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Transcript

Ghosts · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Why We Do what We do. I am
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: your Haunted host, Abraham Who.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: And I'm your spooky host Shane. I'm your clean sheets host, Shane.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: There you go with that one, Okay. We are a
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: psychology podcast. We talk about all of the things that
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: people do, and in the month of October we take
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: on some maybe spookyer topics that we can sort of
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: shoehorn into a psychology podcast, if you will. And we've
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: been doing this for a few years, but this is
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: our third or fourth or something like that, so it's
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: a tradition here at Why we do what we do,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: to spend all of October doing creepy psychology things, and
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: today is no different. We are going to be talking
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: up out the spookiest thing of all ghosts.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: They are quite spooky, quite haunting. If you will do so.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: If you are joining us for the first time, welcome.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: We're so happy that you have found us. We hope
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: that you enjoy what you hear today. And if you
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: do and you'd like to support us, you can do
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: that in a variety of ways. You can like and subscribe,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: leave a rating or a review or both. You can
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: tell a friend. You can join us on Patreon. You
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: can pick up some merch at our merch store, and
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I'll talk more about that at the end of this discussion.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: But if you are returning and you've been with us
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: before and you're back for more than thank you so
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: much for joining us again. We hope you continue to
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: find joy and enjoyment in what we're trying to do
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: in our silly little psychology podcast that takes on the
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: weird things of the world and then breaks them down
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: into a textbooked level sort of analysis, albeit with as
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: little jargon as possible and more fun. Indeed, and this
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: episode publishes just right before the end of the month.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: It is October thirtieth, so happy Halloween tomorrow.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but today is National Wicked Day, so that's fun. True.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: It is also National text your X Day. I guess
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: this is the curious of all. I know it like
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: it's quite spookyo.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: I don't like it. It's National Publicist Day, which is interesting.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Sure, National candy corn Day, which no, thanks, take that
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: as you will. I guess.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw somebody make a candy corn dog where
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: they wrapped a hot dog in candy corn, and it
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: just looks like a nightmare. Situation, so you don't have
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: to eat that. It's a National checklist Day. I am
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: a big fan of checklists.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, checklists can be quite helpful. It is create a
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Great Funeral Day. I really hope that none of you
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: are trying to listen to this and also do that.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: But I guess that is a day that the funeral
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: industry decided needed to make it onto the calendars for reasons.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: So create a great funeral day.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess. And also maybe a quick caveat to
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: that is not to actively make it so a funeral
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: is required. I think it's talking about the actual celebration
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: being a great celebration rather than really good point pushing. Yeah, yeah,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I just yeah, you're not gonna actually make if you know,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: because you got to say it sometimes just from liability,
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Like our lawyers talk to us about this a lot.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: We just make sure we gotta be careful with that.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: It is Haunted Refrigerator Day. Yikes.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Refrigerator is haunted by the ghosts of things that I
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: must throw.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Away or things that run. Yeah.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Indeed, it is mine rescue Day. It's important.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: That is very important. It is Pomegranate Festival. Yup.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Love that it is BAT Appreciation Week.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: It just makes me think of what we do in
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: the Shadows Bat. It is Henry Winkler's birthday, so happy birthday, Fonds.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, if you listen, then definitely reach out to us
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: because we love you and we think you're great and
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: we so honored to even receive an email of any
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: sort from you. Yes please, or social media post or
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: something great anyway. It is also LGBTQ plus History Month,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: great month to learn about those.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Things important, very very important.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe it fits into the sort of spooky theme
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: when we talk about how poorly treated LGBTQ plus people
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: have been, but also don't feel like exploiting that pain
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: of theirs, So probably not something will take on as
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: part of what we do at least that doesn't seem
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: that way right now. Who knows, Maybe the future will
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: change things for us. Maybe we'll have someone come on
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: and share their own stories. But in the meantime, we're
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: just going to keep doing what we do, which is
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: this fun little psychology podcast which recounts the holidays that
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: happen each time that we publish an episode. Because but
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: as we said, we are talking about ghosts here today.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, we are, So we are going to answer the questions,
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: what are ghosts, how are ghosts, how do they work?
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: What makes people think they have interacted with ghosts? And
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: why have we invented ghosts?
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Or we're gonna try to at least those are the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: things that seemed like good questions to try and answer.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: And yeah, h so we got around were getting around
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: to some of them in some capacity or another. Let's
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: do our best. Let's start by defining our subject, of course,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: in case you're not familiar, and good on you if
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: you're not. Ghosts are the incorporeal apparitions of once living
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: things that have since died. So at some point they
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: were alive, now they're not. They are a representation of
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: that thing that died. They may have a physical presence
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: such as a sound, smell, touch of our common one
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: as temperature, or some combination of those things, or they
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: may be totally imperceptible. But it's typically ghosts lack the
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: ability to interact with the natural world, say for these
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: sort of sporadic, intermittent appearances or other manifestations that are
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: barely or not at all detectable most of the time
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: to most people.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Right, so super important to kind of like lay that
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: groundwork right. Interestingly, pretty much anything with mass can seemingly
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: have a ghost. There have been stories of ghost vehicles
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: such as trains, planes, and automobiles, ships and motorcycles as well.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: There are also animals that sometimes I've said to have ghosts.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Even buildings have sometimes had ghosts in stories. And there
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: is also a ghost writer of.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: All things, yes, Nicholas Cage, Yes he was. So the
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: concept of ghosts seems to have existed in pretty much
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: every culture throughout history where we have enough evidence to
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: have learned about some of the beliefs of those cultures.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: So there's probably some instances where we don't really have
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: clear evidence of that, but we also just don't know
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: very much about those cultures. They seem to be pretty
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: ubiquitous throughout history. The exact understand of what ghosts are
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: or how they work across these cultures throughout history have
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: ranged a variety of sort of roles that they might
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: have had, from the all the way from the like
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: the totally mundane to the terrifyingly supernatural, where ghosts are
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: maybe something that just sort of is there and it's
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: sort of like they ghost, and sometimes they're like demons
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: that are trying to destroy the whole planet's type things.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: I guess you'll hear stories of benevolent ghosts like maybe
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: just like a friend hanging out. They're just like you're
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: just occupying their old house. And then you hear about
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: like demons and exorcisms like pazou Zoo and all that
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: fun stuff. Right, You're right, it's a blast. The pervasive
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: consistency is the idea of life continuing after death. A
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: lot of the idea of ghosts comes from the idea
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: that we persist well beyond our living vessels, our physical vessels, right,
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: And this can arise from two core features of human psychology.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: One is that we really struggle with concepts that transcend
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: the scope of our lifespan. That is to say, the
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: concept of being gone forever or really any way anything
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: like that. Are any numbers specifically like something like that,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: any numbers that are outside of quantities that we could
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: reasonably encounter and count in our lifetime, we cannot comprehend.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: It's nearly impossible. Infinity is too large, Yeah, to wrap
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: our heads around the fact that the universe keeps expanding,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: and the size of celestial bodies it's too much. We
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: can't handle it. So yeah, all of the time, the
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: stretches into eternity before and after our existence is entirely mystifying,
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: if not terrifying. So one just vast miscomprehension of the
