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Stuff To Blow Your Mind: The Horror · Spooky Season Podcasts 🎃

0:03
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
0:06
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
0:14
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
0:16
Speaker 1: what is your relationship with horror stories, with horror movies,
0:20
Speaker 1: with horror fiction. Um, well, you're a fan. Well, well, yeah,
0:24
Speaker 1: I would say that I'm not as much anymore. And
0:27
Speaker 1: I became really sensitive to horror in any sort of
0:31
Speaker 1: form um when my after my daughter was born. Actually
0:35
Speaker 1: well I was pregnant, so I have been slowly ramping
0:37
Speaker 1: back up, back back up into zombie land. Uh. But
0:42
Speaker 1: I used to love the Ripper stuff. I'm not a ripperologist,
0:47
Speaker 1: but that that was something that occupied my mind for
0:49
Speaker 1: for many, many years and a ripper enthusiast enthusiast. Sure, sure,
0:55
Speaker 1: I like that. Um but yeah, yeah, that's that's uh
0:59
Speaker 1: stuff that I think is absolutely frightening and takes hold
1:03
Speaker 1: of your mind and you can't help being transport. And
1:05
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that you have a good and lengthy
1:08
Speaker 1: relationship with horror. Yeah yeah, I um, I mean from
1:12
Speaker 1: very early on, possibly because my my my mom's explanation
1:16
Speaker 1: for this is that she is that they always made
1:19
Speaker 1: too much out of Halloween, or that they really celebrated
1:22
Speaker 1: Halloween in our households. So it kind of instilled an
1:25
Speaker 1: early fascination with with them a cob and and and
1:30
Speaker 1: perhaps that that's the case, but I mean from a
1:32
Speaker 1: very early age, I was fascinated with with these fantastic
1:37
Speaker 1: stories and settings and and any kind of creepy tales. UM.
1:42
Speaker 1: I remember like when I was in uh younger grades,
1:47
Speaker 1: we would would go to the video store to rent
1:49
Speaker 1: movies as a family, or I'd go there with my dad,
1:51
Speaker 1: and we were not horror movie renting people, but I
1:56
Speaker 1: would sneak over or even not really sneak, but I would.
1:58
Speaker 1: I would go over to the horror and I would
2:00
Speaker 1: walk down I would look at all the vhs uh
2:03
Speaker 1: covers And it was a pretty uh, pretty crazy experience
2:06
Speaker 1: doing that because on one hand, especially in you know,
2:10
Speaker 1: back in the back in the nineties, these uh, these
2:13
Speaker 1: VHS covers, they even the crappiest film might have a
2:18
Speaker 1: really awesome bit of poster art on the cover, awesome title,
2:22
Speaker 1: really awesome stelf and uh. And as we've discussed before,
2:25
Speaker 1: I think that like the first episode we did with
2:27
Speaker 1: each other, or the second about people turning inside out.
2:30
Speaker 1: There was one film that had a picture of a
2:32
Speaker 1: guy turning inside out on the cover, and the actual
2:34
Speaker 1: film has nothing to do with that. And it didn't
2:36
Speaker 1: you say, he had like jeans onto you, And that
2:38
Speaker 1: was what was so just concerting, as he was turning
2:41
Speaker 1: himself inside out or he was inside out, and yet
2:43
Speaker 1: he had jeans on like me. Maybe he knew he
2:45
Speaker 1: was going to turn inside out and he has a
2:47
Speaker 1: real version of nudity, so he swallowed some gene shorts
2:49
Speaker 1: before the poisonous miss could transform him. How that happened.
2:53
Speaker 1: But they always had, you know, even if it was
2:55
Speaker 1: it was something just crazy, out of the ordinary, just
2:59
Speaker 1: a lost beef home, it might have some really neat
3:01
Speaker 1: cover going on. And then the mainstream hits, they all
3:04
Speaker 1: had fascinating covers, be it like a Friday the thirteen
3:08
Speaker 1: or a Nightmare on Elm Street. And and I would
3:10
Speaker 1: always build up in my mind this, uh, this creative
3:14
Speaker 1: version of what that film must consist of, and generally,
3:17
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not an idea that would stand
3:19
Speaker 1: the test of time when I actually watched the film
3:21
Speaker 1: later on the road. So yeah, from a from a
3:25
Speaker 1: very early point, I was very interested in these in
3:28
Speaker 1: horror stories and some of the first books I started
3:30
Speaker 1: reading a really hardcore where Stephen King books, and then
3:33
Speaker 1: we got really into love craft, and and I still
3:37
Speaker 1: I still read a certain amount of horror. Some of
3:41
Speaker 1: it maybe is a little more literary, some of it
3:44
Speaker 1: is significantly less literary, depending on I guess what my
3:47
Speaker 1: mood is, and I write stories that are horror or
3:52
Speaker 1: horror esque in nature. So right, we'll get to the
3:56
Speaker 1: crux of what we're talking about in a moment. But
3:57
Speaker 1: you want to talk about as soon as I'm through rampling, No, no, no,
4:01
Speaker 1: about what you've written and in some upcoming information about that. Oh,
4:05
Speaker 1: I do have a book of short stories. It's going
4:06
Speaker 1: to be out eventually, but I don't it's a book
4:11
Speaker 1: of Southern short stories and it's called it's going to
4:14
Speaker 1: be called The Grave Stoppers, I believe. Yeah. Okay, so
4:17
Speaker 1: look forward to and we'll give you, guess some more
4:19
Speaker 1: information on that. But I think that's really exciting to
4:22
Speaker 1: talk about. I'm excited about it. It's just got a
4:23
Speaker 1: little more editing tweaking to do. Um. But yeah, the
4:27
Speaker 1: the topic here, we're talking about horror. We're talking about
4:30
Speaker 1: our fascination with horror and kids fascination kids, because that's
4:34
