As for the next radio. Tonight. Sunny and breezy today highs near 57 mostly clear tonight lows in the mid thirty's partly sunny tomorrow near 54 Good afternoon Wolf and it's 1 o'clock the column back in Russia is next and support comes from Chase Collegiate School Middlesex Hospital wisdom House retreat and conference center in which field and the University of Hartford start school. Year is 1818 the place is a rented villa overlooking Lake Geneva in that villa are among other people Percy Shelley Lord Byron and Mary gone but who would soon marry a person showing their god was 18 years old at the time the weather was terrible they were bored they fell to making up kind of spooky stories and she made up Frankenstein that's all that's all she did she's made of Frankenstein right there is a very different story than the one that is coming to handed down to us through movies today on the show we're going to talk about that story the Mary Godwin Shelley story and then ultimately also talk about the way in which the films have shaped our ideas about not only Frankenstein but about the rest of our reality the way we applied that story in those troops last night about a local story that's kind of Frankenstein for the new. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying federal investigators are examining how Russian operatives exploited social media platforms to undermine the u.s. Political process and influence a 2016 presidential election for the next 2 days members of Congress will question Legal experts from Facebook Google and Twitter N.P.R.'s Miles Park has more on the hearing that begins this afternoon lawyers from the 3 companies are expected to say that the impact from Russia seems to have been bigger than previously thought Facebook for example is going to share the content produced and circulated by Russian operatives may have reached as many as 126000000 of their users that's according to prepared remarks acquired by n.p.r. Before today's Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Twitter's expected to announce that Russian linked accounts tweeted 1400000 times about the election just last fall the 3 companies will be on the Hill tomorrow as well testifying before intelligence committees in the House and Senate Miles parks n.p.r. News Washington the defense is presenting its case for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl who could be sentenced to up to life in prison for abandoning his post in Afghanistan in 2009 the sour to military agents are testifying that Bergdahl who was captured and held by the Taliban for 5 years provided a gold mine of information about insurgents when he was released to the u.s. In a prisoner swap N.P.R.'s Frank Morris reports that earlier the judge heard from Terrence Russell who has to brief dozens of former military prisoners and rendered an assessment on Bergdahl served if you could begin decisions were just appalling the worst that any u.s. Soldier has endured since Vietnam the isolation like a prison within a prison he said the deprivation the sickness. Just unbelievable appalling conditions that go endured for 5 years N.P.R.'s Frank Morris reporting the College of Charleston South Carolina is investigating reports of students wearing racially inappropriate Halloween costumes after photos surface online over the weekend N.P.R.'s Arun McCammon reports the costumes include racist slurs and a joking reference to a black man who died in police custody and online statement from the College of Charleston Black Student Union notes that the public liberal arts college is in the same city where a white supremacist murdered 9 people at a historically black church just over 2 years ago it includes photos that show young people wearing orange prison jumpsuit one is labeled Freddy Gray a young black man who died in police custody in 2015 the statement says the photos include students from the College of Charleston and asked administrators to expel them it also describes other problems with hate speech and ongoing displays of Confederate flags on campus in a statement college president Glen f. McConnell says he is extremely disappointed and says the behavior does not reflect the institution's core values Sarah McCammon n.p.r. News this is n.p.r. . In the Libyan city of Derna an airstrike has reportedly claimed civilian lives including children we have the latest from N.P.R.'s Ruth Sherlock in Beirut. Paramedics fumble in the dark in search of the wounded this video posted online claims to show the aftermath of a payload from a war plane that struck a residential district last night the United Nations support mission in Libya said it believes that at least 12 women and children were killed Danna is home to some is the most groups although they pushed ISIS out of the city in 2015 but they are not in a war with heavy for hafta Libya's new military strongman who controls much of the east of the country after his men have besieged over one year it's unclear who carried out the yes trike Research UK n.p.r. News Beirut fortunes of New England are still clearing debris from a storm that produced hurricane force wind gusts this week down tree limbs and power lines in New Hampshire in other states tens of thousands of people are still without electricity one utility company estimates nearly 200000 people in Massachusetts and Rhode Island have yet to have their power restored however at the storm speak on Monday the outage had affected one and a half 1000000 people the Federal Reserve is holding 2 days of meetings in the nation's capital as were Chair Janet Yellen and others are expected to talk about interest rates and are not expected to raise them right now the Dow is up 20 points or $23368.00 I'm Lakshmi saying n.p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the estate of Joan Kroc whose bequest serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation at our w j f dot org. Hello. Dr Wolfe and. What is up with all those hands they're not attached to anything I know right hands won 2nd prize of the 2015 mad scientists convention in Bucharest the judges said I was mad they said I was demented and deprived but in a good way exactly now who are you and why are you here are you the guy who's head of are moving at 1030 you are really early wait what no I'm your new assistant the agency sent me over what's your name Ethan or Austin