Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Berenice
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Brought to you by the Reinvented twenty twelve Camri.
- 0:03Speaker 2: It's ready.
- 0:04Speaker 1: Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know? From HowStuffWorks
- 0:09Speaker 1: dot Com?
- 0:23Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Cook. There's
- 0:30Speaker 3: Charles W. Chucker's brand that makes this stuff.
- 0:36Speaker 4: You should know.
- 0:37Speaker 5: I wonder what that sounds like to people who listen
- 0:39Speaker 5: to it at double speed.
- 0:41Speaker 6: You sound like your normal boys.
- 0:43Speaker 4: Right, yeah, you know that. That was my impression of somebody.
- 0:46Speaker 4: I'm gonna guess go with Vincent Price. No, okay, Edgar Oliver.
- 0:50Speaker 4: It was a great Edgar Oliver. Terrible Vincent Price. Edgar Oliver.
- 0:54Speaker 4: He's a storyteller on the moth. Oh really yeah, and
- 0:57Speaker 4: he sounds exactly like that. You got to check stuff out.
- 1:00Speaker 4: He's awesome.
- 1:02Speaker 6: Is he a horror? Is he like?
- 1:03Speaker 4: No?
- 1:03Speaker 6: Any wrong with him?
- 1:05Speaker 4: Well? Yeah, I mean he talks like that. But other
- 1:07Speaker 4: than he's he's an awesome dude. So that was my Oh,
- 1:13Speaker 4: it's pretty good. You go back and listen now you'll
- 1:15Speaker 4: be like, wow. So I was doing an Edgar Oliver
- 1:18Speaker 4: chuck because in t minus like four days. Yeah, it's
- 1:23Speaker 4: gonna be Halloween, one of our favorite days. And mind
- 1:26Speaker 4: blowingly enough. If you're listening to this on Halloween it's today.
- 1:30Speaker 6: Wow.
- 1:31Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that works. And last year we did something unusual,
- 1:36Speaker 4: so this year we're doing it again, which makes it
- 1:38Speaker 4: the usual. But it was popular. People liked it. We
- 1:41Speaker 4: read a great short story last year.
- 1:43Speaker 5: Yeah, people actually called for it again and said, oh,
- 1:45Speaker 5: you're gonna do it this year.
- 1:46Speaker 6: I think some people might not have liked it, but
- 1:48Speaker 6: just skip it then.
- 1:49Speaker 4: Yeah. We were like, does that mean we don't have
- 1:50Speaker 4: to study? Okay, let's do that exactly. Yeah, there's one
- 1:53Speaker 4: in the can that's guaranteed gonna be at least okay. Yes,
- 1:58Speaker 4: So this year, Charles W. Chuck Bryant selected the story
- 2:05Speaker 4: and it is by someone you may or may not
- 2:07Speaker 4: have heard of. He's a somewhat you know, well known
- 2:11Speaker 4: Writer's name is Edgar Allan Poe and he died in Baltimore,
- 2:17Speaker 4: I believe, in the eighteen forties. Sure, here's one of
- 2:22Speaker 4: the great first great American writers of the nineteenth century.
- 2:25Speaker 4: Slash drug addicts, big time drug addict, and I think
- 2:28Speaker 4: that comes through a lot in this. Yeah. But we've
- 2:32Speaker 4: selected a short story. Chuck selected a short story. It's
- 2:35Speaker 4: actually I gave.
- 2:36Speaker 6: You a selection. You made the final choice.
- 2:38Speaker 4: Yeah, but you let me to You're like, which one
- 2:42Speaker 4: of these would you like? And then you basically put
- 2:44Speaker 4: this one in my hand.
- 2:44Speaker 5: No, actually, I was leaning toward the crazy dwarf that
- 2:50Speaker 5: kills the king.
- 2:51Speaker 4: What are we reading this one for? Because this one's creepy? Okay,
- 2:54Speaker 4: all right, I agreed. Well, do you want to tell
- 2:56Speaker 4: them the name of this one?
- 2:58Speaker 5: It's called Barnice and give you a slight setup just
- 3:02Speaker 5: so you know what's going on. There's a woman called
- 3:04Speaker 5: Baronice and a man, uh, and they are cousins and
- 3:09Speaker 5: they're married, and things go a little weird in the story.
- 3:14Speaker 4: Weirder than cousins being married. Yeah.
- 3:16Speaker 5: I don't want to give anything away, but I just
- 3:17Speaker 5: want you know it's it's old English. It's not Old English,
- 3:20Speaker 5: but it's older than it's Old American.
- 3:22Speaker 4: Yeah. So before we lose any more listeners, let's get
- 3:28Speaker 4: to it. You want to cue the spooky music.
- 3:31Speaker 5: Yeah, but we should also point out that at the
- 3:32Speaker 5: end of this episode we have a very special guest.
- 3:35Speaker 4: So let's not say who. If you listen on Tuesday,
- 3:38Speaker 4: you know.
- 3:38Speaker 5: But if you aren't into the reading, just go ahead
- 3:41Speaker 5: and skip forward to the special guest, and you'll get
- 3:43Speaker 5: some delight there.
- 3:44Speaker 4: Right, And if you do that, we apologize in advance.
- 3:47Speaker 4: Yes either way, all right, So now let's cue the
- 3:50Speaker 4: spooky music.
- 4:01Speaker 6: Okay, that's the tone.
- 4:03Speaker 4: Let's dim the lights, okay, and we now present to
- 4:06Speaker 4: you Edgar Allan poe'se Bevernice.
- 4:16Speaker 6: My Josh is a little quote at the beginning in.
- 4:18Speaker 4: Latin and in English.
- 4:20Speaker 5: I'll read the English. My companion said to me, if
- 4:24Speaker 5: I would visit the grave of my friend, I might
- 4:26Speaker 5: somewhat alleviate my.
- 4:27Speaker 4: Worries reasonable advice.
- 4:31Speaker 6: And here we go.
- 4:32Speaker 5: Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform, overreaching
- 4:37Speaker 5: the wide horizon as the rainbow its hues, or as
- 4:40Speaker 5: various as the hues of that arch, as distinct too,
- 4:43Speaker 5: yet as intimately blended, overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow.
- 4:49Speaker 5: How is it that from beauty I have derived a
- 4:52Speaker 5: type of unloveliness, from the covenant of peace, a simile
- 4:55Speaker 5: of sorrow. But as in ethics, evil is a consequence
- 4:59Speaker 5: of good, So in fact, out of joy is sorrow born.
- 5:03Speaker 5: Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today,
- 5:07Speaker 5: or the agonies which have their origin, and the ecstasies
- 5:12Speaker 5: which might have been nice.
- 5:14Speaker 6: It sounded like improper English, but that's how we wrote it.
- 5:17Speaker 4: And it's not just today, it's to day with a
- 5:20Speaker 4: hyphen in between.
- 5:21Speaker 5: My baptismal name is Eugaeus. That of my family I
- 5:25Speaker 5: will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the
- 5:28Speaker 5: land more time honored than my gloomy, gray hereditary halls.
