Anthology of Horror, Volume 6

that's right. We're recording this the week of Halloween. We wanted to keep recording Halloween content the week of Halloween, which means Halloween last an extra week in our publication schedule. This is indeed going to be Anthology of Horror Volume six, or we might say it's volume six six six, because we're going to be considering some infernal subject matter in

this one. Do you know that due to textual variants in the ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, there is some debate about whether the original number was six six six or six one six. They apparently both work as a cipher for the name of Caesar Nero. Well, it's interesting, but you got it at six one six, not nearly as a sinister it doesn't have the that doesn't have the cinematic qualities you know, it doesn't have all that, although the it's not backed up by by our b

cinema and our horror fiction. Though it does look a little bit ominous with the two six is kind of closing in on the one. I don't know. Yeah, I could see it working, but but I think you're right that the three sixes work better. Now, if you're not familiar with the anthology of horror episodes that we put out around Halloween, Uh, this is basically what the gimme it consists of. We pick we each pick some some particular episodes from either sci fi horror TV anthology shows

or anthology films. You know this This is stuff like on TV, Tales from the Crypt, Tales from the Dark Side, Black Mirror, et cetera. And then in the cinematic tradition, um, it's stuff like Tales from the Dark Side the movie or Stephen King's Cat's Eye. That sort of thing. Uh, movies that contain generally like three or more mini segments, each one a self contained story with some sort of narrative structure holding it all together. Did we actually do

Stephen King's Cat's Eye in the previous year. I don't think we did. I was tempted to this year because they have that Quitters Inc. Episode, you know, where James Woods learns to quit smoking by having his family tormented by maniacs. It's it's like a smoking cession clinic run by the mob, and yeah, they terrorize you. But like anything that James Woods is in, James Woods is the scariest part. Yeah, it's a um, I'm not sure how

that film really holds up. I mainly when I think back on that film, I mainly remember the bit with the little girl and the little troll and the and the giant bedroom set they had to construct to make

it possible. Because one of the cool things is I got to to to meet a guy who worked on that production way, Yeah, and he had some some photos from the set of this giant dad because once they built it, they had to build a giant bed so they could have somebody in that troll suit walk around on it, and so there are pictures of the cast members on the bed, you know, posing with it. Uh. So it was it was a lot of fun. I think it is the most the most fun aspect of

that particular film certainly the most memorable. Yeah. Yeah, if you haven't seen it. The basic premises that there's like a kindall sized troll that comes out of the wall at night and it's attempting to suck a little girl's life spirit out, but her cat must protect her, and so the cat is actually the hero of the story, maybe much like one of the films we're gonna be talking about a little bit later. Yeah, yeah, definitely the cat Cat's Eye does tie into something we're going to

discuss here in a little bit. But before we get to the infernal world of cats, we're going to have to consider the infernal world of a demonic bargains. So Joe, set up your selection for Anthology of Horror volume six. Okay, I think I've established a precedent, at least in one of the previous years, maybe in both that I've always got to talk about a Treehouse of Horror because I love the Simpsons the Treehouse of Horror episodes or maybe my favorites of all time, and today I'm gonna be

talking about the devil in Homer Simpson. This is one of the all time great Treehouse of Horror segments. It is I think from season four from tree House of Horror three. Uh yeah, that this This always throws me off anytime I'm trying to keep my Treehouse is straight, because each one has a different number that's one off from the the the season year. So I lose track if i'm if I'm looking for four, Am I talking about season four? Am I talking about Treehouse four? Yeah?

It's like centuries, right, how like the first century does not start with the number one, and the second century starts with the number one. Yeah, it's easier to just start watching Treehouse of Horror episodes and just stop when you can't really take it anymore. But okay, So the premise of the Devil in Homer Simpson is that Homer Simpson is trapped at work and his boring job at the Nuclear Power Plan. I think he's supposed to be the safety inspector, and he is fiercely covetous of a snack.

He really wants a donut, but Lenny and Carl ate all the other donuts or somebody ate them, and then Homer goes looking for his emergency backup. Donut opens up like a book that he's cut out the inside inside of it. I think it's the the operation manual for his nuclear safety equipment and uh. He finds that, in fact, the donut that is supposed to be in there is missing, and instead there's a note that says like, dear Homer, iou one donut. Uh. And he's you know, like damn it,

he's always one step ahead of me. Uh. So he announces to no one in particular that he would sell his soul for a donut. And of course when you're talking to nobody in particular, there is somebody listening, and it's the Devil. So Satan appears in the form of Ned Flanders with goat legs and a pitchfork in a cool red jacket, and he makes a deal with Homer. The Devil will supply Homer with a donut and Homer

will render his soul. Now, briefly, Homer believes that he's outsmart at the devil because he realizes he can eat all but the last bite of the doughnut and still keep his soul. But then, unfortunately, sometime later, Homer is maybe sort of sleepwalking or at least is hungry for a midnight snack, and he disregards the notes all over the leftover donut bite in the fridge that say things like Dad's soul donut do not eat, and he eats it, and then when he does, Flanders appears to claim his prize.

But then Marge intervenes and she says, you know, Homer

should receive a fair trial. So in the meantime, Homer gets sent to hell for a day where the demons attempt to ironically torture him by force feeding him thousands of donuts, but Homer doesn't really seem to be bothered by this, and in the end Homer wins the trial Merchant of Venice style on a technicality when Marge cleverly proves that he had in fact already handed over possession of his soul to somebody else to her, so the soul was not really his to sell in the first place,

so it was it was a no go deal to begin with. But then in the end, the devil gets his revenge and he turns Homer's head into a giant donut, which Homer will of course forever be picking at and and snacking on. Yeah, you get the idea that that he's still pretty doomed because he's it's like the next day or something, you know, and he's already picking at

his his donut hit. Yes, it's the same kind of bad thinking that led them to keep the original piece of Homer's soul donut in the fridge instead of just like throwing it out or destroying it or something. Right. Yeah, this this is a wonderful episode. One one of these episodes I've watched more times than I can remember. I watched it this year, in fact, as we introduced our son to the Simpsons tree House of Horror horror episodes.

One of my favorite parts of this that is that when we get to the actual trial, of course, Lionel Huts briefly serves as the Simpsons defensivetorne any during the proceedings, before I believe he runs away like he he quite The great thing about Lionel Huts is that he always has uh like enormous overconfidence that he can do these things, but like but has so incapable of of performing. But then he he In this episode, he realizes it has to go to the bathroom and like escapes through the window.

He's the quintessential American character, just endless confidence, no competence and in the end runs away. Right. There's also a great moment where he's just combing his hair with a fork as he walks into frame. Yeah. So obviously this is a great opportunity to talk about deals with the devil, because I think deals with the devil are interesting in in multiple domains, one from a sort of history of religions point of view and another from a psychological point

of view. And one of the things I'd like to start by talking about is that while the contract with the devil, the deal with Satan may seem like a perversion of the religious impulse, I would argue that actually the more personalized and asymmetrical relationship between God and the believer in the modern Abrahamic religions is really the qualitative outlier from a historical perspective, for a huge amount of religion throughout all of history, the relationship between the believer

and the gods has been seen as significantly more practical and contractual. You know, from this God, I want this particular blessing or favor, and in return I offer this ritual or this sacrifice. Uh So, for example, an ancient Roman religion, there is actually a term for this. It's dot deaths, meaning I give that you might give back, So I will sacrifice a goat at your shrine or I will do whatever ritual. I will burn incense for you, and in return you will give me a good harvest,

or you will heal my sick child, etcetera. Yeah, and and this also, like it's an easy, easy parallel, well to say, ap pledging your loyalty to some sort of tribal lord exactly. I mean, this is one of the ways in which the farther you go back in religion, the more religious relationships seem to mirror political practical types of relationships than than a lot of the big religions due today. So in a way, the deal with the devil, I would say, is not a myth archetype that needed

to be invented out of whole cloth by Christian storytellers. Instead, it just took an extremely ancient, extremely common way of practicing religion and put a nefarious, infernal gloss on it. Like, the part that remains unchanged is that there's devotee and they ask for some kind of supernatural deliverance or aid.