I used both I'm by no means it was trending a Kenyan your name has to be big or flex or creep or I can't have a lab is the name Mason Ethan or Austin What did you study gender bakery sciences with a minor in Canadian popular music you're one of those rip holes of people who've graduated since he was born aren't you yes I mean I'm a millennialist that's what you're saying well you're hired but only because I'm desperate Ok here's what you do every morning before you come here go to the university dissecting room grab any body parts you can go to the mortuary same thing and then go to the slaughterhouse from there all I want to pick hard monkey brains then are you look at your phone just a sec my friend Samantha is going through just the worst time with this sketchy boyfriend of hers I'm just support texting her. Look at me Do you know what I was doing when I was your age I had already transplanted bat wings onto a spitting cobra that sounds awesome Well it kind of backfired and my insurance rates going up but that's a long story the point is that I need your total attention it's just that in terms of my hashtag goals I'm not super motivated by what you're saying like if you could make it seem more like a foreign project that would be exciting for me my life coach says I need a mood normative environment in order to be my best me. I never really gave much thought to that I had so many assistants and they all died gruesome death but I never really. Thought about whether they loved their job her for her having any fun wait. This is what you people do with it you make it my burden to get you don't want to do your job get out come back tomorrow with Samantha's boyfriends brain Ok Aren't you forgetting something what 1st day of work trophy oh I'm leaving. A 2017 today on the show listen to stories from when this kind of thing was fun for the scientist and now the bride of Martha Collin McEnroe Port Arthur Wolfenstein All right so we are going to be talking about Frankenstein today and we are going to be talking about its persistence as a story although I think we have to begin with the fact that it's a story that we think we know but we don't know its origins and anywhere near as well as we might imagine unless we heard people who read a lot of literature from the it Romantic period of the year early 19th century any way to do this we are going to be talking to Yvonne Miller writer former lecturer film and media studies at Emory University and coeditor of Frankenstein monster became an icon and his other coeditor of Frankenstein how a monster to him and I got a Sidney Perkowitz Charles Howard Candler professor of physics emeritus at Emory University as well and they are joining us from the Emory broadcasting studios so I think before we delve into the origins I'm going to ask each one of you what you're doing and the I'll start with you what you're doing compiling a Frankenstein book I mean you must have a special relationship with this story when did you imprint like a baby doc on Frankenstein was there a particular movie or moment that made you do this. Baby Duck is is the motion call and I think like a lot of nerds as a kid I gravitated towards this handful of genres you know science fiction and fantasy horror and I actually remember seeing James Wales in 1931 universal film of Frankenstein on black and white 12 inch television it was airing late one Halloween on a little public television station in Denver Colorado and they showed Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein and as a sort of Halloween double feature and Frankenstein. As a figure never really appealed to me as a kid but the monster did the monster was was a character with whom I could really empathize and for whom I'm occasionally mistaken in supermarkets. But you know from a from a really early age I got in chanted with this creature and with the bicentennial of the publication of Mary Shelley's novel coming up I was approached by my my good friend and colleague. Sydney Berkowitz with this idea of doing sort of a mash up of perspectives so how about you being burgled it's Was it in fact the 1931 Universal Pictures of Frankenstein that set your mind and heart of water or was it something else oh that was that was the 1st Bush just that he says but then it got more serious waiter I wrote a book called Digital people about various forms of artificial life and to tell that story I had to tell the Frankenstein story so I dug into it a little bit and then when I heard this bison 10 was coming along I really got revved up I said to myself let's do an anthology I don't want to write the whole book that's going to be a lot of work may. I can suck a wedding into taking half the work to edit it and he said yes and the result is we did a book so it started the same way to the nerd love of science fiction fantasy horror all of that in one big lump what with the monster Franks and his mom Frankenstein's monster taking the leading role and then turned into a real professional commitment that also was fun along the way so you know one of the us is in your book talks about this is the story that we almost know the way that we almost know the words of the national anthem that we almost know Hamlet. There's a lot of parallels are I think between this and Sherlock Holmes in the sense that all the tropes many of the tribes that we associate with Sherlock Holmes are not the work of other Conan Doyle but the stage adaptations that were done later particular by the actor William Gillette and so here we almost know the story of Frankenstein except that so many of the tropes here including some of the ones you heard of that intro are simply not in the original work as one of your is the same essay says there's no name to monster there's no loud there's no assistant there's no village mayhem there's no big huge to me you know bolts of electricity Van De Graff generators and lightning and stuff like that so none of that all that stuff that gets added later is all the stuff that we have completely assembled in our mind as the picture but we need to talk about the origins of this and so anybody who's ever been stuck in a rented summer cottage in really bad weather then maybe sympathize with the plate in which almost 200 years ago it's again just suggested Mary Godwin found herself she's there with her fiance. Who of course is perceived