1
00:00:11,759 --> 00:00:16,039
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today is Monday,

2
00:00:16,160 --> 00:00:19,559
July twentieth, twenty twenty six, and I'm the host of

3
00:00:19,600 --> 00:00:23,960
the show Doctor Kara Santa Maria. I'm actually on vacation.

4
00:00:24,199 --> 00:00:26,039
I guess you could call it. It's a working vacation.

5
00:00:26,359 --> 00:00:31,239
This week and next away with the Skeptics Guide to

6
00:00:31,320 --> 00:00:36,840
the Universe in Australia and New Zealand for some conferences

7
00:00:36,920 --> 00:00:39,920
down under. I will be back in a couple of

8
00:00:39,960 --> 00:00:42,799
weeks and so I'm pre recording some of these for

9
00:00:42,920 --> 00:00:45,600
your pleasure. So if I get any new patrons in

10
00:00:45,640 --> 00:00:49,880
the meantime, I apologize for not giving you a shout out,

11
00:00:49,920 --> 00:00:51,679
but as soon as I am back at my desk,

12
00:00:51,759 --> 00:00:56,280
I will definitely do so. As I mentioned the patrons,

13
00:00:56,520 --> 00:00:59,280
I as always want to thank those of you who

14
00:00:59,520 --> 00:01:02,920
make Talk Nerdy possible. Remember this show is and will

15
00:01:02,960 --> 00:01:06,680
always be one hundred percent free to download, even today

16
00:01:06,719 --> 00:01:08,799
on episode six hundred ten.

17
00:01:09,799 --> 00:01:10,200
Speaker 2: Wow.

18
00:01:10,840 --> 00:01:15,879
Speaker 1: So this week's top patrons include ooh, let's see put

19
00:01:15,920 --> 00:01:18,200
that in the wrong order. Here we go. Top patrons.

20
00:01:18,840 --> 00:01:24,000
They include Chuck Blell, David J. E. Smith, Daniel Lang,

21
00:01:24,239 --> 00:01:29,719
Will Defrain, David Compton, Brian Holden, Gabo jay Ulrica Hagman,

22
00:01:30,040 --> 00:01:35,599
Pasquale Gelati, Rika Maharaj and Joe Wilkinson. Thank you all

23
00:01:35,680 --> 00:01:39,640
so so very much. If you are interested in pledging

24
00:01:39,640 --> 00:01:42,239
your support on an episodic basis, all you've got to

25
00:01:42,239 --> 00:01:45,359
do is visit Patreon. That's p A t R e

26
00:01:45,400 --> 00:01:50,359
o N dot com slash talk Nerdy. All right, let's

27
00:01:50,400 --> 00:01:53,840
get into it. So this week I had the opportunity

28
00:01:53,879 --> 00:01:58,280
to speak with doctor Maria Tatar. She's the John L.

29
00:01:58,400 --> 00:02:03,319
Lobe Research Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and of

30
00:02:03,439 --> 00:02:09,199
Folklore and Mythology Emerita at Harvard University. That's such a

31
00:02:09,199 --> 00:02:13,039
long title. So she is an Emerita professor of Germanic

32
00:02:13,159 --> 00:02:18,719
Languages and Literatures and of Folklore and Mythology. And among

33
00:02:18,800 --> 00:02:21,800
her many, many many books she's published, we're going to

34
00:02:21,879 --> 00:02:25,000
be talking about her newest one today. It is called

35
00:02:25,400 --> 00:02:31,159
a Raknomania spiders and the cultural work they do for us. So,

36
00:02:31,280 --> 00:02:38,280
without any further ado, here she is doctor Maria to talk. Well, Maria,

37
00:02:38,319 --> 00:02:40,120
thank you so much for joining me today.

38
00:02:40,919 --> 00:02:41,800
Speaker 2: Great to be with you.

39
00:02:42,479 --> 00:02:45,080
Speaker 1: I'm excited to talk about your new wist book. I

40
00:02:45,080 --> 00:02:47,439
think it's important to say that because you've written many

41
00:02:47,599 --> 00:02:52,319
many books, but your newest book a Racknomania spiders and

42
00:02:52,360 --> 00:02:55,039
the cultural work they do for us. But before we

43
00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:58,439
get into our favorite or not so favorite Araknids, I

44
00:02:58,479 --> 00:03:01,199
would love to talk to you about your background a

45
00:03:01,199 --> 00:03:08,240
little bit, so Germanic languages and literatures and folklore and mythology.

46
00:03:08,639 --> 00:03:11,840
You're a professor of these things, professor emerita at Harvard

47
00:03:11,919 --> 00:03:15,240
University of these things. How does one become a professor

48
00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:18,400
of folklore and mythology for example?

49
00:03:19,039 --> 00:03:22,840
Speaker 3: Well, first, I have to confess to having academic add

50
00:03:23,840 --> 00:03:27,680
I cannot sit still, I can't stay in one place.

51
00:03:27,800 --> 00:03:31,400
I have colleagues who study Kafka for their entire lifetime

52
00:03:32,400 --> 00:03:34,919
and I can't do that. And also I've been around

53
00:03:34,960 --> 00:03:39,479
for a long time. So I started out studying German

54
00:03:39,560 --> 00:03:45,159
literature with a PhD in that field, and then I

55
00:03:45,840 --> 00:03:47,759
gave I was invited to give a talk on the

56
00:03:47,759 --> 00:03:52,560
brothers Grim and I realized, to my astonishment, that no

57
00:03:52,599 --> 00:03:57,879
one with a PhD in German literature studied the Grims.

58
00:03:58,560 --> 00:03:59,400
Speaker 2: It was just.

59
00:04:00,919 --> 00:04:05,400
Speaker 3: Their fairy tales were considered children's literature, wasn't part of

60
00:04:05,439 --> 00:04:08,439
the true and the good and the beautiful. So that

61
00:04:08,599 --> 00:04:13,759
got me off and running and once I after I

62
00:04:13,840 --> 00:04:17,040
get that talk where there were about two hundred people

63
00:04:17,600 --> 00:04:21,160
as opposed to the ten people that usually came to.

64
00:04:21,199 --> 00:04:26,480
Speaker 4: Academic talks, I thought, you know, maybe I'm onto something here,

65
00:04:26,560 --> 00:04:30,759
and that led me into folklore and of course mythology,

66
00:04:31,439 --> 00:04:35,120
and it's all part of the great cauldron of story.

67
00:04:36,079 --> 00:04:40,759
Speaker 3: And these days we don't stay in one time and place,

68
00:04:41,199 --> 00:04:45,720
but folklorists and those who study literature as well move

69
00:04:45,800 --> 00:04:49,240
around from one continent to the next and from one

70
00:04:49,360 --> 00:04:52,519
era to the next. It's an exciting time.

71
00:04:53,759 --> 00:04:57,319
Speaker 1: It's so I mean, it's so lovely to hear that

72
00:04:57,399 --> 00:05:04,720
somebody has dedicated their career to celebrating and investigating this

73
00:05:05,199 --> 00:05:09,600
fundamentally human endeavor. You know, this show has been on

74
00:05:09,639 --> 00:05:11,600
the air now for eleven years. I've been doing this,

75
00:05:11,759 --> 00:05:16,360
and early on I really kind of situated it as

76
00:05:16,360 --> 00:05:19,920
a hard science show, and most of my guests were

77
00:05:20,199 --> 00:05:24,079
physicists or chemists or biologists. And as the years moved on,

78
00:05:24,439 --> 00:05:29,199
the show itself evolved into more social justice orientations, with

79
00:05:29,240 --> 00:05:33,079
more representation and more of a kind of inclusive conversation

80
00:05:33,399 --> 00:05:37,120
around academia and beyond. And I think part of that

81
00:05:37,240 --> 00:05:42,639
was my transition from more like hard neuroscience into clinical psychology,

82
00:05:43,399 --> 00:05:45,959
and now I have all of these wonderful people who

83
00:05:46,040 --> 00:05:49,040
joined me on the show from all these different kind

84
00:05:49,120 --> 00:05:52,600
of areas of academia. And I love it because A

85
00:05:52,800 --> 00:05:55,879
I don't know anything about this, Like obviously, if I

86
00:05:55,879 --> 00:05:58,399
thought about it long enough, I would realize that people

87
00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:03,199
do this for a living. But it feels so far

88
00:06:03,240 --> 00:06:06,079
away from a lot of my exposure. And so I'm

89
00:06:06,079 --> 00:06:08,480
so excited to be able to pick your brain today

90
00:06:08,720 --> 00:06:11,720
and learn what your career has looked like. Like, what

91
00:06:11,959 --> 00:06:15,199
does a professor who you know, part of the job,

92
00:06:15,240 --> 00:06:18,920
if you're in academia at the level of professor PhD,

93
00:06:19,519 --> 00:06:22,360
is to teach, and part of your job is to

94
00:06:22,399 --> 00:06:27,040
do scholarship. What is the scholarship of somebody who studies

95
00:06:27,600 --> 00:06:32,240
literature and especially studies like mythology, in folklore and beyond.