But now instead of sacrificing a cow to Minerva to get what you want, you have to pay some kind of ultimate price, some unreasonable price, like your eternal soul or your child or something, and you it not to some god of a particular domain, but to the anti God, the figure of evil incarnate. So clearly the Simpsons segment here is drawing on the Christian tradition of the deal with the Devil. But I would say that that is

not a an archetype that originates with Christianity. It's more a sort of reimagining of traditional religion with a very negative spin on it. Yeah, I mean it kind of breaks too, of applying a satanic paint job to to pre Christian religious traditions as well, exactly. But since this episode is dealing with the Christian tradition of the deal with the Devil, I also want to look at the

history of how that idea developed. So in the Christian tradition, the oldest story of an attempted deal with the devil that I'm aware of actually takes place in the Bible.

It's in the Gospels in the New Testament. So after Jesus's baptism, he goes out into the wilderness to fast for forty days and forty nights, and during that time, the devil appears to him and offers him temptations, and the temptations culminate in this passage in the Gospel of Matthew that goes as fall as This is in chapter four, Versus eight to nine. Quote again, the devil took him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all

the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, all these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. Now, of course, Jesus refuses this temptation. He says, well, I'm only going to worship the Lord as commanded in the scripture. But the suggestion of the architecture is there, if he had taken the devil up on his bargain, he would have

surrendered something extremely important. It's not made clear exactly what that is, but he would have sort of sort of like surrendered righteousness or surrendered godhood or something like that, and in return he would be granted, you know, this great earthly power. Yeah, I guess the way the way I've I've often seen it presented. What it's like, you know, Jesus on this mission to save the world, and the devil says, hey, but what if you didn't save the world.

What if I set you up all nice and uh, and and fancy here, and then you could just kind of like rule the world. That'd be pretty good too, right, Why don't we do that? Then everybody's happy? Yes, And so there might be a question like, wait a minute, why would the devil be offering the world to Jesus, Like wouldn't Jesus have more domain over the world anyway that he's the ruler of the kingdom of the air though,

That's right. Yes, this gets into some interesting stuff about apocalypticism that I want to talk about in just a minute. Uh So to follow more about the Christian tradition of the deal with the Devil, I was looking at an entry in the Dictionary of Biblical Tradition and English Literature edited by David Lyle Jeffrey, and there's a good entry on the tradition of packs with the Devil by Camille

or Labossi are So. Regarding the temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness, Lebassi air points out that the primary appeals in this story are to pride, which is kind of interesting, Like in one of the temptations, Satan asks Jesus to bow down and worship him, but in the others he simply Jesus to make a vulgar display of his own power. He says, Okay, you've been fasting for forty days. If you're so hungry, why don't you turn these stones into bread.

And there's a very interesting passage in the Gospel of Mark that that ties into the idea of deals with the devil as well. Now, the Gospel of Mark is the earliest of the four Gospels in the New Testament. It probably represents the earliest stages of a lot of these stories about jesus life. And in this story, Jesus has been performing miracles, he's healing the sick, he's exercising demons.

He gathers the twelve Disciples to follow him, and then in chapter three, verse twenty two, he gets a challenge from the religious scholars. The religious scholars come up to him and it says they came down from Jerusalem and they said, quote, he hath beel's abub and by the prince of devils, casteth he out devils. So they're saying, look, I know how he's casting out devils. He's made a deal with with like the head demon, the chief devil, and he's using that demon power to cast out these

devils so he can win win over you peasants here. Uh. And this is interesting because so earlier this year I had the biblical historian Bart Erman on the podcast to talk about where the Christian concepts of heaven and Hell came from and how they developed over time. And if you haven't checked that episode out, I recommended. I thought

Bart was a really fantastic guest. But one of the historical trends that he talks about in a lot of his work, and he discusses in that episode as well, is the development of what's known as apocalyptic theology in Judaism in the centuries leading up to the birth of Christianity. Uh. And it's a little bit complicated, but I'll try to do the brief simplified version, and it goes like this. For many centuries, the Jewish prophetic tradition had attributed misfortunes

of the Jewish people to punishment for their sins. So it would be like, oh, you were conquered by the Babylonians and your crops were eaten by the locust. That is because God is punishing you for your wickedness. But eventually, over time, I'm sort of the manifest unfairness of this theology became untenable for many Jews, like, how does it make sense that my three year old child is being

punished for the sins of our king? And so a new theology arose within the Jewish religion to explain suffering, and that was that suffering was not punishment for sins, but it was the result of the faithful children of

Israel being persecuted and victimized by forces of darkness. The idea is that there are evil rulers and evil powers who have made deals with the Devil, who have gone into cooperation with a powerful evil being who is opposed to God, and this is the Devil, and God will eventually destroy the Devil and destroy these evil rulers who are in league with him, and will right all wrongs.

But until then we're stuck under the boot of these wicked temporal powers who are allied with and empowered by Satan. It's essentially kind of a dystopian um attempt for religion, yes, very much so, but with the idea that eventually everything would be fixed, that ultimately God is sovereign, ultimately good will win over evil. But now we're stuck in this bad middle period where we're suffering under the arrangements made

with the evil forces. It's the Matrix kind of, yes, though it would develop into even more Matrix e directions with the advent of Gnosticism, which is one of the most fun things if you actually go back and watch the Matrix after learning about Gnostic theology, there are huge overlaps there that are that are very fun to mess around with. Yeah, I'm looking forward. I'm not sure when will be the right time, but I'm looking forward to rewatching all those films because it's been a long time

and I know they've got the Matrix four in the works. Really, Yeah, I feel more excited about that than I should be. No, I mean, I think that there's a lot of room to explore. I'm I'm interested to see what they put together. But anyway, to come back to these ancient theological def elements. Another thing that I think is interesting about the development of apocalyptic theology is the idea of wicked people being

empowered by a pact with Satan or demons. That could sort of be viewed as a logical inversion of the belief that the Jewish people were protected by what they called a covenant with the God of Israel. A covenant is essentially a contract that they would worship him exclusively, scorning all other gods, and he would protect them as

a people. But anyway, given the popularity of this type of apocalyptic thinking around the first century CE, I think it makes sense that the author of the Gospel might have a story like this here, where Jesus's enemies who don't understand him would accuse him of somehow being empowered through a packed with demonic forces, like maybe they, in the author's view here, misunderstand Jesus as one of these evil princes, one of these evil powers, who has been

allied against the good people. It's almost like they're accusing them selling out, Yes, exactly. Uh. And Labassier points out that many early Christian Church fathers, such as Justin Martyr and Origin, they allege that people who possess powers like divination, so the power to acquire otherwise hidden knowledge or to predict the future, that people who have these powers acquire

them through arrangements with the devil. Especially influential in this respect is the writing of St. Augustine in his theological work on Christian doctrine. He claimed that people who have apparent magical powers, such as divination or prognostication, they gain

these powers through consultations, pacts and contracts with demons. And there's a passage in St. Augustine that's quoted as an authority on the subject of all through the Middle Ages and is repeated in in canon law and the Catholic Church. But in the Middle Ages it's when the stories about these kinds of pacts get get more developed. So the Middle Ages saw a proliferate shtion of folk tales about pacts with the devil, especially concerning deals between the devil

and a powerful or learned man. So one example is the story of Saint Cyprian, who Labossierre says, is a quote megas philosophists, or you know, like a magician philosopher, a man of great arcane learning, uh quote, who strikes a bargain with the devil to learn the secrets of the universe. But he he gets turned around. He responds to the appeals of a virtuous woman uh named Justina or Juliana, and he repents of his wicked pact, so

he gets out of it. And even more well known in the Middle Ages is the story of the Afulus of a Donna, and I thought this was a lot of fun. So the Awfulis was a cleric who is said to have lived in the sixth century in Asia Minor. This would be in uh Silicia and modern day Turkey, so that's like the southern part of modern day Turkey. And the story goes that Theophilist is an archdeacon of

a donna. He's like, he's a high up guy in the church, but he's a very humble and righteous man, and he is elected to become a new bishop in a donna, but out of humility, he turns down the position. He's like, oh no, no, I am not worthy. So a different guy gets elected bishop instead. But then, in a cruel twist of fate, the new bishop is swayed by some false rumors about theophilists character and he kicks the Awfulis out of his archdeaconship, and the Afulist is mad.

