Episode 202: Not as It Ought to Be (H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space")

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist David Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] First rule on roadside beat sales, put the most attractive beats on top, the ones that make you pull the car over and go, wow, I need this beat right now. Those are the money beats. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston.

[00:01:20] Dave, the philosopher Agnes Calard is joining us next time to talk about Plato and his dialogue The Gorgeous. We have to be prepared. Have you done the reading yet? I had a Wikipedia, what that was. I was like, the gorgeous. Yeah, no, I have not done the reading.

[00:01:42] I will. Is it, so I really am ignorant about this. Is it one of the long dialogues or is that a subset of one of the long dialogues? No, it is one of the longer dialogues. Have you read any Plato? The Republic, right? Yes. When you read it.

[00:02:01] I read some of the Republic. I didn't even read all of the Republic and I read some dialogues when I was in late high school that I just picked up and read on my own. I don't know which one talks about justice but... The Republic.

[00:02:11] Whichever one talks about justice. Yeah, then maybe that's what I was reading. No, I'm going to be totally prepared. I'm going to be like a classic scholar. I'm going to ask her about the original Greek word. You can't even conceive of what the classic scholar would do.

[00:02:30] I'm going to be like, is it true that this word actually had two connotations depending on context? Right. You just litter the conversation with ancient Greek phrases. It's one of the more annoying things that they do in articles on Plato by ancient philosophers

[00:02:45] and classes is they just randomly will decide to throw in some Greek words. The gorgeous is good. It's long though, so you should be prepared. You should set aside some time. It's really good and it's interesting and I don't know if it's necessarily what

[00:03:02] you would think of when you think of a Platonic dialogue. Okay, okay. I'm intrigued. Luckily, since I've put in so much work in our patron selected episodes and read so much, I feel like I can just leave you to read this. You have to read it.

[00:03:20] But I am. I've actually taught it once before or a couple times before actually. And I know it fairly well, but it always surprises me when I read it the next time. I'll play the role of the naive youngin like in Plato's dialogues. Yeah, right.

[00:03:41] There's in every in every Plato dialogue, there's a naive youngin who asks the questions that are secretly the good ones. I think you're confusing Plato's dialogues with like the Passover's aid or like the four questions. Are Jewish? Wait, which one was Socrates again? See the one that...

[00:03:59] He was definitely not the one who didn't know how to ask. All right, today we are going to talk about a couple things. In the main segment, we are going to talk about an HP Lovecraft story called The Color Out

[00:04:14] of Space, which I strongly recommend our listeners read before because it's just a very cool story. So that's in the main segment. In the first segment, we're going to talk about a paper called... An Exploration of Spiritual Superiority, colon, The Paradox of Self-Enhancement.

[00:04:38] This was one of those that... Did somebody suggest it on Twitter? But as soon as it crossed your radar, you hated it. Is that right? Someone... Yeah, no, I just saw somebody link to it on Twitter. It actually...

[00:04:51] The way it was being described in the tweet as just a damning critique of mindfulness practice, it isn't that. Yes, it turns out... It turns out not to be that, but I hate that genre of study a lot.

[00:05:06] I kind of feel that there are people who have tried meditating and just didn't stick for them. So now they have to show... It's like Ressentement-driven. Now they have to show that nobody's good at mindfulness and that it's all bad. Wait, can you not say Ressentment in English?

[00:05:23] And if you can't, how is this not a resounding confirmation of the superiority that mindfulness meditation brings? I mean to distinguish... I shouldn't have said Ressentimon like that, but I mean the Nietzschean Ressentimon. Oh, okay. Thanks for bringing back the superiority, curtailing it.

[00:05:43] Bringing the author of like the champion of superior. Yeah, so I saw this on Twitter as well and it must have been the same person sharing it. And there's a press release that comes with it that usually these are written by the

[00:06:05] authors or by the university press office in conjunction with the authors. But in my experience, it's pretty much just the author writing it. And it says, study links some forms of spiritual training to narcissism and quote unquote, spiritual superiority.

[00:06:19] And even in the press release, so it says a new study has found that some popular forms of spiritual training such as energy healing or reading and to a lesser degree mindfulness and meditation correlate with both narcissism and spiritual superiority.

[00:06:31] So this paper is just basically looking at a bunch of measures. They created essentially four measures for all of these different constructs. And they look at the correlations between them and they looked at the differences in scores

[00:06:45] between like at least in one study, people who are like dedicated students of a particular spiritual training. So mindfulness training, energetic therapist or aura healing. This is why I was it was sort of misled by the tweet that this was really about

[00:07:03] mindfulness, but like it seems like the energetic training people are the ones that show more effects. I mean, it's all bullshit. Like don't get me right. Like I'm not saying that these things or constructs are real or getting anything.

[00:07:18] But like it seems like that's what this is more about. And I didn't even know what energetic training was. Like did you know? Yeah, that's like what yeah, that's like what you would associate with like the super new agey kinds of people.

[00:07:31] Like it's weird to lump together new like this new age things that actually require very odd supernatural beliefs or like metaphysical beliefs in in auras and energy and crystals and shit like that with mindfulness, which is sort of often explicitly non endorsing of any supernatural belief.

[00:07:53] But nonetheless, they do. But like absolutely you're exactly right. So as I was reading it, I was it's a little confusing the way it's written up, but there is no evidence. Like the one the one study where they actually look at real practitioners of mindfulness, they actually show

[00:08:10] lower scores of spiritual superiority than the other two groups. So if anything like if you are to believe that any of these measures are capturing anything, then that's evidence that the mindfulness people actually aren't superior and it's only when they look in the third study,

[00:08:25] they ask a bunch of people if they have ever or currently, which is a terrible way to ask. Like, have you ever or are you currently practicing mindfulness meditation? And and then so I would be yes to that. You would be yes to that.

[00:08:41] Most people we know would be yes to that probably at some point. Given it a shot at some point. Yeah, given it a shot. And there and only there do they find like a slight slight increase in spiritual superiority compared to people who say they've never

[00:08:54] tried anything, but that's not that, you know, that's not right. That's not a good way to lump people together. No, right. So there's a difference between people who regularly practice something. Right. So OK, so I this is I know this is exactly what you hate the most,

[00:09:08] that there are questionnaires that are made up in this case. The scales. Yeah, making up four scales and saying that their constructs is a bit much because as many have pointed out to Tamler and all other psychologists and me,

[00:09:21] I guess, if you aren't going to do the work of showing that the scale is actually measuring what it says it's measuring, then like, you can't you can't just say you can like right. So like, suppose that spiritual superiority is a thing.

[00:09:35] Suppose that you could actually like rank people in terms of their spiritual superiority in the real world, you would want to do something like, I don't know, like ask their friends, is this person spiritually like does they feel spiritually superior and see if your measure, your self-report measure

[00:09:53] actually is tracking that. So so this is just like all they do is just show that these is reliable, like statistically reliable, which just means that all of the answers are really highly correlated with each other.

[00:10:04] But I wanted to actually read off some of these items because I'm going to ask them to you, OK, good on a seven point scale. Seven being like you agree. One being you disagree. I am aware of things that others are not aware of.

[00:10:25] I mean, how like of course, like I know like how many times I jerk off every day, which is less than one. I swear. Right. How are you supposed to interpret that? Like, like are there some things that only you know that other people don't know?

[00:10:43] Are you more likely to know things than other things? So it's at least more than one. Right. Like I. Yeah. By the way, is this what I was just going to say. This is published in a real journal like European Journal of Social

[00:10:56] Psychology, which is not too shabby. Like it's right now. This is your sideways music paper. It's not. I wish it were that special. Like, I mean, no offense to that. I looked up at least the lead author is like a very tenured professor.

