Matinee Science Playlist, Part 8: ‘Hellraiser’

that offered the least clue when it spoke. The hooks that transfixed the flaps of its eyes and were wed by an intricate system of chains, passed through flesh and bone, alike to similar hooks through the lower lip, were teased by the motion, exposing the glistening meat underneath. I asked you a question, dear, and you see the figure beside the first speaker demanded. Its voice, unlike that of its companion, was light and breathy, the voice of an excited girl.

Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its tongue was similarly decorated. Do you even know who we are? Welcome? Stuff to blow your mind? A production of I Heart Radios. How stuff works? Hey, you welcome? To stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. I guess you've been reading Clive Barker, right,

that's right. Yes. Our cold open is is was a passage from the nineteen eighties six novella The hell Bound Heart by Clive Barker, which he himself adapted and directed in seven into the horror film we all know as Hell Raiser. Wait a minute, there was just one year gap in between writing the novella and making the movie. Yeah. Yeah, Clive Barker was on a roll in the in the late eighties, like he was. I mean, he's still on a roll. He's one of these uh, these creators. It

really has has not visibly slown down. Um, says Stephen King. Quote from that year he said, I've seen the future of horror, and did is Clive Parker? Yeah, yeah, quote quote the King. I think that that that quote was actually in the trailer for for Hell Razor, the film, as was I Am Pain? No, No, I think he doesn't. He doesn't declare that he is pain until three year

possibly four. Um. I'm imagining a future crossover sequel. It's like Jetson's Meet the flint Stones, but it's Judge Dread meets Pinhead and they just alternate back and forth with I am the Law and I um but that that actually sounds like a great matchup. I actually I would be all surprised if it hasn't been done or at least pitch, because Judge Dread is thrown down with like Alien before, and I think he's met Batman. Pinhead's been

in a number of comic books. You could see the the more nuanced side coming out of each because you discovered that in small ways, Judge Dread is also pain and Pinhead is also the Law. Yeah. Um, so I want to, you know, wax nostalgic for a moment here. I didn't get into hell Razor movies until probably not because I was too young for them really prior to that, wait, how old was that? Though? Oh, don't make me do math jo, but I was. I was like in junior

higher or so uh in. And by that point, the first three films were already out and Doug Bradley's Pinhead was already cemented as a as a horror icon. Yeah. I mean he's up there with like Freddie and Jason at that point. Yeah, like in the Simpsons tree House of Horror episodes of the Shinning episode is so good, Pinhead is one of the horror icons that drags Homer out of the refrigerator. Oh yeah, it's like it's like Jason Freddie Pinhead and then just some werewolf or something.

I think. So, yeah, it's like a quick scene, but like already by that point, I think it had been decided that this, uh, this this, this creature, this entity had a role in the Halloween pantheon of Hollywood. So you read the book before you saw the movie. Um, I think I read the book after I saw the movie. I remember reading it on a school trip. Yeah, and it's a it's it's short, it's a novella. But yeah, it was really it was really impressive at the time.

As our colde open illustrates, it has a slightly different feel. It's the film hell Raiser is essentially the hell Bound Heart. It is, you know, Barker's own adaptation of it. But at the same time there are differences, and one of the key differences is, uh, this character of Pinhead, the hell Priest, whatever you want to call it, is just called lead Cinembyte and the first hell Raiser that the role played by Doug Bradley in the novella it is

it has a slightly different flare to it. Yeah, I was reading some things about the production, and it seems to me that the reason Doug Bradley's pinhead became such an icon in the movie had to do with the

practical necessities of filmmaking. And again it was something about like character, Like the other Cinabytes that appear in the film would have been given more dialogue, but they're makeup effects didn't allow it, right, because you have like the chatter and the butter being Cinobytes and the butterball butterball but being similar. But but yeah, that makes sense that the makeup prevented them from speaking. And Doug Bradley could speak,

though he couldn't walk around very well. Apparently he had these black contact lenses in that made it hard for him to see, and he was afraid of tripping over the skirts of his of Cinabyte robe, so he didn't move very easily. But he could talk, and so he could say things like save your tears, it's a waste of good suffering. Yeah, he has a very commanding voice, whereas in the original develo, the character that would become

Pinhead is described as this excited girl. And then the Cinobytes themselves come off They still come off his his grotesque in their own way, but they're more and they're more androgynous for starters. And then there is this there's more, this sense that they are not as demonic as they are justist other worldly, like they have lived in another realm of the senses for so long, uh, and that they just don't have anything in common with with human

sense perception anymore. Right, they are they are explorers that go beyond the boundaries of pleasure and pain. And that's a lot of what we're gonna be talking about today when we get to the science portion of today's episode.

But I know you're not done talking about hell Raiser, right, Oh no, And I do want to just remind everybody as far as The hell Bound Heart goes, you can you can find it for yourself on Amazon or wherever you get your book in all formats, including a dollar ninety nine e book and both an audio book production and a full blown like audio play production, so you have no excuse not to go in and grab a copy of it if you want to check it out. I also highly recommend the books of Blood. Uh. Those

are some There's some really great short stories in those collections. Uh. But yeah, I've always been a Clive Barker fan. I haven't read everything he's written, but it's just an unmatched creativity. They're both on the written written page, but behind the

camera and visual art as well. Just before we came in here, I was having a conversation with our colleague Ben Bolan of stuff they don't want you to know and ridiculous history, and he was asking what my favorite Clive Barker was, and I had to admit I have not read any. For some reason, I just never gotten into Barker. He was very surprised because he knows I like horror fiction, but uh, I don't know. For some reason, I just never went there, Maybe because when I I

don't know. When I first saw the movie Hell Raiser, I think this was like my freshman year of college. I found it actually very depressing. Well, I found it it was full of interesting imagery. I thought it was actually kind of original and imaginative, but something about the world it it pictured it seemed very bleak to me. It was like a world where nothing is good and everything goes to hell and there's nothing to care about. Yeah,

it's a bleak, brooding film. And and I can see why I was especially into it as like a brooding junior high student and as a you know, a teen spoke to you then yeah, I mean then also it it felt you know, it's a cool wid a rebel. I think too, because like Stephen King, I was stupid into Stephen King at the time. And Stephen King has certainly be you know, graphic, but but Barker always felt weirder, more counterculture in a way that really resonated with me.

And you know, there's probably no better way to push back against small town southern Baptist upbringing than to to turn to and you know, the explosively creative worlds of an openly gay British horror writer. Well, and I will say it is uh despite its flaws. I mean, I will talk about how I just rewatched the movie Uh, and it did not match up with my memories at all.

I found it. I have to admit I found it rather funny upon rewatching it, especially a lot of the line delivery by the Cinabites and it's over the top ponderousness that like, uh, there were a whole there was a lot of unintentional laughter. But I will say it is still a pretty imaginative concert up. It was like very original for its time. Let's now that we're speaking on on Pinhead's voice in the movie, let's have a quick uh splash from the trailer will tell your soul part.

