Comfort in the Box: Human Edition

Why do cats like to sit in boxes? Why did humans use box-beds and are enclosed wooden beds really making a comeback? In this Stuff to Blow Your Mind two-parter, Robert and Joe explore the mystery of the box.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick,
and we're back today to talk about getting in a
box once again. This is going to be the sequel

(00:23):
to an episode that aired on Tuesday of this week.
That previous one, we talked about cats getting in boxes,
cats being unable to resist the lure of a cardboard cube,
and we discussed some biological facts about cats that could
potentially drive the box seeking behavior, including a natural behavioral

(00:43):
preferences for hiding places, especially under stressful conditions. We talked
about some studies about that, but then also things that
I hadn't thought about as much before, like thermoregulation, which
seems to me to be potentially a big part of
the explanation of why cats would seek especially some kinds
of box as the kinds that don't really afford anything
like a hiding place. But we also talked about the

(01:05):
more difficult to explain phenomenon of cats sitting on and
in flat squares on the floor, as well as studies
into cats and visual illusions. Today, we wanted to come
back and look at the human side of this. Humans
desiring to get into the box or get into the square.
Yeah yeah, because you know your mind can't help. But

(01:25):
but go in this direction, because I mean, on one level,
the same cardboard boxes that end up attracting the cat
in a household, well, it'll attract children for sure. I mean,
if you've been around children, or ever been a child,
you know the appeal of a box, a big cardboard box,
or so many things you can do with it, cut
some holes in it, some windows, some doors you've you've
got yourself, you know, potentially a whole afternoon of entertainment.

(01:49):
There were you a Ford builder as a child, I
definitely was, Um, I think, yeah, I think so, But
I don't remember having as I feel like there far.
You know, we live in an age now where they're
just where cardboard boxes are just such a regular part
of our life, and as a kid, I don't remember
having as much access to cool giant cardboard boxes. Oh well,

(02:13):
I just mean in general, I mean building small enclosures
out of anything you can get, just boxes, because we
would pouch cushions of course, a perfect building material for
indoor forts. But also I recall Uh, with a friend
of mine, we spent one summer at least building a
ford out of sticks in the woods, just sort of
like you know, leaning them together to create a very

(02:34):
rough sort of hut. I don't think it would have
been functional as a living space, because the roof would
have leaked if it rained or anything like that, but
it was still it felt very cool to have built
something that you could get inside. Yeah, And and so
there's definitely the whole childhood to mension to it, and
I guess we'll continue to touch a bit on that.
But but also I think as adults we can we

(02:57):
can look to boxes and box like in environment, and um,
it's it's interesting to sort of engage with the degree
to which we are drawn to these spaces or repulsed
by these spaces, and and sometimes it's hard to figure
out exactly how we feel about them. So we should
go ahead and state the obvious, and that is that
we know on one level that can that small confined

(03:19):
spaces can be extremely detrimental to human well being. Solitary
confinement is a cruel and debilitating treatment. It's associated with
a whole host of negative mental states. Yes, clearly that's true.
And another thing is sort of along the same lines
as when I was trying to find good sources for
today's episode. For every you know, one source you could

(03:41):
find that has anything to do with a desire for
small spaces, there are going to be a hundred about
the hatred of small spaces, about claustrophobia and related you
know mind states Like obviously, being in a tight, confined
space when you don't want to be there or against
your will is a major preoccupation of humans. It's really
easy to get obsessed with this idea and really hate it. Yeah. Yeah,

(04:05):
though at least for some, at least for a segment
of the population, confined spaces of choice can certainly be comforting,
at least in moderation and if and also I should
say it, sometimes it might be more of a of
a desire for the confined space than a reality of
the confined space. Uh. And I'll get a little bit
more into what I mean by that, and just a

(04:28):
bit um but you know, it should be noted that
the human beings might not all think of box living
is the ideal way to go. But but we also
we do spend a lot of time living in boxes
in the modern world. I mean, there's a high chance
you're in a box space right now, or if you
were outside, perhaps you can see various box spaces from

(04:49):
where you are. I mean we are creatures of the box.
Oh you mean not just our houses, but also say
our cars, but also boxes within the boxes. So within
a house or within an office building where you were,
you might have a little office or a little corner
that's sort of made into a partially enclosed thing, or
a cubicle if you're lucky at work. Yeah. But I mean,
but even just talking about our houses in our rooms. Um,

(05:12):
and I mean I have to admit, like right now,
I am in a small closet, I'm in a confined
space that, for the most part, feels pretty comfortable. I'm
pretty I'm pretty happy in this this little confined space.
I've have my my computer here, I have my mike. Uh,
there's a bookshelf here that has some some books, some games,

(05:32):
there's some miniatures on it. All the coats in the
house are helping to pad out the sound. So, um,
you know, I I definitely feel a certain attraction to
to a cozy, confined space like this. I it's probably
for me conditioning because I'm used to recording in the
studio that sort of a dark, padded area when we
were recording in the office, but even recording from home,

(05:53):
I'm also in a box. I am in the corner
of a room sort of walled off by an acoustic partition.
All that essentially creates a sort of shadowy corner where
I can explore all the depraved thoughts that that will
eventually become part of this podcast. Now. We we recently
discussed Theogenis in our episode on Beans, the fifth century

(06:16):
BC cynic philosopher who is said to have lived in
a tub or a large jar in the streets. Uh
And and after we mentioned I had to look up
some interpretations of what this might have looked like. You know,
sometimes it is like it looks like a big stone
barrel that he's living in. Yeah. I think it was
said to be maybe in the marketplace of Athens. Yeah,
so right right on the middle of everything. Um. Well,

(06:38):
and ultimately, you know, even a tub large jar not
that different from a box. And I should point out
that there is a disorder that is known as Diogenes syndrome,
though it's not tied to the idea of living in
confined spaces. It's actually something of a misnomer as it's characterized.
The syndrome is characterized by self neglect, squalor hoarding, and

(07:00):
social withdrawal. Diogenes, however, was a minimalist and uh, and
you don't see stories about him hoarding anything that would
run against the whole idea. Nor was he socially withdrawn. No, no,
I mean you could consider Diogenes with drawn in the
sense that he made a point out of rejecting social convention.

(07:21):
So he was sort of withdrawn from the social contract
in a way of withdrawn from a buy in with
the rest of society and from expectations and norms. But
he was not withdrawn in terms of his interactions with
other people. He was very public and confrontational about being
not a part of your system. Man. Now you might

(07:42):
well wonder, well, if there is a psychological disorder associated
with a desire to live inside a tub or a jar,
a box, you know what, what would we call it?
Perhaps not claustrophobia, but claustrophilia. And yes, there there is
such a classification abnormal pleasure derived from being in a
confined space. I was looking this up and at least

(08:02):
I found. I don't know if you came across the
same thing that most of the sources using this term,
we're using it with a kind of sexual connotation, that
it was like a particular sexual obsession or fetish for
being in confined spaces. Um. I ran across a little
of that. I mean for the most party, I just
you don't see it discussed near as much as claustrophobia. Um.

