From the Vault: Anthology of Horror, Volume 3

The time has come. Once more, Stuff to Blow Your Mind reaches into the depths of TV horror anthology history, pulls out a handful of episodes and spins science and wonder out of the monstrosities therein. For this year’s installment, Robert and Joe discuss episodes The Outer Limits and The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror. (Originally published 10/31/2019)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Time for a vault episode. This episode originally published on
October thirty one, Halloween Day, twenty nineteen, and it's our
Anthology of Horror Volume three. That's right, horror themed TV
anthology episodes that are used as a springboard to discuss

(00:28):
science and historically, you know, stuff to blow your mind topics.
This one is fun in that one of the anthology
episodes we discuss is a Simpsons tree House of Horror episode.
Uh So, if you enjoy the moments where we frequently
referenced Simpsons episodes, well then this is the main event
because we're going to spend a lot of time talking
about the Simpsons. Here. Let us be your hang in Kodos.

(00:53):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
I Heart Radio's House to Work. Hello, and welcome to
Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Gooley Lamb.
I forgot we were doing the voices. Let's see, I
am what's my name? Also, I'm Corrosive Joseph McCormick exactly,

(01:14):
and we're here with our excellent audio producer death Nicholas Johnson.
It is Halloween. It is Halloween itself, I believe. Yeah,
And so we are presenting Anthology of Horror volume three.
So this will be a sequel to our two previous
Anthology of Horror episodes where we look at old episodes
of horror anthology TV shows and figure out how they

(01:35):
might often be deeper than they seem. Yeah, I mean,
and also sometimes they're not very deep, but we we
have a knack for finding some hidden depth in horror
and science fiction. Now. In the last episode, which should
have been just a couple of days ago, we talked
about an episode of The Twilight Zone concerning how you
can know whether or not you are in a dream

(01:56):
or whether you are someone else's dream. And we talked
about an episode of the old horror anthology Monsters that
featured story about ghoules called down Below and related to
that to cities dealing with rat problems. Uh So, today
I think we were going to start by looking at
an episode of The Outer Limits, right, yes, the Sixth Finger.

(02:18):
This is the fifth episode of the first season of
ABC sci fi anthology series legendary sci fi anthology series
The Outer Limits, which originally ran from through It was
created by Leslie Stevens, and unlike a lot of these shows,
he didn't have a true horror or sci fi host.
It didn't have like a puppet or an actor that

(02:39):
spoke to you and introduced everything. But it did have
the control voice, which in and of itself is pretty classic.
Explain the control voice. So we will control the vertical,
we will control the horizontal. You know, it's like this,
this disembodied voice that is taking over your television set
and presenting you with some sort of cosmic transmission from
the out or Limits. I see, Is this the one

(03:02):
that's there's no need to adjust your television exactly? Okay,
I think I for some reason confused that I thought
that was like an alternate opening to the Twilight Zone.
Uh no, no, no, that Twilight Zone is always like
Rod Serling being like you were entering another dimension. Yeah, etcetera. Um. Yeah,
the Outer Limits was definitely more in the in the
science fiction domain. It was in many ways kind of

(03:24):
like the sci fi side of the coin to the
Twilight Zones horror, but it also got a little spooky,
a little scary at times. Uh and certainly falls under
the domain of our our mission statement here. Now wait
a second, sorry, I just realized that the Outer Limits
introduction you're doing here, that this might be the first
sort of hint or attempt at doing a kind of

(03:46):
found footage thing. Right. It's saying like you are receiving
a transmission. It's like implying that you're part of the
narrative because your TV set is something's being beamed from
another place to it. Yeah, to a limited extent. I mean,
once the episode starts, it's pretty leer. You're still safely
in television land, but you're also in a place that
still feels a little less safe. But this ain't I

(04:06):
love Lucy exactly. So The Outer Limits went two seasons
and produced forty nine episodes. Again, it's just always amazing
just how robust these some of these older seasons television were.
Not all of the episodes are classics, but some stand
out amid the all time greatest achievements in science fiction
television even today in this sort of golden age of

(04:29):
television and television options. Some of the most famous episodes
include uh for instance, Demon with a Glass Hand, which
was scripted by Harlan Ellison, but the Sixth Finger is
also rather iconic. Like a lot of the episodes, it
features some alien makeup effects that that are pretty astounding.
A lot of the alien designs on the Outer Limits,
uh kind of you know, leaned into old school ideas

(04:52):
of what an extraterrestrial might look like. You know. There
are a lot of oversized heads and long ears and whatnot,
like the rain mutant from the Silent Earth. Yeah, yeah,
so some of them are a little bit dated, but
but they were still pulled off exceptionally well, shot in
black and white, and and and you know, sometimes with
an almost avant garde kind of style. That being said,

(05:13):
there are some effects that they pulled off on that
show that stand up I think really well today. The
Galaxy being I think, is an exception where we had
like this kind of sharp contrast of black and white
where it seems to be just radiating on the screen.
But the Sixth Finger was directed by James Goldstone, who
also directed the pilot for a little show called Star Trek. Okay,

(05:35):
so that's before Kirk is the captain, right right, Yeah,
And it was written by Ellis st. Joseph, who did
a lot of TV work in his career and It
also starred British American actor David McCallum, who starred opposite
Robert Vaughan in The Man from Uncle. So McCollum stars
in this episode as the character Griffiths, a Welsh miner
who agrees to let a rogue scientist named Professor Mathers

(06:00):
experiment on him, which is of course always a solid
life choice. Mathers played a role, we're told, in the
development of atomic weaponry, and he wants to aid humanity instead,
and so he has invented of means of speeding up
evolutionary development and he wants to try it out on
a human being. Now, I can say, in the early
nineteen sixties this would actually be not that far fesched

(06:22):
of a scenario. I mean, I think there were a
number of scientists who were known at the time to
have worked on the creation of atomic weaponry who were
deeply publicly regretful of their work. Even Oh yeah, absolutely,
I mean to typified for the most part by the
the heavily quoted bit from from Oppenheimer Now and become Death,

(06:42):
where he himself is of course to quoting Vedic scriptures. Yeah,
because certainly the atomic bomb is this uh, you know,
continues to to loom over us as this the symbol
of of of of great human achievements that are put
to work in in the name of our worst impulses
as as a species, as a civilization. Totally and uh

(07:05):
and yes, So the idea of someone involved with that
wanting to do something that that you know, that it
saves us, that changes us, that you know, that puts
us in a different direction, I think that that makes
perfect sense. And I think a lot of people would
would agree that. You know, this, this period of of
of nuclear power, you know, is something we hope it's
it's kind of a bottleneck, right, It's like it's a
period of extreme danger to the species that we hope

(07:28):
to move past, we hope to evolve through. And and certainly,
you know, we tend to think of that evolution as
more or less biological and more cultural, more political. But
in a science fiction story, you know, it makes sense
to go with the more literal interpretation of that, like
human beings need to evolve beyond this point of extreme danger.

