WEBVTT - From the Vault: Anthology of Horror, Volume 1 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.960 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:11.039 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.360 Time to go into the Old Vault. This one is 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:17.040 an episode from last October. It was our first episode 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:22.400 on horror anthologies. Yes, uh so the basic format here 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:24.920 is that in we'll explain this in the actual episode, 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:29.600 but we each picked different episodes from horror sci fi 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:32.159 anthologies of the past, you know, stuff like Night Gallery 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:35.440 or Tales from the Crypt, Twilight Zone, etcetera. And then 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:37.839 we tease apart some of the science in them, you know, 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:40.000 more or less online with what we do with our 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:44.520 movie episodes when we do our regularly uh recurring uh 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:48.200 movie episodes here on the podcast. And uh and also 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:50.879 we will notice it's still marked his volume one. That 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:54.840 is because volume two is coming up next. I'm so excited. 0:00:54.920 --> 0:01:04.919 All right, Well, let's dive right in. Welcome to Stuff 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:09.240 to Blow Your Mind. My name is Dr Anton Jess, 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:15.039 Professor of Monster Studies, and I am Professor Griffith Wells 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:19.399 Warden of the Howling Pit. Robert and Joe have a 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:23.800 delightfully ghoulish installment of the podcast for you today. One 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:29.080 guaranteed to curdle your blood and expand your mind in 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:34.200 the most cranium popping ways imaginable. It's a science based 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:38.640 stroll through the world of horror anthology, television and cinema, 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:45.560 The Twilight Zone, the Night Gallery, Tales from the crypt Tree, 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:50.600 House of Horror, and more so, stake around blood suckers 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:54.480 and find out which episodes they picked and what sorts 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:58.960 of scientific subjects they were able to suck from their ters. 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:13.400 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how stuff 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:21.720 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:24.040 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:26.560 as you can tell from our delightful intro there, I 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.720 by a couple of colleagues of ours. We'll just assume 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.840 it was delightful. It was. They sounded delighted. They sounded 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.760 delighted there. But they always even the most, even in 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:38.240 the most inopportune of times. Well, it comes down to 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:41.240 the things they delight in, I suppose. But but what 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:44.200 they told you is correct. We're gonna be talking about 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:48.480 horror anthologies today and then we're gonna we're gonna ring 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:53.160 some science from their their desiccated corpses. That sounds like 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.519 great fun to me. But Robert, so, by horror anthology, 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:00.360 you mean like TV shows where say it's it's horror 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.440 themed and it's not the same characters every episode. We're 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:05.960 we're not so much talking about like Monster of the 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:09.480 Week episode on the episodes on the X Files are buffy, right, 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:12.760 and we're also not talking about them from modern version 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:15.359 of this you see with American horror story where each 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:18.640 season it's a different story. No, we're talking about the 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:23.160 likes of the Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Tales from the Crypt, uh, 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.600 the Simpsons, Treehouse of Horror, personal favorite of mind. Yeah, 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:29.720 shows of shows of this nature where each episode is 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:32.600 a self contained story or sometimes a pair of stories 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.600 or a short story and like a sliver of a 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:38.960 little extra on there. But they're they're self contained. They're 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:43.720 they're essentially horror, short horror fiction that has been translated 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.560 generally for television. But then of course you also see uh, 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:50.120 cinematic installments of these shows as well, where you'll have 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:54.720 a feature league length film that consists of say three, four, 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:59.040 maybe five different short horror segments. Oh yeah, maybe we 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:01.920 can do maybe we can include movies like that in 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:04.840 the future. I think we just did TV shows this time. Yeah, 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:07.160 there are a few, a few kind of branch out 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:09.720 into film a little bit um and of course, of 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:11.600 course we'd be remiss we don't end up talking about 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:13.720 any of these episodes. But Black Mirror, I think is 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:17.640 one of the finer examples of horror at times more 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:20.280 sci fi. But really most of those episodes are pretty terrifying. 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:23.680 I think you could make an argument that Black Mirror 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:26.800 is a horror anthology television series. Now, Robert, I'm a 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:29.560 little at a disadvantage in this episode because you have 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:32.560 seen far more of these types of shows than I have. 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:35.560 I'm I'm big on Simpson's tree House of Horror, but 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.280 I've actually seen pretty I've seen no Tales from the 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:41.440 Dark Side, I think, no Night Gallery. I've actually not 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:44.839 seen all that much Twilight Zone. A few episodes you know, 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:48.039 here and there, and the only full Tales from the 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.600 Crypt episode I've actually seen that I remember is deeply 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.480 inappropriate one with Tim Curry, who is the most wonderful 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:58.279 actor ever in in all of acting history. But it's 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:00.840 just too grotesque to even talk about out well, as 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:04.040 we'll get into that description can go for just about 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:07.400 every Tales from the Crypto, like great actors and sometimes 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:12.520 great filmmakers, but kind of a deplorable story. Um. Yeah, 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:15.360 if if I've seen a lot of her anthology TV 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:18.840 SHO shows, it's because I watched a lot of Sci 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.840 Fi Channel and syndicated cable back in the nineties. I 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:25.800 guess you could say it was my my teacher mother 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:32.039 secret Lover U to reference the Triosa far Um, But yeah, 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:36.719 I watched like stuff like Night Gallery, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:39.280 both new and old. I think on the original Sci 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:42.280 Fi Channel watch Tales from the Dark Side in like 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:45.720 Syndication on Sunday afternoons. It always felt like a particularly 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:48.400 unholy place for it to be. Well, you know what 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:51.120 I do expect to find if we get into If 0:05:51.160 --> 0:05:53.480 I go back and start watching shows like this, as 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:56.920 I bet I will recognize things from when I was 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.200 a kid and we would go on a trip and 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:01.640 like stay in a hotel or something like that, and 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:04.200 of course they always had all the channels we didn't 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:06.359 get at home, so they had the Sci Fi Channel 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:09.680 and I just tuned into whatever in the hotel, And 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:13.279 so occasionally I'll see some crazy movie now and realize 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:15.680 I saw a piece of it as a child on 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:18.520 vacation with my family in a hotel. Well, I didn't 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:22.159 have ready access to Tales from the Crypt. I would 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:24.960 what would happen? Is occasionally that on HBO was on HBO. 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:28.680 It was really one of the original original HBO programs. 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:32.360 But to watch it, since we were not HBO subscribers, 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:34.720 I had to either hit it and just mainline it 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:40.680 during HBO preview weekends, or more often watched them half scrambled, 0:06:40.680 --> 0:06:42.920 because I think it would be like it would be 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:46.640 kind of like pizza colored scrambled versions of it, or 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:49.279 sometimes you know, it would just become black and white. 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:52.200 So there are some episodes for Tales in the Crypt 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:54.400 when I go back and watch them now and I'm like, oh, 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:56.640 I had no idea. For instance, I had no idea 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:00.680 that that was Tim Curry playing female character, because clearly 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.120 the first time I watched it, it was too scrambled 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:06.120 for me to tell well in that episode. That's kind 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:12.120 of a mercy, I think. But wow, it's amazing the 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:15.240 things people will will put up with in the search 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:18.920 for for a story that they're into, you know, like 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.200 like the idea I always think it's funny that, you know, 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:25.120 people watch like theater bootlegged videos that like somebody will 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:28.000 record a movie with the camcorder inside a theater and 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:30.840 people will watch that. That's kind of look terrible, but 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:33.360 I don't. I mean people you're they're hungry for it. 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:35.880 They want that movie. And I guess you were like 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:38.800 that too, watching through through all the static and weird 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:43.280 color variations. Yeah, that was how you got to watch it. Um. Yeah, 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:46.800 So to today's episode for any long time listeners to 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:48.800 stuff to prow your mind. This is essentially the same 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:52.680 concept as the three Creepy Pasta episodes that I did 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:56.480 with Christian where we would pick a creepy Pasta stories 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:58.960 and sort of squeeze the science out of them. And 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:01.200 I have to say, we we squeezed all the science 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.920 out of Creepy Pasta. I don't think there's there's much left. 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:08.760 So this feels like the next logical place to, uh, 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:12.560 to start squeezing horror anthologies. Well, I say, let's get 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:16.560 right into our first selection of the day. Alright, Uh, 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:20.760 my selection here for our first one is a Question 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.520 of Fear, and this is this is one of my 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:27.880 favorite episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, his horror anthology 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:31.800 series that ran from nineteen through ninety three. Uh, and 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:34.640 then of course just eternally on the Sci Fi Channel 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.560 during the during the nineties. Is this a picture of 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:40.960 Leslie Nielsen with an eye patch and a mustache? I'm 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:46.480 looking at Yes. This episode starred um Leslie Nielsen as 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:50.600 Colonel Dennis Malloy and it also starred actor Fritz Weaver 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:54.400 as Dr Mazzi. Weaver is terrific in this as well. 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:56.520 I mean, Nielsen is great and this this is the 0:08:56.559 --> 0:09:00.360 pre naked gun Nielsen. This is the serious actor Nielsen. Oh, 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.440 he was that way for a long time. What movie 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:07.440 did I just watch recently where he plays a straight character? 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:09.720 I can't remember right now, But of course he was 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:13.559 in Forbidden Planet, was he? Yeah, you don't remember. He 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:16.480 was like the main he was the commander astronaut and 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:19.480 Forbidden Planets. I mean Forbidden Planets great, it's not great 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:22.480 for the astronaut characters who as usual or just like 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:27.040 some stiff white dudes. Well, you could say that Leslie 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:29.960 Neilson was also one of those those stiff white dudes 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:32.559 for sure. Um, he's kind of like put him in 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:35.560 the same category as Peter Graves, you know. Uh and 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:39.079 and like Peter Graves, and was later used to terrific 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:41.560 effect in comedy as such as in the Airplane movies 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:44.640 and the Naked Gun movies. Uh. And in this he's 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:47.840 he's pretty great because he plays just a very um, 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:52.200 just a very hard cold character. And this colonly plays 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:56.120 he's a fearless mercenary. Uh that has you know, just 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:58.200 been in multiple wars, and even after World War Two 0:09:58.280 --> 0:09:59.720 was over, you know, he couldn't get enough. So he 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:02.959 just continually works as a mercenary and kind of a 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:06.120 Lee Marvin type. Yeah, very much, very much a Lee 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:08.920 Marvin type character here also reminds me a lot of 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.960 the kind of character that, say, um, Lee van Cliff 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:15.560 would have played. Oh yeah, okay, So in this episode, 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:18.760 it starts off with a gentleman's club, and here is 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.280 Colonel Malloy, uh, you know, talking it up with the 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:26.160 other gentleman there. And one of the gentleman there, Dr Mazzi, 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:30.800 played by Fritz Weaver, starts talking about an episode at 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:32.880 a haunted house, some sort of an encounter with a 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:35.520 haunted house where it was just too terrifying for anyone 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:39.000 to survive, and of course the fearless colonel. Here he 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:41.959 starts talking about just how fearless he is and how 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:45.360 fear is a disease. He says, I'm careful, but I 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:49.400 am incapable of fear. Okay, So this leads to a bet, 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.960 as of apparently tends to happen in stuffy gentleman's clubs. 