Speaker 1: the thing, Like, like I mentioned earlier, from a very
4:36
Speaker 1: early age, I was interested in what these stories consisted of,
4:41
Speaker 1: even if they were forbidden to me, and you know,
4:43
Speaker 1: probably in certain to a certain extent because they were
4:46
Speaker 1: forbidden to me. But but all kids seem to have
4:49
Speaker 1: this this obsession on some level with with what is
4:54
Speaker 1: waiting in the closet right what is behind the shower
4:56
Speaker 1: curtain or looking at in the bottom of the toilet,
4:59
Speaker 1: you know. And and and that is so true because um,
5:03
Speaker 1: I remember just hating these stories when I was a
5:06
Speaker 1: little but loving them the same time, like tell me again,
5:08
Speaker 1: and tell me again, and then just you know, sitting
5:10
Speaker 1: in my bed thinking about how a severed hand was
5:13
Speaker 1: going to come and strangle me to death. They're talking
5:15
Speaker 1: about the toilet story. Oh they did think made me
5:18
Speaker 1: think about the toilet first for a moment, because I
5:20
Speaker 1: kind of think at some point I thought a severed
5:22
Speaker 1: hand might come out of the toilet too. When I
5:23
Speaker 1: was a little I'll see, I was poisoned by the
5:25
Speaker 1: VHS covers because they had these awful doolies films and
5:29
Speaker 1: that it pictured that the cover arts are are amazing
5:32
Speaker 1: because they picture these really bad looking puppets. Not these
5:36
Speaker 1: were not hints and creations, but like horrible little goblin
5:39
Speaker 1: puppets coming out of the toilet. And the idea, I
5:41
Speaker 1: think the tagline was like they get you in the
5:43
Speaker 1: end or something, because you're exposed, you're vulnerable on the
5:46
Speaker 1: toilet and as a kid, there there are other anxieties
5:48
Speaker 1: tied up with with using the toilet anyway. And then
5:51
Speaker 1: throw in the fact that there might be a goblin
5:54
Speaker 1: down there that might eat you in the bomb that
5:57
Speaker 1: in the that's that's problem out right there. Well, let's
6:01
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about clowns for a moment um,
6:05
Speaker 1: because you know what you're talking about, toilets and scary stuff.
6:09
Speaker 1: You've gotta go to clowns. Um, I'm not the only
6:11
Speaker 1: person who's frightened of clowns. Apparently this is something that
6:15
Speaker 1: a lot of people have a phobia of. And there
6:18
Speaker 1: is one study that I thought was very interesting. Um.
6:21
Speaker 1: The University of Sheffield study asked more than two fifty
6:24
Speaker 1: children ages four to sixteen, what they thought of the
6:27
Speaker 1: idea of using clown imagery to decorate a hospital children's ward.
6:31
Speaker 1: Because this is really they were trying to figure out
6:33
Speaker 1: what they wanted to make this ward look like to
6:36
Speaker 1: make the kids feel more at home. According to Dr
6:40
Speaker 1: Penny Curtis, who helped conduct the study, quote, we found
6:43
Speaker 1: that clowns were universally disliked by children. Some found them
6:47
Speaker 1: quite frightening and unknowable. And unknowable I thought that was
6:52
Speaker 1: a really interesting word choice because I thought that I
6:55
Speaker 1: think is part of the problem with clowns. Um. And
6:58
Speaker 1: think anybody who's listening that has same feeling about clowns
7:01
Speaker 1: that I do. There's this idea that you know, there's
7:04
Speaker 1: some someone hiding behind a mask, not showing their true
7:08
Speaker 1: self well, and their skin is ghostly pale, and then
7:11
Speaker 1: grease paint. It's just and they're doing you know, creepy tricks. Um.
7:16
Speaker 1: But sometimes they're saving rodeo people from certain goring at
7:21
Speaker 1: the hands of a bull. You gotta respect the rodeo clowns.
7:25
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know about I think the
7:26
Speaker 1: rodeo clown has perhaps be most frightening because then you
7:30
Speaker 1: just put a cowboy head on top. It's just it
7:32
Speaker 1: doesn't work well. One way. I see this tying and
7:34
Speaker 1: what we're talking about today. The rodeo clown especially is
7:37
Speaker 1: kind of distracting you from the idea of death. And
7:40
Speaker 1: maybe we sort of see that, see through that to
7:42
Speaker 1: a certain extent, you know, and we kind of we
7:45
Speaker 1: can't we see the con going on and we don't
7:47
Speaker 1: want to buy into it. That's not a clown having fun.
7:51
Speaker 1: That is one dude trying to save another guy from
7:53
Speaker 1: getting run through with bullhorns. I don't know about that.
7:55
Speaker 1: I think that is the clown trying to add more
7:57
Speaker 1: distraction so that the the radio person will be gored
8:02
Speaker 1: to death. Because I mean, I do not see anything
8:05
Speaker 1: there that's that's um, that is genuine, that's that's beneficial. Well,
8:11
Speaker 1: we'll tell me. There's one more thing about clowns here. Um.
8:13
Speaker 1: And I encountered the clown phobia a lot because it
8:15
Speaker 1: seems like everybody has it. Um. But I started with
8:19
Speaker 1: jesters for me, by the way, jester for the record, no,
8:21
Speaker 1: just court jesters. Those guys, well there with court jesters,
8:26
Speaker 1: I feel like they're a little more honest because the
8:28
Speaker 1: court jester is obviously adult and his and his and
8:32
Speaker 1: is also in such close proximity to a mad ruler.
8:35
Speaker 1: They're really hanging on by a thread. They have to
8:37
Speaker 1: walk that line every day. Um? And can I make
8:41
Speaker 1: the king laugh without actually uh winding up in the dungeon?
8:45
Speaker 1: You know? So I feel for those guys along, But
8:47
Speaker 1: but tell me this, how about the sad clowns? How
8:49
Speaker 1: about the sad hobo clowns? Like like, mkelly, are you kidding?
