Anthology of Horror, Volume 5

So basically this is just a continuing experiment we've been doing where we look to the wonderful world of horror and sci fi uh TV anthologies and uh and cinematic anthologies and pick out little episodes, little uh audio visual short stories. They generally have some horror or sci fi or some sort of in some sort of weird h and perhaps grotesque twist in them, and we use that as a focal point for a discussion of science and culture. Sometimes we're having to really um read into the episode

a lot more than the creators anticipated. Other Times it's just it's really baked into an already intelligent script. Um. It just kind of varies from piece to piece. Well, I got one to talk about first that is definitely baked in some way. Okay, what what have you got for us? Joe? Okay, today I wanted to start by talking about a classic episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? Rob? Did you watch Are You Afraid of the Dark? I? I did. I I can't remember what

channel came on. Maybe it was a Nickelodeon thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember catching episodes of it, and I remember it as being occasionally like really creepy, like it was effective. It was not uh you know, it wasn't. I mean, it was a kid show, but it could really creepy out a little bit. It was. It was well done. Is that recall? Yeah, A lot of the episodes really are, and I would say even the bad episode, going back and watching them as an adult, it is an extremely fun,

nostalgic rewatch. Uh. A lot of the episodes that I found very scary when I was young. You know, it is a kid's show, so they don't quite have the punch they did when I when I was eight or whatever, but a few of them are are still kind of surprising, and one of my favorite things about the show is

that it is just egregiously adorably Canadian. One of the fun things about going back and watching it now is that you frequently encounter child versions of Ryan Gosling or Nev Campbell or somebody else you recognize from later work. And when it comes to the older actors, they weren't usually people who you'd recognize from big movies or anything, but a lot of them have this powerful energy of

like a local character beloved in some town. Like you often get the sense that when you meet Dr Venk or somebody like that, it's like you're you're looking at the r C. Baits of Toronto. Yeah. I the episode I mostly remember from this show is, if I if I'm remembering it correctly, is the Tale of the dead Man's Float, which has to do with like a haunted high school swimming pool that remember, I'm I don't know

if I'm remembering correctly. I may be misremembering that it's somehow in the in the basement of the school, but maybe not. Yeah, there's a swimming pool in the It's like a cursed swimming pool that was on a cemetery or something. Yeah, And I think this is the one where like when I when it follows came out. There's a sequence in it it follows a swimming pool, and it it made me think back to this episode, you

are a thousand percent correct. I I think I made that connection at a subconscious level, but the moment you said that, you're you're totally right. But the episode I want to talk about today is one I don't remember actually which season it's from. I should have looked that up, but anyway, it's called The Tale of the Super Specs, and it's notable for being I think one of the episodes with some legitimately scary imagery, which is achieved via very low tech means. It's just it has some very

creepy images of people draped in black cloth. But it also, I think, is the episode that introduces the fan favorite recurring character Mr Sard, who is a vain sort of scheming magic and novelty shop owner who gets angry when people call him Mr sar Do and he always says his catchphrase that's sar dough, no Mr accent on the dough. That seems that seems very particular, like he's not an added to calling him sar Do. Right, it's more than that Yeah, he's been. He's being a little fussy about

this point. I think, I mean, you invite these problems when you decide to be a single name guy. Yeah, but okay. So the premise of this episode is that there's a young man named Weeds who is kind of a prankster, and he's browsing in Sardo's Magic and Novelty Shop. That's the kind of place that's got masks and fake vomit, but it's also got apparently legitimate spell books and referenced homes on the occult, and real magical artifacts and objects.

I'm not sure why they're all crammed together in this one shop, but so he's sort of looking around for things and he comes across a bag of magic dust, which while simultaneously reading a spell out of an ancient tome, he accidentally spills this magic dust over some plastic glasses that are being sold as super specs, which are supposed to grant X ray vision. I think I think the original understanding is these are just novelty glasses, but they get imbued with magic power when he says the spell.

Also there in the magic shop is Weeds his girlfriend Mary Beth, and she decides to try out the super specs, but when she does, she sees shadowy figures who are draped in black cloth from head to toe, and they're following her everywhere. And they are multiple occasions, you know, like they go to school and she puts on the glasses again and she sees the figures, and then she goes home and she puts on the glasses again and

sees them another time. She also sees um elements of alternative reality, so like she'll look at her fireplace and without the glasses there's no fire, and with the glasses there's there's a fire burning, so it's very they live in a way now. Eventually, what happens is that Weeds and Marybeth get convinced that there are invisible people from another dimension who are stalking them, and they consult with Sardo to try to figure out how to get rid

of these shadow people. And I won't spoil the ending to this one, because I gotta admit the ending is pretty good. But the basic premise is what I wanted to talk about. It's the premise that there is a realm of life that actually occupies the same general spaces us, but that we go about our lives completely unaware of and it's it's a take on the idea popular in some like alien conspiracy theory architecture that aliens are somehow already here. They're here on Earth, but they're are invisible

to us for some reason, or they're hiding in plain sight. Yeah, I think. I think. I recorded an older episode of the show with Ben Bolling and Matt Frederick uh guesting where we talked about shadow people and uh particular study that linked some of this phenomena to disruptions of the body schema. So so basically, like like a situation where you know, neurologically your idea of where your body is and what your body is doing would be skewed in a way that it would be perceived as some sort

of a shadow being that was close by. Oh, I see you. Not to say that's a definitive answer for for all of this, but it was. It was one idea that was put forth by some researchers. Well, I mean, I think we can be pretty safe in assuming that they're not actually like people sized organisms that are walking around unnoticed on Earth and our aliens of some guy, I mean, I guess you can't rule it out, but I'm not aware of any kind of evidence that something

like that is possible. But I wanted to explore a maybe more plausible, still unproven, but more plausible and very interesting sort of parallel idea. And the place I want to start here is I was reading the British astronaut and chemist Helen Sharmon. It was actually the first British