He does not like this, so he's like, I've been wronged. I've got to get revenge. And in a quest for revenge, he seeks out the aid of a sorcerer sometimes described as a necromancer, and this guy helps the Awfulist right out of contract with the devil in his own blood. The devil will give the awfulst the bishopric of a Donna, and in return, the Afulist will renounce Christ, renounce the Virgin Mary, and hand over his soul to Satan. And

the deal goes through and he becomes the bishop. The devil delivers his half of the bargain, but then Theophilist gets cold feet. It's like, oh no, I really screwed up. So he gets scared he's going to go to hell and he ends up fasting for a couple of periods, like a total of seventy days. He prays to the Virgin Mary to get him out of the contract, and at first she appears to him and just really choose him out. She's like, you have been an extremely naughty bishop.

You are that was very bad of you to do. But eventually she relents and she grants him absolution. So you think everything solved now, but the devil does not give up. The next morning, Theophilist wakes up with the contract that he had written in his blood lying on his chest, and I guess that's a sign that the devil is still trying to hold him to account. So next what the apulist does is inspired by the Virgin Mary.

He takes the contract to the bishop who had originally removed him from the archdeaconship, and he confesses everything, and the bishop burns the contract, which frees the awful list of soul from this infernal bargain. And the awfullest is so relieved to have his soul back that he dies of joy on the spot. And I think this story brings up a couple of features that will appear again and again in stories about deals with the devil. I think it's very interesting that you see these features repeated

so often. One is that you can get out of a deal with the devil. You make the deal, you get what you want, but then upon repenting, you can sort of avoid the contract, so to speak. And then the second feature that appears again and again is that, uh is that you can you can get out of it with the intercession or intervention of a virtuous woman. What I love about this is that you know, though though fantastic and supernatural and its elements, it's basically a

critique of short term versus long term thinking. You know, because it's it's often about like somebody like in this case, and I want revenge now, I'm not going to think about what happens later with my eternal soul. But but also just like my life past the point of getting my vengeance. Uh. And likewise with Homer, like he's not thinking about the long term, he's thinking about that immediate reward. He's he's failing the ultimate Marshmallow test. You know, yeah, exactly.

I was thinking about those exact themes. It's the it's the prioritization of the temporal. And in a way, there's this idea that people, uh make decisions without thinking them through. They make the decision on the basis of their appetites or their lusts or their emotions. Uh, and then once they have time to think about it, they repent of the decision they have made. And often, weirdly enough, I mean,

this doesn't happen in every case. Like we'll get to Dr Faustus in a bit, and then Marlow's Dr Faustus. He does not get out of the deal, he just gets claimed by the devil. But in a lot of these deals, eventually, once you think it through and you say, oh no, I really screwed up. Somebody good. Usually a virtuous and clever woman will intervene on your behalf and you'll get out of it. I mean to a certain extent.

We see that in Dante's Inferno, right, I mean, Beatrice is is kind of this this guiding light that is that is there to to sort of pull like a tractor beam, to pull Dante up through Inferno and uh and Purgatory up towards his paradise. It's very interesting than in a lot of these stories, the character who makes the deal with the devil is tempted by pride. And in the Divine Comedy it's made explicit that Dante's main

sin is pride. That's the sin that he really has to be absolved of when he goes through purgatory, and it's the main sin that Beatrice is helping purge him of. Yeah, which is one of my favorite things about the Divine Comedy actually is all the passages where he's like, having

been cleansed of the sin of pride. I will now go back to Earth having written the greatest poem of all time, and will copens everybody that they should do you know, that they should follow the path of righteousness, because I've written the best poem ever written, right, I mean he did, he did really write his finger there, I mean, but but but yes, I don't think. I don't know if you can make a strong case for

the pride being completely purge from Dante. But anyway, So from here, Labassier goes on to mention a number of other stories and pacts with the devil that were popular in the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. For example, the Anglo Norman poem, which is apparently satirical, that takes the form of a full legal document resigning the soul of the signatory to the devil in exchange for the freedom to live in hedonic pleasure, hoarding wealth and exploiting

the poor. And I gotta say, is a brief like moralistic theological note, one thing I can sometimes appre I mean, obviously there are extreme limitations to the insights of medieval moral philosophy. But one thing I appreciate, going back and reading a lot of these rebukes of immorality from the Middle Ages, is one thing that a thing that gets singled out again and again is abusing the poor. Now there are more kinds of packs with the devil. In

chauce Er in the Friar's Tale, in the canon Yeoman's Tale. Uh, there's this idea that people who seek pacts with the devil are often lusting after wealth or especially secret knowledge. The ultimate secrets of alchemy seem to be a real draw for people to get into these uh, these bad deals like to chase after the philosopher's stone is to

make an enemy of God. And these themes really come through in the Renaissance in perhaps the most famous literary character who makes a deal with the devil who which is Dr Faustus. We've talked about the faust legend on

the show before. This is a story with many lives, many new sets of clothes over the ages, so we won't rehash all of that here, but it is yet another tale of a person who seeks great power and knowledge and then uh kind of squanders it and uh and and of course seeks it through a deal with the devil and is ultimately claimed. There is a fair amount of lust in there too. Yes. Lobossi Are also points out an interesting parallel that I might not have

thought of otherwise. But it's Shakespeare's The Murder Shin of Venice between Antonio and Shylock, and because of the anti Semitic assumptions of the play, the Jewish money lender Shylock has portrayed very much as a devil figure toying with

Antonio's fate uh and is. As is so often the case in these tales, Antonio is saved by the intercession of a virtuous woman, Portia, who wins his case by finding a technical loophole in the wording of the contract, much like Marge does in The Devil and Homer Simpson.

As for the title of the Simpsons, segment is of course adapted from the title of the short story by Stephen Vincent Benet, The Devil and Daniel Webster, in which a New England farmer sells his soul to the Devil, then hires the famous lawyer and orator Daniel Webster to represent him in a trial to get it back, and Webster's speech to the jury of the damned souls is so eloquent that they find for the defendant, even though there's no evidence on his behalf, which is pretty good.

You know. As much as we love courtroom dramas in and especially in this country, and as much as we love um, you know, the horrifying and the satanic? Why have we not? Maybe we have and I'm not aware of it. We need a law and Order, um Infernal Unit, or you know, we need Daniel Webster lawn Order mash up where not just like one episode, but every episode deals with some sort of satanic bargain. I mean, I'm half joking, but I also now that I'm thinking about it, like,

I think this has legs. I think this could be a series. I'd watch it The Perry Mason of the Afterlife. Yeah, what's your favorite courtroom drama? Do you have one? Are you? And my cousin Vinny Guy? I mean no, I mean, I mean, what are some of the great I mean you have to go with like to Kill a Mockingbird? Right or something like that. Um. Yeah, I'm trying to think of anything. I don't know. I don't know a

lot of the stuff in between. Like I feel like it for for me to get into a courtroom drama, it needs to be it needs to be really good. Or yeah, I can't. I can't think of one that's amusingly crappy. Yeah, maybe a Few good Men. Like a Few good Men is like entertaining but extremely hokey. Yeah, I mean it does have that classic moment that's been a Leaftland lampoon so many times. Um, yeah, I don't know my favorite really, Seriously, my favorite courtroom scenes are

all from episodes of The Simpsons or Futurama. Yeah, alright, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Thank thank Alright, we're back. You know, I was thinking there's another type of picture of a deal with the devil, which is the idea of deal with the devil as compliment, like the idea that an artist or a musician or somebody is so talented, uh, that their their genius or their talent must have come from a deal with the devil, Like this was said of the great Delta Blues musician Robert Johnson. But of course it was something that actual

like the Romantic poets often said about themselves. The English Romantic poets Blake and Shelley characterized as literary genius and poetic energy as a diabolical pact. Yeah. This is interesting too, because I think it is reflected in a lot of

celebrity worship culture today. But it's perhaps a way on one level, like a way of trying to make sense of of extreme success, you know, you sort of have to tell yourself, well, yeah, they're highly successful at what they do and or they're highly talented, but at what cost? And and you can sort of comfort yourself by saying, I didn't pay that cost. I may not have a number one album out there, but I also didn't sell my soul to the devil. Uh, And you can feel

a little better about it. And then it's also sort of in a way, it's kind of a twisted version of instead of saying, well, you know, um, you know this this celebrity that deep down there a person too, and they're full of insecurities like I am. You know, they're they're concerned about the future, etcetera. Instead of humanizing you, you kind of go in a different direction and say, well, yes, but they're going to hell because they made a soul a soul ex change with the devil. Like I don't know,

