Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a classic episode
Speaker 1: of the show. This one originally aired on October nineteen
Speaker 1: and it was about hell Raiser. Yeah, this one is
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. It's seasonally appropriate and as I remember, Uh,
Speaker 1: they always excellent. Any Reese uh engages in a little
Speaker 1: cold opening for us here excellent. Couldn't ask for more?
Speaker 1: What city is this? One of the four inquired. Frank
Speaker 1: had difficulty guessing the speaker's gender with any certainty. Its clothes,
Speaker 1: some of which were sown to and through its skin,
Speaker 1: hit its private parts, and there was nothing in the
Speaker 1: dregs of its voice or in its willfully disfigured features
Speaker 1: that offered the least clue when it spoke. The hooks
Speaker 1: that transfixed the flaps of its eyes and were wed
Speaker 1: by an intricate system of chains passed through leshi and
Speaker 1: bone alike two similar hooks through the lower lip. We're
Speaker 1: teased by the motion exposing the glistening meat underneath. I
Speaker 1: asked you a question, do you understand the figure beside
Speaker 1: the first speaker demanded. Its voice, unlike that of its companion,
Speaker 1: was light and breathy, the voice of an excited girl.
Speaker 1: Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an
Speaker 1: intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical
Speaker 1: axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its
Speaker 1: tongue was similarly decorated. Do you even know who we are?
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How to Work. Hey, Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. I guess you've been reading
Speaker 1: Clive Barker, right, that's right? Yes, Our cold Open ishi
Speaker 1: Is was a passage from nineteen eighties six novella The
Speaker 1: hell Bound Heart by Clive Barker, which he himself adapted
Speaker 1: and directed in nine seven into the horror film We
Speaker 1: All Know as Hell Raizor Wait a minute, there was
Speaker 1: just one year gap in between writing the novella and
Speaker 1: making the movie. Yeah, yeah, Clive Barker was on a
Speaker 1: roll in the in the late eighties, like he was.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's still on a roll. He's one of
Speaker 1: these uh these creators. It really has has not visibly
Speaker 1: slown down. Um, says Stephen King. Quote from that year,
Speaker 1: he said, I've seen the future of horror and it
Speaker 1: is Clive Barker. Yeah, yeah, quote quote the King. I
Speaker 1: think that that that quote was actually in the trailer
Speaker 1: for for hell Raiser the film, as was I am Pain. No, No,
Speaker 1: I think he doesn't. He doesn't declare that he is
Speaker 1: Pain until three year possibly four. Um, I'm imagining a
Speaker 1: future crossover sequel. It's like Jetson's Meet the flint Stones,
Speaker 1: but it's Judge dread meets Pinhead and they just alternate
Speaker 1: back and forth with I am the Law and I
Speaker 1: am pay that. That actually sounds like a great match up.
Speaker 1: I actually I would be all surprised if it hasn't
Speaker 1: been done or at least pitch, because Judge Dredd is
Speaker 1: thrown down with like Alien before, and I think he's
Speaker 1: met Batman. Pinhead's been in a number of comic books.
Speaker 1: You could see the more nuanced side coming out of
Speaker 1: each because you discovered that in small ways, Judge Dredd
Speaker 1: is also Pain and Pinhead is also the Law. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so I want to you know, wax nostalgic for a
Speaker 1: moment here. I didn't get into hell Razor movies until
Speaker 1: probably because I was too young for them really prior
Speaker 1: to that. Wait, how old was that though? Oh, don't
Speaker 1: make me do math, Joe, But I was. I was
Speaker 1: like in junior higher or so. Uh in ninety five,
Speaker 1: and by that point, the first three films were already
Speaker 1: out and Doug Bradley's Pinhead was already cemented as a
Speaker 1: as a horror icon. Yeah. I mean he's up there
Speaker 1: with like Freddie and Jason at that point. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: in the nine Simpsons tree House of Horror episodes of
Speaker 1: the Shinning episode, Oh, the Shinning is so good. In
Speaker 1: Head is one of the horror icons that drags Homer
Speaker 1: out of the refrigerator. Oh yeah, it's like it's like Jason, Freddie, Pinheads,
Speaker 1: and just some werewolf or something. I think. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a quick scene. But like already by that point,
Speaker 1: I think it had been decided that this, uh, this, this,
Speaker 1: this creature, this entity had a role in the Halloween
Speaker 1: pantheon of Hollywood. So you read the book before you
Speaker 1: saw the movie. Um, I think I read the book
Speaker 1: after I saw the movie. I remember reading it on
Speaker 1: a school trip. Yeah, and it's a it's it's short,
Speaker 1: it's a novella, but yeah, it was really it was
Speaker 1: really impressive at the time. As our cold open illustrates,
Speaker 1: it has a slightly different feel. It's the film hell
Speaker 1: Raiser is essentially the hell Bound Heart. It is, you know,
Speaker 1: Barker's own adaptation of it. But at the same time
Speaker 1: there are differences, and one of the key differences is, uh,
Speaker 1: this character of Pinhead, the hell Priest, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to hall it is just called lead Cinobyte and the
Speaker 1: first hell Raiser that the role played by Doug Bradley
Speaker 1: in the novella it is, it has a slightly different
Speaker 1: flare to it. Yeah. I was reading some things about
Speaker 1: the production and it seems to me that the reason
Speaker 1: Doug Bradley's Pinhead became such an icon in the movie
Speaker 1: had to do with the practical necessities of filmmaking. Again,
Speaker 1: it was something about like character, like the other Cinobytes
Speaker 1: that appear in the film would have been given more dialogue,
Speaker 1: but their makeup effects didn't allow it, right, because you
Speaker 1: have like the Chatter and the butter being Cinobytes and
Speaker 1: Butterball Butterball butter similar but but yeah, that makes sense
Speaker 1: that the makeup prevented them from speaking, and Doug Bradley
Speaker 1: could speak, though he couldn't walk around very well. Apparently
Speaker 1: he had these black contact lenses in that made it
Speaker 1: hard for him to see, and he was afraid of
Speaker 1: tripping over the skirts of his of Cinobyte robe, so
Speaker 1: he didn't move very easily. But he could talk, and
Speaker 1: so he could say things like save your tears, it's
Speaker 1: a waste of good suffering. Yeah, he has a very
Speaker 1: commanding voice. Whereas in the original Develoo, the character that
Speaker 1: would become Pinhead is described as this excited girl and
Speaker 1: the nd the Cinobytes themselves come off. They still come
Speaker 1: off is grotesque in their own way, but they're more
Speaker 1: and they're more androgynous for starters. And then there is
Speaker 1: this there's more, this sense that they are not as
Speaker 1: demonic as they are just other worldly, like they have
Speaker 1: lived in another realm of the senses for so long, uh,
Speaker 1: that they just don't have anything in common with human
Speaker 1: sense perception anymore. Right, They're there are explorers that go
Speaker 1: beyond the boundaries of pleasure and pain. And that's a
Speaker 1: lot of what we're gonna be talking about today when
Speaker 1: we get to the science portion of today's episode. But
Speaker 1: I know you're not done talking about hell Raiser, right,
Speaker 1: Oh no, And I do want to just remind everybody
Speaker 1: as far as The hell Bound Heart goes you can.
Speaker 1: You can find it for yourself on Amazon or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your book in all formats, including a dollar
Speaker 1: ninety nine e book and both an audio book production
Speaker 1: and a full blown like audio play production, so you
Speaker 1: have no excuse not to go and grab a copy
Speaker 1: of it if you want to check it out. I
Speaker 1: also highly recommend the books of Blood. Uh. Those are
Speaker 1: some There's some really great short stories in those collections. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I've always been a Clive Barker fan. I
Speaker 1: haven't read everything he's written, but it's just an unmatched creativity.
Speaker 1: They're both on the written written page, but behind the
Speaker 1: camera and visual art as well. Just before we came
Speaker 1: in here, I was having a conversation with our colleague
Speaker 1: Ben Bolan of stuff they don't want you to know
Speaker 1: and ridiculous history, and he was asking what my favorite
Speaker 1: Clive Barker was, and I had to admit I have
Speaker 1: not read any For some reason, I just never gotten
Speaker 1: into Barker. He was very surprised because he knows I
Speaker 1: like horror fiction. But uh, I don't know. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I just never went there, maybe because when I don't know,
Speaker 1: when I first saw the movie Hell Raiser, I think
Speaker 1: this was like my freshman year of college. I found
Speaker 1: it actually very depressing. Yeah, well, I found it. It
Speaker 1: was full of interesting imagery. I thought it was actually
Speaker 1: kind of original and imaginative. But something about the world
Speaker 1: it pictured it seemed very bleak to me. It was
Speaker 1: like a world where nothing is good and everything goes
Speaker 1: to hell and there's nothing to care about. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a bleak, brooding film. And and I can see why
Speaker 1: I was especially into it as like a brooding junior
Speaker 1: high student and as a you know, a teen spoke
Speaker 1: to you then yeah, I mean then also it felt,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a cool d rebel. I think too,
Speaker 1: because like Stephen King, I was stupid into Stephen King
Speaker 1: at the time, and Stephen King has certainly be you know, graphic,
Speaker 1: but but Barker always felt weirder, more counterculture in a
Speaker 1: way that really resonated with me. And you know, there's
Speaker 1: probably no better way to push back against small town
Speaker 1: Southern Baptist upbringing than to turn to and you know,
Speaker 1: the explosive, creative world of an openly gay British horror writer. Well,
Speaker 1: and I will say it is uh despite its flaws.
Speaker 1: I mean, I will talk about how I just rewatched
Speaker 1: the movie uh and it did not match up with
Speaker 1: my memories at all. I found it. I have to
Speaker 1: admit I found it rather funny upon rewatching it, especially
Speaker 1: a lot of the line delivery by the cinabytes and
Speaker 1: it's over the top ponderousness that like, uh, there were
Speaker 1: a whole there was a lot of unintentional laughter. But
Speaker 1: I will say it is still a pretty imaginative concept.