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: infinite world around us, exactly.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, We just we struggle to comprehend concepts such as forever, yeah,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: and indefinite and stuff like that. It seems like we can,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: we say it, we know what it means. But to
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: try and put yourself in a position of having experienced
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: an eternity of time, we don't know how to do it,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: because no one ever has and no one ever will.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: The other feature of human psychology that sort of enables
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: this idea of ghosts is that our language really enables
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: us to ascribe conceptual orientation to time that is not
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: right here, right now. And we've talked about this a
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: lot on this podcast. And what I mean by this
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: is that we can behave with respect to things that
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: have not happened yet and may not happen for a
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: long time or ever inside of our lifetime, and we
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: can behave with respect to things that happened way in
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: the past. I could learn something from a king of
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: you know, the sixteenth century. I could try and predict
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: or try and behave with respect to an outcome that
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: might not be for two hundred years from now by
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: you know, doing things like leaving some legacy behind or something,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: because I'm trying to have an enduring, lasting thing, if
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: that was something I was trying to do, which I'm not,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: but just to say that, like we we can more
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: or less orient to time that is outside of where
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: we currently are. And we really struggle with the concepts
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: of forever and eternity and also oblivion as well.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah ooh no, thanks oblivion. Right. With these two ingredients,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: we start thinking about the fact that our lives will
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: come to an end and are unable to fathom nothingness
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: forever when all we have ever known is something in
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: a finite amount of time. So we have such a
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: small window of existence that we can comprehend, right right.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Add to this the fact that we can behave with
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: respect to the memory of people and animals after they
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: have passed, and it is quite easy to superimpose a
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: system of imagining that life persists after death in some
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: form or some fashion.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: But we don't take ghosts as a given many, many,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: many people no longer believe in the idea of ghosts
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: in sort of contemporary times. There is, of course no
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: evidence ever in the history of humans that there have
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: ever been ghosts, so it makes sense that we'd eventually
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: shed this mysticism over time. But what do we know
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: about the psychology around the beliefs in ghosts? And we
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: will dig sort of into that psychology, but we need
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: to do a quick, probably not quick, probably long tirade
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: sidebar about why ghosts don't actually exist, just to make
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: sure we're really clear on the context before we get
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: into the psychology piece.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the next section we're going to talk about
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: is this idea of why ghosts, why ghosts do not exist,
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: So we don't really need to spend a lot of
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: time on this or dwell on it. Ghosts aren't real,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: and we're going to unpack this in lots of ways.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Let's start with first the idea of the physical part
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: of this, right, One argument is that our bodies contain energy.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: We move around, we do things, we exist, and we
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: contain energy. When we die, where does that energy go?
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: It floats around haunting people, of course, and important not
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: only just haunting people, but haunting people in the clothes
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: you die in. So you've got to make sure that
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: you dress well all the time. But you're going to
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: be stuck in crocs for eternity, so which you know,
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: I guess if you want to be comfortable, that's fine,
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: no judgment there. So it doesn't float around. But first,
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: a lot of that energy is essentially the mechanisms of
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: our biology that convert resources into potential for moving our
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: muscles and processing sensory information. So like our energy is
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: used to make us live essentially.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we convert matter into energy. That's the food
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: that we eat, the air that we breathe, like there,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the sunlight that we receive. We take in various energy inputs,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: mostly via food. We convert that into energy. We use
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: that energy to move around, to do things around in
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: the world around us. Okay, so when we do that,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: a byproduct of that energy is heat. So we're not
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: necessarily manufacturing heat in a way, we kind of are,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: but that is a byproduct that happens as the energy
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: is being manufactured in our living bodies. But when we die,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: that production stops, and so because the production stops, the
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: heat essentially dissipates that's where some of the energy that
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: was in our body where it goes because it is
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: no longer generating heat, and what production there was dissipates
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: because we're not continuing to feed the furnace, if you will,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and then our.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Lifeless bodies become cold.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Actually they become room temperature, but compared to what a
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: human normally feels like, it feels cold. Sure, Now some
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: of the energy does remain, but that's energy that's largely
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: largely holding our bodies together.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: The energy is stored in all materials in the entire
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: world and the entire universe that have mass by holding
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: those materials together. And this is why when we break
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: or burn materials, that energy that is holding them together
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: is then converted into heat again and escapes out into
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: the ambient air. When I burn a piece of wood,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: what is happening is there is a chemical reaction essentially
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: that is breaking the bonds that hold that wood together
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: and converting it into particles that are small, and they
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: sort of dissipate as heat, and some of them will
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: remain in very small little chunks we call ash that
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: are so light that they'll float around and we'll further
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: break down over time, and the energy then gets converted
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: into other things, like when it passes into the soil.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: What it doesn't ever do when energy is converted from
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: one form into another, particularly heat, is it does not
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: coalesce into a sentient entity. That would not make any sense.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Like it's like when you release gas, any kind of
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: gas into a room. Let's just say a fart because
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: it's fun. Yeah, if you fart into a room, it
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: doesn't usually form a solid mass that can then move
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: around and do things. It will spread out to fill
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: all the available air. And heat's going to do about
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the same thing. Of course, it's subject to air currents
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: that are in the room, but it's mostly going to
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: just spread out. It'll get absorbed by some things, it'll
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: probably move through some areas where there are currents, but
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: it's just going to sort of dissipate into the environment
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: in which it finds itself.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: I do also, I think it's fun to think of
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: a fart as a butt ghost. But sure, you know
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: that's I'm because we're both mature adults. I think that's
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: it that we're both doctors and but ghost is very
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: funny to think about. Yeah, when you said tiny bits
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: of ash earlier, I thought you were gonna say tiny
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: bits of ads.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, So as we were talking about we're sort of
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: unpacking the fact that, like one hypothesis here is that
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: our bodies have energy. When we die, the energy coalesces
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: into a ghost thing. I guess most of it's still
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: holding our body together. Some of it just dissipates as heat.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: But whatever, Let's pretend that we could convert for some
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: reason that energy does coalesce into some kind of mass.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Right, So, even if that heat could converge into a
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: sensient entity and to a mass of energy that for
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: some reason wears clothes for some reason looks like us
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: and somehow manages to continue to execute our bodily functions
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: without a body like movement, processing sensory information, speaking stuff
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: like that. Yeah, that mass then wouldn't We'll not be
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: able to do some of the things that ghosts are
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: purported to do. Energy does not easily transfer through other materials,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: such as walls. Energy does not independently move through space
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: on a whim. That's just not how it works, like
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: on a biological physics level, it does not work like this.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So even if the like someone was trying to
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: argue from physics that ghosts could exist, they wouldn't do
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: what ghosts do because of all of these reasons. And again,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: no reason to think that energy would look like it
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: was wearing clothes. Again, unless our clothes also have spirits,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: that's like somehow linked to our spirit. It doesn't make
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: any sense. And then the clothes are like sitting on us.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: It's not like they were ever alive to begin with.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Where is their energy supposed to have gone since it's
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: still holding the fabric together?