I think it's very weird, very twisted up. No, I think that's really good. I think you're exactly right. In the same way that it feels good to watch a really rich person be miserable, uh, at least feels good to think about somebody who has talents and successes that you're jealous of. You're like, well, they must yeah, they must have done something bad to get that. Yeah, they lost something in the bargain. I guess it does. It doesn't. You can certainly compare it to some of the stats

about say, lottery winners. Right where a sentence, there's there's a strong argument to say that that is a deal made with the devil. You get this enormous uh you know, reward, this this enormous cash prize, but statistically it brings a lot of chaos into your life. Is that true? Though? I've heard people say that, But I think I feel like I've looked into that before and it turns out that might not be as true as is sometimes alleged. It certainly would make us feel better for it to

be true. Yeah, that's the thing. It needs to be true for the ingest this of the universe to make sense. Um. But then again with the lottery thing, for example, I mean, I think one of the great things about that is we're always each and every one of us, you know, we're the first ones to say to ourselves, well, you know, if you win the lottery's gonna bring a lot of casts in your life. But I think I can handle it.

You know, we always think we're the exception. It's kind of like, man, I can't any time I want, Yeah, like making a deal with the devil or picking up a monkey's paw. That's bad news. But I think I might be able to make it work. I think I could. I could. I could word my demand in just the right way that the Devil's going to be totally cool with it. I wouldn't eat the hole doughnut. I would leave that last bite and not forget about it. Yeah. Or I would know how to phrase the monkeys Paul

questions so that it didn't come back on me. Yeah. Well, you know, going back to the Simpsons episode with the monkeys paw, you know, you have that that wonderful segment where Maggie gets ahold of it and and I think is the only person who uses it, and it's in

a way it's like she's a child. So she makes a purer wish, you know, for just a new pacifier, which is immediately brought to her, and it doesn't seem like there's any kind of come up in so there any dark uh, you know, darker ramifications that come from having made that wish of the poll, unlike all the other monkey pot wishes. Well, I think it's interesting that in the Monkeys Pall it is a technical reading of the words of the wish that come back to bite you.

But in many of these stories about the deal with the devil, such as in the Devil in Homer Simpson, it is a technical reading of the language of the agreement that actually gets you out of trouble, you know, trading on a loophole to escape punishment. They seem to come from the anxieties of like a literate and legalistic culture. Yeah, the idea of the law itself as this domain with enough ambiguity in it that a skilled lawyer or sorcerer,

you know, they're basically the same thing. Depending on how you look at it, we'll be able to pry you out of it. Arcane books containing formulations of language that have the power to make things happen in the world that you can't understand that the lawyer is very much a sorcerer. Now, I wanted to talk about the psychology of selling your soul, and I was trying to find

some good psychology studies about people selling their souls. I didn't really turn up a lot that are directly on target, but some that uh, some that are sort of on point but not as robust as I had hoped, and then other things that sort of glance off of it in interesting ways. So the first thing I found was an anecdote in a twelve book called The Righteous Mind

by the American social psychologist Jonathan Height. And this book is about the psychological foundations of moral values and how these values feed into big systems like social groups and politics and stuff. And the story in the book about selling souls comes up in the middle of a passage about a phenomenon that Height calls moral dumbfounding. And this is something that you've probably encountered before. You've seen other

people do it, you've done it yourself. It's where somebody makes a very strong moral judgment about something you say you know that's just wrong, and then if you are asked to explain why it's wrong, you get the mental blue screen of death. You just search around, frustrated for an explanation, a reason behind your moral pronouncement. Maybe you'll end up saying something but it doesn't make a lot of sense, or you just can't think of anything at all,

and yet you remain convinced of your original opinion. From another context, it's phrased as a dogmatic insistence on a moral judgment for which no good reasons can be given, and so example. There are all kinds of examples of this that are offered, a lot of them are read to people as very distasteful for obvious reasons. One is, would it be wrong to dip a sterilized cockroach into somebody's drink? So if I if I just got a cockroach, I put it through an autoclave, so I know it's

absolutely sterile, could not possibly make you sick? Would it be wrong for me to dip that cock roach in a glass of water and then give you the glass of water to drink and not tell you, Yes, that would be wrong. I feel like that would be wrong too, But it's hard to explain, a like, to come up with an explanation for the reason that would be wrong. It's like, well, it can't possibly hurt them, but it just feels really wrong. It feels like a betrayal. Yeah,

it is, I see what you're you're getting. It is tricky to try and like make an argument like you end up having to sort of go further out on a ledge than you think you're going to. You know, you have to say things like, well if you would do that, like what else are you doing to my drink? What what you know? What else? Does what else do to say about our relationship that you would do this? And I'm not necessarily saying that you couldn't give a good reason, but it's like for a lot of people

would be difficult to express one. And I want to come back to the difference there in a bit um. I mean, it would be a health code violation, yes, regardless, Well I don't know if it would it be if it was sterilized. It seems like you need special language in the health code to address I have. Maybe we'll hear from health inspectors out there who listen to the show, But I'm guessing you can't get by by sterilizing your

cockroaches before exposing them. I mean, but then again, I don't know, you know, as we get more into the you know, the consumption of insects. Are there are there food grade cockroaches you could use? I don't know, But how would that be any different than just being sterilized like.

It seems like the implication at least is that questions like this play on just sort of like ick based intuitions we have about what's acceptable and what's not that we find hard to give justifications for based on things like utilitarian concerns about harm. Instead, it's just these things

about like that just feels wrong. I guess I'm gonna come back and say I would be okay with you doing this thing with the cockroach, provided it was it was like a food grade cockroach, which I don't think actually exists that even if we're another food grade insect then possibly, But then again, I don't think it's a vegetarian drink anymore if you've put a dead bugging and

intentionally all very good concerns. Uh yeah. So so I want to explain my thinking about this in a bit, but at first I just want to talk about the experiments. So Height in this section is discussing evidence that our moral decisions are generally not actually rational. So he's sort of making the case that when we have when we make moral judgments, most of the time, we're not reasoning

to arrive at them. Instead, they're deontological intuitions we just feel our moral decisions first, and then afterwards we use our rational minds to kind of come up with post talk justifications for why we felt the way we did. And so some evidence of this he discusses would include the claim that adding cognitive load does not change people's moral judgments. So if you give people mental work to do while they're making moral judgments, their moral judgments don't

appear to change. Or giving giving people more time to think about their answers to moral questions doesn't really seem to change them. And in the example of selling souls, Height is talking about a scenario where a graduate student of his was was offering students two dollars if they would sign a piece of paper that said I hereby sell my soul after my death for the sum of two dollars. And then there was also fine print that

said this form is part of a psychology experiment. It is not a legal document and not binding in any way. And the students were told that if they signed the document, they were free to rip it up and consider it void the moment after they signed it, and they would still get their two dollars, and majorities of students refused, even many students who explicitly said they were atheists and didn't believe in souls, they still didn't want to do it.

And so the point here is that there's something about there's something that we're using to make decisions apart from just reasoning about who it would harm. At least that's the case they're making. Two dollars does seem like low bowing, like even in the like, even even into this scenario, I think I would I would turn it down. I

think I would too. You just I mean, part of it's probably you know, growing up attending you know, a church where you're with the reality of of of demons is kind of part of the background, and then being and then absorbing all of this, uh uh, that this fantasy as well, probably even seeing tree House of Horror as a kid, you know, uh, you end up having all this in your background, and it kind of creates a sense of wrongness to engage in this, or at

least there's a risk factor there that should not be trifled with for a mere two dollars. Well that's so on one hand, yeah, you could argue, well, maybe this is just some sort of deontological hangover from from previous

beliefs you would have. But to come back on things, I think there are arguments against the post talk rationalization theory of moral dumbfounding, Like the fact that somebody can't artic kullate good reasons why something should be wrong doesn't necessarily mean that there are not in fact good reasons. It's possible that a lot of our moral reasoning might actually be reasoning and not just deontic dogma, but it's reasoning on a subconscious level that we find hard to

put into words. There are all kinds of things that people do for good reasons that you could explain in theory, but people can't figure out the right way to put it into words. So one example of this would be on utilitarian grounds, why can't a hospital just say, like, murder one innocent patient who's there for a yearly physical and then harvest their healthy organs to save the lives of, like, you know, ten other people who urgently need organ transplants.