[00:11:12] So I don't mind dissing him. Oh yeah. Like in the past we've always shown such scruples. No, but because precisely because of that. I don't I felt bad in the past. OK. Second question. Yeah, I say five for that.

[00:11:25] OK. Because like you said, I don't know how many times I jerk off. You're right. Exactly. I am more in touch with my senses than most others. Senses in touch with. I guess that has some meaning. Like if you've done mindfulness, right, you should be better. Right. Yeah.

[00:11:45] Right. I feel like I've just kind of pulled myself up to average through mindfulness training. Like I was probably subpar and now I'm just average. So I'll give like a four, four point five.

[00:11:55] You know, by the way, here is where I like I want to say that this is, you know, there's this big tradition in social psychology on above average effects. Like you're showing people they talk about that.

[00:12:06] Yeah. And so this is very much trying to be in that tradition. But if you really in that whole literature, people have done, there's been so much back and forth about what these scales are measuring that.

[00:12:19] Like phrasing something like I am more in touch with my senses than most others. Yeah. Is like it's the most part that they're trying to measure. And like it just is true that, well, it depends on who I am currently thinking of as most others.

[00:12:36] And so oftentimes in better than average effects, like if I were to, if I wanted to know whether students at Cornell thought that they were smart if they had above average effects on intelligence, I would ask them something like compared to

[00:12:50] the average Cornell student or compared to the Cornell students that you know, or in your class, like you want to narrow it down so there's a concrete comparison. Because or else it's just unclear, like like depending on who I'm currently thinking of, it could it could mean that

[00:13:04] I think I'm better than most people in the world or it could mean that I've just thought of, you know, or it could be that I, you know, that I'm thinking of the people that I'm in contact with who tend to be more

[00:13:14] right sort of present than I am. But like, yeah, and it matters. Like, yeah, it's just one of those measurement things. OK, I am away. Did you give a? I took, yeah, I said four for that.

[00:13:26] OK, I am more aware of what is between heaven and earth than most. Oh my God. Had was this in the paper? This is the appendix A. I scroll down right away. OK. What is between heaven and earth than most people? That's like in between.

[00:13:44] Like in the I don't even know, like that's that's a very bizarre thing to put on the scale and think and think what it's measuring like what like I have no idea how to answer that question. I don't think that there is anything in between heaven and earth.

[00:13:58] I don't understand the question and I don't think like most people would understand the questions. It's clearly ether but spelled with that funny A in front of it. Oh yeah, like what that's kind of in the E. Yeah. Right. Yeah, OK. So I don't know what that means.

[00:14:16] I don't know. Yeah, I don't even know like I don't have any possibilities of what it could mean. Like it's like so far if you're scoring really high on the scale, then I'm thinking you're just like kind of arrogant just in general.

[00:14:27] Not like that it really is capturing anything about your spirituality at this point. Like just that you've yeah, yeah, you were arrogant and you were patient. Not having just left. OK, because of my education and experience, I'm observant and see things that others overlook.

[00:14:46] Well, like on the one hand, absolutely, right? Of course, that's kind of what education. Exactly. Like a plumber sees a lot of shit that I never see. Right. Like that's because of the yeah. Like anybody should answer very high for this, right? Assuming they've had training.

[00:15:03] Unless you don't have education or experience, right? Like you. Right. If you're still in the blooming, buzzing, confusing stage of life. So yes, I would say I'm going to give myself this could put me in the spiritual narcissism class, but I'll give myself a six for that.

[00:15:19] Well, yeah, clearly. Because of my background and experiences and not now it's not education. Now they're switching it up to be background and experiences. I am more in touch with my body than other people. I say one of our listeners tweeted that they get more.

[00:15:40] They learn more about from listening to us about what it's like to be in a boy's locker room. Yeah. And when I read that, I was like, oh, shit, she's right. And not like it wasn't meant as a compliment. No, no. But you know, I can take.

[00:15:55] But anyway, I don't even know why you happen to bring that up right now. More in touch with my body because of my background and experience. That's weird. What background leads you to be more in touch? Yeah, I mean, okay.

[00:16:08] If reading all of this like with the lens of, hey, think about mindfulness meditation as a practice now answer these questions, then you might be able to interpret these right in a way that they mean, but but they don't do that.

[00:16:23] And moreover, they're looking at a bunch of different people who don't. That's just asking you like if you're coming at this blind, that's just asking you like if do you think you jerk off more than other people like that?

[00:16:34] That's how that's the only real way to understand that question. That's the only the only thing. Here's the other thing that really bugs me is this is supposed to be a scale of superiority now, suppose that you are a huge mindfulness practitioner or

[00:16:52] you just are like a regular practitioner of mindfulness meditation. You ought to answer highly on all of these things if what you're asked to do is compare to most other people. And like that would be, I think, accurate.

[00:17:05] But scoring high here is supposed to indicate some sort of smugness. So I think you're right that like they're just starting with the assumption that people who think they're bad ass at mindfulness meditation are smug.

[00:17:16] They do say at the end it could be that they are actually spiritually superior. Like I was happy to see that they at least acknowledged that that was an issue. And if this was measuring something like,

[00:17:29] you know, like are you more aware and mindful, which it isn't at all. It's measuring something like very strange. Right? Because they have a separate mindfulness scale that's not theirs. There is, I guess. But I like I don't know what that thing is supposed to be that they're

[00:17:44] measuring, like I said, I think it's it's measuring something about. Yeah, like arrogance in feeling like you can understand something that is and also patience or like maybe if you're getting paid, you need the money or something like that.

[00:17:58] But this is the thing like this is this is your cottage industry problem. Like these scales that I want to read the way they just introduce the scales. They can I read there's only one more item.

[00:18:12] So you the last item because there is a point that I want to make about like the specific guy. OK, the last one is the world would be a better place if others too had the insights that I have now.

[00:18:24] That's the first one that kind of maybe feels like you might be getting something like, but at the same time, like certainly the world would be a better place if the world had some of the insights that I have.

[00:18:37] Well, and it just yeah, that's sort of what it means to believe something to be true is that you think others should believe it to be true. Yeah. So. But I do feel like for some reason,

[00:18:47] like if I answered like a seven or a six, I would feel like I was. Yeah, you're being arrogant. Yeah, being so there's just this one just like measurement issue that I have

[00:18:58] with this, I mean, I have many, but the one that just strikes you when you read these is none of these likes one of the question says compared to most others. And another one says to most people. Another one just says see things that others overlook. Right.

[00:19:15] Then I could be like one like like a couple of others. Yeah, right. Exactly. And one of them is just I'm aware of things that others aren't aware of. So like others, like there's just not clear in the world,

[00:19:27] we have a better place of others had the insights that I have now. It's just not it's not at all clear that you're not changing the way that people are thinking about the comparison group and the way that you ask the question or you're just banking on that

[00:19:42] they're using the same. It would be ideal if they just said like think of for instance, an average friend of yours and then you have that one person in mind and then all of these can be evaluated according to a standard.

[00:19:54] I mean, they would still be shitty question. Right. So it would make like then like the question still makes no sense because take my average friend. What does he think about like what's between heaven and earth? Right. No, that's true. Like this is what you always do.

[00:20:12] You're like like try to you think it just needs some tweaking, some fine tuning, some finishing touches. And then and then this could be told. But I think the problem is much more fundamental here. Well, it's not that you're not right about these things.

[00:20:25] But this is why I was I was coming in. I told you earlier, I was coming in wanting to defend this paper from like what I call your facile criticisms of like that you can't measure anything. But like I believe you can measure something.

[00:20:37] I don't believe that they've measured anything here. Well, so there's two issues, right? So this is this is how they lead into the spiritual superiority and narcissism scale. They say the term spiritual narcissism has been used in several books, e.g. May 1987 and papers, both scientific and journalistic.