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:57.720 Mazy says that he bets he cannot survive one night 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:02.199 in this haunted mansion with being scared to death. And uh, 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:07.040 and he puts ten dollars on the line. Yeah, it's 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:10.000 a load of cash, and so of course our mercenaries 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:12.199 up for it to prove how fearless he is and 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:15.200 to and to to get a nice pay day. He says, 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:17.800 of course I'll do it. So uh. And this is 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:19.800 one of the fabulous things about this episode. It's basically 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:24.120 a two person show. It's just just Weaver and Nielsen. 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:27.840 So and you don't even see Weaver again physically. He 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:31.480 only appears on a television set. So what happens is 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:35.000 that Malloy braves the ghost effects in the house, you know, 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:37.320 all these smoke and mirror effects that seem intended to 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:40.160 scare him out of his pay day. He definitely fires 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:43.600 a few rounds and do some obvious special effects. Uh, 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:47.320 and just the audience is clear that they're special effects, 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.800 or it's obvious within the story that they're special effects. 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:54.320 Think a little of both, especially the modern viewers. Uh. 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:58.640 The effects aren't like outright terrible, but anything they're lacking, 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:02.320 I think actually enhances this aspect of the episode. So 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:05.800 it's like supposed to be visible to Malloyd that it's fake, right, 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.320 or certainly after he's through, you know, emptying his gun 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:10.720 into it, he's like, oh, you're just sitting real. Um. 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:12.400 I dealt with the problem the way I deal with 0:12:12.440 --> 0:12:15.320 all my problems. I attempted to murder it. Uh, and 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:17.520 then I saw that it wasn't anything to be afraid of. 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:21.000 So uh. He eventually, though, he settles into bed, he 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:24.000 has a little coffee for some reason, and then he says, 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:25.760 all right, I'm just gonna go to bed, and when 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:27.880 I wake up, I'm gonna be ten thousand dollars richer 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.680 dreaming of mounting ghost heads on this wall. Right. But 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:34.480 then the second he settles in, iron bar snap into 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:37.160 place over him, and a pendulum starts descending from the ceiling, 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:40.600 and he still refuses to give into the fear. He's like, yells, 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:42.720 all right, Mamsy, you can do this, you can kill me, 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:44.880 but you're not gonna win because look at me, still 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:48.720 not afraid, not afraid to die and uh. And so 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:51.679 he ends up going to sleep and when he wakes up, 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:55.640 he makes himself breakfast and Mazy communicates with him via 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:59.800 a live TV transmission and he reveals the following first 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:04.600 of Malloy apparently encountered Mazzi's pianist father in Italy during 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:07.559 the Second World War, where he tortured him for information, 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:12.200 pouring gasoline over his hands and setting them on fire. WHOA. So, 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:15.640 as you can imagine Mazzi's for to find Malloy and 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:18.600 to break him. You burn my daddy's hands, I'll get 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:20.600 you for this, right Yeah, So now we know it's 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:24.360 a revenge piece. So Mazzi reveals at this point that 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:28.360 he is a biochemist, one of the greatest biochemists in 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:31.520 the field and is highly respected uh in the realm 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:34.600 of biochemical warfare. And he says that he and his 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:38.480 colleague recently discovered a way to convert a complex enzyme 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:41.440 in the human body into that of an earthworm, and 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.000 by injecting this, he says, quote, the bones of the 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:48.319 body disintegrate without affecting the nervous system or the vital organs, 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:51.079 until the victim is as near as can be an 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:55.079 earthworm able to move on its belly, but without vertebrae, 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:59.640 unable to stand, able to feed, able to pass waste matter, 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:03.600 unable to use its arms and legs except to assist 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:07.840 with a slithering motion in the manner of an earthworm. 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:10.040 I can't help but notice this sounds like a better 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:12.960 and more interesting version of a movie I don't like 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:16.960 to talk about. Yes, I have long thought about this. 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:18.920 We've had a couple of movies that have come out 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:23.080 over the past ten years in which a deranged scientist 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:26.440 wants to turn somebody into a creature of some sort, 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:30.360 generally a lesser invertebrate. And and and I find that all 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:34.080 of those men like the concept is initially revolting and appealing, 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:35.960 but then you realize it's not really dealt with in 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:40.400 any depth. It's only rolled out to to revolt the audience. 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:43.680 Whereas in this episode, I feel like it is. It 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:47.560 is leveled in a in a very intelligent way. Uh so, 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:52.160 so yeah, to continue going. Malloy initially doubts this. He's like, 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:54.520 you're you're full of it, but Masi tells him, oh well, 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:57.120 why don't you look in the cellar and see what 0:14:57.200 --> 0:14:59.440 became of my colleague and says that he was a 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:01.840 large man, but now he's reduced to something like a slug. 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:05.280 And indeed, earlier in the episode, when when Leslie Neilson's 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:07.720 character is looking around the mansion, one of the things 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:12.320 he encounters is this unexplained trail of slime through the cellar, 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:16.400 and there's this it's it's it's it's a legitimately creepy 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:19.400 moment and certainly seems a little different from the uh 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.240 the ghost effects that are thrown at him. So then 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.680 he tells Molloy. Massy tells Mooy that the transformation is 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:27.600 going to take time, but that he's going to go 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:30.240 down in medical history and there's no stopping it. He said, 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:32.280 you can after you leave here, you can tell the police. 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:34.680 You can go to a specialist, but first of all, 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:37.280 the specialists probably won't believe you, and even if they do, 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:39.480 they're not going to be able to help you because 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:42.440 this cannot be reversed. Wait, so at this point he's 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:45.800 done something to Malloy. He's like injected him or something. 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:48.680 That's what he claims, yes, and Molloyd calls his bluff, 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:50.800 but but he's already beginning to give in the fear. 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:54.720 Massy tells him, Uh, look, you should just wanted to 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:57.760 check your inside forearm. I believe it is you'll find 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:00.680 an injection point. We drugged your coffee, and I snuck 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:03.560 in and injected you while you were asleep. And and 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:06.440 if you still don't believe me, then go into the seller. 0:16:06.800 --> 0:16:10.440 Go into the seller and see what my colleague became. 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:13.360 And at this point, he's like really working Molloy up. 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:16.120 And Molloy begins to move towards the seller and he 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:18.800 sees the trail of slime this time, uh you know, 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:21.800 working through the hallways and descending into the cellar. And 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:24.840 then he turns around and he tells Mazzi that he 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:27.440 still isn't that there's no way mass is gonna win, 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:30.560 that that that that he Malloy is going to win, 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:33.600 and then he shoots himself with his own gun. And 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:38.600 at this point, um Mazzi uh admits, he says, actually, 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:42.840 I win because there's nothing in the seller that's pretty good. Yeah, 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:45.440 I mean this is just my retelling of it, so 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:48.240 certainly the episode itself is a is a finer version 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:51.640 of the tail than my synopsis here. I love the Uh. 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:55.360 It's a common thing, apparently in horror to just talk 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:58.960 to people through TVs. I'm thinking about those solid movies. 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:04.080 Isn't there a segment in Creep Show where somebody talks 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:07.119 to somebody through a TV? Yes? I believe it is 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:10.160 actually Leslie Nielsen. I think so. In the bed where 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:12.520 Ted Danson and I can't remember the other actor's name, 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:14.280 where they're buried up to their necks in the surf 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:16.800 in the sand. Yeah, and Leslie Nielsen's like, ha ha, 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:19.320 I'll talk to you through a TV. Yeah, that's a 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:22.720 that's a nice connection between this episode and Creep Show 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:27.240 horror anthology film, which, incidentally enough, Fritz Weaver is also 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:31.639 in In the crate segment, he plays the professor. Uh. 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:35.560 That works with how Hobrook's character. Oh okay, and he's 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:38.720 fabulous in that as well, like he's he really should 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:41.680 go down as more of a horror anthology legend. Well, 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.040 I I got to see this episode this is pretty 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:46.639 creepy just hearing you describe it. Yeah, it creeped me 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:48.520 out then it still creeps me out now even though 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:52.399 there's no actual transformation, it's described so well. It's a 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:54.760 it's set up so well that you don't even care 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:58.560 like it it. It doesn't deflate the horror of it 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:01.440 when when you have this final twist at the end. 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.560 But this, uh yeah, particularly this concept of transformation into 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:07.960 an earthworm, I feel like there is a lot of 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:11.760 dread here and it and uh and I'd like to 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:15.239 know discuss a little bit why uh we feel that 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:17.800 sense of dread when we imagine being turned into what 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:21.320 is essentially a noble organism, uh, the earthwork. Now. I 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:26.640 can think of quite a few culturally common body transformation 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:31.000 or deterioration phobias. People have phobias about loss of teeth. 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:33.760 That's a common when people have from nightmares about losing 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:37.879 their teeth. Uh, There's like the penis retraction phobia. You know, 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:42.199 people have genital deterioration fears. But I've never heard of 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:46.240 bone disappearance phobia before. That's a new one. Uh, It's 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:48.879 it's a great one. Though. There's actually an episode of 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:52.240 The Ray Bradberry Theater from the eighties, which has a 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.320 similar plot line in which I believe Eugene Levy plays 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:57.160 an individual who goes to a doctor for some sort 0:18:57.160 --> 0:18:59.639 of skeletal issue and he like removes his skeleton and 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:03.600 reduced him to a like essentially an invertebrate. Oh so 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:07.560 he like becomes a human jellyfish basically. So perhaps it's 0:19:07.600 --> 0:19:12.320 not explored enough the bone removal or disintegration um sub 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:15.520 genre body horror. Well, Robert, I assume you're going to 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.159 tell me something about the science of earthworms, right, Yeah, 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:20.440 this gave me a good excuse to look into the 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:24.879 science of earthworms. And I have to apologize to earthworms 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:28.080 and humans who have been transformed into them, because you know, 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:30.600 we could do a whole episode just on the importance 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:33.400 of earthworms and the evolution of earthworms. That's probably true 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:36.480 of any of the subjects we discuss in this episode, 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:38.840 that we could probably expand them into a whole episode 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:40.679 of their own. Yeah, if we were. If I was 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:42.560 a little more of a grown up about it and 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:45.800 was and didn't want to just use these things as 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:49.720 an excuse to talk about night Gallery. Um, the so yeah, 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:54.000 the uh, we're talking about the analyds here from the 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:59.359 analytic phylum, which includes all the segmented worms such as earthworms, 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:03.880 Lee choose, and a whole host of polychy marine worms 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:06.800 such as the bristle worm, which I recently got to 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:11.480 see on a vacation in Costa Rica tide pools. Yeah. Um, 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:13.679 what do they look like? Are they bristly? They are 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:16.199 bristly And if you touch them, especially with a five 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:20.479 year old touches them, uh, they will they will sting you. 