Wadi Cherith
At Wadi Cherith the exiled prophet Elijah, journeying outside of Israel, was fed each day by ravens, an ambiguous and sometimes maligned bird. Join Fr. Alex Roche and Fr. Anthony Dill every month to discuss a whole range of unconventional topics from a Catholic perspective, finding spiritual nourishment in unexpected places. www.wadicherith.com
Wadi Cherith
The Twilight Zone - Modern Parables
We celebrate Halloween by diving into The Twilight Zone as a trove of modern parables that press on fear, conscience, and hope. Rod Serling’s craft opens space to talk about mob panic, prejudice, premonition, mental health, and a Christian view of death without preaching.
It's not necessary to be familiar with the episodes we discuss prior to listening, but there are spoilers. If you want to watch before listening, check out "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street", "Twenty Two", "Hitch-Hiker", and "Willoughby."
Intro music provided by Holly Serio
It's our Halloween episode, and this year we're going to talk about one of the great sources of modern parables, the Twilight Zone. I'm Father Alex Roach, and joining me today, as always, is Father Anthony Dill.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, Alex. I feel like it's the podcast of heart, too.
SPEAKER_01:Of heart? Like Captain Planet. Is this a Captain Planet episode?
SPEAKER_02:Well, unfortunately, maybe Captain Planet will be around Earth Day, but this is Halloween special.
SPEAKER_01:And for our Halloween special, as you know, we've decided to talk about uh one of the most influential television programs of all time, the Twilight Zone. But before we get into it, I think all of our listeners are wondering the same thing. So I'm gonna ask it on their behalf. All right. Go ahead. What are you gonna be for Halloween?
SPEAKER_02:Oh. Thought we were gonna both guess what that question was on three.
SPEAKER_01:What did you think I was gonna ask?
SPEAKER_02:No idea. I was gonna say the most ridiculous. Nothing was popping into my head when you say the question that everybody's wondering. I don't have a costume. Okay. How about you? Do you have one?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I've been asking the kids like constantly what I should be for Halloween. It's like such an easy go-to to get kids interacting this time of year. But when I got back, so I was just doing a seminary visit, and when I got back, and I just came into the office for the first time because I got back after the office was closed, and sitting on my chair was an astronaut costume. Wow. But it's a double XL. Ouch. So I'm not sure if that's gonna be much use.
SPEAKER_02:Don't develop an eating disorder over that. Seriously. That's cool though. That's nice that they know you and think about you. I guess. What kids? Your parishioners?
SPEAKER_01:No, I think it was one of the secretaries, Scott. I'm assuming it was a secretary. It might have been a parishioner. I have no idea who it's from. It's nice. They're on a they're on a we're we're doing this thing with the local middle schools right now. So there's so many Amazon packages of like supplies for kids coming to the parish. And so it could have easily gotten delivered here, and I would not have noticed it because there's like I just don't even open them, I just bring them to the office. And all the and everybody, all my neighbors probably think I'm just addicted to Amazon shopping.
SPEAKER_02:What have you you haven't tried it on or opened it up?
SPEAKER_01:I just no, it was just when I came in here to record this episode.
SPEAKER_02:So you don't know what the helmet looks like.
SPEAKER_01:Like, is it a helmet or it's just like uh there's no helmet, it's like one of the super cheap ones, okay. You know, off the rack. It's not as pack. I don't think anybody's gonna confuse me for an astronaut. We'll say that.
SPEAKER_02:You just keep getting saluted. What'd you do with an astronaut?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh well, they are military mostly, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So it's it's become our tradition every October to do a little bit of a spooky episode seasonal to dive into the theology. So there's a little spooky and this year. We decided to talk a little bit about the Twilight Zone because it dives into such powerful moral issues, it's usually horror or science fiction themed, so it's write on message with Halloween. And I discovered when we came up with this idea that this was really your introduction to the Twilight Zone, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_02:I've seen like it on TV before, but no, I didn't I didn't know the Twilight Zone well, so yeah, I I really enjoyed. I didn't I'd just been watching for the last couple weeks a couple episodes, but yeah, it's uh it's excellent. I like it too because it fits our theme. Like it's spooky, but it's also I think we really highlight imagination. Like we we allow Halloween to be a time to really dive into imagination, and I think this does a great job provoking thought and imagination.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna I'm gonna put a nickel in a jar for every time through this whole podcast you use the word imagination.
unknown:Smart.
SPEAKER_01:How many nickels?
SPEAKER_02:Who gets the money at the end? Who's getting those nickels?
SPEAKER_01:It'll go towards a Halloween costume.
SPEAKER_02:So that's how nice. Is it all like derivatives? Like if I say imagine, does that count?
SPEAKER_01:No, just imagination. Wow, just the word imagination.
SPEAKER_02:High bar. I can get it.
SPEAKER_01:That's a high bar.
SPEAKER_02:What kind of costume do you want?