[00:20:57] But none of this work has empirically examined the relationship between spiritual development and self enhancement. So their reason for thinking that there is this human trait or property called spiritual superiority or narcissism, that just the basis for

[00:21:14] believing it, reifying it is it has been used in several books and papers. Yeah. And then so this is clearly a thing like nobody's denying that this is a thing. But the one thing that we're doing is figuring out a way to measure it

[00:21:30] and and then also how it relates to these other things. It's just not enough. That's not enough. Like there are things that people have said in lots of books. Right. Exactly. And it's just like like you were saying, there's no way to validate it.

[00:21:44] No way to know if what they're capturing is a real thing or what they're trying to capture is a real thing. And there's no way of knowing if they have the measure has captured it, even if it is a real thing.

[00:21:54] Even if it is a real thing, like I would suspect that it's not it's not doing a good job of capturing it. And you really do like if you're going to do scale construction, show me that like the thing that you've just come up with as a construct.

[00:22:07] OK, I do like, OK, like I feel like what I read the title, I know some people who are smug about their spirituality. Right. Right. So those people tend to behave in certain ways.

[00:22:17] So give me a study that shows that people who score high on that scale are also like doing these other things that I find consistent with what I would consider. Like you want to show like that not just that psychometrically,

[00:22:28] like this is decent, but you want to show that like, I don't know, like other people like like peer self ratings, peer ratings. You know, you want like behavior. That's what it means to validate a scale.

[00:22:43] This is just like and they do this with four brand new scales. Like that's just right. The self esteem one is three items as someone emailed us about. Oh yeah. Yeah. So they come up with like a couple of other scales on their own.

[00:23:00] It's like it's very strange. Supernatural overconfidence scale. Yeah. I feel like does that just mean like when you're a kid and you think you might be able to move something with a force? Like Ori or my jinxing beliefs, my very strong and certain jinxing beliefs.

[00:23:17] But this is more like this really is just like what you would think. If I didn't know what energetic training was, I would think it's people who score high. But that's like because they believe these things. And again, this is not this,

[00:23:31] although this is billed as some sort of veiled critique of mild or not. They all just an outright critique of mindfulness. It really is mostly about these energetic training people. Yeah, they're like crystal healing people. So, you know, you're sorry. The people they quote are talking about mindfulness.

[00:23:49] Like the people who, you know, what gives this its interest is that it's that there's mindfulness, I mean, or not interest, but I don't know, it's what draws attention to it because yeah, of course, if you do energetic training, you have some kooky beliefs and you're right.

[00:24:06] So what that so without in the press release, it says as the authors predicted these correlations were strongest for participants following forms of energetic training, these participants rated higher than the mindfulness meditation students on all of the superiority related scales, especially on the scale of supernatural overconfidence.

[00:24:20] This makes sense. The author is right as energetic training is meant to develop supernatural skills this likely attracts students who already believe they have talents in this area or who now believe it. I mean, or that the training. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:35] So the other part that they make a big deal about is this relationship with narcissism, that spiritual superiority is related to narcissism. And, you know, I guess like those those items that I just described, like, I guess they would correlate with narcissism just because

[00:24:52] thinking highly of yourself no matter what you ask. Right. Right. Like no matter anything positive that you ask, you're going to think highly of yourself of your narcissist. Like I don't know that's a finding. They certainly don't show anything like

[00:25:04] showing that there's another scale of spiritual knowledge that's not correlated with narcissism. You know, you'd want to show that that you have other measures that would tease apart this whole spiritual superiority from something related and not just giving people a bunch of positive. No.

[00:25:23] And then they use like a weird scale of narcissism. They're like, we didn't want to use just the regular narcissism. Because we thought that wouldn't work. Well, if you thought that wouldn't work, like you'd want to know like a clinical narcissism scale. Like that's the claim.

[00:25:35] So you just made it our own. No, I don't know. They got this one from somebody else. Yeah, it's the communal narcissism. OK, so here are the items. I looked up the items for this one too. OK, I get it. I am the most helpful person I know.

[00:25:46] Yeah. I'm going to bring peace and justice to the world. Wait, is this regular or communal? This is the communal narcissism scale. OK. So it's like communal in the sense that you are you have an inflated view of how important you are to other people. OK, yeah.

[00:26:01] I am the best friend someone can have. I will be well known for the good deeds I will have done. I am going to be or am the best parent on this planet. I'm the most caring person in my social surrounding.

[00:26:15] In the future, I will be well known for solving the world's problems. I greatly enrich others' lives. I will bring freedom to the people. Now, this is just starting to be great. I love this. This is great.

[00:26:25] I would believe that you're either a narcissist or you have a good sense of humor. I am an amazing listener. I will be able to solve world poverty. I have a. Is that narcissism? I mean, sure, you probably like if if you're a narcissist,

[00:26:44] maybe you would answer highly, but that seems like a real specific kind of belief, like I'm going to actually solve the world's problems. Right. I don't know if it's a more admirable. It does feel like you'd have to.

[00:26:53] But my guess is that everyone answers these questions very low on the scale. And what they're looking at is differences between very low numbers. I'm looking to see if they have they don't list. I don't think. Yeah, they don't list the actual

[00:27:09] average is on communal narcissism in the tables. But maybe they say, it's not it won't make a difference. But this is the thing and this is in a good journal. And so you can just make up like traits and you can make up scales to measure

[00:27:25] the traits without like doing any real work to suggest that any of this stuff is capturing something real or and capturing it accurately. So like, you know, that's a that's a problem. When we when we do our is philosophy or psychology more fucked thing.

[00:27:41] Yeah, this is a big problem that probably this is a particularly egregious example of it, but it's like it. The the the central point probably applies to more studies and more constructs and more various things than you might be comfortable. Well,

[00:27:59] I mean, this is a deep so this is what just flake friend of the show and avid listener. This is what she goes on about. Like if you're going to there are ways to do validity studies. Just like you're talking about. Yeah, just like this is

[00:28:16] the kind of habit that social psychologists have picked up that is exactly like the the you know, the B in her bonnet, which is like it's just like become convention that you can you can do this and you should not be able to

[00:28:31] do this like this is not the standard for saying that you have a new construct should be a lot higher than this. Yeah. And I, you know, so maybe if they actually were to do it right,

[00:28:42] they would show that this actually isn't, you know, I'm but just like it doesn't pass the sniff test when you read those items. You're like, this isn't this isn't how I would ask about spiritual superiority that certainly doesn't.

[00:28:55] It doesn't seem to fit with like if there is such a thing, you know? Yeah. The bar needs to be higher. And again, what it's trying to capture is something like the reason I think that this gets play is we know people who

[00:29:12] seem to think too highly of themselves spiritually and it can even be related to your your spiritual practice of some sort. And they quote like a couple authors, a couple of Buddhist authors, I think, who talk about this phenomenon.

[00:29:28] And in those quotes and in their description of there, it's you have way more insight like into what they're talking about than anything that you get from this paper. Like the idea that this adds anything to it rather than just sends it down,

[00:29:43] like jumbling down into nonsense is I think I would strongly reject. Yeah. Yep. You know, it's funny in like a lot of social psych papers if you only bother to go and find, you know, and like some like older papers, especially, they'll say

[00:30:01] we made up a 10 item scale and here are two example questions. And you don't even see the items. Right. So I think that for any paper saying that they have a measure of X,

[00:30:11] like the first thing you should do is go look and read those items to see if it even passes that first line of defense against common sense. And often they just don't. But also establish that there is a thing that scale could capture. That's the other thing.

[00:30:27] Like you can make up anything. You can just put some words together like spiritual. There's no way to falsify. Yeah. There's no way to falsify. I once wanted to propose a measure of alternate explanations.