Shelley and then Lord Byron shows up he's mad bad and dangerous to now someone once thought about him and so that's all very exciting except that there's terrible weather there's some interesting reasons for the terrible weather and so what do they do they start making up spooky stories was that what happened yeah and you left. One more one more person at this this crazy house party has a guy named Paula dory John Pollard Dorie and his story that comes out of this weekend is called the vampire and it becomes the 1st modern vampire story really what these are is this is like a group of sort of swinging Bohemians in early 19th century terms. They're creative people they're all part of sort of this literary smart set and basically like you say stranded and in Geneva or well and in Switzerland in any event they they get involved in this sort of literary game of of coming up with scary stories and one of the fun things about this is origin story especially given the stature that the novel has eventually. Has eventually acquired You know this is this is this is like a bar bat this is like a party game this starts with bored young people probably fairly loaded. Playing around with with the ideas that frighten them and yet from this fateful house party one of the enduring tales of mid-air knitty is born and and born from the imagination of an in Middle East Jordan every teenage girl but still a teenage girl it's it's crazy right she's 18 years old she's about to marry you just marry him I think until about December. And so yeah and some of these people are kind of famous too I mean so much to the neighborhood around the village was kind of a Twitter people thought there must be you know wild sex games going on there especially given Byron's reputation and so what they're doing is the us and so you know city Perkowitz one thing so Mary Shelley. In putting all this stuff together Mary Godwin at that moment in putting all this stuff together she's mining a whole bunch of ideas that are kind of out there right now and one of them I think is that the notion that were in a time of scientific foment but there's a not necessarily equate a canonical idea of what science is right there and in other words there's things that are pretending or insisting that they are sorry and spend some of them have different status is right aren't we don't there isn't a way to kind of account of my eyes the whole thing so there are all kinds of kind of some of the some of the ideas about science going on right now I read about Point are a little bit quacky. Some are quite deep about some you can say well they just did not understand what was going on so we take away actress and totally for granted now you just flip a switch and there it is it was a very mysterious force then people thought it might even induce life there was some reason to think along those lines not very good reasons but some reasons so there was real science but it was a formative time that were fair just coming out of a period when science hadn't even quite been given that name we still natural philosophy now became science Mary Shelley herself is not a scientific tight the people around her were not although a Percy actually had fooled around with electricity quite a lot in college she was famous for having electrical apparatus in his dorm room we all were and we still do only now we play music with it he was trying to create life with it not really but it is an electricity so all of that was rolling the other thing I remember is early 1900 the Industrial Revolution is gathering steam so the whole idea of a technology that might really be important for the world was being born and that surely played a role in everyone's thinking about what was going on not in an overt open way Mary show I didn't sit down and say well I'm going to stick in some technology here but it was all there in the background for sure all right so some of that interest in electricity survives into the very different in 131 by no means the 1st film adaptation by the way but for 131 film that so many people did imprint on let's hear a little bit of Dr Henry non-factor for some reason or Henry Frankenstein talking to Dr Weil about his intention to create life. I lead a great deal from you if you have us here. The ultraviolet 3 but she was said was the highest kind of the spectrum. Yet in this machinery I had gone beyond that. I had discovered a great trade obsessed cult like the world over. And you approach the light usually if you'll prove. That I'm a cheat only with dead animals a little kid a street weeks. Doll. A body and a doll like her it's so so so there's that notion of science and that notion of electricity and so it's I mean there's a way in which you can draw a rather peculiar and jagged line from Benjamin Franklin to a Dr Gahl them to to all this right there's. Tell us about that it's a great story and I actually did know it and so one of our contributors sent in a cartoon about it so he summarized the whole thing in a one panel cartoon which is terrific around $740.00 everyone every American at least know the story Ben Franklin almost killed himself by sending up a kite with a key to show that lightning was a trickle that was a big deal at the time he was considered a major researcher and electricity his report of that experiment was translated into Italian a couple of decades later and that was read by a gentleman named Luigi Cavani who had been working with electricity and also knew something about dead frogs I don't quite know where that came from but there it was he put the 2 thoughts together and was the 1st person to understand which we now know for sure is 100 percent true bioelectricity is a big part of how living things function so we went from Franklin to go Dan e f think of Ani nephew of his a real go getter had the idea well if electricity is out of power for I can go around Europe and Animate Dead people people will pay to see that sure enough he tried to do that and sure enough people paid to see it he didn't really animate somebody but if you take a dead body and give it a jolt of a few 100 volts it'll jump and that was good enough to. People that he was making why pap and so that's the next link in the chain and then right after that we have Mary Shelley again no expert on electricity no scientist but picking up what was in the cultural air at the time