(08:23):
And And I guess the thing is, claustrophobia is something
that can kick in and and be a detriment to
you know, your your ability to uh to live your life.
You know, it could prevent you from, say, boarding a
crowded train that you need to need to board, that
sort of thing, whereas claustrophilia, Um, I mean, I guess

(08:43):
it could get you into some slainness and trouble. But
but but yeah, you just don't see as much literature
about it. Um you you, Yeah, you do see some
stuff that that seems to be going in a more
erotic direction. But even some of that, I feel like
it's getting into an area where you're not necessarily talking
about like pure titillation. You're ultimately getting at this sort

(09:04):
of this idea of enclosure and the comforting aspect of enclosure,
even if it is discussed in an area that is
like um, you know, closer to um more, you know,
erotic considerations. But for instance, there was one paper that
I found, a Romanian paper recently published titled what If

(09:25):
I Didn't Go Out Anymore, which which I think is
a great, great title by Rosella Valdre. And uh, I
wasn't able to get access to the full paper, so
I'll just read that the abstract here, which I think
gets to the the heart of what the author is discussing. Quote.
One of the psychological reactions to the COVID nineteen lockdowns

(09:45):
is psychic withdrawal claustrophilia. The author asks why this paradoxical
reaction occurs, naming the death drive and fear of freedom.
Now you can probably hear from some of the keywords
at the end of this that this paper I looked at,
this is actually published in a journal for psychoanalysis, which
means we're in Freudian or Freudian adjacent territory. So I

(10:06):
guess we don't know what the I don't know empirical
or modern scientific validity of the explanation given in this
paper would be but I think the phenomenon it identifies
as something I've seen expressed a good bid actually, that
there is a certain personality type and a certain way
that some people have adapted to, uh to the COVID

(10:27):
nineteen lockdowns that says, I don't know, I don't know
if I really need to leave my house anymore. I
there there there are certain aspects of ongoing quarantine that
are kind of appealing. Now, obviously that's not going to
be true of everybody. I you know, I personally, Ever
since the two week mark after my second vaccination, I
have been thrilled at the prospect of of getting out

(10:48):
of the house more often, and especially being able to
be around other other people more often. That that's been
really exciting to me, even though I think I'm overall
a pretty introverted person, like I like being by myself, elf,
I like being at home. Uh. You know, it's just
they're sort of pent up demand that has built in
my brain over the past year. But that's not there
for everybody. Some people. Some people are like, yeah, I

(11:10):
kind of like how things are for me. Yeah, And
I guess you also have to realize you can divide
it up in different ways, like there are people that
are that are that I'm sure all about, like getting
out back out there socially seeing friends and family, but
might be more of this school when it comes to
work and say, actually, why should I ever leave my
house to work? Like can't I why why do I

(11:31):
need to be in an office? Like it's gonna be
it's I mean, it probably already is interesting in a
lot of places where they're having to to re examine
the purpose of the physical shared workspace and then potentially
have to make a case for it to uh to
their employees or you know whoever. Um. Whereas before it

(11:51):
was just kind of a given well of course we
all come and we share a single space to work, um.
But now they're potentially having to put to go out
there and say, hey, everybody, why don't we come back
together and work in one big space again and share
a coffee maker? Ding? Ding ding? You have got my
number here. Yeah, I've been really excited ever since getting
vaccinated to see friends more often. I have no desire

(12:15):
to to go back to a shared workspace except I
mean except that, I mean, it's not that I don't
like seeing my coworkers. I very much do. I would
like to see all of our co workers again. Socially,
I just don't want to have to work around other people.
I'm so much more productive at home by myself, where
I can focus and not be distracted by a workplace. Yeah,

(12:36):
and so yeah, I think it's going to break down
differently for different people. But of course, as sort of
an introvert myself, I also I can also get a
sense of this too, where there's a lot of movement
to open back up and you know, being to get
back out there, and after you know, over a year
of of doing the opposite, you know, it can it

(12:56):
can feel a little much, you can feel a little threatening,
you know. Uh, the the idea of of going you
know from you know, from zero to fifty and too
short of a time, and I think there is I
have seen some some authors online talking about the idea of,
you know, the importance even of finding like middle ground
things you can do to sort of work back up
to things like this, so you know, and instead of

(13:19):
like your first thing back out in the world shouldn't
shouldn't be uh, you know, going to seventy miles per hour,
it should maybe you know, do go to twenty five
miles per hours. See what that feels like. Maybe start
with a small get together with other vaccinated friends instead
of the monster truck show. Yeah yeah, don't and and
immediately go to the monster truck show or the or
the Mega concert or whatever it happens to be. But

(13:41):
but back just to the idea of of small, tied
and closed spaces, comfy places being appealing. Um uh you know,
even though there are you know, negative aspects again to
such spaces. Uh I, I have to admit to having
felt this kind of draw to such space is throughout
my life. And sometimes it is an actual space that

(14:04):
I'm inhabiting, like you know, the closet here for the
for the podcasting. Other times I do think it gets
more into not the reality of the enclosed space, but
just the idea of the enclosed space, the vision, the
mental image of the enclosed space, or a or a
physical representation of something that looks like a a comfy
enclosed environment. Yeah, I mean, I wonder about the extent

(14:26):
to which some of the appeal of tight enclosed spaces
is um at the conceptual level. It's not even necessarily
like a physical sensory thing, but something about the idea
of being in a small space. Yeah. So when I
was a kid, I remember I would have um, I
had this dream and either I don't know if it

(14:47):
was a recurring dream or just a very vivid dream
that I had once that I just always remembered, but
it was. It was in my house at the time,
and I found a sort of tunnel underneath the stairs
and it was painted, uh and carpeted with wall to
ark hall carpeting the same as the rest of the home,
and the tunnel extended maybe eight feet back. They made

(15:08):
a sharp turn left, and it was a well lit
environment in the dream, despite their you know, they're they're
not being any presence of lights that I remember. But
if you if you follow this this little tunnel back
then you took that turn, uh, it would go for
a little bit and then it would have another turn
and it would so there would be like a kind
of a spiraling around and then it would terminate in

(15:29):
a cubical space that was just large enough for me
to ball up comfortably. But either in this dream or
in subsequent dreams, my body grew to where I can
no longer comfortably venture into the heart of this this place. Uh,
and then I ultimately couldn't reach the heart of it
at all. Wow. So, you know, without going crazy with
dream interpretation, because I don't know, I'm I'm kind of

(15:51):
increasingly of the the night Blender school of dreams, where
none of it means anything, but there are are obvious
pair of else to make between this idea and anxieties
of say, leaving childhood, of growing up, even a desire
to return to the womb um if you want to
get real Freudian about it, because of course, this is
central to the Freudian dual concepts of Aarros and Thanatos

(16:15):
Thanatos the god of death personification of the death drive,
and Arrows, the god of love, and this is linked
to a desire to return to the safety of the womb.
You know, without buying into the explanatory validity of Freudian concepts,
I do think that there's something interesting about the idea
of of the death drive as it relates to I
don't know, a sort of a sort of desire for

(16:36):
the mortification of the flesh that that I want to
link up to to a historical example I have in
just a minute. Yeah, and of course, often, of course,
Freudian thought takes a decidedly sexual tone uh in its explorations.
But but even in a like a non sexual way.
I feel like this, this idea of returning the womb,
I feel like it. It holds a certain amount of

(16:57):
truthiness to it. It. It actually reminds me of a
wonderful short bit in a recent episode of The John
Oliver Show where he talked about his desire to be
an egg. Um. I think the basic setup was like,
this is the kind of thing you don't actually share
with your partner, your your desire to be an egg.
And he goes on this extended a little monologue about

(17:18):
the desire to be an egg, and like the comforting,
how comfortable it would be to not only like to
be inside the egg, but to be the egg, to
be the goo within the the the protective outer shell
of the egg. Yeah, beautifully expressed. Actually to be in
there alone with the goop, just to you, in the goup,
and knowing that whoever is around you outside you has