(07:51):
So I'm going to put a human being inside of
a crazy sci fi contraption and see what kind of
you know, peaceful being comes out the other side, right
as you increase our oldie to destroy ourselves in one another.
It seems like every year that goes by, we're just
sort of like barely eking. You know, we're just making
it if we don't use that power unless you change
us somehow, that it would be inconceivable to us to

(08:14):
use it right now. To be clear, evolution, as we've
discussed plenty of times on the show, is a process
of mutation and natural selection that takes place across the
vast periods of time due to various environmental stressors. Would
you agree with that? You're more Darwin's bulldog on this
show than I am. I mean, our modern picture of
evolution I think has become a little bit more nuanced,

(08:35):
and that we we learn more and more things that
uh that affect it, like epigenetic factors possibly and things
like that. But yeah, basically, I mean the standard model
is that there is variation and then there is selection
by the environment. And yeah, the big thing, of course,
the way this happens in nature is it happens over
many generations. The way evolution is often conceived of in

(08:58):
stories like this is it basically just means like changing
somebody like changing an individual's body in their lifetime, which
would be different from biological evolution. That would be more
like that, I don't know, bioengineering of the body. Yeah,
and and also I mean the other thing too, is
this this model in this science fiction story it has
this It kind of implies that there's an exact map

(09:21):
of our evolution inside of our bodies, inside of our genes.
You know, is if like we're a Pokemon and you
can look at a chart saying like how it advances
to its final form, if I have my Pokemon references correct,
I don't know my Pokemon all that well. But but
still yet it implies that there's like a certain path
that an organism should take and it's all written in
the genes, as opposed to being this process, uh you know,

(09:44):
being you know, driven by this process of natural selection
that depends so heavily upon environment. So on one hand,
it's a tad silly to think that some manner of
mad science process could simply speed up human evolution. But
again they're trying to make a statement here, so we'll
roll with it, okay, So as Griffith evolves and there
there this is a this is a real talking. By
the way, as far as um you know, anthology shows

(10:06):
Go and Outer Limits tended to be I think a
little more cerebral than the many of the other anthology
and you know shows that would come in its wake.
There's a lot of discussing what this means and discussing, uh,
you know, how we might apply it to our understanding
of the world. And so Griffith's you know, he goes
through these prod like a I guess a treatment of evolution.

(10:27):
Then he comes back out and he's changed, and he
talks about it, and he goes back in, he gets
another treatment, he comes back he's even different. But basically
these are the changes biological and mental that take place. Okay,
First of all, he gets an extremely over developed cortex
like a giant alien melon head, which again is very
impressive makeup effects, but at the same time it's kind

(10:49):
of a dated look for our idea of like a
far future speaking. Okay, so just to clarify, basically is
the idea that this is naturally how humans would evolve
if we were allowed to just you know, keep living
for thousands of years. But the scientist has figured out
a way to get us there. Down the already mapped
path ahead of time, right. I think that's what the

(11:10):
model is here. We just have to sort of, you know,
take their word for it on the sci fi process
that's getting it to us. Sure, so huge yet great Now,
as the title implies, one of the other major changes
is that there is a sixth finger on each hand,
so a total of twelve digits on the hands. Now

(11:31):
better to press nuclear launch buttons with yeah. In addition,
long l fears, which you know isn't I don't really
have a good discussion lined up for that, but there
are L fears uh, mental powers such as telekinesis, vastly
enhanced intelligence and ultimately enhanced empathy and understanding, and in

(11:52):
the original script, he also eventually develops a means of
photosynthitus and lives on pure light and kind of transcends
into a being of light. In the show, however, he
attempts to push himself even further in evolution, but his
wife betrays him out of love and turns him back
into his original self, you know, turns back the dial
on the evolution machine to try and get the you know,

(12:15):
the man that she loves back in the room. But
the process ends up killing him. It's just too much
for him. So it all makes for a great mad
science tale and one that I think works well thematically.
Plus McCallum has that kind of like old school Leslie
Howard Delivery, you know which show, which I really love,
because if you're watching a show like The Outer Limits
of the Twilight Zone, you do have to you find

(12:38):
a reason to love some of the more you know,
by today's standards antiquated uh aspects of say acting or
pacing or even the effects. And Joe, I have a
picture of of the the being here for you, and
it certainly anybody wants to see this. Just look up
The Outer Limits the sixth Finger. You can also find
it on like Hulu or Netflix, naming pretty much everywhere.

(13:00):
But you can also find lots of images of this.
It's very iconic cost him. Okay, so first of all,
I see the giant melon head and that look that
looks great because you fit so much brain in there.
I am immediately imagining some problems having to do with birth,
like the size of the human birth canal, which you
would have to assume it would also evolve to be

(13:21):
much bigger to allow a birth of that kind of creature,
though I believe it's it's widely thought that we're already
pretty much as sort of the limits of what our
bodies will allow in terms of cranial size, right, I mean,
And the other thing that comes to mind is our
discussions in our episode on brain soup and liquefied brains. Uh,
the actual size of the brain would not be as
important as the number of neurons within it, right, So,

(13:44):
I think by our modern understanding, it was kind of
it was very much in vogue at the time to
to see, like, you know, outside craniums as being a
sign of super intelligence and your fictional creatures. But I
think nowadays we realize that would not be necessary. But
I mean, like I are you mentioned this island Earth.
It shows up in a lot of sci fi from
the mid century that you've got aliens with huge old heads.