astronaut ever. She was talking to the Observer, I think earlier this year and saying that you know, it was her opinion, and that just given the size of the universe, the number of planets out there, the number of opportunities for biochemistry to arise, that she's pretty convinced that there must be aliens out there somewhere in the universe. And then she adds, quote, will they be like you and me,

made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It's possible they're here right now and we simply can't see them now. I want to be clear that I'm not aware of any evidence whatsoever this is actually the case, and I don't think Sharmon was suggesting that we have evidence of this being true, but it does raise the very intriguing question of how would we know if aliens in some sense or some kind of alternate organism, we're already here,

already somehow within range of our senses. Well, first, is there any conceivable way that something like that could be true? And second, if it were true, would there be any way to sort of put on the superspects, any way

to figure it out? So to further investigate this idea, I was reading a great article from Astrobiology magazine from two thousand six, So this is a little bit older, and some of the science, the underlying science, might have changed somewhat since then, but I think the basic question still stands as posed. And this is by the UC Boulder philosophy professor Carol Cleland, and the article is called

a shadow biosphere. Now, by a shadow biosphere she means a rarely considered form of alternative life, not aliens from another planet, but aliens from Earth, an unrecognized alternative biology that may exist parallel to us, invisibly here on this planet. And she asked the question, if something like that existed, what would these alternative biologies entail in order to have

escaped our notice? So they could possibly include alternative forms of information coding, so forms other than DNA or RNA, or they could include different amino acids to build their proteins, or quote any other means by which the chemistry of early Earth could have combined to form life we are

not familiar with. And so there are there are a few things we can probably rule out from you know, any reasonable question, The first of which is the superspect you know, the literal superspect scenario, where there are like human sized organisms that are going unnoticed. She says, probably if these shadow biological organisms were on the scale of familiar plants or animals, we would have already noticed and detected them, right, Yes, we would. Somebody would have figured

it out by now. So what we're probably talking about, if there were such a thing, would be microscopic organisms. But microscopic organisms can have big impacts, They do a lot, and so the the impact of a microscopic shadow biosphere could be enormous, and it would be very interesting to discover that it had gone unnoticed this long. You know, I can't help but be reminded of a a great great end quotation marks here uh Saturday Night Live parody commercial from I guess back in the nineties for the

fecal vision glasses. Did you ever see this one? No? I didn't. Where everybody puts on the fecal vision glasses and then like fecal matter glows bright green, and of course they just they just show a ridiculous amount of it, Like the entire room is basically covered in it. There's a baby covered in it, that sort of thing. Um. But in a way, you know, seeing the unseen um world of life forms around us. I think that's an excellent point of comparison. Keep keep that, keep that image

in mind as we move on. So one of the first things, of course, you'd have to consider if you're addressing this question of could there could there in fact be a shadow by sphere is um? What counts is life? You want to make sure you're defining your terms properly, because you're if your definition of life is overly inclusive, it could lose all meaning. Right, you don't want to end up with the definition of life that includes like

volcanoes and waterfalls as life. But obviously there are lots of different definitions of life that are in competition with each other. I was reading an article by an astrobiologist named Samantha Rolf and she points out there are probably more than a hundred legit definitions of what constitutes a

life form. Most of them encounter some potential objections here or they're just As one example, she points out that that if you zero in on the definition of life that centered on the ability to reproduce, you arrive at a strange conclusion that like a three D printer that can print and as symbol copies of itself is alive, but a mule, which is sterile, is not alive, And

that doesn't quite seem right. Yeah. I think we've discussed in the show before some arguments about viruses, but also about fire, the degrees to which fire can be classified up to a point as a as an organism. It's not an organism, but but you can make an impassioned argument of your feeling argumentative about it totally, or like

forms of crystals, things like that. I mean, you run into a lot of difficulties actually, if you're trying to come up with the definition of life that rules in everything we want to think of his life and rules out everything we don't. So in this two thousand six article, Carol Cleveland zeros in on the following distinctions what what she thinks is important is, first quote, the capacity of a system to maintain itself as a self organized unit

against both internal and external perturbations. So basically that means a life form has has some type of structural resiliency, It sort of protects its own integrity and has some form of resistance against just dissolution by external and internal forces. And then the second thing she says is the ability to reproduce and transmit to its descendants adaptive heritable modifications. Now, all the life that we know of on Earth that meets those two criteria is defined by a common chemistry.

We know what the primary types of molecules involved are, and those molecules are proteins and nucleic acids. Nucleic Acids of course would include DNA and RNA, and they store hereditary information and they produce proteins. Proteins then make up the structure and the machinery of cells and of the life form as a whole, and the interface between these two functions the hereditary function and the structural or mechanical

function of the of the protein. This is handled by a very important structure known as the ribosome, which is made of both proteins and RNA, and which translate the hereditary information stored in nucleic acids into usable proteins. This is how all the life we know of on Earth works. And yet Cleveland says, we just don't know how different

life could be. Maybe that's the only chemistry in the universe capable of producing the functions we usually attribute to life, and maybe not, she writes, quote Moreover, we can't rule out the possibility that the most important characteristics of life have yet to be discovered. The functions traditionally attributed to life maybe little more than symptoms of more fundamental but

as yet unknown properties. So, for example, at the time she was writing this, all life on Earth built its proteins out of the same twenty amino acids, which which all of these amino acids in life forms share the same chirality. Reality is something we talked about, I think actually in a previous Horror Anthology episode when we were talking about to Serve Man. Oh yes, yes we did.