[00:30:39] So I was just going to come up with a really shitty questionnaire that like had such bad psychometric properties that you could always insert it as a control in your experiments and say, we ruled out alternative explanations because you

[00:30:49] could like if nobody bothered to check, like you could just say that something is a thing, create a scale, show that those things correlate with each other and claim that now this is evidence. It's hard to think of what would falsify the belief that there is a

[00:31:02] construct called spiritual superiority. Like it's not clear what would what they would accept as evidence that this concert doesn't exist. Maybe if it hadn't been mentioned in several books, that would falsify it. But since it has that establishes its existence, you need to be mentioned

[00:31:18] in at least 13 books. It can't be one or two. It has to be several. I believe I believe that's how the moral foundation scale got started. So I don't you know, don't shit on that. John height, he said it. David Bizarro, know me?

[00:31:36] And Jesse, don't drag down Jesse with your Jesse's a wonderful guy. And he was subjected already to a lot of our questioning. So listen to that episode. Because we actually got this is before you got all like all in a huff with

[00:31:50] your what I call construct called measurement superiority that I believe that you're high in social psychology skepticism. Yeah, is that a construct? But we talked a lot about measurement, like how they came up with that scale in those episodes. I was probably too credulous or drunk.

[00:32:12] Yeah, or drunk or both. You can also hear Jesse as a Patreon member. There's I think eight hours of him and me and Natalia talking about David Lynch related material. All right, are we done with this? I think so. Sorry, others.

[00:32:32] Let's talk about something that we that we loved. H.P. Lovecrafts, the color out of space. This episode of Very Bad Wizards is brought to you by Nord VPN. Tamela, I've been meaning to use a VPN for a long time now. I just never got around to it.

[00:32:50] Have you ever used one? Do you even know what a VPN is? I mean, I've definitely heard of it. And I VPN is just a virtual private network. So it's basically like a tunnel where your internet traffic goes through. And there's a few reasons to do it.

[00:33:07] The first one really is security. So if you're ever like in a coffee shop and it just says like free Wi-Fi or whatever, you log on logging on to a VPN first will encrypt it so no bad guys can sniff you out. No, no, no, no, that's right.

[00:33:22] Well, he could probably what you're doing with your connection. The second reason is privacy. A lot of people don't I don't think they realize that like even if you protect yourself, even if you don't give up all your info to Google and Facebook like I do,

[00:33:37] your ISP, your internet service provider sees everything. And if they see everything, guess what? So probably so does the government and a good VPN can can prevent you from from having all of that information just available by subpoena.

[00:33:54] And finally, like this is the real reason, I think, that that maybe our listeners would want to be PN and that is because you can tell it where you're connecting from and you can spoof a geographical location. So a lot of our listeners aren't in the US.

[00:34:11] And when we say that we've watched something on Netflix or we tell people where they can stream a movie, sometimes we're just wrong about them being able to and they just can't. But if you use Nord VPN, you can guess what? You can unlock British Netflix.

[00:34:28] You can unlock, you know, whatever Dutch Netflix, US Netflix, Canadian Netflix, all of that stuff. One of the big reasons that I never used a VPN before was because I had tried it and it was slow and sluggish, but Nord VPN is actually super fast.

[00:34:42] They have 5200 servers in 59 countries and you can connect to your closest one. And I didn't notice any difference. It was a super fast connection. They don't log any data. They have 24 seven customer support. You can use up to six simultaneous connections.

[00:34:58] So I actually installed mine on my iPhone, on my iPad and on my home, my desktop computer that I'm recording now with. And it's seamless, super easy. And maybe the best part of it all is that it has a built in ad blocker.

[00:35:14] No, iPhone kid, does it work on an iPhone? Yeah, it works on an iPhone. It works on an iPad. So subscribe to Nord VPN now. And if you do, you'll get 68% off. It's only three dollars and seventy one cents per month.

[00:35:28] Plus, if you purchase a two year plan, you'll get four months for free. And if you're a very bad wizards listener, you get a surprise gift. So go to Nord VPN dot com slash VBW and use our coupon VBW at checkout.

[00:35:44] Again, you'll get a deal of free gift and for free months at Nord VPN dot com slash VBW. Thank you to Nord VPN for sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards.

[00:36:43] Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. This is the time of the episode where, as always, we like to really, really thank all of our listeners, our supporters, and just reach out to you and personally thank you for all of the communication

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[00:41:38] I want to give a quick shout out to the Weird Studies podcast and J.F. Martell, they are very inspired by Lovecraft and weird fiction on that show, Weird Literature in general. And also he specifically I emailed him to ask what he recommended of Lovecraft.

[00:41:58] And this was, I think, his top choice that is great. It's really, really good. It's a 1927 story by HP Lovecraft. I think it was his favorite story that he did. What did you think of it, Dave? You know, I loved it.

[00:42:15] But as I say that, I'm sort of embarrassed to say that I've never read any Lovecraft before. Like I've been Lovecraft adjacent for a long time. And I certainly knew about like Kthulhu, however it's pronounced. Yeah. And the sort of lore.

[00:42:32] But I'd never read one of his stories. And I don't know what I thought. I thought. I think I thought that he wasn't a good writer. I think in my mind he was sort of like a sort of hammy. Right. Ponderous maybe.

[00:42:45] Like, yeah, I had the same preconception going in. And this was great. I mean, I think it would be hard to write good horror. Like to give people the real sense of dread. And it reminded me a lot actually of Edgar Allan Poe.

[00:43:04] I'm sure people have made that comparison before. It's just does a good job of. Yeah. It creates a mood like just a creeping dread, a feeling of. I took a walk. I reread it again today and I took a walk.

[00:43:18] And like I was just looking at everything with suspicion and like it had me in a mood of feeling like something's off, something's wrong. And if you're really paying attention to people like you are when you're in this state, people do weird things.

[00:43:34] And so it's like they're just only confirming that something is like deeply off like it gets you in that frame of mind. And it's also just propulsive and like narratively like it moves the story. Yeah, it's just well written. It's it's not short.

[00:43:52] You know, it's not that short, I guess. But but I captured me and I was just like as I was reading, I just wanted to keep getting to the more and more and like it just did a good job. I think it's also a story for our age.

[00:44:11] I mean, I think you could probably say that about a lot of ages. But this thing that invades this town or in this family in particular could serve as an allegory for so many things, but including like a virus that isolates people and slowly drives them completely insane.

[00:44:29] Right? Like it is this thing and that like scientists don't really understand. It does kind of capture it. Now, that's a pretty, I don't know. That's almost an explicit connection that you could draw. But there are all sorts of implicit ones to just this fear of something

[00:44:47] that's unknowable, undescribable and and that's kind of just relentless. Like this thing that's affecting this family and this town is just relentless. It doesn't it doesn't stop. It just builds and builds. I mean, I read it as clearly a metaphor for like the woke left. I mean, exactly.

[00:45:10] And one and then, you know, soon it'll be too late to stop them. The Vlad, the Vlad's will rule the world. Shout out to Vlad. There there is a like there's a good sense, you know, like the original

[00:45:25] meaning of awesome, like like the horror of the other and of the. Like the other, the unknown and the just you never get a sense of the boundaries of this thing. Right. You it could it could be that it is going to overtake everything in time. Yeah.

[00:45:47] The grandiosity of that. It's just an emotion that is, you know, he wrote this in 1927, as we said, and it's not like there was even nuclear power. Absolutely. It seems like it could be like a metaphor for that.

[00:46:03] But it'll also be a kind of an allegory for like his racism and xenophobia. Like, yeah, he was apparently terrible. Yeah. He was not he was not enlightened, even for his time, I guess. So a surveyor goes to this town where they have like there's this blasted

[00:46:24] heath that they talk about in the surrounding forest where everything just looks a little bit off in the surrounding forest. And then the blasted heath, it's like nothing can grow there. It's like burnt and it has this horrific or supernatural kind of

[00:46:40] sinister aspect to it or at least just very strange and unsettling aspect to it. And he asks all the people in the town, like what's going on? What's there? Why are there these roads that are now covered in vegetation?

