Anthology of Horror, Volume 4

an informative and entertaining Halloween sausage. We did this for a few years based on creepy pasta stories, and then we kind of felt like that well was running a little dry, so we turned to an even richer and deeper treasure trove of horror fiction, and that is horror and sci fi anthology series. Uh. A lot of these are shows that aired on TV. A lot of them are also films that feature, you know, several different stories in an anthology format, and there's just a tremendous amount

out there. We're We're talking the likes of the Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Tales from the Dark Side, Tales from the Crypt Monsters, Black Mirror, and just so many many more. Uh. Plus there's a highly popular Simpsons Treehouse of horror episodes, as well as various against cinematic horror anthology, such as The Vault of Horror. So this is gonna be volume four,

and then we're gonna do volume five this year. We did volume one in two thousand eighteen, we did volumes two and three and twenty nineteen, so we're continuing the tradition. And uh and again, yeah, I just have to say, there's just so much out there in terms of horror and sci fi anthology television. Uh. And then there's this an additional ton of horror and sci fi anthology cinema. So once again this year I found myself just combing through contenders that I had either forgotten about, was half

aware of, or just had flat never heard of. Like like a lot in horror especially, I feel like the horror anthology genre tends to feel like low hanging route. But but the kicker is that when well done, there's nothing else quite like it. Well, yeah, I think that's true. I mean there's almost an ancient memory aspect to a horror anthology because it feels like people sitting around a campfire going around the circle, each taking a turn to

tell a story. Yeah, and uh, like the literary short story provides wonderful opportunities that full length or episodic mediums don't provide. Like a lot of times, you can really put a particular idea in the forefront, you can put a particular twist in the forefront. Uh. And it can work better than it would if you tried to build an entire you know, uh TV series around this or

an entire feature leath length film around us. I was actually just thinking the other day about the good things about having a short format for horror, because we watched a new horror movie that came out this year. It was a Shutter original film called Host. It was like a Zoom horror movie. It takes place entirely on Zoom, but the characters do a say once and there's demonic shenanigans and the movie is about an hour long. And I thought that worked fantastically because it's, you know, it's

not a super deep film. It's not especially like thoughtful or interesting, but just for an excellent little boo frolic, an hour is a perfect length. Uh And and I wish more horror movies would just kind of embrace that and say, no, we're not going to be as long as it's supposed to be. We're not gonna pad this out to eighty six minutes. We're gonna be an hour long. I mean, if it's good enough for Attack of the

Crab Monsters, an hour run time is good enough for you. Yes, yeah, yeah, I definitely thought about that when I watch when I watched for the first time, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, like just shorter format, but nan they got everything in. So yeah, if you're a horror director out there, don't worry about patting it out. I mean, if your movie is only fifty four minutes long, I think that's great. Now.

You mentioned zoom based horror earlier. In a bit later on in the episode, we're gonna discuss an episode of

the nine nineties revival of the Outer Limits. I want to mention that there this is not the episode we're gonna be talking about, but there is an episode called dead Man Switch that's that's extremely good, and it has to do with individuals humans that are put into uh separate bunkers during an alien invasion and each one is functioning as a dead man switch for the planetary defense system.

But the fun thing about it is all these people are solely communicating with each other via this like you know, closed network television, basically a zoom scenario. Uh So it's a it's a very interesting piece to watch during this time of increased zoom meetings, etcetera. All right, well, let's just jump right in here to our first selection. This is from the Night two horror anthology film creep Show. Uh this is the Lonesome Death of Jordi Verrel. Alright,

so sidebar before we get started on the plot. This segment stars Stephen King in the flesh. He's the actor in it. So I've got to ask what are your favorite Stephen King acting spots and and I'll announce mine. He's got a cameo in a movie called Sleepwalkers. If you've never seen it, I think it came out in the eighties or early nineties, and it is about shape shifting cat demon things that suck the life essence out

of young women. And then I think they can turn invisible, they can like look like different things, and their weaknesses that if they're attacked by cats they die. But anyway, in Sleepwalkers, there is an amazing scene that features a cameo by Stephen King as a perturbed cemetery caretaker who is angry that that perverts keep coming into his cemetery at night. But it also contains cameos by Toby Hooper

and Clive Barker. Oh, I love it when we have scenes like that, and that's a fitting like Grizzly cameo for for Stephen King. Um, because I remember, probably during like the height of my my, my young obsession with Stephen King novels. Uh, the TV series Golden Years came out, which I don't think is anybody's favorite of Stephen King project.

I don't think they ever finished it. You know, it went maybe a season, maybe less in a season, but I remember there being oh, it's like a goodness, I'm having a hard time he remembering what the gist of it was a man aging rapidly I think, or aging backwards, one of the two. Um. It had. One of the best things about it was it had David Bowie's Golden Years as the theme music. But there's a scene where Stephen King shows up as a as a bus driver and at the time I was like, this is amazing

that's Stephen. He's the author and he's the bus driver. Um. Of course he would go on to have so many more interesting cameos and things. Um. For instance, I never saw this, but he has pretty wacky one in the TV version of The Shining he's this band leader, like this really um energetic band, big band leader with a pencil thin mustache. He looked fabulously greased back hair, got a pencil mustache. That that is not a good look

for Stephen King. I don't know, you know, he's he kind of has the like the face for for facial hair. Though he can make most of it work. I feel it kind of works. He does better full beard, I mean full beard. He looks appropriately shaggy and kind of right early with the pencil mustache, he looks like maybe he would be the guy who would be discovered in the cemetery. Now, in terms of just his acting roles, go like things where he's not just a cameo but

he's actually playing a bit part. He had a really fun one in the biker drama Sons of Anarchy. Uh several years back. He played a guy who makes bodies disappear. So he's you know, just kind of this stern but creepy guy in a in a basement that will uh you know, make that make that body disappear when you need it to end. He insists on listening to eighties music while it happens. Well, I've never seen that either, but but I'll have to look it up. All right, Well,

let's get into two creep show here. So creep show for anyone who's not familiar with it, with Stephen King and George Ramiro's tribute to pre code horror comics of old. I think I may have covered the crate in a in a previous episode. I'm not sure, but it has some wonderful segments, but they're all like sort of mean, uh grizzly uh segments that are you know, very much in the vein of classic tales from the Crypt and so forth, where uh there are bad people that do

bad things and get their come up. It's usually in grizzly ways with a little bit of gallows humor thrown in. And like we said, not only is this written by Stephen King, but this segment also stars the author as well. Again, it's the Lonesome Death of Jordy veryl and it's a little bit the Color out of Space and a little bit the Blob. It's about a redneck who comes in contact with space goo. Uh. Then after coming in contact with space goo, some sort of alien plant or plant

like organism takes over his body. And then he makes the terrible mistake of climbing into a hot bath to ease his discomfort. The alien plant infection overtakes him and he ends up following papahanming Way into the sunset. Then we hear on the t V that rainy weather is moving in which will spread, no doubt, spread the alien plants even wider across the Earth. You know, this connects

to several other horror stories, uh in interesting ways. One that I didn't think of until just now is the way that it connects to, especially the late nineteen seventies remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is very good and which characterizes the spores that come down and possess the humans and turn them into the replicants. Uh.