96
00:06:33,079 --> 00:06:36,959
Speaker 3: Oh well, I have to say that there's My research

97
00:06:37,160 --> 00:06:42,199
and my teaching were always entangled because I've learned from

98
00:06:42,240 --> 00:06:46,720
so much from my students, who made me aware of

99
00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:50,720
what was dull and what was interesting. I looked at

100
00:06:50,720 --> 00:06:55,319
their faces, and you know, I could always tell whether

101
00:06:55,360 --> 00:06:58,439
I was going down the right path or whether I

102
00:06:58,519 --> 00:07:03,240
was going into terrain that was just totally uninteresting to them.

103
00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:07,319
As for scholarship, I suppose, you know, I have to

104
00:07:07,360 --> 00:07:12,439
say that I'm an omnivore, and so I love just

105
00:07:12,720 --> 00:07:15,959
moving all over the place, all over the map, as

106
00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:21,240
I said before, and then digging deep into My training

107
00:07:21,360 --> 00:07:26,120
in German taught me that skill of digging deep and

108
00:07:26,199 --> 00:07:30,079
taking things to the sixth decimol point in a way,

109
00:07:30,319 --> 00:07:34,279
and learning the language, learning about the culture, but then

110
00:07:34,319 --> 00:07:37,319
being a FOLKLSST. I was a sort of liberator from that,

111
00:07:37,480 --> 00:07:39,639
and I realized, you know, I could go to China

112
00:07:40,079 --> 00:07:44,720
and I could recollections to be sure they were translations

113
00:07:44,759 --> 00:07:49,360
of Chinese fairy tales, and discover the connections with Western

114
00:07:49,639 --> 00:07:56,199
analogs and so so scholarship to me is oddly very

115
00:07:56,399 --> 00:08:01,079
unsystematic in a way, because what what I like to

116
00:08:01,120 --> 00:08:04,160
do is just have my basket and collect all kinds

117
00:08:04,199 --> 00:08:09,399
of things and then sit at my desk and you know, there,

118
00:08:09,600 --> 00:08:13,079
I would say there is a certain amount of solitude

119
00:08:13,120 --> 00:08:16,000
that is required, you know, going from the classroom to

120
00:08:16,199 --> 00:08:21,680
the desk and just thinking hard. And I should say

121
00:08:21,959 --> 00:08:26,040
Cloud Levey Strauss, the great French anthropologist, taught me that

122
00:08:26,160 --> 00:08:30,399
animals are good to think with. And that accounts I

123
00:08:30,439 --> 00:08:34,960
think for part of my turn to animal animal studies,

124
00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:41,080
because really thinking hard about our world and how we

125
00:08:41,240 --> 00:08:45,279
coexist with other beings on the planet.

126
00:08:47,279 --> 00:08:51,639
Speaker 1: It's so important. And I wonder, I mean, obviously, you

127
00:08:51,679 --> 00:08:53,559
have so many colleagues and this is the world that

128
00:08:53,559 --> 00:08:56,360
you've been steeped in, but for a lot of you know,

129
00:08:56,480 --> 00:08:59,399
people that you meet on the subway, people that you

130
00:08:59,480 --> 00:09:02,519
meet in the grocery store, I wonder how many of

131
00:09:02,559 --> 00:09:06,679
them realize that there is this rich academic world where

132
00:09:06,720 --> 00:09:14,399
people are digging deep into story and how stories shape

133
00:09:14,759 --> 00:09:19,600
humanity and society. I can't help but ask, like, when

134
00:09:19,600 --> 00:09:22,960
you first got into you know, when you first decided

135
00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:25,159
to go to college even and then continue on to

136
00:09:25,240 --> 00:09:28,639
graduate school, was it really situated in like I just

137
00:09:28,720 --> 00:09:32,320
really love to read. Is that what brought you is?

138
00:09:32,360 --> 00:09:33,720
And do you find that with a lot of your

139
00:09:33,759 --> 00:09:37,159
students or your colleagues that most people in this world

140
00:09:37,399 --> 00:09:38,679
are just passionate readers.

141
00:09:39,399 --> 00:09:39,639
Speaker 2: Well.

142
00:09:39,720 --> 00:09:43,519
Speaker 3: I confess to being bookish, and one of the things

143
00:09:43,559 --> 00:09:47,039
that I disliked in my childhood was my mother was

144
00:09:47,120 --> 00:09:49,799
constantly telling people that I always had my nose in

145
00:09:49,840 --> 00:09:53,960
a book. And one of the things I discovered. It's

146
00:09:53,960 --> 00:09:57,320
such an interesting question that you raised, because years and

147
00:09:57,639 --> 00:10:01,840
decades ago I decided to teach a course called fairy

148
00:10:01,879 --> 00:10:07,159
Tales in the Culture of Childhood. And it was tough

149
00:10:07,279 --> 00:10:14,200
to get that course past the gatekeepers, who were worried

150
00:10:14,240 --> 00:10:17,440
that I would have bottom feeders in that court, because

151
00:10:17,480 --> 00:10:18,480
fairy tales.

152
00:10:18,480 --> 00:10:23,080
Speaker 5: You know, these sort of silly, frivolous not stories, right,

153
00:10:24,639 --> 00:10:29,240
And of course, you know, I took some of that seriously.

154
00:10:29,320 --> 00:10:33,240
Speaker 3: But what I discovered when four hundred people showed up

155
00:10:33,240 --> 00:10:38,480
for the course I was expecting fifteen. The beauty of

156
00:10:38,600 --> 00:10:41,159
it was why did they come to that course? They

157
00:10:41,159 --> 00:10:45,720
were passionate readers, and they wanted to go back and

158
00:10:45,840 --> 00:10:48,240
look at the stories that they had grown up with

159
00:10:48,919 --> 00:10:53,960
and analyzed them, you know, not have the immersive reading experience,

160
00:10:54,080 --> 00:10:56,480
but also step back and look at them. You know,

161
00:10:56,559 --> 00:11:00,480
why was this important? What does this story mean? We

162
00:11:00,600 --> 00:11:06,399
are homo significants, not just homo sapiens, but we are

163
00:11:06,440 --> 00:11:11,200
in search of meaning. We engage in these signifying practices.

164
00:11:11,279 --> 00:11:16,840
We try to understand something about the stories that we

165
00:11:17,000 --> 00:11:20,080
tell to each other. And you know what you said earlier,

166
00:11:20,120 --> 00:11:23,840
I mean stories make the human world, and they also

167
00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:27,759
make the world human and they keep us human, which

168
00:11:27,799 --> 00:11:31,600
is something that is more important than ever I think

169
00:11:31,799 --> 00:11:35,440
in an age of AI and new technologies.

170
00:11:36,200 --> 00:11:41,159
Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely, they help us understand ourselves. I think we

171
00:11:41,200 --> 00:11:44,600
can't understand ourselves unless we understand how we are situated,

172
00:11:45,039 --> 00:11:47,360
you know, how we relate to others, how we relate

173
00:11:47,440 --> 00:11:53,120
to to lore. And one thing that I had to

174
00:11:53,120 --> 00:11:55,879
bring up when you were talking about doing these this

175
00:11:56,039 --> 00:11:59,120
course that's more geared towards, you know, the folk tales

176
00:11:59,159 --> 00:12:02,120
of our childhood is whenever we take a minute to

177
00:12:02,200 --> 00:12:05,679
actually introspect, to not just take what we're reading at

178
00:12:05,679 --> 00:12:08,679
face value or say, oh, here is information, I'm going

179
00:12:08,759 --> 00:12:11,159
to add it to my prior information. But to sit

180
00:12:11,240 --> 00:12:13,759
and go like that's kind of weird. Why would they

181
00:12:13,759 --> 00:12:16,279
were to? Then you start to realize, Wow, a lot

182
00:12:16,320 --> 00:12:21,279
of folk lore is pretty dark. A lot of things

183
00:12:21,399 --> 00:12:25,120
kids are exposed to has a lot of depth, and

184
00:12:25,279 --> 00:12:30,000
maybe they're interpreting at a certain level when they're a

185
00:12:30,000 --> 00:12:35,919
specific age, but digging deep probably uncovers a lot, doesn't it.

