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(Don't Fear) The (Grim) Reaper · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: and Jerry's here, too, harvesting souls. And this is Stuff
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: You Should Know, the podcast.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: I'm excited about this one, Chuck. Do you want to
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: know why?
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Why's that?
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Well, mainly because it's Halloween-esque, and I love Halloween. Sure.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: That's it?
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: No, that's not it. There's so much to know about
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: the Grim Reaper. But the biggest thing that I've learned
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: about the Grim Reaper is there's actually not that much
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: to know about him. Because, listen, out of all of
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: the different ways that death has been represented, the Grim
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Reaper is actually like the least invested with like lore
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: or background or mythology. It just is what it is, man.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Is what it is. But we can talk about Bill
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and Ted at least.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: For sure. Well, that's the spoiler. There's the best part
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: of the whole episode. Oh, no.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Well, that's coming in act three. So you got to
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: stick around if you want to hear what, you know,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: what Bill and Ted have to do with this.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: That's right. So if you are not a Westerner, if
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: you're one of our listeners who lives outside of the West,
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: you might not be familiar with the Grim Reaper, although
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: the chances are probably pretty slim. But I say that
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: because the Grim Reaper is an entirely Western representation of
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: death all around the world over time. The eons that
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: humans have been around, there have been different ways of
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: people like kind of putting a face on death. Not
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: the faces of death. That's totally different. Putting a face
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: on death itself, like death with a capital D.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, I guess the idea or at
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: least people speculate the idea behind this is if there
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: is a, you know, a visible personification of an abstract,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: scary thing like death that we're all going to face. Right.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: that it might make it a little bit easier to face. And,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: you know, depending on what history and what religion and
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: what culture you're looking at, there have been a lot
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: of ways that that's been done over the years. Some
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: kind of super scary and some not as scary. Right.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: I found that pretty interesting, too. Chuck, let's take it
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: back a step, though. I'd like to talk in real
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: depth about some creation myths.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Just kidding. We'll just kind of cover this. This point,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: to me, is very important, that there's creation myths from
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: all over the world, from all different cultures that have
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: some really like detailed stuff in common, like people being
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: made out of clay or that there's like a, like
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: creation was supposed to be perfection at one point, but
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: then some trickster figure came along, say a serpent and
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: managed to ruin the whole thing. And then what really
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: kind of, um, it applies to this episode. Um, in
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: a lot of different creation myths, humans were originally intended
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: to be immortal beings, but because they broke some rule
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: through free will of their own, they became mortal, right?
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: And the whole point of even bringing that up is
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: that it's kind of like that, how long have people
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: been aware of death? Well, since the first person witnessed
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: the other first person dying, this is kind of like
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Codifying that in text, our oldest myths that have ever
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: been written down that predate writing by centuries and probably
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: thousands of years all talk about people dying. Like that
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: is a thing that's part of the creation myth. It's
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: that important. Right. So you can kind of chalk up.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: We've been thinking about death at the very least, if
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: not pretty scared of dying, you know, mortal terror and
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: all that. Yeah. For for. A very long time, which
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: I've now very beautifully set the table for talk about
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Grim Reaper and other personifications of death. Yeah.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: And, you know, like I said earlier, like sometimes, depending
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: on the culture, it could be something super scary. Sometimes
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: it's a little more, I don't know about friendly, but yeah,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, maybe friendly. Like if you look at ancient Greece,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: they had Thanatos, who was a twin. I don't think
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I knew that until this. Thanatos had a twin brother.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: which was Hypnos, the god of sleep, like hypnosis. And
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: they were, you know, they were young dudes. They weren't
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: a chore to be around, like both pretty handsome, I think.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: And Thanatos had a job, and that was to, and
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: as you'll see, this is a pretty common thing, of
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: accompanying the dead to whatever their version of the afterlife is.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: In this case, it would be Hades.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was friendly, like you said. His catchphrase was, hi, guy,
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: time to die. And people loved it. They went crazy
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: for it.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: That's pretty scary, actually.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if he's got, like, a creepy smile.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was picturing.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess. So, yeah, he'd accompany you to Hades.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: He'd drop you off with Charon, the ferryman who crossed
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: the River Styx, took you across the River Styx, and
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: then you were officially in the underworld, right? And the
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: fact that Thanatos' job... was to guide you, the dead
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: person's spirit or soul or whatever you want to call it.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: That makes him a very specific kind of personification of death,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: a psychopomp, which is, it's a pretty word to look
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: at in some ways.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's, there has to be a band named psychopomp.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Gotta be, yeah.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: There's just no way. That one's too good to ignore,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: especially with the meaning of it and everything. Yeah, but
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: that's one way you can go. It's generally kind of
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: split in half as far as, what your culture or
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: religion personifies as death. You can be the psychopomp, which
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: just sort of helps guide you to the afterlife and
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: drop you off at the front door. Or you could
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: be a collector. And that is like, you know, you
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: know what that means. That means the Sith comes along
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: and actually causes your death.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so there's, there's like psychopomps. It's a pretty
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: recurring theme, like Anubis, the dog headed God from Egyptian mythology.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Love and noobs.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: It's like Psycho Pump. Me too. I like him a lot.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: You know why? Why? Because he's a good boy.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. He would smite you so quick for
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: doing that.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: But, I mean, I guess if he was to score
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: you the afterlife anyway, you're dead already. So what do
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: you have to lose?
