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Speaker 1: Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know? From HowStuffWorks
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Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Cook. There's
Speaker 3: Charles W. Chucker's brand that makes this stuff.
Speaker 4: You should know.
Speaker 5: I wonder what that sounds like to people who listen
Speaker 5: to it at double speed.
Speaker 6: You sound like your normal boys.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, you know that. That was my impression of somebody.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna guess go with Vincent Price. No, okay, Edgar Oliver.
Speaker 4: It was a great Edgar Oliver. Terrible Vincent Price. Edgar Oliver.
Speaker 4: He's a storyteller on the moth. Oh really yeah, and
Speaker 4: he sounds exactly like that. You got to check stuff out.
Speaker 4: He's awesome.
Speaker 6: Is he a horror? Is he like?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 6: Any wrong with him?
Speaker 4: Well? Yeah, I mean he talks like that. But other
Speaker 4: than he's he's an awesome dude. So that was my Oh,
Speaker 4: it's pretty good. You go back and listen now you'll
Speaker 4: be like, wow. So I was doing an Edgar Oliver
Speaker 4: chuck because in t minus like four days. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: gonna be Halloween, one of our favorite days. And mind
Speaker 4: blowingly enough. If you're listening to this on Halloween it's today.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that works. And last year we did something unusual,
Speaker 4: so this year we're doing it again, which makes it
Speaker 4: the usual. But it was popular. People liked it. We
Speaker 4: read a great short story last year.
Speaker 5: Yeah, people actually called for it again and said, oh,
Speaker 5: you're gonna do it this year.
Speaker 6: I think some people might not have liked it, but
Speaker 6: just skip it then.
Speaker 4: Yeah. We were like, does that mean we don't have
Speaker 4: to study? Okay, let's do that exactly. Yeah, there's one
Speaker 4: in the can that's guaranteed gonna be at least okay. Yes,
Speaker 4: So this year, Charles W. Chuck Bryant selected the story
Speaker 4: and it is by someone you may or may not
Speaker 4: have heard of. He's a somewhat you know, well known
Speaker 4: Writer's name is Edgar Allan Poe and he died in Baltimore,
Speaker 4: I believe, in the eighteen forties. Sure, here's one of
Speaker 4: the great first great American writers of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 4: Slash drug addicts, big time drug addict, and I think
Speaker 4: that comes through a lot in this. Yeah. But we've
Speaker 4: selected a short story. Chuck selected a short story. It's
Speaker 4: actually I gave.
Speaker 6: You a selection. You made the final choice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you let me to You're like, which one
Speaker 4: of these would you like? And then you basically put
Speaker 4: this one in my hand.
Speaker 5: No, actually, I was leaning toward the crazy dwarf that
Speaker 5: kills the king.
Speaker 4: What are we reading this one for? Because this one's creepy? Okay,
Speaker 4: all right, I agreed. Well, do you want to tell
Speaker 4: them the name of this one?
Speaker 5: It's called Barnice and give you a slight setup just
Speaker 5: so you know what's going on. There's a woman called
Speaker 5: Baronice and a man, uh, and they are cousins and
Speaker 5: they're married, and things go a little weird in the story.
Speaker 4: Weirder than cousins being married. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I don't want to give anything away, but I just
Speaker 5: want you know it's it's old English. It's not Old English,
Speaker 5: but it's older than it's Old American.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So before we lose any more listeners, let's get
Speaker 4: to it. You want to cue the spooky music.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but we should also point out that at the
Speaker 5: end of this episode we have a very special guest.
Speaker 4: So let's not say who. If you listen on Tuesday,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 5: But if you aren't into the reading, just go ahead
Speaker 5: and skip forward to the special guest, and you'll get
Speaker 5: some delight there.
Speaker 4: Right, And if you do that, we apologize in advance.
Speaker 4: Yes either way, all right, So now let's cue the
Speaker 4: spooky music.
Speaker 6: Okay, that's the tone.
Speaker 4: Let's dim the lights, okay, and we now present to
Speaker 4: you Edgar Allan poe'se Bevernice.
Speaker 6: My Josh is a little quote at the beginning in.
Speaker 4: Latin and in English.
Speaker 5: I'll read the English. My companion said to me, if
Speaker 5: I would visit the grave of my friend, I might
Speaker 5: somewhat alleviate my.
Speaker 4: Worries reasonable advice.
Speaker 6: And here we go.
Speaker 5: Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform, overreaching
Speaker 5: the wide horizon as the rainbow its hues, or as
Speaker 5: various as the hues of that arch, as distinct too,
Speaker 5: yet as intimately blended, overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow.
Speaker 5: How is it that from beauty I have derived a
Speaker 5: type of unloveliness, from the covenant of peace, a simile
Speaker 5: of sorrow. But as in ethics, evil is a consequence
Speaker 5: of good, So in fact, out of joy is sorrow born.
Speaker 5: Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today,
Speaker 5: or the agonies which have their origin, and the ecstasies
Speaker 5: which might have been nice.
Speaker 6: It sounded like improper English, but that's how we wrote it.
Speaker 4: And it's not just today, it's to day with a
Speaker 4: hyphen in between.
Speaker 5: My baptismal name is Eugaeus. That of my family I
Speaker 5: will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the
Speaker 5: land more time honored than my gloomy, gray hereditary halls.
Speaker 5: Our line has been called a race of visionaries, and
Speaker 5: in many striking particulars in the character of the family mansion,
Speaker 5: in the frescoes of the chief saloon, and the tapestries
Speaker 5: of the dormitories, and the chiseling of some buttress in
Speaker 5: the armory, but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings,
Speaker 5: and the fashion of the library chamber, and lastly in
Speaker 5: the very peculiar nature of.