- 5:32Speaker 5: Our line has been called a race of visionaries, and
- 5:35Speaker 5: in many striking particulars in the character of the family mansion,
- 5:39Speaker 5: in the frescoes of the chief saloon, and the tapestries
- 5:42Speaker 5: of the dormitories, and the chiseling of some buttress in
- 5:45Speaker 5: the armory, but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings,
- 5:49Speaker 5: and the fashion of the library chamber, and lastly in
- 5:53Speaker 5: the very peculiar nature of.
- 5:55Speaker 6: The library's contents.
- 5:57Speaker 5: There is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the bloe.
- 6:00Speaker 4: The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber,
- 6:04Speaker 4: and with its volumes, of which latter I will say
- 6:07Speaker 4: no more. Here died my mother here, and I was born.
- 6:11Speaker 4: But it is mere idleness to say that I had
- 6:13Speaker 4: not lived before that. The soul has no previous existence.
- 6:17Speaker 4: You deny it. Let us not argue the matter, convince myself.
- 6:20Speaker 4: I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance
- 6:23Speaker 4: of aerial forms, of spiritual and meaning, eyes of sounds,
- 6:28Speaker 4: musical yet sad, A remembrance which will not be excluded,
- 6:32Speaker 4: a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady, and
- 6:37Speaker 4: like a shadow too in the impossibility of my getting
- 6:40Speaker 4: rid of it, while the sunlight of my reason shall
- 6:42Speaker 4: exist in that chamber. I was born thus, awaking from
- 6:46Speaker 4: the long night of what seemed but was not nonentity,
- 6:50Speaker 4: at once into the very regions of fairyland, into a
- 6:53Speaker 4: palace of imagination, into the wild dominions of monastic thought
- 6:57Speaker 4: and erudition. Singular that I gazed around me with a
- 7:01Speaker 4: startled and ardent eye, that I loitered away my boyhood
- 7:05Speaker 4: and books, and dissipated my youth in reverie. But it
- 7:08Speaker 4: is singular that as the years rolled away and the
- 7:11Speaker 4: noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of
- 7:13Speaker 4: my fathers, it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon
- 7:17Speaker 4: the springs of my life. Wonderful how total an inversion
- 7:20Speaker 4: took place in the character of my commonest thought. The
- 7:23Speaker 4: realities of the world affected me as visions, and as
- 7:26Speaker 4: visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of
- 7:29Speaker 4: dreams became in turn, not the material of my everyday existence,
- 7:33Speaker 4: but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
- 7:38Speaker 5: See he's getting a little caught up in his own
- 7:41Speaker 5: obsession of thoughts.
- 7:42Speaker 4: Right, he's a bookworm. Okay, he's bookish.
- 7:45Speaker 5: So the real world as it doesn't even matter to
- 7:46Speaker 5: him at this point.
- 7:49Speaker 4: That's what he thinks of the real world.
- 7:51Speaker 5: Onward, Bearnice and I were cousins, and we grew up
- 7:54Speaker 5: together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew I ill
- 7:59Speaker 5: of health and buried in gloom. She agile, graceful and
- 8:03Speaker 5: overflowing with energy. Hers the ramble on the hillside, mine
- 8:07Speaker 5: the studies of the cloister. I living within my own heart,
- 8:12Speaker 5: an addicted body and soul to the most intense and
- 8:14Speaker 5: painful meditation. She roaming carelessly through life, with no thought
- 8:18Speaker 5: of the shadows in her path or the silent flight
- 8:22Speaker 5: of the raven winged owers. Berenice, I call upon her name,
- 8:26Speaker 5: Berenice from the gray ruins of memory, A thousand tumultuous
- 8:32Speaker 5: recollections are startled at the sound.
- 8:35Speaker 6: Ah.
- 8:36Speaker 5: Vividly is her image before me now as in the
- 8:38Speaker 5: early days of her light heartedness and joy, Oh gorgeous
- 8:42Speaker 5: yet fantastic beauty, Oh sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim,
- 8:49Speaker 5: oh Naiad among its fountains. And then then all is
- 8:54Speaker 5: mystery and terror, a tale which should not be told. Disease,
- 8:58Speaker 5: a fatal disease, fell.
- 9:00Speaker 6: Like the simoon upon her frame.
- 9:02Speaker 5: And even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of
- 9:05Speaker 5: change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and
- 9:09Speaker 5: her character, and in a manner the most subtle and terrible,
- 9:13Speaker 5: disturbing even the identity of her person Alas the destroyer
- 9:17Speaker 5: came and went.
- 9:18Speaker 6: And the victim where was she?
- 9:20Speaker 5: I knew her not, or knew her no longer as Berenice.
- 9:29Speaker 6: Now she got sick.
- 9:30Speaker 4: When I first read him saying Berenice Nice, I thought
- 9:34Speaker 4: of Kramer going, Pam, Pam, you remember that one?
- 9:39Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, Spernice didn't doing so hot all of
- 9:42Speaker 5: a sudden.
- 9:43Speaker 4: No, it happened like that. Ye. Among the numerous train
- 9:47Speaker 4: of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one, which
- 9:51Speaker 4: affected a revolution of so horrible a kind, and the
- 9:53Speaker 4: moral and physical being of my cousin may be mentioned
- 9:57Speaker 4: as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a
- 10:00Speaker 4: species of epilepsy, not unfrequently terminating in trance itself, trance
- 10:05Speaker 4: very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner
- 10:09Speaker 4: of recovery was in most instances startlingly abrupt. In the meantime,
- 10:14Speaker 4: my own disease, for I have been told that I
- 10:17Speaker 4: should call it by no other appellation. My own disease
- 10:20Speaker 4: then grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac
- 10:24Speaker 4: character of a novel and extraordinary form, hourly and momently
- 10:29Speaker 4: gaining vigor, and at length obtaining over me the most
- 10:32Speaker 4: incomprehensible ascendency. This monomania, if I must so term it,
- 10:37Speaker 4: consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the
- 10:40Speaker 4: mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more
- 10:44Speaker 4: than probable that I am not understood, But I fear
- 10:48Speaker 4: indeed that it is in no matter possible to convey
- 10:51Speaker 4: to the mind of the merely general reader an adequate
- 10:54Speaker 4: idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in
- 10:58Speaker 4: my case, the powers of metaie not to speak, technically
- 11:02Speaker 4: busied and buried themselves in the contemplation of even the
- 11:05Speaker 4: most ordinary objects of the universe.
- 11:09Speaker 5: So now he's becoming obsessive about just things, anything transfixed
- 11:14Speaker 5: on things.
- 11:14Speaker 4: But like he can't even get across how obsessed.
- 11:17Speaker 5: He becomes monomania all right, to muse for long, unwearied hours,
- 11:22Speaker 5: with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the
- 11:25Speaker 5: margin or in the topography of a book. To become
- 11:29Speaker 5: absorbed for the better part of a summer's day, and
- 11:31Speaker 5: a quaint shadow falling a slant upon the tapestry or
- 11:35Speaker 5: upon the door, To lose myself for an entire night,
- 11:38Speaker 5: and watching the steady flame of a lamp or the
- 11:41Speaker 5: embers of a fire, to dream away whole days of
- 11:44Speaker 5: the perfume of a flower. To repeat monotonously some common
- 11:49Speaker 5: word until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased
- 11:53Speaker 5: to convey any idea whatever to the mind.