I feel like if you think that that kind of statement is a defeater for utilitarian reasoning, uh that that represents a sort of shallow interpretation of utilitarianism. Like imagine if something like that were to actually happen. The con sequences of it would be that it would totally undermine the stability of the society and of medicine in a way that would make everyone paranoid and unable to trust

doctors or feel safe. So it's like, the consequences of something like that actually happening in reality would be hugely destructive in a utilitarian sense, even though in the moment you have saved a number of lives. And so I think there could be similar things going on with these examples about like say, a contract to get two dollars

for selling your soul. I feel like I have a kind of idiosyncratic view on this, probably with regards to selling souls, because I would say, you know, personally, I'm kind of a provisional materialist, like I believe that the mind is dependent on the functioning of the physical brain. I don't see any evidence for the existence of an

immaterial soul or mind that exists without the body. And yet at the same time, I think the soul is kind of a meaningful and even indispensable concept, and I think it really means something to sell your soul, not in a supernatural sense, but in the sense that there are things we can do that represent a surrender of rights and claims to the deepest part of our own integrity.

And in English, the word soul still captures that thing, that deep part of our integrity, probably better than any other word does, even though it does come with a lot of supernatural baggage. And thus I think signing a piece of paper in agreement to sell your soul could be a thing you would want to resist doing, even

though you don't believe in a supernatural soul. Like on the physicalist or naturalist view of the world, the brain operates strongly on the basis of habit, and doing something one time always prepares you to do a similar thing more easily in the future. And so I think I would worry that selling my soul, even in a purely symbolic sense, would kind of wound myself image in a way that would perhaps make me less protective of my integrity in the future. I feel like to come back

to anchoring. It's also insulting to to offer two dollars for someone's soul, because and then you're gonna turn him down, like you've already established that that is where you're going to begin the bidding. Yes, so even even if I come back and and I'm gonna gonna say something like, well, at least not for me a hundred dollars, like that doesn't say I still probably wouldn't do it for a hundred dollars. But but now I'm already thinking about it.

Because he started at two dollars. I think you were actually very much onto something about that number. There. There there's a way in which the two dollars makes it even worse, because again, even if you don't believe in any sort of supernatural immaterial soul, the deal would represent a kind of symbolic low ball valuing of yourself. You're just saying like, I'm not worth very much, and that hurts you to say, even in a symbolic way where

you can tear up the contract afterwards. Then to come back on the other side, though, I did find a study that seemed, at least at least on its surface value, to sort of line up with the idea of of valuing souls and things like that at a at a dog matter or deontological level rather than a moral reasoning lele. And this was an fMRI I cognition study, which, of course we've learned to always be somewhat careful about not rely too much on just one or two studies like

this about a subject, but look for some corroboration. But this study was in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society b Biological Sciences in twelve by Gregory S. Burns, Emily Bell, C. Monica Capra, Michael J. Preetula, Sarah Moore, Brittany Anderson, Jeremy gin j Son Scott A trend and the short version of this is that the the authors of the study put people in f MRI machines and then offered them sums of money that would actually be paid out, so

people would get real money in exchange for symbolically making statements that were about sort of sacred type values, deeply held personal values, but making statements that disagreed with their actual positions. And people were very resistant to doing this in some cases for understandable reasons. I think a lot of them along the lines of things we've just been

talking about. And they found that quote. Using fMRI I we found that values that people refuse to sell sacred values were associated with increased activity in the left tempo parietal junction in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex regions previously associated with semantic rule retrieval. This suggests that sacred values affect behavior through retrieval and processing of deontic rules, and not through

utilitarian evaluation of costs and benefits. So I think this finding, to the extent that is valid, would tend to line up more with the idea that when ideas about a sacred substance are concerned the idea of like surrendering something that is a deeply held value to yourself, you're more likely to just use the part of your brain where you intuitively automatically check the rules in your knowledge, versus the part of your brain that you use to sort

of think through the pros and cons of things. But anyway, I guess to wrap up this section, would you sell your soul for a donut? Know? What would you sell your soul for? What kind of pastry would it have to be? It has to be a pastry? I mean, what about a really good queen of mom? I mean, I mean, if if my my souls being sold either way, like it's a must sell situation and I have to pick a pastry, I mean I'm gonna go with something big,

like I'm gonna go with like a big moon cake. Um, one that's about the size of a like a dinner table or something, you know, some sort of record setting pastry. Oh what about one of those like Guinness book parking lot sized pizzas? How about that? Now? Nothing that big any anytime there's a food that that looks like you had to use like shovels or and or buckets to bake it or prepare it, I'm just I'm not really

fill you with confidence. Yeah, it needs the food needs to have been made with actual culinary instruments and tools and not things from the hardware store. Now is that a conclusion that you reasoned your way to or is that a deontological judgment? It's the ladder, but I'd agree with you. I think it's based on watching videos of the of some of these records setting baking or cooking projects,

you know, really dirty. Yeah, get being turned off by the idea of somebody using something that even if it's pristine and it's been sterilized, like you're not supposed to use a shovel to stir a chili, you know that sort of thing. This is really funny. This comes exactly back to the cockroach thing. So would you dip a sterilized cockroach in your apple juice and drink it? You know, No, you'd feel like that's ikey somehow, even though it's sterilized.

I've worked in restaurants before, and there are moments in a restaurant because you have to create huge portions of things that you'll be mixing up a sauce or a soup or something in buckets or even in a garbage can or something like that, and it's just like, no, no, you can't feed that to people. It is clean, they clean it, but it just doesn't seem right. I agree, I would. I would prefer not to know about that with my my my favorite restaurants. Don't go in the kitchen.

Then all right, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back and we're all right. Well that that selection was definitely infernal, but I think in in a in a in a way, our next selection is also pretty infernal. So uh, you know, generally, speaking with with horror anthology films, you have kind of a smartist board of horror that's presented. In some cases the filmmakers clearly just cobbled together some some short horror films with

a shaky framing narrative or a creepy host. Otherwise, the theme might be the author themselves. Uh, you know, it might be okay, these are three stories from Stephen King, or these are three stories from Richard Matheson. Other times, it's more of a cultural or regional themes, such as say the film Three Extremes, which features East Asian horror tales. And then there is the Uncanny, from which is I feel like it's pretty singular. I think it might be

one of a kind because it is. It's certainly unlike any other horror anthology film that I've watched or I am aware of, because the framing narrative and all three segments are devoted entirely to murderous house cats. It's true, and and I've watched the whole thing. Yeah, it is

eighty eight minutes of feline cinematic terror. It's wall to wall cat sounds, cat based jump scares, creepy music combined with cat close ups, and some otherwise very talented actors reacting to cat to cats scares, and of course cats jumping out and slashing them to Jesus out of people. A lot of times with real cats that are clear. I mean, there are a lot of cats in this film, probably more cats in scenes in this film than I've ever seen, uh in a movie before. Though I would

say also lots of cats in close up. And I think these close ups were filmed separately than the rest of the movies, So they just got lots of close ups of cats meowing, hissing, swatting at things, and then cut those in with the drama that was going on, which did still involve some cats, which I'm sure was a nightmare. Yeah, this is this production was clearly a nightmare. Um. The result is is I will say it's it's very watchable. It's a film in the tradition of the the Amicist productions.