That's just a sample though, because most of the original theatrical trailer is screaming. Okay, uh yeah, So I guess should we briefly discuss the plot of the movie. Yes, And for anybody who hasn't listened to a movie episode we've done before, we will get to you know, a lot more science and interpretation of of this particular you know, cinematic installment. But but first we do need to remind everybody about what's up in Hell Racer, because it's easy forget,

especially if you've seen a lot of the sequels. Uh and and if you've seen some of the later sequels then then truly God help you. But the original plot line goes like this, do you have a creepy uncle? Well, did your creepy uncle ever say, have an affair with your mom and then use an antique puzzle box to open a dimensional rift in your grandma's house, summoning a weird sect of transdimensional Cincinnats in your uncle's quest for

new extremes of pleasure. Well, that uncle is Frank Cotton, and yes, he's dragged away to the realm of the Cinabytes, so the order of the gash, and after a while manages to escape in a much reduced state um and works out a plot to reclaim his body. And that's essentially the plot line of hell Racers. Right, So you've got your core elements of this mysterious puzzle box that is just a normal kind of cube with some paintings

on it. But if you manipulate it in the right way, press here and turn there and that kind of stuff, it starts opening up. And then once it opens up, a familiar series of events unfolds where lights shine in through you know, cracks in the walls and stuff, uh, chains with hooks at the ends of them shoot out of the walls and grab you. And then the centabytes show up and they're these people usually with like shaved heads or just generally weird heads. Usually something has happened

to their head. They're wearing black leather robes as if they're a combination of the there's sort of like S and M priests, and they show up and they're like, Okay, it's time to take you away to a dimension beyond sensation. It's time to experience pain and pleasure indivisible. Right. Yeah, and they're you know, they're they're very much there's a boundary confusion with them, right, because they're both ghastly and beautiful in their own way. They're erotic and grotesque at

the same time. Yeah. And the suggestion, I think it's explored much more in the book is that these creatures are there part of some weird, esoteric, other dimensional religious order that worships the exploration of the extremes of sensation right then, and so that they've gotten to the point where where they can no longer tell the difference between pleasure and pain. It's just sort of like experiences to

the max all the time of whatever valence possible. Yeah, it's it's more it's not like I'm gonna pull your skin off. Uh, It's more like, oh, I'm I'm sorry, I'm rude, I'm being rude. I should pull your skin off. I should be a good host, and this is the natural thing to do. Yuh, though I feel like that. I think that's more there in the book, which again I haven't read, But in the movie it does come to feel more like they're there to punish you sometimes.

I don't know if this conceit about them just being sort of experiment ers is really consistent in the film now. I mean, even in the first film, which is which is certainly the truest to the original source material, even in that you can tell that that Barker is leaning more into the idea of them as movie monsters, though it's still it's still Clive Barker's movie monsters, and Clive Barker is one of those creators who has always loved

his monsters most of all, you know. But but still even in the film, you know, the cinemabytes are not the most important aspect of the plot. They're not the central antagonist. Even our heroine uh Kur Steve Cotton and her father Larry Cotton aren't as central to the plot as Frank the the individual who just described the uncle, and Chris Kirstie's mom Julia. It's ultimately about their dark

love affair that ultimately transcends the boundaries of life and death. Uh. You know, they're the characters at the heart of all this, and and they're the ones whose desires we most understand and even on some level sympathize with, even though they are you know, dark, desperate and depressing characters. Yeah. I think the deal is Frank is just this guy who's seen it all. He's had every hedonistic pleasure of the flesh possible. He's he's you know, he's beyond good and evil.

He has no morality left. He's just he's just like trying to to seek the next highest possible sensation. Uh. And he's usually got a knife out because he's just that kind of guy. Right. And then Julia, on the other hand, played by the the excellent Claire Higgins in this she's you know, by and large, the best performance in the film. There is one scene where I don't know if they did this on purpose, but the way they did her makeup and her hair, she looks exactly

like David Bowie and his Aladdin sane persona. Oh I I didn't notice that. I have to look back at it. But but yeah, she's wonderful in it, and and in the same way her character. Her character is also like trapped in a life of of tedium and boredom. Like her husband is this boring guy who watched this boxing on television and and she just seems to be, you know, putting up with him. Uh. And and so thus comes her attraction to Frank. And even when Frank comes back

from the dead uh in this you know, grotesque body. Uh, you know, she still ends up helping him. Oh and of course helping him involves like killing a bunch of people. I think so he can It's not exactly clear he can basically drink their blood and thus reconstitute his original body. Yeah, Like, yeah, it's it's a little vague, and I like that it's vague. You know, weren't really sure exactly what the necromancy is of all this, but that that is the thing. Frank

is essentially a necromancer. Uh and and has these these powers. Uh. You know, looking back at the film, it's you really can't overstate the importance of Frank and Juliet. They are the core of the film. They are its main characters, and they are its main monsters. Yeah. The cinembytes show up mostly in the third act as a kind of almost as a kind of d S X machina. Yeah, which is fitting because they are literally coming out of

the machine, right d S xbox. And let's say a few other things I want to say about the film just rewatching it. Um, the music is fine, it's a bit dramatic, but I've long wanted to see a cut of it with the original score by post and cut

Industrial Act Coil. This was the late Peter Christofferson of who was also in Throbbing Gristle, and the late John Balance was also in Psychic TV, so that they had conducted the original put together the original score for the film, and the replacement score that's more traditional and cinematic was supposedly a condition of additional funding that Barker Is eaved in order to finish the special effects in the film. Uh So, I would my musical taste lean far more

Coil than they do traditional cinematic score. So, uh, you know, when what I've heard of it, it sounds really interesting. So that's that's that's one thought I have on it. Coil. If you're not familiar with them, they were. They were a big influence on the likes of say Trent resner Um and uh and of course Clive Barker was also an influence on Trent Resuer as well. Yeah, I'd say Nine Inch Nails is pretty thoroughly cinembyte music. Yeah, especially

the early stuff. Let's see what else about this film, Oh, the costumes and the practical effects I think hold up

very well. Yeah, they do. And I think this is this is definitely a film where you look at it and you I'm impressed by just how ambitious it really was, perhaps overly ambitious, especially given the small budget and the fact that Barker was, you know, adapting his own work here directing it as well, and this was his He'd done some screenwriting, but he had not directed anything previously.

And it's really you know, it's they go for not only they have the cinabytes in there and all these effects, but also like a regeneration scene and additional demon monsters that you know, if you were being like maybe a little more careful with your budget, you might say, well, do we need this monster? We already have this monster. Maybe we can actually cut two whole monsters in two big practical effects from the film and use those funds elsewhere.