- 11:57Speaker 6: Everyone does that.
- 11:58Speaker 4: Yeah, it's called day awesome.
- 12:01Speaker 5: To lose all sense of motion or physical existence by
- 12:05Speaker 5: means of absolute bodily quiescence, long and obstinately persevered in
- 12:10Speaker 5: such were a few of the most common and least
- 12:13Speaker 5: pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties,
- 12:17Speaker 5: not indeed altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything
- 12:22Speaker 5: like analysis or explanation.
- 12:24Speaker 4: You did good. That was a tough one. Thanks.
- 12:26Speaker 6: He sounds like an opium head, you know he's like.
- 12:30Speaker 4: And by the way, I'm high as a kite right.
- 12:32Speaker 6: Now, I'm staring at a lamp for two days.
- 12:36Speaker 4: Yet let me not be misapprehended. This due earnest and
- 12:40Speaker 4: morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature,
- 12:43Speaker 4: frivolous must not be confounded in character with that ruminating
- 12:47Speaker 4: propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged him
- 12:51Speaker 4: by persons of ardent imagination. It was not, even as
- 12:55Speaker 4: might be at first supposed, an extreme condition or exaggeration
- 12:58Speaker 4: of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different.
- 13:04Speaker 4: In the one instance, the dreamer or enthusiast, being interested
- 13:07Speaker 4: by an object, usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of
- 13:11Speaker 4: this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions, issuing
- 13:15Speaker 4: therefrom until at the conclusion of a day dream often
- 13:19Speaker 4: replete with luxury, he finds the in sedimentum or first
- 13:24Speaker 4: cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case,
- 13:29Speaker 4: the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming through the
- 13:34Speaker 4: medium of my distempered vision a refracted and unreal importance,
- 13:39Speaker 4: few deductions, if any, were made, and those few perdinaciously
- 13:43Speaker 4: returning in upon the original object as a center. The
- 13:46Speaker 4: meditations were never pleasurable, and at the termination of the reverie,
- 13:50Speaker 4: the first cause, so far from being out of sight,
- 13:53Speaker 4: had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing
- 13:57Speaker 4: feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind,
- 14:01Speaker 4: more particularly exercised, were with me, as I have said before,
- 14:05Speaker 4: the attentive, and are with the daydreamer, the speculative anything thoughts, No,
- 14:14Speaker 4: he's just going on to say it was really serious.
- 14:16Speaker 5: Yeah, they'd like to really describe things back then. Yeah, okay,
- 14:20Speaker 5: my books at this epoch, if they did not actually
- 14:23Speaker 5: serve to irritate the disorder partook, it will be perceived
- 14:27Speaker 5: largely in their imaginative and inconsequential nature of the characteristic
- 14:32Speaker 5: qualities of the disorder itself.
- 14:34Speaker 6: I will remember, among.
- 14:35Speaker 5: Others, the triestas of the noble Italian Colius Secundus curio,
- 14:41Speaker 5: the amplitudine biat de regni de Saint Austin's great work
- 14:47Speaker 5: The City of God and Trillium decarne Christi, in which
- 14:52Speaker 5: the paradoxical sentence mortus sde phileas credibo esquia s sepotus
- 15:02Speaker 5: resurreic exit certum esquia impossibilest occupied my undivided time for
- 15:12Speaker 5: many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation. So he's getting
- 15:15Speaker 5: hung up on these phrases from the books.
- 15:18Speaker 4: Yeah, like I am the Latin.
- 15:21Speaker 5: Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only
- 15:24Speaker 5: by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean
- 15:27Speaker 5: crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephistian, which, steadily resisting the
- 15:32Speaker 5: attacks of human violence and the fiercer fury of the
- 15:36Speaker 5: waters and the kinds, trembled only the touch of the
- 15:39Speaker 5: flower called Asphodel. And although to a careless thinker it
- 15:45Speaker 5: might appear a matter beyond doubt that the alteration produced
- 15:48Speaker 5: by our unhappy malady and the moral condition of Berenice
- 15:52Speaker 5: would afford me many objects for the exercise of that
- 15:55Speaker 5: intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at
- 15:59Speaker 5: some trouble and explaining. Yet such was not in any
- 16:03Speaker 5: degree the case in the lucid intervals of my infirmity.
- 16:07Speaker 5: Her calamity indeed gave me pain, and taking deeply to
- 16:11Speaker 5: the heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life,
- 16:14Speaker 5: I did not fall to ponder frequently and bitterly upon
- 16:17Speaker 5: the wonder working means by which so strange revolution had
- 16:21Speaker 5: been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook
- 16:25Speaker 5: not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such
- 16:29Speaker 5: as would have occurred under similar circumstances to the ordinary
- 16:32Speaker 5: mass of mankind, true to its own character. My disorder
- 16:36Speaker 5: reveled in less important, but more startling changes wrought in
- 16:39Speaker 5: the physical frame of Baronice, and the singular and most
- 16:43Speaker 5: appalling distortion of her personal identity during the brightest days
- 16:47Speaker 5: of her unparalleled beauty. Most surely I had never loved her,
- 16:51Speaker 5: and the strange anomaly of my existence. Feelings with me
- 16:53Speaker 5: had never been of the heart, and my passions always
- 16:57Speaker 5: were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning,
- 17:00Speaker 5: among the trellish shadows of the forest at noonday, and
- 17:03Speaker 5: in the silence of my library at night, she had
- 17:06Speaker 5: flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her not
- 17:10Speaker 5: as a living and breathing Berenice, but as the baronice
- 17:12Speaker 5: of a dream. Not as a being of the earth earthy,
- 17:16Speaker 5: but as the abstraction of such a being, Not as
- 17:19Speaker 5: a thing to admire but to analyze, Not as an
- 17:21Speaker 5: object of love, but as the theme of the most
- 17:24Speaker 5: obtruse although desultory speculation. And now now I shuddered in
- 17:31Speaker 5: her presence, and grew pale at her approach, yet bitterly
- 17:34Speaker 5: lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind
- 17:38Speaker 5: that she had loved me long, and in an evil moment,
- 17:41Speaker 5: I spoke to her of marriage. I'm getting oddly Madonna
- 17:51Speaker 5: esque here with my English.
- 17:54Speaker 4: Yeah, does she speak strangely? Ah?
- 17:56Speaker 6: You know, she married guy Richie.
- 17:57Speaker 5: All of a sudden she started talking like a Madonna.
- 18:00Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right, not like she was from Queen's or.