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Also, let's consider the fact that seventy to ninety percent
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: of the cells in our body are made of bacteria,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: just in case you didn't already know that fun fact
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: to ruin your day. Yes, we are more of a
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: symbiotic relationship with a micro biome than we are ourselves
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: wild because so much of us as a microbiome. So
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: where do those go when we become ghosts? Because a
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: lot of them just stay in the cells in our body.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Why why would they escape? So would then our ghost
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: be ten percent of us because of the microbiome that's
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: left behind. Like I don't, I don't know, like this
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: does it doesn't make any sense?
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: I do like the idea of a ghost amba though,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: and how somebody would study that, Like they had to
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: like get a microscope that could pick up ghosts like
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: little ghost like this is a.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Little like good things ghost bacteria all over the place.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fun. So let's pretend that ghosts are some
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: spirit materials that is not even energy, just some incorporeal
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: substance that makes up our consciousness. That would rule out
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: things without consciousness, such as vehicles, right, So like if
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: if it is consciousness come to life through energy and
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: like living whatever, then vehicles couldn't be ghosts. But also,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: how does a substance fit into the universe? What's made
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: out of Can it be destroyed? If it's not made
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: or destroyed, then how are new people born? Because you know,
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: matter is a whole thing. New people must get this
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: life force from somewhere, and it seems unlikely that it's
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: recycled ghosts. That would be really horrible. If we were
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: just recycled ghosts, that would be really wild. If there's
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: like a finite number of spirits and we just were
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: recycling them forever, that's wild. Yeah, So it must be made,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: and if it is made, then it must come from somewhere,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: whence does it come? There's no reason to believe that
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: such a thing has, does, or ever will exist. And
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: a lot of times what you'll see is like they'll
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: talk about like protoplasm or ecdoplasm, Like it's like some
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: of the terms that you'll hear paranormal investigators use, which
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: is just basically like a fancy word for slime.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but again, slime is made out of matter. So
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: where did that matter come from? Where does it go,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: what are its components? What chemically is it like doing?
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: And so anyway, again there's also the fact that like
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: this has never actually been documented anywhere ever by anyone
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: in any circumstance. So like, whatever substance there seems to be,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: it's not a substance and not one that we've interacted
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: with in a way that was meaningful. Right, Okay, that's
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: all the sort of physical aspect of this. So it
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to try and lean on physics in
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: any aspect of this, or any sense of reality or
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the natural sciences, because it just doesn't make any sense.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Let's talk to our sort of mental the mental aspect
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: of this, because part of the idea of these ghosts
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: is that they seem to have intention, They seem to
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: be doing things in some capacity, which means that they're
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: interacting with things in some capacity. Now, let's start with
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: the fact that our minds what our mind is. That's
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: essentially the name we give to the activity of our
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: brain that allows us to form a cohesive narrative picture
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: about our experiences. That's pretty much it, right. Without a brain,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: there is no mind. You kill the brain, you kill
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: the mind. The mind is the activity of the brain.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: It's not something separate from that. That's really important. It
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: is that it is the activity of the brain if
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the brain stops working. The idea here is that ghosts
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: somehow have mental functions of the brain that carry on.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: And let's go back to the fact that again we
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: interact with the visual aspects of life because light enters
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: our eyeballs stimulates the nerves on the back of our
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: retinos that connect to the neurons in our brains.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: How does one do that without an eyeball.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Part of the nature of the eyeball is the fact
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: that it is actually a dark place with one little
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: aperture for light to get through. So if you had
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: a transparent or translucent eyeball. Light would just pass right
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: through it. It couldn't even stimulate the nerves, supposing they somehow
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: managed to exist. So vision ghosts seem to be something
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: that they would have to lack. When sounds happen, that's
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: just vibrations in the air that essentially move our ear
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: drum and bones behind our ear drum, and our inner
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: ear stimulates fluid and neurons, which again connects to the
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: neurons in our brain. How would that work if we
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: don't have matter, which those air follicles can be stimulated
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: or can stimulate, so that it could then be interpreted
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: as sound. Like sound doesn't exist to a brain that
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: doesn't exist, it exists to us because we have brains.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: And of course, if we weren't here, like air could
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: still vibrate and it would still technically be sound, but
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: we would not be perceiving it as such. So how
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: does it work if we don't have matter that we
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: could interact with the world. Perhaps ghosts are just floating
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: around completely imperceptible to anything that's going on around them
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: because they don't have mass, They can't feel touch, because
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: they don't have any sensory organs or connected to a brain,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: so they can't perceive sites or sounds or images or
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: temperature or anything like that. So like, if there is one, like,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: what would the mechanism be by which the mind would
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: transfer to lack of When the mind is just the
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: activity of that material, it doesn't make any sense.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Right exactly. Now, another question that comes up is can
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: ghosts die? Which you know you might be going, well,
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: that's redundant, Shane, I would think so, I mean, I
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: think it's a good question. Right. They aren't alive, so
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: it seems that they couldn't die. But apparently they come
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: into existence, as some people believe. And we have yet
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: to discover anything that comes into existence that doesn't die,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: just in our natural world, not humans, not animals, not
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: even stars or galaxies. Everything that comes to be ceases
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: to be at some point in time.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, exactly, at some point it stops. It just stops.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: It no longer is so if ghosts don't die, then
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: there is an implication here, which is what rule would
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: ghosthood serve in the evolution or nature? Just more broadly, like,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: this wouldn't further the existence of a species, It wouldn't
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: aid in the tendency of the physical world toward entropy,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: It would not meaningfully impact anything in nature at all.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: So what purpose would this have? Why would something like
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: this come to exist in billions of years when our
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: planet has been swallowed by the sun and humans have
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: been gone for a long time because Trump destroyed our species?