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: That's a good point.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Baron Samedi, who I had not heard the name of,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: but once I read the description of him, I'm like, oh, yeah,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: he's in The Man with the Golden Gun. Yeah.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, for sure. And just also, like, I think
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: that's a, like, a lot of these things are things
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: that you may not have heard of, but you recognize
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: from either, like, a Grateful Dead sticker or, like, some
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: other piece of pop culture.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Or a metal album cover art.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but definitely, I mean, yeah, which one was that,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Live and Let Die?
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  Speaker 2: I thought it was the man with the golden gun,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: the one with Yafit Koto. Is it Live and Let Die?
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: I think you're right.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: It's Live and Let Die.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: I think Live and Let Die was the sort of
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: voodoo-centric one.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, then that would be it, yeah. But Baron Samedi,
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: he's depicted as often like a skeletal figure. He wears
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: a top hat. He wears a coat with tails. He
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: also wears sunglasses all the time.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: He drinks rum. He smokes cigars. He chases women. He
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: tells dirty jokes.
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  Speaker 1: My kind of dude.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's pretty interesting for sure. But he's a psychopomp
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  Speaker 2: because when you die under Haitian voodoo tradition— He comes
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: and digs you up and is like, let's go to
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: the afterworld. And hey, you got a cigar on you?
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And would you like a Mai Tai?
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, is the answer to that.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: The collector, again, that's a different thing. That actually causes
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: the death. There are plenty of examples from this. There's
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: one that comes from the UK, which is Anku. It
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: comes from the Britain mythology and Welsh, mainly Welsh and
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Cornish traditions. And this, again, is a robed skeletal figure.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: You know, you're going to see these recurring themes over
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: and over. And this guy actually carries an actual Sith.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: So I think kind of the first time we've seen
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: that particular implement. And the Sith is used to cut
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: down wheat and also cut down life short.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or long. You know, when it's your time, that's
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  Speaker 2: how you go.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Is Anku comes and takes you is the rhyme.
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  Speaker 1: Right. But Anku is not death, is not death, is
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: basically a shimp, an employee for death.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And he's a collector, right? He's not guiding you anywhere.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: He doesn't care where you go after that. And that's
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: like another subcategory you just touched on. He's a bureaucrat.
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  Speaker 2: There's like a whole type of personifications of death that
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: are like, I just I'm just here to do my job, man.
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  Speaker 2: Just I'm sorry, I can't do anything for you. It's
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: your time.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: You know. You're now dead. Sorry. I got to move on. Yeah,
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: he punches the clock. And the Anku is a good
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: example of that. And like you said, they're a worker
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: for death. And it's actually a changing role. Like you
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  Speaker 2: could be the Anku in your village if you wanted to.
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  Speaker 2: You just have to die at the right time.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're the first person to die that year,
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  Speaker 1: then you are the Anku, I guess, for the remainder
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: of the year.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And you die going, Anku, like you called it.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's pretty interesting. The bureaucrat thing also
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: is like, like I said, it's kind of a recurring
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: theme across cultures, including in the Bible. Yeah. So there's
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of like, I don't really know my Bible
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: that well, especially like real detail stuff. But supposedly in
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: the entire Bible, there is no angel of death named.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: There's an angel that's called the destroyer at one point,
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: and then that's it. There's not really a lot of
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: lore about who comes and gets you and, you know,
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: takes you to heaven or whatever or hell. Like there's
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: there doesn't seem to be anything like that in the Bible.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: It's all just kind of been added over time through
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: like Christian fanfic, basically. Yeah.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Like Michael and Gabriel have both sort of taken that
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: role as the angel of death and in the religion,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: but not like in the Bible. Like there's no actual
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: story in the Bible about Gabriel being the angel of death.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Right. But Michael and Gabriel, again, they're bureaucrats. As angels
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: of death, they're bureaucrats because they're working at the behest
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: of God who says, smite that guy.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know what you do then? You better
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: smite that guy.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You don't really have a choice because you will
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: be the one who's smote.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And you don't get the pay bump either.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: You get skipped over on your Christmas bonus.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Should we take a break?
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll take a break and come back and talk
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: a little more about Angels of Death because it's fun.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: And then I guess we'll start to get into the
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Grim Reaper, huh?