Speaker 6: The library's contents.
Speaker 5: There is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the bloe.
Speaker 4: The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber,
Speaker 4: and with its volumes, of which latter I will say
Speaker 4: no more. Here died my mother here, and I was born.
Speaker 4: But it is mere idleness to say that I had
Speaker 4: not lived before that. The soul has no previous existence.
Speaker 4: You deny it. Let us not argue the matter, convince myself.
Speaker 4: I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance
Speaker 4: of aerial forms, of spiritual and meaning, eyes of sounds,
Speaker 4: musical yet sad, A remembrance which will not be excluded,
Speaker 4: a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady, and
Speaker 4: like a shadow too in the impossibility of my getting
Speaker 4: rid of it, while the sunlight of my reason shall
Speaker 4: exist in that chamber. I was born thus, awaking from
Speaker 4: the long night of what seemed but was not nonentity,
Speaker 4: at once into the very regions of fairyland, into a
Speaker 4: palace of imagination, into the wild dominions of monastic thought
Speaker 4: and erudition. Singular that I gazed around me with a
Speaker 4: startled and ardent eye, that I loitered away my boyhood
Speaker 4: and books, and dissipated my youth in reverie. But it
Speaker 4: is singular that as the years rolled away and the
Speaker 4: noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of
Speaker 4: my fathers, it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon
Speaker 4: the springs of my life. Wonderful how total an inversion
Speaker 4: took place in the character of my commonest thought. The
Speaker 4: realities of the world affected me as visions, and as
Speaker 4: visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of
Speaker 4: dreams became in turn, not the material of my everyday existence,
Speaker 4: but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
Speaker 5: See he's getting a little caught up in his own
Speaker 5: obsession of thoughts.
Speaker 4: Right, he's a bookworm. Okay, he's bookish.
Speaker 5: So the real world as it doesn't even matter to
Speaker 5: him at this point.
Speaker 4: That's what he thinks of the real world.
Speaker 5: Onward, Bearnice and I were cousins, and we grew up
Speaker 5: together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew I ill
Speaker 5: of health and buried in gloom. She agile, graceful and
Speaker 5: overflowing with energy. Hers the ramble on the hillside, mine
Speaker 5: the studies of the cloister. I living within my own heart,
Speaker 5: an addicted body and soul to the most intense and
Speaker 5: painful meditation. She roaming carelessly through life, with no thought
Speaker 5: of the shadows in her path or the silent flight
Speaker 5: of the raven winged owers. Berenice, I call upon her name,
Speaker 5: Berenice from the gray ruins of memory, A thousand tumultuous
Speaker 5: recollections are startled at the sound.
Speaker 6: Ah.
Speaker 5: Vividly is her image before me now as in the
Speaker 5: early days of her light heartedness and joy, Oh gorgeous
Speaker 5: yet fantastic beauty, Oh sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim,
Speaker 5: oh Naiad among its fountains. And then then all is
Speaker 5: mystery and terror, a tale which should not be told. Disease,
Speaker 5: a fatal disease, fell.
Speaker 6: Like the simoon upon her frame.
Speaker 5: And even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of
Speaker 5: change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and
Speaker 5: her character, and in a manner the most subtle and terrible,
Speaker 5: disturbing even the identity of her person Alas the destroyer
Speaker 5: came and went.
Speaker 6: And the victim where was she?
Speaker 5: I knew her not, or knew her no longer as Berenice.
Speaker 6: Now she got sick.
Speaker 4: When I first read him saying Berenice Nice, I thought
Speaker 4: of Kramer going, Pam, Pam, you remember that one?
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, Spernice didn't doing so hot all of
Speaker 5: a sudden.
Speaker 4: No, it happened like that. Ye. Among the numerous train
Speaker 4: of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one, which
Speaker 4: affected a revolution of so horrible a kind, and the
Speaker 4: moral and physical being of my cousin may be mentioned
Speaker 4: as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a
Speaker 4: species of epilepsy, not unfrequently terminating in trance itself, trance
Speaker 4: very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner
Speaker 4: of recovery was in most instances startlingly abrupt. In the meantime,
Speaker 4: my own disease, for I have been told that I
Speaker 4: should call it by no other appellation. My own disease
Speaker 4: then grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac
Speaker 4: character of a novel and extraordinary form, hourly and momently
Speaker 4: gaining vigor, and at length obtaining over me the most
Speaker 4: incomprehensible ascendency. This monomania, if I must so term it,
Speaker 4: consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the
Speaker 4: mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more
Speaker 4: than probable that I am not understood, But I fear
Speaker 4: indeed that it is in no matter possible to convey
Speaker 4: to the mind of the merely general reader an adequate
Speaker 4: idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in
Speaker 4: my case, the powers of metaie not to speak, technically
Speaker 4: busied and buried themselves in the contemplation of even the
Speaker 4: most ordinary objects of the universe.
Speaker 5: So now he's becoming obsessive about just things, anything transfixed
Speaker 5: on things.
Speaker 4: But like he can't even get across how obsessed.
Speaker 5: He becomes monomania all right, to muse for long, unwearied hours,
Speaker 5: with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the
Speaker 5: margin or in the topography of a book. To become
Speaker 5: absorbed for the better part of a summer's day, and
Speaker 5: a quaint shadow falling a slant upon the tapestry or
Speaker 5: upon the door, To lose myself for an entire night,
Speaker 5: and watching the steady flame of a lamp or the
Speaker 5: embers of a fire, to dream away whole days of
Speaker 5: the perfume of a flower. To repeat monotonously some common
Speaker 5: word until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased
Speaker 5: to convey any idea whatever to the mind.