8:54
Speaker 1: Like that's that's that's the worst? How is that the worst?
8:57
Speaker 1: Was just even you see him and he's just the
9:01
Speaker 1: hobo clown, you know, with stubble on the chimp, a
9:04
Speaker 1: cigarette hanging out, you know, two coins in his pocket,
9:08
Speaker 1: has a hole in it. That's uplifting for a child
9:11
Speaker 1: right there there hoping it has that hobo mystique about him.
9:14
Speaker 1: You know, it's the traveler, he's got emperiences. Um okay.
9:20
Speaker 1: So I think the question is why do we keep
9:23
Speaker 1: going to material that that unearth these uneasy feelings? So
9:26
Speaker 1: why did I read Stephen King's it? And I couldn't
9:29
Speaker 1: put it down? Um? You know, and and it features
9:33
Speaker 1: a prominent clown, right. I think there's people when they
9:35
Speaker 1: think about clowns, they usually think kings. Ye, why do
9:39
Speaker 1: we keep doing this? And scientists believe that The answer
9:41
Speaker 1: is that humans have evolved to actually enjoy fear, and
9:46
Speaker 1: that we there's a type of personality that really enjoys it.
9:49
Speaker 1: We've talked about this person before. It's the neophiliac. It's
9:52
Speaker 1: like the type T right, Type T. Yeah, this is
9:55
Speaker 1: the person who craves new experiences, really wants a jolt,
9:59
Speaker 1: and that's because they have a lot more dopamine flowing
10:01
Speaker 1: and we already know that they are genetic markers for this, right. Um,
10:05
Speaker 1: So this is something that is hardwired in some people.
10:08
Speaker 1: But that being said, even if you're not a type
10:11
Speaker 1: TIE person or a neophiliac, usually most people enjoy good
10:15
Speaker 1: scare to some degree. So should I walk us through
10:19
Speaker 1: the the the the shadow of the value of death.
10:24
Speaker 1: Al Right, So let's say you're watching something scary or
10:27
Speaker 1: or reading something scary. Um, I don't know. Let's say
10:30
Speaker 1: it's our textis Chainsaw Masker. That's that was one that
10:33
Speaker 1: always got on. Um. So you're watching this right, Yeah,
10:37
Speaker 1: the horror on the screen and uh and in the
10:39
Speaker 1: soundtrack because it has a fabulous sound design. Uh, runs
10:43
Speaker 1: into your ears, into your eyes, and it all winds
10:46
Speaker 1: up in this little almond shaped clump of neurons called
10:49
Speaker 1: the amygdala. All right, right, we've talked about the Magdola
10:53
Speaker 1: processes all sorts of emotions front and center. Yeah, it's
10:57
Speaker 1: vital to emotional processing, especially thanks like glove, pleasure, and
11:01
Speaker 1: of course fear um. So Amigola activate unless she's all this,
11:07
Speaker 1: All these brain and body cocktails into your body, All
11:10
Speaker 1: these hormones, all right, yeah, Yeah, prompts the adrenal glands
11:15
Speaker 1: to turn out cortisol, which is a stress hormone, and
11:18
Speaker 1: high levels of this can actually impede insulin and causes
11:22
Speaker 1: the rise in blood sugar. Gives you a little extra
11:24
Speaker 1: fuel because you the brain is telling you something scary
11:27
Speaker 1: is happening and you might have to either run from
11:29
Speaker 1: it or attack it with a stick. So yeah, you
11:34
Speaker 1: can need extra oxygen for that. So you're breathing faster.
11:36
Speaker 1: The body is saying, all right, let's do it. We're
11:38
Speaker 1: gonna fight or flight. I'm going to make sure that
11:40
Speaker 1: you have enough oxygen for it. Heart is racing so
11:42
Speaker 1: that oxygen can get to your muscles. Your appetite stalls,
11:45
Speaker 1: because if you're about to have to fight leather face,
11:48
Speaker 1: you don't you don't want to have to stop for
11:50
Speaker 1: a snack break or granola bar bar halfway through it um,
11:54
Speaker 1: which I think would be a nice take because you know,
11:56
Speaker 1: in the slasher films, what always happens to the the
11:59
Speaker 1: survey of her lady, right, she ends up knocking down
12:02
Speaker 1: Jason Vorhees or somehow incapacitating our killer, kicking him in
12:06
Speaker 1: the the nethers or something hitting him on the head,
12:10
Speaker 1: and then they're down. And instead of doing the logical thing,
12:12
Speaker 1: which is either which is fight or flight, which is
12:15
Speaker 1: either run all the way away into the next county
12:18
Speaker 1: or never stop hitting the down maniac in the face
12:22
Speaker 1: with a brick fight it finish it right, Instead, they
12:25
Speaker 1: set there next to the the killer and maybe weep
12:28
Speaker 1: a little bit until they actually wait back up again
12:30
Speaker 1: and it all starts a new But it would be
12:32
Speaker 1: a nice twist if if they stopped and they actually
12:33
Speaker 1: use that time to have a granilla bar and yeah,
12:36
Speaker 1: little sacket of snack mix. That would be you know,
12:39
Speaker 1: if anybody's listening in there, they're writing the next screenplay
12:41
Speaker 1: for screen ten or whatever we're on though. All right,
12:45
Speaker 1: so but that's not all Your appetite is stalled, and
12:47
Speaker 1: you're also you're sweating because we don't want you to
12:50
Speaker 1: overheat in this fight or flight scenario, all right, your
12:53
Speaker 1: pupils are dilated so that you can see the enemy better,
12:56
Speaker 1: because again the body is getting you ready to either
12:58
Speaker 1: fight it or flight it. And uh. And finally, the
13:01
Speaker 1: cortisol saturated your bloodstream and feeds back in the nicola
13:06
Speaker 1: to boost the perception of danger. So it also reinforces
13:09
Speaker 1: your memory of that initial fright so that you'll still
13:12
Speaker 1: feel a little jumpy. Because the idea here is like
13:15
