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Is the Necronomicon real? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
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Speaker 1: From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. We just ticked off every
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Speaker 1: HP Lovecraft fan there is with that. That was so cheesy. Um,
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Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know. I'm Josh Clark. There's
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Bryant, and who else is in here? I
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Speaker 1: was gonna wait a minute, Okay, I was going to
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Speaker 1: lead up to that, Well, there's no one else in here, no,
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Speaker 1: no one. Um. Today we are doing a special podcast
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Speaker 1: on Yeah, um and uh. For those of you who
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Speaker 1: don't know what the necronomicon is, it is arguably the
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Speaker 1: most famous fictional text ever created in the history of
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Speaker 1: American literature. It is an evil book, one might say,
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Speaker 1: created by are probably my favorite author, HP Lovecraft. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I didn't realize this. You told me this, I didn't.
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Speaker 1: I love Lovecraft. My favorite UM stories are Dreams in
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Speaker 1: the Witch House, where he basically equates um physics to Witchcraft,
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Speaker 1: like witches have a really an advanced grasp on physics.
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Speaker 1: It's awesome, it's so cool. Strange case of Charles Dexter
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Speaker 1: Award is probably the greatest one he's ever written. It's amazing.
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Speaker 1: Uh yeah, you gotta read that. And these are short stories. Well,
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Speaker 1: the next one's a novella at the Mountains of Madness.
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Speaker 1: Excellent story. And actually that one kind of factors into
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Speaker 1: what we're gonna be talking about today. Um, I don't
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Speaker 1: know if the Necronomicon makes an appearance, but what the
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Speaker 1: Necronomicon deals with is all over the place there. So Chuck,
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Speaker 1: let's despite my love of love Craft. Yes, it's painfully
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Speaker 1: obvious to both of us that we're mere full these
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Speaker 1: compared to some other people out there who are Lovecraft fans,
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Speaker 1: right the dogs. And we figured that we were going
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Speaker 1: to get nothing but angry emails for this one, and
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Speaker 1: they take it pretty seriously. I would imagine that they
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Speaker 1: don't want us to poop on their hero and their
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Speaker 1: icons now, and he's my hero too, but I just
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Speaker 1: I don't. I can do it justice, you know I can't.
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Speaker 1: So instead we decided to bring in who will call
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Speaker 1: the shield, who can who can take all of the
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Speaker 1: angry emails, and that is our friend, colleague and fellow podcaster,
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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. Paramore. Yes, we have a special guest today.
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Speaker 1: Chuck wasn't lying. I was so, hey, strick how's it going?
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Speaker 1: Hey there, guys, um going pretty well. Thanks for having
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Speaker 1: me on. I I really enjoyed writing both Culhu and
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Speaker 1: the Necronomicon articles, so I'm there as very very cool.
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Speaker 1: You're you're kind of raised on these, weren't you. Doesn't
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Speaker 1: your dad write weird fiction? Yeah? Um, my father's names
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Speaker 1: Brad Strickland, So if you were to do a search
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Speaker 1: for that on Amazon, you would see that he's written
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Speaker 1: quite a few novels, several which fall into the horror
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Speaker 1: or weird fiction category. So yeah, I grew up around
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Speaker 1: the stuff. This was your life. It's pretty cool, and
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Speaker 1: you're you're dead, predicted Teddy Ruxman. That's true, but has
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Speaker 1: nothing to do with Lovecraft or Cathul or into the
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Speaker 1: necronomic right, No, it doesn't. My parents are t school teachers,
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Speaker 1: so not nearly excited it. As a mechanical engineer, I
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Speaker 1: didn't grow up with Cathulhu and strange beasts that would
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Speaker 1: drag him in saying just to look upon its face, right, yeah, yeahs,
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Speaker 1: which is something. It's a point that you make in
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Speaker 1: the in the articles you wrote, strict was that these
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Speaker 1: these creatures that the Necronomicon deals with, um, they'll drive
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Speaker 1: you crazy just by looking at them or by you know,
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Speaker 1: interacting with them. Usually terrible, terrible things happen. Right, And
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Speaker 1: at the center of the Necronomicon is cathulu cthulu or
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Speaker 1: there's a pronunciation um that Lovecraft wrote in a letter
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Speaker 1: to a fellow author. Right, and how how is that
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Speaker 1: one pronounced? You know, why are you hitting me with
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Speaker 1: that all all of a sudden. Okay, let's let's let's
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Speaker 1: be clear here. Lovecraft actually makes a point to say
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Speaker 1: that these otherworldly creatures have their own language which humans
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Speaker 1: are incapable of repeating. That makes it very mysterious and
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Speaker 1: creepy to me. Yeah, it's the same sort of nature
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Speaker 1: as as they. They have this appearance that we are
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Speaker 1: we cannot comprehend. If we were to look upon it
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Speaker 1: as you say, we would go crazy. So it actually
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Speaker 1: takes a lot of pressure off because you can name
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Speaker 1: things whatever you like. You can put as many consonants
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Speaker 1: and little apostrophes in there, and so you can call
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Speaker 1: it whatever you like. And when people say, how do
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Speaker 1: you pronounce it? You just respond you can't. But Coutulu
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Speaker 1: is one that I think most Lovecraft um scholars would
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Speaker 1: argue as the appropriate pronunciation. But the way I've always
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Speaker 1: said it, in the way that most of the fans
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Speaker 1: that I've talked to have always said it as Cathulu,
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Speaker 1: right was it wasn't there a rumor early on that
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Speaker 1: the clover filled movie was the monster was the Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that was very early on when that that preview first hit,
5:01
Speaker 1: and there was not even a title for the movie yet.