They're very plant like. I mean, obviously they're not from Earth, so they're not exactly of the Kingdom of the Plants, but there's clearly a similarity with plants and an affinity for plants among the aliens, and the ending of the Jordy Viril segment makes me think very much of the beginning of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers Remake, because in the opening credits to The Body Snatchers Remake, there is this sequence that just kind of shows these filaments

almost blowing in the wind, and it accomplishes a very sinister visual connotation without any words or any explanation, just of the idea of biological material kind of drifting and through through the air, through space, carried on currents of various kinds. Yeah, and of course the weakenings instantly think to other sort of plant based horror properties, such as the Day of the Triffids, which we've mentioned on here before. That's a big one about plant plant like aliens overtaking

the earth or troll too. That's right, that's right. So this Jordy Viral episode, it is the question for me, are there any plants that can grow on or in the human body under sort of normal circumstances, Because obviously, like a dead body filled with dirt, you could grow some some plants, and that if you had some sort of somehow I had an outfit that had like lots

of dirt pockets you could grow grow that way. Also wanted to you know, avoid discussing bacteria and fungi, sticking to just good old plants, which again seems more in line with the plant like organisms that we're dealing with in this short um. And we're not counting things that might look like plants but are in fact tumors or what have you. So for the most part, plants don't want to be on us or inside us, unless, of course, their seeds are traveling on our hair or garments, or

if their seeds are traveling through our digestive systems. Otherwise, there's just not much of an in game going on with the inside of the human body or even like on the exterior of the human body. Uh, you know, seeds need to get in the dirt. But sometimes things go wrong, as horribly wrong. As reported in by the BBC and various other outlets, a man named Ron vet and I believe uh had been battling emphysema, and he

underwent an X ray as his condition worsened. The doctors then discovered that a p had gone down the wrong um, you know, the wrong pipe and sprouted in the warm, moist environment of the patient's lung. It had only grown a half an inch long, but you know, still it was enough to cause some concern. Surgeons removed it. Uh and uh, we should stress here that what was happening is that the P was sprouting as if it were

under the soil reaching up for sunlight. Thus it grew in the darkness of a human body as if it were going to sprout out of the body and find the sun. Now an energy terms, it couldn't keep growing like that forever, right, because eventually it would need sunlight in order to supply new energy. But of course, a P, like many other uh you know, like the yolk of an egg or something, has some chemical energy built into

it that can propel that initial sprouting from the dark place. Uh. Fortunately, it would probably eventually not be able to find sunlight, but it still would, I guess, be some kind of gross thing in your lung. So it's a good thing they took it out. But in the spirit of of making the familiar strange, I think we should dwell for a minute on the idea of seeds using bodies such as human bodies for dispersal. We don't dwell on this as a parallel to any kind of botanical body horror

because it just seems so normal. Well, yeah, you know, sometimes you just eat fruit with seeds in it. But this is really kind of strange the more you think about it. So, of course, there are evolutionary pressures on plants that caused them to find methods of seed dispersal, not just to produce seeds of for a new generation of plants, but to try to get them physically away

from the parent and uh. And this is because like the can share genes of the parent and offspring plant, it's don't want to be forced to compete directly with one another for resources. And these resources would include soil space, water, nutrients in the soil, access to sunlight. If you can get the kids out of the house, that's good because then you're not fighting over food. And competition of this kind can be reduced by dispersing seeds, and nature of

course has lots of ingenious solutions for this. We've talked about some on the show before. For example, you know all the different structures the parachute or wing like structures that seeds sometimes sprout in order to ride on the wind to or to drift, like the like the filaments in in Invasion to the body snatchers. Then there were even exploding seed pods like you would find on the sandbox tree or Hera crepitans, And so this is a

tree that has thorns all over its trunk. I think I've read somewhere that it's called the monkey Can't Climate tree, and it produces seed pods that look kind of like tiny pumpkins, and they explode in their right literally explodes in ballistic propulsion of seeds up to distances of like a hundred meters away according to some reports. But also, as you mentioned earlier, a lot of seeds rely on animals to be dispersed, and this is known as zoo cory.

So there's epizoo cory, which is the transport of seeds on the outside of the animal. So you think of like the burrs that get stuck on a dog's fur, stuck to your socks. One example of this is the burdock plant, which was apparently the inspiration behind the invention

of velcrow, invention of the loop and fastener system. But then there's also, of course what's known as indo zoo Corey the transport of seeds inside of the animal, and this usually involves creating a tasty, fruiting body containing the seed, waiting to get eaten, traveling around inside an animal's digestive system, then being released in the animals species to grow in

a new place. And so if you eat some tasty blackberries, you are, in a way, Jordi varrel, you are the moost of this plant that is using your digestive system, using and your your legs, your mobile body in the dispersal of seeds as part of its reproductive cycle. In fact, there are even some seeds that are somewhat obligate in this way. They need to be primed to grow inside an animal's digestive system. Blackberries would be an example, which I think usually needs some time in a bird's gizzard

before they will grow. But all the stories you read of like okay, well you know, my cousin knows a guy who swallowed a watermelon seed and it grew a watermelon inside his stomach, that that's not true. I could not find any evidence that anything like that ever happens. But while it's unlikely that you would grow a plant from a seed in your body while you are alive.