186
00:12:36,519 --> 00:12:41,879
Speaker 3: Oh yes, absolutely, the darkness and fairy tales in particular,

187
00:12:41,919 --> 00:12:47,799
folklore and lore in general, myths as well, they are

188
00:12:47,960 --> 00:12:53,000
just weird. They're wired for weirdness, and so I always

189
00:12:53,000 --> 00:12:56,679
think of that phrase that Churchill use to describe Russia,

190
00:12:57,360 --> 00:13:01,679
a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside in an And

191
00:13:01,919 --> 00:13:05,039
sometimes these stories are so minimalist.

192
00:13:04,360 --> 00:13:07,000
Speaker 2: In your concept what what first.

193
00:13:06,720 --> 00:13:10,399
Speaker 3: You're asking what happened? You know what's next because it's

194
00:13:10,480 --> 00:13:16,159
often a great story. But then why, And so wonder

195
00:13:16,240 --> 00:13:19,080
tales sometimes fairy tales are called wonder tales, which I

196
00:13:19,080 --> 00:13:24,720
think is a beautiful designation because wonder, as Aristotle and

197
00:13:24,799 --> 00:13:29,559
Plato taught us, is the beginning of philosophy. And so

198
00:13:29,840 --> 00:13:33,600
you start to understand why Einstein is reported to have

199
00:13:33,639 --> 00:13:37,639
said this may be apocryphal. If you want intelligent children,

200
00:13:37,720 --> 00:13:41,279
read them fairy tales. If you want more intelligent children,

201
00:13:41,600 --> 00:13:45,639
read them more fairy tales, because they get you thinking,

202
00:13:46,039 --> 00:13:50,000
and they also get you in conversation with other people

203
00:13:50,120 --> 00:13:53,519
who have heard a similar story and are also perplexed

204
00:13:53,600 --> 00:13:56,919
or puzzled and have a different take on the story.

205
00:13:57,639 --> 00:13:59,799
Speaker 1: Oh I love that. Yeah, it reminds me of I

206
00:14:00,440 --> 00:14:02,960
I never had the opportunity to be exposed to too

207
00:14:03,240 --> 00:14:10,080
much like literary training beyond my core courses in undergrad really,

208
00:14:10,799 --> 00:14:12,840
but it reminds me a lot of the work that

209
00:14:12,960 --> 00:14:14,879
I was lucky enough to do in some of my

210
00:14:14,919 --> 00:14:20,960
philosophy and my poetry courses, where you're not just creating,

211
00:14:21,159 --> 00:14:23,840
but you're co creating, and then you're really taking the

212
00:14:23,879 --> 00:14:30,799
time to attempt these I guess hermaeutic interpretations, like how

213
00:14:30,799 --> 00:14:34,080
do I read this in my context? But also what

214
00:14:34,200 --> 00:14:37,039
was thegeist at the time, you know, what were they

215
00:14:37,039 --> 00:14:40,240
maybe trying to say and how relevant is that to

216
00:14:40,320 --> 00:14:41,080
this conversation.

217
00:14:41,879 --> 00:14:44,720
Speaker 3: Yes, I love the fact that you use the term

218
00:14:44,759 --> 00:14:49,039
hermaeneutic because my students loved it when I referred to

219
00:14:49,080 --> 00:14:55,519
them as hermauts. There were interpreters. They were searching for meaning,

220
00:14:55,639 --> 00:14:59,039
they were trying to figure things out and to get

221
00:14:59,120 --> 00:15:04,240
I I really think it's so important to emphasize what

222
00:15:04,279 --> 00:15:07,559
you just said about the power of story, because we

223
00:15:07,639 --> 00:15:11,120
also live in an era that is characterized by hermeneutics

224
00:15:11,159 --> 00:15:11,879
of suspicion.

225
00:15:12,440 --> 00:15:14,360
Speaker 2: We read things and we say.

226
00:15:14,320 --> 00:15:17,320
Speaker 3: What you know, we become overtly critical in a way

227
00:15:18,039 --> 00:15:24,399
and in an effort to be ideologically correct. But you know, again,

228
00:15:25,120 --> 00:15:31,120
sometimes sometimes that kind of suspicion also gets conversations going.

229
00:15:31,399 --> 00:15:36,240
So I'm not completely opposed to it, you know, I have.

230
00:15:36,279 --> 00:15:40,360
Speaker 1: To admit that you know, a rachinomania I think really

231
00:15:40,440 --> 00:15:42,960
speaks to me because I do come from a more

232
00:15:43,080 --> 00:15:47,679
natural science tradition, and sometimes I struggle when I read,

233
00:15:47,879 --> 00:15:50,080
maybe less so when I read. But I love that

234
00:15:50,120 --> 00:15:54,559
you mentioned this label of wonder stories as opposed to

235
00:15:55,039 --> 00:15:58,679
fairy tales or wonder tales. I sometimes struggle with watching

236
00:15:58,720 --> 00:16:03,200
fantasy films or getting involved in the world building that's

237
00:16:03,399 --> 00:16:07,279
necessary to get lost in fantasy. I find that I

238
00:16:07,559 --> 00:16:11,279
struggle to suspend disbelief in those in those areas as well.

239
00:16:11,879 --> 00:16:15,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hear you completely. I am a huge fact.

240
00:16:15,720 --> 00:16:15,879
Speaker 2: You know.

241
00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:19,840
Speaker 3: I've never met a story that I didn't like in

242
00:16:19,879 --> 00:16:23,320
one way or another, but I should. I'll make one

243
00:16:23,360 --> 00:16:26,639
exception there. I could never get into Lord of the

244
00:16:26,679 --> 00:16:30,559
Brain me neither. It's like a whole thing, no I know,

245
00:16:30,840 --> 00:16:33,000
And I thought, well, maybe if I had a lifetime

246
00:16:33,159 --> 00:16:37,120
to learn always so I say, I've never met a

247
00:16:37,159 --> 00:16:41,279
fairy tale I didn't like, but I have met fantasy books.

248
00:16:41,360 --> 00:16:45,320
And also science fiction is a genre that I struggle with,

249
00:16:47,600 --> 00:16:52,120
but everything else I love and I embrace and I

250
00:16:52,159 --> 00:16:56,720
admire the people who can really get get into these

251
00:16:58,080 --> 00:17:02,840
into these worlds and visualize and see them so Oh.

252
00:17:02,960 --> 00:17:05,920
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's interesting, like there's a there's a

253
00:17:05,960 --> 00:17:08,160
point I guess where it's too in the uncanny valley

254
00:17:08,160 --> 00:17:12,359
and it requires too much cognitive effort. But if it's

255
00:17:12,359 --> 00:17:14,759
really fantastic, it's like, oh yeah, it's you know, it's

256
00:17:14,759 --> 00:17:16,920
easy to suspend that disbelief.

257
00:17:17,119 --> 00:17:20,680
Speaker 3: And I'm glad I found a kindred spirit. And now

258
00:17:20,720 --> 00:17:23,880
that we're in the confessional boat, I love it.

259
00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:27,000
Speaker 1: It's a lot of people they don't understand that. So

260
00:17:27,440 --> 00:17:31,000
I've got to ask. Then you mentioned this turn to animals,

261
00:17:31,119 --> 00:17:35,559
and this turn to I guess life, ecology, biology, the

262
00:17:35,599 --> 00:17:39,640
way that we are situated amongst all of the living creatures,

263
00:17:39,680 --> 00:17:46,200
all of the organisms. What specifically turned you to spiders?

264
00:17:47,720 --> 00:17:49,119
Speaker 2: That is a great question.

265
00:17:49,359 --> 00:17:53,319
Speaker 3: I ask myself that almost every how did that land

266
00:17:53,359 --> 00:17:57,759
on spiders? And you know what you said earlier about

267
00:17:57,799 --> 00:18:02,480
connection and relationships. I immediately thought about spiders in the

268
00:18:02,519 --> 00:18:06,599
way that they spin webs and all the metaphors that

269
00:18:06,640 --> 00:18:11,880
we derive from observing spiders. But the beginning of it

270
00:18:12,279 --> 00:18:15,759
was in a book that I wrote some time ago

271
00:18:15,880 --> 00:18:19,160
called The Heroin with one thousand and one Faces, which

272
00:18:19,200 --> 00:18:22,319
looked at the craft of storytelling and craft I used

273
00:18:22,359 --> 00:18:27,680
that word deliberately because stories were often told in places.

