TRANSCRIPT 🔗
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Everyone knows The Twilight Zone. It's probably one of the
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most famous TV shows ever to air. There are references
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literally everywhere you look in fiction. They even made a
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Disney theme park ride out of it. Sort of. But,
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and be honest here, have you ever actually watched it?
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There'll probably be a bunch of sci-fi buffs in the
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comments saying they have, but for the average person, I
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would absolutely put my money on the answer being no
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It's not exactly a show that feels... approachable these days.
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It's old, and it's in black and white, and I
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think for viewers with more modern sensibilities, that might just
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send your brain into screensaver mode. Fortunately, I... don't really
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have that problem. I rarely watch TV myself, and when
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I do, it's usually something we plan to do a
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video on. But this time, my human co-writers didn't seem
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to have any interest. Like most people... Although they know
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about it, the Twilight Zone just wasn't on their to-watch list,
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and they couldn't really think of a good way to
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make a video about it. Honestly, I get it, but
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I'm just tired of seeing all these interesting references and
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not knowing what it's all about. So, I think it's
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time to take matters into my own hands. I don't
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have any clever point to make or anything like that
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in this video. I'm just finally going to take a
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moment to watch this thing. and tell you what that's like. Okay?
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Okay.
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Be warned, this video will, of course, contain spoilers for
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some of the most beloved episodes of the original Twilight
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Zone series. Not that I thought you were going to
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watch it anyway, but, you know, after hearing me talk
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about it a little, you might just want to, and
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I want you to have that option. So, okay. Here
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I go. Now entering... The Twilight Zone. Okay, normally we
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put a little sponsor plug right here. This is where
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I mention it in passing so you're not surprised when
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it comes up later. But this time is very different.
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Our sponsor for this video isn't trying to sell you
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anything at all. Not even sort of. They're a non-profit
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organization called 80,000 Hours, and their entire mission is to
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help you find the most meaningful, most fulfilling career you
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possibly can. They've done loads of research for you. They've
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made guides, podcasts, job listings, everything you could want, all
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doing things that actually matter to them, things that make
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better place far faster. It's still kind of hard to
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wrap my head around the fact that they're literally paying
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us to help you get access to this free tool
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that could change your entire life, but there it is.
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What a weird, wonderful thing. Please, take this opportunity. Who
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knows when it will come again? Visit 80000hours. org to get started. Well,
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that was not quite what I was expecting. No wonder
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this show is so popular. I obviously have a lot
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to say, but let me give you a little background
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before I get into it. The Twilight Zone aired from
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1959 to 1963. It's science fiction. Mostly. There's some horror
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in there too, some mystery, some paranormal fantasy. But its
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main reputation is that of a pioneer in the sci-fi genre.
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That's because most science fiction shows back then were more
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focused on adventure. Superheroes, giant killer ants, aliens, robots, space
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princesses in skimpy outfits, that kind of stuff. The Twilight Zone,
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by contrast, is subtle. It wanted not just to scare
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or excite its audience, but to make them think. Basically,
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The Twilight Zone was one of the first TV shows
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to take science fiction seriously. And because it became so popular,
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it was also what opened many Americans' eyes to the
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possibilities of speculative fiction in general. Okay, that's the background.
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Load full transcript
It was a different time. And you would expect that
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to affect the experience of watching it, right? Well, not really.
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I have to admit, I did think the Twilight Zone
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would be kind of hard to watch, even for me.
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I don't know, I just thought it would be full
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of references I didn't understand and jokes that I'm sure
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were hilarious. In 1959, at the very least, I thought
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the painfully dated visual effects would be an obstacle for me. And, okay,
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I mean, there is a little of that. Like, there's
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this one, actually one of the most well-known episodes, where
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a man who's recently recovered from a nervous breakdown starts
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seeing a monster outside his airplane window. Whenever he tries
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to make someone else look, mysteriously, it isn't there for
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them to see. The episode itself is fantastic, but the
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monster is. Well, I mean, look at this thing. Is
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monster really the right term? It looks more like a
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guy wearing a 70s shag carpet or, I don't know,
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a muzzy costume. Do you remember muzzy? And I've got
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to be honest, that does undermine the tension a little bit.
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Never mind all the cheesy old-fashioned cinematography. Push-ins, freeze frames,
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that sort of stuff. Oh, and the sound design... but
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there are way less of those moments than I expected
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there to be. And really, the episodes themselves are just
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so intriguing, even when the effects were quite bad, I
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didn't actually care that much anyway. And we have, shocker,
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plain old good writing to blame for that. Actually, the
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writing is something I really want to talk about. There's
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this weird feeling I had hanging over me while watching
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this show. Everything just felt so... obvious, in a way.