That was a really fun one, uh about like how would you the dangers of constructing, say, food for an alien being exactly, and and the idea that aliens would want to eat us we might be poisonous to them if their molecular biology is somewhat different than ours. But just as a brief refresher, chirality or the handedness of molecules refers to like which way they're oriented in terms of like a mirror image of each other. And Earth life uses left handed molecules, but it maybe could use

right handed molecules. A biotic processes, like processes not associated with life, are known to create all kinds of amino acids that are not found in life forms. Cleveland references more than a hundred known amino acids that are created by a biotic processes, So why does life as we know what not employ more of these amino acids or different chirality of amino acids. Lab experiments show that you can build proteins out of alternative amino acids and molecules

with right handed chirality. Likewise, with the exception of RNA viruses, all life on Earth stores its genetic information in DNA, but it's possible DNA could use different combinations of bases

and amino acids. So she's sort of asking the question in general, why all these particular ers, why while these particularities of Earth life that, as far as we can tell, are totally contingent, and Cleveland thinks that the best explanation is, well, this is just how it happened in the conditions of the young Earth when life first arose, and these contingencies of molecular biology have been recopied down the ages since then,

ever since these life forms have been reproducing quote. So it is unlikely that the ribosomes found in the cells of familiar life represent the only possibility for translating hereditary information stored on nucleic acids into proteins, let alone the original mechanism utilized by the first protocells. Had circumstances on the early Earth been different, familiar life would also have

been different. But this raises a really interesting question if these features of molecular biology as we know it are

really just contingencies. In other words, if it's just chemically how things happened to shake out when the first life forms were coming together, how do we know that other life forms, other forms of molecular biology did not arise at different times in places on Earth in the history of Earth, with their own contingent chemical quirks making them hard for us to recognize with tools that are honed

in the search for familiar forms of life. I mean, in a way, what you can discover is sort of determined or bounded by what kind of tools you use and what you expect to be looking for. Yeah, I mean it reminds me a bit of recent discussions we've had about, um, how you would just how you would describe a sense that you have to a being that is lacking that sense, you know, like it's it's it's hard to to to to explain that, and like that works in reverse, like looking for the thing that you

can't experience. Now, from here, Cleveland goes on to address some objections that are usually raised to the idea that there could be alternative forms of molecular biology on Earth. So, first of all, there is the claim that quote any variations in the earth eliest forms of life would have been combined by lateral gene transfer into a single form

of life. Right, So that we've talked about horizontal gene transfer on the show before, and the idea is that, you know, there just would have been like sort of a cross fertilization of genes that way, and they kind of would have been absorbed into the dominant biosphere. But she argues against this by saying, you know, we can't assume compatibility and opportunity for lateral gene transfer between our ancestral microbes, the microbes that became us, and whatever these

alternative critters are. There could be chemical and compatibility, there could be geographic isolation, and so forth. And then there is a second argument, which is that well, our single celled ancestors would have wiped out these alternative biological organisms in the competition for resources, and she argues against this by saying, well, rare microbes that we know of tend to occupy unique ecological niches, so they're not necessarily in

deadly competition the same resources. They might just kind of have different needs, have established different niches, and they're just writing it out as as sort of rare, unique and isolated communities of organisms, or even within communities of of

conventional organisms. And then finally she talks about the argument that if these things are still here, we should have found evidence of them by now, and so against the we should have found it by now, she argues that given the tools we possessed at the time she was writing this, it was very possible to miss things like, Okay, you can look at microbes under a microscope, but that can only take you so far because convergent evolution means that a lot of different microbes will kind of look

superficially similar in structure, like archaia kind of look like bacteria. And then we have other tools like lab cultures, but lab cultures just might fail to grow them. Uh. And then another option we have for detecting microbial life that's difficult to culture is known as PCR amplification. That stands for polymerase chain reaction. It's chemical process for multiplying genetic

material so that it can be detected. And PCR amplification that relies on ribosomal RNA would not be able to detect a microbe that didn't have ribosomes or that had a different form of ribosomal RNA. So basically Cleveland's case here is that our best tools for looking for chemical signs of life, at least the time she was writing, are kind of tuned to the kinds of life that we know about, and they might completely pass over a

potential shadow biosphere if it existed. Now, there's another possible objection, which is that wouldn't we have observed these microbes, the shadow microbes, by the effect they have on their environment. Of course, we observe the effects of common known microbes on the environment all the time, She says, quote. Life invariably modifies its environment, extracting energy, building structures, producing waste products.

So you know, all of the oxygen in the atmosphere is a product of of microscopic life, or at least was originally. Now I guess it's also the product of macroscopic life. But she says, actually, you know, this is a really good way to look for these things, to look for the effects they have on their environments. And Cleveland argues that it's possible that up until now their effects have always blended in with the background noise of

effects produced by other microbes. So it's possible we just haven't looked closely enough in the right places, or we've been hindered by the bounds of an existing paradigm of molecular biology. She writes, quote. Similar cases can be found in biology, such as the discovery of Archaea, a new variety of familiar microbial life that revolutionized biological taxonomy, and so as background, our archaea is now considered one of

the three main domains or super kingdoms of life. You've got eukaryotes, which includes all multicellular life bacteria, and then Archaea. And Archaea used to be thought of as just a type of bacteria. It's now recognized, has been recognized since the nineteen seventies. And think nineteen seventy seven that Archias

is a totally different domain, a different evolutionary history. But she goes on, in hindsight, it's clear there were signs that some prokaryotes are fundamentally different from others, despite their remarkable similarities and sell morphology. But because biologists were working under the prokaryote eukaryot paradigm, which used cellular morphology as the guiding principle for understanding taxonomic relations, these signs went unrecognized.

So we were just looking at the shapes of cells and thinking that would tell us everything we needed to know, and it didn't. Actually and then finally, as she ends the article by calling out a possible example of a place to look for alternative microbiology or alternative molecular biology. Sorry, she singles out an example known as desert varnish. And this is a thin coating of discoloration, usually kind of a red or dark discoloration that you see on exposed

rock faces in deserts and their dry areas. You've probably seen it before if you looked at some desert rocks that had a kind of dark red or black shiny surface. And I've read that since this two thousand six s a new discoveries have made desert varnish appear to be very unlikely as a result of shadow biological processes. But that doesn't mean the question has gone away. I mean

the questions about a possible shadow biosphere remain. More recently, I was reading an article about this in Science by Emily Conover. This was in and Conover points out developments since the original idea of a shadow biosphere have continually been introduced. They make it more and more interesting. For example, discoveries that make clear how our traditional definitions of Earth life are just not quite inclusive enough. They don't necessarily

capture all the possibilities. For example, quote recently discovered giant Amiba infecting viruses blur the line between life and non life, although they rely on their hosts for essential biological functions, meaning you know they're not self sustaining the bacteria sized viruses have complex genomes. So the question would be, then, how are scientists currently looking for signs of possible alternative

biochemistry if there's a shadow biosphere on Earth. Uh And she quotes the planetary scientist Carolin Porko of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who says, you know, a really good way to look for these things is to go back to the last point that Cleveland raised in the article, look for disequilibriums in nature. Look for environments that are sort of out of balance or out of whack. Quote. Life takes in and uses energy, altering its environment in

the process. Without life, for example, our planet would not have an oxygen rich atmosphere, as chemical reactions tend to deplete oxygen. She also mentions some other interesting possibilities, such as the idea that this one is raised by David Lynn of Emory University, who draws attention to the idea of misfolded proteins representing a possible type of alternative life.