(14:05):
I guess because they're very smart. But also I like
how he's got extremely defined facial bone structure, like this
guy has cheekbones to die for? He does, yes. And
then of course there are the lf ears, which, again
we don't really have anything to say about them. I'm
not sure what point of ears would really accomplish evolutionarily.
Oh man, this seems like something that has to have

(14:27):
been explored in a kind of speculative paper, like somebody
who's an expert on the morphology of the ears and
how they help you here, How would you hear differently
if you had l f ears. I don't know, we
should come I bet we should come back to that,
because there is a good answer for it. Uh. You know,
there's a whole world of of elve and ear structure
that we could discuss in the future. But what I
want to talk about is that extra finger. Okay, so

(14:50):
we're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back,
we will get into the the five digit rule invertebrate
evolution and we'll discuss the possibility of a sixth finger
coming into play. All right, we're back. So we've been
talking about the classic Outer Limits episode The sixth Finger,
about a man who speeds up his own evolution within

(15:13):
his own lifetime and he gets a gigantic melon head,
he gets really defined facial bones, beautiful cheekbones, he gets
elf ears, but he also grows a sixth finger. And
so Robert, you looked into what it would mean to
grow a six finger is that kind of thing possible?
Why or why would not we Why wouldn't we see
that in human evolution or primate evolution. Yeah, it's really

(15:36):
it's really fascinating because, first of all, the five digit
rule does run pretty deep invertebrate evolution. According to Michael Coates,
Associate professor in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy
at the University of Chicago and co editor of Evolution
and Development, writing for Scientific American, the condition of having
no more than five fingers and toes probably goes back

(15:56):
before the evolutionary divergence of amphibians and amniots, birds, mammals, reptiles.
We were talking three hundred and forty million years ago.
Go back three hundred sixty million years ago, and there's
evidence of tetrapods with six, seven, eight digits. Uh. The
the decrease to five or fewer came about alongside the

(16:17):
development of sophisticated wrist and ankle joints. So basically, the
creatures with more digits had simpler skeletons and simpler limb mobility,
and they were generally, you know, something along the line
of flippers. Because we're talking about creatures of the water here.
But as these limbs evolved to allow certain organisms to

(16:37):
stand or to push off with those limbs essentially, you know,
as they move towards being land creatures, we see the
reduction of digits, and indeed we tend to see, you know,
the further reduction of digits because the rule of evolutionary
thumb here is that it's easier to lose something than
it is to gain something. Absolutely. I mean you can

(16:57):
see that with many tetrapod mammals to for example, look
at a dog's paw. I mean, they have a sort
of vestigial other thumb type thing up there on the
on the leg, but basically they got four toes that
go go down on the ground. It's the what the
do claw? Yeah, yeah, up there? Or I mean even
look at the feet of ungulates. Yeah, I mean, horses

(17:19):
are a great place to look because we see how
far it's reduced now. But you know, various prehistoric horses
had three or four toes. And when animals actually do
gain digits well, uh Coats points out that the lack
of true six toed or six fingered creatures in today's
fauna quote highlights some sort of constraint. For instance, one

(17:40):
of the rare cases we see of you know, the
creature gaining digits is the marine reptile uh Ethosaurus. This
is the these sixty years ago. We've talked abou about
them on the show before. They essentially are dolphin like creatures.
They have that same sort of shape, but they they
are reptiles um and as a result alt to returning
to the sea, they eventually developed paddles that sometimes had

(18:03):
you know, quite a number of digits in there. Okay,
so the athosaurs, like the marine mammals of today, in
their evolutionary history, went to land and then went back
to water, right, Yeah, So, which again lines up nicely
with this idea of of as long as you're a
sea creature, you can have multiple digits within that paddle.
But when you start using that paddle increasingly again over

(18:25):
you know, generation after generation after generation, if it's used
to push off, if it's new, used even to hold
up your weight, it becomes increasingly um more beneficial to
have fewer digits in that at the end of that limb. However,
we do see creatures like the mole and the panda,
both of which benefit from remodeled wrist bones that essentially

(18:47):
serve as a six finger, but which are not true fingers.
And if you haven't seen a picture of this, I
encourage everyone to look up pictures of panda's paw or
the laws of a mole, and you will. You know,
if you start doing some counting, you'll be like, okay,
one too, three, four, five, and oh kind of six

(19:08):
again not a true thumb. But for the panda, for instance,
it serves as a thumb. It has like the roll
of a thumb in helping them handle food. The panda,
of course, is the herbivore of the bare world, and
and the and it has to eat constantly, and therefore
it has eventually used the point where it needs a
little extra thumblike appendage to get the job done. Meanwhile,

(19:31):
for moles, uh, this extra little thumblike appendage it helps
them tunnel through the earth, so being almost more like
a flipper, Yeah, help it swim through the earth. Yeah.
These are, in Coats's words quote, rather baroque solutions to
the apparently straightforward task of growing an extra finger. So
you know, if we're going to think back to our

(19:52):
outer limits example here, it would be far more likely
that one would grow some sort of you know, you know,
a paddle of a pseudo finger as opposed to growing
a full finger. No matter how many keyboards you're having
to use, no matter you know, how many you know,
you know, mad science gadgets you're having to manipulate with
your far future digits. But I want to talk about

(20:13):
another even more amazing example from real world biology. And
for this we have to turn to the world of
the Lemur, as recently reported in Smithsonian. The I I
Lemur known for its weird looks and it's elongated middle
finger which it uses to fish grubs out of trees.
You may have seen this in various documentaries before. It

(20:36):
looks like a tree goblin and it's I think it
has unfortunately suffered from like superstitious killings in the past,
but it has this it's nocturnal, and it has this
fabulous super elongated in some people's eyes, and I think
it's creepy middle finger which it uses you have to
fish out a grub and uh and then it's it's
you know, it's this highly specialized digit and once it

(20:59):
gets the about I was reading that it will also
like pluck the top of the grub. Off and like
suck the inside of the grub out, like it is
just a highly evolved grub the eater. But in addition
to this, it also boasts an extra tiny thumb or
pseudo thumb, complete with a fingerprint. This according to Adam
Hearstone Rose, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at North Carolina

(21:22):
State University, It's a pseudo thumb made of bone and cartilage,
but it can be moved in three directions, much like
a human thumb. Now you might wonder, why, why why
is this creature so greedy for crazy digits? It already
has this super elongated specialized digit. What does it need
an extra digit for? You know what? I realized The
II hand reminds me of I just looked it up