But uh, still, you know it it mostly comes together. I'm not quite sure the purpose served by the monster that's referred to as the Engineer, which doesn't look anything like an engineer. Instead, it's like a big sort of larva that crawls down the hallway with a scary mouth on the bottom part, chasing after people. Yeah, it's that's something that the engineers mentioned in the novella, but it's more it's like a being of light or something. It's

it's not a monster. So that like that, I feel like comes off a little confusing in the picture, like what is this and how's it connected with everything? Now? I don't want to rag on the film too much, but I will say that one of the things that was funniest about it to me is that Pinhead, even in the first movie, I mean, I think he gets

even more like this as the movies go on. Pinhead gets increasingly frettified, Like he becomes like a wise cracking, you know, making jokes at the camera kind of Freddy Krueger character. But even in the first movie, almost everything he says is this like threatening, lee pretentious kind of line that could be a quote on the VHS box cover. It's all stuff like will tear your soul apart, or the box you opened it, we came, or of course, uh,

the the inimitable I am pain. Yeah yeah yeah. Like Freddie, he has a lot of catch phrases and sort of quote ready samples. Uh. And I've heard him in a number of different DJ nixes as well, throwing a little pinhead right. Uh. He also reminds me a bit of nineties pro wrestlers in that regard. You know, he's like the rock you know, he has the Rocks. I guess more post nineties, but still, you know, he has his

his catchphrases that he lashes out with. You can imagine macho man Randy Savage saying the box you opened it, we came. I actually just learned that Doug Bradley serves as the authority figure in the indie British occult themed wrestling promotion Blackcraft Wrestling. I don't know what that means. Well, look it up, beild it exists. Um. It's like clearly he's doing kind of like a he's not in a

wrestling ring. He's like showing up like they're doing a green screen thing and he's you know, making matches and whatnot. But it's it's Doug Bradley being Doug Bradley. But like he officiates a match by saying you're suffering, will be legendary even in hell. Now I will say that in the I think it's by the fourth win. He does have a line about pain that that is I think it's actually pretty good, where he says, uh, quote what you think of as pain is only a shadow. Pain

has a face. Allow me to show it to you. Allow me to show it to you, and uh and like that that line I think is pretty good. Like he gets at some of the the intangible aspects of pain and the how difficult it is to understand another individual's pain or relate your own. But of course this is and this is from hell Raiser Inferno. Then he goes on to say, uh, uh, gentleman, I am pain, and he kind of he kind of ruins the moment.

You know, it can go so far. He can't help but go for the catchphrase, ladies and gentlemen, I am pain. So in summary, uh, this is what I'll say about how Razor. Uh. It's a it's a film I have a lot of nostalgia for and having rewatched it in the past, week, I'd say that that more things work

than don't work. And then it's still like it's it's astounding that that that everyone is able to put this film together and then ultimately, like clearly it resonated, even though like my personal taste, I like the cinobites of the novella more like Pinhead worked, like Pinhead became a staple, like Pinhead is part of American popular culture now. A couple of years ago I went through the process. I don't know, I decided I needed to do this, but I watched all of the Hell Raiser sequels. I don't

think that's a journey people need to go on. There. There are fleeting pleasures throughout them, like Part three has some pretty funny stuff. Part four has some funny moments. Part three is kind of like peak Freddie uh hell Raised, like they realized, like, oh, this is what we've created. We've created this this this this horror creature that you know the masses are into. Let's give him the film

that this core character deserves. Of course, Part four is Pinhead goes to Space, which is I don't know, it's hard to sniff it that. Yeah, that that film is notoriously a mess, but then it also just has so many like crazy things in it it's hard to completely dismiss it. I kept wanting to see I think I may have said this on the show before, but Rachel and I have frequently talked about how there needs to be a crossover again, franchise crossover, but not with Judge Shred.

This should be Hell Raisor, and then the air bud sequels they cross over. So you've got like Golden Retriever puppies and they're playing with the box and it's called hell Buddies, and so the cinebytes come out and they're ready to do all their hooks and stuff, but then they're conquered by the cuteness of the puppies. So it's like, I am all right, Well on that note, let's take our first break, and when we come back, we're going

to talk about puzzle boxes. Than alright, we're back, alright, So we know that Hell Razor starts with a mysterious puzzle box. It's this box that, uh, it can be opened, but how you open it is apparently not obvious, and people just fiddle around with it until they figure out the secret, and then they end up unleashing the hooks, the chains, the cinabytes and so forth. Yeah, the first film and all subsequent films, they are generally gonna be

some scenes with somebody fiddling with the box. And it doesn't seem to It seems to adhere to unreal physics, which is fitting. It is a magical box that opens a magical doorway through which magical beings then enter um. So you know, I don't take any issue with that at all, But uh, of course, in the idea itself

is just irresistible. We love myths about boxes that should not be opened, or the idea of a box that resists opening is also tremendous as well, an enclosure born of human ingenuity that must be solved via human ingenuity as well. Oh yeah, I mean, I think it's a wonderful conceit for opening a story like this, that there is this thing it requires effort. It suggests that there's kind of a that there's a beyond normal amount of interest.

Right people seek out this box when they're they're board with all of the sensations of Earth and they want to go beyond. They want to see what of other level they can reach. They have to find this secret artifact. Yeah, and you know, ultimately, I think we all have puzzle boxes like that in our lives that we're trying to unravel. Right. But one of the interesting things here is that, of course Clive Barker's not just creating this out of nothing.

He's he's drawing on inspirations. One of the inspirations is clearly and you know especially I think they flesh this out a little bit uh in the fourth film, uh, playing on the tradition of philosophical toys, uh, the that captivated to audiences in the eighteenth century. And we've talked about some of these on the show before, like the pooping duck, various automatons, wind up clockwork devices. They don't really do anything. I mean, they don't you know, fulfill

a purpose. They do things, but those things that they do are merely to amuse us or to make us think about, you know, the biomechanical nature of the world, or God as a clockmaker, that sort of thing. Sure, a machine that poses a question. Yeah, and they're also testaments, of course, to the creator's talents. How could someone so gifted with machinery make a musical box such as this?

But then there's a there's another legacy of boxes that he's drawing out, and that is the puzzle box, particularly the puzzle boxes of the Victorian period. And I have to admit I really wasn't familiar with with these at all, Like even you know, having seen the hell Raiser movies, I never looked into anything anything beyond the you know, the wind up clockwork stuff. But there's a tradition of woodworking, uh trick boxes, puzzle boxes, and they're pretty pretty phenomenal.

So one example I came across from said to be from the year nineteen hundred, is a wooden book money box. So it looks like a book that you would have on a shelf, like a hard bound book, but it's made out of wood. If you pick it up, take it off the shelf, you see that there's a coin slot in top in the top of it. So it's not being too secretive, like I put money into this,

But then how do you get the money out? Well, to do that you have to know the trick, and these older trick boxes there generally there's just one way to do it. So on this one, you slide part of the book spine aside and that allows you to slide another little panel and that opens the box and you can get the money inside. Uh. It's clever, you know, kind of the woodworking version of the various clockwork marvels

that we were discussing earlier. But then it ends up coming to it into its own in the twentieth century, because it's during this period that you have woodworkers both in Europe, particularly in England and Switzerland, but also in Japan. They really begin pushing the boundaries of what's possible with a wooden puzzle box, and the Japanese puzzle boxes seemed

to be some of the most impressive. They typically look like ornate wooden boxes with no visible hinges or lids, and then they may require as few as three or more than a hundred moves to open. So sliding, yeah, like sliding this little panel, like first of all, finding the panels to figure out like which what does a piece of wood that moves here, and then sliding it to the side, sliding something else to the side, doing all these little tricks in order to open up the

old him an interior of the box. Um. Yeah, And and this was according to wood Smith's Shop, which is a video series from wood Smith Magazine Episode twelve o four is on YouTube. These guys Chris and Phil host it and uh you know they're they're going for the hell Raiser audience by the way, Yeah, they're They're exactly what you might imagine when you think of like sort of I'm guessing like Midwestern um perhaps um, you know,