Speaker 1: It was like very original for its time. Let's now
Speaker 1: that we're speaking on Pinhead's voice in the movie, let's
Speaker 1: have a quick uh splash from the trailer will your
Speaker 1: soul part? That's just a sample though, because most of
Speaker 1: the original theatrical trailer is screaming okay, uh yeah. So
Speaker 1: I guess should we briefly discussed the plot of the movie. Yes,
Speaker 1: And for anybody who hasn't listened to a movie at
Speaker 1: so we've done before we will get to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot more science and interpretation of of this particular
Speaker 1: you know, cinematic installment. But but first we do need
Speaker 1: to remind everybody about what's up in Hell Racer, because
Speaker 1: it's easy forget, especially if you've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: the sequels. Uh and and if you've seen some of
Speaker 1: the later sequels then then truly God help you. But
Speaker 1: the original plot line goes like this, do you have
Speaker 1: a creepy uncle? Well, did your creepy uncle ever, say,
Speaker 1: have an affair with your mom? And then use an
Speaker 1: antique puzzle box to open a dimensional rift in your
Speaker 1: grandma's house, summoning a weird sect of transdimensional Cincinnats in
Speaker 1: your uncle's quest for new extremes of pleasure. Well, that
Speaker 1: uncle is Frank Cotton, and yes, he's dragged away to
Speaker 1: the realm of the Cinabytes so the order of the Gash,
Speaker 1: and after a while manages to escape in a much
Speaker 1: reduced state um and works out a plot to reclaim
Speaker 1: his body. And that's essentially the plot line of Hell Racers. Right,
Speaker 1: So you've got your core elements of this miss serious
Speaker 1: puzzle box that is just a normal kind of cube
Speaker 1: with some paintings on it. But if you manipulate it
Speaker 1: in the right way, press here and turn there and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. It starts opening up, and then
Speaker 1: once it opens up, a familiar series of events unfolds,
Speaker 1: where lights shine in through you know, cracks in the
Speaker 1: walls and stuff chains with hooks at the ends of
Speaker 1: them shoot out of the walls and grab you. And
Speaker 1: then the Centabyites show up, and they're these people usually
Speaker 1: with like shaved heads or just generally weird heads. Usually
Speaker 1: something has happened to their head. They're wearing black leather
Speaker 1: robes as if they're a combination of the there's sort
Speaker 1: of like S and M priests. And they show up
Speaker 1: and they're like, okay, it's time to take you away
Speaker 1: to a dimension beyond sensation. It's time to experience pain
Speaker 1: and pleasure indivisible. Right. Yeah, and they're you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're very much there's a boundary confusion with them, right,
Speaker 1: because they're both ghastly and beautiful in their own way.
Speaker 1: They're erotic and grotesque at the same time. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the suggestion question, I think it's explored much more in
Speaker 1: the book, is that these creatures are there part of
Speaker 1: some weird, esoteric, other dimensional religious order that worships the
Speaker 1: exploration of the extremes of sensation right then, and so
Speaker 1: that they've gotten to the point where where they can
Speaker 1: no longer tell the difference between pleasure and pain. It's
Speaker 1: just sort of like experiences to the max all the time,
Speaker 1: of whatever valence possible. Yeah, it's it's more it's not
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna pull your skin off blooh. It's more like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sorry, I'm rude, I'm being rude. I should
Speaker 1: pull your skin off, I should be a good host,
Speaker 1: and this is the natural thing to do. Yeah, though
Speaker 1: I feel like that, I think that's more there in
Speaker 1: the book, which again I haven't read, but in the
Speaker 1: movie it does come to feel more like they're there
Speaker 1: to punish you sometimes. I don't know if this conceit
Speaker 1: about them just being sort of experiment ers is really
Speaker 1: consistent in the film now. I mean, even in the
Speaker 1: first film, which is which is certainly the truest to
Speaker 1: the original source material, even in that you can tell
Speaker 1: that that Barker is leaning more into the idea of
Speaker 1: them as movie monsters, though it's still it's still Clive
Speaker 1: Barker's movie monsters, and Clive Barker is one of those
Speaker 1: creators who has always loved his monsters most of all.
Speaker 1: You know. But but still even in the film, you know,
Speaker 1: the cinemabytes are not the most important aspect of the plot.
Speaker 1: They're not the central antagonist. Even our heroine, uh, Kirstie
Speaker 1: Cotton and her father Larry Cotton aren't as central to
Speaker 1: the plot as Frank, the the individual who just described
Speaker 1: the uncle and Chris, Kirstie's mom Julia. It's ultimately about
Speaker 1: their dark love affair that ultimately transcends the boundaries of
Speaker 1: life and death. Uh. You know, they're the characters at
Speaker 1: the heart of all this, and and they're the ones
Speaker 1: whose desires we most understand and even on some level
Speaker 1: sympathize with, even though they are you know, dark, desperate
Speaker 1: and depressing characters. Yeah, I think the deal is Frank
Speaker 1: is just this guy who's seen it all. He's had
Speaker 1: every hedonistic pleasure of the flesh possible. He's he you know,
Speaker 1: he's beyond good and evil. He has no morality left.
Speaker 1: He's just he's just like trying to to seek the
Speaker 1: next highest possible sensation. Uh. And he's usually got a
Speaker 1: knife out because he's just that kind of guy. Right.
Speaker 1: And then Julia, on the other hand, played by the
Speaker 1: the excellent Claire Higgins. In this she's you know, by
Speaker 1: and large, the best performance in the film. There is
Speaker 1: one scene where I don't know if they did this
Speaker 1: on purpose, but the way they did her makeup and
Speaker 1: her hair, she looks exactly like David Bowie and his
Speaker 1: Aladdin sane persona. Oh huh, I I didn't notice that,
Speaker 1: have to to look back at it. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: she's wonderful in it. And in a same way her character.
Speaker 1: Her character is also like trapped in a life of
Speaker 1: tedium and boredom. Like her husband is this boring guy
Speaker 1: who watched his boxing on television and and she just
Speaker 1: seems to be, you know, putting up with him. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and so thus comes her attraction to Frank. And
Speaker 1: even when Frank comes back from the dead uh in
Speaker 1: this you know, grotesque body, uh, you know, she still
Speaker 1: ends up helping him. Oh and of course helping him
Speaker 1: involves like killing a bunch of people again so he
Speaker 1: can it's not exactly clear he can basically drink their
Speaker 1: blood and thus reconstitute his original body. Yeah, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a little vague, and I like that it's vague,
Speaker 1: you know, weren't really sure exactly what the necromancy is
Speaker 1: of all this, but that that is the thing. Frank
Speaker 1: is essentially a necromancer. Uh and and has these these powers. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, looking back at at the film, it's you
Speaker 1: really can't overstate the importance of Frank and Juliet. They
Speaker 1: are the core of the film. They are its main characters,
Speaker 1: and they are its main monsters. Yeah. The cinembytes show
Speaker 1: up mostly in the third act as a kind of
Speaker 1: almost as a kind of d S X machina. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is fitting because they are literally coming out of
Speaker 1: the machine, right d S xbox in. Uh. Let's a
Speaker 1: few of are things I want to say about the
Speaker 1: film just rewatching it. Um, the music is fine, It's
Speaker 1: a bit dramatic, but I've long wanted to see a
Speaker 1: cut of it with the original score by Post and
Speaker 1: tut Industrial Act Coil. This was the late Peter Christofferson
Speaker 1: of who was also in Throbbing Gristle, and the late
Speaker 1: John Balance was also in Psychic TV, so that they
Speaker 1: had conducted the original put together the original score for
Speaker 1: the film and the replacement score. This more traditional and
Speaker 1: cinematic was supposedly a condition of additional funding that Barker
Speaker 1: received in order to finish the special effects in the film.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I would my musical taste lean far more
Speaker 1: coil than they do traditional cinematic score. So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when what I've heard of it, it sounds really interesting.
Speaker 1: So that's that's that's one thought I have on it. Coil.
Speaker 1: If you're not familiar with them, they were. They were
Speaker 1: a big influence on the likes of say Trent Resner
Speaker 1: Um and uh and of course Clive Barker was also
Speaker 1: an influence on Trent Resider as well. I'd say Nine
Speaker 1: Inch Nails is pretty thoroughly cinabyte music. Yeah, especially the
Speaker 1: early stuff. Let's see what else about this film, Oh,
Speaker 1: the costumes and the practical effects I think hold up
Speaker 1: very well. They do. And I think this is this
Speaker 1: is definitely a film where you look at it and
Speaker 1: you I'm impressed by just how ambitious it really was,
Speaker 1: perhaps overly ambitious, especially given the small budget and the
Speaker 1: fact that Barker was, you know, adapting his own work
Speaker 1: here directing it as well, and this was his He'd
Speaker 1: done some screenwriting, but he had not directed anything previously.
Speaker 1: And it's really, you know, it's they go for not
Speaker 1: only they have the cinabytes in there and all these effects,
Speaker 1: but also like a regeneration scene and additional demon monsters
Speaker 1: that you know, if you were being like maybe a
Speaker 1: little more careful with your budget, you might say, well,
Speaker 1: do we need this monster? We already have this monster.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can actually cut two whole monsters in two
Speaker 1: big practical effects from the film and use those funds elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But uh, still, you know it, it mostly comes together.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure the purpose served by the monster
Speaker 1: that's referred to as the engineer, which doesn't look anything
Speaker 1: like an engineer. Instead, it's like a big sort of
Speaker 1: larva that crawls down the hallway with a scary mouth
Speaker 1: on the bottom part, chasing after people. Yeah, it's that's
Speaker 1: something that the engineers mentioned in the novella. But it's
Speaker 1: more it's like a being of light or something. It's
Speaker 1: it's not a monster. So that like that I feel
Speaker 1: like comes off a little confusing in the picture, like
Speaker 1: what is this and how's it connected with everything? Now?