Speaker 1: I got attacked by Jason Vorhees today, I might be
13:17
Speaker 1: attacked by another Jason Vorhees tomorrow. So it stays in
13:21
Speaker 1: your system for a few days. That's why something frightful happens,
13:23
Speaker 1: you're you maybe a little jumpy for a little bit afterwards,
13:26
Speaker 1: for you know, days. And this all happens within about
13:29
Speaker 1: three seconds. And while all this is happening, information also
13:32
Speaker 1: travels to your prefrontal cortex, and this is part of
13:35
Speaker 1: the brain responsible for consciously evaluating danger and it tells you,
13:41
Speaker 1: thankfully that this is just a movie. And so what
13:45
Speaker 1: happens is you are completely overstimulated, right, and the resulting
13:50
Speaker 1: spillover is processed as reward instead of fear because all
13:54
Speaker 1: of a sudden you think, oh, yes, okay, it's okay,
13:57
Speaker 1: there's there's no imminent threat. I have actually served vibed
14:00
Speaker 1: what I just imagined for myself. Yeah, because the other thing,
14:03
Speaker 1: if you're about to potentially fight Jason Vorhees or run
14:07
Speaker 1: from him, um, the body is also helping out by
14:10
Speaker 1: making sure that the that their endorphins released into your
14:13
Speaker 1: bloodstream because you're going to sustain injuries if you're fighting
14:16
Speaker 1: him or running through the woods to escape him. So
14:20
Speaker 1: so you end up having dopamine, uh flowing through the
14:22
Speaker 1: system is feel good drug that if you're not actually
14:26
Speaker 1: having to fight or run away, is just going to
14:30
Speaker 1: be there to make you feel good, you know. And
14:31
Speaker 1: you mentioned to you that cortisol lingers in your blood
14:34
Speaker 1: for a couple of days, and um, that actually feeds
14:37
Speaker 1: into this other idea that it's useful for your magdala
14:41
Speaker 1: to be processing both fear and pleasure because uh, you know,
14:47
Speaker 1: necessarily want to um separate those two forms of stimulation
14:52
Speaker 1: because situations change on the time. What could be pleasant
14:55
Speaker 1: now could in five minutes, ten minutes a day later
14:59
Speaker 1: be actually very fearful or unpleasant. So the brain has
15:03
Speaker 1: to respond accordingly. And it's actually pretty brilliant way to
15:06
Speaker 1: adapt very quickly situations to have the magdala uh. You know,
15:10
Speaker 1: having this double duty now another huge aspect of fear
15:15
Speaker 1: and uh and and this certainly flows over into into
15:19
Speaker 1: our enjoyment of horror films and horror fiction and and
15:22
Speaker 1: you know, quick improved scares around the house. Uh And
15:27
Speaker 1: and that is the social context of it, because, like
15:31
Speaker 1: a lot of things, we learn how it works from
15:34
Speaker 1: seeing how others use it. We see how what other
15:37
Speaker 1: people's fear responses, and from that we uh we begin
15:40
Speaker 1: to piece together our own appropriate fear responses. It's true.
15:45
Speaker 1: And uh. You know, we have mentioned kids and the
15:48
Speaker 1: fact that they actually like to be scared. And I
15:50
Speaker 1: even see this in my three year old at round
15:51
Speaker 1: age two, she started saying chase me or you know,
15:54
Speaker 1: pretending that I was you know, uh t rex or something.
15:58
Speaker 1: Um and you do you see the same kids and
16:01
Speaker 1: they really are trying to work out situations and this
16:04
Speaker 1: is the idea behind why they do like to get scared.
16:08
Speaker 1: Psychologist Paul Bloom's lab has actually shown four and five
16:12
Speaker 1: year old films of other children reacting to movies now
16:15
Speaker 1: he had to do that because for ethical reasons, he
16:18
Speaker 1: couldn't get kids into his lab and then scare them, right,
16:22
Speaker 1: um so, but he could show them images of children
16:25
Speaker 1: who were scared, who were watching scary movies. When asked
16:30
Speaker 1: which of the movies they would want to see, because
16:32
Speaker 1: he shared them all different types of movies, boring movies,
16:35
Speaker 1: happy movies, sad movies, scary movies. The four and five
16:38
Speaker 1: year olds preferred the happy films, of course, but they
16:41
Speaker 1: picked scary movies over the boring ones. And he says,
16:45
Speaker 1: parents automatically assumed that children like stories with happy endings,
16:49
Speaker 1: and he cited the Little Engine that Could, But he says,
16:52
Speaker 1: what about the little Engine that that tried and failed?
16:55
Speaker 1: It might be that children would find it perversely satisfying.
17:00
Speaker 1: It's it's also worth noting here, um, not to jump
17:02
Speaker 1: too far ahead, but most, maybe most, um, mainstream horror
17:07
Speaker 1: films do have a happy ending. Um yeah, like you know,
17:12
Speaker 1: you have a lot of bad stuff happened. But then
17:14
Speaker 1: but if they follow the more stereotypical story arc of
17:18
Speaker 1: these things, uh, you still have everything come back around
17:21
Speaker 1: to some level of normalcy and some some manner of
17:25
Speaker 1: a happy ending. Now, that that does not hold true
17:27
Speaker 1: across the board. But if you think of some of
17:30
Speaker 1: the stuff that's really mainstream, the stuff that is actually
17:33
Speaker 1: up there in the box office, um, like Jaws, for instance,
17:36
Speaker 1: what happens in the end of Jaws spoiler shark blows
17:39
Speaker 1: up right right the the bad guy, the Boogeyman, is vanquished. Really,
17:44
Speaker 1: and so we see that over and over again in stories.
17:46
Speaker 1: We see fairy tales, right, and this is the stuff
17:48
Speaker 1: that we feed our children's mind with from the get go.