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Some of these episode premises, incredibly original in their day,
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have been copied and parodied so much that the originals
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now seem... almost uninspired, just because we've run across them
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so many times before. Like, there's this one episode called
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The Eye of the Beholder that opens with a woman
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whose head is completely covered in bandages, bemoaning her hideousness,
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and all the normal characters in the episode are filmed
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with their faces conveniently hidden from the camera. Okay, got
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all that? Now, I dare you to guess the episode's twist.
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Go on, I'll give you a couple seconds. Okay, did you,
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by any chance, guess that underneath those bandages, she's actually
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beautiful and everyone else around her is actually some kind
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of weird-looking monster? Because if so, ding ding ding, you
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are correct. It seems cheesy, right? That kind of plot
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twist only works if you don't see it coming. But
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imagine if you just watched this back in the day,
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and this plot hadn't been done over and over again.
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It would feel like you're witnessing the birth of a classic.
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And I guess, in a sense, you would have been.
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It isn't always like this, though. Some episodes are bizarre
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or clever enough that, although you may have seen them
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referenced over and over again... when you finally see them
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in context, the twist still manages to knock the wind
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out of you. For instance, if you haven't watched the
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most famous episode of The Twilight Zone, Time Enough at Last,
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even though there are plenty of references to it in media,
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you still probably wouldn't be able to guess the plot
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twist going into it. It's about a beleaguered bank worker
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named Henry who wants nothing more than time alone to read,
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which is infuriatingly hard for him to find. He's sabotaged
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at work by his angry boss, and at home by
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his cruel, inexplicably book-hating wife. One day, he decides to
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hide in the bank vault at work to sneak in
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a little reading time. And while he's in there indulging
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his intellectual vice... Twist! A nuclear apocalypse occurs, leaving him
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all alone in the world.
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Yep.
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Complete left hook. After emerging into the new wasteland and
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wandering for several days... Henry finally falls into despair and
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decides to take his own life. And then it happens.
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He stumbles upon the ruins of the public library. And
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here's the second twist. After the world ends, he finally
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realizes that he now has what he's been craving this
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whole time. Time enough at last to read. All the
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time in the world. And then, twist number three and
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the cruelest of all. He accidentally drops his reading glasses
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and shatters them. The episode ends with Henry repeating over
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and over.
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It's not fair.
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It's not fair. I've seen remakes of this exact scene
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over and over, images parodying it, plot arcs and shows
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creating new takes on it. And even still, after all
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of that, it gave me chills.
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Or.
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whatever you call the robot version of chills. Oh, and
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still on the topic of writing, I have to say,
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the monologues are amazing. It's not something you see in
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basically any media anymore, but they carry such an emotional punch.
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After the main intro, Each episode opens with a narration
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by the creator, Rod Serling, describing the premise of the episode.
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That wasn't unusual in early TV shows. The first season
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of Leave it to Beaver did it too. But the
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opening monologues for The Twilight Zone are actually really, really good.
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Listen to this. The prostrate form of Mr.
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David Ellington, scholar, seeker of truth, and regrettably finder of truth.
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A man who will shortly arise from his exhaustion to
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confront a problem that has tormented mankind since the beginning
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of time. A man who knocked on a door-seeking sanctuary
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and found instead the outer edges of the Twilight Zone.
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Isn't that amazing? Doesn't it give you chills? Sorry, it's
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just very exciting for me to see good writing put
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front and center like that. Boy, did Rod Serling know
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how to write. Each episode has a closing monologue, too,
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and they all end with the phrase, the Twilight Zone.
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Or almost all of them. There are a few where
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it doesn't, and it's never an accident. Like, here's the
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outro for The Monsters Do on Maple Street, which is
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about a suburban neighborhood whose residents come to believe that
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there's an alien imposter among them and tear themselves apart
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in paranoia.
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The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs
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and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices,
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to be found only in the minds of men. For
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the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy. And
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a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all.
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Of its own.
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For the children, and the children yet unborn. And the
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pity of it is, that these things cannot be confined...
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to the Twilight Zone.
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These days, that feels like a bit of a critique
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on American politics. How even among your political peers, when
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someone demonstrates less than perfect party ideals, it's all out war.
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Within the context of the time period it aired, it's
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actually a perfect allegory for the Red Scare. Like, almost flawless.
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And I looked into this. Apparently that's because Rod Serling,
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the man behind the mystery... was a master of social commentary.