SPEAKER_01:So The Twilight Zone, for people who don't know, was a TV show, an anthology series that ran from 1959 to 1964. It's 150 some odd episodes. It is widely cited and referenced. There were a couple other iterations throughout the years, I think three others. There was a movie in the 80s with John Lithgow. It's huge cultural impact. I will say, I think for a lot of people like us that didn't grow up when the Twilight Zone was at its height, the the fact that it's black and white, the fact that the special effects look like they're from the early 60s, the fact that some of the some of the the episodes have really great acting, but it's a little uneven in some episode some episodes it's not as good. But I'll say despite all of that, the writing is universally good, always good writing, and for the vast majority of them, the theme and the content and the message and the twist is genuinely good. So even though it's this 60-year-old show at this point, 60 years plus, I do think if you haven't seen it, it is worth checking out. I don't think you'll regret watching a few episodes.
SPEAKER_02:I was at like a little family gathering thing with well, my one cousin was having a bridal shower, and so the guys of my family were at a bar, and I brought up that I was started watching the Twilight Zone, and all my uncles just like couldn't say enough about it, and it's like a huge nostalgia thing for them, which I didn't, yeah, like it's a huge cultural event. It overlaps, like you said, the years too kind of overlapped the second Vatican Council, which I just think is interesting for creativity and imagination at that time.
SPEAKER_01:Do you think that Twilight Zone influenced the Second Vatican Council? Is that why we think that like some of the documents?
SPEAKER_02:No, I think I think like at least in America, like it's it's starting, it's it's opening a philosophical conversation over public airways that maybe wasn't there before. Like you were talking about the good writing and the writer, we're gonna talk about the the host of it, Rod Serling, is responsible for kind of riding a cultural wave at that time where it was acceptable and unacceptable to start pushing these philosophical moral questions. And I think like so that that wave that existed then also kind of existed in the Second Vatican Council with difficult moral and and philosophical questions, existential questions.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh yeah, I think you're right. But there, I mean, the there is that whole paragraph in Gadimet Spez that deals use the analogy of a goblin on the wing of a plane.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I couldn't wait to hear what this paragraph was gonna say.
SPEAKER_01:For those of you who don't know, Gaddium et Spez is the constitution of the church in the modern world, 1965, Second Vatican Council, and it does not have that paragraph.
SPEAKER_02:I thought you were gonna say, for those of you who don't know, a goblin is a mythical green shit that inhabits the forests.
SPEAKER_01:That that's a famous episode that we're not speaking about tonight with William Shatner that was then redone for the Twilight Zone, the movie with John Lithgow. So one of the more famous episodes of the Twilight Zone. Yeah, it's a good one. You should watch it.
SPEAKER_02:I haven't seen it, and I know I need to I need to do it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So you want to talk a little bit about old Rod first before we jump into everything?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it was funny when I said to my uncles, I was watching it, though, my one uncle, like the first thing he said was, Oh, Rod Sterling was a really cool, interesting guy. And so I looked him up a little bit, and he was a World War II vet and a paratroop, a paratrooper, and went and was deployed to the Philippines and kind of commented on some of his writing. He he was a a gifted writer and then honed his craft when he got back. And a lot of his creative writing was coming from the experience and trauma of being in the Second World War. And so, like a lot of the moral things and like spooky things is coming from like a pretty dark place and like a therapeutic place with a whole generation of men that kind of experience the same thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he he certainly had PTSD, which they wouldn't have called that at the time. And I mean, he watched his best friend die over there, and it was incredibly horrific. Yeah, and I and I've I've I've seen that in a lot of places that writing for him was a form of therapy, which is which is kind of a neat aspect of his life and of this show. Yeah, so he uh he was from originally, he grew up in Binghamton, he was born on Christmas Day, 1924, Jewish kid, belonged to a reform Jewish temple, and seemingly had a pretty good childhood, was a well-adjusted kid, and then that formative experience of the Second World War, which traumatized a lot of people in the greatest generation, obviously, and sort of led to a lot of the views that come out throughout the rest of the show. And and in fact, some some episodes of the show are set during World War II and deal with a lot of the themes that he took from his time there. Very, very anti-war. So I I think among the many social issues that he seemed to have strong opinions on, uh, certainly uh his experience in the Philippines led him to take a pretty strong stance against war. Among other things, I mean you'll see as we talk some social issues like especially racism, anti-Semitism, a lot of forms of prejudice, in addition to a lot of the psychological and emotional themes that come up throughout the show.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, just confronting death in general, yeah, yeah, or psychotic breakdowns in general. He seems to have no problem talking about.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:He had a he had a bronze star and a purple heart, too.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So he was wounded. And he go ahead. Did you see any interviews with him?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I was watching obviously you see him talking every episode, but yeah, I was I was watching one of where they were asking him questions about censorship, which seemed to be kind of one of the ways that Twilight Zone was developed because he was writing for other shows, and there was a couple things affecting censorship at the time. One was just sponsorship. So whoever was paying for the show or the main sponsor had so much creative control and could edit some of the things that would happen. And also there was general feedback from the population. Like people could write letters back and say, like, I don't like you treating this issue, or just the overall kind of like Hollywood system could censor things. And he was doing controversial topics. So one of the reasons they did the Twilight Zone wasn't like he was a good sci-fi writer, but he said in the genre of sci-fi, you could say, Oh no, this isn't a moral, this isn't a moral show, it's it's just sci-fi, and this happens to be what the aliens are doing, or this happens to be what they're doing, but it's kind of just the guise to be able to talk about deeper philosophical issues.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that's that's an angle we can talk about a little bit more. But first, uh I wanted to ask if you noticed that in any video except the intro to the well, I maybe it is in the intro to the show, I'm not sure. In any video I saw of the man, he had a cigarette in his hand. He never did not have a cigarette in his hand.