Speaker 1: I don't want to rag on the film too much,
Speaker 1: but I will say that one of the things that
Speaker 1: was funniest about it to me, is that Pinhead even
Speaker 1: in the first movie. I mean, I think it gets
Speaker 1: even more like this as the movies go on. Pinhead
Speaker 1: gets increasingly fretified, Like he becomes like a wise cracking
Speaker 1: you know, making jokes at the camera, kind of Freddy
Speaker 1: Krueger character. But even in the first movie, almost everything
Speaker 1: he says is this like threatening, lee pretentious kind of
Speaker 1: line that could be a quote on the VHS bo
Speaker 1: ex coover. It's all stuff like will tear your soul apart?
Speaker 1: Or the box you opened it, we came? Or of course, uh,
Speaker 1: the the inimitable I am pain Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Freddie,
Speaker 1: he has a lot of catch phrases and sort of
Speaker 1: quote ready samples. Uh. And I've heard him in a
Speaker 1: number of different DJ mixes as well, throwing a little
Speaker 1: pinhead right. Uh. He also reminds me a bit of
Speaker 1: nineties pro wrestlers in that regard. You know, he's like
Speaker 1: the rock you know, he has the Rocks like more
Speaker 1: post nineties, but still, you know, he has his his
Speaker 1: catch phrases that he lashes out. You can imagine macho
Speaker 1: man Randy Savage saying the box you opened it we came.
Speaker 1: I actually just learned that Doug Bradley serves as the
Speaker 1: authority figure in the indie British occult themed wrestling promotion
Speaker 1: Blackcraft Wrestling. I don't know what that means. Well, look
Speaker 1: it up, beild it exists. Um, it's like clearly he's
Speaker 1: doing kind of like a he's not in a wrestling ring.
Speaker 1: He's like showing up like they're doing a green screen
Speaker 1: thing and he's you know, making matches and whatnot. But
Speaker 1: it's it's Dug Bradley being Doug Bradley. But like he
Speaker 1: officiates a match by saying you're suffering will be legendary
Speaker 1: even in hell. Now, I will say that. In the
Speaker 1: I think it's by the fourth one, he does have
Speaker 1: a line about pain that that is I think it's
Speaker 1: actually pretty good where he says, uh, quote, what you
Speaker 1: think of as pain is only a shadow. Pain has
Speaker 1: a face. Allow me to show it to you, Allow
Speaker 1: me to show it to you, and uh and like
Speaker 1: that that line, I think it is pretty good, Like
Speaker 1: he gets at some of the the intangible aspects of pain,
Speaker 1: the how difficult it is to understand another individual's pain
Speaker 1: or relate your own. Of course, this is and this
Speaker 1: is from how rays your inferno. Then he goes on
Speaker 1: to say, uh, uh, gentleman, I am pain, and he
Speaker 1: kind of he kind of ruins the moment. You know
Speaker 1: it can go far. He can't help but go for
Speaker 1: the catchphrase, ladies and gentlemen, I am pain. So in summary, uh,
Speaker 1: this is what I'll say about How Raiser. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a film. I have a lot of staut it
Speaker 1: for and having rewatched it in the past week, I'd
Speaker 1: say that that more things will work than don't work.
Speaker 1: And it's still like it's it's astounding that that that
Speaker 1: everyone is able to put this film together and then ultimately,
Speaker 1: like clearly it resonated, even though like my personal taste,
Speaker 1: I like the cinebyites of the novella more like Pinhead worked,
Speaker 1: like Pinhead became a staple, like Pinhead is part of
Speaker 1: American popular culture now. A couple of years ago I
Speaker 1: went through the process. I don't know why I decided
Speaker 1: I needed to do this, but I watched all of
Speaker 1: the Hell Raiser sequels. I don't think that's a journey
Speaker 1: people need to go on. There. There are fleeting pleasures
Speaker 1: throughout them, like Part three has some pretty funny stuff.
Speaker 1: Part four has some funny moments. Part three is kind
Speaker 1: of like peak Freddie. Uh hell Raised, like they realized like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what we've created. We've created this, this this
Speaker 1: this horror creature that you know the masses are in to.
Speaker 1: Let's give him the film that this character deserves. Of course,
Speaker 1: Part four is Pinhead Goes to Space, which is I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's hard to sniff it that. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that film is notoriously a mess, but then it also
Speaker 1: just has so many crazy things in it it's hard
Speaker 1: to completely dismiss it. I kept wanting to see I
Speaker 1: think I may have said this on the show before,
Speaker 1: but Rachel and I have frequently talked about how there
Speaker 1: needs to be a crossover again, franchise crossover, but not
Speaker 1: with Judge Shred. This should be hell Raiser, and then
Speaker 1: the air bud sequels they crossover. So you've got like
Speaker 1: Golden Retriever puppies and they're playing with the box and
Speaker 1: it's called hell Buddies, and so the cinembytes come out
Speaker 1: and they're ready to do all their hooks and stuff,
Speaker 1: but then they're conquered by the cuteness of the puppies.
Speaker 1: So it's like I am all right. Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: let's take our first break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about puzzle boxes. Alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: all right. So we know that Hell Raiser starts with
Speaker 1: a mysterious puzzle box. It's this box that, uh, it
Speaker 1: can be opened, but how you open it is apparently
Speaker 1: not obvious, and people just fiddle around with it until
Speaker 1: they figure out the secret, and then they end up
Speaker 1: unleashing the hooks, the chains, the cineabytes and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first film and all subsequent films, they are generally
Speaker 1: gonna be some scenes with somebody fiddling with the box.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't seem to it seems to adhere to
Speaker 1: unreal physics, which is fitting. It is a magical box
Speaker 1: that opens a magical doorway through which magical beings then
Speaker 1: enter um. So you know, I don't take any issue
Speaker 1: with that at all. But of course, in the idea
Speaker 1: itself is just irresistible. We love myths about boxes that
Speaker 1: should not be opened, or the idea of a box
Speaker 1: that resists opening is also tremendous as well. An enclosure
Speaker 1: born of human ingenuity, it must be solved via human
Speaker 1: ingenuity as well. Oh yeah, I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful conceit are opening a story like this, that
Speaker 1: there is this thing, it requires effort. It suggests that
Speaker 1: there's kind of a that there's a beyond normal amount
Speaker 1: of interest. Right. People seek out this box when they're
Speaker 1: they're board with all of the sensations of Earth and
Speaker 1: they want to go beyond. They want to see one
Speaker 1: of other level they can reach. They have to find
Speaker 1: this secret artifact. Yeah, and you know, ultimately, I think
Speaker 1: we all have puzzle boxes like that in our lives
Speaker 1: that we're trying to unravel. Right. But one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things here is that, of course Clive Barker is
Speaker 1: not just creating this out of nothing. He's he's drawing
Speaker 1: on inspirations. One of the inspirations is clearly and you know,
Speaker 1: especially I think they flesh this out a little bit
Speaker 1: uh in in the fourth film, uh playing on the
Speaker 1: tradition of philosophical toys uh, the that captivated to audiences
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century. And we've talked about some of
Speaker 1: these on the show before, like the pooping duck, various automatons,
Speaker 1: wind up clockwork devices. They don't really do anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: they they don't you know, fulfill a purpose. They do things,
Speaker 1: but those things that they do are merely to amuse us,
Speaker 1: sort of make us think about, you know, the bio
Speaker 1: mechanical nature of the world, or as a clockmaker, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, a machine that poses a question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're also testaments, of course, to the creator's talents.
Speaker 1: How could someone so gifted with machinery make a musical
Speaker 1: box such as this? But then there's a there's another
Speaker 1: legacy of boxes that he's drawing out, and that is
Speaker 1: the puzzle box, particularly the puzzle boxes of the Victorian period.
Speaker 1: And I have to admit I really wasn't familiar with
Speaker 1: with these at all, Like even you know, having seen
Speaker 1: the hell Raiser movies, I never looked into anything anything
Speaker 1: beyond the you know, the wind up clockwork stuff. But
Speaker 1: there's a tradition of woodworking, uh trick boxes, puzzle boxes,
Speaker 1: and they're pretty pretty phenomenal. So one example I came
Speaker 1: across from said to be from the year nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: is a wooden book money box. So it looks like
Speaker 1: a book that you would have on a shelf, like
Speaker 1: a hard bound book, but it's made out of wood.
Speaker 1: If you pick it up, take it off the shelf.
