April 20, 2018 • 24 mins
This week, Dylan and Kathleen bring you interviews about the end of the world and discover a surprising pattern in people's answers. Special guest: Ben Bowlin.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, it's kind of weird hearing my own echo here. Yes,
it's odd. M hm hm, Hi, and welcome to the
(00:24):
Question Booth. I'm Dying Fagin and I'm Kathleen William and
we're so excited that you're here with us today. If
you haven't tuned in before, the Question Booth is a
place where people answer a big question each week. But
before we start, how are you doing today, Kathleen, I'm
pretty good. Dylan, I'm looking forward to talking about the
end of the world today. Is that a hint about
this week's topic. Yes, we're listening to the answers to
(00:45):
the question if there were an apocalypse and you survived it,
what would you be good at? Have you ever thought
the world was going to end? I have literally never
thought about it. I don't have canned peaches ready or
go bag. I'm pretty happy living in the present. How
about you? Have you ever thought about it? Absolutely? And
(01:05):
not because I'm that type of person per se. But
there was this radio host named Harold Camping who thought
the world was going to end on two thousand eleven.
In fact, there are a lot of billboards advertising the
date around the Metro Atlanta area. But I didn't take
them seriously until I experienced a number of things The
day before it was all supposed to go down to
set the scene. I was in college and it was
(01:26):
finals week, and I've been up for a very long time,
but I had this gig to fulfill with the band
I was in, and I got lost somewhere in Tennessee
on the way there. It was somewhere mountainous with very
bad cell reception, and just as I was about to
get to the field where we were supposed to perform
that night, I popped a tire and after the show,
I tried to drive back to Atlanta at one am
(01:48):
on my undersize spare, which was hard because you're not
really supposed to drive at speed on those, and I
ended up getting a motel room somewhere in Alabama because
I was just so exhausted. And then at six say am,
a blinding light blasted through the motel window, and I
was terrified that this was it. I've been wrong, it
was all over. So I crawled out of bed, opened
(02:10):
the curtains, and was greeted by the big glowing Whitney
sign next door. They just turned it on for the day. Obviously,
I'm glad it wasn't the end of the world, but
I can understand why we might start to believe in
doomsday scenarios when we find ourselves in extraordinary situations. Yes,
and when you ask something in the question booth, you
start to see a pattern in people's answers. This week,
(02:32):
the reoccurring theme was healing. People thought that if everything
went down, they would have the ability to keep others
calm and positive. And we'll also be talking to how
stuff works. Ben Bolen about apocalyptic history and realistic end
of the world scenarios were very good at surviving, so
it's not unreasonable for anyone to look at themselves and say,
(02:54):
you know what, if this house of cards called civilization
suddenly collapses, I'm gonna figure something. But let's kick this
episode off with Marissa and Moshi, because they really hit
on this week's theme. Hmm. I know what I would
be what the uplift would be the healer, the inspire,
(03:16):
someone that makes somebody see the strengthen themselves. I think
I might be the strategists, kind of the person bringing
people together and figuring out who can do what and
how they can work together to achieve the best result.
No power. I think would be really hard for our society.
I think would be actually pretty nice. We're so distracted
so much of the time that it would be actually
(03:40):
wonderful for people to get to know who they really
are without being distracted. It brings us back to the
present moment, to what's right here, right now. It would
definitely be a big adjustment. I just feel like my
intuition would lead me to the right people. Yeah, I
think it's really important that we user intuition, we trust ourselves. Sure,
you can't act out of your lower brain. You're survival
(04:00):
fighter flight brain, because you're not thinking. You have to
think with your prefrontal cortex, and that requires you being
common centers that you can hear what you need to
hear and feel you need to feel so you can
make the right decision of yourself. We would totally evolve
our notion of what's possible, that's for sure, because everybody
has to step up and do things that they never
thought was possible before. And it's amazing when people get
(04:22):
into life threatening situations what they can do. The idea
of keeping calm daring an apocalypse is really surprising to me,
But there was actually the study out of the University
of Buffalo that found that people who played the online
video game arc Age stayed pretty cool under pressure when
a simulated doomstay crept in and from the sound of
the trailer, it certainly seems like they were under a
(04:43):
lot of pressure. Would your face in relation a chance
to stop a new Now this is interesting. Researchers studied
the virtual actions of around eighty thousand players of this
role playing game, and on the whole, yours exhibited behavior
that was helpful toward one another. Antisocial behavior like violence
(05:05):
did rise, but it was an action performed by a
small fraction of the participants. It kind of gives you
hope that maybe the end of the world wouldn't all
be chaos, at least, if that's any consolation. Yes, that's
an example of people coming together, virtually at least. But
on the other hand, some folks might just want to
stay off the grid. Here's Judy. As long as my
(05:28):
cats survive, I might be okay. Yeah. A lot of
people talked about how whatever happened, they would have to
bring their pets. I'd have to have my pets. Could
you be like a fighter? Would you? I would probably
take my fingers and gouge their eyes out, or I would.