(21:44):
to see it again. It reminds me of the of
klaus Kinsky's hands in Werner Hertzog's nose fur Aw too,
He's got the long nails and the creepy fingers. Yeah,
it does. It does seem like a true creature of
the night, doesn't it. But basically it seems to have
developed this this additional pseudo thumb because the other fingers

(22:08):
are elongated and specialized like Essentially it's lost that middle
fingers specialized usage, and so it has had to develop
a pseudo thumb to make up for that special specialization.
And to be clear, you'll you'll sometimes find a six
finger occurring on a human as a as a birth defect.
And in fact, since we're celebrating Halloween, it's worth noting
that Hannibal Lecter in the books um has an extra

(22:32):
digit on his left hand like that that occurs, but
it is not, you know, it's not a naturally you know,
evolved feature. So you're probably wondering where does this leave
our six fingered man in the outer limits. So Griffith
kind of essentially dodges the question when at one point
of scientists actually asked him about the six finger, like

(22:52):
what's what's up with that extra finger, and he just
kind of starts talking about something else. But but it's implied,
especially given the prior scene in which he played as
a piano, that it enables the better manipulation of interface
tools like the keys of a piano or the keys
of a computer, etcetera. Now, if again, this is suggesting
this would be selected for an evolution, that would imply

(23:15):
that at some point people are like dying or not
reproducing as much because they can't type as fast. Yeah. Yeah,
that's that's where we get into some some problems with
this this model if you look at it too closely. Um.
I also had to realize as I was typing up
notes for this, I was hyper conscious of how little
I actually use my pinky fingers while typing. Now, ultimately

(23:36):
I'm probably using some sort of weird hybrid of of
actual typing with a little hunt and peck thrown in there.
But yeah, I don't know that I use my pinkies
all that much, if at all, Unless I'm doing some
sort of weird hot key, I definitely use mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's that's semicolon, you know, for cle and sentences. No, yeah,
I wait, I gotta think of okay, yeah, okay, yeah,

(24:00):
I do it, Okay, all right, to each is all right.
I'm not bragging. I mean no, no, I mean I thought,
because my pinky fingers are way better than yours, well
you know they're not. They're not holding me back. I'm
just saying that, like, you know, when I catch myself typing,
I'm like, I don't think the pinkies are really carrying
their weight here. So it's kind of silly to imagine

(24:21):
a scenario in which being able to type extra hard
and be able to hit like crazier hot keys on
a keyboard would would have this kind of impact on
human evolution. At the same time, maybe it's for the
next level of PC gaming. Yeah, that's but But on
the other hand, it is true that habitual tool use
has led to the evolved state of the modern human hand,

(24:44):
including thumb length. So tool use has shaped our bodies,
it has shaped our hand in the past, so it's
not ridiculous to say that the future human evolution would
continue to reshape the human hand. But there you would
be contending with the fact that I think there's you know,
in the environments that we mostly live in today, not
being able to use a tool as well doesn't usually

(25:07):
mean that you're going to, you know, on average, have
fewer children than the people next door. That that seems
like a thing that would be more the case in
like a hunter gatherers survival scenario exactly. Yeah, And ultimately
we have to remember that you were no longer subject
to purely natural selection at this stage of the human experience.
You know, it's it's more of an unnatural selection. We

(25:28):
also have to consider the potential of directed evolution that
we will, in the future continue to figure out ways
to manipulate our own genes, which brings up the possibility
that perhaps our far future selves have simply added on
an extra finger. Right, it's not a situation where we
evolved when, but we realize, hey, having two pinkies on

(25:48):
each hand would be nice. Let's do it, and then
we just we just do it. We just check it
off on the menu of g manipulation, which which reminds
me of Less Grossman's The Magician and the sci fi
uh TV series that's based on it. There's a there's
a dark wizard in the show called the Beast, and
he has an extra finger on each hand because in

(26:11):
the in The Magician's casting spells involves a lot of
like fine manipulation of your digits, like sort of like
the the use of moodras and whatnot. Uh So, if
you had an extra digit on each hand, you'd be
able to cast improve variations of spells. You'd be able
to cast spells that a normal individual with five digits
would be incapable of. Well, that makes me wonder who

(26:32):
invented those spells then, I mean, I guess they're of
his own creation. Well, yes, and of course there are
a lot of inhuman being entities in this world as well.
He could be going to them for such spells. However, uh,
you know, discussing this idea of like, you know, growing
extra fingers to manipulate technology, etcetera. As Peter Ward pointed

(26:52):
out in his Scientific American article The Future of Man,
how will evolution change humans? We also have to consider,
you know, not only like computer interfaces like keyboards, but
more drastic interfaces, some of the sort of futuristic mind
computer interfaces that we've discussed in the show before. Um.
He points to a quote from George Dyson in his

(27:14):
book Darwin Among the Machines. Quote, everything that human beings
are doing to make it easier to operate computer networks
is at the same time, but for different reasons, making
it easier from computer networks to operate human being. Darwinian evolution,
in one of those paradoxes with which life abounds, may
be a victim of his own success, unable to keep

(27:34):
up with non Darwinian processes that it has spawned. I
think there's a lot to that. I mean, I would say,
I mean, this is in the nineteen nineties, before you
could anticipate a lot of the stuff that's going on
now with say social media, in the many ways that
our our technology is influencing us. But yeah, just one
thing I would say here is that this person probably
lived through the transition from command line computers to graphical

(27:58):
user interfaces, and so the obviously having a graphical user
interface makes it way easier for people who don't know
much about how the computer works or understanding directories and
commands and all that stuff to use it because it's intuitive.
It's easy. You just look at the thing, you recognize that,
you click on it. All that, but also those graphical
user interfaces I think led to all of the ways

(28:19):
that computers are now just completely attention monopolizing devices. Absolutely.
So Ward basically concludes that we'll have to go one
of three different ways as humans continuitive to evolve. Uh.
There's these There's the stasis direction where we mainly just
stay the same but with minor tweaks, and also a
kind of merging of races. There's also a speciation in

(28:43):
which we break off into different species. Uh, you know,
and hopefully none of them are are more locks, because
ultimately a speciation is the model that H. G. Wells
explorers in the time machine. And then he also talks
about the board grout, which is symbiosis of machines. I
find it kind of hard to believe that there could