It has Peter Cushing in, it has Donald Pleasant some other actors of note. Um, it's it's very well made. UM. And I it's it's interesting. I'd forgotten about this film and then I when I was researching it and kind of rediscovered it, I realized that I had in fact seen the first segment, and the first segment is the one that I rewatched for this episode. I think I caught it on A and E back when I was a kid, or when I was in junior high and I remember being creeped out at the time, and it

it is still effectively creepy. It is a it is essentially an animals attack film. Yes, but with cats. It's Jaws with cats. Yeah, it's the birds but instead cats. Oh, the birds is a better comparison because there's not just one cat. There are many many cats. By the way, this came out in ninety seven. Again, uh, that is the same year that Stephen King published a short story

about a killer cat, The Cat from Hell. Uh, came out in the magazine Cavalier, and this would later be adapted into the in the excellent horror anthology film Tales from the Dark Side the Movie with Buster Point Exter and William Hickey. Um, it's it's terrible, but but good. I really want to spoil the ending of that segment, but I won't. Yeah, it's a it's pretty it's pretty great. Uh you know. Actually, Tales on the Dark Side of

the Movie is definitely worth checking out. Not so much for this for for this one for the Cat from Hell, but it has a wonderful gargoyle story that I think I've mentioned before that is essentially a retelling of a of a Japanese ghost story about the frost made. Yes, the first segment I believe is the Mummy one that's just star studded. It's got lots of one's well known actors and it doesn't have like Christian Slater and Steve

Bushimmy and people. Christian Slater's definitely in it. Yeah, that that Mummy tale, very loosely based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work is is pretty terrific in that I find that it would be one of the few, certainly, yeah, really one of the few Mummy tales where they do

a good job of making the Mummy scary. Uh As I recall, like the Mummy at one point, like Star it stalks up on somebody and removes their brain through their nostril with like a coat hanger um, which I thought was a nice touch, you know, alluding to it to the practices of mummification that the ancient Egyptians employed. Yeah, one of my other favorite Mummy movies actually is the one that I've got the poster of right next to me right now. Lamelodicion de feron the nineteen British Mummy

if it I think it's hammer. If it's not hammer, it's very hammer adjacent. Via the cast. It's got Peter Cushing, it's got Christopher Lee, it's it's it's fantastic, all right. Well, speaking of Peter Cushing, let me let me go and roll out there. The framing narrative for the uncanny Peter Cushing, who again it always a class act, always elevates anything he's part of. In this he plays a nervous author named Wilburg Ray who has a new manuscript about cats,

about how they're actually evil supernatural creatures. They're the devil in disguise. They're out to get us and cooshing places very well, convincingly, coming off as extremely jumpy and sleep deprived due to the lingering threat of feline assassination. It has all the he has all the air and seriousness of a character in a spy movie, you know who's like a defect or pursued by shadowy figures through the streets, though in instead of being like weird looking agents and

trench coats, it's cats. It's stray cats and house cats that are that are stalking him at every turn. It's what are the thirty nine steps and they're they're all cats. Yeah, but uh, I will say this movie makes one grievous error with respect to Peter Cushing, which is that he has a scraggly beard in it. And Peter Cushing should always be clean shaven. He does not need facial Having facial hair on Peter Cushing is like having Michael Myer's

wheeled and knife. But it's in a sheath, is just you know, it doesn't really capture what you're using Peter Cushing for. Yeah, So those face angles, they should be naked. So that's the basic setup. He comes he comes to his publisher's house apartment to talk about this this manuscript, and of course the publisher has a cat which is creeping at him out even more, and he proceeds to talk about three different cases that are discussed in his book.

Each one is a segment about murderous cats. Um. The only one that I rewatched for this episode is the first one, which is terrific. It takes place in London in nineve and in this one, we have a wealthy old woman who decides to leave her a state to her mini pet cats, who are sadly mistreated by the maid turns out the maid is in league with the old woman's nephew, who's uh, he's kind of a scoundrel

and you know, squandering his money. He's he's he's a bad dude, and he was set to inherit everything before this new will was put in place. Well, the maid catches wind of this new plan. She hears the old woman talking to her attorney about it, so she tells the nephew, and the nephew tasks her then with stealing the new will because it's it's assumed that the old lady is not going to live that long and we can just get this new will out of the picture.

Then you know, the nephew will get all the money, everything will be fine, and they'll like run off into the sunset together. Right, So what does she do? She decides to steal the will. So what she does is she sneaks into the old woman's room at night, goes to the safe, opens it up, gets the will out. But then the old woman awakens, uh and so, and

surrounded by her many cats, accuses the maid. Well, the maid says, well, I've got to go with plan B now, and she smothers the old woman there in front of her many cats. And the cats are immediately upset, you know, they realize, whoa, we've overstepped your boundaries, you've killed this old woman. And when the maid goes to pick up the last will and testament on the floor, a cat, a cat pop comes out and scratches her hand, and she shrieks and draws back and she's bleeding at the hand.

She reaches out for it again. Cats wipes her hand again and and and it's great because it's clearly like a like a puppet of a cat's hand scratching her um uh cats pomp uh and uh. And from there it just becomes a full blown assault. You know, cats are leaping out at her, they're they're they're they're assaulting,

or they're they're chasing her around the house. She ends up barricading herself in the larder and for some reason, like she's in there long enough that she's forced to eat what I what I think is supposed to be cat food on bread in order to survive. There just jars and jars of these earthenware jars of wet cat food covered with like cloth and twine. Yeah. Wait, just it's ridiculous. Because like, why are you spreading that on

the biscuit. Just eat the biscuits if you're starving because you're barricaded in her room by cats, Like, just eat all the biscuits up first, and then you can think of like she's she's playing a weird long game of forcing herself to eat cat food. Yeah, there's a bread box. She like gets out the bread box, and it's funny because when she gets it out, you think she's gonna do something with the bread box, like climb up on

it to get out the window or something. But no, she just gets bread out and then and then spreads cat food on it. Now, so she hangs out in there for a while, presumably like days, I don't know. Finally, she's listening at the door. Seems like things have calmed down, so she creeps out with a knife, goes back up the stairs and tries once more to grab the will, but the cats disarmor. She runs away. I think she

falls down the stairs. Uh, But before she does, she sees that the cats have of course begun to eat the old woman who is dead in the bed. Finally, the police break down the door. The lawyer and the nephew show up. Uh. They're you know, horrified when they find the body of the maid. But the nephew, he's only got one thing on his mind, so he runs upstairs, goes into the bedroom where the old woman has been munched down by the cats. Uh, and he sees the

will on the floor. He goes to get it, cat jumps onto his neck, rips his jugular open, and he dies. We also find that once they go up there, they discover the cats have also eaten the whole made They've just stripped her flesh like piranhas, and and it apparently has happened in a matter of seconds. Yeah, so it's ridiculous,

but it's it's it's terrific. You know that these cats are not only are they they they sinister and murderous, but they also understand that they have a legal claim to this house and the woman's estate, and they are willing to to to murder to protect it. Yeah, that's

something I wasn't sure about. It. It does suggest that the cats understand the legal ramifications of what's going on, And I guess this ties in with the framing narrative, which is Peter Cushing's idea that that cats secretly understand everything and run the world, and that they're listening. Now you you watch the other segments that are they stand out at all, like like I felt like I hadn't I've had enough, you know, like my eyes would be bigger than my stomach if I if I kept going.

I mean, it's a I'd say the movie is very front loaded on the cats, because the first segment is just cats, cats, cats, and the next two segments are about cats, but they're not constantly tons of cats hissing and screeching and me owing. There there's a little bit more with the human characters. The second segment has Charles Bronson's daughter in it, and she plays like a girl who uh gets taken into a new home and is mistreated by the like the daughter who already lives there

and is and is she's very mean. She's like the mean daughter in in Jack Frost, and the mean daughter eventually gets punished by by Charles Bronson's daughter when she does a satanic ritual that like shrinks the mean girl down to the size of a mouse and then is tormented by the cat. But ultimately she gets stepped on by a human, not by by a cat, and then Uh. That scene at that segment also has a scene where the mean daughter is tormenting the main character with a

remote control airplane. But while she's like supposedly controlling the airplane, you can actually see part of the airplane just poking into the frame, so it's just sitting right there in front of her. The third segment has Donald Pleasants and uh, and I think I was texting you about this in my phone auto corrected his name to Donald Pleasure, which is about right, because he is a pleasure. In this segment, he's wearing a red wig, so he's ginger Donald Pleasance.