Speaker 6: Everyone does that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's called day awesome.
Speaker 5: To lose all sense of motion or physical existence by
Speaker 5: means of absolute bodily quiescence, long and obstinately persevered in
Speaker 5: such were a few of the most common and least
Speaker 5: pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties,
Speaker 5: not indeed altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything
Speaker 5: like analysis or explanation.
Speaker 4: You did good. That was a tough one. Thanks.
Speaker 6: He sounds like an opium head, you know he's like.
Speaker 4: And by the way, I'm high as a kite right.
Speaker 6: Now, I'm staring at a lamp for two days.
Speaker 4: Yet let me not be misapprehended. This due earnest and
Speaker 4: morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature,
Speaker 4: frivolous must not be confounded in character with that ruminating
Speaker 4: propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged him
Speaker 4: by persons of ardent imagination. It was not, even as
Speaker 4: might be at first supposed, an extreme condition or exaggeration
Speaker 4: of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different.
Speaker 4: In the one instance, the dreamer or enthusiast, being interested
Speaker 4: by an object, usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of
Speaker 4: this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions, issuing
Speaker 4: therefrom until at the conclusion of a day dream often
Speaker 4: replete with luxury, he finds the in sedimentum or first
Speaker 4: cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case,
Speaker 4: the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming through the
Speaker 4: medium of my distempered vision a refracted and unreal importance,
Speaker 4: few deductions, if any, were made, and those few perdinaciously
Speaker 4: returning in upon the original object as a center. The
Speaker 4: meditations were never pleasurable, and at the termination of the reverie,
Speaker 4: the first cause, so far from being out of sight,
Speaker 4: had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing
Speaker 4: feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind,
Speaker 4: more particularly exercised, were with me, as I have said before,
Speaker 4: the attentive, and are with the daydreamer, the speculative anything thoughts, No,
Speaker 4: he's just going on to say it was really serious.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they'd like to really describe things back then. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 5: my books at this epoch, if they did not actually
Speaker 5: serve to irritate the disorder partook, it will be perceived
Speaker 5: largely in their imaginative and inconsequential nature of the characteristic
Speaker 5: qualities of the disorder itself.
Speaker 6: I will remember, among.
Speaker 5: Others, the triestas of the noble Italian Colius Secundus curio,
Speaker 5: the amplitudine biat de regni de Saint Austin's great work
Speaker 5: The City of God and Trillium decarne Christi, in which
Speaker 5: the paradoxical sentence mortus sde phileas credibo esquia s sepotus
Speaker 5: resurreic exit certum esquia impossibilest occupied my undivided time for
Speaker 5: many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation. So he's getting
Speaker 5: hung up on these phrases from the books.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like I am the Latin.
Speaker 5: Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only
Speaker 5: by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean
Speaker 5: crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephistian, which, steadily resisting the
Speaker 5: attacks of human violence and the fiercer fury of the
Speaker 5: waters and the kinds, trembled only the touch of the
Speaker 5: flower called Asphodel. And although to a careless thinker it
Speaker 5: might appear a matter beyond doubt that the alteration produced
Speaker 5: by our unhappy malady and the moral condition of Berenice
Speaker 5: would afford me many objects for the exercise of that
Speaker 5: intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at
Speaker 5: some trouble and explaining. Yet such was not in any
Speaker 5: degree the case in the lucid intervals of my infirmity.
Speaker 5: Her calamity indeed gave me pain, and taking deeply to
Speaker 5: the heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life,
Speaker 5: I did not fall to ponder frequently and bitterly upon
Speaker 5: the wonder working means by which so strange revolution had
Speaker 5: been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook
Speaker 5: not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such
Speaker 5: as would have occurred under similar circumstances to the ordinary
Speaker 5: mass of mankind, true to its own character. My disorder
Speaker 5: reveled in less important, but more startling changes wrought in
Speaker 5: the physical frame of Baronice, and the singular and most
Speaker 5: appalling distortion of her personal identity during the brightest days
Speaker 5: of her unparalleled beauty. Most surely I had never loved her,
Speaker 5: and the strange anomaly of my existence. Feelings with me
Speaker 5: had never been of the heart, and my passions always
Speaker 5: were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning,
Speaker 5: among the trellish shadows of the forest at noonday, and
Speaker 5: in the silence of my library at night, she had
Speaker 5: flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her not
Speaker 5: as a living and breathing Berenice, but as the baronice
Speaker 5: of a dream. Not as a being of the earth earthy,
Speaker 5: but as the abstraction of such a being, Not as
Speaker 5: a thing to admire but to analyze, Not as an
Speaker 5: object of love, but as the theme of the most
Speaker 5: obtruse although desultory speculation. And now now I shuddered in
Speaker 5: her presence, and grew pale at her approach, yet bitterly
Speaker 5: lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind
Speaker 5: that she had loved me long, and in an evil moment,
Speaker 5: I spoke to her of marriage. I'm getting oddly Madonna
Speaker 5: esque here with my English.
Speaker 4: Yeah, does she speak strangely? Ah?
Speaker 6: You know, she married guy Richie.
Speaker 5: All of a sudden she started talking like a Madonna.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right, not like she was from Queen's or.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're not supposed to do that. You got to
Speaker 4: remember who you are, you know, I agreed, and at
Speaker 4: length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon
Speaker 4: an afternoon in the winter of the year, one of
Speaker 4: those unseasonably warm, calm and misty days, which are the
Speaker 4: nurse of the beautiful halcyon. I sat and sat as
Speaker 4: I thought, alone in the inner apartment of my library,
Speaker 4: but uplifting my eyes, I saw the baronice stood before me.
