October 27, 2011 • 45 mins
It's Halloween again, and this year Chuck and Josh are ringing in the holiday with a special reading of the short story "Berenice," by Edgar Allan Poe. Tune in to catch Stuff You Should Know's Poe-rific Halloween episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the Reinvented twenty twelve Camri.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's ready.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know? From HowStuffWorks
dot Com?
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Cook. There's
Charles W. Chucker's brand that makes this stuff.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
You should know.
Speaker 5 (00:37):
I wonder what that sounds like to people who listen
to it at double speed.
Speaker 6 (00:41):
You sound like your normal boys.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Right, yeah, you know that. That was my impression of somebody.
I'm gonna guess go with Vincent Price. No, okay, Edgar Oliver.
It was a great Edgar Oliver. Terrible Vincent Price. Edgar Oliver.
He's a storyteller on the moth. Oh really yeah, and
he sounds exactly like that. You got to check stuff out.
He's awesome.
Speaker 6 (01:02):
Is he a horror? Is he like?
Speaker 4 (01:03):
No?
Speaker 6 (01:03):
Any wrong with him?
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Well? Yeah, I mean he talks like that. But other
than he's he's an awesome dude. So that was my Oh,
it's pretty good. You go back and listen now you'll
be like, wow. So I was doing an Edgar Oliver
chuck because in t minus like four days. Yeah, it's
gonna be Halloween, one of our favorite days. And mind
(01:26):
blowingly enough. If you're listening to this on Halloween it's today.
Speaker 6 (01:30):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Yeah, yeah, that works. And last year we did something unusual,
so this year we're doing it again, which makes it
the usual. But it was popular. People liked it. We
read a great short story last year.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
Yeah, people actually called for it again and said, oh,
you're gonna do it this year.
Speaker 6 (01:46):
I think some people might not have liked it, but
just skip it then.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Yeah. We were like, does that mean we don't have
to study? Okay, let's do that exactly. Yeah, there's one
in the can that's guaranteed gonna be at least okay. Yes,
So this year, Charles W. Chuck Bryant selected the story
and it is by someone you may or may not
have heard of. He's a somewhat you know, well known
(02:11):
Writer's name is Edgar Allan Poe and he died in Baltimore,
I believe, in the eighteen forties. Sure, here's one of
the great first great American writers of the nineteenth century.
Slash drug addicts, big time drug addict, and I think
that comes through a lot in this. Yeah. But we've
(02:32):
selected a short story. Chuck selected a short story. It's
actually I gave.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
You a selection. You made the final choice.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Yeah, but you let me to You're like, which one
of these would you like? And then you basically put
this one in my hand.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
No, actually, I was leaning toward the crazy dwarf that
kills the king.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
What are we reading this one for? Because this one's creepy? Okay,
all right, I agreed. Well, do you want to tell
them the name of this one?
Speaker 5 (02:58):
It's called Barnice and give you a slight setup just
so you know what's going on. There's a woman called
Baronice and a man, uh, and they are cousins and
they're married, and things go a little weird in the story.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Weirder than cousins being married. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
I don't want to give anything away, but I just
want you know it's it's old English. It's not Old English,
but it's older than it's Old American.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
Yeah. So before we lose any more listeners, let's get
to it. You want to cue the spooky music.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
Yeah, but we should also point out that at the
end of this episode we have a very special guest.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
So let's not say who. If you listen on Tuesday,
you know.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
But if you aren't into the reading, just go ahead
and skip forward to the special guest, and you'll get
some delight there.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Right, And if you do that, we apologize in advance.
Yes either way, all right, So now let's cue the
spooky music.
Speaker 6 (04:01):
Okay, that's the tone.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Let's dim the lights, okay, and we now present to
you Edgar Allan poe'se Bevernice.
Speaker 6 (04:16):
My Josh is a little quote at the beginning in.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Latin and in English.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
I'll read the English. My companion said to me, if
I would visit the grave of my friend, I might
somewhat alleviate my.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Worries reasonable advice.
Speaker 6 (04:31):
And here we go.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform, overreaching
the wide horizon as the rainbow its hues, or as
various as the hues of that arch, as distinct too,
yet as intimately blended, overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow.
How is it that from beauty I have derived a
type of unloveliness, from the covenant of peace, a simile
(04:55):
of sorrow. But as in ethics, evil is a consequence
of good, So in fact, out of joy is sorrow born.
Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today,
or the agonies which have their origin, and the ecstasies
which might have been nice.
Speaker 6 (05:14):
It sounded like improper English, but that's how we wrote it.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
And it's not just today, it's to day with a
hyphen in between.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
My baptismal name is Eugaeus. That of my family I
will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the
land more time honored than my gloomy, gray hereditary halls.
Our line has been called a race of visionaries, and
in many striking particulars in the character of the family mansion,
in the frescoes of the chief saloon, and the tapestries
(05:42):
of the dormitories, and the chiseling of some buttress in
the armory, but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings,
and the fashion of the library chamber, and lastly in
the very peculiar nature of.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
The library's contents.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
There is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the bloe.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber,
and with its volumes, of which latter I will say
no more. Here died my mother here, and I was born.
But it is mere idleness to say that I had
not lived before that. The soul has no previous existence.
You deny it. Let us not argue the matter, convince myself.
I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance
(06:23):
of aerial forms, of spiritual and meaning, eyes of sounds,
musical yet sad, A remembrance which will not be excluded,
a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady, and
like a shadow too in the impossibility of my getting
rid of it, while the sunlight of my reason shall
exist in that chamber. I was born thus, awaking from
(06:46):
the long night of what seemed but was not nonentity,
at once into the very regions of fairyland, into a
palace of imagination, into the wild dominions of monastic thought
and erudition. Singular that I gazed around me with a
startled and ardent eye, that I loitered away my boyhood
and books, and dissipated my youth in reverie. But it
(07:08):
is singular that as the years rolled away and the
noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of
my fathers, it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon
the springs of my life. Wonderful how total an inversion
took place in the character of my commonest thought. The
realities of the world affected me as visions, and as
visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of
(07:29):
dreams became in turn, not the material of my everyday existence,
but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
See he's getting a little caught up in his own
obsession of thoughts.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Right, he's a bookworm. Okay, he's bookish.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
So the real world as it doesn't even matter to
him at this point.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
That's what he thinks of the real world.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
Onward, Bearnice and I were cousins, and we grew up
together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew I ill
of health and buried in gloom. She agile, graceful and
overflowing with energy. Hers the ramble on the hillside, mine
the studies of the cloister. I living within my own heart,
(08:12):
an addicted body and soul to the most intense and
painful meditation. She roaming carelessly through life, with no thought
of the shadows in her path or the silent flight
of the raven winged owers. Berenice, I call upon her name,
Berenice from the gray ruins of memory, A thousand tumultuous
(08:32):
recollections are startled at the sound.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
Ah.
Speaker 5 (08:36):
Vividly is her image before me now as in the
early days of her light heartedness and joy, Oh gorgeous
yet fantastic beauty, Oh sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim,
oh Naiad among its fountains. And then then all is
mystery and terror, a tale which should not be told. Disease,
(08:58):
a fatal disease, fell.
Speaker 6 (09:00):
Like the simoon upon her frame.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
And even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of
change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and
her character, and in a manner the most subtle and terrible,
disturbing even the identity of her person Alas the destroyer
came and went.
Speaker 6 (09:18):
And the victim where was she?
Speaker 5 (09:20):
I knew her not, or knew her no longer as Berenice.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
Now she got sick.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
When I first read him saying Berenice Nice, I thought
of Kramer going, Pam, Pam, you remember that one?
Speaker 5 (09:39):
Yeah, all right, Spernice didn't doing so hot all of
a sudden.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
No, it happened like that. Ye. Among the numerous train
of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one, which
affected a revolution of so horrible a kind, and the
moral and physical being of my cousin may be mentioned
as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a
species of epilepsy, not unfrequently terminating in trance itself, trance
(10:05):
very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner
of recovery was in most instances startlingly abrupt. In the meantime,
my own disease, for I have been told that I
should call it by no other appellation. My own disease
then grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac
character of a novel and extraordinary form, hourly and momently
(10:29):
gaining vigor, and at length obtaining over me the most
incomprehensible ascendency. This monomania, if I must so term it,
consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the
mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more
than probable that I am not understood, But I fear
indeed that it is in no matter possible to convey
(10:51):
to the mind of the merely general reader an adequate
idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in
my case, the powers of metaie not to speak, technically
busied and buried themselves in the contemplation of even the
most ordinary objects of the universe.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
So now he's becoming obsessive about just things, anything transfixed
on things.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
But like he can't even get across how obsessed.
Speaker 5 (11:17):
He becomes monomania all right, to muse for long, unwearied hours,
with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the
margin or in the topography of a book. To become
absorbed for the better part of a summer's day, and
a quaint shadow falling a slant upon the tapestry or
upon the door, To lose myself for an entire night,
(11:38):
and watching the steady flame of a lamp or the
embers of a fire, to dream away whole days of
the perfume of a flower. To repeat monotonously some common
word until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased
to convey any idea whatever to the mind.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
Everyone does that.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Yeah, it's called day awesome.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
To lose all sense of motion or physical existence by
means of absolute bodily quiescence, long and obstinately persevered in
such were a few of the most common and least
pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties,
not indeed altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything
(12:22):
like analysis or explanation.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
You did good. That was a tough one. Thanks.