Speaker 1: You see that there's a coin slot in top in
Speaker 1: the top of it, so it's not being too secretive,
Speaker 1: like I put money into this, but then how do
Speaker 1: you get the money out? Well, to do that you
Speaker 1: have to know the trick, and these older trick boxes
Speaker 1: there generally there's just one way to do it. So
Speaker 1: and this one you slide part of the book spine aside,
Speaker 1: and that allows you to slide another little panel and
Speaker 1: that opens the box and you can get the money inside. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's clever, you know, kind of the woodworking version of
Speaker 1: the various clockwork marvels that we were discussing earlier. But
Speaker 1: then it ends up coming to it into its own
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century because it's during this period that
Speaker 1: you have woodworkers both in Europe, particularly in England and Switzerland,
Speaker 1: but also in Japan, they really begin pushing the boundaries
Speaker 1: of what's possible with a wooden puzzle box. Uh. In
Speaker 1: the Japanese puzzle box this seemed to be some of
Speaker 1: the most impressive. They typically look like ornate wooden boxes
Speaker 1: with no visible hinges or lids, and then they may
Speaker 1: require as few as three or more than a hundred
Speaker 1: moves to open, so like sliding, yeah, like sliding this
Speaker 1: little panel, like first of all, finding the panels to
Speaker 1: figure out like which what does a piece of wood
Speaker 1: that moves here? And then sliding it to the side,
Speaker 1: sliding something else to the side, doing all these little
Speaker 1: tricks in order to open up the ultimate interior of
Speaker 1: the box. Um. Yeah, And and this was according to
Speaker 1: wood Smith's Shop, which is a video series from wood
Speaker 1: smith Magazine. Episode twelve O four is on YouTube. These
Speaker 1: guys Chris and Phil hosted and uh, you know they're
Speaker 1: they're going for the hell raiser audience by the way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're They're exactly what you might imagine when you think
Speaker 1: of like sort of I'm guessing like Midwestern um perhaps,
Speaker 1: um you know wood wood wood workers, h you know
Speaker 1: that that they show off one of these boxes, and
Speaker 1: the craftsmanship is amazing, Like woodworking, I feel is an
Speaker 1: area that I often take for granted, Like I see
Speaker 1: a finished piece of furniture, be it something from Ikea
Speaker 1: or something, you know, in a more robust and I
Speaker 1: don't really think about all the skill that went into
Speaker 1: making it. And perhaps that's why things like wooden puzzle
Speaker 1: boxes exist to show you just how much skill is
Speaker 1: involved in turning uh, you know, raw wood into something
Speaker 1: that serves the purpose. Well, there's something counterintuitive about it
Speaker 1: because we don't usually think of woodworking as is being
Speaker 1: concerned with moving parts. Most often woodworking is, you know,
Speaker 1: design and crafting of static elements, maybe with very few
Speaker 1: moving parts, or some things that maybe there's a hinge
Speaker 1: or something on a cabinet. But these combined elements of
Speaker 1: of course, the kind of beautiful static art and design
Speaker 1: of woodworking with the kinds of interlocking mechanisms you'd more
Speaker 1: often see in machinery and metal. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: you know, I can, I can describe them a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I really you should look up some videos of
Speaker 1: people manipulating these boxes and then hopefully, you know, get
Speaker 1: your hands on a wooden puzzle box of your own,
Speaker 1: because there are still people making them. There's an individual
Speaker 1: by the name of Kagan Sound that's with a K
Speaker 1: K A G A N S O U N D
Speaker 1: at Kagan sound dot com. You can look him up.
Speaker 1: He's apparently one of the foremost wooden puzzle box makers
Speaker 1: in the world, and he's he's something of a modern
Speaker 1: day Lemon shand if you will wait, well, that's from
Speaker 1: the fourth movie, right. We find out that the creator
Speaker 1: of the box is somebody named La mar Schand. I
Speaker 1: think it's also revealed in the novella. Okay, it's it's
Speaker 1: the Lament Configuration or the La mar Schand Box. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are also people that are apparently making puzzle boxes
Speaker 1: out of Lego blox, which makes sense. Now. Some of
Speaker 1: you might say, well, hey, how about the Rubik's Cute. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Rubics four invention. I would say, like,
Speaker 1: if you'd it just right, it opens up and there's
Speaker 1: something inside. Well, that's the thing. It doesn't have an interior,
Speaker 1: so it's not it's a puzzle cube, not a true
Speaker 1: puzzle box. There is no inside to the Rubik's Cube.
Speaker 1: It will not open up new realms of pleasure and sensation. No,
Speaker 1: that's not true. If you solve it, you get all
Speaker 1: the faces, solid colors. Hooks shoot out of the walls.
Speaker 1: That's how you get the hooks. Um. Yeah. I should
Speaker 1: also point out that it's not always completely clear in
Speaker 1: the Hill Raiser books that the Lament Configuration has an
Speaker 1: interior either, but there are shots in the film that
Speaker 1: establish an interior to the box, and its interior is
Speaker 1: described in the novella. So there are scenes in the
Speaker 1: movie that I can imagine would have worked a lot
Speaker 1: better in fiction when you didn't have to see them staged.
Speaker 1: And one of them is the scene where the box
Speaker 1: is solved in order to fix the problem, you know,
Speaker 1: where the cinemabytes are sent back to their realm because
Speaker 1: Kirsty Swanson like does the right things with the box.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just looks funny when she's messing with
Speaker 1: the box while the house is falling apart and pin
Speaker 1: to saying no, don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. It's the
Speaker 1: problems of translating the novella to to the film because
Speaker 1: in the novella the box is also not described as
Speaker 1: being really ornate, even it's really more has more in
Speaker 1: common in the book with the these wooden puzzle boxes
Speaker 1: we've described. Now, uh you know that the here's another
Speaker 1: area to consider. So the Box of Lament is largely
Speaker 1: positioned as a thing that must be solved in order
Speaker 1: to open a gate to reveal a secret. But we
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't forget that the cinepytes are also presented, especially
Speaker 1: in the Novella as explorers. Uh, there's a sense of
Speaker 1: curiosity to them. Uh, they're truly spaced out on sensation,
Speaker 1: you might say. And uh so I'm wondering might we
Speaker 1: consider the Lament configuration as a means of exploration as well,
Speaker 1: because certainly puzzle boxes are used in various animal studies
Speaker 1: by scientists, typically with a food reward at the center.
Speaker 1: I believe we've discussed the sorts of boxes in the
Speaker 1: study of Corvitts, where they'll be like generally, you know,
Speaker 1: there's food in the middle of the box. There may
Speaker 1: be some tools, or they have to make their own tool,
Speaker 1: what have you. But they have to come up with
Speaker 1: a way to free the prize from the box, which
Speaker 1: is ultimately what Frank's trying to do with the Lament configuration. Now,
Speaker 1: another noteworthy puzzle box from science history is a Thorndyke's
Speaker 1: puzzle box. Uh. This is the work of an American
Speaker 1: psychologist who was working at the same time as a
Speaker 1: Pavlov and in the same area, you know, looking at
Speaker 1: animals and their problem solving abilities and their behavior. And
Speaker 1: he used this on cats in particular to test their
Speaker 1: learning and problem solving abilities. They're essentially cages that can
Speaker 1: be exited by performing at the correct task, hitting the
Speaker 1: right mechanism, etcetera, in order to to step out of
Speaker 1: the cage and get your food. Uh and uh. In
Speaker 1: His main observation from all of this was the cat
Speaker 1: would behave radically the first time use that you put
Speaker 1: them in the box. The first time they were in
Speaker 1: there for the experiment, but then they would learn so
Speaker 1: in su sequent experiments they wouldn't. They would waste less
Speaker 1: and less time in the box. They would just realize like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm in here again. I push this button. Then I
Speaker 1: get out and I can get my food. And then
Speaker 1: Thorndyke's work would lead to another noteworthy box, Skinner's Box,
Speaker 1: in which the animal has to engage a mechanism in
Speaker 1: order to be fed within the box, the work of
Speaker 1: BF Skinner. So later installments of the hell Raiser franchise
Speaker 1: explore to some degree the idea of the boxes a
Speaker 1: place or thing that may contain us, but for the
Speaker 1: most part not so much. But the the idea of
Speaker 1: the puzzle boxes a means of exploring human desire. I
Speaker 1: think that's kind of an interesting idea to consider. Well,
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder if the box is also being
Speaker 1: used to test us somehow. If it is being used
Speaker 1: to test us, then to test the humans that you know,
Speaker 1: play with it. Obviously the people doing the testing would
Speaker 1: be the cinobytes, right, So maybe we should turn to
Speaker 1: the cinabytes and think a little bit about about pain, experience, sensation,
Speaker 1: and flagellation. Absolutely, all right, So let's just start with
Speaker 1: the words centobyte, because is this this really gets into
Speaker 1: a lot of what we're going to discuss here. A
Speaker 1: cynobyte is merely a member of a religious group living
Speaker 1: together in a monastic community. There are plenty of cynobytes. Technically,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of cinnobytes in the world today and
Speaker 1: they have They have nothing to do with the hell
Speaker 1: raised their movie. If you've never seen it written out,
Speaker 1: it is not spelled like cinnabun. Uh. It is c
Speaker 1: e n o they had. The word apparently emerged in
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century and it comes from the late Latin
Speaker 1: colon obita. I'm saying that correctly. Uh, Basically you have
Speaker 1: the Greek coin cohen plus bios life, so it basically
Speaker 1: means the monastic life. Now, one obviously does see certain
Speaker 1: levels of self inflicted pain, however, in monastic history, so
Speaker 1: religious rights of flagellation or blood lighting can be found
Speaker 1: throughout Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Native American, and other religious rights.
Speaker 1: We we've covered some of these on the show, but
Speaker 1: for there there are plenty of religious rights of pain
Speaker 1: that can be found in the world and in human history,
Speaker 1: just as there are various secular rights of pain that
Speaker 1: can be found today within the realms of say performance
Speaker 1: art or even you know b D s M for instance,
Speaker 1: uh the later of which served as partial inspiration for
Speaker 1: Clive Barker and likewise Barker's work, while Nott the influencing
Speaker 1: b D s M to some degree as well. Oh
Speaker 1: that's not surprising. Uh So I was looking around, yeah,
Speaker 1: for more historical ideas about pain and pleasure indivisible as
Speaker 1: the as pinhead says they explore, and I came across
Speaker 1: a book by the American psychologist James H. Luba who
Speaker 1: lived eighteen sixty eight to nineteen forty six, who focused
Speaker 1: a lot of his work on the psychology of religion.
Speaker 1: And this book was called The Psychology of Religious Mysticism.
Speaker 1: And in this book there's part where he's in the
Speaker 1: middle of a section about narcotics, consciousness, and mysticism, and
Speaker 1: Luba begins to discuss the idea of pleasure in pain
Speaker 1: or enjoyment and suffer ring, which is a major theme
Speaker 1: of this movie and of the novel. And his hypothesis
Speaker 1: is that quote, the apparent paradox of people seeking and
Speaker 1: enjoying pain becomes intelligible when one takes into account the
Speaker 1: passion for vivid consciousness. Uh. And so he of course
Speaker 1: is this is in the context of religious experience. So
Speaker 1: he mentions members of self flagellating Muslim sex of the quote,
Speaker 1: painful ascetic practices of the yogi, or the violent dancing
Speaker 1: frenzies of the mind ads. He says those quote all
Speaker 1: may yield a sense of new or increased life. Now
Speaker 1: what does he mean by that, Well, he explains further
Speaker 1: by quoting a letter from Gothold Ephraim Lessing to Moses Mendelssohn,
Speaker 1: which in which Lessing writes, quote, were agreed in this,
Speaker 1: my dear friend, that all passions are either vehement cravings
Speaker 1: or vehement loathings. And also that in every vehement craving
Speaker 1: or loathing we acquire an increased consciousness of our reality,
Speaker 1: and that this consciousness cannot but be pleasurable. Consequently, all
Speaker 1: our passions, even the most painful, are as passions pleasurable. Uh,
Speaker 1: which is kind of interesting explore more in a second,
Speaker 1: But that I just realized that made me think of
Speaker 1: a passage in The Brothers Karamazov that's all about uh,
Speaker 1: a character talking about the pleasure one takes in taking offense. UH.