Could it happen after you're dead? Again? You mentioned earlier Rob that if a seed was maybe in your pockets, in your pockets were full of soil, it could grow out of that. But could it actually grow from inside your body? Well, I could not find a verified example of this. I found a disputed claim about a fig tree that grew out of a murdered man's stomach in a cave in Cyprus. But it looks like that that

account is has has generally been refuted. But I was reading an article that talks about that that rumored story in Life Science by Laura Geigel, and the author here consulted a soil science professor from Oregon State University named j. Knohler, and it was Nhler's opinion that such a thing is actually plausible. He said that seeds can sometimes emerge from dead animals, so he imagines they could likewise emerge out of a dead human um. But he said it wouldn't

have to be in their stomach. It could actually grow from any part of the dead person's digestive tract. It could be in their large intestine, small intestine, and the way it breaks down would work like this. So you'd have a dead, decaying body all around the plant seed that would sort of help it out with nutrients, very

possibly with the third party of ungus involved. So microscopic fungi in the soil would help decompose the dead body breakdown, you know, the fungus would break down fats and proteins into simpler constituent nutrients, and then the fungus would share these nutrients with nearby plants, possibly even seeds that are among the decaying organic material of the body in a

symbiotic relationship. So they would exchange simple sugars that the plant produces for these nutrients that they're getting from decomposing the body. But I wanted to think about another way of possibly framing infection by an alien plant, apart from directly becoming the host or substrate of the plant itself, And that's the idea of infection via a plant vector. Or to put it as a question, would you let

a zucchini flower cough in your mouth? And I was looking around for for answers to this question can you get infected from a plant? And I found an article by a plant pathologist and diagnostician at iowas a University named Dr. Lena Rodriguez Salamanca, and she said that sometimes her lab receives questions from the public, including the question of can I catch and infectious disease from a plant.

The answer is in most cases no. You know, pathogens that are specialized to infect plants, and of course there are many of these. Plants can be infected by fungi, by viruses, by bacteria, just like animals can. But usually a pathogen that is specialized for one kingdom of life is not just going to jump, you know, from that one into another kingdom of life and infected. It is

not adapted to that. But there are cases of a few known opportunistic pathogens that will make this jump, and this is especially true for people with compromised immune systems. So one example is an infectious bacterium known as a pseudominous erugenosa, and Rodriguez Salamanca says that it can cause a weak soft rot on plants such as lettuce, and this bacterium has been known to jump the kingdom barrier

sometimes infect people with compromised immune systems. This can lead to infections of the urinary tract, of the lungs, the blood and wounds including burns, but for most people it does not represent a threat. But then there are other ones. For example, there is a fungal infection caused by the fungus Sporothrix shanky i, which thrives on the dead thorns of a rose stem, and this has given rise to

the name rose pickers disease or rose handler's disease. So if you're handling a rose and you, you know, get pricked by one of these dead thorns that has the fungal infection, or get a scratch, this way, the fungus can get into your scan, potentially into your lymph system. And apparently you can also inhale spores of this fungus and this can cause all kinds of problems infections of the skin, of course, but of the eyes, the lungs,

the nervous system, bones, and joints. And then finally she mentions that there are infectious agents of plants that can produce set candary byproducts that are harmful to humans, and she gives the example of fungi that attack corn. The phrase she used specifically is ear rots, which is a new sort of words quick for me. But this includes the genus Fusarium and these fungi produced secondary microtoxins, including quote few Monison's z ralinone and the aptly named vomitoxin, which, yes,

that that is what it sounds like. And of course these are byproducts that can affect you in all kinds of ways. She talks about how most of the things like this, like like Aspergillis flavius also is a is a contaminant that you could find in grains that produces secondary microtoxins. A lot of these things that produce these secondary microtoxins that can harm you would be found specifically, not in like leafy plants like let us, but on grains.

And she she mentions, you know, you don't need to be too worried because like grain producers monitor for the presence of these organisms. So yes, it is in fact possible for a human to catch a disease from a plant, much in the same way that we could catch a disease from a mosquito or a bat, but fortunately it's

not very common. All right, with that, we're gonna go ahead close the book on Ajority Veril and I think we're gonna go and take our first break, but when we come back, we will unlock another entry in horror anthology history than all right, we're back. Is it time to go to the Outer Limits? Yeah, let's go to the Outer Limits. Uh. So I mentioned that we would be looking at an episode from the nineties revival of the Outer Limits. UM not to be confused with the

original series from the from the nineteen sixties. Uh. This is a series that ran through two thousand and two. Now, I watched a few of these on TV back in the day, but via Amazon Prime Watch Party, we've been watching an episode a week with a couple of friends, and I have to say, the nineties Outer Limits has

everything I love. You've got really cool sci fi concepts, you have great monster makeup, a little nineties cheesiness, uh sprinkled in there, and some really fun performances as well, sometimes by people you've you've never heard of, but oftentimes by people that went on to have uh you know, key roles in in various sci fi properties or uh you know they did they did additional television work, so

you never know who you're gonna get. Like, for instance, I haven't watched this yet, but there's an episode where Gary Busey shows up playing a televangelist. There's a one where Michael Ironside shows up playing a mutant. Uh, it's is you just never know who's going to be in there. Yeah, there's a lot of oh that guy in it. Yeah. Basically, name an actor who is doing TV during this period of time, and there's a great chance that they were

on an episode of The Outer Limits. So during the Outer the nineties Outer Limits run they did a hundred and fifty two episodes. That's compared to forty nine episodes from the original nineteen sixties series. And again I certainly haven't watched them all, but this is a really good one we're gonna be talking about. It's an episode that is probably a bit heavy handed, as these sort of

things tend to be. Um, but this is also rather pronounced, as it was essentially a n commentary about climate change denihalism. That's very early. Yeah, yeah, you know, earlier than say an Inconvenient Truth and um and the like. But we'll get into something like the basic where it fits into the basic timeline of of climate change understanding here shortly.