and thinking this could be part of the book and then go one more step to 931 the Frankenstein film that we all know someone on the production side who is thinking of special effects said Man if we can get a big bolt of lightning in this movie that will be you killer scene and indeed it was that's how it worked out all right so Eddie was there good science on the one hand and we got a lot of other things going on maybe sort of on the humanities front a little bit I mean one thing we have going on is romanticism So we're And we've got some notable romantics right there in the villa and they're so within romanticism and we're not at all far from good to creating his foulest it's hard to say when go to created for us because they don't mean 47 years to write it or something but so yeah I mean you've got these kinds of stories right about these kind of. Geniuses who don't necessarily follow the rules who who are emboldened by by inspiration you know by powerful surges of inspiration and this kind of a dangerous combination right if you you know if you let Lord Byron be a scientist he's probably not going to be a very responsible one. It's it's so interesting because Mary Shelley is a radical thinker from a line of radical thinkers her father is one of the founders of the anarchist movement her mother who died when she was just an infant her her mother was one of the 1st sort of feminist thinkers and it's a really revolutionary time it's Reporter remember that that both the American Revolution and more dramatically the French Revolution is really recent history at this moment and that idea of a sort. Of radicalized individual ism is is part and parcel of the Romantics and so when we when we look at Frankenstein the doctor Dr Frankenstein. Who is very very different in almost all the films that he is in the in the the book you do see this compelling portrait of genius Runamuck of sort of what happens when that radical individual ism is carried to too dangerous extremes and it's it's a really ambiguous portrait that she makes right because on the one hand there's a lot about Victor Frankenstein in the novel that makes some sort of the the ultimate romantic hero he's an iconoclast he doesn't play by the rules he is he is passionate about his art or his science to the expense of all other considerations. But at the same time morally he's he's a monster and it's really intriguing to sort of think what were the meanings for. For Mary who's hanging out with Percy Shelley and with as you say Lord Byron. Her perspective on these men and this romantic notion of of the human creative force liberated from sort of morality and mores it's it's interesting to think what what was she saying to the to the men in her life and to this moment that she's living through because a lot of great things are coming out of this right I think she I think she's kind of I mean you also sort of wonder just how fed up she was with these guys being stuck in this village for this long you know and I think she's kind of sticking romanticism up their butts a little bit saying you know what this doesn't always come out so great you know in fact in fact she's saying this never comes out great this always ends badly but you know there's a little more nuance to that and again it's maybe show you need to put this in it isn't made a big part of the book but it's there when Dr Frankenstein in the book is thinking about building a monster and he doesn't think of it that way he's thinking of creating an improved human being so it's actually not all that different Not at all different from modern genetic engineering which always justifies itself by saying who cures disease maybe we can make a better human being maybe we can make people smarter and stronger I agree that mostly Dr Frankenstein is a self-absorbed kind of guy built on top of a bunch of male privilege all of that is in there but he had some ethical strands in this thinking too we hope for the best but he didn't make it work he didn't execute it very well student Sidney his goal is to make something beautiful too I mean that's one of the ways in which everything the. We understand about Frankenstein today starting with our visual image departs considerably from what's being talked about here you don't want to go monster in that conventional sense he wants to make a thing of beauty but he also wants to make a laborer right he wants to make a creature that can Indoor the cold a creature that can can live under very difficult circumstances and so I think I think Frankenstein is himself conflicted he wants to make beauty he wants to make perfection but he also doesn't want to be challenged right it's it's it's a really it's a really complex and this is this is the remarkable thing to me movies and television we tend to like to simplify stories make good and evil much clearer strip away some of that ambiguity the novel is is deeply complex deeply ambiguous and so there's a mean just about of when you're saying to do that and that notion of making a worker. So I mean 1st of all yes there's. You know I mean Also unlike the movie this monster if that's the right word and for applying to the right character this monster is articulate he's very good itself educating he starts reading the Paradise Lost he quickly figures out that not only to say didn't have all the good lines but there his lines to there are ways in which he didn't ask to be made he's been made and the terms master and slave start getting exchanged explicitly between these 2 characters. Yeah to the point where where the the monster will call him the creature because it's ambiguous at that point whether whether his creation is more monstrous than the maker but there is a moment where where the creature seizes the reins and basically says you know I'm in charge now you're going to do what I say or I will make your life an unbearable hell and that that turning of the tables is is one of I think the more powerful scenes in the book and it's left out of almost all the screen adaptations it's it's been a few of the maybe the more more faithful ones but. That idea not just at the monster is a menace to its maker but the monster becomes its makers Master which I would say and Sidney is better qualified to address it but to me that makes me feel much the way my smartphone makes me feel. It is now the boss of me. A metaphor for