Speaker 1: And I remember being like, Wow, how have I never
Speaker 1: read this before? But it's so true that, like, in
Speaker 1: getting mad about something unfair that has happened to you
Speaker 1: or somebody who's been mean to you or something, there
Speaker 1: is so often this feeling of like almost joy in
Speaker 1: the way that you get worked up about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and there's a difference to like there's certainly there's
Speaker 1: righteous anger. There's a situation where like, if you feel
Speaker 1: like you've been wronged and you're you're having been wronged
Speaker 1: is a part of a larger problem in the culture
Speaker 1: in the world, then yeah, you can get in this
Speaker 1: area of righteous anger. But I think more of what
Speaker 1: you're talking about here are the petty things in life,
Speaker 1: you know, where it's like the server at a restaurant
Speaker 1: doesn't bring you your appetizer first, and you you have
Speaker 1: been wrong, and you just start getting excited about how
Speaker 1: mad you are and on some love like You're probably
Speaker 1: not thinking, oh, I feel so alive, I'm so angry
Speaker 1: at this server. But in a way that is happening.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So what does Luba think is going on
Speaker 1: with these these passions being pleasurable even when they're painful? Uh?
Speaker 1: He writes that it's because these heightened states of awareness
Speaker 1: and passion triggered by pain offer an escape from a
Speaker 1: sort of baseline form of consciousness characterized by tedium, insensibility
Speaker 1: and normal fatigue. Thus, for some people, normal states of
Speaker 1: consciousness become so boring, so exhausting and tedious that the
Speaker 1: self and election of pain actually unlocks a state of
Speaker 1: mind that is to them preferable by contrast, and and
Speaker 1: this becomes an important distinction in Luba's idea here. It's
Speaker 1: that religious ecstasy in the self infliction of pain is
Speaker 1: not actually an enjoyment directly of the pain itself, but
Speaker 1: an enjoyment of a kind of rapturous and highly aware
Speaker 1: state of mind that's brought about by the infliction of pain.
Speaker 1: Quote not the pain nor the wound does the martyr enjoy,
Speaker 1: but the exaltation that comes with the quivering of the flesh.
Speaker 1: The quivering of the flesh. Oh you're a fan too, No,
Speaker 1: I mean it's so it's interesting. I'll come back to
Speaker 1: Hell Raiser in just a second. I mean, first, I
Speaker 1: would point out that, of course this is in the
Speaker 1: sort of like William James E and cast of like
Speaker 1: broad observational psychology, which it doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that it should be thought of
Speaker 1: more like interesting philosophical writings based on observations rather than
Speaker 1: conclusions derived from grisly controlled experiments. But again not to
Speaker 1: say he's wrong. It's just that it's not really science
Speaker 1: by modern standards. It's more like philosophy and cultural criticism.
Speaker 1: He could be onto something there, uh, And I do
Speaker 1: think those observations maybe onto something. It's funny that it
Speaker 1: lines up so well with the character of Frank in
Speaker 1: Hell Raiser, a man who again in the movie we
Speaker 1: we see a couple of scenes of him appearing disgusted
Speaker 1: by normal hedonistic pleasure, like all of the regular pleasures
Speaker 1: of the flesh that seemed to have they've failed for him,
Speaker 1: they don't work anymore. Everything's boring. So according to Luba's
Speaker 1: framework here, it could make sense for him to join
Speaker 1: a self flagellating order devoted to the mortification of the flesh,
Speaker 1: because maybe pain will unlock higher states of conscious awareness
Speaker 1: and excitation that he wants to reach, but for which
Speaker 1: the bridges of normal pleasure have collapsed. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's a solid read on on Frank's character for sure,
Speaker 1: you know. But also Julia is the sort of flip
Speaker 1: side to that coin. She's the tedium side of it.
Speaker 1: She is she lives this life of boredom and perhaps
Speaker 1: some level of contempt for her boring husband as well,
Speaker 1: um and ends up being sucked into this world of
Speaker 1: of intense sensation as just as Frank has. But I
Speaker 1: think in all this one thing we get to is
Speaker 1: that it starts to become complicated to try to define
Speaker 1: and understand pain. I think because when you ask what
Speaker 1: is pain, it's something we all know about, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no debating whether there is such a thing as pain.
Speaker 1: But when you try to come up with a rigorous
Speaker 1: definition of it that applies to every case, that becomes difficult.
Speaker 1: I think it goes back to that quote from the
Speaker 1: help Priest himself. What we think of pain is a shadow,
Speaker 1: but pain has a face. Um who just but actually
Speaker 1: like for us to actually define the lines of that face. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's extremely difficult and a huge part of that.
Speaker 1: And this is something we've talked about in the show.
Speaker 1: For us, like the difficulty and even discussing pain, Like
Speaker 1: I can talk about my pain, you can talk about
Speaker 1: your pain, but it becomes very difficult for us to
Speaker 1: properly understand each other's pain. Uh, and but properly related. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there are some contexts in which I think it's
Speaker 1: simpler than others. But even in the simpler ones, say
Speaker 1: like regular no susceptive body pain that you would feel
Speaker 1: in the context of, uh, you know, getting pricked with
Speaker 1: a needle or something in a clinical setting. Even then,
Speaker 1: if we look to like best approximation type answers within
Speaker 1: the medical world, you can get definitions like this one,
Speaker 1: which is cited by the International Association for the Study
Speaker 1: of Pain. Quote. Pain is an unpleasant, sensory and emotional
Speaker 1: experience that is associated with actual or potential tissue damage
Speaker 1: or described in such terms. Okay, so that's kind of complicated.
Speaker 1: It's got multiple clauses in there. But also one of
Speaker 1: the things that's difficult about that you immediately hit a
Speaker 1: snag with the idea that pain is explicitly and necessarily
Speaker 1: described as unpleasant. And this very definition would, of course,
Speaker 1: I think that would apply to most cases. I mean
Speaker 1: most cases when people say they're in pain, they think
Speaker 1: of that as bad and they wanted to stop right. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean part of it. You have the problem with
Speaker 1: our our language, for instance, in in yoga. I practice yoga,
Speaker 1: and something that's often touched on by the teachers is
Speaker 1: that is the distinction between discomfort and pain, Like you
Speaker 1: should work with discomfort, like discomfort is part of the practice.
Speaker 1: But if you're feeling pain, then that means you need
Speaker 1: to back off because you don't want to go into
Speaker 1: that third area of injury of damage. Right. But a
Speaker 1: lot of times it can be hard to tell the
Speaker 1: difference between discomfort and pain. I mean, are they distinct
Speaker 1: classes of things or is that a gradient with you know,
Speaker 1: them being at two different sides of a scale. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course, the very definition that says that pain
Speaker 1: is necessarily on pleasant would seem to rule out the
Speaker 1: existence of pleasure in pain. It would either mean that
Speaker 1: nobody actually does take pleasure in pain, and I think
Speaker 1: lots of anecdotal evidence would seem to disagree with that right,
Speaker 1: or that painful sensations that bring about pleasure are not
Speaker 1: actually technically pain. But in that case, what are they?
Speaker 1: What would you call them? I mean, it's a great
Speaker 1: man once said pain don't hurt, So what are we
Speaker 1: to make of that? Okay, so you quote Roadhouse and
Speaker 1: he said, but I think that position in a way
Speaker 1: is incoherent. He so he says pain don't hurt, but
Speaker 1: then he spends the rest of the movie trying to
Speaker 1: prevent the villain from inflicting pain on people. It's true,
Speaker 1: I've got a real beef with Roadhouse. But I wonder
Speaker 1: if that quote, like part of it is that what
Speaker 1: he's trying to say is that for him, physical pain
Speaker 1: does not have, at least in this case, an emotional context.
Speaker 1: But I think it's in a way, it's like a
Speaker 1: lot of things in the Roadhouse, Like maybe it's accidentally
Speaker 1: clever because because it is getting at that distinction. For
Speaker 1: for human beings, pain is both sensory, like purely sensory,
Speaker 1: but also it has this enormous emotional context, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: that it pain is a physical sensation, you know, there's
Speaker 1: no susception in the nerves in the flesh, and so
Speaker 1: it detects something that is an injury, could indicate an
Speaker 1: injury or something like that. But then it also is
Speaker 1: a motivation. It triggers avoidance behaviors. Yeah, like in the
Speaker 1: the yoga example for instance, like the pain is there
Speaker 1: to tell me, Hey, this thing you're doing to your arm,
Speaker 1: uh is not in your normal practice. You should you
Speaker 1: should be aware that if this continues, worst things could occur. Injury,
Speaker 1: damage could occur. Again, that's normal functioning, not getting into
Speaker 1: you know, disorders of pain. But again, yeah, for humans,
Speaker 1: pain is a complex topic. Uh, physical sensation, but also
Speaker 1: this emotional realm as well. And there are seemingly dimensions
Speaker 1: of pain that are beyond the scope of less cognitively
Speaker 1: advanced organisms. You know, not saying animals don't feel pain,
Speaker 1: but and their animals do not necessarily have this emotional
Speaker 1: context to their their suffering as well. Yeah, certainly not
Speaker 1: in the same way. I mean, you can see that
Speaker 1: a painful stimulus might cause a retreat or avoidance behaviors
Speaker 1: and say a crab, but it's hard to believe that
Speaker 1: a crab has the full spectrum of human like fear
Speaker 1: and emotions that that you would get from feeling a
Speaker 1: painful wound, which raises an interesting question. Would a being
Speaker 1: more cognitively advanced than a human being have a greater
Speaker 1: potential for suffering and pain? And maybe would that explain
Speaker 1: something about the nature of many gods and myth and legends. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean this shows up in existing works of theology.