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Would there just be billions of ghosts floating around the
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: cosmic ruins that used to be our planet? Why? To
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: what end? Like, what kind of experience is this? If
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: they can die, how how did they come into existence?
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: In the How dies it go from like coming into
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: existence to going out of existence? And where does it
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: go if a ghost can die? So again, it just
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense at all.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: And yeah, and so like you asked, even if they
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: could die, how what would that even mean? And could
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: a ghost turn into a ghost itself? Are there ghosts
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: of ghosts? Are there layers of ghosts? There's a really
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: great short story by Kurt Vonnegut called Thanatosphere, and it's
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: about like the space race and how they're starting to
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: kind of like begin the space race, but they discover
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: that when they get into space, it's full of ghosts.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: And it's like a really great it's a really great story,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: like it's because they start commuting with the dead and
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: all that. So it's a really good but it's like
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: very tongue in cheek. It's like written as like a letter,
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: official government letter being from a doctor going like we
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: shouldn't be doing this.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right, Sure.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: It's pretty good. So bonus recommendation for everybody here. If
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: you like Kerbonnagut, you want to read that short story.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: It's fun, it's a good it's a good halloween read. Nice.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: So we had mentioned that we would have eventually talked
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: about ghost psychology. I feel like we've I mean, there's
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: there's so many reasons that ghosts just don't make any sense,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: like they couldn't possibly exist. That's one of those things
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: where it's like it's so wrong that even if it
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: was right, it would still be wrong, shru of wrong,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: like it's.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Just utter nonsense.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: And we'll circle back around to this a bit in
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: the past, but let's go ahead and fulfill on our
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: promise to actually talk about ghosts as it relates to
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: psychology after unfortunately we haunt you with some Adso okay,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: So we have been justifying why we think that ghosts
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: don't exist or why we have reason to believe that
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: we're so confident in the fact that they don't exist
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: that we could just as reasonably say we know they
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: don't exist, because all the things I know to be
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: true have as much evidence as there is against the
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: existence of ghosts. But let's talk about ghost psychology.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Nevertheless, so some polls report that anywhere from forty to
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: sixty percent of Americans believe in ghosts.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not shocked, you're not, but that seems hot to me.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: That's why I'm not shocked, because if you watch any
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: politics right now, then you then you're like, it's a
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: lot of people who believe in ghosts. Now, the sixty
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: percent number comes from data aggregating in twenty twenty four,
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: so we may be on an increase.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the majority of the polls that I found said
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: forty one percent. I saw that number over and over
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: and over again. But then I saw this twenty twenty
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: four study that says sixty percent, and I'm like that,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: what is there a sample bias problem here or what's
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: going on?
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Wild?
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Maybe they just did that last poll just in Florida
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: where they've burned all the books and people don't know
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: things anymore.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: That's probably exactly where they got that if.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: You're from all right, Well, in other countries people also
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: believe in ghosts. In twenty seventeen, a poll found that
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: thirty three percent of British citizens believe in ghosts, although
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: they also reported that another twenty one percent said that
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: they weren't sure. So if saying maybe ghosts exist is
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: on the level of ghosts exist, then they're closer to
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: fifty four percent, but maybe it's somewhere close to that
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: forty percent. So it's not terribly different really from what
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: the United States is.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Looking like, you would think that if ghosts existed, with
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: the long history of Britain and the Isles, you would
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: imagine that there would be a lot more ghosts, right,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Like you would believe it, Like you would think that
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: there'd be so many more sightings there just because the
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: amount of people that have died there, especially folks that
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: died in the bear baiting arenas, like, like they would
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: be haunting chic expery in plays that.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they would outnumber people, I think.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: And they would be in the crowd going this is unbearable.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: They might be saying because they were Oh, I would
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: like that too, would I would support that. I do
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: like negative critic ghosts. Those are great ghosts. So there
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: was also a study that showed the only seven percent
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: of Dutch the Dutch people reported believing in ghosts, So
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: there's that too.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Now, there was also sort of some interest A lot
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: of psychologists were trying to understand essentially the characteristics of
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the people who believe in ghosts and sort of unpacking
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: what you might infer from I guess, people who report
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: believing in ghosts. So there was this twenty twenty two
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: study by Dean and colleagues and they reviewed seventy one
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: psychological studies of paranormal beliefs. Oh and that covered about
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: forty years of studies involving almost twenty one thousand participants,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: And they report several features of people with paranormal beliefs
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: sort of generally so this is not necessarily isolated to ghosts,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: but paranormal beliefs, which it could include ghosts, right, And
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: so one of the things they found is that people
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: with stronger beliefs in paranormal ideas also tend to score
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: higher on things like extraversion, so they tend to be
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: a little bit more on the social side. But they
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: also tended to score higher on neuroticism.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Interesting, so education is negatively correlated with lower belief in
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: paranormal in general, but depends on the field. So people
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: in the natural sciences have the lowest rates of belief,
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: while theology, arts, and education were more likely to believe
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: in supernatural concepts.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: I think that I actually wrote that wrong too, because
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: it would be negatively correlated with beliefs, not lower beliefs,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: because that would impulse the correlation. Yeah, yeah, but which
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. Essentially, people who are more
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: educated less likely to believe in ghosts, particularly when they're
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: in the natural sciences. People who are more educated but
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: not in the natural sciences my be more inclined to
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: believe in ghosts than people who are in the unnatural sciences,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: but maybe less so than people who have less education
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: more generally, right, if that makes sense.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: That makes very make sense.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Now, there were some studies that found that, like, you
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: could reliably associate belief in ghosts with one gender more
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: than another, but they're really mixed. They're inconsistent in how
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: they correlate with belief in ghosts. So it seems like
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: it's probably split fairly fifty to fifty age is another
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: one where it was kind of inconsistent and kind of mixed,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: but it did tend to skew a bit that people
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: who were younger were more likely to believe in ghosts
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: than people who were older and who would arguably be
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: hanging out with more ghosts. But you know, it's the
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: young people are a bit easier to persuade of supernatural things.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I think that makes sense.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: This is probably I don't think anybody here listening is
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: going to be surprised by this, But I also think