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Speaker 1: In fact, there was no title internally for the movie.
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Speaker 1: People could only get little glimpses of what was going on,
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Speaker 1: and a lot of people said, Hey, maybe this is
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Speaker 1: the Cathulu movie we've all been waiting for. This is
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Speaker 1: actually the monster. I wonder I haven't made that yet.
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Speaker 1: I think, Well, there have been several movies that have
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Speaker 1: tried to tap into the Lovecraft universe, and only a
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Speaker 1: few have been really successful. I think part of the
5:26
Speaker 1: problem is that how do you portray a monster that
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Speaker 1: is so horrible that you'd go crazy looking? That was
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Speaker 1: what I was thinking was, it's probably pretty intimidating for
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Speaker 1: a filmmaker to try and tackle this. Well, there there
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Speaker 1: are descriptions of Cthulhu. What's right? So he basically he
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Speaker 1: has wings. Um, he resembles just by looking at this. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: you think about this, do you think do you think
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Speaker 1: feminine when you hear this? Wings? Huge leathery wings, part octopus,
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Speaker 1: part dragon woman, part part man. Now I wouldn't say,
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Speaker 1: I just seem so with Lovecraft thing he would say
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Speaker 1: it is agenda that cannot be defined. Yeah, unnamable. Okay,
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Speaker 1: so we'll call him he. Okay, so we will call
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Speaker 1: Cthulu he Okay, So um, Cthulhu in the whole reason
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Speaker 1: we're talking about him is the he figures at the
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Speaker 1: center of the Cthulhu mythos that that Lovecraft created during
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Speaker 1: the course of his writing in Strickland. When was he
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Speaker 1: most prolific, It was it during the twenties. Yeah, we're
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Speaker 1: talking about just right around that era, late twenties. Um,
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Speaker 1: pretty much. What what's really interesting to me is that
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Speaker 1: Cthulhu became the central of this the center figure of
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Speaker 1: this mythos. But it's not the creature that Lovecraft wrote
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Speaker 1: about the most. Cathula really only factors into a couple
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Speaker 1: of stories, and in fact is described in some as
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Speaker 1: being a priest kind of figure for the Old Ones,
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Speaker 1: which is this race of creatures Lovecraft created. Yeah, but
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Speaker 1: he never said whether he was a priest that led
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Speaker 1: the worship of the Old Ones or whether he was
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Speaker 1: the priest to the Old Ones. That's that's correct. So
7:07
Speaker 1: that's you know, I'm just gonna leave the rim. You
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Speaker 1: guys are nerd and out all. Well, the point I'm
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Speaker 1: trying to make here is that it's really the fans
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Speaker 1: of Lovecraft who kind of latched onto Cathulu and made
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Speaker 1: it the central figure of his mythology. Uh, if you
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Speaker 1: were to read all the stories, you would say why.
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Speaker 1: I mean, it is a very striking kind of image,
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Speaker 1: but why this over any other particular like why not?
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Speaker 1: A reason that I think it's mainly because when you
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Speaker 1: do read the descriptions, Uh, they are very compelling, and
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Speaker 1: I think that I think it's also probably one of
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Speaker 1: the ones that are that's easier to imagine than some
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Speaker 1: of the other A lot of the other ones end
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Speaker 1: up being shapeless. Well that's kind of hard to imagine
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Speaker 1: or mindless um being cosmic being who ruled at the
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Speaker 1: center of chaos, that's kind of difficult to um to
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Speaker 1: conceive of. I think so it's it's very hard to
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Speaker 1: make a plush toy of that, right. I think the
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Speaker 1: other reason that Cathulum has become such a prominent figure
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Speaker 1: in love crafty and lore is that he's still here
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Speaker 1: on Earth. He was, um, he was one of the
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Speaker 1: rulers of Earth along with the great old Ones, right,
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Speaker 1: that's correct. And then he had a city that was
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Speaker 1: called really a actually still is that sunk under the waters.