- 18:01Speaker 4: Yeah, you're not supposed to do that. You got to
- 18:03Speaker 4: remember who you are, you know, I agreed, and at
- 18:07Speaker 4: length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon
- 18:10Speaker 4: an afternoon in the winter of the year, one of
- 18:13Speaker 4: those unseasonably warm, calm and misty days, which are the
- 18:16Speaker 4: nurse of the beautiful halcyon. I sat and sat as
- 18:20Speaker 4: I thought, alone in the inner apartment of my library,
- 18:24Speaker 4: but uplifting my eyes, I saw the baronice stood before me.
- 18:28Speaker 4: Was it my own excited imagination, or the misty influence
- 18:31Speaker 4: of the atmosphere, or the uncertain twilight of the chamber,
- 18:34Speaker 4: or the gray draperies which fell around her figure that
- 18:37Speaker 4: caused in it so vacillating an indistinct an outline.
- 18:41Speaker 6: Or was it all the opium? And as he likes
- 18:44Speaker 6: to have.
- 18:45Speaker 4: A lot of different ideas to choose from, sure, I
- 18:48Speaker 4: could not tell. She spoke no word, I not for
- 18:52Speaker 4: worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill
- 18:55Speaker 4: ran through my frame, A sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me,
- 18:59Speaker 4: assuming curiosity pervaded my soul, and sinking back upon the chair,
- 19:04Speaker 4: I remained for some time, breathless and motionless, with my
- 19:07Speaker 4: eyes riveted upon her person alas its emaciation was excessive,
- 19:12Speaker 4: and not one vestige of the former being lurked in
- 19:15Speaker 4: any single line of the contour. My burning glances at
- 19:19Speaker 4: length fell upon the face, the forehead was high and
- 19:22Speaker 4: very pale and singularly placid, and the once jetty hair
- 19:26Speaker 4: fell partially over it and overshadowed the hollow temples with
- 19:30Speaker 4: innumerable ringlets, now of vivivid yellow and jarring discordantly in
- 19:34Speaker 4: their fantastic character. With the raining melancholy of the countenance,
- 19:39Speaker 4: the eyes were lifeless and lustreless and seemingly pupilss and
- 19:43Speaker 4: I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation
- 19:47Speaker 4: of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted, and, in
- 19:51Speaker 4: a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed
- 19:54Speaker 4: Berenics disclosed themselves slowly to my view, would to God
- 19:59Speaker 4: that I never beheld them, or that having done so,
- 20:02Speaker 4: I had died. Bear Nice is in bad shape here,
- 20:08Speaker 4: so's the guy.
- 20:11Speaker 5: The shutting of the door disturbed me, and looking up,
- 20:14Speaker 5: I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber,
- 20:17Speaker 5: but from the disordered chamber of my brain had not
- 20:20Speaker 5: alas departed, and would not be driven away the white
- 20:24Speaker 5: and ghastly spectrum of the teeth, not a speck on
- 20:27Speaker 5: their surface, not a shade on their enamel, not an
- 20:30Speaker 5: indenture in their edges, but what that period of her
- 20:34Speaker 5: smile had sufficed a brand in upon my memory. I
- 20:38Speaker 5: saw them now, even more unequivocally than I beheld them then.
- 20:41Speaker 6: The teeth.
- 20:42Speaker 5: The teeth, They were here and there and everywhere, invisibly
- 20:47Speaker 5: impalpably before me, long, narrow and excessively white, with the
- 20:51Speaker 5: pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment
- 20:54Speaker 5: of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury
- 20:58Speaker 5: of my monomania, as ruggled in vain against his strange
- 21:01Speaker 5: and irresistible influence in the multiplied objects of the external world,
- 21:05Speaker 5: I had no thoughts but for the teeth.
- 21:08Speaker 6: For these I longed with a frenzied desire. All other
- 21:12Speaker 6: matters and all.
- 21:13Speaker 5: Different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They, they alone,
- 21:18Speaker 5: were present to the mental eye, and they, in their
- 21:21Speaker 5: sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I
- 21:24Speaker 5: held them in every light, I turned them into every attitude.
- 21:28Speaker 5: I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I
- 21:33Speaker 5: pondered upon their confirmation. I mused upon the alteration in
- 21:37Speaker 5: their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them an imagination,
- 21:40Speaker 5: a sensitive and sentient power and even when unassisted by
- 21:44Speaker 5: the lips, a capability of moral expression.
- 21:47Speaker 4: Boy, he's a losing it.
- 21:50Speaker 5: Of Madselle Salaer has been well said couetou cepa in
- 21:56Speaker 5: chien decentient, and of Beernice, I'm more serious believed quit.
- 22:04Speaker 6: Indien daisy ds.
- 22:10Speaker 5: And I believe that translated to something like the ideas
- 22:14Speaker 5: the ideas. All of his ideas were of the teeth,
- 22:17Speaker 5: something like that.
- 22:18Speaker 4: And he just had to say it in French, didn't he?
- 22:20Speaker 4: Wellat this is this isn't that good? So I'm gonna
- 22:23Speaker 4: make you I'm going to write in French.
- 22:25Speaker 5: If I went to a French speaker in the office
- 22:27Speaker 5: and they're like, dude, this is really like hard to translate.
- 22:29Speaker 5: So if anyone knows that, please send it.
- 22:32Speaker 4: Do you want to read it again? That part the line.
- 22:36Speaker 5: Sure quetu sepa ittien the sentiments getu said, Then itien
- 22:46Speaker 5: daisy days, daisy days, all right, Ah, here was the
- 22:51Speaker 5: idiotic thought that destroyed me easy days.
- 22:55Speaker 6: Ah.
- 22:55Speaker 5: Therefore it was that I coveted them so madly. I
- 22:59Speaker 5: felt that there possess could alone ever restore me to
- 23:02Speaker 5: peace in giving me back to reason.
- 23:09Speaker 4: So Chuck what's going on here? Like, there's teeth. Now
- 23:12Speaker 4: he's got teeth, and he's focused on the teeth.
- 23:14Speaker 5: Well, now the teeth are in her mouth. She is
- 23:16Speaker 5: disintegrating physically, except for her teeth, which remained perfect. Okay,
- 23:21Speaker 5: So now he is hyper focused and obsessed with her
- 23:23Speaker 5: teeth because they're so perfect.
- 23:25Speaker 4: I would be hyper focused. I'm running out of the
- 23:27Speaker 4: room at this point too, okay. And the evening closed
- 23:32Speaker 4: in upon me. Thus, and then the darkness came and
- 23:36Speaker 4: tarried and went, and the day again dawned, and the
- 23:40Speaker 4: mists of a second night were now gathering around. And
- 23:43Speaker 4: still I sat motionless in that solitary room, and still
- 23:46Speaker 4: I sat, buried in meditation, And still the phantasma of
- 23:50Speaker 4: the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy, as with the most vivid,
- 23:54Speaker 4: hideous distinctness, It floated amid the changing lights and shadows
- 23:58Speaker 4: of the chamber length. There broke in upon my dreams
- 24:02Speaker 4: a cry of horror and dismay. And thereon too, after
- 24:05Speaker 4: a pause succeeded the sound of troubled voices intermingled with
- 24:10Speaker 4: many low moanings of sorrow or pain. I arose from
- 24:14Speaker 4: my seat, and, throwing open one of the doors of
- 24:16Speaker 4: the library, saw standing out in the antechamber a servant
- 24:19Speaker 4: maiden volunteers, who told me that Baronice was no more.