[00:46:53] He's surveying it because they want to put a lake on top of it. And nobody will talk about it in the town. And they they mentioned this crazy guy named Ami, who as a farmer who sounds Israeli. Yeah, he does. He talks about it.

[00:47:11] But you know, they kind of dismiss him as crazy. But then the narrator goes and talks to Ami. And then Ami tells the story of this meteor that crashed not that long ago. It was like 30 or 40 years before the narrator is telling the story.

[00:47:27] Yeah, half a century, maybe half a century, I think. Yeah. And at first, the scientists came to see the meteor and they kind of splintered it, took it apart and what they would take back to the lab behaved very strangely.

[00:47:43] And then once they got far enough into the meteor, they found this like this bit of this globule of this color. How do they how do they describe it? I think I wrote this down.

[00:47:55] They had uncovered what seemed to be the side of a large colored globule embedded in the substance, the color which resembled some of the bands in the meteor's strange spectrum was almost impossible to describe. And it was only by analogy that they called it color at all.

[00:48:11] And this is a big thing, this color, which isn't even a color. It's just that's the closest we can get to conveying sort of what the what this thing actually was is really interesting. And that's the kind of thing that spreads in very not evil exactly,

[00:48:31] but just very unsettling ways and destructive ways. And so before we even hear the story, the surveyor says after he heard the story, he went home, click quit his job and he's never going back to that place ever again. And then you hear the story, which is

[00:48:48] once the scientists were doing it, every time they would bring the stuff back to the lab, it would just disappear and also the beakers that it was in would also disappear. The glass would get consumed by it somehow or like disappear. Yeah.

[00:48:59] And meanwhile, the meteor is getting smaller once even though they initially thought that that was not possible. They have the kind of arrogance of scientists at first where they're like, no, no, no, you don't understand. And so they rule out any kind of supernatural explanation.

[00:49:15] So they feel like this thing is has to obey the laws of the earth. And it's just clearly doesn't do that. Finally, it just disappears altogether after a lightning storm. The scientists have nothing really else to do.

[00:49:30] So they just go back and then now this thing, whatever it is, starts creeping into the family that lives there, Nahum or Nahum Gardner and his wife and four sons and just the way in which it starts to attack this family and the foliage around the vegetation.

[00:49:52] At first, the vegetation. Yeah. The first fruits and vegetables to come up surrounding the house. They look like big and like, you know, like a good crop. And then they just there's something so powerful about the way you describe,

[00:50:06] like the sight of the fruit that but then you open it and it's just just it's like smells terrible and is like rotten but not rotten. You know, it's it's nausea inducing without but and disgusting,

[00:50:19] but not in a not in a way that you understand it's like a new way that something would be like that. And I love that at first it seems like, oh, this is great. You know, like this is actually a good thing.

[00:50:30] And then it but then quickly becomes like non-functional and poisonous. And and yeah. And then so so it spreads to the to all the plants, which become inedible, all the agriculture and then just in this family farm and then the animals,

[00:50:47] like the dogs are freaked out, the horses always like try to get away from there and and soon they start dying. And then also the family starts going quickly mad. So first affects their behavior, even the animals too.

[00:51:03] They start sort of scattering around, not acting like they normally would. And then it gets into their heads and they slowly become insane. Like both the mother and one of the sons have to be locked in the attic.

[00:51:15] And they start because the way like this as you do as you do. Yeah, it puts them like first the mother in the attic. Well, he let them so here's here's the description I did. Write this down.

[00:51:27] In her raving, there was not a single specific noun, but only verbs and pronouns. Things moved and changed and fluttered and ears tingled the impulses, which were not holy sounds. Something was taken away. She was being drained of something.

[00:51:40] Something was fascinating itself on her that ought not to be. Someone must make it keep off. Nothing was ever still in the night. The walls and windows shifted. Nahum did not send her to County asylum, but let her wander around the house

[00:51:55] as long as she was harmless to herself and others. Even when her expression changed, he did nothing. But when the boys grew afraid of her and Thaddeus nearly fainted at the way she made faces at him, he decided to keep her locked in the ad.

[00:52:07] By July, she had ceased to speak and crawled on all fours. And before that month was over, Nahum got the mad notion she was slightly luminous in the dark, as he now clearly saw was the case with the nearby

[00:52:18] vegetation. It was a little before this that the horses had stampeded. So you can see like that's a passage that just kind of describes the way this thing just creeps in and starts to take you over, but gradually in a way that well, you definitely don't understand what's

[00:52:34] happening or even that it's happening. Yeah. I love that the description of the vegetation. At some point he says, Vasters and Golden Rod bloomed, gray and distorted and the roses and zinnias and Holly Hawks in the front yard were such blasphemous looking things.

[00:52:51] The Nahum's oldest boy, Zinas, cut them down. It's like, what looks blasphemous? I love the way he describes things without describing them. This is one of the really interesting ways that this is constructed. Like it has this kind of Russian doll like construction where we're getting

[00:53:11] the story from the narrator who's getting it from Ami, the farmer. And Ami himself got most of the story from Nahum Gardner and all of them admit that like a big part of it is indescribable. So they have to use these analogies like blasphemous or like

[00:53:28] he talks about it like ought not to be. Like what is this thing? Yeah, yeah, that's what we should talk. Like I want to talk about that sort of the there are words that he never says that like evil.

[00:53:41] But because I don't think I think it's evil is more, I don't know, of this earth, what's going on here. It's it is right. You get the sense that maybe this thing isn't a terrible thing by nature.

[00:53:58] It's just from such a different plane of existence that it is wreaking havoc here. And it is, it doesn't belong. It just does not belong like multiple mentions of the laws of nature and the laws of this universe. And so it's violating both physically

[00:54:16] and perhaps broadly morally in the sense that it ought to not exist, but not as an evil. It's yeah. Yeah, not as an evil as something that is just external to us. Yeah, like that is a thing like external to us and kind of incompatible with us

[00:54:33] in some way. Right. But it's not trying to conquer us. You don't get the sense that it's trying to invade us or that there's any real rhyme or reason. Right. Continue with the sorry. Oh, yeah. And then so once

[00:54:47] that thing now sends the both the oldest son and the mother insane, then one of the sons goes missing, then another son goes missing. And then the last time Ami goes to the house, the thing is in the house like fully now.

[00:55:04] And it finally gets to Nahum Gardner. After that, he dies. Everybody's everybody dies. The two of the middle kids are at the bottom of the well and the poor Ami has to go back to the because he tells everybody they're all dead and they're like, OK,

[00:55:25] so you just found them there. He's like, I swear you guys can come if you want. So now he has to go back there and they have to go to the well, which is sort of the center of this place, because it has some relationship

[00:55:35] to water and liquid, even though that the water is completely undrinkable and poisonous as is everything around there. So and then the thing just sort of gathers most of what it is. And it gathers like it seems like it's going around like finding the little

[00:55:53] remnants of itself and then just shoots up in an image that I feel like I've seen in so many movies, just that vertical all of a sudden this thing is just standing there. This thing that nobody has seen before or knows how to describe.

[00:56:05] And then it just immediately shoots up like a rocket or a meteor back to wherever it was. Yeah, like a big column of light and energy. Yeah, that is that is this very queer color as he calls it.

[00:56:18] But then the there's definitely hints that it's still there and that it's still affecting that town, but much much more gradually now because it's smaller and it's but there's no stopping. That's for sure. Today's episode is brought to you by Givewell.

[00:56:39] Dave, it's been a while since I've taught intro to ethics face to face. And you know what I miss the most about that? The stages of singer. Yes, the stages of singer, famine, affluence and morality.