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:24.159 But the child was fine. It was a friend of 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:26.720 my son's. Yeah, he was fine. He got that. But 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:28.560 he did get to have a very up close and 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:33.320 personal experience with with the bristleworm. Um. So, the this 0:20:33.359 --> 0:20:36.720 particular phylum contains more than nine thousand species and six 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:40.760 thousand species of earthworm. They live everywhere except Antarctica. And 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:43.800 there are even bioluminescent earthworms. Oh I don't think I 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:46.320 knew that. Uh yeah, I found a couple of great 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:50.560 sources on them, in particular Dr Frank Anderson and Dr 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:55.200 Samuel James. They did a blog post at Biomedical Central 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:59.080 titled the Evolution of Earthworms. So earthworms are fabulous. There 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:03.639 their eco system engineers working draining, aerating the soil. I 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:06.600 feel like nowadays most people realize that, hey, if you've 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:09.480 got worms living in your garden, earthworms, they're they're doing 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:12.000 the Lord's work. That's good. But what did we not 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:14.960 always realize that worms were good for the soil? Well, 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:17.520 it seems like we didn't. I mean, you can look 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:20.040 back to the writings of say Aristotle, who referred to 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:23.480 them as the intestines of the earth, which is in 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:26.800 many ways true. It seems like a good thing, right, 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:29.840 You don't want to not have intestines, right. But but 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:35.440 apparently before Charles Darwin came along with his interest in earthworms, 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:38.040 there was this idea, at least in the Western world, 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:41.879 at least in in Europe, in Britain specifically, that earthworms 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:43.840 were kind of a pest in your garden, that they 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:47.720 weren't really doing anything. Get there. By the way, Dr 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:50.760 Anderson and James, one of the things they discussed in 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:53.919 their their article is that roughly one third of the 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:58.240 earthworms species in North America were introduced from Europe or Asia, 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:01.720 and some were introduced into northern forests which had been 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:04.880 free of earthworms since the end of the Last Ice Age. 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:08.240 Roughly eleven thousand years ago. Oh wow, I've never thought 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:12.480 about that the way um like the soil fauna has 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:15.520 to recover after areas have been covered by glaciers. I 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:17.800 guess yeah. I believe we've touched on this in the 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:19.840 past on the show. Maybe it was a very old 0:22:19.840 --> 0:22:23.480 episode about the idea of of earthworms being brought in 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:28.280 by by colonial forces from the from the Old World 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:33.000 into the New World. Anyway, but earthworms, there are a 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:35.440 lot of them out there. The largest is the giant 0:22:35.480 --> 0:22:39.919 African earthworm. Uh. It's typically typically reaches fifty four inches 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:42.920 or one point thirty six ms in length, but its 0:22:42.960 --> 0:22:48.040 record length is twenty two ft or six point seven ms. What. Yeah, Now, 0:22:48.080 --> 0:22:51.000 even this species before anyone pictures like a full Leslie 0:22:51.080 --> 0:22:55.159 Nielsen transformed earthworm, uh, this species was still the giant 0:22:55.200 --> 0:22:58.040 here was still less than an inch in diameter. Uh. 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:00.439 So nothing that could scare a man to death. A seller. 0:23:00.880 --> 0:23:04.840 That makes me wonder what are the upper limits of 0:23:04.920 --> 0:23:09.320 Like how how filament like an organism can be? Like 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:12.199 at some point you would think that the strains of 0:23:12.520 --> 0:23:16.440 moving something that long and that thin would want to 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:18.680 rip it apart or something. I guess that's one because 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:20.359 you see them remaining so thin, you don't see them 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:24.600 reaching sandworm or gravoid size. So Anderson and James that 0:23:24.800 --> 0:23:28.560 they believe that the ancestor of all living earthworms probably 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:32.800 lived over two D nine million years ago, making earthworms 0:23:32.800 --> 0:23:36.119 about as old as mammals and dinosaurs. They based this 0:23:36.240 --> 0:23:39.439 estimate on DNA sequencing as well as the fossil record, 0:23:39.480 --> 0:23:41.520 which they said, you know, ultimately doesn't tell us a 0:23:41.600 --> 0:23:45.080 lot regarding earthworms, but it does give us leech cocoon 0:23:45.200 --> 0:23:49.639 fossils from the late Triassic two one million years ago, so, 0:23:49.680 --> 0:23:54.080 which presents a minimum age for leeches and earthworms. But 0:23:54.160 --> 0:23:57.800 the idea of a human becoming an earthworm, the loss 0:23:57.800 --> 0:24:01.280 of our vertebrate status, I think it terrifies us because 0:24:01.280 --> 0:24:04.120 it also, you know, it reduces us to the activities 0:24:04.160 --> 0:24:08.679 mentioned by Dr MASI right, moving, eating, producing waste, and 0:24:08.720 --> 0:24:11.359 these are all things we do naturally. But but we 0:24:11.400 --> 0:24:13.119 tend to focus on all the other aspects of our 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:15.320 human existence. I mean, sometimes to the point where we 0:24:15.359 --> 0:24:18.680 want to reject our inner worm. You'd say, I think 0:24:18.720 --> 0:24:24.520 generally bones are pretty important to our lives. Yeah, I 0:24:24.560 --> 0:24:28.960 agree with that. We we need our bones. But but 0:24:28.960 --> 0:24:32.040 but also just the idea that the worm doesn't do 0:24:32.080 --> 0:24:35.000 anything else. I mean does a lot. Again, but to 0:24:35.160 --> 0:24:38.399 the sort of the human perspective, digging around in a 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:40.520 garden and not knowing what the earthworms are doing, all 0:24:40.520 --> 0:24:43.199 it seems to do is just food goes in one end, 0:24:43.240 --> 0:24:45.919 poop comes out the other. It crawls around. It is 0:24:45.960 --> 0:24:50.760 like just the you've stripped everything more interesting away from 0:24:50.800 --> 0:24:55.040 the certainly the human experience and the mammalian experience as well. Well. Yeah, 0:24:55.080 --> 0:24:58.520 I mean a common feature of body horror. You know, 0:24:58.600 --> 0:25:00.640 long before we had David Crone and Berg, we had 0:25:00.680 --> 0:25:03.000 older strains of body horror, the kind of horror that's 0:25:03.040 --> 0:25:05.639 based not saying a monster chasing you, but in the 0:25:05.640 --> 0:25:09.320 transformation of yourself into something you don't like or recognize. 0:25:10.160 --> 0:25:14.200 I mean that the most common version of that is say, 0:25:14.240 --> 0:25:18.159 reduction to what people would consider a lower strata of 0:25:18.200 --> 0:25:22.480 animal existence, you know, being made into a beast that's 0:25:22.560 --> 0:25:25.200 less than human. Oh yeah, I mean I can't help 0:25:25.200 --> 0:25:28.880 but think, of course, of of Kafka's the metamorphosis. Yeah uh, 0:25:28.960 --> 0:25:32.160 though of course that that beast like he was turned into. 0:25:32.200 --> 0:25:36.600 I think the term directly translated into translates into something 0:25:36.640 --> 0:25:40.000 like vermin. But it's often interpreted as like a you know, 0:25:40.000 --> 0:25:43.840 a cockroach or something like that. But yeah, he The 0:25:43.840 --> 0:25:46.960 weird thing there is he retains all of his mental faculties. 0:25:47.000 --> 0:25:49.879 You know, he has full sentience. He's just said his 0:25:49.960 --> 0:25:53.040 body transformed. I absolutely love that story. That is. I 0:25:53.040 --> 0:25:55.240 think that is the only horror story that I've actually 0:25:55.240 --> 0:25:57.080 read in a foreign language. I read it in a 0:25:57.080 --> 0:26:00.520 German class. Really yeah, yeah, what was it like in German? 0:26:00.600 --> 0:26:03.520 It was. It was a cool experience. I've since forgotten 0:26:03.560 --> 0:26:05.760 any you know, smidge of German that it was. That 0:26:05.840 --> 0:26:08.480 was that Reading that story in German was the absolute 0:26:09.040 --> 0:26:13.760 peak of my, my, my, my German language reading ability. Well, 0:26:13.760 --> 0:26:15.800 it sounds like a good peak to climb before committing 0:26:15.800 --> 0:26:19.439 to the valley forever. So I mentioned Charles Darwin earlier. 0:26:19.640 --> 0:26:23.479 Charles Darwin, of course, the famous naturalist who gave us 0:26:24.480 --> 0:26:27.240 the theory, the theory of natural selection. He was quite 0:26:27.240 --> 0:26:29.679 interested in earthworms, and in fact they were the subject 0:26:29.760 --> 0:26:34.320 of his last book, Ones, The Formation of Vegetable Mold 0:26:34.359 --> 0:26:38.280 through the Action of Worms. And despite this, you know 0:26:38.359 --> 0:26:41.960 what makes him dry subject matter? Perhaps, uh, it was 0:26:42.000 --> 0:26:46.160 still the most successful book published during his lifetime and 0:26:46.280 --> 0:26:49.600 uh and uh yeah, And according to Anderson and James, 0:26:49.840 --> 0:26:53.639 it was pretty key in changing Western views on earthworms. Uh, 0:26:53.680 --> 0:26:56.879 they were no longer soil pests. People realized they had importance. 0:26:57.359 --> 0:27:00.600 And the tying in with our directly with our Night 0:27:00.640 --> 0:27:05.040 Gallery episode it's it's success inspired an eighteen eighty two Punch, 0:27:05.640 --> 0:27:08.280 which is a publication punch magazine. I guess you would 0:27:08.280 --> 0:27:12.160 call it. Um. They had a cartoon that depicted worms 0:27:12.200 --> 0:27:16.960 evolving into monkeys and monkeys evolving into men in you know, 0:27:17.040 --> 0:27:22.040 kind of a spiral around a cartoon version of Charles Darwin. Well, 0:27:22.560 --> 0:27:24.880 I feel like I should know the answer to this question, 0:27:24.920 --> 0:27:29.680 but I honestly don't. Are is a worm like organism 0:27:29.720 --> 0:27:34.440 at some point believed to be part of our phylogenetic history? 0:27:35.000 --> 0:27:38.880 Or is or have worms always been separate from whatever 0:27:39.040 --> 0:27:42.800 became vertebrates and eventually became us? Well there They've been 0:27:42.840 --> 0:27:45.880 a lot of studies over the years looking at nematodes 0:27:45.920 --> 0:27:48.680 in particular. Um, Like, if you just do some searches 0:27:48.760 --> 0:27:53.040 for uh, human genetics and worms, you'll find these, uh, 0:27:53.160 --> 0:27:55.160 these articles. And I was tempted to go into those 0:27:55.200 --> 0:27:58.399 deeper here, but then realized that's it's really deserving of 0:27:58.600 --> 0:28:02.760 a whole episode. But but either way, I mean whether 0:28:02.840 --> 0:28:05.520 or not some type of worm is a direct ancestor. 0:28:05.560 --> 0:28:08.680 Obviously we share common ancestry, so the question is how 0:28:08.760 --> 0:28:11.440 much do we have in common? Well, I was looking 0:28:11.440 --> 0:28:13.720 at a paper that goes into this, a bit titled 0:28:13.720 --> 0:28:19.240 Earthworm Genomes, Genes and Proteins The Rediscovery of Darwin's Worms, 0:28:19.320 --> 0:28:23.680 and this was by strussan Baum, Andre Kylie and Morgan 0:28:23.960 --> 0:28:26.240 was publishing two thousand nine and in the Proceedings of 0:28:26.280 --> 0:28:29.280 the Royal Society b SO. I I'd like to read 0:28:29.960 --> 0:28:33.200 just a section where they referenced Darwin here, and in 0:28:33.640 --> 0:28:36.280 particularly they're referencing that illustration I talked about with the 0:28:36.280 --> 0:28:42.960 worms transforming into monkeys. Quote. The illustration is a humorous construct, 0:28:43.240 --> 0:28:47.440 but an examination of the earthworm structure and function reveals 0:28:47.600 --> 0:28:52.600 cells and tissues and cell types with vertebrate counterparts. Earthworms 0:28:52.800 --> 0:28:59.120 are ce limit protostomes, possessing an anatomically and functionally differentiated 0:28:59.600 --> 0:29:05.600 alum terry canal with brush bordered absorptive epithelia, a closed 0:29:05.600 --> 0:29:10.440 blood circulation with hemoglobin in free suspension, an organized nervous 0:29:10.480 --> 0:29:15.600 system with cepholic ganglia, and neuro secretary activities, a multi 0:29:15.600 --> 0:29:21.160 functional tissue for which carbohydrate metabolism and storage properties are 0:29:21.160 --> 0:29:26.680 reminiscent of mammalian heptocytes, a series of paired tubules in 0:29:26.720 --> 0:29:30.520 each segment with renal urine forming functions, and a systemic 0:29:30.680 --> 0:29:35.520 immune system comprising leukocite like cells. So I realized there's 0:29:35.520 --> 0:29:38.680 a lot of though very technical information there that I 0:29:38.720 --> 0:29:41.920 had to stumble through. Uh. But you know, what it's 0:29:41.920 --> 0:29:44.920 basically getting down to is that, yes, we're very different 0:29:44.920 --> 0:29:47.920 from earthworms. I'm not saying that earth worms and humans 0:29:47.920 --> 0:29:50.800 are basically the same thing, but when you start looking 0:29:50.880 --> 0:29:54.840 at genetics and just sort of life itself, we're not 0:29:55.120 --> 0:29:57.920 that different. Ye know. They've got a lot of similar 0:29:58.040 --> 0:30:02.120 anatomical counterparts, some of the same stuff you'd see in mammals, 0:30:02.240 --> 0:30:04.200 and in a way, you can see them as a 0:30:04.680 --> 0:30:08.320 reduced version of what we are right Um, and in fact, 0:30:08.320 --> 0:30:10.800 when you look at our genes. Uh, one thing that 0:30:10.800 --> 0:30:13.360 the author's pointed out here is the earthworms share something 0:30:13.360 --> 0:30:16.760 like two d and twenty genes um of their of 0:30:16.800 --> 0:30:19.800 their then catalog that eight thousand, one hundred twenty nine 0:30:19.840 --> 0:30:23.080 gene objects with humans, and that's more than with fruit 0:30:23.120 --> 0:30:27.240 flies sixty eight genes or nematode worms forty nine genes. 0:30:27.480 --> 0:30:31.160 Despite the importance of fruit fly and nematode genes in 0:30:31.280 --> 0:30:33.800 human research, there's so you know, so there are a 0:30:33.800 --> 0:30:37.960 whole lot of vertebrate homologies in there. They wrote in 0:30:37.960 --> 0:30:42.440 summary that more earthworm genes are conserved between earthworms and humans. 0:30:42.560 --> 0:30:47.959 Provides anecdotal support of the original Punch Cartoons strapline quote, 0:30:48.160 --> 0:30:51.600 man is but a worm. That's wonderful. And I like 0:30:51.680 --> 0:30:56.240 how they have fundamentally conclusively proved that you can inject 0:30:56.240 --> 0:30:58.280 somebody with an enzyme and turn them into an earth 0:30:58.400 --> 0:31:01.840 No no, no no, no no, that's still pure science fiction. 0:31:02.240 --> 0:31:04.240 But but I think maybe it does lean into the 0:31:04.280 --> 0:31:08.080 idea that it is science fiction and not just pure sorcery. 0:31:08.920 --> 0:31:11.360 Like there there there is a connection, there are There 0:31:11.400 --> 0:31:16.600 is a wormy, slimy trail descending through the haunted House 0:31:16.640 --> 0:31:19.840 of human evolution if we dare follow it. Well, I 0:31:19.840 --> 0:31:22.720 have greatly enjoyed following the slimy trail. Robert, Yeah, I 0:31:22.720 --> 0:31:24.800 think that's part of the fun of going after these 0:31:24.800 --> 0:31:28.000 is like sort of picking an episode from an anthology 0:31:28.040 --> 0:31:31.160 series and then just seeing what kind of science you 0:31:31.200 --> 0:31:34.160 can probably squeeze out of it. Um. On that note, 0:31:34.240 --> 0:31:36.120 let's take a quick break, and when we come back, 0:31:36.520 --> 0:31:41.640 I believe you have a selection for us. Thank alright, 0:31:41.680 --> 0:31:44.840 we're back, okay, Robert. Treehouse of Horror. Do you have 0:31:44.880 --> 0:31:47.760 a favorite Treehouse of Horror of all time? Oh? Well, 0:31:47.960 --> 0:31:50.840 I have a I definitely have a favorite episode, yes, 0:31:50.840 --> 0:31:53.800 that I watched last night, because it has some of 0:31:53.840 --> 0:31:57.280 the best segments. It has. It has the Shinning, which 0:31:57.320 --> 0:32:00.600 I I referenced already in the episode. It also has 0:32:00.720 --> 0:32:04.600 Nightmare Cafeteria, the one where you know, all the teachers 0:32:04.640 --> 0:32:07.680 in the lunch room returning to cannibalism and eating the children. 