17:52
Speaker 1: I remember that not too long ago there were five
17:54
Speaker 1: hundred year old um German fairy tales that were just unearthed,
17:59
Speaker 1: and one of them was particularly gruesome. It was about
18:02
Speaker 1: a witch who swallowed um, this girl. Actually the girls
18:07
Speaker 1: trying to get away from the witch, she turned into water.
18:09
Speaker 1: The witch swallowed her up and so then the girl
18:12
Speaker 1: had to cut herself out of the witch's belly. And
18:15
Speaker 1: you know this again, the reason why we're putting this
18:18
Speaker 1: sort of information out there, um consciously or unconsciously, is
18:22
Speaker 1: because you're trying to teach kids about dangers in the world.
18:25
Speaker 1: And that's what storytelling and and really horror stories are
18:28
Speaker 1: trying to tell you. Like, there is some sort of
18:30
Speaker 1: moral code ascribed to what we're doing in the world. Um.
18:34
Speaker 1: And there are consequences, and of course you have. Some
18:36
Speaker 1: of the nursery boogies were just all about trying to
18:39
Speaker 1: correct certain behaviors, like like the long Legged scissor Man,
18:43
Speaker 1: the whole rhyme about We're basically it's you don't need
18:45
Speaker 1: to suck your thumb because if you keep sucking your thumb,
18:48
Speaker 1: the long legged scissor Man will show up and he
18:50
Speaker 1: will slice your thumbs off. I never heard that, Oh,
18:53
Speaker 1: you're really there's a there's a fun rhyme. If I
18:55
Speaker 1: if I thought about it ahead of time, I would
18:56
Speaker 1: have brought it. I would have brought it in prepared
18:58
Speaker 1: so we could we could read it. But wow, okay, um,
19:03
Speaker 1: I didn't get a lot of that kind of stuff
19:05
Speaker 1: right to me as a child. It was mostly like
19:06
Speaker 1: if you grow up in a Victorian it was mostly
19:10
Speaker 1: like environmental literature like pop Cam Park and stuff like that. Um.
19:15
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean there's this idea that children are
19:18
Speaker 1: learning what dangers are and people who they can trust
19:21
Speaker 1: and not trust. Um. And there's something actually called Williams
19:26
Speaker 1: syndrome and children and adults and this actually this syndrome
19:31
Speaker 1: doesn't allow them to be fearful of anybody in any
19:34
Speaker 1: sort of social situation. Um, they are hyper social people
19:38
Speaker 1: with William syndrome. They love people and they are literally
19:41
Speaker 1: pathologically trusting of people right now. And then not to
19:44
Speaker 1: imply that all hyper social activity and UH in small
19:48
Speaker 1: kids is definitely tied up in this condition. You also
19:51
Speaker 1: have situations where kids will be hyper social because they've
19:54
Speaker 1: grown up in an early environment where it is advantageous
19:59
Speaker 1: to be UH ultrasocial with various people moving through their lives,
20:03
Speaker 1: particularly and say UH an institutionalized setting like an ape
20:07
Speaker 1: as yeah, right, as as as a way to adapt. Um.
20:10
Speaker 1: But with with people with true Williams syndrome readers, researchers
20:15
Speaker 1: actually think that their limbic system, the part of the
20:17
Speaker 1: brain that regulates emotion, is wired differently, and there appears
20:21
Speaker 1: to be a disregulation in one of the chemicals oxytocin
20:25
Speaker 1: we've taught. We've called that the love hormone. Before that
20:28
Speaker 1: signals went to trust and went to distrust. And parents
20:31
Speaker 1: of kids with William syndrome have to be really vigilant
20:33
Speaker 1: about teaching their children to distrust people, because they truly
20:36
Speaker 1: will they really sensed no fear whatsoever. And we'll run
20:40
Speaker 1: up to anybody and uh and pretty much say, hey,
20:44
Speaker 1: what's going on? Come home with me? All right, we're
20:46
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
20:48
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss Catharsis and our old friend benign violation.
20:53
Speaker 1: Oh that old friend, right, we're back, so benign violation.
21:02
Speaker 1: You may remember this from when we talked about humor.
21:04
Speaker 1: What makes something funny? According to some theories of humor, um,
21:09
Speaker 1: it's the fact that we're threatened but not really. Something
21:12
Speaker 1: that seems like it's gonna kill us is actually just
21:15
Speaker 1: a joke, and therefore we laugh. It's our our our
21:17
Speaker 1: way of communicating to our fellow cave people that that
21:22
Speaker 1: there's no real threat, that the what we thought was
21:25
Speaker 1: a savor tooth tiger jumping out of the the underbrush
21:28
Speaker 1: to consume us was actually just thog having a laugh
21:32
Speaker 1: at our expense. And then we all kind of laugh
21:34
Speaker 1: because we were so frightened and really sacrificed thog to
21:37
Speaker 1: our red gods. Right, but then the sabre tooth tiger
21:40
Speaker 1: in the actual horror film does come out right after
21:43
Speaker 1: the laughter rime. Right, But but the benign violation definitely
21:47
Speaker 1: plays into our consumption of horror because, like we discussed earlier,
21:50
Speaker 1: all this stuff is going on in your brain. You're
21:52
Speaker 1: watching this horror movie, you're reading this horror book. Your
21:54
Speaker 1: body is responding accordingly, and then your brain kicks in
21:58
Speaker 1: and says, WHOA, Just to keep in mind, this is
22:01
Speaker 1: just a movie. It's not real. Uh and uh, and
22:04
Speaker 1: thank goodness that part of the brain is there to
22:06
Speaker 1: remind us of this. But it results in this benign
22:10
Speaker 1: violation area where we're threatened but not really. There's something horrible,
22:15
Speaker 1: but it actually can't hurt us, right, so you know
22:18
Speaker 1: that the threats not there. And UM, I do think
22:21
Speaker 1: it's very interesting that it has such a parallel with humor.