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Speaker 1: And what's interesting is that depending on which story you're reading,
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Speaker 1: you can kind of locate where really is. It's off
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Speaker 1: the coast of South America, and uh, there have been
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Speaker 1: some interesting, weird things that have gone on in in
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Speaker 1: that general area that people jokingly attribute to Cathulhu, uh, saying, hey,
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Speaker 1: you know it's Cathulu snoring, right, Like I know you
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Speaker 1: put a little sidebar that was pretty interesting that they
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Speaker 1: detected with underwater microphones what a very loud, low rip
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Speaker 1: eating sound somewhere out in the middle of the ocean
9:02
Speaker 1: out there, right, and that they said, oh, well, that's
9:05
Speaker 1: just a whale song. But then marine biologists came in
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Speaker 1: and say, oh, that's not a whale, and that's unless
9:10
Speaker 1: that's the biggest whale in the history of the universe. Right,
9:12
Speaker 1: it was such a loud and prolonged sound that it
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Speaker 1: would be it would have to be made by a
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Speaker 1: creature larger than anything that we currently know of, right, So, hey, Cathula,
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Speaker 1: it's got to be him. It's interesting if you listen
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Speaker 1: to the sound unaltered, it's just this really low rumble
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Speaker 1: and it goes on for ages. But if you speed
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Speaker 1: it up really fast, it goes really which is why
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Speaker 1: they call it the bloop. There you have it, which
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Speaker 1: is also why a lot of people thought the clover
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Speaker 1: Field Monster was Cathulu because apparently on the on the
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Speaker 1: official website, there was a bloop, was there? Yeah, they
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Speaker 1: tied it into a a fictional um slushy maker Japanese company,
9:54
Speaker 1: and so that had something to do with it as well.
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Speaker 1: Once people started seeing the supplemental material, they started draw
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Speaker 1: their own conclusions, and of course they turned out to
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Speaker 1: be wrong. But it just shows how imaginative and passionate
10:07
Speaker 1: the Lovecraft failure, and it shows how smart J. J.
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Speaker 1: Abrams is, the marketing genius, master marketer. So let's talk
10:14
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the sure um. So the
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Speaker 1: text Strickland is often considered a book of spells. Most
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Speaker 1: of the people who get their hands on the Necronomicon
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Speaker 1: in lovecraft stories um end up using it to conjure
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Speaker 1: some of the Great Old Ones. Remember Cathulus, the priests
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Speaker 1: of the Great Old Ones. Um, and terrible, terrible things
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Speaker 1: happened this guy's open up. People tend to disappear in
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Speaker 1: in under terrible circumstances. And um the author. Let's talk
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Speaker 1: about the author of the Necronomicon. He himself, the mad
10:53
Speaker 1: arab abdul al has read. That's correct, the mad arab
10:57
Speaker 1: abdul l has read A fiend. Yes, the eighth century
11:02
Speaker 1: Opium fiend from supposed to be supposedly a poet who
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Speaker 1: at some point gets this um. Well, I suppose he
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Speaker 1: gets some strange inspiration, possibly fueled by drugs, and writes
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Speaker 1: down this book called the Necronomicon, right, originally called al right,
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Speaker 1: and that that refers to a sound made by night
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Speaker 1: insects in the desert or demons howling, depending on who
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Speaker 1: you ask. Right, that's correct. And so we have this
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Speaker 1: this text that's supposed to be very rambling and crazy,
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Speaker 1: and uh. Interesting thing is that Lovecraft never wrote the
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Speaker 1: full Necronomicon. He actually wanted to create it, and and
11:45
Speaker 1: dabbled on a shorter versions at one point, right, right,
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Speaker 1: he wrote a couple of passages from an abridged version,
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Speaker 1: and there are there are a few passages that are
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Speaker 1: that are fairly famous in lovecraft lore. But he wanted
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Speaker 1: to create this mythology where scholars in his world would
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Speaker 1: have certain books they would refer to whenever they needed
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Speaker 1: to study these creatures. Okay, and some of those books
12:07
Speaker 1: actually were real, right, that's correct. Some of the books
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Speaker 1: were in fact real books that have a historical background.