0:32:08.400 --> 0:32:12.640 But it also has has one more just really stellar segment. Yes, 0:32:12.800 --> 0:32:15.960 and this is, of course the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment, 0:32:16.360 --> 0:32:20.120 Time and Punishment, one of the great Simpsons Treeouse of 0:32:20.120 --> 0:32:23.160 Horror shorts of all time, maybe maybe the best one ever. 0:32:23.760 --> 0:32:26.960 So I'll give you the quick rundown. Homer Simpson breaks 0:32:27.000 --> 0:32:30.480 the toaster by getting his hand jammed in it twice. Uh, 0:32:31.160 --> 0:32:34.160 one of the best gags ever on the show. It 0:32:34.280 --> 0:32:36.600 still makes me laugh every time the second time he 0:32:36.640 --> 0:32:39.520 gets his hand jammed in there. So I think Lisa's like, Dad, 0:32:39.600 --> 0:32:41.920 your hands still in there, and He's like, there's just 0:32:42.000 --> 0:32:48.560 so much fabulous screaming and sprawling about. Anyway, So toasters broken, 0:32:48.560 --> 0:32:50.600 he has to do some repairs. So in doing so, 0:32:50.840 --> 0:32:54.920 Homer accidentally turns the toaster into a time machine that 0:32:55.000 --> 0:32:58.320 takes him back to the Cretaceous period, and upon arriving, 0:32:58.560 --> 0:33:01.560 he recalls the advice his father gave him on his 0:33:01.600 --> 0:33:04.120 wedding night, which is, if you ever happened to travel 0:33:04.120 --> 0:33:07.360 back into the past, don't change anything, because the ripple 0:33:07.440 --> 0:33:12.640 effects through time could be disastrous. Unfortunately, of course, Homer 0:33:12.720 --> 0:33:16.360 ends up killing bugs and you know, generally messing stuff 0:33:16.400 --> 0:33:18.840 up in the past. And so Homer comes back to 0:33:18.840 --> 0:33:20.960 the present the first time to find a kind of 0:33:21.080 --> 0:33:24.800 nineteen eighty four scenario where ned Flanders rules the earth, 0:33:25.720 --> 0:33:29.200 a kind of nineteen eight didle for if you will, 0:33:30.000 --> 0:33:33.280 and uh, it's just too good. So eventually Homer he 0:33:33.680 --> 0:33:36.160 goes back through time again to try to fix things, 0:33:36.840 --> 0:33:38.800 and every time he changes something in the past, the 0:33:38.840 --> 0:33:42.320 future changes in horrible ways. Finally, in the end, he 0:33:42.400 --> 0:33:45.280 settles for a present in which things are basically normal, 0:33:45.320 --> 0:33:48.240 but everybody has forked lizard tongues yeah, he says, like, yeah, 0:33:48.280 --> 0:33:51.160 good enough. Uh. And of course this seems to be 0:33:51.200 --> 0:33:54.160 based on Ray Bradbury's short story A Sound of Thunder, 0:33:54.200 --> 0:33:58.000 which was originally published in Collier's magazine in nineteen fifty two. 0:33:58.280 --> 0:34:00.920 And by the way, Robert, I think I'm to understand 0:34:00.960 --> 0:34:04.640 you have not seen the two thousand five movie version 0:34:04.720 --> 0:34:07.080 of A Sound of Thunder with Ben Kingsley and that 0:34:07.200 --> 0:34:10.080 dude with an attitude from Saving Private Ryan. No, I 0:34:10.440 --> 0:34:13.640 haven't you sent me a trailer for it? And somehow 0:34:13.960 --> 0:34:17.879 I totally missed this movie ever even existed. It has 0:34:17.960 --> 0:34:21.759 some of the most deliciously awful c g I monsters 0:34:21.840 --> 0:34:24.720 of all time. It's, you know, that kind of early 0:34:24.880 --> 0:34:27.960 two thousands c g I that at the time people 0:34:28.040 --> 0:34:31.439 just thought was amazing, and now you can't look at 0:34:31.480 --> 0:34:34.640 it without laughing. Yeah, it's it's a it's a shame, 0:34:34.840 --> 0:34:36.600 you know. It's like, it's not like some of the 0:34:36.600 --> 0:34:39.480 stop motion animation you find in older some older horror 0:34:39.480 --> 0:34:42.440 films like this is the Puppets. Yeah, yeah, puppets like this. 0:34:42.640 --> 0:34:46.879 Maybe maybe you know, our taste will change, Maybe we'll 0:34:46.880 --> 0:34:49.920 look back on them in ten years and we'll love them. 0:34:50.040 --> 0:34:51.960 Right now, it's very difficult. Well, I mean, I do 0:34:52.120 --> 0:34:54.880 love them, but not for the reason they were expecting 0:34:54.920 --> 0:34:58.200 people to love them. It's it's hilarious like reading movie 0:34:58.280 --> 0:35:01.640 reviews from the late nineties in early two thousand's where 0:35:02.000 --> 0:35:04.839 critics will say like, well, this movie wasn't very good, 0:35:04.880 --> 0:35:08.080 but at least it has dazzling special effects. Some people 0:35:08.080 --> 0:35:11.600 were just they're out of their minds in the late 0:35:11.680 --> 0:35:14.200 nineties and early two thousands for these c g I 0:35:14.360 --> 0:35:17.960 movies that looks so bad you cannot keep your eyes 0:35:18.040 --> 0:35:20.640 focused on them. You have to look away. I remember 0:35:20.800 --> 0:35:23.719 seeing the Spawn movie when it came out and thinking, oh, 0:35:23.719 --> 0:35:26.279 well that that had some pretty cool looking action in it. Yeah, 0:35:26.320 --> 0:35:29.320 and I recently like glanced back like Glant. Granted I 0:35:29.320 --> 0:35:31.920 didn't watching him full. I just watched a few scenes 0:35:31.960 --> 0:35:34.520 on YouTube and I was just really astounded at how 0:35:34.600 --> 0:35:37.600 bad the c g I was. It's it's amazing. But anyway, 0:35:37.680 --> 0:35:40.640 this movie, it takes this story. At one point, there's 0:35:40.680 --> 0:35:44.280 this monster, this kind of like a baboon velociraptor hybrid. 0:35:44.480 --> 0:35:47.920 It's just amazing. But anyway, so, what what is the 0:35:48.000 --> 0:35:51.160 plot of A Sound of thunder Ray Bradberry's original story, Well, 0:35:51.320 --> 0:35:54.560 it involves hunters traveling back through time to go on 0:35:54.680 --> 0:35:58.240 the safari through time and kill a turano source Rex. 0:35:58.680 --> 0:36:01.239 And so this time travel afari in the story is 0:36:01.280 --> 0:36:04.239 believed to be safe because scouts have gone ahead and 0:36:04.320 --> 0:36:07.520 selected an animal that was about to die anyway, so 0:36:07.640 --> 0:36:10.480 killing it shouldn't change too much about the past. But 0:36:10.600 --> 0:36:13.000 then in the story, won one of these safari guys. 0:36:13.040 --> 0:36:14.520 I think this rich guy pay in to go on 0:36:14.560 --> 0:36:17.080 this trip. He sort of goes off script. He falls 0:36:17.080 --> 0:36:20.520 off this levitating path that they've constructed. Uh, and he 0:36:20.680 --> 0:36:23.480 changes too much about the past, especially in the end 0:36:23.480 --> 0:36:26.520 by discovering that he crushed a butterfly under his boot. 0:36:27.080 --> 0:36:30.560 And so then when they return to the future, everything's weird. 0:36:30.800 --> 0:36:34.719 English words are spelled different, and a fascist politician has 0:36:34.760 --> 0:36:37.640 come to power. It's a fabulous story. I should also 0:36:37.680 --> 0:36:40.120 point out that I think it's the third season of 0:36:40.160 --> 0:36:43.040 the Ray Bradberry Theater had an adaptation of this that 0:36:43.080 --> 0:36:45.520 I think was actually scripted by Ray brad Berry and 0:36:45.560 --> 0:36:49.279 I remember as being pretty good. Yeah, so do not 0:36:49.400 --> 0:36:52.560 feel like you only have that that awful c g 0:36:52.719 --> 0:36:55.040 I film to fall back on. But but isn't it 0:36:55.080 --> 0:36:58.920 interesting that probably more people have been exposed to this 0:36:59.040 --> 0:37:03.759 concept through The Simpsons, then through the Ray Bradberry Theater, 0:37:03.960 --> 0:37:06.360 or certainly that the writings of Ray Bradberry. Oh. I 0:37:06.400 --> 0:37:08.680 think that's how it often is. I mean, lots of 0:37:08.920 --> 0:37:12.440 classic sci fi stories ended up as Simpsons episodes, and 0:37:12.480 --> 0:37:15.200 that's what people primarily know them from. Just like I 0:37:15.200 --> 0:37:18.800 bet more people of roughly our generation know the Tale 0:37:18.800 --> 0:37:22.319 of the Monkeys Paw as the Twisted Claw episode of 0:37:22.360 --> 0:37:25.759 Are You Afraid of the Dark? I mean it makes sense. 0:37:25.760 --> 0:37:29.279 We're essentially talking about folk tales and myths, and these 0:37:29.280 --> 0:37:32.600 things evolved, These things change with the teller historically, and 0:37:32.640 --> 0:37:34.600 so it makes sense that they should change with the 0:37:34.640 --> 0:37:38.239 teller even today. Yeah. But so this is sort of 0:37:38.239 --> 0:37:41.520 a timeless story in a way, because it's illustrating a 0:37:41.600 --> 0:37:45.080 concept that if you've ever really thought about time travel 0:37:45.160 --> 0:37:47.200 and what it would mean if time travel into the 0:37:47.200 --> 0:37:50.120 past could exist, if you think about it hard enough, 0:37:50.160 --> 0:37:53.759 you're likely to stumble across some version of what's come 0:37:53.800 --> 0:37:57.799 to be known in chaos theory and meteorology and mathematics 0:37:57.840 --> 0:38:01.240 as the butterfly effect. Now, there are plenty of popular 0:38:01.320 --> 0:38:04.000 misconceptions about the butterfly effect. You heard about it in 0:38:04.200 --> 0:38:08.040 Jurassic Park and stuff. One of the common misconceptions is 0:38:08.080 --> 0:38:11.600 that the term actually comes from Ray Bradberry's story A 0:38:11.680 --> 0:38:14.160 Sound of Thunder, because what do we find out at 0:38:14.160 --> 0:38:16.480 the end that this guy stepped on a butterfly and 0:38:16.520 --> 0:38:19.319 he sees it on his boot and realizes, oh no, 0:38:19.600 --> 0:38:23.960 that caused these cascading effects through time and changed everything. Uh, 0:38:23.960 --> 0:38:25.880 this is not the case that the term does not 0:38:26.040 --> 0:38:28.959 come from that story. In reality, credit can be given 0:38:28.960 --> 0:38:32.319 to the m I. T. Meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz, who 0:38:32.400 --> 0:38:36.960 was discussing the accuracy of weather prediction models. And Lorenz 0:38:37.000 --> 0:38:42.480 found while working on meteorological computer programs that extremely tiny 0:38:42.719 --> 0:38:47.400 changes in initial inputs would lead to huge differences in 0:38:47.480 --> 0:38:52.080 predicted weather patterns over time, such that unavoidable errors in 0:38:52.120 --> 0:38:57.240 our inputs will probably always make weather fundamentally unpredictable beyond 0:38:57.320 --> 0:38:59.880 a certain distance into the future. And you actually know 0:39:00.080 --> 0:39:02.680 this from your own experience. Right, you look at today's 0:39:02.760 --> 0:39:07.480 weather forecast, it's probably pretty accurate. Tomorrow's is probably pretty accurate. 0:39:07.760 --> 0:39:11.040 You try to go seven days into the future, it's 0:39:11.080 --> 0:39:14.560 it's kind of a crapshoot. Then, in predicting, say whether 0:39:14.600 --> 0:39:17.920 a month into the future is almost useless. And this 0:39:18.000 --> 0:39:21.240 is because even though we have very good weather prediction 0:39:21.320 --> 0:39:25.600 models at this point, their accuracy just deteriorates over time 0:39:25.640 --> 0:39:30.640 because of the amplification of tiny initial differences that you 0:39:30.719 --> 0:39:34.960 can't ever totally eliminate. So you know, uh, you you 0:39:35.000 --> 0:39:39.120 make a tiny, tiny, you know, many many decimal places 0:39:39.160 --> 0:39:43.000 behind the zero change to some initial input in a 0:39:43.080 --> 0:39:46.680 weather prediction model, and then you run that, run that 0:39:46.760 --> 0:39:50.560 alongside something with the original input, and one day into 0:39:50.600 --> 0:39:53.719 the future they will be pretty similar, but five days 0:39:53.760 --> 0:39:57.520 into the future they will be dramatically different. So whatever 0:39:57.560 --> 0:40:00.680 you've got slightly wrong today, however tiny that error is, 0:40:00.760 --> 0:40:03.400 will mean you just can't predict the future in a month. 0:40:03.800 --> 0:40:07.640 And illustrate this concept, Lawns used the image of a bird, 0:40:08.040 --> 0:40:11.040 I think a seagull or a butterfly flapping its wings 0:40:11.440 --> 0:40:14.120 leading to changes in the weather that would create a 0:40:14.160 --> 0:40:17.359 tornado that you wouldn't have had otherwise. Now, one thing 0:40:17.400 --> 0:40:19.279 I also want to make clear is that this is 0:40:19.320 --> 0:40:23.400 talking about the predicted movements of like specific weather patterns 0:40:23.440 --> 0:40:26.520 and events. Right when they're trying to say where rain 0:40:26.640 --> 0:40:29.640 will be at a certain time and how the front 0:40:29.719 --> 0:40:31.960 the you know, the the air fronts will move and everything. 0:40:32.480 --> 0:40:35.080 We can, on the other hand, make some solid predictions 0:40:35.120 --> 0:40:38.720 about whether just based on climate and statistics. For example, 0:40:39.040 --> 0:40:41.120 you can predict it is much more likely to be 0:40:41.200 --> 0:40:43.879 raining in Seattle tomorrow than it is to be raining 0:40:43.880 --> 0:40:47.360 in Death Valley tomorrow, and you you are likely to 0:40:47.440 --> 0:40:50.160 be correct based on those predictions made on on the 0:40:50.200 --> 0:40:54.080 basis of knowledge about climate and statistics. But still, if 0:40:54.080 --> 0:40:56.319 you're trying to predict far in the future with specific 0:40:56.440 --> 0:40:58.959 movements of weather patterns, you're you're gonna have a really 0:40:59.000 --> 0:41:02.680 hard time doing it. Another misconception about the butterfly effect. 0:41:03.000 --> 0:41:06.480 I think a lot of times people interpreted exactly the 0:41:06.560 --> 0:41:09.080 wrong way. It's like the opposite of what it means. 0:41:09.120 --> 0:41:13.160 They think that it means you can identify small changes 0:41:13.680 --> 0:41:16.920 that lead to big effects in complex systems. This is 0:41:16.960 --> 0:41:19.320 the opposite of the point about the butterfly effect. The 0:41:19.360 --> 0:41:24.160 butterfly effect is specifically about the lack of deterministic predictability 0:41:24.280 --> 0:41:28.719 in complex systems with sensitivity to initial conditions, and the 0:41:29.120 --> 0:41:33.120 technical term for this would be deterministic non linear systems. 0:41:33.160 --> 0:41:37.320 Nonlinear systems are systems where the outputs are not directly 0:41:37.360 --> 0:41:40.319 proportional to the inputs. You know, you can slightly vary 0:41:40.360 --> 0:41:42.719 an input and get big changes in the difference of 0:41:42.760 --> 0:41:46.080 the output. So the point is not that you can 0:41:46.120 --> 0:41:48.440 see a tornado and actually trace it back to a 0:41:48.480 --> 0:41:51.720 butterfly flapping its wings. Rather, the point is that weather 0:41:51.760 --> 0:41:56.480 systems emerged from complex interactions over time with extreme sensitivity 0:41:56.520 --> 0:41:59.160 to initial conditions, meaning that if you move far enough 0:41:59.200 --> 0:42:01.759 back in time, you could not have predicted that a 0:42:01.840 --> 0:42:05.000 tornado would emerge. It's not about predicting the future of 0:42:05.040 --> 0:42:08.520 a complex system based on tiny initial changes. It's about 0:42:08.600 --> 0:42:12.040 how complex systems are more and more unpredictable the farther 0:42:12.120 --> 0:42:14.719 into the future you try to predict. This, of course, 0:42:14.800 --> 0:42:17.759 is one of the fundamental concepts of chaos theory, and 0:42:17.800 --> 0:42:19.759 maybe maybe we should come back and devote a full 0:42:19.760 --> 0:42:22.360 episode to this one day with special GUESTI and Malcolm. 0:42:23.000 --> 0:42:26.759 I've never really thought to look critically at whether the 0:42:26.840 --> 0:42:30.160 way Ian Malcolm tries to apply chaos theory and Jurassic 0:42:30.239 --> 0:42:33.320 Park is a legitimate application of that theory. Maybe maybe 0:42:33.320 --> 0:42:35.520 the maybe it is, I don't know. That would would 0:42:35.520 --> 0:42:37.200 actually be fun to just to do a breakdown of 0:42:37.280 --> 0:42:40.080 the original Jurassic Park film, Uh, and it would give 0:42:40.120 --> 0:42:44.400 us more opportunity to rail against what Jurassic Park, especially 0:42:44.440 --> 0:42:47.520 the recent films, are doing the understanding of dinosaurs. I'm 0:42:47.560 --> 0:42:52.560 really into kids now whose favorite dinosaurs are fictional dinosaurs 0:42:52.560 --> 0:42:54.920 from this most recent movie, and I feel like it's 0:42:54.920 --> 0:42:57.879 a shame. Real dinosaurs are good enough. Come on, Yeah, 0:42:57.880 --> 0:43:00.759 It's like everybody they're like, oh, it's this blue velociraptor 0:43:00.880 --> 0:43:02.719 or something. I don't know, I haven't seen it yet. 0:43:02.760 --> 0:43:05.120 Maybe it's wonderful. I suppose I should just be played 0:43:05.120 --> 0:43:07.480 that they're interested in dinosaurs at all. But they're just 0:43:07.520 --> 0:43:12.200 so many wonderful actual species, and our current scientific understanding 0:43:12.239 --> 0:43:14.239 of them I feel like should be reflected to some 0:43:14.320 --> 0:43:17.400 extent in our fiction. Totally. Uh So, it's pretty widely 0:43:17.440 --> 0:43:20.440 accepted that something like the butterfly effect applies to whether 0:43:20.600 --> 0:43:23.160 I think there are actually are some who dissent and say, no, 0:43:23.400 --> 0:43:25.920 it's just, you know, problems with our models or something. 0:43:26.520 --> 0:43:29.480 But the question is would it apply to the biological 0:43:29.560 --> 0:43:33.040 history of Earth? Would stepping on a fish seventy million 0:43:33.120 --> 0:43:37.520 years ago change the present substantially? And how would it 0:43:37.640 --> 0:43:41.080 change the present? Unfortunately, this is not a question that 0:43:41.160 --> 0:43:43.279 I think has a firm scientific answer. I think this 0:43:43.360 --> 0:43:45.400 is just something people we don't know what the answer 0:43:45.480 --> 0:43:48.879 to this question is. Uh. One thing I think, though 0:43:48.880 --> 0:43:51.480 I could be wrong, is that I think stories like 0:43:51.520 --> 0:43:56.359 this often get the scale of the changes wrong, like 0:43:56.440 --> 0:43:58.919 that It's interesting that these stories tend to assume kind 0:43:58.920 --> 0:44:04.200 of nonsensical esthetic changes around the margins of reality, but 0:44:04.280 --> 0:44:07.279 where the broad strokes are the same, uh. You know, 0:44:07.360 --> 0:44:10.560 example would be Ned Flanders still exists the Simpsons, The 0:44:10.560 --> 0:44:14.839 Simpsons still exist there apparently the same people. Uh. Ned 0:44:14.840 --> 0:44:17.680 Flanders is still the Simpsons Simpsons next door neighbor, but 0:44:17.920 --> 0:44:20.840 is also the dictator of Earth, you know. And I 0:44:20.880 --> 0:44:22.719 know that's a parody. I'm not trying to like rag 0:44:22.760 --> 0:44:24.799 on the Simpsons for that, but it's a It's a 0:44:24.800 --> 0:44:28.440 good parody because it highlights the kind of absurdity that 0:44:28.520 --> 0:44:30.879 you see in stories like this, like in a Sound 0:44:30.960 --> 0:44:34.560 of Thunder, the idea that you'd still basically have the 0:44:34.640 --> 0:44:38.800 same uh people existing in the same like candidates running 0:44:38.840 --> 0:44:41.279 for offer It's office, but a different one of the 0:44:41.320 --> 0:44:44.440 candidates one yeah, and the bactor the Simpsons, Like why 0:44:44.480 --> 0:44:47.640 would everything be the same except for the tongue? Right? So, 0:44:47.719 --> 0:44:49.400 I you know, I could be wrong, But I would 0:44:49.400 --> 0:44:52.719 tend to say, just intuitively and based on you know, 0:44:52.920 --> 0:44:57.359 using the weather analogy, that butterfly effect type changes from 0:44:57.560 --> 0:45:01.320 deep into the past would result in let's say, larger 0:45:01.360 --> 0:45:05.960 amplitude changes tens of millions of years down the road, bigger, 0:45:06.080 --> 0:45:09.960 bigger amplitude changes than which candidate wins an election. Would 0:45:10.000 --> 0:45:13.640 people even exist if they did with the same individual 0:45:13.800 --> 0:45:17.480 people even exist? I don't know. It seems kind of doubtful. 0:45:17.719 --> 0:45:20.680 There's that great scene in that episode where Homer sits 0:45:20.760 --> 0:45:24.239 on a creature emerging from the water. Yes um, which 0:45:24.280 --> 0:45:26.000 I love that because I feel like it it kind 0:45:26.000 --> 0:45:30.560 of calls back to um paleo art in our science 0:45:30.600 --> 0:45:33.279 textbooks where you're told about the evolution of life and 0:45:33.280 --> 0:45:36.080 you see this picture of some sort of creature waddling 0:45:36.160 --> 0:45:39.600 out of the water, talking about like life coming from 0:45:39.640 --> 0:45:42.839 the sea and then becoming terrestrial. But it it can 0:45:42.920 --> 0:45:45.479 it's kind of accidentally put this idea in your mind 0:45:45.719 --> 0:45:49.759 that there was one fish. There's one creature like that, 0:45:50.480 --> 0:45:52.120 just like this is the one and if you sat 0:45:52.200 --> 0:45:55.080 on it, it would change everything. Yeah, that that kind 0:45:55.080 --> 0:45:59.680 of misconception, like one fish got brave and it climbed 0:45:59.680 --> 0:46:02.160 out of the water, and if it hadn't done that, 0:46:02.239 --> 0:46:05.520 there never would have been uh any kind of like 0:46:05.640 --> 0:46:09.479 water to land dwelling vertebrate transition. Yeah, I mean maybe 0:46:09.480 --> 0:46:12.480 that's part of like an American exceptionalism, right, kind of 0:46:13.360 --> 0:46:16.480 kind of you know, accidentally drained into our science. God, 0:46:16.560 --> 0:46:20.360 that fish, really it was a freethinker. It really changed everything. 0:46:21.640 --> 0:46:24.919 It's the great Man theory of history exactly. Of course 0:46:24.920 --> 0:46:28.320 we got no time for that, but hey, this story 0:46:28.440 --> 0:46:31.520 also deals to the practical effects of time travel, something 0:46:31.600 --> 0:46:35.719 that unfortunately again is in in the speculative realm. But 0:46:35.760 --> 0:46:39.120 at least we can offer some informed criticism even if 0:46:39.160 --> 0:46:41.960 we can't have a like, you know, a proven scientific 0:46:42.000 --> 0:46:44.600 theory about time travel. So one of the things we 0:46:44.640 --> 0:46:46.960 often point out on the show is that, of course 0:46:47.000 --> 0:46:49.600 time travel into the future is easy. In fact, you're 0:46:49.640 --> 0:46:52.799 doing it right now in more ways than in more 0:46:52.840 --> 0:46:54.799 than one, more than one way, more way than one, 0:46:54.880 --> 0:46:58.280 more ways than one anyway. You are traveling into the future, 0:46:58.360 --> 0:47:00.640 of course, at a rate of one set can per second. 0:47:00.719 --> 0:47:04.640 But beyond that, you are in fact time traveling into 0:47:04.640 --> 0:47:07.719 the future in the way that many stories imagine, meaning 0:47:07.760 --> 0:47:11.200 you're going into the future faster than other things are. 0:47:11.400 --> 0:47:14.880 Because of time dilation effects, you're closer to the center 0:47:14.920 --> 0:47:17.719 of gravity of Earth, so you are actually going into 0:47:17.719 --> 0:47:21.239 the future faster than objects farther away from the center 0:47:21.280 --> 0:47:23.000 of gravity of Earth that are moving at the same 0:47:23.080 --> 0:47:27.520 velocity as you. Also, because you're moving faster, that's dilating 0:47:27.560 --> 0:47:30.400 time in a way, speeding up your travel into the future. 