December 16, 2014 • 29 mins
Find out why the Grinch had the personality of a toadstool sandwich, with arsenic sauce. Robert and Julie explore the physiology of the Green One, not to mention his self-imposed social isolation, which may have contributed to the woefully diminutive size of his heart.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to stuff to goow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Bass.
The holidays are upon us, so of course we're talking
about the science of a couple of our favorite holiday entities.
(00:24):
So we have an episode about Scrooge, and this episode
is about the Grinch. That's right, You're a mean one,
Mr Grinch. Is everybody familiar with that song? They should be.
This is another one that I feel like I watched
and read it so many times as a child, and
then you know, and then it's just all over pop culture.
(00:46):
And then they made that movie. The less that's said
about the better, But still people are not that movie
is old enough now that people are nostalgic about it.
That's noting like that films like over a decade old
now the gym Carey, But for me it was all
ways the old animated version. The head boars karlof yeah
in it and in the book itself by the good
uh Dr Seuss, Yeah, The Grinch She Stole Christmas is
(01:09):
a great literary classic. In the song You're Mean when
Mr Grinch performed by Thorle ravens Croft. Yeah, not Boris
Karlaf some people mistake did the voice of the and yeah,
and in fact Thorle ravens Croft also did the voice
for Tony the Tiger. But we bring it all up
because this is just great fodder. Great, yes, great fodder
(01:32):
to deconstruct the Grinch. That's our aim today, to find
out what makes him tick mentally and physically, and also
find out why he's so obsessed with stopping Christmas from
coming to Ville. Indeed, you know, the basic scenario is, uh,
it's it's very much like Scrooge in a sense, you know,
the commugon ly old critter who who learns the true
(01:54):
meaning of Christmas and has a big change of heart.
You know, it's a reduntion story and all that, um.
But in the meantime, can't be bothered with all those
do goods and merrymakers right, and just can't stand can't
stand the sound of them, can't stand the idea that
they are down there, and decides, well, I'm just gonna
steal their Christmas. I'll take it away. I'll go down there,
I'll dress the Santa Claus, I'll take everything out of
their houses. Their presence, their food, there, the decorations on
(02:18):
the walls, Like he just completely ravages their culture. That's his,
his thing, and then he's going to destroy it all.
But then something happens. He has an epiphany, and we'll
get to that. There is another character that we're like,
how did he get to that epiphany? Um? First though,
let's take a look at what the Grinch looks like,
I mean with his actual physical characteristics. As we're talking
(02:40):
about a green fur clad primate. Yeah, yeah, some sort
of bipedal critter. Now, I I do have questions about
his primate status because the the world that we encounter
in the Grinch, uh, the who despec is, is filled
with creatures that are just run straight out of our world.
(03:02):
There's a dog, you know, there are mice, but then
you have the primary resident seemed to be the Who's
who haven't who are bipeds as well, but they have antenna.
The Grinch doesn't have antenna, but I will know that
he has very animated eyebrows and these two kind of
horns of hair, which leads me to believe that they
might be antenna. They're simply covered in hair that's just
(03:22):
a loose theory. That's true, it's hard to tell. I
saw that little mop. I kept staring at that little
mom trying to figure out because what could it be.
In the animated version, there's that great scene where he
gets the idea, uh, and he smiles and it's the
most devious smile ever brought to the moving picture. Now,
from the Whoville Wikipedia, it states that the grinch is
(03:44):
known to be of a different species than the who's
being stated as a what. And moreover, in the story,
the grinch is described as being as strong as ten
grinches plus two, implying that perhaps a grinch is its
own species. To who's call him of what? How very how?
How very alienating of them to do that to to
(04:06):
who it's who? It's tied up with your identity, right
and what? That's very dehumanizing. Well, keep a handle on that,
because I feel like this will become important discussion fodder, uh,
for when we talk about epiphanies. Now, the grinch is constitution,
as we all know, super grumpy, antisocial, neurotic, aggressive, depressive,
(04:30):
you could even say, vindictive, and possibly even fulfilling a
neurotic need for power by exploiting his companion Max the dog. Yeah,
the relationship between the Grinch and max Is is perhaps
a little borderline abuse of at times. But but but
(04:55):
he's a you know, it's a service animal. That's that's
that's that's animal. Yeah. I don't see anything on there
that says do not pet. Well, it's implied, you know,
the horn on the head, positioning in the front of
the sway like clearly. Uh, you know, the Grinch sees
this as an animal that aids him in his endeavors.
He makes a great foil, does now The image of
(05:17):
the Grinch in that cave on a mantaintop really brings
to mind a jetty or better yet another creature and
I'm talking about from the epic tale bail Wolf. Yes, uh,
this is this is something I just keep thinking about
this Christmas season. I never thought of it before, but
it it's it comes up every now and then. We're
(05:38):
not the first people to to talk about Grindel and
Grinch as very similar entities, because you have one that's
a cave dwelling monster that haunts the Danish moors, and
the other lives within the microcosm of the hood despec
one taliens in bloodshed, the other in Christmas Cheer. But
both stories concern a loan outside or a to quote
(05:59):
the words of authored John Gardner, who who wrote the
book Grindel, which is the story of Baowulf and Grendel.
From Grendel's perspective, uh, the creature is quote a shadow
shooter and earth room roamer, a walker of the world's
weird wall, a perpetual outsider that is uh, that's barely
even a part of the the world of man, or
(06:21):
in this case, the world of the Who's Yeah, there's
a sense of suffering there. And according to Courtney che
writing for Humanities three sixty, she says the first and
most apparent similarity between Grendel and the Grench other names
both begin with a sound Grin the Online Etymology Dictionary
states that the Old English word grenian means to show
(06:42):
the teeth in pain or anger, and an old Norse
the word crena means to howl indeed, uh And and
you know, in both cases the creature is is just
really irritated by the noise and the grinch and the noise,
the noise, the noise, and in bow will fuh it
is written, then the mighty war spirit endured for a season,
(07:04):
bore it bitterly, he who bided in darkness. That lighthearted
laughter aloud in the building greeted him daily. There was
dulcet heart music, clear song of the singer. And uh.