SPEAKER_02:He also didn't open his jaw when he talks. Like, I don't know if that bothers you at all during the intro, but it's like his teeth never get more than like a quarter inch apart.
SPEAKER_01:I respect that. So tight jaw locked down. Efficient. That's a that's what we call a fish. Uh yeah, well, I I to your point, like we mentioned already, a lot of deep themes, not all of which are social commentaries, but many of which are throughout a Twilight Zone. Well one of the episodes we're gonna talk about today does discuss more social issues. Uh, some of them are more psychological, but I will say he had a a few instances where he laid out why he thought a show like The Twilight Zone was uniquely positioned to make social commentary. And and you hinted at this already, but he even used the word parable, and he talked about how teaching and and expressing a lot of his views and his thoughts through parable or through the stories that he wrote allowed him to engage people that otherwise would have shut him down, allowed him to introduce ideas to people that they perhaps would not have been open to had he just come out and say African Americans are deserving of all the same rights as whites in the United States. If he just would have said that, he probably would have been shut down. But by using these stories to get that message across, he thought he was able to reach audiences that he otherwise wouldn't. And I thought it was very interesting. He said, Is it possible that they missed the message? Yeah, that's possible. But I believe at least peripherally, they're receiving some of the message regardless. And I thought that was really interesting. And obviously, there's a connection to our faith there. Somebody we know, both of us, teaches almost exclusively in parables Jesus of Nazareth.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, I was thinking it might be Jesus, too. I was like, I don't know anybody else. Except for Rod Serling.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on any of anything I just said?
SPEAKER_02:No, I I I agree with you, and so like it's interesting you're kind of almost shaping him as seeing his primary role as a prophet more than a storyteller.
SPEAKER_01:And I think he thinks they're the same thing. I think a storyteller is a prophet. And and in fact, one of the stories we're going to talk about tonight is an older story that he adapted. It's not his story necessarily, which is kind of interesting too. So I I think he just thinks that's how the medium how the medium works.
SPEAKER_02:That's the point in being able to tell stories. Is that you can show you?
SPEAKER_01:Or one of the one of the points.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I he obviously was an early and strong believer in the power of television to tell these stories. And I just obviously you can overstate this, but it's it's pretty interesting, especially in the context of something like Wadi Cherith, to look at at this notion that not only can you find God and morality on the peripheries and in these indirect ways, but according to Serling, it's it's the preferable way to do it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah, because the bigger reality. I mean, that's the reason one of the reasons the gospels are the way they are, too. You're right. It's a it's a bigger reality that than can be expressed in direct information. Right.
SPEAKER_01:And and science fiction and horror, the two genres I think you would link to the Twilight Zone the most, are pretty famous for doing exactly that, for just making commentaries. But we're talking about another society, right? It's a Martian saying it, it's it's a Klingon saying it, it's you know, the Jedi saying it. It has nothing to do with our current situation here and now, so you can kind of get away with making some some points that would be tougher if it was a contemporary setting.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:In terms of religious beliefs, uh, he uh, as I mentioned, was raised in uh reform Judaism. Uh his wife was a Unitarian Universalist, so a Christian Unitarian, and he does seem to have gotten pretty involved in that church later in life. Not a lot of explicit religion from him, but I did uh find a commencement address that he gave at Binghamton High School in 1968, I think, in which he uh told the students to find faith in something worthy of their faith, and that they must find faith in their life, that there's no replacement, nothing can fill that role. And and you also see throughout the show a lot of religious allusions and very positive portrayals of religion and its role in society. So while certainly not Catholic and not what we would generally consider very religious, Serling and the show in general paint a very positive picture of religion. And and many episodes are explicitly focused on religion, actually.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like the I'm thinking the howler episode with uh when they trap the devil, and it's like in a monastery, but it kind of goes out of its way to show it's not a Catholic monastery. But the same kind of concept exists of good and evil, and and using the like actually having a character which is is the a tempter and a and an evil one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there's another episode, The Obsolete Man, where it's this portrayal of a society without religion, and the protagonist is a man talking about faith and how he holds to religion and and reading and books, and there's so it's it's generally a positive view. Yeah. Do you want to talk about a couple of the episodes? Or do you have anything else in general?
SPEAKER_02:No, let's get into the the good episodes here.
SPEAKER_01:All right, what are we gonna talk about first?