0:47:30.880 --> 0:47:33.440 If you get in a spaceship and travel even even 0:47:33.520 --> 0:47:36.960 faster than you will even more greatly speed up your 0:47:37.000 --> 0:47:40.760 relative travel into the future. You will get old slower 0:47:40.800 --> 0:47:42.960 than things that are not traveling with you in that 0:47:43.000 --> 0:47:46.160 fast moving spaceship. So yeah, time travel into the future 0:47:46.280 --> 0:47:49.880 is totally real, proven feature of relativity, and it's just 0:47:50.640 --> 0:47:54.040 it's actually almost kind of easy. Um. On the other hand, 0:47:54.120 --> 0:47:56.280 we often talk about how time travel into the past 0:47:56.400 --> 0:48:00.359 is perhaps impossible, and if not impossible, at least very 0:48:00.480 --> 0:48:03.600 very hard. Uh, the ways in which it has done. 0:48:03.760 --> 0:48:06.319 I was I was reading a post about this, UH 0:48:06.440 --> 0:48:10.840 on Sean Carroll's blog, The physicist Sean Carroll, Caltech physicist. 0:48:10.920 --> 0:48:13.080 He writes a lot of great, you know, popular science 0:48:13.080 --> 0:48:15.600 writing these days, and he's got a great blog. One 0:48:15.640 --> 0:48:17.760 of his posts from two thousand nine is called rules 0:48:17.760 --> 0:48:20.839 for time travelers, where he just says, Okay, if we 0:48:20.840 --> 0:48:24.080 were to try to make scientifically accurate time travel movies, 0:48:24.160 --> 0:48:27.799 what would happen in them? He argues that traveling into 0:48:27.800 --> 0:48:31.359 the past is difficult, it might not be impossible. If 0:48:31.400 --> 0:48:34.120 you can do it, it would be based on what's 0:48:34.200 --> 0:48:37.359 you know, basically like bridges through space time known as 0:48:37.440 --> 0:48:40.840 closed time like curves. And if it is possible to 0:48:40.880 --> 0:48:43.560 travel into the past. One of the things about this 0:48:43.680 --> 0:48:47.040 is that it is not possible to change the past. 0:48:47.560 --> 0:48:50.040 So you might be able to travel back in time, 0:48:50.360 --> 0:48:52.919 but you couldn't create a paradox by say, going back 0:48:52.960 --> 0:48:56.280 and killing your grandfather or whatever, so that you never existed. 0:48:56.640 --> 0:48:59.560 In fact, anything you went back into the past and 0:48:59.680 --> 0:49:03.120 did you would find was in fact already part of 0:49:03.160 --> 0:49:05.920 the past in the future that you came from. That's 0:49:05.960 --> 0:49:08.799 the paradox of the whole situation, right, I mean, And that, yeah, 0:49:08.840 --> 0:49:11.520 that makes it kind of weird because that seems to 0:49:11.719 --> 0:49:14.440 sort of create a paradox as well, like it's the 0:49:14.760 --> 0:49:18.520 closed time loop like you see in the original Terminator movie. Uh, 0:49:18.600 --> 0:49:21.360 there's a boy who exists or a person who exists 0:49:21.440 --> 0:49:24.080 only because somebody from the future was sent back in 0:49:24.160 --> 0:49:28.040 time by him to become his father. So like, how 0:49:28.120 --> 0:49:32.640 how did that closed loop get initiated? So anyway, backward 0:49:32.680 --> 0:49:35.560 time travel still generally smells rotten to me. But but 0:49:35.680 --> 0:49:39.200 Carol saying, if it's possible, if it's possible at all, 0:49:39.280 --> 0:49:43.160 you can't change the past. You you know, whatever's done 0:49:43.280 --> 0:49:45.840 is done. That just is the past, even if you 0:49:45.880 --> 0:49:48.960 can go back. Also, another point he makes is that 0:49:49.080 --> 0:49:52.240 you can't travel back in time to before the time 0:49:52.280 --> 0:49:55.799 machine was invented. He says, you know, maybe you can 0:49:55.800 --> 0:49:58.319 travel back to a point you know, you've got a 0:49:58.360 --> 0:50:00.600 time machine later and you can travel act to when 0:50:00.680 --> 0:50:03.319 the time machine was made, But you can't travel back 0:50:03.360 --> 0:50:05.960 to the Middle Ages or something like that, because you 0:50:05.960 --> 0:50:08.759 get paradoxes again, which takes some of the fun out 0:50:08.760 --> 0:50:12.520 of our timetab travel fiction. But it also would explain 0:50:12.560 --> 0:50:15.040 why we haven't been visited by time travelers. Oh yeah, 0:50:15.120 --> 0:50:18.040 I mean that's always a great question. Now you might 0:50:18.080 --> 0:50:20.120 be thinking, okay, but wait about wait a minute, what 0:50:20.160 --> 0:50:23.480 about like forking branches of time? You know, can't you 0:50:23.520 --> 0:50:26.200 like fork off into different branches of time? You know? 0:50:26.280 --> 0:50:29.640 Even Sean Carroll, he he adheres to the many worlds 0:50:29.680 --> 0:50:31.960 theory of quantum mechanics, right, so he thinks that the 0:50:32.040 --> 0:50:35.840 universe is constantly branching off into different realities based on 0:50:35.920 --> 0:50:40.280 the wave function of quantum mechanical objects and events. Um. 0:50:40.360 --> 0:50:42.959 But but even if you accept that, there's no reason 0:50:43.000 --> 0:50:45.520 to think that traveling back into time would somehow give 0:50:45.560 --> 0:50:49.279 you access to different quantum realities. It just seems like 0:50:49.719 --> 0:50:52.520 you know you're here, You're here, this is the one 0:50:52.600 --> 0:50:56.160 you have access to. You can't interact with other quantum realities. 0:50:56.360 --> 0:50:59.520 By definition, you can't interact with them. That's what makes 0:50:59.520 --> 0:51:03.799 them differ realities. So unfortunately, I don't think you you know, 0:51:03.840 --> 0:51:06.120 if you don't like the your lot in life today 0:51:06.160 --> 0:51:08.560 and you want to change things, I don't think you 0:51:08.560 --> 0:51:10.360 can do it by going back and stomping on a 0:51:10.400 --> 0:51:15.560 fish or even a butterfly. Still, great episode of tree 0:51:15.600 --> 0:51:17.920 House of Horror, so good, and and I do recommend 0:51:17.920 --> 0:51:20.319 that Ray brad Berry a theater episode as well. I 0:51:20.360 --> 0:51:23.440 believe you can find the full thing on one of 0:51:23.440 --> 0:51:26.400 the video streaming sites if you love bad movies. I 0:51:26.440 --> 0:51:29.000 also recommend the two thousand five movie. It's It's one 0:51:29.040 --> 0:51:31.759 for the c g ages. All right, Well, let's move 0:51:31.760 --> 0:51:34.640 on to another one, shall we all right? So, Joe, 0:51:34.760 --> 0:51:38.239 you've flown with me before, Yes, so you probably have 0:51:38.320 --> 0:51:41.480 observed that then I'm kind of a slightly nervous flyer. 0:51:41.719 --> 0:51:44.560 I like to try to be a calm, reassuring presence, 0:51:45.640 --> 0:51:47.640 trying not to raise my voice around you when we're 0:51:47.640 --> 0:51:50.759 getting onto an airplane. Yeah, and I have to say, 0:51:50.880 --> 0:51:53.239 you know, I don't have anywhere near the difficulty that 0:51:53.320 --> 0:51:55.640 I know some people struggle with when it comes to flying. 0:51:55.719 --> 0:51:59.000 But yeah, I've I found myself grow more anxious when 0:51:59.000 --> 0:52:01.879 it comes to flights in recent years, and I've I've 0:52:01.920 --> 0:52:05.560 been able to successfully uh manage this to to a 0:52:05.560 --> 0:52:09.680 certain degree, uh with a little uh Zanex, a little 0:52:09.880 --> 0:52:14.319 Steve Roach and being electronic music, maybe a little biosphere uh. 0:52:14.320 --> 0:52:16.239 And then that seems to do the do the job. 0:52:16.320 --> 0:52:18.759 It makes me a more pleasant flyer, it makes me 0:52:18.840 --> 0:52:21.880 more pleasant to be around when I'm flying. But so, 0:52:22.200 --> 0:52:27.560 given this reality, I couldn't help but discuss the classic 0:52:27.800 --> 0:52:32.400 Twilight Zone episode from October of nineteen sixte uh Nightmare 0:52:32.480 --> 0:52:36.400 at twenty thousand feet based I should point out on 0:52:36.480 --> 0:52:40.000 the Richard mathieson short story Alone by Night, Isn't it great? 0:52:40.040 --> 0:52:45.160 How many of these shorts come from great short stories 0:52:45.200 --> 0:52:47.640 by sci fi writers. Yeah. I mean we're gonna get 0:52:47.680 --> 0:52:51.000 to some that are not based on terrible stories, true, 0:52:51.040 --> 0:52:53.000 but but yeah, so far we've been talking about some 0:52:53.040 --> 0:52:58.160 big names here. Uh Richard Matheson, Uh what is was 0:52:58.239 --> 0:53:02.040 a legend? Um. This episode, of course, is famous because 0:53:02.040 --> 0:53:05.200 it also started with him Shatner. Uh so just a 0:53:05.280 --> 0:53:08.200 quick thing. Oh yeah, he's he's pretty good at this. 0:53:09.120 --> 0:53:11.400 But and he was in at least a couple of 0:53:11.440 --> 0:53:14.120 Twilight Zones, maybe more. I remember there being at least 0:53:14.160 --> 0:53:16.279 another one he was in. Yeah, what was he He 0:53:16.320 --> 0:53:18.319 was in one that had like a what was it 0:53:18.360 --> 0:53:23.480 a jukebox napkin napkin dispenser? Yeah? Why why did I 0:53:23.520 --> 0:53:26.120 think juke box it like to spit out fortunes or 0:53:26.160 --> 0:53:28.640 somethingthing to that effect. Yeah, it's like a fortune cookie 0:53:28.719 --> 0:53:32.160 napkin dispenser. I'm blanking on the details. He's not nearly 0:53:32.200 --> 0:53:34.880 the same as this episode. So in this one, William 0:53:34.880 --> 0:53:38.480 Shatner plays a nervous flyer who witnesses a creature on 0:53:38.520 --> 0:53:42.239 the wing of the plane during flight. Um, and he 0:53:42.280 --> 0:53:45.000 has in the episode he has he's just bouncing back 0:53:45.040 --> 0:53:48.360 from a nervous breakdown a board of flight, So everyone's 0:53:48.400 --> 0:53:50.600 doubting him when he starts reporting seeing a creature on 0:53:50.640 --> 0:53:53.200 the wing of the plane. Uh this, so what what 0:53:53.320 --> 0:53:56.479 is essentially a grimlin? Though it's kind of a YETI suit. 0:53:56.719 --> 0:53:58.960 It's like a combination of a YETI suit and it 0:53:59.040 --> 0:54:01.920 also kind of looks like that dog down the hall 0:54:01.960 --> 0:54:04.759 and the scene in the Shining. Yeah, it's not a 0:54:04.800 --> 0:54:08.080 great monster suit, but the episode is so solid it 0:54:08.440 --> 0:54:10.560 somehow works. And I guess it makes sense that it 0:54:10.560 --> 0:54:12.640 would be furry if it's at such a height. You know, 0:54:12.680 --> 0:54:15.600 it's cold up there. Um I should point out I 0:54:15.600 --> 0:54:18.880 said it's a grimlin. Well it's a pre Magua Grimlin 0:54:18.920 --> 0:54:21.800 of a pre gremlins, and grimlins to gremlin, not the 0:54:21.880 --> 0:54:25.160 Joe Dante kind, right, Yeah, this is, you know, essentially 0:54:25.320 --> 0:54:28.840 the folkloric creature that messes with technology, an idea that 0:54:28.920 --> 0:54:31.680 spread especially during World War Two. So if something went 0:54:31.719 --> 0:54:35.120 wrong with your airplane engine, you'd say they're gremlins in there, right. 0:54:35.680 --> 0:54:37.759 So in this episode, the crew attempts to state and 0:54:37.800 --> 0:54:40.120 I think they even give them a pill shatter or 0:54:40.160 --> 0:54:42.800 not the gremlin, right, they don't. Nobody sees the gremlin. 0:54:42.840 --> 0:54:46.000 They're just like here take this pill crazy person. Um. 0:54:46.400 --> 0:54:49.440 By the way, good luck trying to get any kind 0:54:49.440 --> 0:54:54.920 of sedatives out of out of the crew of your flight. Semifly, 0:54:55.160 --> 0:54:57.359 that's the policy. You can't ask for them. You have 0:54:57.480 --> 0:55:00.680 to say you see monsters, and then you'll get them. Yeah. 0:55:00.680 --> 0:55:03.239 So he's raving about the creature and finally like the 0:55:03.239 --> 0:55:06.480 plane lands, he's rolled away in a straight jacket. But 0:55:06.640 --> 0:55:09.680 as he's rolled away, he sees the claw marks on 0:55:09.719 --> 0:55:12.160 the outside of the plane, the proof on the engine 0:55:12.200 --> 0:55:15.520 that the monster was tearing apart the plane. He was 0:55:15.600 --> 0:55:18.439 right all along. He's not the insane person. In fact, 0:55:18.480 --> 0:55:21.239 he's the only same person of course. This uh. This, 0:55:21.400 --> 0:55:25.160 this episode was also recreated in the three film Twilight Zone, 0:55:25.200 --> 0:55:28.800 the movie in which John Liftgau played the lead played 0:55:28.800 --> 0:55:32.839 the nervous flyer. Uh. And he's absolutely wonderful in that uh. 0:55:32.880 --> 0:55:35.080 And oh and by the way, George Miller of Mad 0:55:35.120 --> 0:55:38.920 Max directed that that segment in the film. I like 0:55:39.040 --> 0:55:42.120 the gremlin in the in the movie version. Yeah, there's 0:55:42.440 --> 0:55:44.640 the movie version. Grim one is a lot more frightening. 0:55:45.000 --> 0:55:47.520 And then also there's a Treehouse of Horror that did 0:55:47.520 --> 0:55:49.040 this as well. When they do it with the school 0:55:49.040 --> 0:55:52.000 bus right tere at five and a half feet. Uh yeah, 0:55:52.080 --> 0:55:54.400 it's it's pretty wonderful as well, and then does a 0:55:54.400 --> 0:55:58.320 great job of delivering exactly the same story essentially, except 0:55:58.400 --> 0:56:00.360 with it's on the outside of the school us right. 0:56:00.440 --> 0:56:03.400 Uh yeah. And then when they put barton the ambulance 0:56:03.440 --> 0:56:06.439 at the end, it follows him under the ambulance. Yes, yes, 0:56:06.920 --> 0:56:09.360 that's a nice twist, like they added sometimes the Treehouse 0:56:09.360 --> 0:56:11.799 of Horrors, Like they add a little extra element to 0:56:11.840 --> 0:56:16.600 the existing story and it really works. So the science 0:56:16.640 --> 0:56:19.120 of this, well, uh, you know, we could probably have 0:56:19.200 --> 0:56:23.279 a really rich discussion about flying anxieties in general. We've 0:56:23.320 --> 0:56:26.480 touched on it before in our Escape Pod episode. You know, 0:56:26.520 --> 0:56:28.759 we we we trust ourselves over to the machine and 0:56:28.800 --> 0:56:31.760 the people, companies and regulations that ensure everything is working. 0:56:32.200 --> 0:56:34.959 There's a loss of agency and flying and I feel 0:56:34.960 --> 0:56:38.600 like it's you're just you're constantly reminded or are reminding 0:56:38.680 --> 0:56:43.879 yourself about the potential undesirable possibilities. I mean, it's it's 0:56:43.880 --> 0:56:47.560 like standing atop of mountain when you look out and 0:56:47.600 --> 0:56:50.359 you see the height that you have achieved, not through 0:56:50.400 --> 0:56:53.600 any skill of your own, but just through the technology 0:56:53.640 --> 0:56:56.120 and people surrounding it. It's like being deposited on the 0:56:56.120 --> 0:56:59.600 top of the mountain. Yes, it's a little bit less empowering. Yeah, 0:57:00.000 --> 0:57:02.880 airplanes are are sort of great to look at it 0:57:03.320 --> 0:57:06.799 when you're thinking about fear, because they combine so many 0:57:06.840 --> 0:57:10.800 different kinds of phobia triggers for people. Um. Of course, 0:57:10.840 --> 0:57:12.960 there's just fear of like heights and stuff, you know, 0:57:13.040 --> 0:57:15.320 looking out the window and looking down that that can 0:57:15.440 --> 0:57:18.920 upset people. There is fear of an accident of the 0:57:18.960 --> 0:57:21.600 plane crashing, but there's also just a fear that has 0:57:21.640 --> 0:57:24.960 always been more salient for me whenever I've had airplane 0:57:24.960 --> 0:57:28.160 fear is mainly what it is is, um, what do 0:57:28.200 --> 0:57:29.920 you call it? Here? It's a sort of a type 0:57:29.960 --> 0:57:33.600 of a variety of claustrophobia, I guess where um, not 0:57:33.720 --> 0:57:36.320 being able to leave a place when you want to. 0:57:37.160 --> 0:57:40.120 You know the idea that like, okay, for so many hours, 0:57:40.160 --> 0:57:42.400 I'm stuck here and I could not get off if 0:57:42.440 --> 0:57:45.040 I wanted to. Yeah, the most I can do is 0:57:45.800 --> 0:57:48.360 go through a lot of rigamar role to walk down 0:57:48.360 --> 0:57:51.800 the hallway and you can use a very difficult bathroom, 0:57:51.920 --> 0:57:54.360 uh and potentially have to wait in line. Yeah, I 0:57:54.400 --> 0:57:56.880 guess that's the type of fear. There's also just like, uh, 0:57:57.520 --> 0:58:00.920 I know, airplanes are are a particular type of agoraphobia 0:58:00.960 --> 0:58:03.479 trigger for some people, where you know, like the fear 0:58:03.560 --> 0:58:06.280 of losing control or having a panic attack or something 0:58:06.320 --> 0:58:08.880 like that in a public place, and that itself can 0:58:08.880 --> 0:58:11.680 trigger anxieties. And then on top of that, you've got 0:58:11.680 --> 0:58:14.760 the travel anxieties leading into it, you know, because inevitably 0:58:14.760 --> 0:58:16.720 you had to get to that airport, you had to 0:58:16.760 --> 0:58:20.600 get through security, purity, and you know, maybe customs if 0:58:20.600 --> 0:58:22.160 you're on the other line, like there, They're all these 0:58:22.160 --> 0:58:24.880 other stresses added on top of it makes for you know, 0:58:25.280 --> 0:58:27.720 a very stressful day of travel. Really, in my experience, 0:58:27.800 --> 0:58:30.160 there would be a lot of problems solved if airports 0:58:30.240 --> 0:58:33.320 would actually just play you knows music for airports, yeah, 0:58:33.320 --> 0:58:39.200 instead of CNN yeah on the TV, instead of instead 0:58:39.200 --> 0:58:41.720 of Eno, I don't get it, Yeah, play me something calming, 0:58:42.320 --> 0:58:46.240 just like ENOS music, and just scenes the scenes from 0:58:46.400 --> 0:58:50.960 Legend of Unicorns drinking water. That's all I need. No goblins. 0:58:51.480 --> 0:58:52.800 So I guess the thing we should talk about is 0:58:53.360 --> 0:58:56.040 the idea that this is a nightmare at twenty thou feet? 0:58:56.040 --> 0:58:59.320 What what is the feet about? Right? Uh? To put 0:58:59.320 --> 0:59:01.960 this in perspect to the top of Mount Everest is 0:59:02.440 --> 0:59:05.080 twenty nine thousand and twenty eight feet above sea level. 