Speaker 4: Was it my own excited imagination, or the misty influence
Speaker 4: of the atmosphere, or the uncertain twilight of the chamber,
Speaker 4: or the gray draperies which fell around her figure that
Speaker 4: caused in it so vacillating an indistinct an outline.
Speaker 6: Or was it all the opium? And as he likes
Speaker 6: to have.
Speaker 4: A lot of different ideas to choose from, sure, I
Speaker 4: could not tell. She spoke no word, I not for
Speaker 4: worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill
Speaker 4: ran through my frame, A sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me,
Speaker 4: assuming curiosity pervaded my soul, and sinking back upon the chair,
Speaker 4: I remained for some time, breathless and motionless, with my
Speaker 4: eyes riveted upon her person alas its emaciation was excessive,
Speaker 4: and not one vestige of the former being lurked in
Speaker 4: any single line of the contour. My burning glances at
Speaker 4: length fell upon the face, the forehead was high and
Speaker 4: very pale and singularly placid, and the once jetty hair
Speaker 4: fell partially over it and overshadowed the hollow temples with
Speaker 4: innumerable ringlets, now of vivivid yellow and jarring discordantly in
Speaker 4: their fantastic character. With the raining melancholy of the countenance,
Speaker 4: the eyes were lifeless and lustreless and seemingly pupilss and
Speaker 4: I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation
Speaker 4: of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted, and, in
Speaker 4: a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed
Speaker 4: Berenics disclosed themselves slowly to my view, would to God
Speaker 4: that I never beheld them, or that having done so,
Speaker 4: I had died. Bear Nice is in bad shape here,
Speaker 4: so's the guy.
Speaker 5: The shutting of the door disturbed me, and looking up,
Speaker 5: I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber,
Speaker 5: but from the disordered chamber of my brain had not
Speaker 5: alas departed, and would not be driven away the white
Speaker 5: and ghastly spectrum of the teeth, not a speck on
Speaker 5: their surface, not a shade on their enamel, not an
Speaker 5: indenture in their edges, but what that period of her
Speaker 5: smile had sufficed a brand in upon my memory. I
Speaker 5: saw them now, even more unequivocally than I beheld them then.
Speaker 6: The teeth.
Speaker 5: The teeth, They were here and there and everywhere, invisibly
Speaker 5: impalpably before me, long, narrow and excessively white, with the
Speaker 5: pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment
Speaker 5: of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury
Speaker 5: of my monomania, as ruggled in vain against his strange
Speaker 5: and irresistible influence in the multiplied objects of the external world,
Speaker 5: I had no thoughts but for the teeth.
Speaker 6: For these I longed with a frenzied desire. All other
Speaker 6: matters and all.
Speaker 5: Different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They, they alone,
Speaker 5: were present to the mental eye, and they, in their
Speaker 5: sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I
Speaker 5: held them in every light, I turned them into every attitude.
Speaker 5: I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I
Speaker 5: pondered upon their confirmation. I mused upon the alteration in
Speaker 5: their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them an imagination,
Speaker 5: a sensitive and sentient power and even when unassisted by
Speaker 5: the lips, a capability of moral expression.
Speaker 4: Boy, he's a losing it.
Speaker 5: Of Madselle Salaer has been well said couetou cepa in
Speaker 5: chien decentient, and of Beernice, I'm more serious believed quit.
Speaker 6: Indien daisy ds.
Speaker 5: And I believe that translated to something like the ideas
Speaker 5: the ideas. All of his ideas were of the teeth,
Speaker 5: something like that.
Speaker 4: And he just had to say it in French, didn't he?
Speaker 4: Wellat this is this isn't that good? So I'm gonna
Speaker 4: make you I'm going to write in French.
Speaker 5: If I went to a French speaker in the office
Speaker 5: and they're like, dude, this is really like hard to translate.
Speaker 5: So if anyone knows that, please send it.
Speaker 4: Do you want to read it again? That part the line.
Speaker 5: Sure quetu sepa ittien the sentiments getu said, Then itien
Speaker 5: daisy days, daisy days, all right, Ah, here was the
Speaker 5: idiotic thought that destroyed me easy days.
Speaker 6: Ah.
Speaker 5: Therefore it was that I coveted them so madly. I
Speaker 5: felt that there possess could alone ever restore me to
Speaker 5: peace in giving me back to reason.
Speaker 4: So Chuck what's going on here? Like, there's teeth. Now
Speaker 4: he's got teeth, and he's focused on the teeth.
Speaker 5: Well, now the teeth are in her mouth. She is
Speaker 5: disintegrating physically, except for her teeth, which remained perfect. Okay,
Speaker 5: So now he is hyper focused and obsessed with her
Speaker 5: teeth because they're so perfect.
Speaker 4: I would be hyper focused. I'm running out of the
Speaker 4: room at this point too, okay. And the evening closed
Speaker 4: in upon me. Thus, and then the darkness came and
Speaker 4: tarried and went, and the day again dawned, and the
Speaker 4: mists of a second night were now gathering around. And
Speaker 4: still I sat motionless in that solitary room, and still
Speaker 4: I sat, buried in meditation, And still the phantasma of
Speaker 4: the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy, as with the most vivid,
Speaker 4: hideous distinctness, It floated amid the changing lights and shadows
Speaker 4: of the chamber length. There broke in upon my dreams
Speaker 4: a cry of horror and dismay. And thereon too, after
Speaker 4: a pause succeeded the sound of troubled voices intermingled with
Speaker 4: many low moanings of sorrow or pain. I arose from
Speaker 4: my seat, and, throwing open one of the doors of
Speaker 4: the library, saw standing out in the antechamber a servant
Speaker 4: maiden volunteers, who told me that Baronice was no more.