Speaker 6 (12:26):
He sounds like an opium head, you know he's like.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
And by the way, I'm high as a kite right.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Now, I'm staring at a lamp for two days.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
Yet let me not be misapprehended. This due earnest and
morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature,
frivolous must not be confounded in character with that ruminating
propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged him
by persons of ardent imagination. It was not, even as
might be at first supposed, an extreme condition or exaggeration
(12:58):
of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different.
In the one instance, the dreamer or enthusiast, being interested
by an object, usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of
this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions, issuing
therefrom until at the conclusion of a day dream often
(13:19):
replete with luxury, he finds the in sedimentum or first
cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case,
the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming through the
medium of my distempered vision a refracted and unreal importance,
(13:39):
few deductions, if any, were made, and those few perdinaciously
returning in upon the original object as a center. The
meditations were never pleasurable, and at the termination of the reverie,
the first cause, so far from being out of sight,
had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing
feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind,
(14:01):
more particularly exercised, were with me, as I have said before,
the attentive, and are with the daydreamer, the speculative anything thoughts, No,
he's just going on to say it was really serious.
Speaker 5 (14:16):
Yeah, they'd like to really describe things back then. Yeah, okay,
my books at this epoch, if they did not actually
serve to irritate the disorder partook, it will be perceived
largely in their imaginative and inconsequential nature of the characteristic
qualities of the disorder itself.
Speaker 6 (14:34):
I will remember, among.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
Others, the triestas of the noble Italian Colius Secundus curio,
the amplitudine biat de regni de Saint Austin's great work
The City of God and Trillium decarne Christi, in which
the paradoxical sentence mortus sde phileas credibo esquia s sepotus
(15:02):
resurreic exit certum esquia impossibilest occupied my undivided time for
many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation. So he's getting
hung up on these phrases from the books.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Yeah, like I am the Latin.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only
by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean
crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephistian, which, steadily resisting the
attacks of human violence and the fiercer fury of the
waters and the kinds, trembled only the touch of the
flower called Asphodel. And although to a careless thinker it
(15:45):
might appear a matter beyond doubt that the alteration produced
by our unhappy malady and the moral condition of Berenice
would afford me many objects for the exercise of that
intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at
some trouble and explaining. Yet such was not in any
degree the case in the lucid intervals of my infirmity.
(16:07):
Her calamity indeed gave me pain, and taking deeply to
the heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life,
I did not fall to ponder frequently and bitterly upon
the wonder working means by which so strange revolution had
been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook
not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such
(16:29):
as would have occurred under similar circumstances to the ordinary
mass of mankind, true to its own character. My disorder
reveled in less important, but more startling changes wrought in
the physical frame of Baronice, and the singular and most
appalling distortion of her personal identity during the brightest days
of her unparalleled beauty. Most surely I had never loved her,
(16:51):
and the strange anomaly of my existence. Feelings with me
had never been of the heart, and my passions always
were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning,
among the trellish shadows of the forest at noonday, and
in the silence of my library at night, she had
flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her not
as a living and breathing Berenice, but as the baronice
(17:12):
of a dream. Not as a being of the earth earthy,
but as the abstraction of such a being, Not as
a thing to admire but to analyze, Not as an
object of love, but as the theme of the most
obtruse although desultory speculation. And now now I shuddered in
her presence, and grew pale at her approach, yet bitterly
(17:34):
lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind
that she had loved me long, and in an evil moment,
I spoke to her of marriage. I'm getting oddly Madonna
esque here with my English.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Yeah, does she speak strangely? Ah?
Speaker 6 (17:56):
You know, she married guy Richie.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
All of a sudden she started talking like a Madonna.
Speaker 6 (18:00):
Yeah, that's right, not like she was from Queen's or.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Yeah, you're not supposed to do that. You got to
remember who you are, you know, I agreed, and at
length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon
an afternoon in the winter of the year, one of
those unseasonably warm, calm and misty days, which are the
nurse of the beautiful halcyon. I sat and sat as
I thought, alone in the inner apartment of my library,
(18:24):
but uplifting my eyes, I saw the baronice stood before me.
Was it my own excited imagination, or the misty influence
of the atmosphere, or the uncertain twilight of the chamber,
or the gray draperies which fell around her figure that
caused in it so vacillating an indistinct an outline.
Speaker 6 (18:41):
Or was it all the opium? And as he likes
to have.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
A lot of different ideas to choose from, sure, I
could not tell. She spoke no word, I not for
worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill
ran through my frame, A sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me,
assuming curiosity pervaded my soul, and sinking back upon the chair,
I remained for some time, breathless and motionless, with my
(19:07):
eyes riveted upon her person alas its emaciation was excessive,
and not one vestige of the former being lurked in
any single line of the contour. My burning glances at
length fell upon the face, the forehead was high and
very pale and singularly placid, and the once jetty hair
fell partially over it and overshadowed the hollow temples with
(19:30):
innumerable ringlets, now of vivivid yellow and jarring discordantly in
their fantastic character. With the raining melancholy of the countenance,
the eyes were lifeless and lustreless and seemingly pupilss and
I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation
of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted, and, in
(19:51):
a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed
Berenics disclosed themselves slowly to my view, would to God
that I never beheld them, or that having done so,
I had died. Bear Nice is in bad shape here,
so's the guy.
Speaker 5 (20:11):
The shutting of the door disturbed me, and looking up,
I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber,
but from the disordered chamber of my brain had not
alas departed, and would not be driven away the white
and ghastly spectrum of the teeth, not a speck on
their surface, not a shade on their enamel, not an
indenture in their edges, but what that period of her
(20:34):
smile had sufficed a brand in upon my memory. I
saw them now, even more unequivocally than I beheld them then.
Speaker 6 (20:41):
The teeth.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
The teeth, They were here and there and everywhere, invisibly
impalpably before me, long, narrow and excessively white, with the
pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment
of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury
of my monomania, as ruggled in vain against his strange
and irresistible influence in the multiplied objects of the external world,
(21:05):
I had no thoughts but for the teeth.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
For these I longed with a frenzied desire. All other
matters and all.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
Different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They, they alone,
were present to the mental eye, and they, in their
sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I
held them in every light, I turned them into every attitude.
I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I
pondered upon their confirmation. I mused upon the alteration in
(21:37):
their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them an imagination,
a sensitive and sentient power and even when unassisted by
the lips, a capability of moral expression.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
Boy, he's a losing it.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
Of Madselle Salaer has been well said couetou cepa in
chien decentient, and of Beernice, I'm more serious believed quit.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
Indien daisy ds.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
And I believe that translated to something like the ideas
the ideas. All of his ideas were of the teeth,
something like that.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
And he just had to say it in French, didn't he?
Wellat this is this isn't that good? So I'm gonna
make you I'm going to write in French.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
If I went to a French speaker in the office
and they're like, dude, this is really like hard to translate.
So if anyone knows that, please send it.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Do you want to read it again? That part the line.
Speaker 5 (22:36):
Sure quetu sepa ittien the sentiments getu said, Then itien
daisy days, daisy days, all right, Ah, here was the
idiotic thought that destroyed me easy days.
Speaker 6 (22:55):
Ah.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
Therefore it was that I coveted them so madly. I
felt that there possess could alone ever restore me to
peace in giving me back to reason.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
So Chuck what's going on here? Like, there's teeth. Now
he's got teeth, and he's focused on the teeth.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
Well, now the teeth are in her mouth. She is
disintegrating physically, except for her teeth, which remained perfect. Okay,
So now he is hyper focused and obsessed with her
teeth because they're so perfect.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
I would be hyper focused. I'm running out of the
room at this point too, okay. And the evening closed
in upon me. Thus, and then the darkness came and
tarried and went, and the day again dawned, and the
mists of a second night were now gathering around. And
still I sat motionless in that solitary room, and still
(23:46):
I sat, buried in meditation, And still the phantasma of
the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy, as with the most vivid,
hideous distinctness, It floated amid the changing lights and shadows
of the chamber length. There broke in upon my dreams
a cry of horror and dismay. And thereon too, after
a pause succeeded the sound of troubled voices intermingled with
(24:10):
many low moanings of sorrow or pain. I arose from
my seat, and, throwing open one of the doors of
the library, saw standing out in the antechamber a servant
maiden volunteers, who told me that Baronice was no more.
She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning,
and now at the closing end of the night, the
(24:30):
grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations
for the burial were completed.
Speaker 6 (24:35):
So Bernice is dead.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
Yes, I found myself sitting in the library, and again,
sitting there alone, it seemed that I had newly awakened
from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it
was now midnight, and I was well aware that since
the setting of the sun Baronice had been interred. But
of that dreary period which intervened, I had no positive,
at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete
(24:59):
with horror. Horror more horrible from being vague, and terror
more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in
the record my existence, written all over with dim and
hideous and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decipher them, but
in vain, while ever and anon, like the spirit of
a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a
(25:21):
female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I
had done? Indeed, what was it? I asked myself the
question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me,
what was it? All right?