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Speaker 1: Most of them were just figments of his imagination. He
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Speaker 1: created the Lovecrafts, I should say, a Lovecraft's imagination, not
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Speaker 1: the mad Arab. No, not the mad Arab. So yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's interesting. You're talking about an author Lovecraft who creates
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Speaker 1: this fictional author, the mad Arab, who in turn creates
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Speaker 1: a fictional book called the Necronomicon, parts of which Lovecraft
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Speaker 1: actually wrote outright, So that is the that is the
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Speaker 1: spoiler for those of you who weren't familiar with this
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Speaker 1: at all. Necronomicon completely fictional, mad Arab, completely fictional. And actually,
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Speaker 1: what's cool about um Strickland in the in the article
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Speaker 1: you make the point that the uh, the Necronomicon has
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Speaker 1: not only survived lovecraft death, it's thrived. You can find
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Speaker 1: um versions of it on Amazon. Um there's actual cults,
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Speaker 1: whether they realized that the Necronomic con or except that
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Speaker 1: the Necronomicon is fictitious, they still um this this philosophy
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Speaker 1: of the necronomic and still figures very much into their outlook.
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Speaker 1: Then there's other maybe I got the impression slightly nutt
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Speaker 1: of your cults that actually don't believe the Necronomicon. It
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Speaker 1: is fictional, right, but it's it's pervaded into reality. Correct. Yeah,
13:31
Speaker 1: all of that is right. The uh it's it is
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Speaker 1: fascinating because since Lovecraft left such huge gaps with the Necronomicon,
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Speaker 1: you know, he only wrote little bits and pieces, it's
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Speaker 1: allowed other people to swoop in and fill in those
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Speaker 1: gaps and make money and make money. Yeah, I'll never forget.
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Speaker 1: I was in a bookstore. Um, I was in uh,
13:50
Speaker 1: I think it was South Carolina. I was in a bookstore.
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Speaker 1: This is when I was a teenager, and I'm looking
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Speaker 1: through the books. I'm just trying to find something to read,
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Speaker 1: and I come across a copy of the Neck Anomicon,
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Speaker 1: and I had to stop and look again because I thought,
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Speaker 1: wait a minute, what why would I find a fictional
14:07
Speaker 1: book in a bookstore? And so I took it down
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Speaker 1: and started reading it, and it was filled with lots
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Speaker 1: of of tortured kind of prose. No, it was terrible.
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Speaker 1: Did bite your hand when you try to grab it?
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Speaker 1: It did not? Reference will come back to that later. No, No,
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Speaker 1: it was. It was a terrible book. It was a
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Speaker 1: terrible attempt at trying to make a book sound really
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Speaker 1: dangerous and spooky. But it was transparent. I mean, it
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Speaker 1: was obvious that it was someone trying to be funny.
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Speaker 1: All Right, you guys, this reality parts boring. Let's go
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Speaker 1: back into the fictional world of Lovecraft in the Necronomicon. Okay,
14:44
Speaker 1: where are we actually We're no, we're in no particular place.
14:47
Speaker 1: We're just in this version of reality that Lovecraft created.
14:51
Speaker 1: How about that? Oy? Alright, So within this world you
14:55
Speaker 1: have various creatures, you have various books that all of
14:59
Speaker 1: all of which are bad. I mean, that's just there
15:01
Speaker 1: are people who think they can take advantage of them
15:03
Speaker 1: and gain either power or knowledge or some combination thereof.
15:08
Speaker 1: But it always turns out badly for them. In fact,
15:10
Speaker 1: you kind of wonder why people keep bothering. Yeah, that's
15:13
Speaker 1: really I mean, that's really what weird fiction is all about.
15:16
Speaker 1: You're talking. When you use the word weird, you don't
15:18
Speaker 1: just mean unusual, you mean incomprehensible to the human mind. Yeah.
15:23
Speaker 1: I think Josh told me off Mike that. A lot
15:26
Speaker 1: of other authors kind of have said that's a bit
15:29
Speaker 1: of a cop out on lovecraft part because a lot
15:31
Speaker 1: of times he doesn't have to end up being real
15:33
Speaker 1: creative with his descriptions of things, and he can just say, well,
15:37
Speaker 1: trust me, look upon it, and you shall go and
15:39
Speaker 1: see or or unnamable. Yeah, and and I think it's brilliant.
15:45
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's definitely an argument on either side. You
15:47
Speaker 1: could argue that, well, the human imagination is so powerful
15:50
Speaker 1: that if you leave it up to the individual reader,
15:52
Speaker 1: it's that person is going to make his or her
15:55
Speaker 1: own most horrifying creature. And there's nothing that you, as
15:59
Speaker 1: the writer could describe because you don't know that person.