22:24
Speaker 1: And indeed, like we're discussing the humor situation, what happens
22:27
Speaker 1: when you go to see a horror movie? Uh, in
22:30
Speaker 1: a movie theater, Well, when people are not checking their email,
22:34
Speaker 1: talking on the phone, uh, smoking um illegal substances, or
22:38
Speaker 1: talking with their friends, or eating popcorn, eating nachos, making out,
22:42
Speaker 1: drinking sodas, really loudly talking to their child who is
22:47
Speaker 1: inappropriately attending the film. It is a long list of
22:51
Speaker 1: things that happened that are not movie viewing in a
22:54
Speaker 1: like you just took that list out of your pocket
22:55
Speaker 1: went down. But one of the other things they do
22:58
Speaker 1: is they laugh when something horrible happens, which is something
23:02
Speaker 1: I line up on that list of things I hate
23:05
Speaker 1: about seeing films with other people, uh list. But but
23:08
Speaker 1: it's something that actually lines up with the signs and
23:11
Speaker 1: we're looking at here because it's the benign violation. It's
23:13
Speaker 1: it's the fact that something horrible happened and they didn't die.
23:18
Speaker 1: It produces laughter, and I can't get too irritated at
23:20
Speaker 1: that because it's tied into our evolutionary history. Well it
23:23
Speaker 1: is cathartic. Yeah, right, So but here's here's the thing.
23:27
Speaker 1: So one are the eating nachos, because if they're scared,
23:30
Speaker 1: they should have there. That's the other thing that gives
23:32
Speaker 1: me so like, people will go into a film to
23:34
Speaker 1: see something like Schindler's List or some sort of horror
23:36
Speaker 1: film and they have nachos. All we're gonna pay for
23:40
Speaker 1: it afterward. But that's not your problem, man, But they're
23:43
Speaker 1: gonna lose their appetite. You're in the fearful moments anyway,
23:45
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? Like say, hey, man, don't
23:47
Speaker 1: eat those nachos, like you're you're gonna produce too much
23:50
Speaker 1: stomach acid because you're in an altered state maybe, and
23:53
Speaker 1: and too much noise. They should soak those things more
23:56
Speaker 1: in that yellow gook Beforehands of the Knife and Sagi. Anyway, Um,
24:00
Speaker 1: that kind of episode. What was I talking about? Well,
24:02
Speaker 1: I think we're talking about trying to master our fear
24:05
Speaker 1: in Catharsis. Yes, Catharsis. Catharsis, just remind everybody this is uh,
24:10
Speaker 1: the purging of emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially
24:14
Speaker 1: through certain kinds of art, such as tragedy or music. Um.
24:19
Speaker 1: It's the pleasure that comes from the relief that follows. Right. Um.
24:24
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to note that a lot of horror
24:27
Speaker 1: flicks are really geared toward teenagers and twentysomethings. Um. John
24:33
Speaker 1: Edward Campbell, who is an expert in media studies at
24:35
Speaker 1: Templing University, said that that people in those age groups
24:39
Speaker 1: are more likely to look for intense experiences, while older
24:43
Speaker 1: people have stimulation fatigue. Uh. He says, life's real horrors
24:48
Speaker 1: scare them or they don't find them entertaining anymore or interesting. Yeah,
24:53
Speaker 1: and then Freud he even piped in and this suggests
24:56
Speaker 1: that the horror was appealing because it traffics in quote
24:59
Speaker 1: thoughts and feeling things that have been repressed by the
25:01
Speaker 1: ego but which seem vaguely familiar. So lining up with that,
25:06
Speaker 1: and also outside of that, you have her as a
25:09
Speaker 1: form of this. This can be this form of therapy
25:12
Speaker 1: where we're we're dealing with the things that we're afraid of,
25:14
Speaker 1: but informs that make more sense, be it a social
25:17
Speaker 1: concern that is personified or some sort of just you know,
25:22
Speaker 1: the fear of death personified into something that can be
25:26
Speaker 1: uh dealt with on a on a like a more
25:28
Speaker 1: of a clear cut level. We talked about zombies before,
25:31
Speaker 1: Like you can look at zombies that way, zombies as
25:33
Speaker 1: this uh it's this, this clear cut personification of various
25:38
Speaker 1: fears that can be dealt with in a pretty clear
25:42
Speaker 1: cut manner. Most of our fears we can't shoot dead
25:45
Speaker 1: in the street with a shotgun, um not, and and
25:47
Speaker 1: still maintain a, you know, our fair standing in society.
25:52
Speaker 1: H Zombies and the zombie fiction allows us to engage
25:55
Speaker 1: in that kind of a world where there is good
25:57
Speaker 1: and there is zombie and they're cleanly dealt with through
26:02
Speaker 1: a specified means of taking them down, you know. Um,
26:07
Speaker 1: I was just thinking too, And when you're young, when
26:10
Speaker 1: you're really young, um, and then even when you're a
26:12
Speaker 1: teenager in your early twenties, you are still grappling with
26:15
Speaker 1: this idea that one day you will die, right that
26:17
Speaker 1: This is this ultimately is the problem that we're dealing with.