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: it's important to say out loud because need to know.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: People who believe in conspiracies are correlated with lower educational attainment,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: reduced analytics thinking, a tendency toward confirmation in hindsight bias,
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: increased illusory pattern perception, and are more likely to believe
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: in ghosts. So if you know somebody who's a conspiracy theorist,
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: they are very, very very likely to believe in ghosts
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Yes, they actually did. If there's anything positive they have
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: going for them, which we hope so because their lives
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: are bleak by yes there's anything positive going on, some
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: of the research suggests they might have slightly better memories
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: than average that they score a little higher on like
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: those aspects of some of these psychological tests. But they're right,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: they're pretty gullible. They tend to kind of believe in
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: anything that is not what's right in front of their nose. Sure,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: the opposite of how most of us are when we
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: tend to believe things that are right in front of
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: our notes, right, right. So there were some neurologists who
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: are interested in learning more about sort of ghost perception
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: and and ghost beliefs in that sort of thing, and
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: so in a twenty fourteen study, these neurologists put participants
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: in a brain scanner and they showed them videos of
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: just sort of simple actions with some basic shapes. I
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: kind of got the impression the shapes or maybe a
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: little ambiguous, a little blurry, as if they were maybe
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: watching them. Yeah, it's a little ghosty. And essentially what
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: they sort of asked them about the movements, and people
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: who are more inclined toward paranormal beliefs were much more
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: likely to assign intention and motivation to the shapes and
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: had greater activation in the parts of their brain believed
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: to be involved in theory of mind, which is to
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: say they were sort of interpreting this to mean that
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: they were the theory of mind aspect meant that they
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: were looking at those shapes and interpreting them as the
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: behavior of others, trying to sort of predict their behavior,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: understand their behavior. And so they specifically some of them
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: even noted that it looked like the shapes were playing tag.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: It was just random movements. It was literally random movements.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: They ascribed meaning and motivation to those movements. If they
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: were already more likely to believe in sort of paranormal things. Sure,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: those same people were also more likely to see like,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: quote unquote hidden faces in mundane photos that didn't actually
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: contain hidden faces. So they'd show them a picture and
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: they'd be like, oh, I see the face, and like,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: there's not actually a face there. But these people are
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: sort of they're inclined toward patterns seeking. They're trying to
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: find something right, and us humans are very good at
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: finding faces and pretty much anything. There's a lot of
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: research on that. So you could look at anything really
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: and find a face somewhere. Matter of fact, I encourage
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: you to try it right now, assuming you're not driving,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: But if you can, like look around. See if you
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: can find a face and something around you, I'd be
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: willing to bet that you can do it. And these
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: people were more likely to do that, like basically as
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: a snap judgment without necessarily anything to orient to. There.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: It's really upsetting that you just asked everybody to do that,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: and even I did it. I started looking around my
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: because I'm in a hotel room right now. I start
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: looking around, it's like and then I found one. I
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: was like, Oh, there it is. It's my my air
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: pod case.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: So the face in the hotel room.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: So scary, and I'm in Canada, so who knows what
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: kind of scary is up here? So ghosts cold ghosts,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: So everybody has a winner jacket on. Every ghost does
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: at least. So in general, pearanormal believers tend to lack
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: what research is described as cognitive inhibition, which is the
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: ability to weed out the knee jerk reactive conspiratorial thoughts
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: that we might have and instead critically think about events.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: We talked about cognitive miserliness as well, right in the
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: last episode, and it's kind of in the same world, right.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's basically the same idea, the same thing.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they think about their dad, and then their
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: dad calls a minute later, and instead of recognizing that
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: this is a coincidence, they start imagining the hidden forces
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: that compelled this mythical connection. It's that old saying where
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: people are like, are your ears burning? Somebody's talking about you.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: It's like, or maybe you have an infection, as you
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: should get that looked at.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, exactly, yeah, exactly. That it's that they see
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: coincidence as causal, like there are coincidences in the world.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: If there weren't, I would be inclined toward paranormal beliefs
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: because it does not make sense statistically that coincidences would
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: not happen. But coinincidences do happen because we live in
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: a normal, deterministic, regular universe that doesn't do fantastical mythical things,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: sad as that may be. And so for those of
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: us when something like that happens, we sort of shrug
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: it off as oh, that's kind of a funny coincidence.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Oh well, hoham, go about my day. Sure.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: But then there are those people who are like, hold on,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: stop everything, something coincidental just happened. A gnome did it,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: And so they start looking synchronicities. Yeah, they start looking
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: for the cause and ascribing meaning to it, like it
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: couldn't possibly have been random chance, it had to have
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: been God, it couldn't possibly have been a coincidence. It
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: had to have been a ghost, like that's where their
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: mind ghosts. And some of us might even have that
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: initial thought like that was really strange a ghost. What
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: I wonder if that was a ghost? And then we
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: stop ourselves and go, no, that's silly, that's really not
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: how things work. And then we discover often the reason
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: for what happened, and that's the inhibition piece, is that
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: we sort of catch ourselves when we start to delve
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: into the nonsense loop.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Right, But a lot of these people.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Who lack that inhibition, they don't They just follow it
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole as far as they can.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Right. Absolutely.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Now, I think we have been objective in how we
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: have relayed the information of research here in this part
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: of the discussion so far.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's also worth pointing out that, like,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: it does sound like we're being very harsh on ghost beliefs,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: and we kind of are. So let's also turn to
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: the fact that researchers have also pointed out that people
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: who do have belief in the paranormal do have an
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: advantage that can be positively influenced by their beliefs, which
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: is that their gollibility can be used as an effect tool.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: For example, they will actually perform better if they are
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: carrying something they believe to be a lucky charm. If
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: they actually believe that it will bring them luck, they
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: will do better as very much like on the on
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: the Harry Potter movie, I forget which one it is,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: but Harry Potter gives Ron the sort of the magical
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: stuff that is supposed to bring luck, the liquid luck.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Yes he didn't actually give it to him, but but
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: he believed that he had gotten it, so then he
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: went out and performed super well. And like that is
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: in effect that can happen from people who are inclined
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: to believe such things. If you believe that there is
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: real luck imbued in this mundane object, you might actually
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: manifest the luck in your real life, or you might
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: at the very least buying the silver lining and things
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: that are going on around you. You say look at