16:01
Speaker 1: I don't know what would horrify that person exactly. But
16:04
Speaker 1: by leaving it up to the to the reader's imagination, Uh,
16:07
Speaker 1: suddenly you've made a much more effective monster, which is
16:10
Speaker 1: kind of what they did with clover Field. Actually, they
16:12
Speaker 1: did kind of tap into that because they didn't show
16:14
Speaker 1: the monster very much at all, and I thought it
16:16
Speaker 1: was effective. I like the movie. No, I I really
16:18
Speaker 1: enjoyed that as well. I haven't seen it yet both
16:20
Speaker 1: of you showed up. Oh sorry, spoiler alert, there's a monster.
16:25
Speaker 1: Another thing I thought was cool was that Lovecraft at
16:27
Speaker 1: one point said that there are um only a uh
16:31
Speaker 1: several official copies of the Necronomicon located in I think
16:35
Speaker 1: you listed five different libraries, and uh, two of them
16:39
Speaker 1: don't even exist. So he he dabbled. Yes, he dabbled
16:44
Speaker 1: so much between reality and fiction that I think it worked.
16:47
Speaker 1: It ended up being like, you don't know what's real
16:49
Speaker 1: and what isn't. Dude, we're back in Lovecraft's world. Okay, sorry,
16:54
Speaker 1: so strickling. The Necronomicon was written by al has red Right,
16:59
Speaker 1: and um he I believe he died fairly horribly. Either
17:03
Speaker 1: he was swallowed up after conjuring somebody using the Necronomicon.
17:08
Speaker 1: I think I remember another story where Lovecraft writes about
17:11
Speaker 1: how he was beheaded but his head was still able
17:13
Speaker 1: to speak. Um, there there's several different ways that he
17:17
Speaker 1: supposedly died, but either way he died, but his book
17:20
Speaker 1: survived and it stayed in Arabic, which actually I believe
17:24
Speaker 1: none of the Arabic original copies in Arabic exist today.
17:29
Speaker 1: But the UM in nine fifties, somebody else found it
17:33
Speaker 1: and it was translated into Greek. Right, Yes, that's right.
17:36
Speaker 1: There are actually several different translations UM that are mentioned
17:40
Speaker 1: in Lovecraft's stories. Uh, there's Greek, there's there's Hebrew, there's
17:44
Speaker 1: a few others. There's Latin. I think he said Alias
17:47
Speaker 1: Wormings was a priest that translated into Latin, and then
17:50
Speaker 1: it was banned by Pope Gregory nine. But in reality,
17:54
Speaker 1: this is what I love the fiction. Again, you're not Catholic?
17:58
Speaker 1: Was that not Pope Gregory nine? The nine? Okay, yeah,
18:01
Speaker 1: but Gregory the Night? Uh? In reality that Elias Warmius
18:05
Speaker 1: was actually a Dutch physician, so there was no tide
18:08
Speaker 1: there whatsoever. Yeah, that was the mixture of reality and fantasy. Um. Now,
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Speaker 1: the the really cool stuff, as far as I'm concerned
18:16
Speaker 1: here is that that he's he's built up a believable
18:20
Speaker 1: enough base that if you were to just read the
18:23
Speaker 1: story without without any other background information, you could totally
18:27
Speaker 1: buy into this mythology. He's really made it very rich
18:31
Speaker 1: and believable. He's he's he's anchored it in reality and um.
18:35
Speaker 1: And there are lovecraft Ian scholars and fans who will
18:38
Speaker 1: talk of this as if it were all real, as
18:41
Speaker 1: if these Greek and and other translations of the Necronomicon
18:45
Speaker 1: do in fact exist and are in fact in these libraries. Right. Well,
18:48
Speaker 1: I know what earlier we were talking and I thought
18:50
Speaker 1: it was odd that he would use people like Elias
18:54
Speaker 1: warmis their name, which you know was a physician, and
18:57
Speaker 1: then in six Dr John D was an Englishman and
19:01
Speaker 1: a magician, when in fact he was really just an
19:03
Speaker 1: adviser to Queen Elizabeth. And I thought, well, how strange
19:06
Speaker 1: to use these real people like wouldn't he be found out?
19:09
Speaker 1: But you said that, you know, this is the nine twenties,
19:11
Speaker 1: and there weren't You couldn't go up on the internet
19:13
Speaker 1: and look up who John D was, right, And now
19:15
Speaker 1: you had people who those names would sound familiar, and
19:18
Speaker 1: they think, hey, that does lead leads some credence to
19:21
Speaker 1: this and I and I also compared it to Bram Stoker,
19:25
Speaker 1: who did base Dracula off of the real person Vlad Tepish.
19:29
Speaker 1: But if you were to look into Vlad tepish Is life,
19:32
Speaker 1: you would see that it doesn't really parallel Dracula at all.