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[00:59:05] So you go to Givewell.org slash very bad wizards, select podcast when you check out and enter very bad wizards. And this matching offer is good for as long as funds last. So act soon.

[00:59:20] This is a really special chance to make even a small donation, make a big impact. Thank you so much to Givewell.org for sponsoring this episode. We love Givewell. I love how it's like so kills, as you said, all the vegetation. Everything that it everything that's living,

[00:59:41] it seems to destroy eventually and things turn into like an ashen sort of like crumbly texture of gray dust. Right. And the people around there swear that it's getting bigger, even though it might only be whatever, like an inch a year. Yeah.

[01:00:00] People say the color of the neighboring herbage is not quite right in the spring and that wild things leave queer prints in the light winter snow and hunters cannot depend on their dogs. Dogs are usually a good sign of whether something is is off. Yeah.

[01:00:18] So I it's a really interesting story. It really seems to capture like when I say like that it capture it's a story for our age, it also captures this feeling that something is off. Something is wrong. Something's not as it ought to be.

[01:00:35] But unlike conspiracy theories, in some ways, it's like the opposite of conspiracy theories because even though there's that same sense that something is not as it ought to be and wrong and not like, you know, sort of what the official explanation is. It's corrupted in some sense.

[01:00:51] But instead of having like an elaborate explanation, there's no explanation. And in fact, and no understanding it and no way to describe it in words, even if somehow you did have some sort of direct contact with it.

[01:01:03] There's this inability to even convey that information to yourself or to others. The use of the color analogy is great because, you know, who doesn't think like, you know, imagine, imagine a color that you've never seen. Right. It's it is beyond imagination.

[01:01:23] It's it's a great way to try to describe that something is indescribable. Yeah. Just saying it's indescribable is like, OK, like I'm going to have some image in my mind of it. That's why I really, you know, we mentioned before we recorded that this

[01:01:37] has been made into various movies. I can't imagine wanting to see it. Like now it seems to defeat the very like it's supposed to be indescribable. And I suppose you could do it well where you never show any of it.

[01:01:49] And this is one of the characteristics that it seems to have that I don't think you touched on, but which is it is attracting. It has a power to attract them. And even though they know that the effects are are damaging, yeah, they're not leaving.

[01:02:08] Right. And and in fact, the source of this appears to be, you know, whatever remnants were in the well is what, you know, one of the kids kept going constantly to the well and couldn't pull himself away.

[01:02:20] So there is something just really disturbing about something that you know is is bad or harmful yet you can't you can't stop yourself from from being with it or next to it or whatever. It's like if you had like contaminated milk or something like that,

[01:02:38] but you couldn't stop drinking it even though you knew it was bad. And that's like what this thing is, is this yeah, it's both something that you know is affecting you, you know, I mean, I guess it could stand in for

[01:02:51] iPhones, like you know, it's fucking you up and yet you're still drawn to it. And everybody, it's not, it doesn't seem to have the same exact effect on everybody. So the wife clearly like goes crazy when almost right away.

[01:03:08] Yeah, it says when the boys grew afraid of her and that he's nearly fainted at the way she made faces at him, he decided to keep her locked in the attic. And then she ends up stop, ceases to speak and crawls on all fours,

[01:03:19] which by the way is it, you know, obviously she was sort of like alluding to her being wild and an animal and like losing her mind. But it reminded me of in the Bible, King Nebuchadnezzar, when God strikes

[01:03:30] him hungry, he's he's sent to the fields to live on all fours and his hair gets long and he lives like a wild animal for seven years. That doesn't happen to the other ones, right? But they know the boy to Thaddeus it does. Oh, yeah.

[01:03:48] Thaddeus went mad as well. He went mad and probably and then died in a way that it's too awful to describe. That's what the Nehem didn't he wouldn't even tell right, I mean, how that happened.

[01:04:02] But you get the sense it sounds like we see what happened with because we see what happened with the mother or we don't. That's the thing. It's like also too awful to describe. But the only thing we know is that he probably killed her.

[01:04:14] Yeah, like some sort of mercy killing because like she was starting to turn into some gray creature. But and he thought she was dead, but she kept moving. Is that right? Like yeah, she kept moving toward him. It shouldn't move. There's a lot of this oughtn't shouldn't.

[01:04:31] Yeah. Yeah. You know, part of what they're doing at first is trying to figure out what's going on, like is it poison, but it couldn't have been because it's affecting animals that have been locked in a barn. Like it's not or who aren't eating any of the. Yeah.

[01:04:47] I love the way one of the first things that Nahum says that he noticed was you alluded to this, the different behavior of the animals. And this is one of the first things that really got to me somehow. Yeah. He says, Nahum himself gave the most definite

[01:05:06] statement of anyone when he said he was disturbed about certain footprints in the snow. Now again, like, like what would a disturbing set of footprints look like? Yeah. It's like, you know, I live where it snows and I see deer and other animals,

[01:05:22] footprints in the snow all the time. I wouldn't know what it means that the footprints are disturbing. So he says they were the usual winter prints of red squirrels, white rabbits and foxes. But the brooding farmer professed to see something not quite right about their nature and arrangement.

[01:05:37] He was never specific but appeared to think that they were not as characteristic of the anatomy and habits of squirrels and rabbits and foxes as they ought to be. Right. Yeah. And it's also something that will make you sound like a crackpot if you tell somebody,

[01:05:51] you know, that's not quite right, Kamilar. That's like, that's the thing, like at least at first, it's like, that's just like those, you know, the foliage looks a little bit off. The trees are swaying even when there's not enough wind.

[01:06:04] And it's only like later that becomes too obvious to deny. But at first, it just makes you seem like you're a loony. And that's how that's still how the people in the town seem to think about it, even though they kind of won't really go there.

[01:06:19] That makes me think, you know, that's slow, that's slow change into the slow descent. You have you ever been in a relationship that is so bad, but you didn't really realize how bad it was until afterwards. And you were like when you look back,

[01:06:35] you're like, I guess just it started deteriorating to the point where like at the at its worst, you would you would know, obviously, that's crazy. But you you eased yourself into that badness in a way that you never really noticed.

[01:06:49] It sounds like everything can be explained a little bit. You can make excuses for any one thing. And before you know it, you're just living in a fucking Lovecraftian horror story. And especially like if it initially seemed really luscious and good and kind of

[01:07:03] unusual like it is, it's also, I think, a good analogy for that before. And it's only at a certain point, like in a destructive relationship or whatever, where it becomes so obvious that you can't like the trees are great.

[01:07:16] Obvious to the external world when they come and see it, they're like, wait, this isn't wrong. You might be you're just like, no, no. I mean, it's yeah, they kept drinking the water even though everybody realized no, no, you can't tell them like stop drinking the water.

[01:07:28] It was like that. The trees is a good example. So first they're just sort of swaying when there's no wind out again. Nobody really believes the family when they say that. And then they start turning this weird color that's not really a color.

[01:07:45] And then I love this towards the end where the thing has. And he said, yet admit that. Amid that tense, godless calm. This is I guess this is after it left right after it shot up the high bear buffs of the trees and the yard were moving.

[01:08:01] They were twitching morbidly and spasmodically, clawing in convulsive, epileptic madness at the moonlit clouds, scratching impotently in the noxious air as if jerked by some alien and bodyless link of lineage with subterranean horrors writhing and struggling below the black roots.

[01:08:21] So it's like the trees want to go up with it or and they're just it's like driven the trees insane. You know what I mean? Exactly like they're reaching out to want to be back with whatever thing has taken over. Yeah, they are tried.

[01:08:36] They want it too. Exactly. Right. Even though it's destructive for them, it's giving them black roots. Yeah. You know, there's a description about like when the horses go crazy. It says it took a week to track all four of the horses.