I wouldn't want to do this, but I could pick
up a cat and throw it at him. Yeah. Yeah,
(05:49):
I could kill someone if I had to. What would
you be good at. I'm a photographer, so I would
be good at documenting the survival, So you would be
good at doc Mentingly, I would document. I guess whatever
was left, you have to take a film camera. No,
I wouldn't. How do you know I didn't. My iPhone
(06:09):
wouldn't survive. But then you'd have no power to charge in.
I'm resourceful. I would figure things out. What would you
struggle with? What it would be hard for you in
an apocalyptic world, or even like a world with no
power internet? Well, you know what, I've traveled a lot,
and I seriously think I would be very happy living
(06:32):
off the grid. So not having power and the luxuries
of life that I have now, I think I would
be okay. I'll admit sometimes it's nice to romanticize the
world without power, but it's worth questioning how it would
actually affect our daily lives. Things could get tough for
(06:55):
a society that's so connected, And there's actually a fairly
recently invent that we can look at to get a
glimpse of what it might be like. In two thousand three,
North America experienced its largest blackout in history. A large
swath of the northeastern US and Canada went without power
for two days. It is only because of emergency generators
that we are able to welcome you to our NBC
(07:16):
News headquarters here in thirty Rockefell or Plaza in midtown Manhattan,
where the lights are out. For that matter, they are
out west to Cleveland, Ohio, and north to Ottawa, Canada,
in a huge and history making blackout. Obviously, the lights
(07:37):
went off, but airports, subways and tunnels also shut down.
Automatic doors and elevators stopped working, and drinking water utilities
were affected. Oh and cell phone towers and a t
M s they went dark as well. Hospitals had to
run on backup generators. Sounds a little like a movie,
doesn't it. Yeah, And I think it would take quite
(07:59):
a long time for most of us to adapt to
that sort of world. Definitely. Okay, So so far in
the show, we've kind of heard both sides of the coin.
People who would heal, people who would throw cats. But
let's hear a little bit more about being a healer.
After the break, we'll be right back m and we're back.
(08:31):
Thanks for joining us. Let's listen in on Jolisa and
Christian and the question booth. I think more like the
psychological and I'm pretty good at making people feel better
about things, so it wouldn't necessarily be anything to keep
people alive, but more of just helping people move on
and move forward from the trauma that they've endured. So
(08:54):
you're resourceful if we're going back to the apocalypse thing. Like,
he was like a boy Scout kind guys, so he
knows how to start fires and all of that. So
what was the most useful thing you learned in boy Scouts?
So I did Boy Scouts in the Bronx, New York,
so it's a little different. I don't know, it's weird,
but probably how to like get along mobil of people.
(09:15):
He's also really good with stress, like a little because
I'm thinking, like, because I've thought about this apocalypse thing before,
and I'm like, i'd be out within the first day
because we used to watch The Walking Dead and stuff
like that, and so you um, like, for instance, we
had a snowstorm a few years and I was snow
storm as an ice storm that happened a few years ago,
(09:37):
and you could hear all the trees crashing down. I
mean a little crazy outside when we finally got to
go outside, but he was chilled the whole time, and
I was freaking out because I could hear all of
this crashing and like something's going to fall in the
house and where you get hurt. And the heat went out.
So we found alternative heating system. You can make um
(09:59):
with like a candle and a pot. You can put them.
You can put one pot upside down, a clay pot
and it will hold in the heat more and himself
would get warm and then just say heat longer. So yeah,
it keeps you warm. I forgot about that. I would
just follow a little survivor, especially like our one of
(10:21):
fan members is in danger of something. She'd be like,
that's different, and every zombie in here for my mom
the Walking Dead, I knew it would be mentioned at
some point in this episode. Yeah, it only makes sense
that it would come up with us being here in
Atlanta and people love zombies. Speaking of I think the
(10:43):
Apocalypse might be on people's minds because of pulp culture
between shows like The Walking Dead the One hundred and
Last Man on Earth. There are plenty of takes on
both the apocalyptic and the post apocalyptic. And there was
this interesting article in The New York Times magazine last year.