(29:03):
be human speciation unless you're talking about space colonization, like
fully separating human populations from one another so that they
cannot physically come together at all for you know, hundreds
of hundreds of years. Even if you sent some of
them below ground to man all the machines and keep
the surface world running, well, I guess it would depend

(29:25):
on whether you could go back and forth between I mean,
I think as long as humans stay in physical contact
with each other, I find it hard to believe that
there will be actual human speciation. But then, yeah, space
colonization does seem like that creates a kind of like
a certain hard divide. It is it is the equivalent
of having a species wind up on an island and
um and and co eval. So War doesn't specifically chime

(29:48):
in on the six finger thing. He doesn't reference that,
but he does dismiss the idea of giant brained futurized
humans like we see in the sixth Finger. He says, quote,
the big brain vision has no real scientific basis. The
fossil record of skull sizes over the past several thousand
generations shows that our days of rapid increase in brain
size are long over. Yeah. In fact, we we already peaked, right,

(30:11):
We're we're our average brain sizes in the modern world
are smaller than they used to be. Yeah. But ultimately,
this episode of Outer Limits is not just about biological evolution,
is about the evolution of of what it means to
be human? Uh, you know, can is there a potential
for us to change in a more meaningful way? Can
we become, for instance, more empathetic? Can we become more
present as a species kinder? Uh? This is the idea

(30:34):
that the episode is playing with and hoping for and
and ultimately, like that's where it gets to at the
end with this, he the character, while he's still more human,
is you know, possessed by this this quest for vengeance
against the people who operate the mind in which he works.
And by the end of it, he has evolved beyond

(30:54):
these feelings of vengeance. Like there's a period in the
in the episode where he wants to use his crazy
you know future brain powers to go you know, wreak
havoc on them, but by the end of it he realizes, no,
that is not the way. Well, I would say, I
think it certainly is possible for us to become more empathetic, um, uh,
you know, less vengeful and violent and all that kind

(31:16):
of stuff. But I don't think you necessarily need biological
changes for that to happen. I mean, I think we've
seen massive changes in the levels of like violence and
vengefulness you see in the average person across different societies
through time, and the main changes are through like culture,
like like social norms, how children are educated, what's acceptable

(31:36):
socially within your friend groups, and the culture. Right, So
changes in the software as opposed to the hardware. Yeah,
but then of course we have to we have to
consider like the rate of which software can change, at
the rate of which it may evolve, uh, you know
how and no matter how pleasant uh a human civilization's
current software, maybe how much has to happen to it

(32:00):
to make it well to to use a naughty word
on this show, devolve into some lesser state. Well, yeah,
I mean, I guess that's the danger. I mean, yeah,
cultural changes can can be undone, maybe as quickly as
they can be done, or even quicker. By the way,
I was reading about the original script and the production
of this episode of The Outer Limits, and according to

(32:22):
the Outer Limits companion by David J. Scoe, uh Dorothy Brown,
the ABC sensor at the time, had objected to the
Darwinism and promotion of evolution inherent in the sixth finger
so one. In fact, one of the early deletions from
the script was a speech on the topic of evolution.
Well that's funny, I mean again, like to really explore

(32:44):
the what's happening to the character in the episode is
not actually Darwinian evolution. But but that's funny. Yeah, I mean,
I guess it does rely on the idea that there's
like a roadmap for our species generally, which also is
not part of Darwinian evolution. So it's not like not
really hitting the viewer over the head with, you know,
a hardcore speech on evolution. But I think just the

(33:05):
mere fact that they were citing evolution and speaking speaking
of evolution um and the works of Darwin as being
you know, something that we can actually you know, hang
our scientific hat on. Um, they were afraid it was
going to offend people. Well yeah, I mean I I
grew up surrounded by that kind of opposition and and
sensitivity to ideas about evolution. But I I don't know,

(33:29):
despite that, I'm kind of surprised that it made ABC
censorship priorities. Yeah, especially in a show like this, which
you know, ultimately is you know, kind of high minded
and stuffy. Well, I guess also trading and science fiction,
which would have had a you know, a certain amount
of appeal to younger audiences as well. But still absolutely say,
this is a pretty solid episode of The Outer Limits.

(33:50):
I think it stands up really well today. You have
to go into it knowing you're not going to get
an action packed, um you know episode here this is
this is a very talky episode mode, but it's it's
really solid, well shot, well acted, um worth checking out.
I think a lot of the best anthology, sci fi
and horror episodes are not actually action packed. Uh. They

(34:11):
often tend to be rather subdued, just dealing with a
strange idea as discussed by a handful of characters. Yeah,
and you know, sometimes you do see this kind of
unevenness to the perceived budget of a show, like you
know that some of those anthology episodes maybe they had
a had a few more bucks to spend on the cast,
on the locations, and some are essentially kind of bottle

(34:32):
episodes where there's just like one set or it's it's
almost kind of a stage piece, but there's you know
when it when it's really well done, you know that
will certainly get you there to serve. Man, is an
action packed either is? Yeah, it's just and that's the
one that we talked about last year. Right, speaking of Joe,
what is your selection your final selection for this year's

(34:53):
Anthology of Horror Episodes? Well, I wanted to talk about
my favorite all times since Treehouse of Horror episode Citizen Kang.
This is from Simpson's tree House of Horror seven. It
originally aired October, and I think this is this is

(35:13):
not only one of my favorite uh Simpson's bits, ever,
I think it is some of the best political satire
in American media history. Yeah. This this is just a
great tree House episode period. I rewatched it the other
night with the family, and I must have seen it
a dozen times in the in the past because in
addition to Citizen Kang. It also contains the genesis tub.

