Its AG Monday
This week we talk the weird 70s with the co-hosts of Monster Talk.
During the 1970s, a lot of people were deeply interested in all the weird things that might be out there. Bigfoot, UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, ghosts, ESP, ancient astronauts, the Bermuda Triangle, demonic possession…All of these bits of weirdness, and more, filled the movie and TV screens, magazines, and books. And our younger selves weren’t immune to a fascination with the unknown.
To help us unpack the weird 70s, we have guests! Blake Smith and Karen Stollznow are the hosts of MonsterTalk, a podcast that takes a scientific look at monsters and other weirdness. They lead through a fun exploration of what made the 1970s a decade full of weirdness, and how the weird 1970s are still relevant today.
Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of culture. We were geeks before it was chic!
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I look forward to this podcast, as the whole Cryptid thing has always amazed me. There is a whole contingent of people out there that are heavily, heavily invested in Big Foot, Nessie, etc and nothing will ever convince them otherwise. I’m not talking about the people who casually assume there is a Big Foot because they hear about it all the time, but rather those that spend hours and hours searching for it and writing about it, attending conventions.
Years ago I had a friend who believed he had been abducted by aliens who then suppressed his memory, only to have it “recovered” by the someone practicing the recovered memory hypnosis schtick that was all the rage in the 70’s and 80’s. He had gone to a convention about aliens and alien abduction and this hypnotist was bringing people up on stage and “recovering” their abduction experiences with more than half turning out to have had an alien encounter. When I pointed out that if half the population was being abducted the skies would be full of UFO’s he had a ready answer: only people that knew deep down they had been abducted would be interested in going to an alien encounter convention.
My 70s weird obsession was telekinesis (Star Wars!!)
I realized early on that “monsters” don’t exist in nature*. As for Nessie or Bigfoot, if there were only one of each, then odds are that one has died in the many decades (centuries?) since they became famous, if they ever existed to begin with.
Of course, a viable species needs more than one exemplar. So there should be at least dozens of each, more likely hundreds. it’s true some small animals get discovered now and then to this day. But other than deep sea creatures, large animals in sufficient numbers to remain a viable species are rather obvious and conspicuous. Ergo there’s no Bigfoot or Nessie.
*Monsters, as in relentless creatures who will pursue victims and never give up, don’t really exist in nature. I guess infectious pathogens qualify, as they lack agency to flee a host deploying effective defenses against it.
And of course, there’s H. sapiens.
BTW, for a change it was there for download early in the morning. The odd thing is that Duncan’s latest Revolutions ep wasn’t (it’s supposed to be the ending of the Martian Revolution).
@Kathy: I’ve always gone with Yeti, Sasquach, Nessie, etc. being fictional because there are no records of humans having killed any. Same for extraterrestrials; if it exists, we’ve killed at some point.
@just nutha:
In the case of Bigfoot, an investigations through sites where it’s reported to have been seen, would inevitably yield stuff like Bigfoot tracks, footprints, hair/fur, and Bigfoot feces.
One of my favorite shows was “In Search Of…” with Nimoy. Such fun for a curious, easily-scared 10 year old. At least we seem to have beaten the dreaded spontaneous human combustion (whatever that was about).
@reid: In Search Of features prominently in the episode.
Finished it on a work errand.
No comment on the innocuousness of the real estate guy?
@Kathy: A lot of “hard” science fiction from the fifties presupposed telekinesis, telepathy, etc, which struck me as odd until I learned about J.B. Rhine. He was a paranormal (parapsychology as he termed it) researcher who gained great prominence in the 1930’s through the 1950’s. He was, at least in his early days, a very legit researcher and was known for outing a lot of the frauds left over from the spirit world craze of the late 19th and early 20th century. He devised a number of simple experiments that could reveal a psychic talent. For instance, he used decks of cards with simple images on them and then tested people for their ability to “read” what card an experimenter was holding. This scientific approach yielded fairly conclusive proof of the existence of ESP… until the statisticians started taking a hard look. He identified people who had much greater success than mere chance would suggest, with astounding runs of correct guesses. But statisticians pointed out that he wasn’t keeping track of how many people his team tested that didn’t show any talents. It turned out to be thousands, and the successes were about what you expected in large samples – a number of long runs. Flip thousands of coins and you will get about 50/50 heads and tails, but within that series you will have long runs of predominantly heads or tails. Sure enough, the Rhine researchers observed that their stars’ talents seemed to fade.
Later, they started searching for ever more questionable runs. They examined their data and found that some more astounding patterns emerged if you looked one card ahead, and they viewed this as evidence of precognition rather than a realization that they had just made it twice as likely for someone to score high. Another leap was to say that someone who missed at a higher rate than normal was also exhibiting parapsychological talent. Those who’ve read Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” or seen the movie may recognize a plot point.
@MarkedMan:
I’ve come across a lot of it. The mentalists in the Second Foundation, Childhood’s End (Clarke’s weakest work IMO), and more. Niven had psi tricks all over, often placed to good use. See the stories of Gil “The ARM” Hamilton, for instance. Then he even made luck a psi talent in Ringworld.
Though later he said that in real life, if Psi talents existed then they were useless or nearly so. Or, as Asimov noted, why are psychics working the boardwalk at Atlantic City rather than fleecing the casinos at the tables?
Speaking of which, in The Naked Sun, we learn Solarian robots communicate with each other via a radio network. When I read that, I thought it would be like telepathy. And then I had an epiphany: if telepathy were real, it would be through some kind of physical mechanism, like radio between robots.
@reid: are you aware if the “ln ReSearch Of” podcast?
@Frank Bailey: Yes, it’s great! I think Blake mentions it during the interview.
@Frank Bailey: I had not heard of that. Thank you.