It was titled why are we so obsessed with the
end of the world, And it posits that it's been
(11:04):
an obsession of ours for a very long time. I mean,
there's Zeus and Odin waging war to make room for humankind,
the biblical story of Noah's Ark, and if you go
way back, the mass extinction of the dinosaurs is always
a riveting event to both research and talk about. But
I'm still endlessly fascinated by people's plans on what they
would do in the event of an unfathomable disaster. Well,
(11:26):
let's hear another one about healing. Here's Hannah and Ali
in the question Booth. I feel like i'd be the mediator,
like trying to stop people from doing reckless things like
killing each other. Not necessarily killing each other, I don't
know that might be necessary, but like things that might
hurt themselves. Like I'm very paranoid, so how so I
(11:50):
don't know. I'm just always worried and I don't want
people to get hurt. Mm hmm, I don't. I feel
like i'd be like evil, Like it's terrible person, stop
you from killing the other people to survive? Can please
don't go in there? Yeah? Can I go in there?
(12:10):
How we can't? Well, it's like, well, obviously she wants
to go against your wishes. I always do the opposite
that she says. So it's true. What would you not
be good at? What would be a really big challenge
for you? My stepsister says, I wouldn't be good at
fending for myself. So you need to be in a
pack of people. Yeah, I need like a good support group. Yeah,
I wouldn't be good at being alone. I would get youn. Yeah,
(12:33):
we would be good to like support each other in
a closet, like Alie, it's fine, we're gonna stay here,
and she big, okay, but I'm my clastrophobic and I
beg it's fine. We could do this, but we just
stay with me. I'm going to die too. We got
each other. Anything is possible, right totally. So, after hearing
about some of the roles that people might play in
(12:55):
the apocalypse, we wanted to know more about why we're
fascinated with the topic and when actual doomsday scenario might
look like. Yes, and we'll talk to someone all about
the end of the world after this break. M hm.
(13:23):
And we're back and we're excited to have How Stuff
Works host Ben Bowling with us in the studio. You
may know him from our podcast Stuff They Don't Want
You To Know and Ridiculous History. Stuff they Don't Want
You To Know, is a show that takes a deep
dive into conspiracies and has covered many apocalyptic possibilities, So
we thought he'd be a great person to talk to.
Thanks for joining us, Ben, Thanks for having me guys. So,
(13:46):
why are we so fascinated with the potential of an apocalypse?
Do you think it's Hollywood or something else? Like? Why
are we so amped up about something that is so terrifying? Yeah,
this is a fascinating question, and it's one that people
been trying to answer for a very long time on
numerous levels. One thing that is always intriguing to discover
(14:09):
is that for almost every year in the timeline of
modern history, dating back even centuries into the past, there's
been some group or some individual that says, no, really,
this time it's the end of the world in some regard,
and they might define it in a number of different ways.
So the end of the world quote unquote might be
(14:31):
the fall of the civilization in which we reside, or
it might be an ecological disaster, or it might be
a catastrophic war or a spiritual cataclysm, right like the
loss of the prominent religion of the time. The reason
this is so compelling is because, regardless of who you are,
(14:53):
where you come from, we all function as the protagonist
of our own personal story, and everybody else, no matter
who they are, is at best like a character foil
for us. Speaking of protagonists, let's rewind for a second
and revisit the titles that people gave themselves in the
booth this week. The strategists the Mediator. So we, being
(15:15):
the main characters of our own personal story, must necessarily
be living at the titular moment in history or one
of So there's a little bit, and I don't want
to sound condescending here, but there's a little bit of
implied narcissism that, out of all the times in the world, I,
or you or you or any of us happened to
(15:38):
be at the moment we want to live in important times,
even if those times are terrifying. It's also strange because
this belief which is so prevalent full disclosure, I'm totally
one of these people. It's interesting because the facts don't
compare one to one with the personal experience. There's i
(15:59):
wouldn't say conclusive, but pretty compelling evidence that we are
collectively living in one of the most peaceful times in
human history when you measure the amounts of war, when
you measure the way that we have succeeded in addressing disease.
We're not great at everything, but we're very good at surviving.
(16:19):
So it's not unreasonable for anyone to look at themselves
and say, you know what, if this house of cards
called civilization suddenly collapses, then I'm going to figure out something.
Can you tell us about some end of the world
predictions from the late twentie and early twenty first century? Sure? Yeah,
(16:40):
So there are a couple of different categories. One would
be something that has a spiritual basis. A leader of
a religious or spiritual movement has received what they perceived
to be a divine revelation, a prophecy, and this would
be typically assigned to a specific fake date, and the
(17:01):
problem with that is that those dates inevitably arrive, and
when they do, so far as we know, the world
doesn't end, so those have a shelf life those predictions.