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Let's do it. All right. So before the break, we
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: mentioned Michael and Gabriel in Judeo-Christian religion, but they also
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: appear in the Islamic faith as death angels, as does
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: the Islamic angel of death, who is Azrael in this case.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: And Azrael can appear as a This is maybe the
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: creepiest image, I think, out of all these as a
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: spirit with eyes and tongues covering his entire body. That's
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: pretty good. Yes.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: I wonder if he makes a sound when he walks.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Probably so. Or you ought to hear that thing run.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Just like wet slapping all over the place. So I've
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: seen discrepancies on whether Asriel is the actual angel of
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: death or if the Malak al-Ma'at is, which is actually
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: just Arabic for angel of death. But regardless of which
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: one it is, they both perform the same function. They
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: get handed down from Allah a ledger every year right
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: before or right after Ramadan. I don't remember exactly.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I think it's the month before, yeah.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: The month before. Okay. And in that ledger, it's everyone
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: who's going to die in the coming year. And that's it.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: You have what's called an ajal, right? Your fixed state
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: of death. And there's not a lot you can do.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: And by a lot, I mean there's nothing.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, get your hands on that
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: ledger if you can.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: I guess so. I'll bet you there's a story about that,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: about somebody trying that. And the lesson probably is don't
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: even try.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, as we'll see, there's a lot of, well,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: we'll get to that, but people trying to cheat death
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: in various ways. That's coming soon. If you go back
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: to the very, very most ancient of cultures, God, like,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: needs no helpers, basically. It's like, hey, I'm God, so
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: I don't need bureaucrats to help me rid the planet
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: of people. I can just do it myself. And that
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: is the case with Motu. the god of the ancient
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Canaanites and Phoenicians. And there's also one in Hindu, right?
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: This one sounds pretty cool. Yeah, Yama rides a black
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: buffalo and carries a noose. That's also a pretty creepy visual.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he uses it to capture the souls that he harvests, right?
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not bad.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but then he personally takes them into the underworld,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: and then he, I guess, puts a robe on, He
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: takes his traveling sweater off and puts his robe on
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: and judges that soul.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: So he does it all for sure. Yeah. The pictures
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: I've seen of Yama are pretty intense, but cool.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I got no beef with the Valkyries either. They
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: have appeared in the Marvel Universe most recently, I guess,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: is where I've seen them. And they are Odin's messengers.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: But they also fly in. And these are attractive women
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: on horses, like flying horses. So what's not to love?
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: I can't think of anything because I've heard they also
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: smell like strawberry shortcake, the doll.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. You just made it creepy.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Did I? Is it creepy to sniff old strawberry shortcake
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: dolls at the store?
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: At the garage sale?
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you'll get thrown out of a front yard for that.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Hasn't happened yet.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: All right. Well, keep that run going.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Okay. I really do love that smell.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, do you really?
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man. It's one of the best smells ever. All
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: of the different strawberry shortcakes smell great. All right.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: I'll have to give him a sniff.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Didn't you have any girlfriends when you were little?
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: No, I was raised Baptist. I wasn't allowed interaction with
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: young girls.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: I got you. Okay.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: When I was a young boy, I was only allowed
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: to go to boy-boy parties.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: None of them like strawberry shortcake?
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: No, which also explains why I was so into the
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: village people.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: That's probably where that originates.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: So you're talking about the Valkyries. They're a bunch of
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: different atypical things going on. Rolled into one. One, they're
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: feminine personifications of death, which in the West typically is not.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: It's usually it's almost always a man in a lot
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: of Slavic cultures. It's a woman. But yeah, in Norse mythology,
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Valkyries are women. The other thing is, is they're bureaucrats
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: and that they're coming in harvesting souls. They guide you.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: So they're also not just collectors. They're psychopomps. But the
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: big thing that differentiates them is they're like, you, you're
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: going to die. Like they choose who lives and who dies. Yeah.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: And I think it's usually like a wartime thing. Like
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: on the battlefield, they'll choose, you know, who they think
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: is the bravest, which isn't very good strategy for winning
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: any war. But whatever, you know.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: No. But I think they take them where they're needed more,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: which is Valhalla, to await the Ragnarok or just Ragnarok.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Which I know all about, not from the Marvel Universe,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: but from our friend John Hodgman. He used to talk
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: about it ceaselessly.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: I remember his Ragnarok days.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He really went through a Ragnarok phase for sure.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: I think we're finally the capital TGR Grim Reaper, right? Mm-hmm.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: So this is the big daddy. This is the one
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: here in the West that everybody has seen. In movies
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: and on glow-in-the-dark posters and various album covers as the robed, well,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: I was about to say skeleton, but the robe is
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: kind of the thing that keeps it shrouded in mystery.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: So generally you see like a robe and then sort
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: of darkness and then that Sith.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but sometimes the giveaway is that it's a skeletal
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: hand holding the Sith.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Ah, true.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Skeletal finger pointing at you. And you're like pointing yourself
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: and looking around like me.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: So what you're saying is the skull is assumed because
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: it matches the hand.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And then also it does like the Grim Reaper
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: is often depicted like with a skull without the hood
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: on or anything like that.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about this, right? Because there's some, all
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: of them symbolically, is that a word?
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Symbolically. I think it is. Yeah. I like symbologically, actually.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: I do, too. It sounds more academic, you know?