274
00:18:27,319 --> 00:18:28,680
Speaker 2: Where chores were carried.

275
00:18:28,480 --> 00:18:34,400
Speaker 3: Where women sewed, where they mended, where they wove spinning rooms,

276
00:18:34,559 --> 00:18:38,240
sewing circles, at all of that. And while I was

277
00:18:38,240 --> 00:18:41,839
writing that book, a Rockney became one of my thousand

278
00:18:41,920 --> 00:18:47,839
and one heroines. She led me to spiders because she,

279
00:18:48,119 --> 00:18:52,680
according to Avid, she was the first spider. So forget Darwin.

280
00:18:53,200 --> 00:18:54,440
Speaker 2: I know you like science.

281
00:18:54,680 --> 00:18:59,880
Speaker 3: Forget Darwin, forget evolution. Avid tells us how spiders came

282
00:19:00,079 --> 00:19:04,160
into the world. And Arockley is just a young girl,

283
00:19:04,160 --> 00:19:08,359
a beautiful young girl known for her weaving. She's also

284
00:19:08,400 --> 00:19:11,359
a bit of a show off. So she catches the

285
00:19:11,400 --> 00:19:15,680
attention of Minerva or Athena, who challenges her to a

286
00:19:15,720 --> 00:19:19,640
weaving contest. And what does and this is why Iraklei

287
00:19:19,720 --> 00:19:24,160
became my hero And that is she creates this tapestry

288
00:19:24,160 --> 00:19:27,640
in which she weaves all of the misdeeds of the

289
00:19:27,680 --> 00:19:33,680
gods on and we get Zeus's sexual assaults, the rape

290
00:19:33,680 --> 00:19:38,759
of Europa, the seduction of Lyda, the deception of Akmena,

291
00:19:38,799 --> 00:19:42,319
and so on. Well, Athena is glorifying the gods in

292
00:19:42,319 --> 00:19:47,880
her tapestry. Athena is so outraged by this that she

293
00:19:47,880 --> 00:19:52,279
she tears a Rockney's tapestry into pieces, hits her over

294
00:19:52,319 --> 00:19:56,279
the head with a spindle, and then a Rockney is

295
00:19:56,359 --> 00:19:59,559
ashamed and plans to hang herself, but at the last

296
00:19:59,559 --> 00:20:06,200
moment Athendo turns her into a spider. But she's now destined.

297
00:20:06,680 --> 00:20:09,799
She can no longer be a show off. She's destined

298
00:20:09,839 --> 00:20:13,920
to spin in dark corners. But what I found so

299
00:20:14,160 --> 00:20:18,240
fascinating about Arockney is one she speaks truth.

300
00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:18,880
Speaker 1: To power.

301
00:20:20,279 --> 00:20:23,319
Speaker 3: With the craft, not with her voice, but with her tapestry.

302
00:20:23,359 --> 00:20:28,200
With images, she creates a textile and also a text

303
00:20:29,079 --> 00:20:33,720
and then she creates a thing of beauty. So to me,

304
00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:40,680
what resonated with me was this sort of entanglement of

305
00:20:41,480 --> 00:20:48,839
both beauty and justice in our storytelling practices in general.

306
00:20:49,720 --> 00:20:53,759
And so this is this is how she became my heroin.

307
00:20:53,839 --> 00:20:56,720
And then she led me to all of these other

308
00:20:56,960 --> 00:21:03,519
fascinating spiders in not just in literature, but in mythology.

309
00:21:03,599 --> 00:21:09,440
There's a Nanzi, the African trickster god, who is also

310
00:21:09,519 --> 00:21:14,279
a master linguist and storyteller. And then there's the Navajo

311
00:21:15,559 --> 00:21:22,079
grandmother spider, who creates the world by weaving, not by

312
00:21:22,119 --> 00:21:25,720
saying let there be light, or using you know, words

313
00:21:26,440 --> 00:21:30,319
naming things. But she does this with the sky god.

314
00:21:30,880 --> 00:21:34,079
And I love these parent mythologies where you have a

315
00:21:34,160 --> 00:21:39,079
male and a female god goddess creating the world and

316
00:21:39,119 --> 00:21:43,640
then by you know, this wonderful act of weaving, creating fabrics,

317
00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:49,720
these protective materials. And if you you know, Freud once

318
00:21:49,799 --> 00:21:55,079
said that weaving was the only contribution that women made

319
00:21:55,119 --> 00:22:01,519
to civilization, which I guess laughable exactly.

320
00:22:01,079 --> 00:22:03,240
Speaker 1: But also there's a lot of depth behind that.

321
00:22:03,640 --> 00:22:05,440
Speaker 3: There's a lot of death they had that And then

322
00:22:05,480 --> 00:22:09,079
if you think of weaving versus tool making, you know,

323
00:22:09,279 --> 00:22:13,839
man the toolmaker and woman the weaver. Who these women

324
00:22:13,880 --> 00:22:22,480
are creating protective coverings, everything from blankets to tense to

325
00:22:22,720 --> 00:22:28,119
and so on. So I think Freud, you know, underestimated

326
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:32,279
what women did, but he also underestimated the power of

327
00:22:32,359 --> 00:22:36,440
weaving and the importance of that to our culture.

328
00:22:37,240 --> 00:22:40,440
Speaker 1: And you know, I can't help but point to you know,

329
00:22:40,480 --> 00:22:42,240
for the listeners of the show who have been with

330
00:22:42,279 --> 00:22:45,599
me for a while, it actually you don't even have

331
00:22:45,640 --> 00:22:47,200
to have been with me for that long because this

332
00:22:47,279 --> 00:22:50,680
only dates back to February. But I had an author

333
00:22:50,759 --> 00:22:54,200
on this show an author and research psychologist and knitter

334
00:22:55,519 --> 00:22:59,440
named Nicole Narek who wrote a book with her own

335
00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:03,119
handsmen Weaving their Stories. And one of the things that

336
00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:07,200
we really dug deep into was this like quintessentially feminist

337
00:23:07,400 --> 00:23:11,000
act that has existed throughout a lot of human history

338
00:23:11,119 --> 00:23:16,440
where women who were uh, you know, they really were

339
00:23:16,480 --> 00:23:20,000
in a lot of ways stripped of any sort of

340
00:23:21,119 --> 00:23:25,079
voice within the public arena. They were able to tell

341
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:29,839
their tales through things like you know, let's say, like

342
00:23:29,880 --> 00:23:33,640
the biotapestry or these different very famous works of art

343
00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:36,759
that very likely it was women who made them, and

344
00:23:36,799 --> 00:23:42,279
they interjected a lot of women's perspective in this work.

345
00:23:42,279 --> 00:23:45,079
And gosh, there's so much crossover there with your with

346
00:23:45,119 --> 00:23:47,920
your spiders, who are of course weaving their webs.

347
00:23:48,680 --> 00:23:51,920
Speaker 3: Oh, I have to listen to that podcast for sure.

348
00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:56,559
And you brought up knitting. Of one of the sections

349
00:23:56,599 --> 00:24:02,279
of my book looks at spinster sleuth who are often

350
00:24:02,519 --> 00:24:05,000
you know, you get the physical description of them, and

351
00:24:05,039 --> 00:24:09,359
you realize that there had to be some sort of

352
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:13,680
awareness that these women all look like spiders. They're wearing black,

353
00:24:13,799 --> 00:24:18,599
they've got you know, and they're knitting. And this connection

354
00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:22,599
between knitting and sleuthing, I mean, soothing. Detective work was

355
00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:25,440
one of the things that women could do where they

356
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:28,920
did have some agency, although not a voice, as you

357
00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:35,200
point out, because who had the voice the police officials,

358
00:24:35,279 --> 00:24:38,920
public of the government, you know, judges, And here are

359
00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:43,880
these women, you know, knitting, puzzling things out, figuring things out,

360
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:48,319
and staying ahead of the officials who are who are

361
00:24:48,559 --> 00:24:53,640
not very good at solving mysteries and crimes.

362
00:24:54,839 --> 00:24:55,720
Speaker 2: Spider women.

363
00:24:57,599 --> 00:25:01,640
Speaker 1: I love it, and I love the just the etymology.