You may remember Heaven's Gate from March for example, they
called themselves Heaven's Gate, a cult started in the seventies
(17:23):
by a man named Marshall apple White who later called
himself Dough. A spaceship or UFO. He told the group
would pick up their souls and take them to begin
their new lives. Was the year the hailed Bob commet
in late March of that year as the comic group Brighter,
Dough became convinced that Comet was assigned to shed their
(17:43):
bodies and exit Earth, and then there would be the
idea of a technological catastrophe. So y two K, right,
we remember that. That made a lot of newsrooms very
happy from eight to December thirty one. The basic idea
(18:04):
on why two K was that for convenience all these
computer programs, when I can to do dates, you only
needed two numbers, Why I use four numbers when you
only need to? And then they recognize what dates is
a computer going to think? It is? When we get
to two thousand, even star treks. Leonard Nimoy was on
TV trying to prepare us for the worst. As a
stroke of midnight January one, two thousand, elevators may stop,
(18:28):
heat made vamish credit cards, and h g ms may
cease to function. The third category would be something related
to geopolitics, for instance, like the bomb is going to
drop right, or someone goes back to an ancient prophecy
(18:49):
or something they think to be a prophecy like Nostre
Damas and they say, hey, I have figured out the
interpretation of this medieval language, and it turns out that you, guys,
is uh when everything goes wrong. This no Stredamis passage
in particular, was very popular online after the September eleven
text to steel, birds will fall from the sky on
(19:10):
the metropolis. The sky will burn at forty five degrees latitude.
Fire approaches the Great New City immediately, a huge scattered
flame leaps up. Within months, rivers will flow with blood,
The undead will roam the earth for a little time.
Super intense, but in reality it's a sloppy translation. The
big giftaway is the inclusion of steel. Nostredamas died in
(19:33):
fifteen sixty six. Steel wasn't invented until eighteen fifty. Okay, okay,
back to Ben. The last one, and perhaps the increasingly
compelling one for a lot of people, would be the
idea of ecological catastrophe. The bees disappear, ocean is certification
reaches an unsustainable level, and this triggers a domino effect
(19:59):
that was bolts in humanities and ability to grow food
or to find clean water. So those all exist together,
and you can discover different interpretations of those and they're
reflected in fiction fiction itself. If we were to personify
as a huge fan of apocalyptic stories, because the rule
(20:21):
of fiction is you always make it personal, and you
always raise the stakes, and it's it's tough to raise
the stakes higher than you know, the end of the world.
All right, we heard from people in the question booth.
(20:41):
But now I've got to ask you the question, Kathleen.
So here it is, if there are an apocalypse and
you survived it, what would you be good at I
think I would just dip out. You dip out? Yeah,
I know that's a little bit morbid, but I don't know.
I look at Walking Dead and all of the posts
apocalyptic worlds, and I don't want to live that quality
(21:03):
of life. It seems pretty low, Like why am I
waking up in the morning. I'm pretty content with how
great my life is right now, and maybe that was
supposed to happen for a reason. I know that this
(21:28):
all sounds dark and pretty terrible, but I think we're
all just trying to figure out how to keep our
world as normal as possible no matter what happens. I
feel like we go through worst case scenarios in our
head all the time about different things, just to figure
out what it is we would have to do to
get through it and to provide for others. We want
to plan, and we want a routine, and we want
(21:49):
to wake up every day and find our purpose. But
the end of the world to me, is just contemplating
that scenario on a much larger scale. I think we
want to find comfort and comfort others if everything goes wrong.
I also think if, and this is a big if,
people have a community, I think they can find a
way to make it through. That being said, I don't
(22:10):
ever I want to have to find out if that's true. Neither,
And since some of this week's episode sounded a lot
like doom and gloom. We want to leave with this
clip from brothers Elliott and Ethan, who have a simple
solution if everything falls apart, what would you do? What's
your escape plan? I dig a hole and night hide
in it and bake Roman. What would be hard for you? Cooking?
(22:35):
Probably cooking, So just stick with your brother because you
can cook. Yeah, I'll go in your rock. Give you
one strip them in a day, one little strip. M
(23:00):
h m hm m m m m. And we want
to know what you think. What would your role be
(23:22):
in an apocalypse? Would you dip out? Would you heal
or hide? You can write to us at the Question
Booth at House to forks dot com with your answer.
We'd like to give a special thanks to executive producer
and our absolute guiding hand Julie Douglas. Thanks as well
to senior producer Annie Reese, and to Ben Bolan for
speaking with us this week. We'd also like to thank
(23:43):
Pont City Market for hosting the Question Booth. The Question
Booth is written, edited and scored by me, Dylan Fagin,
and my co host Kathleen Quillian. You have so many
of my thanks Kathleen, Thanks Dylan, and thanks to everyone
who came into the booth and spoke to me about
this question. And if you in Atlanta, you can visit
the Question Booth too. We're on the second floor pont
(24:04):
City Market twelve to five pm Friday through Sunday. You
can also follow us on social media or the Question
Booth on Instagram and Facebook and Question Underscore Booth on Twitter.
So what are we talking about next week? Next week
we're talking all about smells hot Cheetos? Does it really
have a smell? It does? Interesting. I'm looking forward to
(24:26):
hearing that, But until then, see you in the Question Booth.