But but first of all, just so everyone can find it if you're interested in watching it, it's titled to Tell the Truth, and it was written by Lawrence Myers and directed by Neil Fernley. It stars Gregory Harrison as Dr Larry Chambers. You may remember Gregory Harrison from various TV shows. I think he's like like on Trapper, John m D or something. Um and uh, you know various

other shows. Uh, a kind of a soap opera vibe. Yeah, yeah, definitely and uh and and in this he plays a terraforming botanist on the off world colony of Janice five. And I love how perfectly on the nose that the title is, I mean the name of the colony and our planet is because this is an episode that is concerned with truth, denial and the mistrust of information. Yes, and it has characters whose faces change and who are not what they seem. Yeah. So here's the deal. The

Janice five colony is going pretty well. It has a bright future, but doctor Chambers is concerned by some of the geologic evidence. Geologic evidence that includes the remnants of an extinct shape shifting alien civilization. But five years ago he got it really wrong. He predicted cyclo cyclical catastrophe. Uh, and he thought it was gonna be a volcanic catastrophe,

but then this didn't come to fruition. Now he's come to believe that the cyclical threat that is facing this planet is actually solar and that in another and then another devastating solar storm is just on the horizon, so

he urges that the colony be moved or even evacuated. Yeah, there's a great fake out beginning where a couple of characters appear to be looking out a window and then they see the sky it fills with these shimmering auroras and that turns into fire everywhere, and you you think, oh, no, are our main character is going to be killed right at the beginning. But though it turns out it is

a simulation they're looking at. But I was wondering why, why if they're simulating the future of the climate or their simulating solar activity, does it create a video display of what it's simulating, would happen? I don't. I guess it's just a robust simulation um package they have there. Yeah, that's a really good simulation. Usually simulation spit out like some numbers. This one does it full like I'll give you,

I'll give you a movie. So I mean I guess it's all about you know, creating something you know, visual that of course the audience can get into, but also these colonists, because even sympathetic members of the colony have their doubts about dot your Chambers. After all, he got it wrong once before. And then there's this added detail that he recently lost his wife and then even went missing for a couple of weeks in the in the wilderness. So this there's this lingering question can he be trusted?

Is he acting out of sort of just nihilistic hatred for the colony? Plenty of and also just plenty of the colonist who don't want to go through all of this again, and the higher ups also have a lot

invested in the situation. One thing I think this episode models extremely well is that when the care so Dr. Chambers is trying to convince these characters that his simulation is correct, and when characters find the implications of his conclusions unpalatable, like well, they don't want to have to move or you know whatever, it's not in their interests

to try to evacuate. Most of the substance of their disagreement is not really about what he's saying, but it's about him as a person, So they say, like, you've got a psychological reason that you would make all this stuff up, you know that they start like talking about his personal history and attacking his character and saying, who is this guy? Can we really trust him? Very reminiscent

of how similar debates in reality play out. But also I've just got to say one of my favorite parts of this episode was the repeated threatening visits from this guy named Fenton, who has just really got it out for Dr Chambers. He seems to be a neighbor of his who is some kind of security employee. Uh, but he he looks basically like a diminutive evil ken bone. Yeah.

I loved Finton in this because he's I mean, he he works, he's a gain a character, but he also you know, he's not particularly threatening and he does he also has a great toady vibe to him, Like, I'm totally buying that in this off world colony where where it's later explained that you know a lot of people go here that didn't have a shot at ascending uh into the uh you know, into into higher levels back on Earth, like this is their shot, and you totally

buy Finton as a guy who you know, probably wouldn't be head of security or a major security player anywhere else, but here on on Janice five, he's got a shot. Well, even on Janice five, he's not the head of security. He answers to the guy with the beard. I can't remember what that guy's name is, but yeah, he's he's some kind of cop or something. But it was just really funny how he repeatedly shows up to be like

this threatening figure, but he's this cute little nerd. Now. Um, the key individual here, like the key antagonist I guess you would would call him, is the head of the colony, Franklin Murdoch, and he's played by the terrific William Atherton. Now Atherton is best known for playing Uh. First, there was a character in die Hard named Thornburgh, but most famously I think he played Walter Peck in four Ghostbusters. He he was just a perfect nineteen eighties weasel. Yeah.

He has a special knack, I think for playing arrogant bureaucrats. So in die Hard he's a sleazy, opportunistic reporter and in uh in Ghostbusters he plays the villainous e p

a agent. Yeah, yeah, which is which is is always weird now when I rewatch Ghostbusters to think about Ghostbusters, because yeah, he has just played as like a straight villain or at least a sub villain in the film, despite representing the you know now in battled US Environmental Protection Agency, which is there too, especially in the film, like he's acting to protect New York City from environmental damage from from things like unlicensed nuclear accelerators and and

this containment system that even Egon describes as something that can't be turned off without quote dropping a bomb on the city. I mean, I think there are a couple of ways you could read. Of course, I love Ghostbusters and the character is very funny. You could read it as that the politics of the movie are conservative. That's one another way of reading it is just that like this is a comedy where the protagonists are are dangerously

irresponsible people, and that that's sort of true. Yeah, yeah, I mean certainly, like if you really analyze the character of Peter bankman, um, you know, how how likable is he really? Uh? But you know, Bill Murray, he makes it work, Yeah he does. He does now again now, now, Peck and Ghostbusters is definitely an arrogant jerk I don't want to get past that point. And Atherton brings some of that same energy to this performance, but this time

he is definitely the face of anti environmental forces. Uh, and I think he's he's actually well presented here. Instead of being just a pure money grubbing heel, Murdoch is presented as being someone who opposes Chambers for several reasons. So, first of all, Murdoch has a position of power and importance here on the colony that he would never have achieved on Earth. He has this this really nice little

monologue where he talks about it. I think he's talking is he He's not talking to Fenton, He's talking to another character Will mention in a little bit. Also, Murdoch, like all the other colonists, has in an economic stake in the colony's success, but he also stresses that this does not rank above the importance of his own life. Murdoch seemingly quite authentically in one of these things, proclaims that also Janice five is his home and he doesn't want to leave it. So he has that, um, you know,

tying him to the current situation. And then finally he he is concerned that is convincing his chambers. Maybe he has been wrong before and he might be wrong again for very human reasons. I mean, this episode, actually, like you're suggesting, raises a lot of very interesting and legitimate real life concerns about saying how to communicate scientific conclusions that would motivate action in the real world, because there

are a lot of difficulties there. But I mean, one of the difficulties I think is that science, unlike most other epistemological methods, is very upfront about uncertainty. So like it builds in the fact that, like, you know, I'm trying to tell you that this is a conclusion with x probability instead of just saying, like, here's how it is.

And it turns out that even though that is probably the best method that you can use for actually figuring out what's true, it is not particularly convincing to motivate people to do things that they don't want to do otherwise, because it's like, oh, wait a minute, you're acknowledging you're not certain, then you know, how can how can we

make all these costly decisions on the basis of your conclusion? Yeah, yeah, I mean, like there's a there's a line in there where one of the columns is saying, you're asking us to ruin our lives again, like you've already done it once before, and now you're asking to do it again and and and we can't even be certain about it.