technology taking us over but you know what although that particular master slave reversal maybe doesn't happen in other versions of Frankenstein it happens in most of the science fiction films we know that have synthetic beings right up to Blade Runner 2049 this is about replicants who have been made to be slaves to serve humanity decided they've had enough I don't want to give away too much of a plot point for people who haven't seen it but deciding they've had enough and it's time to rebel little bit so that image of the creature that you thought you had under control suddenly turning on you and not just becoming hostile but actually becoming the boss is a very strong one it's one of the other things that Frankenstein I think has given us the creature the novelist. Not terribly different different different times maybe for Mark or how or in the original right Blade Runner was Roy Batty All right so what do we take a quick break here we'll come back with more of these gas towards the end of the show we're going to tell you a story from Bridgeport because if there were going to be a Frankenstein story in Connecticut where else not one who haven certainly not. The column McEnroe show on n.p.r. Were support comes from Cabot cheese a farmer owned co-op offering cabbage cracker cuts pre-sliced cheeses available in resealable packages in 6 varieties more information at Cabot cheese dot co up. I'm Jeremy Hobson It's been 3 years since the water crisis in Flint Michigan which caused lead poisoning I was feeling today what we see in Flint today is an ongoing crisis on the people of Flint the kids I take care of every day are still unfiltered water. Bottled water that has not changed That's next time on here and now. Here and Now today at 2 pm. Support comes from the hard school and the richer p. Garman a chamber music series presenting the internationally acclaimed trio latitude 41 Thursday Nov 16th 7 30 pm on the University of Hartford campus visit hard for dot edu slash Garman e for more information and from wisdom House on November 11th Sally would all presents the spirituality of today are to share Dan and his legacy of science and mysticism learn more at wisdom house dot org. Bag now to the column knocking Rocio. And you really believe that you can bring light to the age. But he's not dead you just need to leave. I created each I need my own hands from the bodies I took great show in the galaxy with. Feel and see people so. They can like you could she. Find me crazy treat a shit stick each. Week to get all he. Or she will be. Like me there are going to be God You know you. Want Your name of God I do not want to hear my computer. And thus begin with the law of unintended consequences so here we go we're talking more about Frankenstein our guests right now are at Yvonne Mueller a writer former lecturer of film and media studies at Emory Sidney Perkowitz Charles Howard Kendall professor of physics Americas at Emory they are both of the coeditors of Frankenstein monster became an icon so I want to just wrap up a couple of things from our 1st segment conversation and then kind of move on a little bit more to the cinematic and pop cultural history of this but so but the 2 things that we kind of glided over one of them is you know Sidney I kept saying the weather was really bad but there's no scientific weather reason why the weather was really bad in 1818 in this villa where Mary Godwin soon to be Mary Shelley is there with her future husband Percy and Lord Byron there's been a what was it a volcano in Indonesia summers they called the summer of darkness in Europe right yes. It was the year without a summer in Europe and what happened was a major volcano in Indonesia you. Right had exploded a year or 2 before considered one of the biggest eruptions ever whenever a volcano goes goes off it throws a lot of debris in the atmosphere so this volcano did that to bring the atmosphere means sunlight doesn't get through very well and the temperature all over western and northern Europe dropped 2 or 3 degrees and even today we know from global warming 2 or 3 degrees doesn't sound like a big deal but it's huge so that killed the summer agriculture suffered terribly There were there were there was famine especially in Arlon but in other parts of Europe too and among other things that was exceptionally heavy rain so almost for sure the reason that this group was sitting around twiddling their thumbs until they have the idea of telling those stories this is Byron and the rest of them and Mary Shelley and so on is that it just didn't stop raining like Como is a famous tourist spot it's supposed to be beautiful the area where they were but all they had was rain rain rain and it goes back partly to that are kind of corruption All right so the other thing I wanted to make sure we kind of touched upon from our previous conversation I mean you know I think the other things going on and you kind of alluded to it is I mean 1st of all Britain is in the middle of his debate about slavery. And since there's sort of that there's also probably a fair amount of worker unrest maybe even circumstances that don't entirely not resemble that what he's saying election kind of a sense of people being rejected or left behind much like the creature. This is a this is a period of extraordinary displacement especially in the new urban industrial sectors where this is and this is happening in Paris it's happening in in London it's happening very conspicuously in the United States where really for the 1st time in in modern history we have these very large numbers of people who have traveled a tremendous distance from wherever they were born and now they are sort of anonymous generic isolated laborers in in cities and so forth and the status of the worker is an intensely debated topic and you mentioned the debate over slavery which is another another facet of sort of the labor question but one of the things that is conspicuous about the creature and this is something that we find in almost every film version or television version of Frankenstein with maybe the exception of the monsters. Is is that the creature is sort of associated with the working class and it is a being that has no culture and has no provenance it has no place what it has and it has been great and dangerous abundance it has resentment. Right and it feels rejected I