And so Grendel sets out to attack uh the mead
hall of Herod and uh and it's important to know
that the mead hall here is the center of Danish culture. Like,
(07:28):
he's striking at the heart of the Dames. He's striking
at their merriam. And he's starting at the He's striking
at the glue that holds them together through the dark winter.
Right and uh and and the Grinch is doing much
the same thing. He is striking at their Christmas. He's
striking at their their central belief and their central um,
the very heart of their culture. Yes, there's a merriment, right,
(07:49):
there's the feasting. And when he attacks them, Grendel, they
are asleep from their feasting nuts, unlike the Who's who
lay a snooze exactly. Um. But it had had Cindy,
had Cindy lou Dane woken up and wandered into the
meat hall, she would have met with a very different fate.
(08:09):
She would just be gulped down. There will be no discussion.
Oh yes, torn apart. Now, the biggest difference, of course,
is that Grenville's vengeance and hatred makes them incapable of
connecting with anyone else. Right, He's got different motivations too, Yeah,
and some other issues I think too, don't we all Yeah,
And also I'm you know, theo Wolf is a bit
(08:29):
of a jerk. Well, yeah, so it's not like the
Danes are not doing a great job of reaching out
to Grenville, right, and so he's not going to have
that epiphany like the Grinch. R. Yeah. But nonetheless, there
are so many similarities between the two you can't help
but mention them. Indeed, Yes, and I would love to see, uh,
some sort of adaptation that combines these two in a
(08:51):
in a more festive manner. All Right, we're gonna take
a quick break on that note, and when we come back,
we're going to discuss the physiology of the because we
know at least one crucial thing about it. All right,
we're back. We're back. And one of the distinguishing physiological
(09:14):
features of the Grinch is of course that his heart
is two sizes too small. Yes, and this seems to
be both a physical and figurative situation. For the most part,
from what we can tell, we have a little X
ray that comes into frame and shows you that the
heart is is literally too small, and also his love
for his uh, his fellow creature seems to be somewhat
(09:35):
lacking as well. Indeed, so we look to the human
world to try to explain some of the reasons why
this may be so, at least on the physical level. Yeah, now,
I do want to say one quick thing about why
it is definitely a problem. Because the grinch is living
at a very high altitude, right and uh, and so
he's living in a glow oxygen environment. So if he
(09:57):
if his species, if you will truly evolve to throw
I have at high altitudes, then that species would boast
slower development, delayed maturity, greater lung volume, and a larger heart.
Has pointed out in the book Essentials of Physical Anthropology,
we find all four of these attributes in lifelong high
altitude human residents. So his heart is too small for
(10:19):
his environment. Well, especially if you consider that the grinch
and the Who's evolved convergently with one another, as possible
that the grinch has a heart that is really better
adapted to um higher levels of oxygen, which would find
on the ground right right, So it's it's hard to
(10:39):
tell where this is coming from. It could be maybe
the Grinch is actually at lower levels of altitude, but
now as an outsider has decided to live on this
mountaintop and therefore doubt by the Who's, Yes, he's been
excommunicated by the Who's and now here he is with
his heart. She size is too small to deal with
a lack of oxygen the high altitudes. It's okay, I
(11:02):
like this theory, and it plays into some other arguments
they're gonna make later in the podcast concerning the origins
of the Grinch. But another idea, maybe that's not a
Grench heart in his chest. Maybe it is a whole heart.
Because in in, indeed, when it comes to you a
human heart transplant, transplantation UM underside replatement, replacements are are
(11:23):
certainly an issue of concern because you you know, when
it when it comes to heart availability, you're not always
able to match up everything perfectly. You know, you're you're
matching across genders, um, you know, ultimately across different people.
So sometimes the heart is a is a bit smaller
than it would ideally be for that chest cavity. Yeah,
and what you're describing is actually called the Grinch syndrome.
(11:45):
In some cases it is a postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.
And it sounds like one of the things that Who
gets on Christmas Morning one of the instruments. It is
actually um and most patients have a heart that is
indeed two sizes too small. And this effects about five
(12:05):
hundred thousand Americans, primarily young women. So again, this is
something that is really taken into consideration when you are
looking at donors. So if this were the case, Uh,
you could imagine that in all that junk up there
in the mountain, on the top of Mount Crumpet. Uh,
perhaps the Grinch has some sort of automated surgical theater
that performed this procedure once upon a time. And why not,
(12:27):
I mean, he has a sewing machine. It's true. It's true.
Perhaps Max has has a skill set that we were
just not privy to in the book or in the film,
or or perhaps the Who's did it themselves before they
shunned him and pushed him up to the top of
a mountain. In any case, you put someone up there
with a heart that's much too small for that altitude.
(12:47):
You're gonna get some dizziness, You're gonna get some very
unclear thinking, You're gonna get a lot of crappiness. Yeah,
it's going to definitely, I think contribute to his his
ill demeanor. Indeed, now not laud is known about his
actual ears. Um. Perhaps they're situated underneath all of that
that for the cladding his body. But it could be
(13:10):
that he's just highly sensitive to noise. And we know
that the human ear canal actually amplifies noises in the
range of two thousand to five thousand hurts um. So
that's why I like things like knives, scraping plates, or
nails on a chalkboard are so terrible sounding, because they
inhabit that range and they kind of ricochet around in
(13:33):
the ear canal. So could it be that all that merriment,
all all of that singing is occupying that same space.