And he plays this vain actor who murders his wife to try to get a beautiful, younger new wife. Uh. And he tries to. He's like he's hostile towards his dead wife's cat, but the cat gets revenge on him. Nice. I believe there's a there's an iron maiden in this one, right, Yes, yes, there is an iron maiden, and uh, it's a prop iron maiden for use on a film set. But it turns out the spikes are actually metal and sharp, so that when he gets closed inside it, or when somebody

gets closed inside it, it impales them. Well, you know, if you're a method actor, it's how you have to work. Yeah, there's a really good scene in the third segment where Donald Pleasants is demonstrating to a to a bad actress how to scream. People should just clip out that scene. Now. I want to include a word a word of warning about this film. So this is very much an animal's

attack film from nine seven. Now, some of you might have more experience than others with animal attacks films, but certainly the older animal attacks film you're gonna run into some some questions about animal handling. Uh, And you certainly get that vibe with this pretiction with this production, especially

in that first segment, which again just has so many cats. Um, it must have just been a nightmare to film, because I remember reading about the Cohen Brothers making inside Lewin Davis and about just how much trouble they had shooting one cat and getting one cat to do what they wanted to do. And in this segment of the nine twelve segment, they're just cats everywhere. It's just it's just awful to imagine. And I couldn't find anything concrete about

cat mistreatment on the film. But um, imdbek has a has a bit in the Trivia claiming that cinematographer Harry Waxman threatened to quit when he found that the production was mistreating the cats. But it's not cited, so I don't know where he was saying that. I mean, I'm not particularly doubting it, I just don't have any evidence

to back that up. Well, I gotta say, I don't know if that claim is true, And even if it is true, I thought it was phrased in an ambiguous way, so I didn't know if that meant his objection was to the production actually mistreating cats or to the fact that the movie was about the mistreatment of cats. Right, but but certainly just so many cats being used. Uh, it does raise a red flag because if you know cats, cats in general do not want to be a part

of your stupid movie project. They aren't even interested in watching your stupid movies unless you have some good high deaf bird or road in action. Um, you know, about the most that they'll do is they'll they'll tolerate setting on you during a film if you if you don't laugh too much. So I would say, if you're if you're sensitive to this sort of thing. Just skip this one all the way. Um. A plus on top of all this, the fiction of the film involves conflict between

humans and house cats. Um, so you know it's it's going to deal with the idea of like your your fur babies as vicious murderers and something that you would have to combat. Well. On the other side, though, I would say that the cats in essentially all three segments are to the extent that there is a protagonist, the cats are the protect agonists and the human character. It's like Tales from the Crypt The human protagonists are bad people who are getting punished for their antagonism towards cats,

and the cats win. Yeah, it's I I feel like this is kind of a golden rule of evil cat um horror fiction, right The cats need to win, like the cats never losen. Yeah, I mean that's the case with the cat from hell. Um. I don't know if to have some listeners chime in on this one. I think if they can think of any examples where, uh, the evil cat doesn't win, I cannot think of one. I mean, it's it seems like a very ancient meme the cat came back. There is always the cats just

always gonna win, all right. So I think we've established what this film is and what it's all about. It's time to start thinking deeply about it. So. Um, the first question that I think arises from all of this, especially that first segment when in which again cats clearly just straight up murder two people. Um, has a house at ever killed a human? Uh? And then I think this is a pretty interesting question to look into. Uh. And there have been a couple of articles at least

that have have examined it. Mike Pearl that a solid article for Vice about five years ago on this topic, talking to some experts about not just the historical matters here, but also just the physical attack capabilities of cats and their jaws and their teeth. The consensus seems to be that that, okay, there are a few situations where cats

have been linked to human deaths. For example, there are reports of cats accidentally smothering babies by laying on them, and this seems to have given rise to the you know, the long standing superstition that cats suck out of child's breath when they sleep. This, of course, was also part of the plot for Stephen King's Cat's Eye. Oh yeah, but of course The twist there is that the cat, the cat is is said to be the one sucking out her life essence, but really it's a troll and

the cat is the bodyguard protecting her from the troll. Right, So so that's that's one area where you can say, Okay, this is an example where house cats have been linked to human deaths. Some people have also died from infections caused by cats, such as rabies, but no human in all of recorded history has ever been like straight up attacked and killed by a housecat. Doesn't mean it hasn't happened, but it doesn't seem to have happened in a way

that has been recorded and uh and has been made notable. Uh. And it basically comes back to the fact that cats, even a large housecat, simply doesn't have the bite strength to pull this off, unlike something like a domestic dog, which definitely does. I mean, even in the United States dogs kill thirty to fifty people a year now. Brian Palmer also wrote an article about this for Slate, and he he kicked off the article by pointing out that in UH, an Illinois man allegedly plotted to murder an

attorney and frame the victims cat for the murder. So not an example of cats actually murdering somebody, but somebody thinking they could they could use that to cover their own track. That sounds very much like a segment that would be in the Uncanny. Yeah. Um. Now, Palmer points out that there have been cases where a human has reportedly had a had a scrape with a cat, gotten into a fight with a cat essentially and have to

have you know, some degree of of medical intervention. Uh. In two thousand ten, a postpartum cat in Idaho bit her owner thirty five times. Uh. There was a two thousand eleven case where a Cleveland man had to be air left lifted following a housecat attack. Uh. I couldn't find a lot of details about either of those cases, by the way, Um, so some questions remain. But you know, really these two accounts don't give as much to go

on for a variety of reasons. House cats may engage in in you know, in in play aggressive behavior or even more legitimate aggressive behavior. They may act out in defense. Uh. There is a threshold to how much of your nonsense that a cat is going to put up with a cat may scratch you, and a cat scratches, nothing to sneeze at, certainly, but almost certainly not gonna be lethal. Right. It seems like the main area where you see enhanced danger from cats from from house cats is is the

area of a cat getting underfoot. So such as when you're carrying stuff in carrying in groceries, or you're doing something in the kitchen. I think about this a lot, like my cat is going to be the death of me because she's under my feet when I'm trying to move like a um, you know, boiling spaghetti around the kitchen or something. Yes. Uh, and dogs can do this too. In fact, sometimes I noticed there's like an ironic attraction.

It seems like dogs and cats often want to get under your feet right when you're doing something precarious, probably because it like looks unusual if you've got like a big package in your arms or something. Yeah, or with a cat, it's like it's happening in the kitchen, it might be food for me. So uh So I looked at this up a little bit, and I found a two thousand nine report from the CDC that said that pet related falls involving both dogs and cats injure more

than eighty six thousand people annually. Now, this entails a number of pet activities, ranging from taking a dog on a walk to stepping over a cat. Uh, and also involves like chasing or running from animals. So there's a lot that that is entailed there um this particular right up says quote most falls involving cats occurred at home eighty five point seven percent. Approximately eleven point seven percent of injuries occurred while persons were chasing cats. However, an

activity was not specified. In sixty two point one percent of cases, the most frequent circumstances were falling or tripping over a cat. Twenty nine point two percent involved other or unknown circumstances. Now, how many of those cases where the cat caused to fall were due to someone trying to frame a cat for murder? I don't know half um. So the next question I have, of course, are our cats supernatural? Are they actually the spawn of Satan? Obviously,

housecats are not the spawn of Satan. They're not magical, but of course they have. They have been long associated with magical and or diabolical ideas, and a lot of this seems to come from several different qualities that we observe in cats. Um. So for starters, cats haven't been domesticated as long as dogs and are by some estimates self domesticating. So there's this idea that the the cat retains a certain amount of power over itself that we

might find suspicious or intimidating at times. Cats are obviously stealthy and uh and move around in ways that that we might have a difficulty, you know, detecting them, and they may play at hunting you especially, you know, a house cat may do this, but I've seen outdoor cats engage in this kind of behavior as well, which can

be maybe a trifle unnerving. Cats are also frequently active at night, and their eyes have a reflective layer called the tapatum lucidum that magnifies incoming light and is the reason you'll see this reflective, sometimes greenish glint to their eyes at night, and it can certainly have a kind of fairy fire look to it. Yeah, they've got the same thing that like spiders have. Yeah. Uh. And I think other things just to keep in mind is that,