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's something that's often used to
Speaker 1: develop the Christian mythos, which is of course has a
Speaker 1: big theology of the suffering of God. It says that
Speaker 1: God came down into human form, was crucified on the
Speaker 1: cross in the form of Jesus Christ, and then descended
Speaker 1: into hell for three days and then was resurrected. And
Speaker 1: in order to emphasize the immensity of the sacrifice, Christian
Speaker 1: theologians often point out that this isn't just like a
Speaker 1: human suffering, it's God himself suffering. And since God's state
Speaker 1: of holiness and perfection was already infinitely greater than the humans,
Speaker 1: it follows that when he descends to suffering and death.
Speaker 1: That suffering is infinitely greater of an insult than it
Speaker 1: would be to a normal human. So the parts of
Speaker 1: our brain that respond a pleasure also react to sensations
Speaker 1: of pain. This also further complicates things, and the line
Speaker 1: between the two is sometimes a bit of a blur.
Speaker 1: For instance, two thousand thirteen study from the University of
Speaker 1: Oslo found that quote, the brain changed how it processed
Speaker 1: moderate pain according to the context of what the alternative was.
Speaker 1: If the pain was less than anticipated, then the brain
Speaker 1: transformed the sensation into something comforting or even pleasurable. Likewise,
Speaker 1: there was a two fourteen study from Northern Illinois Universty
Speaker 1: that linked sado masochism the altered states of mind that
Speaker 1: can be obtained. Their linked them with with those states
Speaker 1: of mind you might achieve through yoga or meditation, you know,
Speaker 1: which I think a lot of that makes sense. You're
Speaker 1: talking about like just a feeling alive in the moment
Speaker 1: of sensation, be that sensation you know, painful or pleasurable,
Speaker 1: Like there is a is essentially a built in mindfulness
Speaker 1: exercise to that. In the same way that if you
Speaker 1: focus on your breath you are living entirely or at
Speaker 1: least more so in the body than you are normally. Likewise,
Speaker 1: if you you know, if you're you accidentally prick your finger,
Speaker 1: you're you're living in the moment of that that that
Speaker 1: that finger prick, like there's probably not a lot else
Speaker 1: on your mind in that single instance. Oh. In fact,
Speaker 1: that this actually comes up in the study I want
Speaker 1: to talk about in a minute that has to do
Speaker 1: with how pain pain has been shown to alter or
Speaker 1: mediate our perception of our identity. Excellent, Uh, the same
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen study. The researchers and you know, they
Speaker 1: suspected that pain inflicted in consensual sado masochism alters blood
Speaker 1: flow in the brain, particularly to the dorso lateral prefrontal cortex,
Speaker 1: would plays into our ability to distinguish self from other
Speaker 1: As such, intense pain may result in feelings of oneness
Speaker 1: with you know, the other individual or with humanity or
Speaker 1: the universe, which it is interesting to think about. That
Speaker 1: is really interesting. I mean that gets back into stuff
Speaker 1: we talked about in our episodes on psychedelics, of course,
Speaker 1: with the the sort of self other distinction that is
Speaker 1: sometimes dissolved by changes in brain chemistry, but of course,
Speaker 1: we know that not all changes in brain brain chemistry
Speaker 1: have to come from ingesting chemicals from outside the body,
Speaker 1: right right, Um, And again I do want to underline
Speaker 1: the consensual aspect of that study. They are talking about
Speaker 1: consensual acts of sado maschism here. Oh of course. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I figured it would be worth talking about other interesting
Speaker 1: sign offic research that offers complications in our understanding and
Speaker 1: experience of pain. One thing that I came across that
Speaker 1: was really interesting to me is something that is known.
Speaker 1: It's it's a cognitive heuristic known as the peak end phenomenon.
Speaker 1: And so this is a psychological memory bias that says
Speaker 1: that people don't in their memories mentally characterize and experience
Speaker 1: by taking an average of the entire duration of the experience. Rather,
Speaker 1: they mentally characterize an experience according to memories of a
Speaker 1: couple of little things, and they tend very often to
Speaker 1: be moments of peak intensity of the experience and then
Speaker 1: the final moments of the experience. And this has been
Speaker 1: found to apply to both pleasurable and painful experiences. Of course,
Speaker 1: not all experiences. No psychological phenomenon applies to everything, but
Speaker 1: to a lot in which it very often has strange consequences.
Speaker 1: It's been documented a lot of times now, but one
Speaker 1: important early study is by Daniel Kaneman, Barbara Frederickson, Charles Schreiber,
Speaker 1: and Donald Riddelmeyer published in Psychological Science in called win
Speaker 1: more pain is preferred to less adding a better end.
Speaker 1: So in this study it was pretty simple. You've got
Speaker 1: to test conditions that both induce pain. Again, like most
Speaker 1: studies are pretty much all good studies, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be non threatening pain, but it will be uncomfortable. And
Speaker 1: what it is here is plunging your hand into cold
Speaker 1: water and holding it there. So in test one, you
Speaker 1: plunge your hand into cold water, which was fifteen degrees celsius,
Speaker 1: and you hold it there for one minute. And then
Speaker 1: in test two, you do exactly the same thing, plunge
Speaker 1: into the fifteen degree celsius cold water, hold it there
Speaker 1: for one minute, but then you also have to hold
Speaker 1: it for an additional thirty seconds as the temperature in
Speaker 1: the water is gradually slightly increased, though it's still cold,
Speaker 1: more cold than its comfortab bowl. A majority of people,
Speaker 1: a significant majority of people chose when they had the
Speaker 1: choice to repeat one of the two tests, chose to
Speaker 1: repeat the second test rather than the first, meaning they'd
Speaker 1: rather the discomfort go on longer if the final moments
Speaker 1: of the discomfort were slightly less intense. And other studies
Speaker 1: have found versions of this in different context. It does
Speaker 1: seem that we are willing to experience more pain or
Speaker 1: discomfort for a longer period of time if the last
Speaker 1: few moments of the pain are not as bad. And
Speaker 1: this seems to suggest that there's some way that as
Speaker 1: we form memories of painful or unpleasant experience, those memories
Speaker 1: can be formed in such a way that objectively, more
Speaker 1: pain chronologically measured seems like less pain because the ending
Speaker 1: of it wasn't quite as bad, and the ending seems
Speaker 1: to matter the most to us. But this also makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense if you think of of pain as the
Speaker 1: signal warning you about something that may happen about, you know,
Speaker 1: continued stressing of this particular muscle, or continued exposure to
Speaker 1: a dangerous element such as heat or cold. Oh that's
Speaker 1: very interesting. I hadn't so. I'd seen it mainly interpreted
Speaker 1: like what's causing this? The main interpretation I had seen
Speaker 1: had been recency bias. Of course, you know, we tend
Speaker 1: to uh know. Well, again, there are two things. It's
Speaker 1: the peak intensity of the experience and the end. So
Speaker 1: focusing on the end of the experience, it would be
Speaker 1: the recency bias, right, is the things that happened more
Speaker 1: recently seem more salient to us. Um But yeah, that
Speaker 1: also makes sense, especially for registering pain, because pain is
Speaker 1: a lot about what could happen. It's supposed to be
Speaker 1: giving you warnings that are useful information in order for
Speaker 1: you to protect your body. Right. But then again, at
Speaker 1: the same time, as we were discussing and will continuous discuss,
Speaker 1: the human pain is complex, so there are other elements
Speaker 1: that I guess may skew that sort of thing. Oh,
Speaker 1: of course, Yeah, so so that's that's an interesting possibility too.