Speaker 5 (25:40):
So he's awoken from a fever dream and he's like something.
I've done something here while I slept That ain't good?
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (25:49):
What was it?
Speaker 5 (25:58):
On the table beside me burned a land mp and
near it lay a little box that can't be good.
It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen
it frequently before, for it was the property of the
family physician. But how it came there upon my table?
And why did I shudder? And regarding it? These things
were in no manner to be accounted for. And my
eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a
(26:18):
book and to the sentence underscored therein. The words were
the singular but simple ones of the poet Eben Zayat.
My companion said to me, if I would visit the
grave of my friend, I might somewhat alleviate my worries.
Speaker 6 (26:33):
Why, then, as.
Speaker 5 (26:34):
I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect
themselves on end, and the blood of my body become
congealed within my veins. There came a light tap at
the library door, and as pale as the tenet of
the tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were
(26:57):
wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a
voice mulus husky and very low. What said he some
broken sentences I had heard. He told of a wild cry,
disturbing the silence of the night, of the gathering together
of the household, of a search in the direction of
the sound. And then his tones grew thrillingly distinct, as
he whispered me of a violated grave, of a disfigured body,
(27:20):
and shrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
He pointed to garments. They were muddy and clotted with gore.
I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand.
It was indented with the impressive human nails. He directed
my attention to some object against the wall. I looked
at it for some minutes. It was a spade with
a shriek. I bounded to the table and grasped the
box that lay upon it, but I could not force
(27:49):
it open, and in my tremor. It slipped from my
hands and fell heavily and burst into pieces. And from it,
with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of
dental surgery, intermingled with thirty two small white and ivory
looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
The end.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
Wow, I just got a little chill, actually.
Speaker 6 (28:19):
And I knew the ending.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
He liked his teeth.
Speaker 6 (28:22):
Did he dig her up or was she still alive?
Speaker 4 (28:24):
I don't know. I was thrown off by the fact.
Speaker 6 (28:26):
That those shrieking women.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
Yeah, she's still palpitating as it, were still alive.
Speaker 5 (28:31):
I think he hallucinated the whole thing and that she
did not die and was buried. I think he went
into her chamber and removed her teeth while she was alive.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Or maybe he while he was in his little opium dream,
buried her alive, then decided, oh yeah the teeth, went back,
got him out of her mouth while she's still alive,
and took him back to the library. I think he
needs to lay off the dope, is what it comes
down to. Yeah, So happy Halloween. I hope everybody is
(29:03):
appropriately nervous now, right.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
Yeah, And if you have ideas on royalty free readings
that we can do next year.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
Yeah, well we'll bring this up again, like in August
or something like that. Agreed, So stick around. We are
not going anywhere just yet. We have a special you
can almost call us a two parter. The second part
is a special guest. Right, We're not going to do
listener mail or anything. We're going to do this Happy
Halloween everybody. So since this is a Halloween episode, and since,
(29:42):
as you may remember from Tuesday, John Hodgman has been
hanging around the office this week.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
That's I'm sleeping in a cubicle earlier.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
It's weird. We I got locked out of my here again.
My so, Hodgman, how you doing? Was?
Speaker 7 (30:02):
I don't get a I don't get like the chimes?
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Well, well, I haven't finished the introduction yet. We're not
doing listener mail this week because it's special, it was,
this is a Halloween episode and because Hodgman's here, so
instead we're going to do stuff with John Hodgman.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
And the reason, well, the reason John's here is because
he decided to surprise us and he had a ticket
to the show.
Speaker 6 (30:23):
Yep, we decided to honor that ticket. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (30:26):
Look, I feel bad. I feel a little bad about
last week because I came in and interrupted Sarah's letter.
Speaker 6 (30:32):
This week, whatever was, We took care of it.
Speaker 7 (30:34):
Don't you know what I don't. I don't pay attention
to time anymore. I'm a deranged millionaire.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
I like Sarah.
Speaker 7 (30:40):
I like the letters she writes. I like all the letters.
But I'm a listener too, you know. That's why I'm here. Yeah,
and what am I going to have my say?
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5 (30:48):
And no one ever comes in to do their listener
mail in person like you.
Speaker 6 (30:51):
You bought a ticket to do.
Speaker 7 (30:52):
So. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I have access. It's
time for me to have my say. Here's my listener mail.
All right, nice work, guys.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Thank you, thank you. That's nice listener huh. Yeah, that
was Chuck's.
Speaker 6 (31:06):
Well that was Poe los my mind.
Speaker 7 (31:10):
You say it was porific, I say Poe.
Speaker 6 (31:16):
No, I like it.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
Drownd post.
Speaker 7 (31:17):
Fine, Well you got of Like you know, guys, I
wrote this new book of complete World Knowledge called That
is All that's coming out. And this is the third
book of Complete World Knowledge. And in my previous books
of Complete world knowledge. I talked about everything, right, I
talked about how to tile kinds of knots. No, I
never did for some reason, I think I did.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
That was so close. I almost said, like, Yeah.
Speaker 7 (31:40):
I talked about Hobo's. I talked about Mollman. I talked
about the presidents of the United States. I talked about
the mottos and nicknames of all fifty one American states.
I talked about history. I talked about the future. But
there was one topic that I never took on before,
and that was sports. Yeah, because I am not a
(32:02):
sports fan.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
See, I found that surprising.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
Really.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Yeah, well, you and I co hosted at trivia then
it Max fun Con, and yeah, we did our own
little fun trivia.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
Well'm Elijah won. Right.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
I did some sports questions that you were not privy
to to humiliate me. You did some science fiction nerd
movie questions that I because I'm not into that.
Speaker 7 (32:21):
You did jock questions to humiliate me, and I did
nerd questions to humiliate and it went great. It went great.
Speaker 6 (32:26):
We're both humiliated, that's right.
Speaker 7 (32:27):
And that is usually the sign of a good night.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
Yes it is.
Speaker 7 (32:31):
But here's the thing for this third book, because we
are reaching the end of human civilization December twenty one, twenty.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
Twelve, at eleven eleven am.
Speaker 7 (32:40):
Exactly, and it's and it's time for me to engage
in well, Like the dying person, I reach out to
that which I've previously spurned in life, like religion and sports.
So I decided to learn a lot about sports and
to write about sports in this new book. And one
of the things I learned, which I didn't know until now,
(33:02):
you guys probably know this, that the Baltimore Ravens is
named after the Edgar Allan Poe poem The Right. So
you didn't know that. I didn't know that. I knew that,
and now that makes more sense. I didn't realize why
they had Edgar Allen Poe as their mascot. Some dude
(33:24):
dressed up as like nineteenth century and no, he's got
one of those big heads on, like a big Edgar
Allen Poe head.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
I was like, why is that?
Speaker 7 (33:32):
And then I finally got it. Ed Ground Poe apparently
got runeously drunk in Baltimore, as he did in every
East Coast city for a period of time. They all,
for some reason claim him as their son. Well, in Philadelphia,
New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Providence, but only Baltimore had the
nerve to name their team after a famous quasi literary
(33:58):
kind of dumb dumb poem that the French really liked.
And they have this mascot, which is crazy. Now I
understand why they have that mascot. This dude dressed up
his egg ground Poe with a giant Edgar Allan Poe
head on top of him that's filled with brandy.
Speaker 6 (34:12):
Now it makes sense.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
And John Cusack, to bring in full circle, is playing
Poe in a movie I know, which is.
Speaker 7 (34:18):
He's only the latest who wanted to play ed Ground Poe.
Of course, Sylvester Stallone was developing an edge Ground Poe
really biopic four years.
Speaker 6 (34:26):
Four years. You didn't know that.
Speaker 7 (34:29):
Foreigner was going to do the theme song. They wrote,
I have the tiger for that movie. Oh sorry, foreign first,
I apologize exactly survivor right, They wrote I have the
tiger for the edg Ground Poe movie, but when it
didn't get made, they used it for Rocky three instead
got sports and more sports. Punching is a sport, right Pugilism?
(34:52):
Oh no, I agree, that's the sweet science. That's the
that's the that's the intricate logical art of her doing
someone in the face exactly.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Wow, wow, hold on, you're leaving out a big element
trying to not get hurt in your own face. Right,
that's practically you're doing two things at once.
Speaker 7 (35:10):
Yeah, that's that's that's ballet.
Speaker 6 (35:12):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 7 (35:13):
That's that's an intricate dance. That's like ultimate fighting. I'm
guys down on the ground trying to knee each other
in the neck. It's it's acrobatic.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
I see you at a boxing match, though, Hodgman, I
wasn't a boxing match. I've seen that, Yes, you were.
Speaker 7 (35:30):
I was in a fake I was in a fake
boxing match.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
Was that choreograph of that state that it looked a
lot like the directors like you to just go at
each other and we'll see what happened.
Speaker 7 (35:38):
This was in an episode of Boards to Death.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
Right with you? You box, Jason Schwartz.
Speaker 7 (35:43):
I did, yeah, and uh, And I realized then that
it is an extremely physically taxing thing to do. I
don't I do not mean to run down boxers in
the least because first of all, they will kill me.