(17:40):
to handle you very carefully. Yeah. And so I feel
like it got to the heart of this sort of
often kind of abstract or subconscious thing I feel when
I'm especially if I'm looking at pictures of something or
or encountering a setting in a motion picture or TV show,
so especially tidy and cozy ship or train cabins um

(18:04):
for instance, I really enjoyed the first two seasons of
the snow Piercer TV show, and I think part of
it is the way they depict some of the tight
living spaces. I'm like, oh, I can I can imagine
being in there. I can imagine curling up in that
bed that's set into the wall. I haven't seen the show.
I did see the movie snow Piercer, and I liked
the movie, but there was absolutely nothing about it that

(18:25):
was appealing whatsoever to me. Well, it may be a
difference in how the show is. The sets are done well,
I think, but I think the main difference is, of
course the movie, which is also really good. The movie
only has so much time and they've got to get
to that bloody revolution, whereas the TV show just has
more time to deal with, more space to lay out
the world of the show, in the world of the train,

(18:47):
and therefore you get those moments where you're like, oh,
I can imagine being in there. Nobody's dying in here
right now, it seems fine. Now, apart from the post
apocalyptic setting, in general, I just do really love the
idea of old train compartment, little private compartment and a train.
It's it's just lovely. Yeah, absolutely. Uh. Now another area

(19:07):
and then this again goes to sci fi, is when
you encounter a good suspended animation chamber in science fiction,
like the like the Stasis pods, an alien even I
find for me anyway, even when they give those pods
kind of a darker tone, you know, like you're throwing
up when you get out of it, or you're weak
when you get out of it, or you're you know,
they're really leaning into the sort of glass casket uh

(19:29):
Grimm's fairy tale, uh, you know version of it. I
often find them kind of relaxing to think about. Maybe
not at a you know, an actual conscious level where
I'm like, oh, man, I wish I was in there
and Michael Fastbender was threatening me with experiments in my dreams,
but more like there's just something in me where I'm like,
that looks comfy and safe and nice. I just want

(19:50):
to be the mummy of Vladimir Linen. Yeah, it's that
sort of thing. And again It's like if I, if
I stopped and I apply rational thought to it, it
maybe doesn't sound so great, you know, or even just
apply it to the plot of the thing that it
is embedded within. But on some level it seems nice.
And I feel like this this even applies to uh

(20:12):
two really nice coffins and caskets. I don't know if
you've had this experience as well, But if I'm like,
if I'm like checking out or it's it's not like
if I'm at an actual funeral, but if I'm just
thinking about caskets or caskets show up in a film, um,
I'll sometimes look at them and be like, yeah, that
that looks that looks pretty comfy. There's something attractive about that.

(20:32):
And I realized part of it is that, yeah, that's
kind of the whole game of casket making and casket
salesmanship because it don't yeah there for the living. The
living have to look at that and think I would
I think I'd be comfortable in there. So the my
you know, deceased, love when they will be comfortable in there,
even though of course they're they're dead. It doesn't matter
to them where they are. It makes me think of

(20:55):
the scene in Edwood where Bella Lego see is coffin
shopping and he's trying out laying in all the coffins
and I can't even fold my arms. Yeah, um, I
think it is. Also it is also compounded by the
fact that even though I have never actually tried out
a coffin, Um, you see this in films all the time,

(21:19):
where someone is like that, you know, trying out a coffin,
or they're hiding in a coffin to get away from
bad guys, or maybe they've even been buried alive but live.
People find themselves in in coffins all the time in cinema. Now,

(21:39):
as much as the appeal of a small, tight, cozy
space like a box or a coffin might be rooted
in some kind of conceptual abstraction, you know, pictures you're
putting together in your head about what would be conceptually
comforting as a as a space to occupy. I think
there could also be some raw physical biological reality to

(22:00):
this because in the last episode we talked about research
by Dodman and uh and Grandon about the stress relieving
potential of flank pressure on the bodies of mammals. The
research we were looking at was from the nineteen eighties
and it specifically was focused on pigs, but it seems
there is probably a broader mammalian response to having a

(22:21):
gentle squeezing pressure on the side of the body that
triggers a sort of stress relief response within the neuroendocrine system. Yeah.
I think that the one most famous example of this,
and I think she we briefly mentioned her in the
last one. I think she heard she was an author
in one of the papers. You say, yeah, that's what
I was just talking about. H um was this would

(22:42):
of course be the hug machine invented by Temple Grandon,
has a therapeutic stress relieving device to resolve anxiety and
sensory issues. And Temple Grandon, if you're not familiar, she's
an animal behaviorist, but has also written a lot and
done stuff about the autism spectrum. She herself phys autistic. Yeah.
I think they made a movie several years back, and

(23:04):
I think Claire Danes later, if I'm not mistaken, I
didn't in the film. I remember being a fun film.
I usually don't watch a lot of biopics, but I
thought it was pretty good. Um so uh so so Yeah,
She invented it while attending college and was inspired by
the by the squeeze shoots used for cattle inoculations. So
cattle walks in the walls these kind of like you know,

(23:25):
these walls move in kind of apply pressure from either side,
and then you're able to inject the cattle uh at
the cow within the inoculation um. And so she she
found it very useful at least for you know, long
stretch in her life. And then subsequent studies have found
that that deep pressure may have a calming effect, especially
on persons with autism, especially if those persons have high

(23:48):
anxiety levels. This is actually described in a paper that
Temple grand And published in nine in the Journal of
Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology. And the paper was called Calming
Effects of Deep Touch Pressure in Patients with Autistic disorder,
college students and Animals. Uh And so, just to read
from Grandon's abstract here quote many people with autistic disorder

(24:12):
have problems with oversensity to both touch and sound. The
author and autistic person developed a device that delivers deep
touch pressure to help her learn to tolerate touching and
to reduce anxiety and nervousness. The squeeze machine applies lateral,
inwardly directed pressure to both lateral aspects of a person's
entire body by compressing the user between two foam padded panels.

(24:37):
Clinical observations and several studies suggest that deep touch pressure
is therapeutically beneficial for both children with autistic disorder and
probably children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Only minor and
occasional adverse effects have been noted. But then also Granded
notes that that there are data to show that this
is not only effective at calming people who have autism,

(25:01):
but also at what it's called non referred college students,
I think, just the general population, and also points to
studies I think similar to and probably including the one
we mentioned last time in animal welfare. And so that
there could be some significant clinical value to some kind
of squeeze machine that provides this this deep sort of

(25:21):
hug like pressure with these foam pads almost swaddling the body. Yeah. Yeah.
And to come back to what I said earlier about
like some of the sort of the erotic treatments of claustrophilia,
I think some of that. My my sort of gout
intuition here is that like some of that is ultimately
getting back to this idea, you know, like, um, the

(25:43):
idea that if I somehow closely can find my body
if I like you know, you know, vacuum seal myself
between two pieces of vinyl or latex or something that like,
ultimately you're getting at the comforting reality of the uh
similar to something that you might find in the Hugman
sheen as as opposed to something that's just pure titillation.
But I could be wrong on that, And of course

(26:04):
obviously it's going to vary from from person to person. Uh.
Nobody's gonna have exactly the same reaction to the sort
of stimuli we're describing here. Well, I guess one thing
this highlights is that it's not always totally easy to
make a clear dividing line between what is erotic pleasure
and what is other types of pleasure. Yeah, now, um,
another thing that you see marketed in similar ways to