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's go with it.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Okay, so symbologically, all of these things are kind of
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: obvious in a lot of ways, but they really work,
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: even if they are a little on the nose. But
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: I said earlier that the Grim Reaper's almost loreless. He's
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: got no backstory. He's not some cursed soul who has to,
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: you know, rove the earth for eternity. Didn't do anything
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: wrong as far as I know. Um, it's not Fats Domino.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: I looked and it's, he just doesn't have a backstory.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: And the reason why is because he was assembled from
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: different parts and pieces over the course of centuries before
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: he finally, it wasn't until like the 1850s where he
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: had been fully packaged into what we think of as
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: the Grim Reaper, but he had been kind of slowly
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: assembling like a death-based Voltron or something. Right. Since the
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: 13th century, basically.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, if you go back to the European
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: religion in the Middle Ages, you kind of get your
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: first representation of the angel of death as a skeleton.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: I think that was from a 13th century illustration called
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: The Three Living and the Three Dead, where you had
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: these three skeletons wearing burial shrouds. They have maggots crawling
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: all over them. Uh, one of the skeletons is like
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: peeking out from the page. It's like, like looking at
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: the reader and smiling. Yeah. It's a, it's a totally
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: cool illustration. Yeah.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a big, like not even a mean or,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: or like, um, scary smile. Like it's a big grin. Like, Hey,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: good to see you. Kind of. I love that picture.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Me too.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: Um, yeah, it's not knowing, like, I know what's going
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: to happen to you and you're not going to like
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: it kind of thing. Yeah.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: If we really want to see where this took hold,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: you've got to look at the Black Death, which I
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: figure it seems like we've talked about that several times semi-recently.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: I think we did an entire episode on it.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a while ago, but it's just popped
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: up here and there. Has it? Yeah, just like how
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: many people died, which was at least 25 million people
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: in the initial outbreak. Mm-hmm. And I know we talked
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: about this in the episode, but it changed the way
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: like so many people died. It changed the way that
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: people thought about death. Like everyone knew death was eventually coming.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: But when the when the plague hit, death was at
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: the forefront of everybody's mind all the time.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that initial outbreak over just a couple of years,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: the estimates are something like 30 to 50 percent of
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: the entire population of Europe at the time. And everybody, men, women, babies,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: old people died. Rich people, poor people, everyone just started dying.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: And the living were subjected to living among the dead.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: And yeah, how could that not just completely alter not
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: just you and then the people who are young and
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: being impressed upon for the rest of their life, but
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: just society as a whole?
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I mean, that was a morbid pall
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: that hung over a continent. For a long time. And
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: the books that were coming out, the poems and the
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: odes and the paintings, like all this stuff was pretty
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: dark at the time. You saw a lot of skeletons,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: never seen more skeletons in your life and paintings than
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: during the plague.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Everybody was talking about it.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: It was the hot thing. And then eventually that would
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: lead to the dance macabre, the dance of death.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, which I think dance macabre, D-A-N-S-E-M-A-C-A-B-R-E, is a really
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: cool term.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks like a band name or an album,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: like a dark metal album cover or something.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: I think it was a nonfiction book that Stephen King
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: wrote in the 80s, too, if I'm not mistaken.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's something about a slight misspelling as we know it.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: That ups the creep factor. If it was D-A-N-C-E, it
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: is 75% less scary. Yeah.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Remember that band Dead Can Dance?
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Was that with a C? Yes. If they would have
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: made it with an S, you know how scary that
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: band becomes?
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: I know. They would have only gotten booked around this
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: time of year, you know?
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: This is the one where I think of the Grateful
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Dead sticker. I don't know if that is strictly Grateful.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: A dance macabre, but the skeletons dancing, like that's what
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: that is, right?
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think anytime you see skeletons dancing, it somehow,
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: some way has its roots in the dance macabre because
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: that's how that was the depiction. It was skeletons cavorting, dancing,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: partying with the living.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: And in a lot of cases, the living depicted in
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: these images like clearly aren't aware that the skeletons are
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: partying with them. Yeah. But they are nonetheless. So death
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: is always around you. And then another part of it
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: is like they would sometimes dance and party, lead the
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: party right to the grave. And that was, you know,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: everybody's going to end up there eventually. That's essentially the
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: basic message of the dance of death. But it goes
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: even deeper than that, really. Yeah.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: And actually, I don't do this often, but I just
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: looked up and apparently there was an actual event called
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Dance Macabre featuring the Grateful Dead and who else? Country
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Joe and the Fish.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Back in the 60s?
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was 1966.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Because, you know, if you want to evoke death, you
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: got to have. I'm going to go to the country.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, is that Country Joe and the Fish?
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I think so. Isn't that like their one big song?
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Oh, my God. That's hilarious.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: That song is just I don't know why it's endlessly
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: funny to me.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: That'll change the tone of an acid test like in
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: a snap.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: I diverted it. So where were we?
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: We were talking about the dance macabre is basically like
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: death is inevitable, but there's more to it. And really
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: the more to it was also like the people who
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: are often depicted in the dance macabre illustrations were from
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: all stations in life, right? So there could be like
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: the Pope and there could be like a peasant and,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: you know, some merchant or whatever. Just a bunch of
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: different people meant to just basically say like death does
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: not care about your social strata. It just levels everybody.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: My brother and I used to crack up at the
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Black Sabbath line. Would you like to see the Pope
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: at the end of a rope? Do you think he's
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: a fool? For some reason, maybe it was because soap
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: on a rope. I don't know. My brother just thought
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: that was the funniest thing ever.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: That is pretty good. Which one is that from?