364
00:25:01,759 --> 00:25:04,160
You know, you were talking earlier about your work in

365
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:09,480
German and really digging deep into not just the era,

366
00:25:09,720 --> 00:25:13,559
but of course the language itself. I love that this book.

367
00:25:13,640 --> 00:25:18,839
Of course it's a book about spiders by you. So

368
00:25:18,839 --> 00:25:21,440
so this is one of those lovely times when etymology

369
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:25,160
and entomology it should not be mixed up, but are

370
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:28,119
both quite relevant. But I think about terms, you know,

371
00:25:28,160 --> 00:25:32,039
we we do we we weave a we tell a

372
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:36,599
yarn or weave a yarn like like webs spear story. Yeah,

373
00:25:36,599 --> 00:25:41,160
their stories, their tales. Do you know where that comes from?

374
00:25:41,519 --> 00:25:44,000
Like what that actually dates back to this idea of

375
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:48,839
the story being a web that was woven.

376
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:52,799
Speaker 3: Well, I think that it actually goes back to the Greeks,

377
00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:56,200
where sewing and poetry were connected.

378
00:25:56,279 --> 00:25:58,279
Speaker 2: You sewed words together.

379
00:25:58,720 --> 00:26:03,920
Speaker 3: And then you have I mean it's hard to trace

380
00:26:04,039 --> 00:26:08,599
this perfectly, but I always think of these spinning rooms

381
00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:13,680
and as I said, sewing circles, these places where people

382
00:26:13,799 --> 00:26:19,640
gathered and you know they were carrying out household chores

383
00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:22,799
I mean, knitting. You have to have something else there,

384
00:26:22,839 --> 00:26:26,400
just like the cigar rollers who listen to novels, who

385
00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:30,839
have novels read to them. When you have work that

386
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:35,519
is repetitive, you really need, you desperately need a good story.

387
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:41,799
And remember nineteenth, eighteenth, nineteenth century, earlier times, no electronic entertainments,

388
00:26:42,599 --> 00:26:49,519
long dark evenings, so you needed really peppy, melodramatic, racy,

389
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:53,279
racy stories to keep things things going. And that's what

390
00:26:53,759 --> 00:26:57,680
you know we do for spinning tails, spinning yarns, or

391
00:26:57,759 --> 00:27:01,680
weaving webs. And then I mean we could even take

392
00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:05,640
it up to the World Wide Web and the way

393
00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:13,119
that many women were involved in the beginnings of uh well,

394
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:16,200
not not just artificial but you know, just the computer

395
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:20,880
in general and programming and that kind of thing.

396
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:25,920
Speaker 1: How much has your work throughout your career been interested

397
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:31,279
in the social justice components of stories, maybe you know,

398
00:27:31,359 --> 00:27:35,039
a feminist perspective or an intersectional perspective. I know that

399
00:27:35,079 --> 00:27:39,160
you've written about Vymar Journey Germany. You've written about these

400
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:47,160
very kind of of their time, before their time, experiences

401
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:50,720
that individuals were having. And I'm curious how much that

402
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:54,880
your own I guess feminism or femininity has driven some

403
00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:57,960
of the stories that you you like to dig deep into.

404
00:27:58,799 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, my own feminism.

405
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:02,559
Speaker 3: And also I think I learned a lot. Here's a

406
00:28:02,559 --> 00:28:04,880
point at which I learned a lot from my students

407
00:28:05,559 --> 00:28:09,079
who were ahead of me in terms of thinking about

408
00:28:09,160 --> 00:28:12,720
issues of social justice. And I had always framed it

409
00:28:12,759 --> 00:28:15,480
when I was studying fairy tales many years ago, I

410
00:28:15,519 --> 00:28:18,960
suppose in the eighties and nineties, I had always framed

411
00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:23,160
it as getting even that is, you know, there is

412
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:29,240
kind of naive morality and fairy tales, and you know,

413
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:34,960
the villains were you know, goodness was rewarded, virtue was rewarded,

414
00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:39,279
advice was punished, and the scales were balanced out in

415
00:28:39,279 --> 00:28:42,160
a way. But over the years, I think, you know,

416
00:28:42,319 --> 00:28:45,240
listening to how my students read these stories, I think

417
00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:48,960
so much of it is, you know, moving in the

418
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:54,799
direction of fairness. And I mentioned beauty before. I would

419
00:28:54,839 --> 00:28:58,359
love the fact that our English termed fairness captures both

420
00:28:58,759 --> 00:29:03,400
social justice and beauty. And again, you know, through story.

421
00:29:03,759 --> 00:29:06,839
I mean, think about the Me Too movement. I mean,

422
00:29:06,839 --> 00:29:10,559
we had the court the courts are courts which did

423
00:29:10,640 --> 00:29:15,720
not give women justice for many, many years, and then

424
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:20,039
we have the court room of public opinion and what

425
00:29:20,359 --> 00:29:24,440
was that but sites of storytelling where women told their

426
00:29:24,519 --> 00:29:30,519
stories and by God, the culture changed. That was an

427
00:29:30,519 --> 00:29:33,640
extraordinary moment and I think it really tells us a

428
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:36,480
lot about the power of storytelling.

429
00:29:36,519 --> 00:29:37,039
Speaker 2: And there.

430
00:29:37,359 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 3: I mean you could say it was a movement also

431
00:29:39,960 --> 00:29:43,000
to get even get revenge in a way, but I

432
00:29:43,039 --> 00:29:45,799
don't think that was the driving force. I think it

433
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:50,039
was more, you know, speaking truth to power, getting justice,

434
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:56,200
seeing the other side of the story, discovering that these

435
00:29:56,319 --> 00:30:02,559
voices that had not been heard were worthless to Yeah, it's.

436
00:30:02,640 --> 00:30:05,319
Speaker 1: You know, it reminds me one of my favorite memes

437
00:30:05,359 --> 00:30:08,359
online that I that I come across periodically, because clearly

438
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:11,039
the algorithms know what it is I'm looking at. We'll

439
00:30:11,039 --> 00:30:14,440
say things like men should be uh, men should be

440
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:19,000
happy that women just want equality and we don't want revenge, right,

441
00:30:20,279 --> 00:30:23,480
A very different world we'd be living in, uh if

442
00:30:23,519 --> 00:30:28,359
that were the case. Speaking though, of this very feminist

443
00:30:28,839 --> 00:30:33,599
or feminine perspective, I mean, I can't help but but

444
00:30:33,759 --> 00:30:38,119
point to the the feminine of the spider. Like when

445
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:43,240
we think about spiders, there's so much sort of uh,

446
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:46,160
I don't know, analogy, there is so much of it

447
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:47,319
feels so feminine.

448
00:30:49,119 --> 00:30:51,759
Speaker 3: Yes, you know what and that is that's you know,

449
00:30:51,799 --> 00:30:53,440
I think of Stephen King's It.

450
00:30:54,319 --> 00:30:56,039
Speaker 2: I don't know whether you've ever read that.

451
00:30:56,279 --> 00:30:58,759
Speaker 1: It's oh I did when I was too young, too

452
00:30:59,359 --> 00:31:00,960
much too Yeah.

453
00:31:01,079 --> 00:31:05,599
Speaker 3: Yeah, well what a blood curdling story that is. And

454
00:31:06,119 --> 00:31:08,519
the spider the monster of course, you know there's a

455
00:31:08,559 --> 00:31:11,440
way in which that story framesponster, what are you afraid of?

456
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:15,720
Best than your monster? You create your own monster, but

457
00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:23,160
it which is everyone's monster, it's female and it's pregnant.

458
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:24,200
Mm hmmm.

459
00:31:24,920 --> 00:31:25,319
Speaker 4: Wow.

460
00:31:25,359 --> 00:31:29,799
Speaker 3: So you know there's something about that that tells us

461
00:31:29,839 --> 00:31:33,960
about our our fear of not just of women, but

462
00:31:34,039 --> 00:31:38,559
of their capacity to give birth, to create.

463
00:31:39,720 --> 00:31:42,680
Speaker 1: And their power, their power. Yeah.

464
00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:47,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, And trying to unpack that is uh, you know,

465
00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:52,279
a real challenge, I think, uh, to try to understand

466
00:31:53,079 --> 00:31:55,359
what is what is at the heart of.

467
00:31:55,279 --> 00:31:58,400
Speaker 2: That, Why why would Stephen King come up with it?

468
00:31:58,440 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 3: And Stephen King is you know, in many ways very

469
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:04,319
politically correct too, you know, so, so when I came

470
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:08,319
to that moment, I thought, what you know, and stranger

471
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:11,759
things too. If you think about the monsters in the

472
00:32:12,279 --> 00:32:16,319
it's I always down under or the I.