As a brief aside about the scientific premise of the episode, I was interested in Chambers suggest gen that, so what happens on on Janice five on the planet is that Chambers believes every one thousand years, basically the planet is sterilized and nearly all life is wiped out by solar activity. That that just bombards the surface of the planet with radiation and uh and and you know, wipes everything clean,

and then life has to bounce back. And I was wondering, wait a minute, how would it be possible for complex life to even evolve on such a planet? And I was trying to I was trying to make it work. One way I thought of is well, maybe years are longer on Janice five than they are on Earth. So a thousand years is actually a much longer period. Uh So I was looking at you know, what, what's a what's a planet that has a really long orbital period

in our Solar system? Neptune takes a hundred and sixty five years to orbit the Sun. So if Janice is like Neptune, then a thousand Janie years would be a hundred and sixty five thousand Earth years. But the crazy thing is that's still the blink of an eye and evolutionary time. Uh. And sometimes it can be hard to

put that in perspective. But if you consider it like this, so uh, the if the evolution of life on Earth fits into you know, we don't know exactly when the first cells arose or or the chemical evolution that gave rise to the first cells happened, but if you put it in basically the last four billion years, more than twenty four thousand periods of a hundred and sixty five

thousand years could fit into that. So it makes you think, well, if you're going to take this premise seriously that somehow complex life evolves on a planet that is sterilized every thousand years or so, either that sterilization has to be taken into account in the biology of the life that evolves, like it goes dormant somehow to avoid the sterilization. Uh. And that possibility, I think is raised in the episode, or it evolves at rates that are that are unthinkable

given the kind of evolution we understand here on Earth. Yeah, that's interesting, you know, it's it's a very thoughtful show, even with its occasional hoke nous, you know, and and necessary leaps in you know, in the fantastic Um. But but yeah, it's interesting to think about the idea of say comparing it to the organisms that that depend on cyclical forest fires. Uh, it's just part of the environment that they live in. That's a very good point of comparison.

And actually a similar idea comes up in the Three

Body Problem by c Chin Lou. Oh. Yeah, that's right, in the simulation that they're working with, right, with the world with multiple suns, right, the ideas that they're they're unpredictable times when the environmental conditions of their home planet become basically unsurvivable and the aliens have to disappear, have to sort of like go into a hibernation or dehydration state in order to just like ride out the uninhabitable period and then re emerge once the planet becomes less hostile.

So this is the basic set up for the the episode. And I want stress here, by the way, when this is where the audio realm uh Janice five the name of the colony. This is this is not Janice like the uh as in Janet or anything. This is the two faced got And so that's sort of the yeah. So from anyway, anyway, from here, the episode, you know, takes a couple of I thought really satisfying twists and turns that I don't want to spoil too much in this episode in case you want to want to see

it for yourself, and I recommend you do. But let's just say that some folks are accused of being shaped shifting aliens that survived uh, you know, like they living in the depths of the earth or something um. And we're forced to wonder if Chambers will be proven right or wrong and what it will mean for the people of the colony. Now again, this episode is an obvious treatment on the of the dangers of climate change and the role that climate change denialism plays in our society.

To put everything in an historical framework, the greenhouse effect was described by French physicist Joseph four in eighteen twenty four. BBC has a nice breakdown of key moments after that in a Brief History of Climate Change, which brings up everything. It brings up everything through because you know, that's that's when the timeline came out. But it's a nice handy reference point for some of the stuff we're talking about here.

But they hit a few key points. From the later twentieth century, U S scientist Wallace Brocker put the term global warming in the title of a science paper, popularizing the term, and in nineteen eighty seven the Montreal Protocol came into effect to protect the ozone layer, and in nine eight the inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change formed to colate and assess the evidence. And of course the i p c C continues to collect and assess the evidence on on the state of climate change even today.

I think their most recent major update and report was in furteen. It was the fifth Assessment Report, and it paints a pretty dire picture. Now. One thing that this BBC timeline also points out, and this is something that Carl Sagan wrote about in The demon Haunted World as well.

Margaret Thatcher gave a speech to the u N in nine and urged a global treaty stating quote, we are seeing a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere, and then She goes on to to point out that the future changes will quote likely be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. And as Sagan pointed out, Thatcher, no matter what else you know think about her in her politics, was is one of the few heads of state we can point

to that had a science background. She was a research chemist with a chemistry degree from Oxford. A weird thing to remember. Yeah, in in the demon Haunted World, Sagan brings us up because he's talking about science and politics where they meet, and the idea here is that Margaret Thatcher, you know, whatever else her her politics might mean, or whatever you know, other details regarding her place in history, she perhaps had an advantage in understanding these dire warnings

coming from the scientific community because of her own scientific background. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, it is not all that common to see world leaders, major political leaders, coming from a scientific background, I think, doesn't I think Angela Merkel has a scientific one of the few other ones you can easily point to. Yeah, but I was trying to think of other examples and it come up very very short.

I mean, that is interesting, and I'm not saying necessarily that one needs to be a scientist to be a political leader. I mean that that also seems like a unreasonable demand. And it's not necessarily true that scientific careers would provide all of the kind of skills you need to be a good political leader. But it seems like it would be good to have at least a higher

proportion of people with scientific backgrounds involved in politics. I mean, it's strange to just like look at the professional backgrounds of people who become politicians and notice how uniform it is most of the time. I mean, at least in the United States, politics is overwhelmingly dominated by lawyers and people from business. You kind of wonder how different our politics might be if there was a more representative sample of people from other fields, of people from the sciences,

of teachers, of labor. Leader. Isn't so forth that all like became political leaders. Also, Yeah, I mean, at the very least, you want leaders who listen to trusted scientists. You you know, you want scientists to um and uh and scientifically minded people to be in positions to speak to scientific topics and then have that be a part of the you know, the upper political consideration. And I don't think that's a controversial statement to make on a

science podcast. Um, but let's come back to this Outer Limits episode. So this came out in which curiously and this you know, I don't know what degree this is, Uh, this is actually um, you know, essential, but it's curiously the same year that the rate of average global surface

warming began a slowing trend that lasted till now. As Rebecca Lindsay points out on climate dot Gov, this really just meant that quote the rate of average global surface warming from two thousand and twelve was slower than it had been for two to three decades leading up to it,

but the big picture of long term warming continued unchanged. Still, climate change deniers at the time took took what climate scientists described as a temporary pause or hiatus as proof that quote global warming stopped in Oh yeah, I remember

seeing that claim a lot floating around on the internet. Yeah, so again, that might just be pure you Obviously, this this episode was probably written uh prior to ninety eight, and I don't know what the exact production history on on the script was that it might just be you know, pure coincidence that had happened exactly that year, but maybe not who knows. I would tend to think coincidence because