Speaker 4: She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning,
Speaker 4: and now at the closing end of the night, the
Speaker 4: grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations
Speaker 4: for the burial were completed.
Speaker 6: So Bernice is dead.
Speaker 4: Yes, I found myself sitting in the library, and again,
Speaker 4: sitting there alone, it seemed that I had newly awakened
Speaker 4: from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it
Speaker 4: was now midnight, and I was well aware that since
Speaker 4: the setting of the sun Baronice had been interred. But
Speaker 4: of that dreary period which intervened, I had no positive,
Speaker 4: at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete
Speaker 4: with horror. Horror more horrible from being vague, and terror
Speaker 4: more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in
Speaker 4: the record my existence, written all over with dim and
Speaker 4: hideous and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decipher them, but
Speaker 4: in vain, while ever and anon, like the spirit of
Speaker 4: a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a
Speaker 4: female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I
Speaker 4: had done? Indeed, what was it? I asked myself the
Speaker 4: question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me,
Speaker 4: what was it? All right?
Speaker 5: So he's awoken from a fever dream and he's like something.
Speaker 5: I've done something here while I slept That ain't good?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: What was it?
Speaker 5: On the table beside me burned a land mp and
Speaker 5: near it lay a little box that can't be good.
Speaker 5: It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen
Speaker 5: it frequently before, for it was the property of the
Speaker 5: family physician. But how it came there upon my table?
Speaker 5: And why did I shudder? And regarding it? These things
Speaker 5: were in no manner to be accounted for. And my
Speaker 5: eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a
Speaker 5: book and to the sentence underscored therein. The words were
Speaker 5: the singular but simple ones of the poet Eben Zayat.
Speaker 5: My companion said to me, if I would visit the
Speaker 5: grave of my friend, I might somewhat alleviate my worries.
Speaker 6: Why, then, as.
Speaker 5: I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect
Speaker 5: themselves on end, and the blood of my body become
Speaker 5: congealed within my veins. There came a light tap at
Speaker 5: the library door, and as pale as the tenet of
Speaker 5: the tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were
Speaker 5: wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a
Speaker 5: voice mulus husky and very low. What said he some
Speaker 5: broken sentences I had heard. He told of a wild cry,
Speaker 5: disturbing the silence of the night, of the gathering together
Speaker 5: of the household, of a search in the direction of
Speaker 5: the sound. And then his tones grew thrillingly distinct, as
Speaker 5: he whispered me of a violated grave, of a disfigured body,
Speaker 5: and shrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive.
Speaker 4: He pointed to garments. They were muddy and clotted with gore.
Speaker 4: I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand.
Speaker 4: It was indented with the impressive human nails. He directed
Speaker 4: my attention to some object against the wall. I looked
Speaker 4: at it for some minutes. It was a spade with
Speaker 4: a shriek. I bounded to the table and grasped the
Speaker 4: box that lay upon it, but I could not force
Speaker 4: it open, and in my tremor. It slipped from my
Speaker 4: hands and fell heavily and burst into pieces. And from it,
Speaker 4: with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of
Speaker 4: dental surgery, intermingled with thirty two small white and ivory
Speaker 4: looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.
Speaker 6: The end.
Speaker 5: Wow, I just got a little chill, actually.
Speaker 6: And I knew the ending.
Speaker 4: He liked his teeth.
Speaker 6: Did he dig her up or was she still alive?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I was thrown off by the fact.
Speaker 6: That those shrieking women.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's still palpitating as it, were still alive.
Speaker 5: I think he hallucinated the whole thing and that she
Speaker 5: did not die and was buried. I think he went
Speaker 5: into her chamber and removed her teeth while she was alive.
Speaker 4: Or maybe he while he was in his little opium dream,
Speaker 4: buried her alive, then decided, oh yeah the teeth, went back,
Speaker 4: got him out of her mouth while she's still alive,
Speaker 4: and took him back to the library. I think he
Speaker 4: needs to lay off the dope, is what it comes
Speaker 4: down to. Yeah, So happy Halloween. I hope everybody is
Speaker 4: appropriately nervous now, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And if you have ideas on royalty free readings
Speaker 5: that we can do next year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well we'll bring this up again, like in August
Speaker 4: or something like that. Agreed, So stick around. We are
Speaker 4: not going anywhere just yet. We have a special you
Speaker 4: can almost call us a two parter. The second part
Speaker 4: is a special guest. Right, We're not going to do
Speaker 4: listener mail or anything. We're going to do this Happy
Speaker 4: Halloween everybody. So since this is a Halloween episode, and since,
Speaker 4: as you may remember from Tuesday, John Hodgman has been
Speaker 4: hanging around the office this week.
Speaker 5: That's I'm sleeping in a cubicle earlier.
Speaker 4: It's weird. We I got locked out of my here again.
Speaker 4: My so, Hodgman, how you doing? Was?
Speaker 7: I don't get a I don't get like the chimes?
Speaker 4: Well, well, I haven't finished the introduction yet. We're not
Speaker 4: doing listener mail this week because it's special, it was,
Speaker 4: this is a Halloween episode and because Hodgman's here, so
Speaker 4: instead we're going to do stuff with John Hodgman.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 5: And the reason, well, the reason John's here is because
Speaker 5: he decided to surprise us and he had a ticket
Speaker 5: to the show.