19:35
Speaker 1: You could just see where the inspiration came from. But
19:37
Speaker 1: because you have laud Dre Cool, you have this whole
19:40
Speaker 1: persona there, it lends your story a stronger base in reality. Yeah,
19:46
Speaker 1: like you guys said, the Lovecraft is a master at
19:49
Speaker 1: mixing reality and fiction, like with the libraries where you
19:53
Speaker 1: could supposedly find the Necronomicon, but also he would pepper
19:57
Speaker 1: um some of the books like on the shelves ire
20:00
Speaker 1: were in the strange case of Charles dexter Ward his
20:03
Speaker 1: ancestor what was his ancestors name, I don't remember either, um,
20:07
Speaker 1: but he there was there were tons of books of
20:10
Speaker 1: magic and the occult, and some of them were real,
20:12
Speaker 1: like the Rs Magna at Ultima uh, and they would
20:16
Speaker 1: be sitting alongside the Necronomicon. So there were some that
20:20
Speaker 1: were real and some that weren't. Um. And not only
20:23
Speaker 1: did Lovecraft write about that, he would use books that
20:26
Speaker 1: some of his contemporaries had made upright in his books,
20:30
Speaker 1: and they would do just the same, right, they would
20:33
Speaker 1: mention the Necronomicon in their books. Yeah, there was a
20:35
Speaker 1: lot of cross pollination going on at this time, where
20:39
Speaker 1: you would. Lovecraft loved having friends who were also authors.
20:44
Speaker 1: He was prolific letter writer, and he encouraged his friends
20:48
Speaker 1: to write stories set in his mythology, and then he
20:51
Speaker 1: would write stories there's as well. So you started to
20:54
Speaker 1: get this really rich background that didn't exist in other
20:58
Speaker 1: authors works. Because I mean, in a way, it's almost
21:01
Speaker 1: like writing fan fiction, except in this case, the people
21:04
Speaker 1: who are writing fan fiction are really well known authors, right, right,
21:08
Speaker 1: But that continues today. You still have people writing within
21:12
Speaker 1: Lovecraft's mythology, and of course, you know, it's expanded beyond
21:16
Speaker 1: just writing books. It's also in movies and television. Right.
21:20
Speaker 1: There's some pretty pretty noteworthy cameos that the Necronomicon has made,
21:25
Speaker 1: most notably in the Evil Dead series. Yes that was
21:29
Speaker 1: it an Evil Dead or just Evil Dead too, No,
21:32
Speaker 1: it's in It's an Evil Dead, Evil Dead to an
21:34
Speaker 1: Army of Darkness. Army of Darkness actually was my favorite
21:38
Speaker 1: scene with the Necronomicon because he has to approach it
21:41
Speaker 1: on the hill and repeat the Klatu varata and then
21:45
Speaker 1: which the last word isn't that from the day the
21:48
Speaker 1: Earth still? Yeah, that's actually that was the one of
21:50
Speaker 1: the things about Yes, Sam Raimi just loves to quote
21:53
Speaker 1: from other movies and and and science fiction, horror everything.
21:56
Speaker 1: I mean, he's he's one of those guys who just
21:59
Speaker 1: has like that huge Labrintheian Library of of Trivia instead
22:04
Speaker 1: and so yeah, he brought a lot of that out
22:05
Speaker 1: into those movies. But the interesting thing about the Necronomicon
22:09
Speaker 1: and those and those movies is that it doesn't really
22:12
Speaker 1: resemble the one in Lovecraft stories. Right. It's the Book
22:15
Speaker 1: of the Dead is what they call it, and evil
22:17
Speaker 1: dead and it's a or at least an army of darkness.
22:20
Speaker 1: It was like this, uh had an evil face. It
22:22
Speaker 1: was like leather bound, but had a mouth and eyes,
22:25
Speaker 1: and that's why it bit him when he tried to
22:26
Speaker 1: pick it up, which is what I was referencing right right.
22:28
Speaker 1: It's actually bound in flesh and written in blood. Yeah, yeah,
22:32
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's a little different from the Necronomicon
22:35
Speaker 1: and Lovecraft stories. But the Necronomicon, you gotta admit, that's
22:38
Speaker 1: an awesome name for an evil book. So it totally
22:42
Speaker 1: made sense to to reference it, you know, and a
22:45
Speaker 1: lot of people I think have sort of a passing
22:48
Speaker 1: familiarity with Lovecraft stories stuff, so if you mentioned it,
22:53
Speaker 1: they get the idea, oh, that's an evil book. They
22:55
Speaker 1: don't need to have this wealth of information in their heads.