473
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:18,480
Speaker 1: Always get the yeah, the upside down.

474
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 3: Upside I always want to call it the down under,

475
00:32:24,359 --> 00:32:25,480
the upside down?

476
00:32:25,640 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 2: What is in that world?

477
00:32:27,119 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 3: This kind of mass of it is a little bit

478
00:32:31,119 --> 00:32:33,680
like a womb, like going inside a body.

479
00:32:34,039 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 6: And then the the uh, the figure, well, the carnivorous

480
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:45,000
carnivorous spider is.

481
00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:50,519
Speaker 3: You know, oh, well, talk about it is reminiscent of

482
00:32:50,519 --> 00:32:54,400
female genitals. I'll just say it because Shalob is the

483
00:32:54,440 --> 00:33:02,480
same thing where uh you know, this creature comes sort

484
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:07,799
of the most frightening feminine form possible.

485
00:33:08,039 --> 00:33:12,400
Speaker 1: Right, you know, I can't help I think my own cynicism,

486
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:15,519
or maybe I'm not being cynical, maybe I'm being a realist.

487
00:33:15,519 --> 00:33:19,759
But I can't help but see this through the lens

488
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:23,839
of somebody who can't help but see patriarchy all around me,

489
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:26,720
and think about the fact that there has been a

490
00:33:26,799 --> 00:33:32,960
long history of men clinging to power and preventing women

491
00:33:33,359 --> 00:33:37,759
from having said power or having said voice. And I

492
00:33:37,799 --> 00:33:42,079
do wonder how much underlies or how much of it

493
00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:47,240
is underlying this, like this fear that women have, you know,

494
00:33:47,279 --> 00:33:51,160
these ultimate powers they can create life. And I think

495
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:53,960
historically too, because of the positioning of men and women,

496
00:33:54,039 --> 00:33:58,480
the normative gender roles, there's this mystique. Right, this suckubis

497
00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:02,599
kind of Yeah, women are going to get inside your

498
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:06,319
head and they're going to like undermine your your manhood

499
00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:09,599
or whatever. And really, yeah, it's all just been a

500
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:13,079
I guess, just the activity of women to try to

501
00:34:13,119 --> 00:34:17,079
make sure their voices are heard. But it's become monsterfied

502
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:21,119
by the men who told these stories.

503
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:25,199
Speaker 3: Of right, right, it sort of is whom that What

504
00:34:25,320 --> 00:34:27,639
is the title of that book from long ago is

505
00:34:28,119 --> 00:34:34,000
male to culture as female is to nature. You know,

506
00:34:34,079 --> 00:34:40,559
the nature culture divide. That is, with the male being strong, autonomous,

507
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:46,039
self contained and the woman being very much body and

508
00:34:46,159 --> 00:34:51,760
biology reproduction. I mean you could find its production versus reproduction,

509
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:58,519
creativity versus procreation, and that binary I think is something

510
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:01,000
that we really have to worry about.

511
00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:04,880
Speaker 1: I agree, yeah, because it is artificial, right it is.

512
00:35:05,159 --> 00:35:09,119
It is a story in itself, right, right, Yeah, And

513
00:35:09,159 --> 00:35:11,519
that's such an interesting thing as a person like you know,

514
00:35:11,599 --> 00:35:14,079
working as a psychologist. One of the things I've long

515
00:35:14,119 --> 00:35:17,840
been grappling with is the idea of constructivism.

516
00:35:18,039 --> 00:35:18,199
Speaker 2: Right.

517
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:20,639
Speaker 1: I'm a science based thinker, I'm an evidence based thinker.

518
00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:24,840
I'm an atheist. I don't believe in anything supernatural. And yet,

519
00:35:25,960 --> 00:35:29,679
although I agree that there is an external reality that

520
00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:32,920
we can consensually agree on based on our tools, I

521
00:35:33,079 --> 00:35:37,400
also believe that every single person on the planet constructs

522
00:35:37,679 --> 00:35:41,119
their own reality from their own experience. They have their

523
00:35:41,159 --> 00:35:46,559
own lens, and we all have narrative. Right. Stories are

524
00:35:46,679 --> 00:35:50,719
codified versions of those narratives, and hopefully with a lot

525
00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:54,880
more creativity and wordplay, and you know, hopefully just like

526
00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:58,079
with the interest in the pizazz that keeps us fascinated

527
00:35:58,119 --> 00:36:02,079
and wanting to turn the page. But a story about

528
00:36:02,079 --> 00:36:05,280
a spider that is either passed down through the ages

529
00:36:05,440 --> 00:36:09,280
or is you know, put on the page, is in

530
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:12,559
a lot of ways no different than a person's story

531
00:36:12,639 --> 00:36:16,440
about their own life, right, or how they are situated

532
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:20,280
in the timeline of humanity. It's still a story. It's

533
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:20,920
a narrative.

534
00:36:21,920 --> 00:36:22,840
Speaker 2: It's a narrative.

535
00:36:23,159 --> 00:36:27,440
Speaker 3: And what I would say is that in many ways,

536
00:36:27,519 --> 00:36:30,320
I mean, even though I mean, take take something Stephen

537
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:34,960
King's it, we just talked about how you know how

538
00:36:35,039 --> 00:36:39,840
horrifying that scene is. And yet I would say the

539
00:36:39,880 --> 00:36:43,079
importance of the story is the minute I read that,

540
00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:44,480
I wanted to go out.

541
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:45,880
Speaker 2: And talk to somebody about it.

542
00:36:46,679 --> 00:36:50,320
Speaker 3: So the story, you know, everything is constructive in a way.

543
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:57,360
But because we have this contact zone in story and

544
00:36:57,519 --> 00:37:01,880
its story gives us, I mean gives us a symbolic world.

545
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:09,440
But to me, it's also so important that the symbolic

546
00:37:09,599 --> 00:37:14,239
helps us navigate the real that often we need the

547
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:19,159
story about the spider instead of the human in order

548
00:37:19,239 --> 00:37:23,840
to understand ourselves. That is, you know, spiders are in

549
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:27,840
a funny way, our significant others are curved mirrors, are

550
00:37:28,679 --> 00:37:34,800
you know they tell us something about us. I'm only

551
00:37:34,920 --> 00:37:38,320
I always marvel at how fables, for example, I big fables.

552
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:42,280
We tell these fables to children about animals. You know,

553
00:37:42,320 --> 00:37:46,639
again going back to Levey Strauss, animals are good to

554
00:37:47,199 --> 00:37:52,480
think with, and they sort of help us to construct

555
00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:59,000
a symbolic world that helps us understand the real. And

556
00:37:59,039 --> 00:38:01,480
getting back to what you said and how the wheel

557
00:38:01,599 --> 00:38:03,320
is also socially constructed.

558
00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:07,079
Speaker 1: It's you know, I'm long grapped when I work with

559
00:38:07,079 --> 00:38:10,480
my patients, and I work in a large cancer center

560
00:38:10,519 --> 00:38:14,159
in a large hospital, and a lot of what we

561
00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:20,320
do is logo therapeutic work, right meaning focused therapy, life review,

562
00:38:20,519 --> 00:38:28,000
trying to understand purpose, trying to understand and live life

563
00:38:28,079 --> 00:38:31,760
to the fullest, regardless of what life is left right

564
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:35,000
and how much time we have, really grappling with mortality.

565
00:38:35,599 --> 00:38:39,920
Metaphor is so fundamental to the work. There are just

566
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:46,880
sometimes you just cannot verbalize an emotion or an experience

567
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:50,360
without utilizing the power of metaphor.

568
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:55,480
Speaker 3: That's I think that's exactly what Levey Stross was getting

569
00:38:55,559 --> 00:38:58,639
at that. You know, I always think about it when

570
00:38:58,639 --> 00:39:01,880
you ask children, how is school today? How is that movie?

571
00:39:02,119 --> 00:39:05,760
What did you like about the party? They clam up.

572
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:09,519
They you know, they have nothing to say. And then

573
00:39:10,199 --> 00:39:14,000
if you start to, you know, just start telling them

574
00:39:14,039 --> 00:39:18,440
a story and then you'll see that I mean, they

575
00:39:18,559 --> 00:39:23,599
are myth makers in a way, because they pick up

576
00:39:23,679 --> 00:39:28,079
bits and pieces of the day and they if you

577
00:39:28,079 --> 00:39:30,039
you know, I don't I don't mean just tell them

578
00:39:30,079 --> 00:39:34,559
the story, but create a story with them, and suddenly

579
00:39:34,599 --> 00:39:38,039
you'll start to understand. This is why, you know, it's

580
00:39:38,039 --> 00:39:40,639
such a two way We always think of reading to

581
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:44,800
children or telling children's stories. We're teaching them, we're entertaining them,

582
00:39:44,960 --> 00:39:49,159
but above all teaching them. But it's a two way street.