Yeah, it's kind of weird hearing my own echo here. Yes,
it's odd. M hm hm, Hi, and welcome to the
(00:24):
Question Booth. I'm Dying Fagin and I'm Kathleen William and
we're so excited that you're here with us today. If
you haven't tuned in before, the Question Booth is a
place where people answer a big question each week. But
before we start, how are you doing today, Kathleen, I'm
pretty good. Dylan, I'm looking forward to talking about the
end of the world today. Is that a hint about
this week's topic. Yes, we're listening to the answers to
(00:45):
the question if there were an apocalypse and you survived it,
what would you be good at? Have you ever thought
the world was going to end? I have literally never
thought about it. I don't have canned peaches ready or
go bag. I'm pretty happy living in the present. How
about you? Have you ever thought about it? Absolutely? And
(01:05):
not because I'm that type of person per se. But
there was this radio host named Harold Camping who thought
the world was going to end on two thousand eleven.
In fact, there are a lot of billboards advertising the
date around the Metro Atlanta area. But I didn't take
them seriously until I experienced a number of things The
day before it was all supposed to go down to
set the scene. I was in college and it was
(01:26):
finals week, and I've been up for a very long time,
but I had this gig to fulfill with the band
I was in, and I got lost somewhere in Tennessee
on the way there. It was somewhere mountainous with very
bad cell reception, and just as I was about to
get to the field where we were supposed to perform
that night, I popped a tire and after the show,
I tried to drive back to Atlanta at one am
(01:48):
on my undersize spare, which was hard because you're not
really supposed to drive at speed on those, and I
ended up getting a motel room somewhere in Alabama because
I was just so exhausted. And then at six say am,
a blinding light blasted through the motel window, and I
was terrified that this was it. I've been wrong, it
was all over. So I crawled out of bed, opened
(02:10):
the curtains, and was greeted by the big glowing Whitney
sign next door. They just turned it on for the day. Obviously,
I'm glad it wasn't the end of the world, but
I can understand why we might start to believe in
doomsday scenarios when we find ourselves in extraordinary situations. Yes,
and when you ask something in the question booth, you
start to see a pattern in people's answers. This week,
(02:32):
the reoccurring theme was healing. People thought that if everything
went down, they would have the ability to keep others
calm and positive. And we'll also be talking to how
stuff works. Ben Bolen about apocalyptic history and realistic end
of the world scenarios were very good at surviving, so
it's not unreasonable for anyone to look at themselves and say,
(02:54):
you know what, if this house of cards called civilization
suddenly collapses, I'm gonna figure something. But let's kick this
episode off with Marissa and Moshi, because they really hit
on this week's theme. Hmm. I know what I would
be what the uplift would be the healer, the inspire,
(03:16):
someone that makes somebody see the strengthen themselves. I think
I might be the strategists, kind of the person bringing
people together and figuring out who can do what and
how they can work together to achieve the best result.
No power. I think would be really hard for our society.
I think would be actually pretty nice. We're so distracted
so much of the time that it would be actually
(03:40):
wonderful for people to get to know who they really
are without being distracted. It brings us back to the
present moment, to what's right here, right now. It would
definitely be a big adjustment. I just feel like my
intuition would lead me to the right people. Yeah, I
think it's really important that we user intuition, we trust ourselves. Sure,
you can't act out of your lower brain. You're survival
(04:00):
fighter flight brain, because you're not thinking. You have to
think with your prefrontal cortex, and that requires you being
common centers that you can hear what you need to
hear and feel you need to feel so you can
make the right decision of yourself. We would totally evolve
our notion of what's possible, that's for sure, because everybody
has to step up and do things that they never
thought was possible before. And it's amazing when people get
(04:22):
into life threatening situations what they can do. The idea
of keeping calm daring an apocalypse is really surprising to me,
But there was actually the study out of the University
of Buffalo that found that people who played the online
video game arc Age stayed pretty cool under pressure when
a simulated doomstay crept in and from the sound of
the trailer, it certainly seems like they were under a
(04:43):
lot of pressure. Would your face in relation a chance
to stop a new Now this is interesting. Researchers studied
the virtual actions of around eighty thousand players of this
role playing game, and on the whole, yours exhibited behavior
that was helpful toward one another. Antisocial behavior like violence
(05:05):
did rise, but it was an action performed by a
small fraction of the participants. It kind of gives you
hope that maybe the end of the world wouldn't all
be chaos, at least, if that's any consolation. Yes, that's
an example of people coming together, virtually at least. But
on the other hand, some folks might just want to
stay off the grid. Here's Judy. As long as my
(05:28):
cats survive, I might be okay. Yeah. A lot of
people talked about how whatever happened, they would have to
bring their pets. I'd have to have my pets. Could
you be like a fighter? Would you? I would probably
take my fingers and gouge their eyes out, or I would.