mean the I mean in the in the novel anyway the emotional rejection of this creature feels I mean you know Dr Victor Frankenstein some of the worst single dad ever. But but but you know it's you're right he's he's in part the bad dad who rejects his offspring but he's also the bad alit who refuses to acknowledge that his actions created the situation that made this being monstrous This is not a. Creature that was made to be a monster it was in its eyes at least forced to be a monster by the actions of its its creator and I I think. Even over the course of the 19th century this was something that that readers sort of glom onto is the class dynamic and this idea of alienation as a problem in the in the modern world and that's a problem that's only gotten worse so. Now let's jump away from the book and towards the screen Sidney Perkowitz. So we go about 100 seller talking about a 200th anniversary of the novel but we just go 100 years forward from from Mary Godwin at the lake house we get basically basically to the birth of the moving image and it's really one of the you know we keep talking about the 131 movie but it's really one of the 1st things people want to make movies about right there so I think one estimate in your book that between I think it's 1918 in 2005 something like that that's at least 79 different film versions of Frankenstein happen any theories to me on why that is I mean this is just you know so ingrained in people's unconscious by the time that they'll recognize that story it's I think it's deeper than that and I mean one thing that maybe we don't like to talk about but if you want to get to the deep deep deep it's rooted in what the president story is about. It's about defeating death. Here is a person who can take random parts of a human and turn them into something that approaches being human not wholly successful but it's definitely alive definitely can think and walk and move he's created life truly and life and the creation of life was central to the myth and function of cinema Well when we watch 1930 one's Frankenstein today we're literally watching the dead no one who made that film is is living any longer and if you think about what filmmakers do is they cut together a living story out of these fragments I think there's there's something primally said in magic about Frankenstein and something about Frankenstein that is is intrinsically cinematic this is about making a new life out of dead fragments and filmmakers do that every day it's even broader than that it's artistic one person wanted to contribute to our anthology but we couldn't work it out was an artist who was inspired by their idea of stitching together body parts and wanted to make a cold watch what could be more obvious than that it came together so so perfectly I don't think we've mentioned this yet so I'll mention it as he may want to say more about it 931131 film is the film it's the one we will have images of in our head but 21 years before that in 1010 Thomas 7 Edison was just getting into the film business made the 1st Frankenstein film it was a short only a few minutes it's very blurry the refuse scenes there are a couple of pictures from them in our book in fact but he did it and again it's so powerful that this is one of one of the stories that Edison 1st wanted to put on film it's really astonishing right so you know one thing I want to talk about and it's I think it's in the Oval Room in your book there's a way in which film itself. Giri William Friedkin the director told me that when he was a little boy he was taken to the movies for the 1st time and he just sat in a more of a back row screaming not because of the content on the screen but just because of being in this dark theater with these things on the screen and even in 31 you sort of Certainly yes with in the case of the Edison film but even in $31.00 it's a new enough technology so that Lieberman in his eyes he makes that kind of a convincing case that there's a way in which the the our sense of being shaped and assaulted by what's on the screen makes it makes the medium of film a perfect marriage for this kind of material Yeah it's an excellent essay and I think it's a valuable perspective because I think that to us the moving image is so ubiquitous you know we can watch we can watch our smartphones we can watch on tablets the moving image is always with us and it has been to some extent demystified but especially the experience of seeing films in a theatre there is something uncanny about it and there is and this is part of what makes horror films frightening in a way that say a horror film viewed at home when you can stop or pause the action at will part of what makes a horror film frightening is the movie is something that happens to us right in the mechanism that makes the movie happen is always behind us the projectors always behind us throwing this spectrum in front of us and we are at the mercy of the screen. And when we read about the visceral reactions that people had to King Kong in 1933 or to Frankenstein in 1031 or the train arriving at the station for that matter in 1905 when we hear about people screaming or running in panic It seems funny to us like what's wrong with these morons can't they tell it's just a screen but the truth is that when we're alone in the dark with strangers and this thing is is unfolding in Iraq illicitly before our eyes we or we are at the mercy and mesmerized by what we're seeing and and that I think does sync up very nicely and it's a image we see in a lot of the films the sort of whether it's a victim or sometimes it's Victor Frankenstein himself or sometimes you know it's a peasant girl or whatever we see somebody staring in sort of dumbstruck horror at the spectacle of the monster who is frequently not you know it's not like the alien aliens it's not ripping anybody's heads off but there is a way in which the monster becomes. Sort of hypnotizing spectacle and I think it's a really powerful it's a powerful thing that maybe we're losing now but it's certainly been part of the cinematic century I can certainly tell you that my mother as a girl saw that mentioned 33 King Kong. In the movie theater she was doing them as a girl in a small New England town and she was unable to walk home from it she got about a few blocks away from the movie theater and she was paralyzed she was so afraid her