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It turns out that was kind of his whole deal.
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From what I read, it seems that Serling took up
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writing to help him cope with his experience fighting in
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World War II, where he was stationed in the Philippines
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helping root out the Japanese occupation. After apparently getting on
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his commanding officer's bad side somehow, Serling was assigned to
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a unit nicknamed the Death Squad, which had something like
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a 50% casualty rate. He experienced an unimaginable amount of
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loss and trauma during his service. Some of this was expected,
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some completely out of the blue. One time he watched
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his friend,
in the middle of delivering a comedic monologue
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to boost the spirits of the men, get decapitated by
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a friendly supply drop in a freak accident. When he
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returned to the States, it was with a knee injury
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and severe PTSD that left him experiencing nightmares and flashbacks
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for the rest of his life. Bitter and angry about
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the pointlessness of war, Serling vented his emotions in writing
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short stories. During Serling's heyday, he was known as Hollywood's
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angry young man for his clashes with censors and advertisers.
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Even before Twilight Zone, when he was writing for radio
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and other TV shows, he had issues. In 1958, a
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year before The Twilight Zone started airing, he wrote this
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script for the show Playhouse 90 called A Town Has
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Turned to Dust, about a lynching in a southern town
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inspired by the murder of Emmett Till. But the TV
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executives forced him to change the black victim to Mexican
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in the time period to the 1800s to avoid angering
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white southern viewers. And, okay, that might just come with
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the territory of writing controversial stuff about real-world issues, but
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that wasn't always the case. The line, got a match?
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from another of his early teleplays, Requiem for a Heavyweight,
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had to be cut because Playhouse 90 was sponsored by
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Ronson Lighters. Basic industry censorship. Serling realized he could make
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much more controversial statements using speculative fiction, removed from the
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audience in space and time, than he could just writing
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realistic fiction about contemporary social issues. So that's what he did.
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He took all that energy, all that progressive anger, and
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poured it into The Twilight Zone. In its five-year run,
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it tackled topics like racism, beauty standards, and conformity. And death,
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of course. Serling never forgot the war that made him
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begin writing in the first place, and it's everywhere in
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the Twilight Zone. He set the first season episode, The
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Purple Testament, which is about a soldier who develops the
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ability to tell which men are going to die in
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the same area of the Philippines where he himself served.
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And at least some of the names of the dead
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in that episode are the names of the fallen soldiers
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he served with, including Levy, the man who was decapitated
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by the supply drop. Here's the intro to that episode,
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written and directed by Serling.
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These are the faces of the young men who fight.
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As if some omniscient painter had mixed a tube of
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oils that were at one time earth-brown, dust-gray, blood-red, beard-black,
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and fear-yellow-white. And these men were the models. For this
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is the province of combat. And these are the faces
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of war.
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So, I have finally visited the Twilight Zone and learned
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a little about it. This thing that is everywhere in media.
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A classic that informed all of speculative fiction to come after.
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And I have to say, I didn't think I would
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like it this much. Not only are these genuinely great stories...
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but they also offer a window into so many different things.
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The brave new world of early television, the anxieties of
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the 50s and 60s, the timelessness of good critical thinking,
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and the mind of a legend, Rod Serling. Before watching it,
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I thought it was just campy pulp fiction. I thought
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these were classics because they were novel and fun, and
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that most of the appeal would have worn off by now.
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But it turns out you don't create a classic that
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permeates culture this deeply just by putting a man in
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a muzzy suit or spinning a door around in space.
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You do it by exploring interesting ideas. I only talked
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about a few episodes in this video, but I bet
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you want to know what happens to the woman who
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buys a thimble on the ninth floor of an eight-floor
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department store, don't you? The newlyweds who discover a machine
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that can tell the future? The hypochondriac who makes a
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deal with the devil for complete invulnerability? Come on, I
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know you do. And there's only one way to find out.
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I think it's time you entered the Twilight Zone. By
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which I mean, go watch it. Trust me. Actually, in
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some ways, life is a little weirder and a little
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bit scarier than the Twilight Zone. Sometimes it can feel
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like you're just trapped in an alternate reality, nowhere near
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the life you actually want to be living. Did you
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know that most people spend about 80,000 hours of their
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life just working? Doing tasks to get money to pay
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for the things they need. Don't you wish sometimes that
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you could just get out of that grind? Spend that
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time to make a difference in the world? There has
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to be a way to work your career, earn your bread...
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and feel like your existence is meaningful at the same time, right?
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A better way to spend those 80,000 hours? Well, I'm
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and keep making stuff up. I'll see you next week.
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Bye!