I wouldn't want to do this, but I could pick
up a cat and throw it at him. Yeah. Yeah,
(05:49):
I could kill someone if I had to. What would
you be good at. I'm a photographer, so I would
be good at documenting the survival, So you would be
good at doc Mentingly, I would document. I guess whatever
was left, you have to take a film camera. No,
I wouldn't. How do you know I didn't. My iPhone
(06:09):
wouldn't survive. But then you'd have no power to charge in.
I'm resourceful. I would figure things out. What would you
struggle with? What it would be hard for you in
an apocalyptic world, or even like a world with no
power internet? Well, you know what, I've traveled a lot,
and I seriously think I would be very happy living
(06:32):
off the grid. So not having power and the luxuries
of life that I have now, I think I would
be okay. I'll admit sometimes it's nice to romanticize the
world without power, but it's worth questioning how it would
actually affect our daily lives. Things could get tough for
(06:55):
a society that's so connected, And there's actually a fairly
recently invent that we can look at to get a
glimpse of what it might be like. In two thousand three,
North America experienced its largest blackout in history. A large
swath of the northeastern US and Canada went without power
for two days. It is only because of emergency generators
that we are able to welcome you to our NBC
(07:16):
News headquarters here in thirty Rockefell or Plaza in midtown Manhattan,
where the lights are out. For that matter, they are
out west to Cleveland, Ohio, and north to Ottawa, Canada,
in a huge and history making blackout. Obviously, the lights
(07:37):
went off, but airports, subways and tunnels also shut down.
Automatic doors and elevators stopped working, and drinking water utilities
were affected. Oh and cell phone towers and a t
M s they went dark as well. Hospitals had to
run on backup generators. Sounds a little like a movie,
doesn't it. Yeah, And I think it would take quite
(07:59):
a long time for most of us to adapt to
that sort of world. Definitely. Okay, So so far in
the show, we've kind of heard both sides of the coin.
People who would heal, people who would throw cats. But
let's hear a little bit more about being a healer.
After the break, we'll be right back m and we're back.
(08:31):
Thanks for joining us. Let's listen in on Jolisa and
Christian and the question booth. I think more like the
psychological and I'm pretty good at making people feel better
about things, so it wouldn't necessarily be anything to keep
people alive, but more of just helping people move on
and move forward from the trauma that they've endured. So
(08:54):
you're resourceful if we're going back to the apocalypse thing. Like,
he was like a boy Scout kind guys, so he
knows how to start fires and all of that. So
what was the most useful thing you learned in boy Scouts?
So I did Boy Scouts in the Bronx, New York,
so it's a little different. I don't know, it's weird,
but probably how to like get along mobil of people.
(09:15):
He's also really good with stress, like a little because
I'm thinking, like, because I've thought about this apocalypse thing before,
and I'm like, i'd be out within the first day
because we used to watch The Walking Dead and stuff
like that, and so you um, like, for instance, we
had a snowstorm a few years and I was snow
storm as an ice storm that happened a few years ago,
(09:37):
and you could hear all the trees crashing down. I
mean a little crazy outside when we finally got to
go outside, but he was chilled the whole time, and
I was freaking out because I could hear all of
this crashing and like something's going to fall in the
house and where you get hurt. And the heat went out.
So we found alternative heating system. You can make um
(09:59):
with like a candle and a pot. You can put them.
You can put one pot upside down, a clay pot
and it will hold in the heat more and himself
would get warm and then just say heat longer. So yeah,
it keeps you warm. I forgot about that. I would
just follow a little survivor, especially like our one of
(10:21):
fan members is in danger of something. She'd be like,
that's different, and every zombie in here for my mom
the Walking Dead, I knew it would be mentioned at
some point in this episode. Yeah, it only makes sense
that it would come up with us being here in
Atlanta and people love zombies. Speaking of I think the
(10:43):
Apocalypse might be on people's minds because of pulp culture
between shows like The Walking Dead the One hundred and
Last Man on Earth. There are plenty of takes on
both the apocalyptic and the post apocalyptic. And there was
this interesting article in The New York Times magazine last year.
It was titled why are we so obsessed with the
end of the world, And it posits that it's been
(11:04):
an obsession of ours for a very long time. I mean,
there's Zeus and Odin waging war to make room for humankind,
the biblical story of Noah's Ark, and if you go
way back, the mass extinction of the dinosaurs is always
a riveting event to both research and talk about. But
I'm still endlessly fascinated by people's plans on what they
would do in the event of an unfathomable disaster. Well,
(11:26):
let's hear another one about healing. Here's Hannah and Ali
in the question Booth. I feel like i'd be the mediator,
like trying to stop people from doing reckless things like
killing each other. Not necessarily killing each other, I don't
know that might be necessary, but like things that might
hurt themselves. Like I'm very paranoid, so how so I
(11:50):
don't know. I'm just always worried and I don't want
people to get hurt. Mm hmm, I don't. I feel
like i'd be like evil, Like it's terrible person, stop
you from killing the other people to survive? Can please
don't go in there? Yeah? Can I go in there?
