Futility Closet - 235-Leon Festinger and the Alien Apocalypse

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from Saturn's hexagon to the illusion of popularity. This is episode 235. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1955, aliens from the planet Clarion contacted a Chicago housewife to warn her that the end of the world was imminent. Psychologist Leon Festinger saw this as a unique opportunity to test a new theory about human

Starting point is 00:00:39 cognition. In today's show, we'll follow him inside a UFO religion as it approaches the apocalypse. We'll also try to determine when exactly LBJ became president and puzzle over some wet streets. In 1934, an earthquake struck the Indian state of Bihar. It was felt over a wide area, but the actual damage was limited. Afterward, a strange thing happened. Rumors started to circulate that a worse disaster was about to happen, a flood, a cyclone, or another earthquake. Psychologists found that hard to understand. The prevailing theory at the time said that people respond to reinforcers. If they're rewarded for a behavior, they'll pursue it, and if they're punished, they'll stop.

Starting point is 00:01:23 So why would people spread rumors that would increase their fear and anxiety? There seemed to be no reason for it. A psychologist named Leon Festinger thought he saw an answer. The people who spread the rumors had just been through a violent crisis and probably felt a strong reaction of fear, but they hadn't suffered much actual damage. That created a conflict. They felt fear, but they couldn't see anything to be afraid of. So maybe they were starting the rumors in order to resolve that conflict. By predicting a future disaster, they were finding a way to justify the fear and anxiety they felt. Festinger and his colleagues spent seven years building that notion into a theory, which they called cognitive dissonance.

Starting point is 00:02:03 Essentially, it says that people feel discomfort if the beliefs they hold are inconsistent. That can lead them to respond in dismaying ways. If I'm invested in a belief and you show me evidence that it's wrong, I'm more likely to reframe the evidence than to change my beliefs. Festinger wrote, A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources.

Starting point is 00:02:25 Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point. Festinger found evidence for his theory in historical accounts of millennial and messianic movements. He found that when a prophecy failed to come true, believers who'd invested in it only became more fervent and tried to convert other people. They felt genuinely troubled when their belief was shown to be wrong, but since they'd committed to it in a way that was hard to give up, they tried to reduce the conflict by convincing the people around them. It was an intriguing theory, but Festinger had no way to test it. He could only look for evidence in historical records. But then one day in 1955, he saw a striking article in his local newspaper.

Starting point is 00:02:57 The headline read, Prophecy from Planet Clarion Call to City, Flee That Flood. The story said that a housewife named Marion Keech had received messages from the planet Clarion warning that a great flood would inundate the earth on December 21st. These beings, who she called the guardians, had visited our planet in flying saucers and saw fault lines in the earth's crust. They warned her that the flood would destroy most of civilization. The story was bizarre, but Festinger realized it gave him a unique chance, a chance to test his theory under natural conditions. He and his colleagues decided to study Keech and her

Starting point is 00:03:30 followers to see how they would react when the flood failed to materialize. Keech, the housewife, had come to the prophecy through a strange set of circumstances. She had woken up one morning to discover she had a gift for automatic writing. She could hold a pencil and it would write messages guided by unseen forces. Those turned out to be spiritual beings from the planets Clarion and Cirrus, and in April she started to receive messages from Sananda, who later identified himself as the modern identity of Jesus. He told her to spread the word of his coming, and he promised to return to teach her followers. She wasn't very successful in convincing other people, but eventually she connected with Thomas Armstrong, a physician in Collegeville, a town about 200 miles away.

Starting point is 00:04:09 I should mention that these aren't the real names. Festinger wanted to protect their identities. Armstrong and his wife were interested in flying saucers, and they decided that the Guardians had intended them to meet Marion Keech, who by now was receiving up to 10 messages a day. I would like to tell you about the messages, but they are hard even to summarize. My notes say they're an irrational, incoherent, and constantly changing set of ideas. Basically, the Guardians were superior beings who wanted to advance our spiritual development and to prepare us for certain changes. They said, there is light, and it shall be revealed to you. You are coming to the end of the Age of Darkness.