583
00:39:49,880 --> 00:39:54,119
And we learn a lot about the child and how

584
00:39:54,159 --> 00:39:56,360
the mind of a child would say, you know, the

585
00:39:56,400 --> 00:39:59,519
great mystery, how does the mind of a child, we

586
00:39:59,639 --> 00:40:03,760
learned hold much about them through the story.

587
00:40:04,199 --> 00:40:06,280
Speaker 2: And they need metaphor.

588
00:40:06,519 --> 00:40:08,920
Speaker 3: I think they may not know what a metaphor is,

589
00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:12,000
but they really need it to be able to open

590
00:40:12,119 --> 00:40:12,880
up and talk.

591
00:40:14,039 --> 00:40:16,559
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'd argue that as adults were not far

592
00:40:16,599 --> 00:40:22,079
off from that either. The child inside of us, especially

593
00:40:22,079 --> 00:40:24,519
in a you know, I mentioned a therapeutic setting because

594
00:40:24,519 --> 00:40:27,639
that's sometimes one of the most vulnerable places that we exist.

595
00:40:28,159 --> 00:40:32,280
And yes, metaphor is a huge helper to be able

596
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:35,159
to go into the death right.

597
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:39,760
Speaker 3: And what you described just reminded me of my experience

598
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:43,920
with children. And you're right, it's often a crisis situation,

599
00:40:44,159 --> 00:40:49,199
an emotional crisis, the triggers the need for a story, yes,

600
00:40:49,239 --> 00:40:50,920
and the need for metaphor.

601
00:40:51,440 --> 00:40:55,400
Speaker 1: That's probably why so many of these fables right have

602
00:40:55,559 --> 00:41:00,159
such dark roots and even as you're doing your or

603
00:41:00,199 --> 00:41:04,840
you were doing your scholarship, you know, basically combing all

604
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:09,000
of the literature for these examples of spiders and what

605
00:41:09,039 --> 00:41:13,039
they represent and where they are. I mean, nobody writes

606
00:41:13,039 --> 00:41:16,719
in a vacuum. They write in the political landscape that

607
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:22,440
they find themselves situated within. And so you know, even

608
00:41:22,639 --> 00:41:25,599
what we think of is these like innocuous stories usually

609
00:41:25,639 --> 00:41:32,519
have very dark and difficult themes of like human conflict.

610
00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:36,360
Speaker 3: Actually, storytelling in general, I was going to say fairy tales,

611
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:40,519
but storytelling in general takes up cultural contradictions.

612
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:42,559
Speaker 2: You know, This is why there's.

613
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 3: Never one single meaning right that you can get from

614
00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:52,519
a story, because a story will wrestle with contradictions that

615
00:41:52,559 --> 00:41:54,679
we have to live with for better or for worse.

616
00:41:55,119 --> 00:41:57,800
We think of beauty and the beast, it's a story

617
00:41:57,880 --> 00:42:03,599
about empathy and hostility, you know, the two ways you

618
00:42:03,639 --> 00:42:06,480
can accounter the other by being empathetic or you can

619
00:42:06,519 --> 00:42:12,840
be frightened and scared and terrified and hostile hostpitality. As

620
00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:19,039
one critic hospitality and hostility. And we sort of live

621
00:42:19,119 --> 00:42:23,280
with things like that, with terms like that, and we

622
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:26,039
have to find not so much a middle road, but

623
00:42:26,119 --> 00:42:29,039
we have to find it positions somewhere on that spectrum,

624
00:42:29,079 --> 00:42:32,400
and I think stories help us work out our values.

625
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:36,400
You know what is you know, is compassion the right answer?

626
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:44,800
Does that work better than hostility or anger or all

627
00:42:44,840 --> 00:42:48,360
of these toxic emotions that we've all felt at one

628
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:53,559
time or another. So, yeah, the darkness, you know, it's

629
00:42:53,559 --> 00:42:57,079
a human condition. We have to live with both darkness

630
00:42:57,119 --> 00:43:03,199
and light and everything everything in between. But you know,

631
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:08,000
stories are I think of the term kiero scuro, which

632
00:43:08,079 --> 00:43:12,599
is applied by film critics to the light and shadows

633
00:43:12,639 --> 00:43:14,840
that you get in films, and that kind of.

634
00:43:15,159 --> 00:43:16,400
Speaker 2: That contrast that.

635
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:22,840
Speaker 3: Comes across so vividly in black and white films. That's

636
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:26,159
sort of what I mean. We live, in many ways

637
00:43:26,159 --> 00:43:29,079
in a black and white world and we have to

638
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:31,199
navigate our way through that.

639
00:43:32,039 --> 00:43:35,800
Speaker 1: And I think both it's so interesting. I keep coming

640
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:39,079
back to the work that I've been doing recently and

641
00:43:39,639 --> 00:43:47,440
the relationship to this literary conversation. But this concept of

642
00:43:47,519 --> 00:43:51,840
ambivalence is one of the central features to the psychotherapy

643
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:55,440
that I am often engaging with my patients in. It's

644
00:43:55,519 --> 00:43:58,480
not choosing one or the other, it's it's learning how

645
00:43:58,519 --> 00:44:00,159
to sit with the fact that you can feel know

646
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:03,440
two things at the same time, even if they feel

647
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:06,280
like they're in conflict. And I think so often in

648
00:44:06,320 --> 00:44:09,280
this in this world where we're tasked with having to

649
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:15,239
polarize ourselves and and sort of deny one thing in

650
00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:19,159
order to embrace another. But I think story allows us

651
00:44:19,239 --> 00:44:24,239
to feel conflicting emotions and to ride that roller coaster

652
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:29,719
in maybe a safer way than you know, overtly confronting

653
00:44:29,719 --> 00:44:31,199
our existential demons.

654
00:44:32,199 --> 00:44:36,440
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, or you know, as opposed to reading the newspaper,

655
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:42,559
we're going on social media. Yes, you know, stories are

656
00:44:42,559 --> 00:44:46,280
our salvation in that way because everything you said about

657
00:44:46,679 --> 00:44:54,840
ambivalence and conflict and you no ambiguity. F Scott Fitzgerald.

658
00:44:55,039 --> 00:44:57,320
I think it was Fitzgerald who told us that the

659
00:44:57,400 --> 00:45:01,880
sign of an intelligent mind is the ability to hold

660
00:45:01,880 --> 00:45:07,519
two contradictory thoughts in your head at once. Yeah, and

661
00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:11,599
and to try to work that out. And again, you

662
00:45:11,639 --> 00:45:16,320
know what you've found in your there to talk about that, uh,

663
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:19,360
to talk about that and not you know, argue with

664
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:22,119
somebody about it, but just to try to figure out

665
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:27,480
this great all these great existential puzzles that we live with.

666
00:45:29,159 --> 00:45:31,679
Speaker 1: And you know, when I think again, about I love

667
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:34,440
the title, by the way, racknomania, right, because when we

668
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:36,800
hear a rack noo, most people go to phobia like

669
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:40,880
that is the sort of uh, the heuristic in our minds.

670
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:44,320
But of course I have to admit I'm a lover

671
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:47,079
of spiders. I think they're beautiful, I think they're fascinating.

672
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:49,079
I never kill them in my home.

673
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:52,119
Speaker 2: And I have learned.

674
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:55,039
Speaker 3: I have learned the easy way to get a spider

675
00:45:55,079 --> 00:45:57,559
out of the house is just put a glass over it, yes,

676
00:45:57,760 --> 00:46:00,760
and it will climb up the glass, and you just

677
00:46:00,920 --> 00:46:04,199
need a paper towel or something like that and you

678
00:46:04,239 --> 00:46:08,559
can take it right outdoors. I'm so glad to hear that.

679
00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:12,719
And of course, you know, I mean astonishingly a rock

680
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:14,280
no phobia.

681
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:16,280
Speaker 2: They're no.

682
00:46:16,559 --> 00:46:20,360
Speaker 3: You know, we have alloraphobia, sinophobia, this fear of cats

683
00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:23,280
and dogs. But but none of those words have become

684
00:46:23,480 --> 00:46:27,760
part of our normal discourse. It's only a rock nophobia.