Second of all, what they do they are. They're are
extremely accomplished athletes. I have no problem with athletes, you understand, Sure,
(36:07):
I think they're incredibly skilled people whom I wish only
not to hurt me, do you know what I mean?
But they are artists in there in their own way.
And I don't even dislike sports per se. Like, there's
some sports that I occasionally will watch. I dig a
curling match from time to time.
Speaker 6 (36:23):
Okay, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, any.
Speaker 7 (36:26):
Spot with a broom I like. It's it is the
presupposition in our culture that everyone must like sports, and
if you do not know what the sports teams are
or what they.
Speaker 6 (36:38):
Do on the field, something is wrong with you. Then
you are abnormal.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
In some way.
Speaker 7 (36:42):
And I think that that's a little bit that presumes
too much.
Speaker 6 (36:46):
Well, John, that's the where we live in.
Speaker 7 (36:48):
But it's changing now. Baltimore got the Ravens in what
nineteen ninety six or seven or something like that. Okay,
so they name their team after a poem, right, was like,
no big deal, not a big deal, who cares?
Speaker 6 (37:03):
Right?
Speaker 7 (37:05):
This year we got some baseball what's the baseball player?
Speaker 6 (37:08):
Who named is a bat?
Speaker 7 (37:09):
Orchrist?
Speaker 6 (37:11):
I did not that.
Speaker 7 (37:12):
Yeah, it's that it's in the news, someone will write
about it and send it in.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
Okay, it was.
Speaker 7 (37:19):
It was this April it was revealed the very popular
bass ball player named his bat Orchrist, after one of
the Elven forged swords in the Hobbit.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
Huh that's pretty cool.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
Yeah right?
Speaker 7 (37:33):
And then guess what have you noticed this?
Speaker 4 (37:37):
You know?
Speaker 7 (37:37):
It's Nick Mangol, the center for the New York Jets.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (37:42):
Have you noticed, like he's not wearing a helmet anymore?
Speaker 6 (37:45):
I have not noticed that.
Speaker 7 (37:47):
It's surprising to me. He came out in one of
the games earlier this year. He was wearing a leather
top hat with like goggles on it.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
Do you notice that? I did not know? What is
that on the field on the field why, I.
Speaker 7 (38:04):
Don't know, but it's weird. And then and then another
time he came out and he was wearing a pith
helmet with with a jeweler's lens on it. That and
he came out in the he came out on the
field on a on a on a penny farthered bicycle.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
What is going on?
Speaker 7 (38:21):
It was a steam powered Penny farthing bicycle?
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Wow? Which was it of his own design and manufacture? Yeah.
Speaker 7 (38:29):
And then he went on a sports program, a radio
program much like this this radio right, Yeah, sure, it's
kind of and uh and he was and he was saying,
I'm really glad we won that game, and uh, I
think and they said, well, what do you think? How
do you how do you what to what do you
attribute your win?
Speaker 6 (38:49):
And he said, I just took.
Speaker 7 (38:53):
The lesson of Admiral acpart to heart and realized that
they were setting a trap.
Speaker 6 (39:00):
Weird.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
That is weird, very weird. What do you think is
going on there?
Speaker 6 (39:03):
I think this is it? Guys, I think this is happening.
Speaker 7 (39:05):
Is this the beginning the beginning of the nerd jock convergence?
See it all around us?
Speaker 6 (39:11):
Wow?
Speaker 7 (39:12):
I think Nick Mangled may be the one. Yeah, it's
the person who's going to join these two worlds together. Yeah,
he's doing steampunk cosplay, he's quoting Admiral Lackbar, He's riding
a Penny Farthing motorcycle, not just a steam powered Penny
Farthing motorcycle of his own design. And I recently, you
(39:34):
know how my my Zeppelin Hubris isn't in ruins, the
HC Hubris, the HC Hubris Audrin Zepplin's Hubris. Uh, but
I just got an offer on it.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Did you know that?
Speaker 6 (39:48):
That weird?
Speaker 7 (39:49):
I mean it's still crashed, it's still I think parts
of it is still burning in Central Park.
Speaker 6 (39:54):
This happened since Tuesday.
Speaker 7 (39:55):
Yeah, yeah, I maybe you hear this person heard the podcast.
I don't know what it is, but if the offer
came in, it's a good offer too, from man Gold
Steampunk Industries.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
It's gotta be the same one football Well yeah, see,
I think it might be him. Are you selling it
to him as is?
Speaker 7 (40:17):
Well, I'm not putting that thing back together. It's on
fire and burned my hands. Yes, I hope it works.
Speaker 6 (40:23):
Where is it over? I don't know.
Speaker 7 (40:26):
Most of the top half of Central Park.
Speaker 6 (40:27):
I mean it was big, it was big, most of
the top half. Yeah, I haven't been up there in
a while.
Speaker 4 (40:33):
Good.
Speaker 7 (40:34):
It crashed and burned probably two years.
Speaker 4 (40:37):
Ago and still oh yeah, it's still burning.
Speaker 7 (40:40):
Yeah, well I should do something.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
Well, John, let me ask you. I mean, that seems
like one of the great divisions in life in the
world that's been going on forever, is this division between
jockson nerds. It seems like it's a good thing. If
things come together, is it not?
Speaker 6 (40:56):
I I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 7 (41:00):
I think it's I think, like all major c changes,
it's unnerving, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (41:05):
I think those of us I'm scared of things too.
Speaker 7 (41:08):
I think those of us on the nerd side have
been defining ourselves by our marginalization for so long that
it may be hard for us to accept a world
where you know, that TV show Community did a whole
Dungeons and Dragons episode. Superhero movies are the only movies
(41:30):
that people make, now, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 6 (41:33):
Like all of the.
Speaker 7 (41:34):
Things, And now I think at least ten people in
the United States know who Doctor.
Speaker 6 (41:40):
Who is now, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 7 (41:42):
Comic Con is big, big business. And I think that
that all of these things that we used to hold
as badges and use to comfort ourselves in our marginalization
and culture are now being absorbed into, you know, the
monoculture as a whole. And there's no greater expression of
(42:02):
the monoculture than jock culture, which is the great leveling,
cross cultural, unifying thing that men and a lot of
women talk about unless they're a nerd like me. Right,
So when that's gone, I think that will bother nerds
very well. But I don't think the jocks give at all.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
No and and jocks tend to get their way as
far as society goes, if they want something. If Mangole
wants to make steam, hey.
Speaker 6 (42:30):
I like your steam pup culture.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
Give me that, nerd. That's right, they take mine.
Speaker 7 (42:35):
It's mine now, Hey, you're you're your your your steam
funk ironman armor that you made yourself.
Speaker 6 (42:42):
That's mine.
Speaker 7 (42:43):
Now drop it off at my locker.
Speaker 6 (42:46):
Throw a Jets jersey on top of it.
Speaker 7 (42:47):
Yeah, I'm gonna put the Jets jersey on top of it.
It's going to be steampunk Ironman Jets. That's not what
the mc. Mangol does not talk like that at all.
He's a very sweet guy.
Speaker 6 (42:55):
I met him. That's why I hope so.
Speaker 7 (43:01):
In real life. In real life, Nick Mangold's Twitter avatar
is an illustration of him as an ewok.
Speaker 6 (43:11):
Really.
Speaker 7 (43:11):
Yeah, So you may say that what I'm putting in
my book is crazy, but look around you, everybody, it's
coming true.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
Well, John, thank you for coming by with your baffling prediction.
Speaker 7 (43:22):
You don't have to think it's very easy. I just
walked down the hallway from my safe room.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
Are you going to stay here? Because the weekend's approaching.
Speaker 7 (43:28):
I need someone to kick down the door of my
safe room because I fell asleep in that cubicle because
I went out and I accidentally armed the system. Okay,
So if you have an intern or someone who can
go in there, they will.
Speaker 6 (43:42):
Be gassed, Jerry, Yeah, a foot of lead.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
Okay, and she can.
Speaker 7 (43:49):
Yeah, but there are booth but there are booby traps.
There will be gassed, There will be darts, there will
be snakes, there will be a giant rolling boulder.
Speaker 6 (43:57):
Just good.
Speaker 7 (43:58):
If we get that, then I can get back in
and then I'll be back again.
Speaker 5 (44:01):
Jerry deals with us on a day to day basis.
She can handle any boulders or poisoned darts.
Speaker 6 (44:06):
You're right, Yeah, here's to you, Jerry.
Speaker 4 (44:08):
We'll send Jerry in. Yeah. And then.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
So John's book is that is all and it is
coming out November first, and you can pre order it
right now using the internet, using the internet, and I
hope that you will at a variety of Internet sites.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
Oh you really, just plug the heck out of that, chuck.
Speaker 6 (44:30):
Well, you know, I want the guy to sell a
book or two.
Speaker 7 (44:33):
I'm just happy to be here as an listener, as
a deranged millionaire. I'm happy to come in here and
take over your listener mail, and as a resident, as
a resident of past up Works closet.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
Well to those of you who made it all the
way through this podcast and you're with us right now.
I want to say on behalf of myself, Chuck and
mister John Hodgman, Happy Halloween. Be safe, Please don't get
hit by a car.