Starting point is 00:04:41 They made some small predictions of minor events. They said that Keech would meet a man or that she had to wait on a street corner for some unspecified event, but those led nowhere. But then on August 15th, Sananda gave her a dire warning. He said that on December 21st, a great flood would sweep the world clean, new mountains would be thrown up, and a cosmic house cleaning would create a new order upon the earth. When Keech told Armstrong about this, he mimeographed an open letter to American editors and publishers warning of the disaster. He sent it to 50 people, but none of them asked for more information. In September, he sent a second release, and the Lake

Starting point is 00:05:13 City Herald sent a reporter to see Mrs. Keech. That interview led to the article that Leon Festinger had read. In Festinger's theory, these warnings don't count as proselytizing. Sananda had asked the group to spread the news of the flood, but he didn't ask the seekers to try to convince anyone. He said that those who were ready would hear the message. But the warnings were important in another way. By making their beliefs public, the group members were committing to them, staking their public reputation to this belief. If Festinger was right, that meant that if the prophecy failed to come true, the group's members would be less likely to renounce their views and more likely to try to reinforce them by converting other people. At the moment, that certainly wasn't the

Starting point is 00:05:49 case. Even when Festinger and the other psychologists saw the story in the paper and approached her, Marian Keech made no attempt to persuade or convert them. She described her beliefs but said little about the cataclysm. But they learned that the Armstrongs ran a more active group that followed Keech's teachings. They called themselves the Seekers. There were 15 to 20 people who met on Sunday afternoons, and they sent mimeographed excerpts of Keech's writings to a mailing list of about 200 people and organizations, such as flying saucer clubs and metaphysical societies. So in early November, members of Festinger's group approached the Seekers,

Starting point is 00:06:23 presenting themselves as ordinary people so they could observe the meetings firsthand. Armstrong seemed pleased with their interest but didn't try to recruit them and didn't mention the flood or even the meetings at first. The Armstrongs believed that those who were ready would be sent and weren't interested in convincing unbelievers. Armstrong told one student, you can't explain the prophecy or the coming catastrophe to anyone who isn't ready, and those who are ready will be sent to this house. As Festinger's observers established themselves in the group, they recorded what they found. Between mid-November and December 20th, they encountered 33 people who either attended the Seekers' meetings or visited the Armstrong house on some errand related to the movement. Of those 33, they classified eight as heavily committed, that is, they believed in the flood and had taken some action that would be hard to reverse, such as quitting a job. Seven were

Starting point is 00:07:03 less ardently committed, and 18 were more or less hangers-on. Let us pause here to admit that there are some problems with this study. It's anecdotal, for one thing. It draws big conclusions from the limited experience of a small group of people. And some of the investigators lied about paranormal experiences in order to get into the group, which is an ethical problem. Also, there's the danger that all these undercover scientists were influencing the proceedings. At one meeting, there were 10 group members and four observers, meaning that nearly a third of the people there were scientists. They tried not to influence the discussion, but just the bare fact of their attendance must have seemed like some kind of endorsement.

Starting point is 00:07:36 But the group members wouldn't have known they were scientists, right? No. No, they were presenting themselves as just people who had an honest interest in this group. But just by being there, they could make it seem like more people believed in these ideas than actually did? Right. I mean, that stands to reason. I see. Which you can imagine would sort of reinforce everyone, even if they never opened their mouths. One of the most committed believers was Armstrong himself because he'd been asked to resign from his position on the health service staff of a local college. They'd received complaints that he was using his position to teach unorthodox religious beliefs.

Starting point is 00:08:11 He took it well. He thought it was part of the Guardian's plan, preparing him to leave this world for a better one. But it meant he was really invested in that belief now. In a sense, he needed the prophecy to come true. In late November, several other followers quit their jobs on orders from the Guardians, but the group still wasn't reaching out to the public. If anything, they were trying to maintain secrecy. At one point, some children told Armstrong they'd heard rumors about the end of the world, and he dismissed them. And Marion Keech worried that her house was under surveillance and took steps to avoid the attention of police. By mid-December, reporters were pestering Armstrong, hoping to write humorous stories about the prophecy, and even some readers of the newspaper articles were making sincere inquiries about the

Starting point is 00:08:48 flood. Armstrong responded judiciously to all of these. He said they were not trying to get anybody into anything. Throughout all of this, the tension was mounting because the group still hadn't been told how they'd be saved from the coming cataclysm. Finally, at 10 o'clock on the morning of December 20th, Marion Keats received a message for the whole group. It told them that at midnight they'd be put into cars and taken to a place where they would board flying saucers. The message had arrived just in time. The group believed that the world would be flooded just a few hours after that. That evening, the group gathered anxiously at Marianne Keech's house.

Starting point is 00:09:19 Some of them had left jobs, schools, and even spouses, or gave away money or possessions, believing that the world they knew was about to be destroyed. They removed all the metal from their clothing, thinking it would burn them on the flying saucer. Finally, Mrs. Keats received a message that a spaceman would come to the door precisely at midnight to lead them to safety. At 1115, they put on their overcoats and stood waiting in the living room. The clock's hands crept toward 12, reached it, and then passed it. According to Festinger's theory, this was the critical moment. The people who had committed to the prophecy now held two conflicting beliefs.