(12:10):
How we can't? Well, it's like, well, obviously she wants
to go against your wishes. I always do the opposite
that she says. So it's true. What would you not
be good at? What would be a really big challenge
for you? My stepsister says, I wouldn't be good at
fending for myself. So you need to be in a
pack of people. Yeah, I need like a good support group. Yeah,
I wouldn't be good at being alone. I would get youn. Yeah,
(12:33):
we would be good to like support each other in
a closet, like Alie, it's fine, we're gonna stay here,
and she big, okay, but I'm my clastrophobic and I
beg it's fine. We could do this, but we just
stay with me. I'm going to die too. We got
each other. Anything is possible, right totally. So, after hearing
about some of the roles that people might play in
(12:55):
the apocalypse, we wanted to know more about why we're
fascinated with the topic and when actual doomsday scenario might
look like. Yes, and we'll talk to someone all about
the end of the world after this break. M hm.
(13:23):
And we're back and we're excited to have How Stuff
Works host Ben Bowling with us in the studio. You
may know him from our podcast Stuff They Don't Want
You To Know and Ridiculous History. Stuff they Don't Want
You To Know, is a show that takes a deep
dive into conspiracies and has covered many apocalyptic possibilities, So
we thought he'd be a great person to talk to.
Thanks for joining us, Ben, Thanks for having me guys. So,
(13:46):
why are we so fascinated with the potential of an apocalypse?
Do you think it's Hollywood or something else? Like? Why
are we so amped up about something that is so terrifying? Yeah,
this is a fascinating question, and it's one that people
been trying to answer for a very long time on
numerous levels. One thing that is always intriguing to discover
(14:09):
is that for almost every year in the timeline of
modern history, dating back even centuries into the past, there's
been some group or some individual that says, no, really,
this time it's the end of the world in some regard,
and they might define it in a number of different ways.
So the end of the world quote unquote might be
(14:31):
the fall of the civilization in which we reside, or
it might be an ecological disaster, or it might be
a catastrophic war or a spiritual cataclysm, right like the
loss of the prominent religion of the time. The reason
this is so compelling is because, regardless of who you are,
(14:53):
where you come from, we all function as the protagonist
of our own personal story, and everybody else, no matter
who they are, is at best like a character foil
for us. Speaking of protagonists, let's rewind for a second
and revisit the titles that people gave themselves in the
booth this week. The strategists the Mediator. So we, being
(15:15):
the main characters of our own personal story, must necessarily
be living at the titular moment in history or one
of So there's a little bit, and I don't want
to sound condescending here, but there's a little bit of
implied narcissism that, out of all the times in the world, I,
or you or you or any of us happened to
(15:38):
be at the moment we want to live in important times,
even if those times are terrifying. It's also strange because
this belief which is so prevalent full disclosure, I'm totally
one of these people. It's interesting because the facts don't
compare one to one with the personal experience. There's i
(15:59):
wouldn't say conclusive, but pretty compelling evidence that we are
collectively living in one of the most peaceful times in
human history when you measure the amounts of war, when
you measure the way that we have succeeded in addressing disease.
We're not great at everything, but we're very good at surviving.
(16:19):
So it's not unreasonable for anyone to look at themselves
and say, you know what, if this house of cards
called civilization suddenly collapses, then I'm going to figure out something.
Can you tell us about some end of the world
predictions from the late twentie and early twenty first century? Sure? Yeah,
(16:40):
So there are a couple of different categories. One would
be something that has a spiritual basis. A leader of
a religious or spiritual movement has received what they perceived
to be a divine revelation, a prophecy, and this would
be typically assigned to a specific fake date, and the
(17:01):
problem with that is that those dates inevitably arrive, and
when they do, so far as we know, the world
doesn't end, so those have a shelf life those predictions.