Speaker 7 (45:00):
Dress your children in skeleton costumes and send them out
into the street.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
At the end, be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how stup Work
staff as we explore them with promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Brought to you by the reinvented twenty twelve Camra.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the Reinvented twenty twelve Camri.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's ready.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know? From HowStuffWorks
dot Com?
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Cook. There's
Charles W. Chucker's brand that makes this stuff.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
You should know.
Speaker 5 (00:37):
I wonder what that sounds like to people who listen
to it at double speed.
Speaker 6 (00:41):
You sound like your normal boys.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Right, yeah, you know that. That was my impression of somebody.
I'm gonna guess go with Vincent Price. No, okay, Edgar Oliver.
It was a great Edgar Oliver. Terrible Vincent Price. Edgar Oliver.
He's a storyteller on the moth. Oh really yeah, and
he sounds exactly like that. You got to check stuff out.
He's awesome.
Speaker 6 (01:02):
Is he a horror? Is he like?
Speaker 4 (01:03):
No?
Speaker 6 (01:03):
Any wrong with him?
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Well? Yeah, I mean he talks like that. But other
than he's he's an awesome dude. So that was my Oh,
it's pretty good. You go back and listen now you'll
be like, wow. So I was doing an Edgar Oliver
chuck because in t minus like four days. Yeah, it's
gonna be Halloween, one of our favorite days. And mind
(01:26):
blowingly enough. If you're listening to this on Halloween it's today.
Speaker 6 (01:30):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Yeah, yeah, that works. And last year we did something unusual,
so this year we're doing it again, which makes it
the usual. But it was popular. People liked it. We
read a great short story last year.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
Yeah, people actually called for it again and said, oh,
you're gonna do it this year.
Speaker 6 (01:46):
I think some people might not have liked it, but
just skip it then.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Yeah. We were like, does that mean we don't have
to study? Okay, let's do that exactly. Yeah, there's one
in the can that's guaranteed gonna be at least okay. Yes,
So this year, Charles W. Chuck Bryant selected the story
and it is by someone you may or may not
have heard of. He's a somewhat you know, well known
(02:11):
Writer's name is Edgar Allan Poe and he died in Baltimore,
I believe, in the eighteen forties. Sure, here's one of
the great first great American writers of the nineteenth century.
Slash drug addicts, big time drug addict, and I think
that comes through a lot in this. Yeah. But we've
(02:32):
selected a short story. Chuck selected a short story. It's
actually I gave.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
You a selection. You made the final choice.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Yeah, but you let me to You're like, which one
of these would you like? And then you basically put
this one in my hand.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
No, actually, I was leaning toward the crazy dwarf that
kills the king.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
What are we reading this one for? Because this one's creepy? Okay,
all right, I agreed. Well, do you want to tell
them the name of this one?
Speaker 5 (02:58):
It's called Barnice and give you a slight setup just
so you know what's going on. There's a woman called
Baronice and a man, uh, and they are cousins and
they're married, and things go a little weird in the story.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Weirder than cousins being married. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
I don't want to give anything away, but I just
want you know it's it's old English. It's not Old English,
but it's older than it's Old American.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
Yeah. So before we lose any more listeners, let's get
to it. You want to cue the spooky music.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
Yeah, but we should also point out that at the
end of this episode we have a very special guest.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
So let's not say who. If you listen on Tuesday,
you know.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
But if you aren't into the reading, just go ahead
and skip forward to the special guest, and you'll get
some delight there.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Right, And if you do that, we apologize in advance.
Yes either way, all right, So now let's cue the
spooky music.
Speaker 6 (04:01):
Okay, that's the tone.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Let's dim the lights, okay, and we now present to
you Edgar Allan poe'se Bevernice.
Speaker 6 (04:16):
My Josh is a little quote at the beginning in.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Latin and in English.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
I'll read the English. My companion said to me, if
I would visit the grave of my friend, I might
somewhat alleviate my.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Worries reasonable advice.
Speaker 6 (04:31):
And here we go.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform, overreaching
the wide horizon as the rainbow its hues, or as
various as the hues of that arch, as distinct too,
yet as intimately blended, overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow.
How is it that from beauty I have derived a
type of unloveliness, from the covenant of peace, a simile
(04:55):
of sorrow. But as in ethics, evil is a consequence
of good, So in fact, out of joy is sorrow born.
Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today,
or the agonies which have their origin, and the ecstasies
which might have been nice.
Speaker 6 (05:14):
It sounded like improper English, but that's how we wrote it.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
And it's not just today, it's to day with a
hyphen in between.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
My baptismal name is Eugaeus. That of my family I
will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the
land more time honored than my gloomy, gray hereditary halls.
Our line has been called a race of visionaries, and
in many striking particulars in the character of the family mansion,
in the frescoes of the chief saloon, and the tapestries
(05:42):
of the dormitories, and the chiseling of some buttress in
the armory, but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings,
and the fashion of the library chamber, and lastly in
the very peculiar nature of.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
The library's contents.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
There is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the bloe.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber,
and with its volumes, of which latter I will say
no more. Here died my mother here, and I was born.
But it is mere idleness to say that I had
not lived before that. The soul has no previous existence.
You deny it. Let us not argue the matter, convince myself.
I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance
(06:23):
of aerial forms, of spiritual and meaning, eyes of sounds,
musical yet sad, A remembrance which will not be excluded,
a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady, and
like a shadow too in the impossibility of my getting
rid of it, while the sunlight of my reason shall
exist in that chamber. I was born thus, awaking from
(06:46):
the long night of what seemed but was not nonentity,
at once into the very regions of fairyland, into a
palace of imagination, into the wild dominions of monastic thought
and erudition. Singular that I gazed around me with a
startled and ardent eye, that I loitered away my boyhood
and books, and dissipated my youth in reverie. But it
(07:08):
is singular that as the years rolled away and the
noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of
my fathers, it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon
the springs of my life. Wonderful how total an inversion
took place in the character of my commonest thought. The
realities of the world affected me as visions, and as
visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of
(07:29):
dreams became in turn, not the material of my everyday existence,
but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
See he's getting a little caught up in his own
obsession of thoughts.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Right, he's a bookworm. Okay, he's bookish.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
So the real world as it doesn't even matter to
him at this point.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
That's what he thinks of the real world.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
Onward, Bearnice and I were cousins, and we grew up
together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew I ill
of health and buried in gloom. She agile, graceful and
overflowing with energy. Hers the ramble on the hillside, mine
the studies of the cloister. I living within my own heart,
(08:12):
an addicted body and soul to the most intense and
painful meditation. She roaming carelessly through life, with no thought
of the shadows in her path or the silent flight
of the raven winged owers. Berenice, I call upon her name,
Berenice from the gray ruins of memory, A thousand tumultuous
(08:32):
recollections are startled at the sound.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
Ah.
Speaker 5 (08:36):
Vividly is her image before me now as in the
early days of her light heartedness and joy, Oh gorgeous
yet fantastic beauty, Oh sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim,
oh Naiad among its fountains. And then then all is
mystery and terror, a tale which should not be told. Disease,
(08:58):
a fatal disease, fell.
Speaker 6 (09:00):
Like the simoon upon her frame.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
And even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of
change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and
her character, and in a manner the most subtle and terrible,
disturbing even the identity of her person Alas the destroyer
came and went.
Speaker 6 (09:18):
And the victim where was she?
Speaker 5 (09:20):
I knew her not, or knew her no longer as Berenice.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
Now she got sick.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
When I first read him saying Berenice Nice, I thought
of Kramer going, Pam, Pam, you remember that one?
Speaker 5 (09:39):
Yeah, all right, Spernice didn't doing so hot all of
a sudden.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
No, it happened like that. Ye. Among the numerous train
of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one, which
affected a revolution of so horrible a kind, and the
moral and physical being of my cousin may be mentioned
as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a
species of epilepsy, not unfrequently terminating in trance itself, trance
(10:05):
very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner
of recovery was in most instances startlingly abrupt. In the meantime,
my own disease, for I have been told that I
should call it by no other appellation. My own disease
then grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac
character of a novel and extraordinary form, hourly and momently
(10:29):
gaining vigor, and at length obtaining over me the most
incomprehensible ascendency. This monomania, if I must so term it,
consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the
mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more
than probable that I am not understood, But I fear
indeed that it is in no matter possible to convey
(10:51):
to the mind of the merely general reader an adequate
idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in
my case, the powers of metaie not to speak, technically
busied and buried themselves in the contemplation of even the
most ordinary objects of the universe.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
So now he's becoming obsessive about just things, anything transfixed
on things.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
But like he can't even get across how obsessed.
Speaker 5 (11:17):
He becomes monomania all right, to muse for long, unwearied hours,
with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the
margin or in the topography of a book. To become
absorbed for the better part of a summer's day, and
a quaint shadow falling a slant upon the tapestry or
upon the door, To lose myself for an entire night,
(11:38):
and watching the steady flame of a lamp or the
embers of a fire, to dream away whole days of
the perfume of a flower. To repeat monotonously some common
word until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased
to convey any idea whatever to the mind.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
Everyone does that.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Yeah, it's called day awesome.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
To lose all sense of motion or physical existence by
means of absolute bodily quiescence, long and obstinately persevered in
such were a few of the most common and least
pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties,
not indeed altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything
(12:22):
like analysis or explanation.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
You did good. That was a tough one. Thanks.