(35:36):
This is where Lise's tooth grows a civil of civilization
after it gets a little static shock from Bart, which
is very similar to a tale by George R. Martin
that was adapted by the nineteen nineties revival of The
Outer Limits more or less along the same time. And
then this episode also has The Thing and I, which
is a great more of sort of a straight up

(35:58):
horror piece, which contains twist ending that I have to
say is nearly identical to the twist ending of a
certain top twenty nineteen horror film. Okay, well, let's not
say any more than that. I think you know the one, right, Yeah,
I know exactly what you're talking about, but I don't
want to spoil it for anybody else. All Right, we
need to take a quick commercial break, but we will
be right back. Thank Okay, So this Simpson's tree House

(36:22):
of Horror again. It aired at the end of October nineteen,
and at the time it actually aired, the United States
was right in the final days of a presidential election
that was pitting incumbent Democratic President Bill Clinton against Republican
Senator Bob Dole from Kansas. And in this tree House
of Horror segment, alien invaders Kang and Kodos, who are

(36:45):
from a certain ringed planet who they prefer not to
mention um. They plot to take over the world by
body snatching both Clinton and Dole and taking their places
in the election as lookalikes, and the idea is stated
pretty dire actually by Kang and the guys of Bob Dole.
A reporter asks the Kang Dole Senator Dole, why should

(37:06):
people vote for you instead of President Clinton? And Kang
Dole responds, it makes no difference which one of us
you vote for. Either way, your planet is doomed, doomed
replacing both. That's a good idea, right, Yeah, then there's
no risk, right either way, they're gonna win. Yeah. So
in this uh, in this little plot, Homer becomes aware

(37:27):
of the alien takeover plot because he happened to be
on the alien ship when Clinton and Dole were replicated.
So he decides he's got to reveal Kang and Kodos
for what they are. So he runs on stage at
an event I think at the Capitol Building where both
candidates are speaking, and he rips off their disguises, revealing
them both as hideous space reptiles, but Kangan Kodos seem unfazed, declaring,

(37:51):
it's true we are aliens, but what are you going
to do about it. It's a two party system. You
have to vote for one of us. And then some
in the crowd suggests voting for a third party candidate,
and Kodo says, go ahead, throw your vote away. So
the Americans, of course, end up electing Kang, who immediately

(38:11):
enslaves all humans and he puts them to work constructing
a giant laser to aim at some third, unspecify, unspecified planet.
And then Marge laments the state of affairs that they're
they're suffering under right now, and Homer smugly declares, don't
blame me. I voted for Kodos. I think this this

(38:31):
might be the best nine minutes of political science, satire
and American pop culture history. Uh. And I don't want
to be misunderstood there based on some of the themes
in the episode, because, of course, a major theme here
is the pointlessness and futility of some parts of the
democratic process. I don't want to be mistaken for saying
I think it makes no difference who you vote for

(38:53):
for president, or that all politicians are the same. You know,
I think that's the kind of thing that it's like
easy to say and feel superior or about saying when
you don't want to put in the work to learn
what's going on and what's at stake. Right, it was
the kind of statement I would have found very attractive
when I was like a first year college student, kind
of intellectually lazy but wanting to stake ammorl claim. Yeah,

(39:15):
I're wanting to to differentiate yourself from you know, the
politics that you might have been born into. It's easier.
Instead of saying, actually, I disagree with you completely and
I go to this side, you can just say, oh,
I think I don't sorry, I don't go for any
of it, right, Yeah, you know, I can remember being
like that. I wanted to have a strong opinion without
having to do the work to earn an opinion. So

(39:35):
I don't think that way anymore. But at the same time,
while I don't generally feel the field that's always true
about elections, I think there is some real cutting wisdom
in that satire, because even though it's not the case
that all politicians are the same, in elections don't matter
people often overestimate how much their democratic choice will make
a difference to particular issues they really care about. I mean,

(39:58):
there's so many big problems that you thought electing the
right person might solve, and then that person was elected
and the problem stayed the same or got worse. But
even more than that, I think this episode is brilliant
at highlighting the absurd and nonsensical conclusions often reached by
group choice algorithms that we follow in our politics. And

(40:20):
that's sort of what I wanted to look at here
in relation to this episode. In that mein, I want
to explore the question of whether or not the election
of Kang is an example of the Abilene paradox. Robert,
had you ever come across this concept before? I don't
believe I had no. Yeah, I I think this is
very useful to have in your tool kit of of

(40:41):
concepts to apply to the world, because it's absolutely something
that explains many unfortunate group behaviors in politics, in business,
even in like family vacations and and hang out with
your friends. Uh So, this paradox was explained in a
nineteen seventy four paper by the George Washington University scholar
Jerry B. Harvey, which was published in the journal Organizational Dynamics,

(41:06):
and I'm going to give a kind of updated scenario
here for you to consider. So imagine the following scenario.
You are hanging out with your friends p J, Nancy,
and Jamie Lee. It's October. You're all just finished babysitting.
You're at Nancy's house carving a pumpkin, and you're watching
an old Howard Hawks movie on TV, The Thing from
Another World. You're hanging out, You're having an okay time.

(41:27):
But then suddenly Nancy says, hey, does anybody want to
go out and see a movie? And p J says, yeah,
that could be cool. Let's see what's playing. So you
look up show times at the local theater and the
only show left tonight is a midnight showing of The
Purge seventeen as the World Purges. Uh So p J says, yeah,
we could see that if you guys want, and Nancy says, yeah, okay,

(41:49):
I could be down to go to the Purge, and
Jamie Lee says sure, if you two want to see it,
I'm in. So since all of your friends agreed, you
resign yourself. You say, okay, let's see it. Tickets are
fourteen dollars apiece. Uh. The movie stars Fred Durst and
Tim Allen. It's three and a half hours long. At
multiple moments, you consider leaving the theater, but you don't
want to go out alone and leave your friends behind,

(42:10):
So you sit through this whole terrible movie, and when
the credits finally roll, you leave the theater with a
throbbing headache, and you immediately ask why did we do
that to ourselves? And Jamie Lee says, I don't know.
It sounded pretty bad to me, but I thought the
rest of you wanted to see it, And Nancy says, well,
I didn't want to see it. I just thought the
rest of you did. And p J says, well, don't

(42:32):
look at me. I just said I was okay with
it if you guys wanted to go. Weren't you the
one who suggested it? And Nancy, the one who did
suggest going to a movie finally says well, I just
thought you guys might be bored hanging out at the house.
So it turns out that none of the four of
you actually wanted to see this movie, and yet somehow
you collectively decided it would be the best thing to

(42:53):
do with your time together. Everybody agreed on a course
of action that nobody individually wanted. Robert. Can I assume
this experience is somewhat familiar to you? Yeah? Maybe from
I think probably the best example I can think of
is like when as a family when I was a kid,
sometimes we would agree on what to watch, and you know,