- 24:24Speaker 4: She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning,
- 24:27Speaker 4: and now at the closing end of the night, the
- 24:30Speaker 4: grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations
- 24:33Speaker 4: for the burial were completed.
- 24:35Speaker 6: So Bernice is dead.
- 24:37Speaker 4: Yes, I found myself sitting in the library, and again,
- 24:41Speaker 4: sitting there alone, it seemed that I had newly awakened
- 24:44Speaker 4: from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it
- 24:46Speaker 4: was now midnight, and I was well aware that since
- 24:48Speaker 4: the setting of the sun Baronice had been interred. But
- 24:52Speaker 4: of that dreary period which intervened, I had no positive,
- 24:55Speaker 4: at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete
- 24:59Speaker 4: with horror. Horror more horrible from being vague, and terror
- 25:03Speaker 4: more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in
- 25:07Speaker 4: the record my existence, written all over with dim and
- 25:10Speaker 4: hideous and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decipher them, but
- 25:15Speaker 4: in vain, while ever and anon, like the spirit of
- 25:18Speaker 4: a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a
- 25:21Speaker 4: female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I
- 25:24Speaker 4: had done? Indeed, what was it? I asked myself the
- 25:28Speaker 4: question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me,
- 25:33Speaker 4: what was it? All right?
- 25:40Speaker 5: So he's awoken from a fever dream and he's like something.
- 25:43Speaker 5: I've done something here while I slept That ain't good?
- 25:47Speaker 4: Yeah?
- 25:49Speaker 6: What was it?
- 25:58Speaker 5: On the table beside me burned a land mp and
- 26:00Speaker 5: near it lay a little box that can't be good.
- 26:04Speaker 5: It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen
- 26:06Speaker 5: it frequently before, for it was the property of the
- 26:08Speaker 5: family physician. But how it came there upon my table?
- 26:11Speaker 5: And why did I shudder? And regarding it? These things
- 26:14Speaker 5: were in no manner to be accounted for. And my
- 26:16Speaker 5: eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a
- 26:18Speaker 5: book and to the sentence underscored therein. The words were
- 26:22Speaker 5: the singular but simple ones of the poet Eben Zayat.
- 26:26Speaker 5: My companion said to me, if I would visit the
- 26:28Speaker 5: grave of my friend, I might somewhat alleviate my worries.
- 26:33Speaker 6: Why, then, as.
- 26:34Speaker 5: I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect
- 26:37Speaker 5: themselves on end, and the blood of my body become
- 26:40Speaker 5: congealed within my veins. There came a light tap at
- 26:43Speaker 5: the library door, and as pale as the tenet of
- 26:53Speaker 5: the tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were
- 26:57Speaker 5: wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a
- 26:59Speaker 5: voice mulus husky and very low. What said he some
- 27:03Speaker 5: broken sentences I had heard. He told of a wild cry,
- 27:08Speaker 5: disturbing the silence of the night, of the gathering together
- 27:11Speaker 5: of the household, of a search in the direction of
- 27:13Speaker 5: the sound. And then his tones grew thrillingly distinct, as
- 27:16Speaker 5: he whispered me of a violated grave, of a disfigured body,
- 27:20Speaker 5: and shrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive.
- 27:28Speaker 4: He pointed to garments. They were muddy and clotted with gore.
- 27:31Speaker 4: I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand.
- 27:34Speaker 4: It was indented with the impressive human nails. He directed
- 27:38Speaker 4: my attention to some object against the wall. I looked
- 27:41Speaker 4: at it for some minutes. It was a spade with
- 27:44Speaker 4: a shriek. I bounded to the table and grasped the
- 27:47Speaker 4: box that lay upon it, but I could not force
- 27:49Speaker 4: it open, and in my tremor. It slipped from my
- 27:51Speaker 4: hands and fell heavily and burst into pieces. And from it,
- 27:55Speaker 4: with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of
- 27:58Speaker 4: dental surgery, intermingled with thirty two small white and ivory
- 28:02Speaker 4: looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.
- 28:14Speaker 6: The end.
- 28:16Speaker 5: Wow, I just got a little chill, actually.
- 28:19Speaker 6: And I knew the ending.
- 28:21Speaker 4: He liked his teeth.
- 28:22Speaker 6: Did he dig her up or was she still alive?
- 28:24Speaker 4: I don't know. I was thrown off by the fact.
- 28:26Speaker 6: That those shrieking women.
- 28:28Speaker 4: Yeah, she's still palpitating as it, were still alive.
- 28:31Speaker 5: I think he hallucinated the whole thing and that she
- 28:33Speaker 5: did not die and was buried. I think he went
- 28:35Speaker 5: into her chamber and removed her teeth while she was alive.
- 28:39Speaker 4: Or maybe he while he was in his little opium dream,
- 28:44Speaker 4: buried her alive, then decided, oh yeah the teeth, went back,
- 28:48Speaker 4: got him out of her mouth while she's still alive,
- 28:51Speaker 4: and took him back to the library. I think he
- 28:54Speaker 4: needs to lay off the dope, is what it comes
- 28:57Speaker 4: down to. Yeah, So happy Halloween. I hope everybody is
- 29:03Speaker 4: appropriately nervous now, right.
- 29:06Speaker 5: Yeah, And if you have ideas on royalty free readings
- 29:11Speaker 5: that we can do next year.
- 29:13Speaker 4: Yeah, well we'll bring this up again, like in August
- 29:15Speaker 4: or something like that. Agreed, So stick around. We are
- 29:19Speaker 4: not going anywhere just yet. We have a special you
- 29:22Speaker 4: can almost call us a two parter. The second part
- 29:25Speaker 4: is a special guest. Right, We're not going to do
- 29:28Speaker 4: listener mail or anything. We're going to do this Happy
- 29:32Speaker 4: Halloween everybody. So since this is a Halloween episode, and since,
- 29:42Speaker 4: as you may remember from Tuesday, John Hodgman has been
- 29:46Speaker 4: hanging around the office this week.
- 29:48Speaker 5: That's I'm sleeping in a cubicle earlier.
- 29:51Speaker 4: It's weird. We I got locked out of my here again.
- 29:57Speaker 4: My so, Hodgman, how you doing? Was?
- 30:02Speaker 7: I don't get a I don't get like the chimes?
- 30:04Speaker 4: Well, well, I haven't finished the introduction yet. We're not
- 30:07Speaker 4: doing listener mail this week because it's special, it was,
- 30:09Speaker 4: this is a Halloween episode and because Hodgman's here, so
- 30:13Speaker 4: instead we're going to do stuff with John Hodgman.
- 30:18Speaker 6: That's right.
- 30:18Speaker 5: And the reason, well, the reason John's here is because
- 30:21Speaker 5: he decided to surprise us and he had a ticket
- 30:23Speaker 5: to the show.
- 30:23Speaker 6: Yep, we decided to honor that ticket. Yeah.