Speaker 6 (12:26):
He sounds like an opium head, you know he's like.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
And by the way, I'm high as a kite right.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Now, I'm staring at a lamp for two days.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
Yet let me not be misapprehended. This due earnest and
morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature,
frivolous must not be confounded in character with that ruminating
propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged him
by persons of ardent imagination. It was not, even as
might be at first supposed, an extreme condition or exaggeration
(12:58):
of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different.
In the one instance, the dreamer or enthusiast, being interested
by an object, usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of
this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions, issuing
therefrom until at the conclusion of a day dream often
(13:19):
replete with luxury, he finds the in sedimentum or first
cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case,
the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming through the
medium of my distempered vision a refracted and unreal importance,
(13:39):
few deductions, if any, were made, and those few perdinaciously
returning in upon the original object as a center. The
meditations were never pleasurable, and at the termination of the reverie,
the first cause, so far from being out of sight,
had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing
feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind,
(14:01):
more particularly exercised, were with me, as I have said before,
the attentive, and are with the daydreamer, the speculative anything thoughts, No,
he's just going on to say it was really serious.
Speaker 5 (14:16):
Yeah, they'd like to really describe things back then. Yeah, okay,
my books at this epoch, if they did not actually
serve to irritate the disorder partook, it will be perceived
largely in their imaginative and inconsequential nature of the characteristic
qualities of the disorder itself.
Speaker 6 (14:34):
I will remember, among.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
Others, the triestas of the noble Italian Colius Secundus curio,
the amplitudine biat de regni de Saint Austin's great work
The City of God and Trillium decarne Christi, in which
the paradoxical sentence mortus sde phileas credibo esquia s sepotus
(15:02):
resurreic exit certum esquia impossibilest occupied my undivided time for
many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation. So he's getting
hung up on these phrases from the books.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Yeah, like I am the Latin.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only
by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean
crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephistian, which, steadily resisting the
attacks of human violence and the fiercer fury of the
waters and the kinds, trembled only the touch of the
flower called Asphodel. And although to a careless thinker it
(15:45):
might appear a matter beyond doubt that the alteration produced
by our unhappy malady and the moral condition of Berenice
would afford me many objects for the exercise of that
intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at
some trouble and explaining. Yet such was not in any
degree the case in the lucid intervals of my infirmity.
(16:07):
Her calamity indeed gave me pain, and taking deeply to
the heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life,
I did not fall to ponder frequently and bitterly upon
the wonder working means by which so strange revolution had
been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook
not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such
(16:29):
as would have occurred under similar circumstances to the ordinary
mass of mankind, true to its own character. My disorder
reveled in less important, but more startling changes wrought in
the physical frame of Baronice, and the singular and most
appalling distortion of her personal identity during the brightest days
of her unparalleled beauty. Most surely I had never loved her,
(16:51):
and the strange anomaly of my existence. Feelings with me
had never been of the heart, and my passions always
were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning,
among the trellish shadows of the forest at noonday, and
in the silence of my library at night, she had
flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her not
as a living and breathing Berenice, but as the baronice
(17:12):
of a dream. Not as a being of the earth earthy,
but as the abstraction of such a being, Not as
a thing to admire but to analyze, Not as an
object of love, but as the theme of the most
obtruse although desultory speculation. And now now I shuddered in
her presence, and grew pale at her approach, yet bitterly
(17:34):
lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind
that she had loved me long, and in an evil moment,
I spoke to her of marriage. I'm getting oddly Madonna
esque here with my English.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Yeah, does she speak strangely? Ah?
Speaker 6 (17:56):
You know, she married guy Richie.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
All of a sudden she started talking like a Madonna.
Speaker 6 (18:00):
Yeah, that's right, not like she was from Queen's or.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Yeah, you're not supposed to do that. You got to
remember who you are, you know, I agreed, and at
length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon
an afternoon in the winter of the year, one of
those unseasonably warm, calm and misty days, which are the
nurse of the beautiful halcyon. I sat and sat as
I thought, alone in the inner apartment of my library,
(18:24):
but uplifting my eyes, I saw the baronice stood before me.
Was it my own excited imagination, or the misty influence
of the atmosphere, or the uncertain twilight of the chamber,
or the gray draperies which fell around her figure that
caused in it so vacillating an indistinct an outline.
Speaker 6 (18:41):
Or was it all the opium? And as he likes
to have.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
A lot of different ideas to choose from, sure, I
could not tell. She spoke no word, I not for
worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill
ran through my frame, A sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me,
assuming curiosity pervaded my soul, and sinking back upon the chair,
I remained for some time, breathless and motionless, with my
(19:07):
eyes riveted upon her person alas its emaciation was excessive,
and not one vestige of the former being lurked in
any single line of the contour. My burning glances at
length fell upon the face, the forehead was high and
very pale and singularly placid, and the once jetty hair
fell partially over it and overshadowed the hollow temples with
(19:30):
innumerable ringlets, now of vivivid yellow and jarring discordantly in
their fantastic character. With the raining melancholy of the countenance,
the eyes were lifeless and lustreless and seemingly pupilss and
I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation
of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted, and, in
(19:51):
a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed
Berenics disclosed themselves slowly to my view, would to God
that I never beheld them, or that having done so,
I had died. Bear Nice is in bad shape here,
so's the guy.
Speaker 5 (20:11):
The shutting of the door disturbed me, and looking up,
I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber,
but from the disordered chamber of my brain had not
alas departed, and would not be driven away the white
and ghastly spectrum of the teeth, not a speck on
their surface, not a shade on their enamel, not an
indenture in their edges, but what that period of her
(20:34):
smile had sufficed a brand in upon my memory. I
saw them now, even more unequivocally than I beheld them then.
Speaker 6 (20:41):
The teeth.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
The teeth, They were here and there and everywhere, invisibly
impalpably before me, long, narrow and excessively white, with the
pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment
of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury
of my monomania, as ruggled in vain against his strange
and irresistible influence in the multiplied objects of the external world,
(21:05):
I had no thoughts but for the teeth.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
For these I longed with a frenzied desire. All other
matters and all.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
Different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They, they alone,
were present to the mental eye, and they, in their
sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I
held them in every light, I turned them into every attitude.
I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I
pondered upon their confirmation. I mused upon the alteration in
(21:37):
their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them an imagination,
a sensitive and sentient power and even when unassisted by
the lips, a capability of moral expression.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
Boy, he's a losing it.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
Of Madselle Salaer has been well said couetou cepa in
chien decentient, and of Beernice, I'm more serious believed quit.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
Indien daisy ds.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
And I believe that translated to something like the ideas
the ideas. All of his ideas were of the teeth,
something like that.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
And he just had to say it in French, didn't he?
Wellat this is this isn't that good? So I'm gonna
make you I'm going to write in French.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
If I went to a French speaker in the office
and they're like, dude, this is really like hard to translate.
So if anyone knows that, please send it.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Do you want to read it again? That part the line.
Speaker 5 (22:36):
Sure quetu sepa ittien the sentiments getu said, Then itien
daisy days, daisy days, all right, Ah, here was the
idiotic thought that destroyed me easy days.
Speaker 6 (22:55):
Ah.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
Therefore it was that I coveted them so madly. I
felt that there possess could alone ever restore me to
peace in giving me back to reason.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
So Chuck what's going on here? Like, there's teeth. Now
he's got teeth, and he's focused on the teeth.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
Well, now the teeth are in her mouth. She is
disintegrating physically, except for her teeth, which remained perfect. Okay,
So now he is hyper focused and obsessed with her
teeth because they're so perfect.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
I would be hyper focused. I'm running out of the
room at this point too, okay. And the evening closed
in upon me. Thus, and then the darkness came and
tarried and went, and the day again dawned, and the
mists of a second night were now gathering around. And
still I sat motionless in that solitary room, and still
(23:46):
I sat, buried in meditation, And still the phantasma of
the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy, as with the most vivid,
hideous distinctness, It floated amid the changing lights and shadows
of the chamber length. There broke in upon my dreams
a cry of horror and dismay. And thereon too, after
a pause succeeded the sound of troubled voices intermingled with
(24:10):
many low moanings of sorrow or pain. I arose from
my seat, and, throwing open one of the doors of
the library, saw standing out in the antechamber a servant
maiden volunteers, who told me that Baronice was no more.
She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning,
and now at the closing end of the night, the
(24:30):
grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations
for the burial were completed.
Speaker 6 (24:35):
So Bernice is dead.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
Yes, I found myself sitting in the library, and again,
sitting there alone, it seemed that I had newly awakened
from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it
was now midnight, and I was well aware that since
the setting of the sun Baronice had been interred. But
of that dreary period which intervened, I had no positive,
at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete
(24:59):
with horror. Horror more horrible from being vague, and terror
more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in
the record my existence, written all over with dim and
hideous and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decipher them, but
in vain, while ever and anon, like the spirit of
a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a
(25:21):
female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I
had done? Indeed, what was it? I asked myself the
question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me,
what was it? All right?
Speaker 5 (25:40):
So he's awoken from a fever dream and he's like something.