Speaker 6: Yep, we decided to honor that ticket. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Look, I feel bad. I feel a little bad about
Speaker 7: last week because I came in and interrupted Sarah's letter.
Speaker 6: This week, whatever was, We took care of it.
Speaker 7: Don't you know what I don't. I don't pay attention
Speaker 7: to time anymore. I'm a deranged millionaire.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 6: I like Sarah.
Speaker 7: I like the letters she writes. I like all the letters.
Speaker 7: But I'm a listener too, you know. That's why I'm here. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and what am I going to have my say?
Speaker 4: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: And no one ever comes in to do their listener
Speaker 5: mail in person like you.
Speaker 6: You bought a ticket to do.
Speaker 7: So. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I have access. It's
Speaker 7: time for me to have my say. Here's my listener mail.
Speaker 7: All right, nice work, guys.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you. That's nice listener huh. Yeah, that
Speaker 4: was Chuck's.
Speaker 6: Well that was Poe los my mind.
Speaker 7: You say it was porific, I say Poe.
Speaker 6: No, I like it.
Speaker 4: Drownd post.
Speaker 7: Fine, Well you got of Like you know, guys, I
Speaker 7: wrote this new book of complete World Knowledge called That
Speaker 7: is All that's coming out. And this is the third
Speaker 7: book of Complete World Knowledge. And in my previous books
Speaker 7: of Complete world knowledge. I talked about everything, right, I
Speaker 7: talked about how to tile kinds of knots. No, I
Speaker 7: never did for some reason, I think I did.
Speaker 4: That was so close. I almost said, like, Yeah.
Speaker 7: I talked about Hobo's. I talked about Mollman. I talked
Speaker 7: about the presidents of the United States. I talked about
Speaker 7: the mottos and nicknames of all fifty one American states.
Speaker 7: I talked about history. I talked about the future. But
Speaker 7: there was one topic that I never took on before,
Speaker 7: and that was sports. Yeah, because I am not a
Speaker 7: sports fan.
Speaker 4: See, I found that surprising.
Speaker 6: Really.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you and I co hosted at trivia then
Speaker 5: it Max fun Con, and yeah, we did our own
Speaker 5: little fun trivia.
Speaker 6: Well'm Elijah won. Right.
Speaker 5: I did some sports questions that you were not privy
Speaker 5: to to humiliate me. You did some science fiction nerd
Speaker 5: movie questions that I because I'm not into that.
Speaker 7: You did jock questions to humiliate me, and I did
Speaker 7: nerd questions to humiliate and it went great. It went great.
Speaker 6: We're both humiliated, that's right.
Speaker 7: And that is usually the sign of a good night.
Speaker 6: Yes it is.
Speaker 7: But here's the thing for this third book, because we
Speaker 7: are reaching the end of human civilization December twenty one, twenty.
Speaker 4: Twelve, at eleven eleven am.
Speaker 7: Exactly, and it's and it's time for me to engage
Speaker 7: in well, Like the dying person, I reach out to
Speaker 7: that which I've previously spurned in life, like religion and sports.
Speaker 7: So I decided to learn a lot about sports and
Speaker 7: to write about sports in this new book. And one
Speaker 7: of the things I learned, which I didn't know until now,
Speaker 7: you guys probably know this, that the Baltimore Ravens is
Speaker 7: named after the Edgar Allan Poe poem The Right. So
Speaker 7: you didn't know that. I didn't know that. I knew that,
Speaker 7: and now that makes more sense. I didn't realize why
Speaker 7: they had Edgar Allen Poe as their mascot. Some dude
Speaker 7: dressed up as like nineteenth century and no, he's got
Speaker 7: one of those big heads on, like a big Edgar
Speaker 7: Allen Poe head.
Speaker 6: I was like, why is that?
Speaker 7: And then I finally got it. Ed Ground Poe apparently
Speaker 7: got runeously drunk in Baltimore, as he did in every
Speaker 7: East Coast city for a period of time. They all,
Speaker 7: for some reason claim him as their son. Well, in Philadelphia,
Speaker 7: New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Providence, but only Baltimore had the
Speaker 7: nerve to name their team after a famous quasi literary
Speaker 7: kind of dumb dumb poem that the French really liked.
Speaker 7: And they have this mascot, which is crazy. Now I
Speaker 7: understand why they have that mascot. This dude dressed up
Speaker 7: his egg ground Poe with a giant Edgar Allan Poe
Speaker 7: head on top of him that's filled with brandy.
Speaker 6: Now it makes sense.
Speaker 5: And John Cusack, to bring in full circle, is playing
Speaker 5: Poe in a movie I know, which is.
Speaker 7: He's only the latest who wanted to play ed Ground Poe.
Speaker 7: Of course, Sylvester Stallone was developing an edge Ground Poe
Speaker 7: really biopic four years.
Speaker 6: Four years. You didn't know that.
Speaker 7: Foreigner was going to do the theme song. They wrote,
Speaker 7: I have the tiger for that movie. Oh sorry, foreign first,
Speaker 7: I apologize exactly survivor right, They wrote I have the
Speaker 7: tiger for the edg Ground Poe movie, but when it
Speaker 7: didn't get made, they used it for Rocky three instead
Speaker 7: got sports and more sports. Punching is a sport, right Pugilism?
Speaker 7: Oh no, I agree, that's the sweet science. That's the
Speaker 7: that's the that's the intricate logical art of her doing
Speaker 7: someone in the face exactly.
Speaker 4: Wow, wow, hold on, you're leaving out a big element
Speaker 4: trying to not get hurt in your own face. Right,
Speaker 4: that's practically you're doing two things at once.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's that's that's ballet.