(43:16):
sometimes it's something that one of us had a definite
steak in, but other times it kind of felt like
this where we ended up agreeing to watch a movie
just because it was it was a major film that
came out, and we're like, Okay, I guess we're watching
Oh uh God. I can't even think of a good
example of just something, you know, whatever the big mainstream
family film was that had to hit theaters and was

(43:37):
now on VHS Christmas with the Cranks. Well, maybe not
that bad, but but stuff stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah,
So this would be a prime example of what Harvey
calls the Abeleyan paradox, and the name Abolean paradox comes
from the story Jerry Harvey tells to open his paper.
It's similar to the story I told, but it's about
a family in Texas making a long drive to a

(44:00):
Baleen in a non air conditioned car in hot weather.
It's a completely miserable experience, as you would expect. And
it turns out nobody actually wanted to go to Abilene
in the first place. Every member of the family just
thought the other family members wanted to go and then
failed to communicate their actual preferences. And as Harvey puts
it in this article, the Abilene paradox is the fact

(44:22):
that quote organizations frequently take actions in contradiction to what
they really want to do and therefore defeat the very
purposes they're trying to achieve. And any characterizes the Abilene
paradox says not a failure to manage disagreement, but a
failure to manage agreement. Uh So, when I first read

(44:43):
about this at some point in the past couple of years,
I was like, oh my god, this kind of thing.
I recognize so much of this in the world. How
have I gone this long without a name for it?
It seems to me to be a problem for group
choice at all kinds of levels. Again, you mentioned you
know a family trying to to decide what movie to see,
but you know a group of friends trying to decide

(45:04):
what to do, how to spend their Sunday, or a
democratic society trying to elect their leaders. Many kinds of
group choice problems I think arise, of course, from the
inability to manage conflict. But this is the opposite. Harvey
argues that even more group choice problems arise from the
inability to manage agreement. And another real world example that

(45:25):
Harvey gives in his paper is the Watergate scandal. He
he quotes a number of people involved in Nixon's came
the Nixon campaign's dirty Tricks team, who all claimed privately
that they had doubts not only about the morality about
but about the practical wisdom of their scheme that to
each of them privately seemed like the payoffs were not

(45:46):
really worth the risks. But they each assumed they were
the only ones with such doubts, and thus acted along
with the rest of the group in a way that
hurt all of them, even though they privately most or
all thought it was a bad idea. Uh So, it's
like Nixon wants to purge, Lily wants to purge. So
I guess, I mean, I don't really want to purge,
but if everybody's in the mood to purge, I guess

(46:08):
I'm in right and uh. In a lot of his paper,
Harvey just analyzes what he sees, or like the he
he thinks the common organizational symptoms of the Abilene paradox.
For example, he talks about the idea of action anxiety. Yeah.
He explains this by quoting Shakespeare's Hamlet. He says, action
anxiety is that which quote makes us rather bear those

(46:30):
ills we have than fly to others we know not,
of which, of course, is what you know. Hamlet talks
about the idea of going on through pain rather than
like ending it and going on to see what undiscovered
country lies beyond the grave. Um. But it's a fear
of acting on your actual preferences, an environment that makes
pursuing the path that you don't want seem like the

(46:52):
less scary option than asking for the path that you
do want. Well. That's also touched on a little bit
in Macbeth. Right, idea about it having waited so far
through the blood that it's better to just go on
through to the other side of this this blood lake
than to turn back around, even if turning back around
is what you really want to do. Yeah, And he
and Harvey roots a lot of this actually and appeals

(47:14):
to human psychology. He says, you know, some of our
greatest fears are expressed as negative fantasies about fear, about
fears of separation and ostracization. You know, it's like terrifying
to be the one to step out and say, I'm
going to challenge the momentum of this group that you
know that like whether it's even in simple things like

(47:36):
going out to a movie. Like you're going out to
a movie with friends. I mean, maybe you're comfortable enough
with the friends to say no, actually I don't want
to do this. But like a lot of times, especially
if you don't know people as well, you'd rather just
not be thought of as the jerk who said let's
not do it. Yeah, because you're engaging, and you're you're
kind of engaging in this group. Think you know, it's
something as simple as say, like a group of friends

(47:58):
getting together to to play Dungeons and Dragons. You know
you're not, you know, you're not a dirty tricks counsel
or whatever. You know you're not. All you're doing is
just trying to hang out and play a game. But
you know, still don't want to shake the boat if
somebody wants to get fried pickles, you know, um, even
if you really don't care for fried pickles all that much. Right,

(48:19):
But maybe the person who suggested it doesn't either, and
they're just saying because they thought somebody else did. Yeah,
And so you reach a point where every week you
order fried pickles, even though nobody's really crazy about fried pickles,
and everybody probably feels a little bad about eating them
every week. Yeah. So in the end, Harvey comes up
with a couple of recommendations for diagnosing and dealing with
UH with abilene paradox is in a business context. Unfortunately,

(48:42):
there's no special magic trick. Basically, he says, he thinks
the best way to deal with it is for an
authority figure who detects a situation like this to call
a meeting, frankly, articulate their doubts in a group setting,
and then ask others to share their honest thoughts. If
you're an authority figure, you have you know, it's safer
for you to go out on a limb and question

(49:02):
the direction that you're going in, all right, I mean,
that's that's why they make the big bucks, right. This,
This is the this is the moment when they can
really earn that higher pay that the higher pay grade
right right be the authority figured that comes in and
shuts down, uh, you know, things that nobody really wants
to do, or that there's no real advantage to doing
from a business standpoint. Yeah. Now, in the political context,

(49:25):
I think the Kang in Kodos situation kind of highlights
a satirical absurd version of this, with the idea that uh,
you know, obviously humans would all recognize like, okay, we
we are all in agreement. We're in agreement. We don't
want either Kang or Kodos. That's the position shared by
everybody voting at this point. But they're able to cause

(49:46):
this action anxiety about organizing any kind of third option,
the idea of throwing your vote away on any kind
of third party candidate. When you've got Kang in Kodos,
there is going out on a limb. You fear ostracization,
you fear being separated, you fear being different, and so
eventually they just kind of decide, well, which one will
I take, Hanger Kodos, And despite everybody agreeing that neither

(50:09):
option is wanted, but it keeps everybody together I mean,
humanity is united at the end in their enslavement to
these uh, these terrible alien overlords. No they're not. They're
still bickering. Don't blame me. That's genius of it is there.
I mean, they're essentially unified, but they still have the
mindset of division. Uh uh yeah. And so I think

(50:31):
the way around that, of course, would be that it
requires some kind of uh risk of leadership for somebody
to say, hey, wait a minute, can we try to
organize some way to get around this too? You know,
the two options we've got here that we all agree
we don't want. That sounds like a really wicked problem
to deal with them. Well, yeah, I mean, I think
the point the writers are making there is that we're

(50:52):
just not good at organizing that kind of agreement effectively. Now,
what do we do about the fact that we're often
not good at me and ing agreement? And this leads
to repeated absurdities like the kang and like the election
of kang Um. Well he actually Harvey ends his paper
with a strangely philosophical note for an organizational dynamics paper. Uh.