I doubt people. I mean, climate change was not as much of a salient issue or political controversy at the time, and there wasn't the same like period data to latch onto and denying it yet. Yeah, but the idea of calling it a pause or hiatus could be really kind of misleading. I mean it seems like, actually, what I was just talking about goes both ways. It would be good, I think, to have more scientists involved in political leadership, but it would also probably be good to have more

people who are experienced with rhetoric and messaging involved in science. Yeah, because I mean that honestly. Yeah, that that's kind of confusing terminology to throw out there. And and even if you don't have an agenda, if you don't have, uh, you know, a dog in the hunt, and of course this will discuss everybody has a dog in this particular hunt. Um, you know, you can see how you might misinterpret that.

But anyway, Yeah, this was the idea was pushed by some that this means, oh, well, global warming has stopped, like it's over. Uh, you were freaking out over nothing. This despite that global warming is a human cause condition still saw two thousand twelve as the warmest fifteen year period on record at that time, with greenhouse gases climbing to new record highs, the oceans were warming, sea levels

were rising, ice was melting. Now, as we've discussed on the show before, part of this comes down to a misunderstanding, willful or otherwise, on how science functions. Science is not a tool that works or doesn't work, and then maybe cast aside like a crooked drill bit or something that

needs to be replaced. The part in to tell the truth about Chambers having gotten it wrong before certainly smacks of the common climate denialism mantra of but what about the warnings of the new ice Age and other such criticism, right, you know, there's a lot wrong with with that approach, obviously, ranging from the treating uh, you know, of all science and scientists, regardless of area focus is kind of a monolith like, oh, you know, this is what science is doing.

Is what the scientists are doing. And I found a scientist that says otherwise, because that also gets into the cherry picking and uh, you know, assuming that air and recalibration are not part of the scientific process. One of the real difficulties with scientific communication is that you can always make a kind of confusing reference to the past.

Like you can find controversy on essentially any issue. Uh. You know, there's no scientific issue I can think of where through through the entire history of the awareness of the issue, all scientists have had it right and been on the same page about it. So if you're interested in generating the the idea of confusion or controversy about any particular scientific conclusion, and you want to make references to, well, when have people said different things about this issue in

the past, you can always find something like that. And in some cases issue scientific consensus about issues develops and changes very rapidly. I mean, I think about the ways that um for example, current recommendations about how best to battle the coronavirus out UH masks and social distancing and all that stuff. People who are kind of people who are opposed to following the current best guidelines about those things will make reference to what people were saying in

the earliest weeks of the of the pandemic. You remember this, right, Like, like initially scientific guidelines were not recommending people wear masks. That changed very quickly. We did a very early episode where we about the coronavirus, where we we we mentioned that, though I should also point out that we also drove home that you know we're recording this on such and such date, at such and such point in this pandemic. Be aware that that, you know, everything may change as

this story develops. It can be a really frustrating thing. I mean. The evidence now for the effectiveness of mask wearing too slow the spread of the virus is very good. It comes from multiple kinds of studies. Studies looking at the effects of mask mandates at the population level, studies looking at the effects of physical barriers on the propagation of droplets and aerosols, and can rolled environments, how it

spreads between hamsters and things like that. The bottom line from all of this research up to now is that there's very good reason to wear a mask if you go out in the public setting or anywhere near people outside your household. But no matter how much evidence accumulates in that column, there's always going to be this historical reference point where people can say, hey, wait a minute, like the experts weren't saying that at the beginning of March,

So how can we be sure that they're right. Now, Why is what scientists are saying about the coronavirus or about climate or anything now better than what they were saying in the past. And it can seem confusing, But for the most part, the answer is actually pretty simple, and it's that now we have better evidence. There's more evidence,

more relevant evidence, better quality evidence. That's the difference. Yeah, this makes me think about the fact that science can be very susceptible to political weapons when those weapons are leveled at it, because science, science is ultimately this thing that is that is taking place and analyzing, you know, the fun mineral aspects of the larger world, the cosmos, whereas politics is very much a condition of of social dynamics.

And so you know, these political weapons, these singers and and got your points and basically anything that might be used from by one political opponent against another, like those are things that are designed to work within a social context for the most part, into a certain extent, within illegal context. But but sciences is like the world beyond

this domed colony of of law and society. And I wonder, now that I've said that out loud, I wonder if that's kind of the the beauty of this, uh, this setting in this outer Limits of episode, because the people in the colonists are literally living inside a bubble of their own construction, uh, you know, of their own design, and trying to evaluate threats that exist outside, like literally outside the sphere of their immediate domain. All right, we're

gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back with more. And we're back now, of course in this Outer Limits episode. Um, you know, as as as we we've pointed out before, there's this stark difference between what's going on with Dr Chambers and what's going on with us, because well, it's just in the show, it's just Dr Chambers preaching to a crowded room and making a case with difficult evidence. Though climate change data is certainly complex, but but in

our world it is a case of overwhelming scientific consensus. Um, it's especially as far as climate scientists are concerned. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. I mean, we've talked about the consensus on this issue and and the studies measuring it in previous episodes. I think we talked about that in one of the episodes we recorded after you came back from the World Science Festival in the previous year. And we discussed one of the panels about science communication

and about climate change. But yeah, there's no doubt at all that almost all climate scientists are people with expertise in the relevant fields, are on the same page with the broad strokes of climate change. It is a problem, it is major threatening, It is caused in large part

by the products of human industry. And yet it can certainly feel at times like it's just one doctor Chambers pleading with the rest of the colony because there is significant and UH and and dangerous lack of commitment to combating the problem, especially in the United States, and a great deal of anti science and anti climate science worldview UH is often found here, especially in places of significant

political power. Yeah, the anti science sentiment is extremely dangerous, Like just this year in we've seen the results in real time um uh with the coronavirus as failure to listen to scientists and take advisories about mask wearing and social distancing seriously have led to outbreaks and surges that have cost human lives first and foremost, but also cost

time and money. Uh. You know, it can still be difficult to gauge such threats, but it's certainly a more I think readily understandable situation compared to climate change, which you know, one of the issues. There is again complex climate science dealing with you know, longer periods of time uh as opposed to everything happening within the space of

a few months. Though at the same time, we are also living in a time of dangerous climate alteration, as we endure rising seas, intense hurricanes, and increased droughts and heat waves. It's perhaps more pronounced now than ever before.