I've done something here while I slept That ain't good?
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (25:49):
What was it?
Speaker 5 (25:58):
On the table beside me burned a land mp and
near it lay a little box that can't be good.
It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen
it frequently before, for it was the property of the
family physician. But how it came there upon my table?
And why did I shudder? And regarding it? These things
were in no manner to be accounted for. And my
eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a
(26:18):
book and to the sentence underscored therein. The words were
the singular but simple ones of the poet Eben Zayat.
My companion said to me, if I would visit the
grave of my friend, I might somewhat alleviate my worries.
Speaker 6 (26:33):
Why, then, as.
Speaker 5 (26:34):
I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect
themselves on end, and the blood of my body become
congealed within my veins. There came a light tap at
the library door, and as pale as the tenet of
the tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were
(26:57):
wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a
voice mulus husky and very low. What said he some
broken sentences I had heard. He told of a wild cry,
disturbing the silence of the night, of the gathering together
of the household, of a search in the direction of
the sound. And then his tones grew thrillingly distinct, as
he whispered me of a violated grave, of a disfigured body,
(27:20):
and shrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
He pointed to garments. They were muddy and clotted with gore.
I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand.
It was indented with the impressive human nails. He directed
my attention to some object against the wall. I looked
at it for some minutes. It was a spade with
a shriek. I bounded to the table and grasped the
box that lay upon it, but I could not force
(27:49):
it open, and in my tremor. It slipped from my
hands and fell heavily and burst into pieces. And from it,
with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of
dental surgery, intermingled with thirty two small white and ivory
looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
The end.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
Wow, I just got a little chill, actually.
Speaker 6 (28:19):
And I knew the ending.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
He liked his teeth.
Speaker 6 (28:22):
Did he dig her up or was she still alive?
Speaker 4 (28:24):
I don't know. I was thrown off by the fact.
Speaker 6 (28:26):
That those shrieking women.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
Yeah, she's still palpitating as it, were still alive.
Speaker 5 (28:31):
I think he hallucinated the whole thing and that she
did not die and was buried. I think he went
into her chamber and removed her teeth while she was alive.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Or maybe he while he was in his little opium dream,
buried her alive, then decided, oh yeah the teeth, went back,
got him out of her mouth while she's still alive,
and took him back to the library. I think he
needs to lay off the dope, is what it comes
down to. Yeah, So happy Halloween. I hope everybody is
(29:03):
appropriately nervous now, right.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
Yeah, And if you have ideas on royalty free readings
that we can do next year.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
Yeah, well we'll bring this up again, like in August
or something like that. Agreed, So stick around. We are
not going anywhere just yet. We have a special you
can almost call us a two parter. The second part
is a special guest. Right, We're not going to do
listener mail or anything. We're going to do this Happy
Halloween everybody. So since this is a Halloween episode, and since,
(29:42):
as you may remember from Tuesday, John Hodgman has been
hanging around the office this week.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
That's I'm sleeping in a cubicle earlier.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
It's weird. We I got locked out of my here again.
My so, Hodgman, how you doing? Was?
Speaker 7 (30:02):
I don't get a I don't get like the chimes?
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Well, well, I haven't finished the introduction yet. We're not
doing listener mail this week because it's special, it was,
this is a Halloween episode and because Hodgman's here, so
instead we're going to do stuff with John Hodgman.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
And the reason, well, the reason John's here is because
he decided to surprise us and he had a ticket
to the show.
Speaker 6 (30:23):
Yep, we decided to honor that ticket. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (30:26):
Look, I feel bad. I feel a little bad about
last week because I came in and interrupted Sarah's letter.
Speaker 6 (30:32):
This week, whatever was, We took care of it.
Speaker 7 (30:34):
Don't you know what I don't. I don't pay attention
to time anymore. I'm a deranged millionaire.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
I like Sarah.
Speaker 7 (30:40):
I like the letters she writes. I like all the letters.
But I'm a listener too, you know. That's why I'm here. Yeah,
and what am I going to have my say?
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5 (30:48):
And no one ever comes in to do their listener
mail in person like you.
Speaker 6 (30:51):
You bought a ticket to do.
Speaker 7 (30:52):
So. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I have access. It's
time for me to have my say. Here's my listener mail.
All right, nice work, guys.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Thank you, thank you. That's nice listener huh. Yeah, that
was Chuck's.
Speaker 6 (31:06):
Well that was Poe los my mind.
Speaker 7 (31:10):
You say it was porific, I say Poe.
Speaker 6 (31:16):
No, I like it.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
Drownd post.
Speaker 7 (31:17):
Fine, Well you got of Like you know, guys, I
wrote this new book of complete World Knowledge called That
is All that's coming out. And this is the third
book of Complete World Knowledge. And in my previous books
of Complete world knowledge. I talked about everything, right, I
talked about how to tile kinds of knots. No, I
never did for some reason, I think I did.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
That was so close. I almost said, like, Yeah.
Speaker 7 (31:40):
I talked about Hobo's. I talked about Mollman. I talked
about the presidents of the United States. I talked about
the mottos and nicknames of all fifty one American states.
I talked about history. I talked about the future. But
there was one topic that I never took on before,
and that was sports. Yeah, because I am not a
(32:02):
sports fan.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
See, I found that surprising.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
Really.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Yeah, well, you and I co hosted at trivia then
it Max fun Con, and yeah, we did our own
little fun trivia.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
Well'm Elijah won. Right.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
I did some sports questions that you were not privy
to to humiliate me. You did some science fiction nerd
movie questions that I because I'm not into that.
Speaker 7 (32:21):
You did jock questions to humiliate me, and I did
nerd questions to humiliate and it went great. It went great.
Speaker 6 (32:26):
We're both humiliated, that's right.
Speaker 7 (32:27):
And that is usually the sign of a good night.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
Yes it is.
Speaker 7 (32:31):
But here's the thing for this third book, because we
are reaching the end of human civilization December twenty one, twenty.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
Twelve, at eleven eleven am.
Speaker 7 (32:40):
Exactly, and it's and it's time for me to engage
in well, Like the dying person, I reach out to
that which I've previously spurned in life, like religion and sports.
So I decided to learn a lot about sports and
to write about sports in this new book. And one
of the things I learned, which I didn't know until now,
(33:02):
you guys probably know this, that the Baltimore Ravens is
named after the Edgar Allan Poe poem The Right. So
you didn't know that. I didn't know that. I knew that,
and now that makes more sense. I didn't realize why
they had Edgar Allen Poe as their mascot. Some dude
(33:24):
dressed up as like nineteenth century and no, he's got
one of those big heads on, like a big Edgar
Allen Poe head.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
I was like, why is that?
Speaker 7 (33:32):
And then I finally got it. Ed Ground Poe apparently
got runeously drunk in Baltimore, as he did in every
East Coast city for a period of time. They all,
for some reason claim him as their son. Well, in Philadelphia,
New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Providence, but only Baltimore had the
nerve to name their team after a famous quasi literary
(33:58):
kind of dumb dumb poem that the French really liked.
And they have this mascot, which is crazy. Now I
understand why they have that mascot. This dude dressed up
his egg ground Poe with a giant Edgar Allan Poe
head on top of him that's filled with brandy.
Speaker 6 (34:12):
Now it makes sense.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
And John Cusack, to bring in full circle, is playing
Poe in a movie I know, which is.
Speaker 7 (34:18):
He's only the latest who wanted to play ed Ground Poe.
Of course, Sylvester Stallone was developing an edge Ground Poe
really biopic four years.
Speaker 6 (34:26):
Four years. You didn't know that.
Speaker 7 (34:29):
Foreigner was going to do the theme song. They wrote,
I have the tiger for that movie. Oh sorry, foreign first,
I apologize exactly survivor right, They wrote I have the
tiger for the edg Ground Poe movie, but when it
didn't get made, they used it for Rocky three instead
got sports and more sports. Punching is a sport, right Pugilism?
(34:52):
Oh no, I agree, that's the sweet science. That's the
that's the that's the intricate logical art of her doing
someone in the face exactly.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Wow, wow, hold on, you're leaving out a big element
trying to not get hurt in your own face. Right,
that's practically you're doing two things at once.
Speaker 7 (35:10):
Yeah, that's that's that's ballet.
Speaker 6 (35:12):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 7 (35:13):
That's that's an intricate dance. That's like ultimate fighting. I'm
guys down on the ground trying to knee each other
in the neck. It's it's acrobatic.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
I see you at a boxing match, though, Hodgman, I
wasn't a boxing match. I've seen that, Yes, you were.
Speaker 7 (35:30):
I was in a fake I was in a fake
boxing match.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
Was that choreograph of that state that it looked a
lot like the directors like you to just go at
each other and we'll see what happened.
Speaker 7 (35:38):
This was in an episode of Boards to Death.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
Right with you? You box, Jason Schwartz.
Speaker 7 (35:43):
I did, yeah, and uh, And I realized then that
it is an extremely physically taxing thing to do. I
don't I do not mean to run down boxers in
the least because first of all, they will kill me.
Second of all, what they do they are. They're are
extremely accomplished athletes. I have no problem with athletes, you understand, Sure,
(36:07):
I think they're incredibly skilled people whom I wish only
not to hurt me, do you know what I mean?