22:58
Speaker 1: So my favorite reference, um, and you actually pointed out
23:02
Speaker 1: in the article Strick is um the appearance of the
23:05
Speaker 1: Necronomicon in the Simpsons. You guys see this one. It
23:09
Speaker 1: was in the episode Brawl in the Family where there's
23:12
Speaker 1: a meeting of the Republican Party and Mr Burns goes
23:17
Speaker 1: and now Bob Dole will read from the Necronomicon. And
23:20
Speaker 1: Bob Dole comes to the podium and he's wearing like
23:22
Speaker 1: a black robe and he starts channing in Latin and
23:24
Speaker 1: reading from the book. It's perfect. Yeah, My I think
23:28
Speaker 1: my favorite is when it makes a very very brief
23:31
Speaker 1: appearance in Friday of the Thirteenth, Part nine, Jason goes
23:34
Speaker 1: to Hell. It's it's just it's one of those things
23:37
Speaker 1: where the camera's just panning by and if you pay attention,
23:39
Speaker 1: you see, hey, that's the Necronomicon from the Evil Dead movies. Yeah,
23:44
Speaker 1: it's just it's just there in in the shot. I mean,
23:46
Speaker 1: there's no reference to it. No one picks it up.
23:48
Speaker 1: Where was it? Was it like Jason's house, Yeah, it's
23:50
Speaker 1: it's towards the it's towards the end of the movie.
23:52
Speaker 1: There's a few different references. I think you also, if
23:55
Speaker 1: you look, you see a crate that's labeled Arctic Expedition,
23:59
Speaker 1: So fans of horror movies, you'll know what that's from. Too,
24:01
Speaker 1: so awesome. Jason goes to Hell? Was that was that?
24:05
Speaker 1: That was also in Pumpkinhead two? Yep. Also in Aquitine
24:10
Speaker 1: Hunger Force, which we love, and The Real Ghostbusters, The
24:14
Speaker 1: Grim Adventures of Billion Mandy and metal Lock. You don't
24:20
Speaker 1: know that that's that's the that's the cartoon on Adult
24:24
Speaker 1: Swim that details the misadventures of a death metal band
24:30
Speaker 1: called death Clock. You almost said adventures, very nice catch.
24:33
Speaker 1: Misadventures much different. So this was actually in strict Thank
24:37
Speaker 1: you so much for coming in, dude, you say this,
24:40
Speaker 1: this is one of those every once in a while
24:42
Speaker 1: we'll do a podcast where like this is just the
24:43
Speaker 1: tip of the iceberg. Go read the article. You clearly
24:47
Speaker 1: should go read these articles. If we piqued your interest
24:49
Speaker 1: in all. First of all, go start reading Lovecraft. He's awesome. Um.
24:53
Speaker 1: He was also an awesome person his real life. He
24:55
Speaker 1: he had a woman that he lived with who was
24:58
Speaker 1: old enough to be his mother, that he love up
25:00
Speaker 1: very much. But people posit that they never consummated their relationship.
25:04
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Yep. He was just an all around
25:07
Speaker 1: weird guy, but really sweet and cute and um not
25:11
Speaker 1: really well I think he does in that nine He
25:14
Speaker 1: doesn't have like uh, yeah, you're right, um, but he
25:19
Speaker 1: he was an interesting character, uh, an incredible writer and
25:23
Speaker 1: uh Strickland wrote two really good articles on him. So
25:25
Speaker 1: if you want to read more about it, you can
25:28
Speaker 1: go to how stuff works dot com and typing cthulu
25:31
Speaker 1: c t h U l U in the search bar.
25:34
Speaker 1: You could also type in necronomicon, which would be spelled
25:39
Speaker 1: n E c R O n O M I c
25:43
Speaker 1: O and necronomicon you can find both of those articles.
25:48
Speaker 1: And I think if you type you those words in
25:50
Speaker 1: the Google in general, you're going to find a whole
25:52
Speaker 1: world away to you. Just interesting stuff. Interesting way to
25:56
Speaker 1: waste some time. You dare not speak it and look
25:59
Speaker 1: at it or you shall go insane. And also we
26:03
Speaker 1: can all look forward to the day the stars aligne
26:06
Speaker 1: and the Stone City of Relay rises up out of
26:09
Speaker 1: the ocean and takes possession of the Earth again, and
26:12
Speaker 1: we are all screwed awesome, or as we would say
26:16
Speaker 1: in love Crafts universe, Yeah yeah, kutula fatagan. No better
26:20
Speaker 1: way to end then for that, no better way to
26:23
Speaker 1: end the than that? All right, Well, since Strickling just
26:25
Speaker 1: said something that we can't pronounce ourselves, that means it's
26:29
Speaker 1: listener mail time. Alright, So Chuck, what do you have
26:35
Speaker 1: for us today? You're just gonna call this the saddest
26:38
Speaker 1: thing I've ever heard. This is from Vic in Lincolnshire, Illinois.