[01:08:47] When when found, they were seen to be quite useless and unmanageable. Something I don't know why this got to me. Something had snapped in their brains and each one had to be shot for its own good. It's like just breaking their brains.

[01:08:59] And again, you get the sense that like whatever this thing is, it's not meant to be around things like us. It just is breaking. It's breaking things. Yeah. And it's not even like not on purpose. Like no, it's just it's very existence. There's no design.

[01:09:15] This is what totally separates it from conspiracy theories. It is there's no explanation for it. There's no design and no sign. No way of like scientifically even approaching it. In fact, like the scientists are worse off than everybody else because they're

[01:09:32] convinced that it has to be some sort of natural explanation for it. And so they miss things that like the farmer doesn't miss the like the fact that the meteor is getting smaller or the fact and they kind of go in with that overconfidence.

[01:09:47] I mean, you could also just measured it. Yeah, exactly. You mentioned like the nuclear like bomb thing. It's sort of like they go in there, they fuck with it. And and because they fuck with it,

[01:10:01] like maybe arguably if it had just stayed in the meteor, like it would have been fine because nothing had happened before the scientists fucked with it. But they fuck with it, they splinter it, they expose the globule. And then they just go home after that.

[01:10:15] And so like they're done, like they've done their job, they couldn't figure it out. But because they have their prism, they like now that the farmers and his family have to deal with what they did. And so you could think of that as a critique of like science,

[01:10:32] you know, trying to delve into forces that they don't understand. And then just leaving us to deal with it. You know, like once they once they failed. I'm more impressed with this, that it's given that it's before like the nuclear age.

[01:10:47] Yeah, because that grayness of the, you know, this is it so clearly behaves like radiation. When water is irradiated, you don't know, you can you continue to drink it. And if you're thirsty, you can continue to drink it and you're just going to like,

[01:11:01] you know, just skin will fall off after a while. Right. And the results of a nuclear explosion in a nuclear winter, you know, we've seen images of Chernobyl forests. It reminded me of Chernobyl forests. But that's that wasn't a thing yet.

[01:11:16] And so this is this was science fiction and horror in its best. And I think, yeah, the arrogance of scientists is clear through. You think you know what this is and you shouldn't have fucked with it.

[01:11:28] A, if you think you know it, then you're already epistemologically worse off than just people who are admitting their ignorance. And then B, they actually manipulate it. Now, they're not this is what scientists do. They're not like they had a measure of scientific superiority. Right.

[01:11:44] And the journalist who like only writes like kind of snide and snarky like columns about it and the family. Can I read this? There is this description that Lovecraft gives us of, I think this is if there is a creature at all. This is the description we says,

[01:12:05] what presence had his cry and entry started up, halted by some vague fear? He heard still further sounds below. Indubitably, there was a sort of heavy dragging and a most detestably sticky noise as of some fiendish and unclean species of suction. Oh, man. Species of suction.

[01:12:23] It's a, you know, I think I'm this kind of writing, I'm like sometimes a little wary of like when they use too many adjectives and they're trying too hard. But I did not get the sense at all, even though like when I read the words,

[01:12:37] it's a very rich description that's kind of over, it could be over the top. Like with an associative sense goaded to feverish heights. He thought unaccountably what he had seen upstairs. Good God, what eldritch dream world was this into which he had blundered?

[01:12:49] But this is when he's on the steps. Just like he can't go upstairs because that's where he's the woman is who he's just mercy killed and then down there is his horse just books it. Like the horse and buggy just went home on its own. Yeah.

[01:13:05] And so do you get what I'm saying? Like this, the writing might be that. Yes. Like on its own, I might if you had just given me that sentence, I might have been like, oh, it's a little over the top. But it just works here.

[01:13:15] It's for me at least. Yeah, no, it does. And it gives that kind of again, like it is just different ways of describing the indescribable, just like getting us to be able to conceive of something

[01:13:31] that we don't have any concepts or categories that we could use to really try to fully appreciate what that experience might be. And I think the story is very aware of that. Like it has to do it that way.

[01:13:43] And even like the fact that we're getting this third and fourth hand is related to that. And it's good because the writer then has a conceit for not being able to describe it. And that gives, lends itself to our imagination just more.

[01:14:00] That's why I would never want to see a visual depiction of this. Apparently, I was reading that he was just like annoyed at how science fiction depicted like aliens as just like super unimaginatively, you know, like in Star Trek, sometimes we just call them

[01:14:17] forehead, forehead aliens because it's just like you're just a normal person. But now, no, now you have ridges on your forehead. Yeah, yeah. No, this is alien in the true sense of the term. Tamler, you know, I think that our listeners are

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[01:16:42] This is available for our listeners worldwide now. Thank you to Better Help for sponsoring this episode. There are properties of this thing that I wanted to talk to you about. So like it's contagion, it's spreading. The spreading nature of it is very scary, right?

[01:17:02] Like, and for some reason, that slow spread where it's like first affecting the animals, it's like it's it really is distressing. It never it's not like, you know, a beast that runs and chases after you or anything like that. Yeah, it is.

[01:17:18] It's permeates like the way that it spreads, it permeates. Right. And it gets you to sort of stick around to somehow. But it permeates things that but very gradually so you don't really notice it.

[01:17:31] The way that it's destructive is, you know, still even still unclear where it's like. Yeah. I mean, everything ends up some kind of like grayish dull dust. But but the way that it it drives some things crazy and then just like

[01:17:48] physically destroy some other things is kind of weird. Patternless sort of it doesn't. There's no way to figure out exactly like what it's M.O. Is it doesn't have an M.O. In the way that we would understand.

[01:17:59] I was particularly like freaked out at what so so this thing, as we said, is in the well, whatever whatever piece of the essence of the thing is in the well and they find the bones of the two boys in the well and they decide that

[01:18:14] they need to investigate the well. And they might like drain, they might take the water out. But the the scientist that is trying to analyze what's at the bottom, you know, they they stick a really long stick down there, a long pole.

[01:18:29] It says the ooze and slime at the bottom seemed inexplicably porous and bubbling and a man who descended on hand holds on hand holds with a long pole, found that he could sink the wooden shaft to any depth in the mud of the

[01:18:42] floor without meeting any solid obstruction. Right? So it's like it's going to the corner. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, this thing is and that's the way it sort of leaves it is that this thing is sort of creeping and it also it gets in your head.

[01:18:56] So one thing you might wonder is how the farmer and Ami is still alive and has and isn't like blocked away in an attic or turned into gray dust. And at some point I don't think I wrote it down, but

[01:19:08] they say that it's a good thing that he was so unimaginative as a person. Because once it like once you really start thinking about this thing, it did drive him a little crazy, but he's doing much better than a lot of

[01:19:20] the other people who came into close contact with it. And so the way they say it is like it's, you know, he wasn't an imaginative sort. And so this thing like that gets into your mind.

[01:19:33] If you do have an imagination, it's like that kind of way it's going to affect you worse and you get the sense that the narrator might be worried that you know, his imagination is going to lead him to go crazy in a way that like

[01:19:47] Ami was able to survive. Right. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He yeah, because the narrator does feel this thing and feel like very even though he was he never saw it came there 50 years later and left right away. Yeah.

[01:20:03] At the very beginning, I remember reading this at the very beginning and not understanding what like why the narrator was saying this says, Bill Fook have gone away and foreigners do not like to live there. French Canadians have tried it.

[01:20:17] Italians have tried it in the polls have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for the imagination and does not bring restful dreams at

[01:20:28] night. So that's interesting. The more capable you are of imagination, the more it affects you. Yeah. That's that's weird. That's yeah, that's because maybe it torments you because you aren't able to like understand it at all. And maybe if you're less imaginative, like that wouldn't torment you.