It could be it's hitting the sweet spot for him,
or the spot as it were. Well, the noise, noise, noise,
that's the one thing he hated. Yeah, yeah, and that's ultimately,
I mean, that's that's what makes him decide, Hey, I'm
gonna go down there and I'm going to cut this
noise out, all those fancy bells and whistles they get
(13:56):
Christmas morning, I'm going to take rid of to take
care of that. And that's ing may do. There's gonna
be no cause for that either, because I'm stealing everything
that's right. Because when I am perched atop my mountain,
particularly on the edge, and I'm really like leaning down
to here, I know that sound is reflecting off of
really hard surfaces like rock, water, or ice. And I'm
(14:17):
that grinch and I'm mad about this. And that's to
say nothing about what's going on inside that cave. Indeed,
if you think of the ear canal as as amplifying sound,
essentially the cave that the that the Grinch is in
is another ear canal. It is, I mean, because if
you you look at it, there's hard surfaces that are
surrounding the Grinch, perfect for amplifying sounds, since any noise
(14:40):
that would appear to enter the cave or that was
made inside of it would bounce off the cave walls
and it would be picked up by the ears. And
in this sense, there's a twin to each noise a
kind of shadow noise, and this gets into a really
interesting area of research called arco acoustics. UM. One of
the main guys behind all of this is a US researchers,
Steven Waller, Uh, and he's looked extensively at at Lascaux
(15:04):
caves in France, these ancient caves, cave art on the sides,
you know, animals, that that kind of thing, and he
believes that the echoes of ritual clapping outside of those
caves would have sounded like hundreds of hoofs drumming on
the ground. So he thinks that the the the design
of the caves, the positioning of the art, all of that,
um is orchestrated with the sound amplification in mind. Yeah,
(15:29):
these kind of sound illusions that come from it. And
we were talking earlier, You think that perhaps the hooves
might be behind this. Yes, yeah, it does make me
think that. Um. You know, Weller pointed out quote ancient
mythology explains echoes from the mouths of caves as replies
from spirits. Our ancestors may have made cave paintings in
response to these echoes and their belief that echo spirits
(15:50):
inhabited rocky places such as caves or canyons. Uh. So,
taking this thinking about the Grinch, thinking about the Grinch
is a creature that has been shunned and even placed
there by the Who's Perhaps they also created this cave
so that whoever's occupying that create that cave, whoever is
the Grinch, will steadily be driven mad by the amplified
(16:11):
sounds of merriment far below. Um and and i'll and i'll,
I'll talk more about this as we we progress, but
it's all part of my theory that the grinch um
has an important, crucial even role to play, uh annual
role to play in the culture of the Who's Well.
And in this sense, he's kind of like the cramp
(16:33):
Us that the anti clause, right, So we'll talk about
this a little bit more in the epiphanes Um discussion.
But what I think is interesting is here he is
sequestered away, completely isolated. Perhaps um he is experiencing these
sound illusions and going a little bit mad from it. Now,
the isolation aspect of this, I think is a really
(16:55):
big deal. Um, we should take a quick break, and
when we get back, we're going to talk about Grinch
on his only mountain top. All right, we're back. So
there's the Grinch up in his cave up the mount Crumpet,
far far, far from the who civilization down below. Um,
it would seem that he isn't you know, he would
(17:16):
be in a very splendid uh area of isolation, that
he would be far from from any of the sounds
that might bother him. No, not at all. We we
tend to think that we talked about this in our
episode Splendid Isolation, this idea that if you could just
get some quiet and isolation, and maybe you could even
live like one year completely isolated, that you could finally
(17:38):
sort of unwind and let you the flowers of your
brain bloom. But no, what happens is that those flowers
get all sort of choked together and die off because
you're not having those sort of connections with people and
associations that you need that your brain craves. Yeah, I mean,
you end up talking to a dog, dressing like Santa
(17:59):
Claus and and breaking into houses. Indeed, according to researcher
John Caciopo at the University of Chicago, of all people
are unhappy because of social isolation at any given moment.
So he wanted to know, Hey, what's going on in
the minds of these folks who are isolated and they're unhappy,
(18:20):
And he recruited volunteers to look at some photos while
undergoing f m R I. Now this is this has
such an interesting twist to it. Um Some of the
participants have been identified as having an acute sense of
social isolation and some were just you know, healthy volunteers
that they had screened. Now, both groups viewed a series
(18:40):
of images, some with positive connotations like happy couple doing
funhappy things, and others with negative associations, such as scenes
of human conflict. Now, when the two groups watched pleasant imagery,
the area of the brain that recognizes rewards showed a
significantly greater response non lonely people than in lonely people. Similarly,
(19:03):
the visual cortex of lonely subjects responded much more strongly
to unpleasant images of people than to unpleasant images of objects.
This suggests that the intention of lonely people maybe especially
drawn to human conflict, and that what's interesting about this
(19:24):
is that the nominally subject showed no difference here, So
it was the lonely subjects who were particularly taken with
these scenes of conflict, and this this instantly brings to
mind an image of someone who's isolated themselves inside of
their apartment and they're just watching nothing but but cable
news over and over again and yelling at it yea,
(19:44):
and yelling at it, just glutting themselves on conflict and
engaging with the conflict and really feeling a lot of stress. Um.
There's a two thousand seven study from the University of
Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, and they reported that
the anxiety and aggression that results from social isol a
trace to altered levels of an enzyme that controls the
production of a brain hormone. The in the two enzymes
(20:08):
in this case are needed for the production of allo pregnantoline,
a brain hormone that acts to reduce stress through regulation
of gabba uh, an important neuro transmitter. So the suggestion
here is that increased levels of isolation, it's going to
impact your ability to roll with stress and regulate your
own stress on a on a on a on a
(20:29):
neurological scale. Right, and um, one of the ways that
you might deal with stress is to communicate with others. Right,
to unburden yourself. And again he does not have that luxury.
Yes Max, Yes, Max, But Max seems and and and
rightly so a bit reserved. Yes, Max does not speak
despite being a cartoon storybook dog. He merely just rolls
(20:53):
with the punches. Yeah. And you know, we talked about
the dysfunctional families. Just would be the lost child, right,
and one that receives to the shadows because he's like,
forget it. I don't want to raise the hackles of
the Grinch, but you know, I think the stage is
pretty well set here that you have this, this creature
who is tormented UM, auditorially fermented UM and psychologically tormented
(21:19):
and as a result, perhaps having a mental breakdown. Now,
in the BBC documentary alone The Brain Century, Deprivation and Isolation,
six people were deprived of sensory input. They were essentially
put in solitary confinement for about forty eight hours, and
one of the findings is that at around our thirty
people began to pace back and forth, and a lot
(21:42):
of people who were looking at the footage said, this
is a lot like animals in captivity. And perhaps one
of the reasons why they're doing this is that they're
trying to create some sort of sensory input for their brains.