Says quote, they show some similarities to life, namely that they can generate diversity in the different ways that they fold, can undergo chemical evolution, in which those folded proteins are selected not genetically but chemically, and this could be a kind of precursor to some sort of of chemical network that would be very different than what we're familiar with.

Uh And I was also reading an article this is the one I mentioned earlier by Samantha Rolf, which is about the hypothetical option of a shadow biosphere based on silicon molecules instead of carbon molecules. And silicon, of course is not nearly as good at as as carbon doing the kinds of things molecules need to do inside a cell, But there have been experiments that created silicon bonds in bacteria that make it seem at least possible that some

kind of silicon based life form could exist. So in the end, I want to be very clear that we don't know that there is a shadow biosphere of some kind on Earth. We don't have any strong evidence that there is, but we do know at least that if it exists, it probably consists of microorganisms if it exists

at all. But some some science fiction I want to see exploring that is, like the idea of big sort of network effects created on the Earth by micro organisms within a shadow microbial ecosystem, you know, if memory serves me correctly. Uh, it's been several years since I read these. But Peter Watt's book Starfish involves a plot element that it that it entails this. Uh, an ancient apocalyptic microbe called Behemoth think gets unleashed on the earth. It's been

like hiding out in the bottom of the ocean. That sounds good. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's quite good. I don't know why I haven't read Starfish yet. Maybe they'll be next on my list. But you know, Peter Watts aside, what does what does sar Do have to say about this? You know sar Do unfortunately the Charlatan.

And this raises a question that is true of I think many sort of I don't okay kind of fast and loose horror or or or supernatural properties, which is that it often appears that you are able to buy real magical artifacts and serious tomes on the occult within, just like crank magic shops that have fake vomit in them.

Why why is that so common? I mean, part of it's the hunter gatherer instinct, right, the idea that we could go into a junk store and find something of value, you know, Like it's why I will go into a thrift store and I'll see if I can find a copy of Jerry Maguire and VHS like It's it seems unlikely that such treasures are still available, but I'm still gonna look and occasionally I find one that's true magic. Though Sardo is also contributing to the Pyramid in the Desert.

Yeah so, butter then, I also think another big part of it is the kind of like small town magic op and and God bless them where you can still find them. Uh, you know, anytime I see one, I have to I have to check it out. But but shops like that too. We like the idea that they could have genuine u occult things in them because that means we have access to them. That means there is a possible there a possible connection between ourselves and the

supernatural and the fantastic. I guess, for some reason, at a gut level, I find it much more plausible to find the occult tome or the real magical artifact in a thrift shop or something that I do in the in the novelty magic shop. I don't know, maybe that's just me well, you know, strange sudden deaths are always happening to legitimate wizards. And then who's going to sell their stuff? And where are they going to sell their stuff? It's gonna get pawned off to the local magic shop.

I guess that's it. You you combine them the thrift shop and that they've got a secondhand element, and that can then anything can happen. Yeah, now it's probably eBay. It's the most of your monkey pops are being bought on eBay these days. And then you get it and you're like, all the fingers are still are folded on this thing. I don't even get all the wishes. Here's something I want to hear from listeners. What is the creepiest like most cursed antique or artifact object you've ever

bought her or or somehow acquired. Yeah, I'd love to hear that too. All Right, on that note, we're going to take a break. But when we come back, more

horror anthology. Thank thank you, thank you. All right for our next UH anthology selection this year, I'd like to return to the crypt Tales from the crypt Uh the the the the awesome HBO series that that was was It was an adaptation of these older pre code horror comic books, and as we said before, just does it generally does a great job of creating these, at times kind of trashy uh in nasty tales of often bad things happening to be happening to bad people, bad people

getting their come upance in some sort of grizzly twisted manner. This one that you picked for for today. This episode I watched last night and it has a spectacular intro full of puns by the crypt Keeper. Can we share some of these puns or do you already have them written down? I do not have them written down, but if you, if you have them just floating around your head,

let's see what were they? So? I can't do crypt Keeper voice, but it has something to do with getting a house, getting a little house on the scary a tomb with the view, what are you afraid you can't get a mortgage? Yes, So, the the intro to the show was amazing, The crypt Keeper segments were amazing, and

then the the episodes themselves are often um. I mean it's rare that there's not something notable about them, either a major star or someone who would become a major star, just a great character actor is present, oftentimes big lead directors, uh you know, slummed it up for Tales from the Crypt or or likely just had like a really good time with the series. And um yeah, I find my

stuff returning to them time and time again. UM it's I remember watching it often half scrambled on HBO when I was like a middle schooler, and it was, you know, this perfect cable TV nether world of titilation and gore to immerse yourself in. Um, and it's it's it's interesting that you know back then that that that was the way to watch it, like sort of like pirated half scrambled format. Uh. And nowadays, as of October, it looks like the rights to the series are contested or something.