SPEAKER_02:Let's talk with I I think we'll spend the most time on monsters. Do you want to start with the monsters on Maple Street or what's it called?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so this is a first season episode called The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. Now, I want to say we will spoil these episodes. So I'm if if you're not if you don't care, you can listen. If you want to go watch the episodes, that could be cool too, and listen to what we have to say. If you've already seen them or you remember them or jogging your memory, you know, you can listen however you want. But while we're not gonna necessarily like do a step-by-step recount of all of these episodes that we talk about, we are gonna spoil them. And the episodes we're gonna discuss are The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, 22, The Hitchhiker, and Willoughby. So those are the four episodes we're gonna we're gonna talk about a little bit, and we will spoil them. So you'll we'll give away the twist. Yes, you don't want to set the groundwork for what's going on in the monsters are doing maple street?
SPEAKER_02:Monsters are do on maple street is taking place in like a generic town, and something flies overhead, and then and they're all the power goes out, the phones stop working. Spooky. So spooky. And like back in the day, I guess everybody just came out of their house and confirmed reality with their neighbors. I don't know if that's what would happen. I guess people would do that today. I guess like during COVID, everybody would come out and see what everybody else is doing.
SPEAKER_00:Kind of socially distant.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we're so, but uh even yeah, our society is so like isolated. I don't know if it'd be the same way that everybody would come out of their house as soon as there's a problem and try to figure out what all the neighbors have feeling.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, everybody comes out into the street and they're panicking. They saw something fly overhead, they assume it's a meteor, but now the power's out. None of their cars are starting, none of their lawnmowers are starting. Everybody checking lawnmowers. They've got to check the lawnmower. That's what I would do first. What if if you can't mow your lawn, that's chaos. Think of all the plugs you'll have all over the place.
SPEAKER_02:Think of all the judging that will happen. I'd get a hernia trying to pull that cord, just getting that lawnmower started.
SPEAKER_01:I'm just getting spooky for maybe I'll go that I'll go uncut, untended lawn for Halloween.
SPEAKER_02:The scariest, the scariest of all things. You're getting like you're getting like like clammy palms right now, just thinking about not having chills.
SPEAKER_01:I don't actually care that much about it. So they're out there trying to figure out what happens, and then a kid, a child, starts really getting everybody all worked up by basically recounting the science fiction story he's heard, and that the aliens want them to stay. That's why they shut everything out. And he knows he read it in a story, he saw it in a movie, that it's definitely aliens. And as happens when the kid says this, all the adults just believe him.
SPEAKER_02:They like spoke this idea into everybody's head, and then they can't shake it. This guy's name is Tommy. Tommy is like ruining everyone's lives in this thing.
SPEAKER_01:Well, he gets his later.
SPEAKER_02:And somebody even says that too. They're like, oh, this kid just gives us a comic book plot, and now we all believe it and we can't let go of it. And because of that, the neighbors who are gonna walk to the next town to see if everything's shut off there, too, were afraid to leave because he puts this idea in their head, oh no, only the aliens who came ahead would go to the other town. They're the only one that would be able to leave. And then he says, only the aliens who were planted here ahead of time would have any of their things working because the aliens are letting their things work, and then somebody's car turns on, and then we start to have this. Basically, anybody who has anything that works, or anybody who's a little different, is accused, and people like in general, this is a normal human concept that he feeds on. If we feel like we don't belong or feel we feel there's danger, we're not in the middle of the group, we'll immediately point at somebody else to make them seem further outside. So relatively we can seem further inside.
SPEAKER_01:And that's what happens. So we're pointing out not just whose car starts, but who does something a little different, who likes to stargaze, who's up late at night, who has a ham radio in the radio.
SPEAKER_02:Who has a ham radio? Yep. I didn't know about the ham radio. What's that? The one guy's like, I didn't know you had a ham radio. Oh, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:So they're just ganging up on each other and accusing each other, and this this neighborhood, these neighbors who are all friends, are all of a sudden at each other's throats trying to find out who the aliens among them are and convince everybody that they're not an alien. It comes to a head, well, that further comes to a head first when a member, one of their neighbors who had gone to the next town over, starts walking up, and he's it's dark, they can't see who it is, and there's one character who's trying to calm everyone down, and another character rips uh a rifle from his hand and shoots this guy walking in. They walk over and realize it was their neighbor, not an alien, and so now a murder has been committed.
SPEAKER_02:At first, he tells the one neighbor who's kind of the leader, he's like, You gotta shoot him. And he's like, No, I'm not just gonna shoot a guy walking at us, and he goes, Oh, maybe because you're an alien and he's the alien, and then like has to prove himself by shooting someone not knowing who he is. Right.