Because we've talked about this before. This is one of
the reasons why you can't be isolated for a long time.
Your brain needs something to a non it needs a bone,
and a lot of time other people are those bones.
(22:05):
And again, if you if you have someone who has
sequestered themselves in your brain, isn't getting this sort of
input that it would normally get. The unconscious has very
little information to play with and to mold into a story.
And that story of I. You know, we've talked about this,
the me, the who I am, And that's when you
(22:26):
begin to see some some aspects of mental breakdown sometimes
because there isn't that cohesive, uh, sense of self that's
bolstered by others or even mirrored by other people around you.
All Right, So the Grinch, this uh, this miserable creature,
driven half mad by the merriment of the who's, finally breaks,
(22:47):
finally snaps stresses up like Santa Claus descends down on
Christmas night while the Who's are asleep in their beds,
steals just about everything, even raid the refrigerator packs it
all up on the sleigh, he takes it up and
he's about to dump it, right, He's about to just
throw it into the abyss and u and wish him
a merry Christ. But he's waiting, Remember, he's waiting on
(23:09):
that ledge. He's waiting for them to wake up and
realize that all of their little goodies have been stolen
from them. Right, that's the ultimate reward, more so than
just the material theft involved here. He wants to break them,
to break who culture itself, and just send them into despair.
The problem is, of course, is that when he's he's
(23:30):
got his hand up to his ear and he's listening
really hard, he doesn't hear sobbing. He doesn't hear this
is terrible wretching noises of broken Who's he hears his
unified chorus, this beautiful lilting song that that comes up
to him and makes him realize that all of his
(23:51):
expectations have been violated. And this is what allows him,
at this very moment to go in one of two ways.
Either he can have this sort of cognitive dissonance right
in which his violations or his expectations are violated, and
(24:12):
he doesn't know what to do with that, and so
he doubles down on a sort of cognitive bias and
tries to explain it away and say, oh no, they're
still materialists, they're still terrible. Or he can accept that
there's cognitive dissonance and he can accept that there's an
alternate take to the Who's and to Christmas that is
(24:35):
not just about materialism but perhaps something more m and
that makes all the difference. He has this change of heart.
He brings everything back to them, He celebrates with him, He's, He's,
He's brought into who culture. He's no longer an outsider,
or at least for this one night, he's not an outsider,
and he joins in the feast. He cuts the roast
(24:56):
beast for crying out loud. He does. And again, this, this,
this sort of see change is all predicated on his
epiphany moment that it's connections with people that matter, and
that's what the Who's, uh we're celebrating when it came
to Christmas. Not necessarily their stuff, but these guys Who's
do not get out of this unscathed. Right, It's easy
(25:19):
to look at the story and say, oh, well, the
Who's are such a noble people that even though all
their presence and their food was gone, they still went
out there, and we're happy because they're ultimately happy and
good at heart. But we would argue that they felt this,
they made this. This is a realization for the Who's
because the Grinch told all their stuff, because the Grinch
(25:39):
took away all the material possessions, of which they had
way too many to begin with. Yeah. According to Chad
or Zell in his article on Science Blogs, how strong
was the Grinch each of the thirty three who's in Whoville?
We're getting about three thousand or about six thousand pounds
(26:00):
of stuff on Christmas and Orizel basis calculations on pixels
and what they might represent in terms of real world
dimensions and mass, including that that slayh um. So that
would lead us to believe that maybe those who's we're
just empty husks trying to stuff themselves with things before
the Grinch came along and delivered uh an epiphany to them. Yeah,
(26:24):
I think so. I mean it, you know, clearly their
way over doing it. They're indulging in just rampant materialism,
and then the Grinch comes takes it away and gives
them the space to realize what's important. Most So in
this I would I would argue that the Grinch plays
a crucial role in the Who's if not for that
that Christmas, but perhaps every Christmas. Perhaps the Grinch comes
(26:49):
every Christmas to the Who's and it's part of their
their winter festival, you know, the great green god on
the mountain that it comes down and takes away your
your your material possessions so that you may see what's
most important. So this is like the passion play for
the Who's. Yeah, like maybe, yeah, And I think so
if the if the Grinch doesn't come, then you end
up just drowning in your own materialism and you're you know,
(27:11):
freezing through the winter. And the Grinch himself might say, yes,
I will participate in these festivities and pretend to be
terrible and awful and and and I can recreate that
epiphany that or or you take a creature and you
replace its heart and you stick it into a specially
designed cave on the top of the mountain so that
it will play a role in your your necessary festival
(27:32):
year after year after year. Wow, maybe the Grinch isn't
even real, Like maybe that's a Grinch costume that one
of the Who's has to wear as sort of like
the sacrificial Grinch for the year. Yeah, it's just kind
of the supernatural entity that everyone believes in and you
sort of you partake in the passion play of the
thing that is somehow more believable than um. Then positing
(27:54):
that the whose heart grew two sizes that day when
you have the epiphany simply be has some sort of
genetic switch went off between the who's and the what. Yeah.
I have no explanation for why his heart would literally
grow two sizes and allow you know, better sourcing of oxygen,
but that just reminded me too. Uh. Now, he's more
(28:14):
of a who and than a what, which is sort
of a whole underlying basis of what we were talking
about earlier, like how how terrible to be a what
instead of a who? And he made his way back
to his unness by connecting with his fellow species. Now
that's that's some rich stuff there. That's sus you really
knows who knew what he was doing? An intuitive psychologist?
(28:35):
I think so. Yeah. Alrighty guys, we hope that you
enjoyed our presentation of the Grinch as well as Scrooge.
And if you want to check out more of what
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(28:57):
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(29:19):
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Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to stuff to goow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Bass.