I don't know. I don't I don't know the precise legal prison that it finds itself in. But you cannot stream it anywhere. Um, you can't buy it digitally. Uh So as of right now, the only place you can watch these episodes are like on YouTube and daily motion unless you have like pre existing digital purchases, which I

have on some of the episodes but not all of them. Well, I think what you're getting at is that it actually feels appropriate with the low quality because it's like watching it through like a scrambled cable saying yeah, yeah, it's actually better quality than uh than most of the time when I was watching it when I was younger. Um, but uh yeah. I keep hoping that it will come back because you know, there's still other tales to tell, and they could retell others and create new ones in

the same vibe. I mean, clearly people have been doing that over and over again across the decades. And also John Cassier, the the voice of the of the crypt Keeper. He is very much alive. Not only is he alive, but he is on cameo. I found out I was I was talking with my wife about a friend of ours getting cameo videos for their their spouse for their birthday, and I was like, yeah, cameo just doesn't really interest me unless it was the crypt Keeper. Maybe if it

was the crypt Keeper, I'd be interested. And sure enough, Uh, he's on there seventy dollars a pop. Um. He holds a crypt Keeper like mask over his face when he does it, so you don't get the full puppet performance, but still you get the voice. After you brought this to my attention. I was investigating, and I found out you can get cameo messages from Zordon from Power Rangers, but not how about Sardo Sardo on there. Oh, it didn't look for sar Dough. I should have. All right,

we'll have to look for Sarto later. Um. Anyway, like I said, a lot of these episodes of Tales from the Crypt are ghastly and grizzly, and there's a lot of blood in them. Um. But this one that we're going to discuss here is is a bit different. Uh. This one is titled Maniac at Large and it's uh, it's really a rather tasteful affair as far as Tales in the Crypt goes. And it's directed by John Frankenheimer,

famous for such films with the Manurian Candidate. And it stars Blithe Danner, a veteran of stage and screen that you've probably you've almost certainly seen her in something before because she's been in everything. It also has Salomi Jen's, who I found out was in a movie called Terror from the year five thousand, which was a I think a double feature drive in double feature from the late fifties with the brain Eaters, which is one of my favorite movie posters of all time. That is a great

movie poster. Yeah, that's I've never seen it, but I've seen the movie poster time and time again. I think I've had it as a desktop wallpaper before. Um. It has a couple of other notable character actors in it, well, one character actor in one kind of rock star celebrity. Clarence Williams the Third is in it. He plays a security guard. He's another actor. You look him up. You've definitely seen something with Clarence. Clarence Williams the Third in it, and he gets He gets a fun role that it

is at times kind of creepy. But then Adam Aunt himself shows up as a mega creepy library patron. Adam Aunt has strong ted Ramie vibes in this. Yeah, so again this this episode is extremely solid, quite reserved for a crip episode, but with some satisfying twists and turns. The basic plot here is that Danner's character, Margaret has just started a job at a library in the big city.

She's trying to navigate the environment, figure out you know, who she can trust, who she doesn't, What do the clientele like what's this creepy adamant dude all about um uh and getting you're just getting used to the new job, all while a serial killer remains at large in the city.

I would say this is very much part of the early nineties urban hell sub genre, which is the I don't know if it's a genre really, it's just sort of a set of assumptions shared by it seems like every movie made in like the late eighties early nineties, which is just that like cities in general and New York in particular are hell on Earth, and and uh, that you just don't want to be in the city, and that it's associated with just like littering and crime

and traffic and and misery. But but anyway, yeah, it's very much the idea that this is the city is a bad place, and the library is is not a great place within the city. But she's doing the best you can. Now, I will say there's some there's some twist and turns that occur that turn some of these elements on their head. But this one's got a good twist. I think this is a good twist. We're not gonna ruin it. Go check it out. A And as of

this recording. You can probably just find it on YouTube, which is that you should be able to watch this in a more pristine quality, but at any rate, several elements worth pulling out for our discussion here. Adam Ants character Pipkin is obsessed with serial killers, so he keeps coming up to Margaret and just chatting her up about serial killers, saying just all sorts of creepy things, just an overload of creepy serial killer obsession things. I just

remembered something. It was at the back of my mind and then I pulled it up. There was a movie from n that I watched in a terrible VHS copy many years ago called spell Caster that also has Adam Ant in it. And Adam Aunt had a fairly extensive film career. In this movie, I think he plays an evil wizard. Well, he's good in this. I have to say. His name is Dia Blow. All right. So you have adam Ants character Pipkin, just being obsessed with serial killers

and being very creepy and suspect. Also, Margaret herself has become increasingly obsessed with the idea that she will be the killer's next victim. Creepy things keep happening, People keep acting creepy um, and she keeps and she's clearly obsessing over the fact that she could and perhaps will be next. And it's this is sort of spurred on by Adamant's character because he's like, who's the next victim going to be? I think it'll be a woman this time? Yes, yes, yeah,

he said, slimy, it's wonderful. But then also she keeps she was bringing some of this up to the head librarian Mrs Pritchard, and Miss Pritchard she tries to like stamp this down a bit. She just largely dismisses the serial killer as being this inflated news story in a matter of mass hysteria. So I thought all of this would be a perfect reason to explore the question why are we so obsessed with serial killers and true crime? And you've you've probably noticed this already, but murder podcasts

are big business. I feel like barely a week goes by without a new announcement about some new ghoulish podcast. Asked either it's either at least true crime, if not a serial killer podcast as well, Robert, I hate to break it to you, but the call is coming from inside the house because so we we we got quite a number of these within our own family here. Oh yeah, well, I mean it's a big it's an ever growing family, so it encompasses all sorts of types of podcasts. Even

sports podcasts are around. Uh So, you know, I don't mean to be judging on that that fact, or just judge you about true crime enthusiasm to begin with, because I can. I can easily think of some great reads I've enjoyed that are about serial killers. I've enjoyed some true crime content in the past, and and heck, we're talking about a great episode of Tales from the Crypt

that concerned serial killers. Um. And as far as just more general true crime goes, I like a lot of people grew up watching Unsolved Mysteries and scaring, you know, the pants off of myself, not only about ghosts and aliens, but also about just random acts of crime and madness. I would say one of the most power are full sounds in the entire world in terms of unlocking just a host of creepy associations in my brain is the Unsolved Mysteries theme music. The moment that plays the trapdoor