26:20
Speaker 1: This is why horror films are so entrancing to us. Yeah,
26:24
Speaker 1: you can boil a lot of harror down to just
26:26
Speaker 1: basically us trying to figure out mortality. Yeah, it's the
26:29
Speaker 1: basic human condition of existential fear, right, Like we know
26:32
Speaker 1: that eventually all of us will be entering that that
26:35
Speaker 1: doorstep of death. And so I was just thinking about
26:38
Speaker 1: how you said, uh, that you might be overly wrapped
26:43
Speaker 1: with um the macab because of growing up and celebrating Halloween,
26:48
Speaker 1: And the same thing in my family happened. I mean,
26:51
Speaker 1: my dad would play the pit and the pendulum against
26:53
Speaker 1: the house, like protecting against the house every year, and
26:55
Speaker 1: he would turn our yard into a graveyard. And our
26:58
Speaker 1: favorite movies of family to this day, and this was
27:01
Speaker 1: one of my brother I was five and my brother
27:03
Speaker 1: was seven is Harold and maud Okay, which which is
27:07
Speaker 1: about a very morose kid. It's about death and his
27:10
Speaker 1: occupation with I can't remember he's but Holly was telling
27:16
Speaker 1: me how disconcerting it is to see him in pictures
27:18
Speaker 1: today because he was Yeah, but he his character was
27:23
Speaker 1: preoccupied with death. Um. He would pull off these hoax
27:27
Speaker 1: deaths all the time, or suicides. And my brother used
27:30
Speaker 1: to do the same thing. So he would, like, you know,
27:32
Speaker 1: we'd be eating dinner and he'd go get up to
27:34
Speaker 1: go the bathroom, and the next thing you know, you
27:35
Speaker 1: would see him dragging his body if you've ever seen
27:39
Speaker 1: when someone do that across the threshold, you know, from
27:42
Speaker 1: the door. So we so it looked like someone was
27:43
Speaker 1: dragging his body. He was always pretending to be Harold.
27:47
Speaker 1: And now that I think about it, that that was
27:50
Speaker 1: a really fun way for her, for us to kind
27:53
Speaker 1: of get a beat on that subject on death and
27:57
Speaker 1: work it out. I suppose um. One of my favorite
28:00
Speaker 1: cart that's that's very cathartic. Um. One of my favorite
28:03
Speaker 1: commentators on all of this is is Stephen King, who,
28:06
Speaker 1: in his intro to his short story collection Night Shift
28:10
Speaker 1: Um has us a lot of really interesting things to
28:13
Speaker 1: say about not only the craft of writing stories in
28:15
Speaker 1: his own experiences with with writing horror, but also what
28:18
Speaker 1: he sees as the meaning of it. And he keeps
28:19
Speaker 1: making allusions to the Uh you know, you've heard the
28:22
Speaker 1: idea of the blind men and men and the elephant.
28:25
Speaker 1: Right where there's an elephant and there are these there's
28:27
Speaker 1: this pack of blind men and they're pawing at the elephant,
28:30
Speaker 1: and each one is feeling a different part of the
28:32
Speaker 1: elephant and thus describing it differently. Like the person the
28:35
Speaker 1: blind man touching the the the legs of the elephant says, Oh,
28:39
Speaker 1: it's like it's like a pole, and then the person
28:42
Speaker 1: touching the trunks as that it's like a snake. And
28:44
Speaker 1: uh King makes this um, this argument that horror allows
28:49
Speaker 1: us to paw at this equally um unseen body that
28:55
Speaker 1: is death. Um, I'm gonna read a quick quote from
28:57
Speaker 1: He says, children learn fear quickly. They pick it up
29:00
Speaker 1: off their mother or father's faces when the parent comes
29:03
Speaker 1: into the bathroom and sees them with the bottle of
29:05
Speaker 1: pills or the safety razor. Fear makes us blind, and
29:08
Speaker 1: we uh, fear makes us blind, and we touch each
29:12
Speaker 1: fear with all the avid curiosity of self interest, trying
29:15
Speaker 1: to make a hole out of a hundred parts. Like
29:18
Speaker 1: the blind men with their elephant. We sense the shape.
29:21
Speaker 1: Children grasped it easily, forget it, and relearn it as adults.
29:25
Speaker 1: The shape is there, and most of us come to
29:27
Speaker 1: realize what it is sooner or later. It is the
29:29
Speaker 1: shape of a body under our sheet, under a sheet.
29:32
Speaker 1: So I thought that sums it up rather nicely. Uh.
29:36
Speaker 1: As far as just a horror as our wrestling with mortality, yeah,
29:40
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody can put it better than Stephen
29:42
Speaker 1: King and um, and then there's all I've I mentioned before.
29:46
Speaker 1: You know, monsters. Anytime we're dealing with monsters, monsters almost
29:50
Speaker 1: always signify something they're not just a such situation about.
29:54
Speaker 1: You know, it'd be scary if we had there's a guy,
29:56
Speaker 1: but his his head was a wolf's head. Wouldn't that
29:59
Speaker 1: be That would be scary. Let's just throw that in there.
30:01
Speaker 1: I mean, that may be the level of thinking engaged
30:04
Speaker 1: in the creation of the particular story or myth. But
30:06
Speaker 1: deeper down, um, we even look to the like the
30:10
Speaker 1: word monster. The word monstrosity originates from the Latin uh monstery,
30:14
Speaker 1: which means to show or illustrate a point. So all
30:18
Speaker 1: of our monsters, no matter how gross or poorly designed,
30:23
Speaker 1: they embodied ideas, fears, and abstractions about the human condition,
30:27
Speaker 1: be it about death or disease, be it a social
30:30
Speaker 1: concern or um, you know what, have you eased even ourselves?
30:35
Speaker 1: How we can be unknowable to ourselves? Exactly? Yes, certainly
30:38
Speaker 1: when you look at Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde King.
30:41
Speaker 1: Also in this uh, this intro, he he describes hard
30:45
Speaker 1: to as a kind of replacement therapy you know where.
30:49
Speaker 1: And this gets a little into Catharsis, but but more
30:53
Speaker 1: along the lines of I have certain things in my
30:55
Speaker 1: life that, um, that caused me a certain the level
30:58
Speaker 1: of anxiety, and um, wouldn't it be nice if I
31:01
Speaker 1: could replace that for a little bit with some imagined
31:04
Speaker 1: anxiety that's even worse, so an escapism that makes my
31:08
Speaker 1: lot in life look not so bad? Yeah, he says.