Starting point is 00:09:50 They had invested enormously in this belief, made great personal sacrifices, and they could see now that it wasn't coming true. We'd all like to live in a world where people in that position would simply give up their belief. The evidence was plain that they'd simply been mistaken. But we don't live in that world. These people had invested too much in the belief. They'd made commitments in their lives that would be difficult or impossible to undo. They pressed Marian Keech for an explanation.

Starting point is 00:10:12 She insisted that there must be a plan. The group must have failed to understand it. While they were talking, one of Festinger's observers stepped outside to get some air, and Armstrong, thinking he'd been disillusioned, dashed out to give him a pep talk. What he said was an almost perfect endorsement of Festinger's theory. He said, priests don't have it, and you have to look closely to find it even in the Bible. I've taken an awful beating in the last few months, just an awful beating. But I do know who I am, and I know what I've got to do. I know I've got to teach, just as Jesus knew, and I don't care what happens tonight. I can't afford to doubt. Festinger had predicted that once the prophecy failed, the seekers would

Starting point is 00:10:58 try to justify their beliefs by trying to spread them among other people. He'd written, if more and more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly it must, after all, be correct. That happened, and it happened at 4.45 a.m., less than five hours after the prophecy failed. After a lot of discussion, Mary and Keach received a message that the flood had been called off. The guardians told her that the little group had spread so much light by demonstrating their faith that night that God had decided to spare the world. And that was followed quickly by another message, a Christmas message to the people of Earth, with instructions to release it immediately to the newspapers.

Starting point is 00:11:34 That turned their failure into a success. Their belief in the prophecy hadn't been wrong. In fact, their belief had saved the world. It also fulfilled Festinger's prediction. In his 1956 book about all this, he wrote, The whole atmosphere of the group changed abruptly, and with it, their behavior changed too. From this point on, their behavior toward the newspaper showed an almost violent contrast to what it had been. Instead of avoiding newspaper reporters and feeling that the attention they were getting in the press was painful, they almost instantly became avid seekers of publicity.

Starting point is 00:12:00 Keech told someone, this is the first time I've ever called them. I've never had anything to tell them before, but now I feel it's urgent. So wouldn't a possible interpretation be, though, that they believed they'd been, like you said, that they'd been successful, so they'd been rewarded for being faithful because they'd saved the world. And so it's not this cognitive dissonance thing. It's not that, well well we have to convert other people so we can justify ourselves but more the reinforcement of our faith our our belief system has saved the world so we've been justified in being right yeah just a natural ebullience i

Starting point is 00:12:40 think that makes a lot of sense and apparently they were told to contact the newspapers by at least one of these messages. Yeah. So I was just wondering if that's another possible interpretation rather than Festinger's interpretation. It seems to me it is. I think it's a very interesting study, but I think, yeah, it does omit of different interpretations than it tends to get. It occurred to me as I was researching this that there's some non-zero chance

Starting point is 00:13:05 that there really were spiritual beings on the planet Clarion. We have to keep that on the list somewhere. I guess we can't know for sure. Although I guess the example of what Armstrong did say to the scientist who stepped outside, I mean, that really did kind of illustrate very well what Festinger would have predicted.

Starting point is 00:13:21 And this was, I mean, the principle of cognitive distance was borne out in later experiments as well. Armstrong and another believer took turns phoning every major news service and local newspaper. On December 21st alone, Armstrong and Keech made five tape recordings for radio broadcast, and over the next three days, the group drew up new press releases

Starting point is 00:13:38 and lifted its ban on photographers. They called in the press two more times and granted extensive interviews to reporters. Keech even received spiritual messages for them. Where before the group had been almost secretive, now almost every visitor to the house was accepted. In the end, of the 11 members of the Lake City group who had seen the prophecy fail, only two completely gave up their belief in Mary and Keech's writings, and both of those had only been lightly committed to begin with.