(26:27):
the hug machine is of course a weighted blanket UM,
which and I believe they even use these for dogs sometimes,
but but humans, especially weighted blanket UH can be comforting,
even like a nice sleeping bag. I don't know, these
sort of sarcophagus style sleeping bags. Um. I've always found
certainly the idea of him comforting. But even yeah, on
a camping trip, like being all zipped up and kind

(26:49):
of mummified in one of those can feel feel pretty nice. Um.
We'd also would be remiss if we didn't mention isolation
tanks or you know, flotation tanks in all of this,
because that is I mean, that's just close to what
John Oliver was talking about with the the dream of
being an egg as possible, Like you really do become
the goop, you become the salty goop in there. The
salty goop is you know, generally at the the same

(27:11):
temperature as your body, and you're cut off from the
rest of of of reality and you're you're you're left
with the inner reality of of you, of yourself. If
only you could take a nice tasty yolke in there
with you and then just hang out for weeks yea.
I think that's one of the appeals of some of
the sort of stasis chamber sci fi that you get,
is that sometimes you are in a goop in there, right,

(27:33):
You're like, oh man, look at the coup just looks
so nice and warm and comforting, like when Neo wakes
up in the Matrix. I remember so that scenes supposed
to be liberating, but I remember, you know, when he's
pulling all the plugs out and he's got the goop
all over him and everything. I always remember thinking in
that scene like, oh, look, that looks like the worst
like wake up early in the morning scene. Ever, just

(27:53):
don't you want to get back in that cozy goop bed? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
I mean it, yeah, I mean, ultimately, I guess the
character cipher Um, you know, he had it figured out.
He's like, get me back in that goop? What do
I have to do? Can you get me back in
that group today? I'll betray any friends. I don't care.
I just kind of get back in the egg. Anyway.

(28:16):
This subject of desiring to be squeezed into a small
space or or or in a box of some kind,
it got me thinking about a subject that I've actually
long found fascinating and thought about, especially over the last year,
and that is the subject of people who were known
as anchor rights. These were people who, in the medieval

(28:38):
period would willingly enclose themselves permanently inside a tiny cell,
where they would usually spend the rest of their lives confined,
devoting their days to prayer and meditation, sometimes interacting with visitors,
and passing food and waste only through small holes in
the walls. There's actually a great article fromen from the

(29:02):
British Library about the Anchoritic tradition. It's by a scholar
named Dr Mary Wellesley who's a British Library affiliate, and
it's called the Life of an anchor s. An anchores
is a term used for a female anchorite. And also,
I just want to give a shout out in general
to the British Library and their various blogs and stuff,
because they consistently put out a lot of fantastic content

(29:23):
that features primary source materials front and center and quotes
extensively from the primary sources. I love that they do that.
That that's a great site. But anyway, so so back
to Wellesley's article here. Uh So, the word anchorite and
the word anchors these are from the Greek anachorio, which
means to withdraw. So the cell in which an anchorite

(29:45):
lived was known as their anchor hold. And so if
you want to picture one of these places, you have
to imagine a sort of tiny, maybe closet sized stone
house that's attached to the outside wall of a church.
Wellesley estimates that the average anchor hold was probably no
bigger than about twelve feet square. Some of them might

(30:07):
have had two small rooms, but it seems most were
just one tiny cell, one little room. And again this
cell would have had no door, so an anchorite or
anchor s would have to have a support system in
order to survive, and for this reason, it seems this
was a pathway that was mostly reserved for wealthy people
who could afford to pay one or two servants to

(30:29):
spend basically the rest of their lives looking after them.
So they would have to have a servant to bring
them meals, to take away waste and garbage, etcetera. And
so this exchange of materials would usually happen through one
of three openings in the walls of the anchor hold.
The most common design for an anchor hold seems to
have been it would be a cell built into the

(30:49):
side of a church building, and it would have one
window that opens into a kind of parlor, a tiny
adjoining room where material could be passed back and forth
to the servants. So you could take away waste, you
could bring them meals. And then there would be a
second small window, known as a squint, which would open
into the church itself, and this would be so that

(31:10):
the anchorite or anchors could watch Mass and receive communion
from inside the church. And then there would be a
third small window that would open to the outside world,
and it was through this window that the occupant could
receive visitors. Now you might think that being walled up
permanently inside a tiny cell for the rest of your
life sounds pretty awful, and it certainly would be if

(31:33):
it were against your will. But it seems that the
anchoritic life was actually quite desirable to lots of people
in the late Middle Ages, at least to people who
could afford it. Wellesley notes some some figures that there
were at least a hundred known anchorites and anchoresses in
England in the twelfth century, and then two hundred more

(31:54):
from the thirteen to the fifteen centuries. She also notes
an interesting gender divide that women outnumbered men consistently among
the anchoritic lifestyle, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth century
there were twice as many anchoresses as there were male
anchor rights, and in the thirteenth century there were about
three times as many. And we'll come back to some

(32:17):
possible reasons offered for the popularity of anchoritic life and
the special popularity among women in a bit, But first
I wanted to bring up how there's another thing that's
interesting to me about the way that medieval sources talk
about anchor rights and anchor us is that they are
sometimes spoken of as if they were already dead, even

(32:38):
while they're alive. So I wanted to set the scene
by reading a passage from Wellesley's article quote. At the
moment of an anchoress's enclosure, a priest would recite the
Office of the Dead, which was the set of prayers
said at a person's funeral. This symbolized that the recluse
was dead to the world. In fact, it seems that

(32:59):
some cluses did not leave their cells even after they died.
Archaeological excavations of some anchor holds have revealed the remains
of people who presumably once lived there. In St Anne's
Church in Lewis, Sussex, the anchors is grave has been
positioned in exactly the place where she would have knelt
daily to view the mass through the squint. So you live,

(33:23):
you live in the anchor hold, you do mass through
this tiny slot in the wall, and then you get
buried peering through the slot. Wow, it's um this is
one that is You run into plenty of things in
the historical record that are that are challenging for the
modern for for many modern humans to to understand. But

(33:43):
this one, yeah, this one's This one's tough because on
one hand, it sounds like it's easier to just say, oh, well,
these were clearly zombies. There were zombies, and you cared
about them, so you just kind of locked them in
a hole next to the church and Dan and any
but you. But then you you realize, of course that's
that's that's fantasy. So you try and sort of try
to find parallels in the modern world, and like, it's

(34:04):
it's crazy to imagine this. Like at a at I
was like a modern Christian church that somebody could be
you know, like a wealthy church member could just say, hey,
can I just live in the wall over here and
then and then watch you know, church all the time,
and I'm just here and I'll just never leave, and
then you can just bury me in there. Like, I
guess the closest thing I can imagine is if you

(34:25):
had like a really big sports fan and they had
what do they call those, like the special rooms that
you watch from the sky box. Yeah, Like what if
you had your own SkyWings and it was just for you,
just large enough for you to sit and eat wings
and watch your football game. Um, but you're just like,
I'm never gonna leave. I'm just gonna stay there all
the time. I'll watch all the football games, and when

(34:45):
I die, you can just steal me up in there.
I love church that much. Yeah. But of course even
that is that does not feel like an accurate description
of what's happening here. No, I think there's something So
I think there's some stuff will get to in a
minute that might help explain the psychology of this little more.
I mean also like you can't, uh though, it's kind
of hard to understand, even from a modern religious perspective.