26:42
Speaker 1: It's a little lengthy. If I'm gonna I'm gonna read
26:44
Speaker 1: it fast. Vic is a listener who has borrowed his
26:48
Speaker 1: daughter's iPod and definitely he said, I was kind of
26:51
Speaker 1: taking it over. That is the saddest thing I've ever
26:54
Speaker 1: uh And he he This came about as a suggestion
26:57
Speaker 1: that we do something on wrongful death lassy bots or
27:01
Speaker 1: just wrongful death period. I don't Back in nine seventy
27:05
Speaker 1: my dad had a heart attack and was hospitalized in
27:07
Speaker 1: the co ordinary care unit. They had trouble stabilizing his
27:11
Speaker 1: heart rhythm and decided to implant a temporary demand pacemaker.
27:15
Speaker 1: I guess in theory, when his heart needed and assist,
27:17
Speaker 1: the pacemaker would kick in and get things back on track.
27:20
Speaker 1: We went to visit him the next morning. We could
27:22
Speaker 1: tell that everything was kind of crazy in the CCU,
27:24
Speaker 1: people in a frenzy, all kinds of activity, and we
27:28
Speaker 1: stood beside my father talking to him. I was sixteen
27:31
Speaker 1: years old, and I was fascinated with the ocloscope on
27:34
Speaker 1: the shelf above his head, routinely drawing a regular paced heartbeat,
27:38
Speaker 1: now familiar from all the medical shows in the last
27:41
Speaker 1: forty years. Okay, the nurse on duty saw us at
27:46
Speaker 1: dad's bed and quickly came over to clean him up
27:48
Speaker 1: for the visitors, comb his hair shave him. She was
27:50
Speaker 1: running late and hurriedly plugged his electric shaver into the outlet,
27:55
Speaker 1: the same outlet as the temporary pacemaker power supply. Almost immediately,
27:59
Speaker 1: the heartbeat trade went wild on the monitor. I had
28:01
Speaker 1: my eyes on it the whole time. It first confused
28:04
Speaker 1: as to whether I was seeing electronic interference or actual
28:07
Speaker 1: interference with the beating of my dad's heart. It quickly
28:10
Speaker 1: became clear that it was a ladder. My dad yelled,
28:13
Speaker 1: almost leaping out of bed and fell back dead. Oh
28:16
Speaker 1: my god, right in front of his face. At sixteen
28:19
Speaker 1: in the hospital because the nurse plugged this thing in.
28:22
Speaker 1: Wow awful, no happy ending here. They tried in vain
28:25
Speaker 1: to revive my father, aged fifty nine. A wrongful death
28:29
Speaker 1: lawsuit ensued, but my mother became too sick to go
28:31
Speaker 1: through with it. My understanding is that the pacemaker technology
28:34
Speaker 1: is vastly improved over the years. I'm not sure if
28:36
Speaker 1: there are other stories like mine. And here's a little
28:39
Speaker 1: interesting side note. At the end uh in the CCU
28:43
Speaker 1: at sixteen, I noticed four little shelves about seven feet
28:45
Speaker 1: off the ground in the corners of the room. I
28:47
Speaker 1: asked the resident past or what they were there for.
28:50
Speaker 1: He informed me that someone was doing an experiment with
28:52
Speaker 1: near death out of body experiences because of the high
28:55
Speaker 1: quote traffic in that room. Apparently there were cards with
28:59
Speaker 1: little shape on them, one on top of the on
29:01
Speaker 1: top of the shelves. Have my dad been revived, they
29:04
Speaker 1: would have asked him if he were called hovering above
29:06
Speaker 1: his bed and did he look down and see those shapes? Weird?
29:11
Speaker 1: So that is a side note, and Vic, it's a
29:13
Speaker 1: hell of a side note. This is a long time ago,
29:15
Speaker 1: and I wrote you back and said I was very
29:17
Speaker 1: sorry to hear about this, but it was a great story.
29:19
Speaker 1: And thanks for sharing. And we will definitely add wrongful
29:22
Speaker 1: death lawsuits to the suggestion box for sure. And thanks
29:27
Speaker 1: for sharing that interesting and awful story. If you have
29:30
Speaker 1: any interesting or awful stories, or you just want to
29:33
Speaker 1: say hi, or what up? Or what what does it mentioned? Unicorns?
29:37
Speaker 1: Maybe sure you can put in an email and send
29:41
Speaker 1: that to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com
29:49
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
29:52
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
29:56
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
29:58
Speaker 1: com home page. Yeah, brought to you by the reinvented
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Speaker 1: two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you