(51:13):
He says that, you know, sometimes these situations simply cannot
be resolved, and he calls to mind the myth of Sysyphus,
the character from Greek mythology who was condemned to forever
repeat the task of pushing a boulder up a hill,
only for it to fall back down to the bottom again,
making a mockery of his effort. Says, not only painful
but pointless. Uh. And in Albert Camus version of the myth,

(51:35):
he adds a detail that sometimes, in his endless loop
of absurd toil, Sisyphus would get near the top of
the hill, but then release the boulder of his own accord,
letting it roll back down to the bottom on purpose.
And Harvey says, in this act he could transcend the
absurdity of his struggle. Uh. And I think this is

(51:56):
sort of the bull's eye of existential philosophy, right, life
is absurd, and you transcend that absurdity by recognizing your
radical freedom and acting authentically, which means basically without lying
to yourself about the absurdity of life. Like this is
when you write in a third candidate, Now, I think
actually in this case it might be more like voting
for Kang or not voting or something what While recognizing

(52:19):
the absurdity and unwinnable nous of the scenario. So I
don't know if that's the best thing to do in
the alien election. I would say, actually try to organize
the third party. But I think the uh, this whole
discussion actually does bring us back to real questions about
the field of astro politics. I mean, this is something

(52:39):
I think we could devote whole episodes to in the future.
There's actually a field of study and people have written
about like what would happen if aliens arrived on Earth?
Like what would be the political response to that? How
would different world economic and military powers behave? Uh, you know,
would we all ban together, would we put aside our
differences and are elf interest and say we need to

(53:02):
organize an act together as Earth? Or would aliens be
able to exploit our petty grievances and our differences and
turn us against one another? And I think, unfortunately, I
think there are some pretty good signs pointing towards the ladder. Yeah,
I mean, our only model for intelligent life in the
cosmos is our model of intelligent life of of a

(53:23):
technologically advanced civilization. And when we look at the way
that uh, you know, certainly the way the civilizations have
interacted with each other. And I certainly look at the
way that you know, Western colonization, how that transpired. We
see time and time again basically the Kyan Kodos model.
Manipulate their their leaders and their leadership, corrupt their uh,

(53:45):
their their rule, and work one side against the other,
ultimately overpower and bring enslavement and death. I mean, that's
that is the story of of human history, sadly, and
so when we look to the stars, you know, there
are plenty of people have said, well, that's basically what
we can expect based on our models, based on our
knowledge of our self, knowledge of how we work, that

(54:09):
is what we can expect from a superior technological force.
Like we want to imagine the independence day scenario where
we all come together and join forces. But I don't know,
I don't want to be overly optimistic. Yeah, I mean,
you know, unless we look to our optimism in the
sixth finger. And I think a lot of people have
I mean a lot of certainly the various um New

(54:30):
Age religions that have popped up around the idea of aliens.
You know, they look to aliens as a possibly we're
all we're all messed up in this world and we're
you know, we we have just committed crime after crime,
and we're shackled to the terror of history. Maybe something
will come down from above that has evolved beyond this
state and that can guide us, that can help us

(54:53):
find this new uh, you know, shape of being. Uh.
And you know, maybe that's the case. But again, if
we're looking at our own example of intelligent life, I'm
not sure that that's going to happen. I wouldn't put
hope in aliens being being a good influence on us.
I wouldn't put hope in us biologically evolving beyond our
our petty grievances and all that. I think the hope

(55:15):
lies in culture, unfortunately, and thus it is up to
people like writers and political leaders and those kinds of
figures to help shape human culture in a way that
that allows us to to act collectively in our own
best interest. I know that's not the easiest thing to
put hope in, but I think that might be the
only hope personally. Yeah, I mean, well, that's that's that's

(55:38):
the hard answer. That's a difficult answer, but it's that's
that's the one that requires us to work. That's the
one that requires us to do the heavy lifting here. Yeah,
we've got to fix our own problems, mostly using words.
All right, I'm sure we'll come back to this topic
in the future of Oh, I definitely. I think we
could do some stuff on astro politics. Absolute, yeah, yeah,

(56:01):
I would be down for that. Absolutely. But there you
have it. This is gonna be our third installment of
the Anthology of Horror uh kangan Kodo's willing. We will
return next October with at least one at least a
volume four, if not a volume four and five, And
of course, ironically that'll be pretty much just uh you know,

(56:22):
right before the the the peak moment of American politics
heading into the next presidential election. Probably won't do politics
when then, probably not all right. In the meantime, if
you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Blow your Mind, head on over to stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find them. You
can also find the podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

(56:43):
But again, this was how our Anthology of Horror Volume three,
Volume two came out Tuesday, and we reran volume one
over the weekend. Also, if you want to check out
our other show, Invention. You can find that at invention
pod dot com and that's available everywhere you get your podcasts.
Oh and also the fiction podcast the Second oil Age
launched as well. The first three episodes of that are

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live wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, congratulations man, well,
thank you, thank you alright, Uh, so that's it for
this episode. Certainly we have not seen all of the
horror anthology episodes out there. Uh, we're not familiar with
all the shows. So from now until next October, if
you have specific episodes of various anthology shows you would

(57:27):
like us to consider for next time, let us know.
If they're just whole shows, whole buckets of content that
we're not aware of, please enlighten us. One of the
cool places you can find us for that, uh is
our our Facebook discussion group. It is the Stuff Table
Your Mind discussion module. Go check that out huge. Thanks
as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

(57:48):
No wait, death, Nicholas Johnson. That's right. If you would
like to get in touch with us directly 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

(58:12):
of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio is the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.