(35:07):
Even if you're a religious person today, usually your religious
devotion wouldn't seem to take this form, right, you know
that this level of like a total body sacrifice to
to your religious practice. Well, like, I think a lot
of us can understand say that the desire or sort
of the the ideal of say a monastic life. You know,

(35:29):
I find myself and maybe this is from you know,
just being a fan of like the name of the
Rose and all where like occasionally I'll be like man
with like you know, background thought that's not really tied
to a lot of practical thinking, where it's kind of
like what if I was just a monk instead, Like
this is sort of idea and roughly in your head
that would be easier. I would just live in a
little space and I would have my duties and you know,

(35:50):
again it's just like this this sort of empty fantasy
in the back of your head that doesn't actually match
up with the reality of monastic life or what you
actually want out of life. But it's kind of it's
kind of in the background there enough to where I
can I can be like, well, I understand the desire
for some of that, but but not the living inside
of a tomb. It's not a it's not a desire

(36:12):
you have fully formed, but you can kind of feel
pulses of it every now and then. Yeah, exactly, I
know that feeling. Um anyway, So to go on with
Wellesley's article here more about about the life of anchors is.
In particular, she cites at century how to guide for
people who wish to become anchors is and this is

(36:34):
called the and again I'm not quite sure how to
pronounce this, but is I think it is the oncrane
we uh, which is spelled a n c r e
n e uh. And then the second word is w
I s s e the oncrene wee. I'll say so
the on crene wes says, admiring their own white hands
is bad for many anchors is who keep them too beautiful,

(36:58):
such as those who have too little to do. They
should scrape up the earth every day from the grave
in which they will rot. Yeikes. Wow. So like, if
your hands are too clean, that's clear you're you're being
idle too much. So you need to supplement your prayer
and contemplation with scraping up the dirt. And and I
guess that further shows your devotion to God. But it

(37:21):
reflects one of the major characteristics of the life of
an anchorus, which is asceticism, the denial of worldly pleasures
in favor of the pure life of contemplating and praying
to God. And this was a common way of viewing
holiness in medieval Europe, that the body is corrupt and sinful,
and that the fleshly desires of the body must be

(37:41):
denied in favor of the pure edification of the spirit.
And so of course you could see this in all
kinds of ways that medieval monks might sort of punish
themselves or deny their own bodily desires. But the Oncrene
Wete makes it clear that you shouldn't go overboard with asceticism,
and Wells pulls a great quote here. Uh so this

(38:02):
is from the source. It says no one should gird
herself with any kind of belt except for her confessor's permission,
or wear any iron or hair or hedgehog skins, or
beat herself with these or with a lead whip, or
make herself bloody with holly or brambles. So the idea
of being denied the flash but don't punish the flesh, right,

(38:24):
that seems maybe if you're punishing the flesh of that much,
I wonder if there was a kind of a suspicion
that like you're maybe you're getting pleasure from going overboard
to that extent, like you're going too far, and perhaps
there's like a horseshoe theory of pleasure and pain here,
like you go too far into pain and you're actually
maybe getting a kick out of it. Well, it reminds
me of again that the idea of the isolation tank

(38:46):
in in the modern setting, Like the idea is that
you don't pay as much attention to your body, uh,
in order to contemplate other things. And I feel like
it's something similar is going on in these cells here.
But uh, but but again, yeah, if you're if the
whole idea is to focus on God and not the body,
then yeah you shouldn't. I can see the argument for

(39:08):
not finally manicuring your hands, but also not spending too
much time punishing your hands either. Now, another interesting thing
that Wellesley gets into in this article is she quotes
from a primary text from the Middle Ages, uh called
I think it's called just book, but it is by
an author named Marjorie Kemp and uh. Welsley mentions that

(39:31):
this is one of the earliest known, or maybe the
earliest known autobiographical book written in English, and Kemp visits
a famous anchoress in this book known as Julian of Norwich,
and the meeting is described as follows in Kemp's book quote,
Then she was charged by our Lord to go to

(39:51):
an anchoress in the same city, who was called Dame Julian.
And so she did, and she showed her the grace
that God had put in her ole, and many full
speeches and conversations that Our Lord spoke to her soul,
and many wonderful revelations which she revealed to the anchoress
in order to establish if there was any deception in them,

(40:12):
For the anchoress was an expert in such things and
could give good counsel on the matter. And Wellesley notes
that this account by Kemp is interesting for several reasons.
First of all, it's a picture of female friendship written
by a woman, something that is not very common in
the texts that survived to us today from the Middle Ages.
But also she notes that it shows a woman in

(40:34):
a position of spiritual authority. She Julian of Norwich here
is being sought for religious counsel at a time when
the church itself was controlled entirely by men, and Wellesley
claims that the reason Julian could be sought out so
readily for spiritual advice even though she was not part
of the male authority structure of the church was that

(40:56):
she was an anchoress, and this raises an interesting tradiction.
Despite the fact that anchorses were walled up and unable
to leave their cell for the rest of their lives,
they were nevertheless very much an important part of the
civic and ecclesiastical community, maybe more so than they would
be if they were free to walk the streets. This

(41:18):
is interesting and it makes me wonder. Uh this might
be a stretch, but maybe not so much, given um
many of the things that are referenced by the author.
But in Uh Red Dragon and in the Silence of
the Lambs, we have two characters go to visit Hannibal
Lecter Uh not in a interview room, as seems to
be typical of InCAR with incarcerated individuals, both in reality

(41:41):
and in other fictional treatments, but they go visit him
at his cell, at his enclosure, and he's presented. Of course,
on one hit level, this is a monster uh the
in in his layer. But on the other hand, he
is a wise individual who is segmented apart from society
and is sought out for their wisdom and insight. That's

(42:02):
really good comparison. I hadn't thought about that, but yeah,
I wonder if the anchoritic tradition was somewhat in Thomas
Harris's head here might have been. I mean, Harris made
allusions to a lot of to a number of historical elements,
and I think even, um, you know elements from from
Christian history. So perhaps, well, I want to think more

(42:22):
about this role of the anchorite or the anchoress in
the community and their their role as a source of
spiritual authority. Uh So the guide books for anchorus is
at at the time advised them to be careful not
to spend too much time socializing through the window to
the outside world. For example. Uh this is again from

(42:43):
the Acreane Wee. It says that you shouldn't take meals
with visitors. Quote this is showing too much friendliness because
it goes against the nature of any form of religious life.
And most of all that an anchoress who is utterly
dead to the world. One has often heard of the
dead speaking with the living, but I have never found
yet that they ate with the living. So this is

(43:05):
really interesting. It's like it contains this contradiction. On one hand,
the anchorite or the anchoress. The anchorus is dead to
the world. She is of no value to the world.
She's basically not a living human being anymore. And yet
she is a source of spiritual authority and insight, much
in the same way that a message from beyond the grave,
maybe to a person who's already gone to heaven, would

(43:27):
be yeah, yeah, like they're almost like they're like they're
half dead, that they already have a foot in the
world beyond yeah. And so despite these warnings of like,
you know, you shouldn't eat if you're an anchorss you
shouldn't eat with visitors. That's just too friendly, it's clear
that a good amount of interaction did take place through
that window to the outside world. And in a way,

(43:49):
the anchors could become a sort of hub for the communities,
both spiritually and socially. And so I want to read
another section from the on Creane West that is cited
by Wellesley. Quote, the anchors is called an anchor and
anchored under the church like an anchor under the side
of a ship, to hold the ship so that waves