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: I don't even know.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: It sounds familiar, but I can't place the song. Yeah.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I never thought I would literally sing twice in this episode.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Didn't see that coming.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Maybe there's a third time coming, too. You know any
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Dead Can Dance songs?
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, I don't. But they had a hit, right?
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I just, I knew they were good.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: They had a weird, they had their own unique sound,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: if I'm thinking of the right one. I often confuse
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: them with Rusted Root, and I think they were like
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: nothing alike. I think Dead Can Dance was way more
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: like goth and dark, but also cigarose-y, maybe?
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, I love cigarose.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you'd probably like Dead Can Dance. I think
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: the guy also sung like Ian Curtis from Joy Division
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: 2 a little bit.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, well, that's good.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: I could be making this up, but I'm putting together
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: an ideal band as I speak.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't like Oingo Boingo. It's a dead man's party.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: No.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Who can ask for more?
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Do you know who the lead singer was of that band?
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Come on. Seriously?
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: I didn't know. I should have known.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Wait, when did you find that out?
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: No, no, I didn't know that you knew, but I
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: should have known that you knew. I found that out. Man,
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: I was in diapers when I knew that.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: The great Danny Elfman, for those of you who don't know,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: and I'm not shaming you if you didn't know that,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: by the way. I did just see, by the way,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: I just sang a third time.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you did.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Danny Elfman at a music festival recently did the Simpsons
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: theme on stage. Yeah. And it's pretty great.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Man alive. I'll bet it is. Can you imagine?
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Where did you, what music festival?
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I just saw it on Instagram. It
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: popped up.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: I thought you went to the music.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, no, no, no. I don't know. I don't go
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: to this anymore. I'm too old for that stuff.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: But that is cool. I'm glad you told me. I'll
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: have to go check it out.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: All right. So back to the Dance Macabre.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Did you mention the first depiction of that?
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: No.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: The first one, I think, was a big mural. on
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the wall of the Charnel House at the Cemetery of
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: the Holy Innocents in Paris in the 1420s. But then
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: it became a kind of a play where you would
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: perform this at like, you would get some churchgoers together
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: and perform it in a cemetery or churchyard or something.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: And it's basically a play that says like, hey, death
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: is coming for you and you and you, and we
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: all understand this, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Can you just imagine the kind of spread out like
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: sporadic claptor at the end? People standing around the graveyard
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: watching it. Oh, man.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Worst performance ever.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Should we take a break or talk about some of
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: the symbology?
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: No, I'm all out of songs. So let's take a
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: break and we'll come back.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: You could sing I'm All Out of Love first.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: That's for you only, buddy.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: Okay. All right. We'll take a break and you can
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: sing it to me then. Okay, that was a great rendition, Chuck.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: I actually teared up a little bit, so thank you
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: for that. I feel like it really kind of reinvigorated
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: our partnership.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Well, I know how you feel about air supply.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: So I love them. I told you about that time
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Yumi and I went and saw them in Jacksonville, and
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: I said it was like a church tent revival somehow.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: It was amazing to just be there and experience that.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: That's so cool. Yeah.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: So we're talking about the symbolism of the Grim Reaper,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: which I said earlier is pretty– you can– just if
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: you stop and think about all of it, you're like, yeah,
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: of course that makes sense. But I don't know how
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: much of that is because– You're just so used to
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: seeing the Grim Reaper with like, say, Scythe or the
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Hourglass or whatever. Or if it's because they were already
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: common sense elements that were added over the years to
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: create the whole Grim Reaper package.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been saying Sith. Have I been saying it
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: wrong this whole time?
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: I think you were talking about the Dark Lords, the anti-Jedi.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: So it makes sense. They're kind of evil.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Scythe, isn't it?
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And you're very sweet for not correcting me.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to upset you.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: You didn't want to upset me like all the other
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: times where I'm like, Josh, never do that again.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: I know, man. If we had an outtake reel of
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: you yelling at me for correcting you, it'd be something else.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Well, hopefully you would live with the best of those,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: like Casey Kasem and Bill O'Reilly. Those are so great.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: And Winnebago Man.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, well, sure. They made a whole documentary about that guy.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was great.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: All right, so back to the Grim Reaper and the symbolism.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: You're not surprised to hear us talk about skulls and skeletons,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: of course, and this was just a a common thing
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: during the plague. Like people saw more bones than they'd
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: ever seen in their life. And so that became just
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: a popular depiction, obviously, in that era.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's interesting, don't you, that you can
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: basically place an event that essentially gave us the Grim
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Reaper because it was so awful.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: So you talked about the cloak and the black cloak,
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: specifically in the West, black is associated with death and
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: mourning and funerals. I mean, have you ever seen a,
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Like a bottle green hearse? You haven't. No. Sometimes they're white, though.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: I feel like I've seen a white hearse here or there.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Wasn't the hearse in Six Feet Under green?