You may remember Heaven's Gate from March for example, they
called themselves Heaven's Gate, a cult started in the seventies
(17:23):
by a man named Marshall apple White who later called
himself Dough. A spaceship or UFO. He told the group
would pick up their souls and take them to begin
their new lives. Was the year the hailed Bob commet
in late March of that year as the comic group Brighter,
Dough became convinced that Comet was assigned to shed their
(17:43):
bodies and exit Earth, and then there would be the
idea of a technological catastrophe. So y two K, right,
we remember that. That made a lot of newsrooms very
happy from eight to December thirty one. The basic idea
(18:04):
on why two K was that for convenience all these
computer programs, when I can to do dates, you only
needed two numbers, Why I use four numbers when you
only need to? And then they recognize what dates is
a computer going to think? It is? When we get
to two thousand, even star treks. Leonard Nimoy was on
TV trying to prepare us for the worst. As a
stroke of midnight January one, two thousand, elevators may stop,
(18:28):
heat made vamish credit cards, and h g ms may
cease to function. The third category would be something related
to geopolitics, for instance, like the bomb is going to
drop right, or someone goes back to an ancient prophecy
(18:49):
or something they think to be a prophecy like Nostre
Damas and they say, hey, I have figured out the
interpretation of this medieval language, and it turns out that you, guys,
is uh when everything goes wrong. This no Stredamis passage
in particular, was very popular online after the September eleven
text to steel, birds will fall from the sky on
(19:10):
the metropolis. The sky will burn at forty five degrees latitude.
Fire approaches the Great New City immediately, a huge scattered
flame leaps up. Within months, rivers will flow with blood,
The undead will roam the earth for a little time.
Super intense, but in reality it's a sloppy translation. The
big giftaway is the inclusion of steel. Nostredamas died in
(19:33):
fifteen sixty six. Steel wasn't invented until eighteen fifty. Okay, okay,
back to Ben. The last one, and perhaps the increasingly
compelling one for a lot of people, would be the
idea of ecological catastrophe. The bees disappear, ocean is certification
reaches an unsustainable level, and this triggers a domino effect
(19:59):
that was bolts in humanities and ability to grow food
or to find clean water. So those all exist together,
and you can discover different interpretations of those and they're
reflected in fiction fiction itself. If we were to personify
as a huge fan of apocalyptic stories, because the rule
(20:21):
of fiction is you always make it personal, and you
always raise the stakes, and it's it's tough to raise
the stakes higher than you know, the end of the world.
All right, we heard from people in the question booth.
(20:41):
But now I've got to ask you the question, Kathleen.
So here it is, if there are an apocalypse and
you survived it, what would you be good at I
think I would just dip out. You dip out? Yeah,
I know that's a little bit morbid, but I don't know.
I look at Walking Dead and all of the posts
apocalyptic worlds, and I don't want to live that quality
(21:03):
of life. It seems pretty low, Like why am I
waking up in the morning. I'm pretty content with how
great my life is right now, and maybe that was
supposed to happen for a reason. I know that this
(21:28):
all sounds dark and pretty terrible, but I think we're
all just trying to figure out how to keep our
world as normal as possible no matter what happens. I
feel like we go through worst case scenarios in our
head all the time about different things, just to figure
out what it is we would have to do to
get through it and to provide for others. We want
to plan, and we want a routine, and we want
(21:49):
to wake up every day and find our purpose. But
the end of the world to me, is just contemplating
that scenario on a much larger scale. I think we
want to find comfort and comfort others if everything goes wrong.
I also think if, and this is a big if,
people have a community, I think they can find a
way to make it through. That being said, I don't
(22:10):
ever I want to have to find out if that's true. Neither,
And since some of this week's episode sounded a lot
like doom and gloom. We want to leave with this
clip from brothers Elliott and Ethan, who have a simple
solution if everything falls apart, what would you do? What's
your escape plan? I dig a hole and night hide
in it and bake Roman. What would be hard for you? Cooking?
(22:35):
Probably cooking, So just stick with your brother because you
can cook. Yeah, I'll go in your rock. Give you
one strip them in a day, one little strip. M
(23:00):
h m hm m m m m. And we want
to know what you think. What would your role be
(23:22):
in an apocalypse? Would you dip out? Would you heal
or hide? You can write to us at the Question
Booth at House to forks dot com with your answer.
We'd like to give a special thanks to executive producer
and our absolute guiding hand Julie Douglas. Thanks as well
to senior producer Annie Reese, and to Ben Bolan for
speaking with us this week. We'd also like to thank
(23:43):
Pont City Market for hosting the Question Booth. The Question
Booth is written, edited and scored by me, Dylan Fagin,
and my co host Kathleen Quillian. You have so many
of my thanks Kathleen, Thanks Dylan, and thanks to everyone
who came into the booth and spoke to me about
this question. And if you in Atlanta, you can visit
the Question Booth too. We're on the second floor pont
(24:04):
City Market twelve to five pm Friday through Sunday. You
can also follow us on social media or the Question
Booth on Instagram and Facebook and Question Underscore Booth on Twitter.
So what are we talking about next week? Next week
we're talking all about smells hot Cheetos? Does it really
have a smell? It does? Interesting. I'm looking forward to
(24:26):
hearing that, But until then, see you in the Question Booth.
The Question Booth News
Hosts And Creators
Dylan Fagan
Kathleen Quillian
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