father had to come get her he was not pleased about this whole idea that some stupid movie about a girl it would make her that her favorite people were of that afraid movie is a lot then because the other technology was as you say uncanny So Sidney Perkowitz were kind of running out of time here but. You know in some ways obviously there's been. A delusion. A little bit of the story right I mean it's just it's ubiquitous it's been turned into comedy set of much I mean some of the comedy the Abbott and Costello stuff is is maybe as one of your Says a little bit close to the scary stuff there's there are ties between laughter and fear but you know I mean the more and more Mel Brooks and Saturday Night Live and things like that get a hold of this I'm sort of wonder do you think it still has the it's a regional power or is that power transmute it into maybe a way in which we talk about our own environments you know we worry about frankenfood or something like that. It's definitely changed and eluded I think is a good word but I think it's gained a different kind of power because we're now over the 1st shock of science having hit us and the 1st shock was oh my god it's here why are we going to do and that was an instantaneous reaction now a more thoughtful So we see technology bearing down on us whether it's next March phone or genetic engineering or what or what have you and some people now realize that we need to stop and think about this and we're looking for ways to think about it. It's one of the great powers of science fiction in general and the Frankenstein story in particular that it gives you a framework to look at what may be coming and maybe even begin to begin to scope out where it might take society so I think that's a new power for the story it's not a scary it doesn't raise goose bumps but in the long run it might be much more important because it forces us to think about the ethics of what the scientists are doing to our society really want this is a runaway train that we can't stop or there are even some choices and really all of that is imbedded in the story now we just expanded in apply it for instance to the whole to the whole biological industry whereas biological technology taking us so that's a new power we've lost some terror but maybe we've gained some wisdom from it well thanks so much to Sidney Perkowitz and to any of our Mueller they are the coeditors of this very interesting and follow how a monster became an icon Frankenstein that is how a monster became an icon the science and alluring enduring allure of Mary Shelley's creation we're going to take a break now we're going to come back we're going to tell you a specific Connecticut Frankensteinian story. 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Allston are you trying to drive a dagger through my heart you think I don't wake up every day knowing I don't have a monster serial named after me I'm so sorry doctor Wolfenstein my bad you bet it is today show is produced by Dr Victor no lay off and make i own wealth a man to fish with surgically grafted on to Andrew Bird our internist Sarah Bligh voiceover held by Kevin McDermott the part of Bill Carey was played by Al Franken on tomorrow's show there's still a space station what's going on up there and back to college right so we promised you that we would end this story of Frankenstein with the closest thing that we could find and it actually is pretty close to a Connecticut version of the story so joining us now is Michael beloveds he is a historian poet author of several books including wicked New Haven and wicked to Bridgeport He's also a youth services librarian at the Bridgeport public library and many more things as well I'm sure but 1st of all welcome to our conversation sir thank you very much Carla So you're going to tell us the story of George Porter and perhaps specific Lee someone that George tried Well I mean kind of to reanimate mate but those are George Porter was 1st Dr George Warren Porter was an American hero he was a surgeon during the Civil War and he had men who are on the battlefield and after he left the service. Came to live in Bridgeport Connecticut and he was going to live here and help incorporate the Bridgeport Hospital he was one of the education speakers of the barn amusing him and he was a man about town and people really sought after as a public speaker position thirdhand and as an all around great time to have and also to want to become involved with raising the debt right so we talked earlier in the show about Galvin ism. Discovery really of the electrical currents in the body by Luigi Gollan which by the way is still around it usually is given a different name these days if you know anybody who's involved with Scientology going to be made or that actually is mentioned measuring measuring slight fluctuations in the galvanic skin current but so Dr Porter is he's very interested right Michael in this notion of Calvinism he was very interested in it and while he was here in Bridgeport it was following the execution of a Sherman Connecticut resident Edwin Hall I had. In a fit of rage murdered his father stabbed him with a butcher knife into the into his throat and was brought to trial most folks felt that Edward was insane by. The verdict was carried out and he was Hong from the neck until dead what if what was going to happen on loans on unbeknown to Edwin was that Dr Porter and other local physicians and surgeons had arranged the site of the execution the gallows were located at the North Avenue jail in Bridgeport and in the West yard which by the way all these years later the head was extorting 880 that area still known by some as the gallows yard Dr Porter and the other physicians removed from the rope after he was hanging there for about 39 minutes they placed them on top of a coffin lid and he raced them back into the jail up the stairs to the 2nd floor where they had arranged all aboard Torie with a galvanic battery to see if they could raise him from the dead. When there was a group of a physicians and surgeons there were guards of course in case he should raise from the dead when someone he asked if he does come back will he go free and at 1st people or go following about the thought but but then the room fell silent one of the problems of course is that and when the prisoner had as many people are as that when they