Speaker 1: And I should note that, of course, like a lot
Speaker 1: of psychological phenomenon, the peak in phenomenon doesn't always apply
Speaker 1: at every instance, but it's a general rule. It seems
Speaker 1: like we followed this an awful lot. But if more
Speaker 1: pain objectively measured seems in our minds like less pain,
Speaker 1: at least in retrospect, then what is pain like? What
Speaker 1: is the real pain? What is the real thing that
Speaker 1: we want to try to lessen and avoid or in
Speaker 1: some of these rare cases where people are enjoy or
Speaker 1: taking enjoyment and pain, what is the kind they want
Speaker 1: to experience? More pain in the memory or pain in
Speaker 1: in the in the moment sensation, since those things don't
Speaker 1: always necessarily match up. Yeah, that's true. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing that I feel like this
Speaker 1: happens anytime we look at pain or you really think
Speaker 1: about pain. Is that it seems like our our language
Speaker 1: of pain is severely lacking, like we just don't have
Speaker 1: the proper vocabulary to get it all the different nuances here. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean it raises all kinds of questions, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: even for yourself, if you're not trying to make a
Speaker 1: judgment for other people, assuming pain is something you want
Speaker 1: to avoid in this context, would you rather have less
Speaker 1: pain in the moment or less pain in your memory
Speaker 1: of an experience? I don't know how to like, I
Speaker 1: really don't know how to answer that, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is and this is the total human dimension of pain,
Speaker 1: like the memory of pain, And this is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that yeah that you know, some animals are
Speaker 1: gonna have to deal with a certain animals is gonna
Speaker 1: have to deal with to some level. But but humans
Speaker 1: and pain and memory and the ability to to mentally
Speaker 1: time travel back to that pain and then to to likewise,
Speaker 1: you know, imagine encountering that pain in the future like
Speaker 1: that defines so much of what we do. Absolutely, now
Speaker 1: I've got another study to talk about with pain. But
Speaker 1: should we take a break first and then come back.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Alright, we're back. We're continuing to spin
Speaker 1: off of Hell Raiser and the Hell Bound Hard and
Speaker 1: discuss the nature of pain, pleasure in pain indivisible as
Speaker 1: the Cinobytes would say. So one study I came across
Speaker 1: that I thought had some interesting bits, and it was
Speaker 1: called The Positive Consequences of Pain, a Biopsychosocial Approach by Bastion, Jetton, Hornsey,
Speaker 1: and Lechness from the Social Psychology Review in twoteen. And
Speaker 1: here this is a big review article. So it's like
Speaker 1: looking at existing literature to collect examples of ways that
Speaker 1: pain has been documented to have some positive effects. And
Speaker 1: of course you can't list all of them, and and
Speaker 1: maybe some of these are better held up by evidence
Speaker 1: than others. But these are the things that the broad
Speaker 1: categories that they found some evidence of one is might
Speaker 1: be pretty straightforward, but it's kind of interesting. Pain often
Speaker 1: enhances subsequent pleasure by providing a contrasting experience. Pain causes
Speaker 1: people to rate pleasurable variences in the aftermath of the
Speaker 1: pain as more pleasurable than they otherwise would. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: an example of this that ties in directly with some
Speaker 1: of the methods used in these experiments is that if
Speaker 1: you go to ah to certain saunas, there will be
Speaker 1: a cold water pool, like a chilling water pool, in
Speaker 1: which you may immerse all or parts of your body
Speaker 1: and then in and then once you've overcome with the
Speaker 1: displeasure of that, then you may go and climb into
Speaker 1: the hot tub, and then the hot tub will be
Speaker 1: more pleasurable for the discomfort that you have had in
Speaker 1: the cold tub. Yeah. I don't know to what extent
Speaker 1: this plays a role in the mythology of the cinabytes,
Speaker 1: because it seems like they're sort of pursuing pain for
Speaker 1: its own sake in some cases, right, Like they're not
Speaker 1: always following it up with a nice sauna or something.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we never see them just giving a nice
Speaker 1: gentle bag massage, right. Yeah. The hooks shoot out the
Speaker 1: hooks and then it's like, ah, but then after that
Speaker 1: you get to go have some ice cream. Okay. Another
Speaker 1: thing from their list is they say there's evidence that
Speaker 1: pain increases sensory sensitivity. It sort of increases our sampling
Speaker 1: rate of sensations from the physical world. In some cases,
Speaker 1: this can be good. Yeah, I mean this makes sense,
Speaker 1: right If your if your body is receiving or resonating
Speaker 1: with the signal that something something is potentially damaging the body,
Speaker 1: then it makes sense that the century awareness is also
Speaker 1: ratcheted up in order to take in what may be
Speaker 1: harming the body. Right. Another one they point out pretty
Speaker 1: interesting is that pains sometimes blocks or alleviates our sense
Speaker 1: of guilt, which could otherwise prevent us from experiencing pleasure. Robert,
Speaker 1: I think you had some details on a study that
Speaker 1: looked into this, right, yes, I do. This is a study.
Speaker 1: This one came before the other one. This is from
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, but it's also from Brock Bastion,
Speaker 1: the lead author of the other study. A real um
Speaker 1: you know Hollywood leading man name. Uh that sounds like
Speaker 1: an action here. Uh So basically Brockbastion of the University
Speaker 1: of Queensland Australia set out to understand uh, you know,
Speaker 1: what's going on with pain In this situation, Beastion's team
Speaker 1: recruited young male and female test subjects under the guise
Speaker 1: of a mental and physical acuity study. The researchers asked
Speaker 1: the test subjects to write a personal essay about a
Speaker 1: time in which they ostracize someone, and the aim here
Speaker 1: was to make them feel guilty or immoral. Meanwhile, a
Speaker 1: control group wrote personal essays about a routine memory. You know,
Speaker 1: nothing painful, just a memory, And the researchers instructed both
Speaker 1: the immoral volunteers and the control group to hold their
Speaker 1: hands in a bucket of ice water for as long
Speaker 1: as they could stand it, and others dip their hands
Speaker 1: in a soothing bucket warm water. So the question is
Speaker 1: would immoral test subjects punish themselves with longer dips in
Speaker 1: the cold water? The the individuals who just had to
Speaker 1: write a personal essay about a time that they were
Speaker 1: awful would and then would they feel better afterwards? And
Speaker 1: the answer ends up being yes on both counts. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those who were primed to feel shape aim about past
Speaker 1: actions dip their hands in the cold water for longer durations,
Speaker 1: and they described the dip as more painful and express
Speaker 1: reduced feelings of guilt afterwards. So Rock Bastion argues that
Speaker 1: this experiment illustrates our culturally altered understanding of pain. We've
Speaker 1: come to process it not only is negative and environmental feedback,
Speaker 1: but is justice and punishment. So on a psychological level, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a little bit of self inflected pain rebalances
Speaker 1: the scales. Uh. Now, I would say, on one hand,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of like intuition confirming social psychology
Speaker 1: research that always makes me think, like I'd like to
Speaker 1: see that replicated, you know, a few times. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: assuming that the results hold up, that that is interesting
Speaker 1: that like the pain would have this this effect on
Speaker 1: our self critical judgments, which also, of course gives another
Speaker 1: explanation of why self infliction of pain rituals might be
Speaker 1: so common in certain religious orders, especially people who take
Speaker 1: sins of the flesh very seriously. Yeah, we see, we
Speaker 1: see and read about an example of self flagellation in Burdo.
Speaker 1: Echo is the name of the rose. Yes, and of
Speaker 1: course in that in the movie adaptation, uh, the girl
Speaker 1: is played by the same actor who would play a
Speaker 1: Cinabyte in the fourth hell Racer movie. Really, so, there's
Speaker 1: your vital on Burdo echo hell rasor connection love it? Okay,
Speaker 1: a few more things mentioned in this study. Uh So.
Speaker 1: One thing they say is that pain. There's some evidence
Speaker 1: that pain quote brings cognitive resources online, so it helps
Speaker 1: increase our cognitive effective control of ourselves. They say that pain.
Speaker 1: That this one was interesting and we hinted at it earlier.
Speaker 1: They say that pain enables identity management, and one example
Speaker 1: they give here is that physical pain in the body
Speaker 1: can sometimes interrupt what the authors call quote high level
Speaker 1: awareness of a symbolically mediated, temporarily extended identity. In other words,
Speaker 1: the kind of thinking about oneself that leads to negative,
Speaker 1: repetitive introspection, worry, self consciousness. That physical pain increases awareness
Speaker 1: of the immediate physical body and decreases the immediate salience
Speaker 1: of these kinds of worries. That the negative introspection about oneself,
Speaker 1: and this this horrible symbolic entity known as a person
Speaker 1: tied up in this idea of a soul, which really
Speaker 1: we should we so we should thank the cynobytes for
Speaker 1: tearing the soul apart. Like in the movie It you
Speaker 1: Know it comes off as more with this threat. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you we're going to tear your soul apart.
Speaker 1: What really we should be saying the saying thank you.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of ego loss I've been searching for.
Speaker 1: That's why I picked up the limit configuration. Right, That's
Speaker 1: how you finally achieve the higher state of consciousness. Okay,
Speaker 1: and a couple of other things they mentioned. This one
Speaker 1: I think is pretty straightforward, but it's true pain can
Speaker 1: be interpreted as demonstrating virtue such as courage, toughness, dedication.
Speaker 1: The symbolic value of withstanding pain can sometimes override the
Speaker 1: physical discomfort of the pain itself. Though at the same time,
Speaker 1: worth pointing out that's a great way to wind up
Speaker 1: in that that third category of injured if you were
Speaker 1: just you know, like I'm too I'm too masculine. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm too powerful to listen to the pain signal. Well,
Speaker 1: now you have the injury and damage signal, and you
Speaker 1: have to deal with that, right, Yes, And they also
Speaker 1: note several ways in which it appears that pain promotes
Speaker 1: affiliation between people, you know. They say the expression of
Speaker 1: pain can sometimes increase empathy and care for others. And
Speaker 1: the expressions of pain can trigger social connections and they
Speaker 1: can strengthen bonding and solidarity and in the later you
Speaker 1: know how raizor movies. This this holds true, right because
Speaker 1: once the cinebytes are done with you like you are
Speaker 1: one of them. Yeah, I guess that's true. Now, I
Speaker 1: do want to stress on a briefly serious note that
Speaker 1: while we're talking about these uh possibly recognized psychological benefits
Speaker 1: of different kinds of pain, we should stress us that
Speaker 1: none of the potential benefits of pain should be interpreted
Speaker 1: as excuses to continue practices of actual self injury, uh
Speaker 1: you know, meaning like the deliberate damaging of your body
Speaker 1: tissues such as cutting or burning. If you are practicing
Speaker 1: self injury or considering it, including of course non suicidal
Speaker 1: self injury, this is not something to deal with on
Speaker 1: your own. This is something that's important to talk to
Speaker 1: people about, talk to friends of family members or mental
Speaker 1: health professional if at all possible. There are other ways
Speaker 1: to get relief from the underlying issues that lead to
Speaker 1: this coping mechanism, and they're far less dangerous. Absolutely, um
Speaker 1: no on this On the same night. You know, we
Speaker 1: do have listeners who who have you know taken part
Speaker 1: in b D s M. We've also heard from listeners
Speaker 1: who have done hook suspension. But I think it's it's
Speaker 1: very important to note like these are these are avenues
Speaker 1: that one should you know, enter into with safety in mind.