Speaker 6: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 7: That's that's an intricate dance. That's like ultimate fighting. I'm
Speaker 7: guys down on the ground trying to knee each other
Speaker 7: in the neck. It's it's acrobatic.
Speaker 4: I see you at a boxing match, though, Hodgman, I
Speaker 4: wasn't a boxing match. I've seen that, Yes, you were.
Speaker 7: I was in a fake I was in a fake
Speaker 7: boxing match.
Speaker 4: Was that choreograph of that state that it looked a
Speaker 4: lot like the directors like you to just go at
Speaker 4: each other and we'll see what happened.
Speaker 7: This was in an episode of Boards to Death.
Speaker 4: Right with you? You box, Jason Schwartz.
Speaker 7: I did, yeah, and uh, And I realized then that
Speaker 7: it is an extremely physically taxing thing to do. I
Speaker 7: don't I do not mean to run down boxers in
Speaker 7: the least because first of all, they will kill me.
Speaker 7: Second of all, what they do they are. They're are
Speaker 7: extremely accomplished athletes. I have no problem with athletes, you understand, Sure,
Speaker 7: I think they're incredibly skilled people whom I wish only
Speaker 7: not to hurt me, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 7: But they are artists in there in their own way.
Speaker 7: And I don't even dislike sports per se. Like, there's
Speaker 7: some sports that I occasionally will watch. I dig a
Speaker 7: curling match from time to time.
Speaker 6: Okay, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, any.
Speaker 7: Spot with a broom I like. It's it is the
Speaker 7: presupposition in our culture that everyone must like sports, and
Speaker 7: if you do not know what the sports teams are
Speaker 7: or what they.
Speaker 6: Do on the field, something is wrong with you. Then
Speaker 6: you are abnormal.
Speaker 4: In some way.
Speaker 7: And I think that that's a little bit that presumes
Speaker 7: too much.
Speaker 6: Well, John, that's the where we live in.
Speaker 7: But it's changing now. Baltimore got the Ravens in what
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety six or seven or something like that. Okay,
Speaker 7: so they name their team after a poem, right, was like,
Speaker 7: no big deal, not a big deal, who cares?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 7: This year we got some baseball what's the baseball player?
Speaker 6: Who named is a bat?
Speaker 7: Orchrist?
Speaker 6: I did not that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's that it's in the news, someone will write
Speaker 7: about it and send it in.
Speaker 4: Okay, it was.
Speaker 7: It was this April it was revealed the very popular
Speaker 7: bass ball player named his bat Orchrist, after one of
Speaker 7: the Elven forged swords in the Hobbit.
Speaker 4: Huh that's pretty cool.
Speaker 6: Yeah right?
Speaker 7: And then guess what have you noticed this?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 7: It's Nick Mangol, the center for the New York Jets.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Have you noticed, like he's not wearing a helmet anymore?
Speaker 6: I have not noticed that.
Speaker 7: It's surprising to me. He came out in one of
Speaker 7: the games earlier this year. He was wearing a leather
Speaker 7: top hat with like goggles on it.
Speaker 6: Do you notice that? I did not know? What is
Speaker 6: that on the field on the field why, I.
Speaker 7: Don't know, but it's weird. And then and then another
Speaker 7: time he came out and he was wearing a pith
Speaker 7: helmet with with a jeweler's lens on it. That and
Speaker 7: he came out in the he came out on the
Speaker 7: field on a on a on a penny farthered bicycle.
Speaker 4: What is going on?
Speaker 7: It was a steam powered Penny farthing bicycle?
Speaker 4: Wow? Which was it of his own design and manufacture? Yeah.
Speaker 7: And then he went on a sports program, a radio
Speaker 7: program much like this this radio right, Yeah, sure, it's
Speaker 7: kind of and uh and he was and he was saying,
Speaker 7: I'm really glad we won that game, and uh, I
Speaker 7: think and they said, well, what do you think? How
Speaker 7: do you how do you what to what do you
Speaker 7: attribute your win?
Speaker 6: And he said, I just took.
Speaker 7: The lesson of Admiral acpart to heart and realized that
Speaker 7: they were setting a trap.
Speaker 6: Weird.
Speaker 4: That is weird, very weird. What do you think is
Speaker 4: going on there?
Speaker 6: I think this is it? Guys, I think this is happening.
Speaker 7: Is this the beginning the beginning of the nerd jock convergence?
Speaker 7: See it all around us?
Speaker 6: Wow?
Speaker 7: I think Nick Mangled may be the one. Yeah, it's
Speaker 7: the person who's going to join these two worlds together. Yeah,
Speaker 7: he's doing steampunk cosplay, he's quoting Admiral Lackbar, He's riding
Speaker 7: a Penny Farthing motorcycle, not just a steam powered Penny
Speaker 7: Farthing motorcycle of his own design. And I recently, you
Speaker 7: know how my my Zeppelin Hubris isn't in ruins, the
Speaker 7: HC Hubris, the HC Hubris Audrin Zepplin's Hubris. Uh, but
Speaker 7: I just got an offer on it.
Speaker 4: Did you know that?
Speaker 6: That weird?
Speaker 7: I mean it's still crashed, it's still I think parts
Speaker 7: of it is still burning in Central Park.
Speaker 6: This happened since Tuesday.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I maybe you hear this person heard the podcast.
Speaker 7: I don't know what it is, but if the offer
Speaker 7: came in, it's a good offer too, from man Gold
Speaker 7: Steampunk Industries.