[01:20:48] I don't know what that's trying to get at exactly. But I also think like, I don't know this. You could see this as a kind of metaphor for climate climate change in that kind of slow creeping thing. It's just affecting everything slowly and soon going to make everything

[01:21:06] inedible and off and wrong. But you can also see like there's a way in which like social dynamics are also like it's a good metaphor for that. Just like enemy, enemy right? The socio like the feeling of kind of isolation is something that,

[01:21:21] you know, it's a phenomenon that sociologists talk about the sense that we're more atomized, that we're more isolated from the meaning that society brings. Yeah. And that happens very slowly and there's a lot that's kind of enticing about it too.

[01:21:35] And so we're drawn to it in a way. And and it just all of a sudden kind of takes over a society and like drives people and you know, I don't know, like you get the sense like we've talked

[01:21:47] about this or like our students are taking and there's stats for this. There's data for this like they're taking more medication. There's more mental health issues that's like doubled in the last 10 or 11 years.

[01:22:00] And you know, you could try to pin it down on iPhones or social media or whatever. But there's no real sense of why this is happening or how and it. But there's also like a sense that there's no stopping it. Like it's not going to get better. Yeah.

[01:22:17] By the way, I mean, I read somewhere that suicides have gone up because of the social isolation of the pandemic. But yeah, no, like absolutely the the knowing decay of yeah, or just these fun socially destructive phenomenon that just kind of attack you.

[01:22:40] You may have enough reflective power to see that it's bad, but you don't like there's your powerless to arrest it. It's a visual destruction of like. And you know, it's unclear. So the story starts out with everyone in the surrounding area has moved out.

[01:23:01] Like there is just abandoned building, like abandoned barns. And like all you see is like the remains of the people who used to live. So some people left the people who were far enough away, but could see happening that they left to the city.

[01:23:20] But what the most horrifying aspect of this, once I finished reading it and thought about it was that the whole point of the guy going there was they want to put a reservoir. Exactly. And it's just like

[01:23:36] though this is just going to spread like the feeling of dread that you're that you get when you realize whatever was in there, man, putting it in the water is exactly the worst thing that you could possibly do. Yeah. That's almost conventional horror.

[01:23:50] That's like, well, you know, it's OK. We'll just build this house on this Native American burial ground and, you know, it should be fine. No one will know that it was a burial ground. But but given that it's the narrative of what happens is lost now.

[01:24:05] It's gone from from Nahum to Ami to the narrator. Nobody wants to talk about it anymore. Yeah. The thought that they're just planning to build a reservoir there is just because no one's really gotten that story.

[01:24:19] No one knows that like it was in the well and that the water was like foul. And it could be that the way that the water is the way it infected everything else, I think you were saying this, like that it got through into the vegetation that way.

[01:24:30] Yeah. Yeah. And the narrator is not like he's the one person who might be in a position and he's fucked. No, I'm just never going to drink that water. Like I'm probably going to move to California like it'll probably take longer to get there.

[01:24:43] So he has kind of the ghost in the house. You get the fuck out. Don't ask questions. You don't try. Yeah. Yeah. Any other any other thoughts about this? It's a great like I wish, you know, I kind of regret not doing it as an audiobook.

[01:25:04] Like I would love to have the lights turned out and just listen to this. You can find it on YouTube. I saw I found it. I, you know, my only thoughts are it's kind of brilliant to

[01:25:15] to write a story that that can be read into in so many ways. Right. I did find myself hoping that what he wasn't talking about like white flight or like, you know, like black people or like painting society. No, I mean like, yes, right.

[01:25:34] Like black people and white people sleeping together, you know, like in that. Like, but I don't think like I think this is I think there are other ones that are that that one you could make that connection more strongly than this. Yeah.

[01:25:47] And we haven't, neither of us have seen Lovecraft Country, the TV show, right? I haven't. But apparently it is taking Lovecraftian stories and sort of applying them to like Wokely. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I don't know. Maybe I'll give it a shot. It's a really tight.

[01:26:05] Like I wouldn't I would want nothing to do with this as a like a visual thing. I think it's really it has its power because it's in words and and not like the whole point of it is like you said earlier that you can't

[01:26:18] describe it and we don't have the words for it. So anything you see is going to be, I don't know. You know, did you ever see annihilation? That's what this reminded me of, even though annihilation is not a

[01:26:30] I think it was inspired certainly not an adaptation of this annihilation as its own book, but that it has this thing that's going on in the zone or whatever. That's also making things like it's affecting their DNA, making them wrong, making it not as they ought to be.

[01:26:48] That does a pretty good job of like capturing strangeness without sort of giving you too much. There are plants and animals that are sort of shared like hybrid, weird hybrid. Right. Even though this isn't doing that, it is it's after the same thing, this unknowable,

[01:27:06] unexplicable inexplicable thing that scientists can't figure out. And it's just not of this earth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that strangeness really does get get killed with. If you give me a visual to it,

[01:27:21] like it's so much more powerful for me to just think of an undescribed indescribable thing at the center of all of this. You know, that I will say, though, that dance in annihilation that Natalie Portman does with like the Natalie

[01:27:36] Portman sort of double where they're mirroring each other, even though like you can describe it, that's strange in a way that like I had never seen before and like freaked me out and freaked my daughter out when I saw it with her too.

[01:27:52] Like like she was like she doesn't generally get scared at night of things, but she was terrified that night just of that thing. And so I think there probably are ways to visually represent at least the kind of feeling or mood of strangeness and like

[01:28:07] undescribable just wrongness of something that like you can do. But it's hard. Absolutely. It's it's why I think horror as a visual genre is so so difficult. But when people do it well, they do it well.

[01:28:22] But the people at least in my experience who do it so well do it well because they build up the like unknowing like then the parts before you see ever see anything are always the most terrible parts. And then it's disappointing when you see the thing.

[01:28:37] When you see the Jaws shark or something. Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. Like horror movies are totally like that where like the tension and the build up. And again, it's always when things are just a little bit off,

[01:28:49] but then they feel compelled in a way that he doesn't really and doesn't have to in the story to. Yeah, yeah. I'll say that the feeling a little bit off part in the beginning like that description of like there was something wrong with the animal tracks.

[01:29:02] And they're like right when they're starting to notice something's wrong. I think maybe that's what you were saying in your walk. That is the most horrifying to me. It's like a very like I've had dreams where like the lighting is a little weird.

[01:29:13] I can't quite see things as well. Like that slightly off feeling is terrifying. There were bats when I was walking like we have bats in Houston. It's probably this probably happened before on a walk, but all of a sudden just

[01:29:25] there were just bats everywhere and it was and they weren't like coming. Like it was just like a little weird. Like why are there all these bats like in my neighborhood right now? You know, like and you know, it wasn't dark. And so yeah.

[01:29:38] And then like there was yeah, there was this weird couple down by the bayou where I was walking and it is very like you once you're on the look on high alert for these things, this was why it must be really hard to be like a paranoid person.

[01:29:52] Or something like it's it's like people do weird things and you just don't notice it that often because you're kind of in your own world or you just not focus, you're focusing on other things. So pay close attention to anything and it's weird.

[01:30:07] It's going to be fucking weird. Yeah. Anyway, I hope we could do some more Lovecraft. Me too. Certainly let us know if you want to and which ones. Yeah. Yeah. I think we'll also get sort of better at talking about it too as we get.

[01:30:22] Yeah, it's a different genre than anything we've done. Yeah. And really anything that I read normally, I'm not a fan of this like I'm not a fan of horror fiction. I don't like Stephen King or you know, I like some of the older stuff

[01:30:34] like Edgar Allan Poe like he said, I love the Raven I love like that. That also has this kind of. But but yeah, so we should do more of this. This is fun. All right. Join us next time on Very Bad Wisdom.