The holidays are upon us, so of course we're talking
about the science of a couple of our favorite holiday entities.
(00:24):
So we have an episode about Scrooge, and this episode
is about the Grinch. That's right, You're a mean one,
Mr Grinch. Is everybody familiar with that song? They should be.
This is another one that I feel like I watched
and read it so many times as a child, and
then you know, and then it's just all over pop culture.
(00:46):
And then they made that movie. The less that's said
about the better, But still people are not that movie
is old enough now that people are nostalgic about it.
That's noting like that films like over a decade old
now the gym Carey, But for me it was all
ways the old animated version. The head boars karlof yeah
in it and in the book itself by the good
uh Dr Seuss, Yeah, The Grinch She Stole Christmas is
(01:09):
a great literary classic. In the song You're Mean when
Mr Grinch performed by Thorle ravens Croft. Yeah, not Boris
Karlaf some people mistake did the voice of the and yeah,
and in fact Thorle ravens Croft also did the voice
for Tony the Tiger. But we bring it all up
because this is just great fodder. Great, yes, great fodder
(01:32):
to deconstruct the Grinch. That's our aim today, to find
out what makes him tick mentally and physically, and also
find out why he's so obsessed with stopping Christmas from
coming to Ville. Indeed, you know, the basic scenario is, uh,
it's it's very much like Scrooge in a sense, you know,
the commugon ly old critter who who learns the true
(01:54):
meaning of Christmas and has a big change of heart.
You know, it's a reduntion story and all that, um.
But in the meantime, can't be bothered with all those
do goods and merrymakers right, and just can't stand can't
stand the sound of them, can't stand the idea that
they are down there, and decides, well, I'm just gonna
steal their Christmas. I'll take it away. I'll go down there,
I'll dress the Santa Claus, I'll take everything out of
their houses. Their presence, their food, there, the decorations on
(02:18):
the walls, Like he just completely ravages their culture. That's his,
his thing, and then he's going to destroy it all.
But then something happens. He has an epiphany, and we'll
get to that. There is another character that we're like,
how did he get to that epiphany? Um? First though,
let's take a look at what the Grinch looks like,
I mean with his actual physical characteristics. As we're talking
(02:40):
about a green fur clad primate. Yeah, yeah, some sort
of bipedal critter. Now, I I do have questions about
his primate status because the the world that we encounter
in the Grinch, uh, the who despec is, is filled
with creatures that are just run straight out of our world.
(03:02):
There's a dog, you know, there are mice, but then
you have the primary resident seemed to be the Who's
who haven't who are bipeds as well, but they have antenna.
The Grinch doesn't have antenna, but I will know that
he has very animated eyebrows and these two kind of
horns of hair, which leads me to believe that they
might be antenna. They're simply covered in hair that's just
(03:22):
a loose theory. That's true, it's hard to tell. I
saw that little mop. I kept staring at that little
mom trying to figure out because what could it be.
In the animated version, there's that great scene where he
gets the idea, uh, and he smiles and it's the
most devious smile ever brought to the moving picture. Now,
from the Whoville Wikipedia, it states that the grinch is
(03:44):
known to be of a different species than the who's
being stated as a what. And moreover, in the story,
the grinch is described as being as strong as ten
grinches plus two, implying that perhaps a grinch is its
own species. To who's call him of what? How very how?
How very alienating of them to do that to to
(04:06):
who it's who? It's tied up with your identity, right
and what? That's very dehumanizing. Well, keep a handle on that,
because I feel like this will become important discussion fodder, uh,
for when we talk about epiphanies. Now, the grinch is constitution,
as we all know, super grumpy, antisocial, neurotic, aggressive, depressive,
(04:30):
you could even say, vindictive, and possibly even fulfilling a
neurotic need for power by exploiting his companion Max the dog. Yeah,
the relationship between the Grinch and max Is is perhaps
a little borderline abuse of at times. But but but
(04:55):
he's a you know, it's a service animal. That's that's
that's that's animal. Yeah. I don't see anything on there
that says do not pet. Well, it's implied, you know,
the horn on the head, positioning in the front of
the sway like clearly. Uh, you know, the Grinch sees
this as an animal that aids him in his endeavors.
He makes a great foil, does now The image of
(05:17):
the Grinch in that cave on a mantaintop really brings
to mind a jetty or better yet another creature and
I'm talking about from the epic tale bail Wolf. Yes, uh,
this is this is something I just keep thinking about
this Christmas season. I never thought of it before, but
it it's it comes up every now and then. We're
(05:38):
not the first people to to talk about Grindel and
Grinch as very similar entities, because you have one that's
a cave dwelling monster that haunts the Danish moors, and
the other lives within the microcosm of the hood despec
one taliens in bloodshed, the other in Christmas Cheer. But
both stories concern a loan outside or a to quote
(05:59):
the words of authored John Gardner, who who wrote the
book Grindel, which is the story of Baowulf and Grendel.
From Grendel's perspective, uh, the creature is quote a shadow
shooter and earth room roamer, a walker of the world's
weird wall, a perpetual outsider that is uh, that's barely
even a part of the the world of man, or
(06:21):
in this case, the world of the Who's Yeah, there's
a sense of suffering there. And according to Courtney che
writing for Humanities three sixty, she says the first and
most apparent similarity between Grendel and the Grench other names
both begin with a sound Grin the Online Etymology Dictionary
states that the Old English word grenian means to show
(06:42):
the teeth in pain or anger, and an old Norse
the word crena means to howl indeed, uh And and
you know, in both cases the creature is is just
really irritated by the noise and the grinch and the noise,
the noise, the noise, and in bow will fuh it
is written, then the mighty war spirit endured for a season,
(07:04):
bore it bitterly, he who bided in darkness. That lighthearted
laughter aloud in the building greeted him daily. There was
dulcet heart music, clear song of the singer. And uh.
And so Grendel sets out to attack uh the mead
hall of Herod and uh and it's important to know
that the mead hall here is the center of Danish culture. Like,
(07:28):
he's striking at the heart of the Dames. He's striking
at their merriam. And he's starting at the He's striking
at the glue that holds them together through the dark winter.