Speaker 4: It's gotta be the same one football Well yeah, see,
Speaker 4: I think it might be him. Are you selling it
Speaker 4: to him as is?
Speaker 7: Well, I'm not putting that thing back together. It's on
Speaker 7: fire and burned my hands. Yes, I hope it works.
Speaker 6: Where is it over? I don't know.
Speaker 7: Most of the top half of Central Park.
Speaker 6: I mean it was big, it was big, most of
Speaker 6: the top half. Yeah, I haven't been up there in
Speaker 6: a while.
Speaker 4: Good.
Speaker 7: It crashed and burned probably two years.
Speaker 4: Ago and still oh yeah, it's still burning.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well I should do something.
Speaker 4: Well, John, let me ask you. I mean, that seems
Speaker 4: like one of the great divisions in life in the
Speaker 4: world that's been going on forever, is this division between
Speaker 4: jockson nerds. It seems like it's a good thing. If
Speaker 4: things come together, is it not?
Speaker 6: I I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 7: I think it's I think, like all major c changes,
Speaker 7: it's unnerving, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: I think those of us I'm scared of things too.
Speaker 7: I think those of us on the nerd side have
Speaker 7: been defining ourselves by our marginalization for so long that
Speaker 7: it may be hard for us to accept a world
Speaker 7: where you know, that TV show Community did a whole
Speaker 7: Dungeons and Dragons episode. Superhero movies are the only movies
Speaker 7: that people make, now, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 6: Like all of the.
Speaker 7: Things, And now I think at least ten people in
Speaker 7: the United States know who Doctor.
Speaker 6: Who is now, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 7: Comic Con is big, big business. And I think that
Speaker 7: that all of these things that we used to hold
Speaker 7: as badges and use to comfort ourselves in our marginalization
Speaker 7: and culture are now being absorbed into, you know, the
Speaker 7: monoculture as a whole. And there's no greater expression of
Speaker 7: the monoculture than jock culture, which is the great leveling,
Speaker 7: cross cultural, unifying thing that men and a lot of
Speaker 7: women talk about unless they're a nerd like me. Right,
Speaker 7: So when that's gone, I think that will bother nerds
Speaker 7: very well. But I don't think the jocks give at all.
Speaker 4: No and and jocks tend to get their way as
Speaker 4: far as society goes, if they want something. If Mangole
Speaker 4: wants to make steam, hey.
Speaker 6: I like your steam pup culture.
Speaker 4: Give me that, nerd. That's right, they take mine.
Speaker 7: It's mine now, Hey, you're you're your your your steam
Speaker 7: funk ironman armor that you made yourself.
Speaker 6: That's mine.
Speaker 7: Now drop it off at my locker.
Speaker 6: Throw a Jets jersey on top of it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm gonna put the Jets jersey on top of it.
Speaker 7: It's going to be steampunk Ironman Jets. That's not what
Speaker 7: the mc. Mangol does not talk like that at all.
Speaker 7: He's a very sweet guy.
Speaker 6: I met him. That's why I hope so.
Speaker 7: In real life. In real life, Nick Mangold's Twitter avatar
Speaker 7: is an illustration of him as an ewok.
Speaker 6: Really.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So you may say that what I'm putting in
Speaker 7: my book is crazy, but look around you, everybody, it's
Speaker 7: coming true.
Speaker 4: Well, John, thank you for coming by with your baffling prediction.
Speaker 7: You don't have to think it's very easy. I just
Speaker 7: walked down the hallway from my safe room.
Speaker 4: Are you going to stay here? Because the weekend's approaching.
Speaker 7: I need someone to kick down the door of my
Speaker 7: safe room because I fell asleep in that cubicle because
Speaker 7: I went out and I accidentally armed the system. Okay,
Speaker 7: So if you have an intern or someone who can
Speaker 7: go in there, they will.
Speaker 6: Be gassed, Jerry, Yeah, a foot of lead.
Speaker 4: Okay, and she can.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but there are booth but there are booby traps.
Speaker 7: There will be gassed, There will be darts, there will
Speaker 7: be snakes, there will be a giant rolling boulder.
Speaker 6: Just good.
Speaker 7: If we get that, then I can get back in
Speaker 7: and then I'll be back again.
Speaker 5: Jerry deals with us on a day to day basis.
Speaker 5: She can handle any boulders or poisoned darts.
Speaker 6: You're right, Yeah, here's to you, Jerry.
Speaker 4: We'll send Jerry in. Yeah. And then.
Speaker 5: So John's book is that is all and it is
Speaker 5: coming out November first, and you can pre order it
Speaker 5: right now using the internet, using the internet, and I
Speaker 5: hope that you will at a variety of Internet sites.
Speaker 4: Oh you really, just plug the heck out of that, chuck.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, I want the guy to sell a
Speaker 6: book or two.
Speaker 7: I'm just happy to be here as an listener, as
Speaker 7: a deranged millionaire. I'm happy to come in here and
Speaker 7: take over your listener mail, and as a resident, as
Speaker 7: a resident of past up Works closet.
Speaker 4: Well to those of you who made it all the
Speaker 4: way through this podcast and you're with us right now.
Speaker 4: I want to say on behalf of myself, Chuck and
Speaker 4: mister John Hodgman, Happy Halloween. Be safe, Please don't get
Speaker 4: hit by a car.
Speaker 7: Dress your children in skeleton costumes and send them out
Speaker 7: into the street.
Speaker 2: At the end, be sure to check out our new
Speaker 2: video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how stup Work
Speaker 2: staff as we explore them with promising and perplexing possibilities
Speaker 2: of tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented twenty twelve Camra.
Speaker 2: It's ready, are you