0:59:05.640 --> 0:59:08.640 But that's also quite a bit below the Carmen line 0:59:08.800 --> 0:59:12.080 at three thirty thousand feet, which is generally considered the 0:59:12.520 --> 0:59:15.200 rough boundary between the atmosphere in space. And I say 0:59:15.280 --> 0:59:18.040 rough because it's not like the atmosphere just stops. There's 0:59:18.040 --> 0:59:22.520 more of a tapering off. Now for modern flyers such 0:59:22.600 --> 0:59:26.360 as ourselves, we're generally working with a cruising altitude. And 0:59:26.360 --> 0:59:29.720 cruising altitude, you know, that's that's when you've achieved, you know, 0:59:29.760 --> 0:59:32.760 the altitude that you're gonna have for the main portion 0:59:32.800 --> 0:59:35.360 of your flight. You're not ascending or descending. You're just 0:59:35.720 --> 0:59:40.760 achieving an optimal altitude, optimal speed, et cetera. But it's 0:59:40.800 --> 0:59:43.440 generally going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty 0:59:43.520 --> 0:59:47.120 three thousand feet to forty two thousand feet. So according 0:59:47.120 --> 0:59:49.640 to the USA Today article of what is the altitude 0:59:49.640 --> 0:59:51.840 of a plane in flight, the upper limit is generally 0:59:51.920 --> 0:59:56.240 the domain of private jets because that's gonna be more about, Yeah, 0:59:56.240 --> 0:59:58.040 we want to get where we're going. Uh, you know, 0:59:58.160 --> 1:00:00.520 price isn't much of an option, But with commercial flights, 1:00:00.960 --> 1:00:04.320 everything is kind of a careful algorithm, like, how can 1:00:04.360 --> 1:00:06.920 we do this in the most cost effective way possible 1:00:07.200 --> 1:00:09.919 and the safest way possible. But for the rest of us, Yeah, 1:00:09.960 --> 1:00:12.160 we're gonna be, you know, somewhere closer to that thirty 1:00:12.160 --> 1:00:16.360 three thousand uh foot altitude. It's gonna be this sweet 1:00:16.360 --> 1:00:18.560 spot where the ear is thin enough to reduce drag, 1:00:18.600 --> 1:00:21.400 but there's still enough oxygen for the engines. Plus it 1:00:21.440 --> 1:00:25.360 allows them to fly overmost weather, which is located further 1:00:25.400 --> 1:00:29.400 down in the troposphere. So we're talking about minimal turbulence, 1:00:29.560 --> 1:00:34.080 which is exactly how I like to consume the word turbulence. Now, 1:00:34.120 --> 1:00:37.840 I would guess at normal cruising altitude because cabins have 1:00:37.960 --> 1:00:40.480 to be pressurized, Like you couldn't just like breathe the 1:00:40.560 --> 1:00:43.720 air at that height, right, Yeah, since we're flying above 1:00:43.760 --> 1:00:47.160 ten thousand feet, airliners are are pressurized, hence those little 1:00:47.240 --> 1:00:52.040 drop down mass for oxygen in the event of cabin depressurization. Now, 1:00:52.120 --> 1:00:54.520 of course, the Twilight Zone episode, the original one, takes 1:00:54.560 --> 1:00:57.560 place in the early nineteen sixties, so it made me 1:00:57.600 --> 1:01:00.400 think what sort of altitudes were we talking about here? Well, 1:01:00.440 --> 1:01:03.360 I was reading a longing for the Golden Age of 1:01:03.400 --> 1:01:06.160 air travel. Be Careful what you wish for by history 1:01:06.160 --> 1:01:11.080 professor Janet bed Narnick on the conversation, and she points 1:01:11.080 --> 1:01:14.200 out some key factors in flying during this time period, 1:01:14.280 --> 1:01:17.000 and as the title implies, why you'd be better, far 1:01:17.040 --> 1:01:20.320 better off flying now as opposed to that Golden age, 1:01:20.360 --> 1:01:22.760 no matter how cool it looks on you know, stuff 1:01:22.800 --> 1:01:25.160 like mad Men. Yeah, but can you smoke a pipe 1:01:25.160 --> 1:01:28.440 on a plane today? Well? Yeah, these are the things 1:01:28.480 --> 1:01:31.560 people get nostalgic about. I guess if they're smokers. So 1:01:31.880 --> 1:01:34.120 she points out that prior to the introduction of jets 1:01:34.120 --> 1:01:39.200 in night, the transatlantic commercial flight might last something like 1:01:39.280 --> 1:01:43.760 fifteen hours and they had a maximum cruising altitude altitude 1:01:43.800 --> 1:01:47.000 of ten to twelve thousand feet, meaning that they couldn't 1:01:47.040 --> 1:01:50.640 fly over bad weather. So you thought modern delays were bad, 1:01:51.000 --> 1:01:53.600 No way. Basically like, if the weather was bad, you 1:01:53.720 --> 1:01:56.280 just too bad to fly through it, and then it 1:01:56.320 --> 1:02:00.200 wasn't gonna happen. The then you had the propelled were 1:02:00.320 --> 1:02:04.120 driven Boeing Strato cruiser come along, for example, that could 1:02:04.320 --> 1:02:07.840 see fifty first class passengers or one coach passengers and 1:02:08.000 --> 1:02:11.240 it could cruise at thirty two feet above most of 1:02:11.240 --> 1:02:15.000 the weather. But during its heyday, only fifty six were 1:02:15.000 --> 1:02:18.440 active in the entire world. So that's the other thing 1:02:18.440 --> 1:02:21.320 we have to realize. Now, It's like the commercial flight 1:02:21.520 --> 1:02:24.560 world is just so much vaster than it was uh 1:02:24.680 --> 1:02:27.880 in the in previous times. Later we got the d 1:02:27.960 --> 1:02:31.560 C six and the d C seven, both pressure pressurized planes, 1:02:31.840 --> 1:02:34.440 but they had to fly at lower altitudes. Guess what 1:02:34.560 --> 1:02:38.120 we're talking twenty thou feet. So that's where we I 1:02:38.120 --> 1:02:40.720 think come back around to uh, to the to the 1:02:40.720 --> 1:02:43.680 Twilight Zone episode. Uh. Here for the for these flights, 1:02:43.680 --> 1:02:47.600 turbulence was common. The engines were difficult to maintain, and 1:02:47.600 --> 1:02:51.320 this resulted in frequent delays. Uh. So this just matches 1:02:51.400 --> 1:02:54.240 up perfectly with the ZIGRIDGM idea the Twilight Zone concerned 1:02:54.240 --> 1:02:59.040 about the you know what the engines are doing, engine malfunctions, turbulence, uh, 1:02:59.360 --> 1:03:02.760 all happening at around twenty thou feet. Now, I must 1:03:02.800 --> 1:03:06.480 notice in in Nightmare twenty feet that the windows on 1:03:06.520 --> 1:03:09.400 the airplane look very large compared to the windows on 1:03:09.440 --> 1:03:11.960 a plane today. You know, I didn't I didn't look 1:03:11.960 --> 1:03:13.960 into this as much. I wonder if that's just so 1:03:13.960 --> 1:03:16.080 you can see the monster through it, or they used 1:03:16.920 --> 1:03:20.680 an actual fuselage. Yeah, I didn't research that particular aspect 1:03:20.720 --> 1:03:23.720 of it, huh so. But Nerik also makes some other 1:03:23.760 --> 1:03:27.240 important notes about safety at the time, because ultimately this 1:03:27.280 --> 1:03:31.840 is a film about airline safety and fear of of 1:03:31.840 --> 1:03:35.240 of bad things happening during a flight. She points out 1:03:35.280 --> 1:03:38.160 in the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties, US airlines 1:03:38.200 --> 1:03:41.480 experienced at least a half dozen crashes per year, most 1:03:41.600 --> 1:03:44.120 leading to fate to the fatalities of everyone on board. 1:03:44.560 --> 1:03:48.160 Compare that to seventeen, the safest year on record in 1:03:48.160 --> 1:03:52.840 commercial air history, zero accidental deaths in commercial passenger jets, 1:03:53.000 --> 1:03:57.800 and that's with many more flights, tremendously more flights. Uh 1:03:57.920 --> 1:04:02.840 Dutch aviation consulting firm uh to seventy estimated that the 1:04:02.880 --> 1:04:06.960 fatal accident rate for large commercial passenger of flights is 1:04:07.320 --> 1:04:11.040 point zero six per million flights, or one fatal accident 1:04:11.080 --> 1:04:14.720 for every sixteen million flights. I would suggest by that 1:04:14.800 --> 1:04:19.840 calculation that it appears gremlins are either extinct or endangered. Yeah, 1:04:19.920 --> 1:04:21.160 that would seem to be the case. Like this is 1:04:21.240 --> 1:04:24.320 ultimately a story that speaks more to an earlier age 1:04:24.520 --> 1:04:28.560 of of commercial air travel, despite the fact that every 1:04:28.560 --> 1:04:31.320 time I fly, legitimately, every time I fly, if I 1:04:31.360 --> 1:04:33.440 look out the window and I see the wing, I 1:04:33.480 --> 1:04:37.040 think of this Twilight Zone episode. Yeah, not that I 1:04:37.120 --> 1:04:39.440 like freak out about the possibility of an actual gremlin, 1:04:39.760 --> 1:04:42.040 but I still I can't help but think think about it. 1:04:42.040 --> 1:04:44.120 It's just always been there. But I'd like to turn 1:04:44.160 --> 1:04:48.360 to the biological element of nightmare twenty feet. What sort 1:04:48.400 --> 1:04:53.560 of organism can actually become a factor at that altitude? Well, 1:04:54.160 --> 1:04:56.560 I mean, I know there there are bacteria that live 1:04:56.600 --> 1:05:00.240 in clouds, but are there are there large animal that 1:05:00.400 --> 1:05:03.600 fly up that high? That's a great question because we're 1:05:03.600 --> 1:05:07.880 talking about some extreme heights here, right, Um. And again, well, 1:05:07.880 --> 1:05:12.360 you know, we require pressurized cabins and or masks to 1:05:12.360 --> 1:05:15.800 to survive up there. Everything has to be uh, you know, temperature, 1:05:15.880 --> 1:05:19.800 The temperature has to be carefully maintained. But evolution delivers 1:05:19.920 --> 1:05:23.080 certain bird species to these lofty heights as well, and yes, 1:05:23.360 --> 1:05:27.520 some of them can pose grave danger to flights. These 1:05:27.560 --> 1:05:30.720 are of course referred to as bird strikes, um, which 1:05:30.720 --> 1:05:34.680 which are when they occur, can be pretty pretty terrible. 1:05:34.840 --> 1:05:38.040 I've read that most bird strikes are encountered at below 1:05:38.080 --> 1:05:40.520 ten thousand feet. I've also read that most are actually 1:05:40.520 --> 1:05:43.720 occurring below three thousand feet, so I mean, I think 1:05:43.720 --> 1:05:45.160 that should give you an idea, like most of the 1:05:45.160 --> 1:05:49.400 birds are are are operating at at lower altitudes. When 1:05:49.400 --> 1:05:52.840 you fly above the weather, you're probably flying above the birds. 1:05:52.880 --> 1:05:56.720 So as with most things in air travel, the majority 1:05:56.760 --> 1:05:58.560 of the dangers are going to be closer to take 1:05:58.560 --> 1:06:02.320 off and landing, not at crewing altitude. Right and and again, 1:06:02.360 --> 1:06:04.120 they can be pretty dangerous, especially in the event of 1:06:04.120 --> 1:06:06.960 a double bird strike, where like both engines are hit 1:06:07.560 --> 1:06:11.720 by the birds. Still, major accidents are few, but we 1:06:11.760 --> 1:06:13.720 have to consider some of the birds that do get 1:06:13.800 --> 1:06:16.080 up to some crazy heights. So I just want to 1:06:16.160 --> 1:06:18.080 run through a few of them here before we get 1:06:18.080 --> 1:06:21.680 to the like the King of Altitude. Uh, there are 1:06:21.800 --> 1:06:26.400 migrating white storks which can reach sixteen thousand feet or 1:06:26.520 --> 1:06:31.160 forty eight hundred meters. They're migrating bar tailed godwits that 1:06:31.240 --> 1:06:34.439 can that can actually reach twenty thousand feet or six 1:06:34.440 --> 1:06:38.120 thousand meters. There's the bar headed goose which can get 1:06:38.200 --> 1:06:41.640 up to twenty nine thousand feet or eight thousand, eight 1:06:41.680 --> 1:06:44.640 hundred meters. And these guys fly over the tallest mountain 1:06:44.760 --> 1:06:46.880 ranges on Earth. Why do they go up so high? 1:06:46.880 --> 1:06:50.000 Do you know? Well, with the earlier species we're talking about, 1:06:50.040 --> 1:06:53.720 like this ends up being a part of their migration. Um. 1:06:53.760 --> 1:06:56.800 But the king of all this, the king of altitude, 1:06:56.840 --> 1:07:01.520 is definitely Ruple's vulture, also known as Ruple's Griffin. Whoa, 1:07:01.920 --> 1:07:06.080 we're talking a maximum altitude of eleven thousand, three hundred 1:07:06.080 --> 1:07:10.320 meters or thirty seven thousand, one hundred feet. So these 1:07:10.360 --> 1:07:13.360 are these are vultures. They're extremely keen of I you 1:07:13.400 --> 1:07:16.560 know there they have evolved to fly above it all 1:07:16.960 --> 1:07:19.240 and uh and taking everything beneath. But they can get 1:07:19.320 --> 1:07:22.960 up to just crazy altitudes. Uh, they're just unchallenged in 1:07:23.000 --> 1:07:25.920 their ability to do so. Now. Fortunately they're found only 1:07:26.000 --> 1:07:29.280 in the Sole region of Central Africa. This is a 1:07:29.320 --> 1:07:35.200 belt stretching across the continent just below the Sahara. But indeed, 1:07:35.280 --> 1:07:39.120 a bird strike entailing Ruple's vulture actually occurred over the 1:07:39.160 --> 1:07:43.080 Ivory Coast at an altitude of thirty seven thousand, one 1:07:43.160 --> 1:07:48.400 hundred feet or eleven thousand, three hundred meters on November three. 1:07:48.760 --> 1:07:52.280 According to serious vulture hits to aircraft over the world, 1:07:52.320 --> 1:07:55.120 a two thousand report by the International Bird Strike Committee. 1:07:55.760 --> 1:07:58.880 Outside temperatures were frigid, there was almost no oxygen, and 1:07:58.960 --> 1:08:02.360 yet here comes this, uh, this vulture and it hits 1:08:02.360 --> 1:08:05.120 the plane. So that I think is one of the 1:08:05.320 --> 1:08:07.280 you know, these are some of the few examples of 1:08:07.440 --> 1:08:10.440 organisms that are actually going to be going about their 1:08:10.440 --> 1:08:13.800 normal business, like large organisms, organisms large enough to pose 1:08:13.880 --> 1:08:18.080 a potential and slim, uh, you know, threat to commercial flights. 1:08:18.520 --> 1:08:23.000 By the way, I also ran across a story from 1:08:23.040 --> 1:08:26.519 in which a Ruple's vulture escaped from a bird show 1:08:27.000 --> 1:08:31.200 in North lack Shear, Scotland, and her name was Gandalf 1:08:32.280 --> 1:08:34.839 and uh and after she escaped, airports in the area 1:08:34.960 --> 1:08:37.559 were put on notice, and there was no evidence that 1:08:37.600 --> 1:08:40.559 she was, you know, ever recovered or anything. Fly are 1:08:40.600 --> 1:08:43.640 you fools? But but it's it's like, it's kind of 1:08:43.680 --> 1:08:46.400 an alarming story because it's like, oh, this bird has escaped, 1:08:46.600 --> 1:08:49.120 and it could there's a very slim chance it could 1:08:49.120 --> 1:08:53.240 pose a danger to commercial flights in the area. But 1:08:53.520 --> 1:08:56.040 we should remind you that even with the Ruple's vulture 1:08:56.080 --> 1:08:59.479 flying around somewhere out there, flying is generally pretty safe 1:08:59.479 --> 1:09:02.360 these days. Yeah, it's far safer than driving when you 1:09:02.360 --> 1:09:07.200 break down the statistics again, commercial flying, not necessarily getting 1:09:07.320 --> 1:09:11.320 in the airplane that your dentist buddy owns. Right, we're 1:09:11.320 --> 1:09:16.960 talking about commercial flights again, seventeen safest year on record. Um, 1:09:17.000 --> 1:09:19.080 you really don't have to worry about green ones on 1:09:19.080 --> 1:09:21.679 the wing of the plane, only about the langue years 1:09:22.360 --> 1:09:27.559 land the plan. Speaking of late nineties c g I right, yes, 1:09:27.720 --> 1:09:30.240 for real, man, that's a good one. I love that 1:09:30.280 --> 1:09:32.759 short story though. That was that was definitely a Stephen 1:09:32.840 --> 1:09:35.559 King wellmank It was more of a novella, but it 1:09:35.880 --> 1:09:38.920 it definitely harkened back to some of those Twilight Zone 1:09:39.280 --> 1:09:42.519 type scenarios. I've never read the story, but I remember 1:09:42.560 --> 1:09:46.040 seeing that on TV sometime around back when it came out, 1:09:46.120 --> 1:09:51.599 and oh man, that was one where maybe even maybe 1:09:51.640 --> 1:09:54.120 even the critics of the time, we're not wowed by 1:09:54.120 --> 1:09:57.439 the c G I. Yeah, they were essentially like the critters, 1:09:57.479 --> 1:09:59.760 the crits from the Critters movies. There were just these 1:09:59.800 --> 1:10:02.320 big c g I mouth is like eating the sky. 1:10:03.200 --> 1:10:04.920 It's a shame because the original story it is a 1:10:04.920 --> 1:10:06.880 lot of fun. I do recommend it. I mean, don't 1:10:06.880 --> 1:10:09.599 read it on a plane, for God's sake. Um, you know, 1:10:09.960 --> 1:10:11.840 do read it when you're on the ground. Okay, we 1:10:11.880 --> 1:10:13.519 need to take a quick break, but we will be 1:10:13.640 --> 1:10:19.479 right back with more horror, anthology, science. Thank thank Alright, 1:10:19.520 --> 1:10:22.200 we're back. So what do you have for us, Joe, Well, 1:10:22.360 --> 1:10:24.320 you just did a Twilight Zone episode. I feel like 1:10:24.320 --> 1:10:26.559 I gotta do a Twilight Zone episode they had. There's 1:10:26.560 --> 1:10:29.120 so many thoughtful episodes of the Twilight Zone. And perhaps 1:10:29.120 --> 1:10:31.200 because you know, it wasn't just pure hard it also 1:10:31.200 --> 1:10:32.680 had a lot of science fiction in it and just 1:10:32.680 --> 1:10:35.760 sort of weird fiction in general. So here is a 1:10:35.800 --> 1:10:38.680 sci fi horror episode of the Twilight Zone. This is 1:10:38.720 --> 1:10:41.679 one of the classics. You probably, I bet the majority 1:10:41.720 --> 1:10:44.080 about you out there listening already know the story here, 1:10:44.120 --> 1:10:46.200 but for those of you who don't, I've got to 1:10:46.240 --> 1:10:50.200 tell it. It is to serve man. Uh. This is 1:10:50.280 --> 1:10:52.960 one that was written by Rod Serling, based on a 1:10:53.080 --> 1:10:55.800 story by a writer named Damon Knight. It was originally 1:10:56.240 --> 1:10:59.479 aired on March two, nineteen sixty two, and it's just 1:10:59.520 --> 1:11:02.360 got a whist to put him Night Shamalan to shame. 1:11:02.640 --> 1:11:06.080 It is the best. So here's Rod Serling's teaser for 1:11:06.120 --> 1:11:11.240 the episode, respectfully submitted for your perusal. A cannement height 1:11:11.479 --> 1:11:14.600 a little over nine feet, weight in the neighborhood of 1:11:14.600 --> 1:11:20.639 three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin unknown motives. Therein hangs 1:11:20.680 --> 1:11:22.880 the tale for in just a moment, we're going to 1:11:22.960 --> 1:11:26.679 ask you to shake hands figuratively with a Christopher Columbus 1:11:26.720 --> 1:11:32.080 from another galaxy and another time this is the Twilight Zone. Well, 1:11:32.120 --> 1:11:36.479 that's already a terrifying possibility here. So it's got a 1:11:36.560 --> 1:11:40.400 guy named Lloyd Bachner in it as he's a Canadian 1:11:40.439 --> 1:11:45.120 actor as this government cryptographer who who is tasked with 1:11:45.640 --> 1:11:48.400 decoding and alien books. So I actually I should say 1:11:48.400 --> 1:11:51.800 first aliens show up. They're called the Cannimates. They're played 1:11:51.840 --> 1:11:54.920 by Richard Kiel who ended up playing Kyle or Kiel. 1:11:54.960 --> 1:11:56.760 Do you know how you pronounce it? Always heard Kio, 1:11:56.840 --> 1:11:59.080 but it could be drastically wrong on that. He's the 1:11:59.080 --> 1:12:01.639 guy who played jaw Us in the James Bond movies. 1:12:01.920 --> 1:12:05.559 He was he was, he got yeah. Uh, And so 1:12:05.640 --> 1:12:08.240 he plays all of these aliens. They all look the same, 1:12:08.880 --> 1:12:12.360 uh and uh. Richard Keel in in like some weird 1:12:12.400 --> 1:12:15.800 head makeup, shows up on Earth and he speaks to 1:12:15.840 --> 1:12:19.120 the United Nations telepathically and he's like, hey, we're here 1:12:19.160 --> 1:12:21.760 to help you. We're gonna solve world hunger. We're going 1:12:21.880 --> 1:12:25.240 to make we're gonna make war disappear. We're gonna solve 1:12:25.280 --> 1:12:27.760 all your problems and make life on earth great. Don't 1:12:27.800 --> 1:12:30.679 you want that? Don't you want this free new energy 1:12:30.760 --> 1:12:33.759 source that you can, you know, power a whole country 1:12:33.800 --> 1:12:36.000 for a few dollars a day? Don't you want all 1:12:36.000 --> 1:12:38.960 this great stuff? And people are. They're hesitant at first, 1:12:39.000 --> 1:12:42.519 but they're like, well, okay, And so Jaws brings a 1:12:42.560 --> 1:12:46.400 book with him that has like a title in these 1:12:46.400 --> 1:12:49.760 alien glyphs on the cover. He's like reading things from 1:12:49.760 --> 1:12:53.400 this book as he's promising stuff to humanity, and they 1:12:53.400 --> 1:12:55.479 get a copy. The humans grab a copy of the 1:12:55.479 --> 1:12:58.040 book and they bring it to this government cryptographer and 1:12:58.040 --> 1:13:00.799 they're like, can you decode this? Tell us what it means? 1:13:01.439 --> 1:13:04.280 And so he works on it. He's got a colleague 1:13:04.360 --> 1:13:07.599 named Patty who works on it. Uh. It proves too 1:13:07.600 --> 1:13:11.400 difficult to decode, except that Patty decodes the title and 1:13:11.439 --> 1:13:14.639 figures out that the title is to serve man. Well, 1:13:14.680 --> 1:13:17.240 that sounds noble and wonderful and and really works out 1:13:17.240 --> 1:13:20.479 well for us exactly, So they can't decode the rest 1:13:20.479 --> 1:13:22.880 of the book, but to serve Man, and that sort 1:13:22.880 --> 1:13:25.280 of puts people at ease. They're like, Okay, well, the 1:13:25.280 --> 1:13:28.120 book there is about how to serve humankind. That that 1:13:28.160 --> 1:13:31.000 sounds like a good thing. So people start getting on 1:13:31.080 --> 1:13:35.840 spaceships to go with Jaws to his home planet where 1:13:35.880 --> 1:13:38.040 they will be given. I think that at one point 1:13:38.080 --> 1:13:40.200 they're talking about how they've even got baseball on the 1:13:40.240 --> 1:13:43.240 Cannibate's planet. Uh, to go to the Basically it's like 1:13:43.439 --> 1:13:46.439 a forever vacation where everything is just going to be awesome, 1:13:46.600 --> 1:13:49.120 so that people are getting on the spaceships to go there. 1:13:49.600 --> 1:13:51.880 And then the big twist that comes at the end 1:13:52.479 --> 1:13:54.960 is right as the main guy is about to get 1:13:55.000 --> 1:13:57.200 on the spaceship to go to the cannon It's planet 1:13:57.320 --> 1:14:00.040 and uh and and live out his days at the 1:14:00.160 --> 1:14:04.040 baseball resort or whatever, Patty comes yelling at him, don't 1:14:04.120 --> 1:14:09.719 get on the ship. It's a cookbook. It's so good 1:14:10.560 --> 1:14:14.040 to serve man for dinner. I believe the sentence of 1:14:14.479 --> 1:14:17.200 period this as well to a limited extent, right, how 1:14:17.200 --> 1:14:22.559 to serve mill House for dinner? Oh oh, I'm vaguely 1:14:22.560 --> 1:14:25.680 I don't remember when that which one? I don't I 1:14:25.680 --> 1:14:28.760 can't remember which episode it was, okay, but they definitely 1:14:29.080 --> 1:14:32.080 touched on it at one point. Now, I don't want 1:14:32.080 --> 1:14:35.160 to be too literal about interpreting the science of the story, 1:14:35.200 --> 1:14:37.280 because if you really wanted to be nitpicky, you could 1:14:37.320 --> 1:14:40.320 point out a million really funny details. And its like, 1:14:40.360 --> 1:14:43.000 there's one point where to try to make sure that 1:14:43.080 --> 1:14:46.439 the aliens intentions are actually good. They hook Jaws up 1:14:46.479 --> 1:14:49.960 to a to a polygraph test. It's just like they 1:14:50.000 --> 1:14:53.360 give him a human polygraph to to see if he's 1:14:53.439 --> 1:14:56.960 lying about wanting to help them. And another thing that's 1:14:56.960 --> 1:14:59.720 funny is they bring in this cryptographer to decode this 1:15:00.000 --> 1:15:04.400 alien book, but to decode it to what like cryptography 1:15:04.520 --> 1:15:09.160 usually consists of trying to decode encoded messages to ann 1:15:09.520 --> 1:15:12.120 language where you're like, you know where it will code 1:15:12.160 --> 1:15:15.360 out to some kind of script that you already understand. 