(44:09):
and storms do not capsize it. Just so all Holy Church,
which is described as a ship, should anchor. On the
anchor us for her to hold it so that the
devil's blasts, which are temptations, do not blow it over.
It's interesting. So it's the the idea that the anchoress
is is providing like a stabilizing element to the church

(44:33):
or to the local faithful, to the physical being, the
spiritual being of the church itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And
so I think given some of these considerations, maybe it
is less surprising how popular the anchoritic way of life was,
right that that it, despite being sort of dead to
the world, you would also in a weird way be

(44:53):
held up as a special source of wisdom or insight,
and you might have an important symbolic role in as
a kind of like protector of the church and the
church community and and somebody that people would seek out
for advice. And it also seems that, like according to
what Wellesley says here, that this was a way for
for women to have spiritual authority within the church that

(45:16):
they wouldn't be able to have because by say, entering
the clergy, which they couldn't do. Now, I was wondering
what we have in the way of anchors as describing
their own feelings about their lifestyle in their own words,
and there's actually very little of that. So to read
a section from Wellesley on that quote, the only text

(45:37):
written by an anchor is to Survive the period is
Julian of Norwich's Revelations. All of the other texts about
anchoritism were written by people advising those who had chosen
or wish to choose the Anchoritic way of life. In
Julian's text, she gives away very little about her experience
of being enclosed. At one point, she writes, quote, this

(45:58):
place is prison, this life is penance. But we cannot
be sure whether Julian was referring to her earthly life
more broadly or the specific circumstances of her cell. Uh
And I found that passage really interesting too, because I
wonder if the the physical enclosure of the Anchoritic way

(46:20):
of life takes on a special appeal if you already
in a way view fleshly earthly life as itself a
kind of prison or enclosure. Yeah, yeah, He's sort of
like an immediate physical recreation of what you believe reality
to be. So anyway that that's all bouncing around in

(46:41):
my head about the possible psychology that would lead someone
to want to become an anchoress. But also I just
had to mention a couple of other details that that
I came across that I thought were really great. This
first one is another tidbit from Wellesley's article, and it's
just a story about a saint named St. Dunstan who
was an anchorite, and he was written out in a
work by an eleventh century monk named Osburne. Apparently St.

(47:04):
Dunstan would occupy himself with metal work, especially so he
would do like work with gold while he was secluded
in his cell. And at one point it is told
in this in This Life of St. Dunstan, that the
devil appeared to him and he's like, I'm the devil.
I'm gonna get you, And Dunstan defended himself by tweaking

(47:24):
the devil's nose with a pair of hot metal tongs
that he had been using to do his metal working with.
So very good job, Dunstan. Well you know that this
um this also makes me wonder about like the getting
into sort of the isolation tank area, and also um
sensory deprivation in general, Like if you're pursuing this spiritual

(47:49):
life within the cell of of the anchored. You know,
perhaps it ultimately aids that because you you've you've set
yourself off from so much into reinformation, you know, you're
perhaps putting yourself in a position to have one on
ones with the devil. You know, also if you're engaging
in metal work in there, because I mean, hopefully he

(48:12):
wasn't using any you know, there's anything they produced a
lot of smoke or fumes or anything, because that would
surely these things were well ventilated. Surely that's a good point.
I didn't think about that. Well. I think it's something
we don't often think about when we are engaging in
sort of half thought out desires for enclosed spaces. We

(48:36):
don't think about the fact, oh yeah, I need I
need to be able to breathe in there, you know,
I want to have at least some fresh oxygen finding
me within this chamber. Yeah, or to allow the mercury
fumes to escape. One last detail just that I thought
was too good not to mention, because this was not
from Wellesley's article. I just came across this in the

(48:56):
British Libraries collection summary for the en Creane Weee and
it was a note uh describing the text and summarizing it,
and it's listing many of the rules that are prescribed
for the life of an anchorus. So to quote from
the summary here, we learned that anchoresses were prohibited from
eating meat, and that they were not allowed any accessories

(49:17):
or items of clothing that were decorative rather than practical. Rings, brooches,
patterned belts, and gloves were not allowed. They were also
forbidden from keeping pets except cats. Cat is all about
that box life. So yeah, tying back into the to
the original episode here, I'm not sure what the religious

(49:38):
significance of of allowing a cat into the cell is,
but I thought that was interesting, especially compared to the
sometime medieval associations between cats and witchcraft. Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely,
uh yeah, there, there's there's probably more that could be
said about that. I should also point out though Hannibal
Elector was not permitted to have a cat, I do

(49:58):
not remember him having cat. That would have gone poorly
than now. Certainly, living out the rest of your life
in a box that is the ultimate that. Certainly we
can't top that, but why don't I thought we might

(50:19):
come back to the idea of what about just living
part of your life inside of a box. What if
you only slept inside of a box. And of course, again,
if we think about the fact that we do tend
to sleep in um, you know, cubicle or rectangular rooms. Yeah,
we all kind of sleep in boxes. But how come
we don't see much in the way of like actual
sleeping boxes. How come I don't actually crawl into a

(50:41):
box to sleep at night? Good question, I'd try it. Uh. Well,
First of all, I'd like to remind everyone that if
you listen to our our episode or perhaps it was
episodes on the invention of the bed, box like beds
actually go back quite a way as in history. Uh.
In fact, the some of the earliest examples of furniture

(51:04):
within a domestic environment as opposed to a tomb, uh,
certainly includes a box like bed. There's one from the
Orkney Islands off this coast of Scotland from around and
it's essentially a stone It's a stone bed box. It's
like this, uh you know, it's it's not unlike the
box that might be placed on the floor that your

(51:26):
cat would climb into, except this was a stone box
that you would you know, filled them with some hides
and whatnot to make it comfy, but you're still sleeping
in a box. Yeah. So I think if I remember correctly,
this would be sort of like imagining a stone bathtub
that you would line with a soft material like straw
or hides or things like that, and you can get
in the bathtub and then and have the padding on

(51:47):
the bottom. Yeah, exactly, So to a certain extent that
the idea of sleeping in a box is I mean,
that's just part of human history. And while you know
a lot of our modern beds get away from a
kind of boxing environment, and they're often they're more of
an elevated situation, there are some times during which different

(52:08):
humans certainly slept in boxes, and box sleeping was was
the fat um because certainly Victorian curtain beds, to a
certain extent, create a box that you sleep in. And
a part of part of this reality comes down to just,
you know, the desire to have a warm place to sleep.
You you want to contain your body heat in the

(52:29):
same way that you and you know you would if
you were just covered up with a bunch of blankets.
But what if you also just use curtains to shut
off the rest of the room. But then there's there's
the next step, and that is the idea of the
box bed. Uh. So these were a kind of wooden
wardrobe that you slept inside of. UM. They were often ornate, uh,

(52:50):
with an opening on one side. UM often and this
was a door. So there's like a wooden door that
swung open or slid open. Uh. Though there are other
versions of it. They were more like they just had
like a curtain. And then there are also versions of
it that were like part of the wall, that were
more more in line with the sort of sleeping environments
you might see in a you know, in a in

(53:12):
a confined you know, like ship cabin sort of situation.
So you look in the cabinet where you keep the
nice silver, and then you get jealous of the silver
and say, I want to be the nice silver. I
want to be in there while I rest. Yeah, exactly.
If you look look these up, you can find a
number of different examples of this. UM. One website I
was looking at this is a website called the Vintage News,