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: Maybe so.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Isn't that weird that you said green?
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's a literal.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Cultural green hearse?
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. To contradict me?
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Right. I think it's bottle green. I don't even know
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: what that is, but....
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, bottle green is like a green from the 70s,
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: a car green, not metallic pee. This is a different
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: kind of like darker, more attractive green than metallic pee.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: All right. Let's talk about that scythe.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Okay. The scythe itself is, this one is the money implement,
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: if you ask me, but it's not exactly clear what
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: the Grim Reaper is doing with this, right? So earlier,
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: the Grim Reaper used to hold the arrow and Or darts. Nah.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: I guess he was a dart champion at his local pub.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: A spear? What about a spear?
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: That's creepy, yeah.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: What about a crossbow?
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's scary, but I think I could
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: see a Grim Reaper with a spear in my mind's
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: eye more than I could a crossbow.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I'm sure the crossbow would be distracting because a lot
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: of people would be like, man, can I see that thing?
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: I want to hold the crossbow. It's pretty cool.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Have you ever shot one?
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: I don't think I have. I've just always admired them. Remember,
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: we did a whole episode on them.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Did we really?
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: We totally did.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, good Lord.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: I think we both kind of fanboyed out the whole time.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So eventually it became the scythe. And, you know,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: it was, I think I said earlier, like this thing
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: was used with a big swing to bring down a
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: lot of grain. So I think just sort of symbologically, yeah.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: The idea of a scythe like sweeping through and taking
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: out humans is like a pretty good visual or, you know,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: at least creepy. Right.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Especially during a plague like the Black Death, where a
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: lot of people were cut down at the same time.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: So and that's where the scythe got added was out
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: of that experience. Right. So it totally makes sense. Plus, also,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: this is like an agrarian society.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Like that whole allegory of death coming along to harvest souls.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: In just the same way that a farmer comes along
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: and harvests wheat and say like the fall when the
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: earth itself is about to die. All of it is,
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: it's a pretty good analogy, I think, or it's a
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: pretty good prop.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: The question is, does the Grim Reaper use the scythe
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: to cut you down and take your life? Or is
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: he just holding the scythe because it's just part of
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: his whole look? That's unclear. The fact that he used
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: to hold arrows and darts and spears and crossbows makes
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: it seem like the scythe is the implement he uses
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: to cut your life out. He also used to carry
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: a candle snuffer I saw sometimes. So that makes it
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: seem like he's actively taking your life. But if you
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: think about more modern depictions of the Grim Reaper... Maybe
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: once in a while if he touches you. I think
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: there was a Grim Reaper that touched your head and
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: it killed you. I don't remember on what. But for
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: the most part, he's just there. He's like a bureaucrat
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: collector is basically what he seems to be depicted as
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: mostly these days. Yeah.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: So like he walks up, you see the scythe, and
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh. And he goes, that's just for show.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Don't worry about the scythe.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: It's made of plastic.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: That's right. And he bends the blade like, see?
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: It's a retractable scythe blade.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: The hourglass is another symbol. You know, obviously, you know
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: what an hourglass is. It has the two bulbs with
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the sand. And I believe it takes an hour for
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: the sand to fall from one bulb to the next.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: But if the Grim Reaper walks up to you or
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: here's a fun trick, get like a foot tall hourglass
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: and just like walk up to somebody's table in an
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: outdoor cafe with a creepy look on your face and
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: look him in the eye and turn it upside down
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: and walk away and leave it on their table. The
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: message isn't, you know, if you finish that meal before
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: the hourglass is up, it's free.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: I would take it like that. Yeah. So, yeah, the
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: hourglass also, I mean, now you're conflating time with death, right?
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Everybody has a certain amount of time. So, yeah, I mean,
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: you put all those together, you get yourself a Grim Reaper.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: There's not too many other implements. He's pretty, he travels light,
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: He rides a horse, right? Yeah.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know. That's not necessarily true. So he
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: rides a horse if the Grim Reaper is also considered
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: the same as the horseman Death, who rode a pale
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: horse to bring about the apocalypse along with war, pestilence,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: and famine.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: In the Bible, that is.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: I should say that, yes. So the reason we bring
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: that up— well, you brought it up— is because that horseman, one
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: of the four horsemen, was— is often depicted as looking
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: identical to the Grim Reaper. He's just on a horse.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You got pestilence, you got war, you got famine,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: you got death. And those are the four equestrians.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: That's right. I guess death is the only one that's
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: specifically named in the Bible and they call him Thanatos.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, really? All right. From the ancient Greek.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: I guess so. He was supposed to be friendly, not,
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: you know. horseman of the apocalypse, something happened to him.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: I guess he got dumped and took it really hard, maybe.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: And do you remember I said that he didn't come
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: as a full package until the middle of the 19th century?
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: That's when he finally got the name, the Grim Reaper.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: And it came from a Christian devotional text called Circle
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: of Human Life. That's where the name Grim Reaper originally
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: came from.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: I love it. Do we know who wrote that?