SPEAKER_01:At this point, things continue to escalate. Some lights are going on in certain houses, people start throwing rocks, they decide that it was this kid, Tommy, who first planted the idea that must be the alien. So they're going after this kid, and absolute chaos ensues, just like the whole neighborhood ripping each other apart. And you think, all right, that's it. There's the uh there's the twist, there was no twist. But then you see two aliens who were watching and had shut all the devices out and reveal that their plan all along was not to invade and attack, but to find ways to turn neighborhoods and communities against each other, after which they can sweep in and take over. And end scene. You can probably obviously see the the message he's trying to make with this episode. And you have to remember like this is a man who is has lived through you know the red scare, McCarthyism. It's in the midst of the Cold War. So probably in his mind is this fear that a neighbor is going to accuse someone of being a communist. Uh, he's also obviously uh grew up in a Jewish household, so I'm sure anti-Semitism is part of what he's getting at here. But uh I think just in general, he's uh laying out the dangers of mob mentality, of accusations that can fly around, and how quickly when faced with adversity uh we turn on each other, we tear down anyone that's different, and we just devolve.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, this this I guess then just this human need to feel like we're in the circle and be willing to trade anything to make sure that we're in the circle. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Good thing 60 years later, that's not a problem anymore, isn't it? We we dodged a bullet. We overcame that flaw in humanity.
SPEAKER_02:I yeah, obviously there's and now's a good time for anyone listening to start using your imagination and apply it to how you would apply it today. But yeah, I I do want to say, like, I was thinking about this from the perspective of like the Beatitudes, like blessed are you who are poor, or like just kind of like the the call the gospel some of the St. Francis quotes, like, if we had possessions, then we then we would need weapons to defend them. And I I there there's something about the gospel simplicity of not trying to make yourself seem better than other people, or or trying to live simply or poorly, or striving after a safety or a security that comes from poverty, because by having a pride or having like making yourself seem better than other people, you're putting yourself at risk to cause this type of attempt to push you out of the circle. And so, like, there is like a like an incredible security, I think, in in the concept of evangelical poverty or or gospel simplicity to forfeit membership in a game like that.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Yeah, nothing to protect.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I I think also it's worth noting. Jesus throughout his ministry spends a disproportionate amount of time with outcasts, with the foreigner, with the leper, with the undesirable, with the person that is a little different or looked down upon. And yeah, adulterate. Yeah, right. The sinner. It's especially important to do that given our human nature to so quickly turn on the person who's different when things are bad and and point to them as the cause of our problems.
SPEAKER_02:That's exactly what happened to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01:Right. So so we have to like he has he has to ingrain that in us so firmly as a moral principle, as a part of the faith, as a as a central tenant of his message, so that it's strong enough to withstand what often happens when things go sour, because that's going to be the first group we're going to be tempted to turn against.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And that I mean that's what has happened with the church. And like we grow the fastest way, too, is imitating Jesus completely or sharing his passion through through martyrdom. Like people who say, I'm okay being the outsider and I'm okay being the scapegoat in in participation with Jesus Christ as the scapegoat.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And and I think also just the the danger of even starting to hurl accusations, because that's what happens in this episode. Once you start accusing one another of something, then then the seal is off. And now we're just gonna wildly throw accusations, accusations in every direction. You know, which is why Jesus instructs us like, let judge not lest ye be judged, let he he who is without sin cast the first stone, right? Just because of how quickly things again can devolve once we start pointing fingers.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Or I think of like St. Teresa Bavilan in our autobiography, constantly calling herself like a worthless worm, a stupid woman, or the worst sinner of everyone. Like you read that and you're like, how can you think that? But I think like once you're identifying with Christ so much, you always are trying to make yourself the away from the center of the circle.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Yeah. What I think it can happen, and I don't know how much our listeners would necessarily be exposed to this or aware of this, but it certainly happens in the church, right? I mean, oh yeah. We can be very quick to throw accusations at other. I'm only talking about other Catholics. I mean, obviously we can do it as a society towards all sorts of groups, but you know, question the value of a person's faith or their beliefs, right? I I forget who used to say this, but we I probably heard it multiple times in seminary, just like be very cautious about throwing around the H word, the heresy word, and accusing someone of being a heretic. It's just an incredibly dangerous thing. And once that caps off, it's off. You know, now we're just we can't trust anybody.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I like the I think experiencing as priests like in Pennsylvania who who experienced a grand jury report with the investigation against priests over the last since 1940s, like seeing the veracity of the cases that were there, but at the same time feeling this at least for a little period of time that everybody thought all of us were guilty was a great experience for us to be aware of the way we've done that to others as well, to like be be on that side of it was a great experience for me spiritually.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_01:So here obviously this show uses not too fantastical of a situation. I mean, there were aliens directing it, but uh uses this story and this good story, this well-done story, to put on a modern morality play about how quickly some of these things can just absolutely tear down what appeared to be a strong community. And certainly that's a very real risk and a really, very real threat. I don't think it's gonna be caused by alien visitors, but it doesn't necessarily we don't need them to do it, we can do that ourselves. Yeah, right. Yeah. Do you want to move on to the next one?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So one of your favorites was an episode called 22.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you wanted to say and how you remember it?
SPEAKER_01:So just run through the whole thing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I'll this is very briefly, and then you can we can go into whatever details we think are important. Good. It is a woman in a hospital bed who has had a nervous breakdown, and she's an actress, I believe, right?
SPEAKER_02:A dancer.