in my brain opens and everything comes out. Now obviously, when we're talking about your crime. There's a broad spectrum of good and bad taste with it within the genre, and it ranges greatly. I mean, there's the whole domain of police procedural true crime, which of course entails say that, the work of David Simon and others. There's also the grizzlier stuff that can border on just sort of creepy

serial killer obsession. And then there's there's the psychologically minded stuff, you know, the mind of a killer type approach, which I guess can be a little on the creepy side at times, but also can just be very well put together and formulated and and and in many cases based on actual psychology and the actual um uh, you know,

the actual studies into the minds of serial killers. There's also highly journalistic stuff as well as the kind of sort of citizen journalist and citizen investigator uh fair that has also proven highly popular. But it really does seem at times like our our appetite is just insatiable and uh and it leads us at times to wonder like, what does it all means? Where does this, where is this coming from? What is the the itch that it

is scratching? Uh? You know, and and is it some sort of modern phenomenon or is it just an aspect of of of the human experience. I'm interested in what creates the difference between the tolerance for uh, fictional violence versus the tolerance for true crime. Like just personally, I like a lot of, like, you know, violent, scary fictional horror stuff, but I don't have much of an appetite

for true crime. And there are people who are totally the opposite, you know, like a monster movie to them would seem like gross and overwhelming and unpleasant, but they will just devour true crime. And obviously there's some kind of difference at play there, but I'm not sure exactly what it is what it. Rocky Ericson have said about it. Didn't he have an insightful quote about different types of horror?

I think you might be thinking of where he says that today's movies prey on your inner feres and steady your outer fears. And that's why I wrote the line, don't slip in mud or you'll slip in blood tonight. Just the Night of the Vampire doesn't necessarily clarify a lot, but there there's some kind of obscure wisdom Yeah, yeah, I agree, it's worth keeping in mind as we move forward.

And even though again he's referring to just a division within horror fiction as opposed to uh, fiction versus reality. So I think one thing to get out of the way is that I think we can we can safely dismiss the idea that this is a new phenomenon because we've pretty much always had crime stories of one sort or the other, and our fascination with it is to a large extent fueled by our fear of real crime. But if you look back to a lot of of myths, uh,

you know, you find something interesting. You know, these are stories of people who commit crimes off and now they're committing crimes against the gods or some sort of you know, celestial or infernal order in the world. Uh. But then likewise, what are modern laws and social norms but modern gods of a sort? I think a lot of anthropologists of religion would probably argue that what the gods were with

some kind of embodiment of laws or norms. Yeah, and uh, I've also seen it it argued that if you want something more in line with a pure crime story, you can look to the the Arabic go one thousand and one Night's Tales, and that tradition uh to provide some great examples of of what is essentially early crime fiction, uh, the exploits of criminals, the come uppance of criminals, etcetera.

So on one hand, perhaps we're just exaggerating to try and make anything out of modern true crime interest as if it's something new, But there is a lot of interesting insight out there into like what it means, where where does this interest in crime fiction uh and and

and and true crime come from? And one particular expert that I was I've heard an NPR story UH featuring this is from two thousand nine and they were talking with clinical and corporate psychologist Michael mantell Um and UH they pointed out that there are several key elements involved in our enjoyment of true crime. First of all, there's

the not me elephant combined with psychological voyeurism. So it's if you're not watching a crime or you know, a murder or what have you that is affecting you, you're watching something that affects somebody else, And we are engaging in a certain amount of psychological voyeurism in that case, On top of that, there's a catharsis in identifying with the victim uh and this is uh. And we have

like rehearsed anxiety in these cases over terrible occurrences. So it's almost like um uh, via our our our empathy, we're able to simulate these horrible things with out them actually happening to us. Now. The other the flip side of that, of course, is that you can also engage in compassion and empathy with the perpetrator, not necessarily to the level of saying like, oh man, I wish I was I wish I was like Charlie, but but more like, you know, what if I was like you know, I think,

I think that's all. That's key to a lot of our psychological fascination with serial murders, for instance, is that we know that, Okay, this individual, their brain is not exactly like our brain, but but a lot of things are the same, and therefore it's tempting to analyze that those comparisons and think, what if I, you know, it was just a few degrees to the left free to the right. Could I find myself in this kind of mindset?

Could I find myself having committed acts like this not only as far as nature goes, but also as far as nurture goes as well. You know, if my life conditions had been a little different, would I be you know, the figure on the television right now? Would I be

the subject of this part cast episode. Yeah, I'd say A variation on that is that people might sometimes just want to feel like they're getting a better idea of what to look out for in other people, because you know, it's it's a cliche at this point that somebody commits a horrible act as a mass murderer, turns out to be a serial killer or something, and you know, the the news camera interviews their their neighbor, and it's like, oh, he seemed like a really nice guy. I wouldn't have

known it. And you know, sometimes that is the case. People want to be able to think like I could figure out I could figure out who was the sick. Oh, I could figure out who was the bad guy. And maybe there's a sort of feeling, at least a subconscious level, that by consuming a lot of true crime you could somehow you can discern a pattern. You can figure out Okay, here's how I could sniff out the Jeffrey Dahmer. Yes, yeah, absolutely, And I want to come back to to some of

that in a minute. But but it's also worth keeping in mind all of this in considering the essential Essentially, there are two types of crime stories, right, there's the case closed crime story, uh, and then there's also, uh, the the open case. So on one hand, we love a good, uh you know, structurally complete tale. We love a story in which the bad guy is apprehended, the right bad guy is apprehended and uh and and the

case is closed. And you see a lot of that in um in true crime, you know, people, especially if it's a you know, very oh you know, a lot of the police procedural stuff, for example, is about that, like how do they catch the batties? What can I remember the series the New Detectives, What kind of really

cool technology are they using to catch the batties? But on the other hand, the open cases, the unsolved mysteries like that stantalizing as well, because, uh, you know, on some level, even if it's it's just a slim chance, you could you could watch that and think I might be the next victim, or I might be the one to solve this, you know, I could I could be