would wood wood workers, Uh you know that. But they show off one of these boxes and the craftsmanship is amazing. Like woodworking, I feel, is an area that I often take for granted, Like I see a finished piece of furniture, be it something from Ikea or something you know, in a more robust and I don't really think about all the skill that went into making it. And perhaps that's why things like wooden puzzle boxes exist to show you just how much skill is involved in turning uh you know,

raw wood into something that serves the purpose. Well, there's something counter into do about it, because we don't usually think of woodworking as is being concerned with moving parts. Most often, woodworking is you know, design and crafting of static elements, maybe with very few moving parts, or some things that maybe there's a hinge or something on a cabinet, but these combined elements of of course, the kind of beautiful static art and design of woodworking with the kinds

of interlocking mechanisms you'd more often see in machinery and metalworking. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you know, I can, I can describe them a little bit, but I really you should look up some videos of people manipulating these boxes and then hopefully, you know, get your hands on a wooden puzzle box of your own, because there are still people making them. There's an individual by the name of Kegan Sound that's with a K K A G A N S O U N D at Kegan sound dot com. You can look him up.

He's apparently one of the foremost wooden puzzle box makers in the world, and he's he's something of a modern day Lema che And if you will wait, well that's from the fourth movie, right, we find out that the creator of the box is somebody named Lamar shand I think it's also revealed in the novella If okay, it's

it's the Lament configuration or the La marchand Box. Yes. Yeah, there are also people that are apparently making puzzle boxes out of Lego blox, which makes sense now some of you might say, well, hey, how about the Rubik's cute uh or no rubis invention. I would say, like, if you do it just right, it opens up and there's something inside. Well, that's the thing. It doesn't have an interior, so it's not it's a puzzle cube, not a true puzzle box. There is no inside to the Rubi's cube.

It will not open up new realms of pleasure and sensation. No, that's not true. If you solve it, you get all the faces, solid colors, Hoaks shoot out of the walls. That's how you get the hooks. Um. Yeah. I should also point out that it's not always completely clear in the hell Raiser books that the Lament configuration has an interior either, But there are shots in the film that establish an interior to the box, and it's interior is

described in the novella. So there are scenes in the movie that I can imagine would have worked a lot better in fiction when you didn't have to see them staged. And one of them is the scene where the box is solved in order to fix the problem, you know, where the cinemabytes are sent back to their realm because Kirsty Swanson like does the right things with the box. I mean, it just looks funny when she's messing with the box while the house is falling apart and Pinhead

is saying, no, don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. It's the problems of translating the novella to to the film because in the novella the box is also not described as being really ornate, even it's really more has more in common in the book with the these wooden puzzle boxes we've described. Now, you know the the here's another area to consider, So that the box of Lament is largely positioned as a thing that must be solved in order

to open a gate, to reveal a secret. But we probably shouldn't forget that the cinepytes are also presented, especially in the novella, as explorers. Uh there's a sense of curiosity to them. Uh they're truly spaced out on sensation, you might say. And uh so I'm wondering might we consider the Lament configuration as a means of exploration as well, because certainly puzzle boxes are used in various animal studies by scientists, typically with a food reward at the center.

I believe we've discussed the sorts of boxes in the study of Corvid's where they'll be like generally, you know, there's food in the middle of the box. There may be some tools, or they have to make their own tool, what have you. But they have to come up with a way to free the prize from the box, which is ultimately what Frank's trying to do with the Lament configuration. Now, another noteworthy puzzle box from science history is a Thorndyke's

puzzle box. Uh. This is the work of an American psychologist who is working at the same time as as pav Lav and in the same area, you know, looking at animals and their problem solving ability using their behavior, and he used this on cats in particular to test their learning and problem solving abilities. They're essentially cages that can be exited by performing at the correct task, hitting the right mechanism, etcetera, in order to to step out of the cage and get your food. Uh and uh.

In His main observation from all of this was that a cat would behave radically the first time use that you put them in the box the first time they were in there for the experiment, but then they would learn so in subsequent experiments they wouldn't. They would waste less and less time in the box. They would just realize like, oh, I'm in here again. I pushed this button. Then I get out and I can get my food.

And then Thorndyke's work would lead to another noteworthy box, Skinner's Box, in which the animal has to engage a mechanism in order to be fed within the box, the work of BF Skinner. So later installments of the hell Raiser franchise explored to some degree the idea of the boxes a place or thing that may contain us, but for the most part not so much. But the the idea of the puzzle boxes a means of exploring human desire.

I think that's kind of an interesting idea to consider. Well, it makes me wonder if the box is also being used to test us somehow. If it is being used to test us, then to test the humans that you know, play with it. Obviously the people doing the testing would be the cinobytes, right, So maybe we should turn to the cinobytes and think a little bit about about pain, experience, sensation,

and flagellation. Absolutely all right, So let's just start with the word cinobyte, because this this really gets into a lot of what we're going to discuss here. A cinnobyte is merely a member of a religious group living together in a monastic community. There are plenty of cinnobytes. Technically, there are plenty of cinnabytes in the world today, and they have They have nothing to do with the hell Raiser movie. If you've never seen it written out. It is not spelled like cinnabun uh. It is c e

n o. They had. The word apparently emerged in the fifteenth century, and it comes from the late Latin colonobita. If I'm saying that correctly, Basically you have the Greek coin cohen plus bios life, so it basically means the monastic life. Now, one obviously does see certain levels of self inflicted pain, however, in monastic history. So religious rights of flagellation or blood lighting can be found throughout Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist,

Native American, and other religious rights. We we've covered some of these on the show before. There there are plenty of religious rights of pain that can be found in the world and in human history, just as there are various secular rights of pain that can be found today. Within the realms of say performance art or even you know b D s M for instance, uh the later of which served as partial inspiration for Clive Barker, and likewise Barker's work, while enough influencing B D s M

to some degree as well. Oh that's not surprising. Uh. So I was looking around, yeah, for more historical ideas about pain and pleasure indivisible as the as Pin says, they explore, and I came across a book by the American psychologist James H. Luba, who lived eighteen sixty eight to nineteen forty six, who focused a lot of his work on the psychology of religion. And this book was

called The Psychology of Religious Mysticism. And in this book there's part where he's in the middle of a section about narcotics, consciousness, and mysticism, and Luba begins to discuss the idea of pleasure in pain or enjoyment in suffering, which is a major theme of of this movie and of the novel. And his hypothesis is that quote, the apparent paradox of people seeking and enjoying pain becomes intelligible when one takes into account the passion for vivid consciousness Uh.