685
00:46:28,119 --> 00:46:30,280
I think it does take us to a very deep,

686
00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:34,920
dark place, the one that we were talking about that

687
00:46:35,239 --> 00:46:37,559
is often associated with women.

688
00:46:38,719 --> 00:46:41,559
Speaker 1: And so as you were doing this work and you

689
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:47,519
were digging deep into all of the mythology, all of

690
00:46:47,559 --> 00:46:55,199
the representation, the situating of of you know, spider throughout

691
00:46:55,480 --> 00:47:01,320
time and throughout space within the stories that you came across. Obviously,

692
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:03,480
the work could never be completely done. There's no way

693
00:47:03,519 --> 00:47:05,800
you could ever, you know, come across every spider ever

694
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:10,079
written about. But did you start to notice, you know,

695
00:47:10,119 --> 00:47:12,239
I think we've talked about a lot of themes, like

696
00:47:12,239 --> 00:47:15,239
like femininity, but also like deception and some of the

697
00:47:15,320 --> 00:47:18,840
more like at dark themes that that we see a lot.

698
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:22,360
But did you start to notice anything that maybe surprised you?

699
00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:28,039
Representations from from cultures or from eras that felt like, oh,

700
00:47:28,119 --> 00:47:30,119
that seems really out of step with how we usually

701
00:47:30,119 --> 00:47:32,159
think of spider in literature.

702
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:37,000
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, I have to say, I think I

703
00:47:37,039 --> 00:47:40,679
was surprised by everything in a strange way. You know,

704
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:43,159
there was nothing that I sort of took for granted

705
00:47:43,199 --> 00:47:44,679
I thought, oh, yes, of course.

706
00:47:45,239 --> 00:47:46,159
Speaker 4: I think what I was.

707
00:47:46,159 --> 00:47:49,559
Speaker 3: Shot by was the number of spiders, the way that

708
00:47:49,679 --> 00:47:53,079
they you know, I mean, they're ubiquity right now, they're

709
00:47:53,119 --> 00:47:56,440
probably about five or six spiders within a few feet

710
00:47:56,480 --> 00:48:01,760
of me and h and in literature, mythology and you know,

711
00:48:01,920 --> 00:48:06,719
just our culture as a way of being obsessed with

712
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:10,159
these creatures. But at the same time marginalizing them and

713
00:48:10,199 --> 00:48:14,719
pretending they don't exist, and also forgetting that they are,

714
00:48:15,079 --> 00:48:17,960
I mean, just an agriate. Think of the number of

715
00:48:18,159 --> 00:48:23,960
insects they of where we be without spiders probably well,

716
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:26,639
you know, we wouldn't have much to eat, for one thing.

717
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:33,840
But I think what astonished me was, you know, one

718
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:35,440
of the things that happened when I would tell people

719
00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:37,800
I was writing about spiders, I often got the ug

720
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:41,719
oh how can you do that? But I also got

721
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:45,880
a kind of oh, yeah, Charlotte's web, and you know

722
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:50,280
that that was sort of it. That became the reference point,

723
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:54,880
and gee, that can't be very interesting. And so I

724
00:48:54,880 --> 00:48:57,400
think what I was astonished by was that, you know,

725
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:01,199
I discovered a Nansi and ground I knew about Anansi,

726
00:49:01,239 --> 00:49:04,679
but grandmother Spider was someone a figure I was not

727
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:09,960
that familiar with. But that led me then to Sumerian

728
00:49:10,159 --> 00:49:14,280
sources and Indians, and you discovered that these weavers in

729
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:20,679
Egyptian in Egyptian mythology, they're also weavers. And each of

730
00:49:20,719 --> 00:49:24,280
those stories is very complicated as a slightly different take,

731
00:49:25,039 --> 00:49:29,639
but the prevalence, the prevalence of them, and the diversity also,

732
00:49:30,119 --> 00:49:32,840
I think just as you know, there are so many

733
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:37,599
different types of spiders and different types of webs. They're

734
00:49:37,639 --> 00:49:43,320
reconfigured in each era and by each culture, and so

735
00:49:44,239 --> 00:49:46,639
you know, I did have this sense, you know, I

736
00:49:46,679 --> 00:49:49,400
could just keep writing this book forever because I kept

737
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:53,440
coming up with new examples. But it's also good to

738
00:49:53,519 --> 00:49:58,920
stop and say it's done. But the next person continue

739
00:49:59,079 --> 00:50:01,239
and find all this that I missed.

740
00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:04,880
Speaker 1: Well to that, And I am curious here as we're

741
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:10,000
winding down down the hour, I'm curious, what are your

742
00:50:10,039 --> 00:50:14,599
hopes for this type of your own narrative? Right like

743
00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:18,039
you endeavored to not just do the scholarship, but then

744
00:50:18,079 --> 00:50:22,159
to write this book for public consumption, for folks to

745
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:26,039
sit down and say, you know, my curiosity, my appetite

746
00:50:26,079 --> 00:50:28,880
has been wedded. What are you hoping that people walk

747
00:50:28,960 --> 00:50:31,840
away with after reading this book?

748
00:50:33,119 --> 00:50:35,159
Speaker 3: Oh? I think you know, I helped to awaken their

749
00:50:35,199 --> 00:50:40,039
curiosity about spiders and also to think about Oh, Darwin's

750
00:50:40,320 --> 00:50:45,159
Entangled Bank, that wonderful passage in the Origin of Species

751
00:50:45,199 --> 00:50:49,719
where that he talks about, you know, just a world.

752
00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:54,599
You look at a place in your yard and it's

753
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:59,159
teeming with life and with inner actions and all that,

754
00:50:59,239 --> 00:51:03,000
and just understanding again. I'll go back to the metaphor

755
00:51:03,039 --> 00:51:06,880
of the web if I may, the interconnectedness and the

756
00:51:06,880 --> 00:51:12,320
way that we depend on these creatures, and you know,

757
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:17,159
we need to be sensitive to the world. That's even

758
00:51:17,159 --> 00:51:19,239
as you know, we're living in a planet that is

759
00:51:19,519 --> 00:51:23,559
indifferent to human suffering. We have to be attentive to

760
00:51:24,480 --> 00:51:29,440
what is happening in our environment, but also to give

761
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:33,800
a little bit of hope to us because we are

762
00:51:34,199 --> 00:51:37,039
there's so many we're living in crist You know, every

763
00:51:37,079 --> 00:51:41,039
era has its own crises, and you know, terrible things happen,

764
00:51:41,639 --> 00:51:45,719
But it seems to me that the next generation is

765
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:49,280
going to have to manage so much more than my

766
00:51:49,480 --> 00:51:57,000
generation did, certainly, and I think that sometimes looking at

767
00:51:57,159 --> 00:52:02,119
the small and the marginalize and what appears to be

768
00:52:02,320 --> 00:52:09,079
trivial helps us get through the larger problems, the large,

769
00:52:09,239 --> 00:52:12,119
painful things that are in our environment.

770
00:52:13,719 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: I love that even what you just said, there is

771
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:19,639
so much depth, There are so many layers, and I

772
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:23,119
have to admit I just love hearing you talk. You

773
00:52:23,239 --> 00:52:28,000
have such a wonderful like your voice is really rich

774
00:52:28,239 --> 00:52:33,039
with awe and wonder and I feel very inspired by

775
00:52:33,079 --> 00:52:37,239
this conversation. It's been an absolute joy getting to talk

776
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:39,519
to you today, and I'm just so grateful for your time.

777
00:52:40,559 --> 00:52:41,199
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.

778
00:52:41,280 --> 00:52:43,440
Speaker 3: I just feel as if we're so much on the

779
00:52:43,519 --> 00:52:46,960
same waveleng then it's been a pleasure, a joy really,

780
00:52:47,679 --> 00:52:48,440
just true.

781
00:52:49,480 --> 00:52:54,519
Speaker 1: Everybody, of course everybody. The book is a Rachnomania Spiders

782
00:52:54,559 --> 00:52:57,800
and the cultural work they do for us by doctor

783
00:52:57,920 --> 00:53:01,800
Maria Tatar and everybody listening. I want to thank you

784
00:53:01,960 --> 00:53:05,000
as well for coming back week after week. I'm really

785
00:53:05,039 --> 00:53:07,800
looking forward to the next time we all get together

786
00:53:08,119 --> 00:53:08,880
to talk in the road