Starting point is 00:14:01 Five members came through the failure with their own conviction and commitment unshaken. The group did break up eventually, but not through lack of faith. Ironically, their attempts to spread the word brought on such ridicule that they were unable to continue. Festinger went on to study cognitive dissonance in many other contexts and found it generally borne out. In one famous study, he and James M. Carlsmith asked subjects to do a boring task, and then afterward, as a favor, they asked them to tell the next participant that the task had been enjoyable. They paid them either $1 or $20 for that favor. Afterward, the subjects who'd been paid $20 had no trouble admitting that the task really had been boring, despite what they'd been paid to say. The subjects who'd been paid only $1 were less willing to admit that. Instead, they tended to say that they had genuinely enjoyed

Starting point is 00:14:43 the task and had recommended it honestly. That seems to suggest that people are more comfortable telling a lie for $20 than for $1. In the latter case, they may convince themselves they'd really been telling the truth. Within a decade of Marion Keech's failed prophecy, Festinger's theory had generated over a thousand experiments that revolutionized social psychology, looking beyond simple behavior to consider the mental processes that lay behind it. The Duke University psychologist Edward Jones called the dissonance research movement the most important development in social psychology to date, and Leon Festinger became the fifth most cited psychologist of the 20th century. His insights may have dismaying implications for human society,

Starting point is 00:15:21 but they explain interactions that all of us have every day. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us and is supported entirely by our awesome listeners. We are very grateful to everyone who helps us to be able to keep making the show. And this week, we're sending out a special thank you to Alan Thompson, our newest super patron. If you want to join Alan and all our other wonderful patrons who make possible our continuing celebration of the quirky and the curious, please go to patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the section of our website. I also want to thank everyone who sent in donations to the show,

Starting point is 00:16:10 which are also really appreciated. So thank you so much to everyone who helps keep Futility Closet going. We really couldn't do this without you. The puzzle in Episode 224 was about how Air Force One has taken off one more time than it's landed because President Nixon's resignation took effect while he was mid-flight aboard Air Force One. I covered some updates on this topic in Episode 229, aboard Air Force One. I covered some updates on this topic in episode 229, mostly about Johnson's inauguration on Air Force One before it took off after Kennedy's death, and I have some more updates today. Blake Helms wrote, Hi Sharon, Greg, and Sasha. I immediately knew the answer to the puzzle about Air Force One because I've always been fascinated with presidential trivia. It also brought to mind a couple of other things that I thought you might be interested in. There has been a lot of debate about whether a person becomes

Starting point is 00:17:08 president at the time of the swearing-in or at a specified moment. For example, the 20th Amendment states, the terms of the president and vice president shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, which moved the inauguration date from March 4th. Many scholars interpret this as a transfer that takes place to the new president-elect at precisely noon Eastern Time on January 20th. However, Article II, Section 1, Clause 8 of the Constitution states that before he enters the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation. Some interpret this to mean that there is no president until the oath has been taken, while others interpret this to mean that we always have a president, but he or she can't

Starting point is 00:17:50 begin making presidential decisions until the oath has been given. This is not normally a problem since the oath is given during the transition, or in the case when January 20th falls on a Sunday, in private before the official inauguration the next day. The problem arises when you have the death of a president as in the case of JFK. The 25th Amendment states, in case of the removal of the president from office or of his death or resignation, the vice president shall become president. Depending on your view, LBJ became president at 1 p.m. Central Time on November 22, the moment Kennedy was declared dead, while others contend he didn't become president until he took the oath of office,

Starting point is 00:18:30 which is precisely why he insisted on being sworn in before taking off, as he wanted there to be no question that any orders he might give were valid, since at this point we were not sure that this wasn't a prelude to a Soviet attack. I thought this was a very interesting point that Blake raised of when exactly does someone become the president, especially in the case of the death of the existing president. It's kind of scary that something so momentous hasn't been quite nailed down. With great specificity. Yeah. Because you can imagine situations in which it would make quite a difference. Yeah, because you're in a kind of crisis mode already. You'd want to be very clear about exactly who's a difference. Yeah, because you're in a kind of crisis mode already.

Starting point is 00:19:05 They want to be very clear about exactly who's in charge. Yeah, I would think so. And I wasn't able to find much that actually clearly answered this question. Though oddly enough, I did find an article in The Independent from 2013 that stated quite plainly, the moment a bullet had killed JFK two cars ahead, Johnson had automatically become president of the United States. Though they do note that,

Starting point is 00:19:29 I don't know what the Independent was basing their statement on, and I imagine they might have access to experts that I don't, but what I found in looking into this question was that the U.S. Constitution, as originally written, was rather vague about how exactly presidential succession would work. The Constitution established the office of the vice president primarily so that there would be an available successor to the president, and in Article II, Section 1 states, in case of the removal of the president from office or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the vice president. But what exactly does that mean? Would the vice president simply be acting president until a special election was held and another president was chosen? Or did the vice president