1:15:16.000 --> 1:15:18.680 How would you decode an alien language when you have 1:15:18.800 --> 1:15:21.439 nothing to start with? Yeah, and I like the idea 1:15:21.479 --> 1:15:24.400 that they could they could figure out nothing from the inside, 1:15:24.439 --> 1:15:28.040 like no content but just the title. Yeah, it's great. 1:15:28.080 --> 1:15:31.160 But anyway, Okay, the main thing I wanted to talk about, 1:15:31.560 --> 1:15:34.600 ignoring all that other stuff is the idea of aliens 1:15:34.640 --> 1:15:38.640 invading in order to eat us, or perhaps more realistically 1:15:38.640 --> 1:15:42.200 another option, just to eat earth life in general, maybe 1:15:42.240 --> 1:15:45.080 not focused on us, but just here to eat things. Okay, 1:15:45.080 --> 1:15:47.760 so not just to say, harvest the resources of our 1:15:47.800 --> 1:15:51.799 planet or to do something to our star, which we've discussed, 1:15:51.800 --> 1:15:55.479 and but you're talking about like just just just tear 1:15:55.600 --> 1:15:58.679 into the bio mass of Earth. It's a very common 1:15:58.720 --> 1:16:01.439 theme in sci fi horror. At a glance, it sort 1:16:01.439 --> 1:16:04.400 of makes sense because you think about, like, okay, so 1:16:04.520 --> 1:16:07.880 what do human invaders do when they invade a country. Well, 1:16:07.920 --> 1:16:10.599 a lot of times what they'll do is they'll just 1:16:10.760 --> 1:16:14.040 like raige your village and take all your food. They 1:16:14.040 --> 1:16:17.160 want food, they need all your steal all your grain 1:16:17.280 --> 1:16:19.960 and stuff. And then they'll move on, or they'll land 1:16:19.960 --> 1:16:23.000 on an island. And if there's a particular flightless bird 1:16:23.200 --> 1:16:26.600 or or some sort of a turtle or tortoise that 1:16:26.760 --> 1:16:30.720 is uh, you know, notoriously unable to defend itself and 1:16:30.720 --> 1:16:34.479 and perhaps even trusting to a fault of humans, they 1:16:34.520 --> 1:16:36.599 might just eat them all or just every time they 1:16:36.640 --> 1:16:39.559 come back, harvest as many as they can and eat 1:16:39.600 --> 1:16:41.240 them on the ship, or just kill them and not 1:16:41.360 --> 1:16:45.400 eat them human as did the did that too? Yeah, yeah, 1:16:45.439 --> 1:16:47.120 that that's a little maybe maybe we don't want to 1:16:47.120 --> 1:16:50.760 think about that comparison. Uh but okay, so would they 1:16:50.800 --> 1:16:53.559 want to eat us or eat our food? I came 1:16:53.600 --> 1:16:57.720 across an interesting opinion about this. This was in a 1:16:57.840 --> 1:17:01.400 chapter from a book called Aliens, The World's Leading Scientists 1:17:01.439 --> 1:17:04.919 on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, published in twenty seventeen 1:17:04.960 --> 1:17:08.160 by Piccador. And this book was edited by the Iraqi 1:17:08.200 --> 1:17:12.240 British physicist Jim al Khalili. And there's a chapter in 1:17:12.320 --> 1:17:16.280 this book that was written by the British astrobiologist Louis 1:17:16.400 --> 1:17:20.799 Dartnell where he's talking about what would aliens actually want 1:17:20.920 --> 1:17:23.800 with Earth? Why would they be interested in coming here? 1:17:24.040 --> 1:17:25.960 And he's making the case that a lot of the 1:17:26.000 --> 1:17:29.200 stuff that people usually imagine aliens would want to come 1:17:29.240 --> 1:17:33.439 here for doesn't make any sense. That they want water, 1:17:33.800 --> 1:17:37.200 or they want raw minerals or something like that. He 1:17:37.640 --> 1:17:40.800 just you, oh, that's one too with all those things. 1:17:40.840 --> 1:17:43.599 He points out, how you know that's either and that's 1:17:43.640 --> 1:17:46.439 not actually a concern for anything they would want, or 1:17:46.560 --> 1:17:49.960 they could get this more abundantly elsewhere. And so here's 1:17:50.000 --> 1:17:53.720 Dartnell's case about whether aliens would want to eat us. So, 1:17:53.800 --> 1:17:56.280 the cells in our bodies are made of large collections 1:17:56.320 --> 1:17:59.760 of specific organic molecules. You've got proteins, which are chains 1:17:59.800 --> 1:18:03.719 of amino acids. You've got the nucleic acids like DNA 1:18:03.800 --> 1:18:07.000 and RNA, which are chains of bases and sugars. And 1:18:07.040 --> 1:18:09.280 then of course you've got the best part, the membranes 1:18:09.320 --> 1:18:13.040 and the phospholipids UH, and so in order to keep 1:18:13.040 --> 1:18:15.519 our bodies alive and working properly, we need to have 1:18:15.600 --> 1:18:20.840 steady incoming streams of those molecular building blocks, so we 1:18:20.920 --> 1:18:23.920 eat other life forms like plants and animals in order 1:18:23.960 --> 1:18:26.920 to get them. You can't survive obviously, just by like 1:18:27.000 --> 1:18:30.280 eating sand or tree bark or salt and ammonia. You 1:18:30.280 --> 1:18:34.879 need to get specific organic molecules like sugars, amino acids, 1:18:34.920 --> 1:18:38.639 and fatty acids in order to survive. It's also true 1:18:38.680 --> 1:18:42.240 that your digestive system is specifically evolved to break down 1:18:42.400 --> 1:18:46.200 certain kinds of stuff like earth plant matter and earth 1:18:46.280 --> 1:18:50.240 animal flesh, and it is it has specially tailored enzymes 1:18:50.280 --> 1:18:53.360 for breaking down those molecules likely to be found in 1:18:53.400 --> 1:18:57.280 the stuff Your ancestors were eating. Yeah, it's also worth reminding, 1:18:57.720 --> 1:19:00.040 you know, we eat a lot of creatures and a 1:19:00.360 --> 1:19:03.599 life on this planet. It's easy to forget that there's 1:19:03.600 --> 1:19:05.640 a whole lot of stuff we cannot eat. There a 1:19:05.840 --> 1:19:08.680 lot of a lot of species that are just not 1:19:08.800 --> 1:19:11.360 on the menu for us. Most of the mass of 1:19:11.439 --> 1:19:14.519 planet Earth you can't eat. I mean that. Yeah, there's 1:19:14.520 --> 1:19:17.440 a lot of stuff you just can't get nutrition from. 1:19:17.479 --> 1:19:21.080 Even if it contains raw atoms that you might want, 1:19:21.200 --> 1:19:23.160 you know that would be useful. Your body doesn't have 1:19:23.160 --> 1:19:25.880 a way to break them down properly, doesn't have the 1:19:26.000 --> 1:19:30.000 right chemical enzymes and stuff to separate out the parts 1:19:30.040 --> 1:19:32.320 that you would need or put together the parts that 1:19:32.400 --> 1:19:35.400 you would need. Your digestive system is shaped by what 1:19:35.479 --> 1:19:40.080 was available to the creatures that you evolved from. Now, fortunately, 1:19:40.120 --> 1:19:43.280 most other life forms on Earth have these useful molecules 1:19:43.320 --> 1:19:47.240 in some nutritionally available way. Other animals on Earth are 1:19:47.560 --> 1:19:51.280 nourishing to us because we came from a common ancestor 1:19:51.400 --> 1:19:54.679 and we share common biochemistry. So in order to get 1:19:54.760 --> 1:19:58.519 nutrition from eating us and the alien would need to 1:19:58.640 --> 1:20:02.120 share our biochemistry, And in order to do that, we 1:20:02.160 --> 1:20:05.200 would either need to share a common ancestor, and unless 1:20:05.240 --> 1:20:08.120 they're coming from somewhere else within our solar system, which 1:20:08.120 --> 1:20:11.120 seems unlikely at this point, It's not likely we would 1:20:11.160 --> 1:20:13.960 share a common ancestor or we need to have the 1:20:14.000 --> 1:20:17.240 same biochemistry by coincidence. So what are the odds of 1:20:17.280 --> 1:20:23.160 sharing biochemistry by coincidence? Dartnehill rights, well, that's certainly possible 1:20:23.240 --> 1:20:26.040 for all we know. Perhaps our DNA based life is 1:20:26.080 --> 1:20:30.120 the only way you can make self reproducing life forms 1:20:30.120 --> 1:20:33.840 out of the chemistry available in the universe. Dartnell points 1:20:33.840 --> 1:20:37.320 out that quote, a whole variety of amino acids, sugars, 1:20:37.320 --> 1:20:42.040 and fatty molecules are actually found in certain meteorites, having 1:20:42.080 --> 1:20:45.720 been produced by astro chemistry and outer space, and so 1:20:45.800 --> 1:20:49.639 maybe extraterrestrial life would be based on the same basic 1:20:49.680 --> 1:20:52.680 building blocks as us. So the point there is that 1:20:52.760 --> 1:20:55.240 we haven't found life beyond Earth, but we found a 1:20:55.280 --> 1:20:59.360 lot of the chemical building blocks of life beyond Earth. Uh, 1:20:59.400 --> 1:21:01.880 And maybe our way is a common way, or even 1:21:01.960 --> 1:21:04.640 the only way for the universe to put evolution in 1:21:04.720 --> 1:21:08.400 motion and create the possibility of intelligent life. But then 1:21:08.479 --> 1:21:13.520 Dartnell points out a big complication quote simple organic molecules 1:21:13.600 --> 1:21:17.520 like amino acids and sugars can exist in two different forms, 1:21:18.040 --> 1:21:21.040 mirror images of each other, in the same way your 1:21:21.160 --> 1:21:24.760 two hands are similar shapes but can't be placed exactly 1:21:24.800 --> 1:21:27.920 on top of the other. These two versions are known 1:21:27.960 --> 1:21:31.320 as a nantiomers. And it turns out that all life 1:21:31.360 --> 1:21:36.240 on Earth uses only left handed amino acids and right 1:21:36.400 --> 1:21:41.479 handed sugars, whereas non living chemistry produces even mixtures of 1:21:41.560 --> 1:21:45.519 both kinds. So, yeah, picture that what he's saying about 1:21:45.560 --> 1:21:47.639 holding your hands on top of each other. They're they're 1:21:47.680 --> 1:21:51.040 the same shape, but you can't put one on top 1:21:51.120 --> 1:21:53.040 of the other one. You have to invert one of 1:21:53.080 --> 1:21:55.360 them in order for them to match up. And with 1:21:55.479 --> 1:21:58.320 three dimensional things, that means that they're they're not chemically 1:21:58.360 --> 1:22:01.200 the same. Actually you can't you use one for the other. 1:22:01.920 --> 1:22:05.000 And in science, this this handedness of sugars and amino 1:22:05.080 --> 1:22:08.920 acids is known as chirality. Uh, the fact that all 1:22:08.960 --> 1:22:12.400 life on Earth uses only left handed amino acids and 1:22:12.520 --> 1:22:16.200 right handed sugars, that's known as homo chirality. And it's 1:22:16.200 --> 1:22:19.240 a fascinating mystery to people who study the chemistry of life. 1:22:19.640 --> 1:22:22.120 Why why not the other way around, or why not 1:22:22.320 --> 1:22:27.240 both Both chiralities are and presumably always have been available 1:22:27.360 --> 1:22:30.000 out there in the universe. So why did life on 1:22:30.040 --> 1:22:33.800 Earth end up using only these kinds? Why only left 1:22:33.800 --> 1:22:37.920 handed amino acids and only right handed sugars? And in fact, 1:22:37.960 --> 1:22:40.479 Dartnell points out that chirality is a good way to 1:22:40.520 --> 1:22:43.959 know that traces of life we find, say on Mars, 1:22:44.000 --> 1:22:46.720 are actually authentic. So imagine you've got a rover on 1:22:46.760 --> 1:22:50.040 Mars and it picks up amino acids somewhere on the 1:22:50.080 --> 1:22:55.200 surface of Mars, and they employ the opposite biochemical orientation, 1:22:55.280 --> 1:22:58.599 so you've got right handed amino acids. Then we could 1:22:58.600 --> 1:23:01.519 know that they were genuine the alien and not simply 1:23:01.560 --> 1:23:04.680 contamination from Earth life that we took along with us 1:23:04.720 --> 1:23:08.120 on the rover by accident. And so Dartnell writes, quote, 1:23:08.400 --> 1:23:12.240 so here's a fascinating thought. Alien invaders could be based 1:23:12.240 --> 1:23:17.280 on exactly the same organic molecules amino acids, sugars, etcetera. 1:23:17.560 --> 1:23:20.760 But they still wouldn't gain any nutrition from eating us, 1:23:20.760 --> 1:23:23.719 as the origins of life on their own planets settled 1:23:23.760 --> 1:23:27.720 on the opposite in anti amours, we'd be mirror images 1:23:27.760 --> 1:23:30.719 of each other on a molecular level, and of course, 1:23:30.760 --> 1:23:33.400 if this applied to us, meaning we couldn't be nutritious 1:23:33.439 --> 1:23:35.559 to them, it would also apply to our food sources. 1:23:35.560 --> 1:23:38.320 It would apply to all life on Earth, so they'd 1:23:38.320 --> 1:23:40.320 be like, ah, that Earth food, I can't handle any 1:23:40.360 --> 1:23:44.479 of it. In fact, it might even be toxic to them. 1:23:44.520 --> 1:23:47.479 I was looking at a paper from in pl Os 1:23:47.560 --> 1:23:52.520 one by jiang in son Um about how how bacteria 1:23:52.560 --> 1:23:58.000 are able to sort of break down right handed amino acids, 1:23:58.040 --> 1:24:00.040 and one of the things that they talk about it 1:24:00.200 --> 1:24:03.280 is how right handed amino acids are toxic for life 1:24:03.320 --> 1:24:06.440 on Earth, and it's actually important that back to bacteria 1:24:06.560 --> 1:24:09.400 do some breaking down of these right handed amino acids, 1:24:09.479 --> 1:24:13.280 or else they would accumulate to toxic levels in the environments. 1:24:13.680 --> 1:24:15.559 Oh man, I think it has to be some hard 1:24:15.640 --> 1:24:19.760 sci fi that explores this possibility. What did aliens come 1:24:19.800 --> 1:24:21.920 here to eat us but then we poison them? Well, 1:24:21.960 --> 1:24:24.320 I mean just the idea that their reflections on a 1:24:24.320 --> 1:24:28.920 molecular level and therefore incompatible with us or our food. Yeah, well, 1:24:28.960 --> 1:24:31.360 I like that idea that like they could they could 1:24:31.520 --> 1:24:34.200 in theory even look exactly like us. They could have 1:24:34.280 --> 1:24:37.640 bodies that are very so they were just toxic to 1:24:37.680 --> 1:24:42.200 each other, like contact and sharing organic molecules from each 1:24:42.200 --> 1:24:44.240 other would be poison us. Like if it was the 1:24:44.280 --> 1:24:47.280 movie Alien Nation and you had to have like left 1:24:47.280 --> 1:24:49.880 handed food restaurants and right handed food restaurants, and there 1:24:49.960 --> 1:24:52.680 was you know, it was you know, there's certainly discrimination there, 1:24:52.720 --> 1:24:56.200 but also the fact that the each species can only 1:24:56.240 --> 1:25:00.920 eat a certain type of matter and organic matter. Uh yeah, well, 1:25:00.960 --> 1:25:02.760 I mean but the thing there is that if you 1:25:02.800 --> 1:25:06.240 assume their ecosystem is their planet is also from a 1:25:06.280 --> 1:25:09.120 single common ancestor maybe it would be that all of 1:25:09.200 --> 1:25:12.880 their planet uses the opposite chirality of us, meaning that 1:25:13.000 --> 1:25:15.360 it's not just like we need different food, but every 1:25:15.400 --> 1:25:18.400 bit of life in their whole world would be toxic 1:25:18.439 --> 1:25:21.080 to us and all the life in our world would 1:25:21.120 --> 1:25:23.919 be toxic to them. So like, in order to interact, 1:25:23.960 --> 1:25:27.040 we almost need to like you know, be be sort 1:25:27.040 --> 1:25:29.360 of sealed off in a way. Oh wow, well see 1:25:29.360 --> 1:25:32.280 that's a wonderful sci fi concept there. So anyway, I 1:25:32.320 --> 1:25:35.439 thought that was an interesting possibility. Even if they wanted 1:25:35.520 --> 1:25:37.960 to serve man, it might the dinner might not go 1:25:38.080 --> 1:25:40.640 so well. I like that we were taking some of 1:25:40.680 --> 1:25:43.760 the anxiety out of our twilight zone. Episodes here. Don't 1:25:43.760 --> 1:25:46.080 have to be as afraid of creatures on the wing 1:25:46.120 --> 1:25:47.760 of the plane, don't have to be as afraid of 1:25:48.320 --> 1:25:52.040 alien civilizations coming to our planet to cook us and 1:25:52.040 --> 1:25:55.320 eat us. Well. I mean, the downside of that, thinking 1:25:55.320 --> 1:25:59.479 about the incompatibility of different biochemistries is that you could 1:25:59.479 --> 1:26:03.240 have a liens that meant well and that didn't want 1:26:03.240 --> 1:26:05.320 to eat us, but you know, just wanted to make 1:26:05.360 --> 1:26:08.439 contact and actually be helpful, wanted to serve man in 1:26:08.479 --> 1:26:11.920 the original naive sense of the understanding, but just brought 1:26:12.000 --> 1:26:14.800 with them a bunch of molecules that are deadly to us, 1:26:15.560 --> 1:26:18.120 which brings us kind of back to the Christopher Columbus idea, 1:26:18.200 --> 1:26:20.960 doesn't it. Well. I wouldn't say that Christopher Columbus meant well. 1:26:21.000 --> 1:26:22.599 I know that's not what you were saying. No, no, no, 1:26:22.640 --> 1:26:25.800 but just the idea that on a biological level ends 1:26:25.880 --> 1:26:29.080 up bringing death and also on a cultural level as well. Yes, 1:26:29.120 --> 1:26:33.360 like that even if Columbus had actually meant well, he 1:26:34.040 --> 1:26:37.760 wouldn't have been able to help bringing death along with him. 1:26:37.840 --> 1:26:40.200 All Right, I feel like we're going pretty long here, 1:26:40.240 --> 1:26:43.160 but I think we have time for just one more story, okay, 1:26:43.520 --> 1:26:46.960 and this one comes to us from Tales from the Crypt. 1:26:47.680 --> 1:26:51.960 It aired in the fifth season, episode five. This was October. 1:26:53.120 --> 1:26:55.920 I love how most of these episodes actually aired during 1:26:55.960 --> 1:26:59.120 October at some point, and it was titled people who 1:26:59.160 --> 1:27:04.680 Live in brad Hersars. Alright, So this one, this is 1:27:04.680 --> 1:27:07.919 a delight because this is one of four episodes directed 1:27:07.920 --> 1:27:13.280 by Russell McKay, the visionary director who gave us Highlander one, 1:27:14.240 --> 1:27:18.599 Highlander one, and Highlander two, Highlander two really yes, and 1:27:18.920 --> 1:27:21.080 most of the great music videos of the nineteen eighties. 1:27:21.120 --> 1:27:23.519 Total Eclipse of the Heart. That was him, Wild Boys, 1:27:23.600 --> 1:27:26.400 that was him. How do you say his name? Makakey. 1:27:26.640 --> 1:27:29.080 It's it's I believe it's more kay. It's m u 1:27:29.280 --> 1:27:32.400 l k h y. I've never been able to pronounce that. 1:27:33.200 --> 1:27:38.639 But yeah, the the visionary behind uh Highlander, various other films. 1:27:39.120 --> 1:27:42.040 And I do mean that authentically, like there is a 1:27:42.120 --> 1:27:46.120 visual style to his work. There is an intensity that 1:27:46.600 --> 1:27:48.600 you just you know what when you see it. A 1:27:48.720 --> 1:27:52.400 thing that I think I rediscovered this year upon going 1:27:52.439 --> 1:27:56.120 back to the first Highlander movie. And it's your insistence 1:27:56.600 --> 1:28:00.240 is that actually the first Hilander movie is almost as 1:28:00.280 --> 1:28:03.439 bad as the second one. It's pretty bonkers. Yeah, but 1:28:03.520 --> 1:28:06.479 what we'll say that for for an upcoming episode. Oh yeah, 1:28:06.520 --> 1:28:08.800 we've still got Science of Highlander two coming out. Yes, 1:28:08.840 --> 1:28:12.559 before the year's up, that episode will finally come to fruition. 