(53:34):
and there is an author by the name of Louise
flat Lee who wrote about them. In included a number
of pictures, and this author say that they probably started
out in Brittany six years ago and subsequently spread throughout Europe.
And yeah, it was it seems to have largely been
something like the curtain bed, and that it was a
good way to stay warm during cold nights, and it

(53:57):
might have added security either real sure, your sort of
psychological security for the protection of children during the night.
You know, so you want the children to be safe, Well,
let's have them sleep in this box. Uh, let's actually
have a door on the box and we can just
shut them up in there. It's interesting how the thermal
value of the box bed mirrors what we were talking
about with cats, that you know, you surround yourself with

(54:19):
a at least partially insulated material to trap in your
body heat. Yeah. Now, apparently a Scottish variant was popular
in the six through nineteen centuries. So if you look
around you can find examples of the Scottish box bed.
And I have to say these look quite quite comfy.
These These are not nearly as wardrobe like as some
of the other examples you'll find. These are more uh,

(54:41):
just bed spaces set into the wall with a curtain
that may be drawn, and some of them look quite stylish,
quite modern. Um. And then you'll you tend to have,
you know, more traditional cabinets underneath them, and sometimes I
think there's like a bench that folds out. Yeah, they're
kind of set into an alcove. It looks like incredibly
cozy to me. I want to get in one right now. Yeah. Yeah,

(55:03):
they look cool and I would love to hear from
anyone out there who sleeps in one of these. Uh.
I mean maybe there are some problems. I don't know. Like,
I guess if you're sleeping two to a bed, somebody's
gonna be stuck up against the wall there and can't
get out. But if that person really likes to be cozy,
that's probably the prime place to be, right. You're all
the way in the back, as long as you don't

(55:25):
have to go to the bathroom during the night. But
then also I guess you you have firm walls in place,
so if you're too tall, uh, you know, you're just
gonna be bunched up in there. I don't know. That
is the thing is. Looking at this picture you've attached,
it looks very cozy, but it also looks relatively short. Yeah. Now,
this style apparently largely went out of style with the

(55:47):
advent of twentieth century heating, but they that I've also
read that they may be making a comeback, that Carve
Scandinavian bed boxes seem to have made made a return
in recent years. I wasn't really able to find much
in the way of evidence of this. I'm not doubting it,
but I'm I'm mostly just finding some interesting designs on
Pinterest boards and whatnot, and you know, and antique photos.

(56:11):
So I'd love to hear from listeners on this as
well as you know, if you've been checking out you know,
bed and Breakfast throughout Europe or checking out real estate,
are our box beds making a comeback? Are you finding
people sleeping in wardrobes? What are the Airbnb keywords for this?
Because to on another level, it seems like you can

(56:31):
get in trouble for sleeping in a box. Because here
in the United States, there was the story of cartoonist
Peter Berkowitz who, in order to survive San Francisco's housing market,
which you know has has been insane for a while,
moved into a wooden box and a friends apartment, uh,
paying just four hundred dollars a month. And I've seen
pictures of this, This box. So it's I guess it's

(56:53):
more in line with kind of like an anchor Right's cell,
in that it's like this elongated wooden box. It has
a bed in there and just you know, there's some
room for some space. It's like this tiny compartment, except
instead of being attached to a church, it's in your
friends living room. Uh and um. And so he ended
up writing a piece about it for The Guardian and

(57:14):
getting some pressed out of it, you know, because I
think a lot of it too is just like, hey, uh,
San Francisco housing market is insane. Look what I'm having
to do to deal with it. And he ended he
ended up getting busted for it because the idea was
that these pods and boxes were said to violate local
laws and create a fire hazard. Well maybe, but but
that kind of thing. I'd always kind of wonder Also

(57:35):
if it's just like the neighbors just don't like it. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know. It's hard to tell how much of
that is, you know, how much of it is his neighbors,
how much of it is politics, etcetera. Um, you know
he's making a stink about um about the housing market
in the city, um, etcetera. But but I don't know
there there you can also see that there could be
some legitimate concerns about say ventilation or you know, if

(57:58):
you especially if you make your own uh box to
sleep and live in. Um, you know, are are you
providing enough ventilation for this? Is you know, is there
is air getting in there? Um? Like I think back
to when we were recording together in a studio, we
were in a box within a room. But then they
had a separate like air conditioning fan system set up

(58:18):
to keep the air circulated through that little box that
we were in. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it word yeah,
And sometimes there have been like five people in there
ahead of us and it clearly was not working that hard.
Oh yeah, the days of humidity inside the podcast studio,
that was a time. Now now getting a little bit

(58:39):
into this idea of box bed, but also coming back
to the anchor rights. UM. I found a book by
one Carrie Howie from two thousand seven titled Claustrophilia, The
Erotics of Enclosure in Medieval Literature. And if for anyone
who wants a really deep contemplative dive on this topic,
I think this would probably be the the book to

(59:00):
check out because the author points to a kind of
duel horror fascination with confined spaces, not only during the
Middle Ages, but also in say, modern cinema. So they
specifically bring up the two thousand to David Finch Fincher
film Panic Room as an example of this. I never
saw that one. I was pretty goods where Jodie Foster

(59:21):
plays the this woman and her and then she has
a daughter, I think. And when the bandits come, led
by Dwight Yoakum as the as the lead villainous bandit,
and he's quite good in it. It's weird. He's kind
of a creeper um, so he plays the role well.
Uh so it becomes their place of of shelter but
also kind of a prison. So it does get into

(59:43):
this dual idea of like the panic room is being
the place of safety but also the place that you're trapped. Sorry,
I'm still not getting over Dwight Yoakum. Yeah, I mean
he's good in it. I don't know that I've seen
Dwight Yoakum in many dramatic roles, but he's good in
Panic Room anyway. Carrie, how he writes the following, Indeed,
not only do fear and fascination go hand in hand.

(01:00:05):
When enclosures are at stake, fear is often alloyed with desire.
Claustrophobia is at bottom, in part, a denied love of confinement.
That is to say, it is always alloyed with claustrophilia.
The Middle Ages had a particularly sensitive and sensory understanding
of this, and the devotional text discussed below will become

(01:00:25):
clear that enclosure was unavoidable for High Medieval religious culture.
It was not only secretly desired through repression, but openly courted, constructed,
lived in. So I haven't read it, but I would
imagine how his book probably touches on some of the
themes of the anchoritic life as well. Yes, yes, I
believe so. Now outside of the Western world and getting

(01:00:46):
more into the modern world, I feel like we have
to at least mention capsule or pod hotels in Japan.
I've never stayed in one of these, but I think
a lot of us have seen photos and photo galleries
of such hells. Um maybe you've seen them pop up
in a documentary. Uh, And they do fall into that
category that I've mentioned earlier, where it's like it's kind

(01:01:08):
of like a sci fi pod, a stasis pod, and
you can't help it look at it and think, oh,
on some level, that's that's a desirable place to be. Yeah, totally.
So these started in the late seventies, I believe, and
they're they're notable for their low price, small space, and
they're apparently ideal for business travelers as well as people
who've say've been out on the town and they've become

(01:01:28):
intoxicated and they can't return home, uh, you know across
a you know, like you know, the Tokyo sprawl, and
therefore this is like a quick place you can go
in bed down. But but yeah, there's something undeniably attractive
about them. I was looking at various photo galleries off them,
and I'm seeing like mountainous regions as being popular. I
guess if you have you don't have a lot of