And so he of course is this is in the context of religious experience. So he mentions members of self flagellating Muslim sex of the quote, painful ascetic practices of the yogi, or the violent dancing frenzies of the mind ads. He says as those quote all may yield a sense of new or increased life. Now what does he mean

by that? Well, he explains further by quoting a letter from Gothold Ephraim Lessing to Moses Mendelssohn, which in which Lesson writes, quote, were agreed in this, my dear friend, that all passions are either vehement cravings or vehement loathings. And also that in every vehement craving or loathing, we acquire an increased consciousness of our reality, and that this consciousness cannot but be pleasurable. Consequently, all our passions, even

the most painful, are as passions pleasurable. Uh, which is kind of interesting. Explore more in a second. But that I just realized that made me think of a passage in The Brothers Karamazov that's all about, uh, a character talking about the pleasure one takes in taking offense. Uh. And I remember being like Wow, how have I never

read this before? It's so true that, like, in getting mad about something unfair that has happened to you or somebody who's been mean to you or something, there is so often this feeling of like almost joy in the way that you get worked up about it. Yeah, And and there's a difference to like there's certainly there's righteous anger.

There's a situation where like if you feel like you've been wronged and you're you're having been wronged is a part of a larger problem in the culture in the world, then yeah, you can get in this area of righteous anger.

But I think more of what you're talking about here are the petty things in life, you know, where it's like the server at a restaurant doesn't bring you your appetizer first, and you you have been wrong and you just start getting excited about how mad you are, and on some lie, like you're probably not thinking, oh I feel so alive, I'm so angry at the server, but in a way that is happening. But yeah, So what does Luba think is going on with these these passions

being pleasurable even when they're painful. Uh. He writes that it's because these heightened states of awareness and passion triggered by pain offer an escape from a sort of baseline

form of consciousness characterized by tedium, insensibility and normal fatigue. Thus, for some people, normal states of consciousness become so boring, so exhausting and tedious, that the self infliction of pain actually unlocks a state of mind that is to them preferable by contrast, And and this becomes an important distinction

in Luba's idea here. It's that religious ecstasy in the self infliction of pain is not actually an enjoyment directly of the pain itself, but an enjoyment of a kind of rapturous and highly aware state of mind that's brought about by the infliction of pain. Quote. Not the pain nor the wound does the martyr enjoy, but the exaltation that come with the quivering of the flesh. The quivering of the flesh. Oh, you're a fan too, No, I mean, it's so it's interesting. I'll come back to hell Raiser

in just a second. I mean, first, I would point out that, of course this is in the sort of like William James E in cast of like broad observational psychology, which it doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong, but it does mean that it should be thought of more like interesting philosophical writings based on observations rather than conclusions derived from rigorously controlled experiments. But again, it's not say he's wrong, it's just that it's not really science by modern standard.

It's more like philosophy and cultural criticism. He could be onto something there, uh, And I do think those observations maybe onto something. It's funny that it lines up so well with the character of Frank in Hell Raiser, a man who again in the movie, we we see a couple of scenes of him appearing disgusted by normal hedonistic pleasure. Like all of the regular pleasures of the flesh that seemed to have they failed for him. They don't work anymore.

Everything's boring. So according to Luba's framework here, it could make sense for him to join a self flagellating order devoted to the mortification of the flesh, because maybe pain will unlock higher states of conscious awareness and excitation that he wants to reach, but for which the bridges of normal pleasure have collapsed. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a solid read on on Frank's character for sure, you know, but Also, Julia is the sort of flip side of

that coin. She's the tedium side of it. She is she lives this life of boredom and perhaps some level of contempt for her boring husband as well, um and ends up being sucked into this world of of intense sensation as just as Frank has. But I think in all this one thing we get to is that it starts to become complicated to try to define and understand pain. I think because when you ask what is pain, it's something we all know about. You know, there's no aating

whether there is such a thing as pain. But when you try to come up with a rigorous definition of it that applies to every case, that becomes difficult. I think it goes back to that quote from the help Priest himself. What we think of pain is a shadow, but pain has a face. M who just but actually like for us to actually define the lines of that face. Uh, It's it's extremely difficult and a huge part of that. And this is something we've talked about in the show before.

It's like the difficulty in even discussing pain. Like I can talk about my pain, you can talk about your pain, but it becomes very difficult for us to properly understand each other's pain. Uh, and but properly related. Yeah, and there are some contexts in which I think it's simpler than others. But even in the simpler ones, say like regular no susceptive body pain that you would feel in the context of, you know, getting pricked with a needle

or something in a clinical setting. Even then, if we look to like us to approximation type answers within the medical world, you can get definitions like this one, which is cited by the International Association for the Study of Pain. Quote. Pain is an unpleasant, sensory and emotional experience that is associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in such terms. Okay, so that's kind of complicated. It's got

multiple clauses in there. But also one of the things that's difficult about that you immediately hit a snag with the idea that pain is explicitly and necessarily described as unpleasant, and this very definition would of course, I think that would apply to most cases. I mean most cases when people say they're in pain, they think of that as bad and they wanted to stop right Well, yeah, I mean part of it. You have the problem with our

our language. Uh. For instance, in in yoga, I practice yoga, and something that's often touched on by the teachers is that is the distinction between discomfort and pain. Like you should work with discomfort, like discomfort is part of the practice. But if you are feeling pain, then that means you need to back off because you don't want to go into that third area of injury of damage. But a lot of times it can be hard to tell the

difference between discomfort and pain. I mean, are they distinct classes of things or is that a gradient with you know, them being at two different sides of a scale. Uh. And of course, the very definition that says that pain is necessarily unpleasant would seem to rule out the existence

of pleasure in pain. It would either mean that nobody actually does take pleasure in pain, and I think lots of anecdotal evidence would seem to disagree with that, right, or that painful sensations that bring about pleasure are not actually technically pain. But in that case, what are they? What would you call them? I mean, it's a great man once said pain don't hurt, So what are we

to make of that? Okay, so you quote Roadhouse and he said, but I think that position in a way is inco parent he so he says, pain don't hurt, but then he spends the rest of the movie trying to prevent the villain from inflicting pain on people. It's true, I've got a real beef with Roadhouse, But I wonder if that quote, like part of it is that what he's trying to say is that for him, physical pain does not have, at least in this case, an emotional context.

But I think it's in a way, it's like a lot of things in the Roadhouse, Like maybe it's accidentally clever because because it is getting at that distinction, like for for human beings, pain is both sensory, like purely sensory, but also it has this enormous emotional context, right, Yeah, that it pain is a physical sensation. You know, there's no susception in the nerves in the flesh, and so it detects something that is an injury, could indicate an

injury or something like that. But then it also is a motivation. It triggers avoidance behaviors. Yeah, Like in the the yoga example for instance, like the pain is there to tell me, hey, this thing you're doing to your arm, uh is not in your normal practice. You should you should be aware that if this continues, worst things could occur. Injury, damage could occur. Again, that's normal functioning, not getting into you know, disorders of pain. But again yeah, for humans,

pain is a complex topic. Uh, physical sensation, but also this emotional realm as well. And there are seemingly dimensions of pain that are beyond the scope of less cognitively advanced organisms. You know, not saying animals don't feel pain, but and their animals do not necessarily have this emotional context to their their suffering as well. Yeah, certainly not

in the same way. I mean, you can see that a painful stimulus might cause a retreat or avoidance behaviors, and say a crab, but it's hard to believe that a crab has the full spectrum of human like fear and emotions that that you would get from feeling a painful wound, which raises an interesting question. Would a being more cognitively advanced than a human being have a greater potential for suffering and pain? And maybe would that explain