Right and uh and and the Grinch is doing much
the same thing. He is striking at their Christmas. He's
striking at their their central belief and their central um,
the very heart of their culture. Yes, there's a merriment, right,
(07:49):
there's the feasting. And when he attacks them, Grendel, they
are asleep from their feasting nuts, unlike the Who's who
lay a snooze exactly. Um. But it had had Cindy,
had Cindy lou Dane woken up and wandered into the
meat hall, she would have met with a very different fate.
(08:09):
She would just be gulped down. There will be no discussion.
Oh yes, torn apart. Now, the biggest difference, of course,
is that Grenville's vengeance and hatred makes them incapable of
connecting with anyone else. Right, He's got different motivations too, Yeah,
and some other issues I think too, don't we all Yeah,
And also I'm you know, theo Wolf is a bit
(08:29):
of a jerk. Well, yeah, so it's not like the
Danes are not doing a great job of reaching out
to Grenville, right, and so he's not going to have
that epiphany like the Grinch. R. Yeah. But nonetheless, there
are so many similarities between the two you can't help
but mention them. Indeed, Yes, and I would love to see, uh,
some sort of adaptation that combines these two in a
(08:51):
in a more festive manner. All Right, we're gonna take
a quick break on that note, and when we come back,
we're going to discuss the physiology of the because we
know at least one crucial thing about it. All right,
we're back. We're back. And one of the distinguishing physiological
(09:14):
features of the Grinch is of course that his heart
is two sizes too small. Yes, and this seems to
be both a physical and figurative situation. For the most part,
from what we can tell, we have a little X
ray that comes into frame and shows you that the
heart is is literally too small, and also his love
for his uh, his fellow creature seems to be somewhat
(09:35):
lacking as well. Indeed, so we look to the human
world to try to explain some of the reasons why
this may be so, at least on the physical level. Yeah, now,
I do want to say one quick thing about why
it is definitely a problem. Because the grinch is living
at a very high altitude, right and uh, and so
he's living in a glow oxygen environment. So if he
(09:57):
if his species, if you will truly evolve to throw
I have at high altitudes, then that species would boast
slower development, delayed maturity, greater lung volume, and a larger heart.
Has pointed out in the book Essentials of Physical Anthropology,
we find all four of these attributes in lifelong high
altitude human residents. So his heart is too small for
(10:19):
his environment. Well, especially if you consider that the grinch
and the Who's evolved convergently with one another, as possible
that the grinch has a heart that is really better
adapted to um higher levels of oxygen, which would find
on the ground right right, So it's it's hard to
(10:39):
tell where this is coming from. It could be maybe
the Grinch is actually at lower levels of altitude, but
now as an outsider has decided to live on this
mountaintop and therefore doubt by the Who's, Yes, he's been
excommunicated by the Who's and now here he is with
his heart. She size is too small to deal with
a lack of oxygen the high altitudes. It's okay, I
(11:02):
like this theory, and it plays into some other arguments
they're gonna make later in the podcast concerning the origins
of the Grinch. But another idea, maybe that's not a
Grench heart in his chest. Maybe it is a whole heart.
Because in in, indeed, when it comes to you a
human heart transplant, transplantation UM underside replatement, replacements are are
(11:23):
certainly an issue of concern because you you know, when
it when it comes to heart availability, you're not always
able to match up everything perfectly. You know, you're you're
matching across genders, um, you know, ultimately across different people.
So sometimes the heart is a is a bit smaller
than it would ideally be for that chest cavity. Yeah,
and what you're describing is actually called the Grinch syndrome.
(11:45):
In some cases it is a postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.
And it sounds like one of the things that Who
gets on Christmas Morning one of the instruments. It is
actually um and most patients have a heart that is
indeed two sizes too small. And this effects about five
(12:05):
hundred thousand Americans, primarily young women. So again, this is
something that is really taken into consideration when you are
looking at donors. So if this were the case, Uh,
you could imagine that in all that junk up there
in the mountain, on the top of Mount Crumpet. Uh,
perhaps the Grinch has some sort of automated surgical theater
that performed this procedure once upon a time. And why not,
(12:27):
I mean, he has a sewing machine. It's true. It's true.
Perhaps Max has has a skill set that we were
just not privy to in the book or in the film,
or or perhaps the Who's did it themselves before they
shunned him and pushed him up to the top of
a mountain. In any case, you put someone up there
with a heart that's much too small for that altitude.
(12:47):
You're gonna get some dizziness, You're gonna get some very
unclear thinking, You're gonna get a lot of crappiness. Yeah,
it's going to definitely, I think contribute to his his
ill demeanor. Indeed, now not laud is known about his
actual ears. Um. Perhaps they're situated underneath all of that
that for the cladding his body. But it could be
(13:10):
that he's just highly sensitive to noise. And we know
that the human ear canal actually amplifies noises in the
range of two thousand to five thousand hurts um. So
that's why I like things like knives, scraping plates, or
nails on a chalkboard are so terrible sounding, because they
inhabit that range and they kind of ricochet around in
(13:33):
the ear canal. So could it be that all that merriment,
all all of that singing is occupying that same space.