Speaker 1: And also if you you know, if you go into
Speaker 1: any of these things, uh, you know, safety is going
Speaker 1: to be a part all of those ventures. Like how
Speaker 1: to essentially utilize pain without leading to that area of
Speaker 1: damage um of you know of injury or certainly infection. Um,
Speaker 1: so certainly do your research. It's also worth stressing that
Speaker 1: that some levels of physical pain, that the pain is
Speaker 1: not always the right word, can certainly be acquired through exercise.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, I just want to say one
Speaker 1: of the studies I was looking at, though, it was
Speaker 1: very clear to say that I think at the time
Speaker 1: exercise had not been found to be like an empirically
Speaker 1: reliable way of curing self injury pattern behavior that anecdotally
Speaker 1: it was often reported by patients that exercise was had
Speaker 1: been substituted for self injury. Yeah. I would say that,
Speaker 1: like basically, if you if you were inspired by anything
Speaker 1: you heard here and you want to try something, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, the cold water. I think it is
Speaker 1: a great avenue to consider. But also, yeah, just you know,
Speaker 1: most levels of exercise, you know you hear about like
Speaker 1: feeling the burn, right, um, you know, experiencing some level
Speaker 1: of discomfort during a workout, and perhaps the soreness that
Speaker 1: you would experienced in the following forty eight hours. Like
Speaker 1: you know, that's a I think that's that's an area
Speaker 1: where one might pursue some of what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: and that comes with a lot of added benefits for
Speaker 1: your life and your mental health as well. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you're doing it right, you know, you're not
Speaker 1: injuring yourself in the process. Like so much of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, Like it really resonates with with my
Speaker 1: own yoga practice, is that you know that I I
Speaker 1: can feel myself, you know, putting myself into this this
Speaker 1: level of discomfort, staying clear of the area of injury,
Speaker 1: and in doing so, like feeling this heightened uh state
Speaker 1: of existence you know, uh, like I feel more in
Speaker 1: tune with my body and my surrounding and with the
Speaker 1: people in the room with me that are also engaging
Speaker 1: in this uh, in this practice that are also experiencing
Speaker 1: the same thing. Um. So yeah, I would. I would say, yeah, don't,
Speaker 1: don't do what what Pinhead does, go to a yoga
Speaker 1: studio instead. Well, I would be curious in your yoga practice.
Speaker 1: Do you find the reduction of the negative aspects of self,
Speaker 1: self introspection and the ability to self regulate your identity
Speaker 1: processes through this the discomfort brought about in yoga? Absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's one of the main reasons I do it
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. And maybe I gotta
Speaker 1: give yoga to try one of these days. Oh, you
Speaker 1: gotta give it more than one try, because I hated
Speaker 1: it the first time I did. So. Anywhere in talent
Speaker 1: does like horror yoga? Like horror themed yoga. There's our
Speaker 1: former co host, Christian would go to a death metal yoga.
Speaker 1: I've heard of that. It's not the same. Yeah, you want,
Speaker 1: you want a full horror themed yoga, pumpkin head yoga yoga? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, there's there's so many forms of yoga.
Speaker 1: I feel like there is room for that that brand
Speaker 1: of yoga as well. Okay, I think we may have
Speaker 1: done it for pain here, but I think we could
Speaker 1: briefly talk about skinless critters do you want to do that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well yeah, Frank in the film spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time skin less. You know, it comes back
Speaker 1: as a shriveled corpse, and then he's able to drink
Speaker 1: enough blood to regenerate, but then he needs to acquire
Speaker 1: a new skin. He keeps thinking he's going to get skinned,
Speaker 1: but then he never Like one victim after another, he's like,
Speaker 1: he's got to have skin. This time he's almost there,
Speaker 1: and then still no skin. Right. And in the second movie,
Speaker 1: which which I have not seen in a long time,
Speaker 1: but I remember as being fun, Uh, test, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I remember fun. I remember fun. Basically, it's
Speaker 1: like it's Ernest goes to Hell. They go to Hell.
Speaker 1: It's not well, they go to Hell, Yes, but Earnest.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's quite an Earnest movie. Um, but no.
Speaker 1: In that film, we encounter Frank again and we encounter Julia,
Speaker 1: and Julia now also has this skin less and has
Speaker 1: to acquire a skin, and at one point she's able
Speaker 1: to slip away by sort of uh you know, being
Speaker 1: like like sort of leaving her skin behind, shedding her skin,
Speaker 1: and uh, it is interesting to to then look to
Speaker 1: the natural world and see that. We do see a
Speaker 1: practice like this as a defense mechanism in certain organisms.
Speaker 1: We've talked about autatonomy before on the show, the amazing
Speaker 1: biological ability to shed part of one's body to facilitate
Speaker 1: escape from a predator. The most classic example being a
Speaker 1: lizard shedding its tail. Yeah, you sort of give the
Speaker 1: predator a consolation prize, yeah, or a distraction. There are
Speaker 1: a few different interpretations of it, right, it's a compromise.
Speaker 1: It gets the tail, you get to survive. But there's
Speaker 1: also there are also two species of African spiny mice
Speaker 1: that slouch off portions of their furry flesh when they're
Speaker 1: grabbed by a predator. Uh So, so you know, it's
Speaker 1: one thing to see this in a lizard, but then
Speaker 1: here's a here's a mammal that does it. It's it's flesh,
Speaker 1: it's not a limb that it's going to regrow. It's
Speaker 1: just a big portion of its skin that pulls aside.
Speaker 1: So as I saw explained in nature, uh, these self
Speaker 1: flaying mice simply slip out of portions of their own
Speaker 1: hide and rapidly regrow complete suits of hair, follical skin,
Speaker 1: sweat glands, for and even cartilage to fill in the gaps.
Speaker 1: And we see some of that regenerative power in Julia
Speaker 1: Cotton in hell Razor too. But Frank he'd never seemed
Speaker 1: to have quite learned that ability on his own. Now
Speaker 1: he had to steal his brother's skin. Now we find
Speaker 1: another rather uh skilled skin shucker, if you will, in
Speaker 1: the form of a particular gecko species from Madagascar. Uh.
Speaker 1: These are fish scaled geckos. I'm gonna attempt the species name.
Speaker 1: This is what when we need uh mark mandinka in
Speaker 1: the studio. But it's a gecko Lepis megallepis. And basically
Speaker 1: they have these giant, kind of oversized looking fish scales
Speaker 1: on their body and uh and and basically if something
Speaker 1: tries to capture them, they shed the skin. And it
Speaker 1: actually makes it difficult to study them because you have
Speaker 1: to researchers have to collect specimens with special cotton based traps.
Speaker 1: And even these are are not quite delicate enough to
Speaker 1: prevent injury. Like they'll basically shed some of their skin
Speaker 1: at the drop of a hat. It's a bomber. You
Speaker 1: need to find a way to calm them down before
Speaker 1: you catch them. Yeah, well, I mean but basically they
Speaker 1: they're like, I don't want to be caught period. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so there's a lot like Frank in that
Speaker 1: that situation. Frank does not want to be recaptured by
Speaker 1: the cinepipes. Uh. And of course, not only are these
Speaker 1: both of these these these these different animals of the
Speaker 1: mice and the geckos, not only are they interesting in
Speaker 1: their own right, uh, this is another one of those
Speaker 1: areas as with you know, lizards regrowing their tails and
Speaker 1: other regenerative uh powers in nature, Like there is a
Speaker 1: potential here to to figure out how to employ regenerative
Speaker 1: met coal um technology in humans down the line, like
Speaker 1: salamander research. Yeah, yeah, that's sort of things. So you know,
Speaker 1: we could reach the I don't know about regrowing a
Speaker 1: human's complete skin, but certainly we're getting into that area
Speaker 1: of possibility. But the skin comes off really easily in
Speaker 1: Hell Raiser, I don't know if you've noticed this, and
Speaker 1: in a lot of horror films, um, well, there are
Speaker 1: two things that happened way too easily. First of all,
Speaker 1: someone can be impaled on something super easily. And then
Speaker 1: also and in person's entire skin can be pulled off,
Speaker 1: you know, with relative ease. So as far as impaling
Speaker 1: and stabbing and stuff goes, horror movies seem to forget
Speaker 1: that people have bones. You ever noticed that. It's like
Speaker 1: where the bones somebody trips and a table leg all
Speaker 1: the way through the body, like just straight through, yeah,
Speaker 1: right through all the bones, in the chest, through the heart.
Speaker 1: Everything is if the human body is made out of
Speaker 1: balsa wood. Robert, this has been mighty fun to discuss today.
Speaker 1: But I notice hooks and chain is emerging from the
Speaker 1: studio walls to that's the sign that we have to
Speaker 1: call it there. Obviously, we we could continue to talk
Speaker 1: about the nature of pain here. Uh. So hey, if
Speaker 1: you want, if you want more, check out some of
Speaker 1: our past episodes on pain. Uh and I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: come back around to pain in the future. There are
Speaker 1: a number of things we've touched on here that we
Speaker 1: could flesh out in a future episode. Unintended yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean when you're talking hell Raiser, all puns are intended.
Speaker 1: So uh. In the meantime, if you want to check
Speaker 1: out other episodes, where can you find them? What? You
Speaker 1: can find them in Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's our website. You can also find them wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Uh and hey, if you're on that
Speaker 1: thing they call Facebook, you can find the Facebook group
Speaker 1: for Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's the Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind discussion module. That's a fun place to
Speaker 1: interact with other listeners. Uh and uh and occasionally the
Speaker 1: hosts themselves. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers,
Speaker 1: Seth Nicholas Johnson. Thanks Joe, Hey, this is Seth hopping
Speaker 1: in real quick. Just say a quick thank you to
Speaker 1: Annie Reese for providing the voice of our Cinembyte at
Speaker 1: the beginning of their the lead Cinebyte the Proto Pinhead. Um.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear more from Annie doing awesome
Speaker 1: things with her voice, you should listen to her podcasts,
Speaker 1: That Sminty Stuff Mom Never Told You, and Savor all
Speaker 1: this month. Just like we're doing our Halloween themed episodes,
Speaker 1: they're doing their Halloween themed episodes and they're all really great.
Speaker 1: There's some stuff on female monsters, the feminism of the
Speaker 1: Alien franchise, female serial killers, the Winchester House. Um, let's
Speaker 1: see apple cider, the turnips. You know turnips were the
Speaker 1: original jack lanterns. Just saying these are all really cool
Speaker 1: things that you will learn if you go listen to
Speaker 1: uh Annie on her other podcasts, Sminty and Savor. Go
Speaker 1: do that. Everyone All right Back to you, Joe. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is a
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