something about the nature of many gods and myth and legend. Oh, I mean This shows up in existing works of theology. I mean, I think it's something that's often used to develop the Christian mythos, which is of course has a big theology of the suffering of God. It says that God came down into human form, was crucified on the cross in the form of Jesus Christ, and then descended

into hell for three days, and then was resurrected. And in order to emphasize the immensity of the sacrifice, Christian theologians often point out that this isn't just like a human suffering, it's God himself suffering. And since God's state of holiness and perfection was already infinitely greater than humans, it follows that when he descends to suffering and death, that suffering is infinitely greater of an insult than it

would be to a normal human. So the parts of our brain that respond a pleasure also react two sensations of pain. This also further complicates things, and the line between the two is sometimes a bit of a blur. For instance, two thousand thirteen study from the University of Oslo found that quote the brain changed how it processed moderate pain according to the context of what the alternative was if the pain was less than anticipated, then the

brain transformed the sensation into something comforting or even pleasurable. Likewise, there was a two thousand fourteen study from Northern Illinois University that linked sado masochism the altered states of mind that can be obtained their linked them with with those states of mind you might achieve through yoga or meditation, you know, which which I think a lot of that makes sense. You were talking about, like just a feeling alive in the moment of sensation, be that sensation, you know,

painful or pleasurable. Like there is a is essentially a built in mindfulness exercise to that. In the same way that if you focus on your breath you are living entirely or at least more so in the body then you are normally Likewise, if you uh, you know, if you you accidentally prick your finger, you're you're living in the moment of that that that that finger prick, Like there's probably not a lot else on your mind in

that single instance. Oh. In fact, that this actually comes up in the study I want to talk about in a minute that has to do with how pain. Pain has been shown to alter or mediate our perception of our identity excellent. Uh. The same two thousand fourteen study, the researchers uh, and you know, they suspected that pain inflicted in consensual sado masochism alters blood flow in the brain, particularly to the dorso lateral prefrontal cortex, which plays into

our ability to distinguish self from other. As such, intense pain may result in feelings of oneness with you know, the other individual or with humanity or the universe, which it is interesting to think about. That is really interesting. I mean that gets back into stuff we talked about in our episodes on psye adelics, of course, with the uh, the sort of self other distinction that is sometimes dissolved

by changes in brain chemistry. But of course we know that not all changes in brain brain chemistry have to come from ingesting chemicals from outside the body, right right, um man, I quite again, I do want to underline the consensual aspect of that study. They are talking about consensual acts of salomaschism here, of course. Yeah. Now, I figured it would be worth talking about other interesting scientific research that offers complications in our understanding and experience of pain.

One thing that I came across that was really interesting to me. Is something that is known. It's it's a cognitive heuristic known as the peak end phenomenon. And so this is a psychological memory bias that says that people don't in their memories mentally characterize and experience by taking

an average of the entire duration of the experience. Rather, they mentally care aaracterize and experience according to memories of a couple of little things, and they tend very often to be moments of peak intensity of the experience and then the final moments of the experience. And this has been found to apply to both pleasurable and painful experiences. Of course, not all experiences. No psychological phenomenon applies to everything, but to a lot in which it very often has

strange consequences. It's been documented a lot of times now, but one important early study is by Daniel Kaneman, Barbara Frederickson, Charles Schrieber, and Donald Radelmeyer published in Psychological Science in called when more pain is preferred to less adding a better end. So in this study it was pretty simple, You've got to test conditions that both induce pain. Again, like most studies are pretty much all good studies, this is going to be non threatening pain, but it will

be uncomfortable. And what it is here is a plunge your hand into cold water and holding it there. So in test one, you plunge your hand into cold water, which was fifteen degrees celsius, and you hold it there for one minute. And then in test too, you do exactly the same thing, plunge into the fifteen degree celsius cold water, hold it there for one minute, but then you also have to hold it for an additional thirty seconds as the temperature in the water is gradually slightly increased,

though it's still cold, more cold than is comfortable. A majority of people, a significant majority of people chose when they had the choice to repeat one of the two tests, chose to repeat the second test rather than the first, meaning they'd rather the discomfort go on longer if the final moments of the discomfort were slightly less intense. And other studies have found versions of this in different context.

It does seem that we are willing to experience more pain or discomfort for a long, longer period of time if the last few moments of the pain are not as bad, and this seems to suggest that there's some way that as we form memories of painful or unpleasant experience, those memories can be formed in such a way that objectively, more pain chronologically measured seems like less pain because the ending of it wasn't quite as bad, and the ending

seems to matter the most to us. But this also makes perfect sense if you think of of pain as the signal warning you about something that may happen about you know, continued stressing of this particular muscle, or continued exposure to a dangerous element such as heat or cold. Oh that's very interesting. I hadn't so, I'd seen it mainly interpreted, like what's causing this? The main interpretation I

had seen had been recency bias. Of course, you know we tend to uh no, well, again, there are two things. It's the peak intensity of the experience and the end. So focusing on the end of the experience, it would be the recency bias. Right is, the things that happen more recently seem more salient to us. Um. But yeah, that also makes sense, especially for registering pain, because pain is a lot about what could happen. It's supposed to be giving you warnings that are useful information in order

for you to protect your body. Right. But then again, at the same time as we're discussing and will continuous discuss the human pain is complex, so there are other elements that I guess may skew that sort of thing. Oh, of course. Yeah, so so that's that's an interesting possibility too. And I should note that, of course, like a lot of psychological phenomenon, the peak in phenomenon doesn't always apply at every instance, but it's a general rule. It seems

like we followed this an awful lot. But if more pain objectively measured seems in our minds like less pain, at least in retrospect, then what is pain like? What is the real pain? What is the real thing that we want to try to lessen and avoid? Or in some of these rare cases where people are enjoy or taking enjoyment and pain, what is the kind they want to experience? More pain in the memory or pain in in the in the moment sensation, since those things don't

always necessarily match up. Yeah, that's true. I mean, this is the kind of thing that I feel like this happens anytime we look at pain, or you really think about pain, is that it seems like our our language of pain is severely lacking, Like we just don't have the proper vocabulary to get it all the different nuances here. Yeah, totally.

I mean it raises all kinds of questions, like I mean, even for yourself, if you're not trying to make a judgment for other people, assuming pain is something you want to avoid in this context, would you rather have less pain in the moment or less pain in your memory of an experience? I don't know how to like, I really don't know how to answer that, right, And this is and this is the total human dimension of pain,

like the memory of pain. And this is the kind of thing that yeah, you know, some animals are gonna have to deal with a certain animals is gonna have to deal with to some level. But but humans and pain and memory and the ability to to mentally time travel back to that pain and then to to likewise, you know, imagine encountering that pain in the future like that defines so much of what we do. Absolutely, now

I've got another study to talk about with pain. But should we take a break first and then come back. Let's do it. Thank alright, we're back. We're continuing to spin off of hell Raiser and the hell Bound Heart and discuss the nature of pain, pleasure and pain indivisible

as the cinnabytes would say. So, one study I came across that I thought had some interesting bits, and it was called The Positive Consequences of Pain, a Biopsychosocial Approach by Bastion, Jetton, Hornsey, and Lechness from the Social Psychology Review in and here this is a big review article. So it's like looking at existing literature to collect examples of ways that pain has been documented to have some

positive effects. And of course you can't list all of them, and and maybe some of these are better held up by evidence than others. But these are the things that the broad categories that they found some evidence of. One is might be pretty straightforward, but it's kind of interesting. Pain often enhances subsequent pleasure by providing a contrasting experience. Pain causes people to rate pleasurable experiences in the aftermath of the pain as more pleasurable than they otherwise would. Yeah.