- 30:26Speaker 7: Look, I feel bad. I feel a little bad about
- 30:28Speaker 7: last week because I came in and interrupted Sarah's letter.
- 30:32Speaker 6: This week, whatever was, We took care of it.
- 30:34Speaker 7: Don't you know what I don't. I don't pay attention
- 30:36Speaker 7: to time anymore. I'm a deranged millionaire.
- 30:37Speaker 4: Okay.
- 30:38Speaker 6: I like Sarah.
- 30:40Speaker 7: I like the letters she writes. I like all the letters.
- 30:43Speaker 7: But I'm a listener too, you know. That's why I'm here. Yeah,
- 30:46Speaker 7: and what am I going to have my say?
- 30:48Speaker 4: Do you know what I mean?
- 30:48Speaker 5: And no one ever comes in to do their listener
- 30:50Speaker 5: mail in person like you.
- 30:51Speaker 6: You bought a ticket to do.
- 30:52Speaker 7: So. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I have access. It's
- 30:55Speaker 7: time for me to have my say. Here's my listener mail.
- 30:58Speaker 7: All right, nice work, guys.
- 31:00Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you. That's nice listener huh. Yeah, that
- 31:04Speaker 4: was Chuck's.
- 31:06Speaker 6: Well that was Poe los my mind.
- 31:10Speaker 7: You say it was porific, I say Poe.
- 31:16Speaker 6: No, I like it.
- 31:16Speaker 4: Drownd post.
- 31:17Speaker 7: Fine, Well you got of Like you know, guys, I
- 31:20Speaker 7: wrote this new book of complete World Knowledge called That
- 31:23Speaker 7: is All that's coming out. And this is the third
- 31:26Speaker 7: book of Complete World Knowledge. And in my previous books
- 31:29Speaker 7: of Complete world knowledge. I talked about everything, right, I
- 31:32Speaker 7: talked about how to tile kinds of knots. No, I
- 31:36Speaker 7: never did for some reason, I think I did.
- 31:38Speaker 4: That was so close. I almost said, like, Yeah.
- 31:40Speaker 7: I talked about Hobo's. I talked about Mollman. I talked
- 31:43Speaker 7: about the presidents of the United States. I talked about
- 31:46Speaker 7: the mottos and nicknames of all fifty one American states.
- 31:51Speaker 7: I talked about history. I talked about the future. But
- 31:54Speaker 7: there was one topic that I never took on before,
- 31:57Speaker 7: and that was sports. Yeah, because I am not a
- 32:02Speaker 7: sports fan.
- 32:03Speaker 4: See, I found that surprising.
- 32:05Speaker 6: Really.
- 32:05Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you and I co hosted at trivia then
- 32:07Speaker 5: it Max fun Con, and yeah, we did our own
- 32:09Speaker 5: little fun trivia.
- 32:10Speaker 6: Well'm Elijah won. Right.
- 32:12Speaker 5: I did some sports questions that you were not privy
- 32:14Speaker 5: to to humiliate me. You did some science fiction nerd
- 32:18Speaker 5: movie questions that I because I'm not into that.
- 32:21Speaker 7: You did jock questions to humiliate me, and I did
- 32:23Speaker 7: nerd questions to humiliate and it went great. It went great.
- 32:26Speaker 6: We're both humiliated, that's right.
- 32:27Speaker 7: And that is usually the sign of a good night.
- 32:29Speaker 6: Yes it is.
- 32:31Speaker 7: But here's the thing for this third book, because we
- 32:34Speaker 7: are reaching the end of human civilization December twenty one, twenty.
- 32:37Speaker 4: Twelve, at eleven eleven am.
- 32:40Speaker 7: Exactly, and it's and it's time for me to engage
- 32:44Speaker 7: in well, Like the dying person, I reach out to
- 32:48Speaker 7: that which I've previously spurned in life, like religion and sports.
- 32:53Speaker 7: So I decided to learn a lot about sports and
- 32:56Speaker 7: to write about sports in this new book. And one
- 32:59Speaker 7: of the things I learned, which I didn't know until now,
- 33:02Speaker 7: you guys probably know this, that the Baltimore Ravens is
- 33:05Speaker 7: named after the Edgar Allan Poe poem The Right. So
- 33:12Speaker 7: you didn't know that. I didn't know that. I knew that,
- 33:14Speaker 7: and now that makes more sense. I didn't realize why
- 33:18Speaker 7: they had Edgar Allen Poe as their mascot. Some dude
- 33:24Speaker 7: dressed up as like nineteenth century and no, he's got
- 33:28Speaker 7: one of those big heads on, like a big Edgar
- 33:30Speaker 7: Allen Poe head.
- 33:31Speaker 6: I was like, why is that?
- 33:32Speaker 7: And then I finally got it. Ed Ground Poe apparently
- 33:36Speaker 7: got runeously drunk in Baltimore, as he did in every
- 33:39Speaker 7: East Coast city for a period of time. They all,
- 33:42Speaker 7: for some reason claim him as their son. Well, in Philadelphia,
- 33:45Speaker 7: New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Providence, but only Baltimore had the
- 33:52Speaker 7: nerve to name their team after a famous quasi literary
- 33:58Speaker 7: kind of dumb dumb poem that the French really liked.
- 34:02Speaker 7: And they have this mascot, which is crazy. Now I
- 34:04Speaker 7: understand why they have that mascot. This dude dressed up
- 34:07Speaker 7: his egg ground Poe with a giant Edgar Allan Poe
- 34:09Speaker 7: head on top of him that's filled with brandy.
- 34:12Speaker 6: Now it makes sense.
- 34:13Speaker 5: And John Cusack, to bring in full circle, is playing
- 34:15Speaker 5: Poe in a movie I know, which is.
- 34:18Speaker 7: He's only the latest who wanted to play ed Ground Poe.
- 34:20Speaker 7: Of course, Sylvester Stallone was developing an edge Ground Poe
- 34:23Speaker 7: really biopic four years.
- 34:26Speaker 6: Four years. You didn't know that.
- 34:29Speaker 7: Foreigner was going to do the theme song. They wrote,
- 34:31Speaker 7: I have the tiger for that movie. Oh sorry, foreign first,
- 34:37Speaker 7: I apologize exactly survivor right, They wrote I have the
- 34:41Speaker 7: tiger for the edg Ground Poe movie, but when it
- 34:44Speaker 7: didn't get made, they used it for Rocky three instead
- 34:46Speaker 7: got sports and more sports. Punching is a sport, right Pugilism?
- 34:52Speaker 7: Oh no, I agree, that's the sweet science. That's the
- 34:56Speaker 7: that's the that's the intricate logical art of her doing
- 35:00Speaker 7: someone in the face exactly.
- 35:02Speaker 4: Wow, wow, hold on, you're leaving out a big element
- 35:05Speaker 4: trying to not get hurt in your own face. Right,
- 35:07Speaker 4: that's practically you're doing two things at once.
- 35:10Speaker 7: Yeah, that's that's that's ballet.
- 35:12Speaker 6: Do you know what I mean?