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: that and be like, hmm, that doesn't strike me as lucky,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: but I have my lucky amulet here. I bet this
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: happened for a good reason, and then they sort of
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: go about their day in the sort of pause of light,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: so there can be this sort of quote unquote advantage
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: of delusion.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: I also feel like the word amulet is an underused word.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Fair.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah it's a good, good word. Yeah, it's a really
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: good word. The last little section here that we want
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: to kind of talk about is this idea of why
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: why does this happen? Why ghosts? And that's really the
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: question we're trying to answer. And there is a really
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: fascinating thing going on here. So there's something called haunted
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: person syndrome or HPS, and this is when someone has
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: recurring reports of paranormal experiences. These tend to run in families,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: but platonically, not genetically, so it's not passed down like
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: along bloodlines. It's like a shared feature of like group
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: think almost, and that is kind of like the idea
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: is that people are more likely to believe in paranormal
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: if they're families believe in paranormal, So like if they're group,
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: they're communities believe in paranormal activities, then you're going to
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: have more more a higher rate of paranormal belief in
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: that area.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Community is a good way to put it, rather than family,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: because yeah, it's if they grew up in Sale apart
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: from their family, If they grew up in Sale, if
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: they if they grew up apart from their family in
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: a community that did not endorse those beliefs, then they're
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: not as likely to believe in them. But they are
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: likely to believe in them if they're in a community,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: including their family who does, which makes a lot of sense.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: So there is a shared cultural through line, if you will,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: where it is passed down to subsequent generations as long
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: as those can remain somewhat contained or at least the
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: contact among them remains intact for a long time. Sure,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: So anyway, haunted person syndrome is a thing. Okay, we
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: talked about this with cryptids, but ghosts and other aspects
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: of human bias, they exist in this zone of ambiguity
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: in human sensation, which is the it's the senses that
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: we like get just on the peripheral of what we're
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: able to actually experience. A touch, a movement out of
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: the corner of our eye, a sound we're not totally
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: sure that we heard. It's those like levels of ambiguity.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Our senses are pretty good for what they are. Some
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: animals are better at many of them than we are,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: but at least for what they are, our senses are
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: pretty good. But they can't detect everything. We wouldn't be
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: able to survive if they did. They're sort of limited
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: in what we can detect. What we can see here, smell, taste,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: and feel is somewhat limited. Nevertheless, they're fairly decent. But
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: that means that some things will just barely be on
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: the threshold of stimulating what we're really not able to
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: inter meaningfully interpret what that thing was. And that's the
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: sort of zone of ambiguity where things sort of exist,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: and it is a way when those things happen. Ghosts
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: can sort of be a way for us to put
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: patterns and meanings onto things when we couldn't easily slot
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: them into the category of known sensations. Right, So I
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: hear something that I didn't quite I couldn't quite figure
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: out what it was.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: It's easy to go ambiguous.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Thing I think I heard could be a ghost, It
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: could be something else, but it could be a ghost.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: And like, because if I hear something that's like really
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: clear like I turn on my coffee grinder, I hear
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: the coffee grinder, I'm not thinking, hm, I wonder if
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: that's a ghost making that noise at leastart over not
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: because like I'm there, I'm very clearly interacting with the
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: source of stimulation. But if it comes from somewhere else,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: I'm like sort of just barely picking up on it.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: That is the I can't necessarily put it in the
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: bucket of things. I know what they are, right, and
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: so that makes it easier to superimpose meaning on top
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: of it when I'm unclear. The sort of sequence goes
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: like this. We hear a sound, we're not totally sure
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: what that sound is. We assign agency to that sound
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: as we sort of assume it must have been caused
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: by something. Then we try and fill in the gaps
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: by presuming what could have been the cause. And there's
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: I sort of found a fun story I was looking up.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: This is by someone who reportedly does not even ghosts,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: but for some reason, they were out in a cabin
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: by themselves, sort of in a remote area, maybe camping
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: or something adjacent to camping, Because to me, camping is
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: always an a tent and a sleeping bag, right, But
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: they're out in the woods sort of remote, and they
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: hear this thump in the middle of the night and
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: it scared them. They didn't know what it was. And
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: they heard another thump a little bit a little while later,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: and I think they even said they woke up, and
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: then they were outside the next morning and they heard
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: that thump again and they went to go try and
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: investigate what it was. And then they found that there
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: was an apple tree nearby and the apples.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: Were landing on the ground.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: They they show them to blew them down and it
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: fell into a thump and they're like, that was the
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: exact sound that I heard. But in the middle of
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: the night, we don't know what that sound is. And
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: so the thought we have is something moved and made
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: a thump sound, a monster, a person, a ghost, whatever
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: and made a thumb sound. But the reality was an
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: apple dropped, because apples drop, that's a thing that they do.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: Newton would have shown up in this episode, you.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Know, should a billboard of that at the top be like,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: what does Newton have in common with ghosts?
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: And here we are my favorite state extreme stress that
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: absolutely you know, can lead to some things that might
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: be ghost related. So extreme stress chaotic experiences can result
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: in hallucinations or jumping to supernatural explanations because basically, people
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: are trying to make sense of a chaotic world of
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: things that don't make sense of things that have to
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: have a reason, right. It's kind of like when God
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: is behind the storm that just leveled the city, right,
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: they go, there has to be a reason. It can't
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: just be as simple as this storm did this thing, right,
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: And so there is a little bit of like kind
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: of magical thinking that goes along with this too, that
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: like people just kind of wish that there was more
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: of a reason for behind kind of the chaos that
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: is the world around us.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly why did this happen to me? There must
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: be something out there that has it out for me.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: There must be some entity who can control this, who
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: is targeting me for some reason or another, for good
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: or for ill. And as you said, like we're trying
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: to understand why is this happening? Why is this happening
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: to me? And an easy thing we can turn to
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: is supernatural things that don't follow the rules, because it
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have happened to me because I'm a good person.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: And it did, so something supernatural is breaking the rules
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: to target me specifically. And even when it's not exactly
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: that kind of linear thought, I think you can sort
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: of see the pattern I'm getting at by talking about
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: the idea of I need to assign agency to a
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: thing that is turned my life upside down?
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: What is this?