Like an example of this that ties in directly with some of the methods used in these experiments is that if you go to ah too certain saunas, there will be a cold water pool like a chilling water pool in which you may immerse all or parts of your body and then in and then once you've overcome with the displeasure of that, then you may go and climb into the hot tub, and then the hot tub will be more pleasurable for the discomfort that you have had

in the cold top. Yeah. I don't know to what extent this plays a role in the mythology of the cinabytes, because it seems like they're sort of pursuing pain for its own sake in some cases, like they're not always following it up with a nice sauna or something. Oh yeah, we never see them just giving a nice gentle bag massage. Yeah, the hooks shoot out the hooks and then it's like, ah, but then after that you get to go have some ice cream. Okay. Another thing from their list is they

say there's evidence that pain increases sensory sensitivity. It's sort of increases our sampling rate of sensations from the physical world. In some cases, this can be good. Yeah, I mean this makes sense, right if your if your body is receiving or resonating with the signal that something something is potentially damaging the body, then it makes sense that the century awareness is also ratcheted up in order to take

in what may be harming the body. Right. Another one they point out pretty interesting is that pain sometimes blocks or a aviates our sense of guilt, which could otherwise prevent us from experiencing pleasure. Robert, I think you had some details on a study that looked into this, right, yes, I do. This is a study. This one came before the other one. This is from two thousand and eleven, but it's also from brock Bastion, the lead author of the other study. A real um, you know Hollywood leading

man name. Uh it sounds like an action here. Uh So basically M. Brock Bastion of the University of Queensland, Australia set out to understand, uh, you know, what's going on with pain in this situation. Bastion's team recruited young male and female test subjects under the guise of a mental and physical acuity study. The researchers asked the test subjects to write a personal essay about a time in which they ostracize someone, and the aim here was to

make them feel guilty or immoral. Meanwhile, a control group wrote personal essays about a routine memory. You know, nothing painful, just a memory. And the searchers instructed both the immoral volunteers and the control group to hold their hands in a bucket of ice water for as long as they could stand it, and others dip their hands in a soothing bucket of warm water. So the question is would immoral test subjects punish themselves with longer dips in the

cold water? The the individuals who just had to write a personal essay about a time that they were awful, would and then would they feel better afterwards? And the answer ends up being yes on both counts. Uh. Those who were primed to feel shame about past actions dip their hands in the cold water for longer durations, and they described the dip as more painful and express reduced feelings of guilt afterwards. So Rockbastion argues that this experiment

illustrates our culturally altered understanding of pain. We've come to process it not only is negative and environmental feedback, but is justice and punishment. So on a psychological level, uh, you know, a little bit of self inflected pain rebalances the scales. Uh. Now, I would say, on one hand, this is the kind of like intuition confirming social psychology research. That always makes me think, like, I'd like to see

that replicated, you know, a few times. But but yeah, assuming that the results hold up, that that is interesting that like the pain would have this this effect on our self critical judgments, which also, of course gives another explanation of why self infliction of pain rituals might be so common in certain religious orders, especially people who take sins of the flesh very seriously. Yeah, we we see, we see and read about an example of self flagellation

in m Burdo Echo is the name of the rose. Yes, and of course in that in the movie adaptation, Uh, the girl is played by the same actor who would play a Cinabyte in the fourth Hell Racer movie. Really, so there's your vital on Burdo Echo Hell Razor connection. Love it? Okay? A few more things mentioned in this study. H. So one thing they say is that pain there's some evidence that pain quote brings cognitive resources online, so it

helps increase our cognitive effective control of ourselves. Uh, they say that pain that this one was interesting and we hinted at it earlier. They say that pain enables identity management and one example they give here is that physical pain in the body can sometimes interrupt what the authors call quote high level awareness of a symbolically mediated, temporarily

extended identity. In other words, the kind of thinking about oneself that leads to negative, repetitive introspection, worry, self consciousness. That physical pain increases awareness of the immediate physical body and decreases the immediate salience of these kinds of worries.

That the negative introspection about oneself, and this this horrible symbolic entity known as a person tied up in this idea of the soul, which really we should we so we should thank the cinnabytes for tearing the soul apart, like in the movie It. You know, it comes off as more this threat. Right, I'm gonna tell you you're going to tear your soul apart. What really we should be saying the saying thank you. That's the kind of ego loss I've been searching for. That's why I picked

up the limit configuration. Right, That's how you finally achieve the higher state of consciousness. Yeah, okay, and a couple of other things they mentioned. This one I think is pretty straightforward, but it's true. Pain can be interpreted as

demonstrating virtue such as courage, toughness, dedication. The symbolic value of withstanding pain can sometimes override the physical discomfort of the pain itself, though at the same time worth pointing out, that's a great way to wind up in that that third category of injured if you were just you know, like I'm too I'm too masculine. Uh, you know, I'm too powerful to listen to the pain signal. Well, now you have the injury and damage signal, and you have

to deal with that, right, yes. And they also note several ways in which it appears that pain promotes affiliation between people, you know. They say, the expression of pain can sometimes increase empathy and care for others, and the expressions of pain can trigger social connections, and they can strengthen bonding and solidarity. And in the later you know how raizor movies. This this holds true, right because once the cinebytes are done with you, like you are one

of them. Yeah, I guess that's true. Now, I do want to stress on a briefly serious note that while we're talking about these uh possibly recognized psychological benefits of different kinds of pain, we should stress that none of the potential benefits of pain should be interpreted as excuses to continue practices of actual self injury uh, you know, meaning like the deliberate damaging of your body tissues such as cutting or burning, if you are practicing self injury

or considering it, uh, including of course non suicidal self injury. This is not something to deal with on your own. This is something that's important to talk to people about, talk to friends of family members or mental health professional if at all possible. There are other ways to get relief from the underlying shoes that lead to this coping mechanism,

and they're far less dangerous absolutely. Um. Now, on the on the same nime, you know, we do have listeners who who have you know, taken part in b D s M. We've also heard from listeners who have done hook suspension. But I think it's it's very important to note like these are these are avenues that one should

you know, enter into with safety in mind. And also if you you know, if you go into any of these things, you know safety is going to be a part all of those ventures, like how to essentially utilize pain without leading to that area of damage. Um of you know, of injury or certainly infection. Um, so certainly do your research. It's also worth stressing that some levels of physical pain that the pain is not always the

right word, can certainly be acquired through exercise. Oh yeah, I mean, I just want to say one of the studies I was looking at, though, it was very clear to say that I think at the time exercise had not been found to be like a an empirically re viable way of curing self injury pattern behavior. Uh that anecdotally it was often reported by patients that exercise was