And and not everyone has their head in the sand. Certainly, According to a report from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication, almost six and ten Americans are either alarmed or concerned by global warming, which the authors pointed out as being a major shift. As for the rest, though well, researchers and thinkers have been exploring these questions for years. Again, we have a we have we have passed episodes to

get into this a bit. Why do we deny the evidence? You know? Why why deny um climate change? Now? Certainly there's much to be said for how unpleasant the reality is. No one wants to be a part of a problem like this, or to dwell on a future of massy stabilization, relocation, and extinction. We as humans are in many ways just poorly wired to deal with threats of this magnitude and scale. We're better with the short term. Uh, you know, but but but what are what are we ultimately to do?

I Mean, one of the things we've talked about in previous episodes about this is the idea that identity protective cognition plays in why people respond negatively to climate science. And this is the thing that we should be sympathetic about. I mean, everybody engages in identity protective cognition. Everybody engages in forms of motivated reasoning on various issues to try to protect their their picture of the integrity of their

self and how they fit into a social system. So uh, And this is one of the dangers of scientific issues becoming politicized is that once an issue becomes politicized, the social and identity connotations of the sides of that issue become more relevant than the evidence does. And unfortunately, this can happen really rapidly with issues that don't happen to have any particular like political values or implications attached to

them inherently. I mean, there are examples. I was just thinking about, how do you remember how at some point this year, suddenly it became a political issue with a political valence whether or not hydroxy chlora quinn was an effective therapeutic for COVID nineteen, which when you step back and think about that, that's it's like crazy that that is not an issue that really has any particular political implications.

It doesn't implicate any fundamental values. It just happened to get politicized because of who was talking about it, what ways, and you know how that was appearing in the media. You know, if Donald Trump had come out and said it, said that it was not effective, it could have been politicized in exactly the opposite way. So, you know, it's like weird, how how totally contingent things like this can be. But unfortunately, once a scientific question gains political connotations, it

can be very hard to take them off. Just kind of stuck there. And people don't want to believe in things that they think of as beliefs inappropriate for a person such as themselves, you know, and and so that

that's one of the real dangers. I mean, the best thing to do about science is to try to prevent scientific questions from acquiring a political connotation to begin with, you have to do your best to try to make sure that, uh that a a scientific message or the communication of a scientific conclusion is not associated with anybody of any particular political affiliation. But that can be very hard to do. Yeah, absolutely, I mean it like issues

can be asymmetrically politicized, right. All all it takes is basically one major political figure to to decide to make a scientific question a politicize this issue, and you know they can usually do it. But again, in all this communication is key, you know. And uh and and a lot of this episode of the Outer Limits is about like trying to communicate, um, the nature of science to people that have their doubts, uh, that are denying what's

going on. Uh. So I looked at a paper for a little more in this titled Understanding and Countering the Motivated Roots of Climate change Denial, is by Gabriel Long Parodi and uh Irena Fagina, published earlier this year in Current Opinion and Environmental Sustainability. The paper focuses on communication approaches to reach climate change deniers in peer viewed studies from the past two years. With a special focus on what the authors described as people engaged in quote motivated denial.

This means the people in question have access to the facts, but they still deny them. On some level. They make a choice to deny the science and cling to another view of reality that flies in the face of scientific consensus. But it's easier to accept. Yeah, And again, to be fair, I mean, obviously I think people should accept the scientific consensus on climate change, but I think a lot of the people who deny it are not doing so, like out of a conscious perversity, thinking like I won't accept

the facts. I mean, the fact is that motivated reasoning changes how facts appear to us. Things that are perfectly reasonable to believe just suddenly don't seem plausible to you because of motivations you have. Yeah. Yeah, because I mean, in one hand, there's the responsibility of what human infoke. Climate change means. It means accepting your part of the problem, and then it also means accepting that the problem threatens much of the stability and normalcy that you hold dear.

And furthermore, you may feel the need to speak out and act and so forth, And it can be easier, you know, on on some level, to simply live in denial like that is an easier mental construct, uh to to erect in the mind, as opposed to dealing with all of these additional change changes, uh to the the

world you've grown accustomed to. Now. Chambers does end up being accused of being an alien shape shifter at one point in this Outer Limits episode, but he never reverses this charge on the colonists, which is which which is worth worth noting, especially because it ties in a little bit into what um The authors here in the study discussed that I think they would agree that this was the right move. One of the key points to say the aliens right, well, yeah, essentially not to say say, oh,

climate change denire is you're a bunch of aliens. There's something wrong with you. You're you're you're broken in some way. You know that. That's That's one of the key points and climate change communication, uh, they point out, is to is not to dismiss deniers outright, but to acknowledge their opinions and beliefs. And they they acknowledge that this can be difficult, obviously, but they point to four different strategies that that seem to show promise and or seem to work. Okay,

what are the strategies all right? The first is reef fraiming solutions to climate change as ways to uphold the social system and work towards its stability and longevity. Now in the Outer Limits, Chambers does this, of course, by pointing out that if they don't act, the stability of the colony will be threatened. Um. If if he could have, you know, actually had an honest discussion with Murdoch, he might have told him, Look, this will ruin your prospects

of profits from the colony. It will endanger your power. It's going to threaten this home that you hold dear. Uh, you know this is this is a threat to all the things we we value here. Yeah. So I think this is saying, like, you know, to be factual in representing what the threats are, but to emphasize the kinds of threats that are particularly salient to people with the

political identity who are more likely to deny climate change. So, to use a Simpsons example, if you were trying to convince members of the Simpsons family not to make a foolish investment in a tobacco farm, you might appeal to Homer in particular by saying if you do that, you're not going to have a budget for beer or to pay the cable bill, right, you know, like you you single out the issues that are actually most salient to people. Yeah.

I think a good example of this is we we we we see this in the realization, for instance, that climate change is a national security issue as well as a purely environmental one. Yeah. Yeah, it's not just about saving the earth or saving the environment, but safeguarding things like our supply chains, etcetera. So um so yeah, one of the ideas here is don't just the idea of like we need to save the planet, like you know,

that's going to carry with it. I mean that's true, uh you know, but but but that how does it need to be tweaked to to to meet the world view of the person on the other side. And that gets into the second piece of advice they have, and that's reducing the ideological divide by incorporating the purity of the earth rather than how we harm or care for it.