of course cats are just really weird. Um. They're they're kind of paranoid because they're in this weird space between prey and predator. Um. And I feel like they're just harder to read. Sometimes. I feel like you can you can kind of get to know a dog pretty well, but cats pose more mystery. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it's just personality differences in the species. Dogs tend to be much more social. They're the kind of personality that, if they were a human, you describe

as a person who's an open book. Uh. They're they're very outward about their emotions and all that. Cats read to humans as a loof reserved kind of playing defense. So we've read a lot into that over the years, um and and as and it's comes now subroad that you see cats featuring into various uh cultures and religions. We can identify a you know, wide variety of attitudes and superstitions towards cats, and they range from divine qualities as identified by the ancient Egyptians, uh, you know, to

just admirable qualities as identified by the prophet Muhammad. Uh. He was said to have a loyal cat named Musa, and there were various traditions and legends that were swapped around associated with Musa. I recommend researching that. It's pretty it's pretty interesting in India. UM. As described in uh Nanda Christiana's Excellent Sacred Animals of the India, the domestic cat is the vehicle of of Shash, the fertility goddess

popular in parts of India. UM. So you know, you'll look at iconography of this particular goddess and you'll see that they're clearly writing, you know, kind of standing on a house cat. Interesting, however, or Christiana also writes that in parts of India, a cat crossing one's path is still considered inauspicious. Though, so there's still a certain amount of negative superstition wound up in cultural attitudes towards cats as well. But then, uh, there are a host of

just superstitious cruelties involving cats. Um. In The Golden Bough, James Fraser wrote of French shepherd traditions that involve burning or roasting cats alive, and a bonfire is a way to protect the flock against sickness and witchcraft. Yeah, that just seems to obviously tie into the historical association between cats and witchcraft. Cats often seen as the familiars of witches, the familiar spirits. Yeah, either either they're working with the

witches or they are themselves transformed witches. And so you see this android I customs that survived throughout Europe. Uh. He points out that other animals, such as snakes and foxes suffered the same fate due to the same so siations with alleged witches. The cats are not witches, folks, They're they're they're keeping your basement rat free. Come on, what more could you want if you're gonna If you're gonna air, I would say air on the side of believing your cat to be a tiny god, because they

certainly believe they're tiny gods. Uh. There's no excuse for cruelty to cats, be at your cat or somebody else's cat, be at a domestic purely domestic house cat, or a feral cat. Now, the next question, I guess kind of the final question that the the uncanny makes me ponder, is this our cats vengeful? Can you know? Because these are all tales of like cats enacting revenge cats leading

to the come uppance for villainous humans. Um. And it's really one that's that's interesting to think about because you actually hear about this a lot, if you know people with cats, if you yourself have cats, stories of cats allegedly lashing out against their humans or particular human perhaps peeing on something that they value or slashing something up

in retaliation to something they don't like. I've seen behavior in cats that I've never seen in dogs, like a cat being angry at being bothered or something, and then not just reacting with the sort of defensive scratch, but like chasing you afterwards to to hiss and scratch. Yeah. Again, cats are weird. We have to we have to keep that in mind. I think a lot of a lot of the A lot of this goes without saying. You know that that obviously when humans have pets, we anthropomorphize them.

We have from anthropomorphies our dogs and our cats and any other animals we might have around the house, and in doing so, it's easy to for forget that they are different beings. You know, that they live in a different since world there. You know, they don't just have a small human brain inside that skull of theirs. Uh, And we've put them in strange conditions that they didn't

really fully evolved to inhabit. On the other hand, we can't think of them as just completely you know, unemotional beings. I mean, so so the question becomes one of this. So, if a cat is capable of emotional states, is it capable of seeking revenge? Is it capable of being vengeful

or spiteful? I mean, I think of revenge as as an evolved adaptation that's special in social groups when, like, you expect to be interacting with the same individuals again and again over time, and you need to behave in a way that that punishes them for behaviors across time, not just like discourages something in the moment, but but like continues to enforce the kind of behavior you want

from others even after the behavior has stopped. Yeah. So we're already in a strange position because we, as very social mammals are are trying to apply the same like social structure and uh and and behave realism on creatures

that are far more solitary than we are. So I was looking around for for any you know of feedback on this, for any inside on this, and I ran across the cat coach, Maryland Krieger, who is a certified cat behavior consultant with the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants.

And uh, they've they've written about this before. UM, And I was looking at a particular article on catster dot com, and they pointed out, quote cats always have legitimate reasons for their behaviors, holding grudges and deliberately being irritating are not among them. I guess it would depend on your definitions, though I would be skeptical of anyone saying that any organism always has legitimate reasons for its behaviors. I mean, sometimes behaviors just kind of happen. Well, I mean it

makes you ask a lot of questions about revenge. Is there a legitimate revenge? Like if it happens in a Shakespeare play, is that it's like, that's legitimate, Or it happens in a TV drama, it's legitimate, whereas real life revenge is rarely that simple. I mean, you know, it's

it gets gets pretty mudy pretty quickly. I guess maybe the point here, which would seem pretty reasonable to me, is that, uh that it's it seems like a cat's time horizon for reacting to behavior is probably gonna be a lot shorter and probably going to be a lot more just like basically situationally utilitarian. Then uh then would be justified justified by a wrath of con style revenge plot. Right, Yeah, I guess that's the big question. Our cats capable of

plotting revenge? Um, that seems I think there's a strong case to say no. However, will a cat scratch you, uh, bite you, or hiss at you because you did something that they did not like like as an immediate response? I think the answer there obviously yes. If you don't believe me, uh you know, think think about the last time you try to touch your cat's belly and they weren't into it. They probably let you know, uh you

know cats. Cats will generally be very um, if not vocal, then at least active about their preferences regarding their their belly fur. I remember cats cats I've known being very sensitive about their paws, Like you don't want to touch the pause, Yeah, those are their murder weapons. Don't disrespect them. It's like you cannot touch my sword. Yeah, unlets it draws your blood. The warrior's sword is sacred, so for

a cat. Crager points out what frequently happens is that a cat does something in response to change in their immediate environment, and they're highly susceptible to change in their environment. A change in the household can induce stress and anxiety in the cat, and this can lead to medical problems like actual like legitimate medical problems such as urinary tract problems, bladder problems, etcetera, that may cause them to do things that can then be interpreted as acting out um, even

things like so called spike ping. Uh you know where they're they're paying on, say your favorite pillow or something. It might be tied to a medical issue like some sort of bladder flare up, or it could be tied more to like a separation anxiety, which may cause them to urinate on their favorite person stuff in order to

mingle their scent with that of the owner. So again, like that's the kind of thing where that's outside of the human um you know, our human emotional states for the most part, than the idea of mingling sense to feel with someone else's sense to feel better about them being away from you. But within a cat sense realm uh, that may make perfect sense, Like that is the perfect

thing to do. That is the perfect comforting act. Yeah, And then on the other side of it, like there are some analogies I think people can understand pretty well, Like it might be harder to behave correctly and uh, maintain mastery over all your bodily functions when you're very stressed. Yeah, I mean it's it's difficult for us, it's gonna be

difficult for other organisms as well. So I think it's worth keeping in mind that, you know, the cat world is different from the human world, even if we're sharing the same house. And I mean this applies to any animal. The dog world is different from the human world even though you you spend your lives together, you share the same space, but you don't see the world the same. All right. Uh. On that note, I think we're gonna

go ahead and close it out here. Um. As of October twenty twenty, I believe you can watch You can generally watch the Treehouse of Horror episodes on Disney Plus. I think that's where they're currently hosted. For streaming, The Uncanny was a little harder for me to get a hold of. I had to subscribe to some sort of some indie channel on Amazon Prime in order to streaming to stream it, but I don't know it's it's probably

out on the YouTube or something as well. I found it on the tube of the Second Person, but you know that may change by the time you listen to this episode. Perhaps it's streaming in a more accessible place. All Right, we're gonna go ahead and close the door on Anthology of Horror Volume six and hey, if you like these, if you want this tradition to continue next October, well you have a little less than a year to

start pelting us with suggestions. What are your favorite episodes of various horror and sci fi UH anthology series that you would like us to consider, or your favorite segments from anthology films UH let us know we would love to hear from you. In the meantime, if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can find us wherever you find your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. We just asked that you rate, review and subscribe. You can always find us by going

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