It could be it's hitting the sweet spot for him,
or the spot as it were. Well, the noise, noise, noise,
that's the one thing he hated. Yeah, yeah, and that's ultimately,
I mean, that's that's what makes him decide, Hey, I'm
gonna go down there and I'm going to cut this
noise out, all those fancy bells and whistles they get
(13:56):
Christmas morning, I'm going to take rid of to take
care of that. And that's ing may do. There's gonna
be no cause for that either, because I'm stealing everything
that's right. Because when I am perched atop my mountain,
particularly on the edge, and I'm really like leaning down
to here, I know that sound is reflecting off of
really hard surfaces like rock, water, or ice. And I'm
(14:17):
that grinch and I'm mad about this. And that's to
say nothing about what's going on inside that cave. Indeed,
if you think of the ear canal as as amplifying sound,
essentially the cave that the that the Grinch is in
is another ear canal. It is, I mean, because if
you you look at it, there's hard surfaces that are
surrounding the Grinch, perfect for amplifying sounds, since any noise
(14:40):
that would appear to enter the cave or that was
made inside of it would bounce off the cave walls
and it would be picked up by the ears. And
in this sense, there's a twin to each noise a
kind of shadow noise, and this gets into a really
interesting area of research called arco acoustics. UM. One of
the main guys behind all of this is a US researchers,
Steven Waller, Uh, and he's looked extensively at at Lascaux
(15:04):
caves in France, these ancient caves, cave art on the sides,
you know, animals, that that kind of thing, and he
believes that the echoes of ritual clapping outside of those
caves would have sounded like hundreds of hoofs drumming on
the ground. So he thinks that the the the design
of the caves, the positioning of the art, all of that,
um is orchestrated with the sound amplification in mind. Yeah,
(15:29):
these kind of sound illusions that come from it. And
we were talking earlier, You think that perhaps the hooves
might be behind this. Yes, yeah, it does make me
think that. Um. You know, Weller pointed out quote ancient
mythology explains echoes from the mouths of caves as replies
from spirits. Our ancestors may have made cave paintings in
response to these echoes and their belief that echo spirits
(15:50):
inhabited rocky places such as caves or canyons. Uh. So,
taking this thinking about the Grinch, thinking about the Grinch
is a creature that has been shunned and even placed
there by the Who's Perhaps they also created this cave
so that whoever's occupying that create that cave, whoever is
the Grinch, will steadily be driven mad by the amplified
(16:11):
sounds of merriment far below. Um and and i'll and i'll,
I'll talk more about this as we we progress, but
it's all part of my theory that the grinch um
has an important, crucial even role to play, uh annual
role to play in the culture of the Who's Well.
And in this sense, he's kind of like the cramp
(16:33):
Us that the anti clause, right, So we'll talk about
this a little bit more in the epiphanes Um discussion.
But what I think is interesting is here he is
sequestered away, completely isolated. Perhaps um he is experiencing these
sound illusions and going a little bit mad from it. Now,
the isolation aspect of this, I think is a really
(16:55):
big deal. Um, we should take a quick break, and
when we get back, we're going to talk about Grinch
on his only mountain top. All right, we're back. So
there's the Grinch up in his cave up the mount Crumpet,
far far, far from the who civilization down below. Um,
it would seem that he isn't you know, he would
(17:16):
be in a very splendid uh area of isolation, that
he would be far from from any of the sounds
that might bother him. No, not at all. We we
tend to think that we talked about this in our
episode Splendid Isolation, this idea that if you could just
get some quiet and isolation, and maybe you could even
live like one year completely isolated, that you could finally
(17:38):
sort of unwind and let you the flowers of your
brain bloom. But no, what happens is that those flowers
get all sort of choked together and die off because
you're not having those sort of connections with people and
associations that you need that your brain craves. Yeah, I mean,
you end up talking to a dog, dressing like Santa
(17:59):
Claus and and breaking into houses. Indeed, according to researcher
John Caciopo at the University of Chicago, of all people
are unhappy because of social isolation at any given moment.
So he wanted to know, Hey, what's going on in
the minds of these folks who are isolated and they're unhappy,
(18:20):
And he recruited volunteers to look at some photos while
undergoing f m R I. Now this is this has
such an interesting twist to it. Um Some of the
participants have been identified as having an acute sense of
social isolation and some were just you know, healthy volunteers
that they had screened. Now, both groups viewed a series
(18:40):
of images, some with positive connotations like happy couple doing
funhappy things, and others with negative associations, such as scenes
of human conflict. Now, when the two groups watched pleasant imagery,
the area of the brain that recognizes rewards showed a
significantly greater response non lonely people than in lonely people. Similarly,
(19:03):
the visual cortex of lonely subjects responded much more strongly
to unpleasant images of people than to unpleasant images of objects.
This suggests that the intention of lonely people maybe especially
drawn to human conflict, and that what's interesting about this
(19:24):
is that the nominally subject showed no difference here, So
it was the lonely subjects who were particularly taken with
these scenes of conflict, and this this instantly brings to
mind an image of someone who's isolated themselves inside of
their apartment and they're just watching nothing but but cable
news over and over again and yelling at it yea,
(19:44):
and yelling at it, just glutting themselves on conflict and
engaging with the conflict and really feeling a lot of stress. Um.
There's a two thousand seven study from the University of
Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, and they reported that
the anxiety and aggression that results from social isol a
trace to altered levels of an enzyme that controls the
production of a brain hormone. The in the two enzymes
(20:08):
in this case are needed for the production of allo pregnantoline,
a brain hormone that acts to reduce stress through regulation
of gabba uh, an important neuro transmitter. So the suggestion
here is that increased levels of isolation, it's going to
impact your ability to roll with stress and regulate your
own stress on a on a on a on a
(20:29):
neurological scale. Right, and um, one of the ways that
you might deal with stress is to communicate with others. Right,
to unburden yourself. And again he does not have that luxury.
Yes Max, Yes, Max, But Max seems and and and
rightly so a bit reserved. Yes, Max does not speak
despite being a cartoon storybook dog. He merely just rolls
(20:53):
with the punches. Yeah. And you know, we talked about
the dysfunctional families. Just would be the lost child, right,
and one that receives to the shadows because he's like,
forget it. I don't want to raise the hackles of
the Grinch, but you know, I think the stage is
pretty well set here that you have this, this creature
who is tormented UM, auditorially fermented UM and psychologically tormented
(21:19):
and as a result, perhaps having a mental breakdown. Now,
in the BBC documentary alone The Brain Century, Deprivation and Isolation,
six people were deprived of sensory input. They were essentially
put in solitary confinement for about forty eight hours, and
one of the findings is that at around our thirty
people began to pace back and forth, and a lot
(21:42):
of people who were looking at the footage said, this
is a lot like animals in captivity. And perhaps one
of the reasons why they're doing this is that they're
trying to create some sort of sensory input for their brains.