1:28:12.640 --> 1:28:15.880 We're not joking. Yes, it's real. So this episode of 1:28:15.920 --> 1:28:18.839 Tales from the Crypt, Uh, it's like a lot of episodes, 1:28:18.880 --> 1:28:23.439 It's a wealth of just wonderful acting talent, spectacular gore effects, 1:28:23.439 --> 1:28:27.240 a notable director, and the script that well depends on 1:28:27.280 --> 1:28:29.559 how you look at it, right, I mean, it's easy 1:28:29.600 --> 1:28:32.400 to take these scripts out of context and dream about 1:28:32.400 --> 1:28:35.519 what a stronger, uh you know, rewrite could have done 1:28:35.560 --> 1:28:37.559 for it. But on the other hand, the material is 1:28:37.560 --> 1:28:39.960 the material, and the whole premise of the show is 1:28:40.000 --> 1:28:43.560 that these are retold classic horror comic shorts, you know, 1:28:43.640 --> 1:28:46.599 from the the you know, the golden age of horror comics, 1:28:46.920 --> 1:28:49.200 and they tend to throw some sort of a heel 1:28:49.400 --> 1:28:55.000 character through the ringer with the murderous or supernatural circumstances 1:28:55.040 --> 1:28:58.840 taking place. Yeah, it's generally there, there's some kind of 1:28:58.960 --> 1:29:01.960 nasty dude, he gets his come up and through some 1:29:02.080 --> 1:29:06.559 kind of supernatural karma, Yeah, nasty meets nasty, and then 1:29:06.560 --> 1:29:08.479 there is a joke about it. There's not a lot 1:29:08.520 --> 1:29:13.080 of nuance. It's uh, these were horror stories essentially for 1:29:12.760 --> 1:29:17.200 for for for kids, and uh, but with completely inappropriate contome. 1:29:17.240 --> 1:29:19.280 Oh yeah it was. That's the other thing. All of 1:29:19.320 --> 1:29:22.400 these stories are so inappropriate you go, even going back 1:29:22.439 --> 1:29:24.680 now and watching these these episodes, like some of them 1:29:24.680 --> 1:29:27.559 are just like so cringe worthy. Uh. And I'm not 1:29:27.680 --> 1:29:29.880 sure that it's a flaw. It's like it's kind of 1:29:29.920 --> 1:29:32.240 what you get. It's that stales from the crypt. It's 1:29:32.479 --> 1:29:37.320 it's gross, it's inappropriate. Yeah, and yet there's something wonderful 1:29:37.360 --> 1:29:41.160 about it. So this particular episode definitely brings it with 1:29:41.200 --> 1:29:45.360 the cast because this one started Bill Paxton and Brad Dorrif. 1:29:45.960 --> 1:29:50.640 That's of course Bill Paxton from Aliens the Terminator, um 1:29:50.720 --> 1:29:53.439 and uh and Brad dorrif played worm Tongue in the 1:29:53.439 --> 1:29:55.880 Lord of the Rings movie is a voice of Chucky. 1:29:56.320 --> 1:29:59.320 Then in so many fabulous films over the years, one 1:29:59.360 --> 1:30:01.559 Full Over the Coupo his Nest. Yeah, that was another 1:30:01.560 --> 1:30:04.880 one of his big accomplishments. He was also in What 1:30:05.040 --> 1:30:10.360 Wise Blood I think, Oh yeah, he was in Exorcist three. Yes, Yeah, 1:30:10.360 --> 1:30:14.000 he's a fabulous character actor. So already you have some 1:30:14.080 --> 1:30:18.120 wonderful talent to work with here. Uh. They play brothers, 1:30:18.160 --> 1:30:21.679 Billy and Virgil. Billy is a mean spirited slime bag 1:30:21.800 --> 1:30:25.120 fresh out of prison, but performance by Paxton that reminds 1:30:25.120 --> 1:30:28.759 me a lot of his vampire character in Uh Near Dark, 1:30:29.240 --> 1:30:32.719 you know, just just a bad person, and his brother 1:30:32.840 --> 1:30:36.400 is essentially Lenny from Steinbeck's of Mice and Men, so 1:30:36.439 --> 1:30:39.360 they have that kind of relationship. Billy talks Virgil into 1:30:39.360 --> 1:30:42.599 an ice cream factory heighs, which goes all wrong. They're 1:30:42.600 --> 1:30:44.600 gonna steal a bunch of ice cream there, steal some 1:30:44.600 --> 1:30:46.799 money from a safe, but they end up just murdering 1:30:46.840 --> 1:30:50.000 some people instead, and as a fallback plan, they go 1:30:50.080 --> 1:30:53.679 after the ice cream truck driver who originally turned Billy 1:30:53.840 --> 1:30:56.640 in for stealing from the company, a man by the 1:30:56.720 --> 1:31:00.000 name of Mr Bird. And Mr Bird is played by 1:31:00.080 --> 1:31:04.760 Trian character actor Michael Lerner. Oh, the producer from Barton Fink. Yeah, 1:31:04.800 --> 1:31:07.160 he was nominated for an actor for that role. He's 1:31:07.200 --> 1:31:10.200 tremendous and he's he's great in this too, like everybody's 1:31:10.240 --> 1:31:13.600 great in this. But here's the twist, here's the grotesque 1:31:13.720 --> 1:31:16.400 tales from the crypt twist. Mr Bird turns out to 1:31:16.439 --> 1:31:21.599 be two men conjoined twins, and the episodes grizzly payoff 1:31:21.680 --> 1:31:24.519 as that while the brothers succeed in killing one of 1:31:24.560 --> 1:31:27.639 the twins, they shoot him. He's shot in the head 1:31:27.720 --> 1:31:29.880 with a shotgun. When he emerges through a beated curtain, 1:31:30.360 --> 1:31:32.559 it turns out there the other one lives and he 1:31:32.600 --> 1:31:35.920 gets his vengeance. The final shot of the episode, after 1:31:35.960 --> 1:31:41.920 he's killed the brothers shows the surviving Mr. Bird Twins 1:31:41.960 --> 1:31:44.680 sitting in his ice cream truck making his rounds with 1:31:44.760 --> 1:31:48.640 his decaying twin hunched over in the back seat. And 1:31:48.680 --> 1:31:50.720 this is I didn't even touch on some of the 1:31:50.800 --> 1:31:55.000 just truly bizarre elements of this episode. For instance, Billy 1:31:55.360 --> 1:31:58.800 Bill Paxson's character totally does not need to have a 1:31:58.880 --> 1:32:02.880 butter eating a dick, but he's like eating sticks of 1:32:02.920 --> 1:32:06.680 butter throughout the whole film for no reason, with no payoff, 1:32:07.240 --> 1:32:10.439 Like he already had a pretty good, you know trope 1:32:10.520 --> 1:32:13.240 character here Bill, you know, Bill Paxton is playing a 1:32:13.240 --> 1:32:16.040 slime ball. It's wonderful he was born for this role 1:32:16.439 --> 1:32:18.960 and you're throw in the butter for some reason. There's 1:32:18.960 --> 1:32:22.120 also a part where Virgil is reading a comic book 1:32:22.160 --> 1:32:26.360 and it is Predator versus Jesse Jane, which doesn't I 1:32:26.400 --> 1:32:28.160 have no problem with I love it, but it's just 1:32:28.200 --> 1:32:31.160 such a random element to throw in. That's the original 1:32:31.160 --> 1:32:34.479 Cowboys versus Aliens. It really was. Yeah, I would love 1:32:34.520 --> 1:32:37.639 to see it. Uh let's give me Jesse James versus Predator. 1:32:38.200 --> 1:32:40.840 Uh So the science question here, though, of course, is 1:32:40.840 --> 1:32:43.960 could this happen? If one conjoined twin were to die? 1:32:44.720 --> 1:32:46.640 Would the other one be able to live on in 1:32:46.680 --> 1:32:50.680 this grotesque? Grotesque manner? So to begin with, I do 1:32:50.800 --> 1:32:52.639 have to point out again that Tales from the Crypt 1:32:52.800 --> 1:32:55.760 is pretty far from any sort of fair or reasonable 1:32:55.800 --> 1:33:00.479 portrayal of conjoined twins or just humanity in general. The 1:33:00.560 --> 1:33:02.880 show and the comics they're based on, they tended to 1:33:02.920 --> 1:33:07.040 have a real freak show vibe concerning any sort of deformation, 1:33:07.200 --> 1:33:10.760 birth defect, mutilation, or even just something is routine is 1:33:10.840 --> 1:33:15.000 identical twins. You know, everything was played for weird, Everything 1:33:15.040 --> 1:33:18.160 was played for grotesque, and the stereotypes are pretty broad 1:33:18.160 --> 1:33:21.680 and grotesque too. So you don't go to Tales from 1:33:21.720 --> 1:33:24.799 the Crypt to think about how to model thinking about 1:33:25.000 --> 1:33:28.479 medical conditions. No, not not at all. And yet that's 1:33:28.520 --> 1:33:30.320 kind of what we're doing in this this segment, So 1:33:30.400 --> 1:33:35.479 here we go. So scientifically, conjoined twins are monozygotic twins 1:33:35.880 --> 1:33:39.120 who were joined at some region of their bodies, and 1:33:39.160 --> 1:33:42.440 the details depend on exactly where the conjunction is situated. 1:33:42.680 --> 1:33:46.000 So the exact cause of conjoined twins isn't fully understood. 1:33:46.240 --> 1:33:49.840 But major theory here is that the fertilized egg is 1:33:49.880 --> 1:33:53.920 going to split into a monozygotic set of twins, but 1:33:53.960 --> 1:33:58.280 it doesn't fully separate and they remain connected. So the 1:33:58.320 --> 1:34:03.200 bird twins here are represented as terada catadidema conjoined twins. 1:34:03.240 --> 1:34:07.800 These are lower body conjunctions and more specifically, they are 1:34:08.200 --> 1:34:11.599 phyg pagus twins, meaning they're back to back joined at 1:34:11.600 --> 1:34:15.639 the rump. So this accounts for roughly nine I've also 1:34:15.680 --> 1:34:19.040 read seventeen percent of conjoined twins, but don't let that 1:34:19.120 --> 1:34:22.360 number free you. That still means that they're extremely rare occurrences. 1:34:22.920 --> 1:34:28.840 Um these individuals. They commonly share the gluteal region, terminal spine, 1:34:28.840 --> 1:34:34.200 and lower gastro intestinal, neurological and reproductive tracks. So surgical 1:34:34.280 --> 1:34:37.839 separation of conjoined twins in general it ranges from simple 1:34:37.920 --> 1:34:41.639 to near impossible depending on the conjunction. In many cases 1:34:41.880 --> 1:34:45.559 it's a highly risky surgery with potentially fatal outcomes for 1:34:45.640 --> 1:34:49.679 both patients. However, successful separations of phygo pegas conjoined twins 1:34:49.840 --> 1:34:53.040 have occurred, and uh, you know, with various cases presented 1:34:53.040 --> 1:34:56.439 in medical literature. Uh. And the cases of separation do 1:34:56.600 --> 1:34:58.800 tend to be presented in medical literature like these are 1:34:59.200 --> 1:35:02.520 these are generally know, the more certainly the more complicated. 1:35:02.920 --> 1:35:05.639 Um separations are exactly the kind of thing you're gonna 1:35:05.640 --> 1:35:09.320 find written up in a journal. But a separation is 1:35:09.360 --> 1:35:11.080 not what we see in this episode of Tales from 1:35:11.120 --> 1:35:13.800 the Crypt. One twin is killed via shotgun blast of 1:35:13.880 --> 1:35:17.000 the head, and the other continues to live, dragging him 1:35:17.000 --> 1:35:19.599 around while he kills off the two brothers and then 1:35:19.640 --> 1:35:24.360 continues his ice cream rounds. Could this happen? Uh? Well, 1:35:24.360 --> 1:35:27.400 broadly speaking, noah, And I don't think that should come 1:35:27.400 --> 1:35:30.320 to anybody's surprise, given it again, this is Tales from 1:35:30.320 --> 1:35:33.680 the Crypt. Dr Eric Stratch a pediatric surgeon at the 1:35:33.760 --> 1:35:36.519 University of Maryland Hospital for Children. He actually covered the 1:35:36.520 --> 1:35:39.879 matter in the Esquire article how to Separate a conjoint 1:35:39.880 --> 1:35:43.439 twin On his deathbed. Yeah, he was interviewed or interview 1:35:43.479 --> 1:35:45.519 segment was used in that article. He did not write it, 1:35:46.280 --> 1:35:50.679 but he pointed out that once one twins heart stops beating, 1:35:51.040 --> 1:35:54.400 the blood stops pumping, and the vessels dilate, then the 1:35:54.479 --> 1:35:58.640 living twin will essentially bleed into the dead twin, and 1:35:58.680 --> 1:36:02.040 this will happen quickly. The physical connection between the two 1:36:02.080 --> 1:36:04.560 is large enough, but with smaller cases, there will be 1:36:04.600 --> 1:36:07.200 an infection in a matter of hours. And in these 1:36:07.240 --> 1:36:12.080 cases it's technically possible that surgical separate separation could save 1:36:12.160 --> 1:36:14.720 the living twin, but he didn't think it had ever 1:36:14.760 --> 1:36:18.280 been attempted. Again. In many cases, separation might not even 1:36:18.280 --> 1:36:22.280 be possible under ideal conditions, much less like an emergency 1:36:22.600 --> 1:36:26.680 UH intervention scenario. So while we may be able to 1:36:26.720 --> 1:36:31.120 accept the idea that they're surviving bird twin murders his 1:36:31.320 --> 1:36:34.400 brother's killers, the idea that he goes on to drive 1:36:34.439 --> 1:36:38.200 the ice cream truck around seems a bit of a stretch, now, Robert, 1:36:38.280 --> 1:36:40.640 I see you've attached a panel from a comic, so 1:36:40.720 --> 1:36:43.479 that this one was based on I guess something that 1:36:43.560 --> 1:36:45.800 was told in the comics before it was on the show. Yeah, 1:36:45.880 --> 1:36:48.320 this one was definitely based on a comic. Those comics 1:36:48.320 --> 1:36:51.120 managed to come up with some really gross stuff that 1:36:51.280 --> 1:36:55.439 became only grosser when it was translated to to HBO. Yeah, 1:36:55.479 --> 1:36:57.479 that the comics were big about, like the just the 1:36:57.600 --> 1:37:00.959 visual visceral horror, and the show did agree job of 1:37:00.960 --> 1:37:03.720 of portraying that. Uh yeah. This this panel that I 1:37:03.760 --> 1:37:06.080 found from it, which which is easy to find if 1:37:06.080 --> 1:37:08.799 you do just a Google search for for the title 1:37:08.880 --> 1:37:10.640 of this episode, which was also the title of the 1:37:10.680 --> 1:37:14.400 comics People who Live in Brass Horses. Uh yeah. You 1:37:14.479 --> 1:37:17.280 just see the the ice cream truck driver climbing out 1:37:17.280 --> 1:37:18.800 of the back of the truck and he just has 1:37:18.880 --> 1:37:22.040 this this rotting corpse attached to the back of him 1:37:22.080 --> 1:37:27.480 with flies buzzing around it. Uh. It's it's horrifying, grotesque, insensitive, 1:37:29.360 --> 1:37:32.639 everything you would expect from the tales from the crypt Robert. 1:37:32.800 --> 1:37:36.280 And you're reading about the actual uh like the surgeries 1:37:36.320 --> 1:37:39.880 involved here and stuff. Do you get the sense that, um, 1:37:39.920 --> 1:37:42.719 that medical science is making a lot of progress in 1:37:42.720 --> 1:37:45.840 in how to help conjoined twins, especially in cases where 1:37:45.880 --> 1:37:48.519 they do need to be separated. Yeah, I mean it 1:37:48.560 --> 1:37:50.559 seems to be the case. But at the same time, 1:37:50.600 --> 1:37:53.080 it's like so many of these cases they are they're different. 1:37:53.120 --> 1:37:55.679 Each one has its own individual challenges, and that's rare. 1:37:56.080 --> 1:37:59.120 It's rare, uh, and you know when it when it 1:37:59.160 --> 1:38:00.720 does pop up, there also going to be a lot 1:38:00.760 --> 1:38:03.960 of arguments potentially about is this the thing to do? 1:38:04.160 --> 1:38:08.480 Is is is this is this the morally correct um 1:38:08.479 --> 1:38:12.600 medical intervention if there is such a risk to both patients, 1:38:13.240 --> 1:38:16.120 because there are some heartbreaking accounts in the literature where 1:38:16.320 --> 1:38:20.519 an attempt is made to separate to conjoin twins and 1:38:20.600 --> 1:38:24.879 they simply both die, they do neither one actually survives 1:38:24.920 --> 1:38:26.760 the surgery, right, Well, I mean, I guess I was 1:38:26.800 --> 1:38:30.640 specifically thinking of cases where it is medically necessary in 1:38:30.760 --> 1:38:34.880 order to save them or create better health outcomes to 1:38:34.920 --> 1:38:36.960 separate them. I mean, I don't think we should just 1:38:37.040 --> 1:38:41.679 assume that all can joined twins naturally want to be separated. Yeah, 1:38:42.680 --> 1:38:45.120 Basically it comes down to just the complexity of the 1:38:45.360 --> 1:38:49.280 of the connection. Like if if the connection is is 1:38:49.320 --> 1:38:53.200 smaller and more simple, and then it can actually be 1:38:53.240 --> 1:38:57.120 a pretty safe procedure as I understand it. But then 1:38:57.160 --> 1:38:59.080 there are just other cases where it is going to 1:38:59.120 --> 1:39:03.320 be kind of like the the malin everest of surgical intervention. 1:39:03.840 --> 1:39:08.000 And and yet sometimes depending on the situation, it may 1:39:08.000 --> 1:39:10.240 be something that has to be done. This is yet 1:39:10.280 --> 1:39:12.320 another thing that I think I might deserve a deeper 1:39:12.360 --> 1:39:15.120 look sometime in the future. Oh yeah, absolutely, we've only 1:39:15.320 --> 1:39:20.240 just we've we've only we've barely brushed the surface of 1:39:20.400 --> 1:39:24.439 twins and certainly conjoined twins. And obviously there's a lot 1:39:24.479 --> 1:39:27.720 of a lot of fascinating information out there about you know, 1:39:27.760 --> 1:39:31.280 the lives that led by actual conjoined twins, and not 1:39:31.400 --> 1:39:34.360 the you know, the cartoonish examples that we see in 1:39:34.439 --> 1:39:37.120 like Tales from the crypt which, sadly it tends to be. 1:39:37.400 --> 1:39:38.720 This is the kind of thing that tends to be 1:39:38.760 --> 1:39:42.320 one's first introduction to conjoined twins. In the same way 1:39:42.320 --> 1:39:47.760 that unless you have identical twins in your classroom growing up, 1:39:48.479 --> 1:39:50.280 if you're not encountering them in your life, your first 1:39:50.320 --> 1:39:52.760 example to to identical twins is likely going to be 1:39:52.840 --> 1:39:57.120 some sort of weird horror show. Example, when you're five 1:39:57.160 --> 1:40:00.880 and you watch Dead Ringers, well with hope, but sartainly, 1:40:00.880 --> 1:40:02.800 you can watch The Simpsons, right, The Simpsons had the 1:40:02.800 --> 1:40:06.720 Treehouse of Horror where twins Evil Twin was separated from 1:40:06.760 --> 1:40:09.400 him and his living in the attic. I wonder, I mean, 1:40:09.600 --> 1:40:12.839 is the belief in evil twins actually a fairly common 1:40:12.880 --> 1:40:16.360 thing or does everybody understand that's not real? I hope 1:40:16.479 --> 1:40:18.920 everyone understands that. I mean, I have friends with with 1:40:18.960 --> 1:40:21.960 twins and um, and I I've talked to them a 1:40:21.960 --> 1:40:24.040 little bit about just you know, to the point where 1:40:24.080 --> 1:40:26.320 they just want to avoid any like creepy twin content. 1:40:26.400 --> 1:40:31.040 I don't don't blame them, um, but I basically I 1:40:31.080 --> 1:40:35.440 think comes down more to the to us untwinned individuals 1:40:35.840 --> 1:40:38.880 where we see this, we see two identical individuals, and 1:40:38.880 --> 1:40:41.960 we think of all the potential self exploration, like what 1:40:42.040 --> 1:40:44.479 if I were two people, what would that mean? Would 1:40:44.479 --> 1:40:47.439 have one represented my best qualities and one my my 1:40:48.040 --> 1:40:50.840 you know, my my, my, my darker qualities. And of 1:40:50.880 --> 1:40:53.800 course meanwhile, these twins are are two separate people, were 1:40:53.800 --> 1:40:56.519 just trying to live their lives, and we're staring at them, 1:40:56.560 --> 1:41:00.200 trying to gaze down our own navel or write a 1:41:00.320 --> 1:41:04.439 grotesque horror story. Yeah. The the looker, the person who 1:41:04.439 --> 1:41:06.800 looks at another is the real monster, you know, because 1:41:06.840 --> 1:41:09.040 they always want to make monsters out of people who 1:41:09.040 --> 1:41:12.400 are just people. Yeah, all right, so there you have it, uh, 1:41:12.520 --> 1:41:16.800 Anthology of Horror, Volume one. Because if everyone liked this. 1:41:17.600 --> 1:41:19.519 Maybe we'll do it again next year. Maybe this will 1:41:19.560 --> 1:41:22.800 be our new Halloween thing. Uh. And if it is, 1:41:23.680 --> 1:41:25.960 what would you like us to cover? I guess this 1:41:26.000 --> 1:41:27.680 means before then, I'm gonna have to go back and 1:41:27.720 --> 1:41:31.240 watch some some horror anthology series I am. I am 1:41:31.800 --> 1:41:34.960 under exposed at this point. I had a hard enough 1:41:35.000 --> 1:41:37.519 time picking just the ones that I did today, though, 1:41:38.320 --> 1:41:40.679 I guess I'd never run out of Treehouse of Horror 1:41:40.720 --> 1:41:43.200 episodes to pick tree Yeah, Treehouse tends to be a 1:41:43.280 --> 1:41:47.680 nice like overview of great anthology works in places. Other times, 1:41:47.720 --> 1:41:50.800 of course, they're parioding of futially linked films. I think 1:41:50.840 --> 1:41:54.720 Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, Black Mirror. These are great 1:41:54.720 --> 1:41:57.120 places to look to Tales from the crypt a little 1:41:57.160 --> 1:41:59.200 bit harder. I ran into a lot of dead ends 1:41:59.200 --> 1:42:03.559 and bad pun before I decided to, uh to talk 1:42:03.560 --> 1:42:06.519 about this one. Well, it is a forest of dead 1:42:06.600 --> 1:42:10.240 ends and bad puns, as I'm to understand. All right, Well, hey, 1:42:10.360 --> 1:42:11.920 everybody out there, you have a year to catch up 1:42:11.960 --> 1:42:15.840 on higher anthologies as well, and to suggest episodes from 1:42:15.840 --> 1:42:18.599 those anthologies you'd like us to consider covering in the future. 1:42:18.920 --> 1:42:21.200 In the meantime, check out stuff to blow your Mind 1:42:21.240 --> 1:42:23.960 dot com. That is our our mothership. That's where we'll 1:42:23.960 --> 1:42:26.599 find all the episodes. 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