SPEAKER_01:Dancer. She keeps having this nightmare that she is going down into the basement of the hospital into the morgue and being invited by a nurse to take her place in the morgue. So she has this dream over and over again, and it's causing a lot of distress. And eventually she's discharged and she's about to board a plane, and she sees the nurse from her dream, who is actually a flight attendant, inviting her to get on the plane in the same seat, number 22, as the bed she was being ushered into in the dream, which was in a morgue. She screams, runs the opposite direction, and then the plane explodes. Is that a pretty good summary? Yeah. In 30 seconds or less.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's pretty good. And and so, like, the reason I like it, at first I like it's it that is the scariest thing for me is a mental breakdown and just confounding what's real or not. Because her own doctors were saying it's just a dream, but there seems to be evidence of like, how did she know that the morgue room number was 22? How did she know it was on the basement? So there's there's like things happening from the dream that seems to be some sort of clairvoyance or or ability to see something else. And Hitchcock plays with some of these like ESP or supernatural things of premonition or even like you mean Sterling?
SPEAKER_01:Did you mean Hitchcock or Serling?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, sorry, sorry, yeah, good point, Sterling. And and and like even like by location in some of the episodes as well, where somebody seems to have experienced something somewhere else, even though they weren't there. And in this one, she has this premonition of something that's real. And like when we have, I mean, I believe in supernatural experiences like that, and I don't necessarily have like a justification always for them through faith. Like, I obviously I believe God has power over everything, but why or how or when somebody experiences like some sort of ESP or some sort of supernatural phenomenon, I don't know. But like when someone does have it and it freaks them out like that, which is is somewhat common or usually happens, like uh occurrences of ESP usually happen when somebody's in a like a super high stress situation and they they can't like beckon it, it just like happens and they have a vision of something or they feel something or they know something. And a couple of wavy lines, but uh she has this premonition and it's real, and it's like, is it helping her or hurting her? Because it puts her into a hospital as a mental breakdown. She she can't like get her sanity back, it's scaring her, she can't tell what's real and what's not real. The doctor is like condemning her, her own age and doesn't want to visit her, but at the end of the day, it was a real premonition and it saved her life. And so, like, I think it's just yeah, an interesting moral question to think like, is that good? Like, would it have been better for her to leave a normal life and just die on that plane like everybody else did? Or how how do we, if we do have premonitions or or some sort of supernatural feeling or occurrence, how do we control those or work those into our own sanity?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, and and most of us have like some sort of experience, like a deja vu experience, or like you recognize something that you probably shouldn't recognize, or you have like we do have different levels, different people have different levels of instinctual feelings. Somebody that has really good instincts has trouble trusting other people because they've had an instinct, something was right or wrong, and then it wasn't believed, and then they don't believe anybody. I think of remember the one time we were uh driving with Hickon, and you kept saying, Don't go on this road, we're gonna get a flat tire.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that wasn't an instinct, there was nothing supernatural. There were a bunch of dragon rocks on the road. I'm not supernatural. I I refuse that as an example of you definitely had a premonition, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Remember, remember when there's number 22 on the road and we just kept driving?
SPEAKER_01:I do. Oh, I remember.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I I I and I think like in Catholicism, like ESP is a is a more as a secular term, and like people have experiences with it. Stephen King writes about it all the time, and that's one of the reasons people like it is like they see some of those abilities as possible or like something they recognize in someone else, and then like in Catholicism, we we believe like God can do miracles, or we do believe like saints by locate sometimes, or they have an ability to interpret something, or something happens through prayer, but there's not like a meshing, I feel like, or uh an identification of like how they're unmerited graces sometimes and they're not related to somebody's holiness. And so yeah, I just think that's a really curious topic. Do you have any commentary on on any of those capacities or or thoughts on the episode at all?
SPEAKER_01:What's that? Sorry, my mic was malfunctioning. What'd you say?
SPEAKER_02:Oh probably SP. Probably you did something to it. Do you yeah, do you have any thoughts on the episode or or about like any like phenom like supernatural phenomena like that or anything?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm not sure I read anything super deep into this episode personally. And I don't know, I honestly, I'm not sure what what the lesson necessarily is. Like you have information you shouldn't use it.
SPEAKER_02:Do you believe in like the gift of like a premonition or other gifts of like or just like occurrences of of some sort of extrasensory perception or or anything like that?
SPEAKER_01:No, no, I'm not uh I like I I'm certainly open to information to the contrary. I just haven't necessarily personally in my life seen any convincing evidence that anything like that's real.
SPEAKER_02:What about the guy at the beginning of Ghostbusters who's looking at the cards?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that is the one, yeah, that's the one piece of the evidence that you would trust. That's the thing. I do have I just trust that piece of evidence. That's true. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But there it doesn't matter, actually, because he shot something. Yeah, so I like I was trying when you when you talked about like that theme for this uh particular episode to like spin an angle that I would have on it and a lesson, and I had trouble with that, but that's why there's two hosts.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. Yeah, so so yeah, that as far as like if you just uh like have no belief or experience of like like coincidences happening with people or people having like ideas pop in their head that are how like yeah, premonitions or something like that, then I guess that the episode's not that interesting at all.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I I guess maybe I we'd have the same conclusion that don't listen to visions you have in your head. Well, no, I'm the premonition.