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: No.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Jack Handy.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Well, now we're at the part where we can talk
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: about a little bit more of the fun stuff in
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: pop culture. We promised to talk of Bill and Ted,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: but the way it's handled in Bill and Ted is
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: the way that it's handled in a lot of cases,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: like I mentioned, is where someone's trying to cheat death.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: A lot of times in stories and movies and books
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: and stuff, it's like someone's trying to trick the Grim
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Reaper to escape death, maybe steal that scythe, maybe break
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: that hourglass or something. Mm-hmm. And it can be funny, obviously,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: in the case of Bill and Ted's, or it can
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: be very symbolic and kind of heavy if you're talking
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: about Bergman's The Seventh Seal.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: I've never seen The Seventh Seal. Have you? No.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen clips of it in film classes
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and stuff, but it's, you know, that type of Bergman
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: stuff is a tough watch for me.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen it depicted in like perfume ads sometimes.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: You know, like they always seem to be kind of
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: tapping into that somehow. But essentially, it's like an existential
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: angst type movie where in this film, very famously, a crusader,
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: a knight on his way back from the Crusades, finds
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: death waiting for him. And to basically say like, I'm
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: not ready to die yet. How about this death? Let's
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: play a game of chess. And Death, I guess, kind
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: of bored is like, all right, let's play. And Death
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: actually loses. I don't know what happens after that. But
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: the upshot of the Seventh Seal in mentioning this personification
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: of Death is because if you ever see Death in
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: a black cloak with just a white, like super pale face,
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: they're pointing to the Seventh Seal, that depiction of Death.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And that's where exactly where Bill
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and Ted were trying to pull from because... they challenge
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: him to a game, except in this case, it's Battleship. Yes.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: And if you want to find a piece of bizarre
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: AI slop, go look up the enigmatic legacy of William
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Sadler's Grim Reaper. It's the strangest article I've ever read.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: And I'm You didn't get to read it, did you?
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: I sent it to you and you said it came
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: up with a virus alert.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: He sent me two links that were both virus alerts
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: to the point where I thought someone had like hijacked
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: your phone or something.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: No, this is really a thing. I stumbled upon it.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: William Sadler is the guy, the actor, the very frequently
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: used character actor who plays death in Bill and Ted's
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: Bogus Journey. But this article writes about it as if
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: the cultural impact of his depiction of death was just
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: so sweeping and so wide that it changed art forever, basically.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: It's just completely mad and made up. And then even
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: more bizarre, the pictorial... in it are all of Prince William.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: There's no, and he doesn't look anything like that. It's
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: just normal stock photos of Prince William. And I want
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: to know what AI test produced that because it is
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: a very strange article. I just happened to stumble upon.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I'd rather hear your description of it. Actually,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: that's more fun.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Pretty funny to read, though, in itself. Sure. So what else?
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Well, you've got the Blue Oyster Cult, or just Blue
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Oyster Cult, and their cowbell-heavy song, Don't Fear the Reaper,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: of course. Don't Fear in parentheses.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: The Reaper. I don't know why they did that, because
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: they never just say the Reaper. It's always Don't Fear
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: the Reaper.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the 70s, they were just wild about the parentheticals
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: for some reason.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were. Like, I'm All Out of Love by
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Air Supply. Did you read that poem by Emily Dickinson,
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Because I Could Not Stop for Death?
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I read that in college.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: I had never read it before, and I went and
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: read it today. And it is a beautiful, it's a
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: nice short read, very crisp, efficient, economical. And it's just
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: basically about her riding in a cart through death and
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: going past all the phases of her life until she
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: ends up at the grave. And she seems pretty okay
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: with it.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, E.D., one of the best.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely worth reading, everybody. Of course, the Ghost
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: of Christmas Yet to Come was very clearly based on
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: the Grim Reaper, although that's often depicted as somebody you
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: just don't see, like you don't see necessarily as a skeleton.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: It's just basically hidden in shadow.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's a great inclusion by Dickens.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, I want to throw out death takes a
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: holiday because that was actually remade into a pretty bad movie. Uh,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: the 1934 film was supposed to be good. I never
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: saw it, but it was about death decision to take
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: a break basically, uh, and like take a mortal form
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: and see what that's like. And the 1998 remake was
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: of course, meet Joe black, uh, with Brad Pitt is death.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: And it's, it's, I never saw it because it was,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: it's pretty legendarily bad.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, you didn't see it? It is as bad as
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: you think. He acts blank, and you get the impression
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: that he's just kind of being himself in a lot
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: of ways.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: It's a very strange— he made some strange choices. Almost as
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: strange as the voice he used as the Amish man
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: in 12 Years a Slave, which almost threw the entire
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: movie off the rails. It was such a weird decision.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: It's so weird. But there's a Simpsons treehouse of horror.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: That kind of plays off of that.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: Of Meet Joe Black? A little bit.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: Or Death Takes a Holiday, where Homer accidentally kills Death,
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: and so everybody stops dying. So Homer actually has to
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: become Death, and it's a really good one for sure.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: I think it's called Reaper Madness.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: That's so good.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: They are so great.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: I did just see Obsession, by the way. Not about
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: the Grim Reaper, but I know that you had recommended that,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: and I finally checked it out.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: It's a good one, isn't it?