Because we've talked about this before. This is one of
the reasons why you can't be isolated for a long time.
Your brain needs something to a non it needs a bone,
and a lot of time other people are those bones.
(22:05):
And again, if you if you have someone who has
sequestered themselves in your brain, isn't getting this sort of
input that it would normally get. The unconscious has very
little information to play with and to mold into a story.
And that story of I. You know, we've talked about this,
the me, the who I am, And that's when you
(22:26):
begin to see some some aspects of mental breakdown sometimes
because there isn't that cohesive, uh, sense of self that's
bolstered by others or even mirrored by other people around you.
All Right, So the Grinch, this uh, this miserable creature,
driven half mad by the merriment of the who's, finally breaks,
(22:47):
finally snaps stresses up like Santa Claus descends down on
Christmas night while the Who's are asleep in their beds,
steals just about everything, even raid the refrigerator packs it
all up on the sleigh, he takes it up and
he's about to dump it, right, He's about to just
throw it into the abyss and u and wish him
a merry Christ. But he's waiting, Remember, he's waiting on
(23:09):
that ledge. He's waiting for them to wake up and
realize that all of their little goodies have been stolen
from them. Right, that's the ultimate reward, more so than
just the material theft involved here. He wants to break them,
to break who culture itself, and just send them into despair.
The problem is, of course, is that when he's he's
(23:30):
got his hand up to his ear and he's listening
really hard, he doesn't hear sobbing. He doesn't hear this
is terrible wretching noises of broken Who's he hears his
unified chorus, this beautiful lilting song that that comes up
to him and makes him realize that all of his
(23:51):
expectations have been violated. And this is what allows him,
at this very moment to go in one of two ways.
Either he can have this sort of cognitive dissonance right
in which his violations or his expectations are violated, and
(24:12):
he doesn't know what to do with that, and so
he doubles down on a sort of cognitive bias and
tries to explain it away and say, oh no, they're
still materialists, they're still terrible. Or he can accept that
there's cognitive dissonance and he can accept that there's an
alternate take to the Who's and to Christmas that is
(24:35):
not just about materialism but perhaps something more m and
that makes all the difference. He has this change of heart.
He brings everything back to them, He celebrates with him, He's, He's,
He's brought into who culture. He's no longer an outsider,
or at least for this one night, he's not an outsider,
and he joins in the feast. He cuts the roast
(24:56):
beast for crying out loud. He does. And again, this, this,
this sort of see change is all predicated on his
epiphany moment that it's connections with people that matter, and
that's what the Who's, uh we're celebrating when it came
to Christmas. Not necessarily their stuff, but these guys Who's
do not get out of this unscathed. Right, It's easy
(25:19):
to look at the story and say, oh, well, the
Who's are such a noble people that even though all
their presence and their food was gone, they still went
out there, and we're happy because they're ultimately happy and
good at heart. But we would argue that they felt this,
they made this. This is a realization for the Who's
because the Grinch told all their stuff, because the Grinch
(25:39):
took away all the material possessions, of which they had
way too many to begin with. Yeah. According to Chad
or Zell in his article on Science Blogs, how strong
was the Grinch each of the thirty three who's in Whoville?
We're getting about three thousand or about six thousand pounds
(26:00):
of stuff on Christmas and Orizel basis calculations on pixels
and what they might represent in terms of real world
dimensions and mass, including that that slayh um. So that
would lead us to believe that maybe those who's we're
just empty husks trying to stuff themselves with things before
the Grinch came along and delivered uh an epiphany to them. Yeah,
(26:24):
I think so. I mean it, you know, clearly their
way over doing it. They're indulging in just rampant materialism,
and then the Grinch comes takes it away and gives
them the space to realize what's important. Most So in
this I would I would argue that the Grinch plays
a crucial role in the Who's if not for that
that Christmas, but perhaps every Christmas. Perhaps the Grinch comes
(26:49):
every Christmas to the Who's and it's part of their
their winter festival, you know, the great green god on
the mountain that it comes down and takes away your
your your material possessions so that you may see what's
most important. So this is like the passion play for
the Who's. Yeah, like maybe, yeah, And I think so
if the if the Grinch doesn't come, then you end
up just drowning in your own materialism and you're you know,
(27:11):
freezing through the winter. And the Grinch himself might say, yes,
I will participate in these festivities and pretend to be
terrible and awful and and and I can recreate that
epiphany that or or you take a creature and you
replace its heart and you stick it into a specially
designed cave on the top of the mountain so that
it will play a role in your your necessary festival
(27:32):
year after year after year. Wow, maybe the Grinch isn't
even real, Like maybe that's a Grinch costume that one
of the Who's has to wear as sort of like
the sacrificial Grinch for the year. Yeah, it's just kind
of the supernatural entity that everyone believes in and you
sort of you partake in the passion play of the
thing that is somehow more believable than um. Then positing
(27:54):
that the whose heart grew two sizes that day when
you have the epiphany simply be has some sort of
genetic switch went off between the who's and the what. Yeah.
I have no explanation for why his heart would literally
grow two sizes and allow you know, better sourcing of oxygen,
but that just reminded me too. Uh. Now, he's more
(28:14):
of a who and than a what, which is sort
of a whole underlying basis of what we were talking
about earlier, like how how terrible to be a what
instead of a who? And he made his way back
to his unness by connecting with his fellow species. Now
that's that's some rich stuff there. That's sus you really
knows who knew what he was doing? An intuitive psychologist?
(28:35):
I think so. Yeah. Alrighty guys, we hope that you
enjoyed our presentation of the Grinch as well as Scrooge.
And if you want to check out more of what
we're doing, you can do so stuff to blow your
mind dot com. That's right. You'll find all the podcast episodes,
including various holiday episodes we've done over the years. Right there,
you'll find blog post videos and some of those are holiday.
(28:57):
Orient will try and promote those on the front page
there for you to check out. And also you'll find
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so by emailing us below the mind at how stuff
(29:19):
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