SPEAKER_02:How how do you yeah, how do you test uh I think that's the question is like if if you do have a vision like this, like how do you know it's real or not real? And how do you test it and how do you stay sane with it? Right. So I like I appreciate that it's like starting that conversation, even though we can't seem to go anywhere with it. Right. Don't believe anything that's not right in front of you.
SPEAKER_01:So I are you acting like it's crazy that I don't believe in ESP? Like that's no, no, no.
SPEAKER_02:I'm I'm like exaggerating you to like a like a British empiricist, but right, yeah. No, it's not crazy. You're right, it's definitely fringe paranormal stuff, but I I do believe in it so a lot. So I think it's you believe in it a lot. I I would do I definitely believe, I definitely believe people have like gifts of ESP or like instances of serious premonitions or serious capacities to communicate. I mean, like I just like like quantum mechanics, like the way the the spin on an electronic it is, but it does. It's like it's fast and the speed of light, they communicate with each other in a way, and I do believe like that type of communication is happening too. I do believe in like like bi-location of project PO. I do believe you by located. But I think like just because project PO is holy isn't the only like I think things like that happen where people have an experience of being somewhere else or out of body or or whatever, and that that's not explainable.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, that's fine. I I but to me, saying something's not explainable is not the same as like developing some theory. So, like it you've gone beyond like there are things that we can't explain and and started to explain them.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, I I'm saying that's the step, that's the step. But I'm saying, like, you yeah, we can't explain why she got the premonition or how to even like scientifically whittle down to what's the premonition, why it's a premonition.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh, but if somebody came to me and they had a prem like, is it possible that it's something? Yeah, it's more likely that it's not. Yeah. Oh, I yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I would agree that my my position is more likely that it's not. I was just reading an article on the Vatican updated its norms on how bishops are supposed to test like new apparitions or eucharistic miracles in 2024 because there was problems with the old norms from the 70s of like how people test like a Marian site like Majigori or something like that, as to whether the Vatican needs to say immediately it's supernatural or not supernatural, because it's so hard to test something like that. And like all we can do is like make judgments on it's in accordance with the faith or not, or it seems to be damaging to spirituality. But the Vatican was very concerned that like you wouldn't take a paranormal, extraordinary thing like that and rank it above the gospel. Like we have our tools of understanding knowledge that are standard and like Jesus is the fullness of revelation. But it is possible that God is permitting these operations, and if they are, like we can't just completely ignore it. It shouldn't trump anything else, but you can't just complete like it's a curious thing that tells us something. So I think like the rules becoming more stricter is what you're saying. Like, more than likely something didn't happen. You're imagining something, but there's a possibility, and so like we should have some criteria or or some way to evaluate right something paranormal's happening.
SPEAKER_01:The criteria of is if the plane blows up, then maybe you're right. Maybe she was right, or maybe not, maybe it just blew up.
SPEAKER_02:Maybe it was an incredible coincidence.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe there's only so many numbers. That's not true. There's not infinite numbers, although there's only so many numbers that your plane seat can be. Good point. So quick, because I know we're running late, just we had two other episodes that both of us, I think, had some stuff to say about, and they are both in different ways, completely different ways, about a topic that comes up very often, not only in Christianity and Wadi Cherith, but in the Twilight Zone, which is death. There was one episode called The Hitchhiker, and we'll just like run, describe both episodes and then talk about them both. Do you want to do that? Or talk about them independently?
SPEAKER_02:Uh no, I we can talk about them both because we'll keep these a little more minimal compared to the other two.
SPEAKER_01:So the episode is called The Hitchhiker, and it is about a young woman from New York who is driving across the country, and it opens with her and a mechanic after she had just had an accident. As she's driving along the country, she is continuously followed by a hitchhiker, a nondescript man who's not particularly threatening, but is always there. She sees him over and over again on the side of the road as she drives across the country. She sees him when he stops when she stops, and she begins to panic, interacts with a couple people, a gas station owner, a sailor who is traveling to San Diego, and she's just totally becoming unhinged. She's unraveling because of this hitchhiker. So at one point, she stops at a payphone and she says she needs to hear a familiar voice to calm her down. So she calls her mother. A person she doesn't recognize answers the phone and informs her that her mother is in the hospital after a nervous breakdown because her daughter died in a car accident on Route 11 in Pennsylvania eight days ago. The woman then comes to the realization that she is in fact dead. She's a ghost. She, after coming to that realization, finds some degree of peace and calm, gets back into the car into the car. The hitchhiker is in the back seat and tells her, I believe you're going my way. The implication being the hitchhiker is death. She has accepted her death, and now she's moving on. The other episode is called Willoughby. Do you want to summarize that or do you want to?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, you can do it if you got it and ready to go.
SPEAKER_01:So Willoughby, Willoughby opens with a man at a very stressful job with a boss that's pushing him harder and harder and harder. He is on the train home from work and has a dream about a stop that he had not seen before called Willoughby. In this dream, somehow we've traveled back in time to the 1800s, and Willoughby is described as this incredibly peaceful town. The man we go on to see has a pretty unsupportive wife who is driven, ambitious, wants a certain quality of life, while the man would like to slow down a little bit more, isn't quite interested in always driving for that next promotion. He continues to have this dream and eventually decides he's going to get off the train at the Willoughby stop. He does walking into this idyllic 19th century town that's peaceful and they're singing and everything's nice. This the episode ends with the revelation that the man had jumped off the train and died and was picked up by a funeral director known as Willoughby and Sons. So he's dead. Not in some 19th century town.