had been substituted for self injury. Yeah, I would say that, Like basically, if you if you were inspired by anything you heard here and you want to try something, well, first of all, the cold water I think is a great avenue to consider. But also yeah, just you know, most levels of exercise, you know you hear about like feeling the burn, right, um, you know, experiencing some level of discomfort during a workout, and perhaps the soreness that

you would experienced in the following forty eight hours. Like you know, that's a I think that's that's an area where one might pursue some of what we're talking about, and that comes with a lot of added benefits for your life and your mental health as well. Right, Yeah, and if you're doing it right, yeah, you're not injuring

yourself in the process. Like so much of what we're talking about, like it really resonates with with my own yoga practice, is that you know that, like I can feel myself, you know, putting myself into this this level of discomfort, staying clear of the area of injury, and in doing so, like feeling this heightened state of existence, you know, uh, like I feel more in tune with my body and my surrounding and with the people in the room with me that are also engaging in this, uh,

in this practice, that are also experiencing the same thing. Um, so yeah, I would I would say, yeah, don't don't do what what pinhead does, go to a yoga studio instead. Well, I would be curious in your yoga practice, do you find the reduction of the negative aspects of self self into respection and the ability to self regulate your identity processes through this the discomfort brought about in yoga. Absolutely, Yeah, that's that's one of the main reasons I do it

for sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting and maybe I gotta give yoga to try one of these days. Well, you gotta give it more one try, because I hated it the first time I did so. Anywhere in talent that does like horror yoga, like horror themed yoga. There's our former co host, Christian would go to a death metal yoga. I've heard of that. It's not the same. Yeah, you want, you want a full horror themed yoga, pumpkin head yoga. Yeah, I don't know. Well, there's there's so many forms of yoga.

I feel like there is room for that that brand of yoga as well. Okay, I think we may have done it for pain here, but I think we could briefly talk about skinless critters. Do you want to do that? Oh? Yeah, well yeah. Frank in the film spends a lot of time skinless. You know, it comes back as a shriveled corpse, and then he's able to drink enough blood to regenerate, but then he needs to acquire a new skin. He keeps thinking he's going to get skin, but then he never.

Like one victim after another, he's like, he's got to have skin. This time, he's almost there, and then still no skin, right and in the second movie, which which I have seen in a long time, but I remember as being fun, uh grotesque. I don't know if I remember fun remember fun. But basically it's like it's Ernest goes to Hell. They go to Hell. It's not well, they go to Hell. Yes, but Earnest. I don't think

it's quite an Earnest movie. Um, but No. In that film, we we encounter Frank again and we encounter Julia, and Julia now also has this skinless and has to acquire a skin, and at one point she's able to slip away by sort of uh you know, being like like sort of leaving her skin behind, shedding her skin, and uh. It is interesting to to then look to the natural world and see that we do see a practice like

this as a defense mechanism in certain organisms. We've talked about autatonomy before on the show, the amazing biological ability to shed part of one's body to facilitate a skate from a predator, the most classic example being a lizard shedding its tail. Yeah, you sort of give the predator a consolation prize, yeah, or a distraction. There are a few different interpretations of it. Right, It's a compromise. It

gets the tail, you get to survive. But there's also there are also two species of African spiny mice that slouch off portions of their furry flesh when they're grabbed by a predator. Uh So, so you know, it's one thing to see this in a lizard, but here's a here's a mammal that does it. And it's it's flesh. It's not a limb that it's going to regrow. It's just a big portion of its skin that pulls aside.

So as I saw explained in Nature, Uh, these self flaying mice simply slip out of portions of their own hide and rapidly regrow complete suits of hair, follical skin, sweat glands for and even cartilage to fill in the gaps. And and we see some of that regenerative power in Julia Cotton in hell Raiser too. But Frank he'd never seemed to have quite learned that ability on his own.

Now he had to steal his brother's skin. Now we find another rather uh skilled skin shucker, if you will, in the form of a particular gecko species from Madagascar. Uh these are fish scaled geckos. I'm gonna attempt the species name. This is where when we need uh mark Mandinka in the studio. But it's a gecko Lepis megallepis. And basically they have these giant, kind of oversized looking fish scales on their body and uh and and basically if something tries to capture them, they shed the skin.

And it actually makes it difficult to study them because you have to researchers have to collect specimens with special cotton based traps, and even these are are not quite delicate enough to prevent injury. Like they'll basically shed some of their skin at the drop of a hat. It's a bumber. You need to find a way to calm them down before you catch them. Yeah. Well, I mean but basically they're they're like I don't want to be caught period. Yeah, you know, so there's a lot like

Frank in that that situation. Frank does not want to be recaptured by the cinepipes. Uh. And of course, not only are these both of these these these these different animals of the mice and the geckos, not only are they interesting in their own right, uh, this is another one of those areas as with you know, lizards regrowing their tails and other regenerative uh powers in nature, Like, there is a potential here to to figure out how to employ regenerative medical UM technology in humans down the

line salamander research. Yeah, yeah, that's sort of thing. So you know, we could reach the I don't know about regrowing a human's complete skin, but certainly we're getting into that area of possibility. But the skin comes off really easily in Hell Raiser. I don't know if you've noticed this, And in a lot of horror films, um, well, there are two things that happened way too easily. First of all,

someone can be impaled on something super easily. And then also and in person's entire skin can be pulled off, you know, with relative ease. So as far as impaling and stabbing and stuff goes, horror movies seem to forget that people have bones. You ever noticed that. It's like

where are the bones? Somebody trips and a table leg all the way through the body, like just straight through, yeah, right through all the bones in the chest, through the heart, everything is if the human body is made out of balsa wood. Robert, this has been mighty fun to discuss today, But I noticed hooks and chains emerging from the studio walls too. That's the sign that we have to call it there. Obviously, we we could continue to talk about

the nature of pain here. Uh. So hey, if you want, if you want more, check out some of our past episodes on pain. Uh and I'm sure we'll come back around to pain in the future. There are a number of things we've touched on here that we could flesh out in a future episode. Unintended yes, yeah, I mean when you're talking hell Raiser, all puns are intended. So uh. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes, where can you find well, you can find them Stuff

to Blow your Mind dot com. That's our website. You can also find them wherever you get your podcasts. Uh. And hey, if you're on that thing they call Facebook, you can find the Facebook group for Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's the Stuff to Blow your Mind discussion module. That's a fun place to interact with other listeners and uh and occasionally the hosts themselves. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Seth Nicholas Johnson. Thanks Joe, Hey,

this is Seth hopping in real quick. Just to say a quick thank you to Annie Reese for providing the voice of our cinembytes at the beginning of there the lead Cinebytes the Proto pinhead Um. If you want to hear more from Annie doing awesome things with her voice, you should listen to her podcasts that Sminty Stuff Mom Never Told You and Savor all this month. Just like we're doing our Halloween themed episodes, they're doing their Halloween

themed episodes and they're all really great. There's some stuff on female monsters, the feminism of the Alien franchise, female serial killers, the Winchester House. Um, let's see apple cider, the turnips. You know turnips were the original jack lanterns. Just saying these are all really cool things that you will learn if you go listen to uh Annie on her other podcasts, Sminty and Sabor go do that. Everyone

All right? Back to you, Joe. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows by bid. Nine is no