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Why is this happening to me? And the reality is
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: that things happen and it's hard to predict when and
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: why and how they happen, right, And that's essentially why
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: we have ads. Right, So we're sort of wrapping up
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: here our overall discussion a lot of what I found
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: and looking at the sort of psychology of this here
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: is it is a lot of this. It's the sort
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: of motivated reasoning people trying to make sense out of
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: chaos going on. But there's also some like other things
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: that people turn to where you'll see you'll hear the
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: yeah butts when people come out of the woodwork and say, okay, yeah,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: sure that all makes sense. But what about people who
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: like have out of body experiences. They die, or they
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: take some drug, or they are unconscious for a minute
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: and they report going out of their body, And the
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: reality is like it is kind of well documented at
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: this point. I mean kind of and well documented as
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: sort of an oxymoron. There is some actual evidence to
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: show that, like, neurologically, we are still active in these
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: moments where we're reporting out of body experiences, and we
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: can almost pinpoint now what parts of the brain are
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: likely to be active when we then later report and
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: out of body experience, like we're getting there, we're getting there,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: and so we're clear that like that is a phenomenon
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: that someone can have, but importantly, are we actually leaving
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: our body? And some people, I think put together a
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: pretty clever experiment. There was reportings of people who would
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: like die, leave their body. They would float up above
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: the room and then eventually we'd come back, and so
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: they have this sort of bird's eye view of the
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: room that they're in, and like, how are they doing
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: that if they're not actually leaving their body? And so
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: these experimenters are like, Okay, well, let's put some envelopes
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: or some like letters on top of the shelves in
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: this room where we can't see them. Matter of fact,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: you might not even know that they're there, and they'll
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: have some large font messages written on them. And we'll
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: ask you to just tell us what did we write
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: on that envelope? And then when that person's return to
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: their body, assuming they actually left their body, they'd be
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: able to say what was on those things that was
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: clearly visible when they were floating out and above the room.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: R and so people floated out of their bodies, out
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: out into space looking down on the room couldn't tell
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: you what was on the envelopes. So again there's like
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: very much like a dream. Like in a dream, you
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: can see yourself in third person. In a dream, things
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: can happen in a sort of what weird way where
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: you were seeing a twisted or some version of a
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: world that you once knew or that you do know
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: that all bets are off. Really, a dream can be anything.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: And it seems like that people have this experience where
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: they're like have enough information to reconstruct this sort of
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: simulated reality, but they're not actually leaving their bodies.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: They're just not right.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: And again the researchers bored this out and they were like,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: this is a pretty simple experiment we can do. If
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: you're leaving the body you'd be you should be able
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: to get information that you wouldn't otherwise have that seems
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: pretty straightforward. Yeah, and so like we'll just measure that
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: and lo and behold, no one could do.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: It right, And that makes perfect sense. And you know,
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: another reason that ghosts tend to persist is, you know,
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: we kind of about this on the Crypti episode, where
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: you know, some people have oral traditions that involve spirits
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: and spiritualism and all that stuff. But really, truthfully, when
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: we get to the simple nuts and bolts of it,
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: is ghost stories are kind of fun. Yeah, it's kind
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: of fun exploring the unknown or the unexplainable and leaving
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: people with a sense of curiosity and thought and even
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: maybe a little bit of a thrill around you know,
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: this place is haunted, so like we're going in here
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: and we may see something, and kind of like setting
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: these really interesting expectations around certain experiences, certain stories, certain
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: times of year, you know, and I think, you know,
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: at the end of the day, just ghost stories are
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: generally a very fun thing.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we have been deconstructing the idea of ghosts and
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: the fact that they aren't even plausible, but I wouldn't
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: want ghost stories to stop happening.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: They're really fun.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: They're entertaining, Like I enjoy the video games and the
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: movies and the books and the and the music. Like,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: please keep talking about ghosts. Let's keep the mythology of
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: it a lot. We just don't need to pretend that
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: they're real. But I really enjoy to the stories about them.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: So like, I'm not at all trying to take this away.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: I don't hate ghosts. I don't hate people who believe
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: in ghosts, but they're just not real. And nevertheless, we
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: find so much joy in the sort of tradition that
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: comes from these ideas, and I love the mythology to
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: sort of persist in a creative endeavor sort of way.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: So right, I just want to sort of leave it
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: with that, you know, Yeah, I it's a good place
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: to leave it. Okay, great, So anyway, that's why people
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: believe in ghosts, that's what ghosts are. That's why ghosts aren't.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: And now I warned Shane that I was gonna I
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: was gonna throw him a curve ball, and that is
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: we're gonna play a real quick game here. Love games,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: and you can sort of see the game here. We're
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: gonna play the game where we're gonna try and list movies,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: movies not TV shows that have ghosts or ghosts in
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: the title of the movie, and were gonna go back
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: and forth until one person can't answer, or we repeat
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: someone else's answer and see how many we can get.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: So I did not look any up because I wanted this.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: You know, I obviously wrote the game in here, so
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: I knew that it was happening. But I haven't really
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: been trying to conjure any So we'll see how we do.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: We might not get very far, but I'm curious. So Shane,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: you you get Do you want me to start or
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: do you want to start?
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: You can start, okay, since you came with a game, Yeah,
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: you can start, all right?
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Ghost I knew it. Ghostbusters, ghost Writer, ghost Ship. We
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: have a ghost ghost in the shell, the Goat. Uh,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: the Ghostbusters froze an Empire? Does that count?
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: Ghostbusters After Life?
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Ghostbusters two?
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: Oh? Man, let's see ghost Dad.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Nice? Oh no, I might be out hold on. People
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: are yelling at their speakers right now. Yeah, with a
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: lot of many, many signs questions. I know, there's so many,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: and I'm just not even think of it. Yeah, you
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: know it's funny. Did you say ghost ship already.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I did say ghost Ship.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, damn it, all right, I lose.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: That was fun. I you know, I have I was
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: racking my brain and I literally couldnot think of like
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: any other ghost movies. And uh and it's unfortunate that
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: ghost Dad is the thing that won it for me.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Oh there was a movie called ghost Story. I didn't
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: even think about that. Oh, man, that would have been easy.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: Come on, yeah, let's see.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: Let's see what else is out there, movies with ghosts
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: in the title, because I feel like there's so many
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: ghostosts on the Machine.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: I thought about that, but I was then I was like, no,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of ghost in the Shell. But ghost of
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: the Machine is a real word, so I okay.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well yeah, I was thinking too, like I think
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: ghost in the Machine. Yeah, there's ghosted, Ghost in the Shell,
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: Ghost the Ghost in the Darkness, Blackbeard's Ghost. Yeah, okay,
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: there's so many. Let's see Chronicles of the Ghostly.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: Tide, ghost Writer, Spirit of Vengeance.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: Uh huh, ghost Light made her in the Ghost Light.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: Ah, that'd have been good too. Ghost World, Oh my god,
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: Ghost World is great too.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: I love Mission Impossible. The Ghost train the ghost writer.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, yeah, there's a lot the breakers, which is
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: hopefully we assuage somebody did not see that one. Nope, no, no, no,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: all right, well that was fun anyway talking to that
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: list list ghosts ghosts. Yes, yeah, yeah, hopefully people at
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: UH listening were able to play along a little bit
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: and have some fun with that. And if we forgot
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: any more, then you should reach out and tell us.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, let's go ahead and uh
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: and transition to a wrap up here, which we are
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: going to recommend some things, and if you're joining us
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: for the first time, we at the end of every
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: episode make some recommendations. Sometimes they're related to our topic,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: sometimes not. I do think that ours this week are
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: like tangentially related in that they're horror adjacent, so sort
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: of HALLOWEENI if you will. But otherwise our recommendations are
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: just recommendations, and I think this week's just happens to
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: kind of be a coincidence, a real coincidence, not a
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: ghost inspired coincidence.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Before we get to all of that, I need to
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: read the credits, which is to say, if you like
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: what you heard today, and you like to support us,
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: you can join us on Patreon. There you'll get access
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: to ad free episodes, bonus episodes, all this behind the
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: scenes content and for the wonderful people over there, I
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: will read your name for being one of our faithful, loyal,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: awesome supporters, which includes Mike, m Meghan, Mike T, Justin Kim, Joshua, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian, Ashley, Kiara,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: and Michelle. Thank you all so much. We so appreciate
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: you sticking with us all this time. You are the best.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: Of course, writing and fact checking from Shane myself, and
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: Katie is joining the team as a writer, so happy
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: to have her aboard. Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: and the person making all of the audio sound like
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: good stuff is Justin Greenhouse, who is amazing. Thank you Justin.