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought it was good. You know, a pretty
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: clever idea done well.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't remember the name of the actor, but
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: the main girlfriend.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, man, she was so good.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: Somebody was saying there's like Oscar buzz around her and
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: it would be a really unusual, non-traditional Oscar. I'd love it.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: But if you give actors Oscars for their performance, she
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: definitely should be in the running for sure.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: No, she was fantastic.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: It was great, though, but not as good as Back Rooms.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: I think I liked it more as far as enjoying
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: a movie, but I thought Back Rooms was definitely more
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: kind of creative and out there.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I got shouted down at dinner last night with you, me,
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: and my sister-in-law and brother-in-law and niece. All of them
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: didn't like Back Rooms either.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, I liked Back Rooms. It fell apart for me
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: more after I sort of thought about it more.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: La, la, la, la, la, la, la.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: But I did like it for sure, but I liked
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Obsession more.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: I got you. And then there's a third one I
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: can't think of right now. Oh, yeah. Disclosure Day. I
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: didn't see that. Is that any good or not? Didn't
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: you see it?
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's on the theater. Yeah, I like a really
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: good Steven Spielberg movie, I thought. All right.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: I'll check it out.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Not scary, though.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: You know how sometimes when you don't hear as much
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: buzz about something as you expect to, you just presume
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: it wasn't very good? That's kind of what happened with
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: me in that movie.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think it lit it up, lit
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: the critics on fire, but I thought it was good.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Had a little bit of Spielberg magic.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Let's rattle off a couple more very famous or very
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: creative uses of the Grim Reaper, okay?
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: All right. What you got?
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: The Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. Death is actually a
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: main character who comes to become very fond of humans
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: and is kind of an offbeat take on death. Death
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: rides a horse. A pale horse, but the horse is
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: named Binky. And Death has a granddaughter named Susan. So
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: it kind of gives you a rough sketch of what
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: the Discworld novels, the fantasy novels are like. They sound
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: pretty good.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, haven't heard of those.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Have you ever seen Dead Like Me?
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Who was in that? Was that Christina Applegate?
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know. No, no. Oh, what was that movie?
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: That was a good one, too. Or not a movie.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: That was a show.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: I can't remember what it was called.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: That's something, wasn't it?
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't remember what that was. No, this is different.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: It's about a girl who dies. And rather than going on,
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: she gets recruited to be a Grim Reaper. So kind
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: of like Anku. It's like recently killed people have to
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: act as Grim Reapers. It's pretty cute.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Ah, okay.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: And then there's the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy,
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: the cartoon. It's pretty great.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Haven't heard of that.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: And then let's end this on the MST3K. One of
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: the best Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes ever was Soul Taker.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: And it has Joe Estevez in it as the main
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: soul taker. And I can't remember the other actor's name.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: He's got a very famously has an enormous face. But
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: they are these like, again, recently dead dudes who are
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: tasked with collecting souls into these rubber glow rings, essentially.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: And then they take you to the afterworld.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: What's the name of that one?
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: Soul Taker.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Soul Taker with an actor with a famously large face.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: At least if you are familiar with B and C movies,
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: he is famous for his very large face.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Hmm. I'm going to have to see who that guy is.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: You should. You can also see Ninja Cop. He's a
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: bad guy in Ninja Cop, too.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: And that actor's name is Robert Zadar.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly right. I would never have come up
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: with it, but yes, I've heard that before.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: That's the dude.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, Chuck just found out the name of Robert Zadar,
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: and as predicted in 2008, when Jerry broke open that
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: envelope containing the eighth seal, we just triggered listener mail.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: That's right, this is by a cat named Chester. Hey guys,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: my family and I have enjoyed your show, and I
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: recently got my 10-year-old interested. On road trips and playing
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: out loud to help my kid to go to sleep,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: your voices are becoming a regular sound in my home. However,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: I have a cat named Chester who's taken to digging
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: at my phone when I play your podcast out loud.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: He's gotten so irritated by your voices that it's become
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: a routine to move my phone around or literally hold
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: him back while playing your show. I've experimented with you
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: because this is my question is like, is it everything?
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I've experimented with music and other podcasts, but it's just you. Wow.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: When I play just your podcast, he is set on
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: destroying you too. Help, guys. My screen is getting scratched.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Please apologize to Chester for whatever you did that offended him.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: He's a smart cat. He might forgive you. And we
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: can listen to you in peace in my house again.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: That is Lasko and family. So, Chester, we want to
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: say to you.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: Meow, meow, meow.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Meow, meow, meow. Meow, meow, meow.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And meow, meow, meow for me as well.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Agreed.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you from Lasko and family. And again, Mao Chester,
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: really Mao from the bottom of our mouth. If you
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: want to be like Lasko and get in touch with us,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: you can send us an email. Send it off to
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Mao podcast at Mao radio dot Mao.
• 48:23
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• 48:25
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• 48:30
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