the one. I could notice this thing, I could learn, I know what to look for and and if this fellow comes limping up to me with a fake cast, I can call him on it and I'll be the hero. I think that's right. But actually another thing just occurred

to me. And this is based on your earlier point about psychological voyeurism, which is the idea of in a way, watching like a serial killer story where they ultimately get caught is kind of like just another form of the watching somebody fail spectacularly thing where you like to see somebody who you know, who's in control of things like lose control and and spiral out and all that. Uh, the just a morbid version of it might be Okay,

here's the serial killer. They've got a system, they've got a method for not getting caught, but then they get sloppy and it all spirals out of control and they fail and they go to jail. Yeah, this is kind of I would say. The lesson is sort of committing crime is hard, and it's it can be a weird positive experience too, to encounter on or that because it can make you feel comfortable and the fact that like, oh, well, you know, if you commit a crime, you're probably gonna

get caught. It can give you, at times even an inflated sense of of of the competency of of police investigations. UM. On the other hand, it can be kind of like a like, who, I guess I'm not going to commit crime because it looks really hard. You know, if it were easy, I guess I'd give it a shot, but I'd probably get caught, so I better not. I wasn't gonna do it anyway, but now I know that I'm

definitely not going to do it. Actually, now that I think about it, this might be even more the case in I don't know less grizzly true crime, not just in serial killers, but really in stuff where like there's a con artist or somebody executing massive financial crime or something like that, where there's an element of the hot mess allure that you you know, like it's really exciting to to see somebody on social media who's just like a hot mess and they're flaming out and really making

things bad for themselves. I think there's a there's a strong element of that in a lot of these things, like you're reading about Bernie made Off or something. Yeah, yeah, and and again it's also yeah, it's it's about bad people getting their come Uppan's right, all right, time for a quick break. We'll be right back with more, and

we're back now. One thing that when when Mentell was asked in this NPR piece about about about different gender demographics in the consumption of true crime now, Mantell said that that he didn't see any kind of, you know, notable demographic differences, uh. And he he suspected that there's still likely there's still likely differences in the sort of crime stories that interested different demographics. However, I think most of me listening out there, you've probably heard quite the opposite.

And I know that I've heard this multiple times in meetings about podcast listener demographics, that the true crime audience use female. And I have to be honest, I don't think I was really aware of this until it started coming up in podcast meetings. I just, you know, maybe I can look back and find some sort of uh, some memories and be like, oh, well, that kind of lines up with this alleged statistic, But I don't think

I had really thought about it before then. I don't know if there's any evidence to that gender divide or not. I assume you'll tell me in a minute. But but one thing I would suspect is, even if there is, it probably depends on what you define as crime. Yeah. Yeah, um, And I'm not sure there is a true, definitive answer on that. Like I said the podcast, number of crunchers seem pretty sure about it. They're certainly willing to, you know,

to invest money behind the idea. But one paper I did look at was one title captured by true crime. Why are Women Drawn to Tales of Rape, Murder and Serial Killers? By Amanda M. Vickery and are Chris Freeley, published in two thousand ten by Social Psychological and Personality Science. So exploring this reported demographic divide here, the authors looked at Amazon book reviews and found that men seemed more likely to review war books and women were more likely

to review crime books. Uh, they had research subjects than read crime fiction synopsises and report and they found that women were more drawn to the psychological content of true crime, and they were more likely to read true crime books if the victim was female. Okay, so that's not a perfect measure of actual reading habits in the wild, but that is but it's at least an interesting datum to begin with, right, Yeah, if you're gonna start somewhere. Again,

it's not the most robust um study. I don't think they're putting it up is that, but it's a good place to start. So um Vicari's take is, ultimately is that it all comes down to survival, kind of touching on we were discussing earlier. True crime tends to revolve in some way around the challenges of surviving a crime. It's either just an obvious survival story or it's a tale from which one might draw survival ideas. What did

the doomed character do that that doomed them? You know, what can I do differently to avoid said doom And so even on a subconscious level, it's about learning how to avoid and survive crimes. And this makes sense to UH that the authors point out because women tend to fear crime more than men and are statistically more likely

to be the victim of crime. According to the U. S Department of Justice in two thousand eight, females aged twelve or older were five times more likely than males aged twelve or older to be victims of intimate partner violence, and additionally, in two thousand seven, intimate partners committed fourteen percent of all homicides in the US. And those are some pretty sobering statistics. By the way, October is also

National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the US. Just a reminder, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is one eight hundred seven nine nine safe or one eight hundred seven nine nine seven to three three. But let's get back to this idea of of survival. Um. Uh So, as engaging with these crime stories is kind of like a rehearsal for survival,

learning experience for the survival of crime. Uh, it seems implied that the reverse would be the same for these uh, these these male readers who are then reading all of this war, that it's also about survival. Uh, you know,

processing the riddle of survival in the brain. And I feel like that makes sense Without getting into the the idea of the gender divide, I know that that I've personally dealt with the stresses of by in part thinking a lot about say, war games, clone wars, the galactic Civil war, the wars of ants, that sort of thing.

And and but then likewise, I can think back to times in my life where I found similar solace in crime fiction where um, you know, I distinctly remember a time where there's a fair amount of stress in my life and I was watching some these were these were fictional accounts, but they're basically like slasher films, and I remember even thinking at the time, like, this is a weird way to feel chilled out by watching a film about a slasher, Like this should be this should on

some level be making me more anxiou. So they're making me feel you know, you know, and more nervous, but it's not. It's somehow making me feel better. Yeah. My hunch is that there are two different ways that can work. One is that if it's an effective slasher movie, then there is actually sort of an endorphin you know, emotional catharsis thing of like being afraid but then not actually being in a threat. You know, once the once the fear passes, you kind of get an endorphin release and

you're like, oh, okay, and that can be kind of calming. Um, it can give you a sense of control to have the ironic distance and like watch something that is actually scary but then know that it's not real. And then on the other end, if you're watching like a bad

slasher movie. I think there's a different there's a similar and simultaneously different thing at work, which is there's still the ironic difference, but the ironic difference element is played up to the point where like watching something that is supposed to be scary but is in fact funny is very reassuring. You know, it makes you feel like there's

maybe not that much to worry about. Well, just thinking of bad slasher films, like how many of us have watched the slasher films and really harped on on the the idea of what to do when you get this the killer down right, Like, obviously the thing to do within the context of the films is if you knock the killer out, you slowly approach them and take their mask off. You don't say, grab their weapon and stab them a million times in the torso to make sure

they're debt um. But we love so at times even just yelling at the screen because they are doing the wrong thing. You are not practicing good survival. But I at the same time am contemplating survival, and to some degree, I feel like you feel like you're learning about survival. Yeah, this is a good point. A lot of slasher movies.