- 35:13Speaker 7: That's that's an intricate dance. That's like ultimate fighting. I'm
- 35:18Speaker 7: guys down on the ground trying to knee each other
- 35:20Speaker 7: in the neck. It's it's acrobatic.
- 35:24Speaker 4: I see you at a boxing match, though, Hodgman, I
- 35:27Speaker 4: wasn't a boxing match. I've seen that, Yes, you were.
- 35:30Speaker 7: I was in a fake I was in a fake
- 35:32Speaker 7: boxing match.
- 35:32Speaker 4: Was that choreograph of that state that it looked a
- 35:35Speaker 4: lot like the directors like you to just go at
- 35:37Speaker 4: each other and we'll see what happened.
- 35:38Speaker 7: This was in an episode of Boards to Death.
- 35:41Speaker 4: Right with you? You box, Jason Schwartz.
- 35:43Speaker 7: I did, yeah, and uh, And I realized then that
- 35:48Speaker 7: it is an extremely physically taxing thing to do. I
- 35:51Speaker 7: don't I do not mean to run down boxers in
- 35:54Speaker 7: the least because first of all, they will kill me.
- 35:58Speaker 7: Second of all, what they do they are. They're are
- 36:00Speaker 7: extremely accomplished athletes. I have no problem with athletes, you understand, Sure,
- 36:07Speaker 7: I think they're incredibly skilled people whom I wish only
- 36:11Speaker 7: not to hurt me, do you know what I mean?
- 36:14Speaker 7: But they are artists in there in their own way.
- 36:16Speaker 7: And I don't even dislike sports per se. Like, there's
- 36:20Speaker 7: some sports that I occasionally will watch. I dig a
- 36:22Speaker 7: curling match from time to time.
- 36:23Speaker 6: Okay, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, any.
- 36:26Speaker 7: Spot with a broom I like. It's it is the
- 36:29Speaker 7: presupposition in our culture that everyone must like sports, and
- 36:34Speaker 7: if you do not know what the sports teams are
- 36:38Speaker 7: or what they.
- 36:38Speaker 6: Do on the field, something is wrong with you. Then
- 36:40Speaker 6: you are abnormal.
- 36:41Speaker 4: In some way.
- 36:42Speaker 7: And I think that that's a little bit that presumes
- 36:45Speaker 7: too much.
- 36:46Speaker 6: Well, John, that's the where we live in.
- 36:48Speaker 7: But it's changing now. Baltimore got the Ravens in what
- 36:53Speaker 7: nineteen ninety six or seven or something like that. Okay,
- 36:56Speaker 7: so they name their team after a poem, right, was like,
- 37:00Speaker 7: no big deal, not a big deal, who cares?
- 37:03Speaker 6: Right?
- 37:05Speaker 7: This year we got some baseball what's the baseball player?
- 37:08Speaker 6: Who named is a bat?
- 37:09Speaker 7: Orchrist?
- 37:11Speaker 6: I did not that.
- 37:12Speaker 7: Yeah, it's that it's in the news, someone will write
- 37:16Speaker 7: about it and send it in.
- 37:17Speaker 4: Okay, it was.
- 37:19Speaker 7: It was this April it was revealed the very popular
- 37:22Speaker 7: bass ball player named his bat Orchrist, after one of
- 37:28Speaker 7: the Elven forged swords in the Hobbit.
- 37:31Speaker 4: Huh that's pretty cool.
- 37:32Speaker 6: Yeah right?
- 37:33Speaker 7: And then guess what have you noticed this?
- 37:37Speaker 4: You know?
- 37:37Speaker 7: It's Nick Mangol, the center for the New York Jets.
- 37:40Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 37:42Speaker 7: Have you noticed, like he's not wearing a helmet anymore?
- 37:45Speaker 6: I have not noticed that.
- 37:47Speaker 7: It's surprising to me. He came out in one of
- 37:50Speaker 7: the games earlier this year. He was wearing a leather
- 37:54Speaker 7: top hat with like goggles on it.
- 37:57Speaker 6: Do you notice that? I did not know? What is
- 37:59Speaker 6: that on the field on the field why, I.
- 38:04Speaker 7: Don't know, but it's weird. And then and then another
- 38:08Speaker 7: time he came out and he was wearing a pith
- 38:09Speaker 7: helmet with with a jeweler's lens on it. That and
- 38:14Speaker 7: he came out in the he came out on the
- 38:16Speaker 7: field on a on a on a penny farthered bicycle.
- 38:19Speaker 4: What is going on?
- 38:21Speaker 7: It was a steam powered Penny farthing bicycle?
- 38:24Speaker 4: Wow? Which was it of his own design and manufacture? Yeah.
- 38:29Speaker 7: And then he went on a sports program, a radio
- 38:33Speaker 7: program much like this this radio right, Yeah, sure, it's
- 38:37Speaker 7: kind of and uh and he was and he was saying,
- 38:40Speaker 7: I'm really glad we won that game, and uh, I
- 38:44Speaker 7: think and they said, well, what do you think? How
- 38:46Speaker 7: do you how do you what to what do you
- 38:48Speaker 7: attribute your win?
- 38:49Speaker 6: And he said, I just took.
- 38:53Speaker 7: The lesson of Admiral acpart to heart and realized that
- 38:56Speaker 7: they were setting a trap.
- 39:00Speaker 6: Weird.
- 39:00Speaker 4: That is weird, very weird. What do you think is
- 39:02Speaker 4: going on there?
- 39:03Speaker 6: I think this is it? Guys, I think this is happening.
- 39:05Speaker 7: Is this the beginning the beginning of the nerd jock convergence?
- 39:09Speaker 7: See it all around us?
- 39:11Speaker 6: Wow?
- 39:12Speaker 7: I think Nick Mangled may be the one. Yeah, it's
- 39:15Speaker 7: the person who's going to join these two worlds together. Yeah,
- 39:19Speaker 7: he's doing steampunk cosplay, he's quoting Admiral Lackbar, He's riding
- 39:25Speaker 7: a Penny Farthing motorcycle, not just a steam powered Penny
- 39:30Speaker 7: Farthing motorcycle of his own design. And I recently, you
- 39:34Speaker 7: know how my my Zeppelin Hubris isn't in ruins, the
- 39:39Speaker 7: HC Hubris, the HC Hubris Audrin Zepplin's Hubris. Uh, but
- 39:45Speaker 7: I just got an offer on it.
- 39:47Speaker 4: Did you know that?
- 39:48Speaker 6: That weird?
- 39:49Speaker 7: I mean it's still crashed, it's still I think parts
- 39:51Speaker 7: of it is still burning in Central Park.
- 39:54Speaker 6: This happened since Tuesday.
- 39:55Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I maybe you hear this person heard the podcast.
- 39:59Speaker 7: I don't know what it is, but if the offer
- 40:02Speaker 7: came in, it's a good offer too, from man Gold
- 40:06Speaker 7: Steampunk Industries.
- 40:08Speaker 4: It's gotta be the same one football Well yeah, see,
- 40:13Speaker 4: I think it might be him. Are you selling it
- 40:15Speaker 4: to him as is?