31:11
Speaker 1: The horror story writer is not so different from the
31:13
Speaker 1: Welsh sin eater who was supposed to take upon himself
31:16
Speaker 1: the sins of the deer departed by partaking of the
31:19
Speaker 1: deer departed's food. The tale of Monstrosity and tearor is
31:22
Speaker 1: a basket loosely packed with phobious When the writer passes by,
31:27
Speaker 1: you take one of his imaginary horrors out of the
31:29
Speaker 1: basket and you put one of your real ones in
31:32
Speaker 1: at least for a time, which I thought it was
31:34
Speaker 1: an interesting way of looking at it. Well, very cool. Um,
31:38
Speaker 1: I think that these are different ways to kind of
31:40
Speaker 1: come at the subject. But at the end of the day, Um,
31:43
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's something that a psychologist named Glenn
31:47
Speaker 1: Waltz's of Cuttown University. What he said I thought was
31:51
Speaker 1: was resonated with me. He said, control lost under the
31:55
Speaker 1: cover of darkness is rediscovered in the light of day.
31:58
Speaker 1: Danger posed by things unknown is reduced by increased knowledge
32:01
Speaker 1: and predict predictability. And I thought that is really what
32:05
Speaker 1: it's about. I mean, any sort of story is a
32:08
Speaker 1: bit of a training wheels for us to try to
32:11
Speaker 1: occupy this this space in our mind. We try to
32:14
Speaker 1: imagine ourselves in these horrific moments. Um, So it is instructive. Yeah,
32:19
Speaker 1: in that context, I'll be sure to do a blog
32:21
Speaker 1: post to go along with this podcast, and so as
32:24
Speaker 1: to cut down in time now, I will list some
32:26
Speaker 1: other favorite bits of horrorsh fiction or horror uh film
32:32
Speaker 1: um in that blog post you can check it out.
32:34
Speaker 1: So as gonna leave this podcast and our contemplation of
32:38
Speaker 1: fearful and horrible things and and how real and imagine, yeah,
32:43
Speaker 1: real and imagine, and how looking into the darkness can
32:45
Speaker 1: help us conquer the darkness. Here's a little bit of
32:48
Speaker 1: geeky uh quotiness from one of my favorite authors, Frank Herbert. Uh,
32:53
Speaker 1: you'll recognize it. He said, Uh, I must not fear.
32:56
Speaker 1: Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death.
32:59
Speaker 1: It brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I
33:02
Speaker 1: will permit it to pass over me and through me.
33:04
Speaker 1: And when it has gone past, I will turn the
33:07
Speaker 1: inner eye to see its path. Where fear has gone,
33:10
Speaker 1: there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Hallelujah. Yeah,
33:14
Speaker 1: So who's for that in your mind? Next time you
33:17
Speaker 1: watch something frightening on TV that isn't the news. If
33:22
Speaker 1: it leads, it leads. All right, do we have an
33:25
Speaker 1: email there? Yes, there's Well, I feel like we've probably
33:29
Speaker 1: went a little along, so I'm just gonna have the
33:31
Speaker 1: robot share one of these with us, all right. This
33:35
Speaker 1: is from one Albert Albert Wright cent and says Hi,
33:38
Speaker 1: Robert and Julie. I finished listening to the centaur episode.
33:41
Speaker 1: Very interesting. Just wanted to pass on something regarding centaur sex.
33:45
Speaker 1: John Varley UH in his science fiction novel Titan, explored
33:49
Speaker 1: this very topic. Astronauts end up exploring a space station
33:55
Speaker 1: and one of the species they meet our centaurs. These
33:57
Speaker 1: centaurs have both human genitalia and equine genitalia, and the
34:02
Speaker 1: two parts do not necessarily match, meaning a centaur with
34:05
Speaker 1: a male human package can have a female equine package.
34:09
Speaker 1: The author explores a lot of interesting topics in sexuality
34:12
Speaker 1: in this novel. I highly recommend it. Uh. That is awesome.
34:15
Speaker 1: John Varley UM. For those of you who are not
34:17
Speaker 1: familiar with him, he uh wrote a lot of science
34:20
Speaker 1: fiction back in the day. He also wrote one particular
34:23
Speaker 1: story called Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. UH. And there
34:26
Speaker 1: was a kind of awesome, kind of cheesy PBS adaptation
34:32
Speaker 1: of this story of starring Rawl Rawle Julia back in
34:35
Speaker 1: the day, and it was actually featured on Mystery Science
34:37
Speaker 1: Theater three thousand Adams Family role Julia. Yeah, Yeah, that's
34:41
Speaker 1: that raw Julia. Great actor. UM. Kind of a very
34:44
Speaker 1: cheesy production, A lot of kind of matrix C type
34:48
Speaker 1: special effects before we really have the ability to pull
34:51
Speaker 1: that off. Um, but if you could see the strings
34:54
Speaker 1: on them as they bent backward. Yeah, but it is
34:56
Speaker 1: cheesy as it is. There are some factless ideas explored
34:59
Speaker 1: in that, and so it doesn't come it's too much
35:00
Speaker 1: of a surprise that John Varley also explored the topic
35:05
Speaker 1: of a cent to our sexuality. So there you go, um,
35:08
Speaker 1: and Tina's placement and and other equipment. There you go.
35:13
Speaker 1: So it sounds like one worth checking out there. Thanks
35:15
Speaker 1: Albert for bringing that to attention. And uh, if any
35:18
Speaker 1: of you would like to discuss the topic of centaur
35:21
Speaker 1: sexuality or horror with us, you know where to find
35:25
Speaker 1: us on both at the same there is a lot
35:28
Speaker 1: of overlap between us two topics. I would I mentioned.
35:31
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook where we are stuff
35:34
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, and you can find us on
35:36
Speaker 1: Twitter where our handle is blow the Mind. Let us
35:39
Speaker 1: know your experiences with horror fiction, horror movies, what scares
35:44
Speaker 1: you and what are your thoughts on the the freight
35:47
Speaker 1: process inside your mind? And you can always drop us
35:50
Speaker 1: a line at blew the Mind at discovery dot com.
35:57
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
36:00
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join houstaf Work staff as we explore
36:03
Speaker 1: the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.