So this is more about putting I guess you could say, the hopeful spin on it and emphasizing our ability to make changes and perhaps even our responsibility to to look after the earth that is going to fall in line with various religious world views, rather than just the shame point of realizing that we've done a lot of harm and that we need to change our ways. Now the author is going to point out to other areas one number three, rather having conversations about the scientific consensus around

climate change with trusted individuals. Now, I think that's easier said than done. Um Uh, take outer limits for example, Chambers is mistrusted. Uh and you know who who else are you going to talk to here? If you cherry pick you're trusted individuals? Um? You know that can those trusted individuals can include climate deniers or people with without perhaps with sometimes with a scientific background, but not a

scientific background in climate science. I mean, I think this ties in very much to what I was just talking about with identity protective cognition, Like you don't want to embrace the belief that you see as antithetical to people in your social group who have the kind of integrity that you value, and so yeah, I think one of the best and most important ways to get around this is to show, hey, people like you, people who you socially identify with, they they also agree with the scientific

consensus here. And then the fourth point they bring up is encouraging people to explosively discuss their values and stands on climate change prior to engaging with climate information. So the idea with this one is that quote self affirmation is challenged when people face climate change because it requires them to consider their contribution to the problem, which can

threaten their sense of integrity and trigger self defense. And finally, you know, they say, you want to stress solutions that match in individual's values and don't threaten their sense of identity or their way of life. And now, of course, if we as we've discussed before, this also underlines the horror of politicization of climate change and the attempt to try and uh and bake in climate change denial into a political worldview. Once something like this becomes politicized, it's

difficult to unpoliticize it. Yeah, he'sa Freeman wrote an excellent piece on COVID and climate denialism for The New York Times earlier this month that touches on the work of John Cook, research assistant professor at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University and founder of the

website skeptical science. Um Cook argues that ideology and tribalism tend to come before facts and people's beliefs about climate change, and that means a lot of the power here falls to people of influence within an ideology, and that means that leadership is crucial to overcoming climate change denialism. And again, isn't that what we see in this Outer Limits episode.

Murdoch is the leader of the colony, and while he admits that he actually briefly you believes Chambers, or at least entertains the idea that Chambers may be correct, he otherwise works against him at every turn, and the people look to Murdoch. Uh. Furthermore, Murdoch is a sort of head of state in the off world. Colony. Doesn't only argue against rationally against Chambers, he all so ultimately engages

in more underhanded tactics, including the use of disinformation. Yeah, they try to personally discredit Chambers with with attacks on his what I would say, his character, but attacks on his biology. Yeah, I would say character and biology is the first character and then ultimately biology itself. Um. If we look to our current situation in October twenty with with COVID and climate change. It's it's kind of interesting how to tell the truth forecast our current leadership situation.

Um so so so again, this is one of those episodes. Even though it came out in the nineties, it's still is very relevant today. According to cook Um however, only ten percent of Americans are outright dismissive of the science on climate change, and that seems to correl correlate well with the twelve percent of Americans who are not concerned

about COVID. Friedman writes, quote, this means, he said, referring to Cook, the solution lies, uh, not in persuading those already steeped in science denial, but in not sculating the other nine of the public from scientific disinformation. He likened the challenge to eradicating polio, an incurable disease that was all but eliminated in the United States through vaccinations. In the case of climate and COVID, he said that means using facts and research combined with vivid analogies to explain

the techniques used to mislead the public. And this is one of the things that cook does through skeptical science, which if you want to check out the website it's just skeptical science dot com. Uh. He provides useful real world analogies to counter climate denial arguments, and he also wrote an illustrated book titled Cranky Uncle Versus Climate Change,

How to Understand and respond to Climate science Deniers. You know, I don't want to end on too dark a note here, but but I do seriously worry about because as as difficult as it is to prevent scientific issues from becoming politicized in the first place, when you're just dealing with leaders, you know, trying to make sure that like major media figures and politicians don't start injecting political valences and trying to get people to align politically around something that's not

really a political issue. It is just a scientific question with a factual answer. Um. That's hard enough. It seems like nowadays things are going to be even harder than that, because you essentially have the distributed capability through the Internet and virality and social media to do the same thing

to politicize issues. I mean, I already see worrying signs of how sort of like emerging out of the depths of the Internet, you'll get weird conspiracy theories politicizing whatever vaccine we end up with for for COVID nineteen Yeah, yeah, exactly, um, you know, and to to a wonderful extent, like one of the great things about a show like The Outer Limits is that essentially it's always about people having conversations about uh, you know, science, fictional threats, and and and

and and given that in a short format you have to boil everything down to a simple area like two people trapped in a room or in this case, uh, you know, one scientist speaking to the community in this colony. But of course, in reality, we have a far more

complicated communication system. There's a greater number of players involved, there are different communications systems involved, uh networks, the way that different voices become um uh you know, more pronounced in our culture, it's it's it's it's far more complicated than what we have in the Jan's five example. But but I think it works nicely to still as as an example of the the sorts of problems that we

encounter as humans. I mean, I guess we've sort of been saying that one of the best outcomes, if we could enact it with scientific issues that have political ramifications, is to not allow them to become politicized in the first place. But if that's not really possible, you know, if you can't prevent issue people from trying to politicize issues, I think the question is what does the mental vaccine

against the politicization of scientific issues look like? How do you best plant that sort of like, uh, that meme or that seed in somebody's brain that will grow into, uh, grow into a sort of mental immune system that rejects these politicizations of scientific issues when it encounters them. That, you know, so people know how to recognize when it's happening and stop it before it infects them. Yeah, that is the That is the the ongoing problem that we're

continuing to struggle with. And this is the point where we would have the narrator of the Outer Limits jump back in and nicely summarize the struggle that we've just witnessed on the screen. But of course, the fallible humans failed in their attempt. Yeah, alright, We're gonna go ahead and close out this volume of the Anthology of Horror, but we will be back with part five, Volume five, when we will explore even more episodes from TV and film horror sci fi anthology history and discuss some of

the science and culture surrounding them. In the meantime, if you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find us wherever you get your podcast, wherever that happens to be. We just asked that you rate, review, and subscribe if you have the power to do so, and if you want to find us just really quickly, you can just go to

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