- 40:17Speaker 7: Well, I'm not putting that thing back together. It's on
- 40:19Speaker 7: fire and burned my hands. Yes, I hope it works.
- 40:23Speaker 6: Where is it over? I don't know.
- 40:26Speaker 7: Most of the top half of Central Park.
- 40:27Speaker 6: I mean it was big, it was big, most of
- 40:30Speaker 6: the top half. Yeah, I haven't been up there in
- 40:33Speaker 6: a while.
- 40:33Speaker 4: Good.
- 40:34Speaker 7: It crashed and burned probably two years.
- 40:37Speaker 4: Ago and still oh yeah, it's still burning.
- 40:40Speaker 7: Yeah, well I should do something.
- 40:42Speaker 4: Well, John, let me ask you. I mean, that seems
- 40:43Speaker 4: like one of the great divisions in life in the
- 40:48Speaker 4: world that's been going on forever, is this division between
- 40:51Speaker 4: jockson nerds. It seems like it's a good thing. If
- 40:54Speaker 4: things come together, is it not?
- 40:56Speaker 6: I I don't know. I don't know.
- 41:00Speaker 7: I think it's I think, like all major c changes,
- 41:02Speaker 7: it's unnerving, do you know what I mean?
- 41:05Speaker 4: I think those of us I'm scared of things too.
- 41:08Speaker 7: I think those of us on the nerd side have
- 41:10Speaker 7: been defining ourselves by our marginalization for so long that
- 41:16Speaker 7: it may be hard for us to accept a world
- 41:19Speaker 7: where you know, that TV show Community did a whole
- 41:25Speaker 7: Dungeons and Dragons episode. Superhero movies are the only movies
- 41:30Speaker 7: that people make, now, do you know what I mean?
- 41:33Speaker 6: Like all of the.
- 41:34Speaker 7: Things, And now I think at least ten people in
- 41:39Speaker 7: the United States know who Doctor.
- 41:40Speaker 6: Who is now, do you know what I mean?
- 41:42Speaker 7: Comic Con is big, big business. And I think that
- 41:45Speaker 7: that all of these things that we used to hold
- 41:48Speaker 7: as badges and use to comfort ourselves in our marginalization
- 41:53Speaker 7: and culture are now being absorbed into, you know, the
- 41:58Speaker 7: monoculture as a whole. And there's no greater expression of
- 42:02Speaker 7: the monoculture than jock culture, which is the great leveling,
- 42:06Speaker 7: cross cultural, unifying thing that men and a lot of
- 42:10Speaker 7: women talk about unless they're a nerd like me. Right,
- 42:13Speaker 7: So when that's gone, I think that will bother nerds
- 42:16Speaker 7: very well. But I don't think the jocks give at all.
- 42:21Speaker 4: No and and jocks tend to get their way as
- 42:24Speaker 4: far as society goes, if they want something. If Mangole
- 42:28Speaker 4: wants to make steam, hey.
- 42:30Speaker 6: I like your steam pup culture.
- 42:32Speaker 4: Give me that, nerd. That's right, they take mine.
- 42:35Speaker 7: It's mine now, Hey, you're you're your your your steam
- 42:40Speaker 7: funk ironman armor that you made yourself.
- 42:42Speaker 6: That's mine.
- 42:43Speaker 7: Now drop it off at my locker.
- 42:46Speaker 6: Throw a Jets jersey on top of it.
- 42:47Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm gonna put the Jets jersey on top of it.
- 42:49Speaker 7: It's going to be steampunk Ironman Jets. That's not what
- 42:53Speaker 7: the mc. Mangol does not talk like that at all.
- 42:54Speaker 7: He's a very sweet guy.
- 42:55Speaker 6: I met him. That's why I hope so.
- 43:01Speaker 7: In real life. In real life, Nick Mangold's Twitter avatar
- 43:07Speaker 7: is an illustration of him as an ewok.
- 43:11Speaker 6: Really.
- 43:11Speaker 7: Yeah, So you may say that what I'm putting in
- 43:14Speaker 7: my book is crazy, but look around you, everybody, it's
- 43:17Speaker 7: coming true.
- 43:18Speaker 4: Well, John, thank you for coming by with your baffling prediction.
- 43:22Speaker 7: You don't have to think it's very easy. I just
- 43:24Speaker 7: walked down the hallway from my safe room.
- 43:25Speaker 4: Are you going to stay here? Because the weekend's approaching.
- 43:28Speaker 7: I need someone to kick down the door of my
- 43:31Speaker 7: safe room because I fell asleep in that cubicle because
- 43:35Speaker 7: I went out and I accidentally armed the system. Okay,
- 43:39Speaker 7: So if you have an intern or someone who can
- 43:41Speaker 7: go in there, they will.
- 43:42Speaker 6: Be gassed, Jerry, Yeah, a foot of lead.
- 43:47Speaker 4: Okay, and she can.
- 43:49Speaker 7: Yeah, but there are booth but there are booby traps.
- 43:51Speaker 7: There will be gassed, There will be darts, there will
- 43:52Speaker 7: be snakes, there will be a giant rolling boulder.
- 43:57Speaker 6: Just good.
- 43:58Speaker 7: If we get that, then I can get back in
- 44:00Speaker 7: and then I'll be back again.
- 44:01Speaker 5: Jerry deals with us on a day to day basis.
- 44:03Speaker 5: She can handle any boulders or poisoned darts.
- 44:06Speaker 6: You're right, Yeah, here's to you, Jerry.
- 44:08Speaker 4: We'll send Jerry in. Yeah. And then.
- 44:16Speaker 5: So John's book is that is all and it is
- 44:19Speaker 5: coming out November first, and you can pre order it
- 44:21Speaker 5: right now using the internet, using the internet, and I
- 44:24Speaker 5: hope that you will at a variety of Internet sites.
- 44:27Speaker 4: Oh you really, just plug the heck out of that, chuck.
- 44:30Speaker 6: Well, you know, I want the guy to sell a
- 44:32Speaker 6: book or two.
- 44:33Speaker 7: I'm just happy to be here as an listener, as
- 44:36Speaker 7: a deranged millionaire. I'm happy to come in here and
- 44:39Speaker 7: take over your listener mail, and as a resident, as
- 44:41Speaker 7: a resident of past up Works closet.
- 44:44Speaker 4: Well to those of you who made it all the
- 44:46Speaker 4: way through this podcast and you're with us right now.
- 44:50Speaker 4: I want to say on behalf of myself, Chuck and
- 44:53Speaker 4: mister John Hodgman, Happy Halloween. Be safe, Please don't get
- 44:58Speaker 4: hit by a car.
- 45:00Speaker 7: Dress your children in skeleton costumes and send them out
- 45:02Speaker 7: into the street.
- 45:05Speaker 2: At the end, be sure to check out our new
- 45:12Speaker 2: video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how stup Work
- 45:16Speaker 2: staff as we explore them with promising and perplexing possibilities
- 45:19Speaker 2: of tomorrow.
- 45:23Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented twenty twelve Camra.
- 45:26Speaker 2: It's ready, are you