But they are artists in there in their own way.
And I don't even dislike sports per se. Like, there's
some sports that I occasionally will watch. I dig a
curling match from time to time.
Speaker 6 (36:23):
Okay, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, any.
Speaker 7 (36:26):
Spot with a broom I like. It's it is the
presupposition in our culture that everyone must like sports, and
if you do not know what the sports teams are
or what they.
Speaker 6 (36:38):
Do on the field, something is wrong with you. Then
you are abnormal.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
In some way.
Speaker 7 (36:42):
And I think that that's a little bit that presumes
too much.
Speaker 6 (36:46):
Well, John, that's the where we live in.
Speaker 7 (36:48):
But it's changing now. Baltimore got the Ravens in what
nineteen ninety six or seven or something like that. Okay,
so they name their team after a poem, right, was like,
no big deal, not a big deal, who cares?
Speaker 6 (37:03):
Right?
Speaker 7 (37:05):
This year we got some baseball what's the baseball player?
Speaker 6 (37:08):
Who named is a bat?
Speaker 7 (37:09):
Orchrist?
Speaker 6 (37:11):
I did not that.
Speaker 7 (37:12):
Yeah, it's that it's in the news, someone will write
about it and send it in.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
Okay, it was.
Speaker 7 (37:19):
It was this April it was revealed the very popular
bass ball player named his bat Orchrist, after one of
the Elven forged swords in the Hobbit.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
Huh that's pretty cool.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
Yeah right?
Speaker 7 (37:33):
And then guess what have you noticed this?
Speaker 4 (37:37):
You know?
Speaker 7 (37:37):
It's Nick Mangol, the center for the New York Jets.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (37:42):
Have you noticed, like he's not wearing a helmet anymore?
Speaker 6 (37:45):
I have not noticed that.
Speaker 7 (37:47):
It's surprising to me. He came out in one of
the games earlier this year. He was wearing a leather
top hat with like goggles on it.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
Do you notice that? I did not know? What is
that on the field on the field why, I.
Speaker 7 (38:04):
Don't know, but it's weird. And then and then another
time he came out and he was wearing a pith
helmet with with a jeweler's lens on it. That and
he came out in the he came out on the
field on a on a on a penny farthered bicycle.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
What is going on?
Speaker 7 (38:21):
It was a steam powered Penny farthing bicycle?
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Wow? Which was it of his own design and manufacture? Yeah.
Speaker 7 (38:29):
And then he went on a sports program, a radio
program much like this this radio right, Yeah, sure, it's
kind of and uh and he was and he was saying,
I'm really glad we won that game, and uh, I
think and they said, well, what do you think? How
do you how do you what to what do you
attribute your win?
Speaker 6 (38:49):
And he said, I just took.
Speaker 7 (38:53):
The lesson of Admiral acpart to heart and realized that
they were setting a trap.
Speaker 6 (39:00):
Weird.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
That is weird, very weird. What do you think is
going on there?
Speaker 6 (39:03):
I think this is it? Guys, I think this is happening.
Speaker 7 (39:05):
Is this the beginning the beginning of the nerd jock convergence?
See it all around us?
Speaker 6 (39:11):
Wow?
Speaker 7 (39:12):
I think Nick Mangled may be the one. Yeah, it's
the person who's going to join these two worlds together. Yeah,
he's doing steampunk cosplay, he's quoting Admiral Lackbar, He's riding
a Penny Farthing motorcycle, not just a steam powered Penny
Farthing motorcycle of his own design. And I recently, you
(39:34):
know how my my Zeppelin Hubris isn't in ruins, the
HC Hubris, the HC Hubris Audrin Zepplin's Hubris. Uh, but
I just got an offer on it.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Did you know that?
Speaker 6 (39:48):
That weird?
Speaker 7 (39:49):
I mean it's still crashed, it's still I think parts
of it is still burning in Central Park.
Speaker 6 (39:54):
This happened since Tuesday.
Speaker 7 (39:55):
Yeah, yeah, I maybe you hear this person heard the podcast.
I don't know what it is, but if the offer
came in, it's a good offer too, from man Gold
Steampunk Industries.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
It's gotta be the same one football Well yeah, see,
I think it might be him. Are you selling it
to him as is?
Speaker 7 (40:17):
Well, I'm not putting that thing back together. It's on
fire and burned my hands. Yes, I hope it works.
Speaker 6 (40:23):
Where is it over? I don't know.
Speaker 7 (40:26):
Most of the top half of Central Park.
Speaker 6 (40:27):
I mean it was big, it was big, most of
the top half. Yeah, I haven't been up there in
a while.
Speaker 4 (40:33):
Good.
Speaker 7 (40:34):
It crashed and burned probably two years.
Speaker 4 (40:37):
Ago and still oh yeah, it's still burning.
Speaker 7 (40:40):
Yeah, well I should do something.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
Well, John, let me ask you. I mean, that seems
like one of the great divisions in life in the
world that's been going on forever, is this division between
jockson nerds. It seems like it's a good thing. If
things come together, is it not?
Speaker 6 (40:56):
I I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 7 (41:00):
I think it's I think, like all major c changes,
it's unnerving, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (41:05):
I think those of us I'm scared of things too.
Speaker 7 (41:08):
I think those of us on the nerd side have
been defining ourselves by our marginalization for so long that
it may be hard for us to accept a world
where you know, that TV show Community did a whole
Dungeons and Dragons episode. Superhero movies are the only movies
(41:30):
that people make, now, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 6 (41:33):
Like all of the.
Speaker 7 (41:34):
Things, And now I think at least ten people in
the United States know who Doctor.
Speaker 6 (41:40):
Who is now, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 7 (41:42):
Comic Con is big, big business. And I think that
that all of these things that we used to hold
as badges and use to comfort ourselves in our marginalization
and culture are now being absorbed into, you know, the
monoculture as a whole. And there's no greater expression of
(42:02):
the monoculture than jock culture, which is the great leveling,
cross cultural, unifying thing that men and a lot of
women talk about unless they're a nerd like me. Right,
So when that's gone, I think that will bother nerds
very well. But I don't think the jocks give at all.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
No and and jocks tend to get their way as
far as society goes, if they want something. If Mangole
wants to make steam, hey.
Speaker 6 (42:30):
I like your steam pup culture.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
Give me that, nerd. That's right, they take mine.
Speaker 7 (42:35):
It's mine now, Hey, you're you're your your your steam
funk ironman armor that you made yourself.
Speaker 6 (42:42):
That's mine.
Speaker 7 (42:43):
Now drop it off at my locker.
Speaker 6 (42:46):
Throw a Jets jersey on top of it.
Speaker 7 (42:47):
Yeah, I'm gonna put the Jets jersey on top of it.
It's going to be steampunk Ironman Jets. That's not what
the mc. Mangol does not talk like that at all.
He's a very sweet guy.
Speaker 6 (42:55):
I met him. That's why I hope so.
Speaker 7 (43:01):
In real life. In real life, Nick Mangold's Twitter avatar
is an illustration of him as an ewok.
Speaker 6 (43:11):
Really.
Speaker 7 (43:11):
Yeah, So you may say that what I'm putting in
my book is crazy, but look around you, everybody, it's
coming true.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
Well, John, thank you for coming by with your baffling prediction.
Speaker 7 (43:22):
You don't have to think it's very easy. I just
walked down the hallway from my safe room.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
Are you going to stay here? Because the weekend's approaching.
Speaker 7 (43:28):
I need someone to kick down the door of my
safe room because I fell asleep in that cubicle because
I went out and I accidentally armed the system. Okay,
So if you have an intern or someone who can
go in there, they will.
Speaker 6 (43:42):
Be gassed, Jerry, Yeah, a foot of lead.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
Okay, and she can.
Speaker 7 (43:49):
Yeah, but there are booth but there are booby traps.
There will be gassed, There will be darts, there will
be snakes, there will be a giant rolling boulder.
Speaker 6 (43:57):
Just good.
Speaker 7 (43:58):
If we get that, then I can get back in
and then I'll be back again.
Speaker 5 (44:01):
Jerry deals with us on a day to day basis.
She can handle any boulders or poisoned darts.
Speaker 6 (44:06):
You're right, Yeah, here's to you, Jerry.
Speaker 4 (44:08):
We'll send Jerry in. Yeah. And then.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
So John's book is that is all and it is
coming out November first, and you can pre order it
right now using the internet, using the internet, and I
hope that you will at a variety of Internet sites.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
Oh you really, just plug the heck out of that, chuck.
Speaker 6 (44:30):
Well, you know, I want the guy to sell a
book or two.
Speaker 7 (44:33):
I'm just happy to be here as an listener, as
a deranged millionaire. I'm happy to come in here and
take over your listener mail, and as a resident, as
a resident of past up Works closet.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
Well to those of you who made it all the
way through this podcast and you're with us right now.
I want to say on behalf of myself, Chuck and
mister John Hodgman, Happy Halloween. Be safe, Please don't get
hit by a car.
Speaker 7 (45:00):
Dress your children in skeleton costumes and send them out
into the street.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
At the end, be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how stup Work
staff as we explore them with promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Brought to you by the reinvented twenty twelve Camra.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
It's ready, are you
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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