SPEAKER_02:Turns out it's impossible to take a train to a 19th century town.
SPEAKER_01:Turns out that's not possible. So obviously both about death, but with very different lessons, right?
SPEAKER_02:And both about kind of psychotic breakdowns.
SPEAKER_01:Every Twilight Zone episode's about a psychotic breakdown.
SPEAKER_02:And what your brain does. I mean, that's what it is. It's like your brain's put in a pressure cooker and you start to imagine or see or open it up to other possibilities.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Right. So a lot of them for the first one, for the hitchhiker, a lot of episodes of this show are about coming to accept death and be at peace with dying. What there's no greater fear, Serling rightly recognizes, than death. And in the show characters often come to the slow realization that they should not be frightened by death. And obviously, there's a strong correlation to Christianity there, bodily resurrection and the defeat of death by Jesus Christ being somewhat central to the Christian message. So I do like that the show continuously has uh creatively and using imagination, a view of death that is not stark and terrifying, and that characters are often able to move from this fear of death to this acceptance.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I think it's not untouchable. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And I and I like that. Now Willoughby, they're certainly moving past the fear of death, but in in a different way.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You want to talk about that a little bit? Like not the only theme of Willoughby. Yeah. I think you're going to touch on some other themes.
SPEAKER_02:I I would I like for for me, Willoughby is interesting because it just shows the the pressures of the world and like how our priorities change and what what it is like to have the pressure, especially of a mismatched marriage where somebody is is more relaxed and is attracted to someone who's ambitious and how how that doesn't work out. But I don't where are you getting at with will it be going beyond death?
SPEAKER_01:No, it's about death, but in a different way I meant.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But back to the marriage thing, and I think that's interesting. There are so in our marriage preparation in the Catholic Church, there are a lot of questions and a lot of opportunities to address financial disagreements between prospective bride and groom. And I think for some people that can feel like shallow or unimportant, and and part of it is just like avoiding arguments and learning how to work together. But I also think like like you pointed out, and I never thought of it this way, part of it is about making sure you're on the same page of what kind of future you want. It's important.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Cause I mean, the wife, I wouldn't say the wife is evil, like just because she comes from a successful family and wants to be a successful family, like probably the guy presented himself as someone also wanting to be successful when they got married. So, like in the recap or in the show, watching the show, if you're uh sympathizing, empathizing with the man, you she could seem cold, but yeah, it's uh I also feel like he's being a bum because he just wants to live in a 19th century town and have music and ride bicycles, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right, yeah, and just not do anything, I guess, right? Yeah, what else hit you about that episode? Or or or hitchhiker, either one?
SPEAKER_02:Both of them I could I like it stresses you out watching a lot of the episodes stress you out watching how the protagonist is struggling, and like just with the paranormal activity, like stuff I've read about that, like it it typically manifests when you're stressed out and overwhelmed, and like something needs to happen, or on the other side, a psychotic break happens in the same way, and I think like him exploring, pushing you to the edge of your humanity to break through it, either actually break down or break through is really interesting, and like you're saying, another human limit is death, and he's he's pushing us up against that limit. So the show is is just so beautiful for that. And and like you're saying, from a Catholic perspective, we're expected, like the point of the Beatitudes and things like that is we're supposed to break through the limits that we understand and and expect a resurrection after a death.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And and and you're right, to your point, every instance I've ever heard of of a 19th century town appearing with a train stop has been related to some kind of psychological distress. So I you know you're right. Thank you. Yeah, but but and and I and I wonder if a lot of the focus on mental health, and I I don't want to read into it necessarily, but I'm going to anyway, has to do with Serling's own struggle with PTSD. You know, maybe not the same stresses and issues as some of his characters, but he was certainly familiar with some of those battles.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and and does he think he's a better person because he he went through them? And I would say, like, yeah, probably he does. Yeah, I don't know. Because he's trying to drag us all through them, too.
SPEAKER_01:So I was yeah, I I it it's just uh I can't recommend enough. It's a fantastic show. We had a at the high school where I was the chaplain, one of the theology teachers, Joe Sefchak, used to regularly in his class show Twilight Zone episodes. And at his at his funeral, the the homilist, who was a priest who had him in class, basically summarized an entire Twilight Zone episode for the homily, which I thought was kind of a neat tribute. Yeah, that's cool. And I and I think he recognized that this is an exceptional use of parables to offer some kind of spiritual or psychological or social or moral message, many of which are very consistent with what the gospel says and what we believe as Catholics and as Christians. So it's a great show and it's fun, you know, horror, sci-fi, they're fun genres. So it's I would recommend it.
SPEAKER_02:And it's spooky.
SPEAKER_00:Spooky.
SPEAKER_02:And ease of your imagination.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time.