(01:01:49):
real estate, and you potentially need like a high sleep
density environment, it makes sense to have capsules or pods
for people to sleep in. You know, I've often wondered
why they don't make airplanes where you can buy a
horizontal sleeping pod instead of a seat. I would have
to guess that it's just the geometry doesn't work out

(01:02:10):
like they can't fit as many into the plane that way,
um as they can vertical seats. But I don't know
if you work in designing airplanes, well why is that?
Why are there not planes like that? I want to know. Well,
you do see things like this, I think in in
first class accommodations for certain airlines with with long flights.
I've never experienced it myself, but I know they have

(01:02:32):
things like that. You see occasionally see photographs of it,
uh and then maybe we have listeners out there who
can attest to it. But speaking of of flights, I've
also seen the capsule pod model at least argued as
a solution for airports uh where, especially if you have
solo travelers who have like a long layover. You know,
it may not make sense to actually leave the airport

(01:02:54):
check into a hotel, But you have that long layover,
and what are your choices just to sleep awkwardly you
in one of the chairs out there want while waiting,
or to curl up in the corner and hope nobody
messes with you. What if you could pour yourself into
a nice comfy pod and just um you know, be
the goog for six hours? Oh totally I would be

(01:03:14):
the goo. I I have slept on an airport floor.
I didn't like it. Yeah, yeah, it's not particularly desirable.
Um Oh. I should also mention there's there, at least
there is or was a capsule hotel in Pinghang, China,
the ping Haang Space Capsule Hotel, and this one is
also run by robots. So it's very sci fi based
on the photographs I've seen where you have these, um

(01:03:37):
these capsule like environments that you sleep in, but also
their zones where robots are bringing around. I think they're
bringing around drinks. So, uh, smell the set up of
a sci fi horror movie and nice bottle budget. Uh
looks good. Yeah, capsule budget even Yeah. I guess one
more thing we should discuss here. And there's there's not

(01:03:58):
a lot of hard information and about this because these
are mostly just designs. I don't think anyone actually has
one of these. But at least back as far as
various videos and animations depicting earthquake proof beds were making
the round, do you remember these, Joe, maybe vaguely. They were,

(01:04:18):
they were popular. You saw like Gizmodo articles about it. Uh,
and so I saw an article on the Verge about it,
and you you even saw like Stephen Colbert and various
like late late night talk show hosts covering it because
it's just so weirdly comforting but also horrific to look at.
Um I want to quote James Vincent's right up from

(01:04:41):
the verge he that he nicely summarizes, quote earthquakes humanity's
oldest foe, right up there with snakes, fire, and other
humans when it comes to things that will definitely probably
kill you someday, which is why you need one of
these terrifying earthquake proof beds. In the event of a quake,
You're conspicuously massive four poster will simply swallow you up whole,

(01:05:05):
letting you get back to sleeping while the world itself
shatters around you. Oh man, I love that, especially because
it's like blatantly false that earthquakes or one of humanity's
oldest foe is. Like, an earthquake is really not very
dangerous at all until you are in a built city
right right prior to the construction of of of cities

(01:05:27):
and larger buildings. That's where the true danger in the scenario. Um. Now,
this is the one that that Vincent is specifically referring
to here, I think is one that had a really
neat um need animation to guide it, where you had
essentially a bed that has a trap door in it.
So earthquake occurs, sets off the sensor, that bed does

(01:05:48):
a trap door effect, and you and whoever is sleeping
on the bed just fall into like a pit and
then it seals up behind you. And supposedly there's like
water and supplies in there, and and imply remember ever
wake up that you're just like you just wake up
the next morning. Oh, I guess there was an earthquake
in the night, because now I'm in the comfortable darkness
of my bed's belly. Now I'm an anchor right for

(01:06:09):
the next seventeen days or until we run out of water. Yeah. Now,
there have been various versions of this, I think some
of them are are have been kind of attributed to
the to the same inventor. There's a Chinese inventor by
the name of Wing wind z Uh called the metro
farm bed that in its earlier stages just seems like

(01:06:30):
a bed with high protective arms that doesn't look that
weird at all. It looks actually kind of nice. Um.
But then there are versions of of of their design
that also involved moving doors, wings, etcetera. I've seen some
variations of the of a so called earthquake proof bed
that essentially looks like like sleeping on top of a
box and then that box swallows you to protect you.

(01:06:53):
I've also seen some where the bed itself doesn't drop you,
but like big metal finger has come out from under
the bed and cover you to protect you from earthquake debris.
I'm surprised that so many of these have these moving parts.
It would seem to me, I mean, I'm no expert,
but I would guess the best kind of earthquake proofing
you could have on a bed would just be to

(01:07:14):
give the bed a reinforced roof. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't
seem like you need the added complexity and potential danger
of having doors that close and catch limbs that you know,
the or or the requirements that you would need to
maintain a particular sleeping uh posture in order to avoid
being decapitated by your bad that sort of thing. Uh.

(01:07:35):
But I want to be fair, Maybe maybe there's stuff
I'm not getting about this. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, ultimately,
these are concepts you know, um clearly inventors are still
feeling out the possibilities because again I come back to
my my own um inner world. And on one level, yes,
this looks terrifying. It looks reminiscent of the scene where
Freddie Krueger reaches up through the bed and pull somebody

(01:07:56):
down into the bead. Know that that was that was,
wasn't it? And then the bed just like vomits eighty
three thousand gallons of blood onto the ceiling. Yeah, for
like fifteen minutes it felt like um. So on one level, yes,
it feels like that. But on the other level, it's like,
what if my bed could hug me? What if my
bed could could become my egg? And in that idea,

(01:08:20):
especially in the wake of a potential threat like an earthquake,
it does sound kind of nice. All right, well, we're
gonna go ahead and close it out here. We're gonna
go ahead and press the panic button on our our
our swallowing bed and uh and steal ourselves off for
this episode. But we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
What are your feelings and thoughts on enclosed spaces for

(01:08:43):
sleeping or living or otherwise. Have you stayed in a
Japanese uh pod hotel or some of these examples and
say it'll lear Switzerland. Report back. What was it like?
Was it great? Was it not so great? Was it
a mix of the two. Did you feel comfortable? Did
you feel like the goop? We'd love to know all
about that. Um. You know these various beds, box beds.
Have you slept in one? Are they making a comeback?

(01:09:06):
All of its fair game? Are you an anchor? Right?
If so, let us know. If so, what are you
doing listening to podcasts? I feel like that should not
be allowed unless you were a podcast anchor, right where
your sole responsibility is to listen to as many podcasts
as possible with your podcat who's also there, um, in
order to attain spiritual enlightenment. Oh also, I want to

(01:09:27):
hear about people's experiments with their cats. I don't know
if we mentioned this at the end of the last episode.
Maybe we did, but but yeah, yeah, yeah, if you
if you've put out a square to see if your
cattle sit on it, that kind of thing, yeah, I
feel free to write us about it. Yeah. I think
there's already some action on that. We either received a
listener mail or somebody shared it on the discussion module,
which is the Facebook page where people who dig the show, uh,

(01:09:51):
you know, hang out and share links and whatnot. I
think so far we got one yea in one day
on Facebook, one person saying yeah, put down the tape
square cat got right in, another person saying the cat
doesn't even go anywhere near it. Yeah. I keep it coming.
We need more data in the meantime, and if you
would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Blow Your Mind, you'll find us wherever you get your

(01:10:11):
podcasts and wherever that happens to be. We just asked
the rate review and subscribe huge thanks as always to
our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
the future, just to say hello, you can email us
at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

(01:10:36):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
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(01:11:02):
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