I think could could be effective and could be enjoyable to people because there are at least implied rules, like there's a there's a system of rules that you can suss out, and the fact that they're not announced explicitly makes it seem a little bit more interesting and fun that you have figured them out. You kind of know what a lot of the you know, the mistakes that aaracters are going to make ahead of time, and you can think that, uh, you know, uh, Dewey here is

very stupid for having done that. I would have not done that. I know better by the way of that Vicary and Freeley paper. Uh. They also point out that neither female nor male subjects in their study were drawn to stories with explicitly emotional or sexual content, but it was the psychological content that interested female test subjects. Um So, I guess I suppose the idea there is it's coming down to um uh again survival, but but on a psychological level, like how do you tell which character is

the creepy killer? Kind of coming back to our tales from the crypt episode, like is it is it adam Ant? Is it his character? He's sure is acting creepy uh, am I able to psychologically analyze him in a way where I can guess that he's the killer or is it Clance Williams the third or is it Salomi Gen's Yeah, I mean it's it's one of those episodes where all possibilities are on the table. Now, a couple of a couple other just short references to to uh some write

ups that I found insightful and all of this. As Sarah Watts points out in her Forbes coverage of the aforementioned study, all of this lines up with psycholopsychologist Dr John Mayer's view that perfectly ex purposely exposing oneself to violence in these um uh, these forms can serve as an inoculation against fear. But we also have to consider

individual differences in all of this. So some of us are drawn uh into into say true crime or horror movies because of thrill seeking personalities, but it could be more about interest in the taboo or an interest in dark subject matter. Uh So it's it's ultimately very difficult to create like a one size fits all rule for why people like true crime or horror or whatever the particular piece of media. Maybe you know it's funny I feel like I still haven't, even in this discussion, figured

out the answer to that question. I was asking about true crime versus fictional horror, like both both deal with violence and fear and threats, but people have extremely different reactions to them. I noticed that usually, like horror movies are fun, they make me feel good, and true crime just kind of usually makes me feel bad. But there are people for whom it's entirely the reverse, And I'm still not sure why. Yeah, um, and and then I

don't know. Sometimes it's about how it's presented, right, Like I instantly think to how both the Texas Chainsaw massacre and Fargo both have the introductions at the beginning to try and cast them as legitimate occurrences. You know, this

really happened, even though both are pure fiction. Um but but yet, I guess a lot of it comes down to the fact that I often find that the true crime, like that's definitely true and not you know, fictionalized to a large degree, has a tendency to feel yeah, just more just feel sadder, feel like more of a tragedy as opposed to a you know, violent romp. But one area where we see, um, this this is interesting and

talking about where the fiction meets the reality. UM. I was reading from a book titled Blood Obsession, Vampire, serial Murder, and the Popular Imagination by Jorgo Walch, Assistant Professor of Modern Languages and director of the Language Resource Center and

at Ohio University in Athens Um. In this book, one of the many points that they're making is that they draw this connection between serial murderers, certainly in the modern sense, and the vampire myths of old, uh, seeing the modern serial murder as the vampire myth uh in real life. So you could you could argue that the modern serial murder um either in their their stark reality or they're

sort of presumed reality, you know, they're slightly fictionalized. Uh, you know, the view of their being one around every corner, that we're still dealing with a solitary humanoid hunter of other human beings that we can obsess over, and the vampire is kind of the purely supernatural reflection of that same idea. And I think part of this comes back

to what you said earlier about rules. We like that there are rules, and in both vampire fiction and it's certainly serial killer fiction, and to a certain extent, true crime is often about the rules that they will by by anyway, I think I think the distinction is not not only you know, fascinating, but also it's worth keeping in mind, especially during Halloween. So you can't you can't really go all in on Halloween and vampires and all and say that you don't get true crime fascination because

I think ultimately there's a lot of crossover between the two. Uh, it's just yeah, Ultimately, do you want your you know, the bad guy turning into a bat, or do you want the bad guy you know, limping around with a fake cast or what have you? Do you want to set to Swan Lake or do you want to set to the Unsolved Mysteries theme? I would take Swan Lake, Uh any time. Yeah, I'm I'm with you. That that Unsolved Mystery theme song kind of stirs, uh, just an

innate feeling of fear. I mean, much like the Tales from the Dark Side theme song, the Man that Unsolved Mystery song. It's that it's that one like expansive bending note, you know, the brandy before the before the beat kicks in. It's so powerful and then here comes Robert Stack walking out of the mist. The light behind in ghosts? Do they exist? Or is this another hoax? Let's watch a

recreation starring Matthew McConaughey. You know, Unsolved Mysteries gets a lot funnier after you've recently rewatched Beavis and butt Head do America because Robert Staff agent on that. Yes, yes, that was that was good. I remember that. Now. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close it up for now, but I think we're coming back for a third episode this year. What it would be volume six seven six, I think so Navy volume six six six be on

the lookout. Basically, the situation is going to be, uh, we will We're gonna be recording episodes during the week of Halloween for the week after Halloween, and we don't really want to record non Halloween episodes during the week of Halloween, so you're gonna get a little extra Halloween this year. Um, so hopefully you're okay with that. But then then we'll move on to some other topics if we feel like it. Yes, all right, If you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind,

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