are find a broken neck so I'm used to do some electricity through somebody even if it worked in other ways that was that was the problem with Edwin Hall experiments that. They 1st thought it was just a dislocated neck that his spine hadn't been broken when he applied to the lesser charges and he opened his eyes and he was staring out at the folks who were in the audience that they were taken aback that they figured that maybe he is going to become recess and hated reanimated to life. His arms around him even went so far as pointing accuses Lee at some of the individuals who had assembled just freaked everybody out in the crowd Well they they resuscitated all of the Looked like he was breathing in fact when they held a candle to his lips he blew the candle out when they had applied the electrodes to his. Lungs and his diaphragm. And when that when the experiments didn't result in him rising from the table they really examine the body and they found it and as you said Collin that his spine his neck had been snapped and broken all the said they needed was another fresh specimen to experiment on and they waited 8 years or so right in the coming years it was 8 years October of $1888.00 that are still a part of the you know what murdered his brother Francisco over alone and Philip was put on trial again in Bridgeport and boys executed in the gallows you know at the North Avenue jail in Bridgeport. Folks who were folks who had assembled for the execution we were expecting Dr Porter and the others to. Try to experiment on the corpse again and there are stories that there was a riot had broken out in the gallows yard that Father Leo was trying to keep the physicians and the crowd back from the corpse who was in a simple plain pine coffin they didn't want anybody coming close to the body to remove him for those same. Experiments which also all brought to a possible life the rumors that Philip had survived the hanging with a brace of them inserted under his clothing and a secret society was going to help Philip escape and there were rumors for oh gosh weeks afterwards in the New York papers and in the New Haven papers that Philip was actually alive that he had survived the hanging. The whole time the physicians were focusing on acquiring the body which was to be interesting Augustine cemetery in Bridgeport and to stop that the pause the resurrection men of the sacrum ups the ghouls from removing Philip from the ground they had most of the sentry fatherly on the Italian community had sent somebody there overnight to ensure that nobody was coming to remove Philip's body for those experiments right so. We 1st of all should say the good news is that nothing weird or unsavory ever happened again in Bridgeport after this now just getting absolutely correct. When the motor border is I mean it's we're making him sound like a mad scientist which you know I think by some accounts maybe he would seem like that but he was really regarded that way then right he was you know I mean he was present in the medical as he absolutely was a respected member of the community and highly regarded surgeon as I mentioned has been his battlefield bravery her his heroics there and he relocated to Bridgeport a good friend of his another doctor Dr hovered strongly suggested he relocate here because. He was an outstanding doctor they wanted somebody also you know additional Harvard Porter here to relocate to Bridgeport with his family only respected and the papers sometimes played it up. When they were covered in their papers in the papers when they were recounting the experiments but when Dr Porter delivered his reports it didn't help when the flour Victorian language was being used that they were on the very portals of the doorway of the mysteries of life and death and they really were certain that they could Rehana me these corpses if again they just had fresh material. Individual without a broken back but very quickly we're only about a minute left here but Dr Porter had led a very interesting life prior to all this his life even crossed the paths of John Wilkes Booth explain the connection if you could Michael. Dr Porter I've opened an American hero a really strange life he was a person who was a medical individual in charge of the in the coconspirators involved in the Lincoln assassination and. Whose body had been sacred in the river swamp area outside of Washington d.c. Very publicly so folks could see where both body was being just unceremoniously dumped in a swamp in reality in reality Dr Porter George Porter had possession of John Wilkes Booth spotty and he was given the orders from the Secretary of War Stanton to secure both remains on the floor of the warehouse of the old Washington Arsenal and he said that he would take that secret to the grave but being that they were doing John Wilkes Booth's corpses rumors started to arise that had really survived and his escape and he was living somewhere in the United States so eventually Porter was coming out saying no he was deceased helped bury the real body of John Wilkes Booth and we're going to end it there Michael beloved history and historian poet author of several books including we could New Haven and we could Bridgeport and it's been a wicked good show thank you for joining us we'll be back tomorrow. Dr Wolfenstein The monster is woke this fellow. I don't know about that kind of woke but he's definitely aware inclusive and questions of gender and race that kind of woke What are you talking about I think he's able to check his white monster privilege he's green and you're fired again that's 4 times this morning. The logic behind the estate tax goes a little something like this the United States is not an aristocracy of the we don't want to have generation upon generation of assets build up untaxed that it was so easy on car Ryssdal The Case for and against the estate tax Thanks Mark but. Marketplace tonight at $630.00. Asking the cold lack of a correspondent on full frontal with him at the big to get that job she gave up pursuing a Ph d. For common always easy for a black woman lie like life in Chicago was like I would have a hard time getting past gatekeepers because of cultural differences or because I was like way more political now she got him actually called Black next time it's been a minute from n.p.r. . 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