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: Yep, we love y'all.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: Is there anything that I forgot or anything you'd like
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: to add before we transition to recommendations?
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: Nope, I feel good.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: All right, you can kick off our recommendations this week. Recommendations.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: All right, So I'm going to recommend a video game
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: and it is Mortal Kombat, but it's the newest Mortal
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: Kombat motl Kombat one and it's the the expansion pack
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: called Chaos Rains.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, so the Mortal.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: Kombat one storyline is basically they've reset all the timelines. Okay,
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: and spoiler alert on this for those of you who
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, this game's been out for over a year,
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: so the spoiler alert for anybody who wants to play it.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: The end of the game, the end of the like
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: kind of the game proper, is that you discover that
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: there are multiple timelines that exist simultaneously with multiple Titans,
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: and they're all all the Titans are like the character
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: that kind of governs that tie that timeline, and they're
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: all different versions of like the Mortal Kombat characters. So
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: it ends with a character named Havoc, the Titan Havoc
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: coming in and his whole thing is like he just
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: loves anarchy. And so the Chaos Rains expansion pack is
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: Havo the Titan. Hav It comes in and he's just
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: causing a mess, and so you have to stop him
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: from merging all the timelines into pure anarchy and pure chaos.
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of fun. It's a really quick play
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: at the end of it, but it's a lot of fun,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: and you get bonus characters because they always have expansion
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: packs that have all these characters. You get Irmak, you
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: get Cyrax and Sector, you get Noube Cibot in this
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: expansion pack, and then you get the T one thousand
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: from Terminator to Cool, you get Cony and the Barbarian nice,
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: and you get Ghostface from the screen cool. Wow. Yeah,
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: on top of the fact that you've already got Homelander, Omniman,
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: and Peacemaker as additional characters in it too, right.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: I saw that they had added those some comic book characters.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: It's really very ridiculous.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, very good. And I know that they have this
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: on Switch, and I believe this is also on like
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: PlayStation or is this?
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's better on everything else. It's better on everything
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: else than Switch. It looks better on everything else but Switch.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: But that is why I played on the Switch.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough, all right, Mortal Kombat one Chaos Rains Expansion.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: I'm recommending a movie. It is from I think ten
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: years ago or so. I could be wrong, I don't know,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: but it's called Till Death starring Megan Fox and a
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: bunch of people I'd never heard of before, but she's
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: sort of the main character. Not sort of, she's definitely
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: the main character. And so, without spoiling a lot about this,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: this is a horror movie and I just it. I
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: didn't get the greatest ratings, but I found it really enjoyable.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: Like all the characters' motivations made sense to me. It
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: was one of those where you're often watching thinking like,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: why would you do that? That's so dumb, And I
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: didn't have that moment in this, Like everything they did
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: made sense to me, and sort of sort of like
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: the just the writing felt good and like, I don't know,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: I just thought it was an enjoyable movie. I think
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: that probably some people have a problem with the fact
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: that as it gets to the end, you start to
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: reach the sort of the final, final resolution, and the
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: movie just kind of ends without showing that part. But
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: it's like you also kind of just know what it's
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: gonna be, so it wouldn't add very much, and that
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: also keeps the movie at sort of a tight hour
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: and a half. So it's a it's a quick it's
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: a nice quick one. You can go in and watch.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: It's on Netflix at the time that we are recording this,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: so maybe it'll still be there by the time you
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: go to watch it. But uh yeah, if you this
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: is probably not kid friendly movie. It does deal with suicide,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: so if that's not something you're comfortable watching, then I
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: would sit that one out. But if you're down and
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: interested in looking for horror movies and you have not
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: already watched it, or if you like to watch it
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: again till death, I actually thought was pretty good.
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: No, and I'm adding it to my list because I
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: haven't watched any scary movies this season for some reason.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: So get on that.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: Get on I know, I know, I'm working on.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: If you would like to tell us about ghosts or
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: movies with ghosts in the title, or things about ghosts
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: or movies or video games or anything else, we love
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: hearing from people. You can email us by writing us
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: directly at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com. You can also
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: reach us on the social media platforms after the same
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: string of initials, and we do have some.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: Stuff on YouTube.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: We publish a weekly full length episode every Wednesday, and
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: some short fifteen minutes deep dive what we call minis
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: on Mondays Mini Mondays. I didn't think about that, but
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: that's fun. You can find us there, and if you subscribe,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: then that make sure that we always show up in
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: your feed and you can check out whatever we've got
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: going on that week or that day, as it were.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: And then periodically we will release some nostalgia episodes where
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: we replay an old episode and then add some updated
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: commentary to that discussion, but we only do a few
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: of those a year, like I don't know, maybe seven
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: eight or something like that. Yeah, yeah, and so anyway,
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: those are the thing ways that you can find us.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: But I think I've said all the things. I appreciate
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: you everyone who listened with us today. Thank you or
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: yeah those are words. Thank you for listening, Thank you
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: for recording with me today. Shane, is there anything else
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: you like to add or that I forgot before we
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: say our goodbyes?
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: Nope, but I think that covers it all.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: Right, Boo, this is Abraham and it's Shane. We're out.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: See ya. You've been listening to Why We do what
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: we do. You can learn more about this and other
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: and we hope you have an awesome day.