Starting point is 00:20:21 become the new president for the rest of the previous president's term? And did only the powers and duties of the presidency devolve to the vice president? Or did the office itself? This lack of specificity became a real issue in 1841, when William Henry Harrison became the first U.S. president to die in office, 30 days after he was elected. Many members of Harrison's cabinet initially called John Tyler Vice President Acting as President, and there was a bit of a debate in Congress over what powers Tyler had

Starting point is 00:20:51 and whether his title should be Acting President, Vice President, or President. Tyler was determined that he was now President in all the fullness of that position, and his view of the matter was widely enough accepted that it carried the day, though he was popularly called his accidency. And it didn't help that Tyler wasn't very popular, even within his own party. The Whig Party's leaders had chosen Harrison partly for his malleability and lack of strong opinions. But when one of the party leaders, Secretary of State Daniel Webster, told Tyler that it was the custom to settle all administrative issues by having the cabinet vote

Starting point is 00:21:30 on them and the president only got one vote, Tyler replied, I am the president and I shall be held responsible for my administration. I shall be pleased to avail myself of your counsel and advice, but I can never consent to being dictated to as to what I shall do or not do. When you think otherwise, your resignations will be accepted. Tyler went on to have a rather contentious presidency, and the members of his cabinet did end up resigning. He battled mightily with his own party, which actually finally disowned him and even tried to initiate the first presidential impeachment proceedings against him. But the precedent that Tyler had established for the transfer of the presidency lived on. It sounds as though, even then, it wasn't quite established formally, that it was really sort

Starting point is 00:22:16 of a precedent or that Tyler's authority was accepted rather than established. Right, yes. It wasn't explicit in the Constitution as to how exactly this was going to work or what exactly Tyler was now. So he just kind of sidled in? Well, yeah. Well, he kind of stronger than sidled. But he kind of basically said, no, I'm the full president, and that's it. And enough people said, okay, I guess we can go along with that. That they just did it that way.

Starting point is 00:22:42 That they just did. They swore him in and decided, okay, we'll consider him to be president. And then that just set a precedent for all the following years. But a precedent isn't really quite a... Right, exactly. So there wasn't anything explicit in the Constitution still about it, but they just sort of were like, well, this is the way we did it, so we'll just keep doing it this way. However, there actually was still no constitutional provision at all for filling a vice presidential vacancy, with no precedent even. one vice president who'd resigned, seven who died in office, and another eight who had taken over for presidents who had died, which left the office vacant until the next election was held 18 times. Congress had already been debating a constitutional amendment to allow for the office to be filled, as well as to specify various issues around the transfer of presidential power when Kennedy's assassination gave rather more impetus to that effort.

Starting point is 00:23:44 of presidential power when Kennedy's assassination gave rather more impetus to that effort. The proposed amendment to address these issues passed in Congress in 1965 and officially became the 25th Amendment in 1967. However, at the time of Kennedy's death, this amendment didn't exist yet, so I imagine that when Johnson took the office, they would have still been operating under the precedent that Tyler had set set rather than any explicit constitutional language. That's amazingly late in history for those questions still to be undecided formally. Yes. Yeah, it is surprising. I mean, you can understand how the first one kind of caught them off guard, like, oh, we didn't really think this through. But then nobody said, you know, we ought to maybe do something about that.

Starting point is 00:24:21 Well, they had been debating it. They just hadn't actually gotten there yet. But it is amazing to hear that the vice presidential slot was empty 18 times. In episode 229, I also read a point raised by Jonathan Kaufman that if Johnson's inauguration had taken place in the air rather than on the tarmac, then this might have meant that the aircraft would have taken off carrying the call sign of Air Force Two, and then landed as Air Force One. And that might have balanced out the change in designation from Nixon's resignation, leaving Air Force One with an equal number of takeoffs and landings. Blake also followed up on this in his email. The situation that one listener mentioned about Air Force Two becoming Air Force One nearly happened on March

Starting point is 00:25:05 20th, 1981, after Reagan was shot. If Reagan had died, the 25th Amendment meant that George H.W. Bush would have become president while traveling back to D.C. on Air Force Two. Also, had Bush chosen to invoke the 25th Amendment impairment clause while Reagan was in surgery, which several members of the cabinet urged him to do but Bush never seriously considered, he would have become acting president and thus Air Force Two would have become Air Force One. And I guess if that had happened, then we wouldn't have had a puzzle. So good. And Eric Waldo wrote, Greetings, podcasters and podcat. On the subject of having a different number of takeoffs and landings, there's the case of Chuck Yeager. Twice he took off and had to bail out of

Starting point is 00:25:50 aircraft before landing, but most of his X-plane research flights were carried aloft by a bomber aircraft with its own flight crew, released, conducted the planned testing, and then landed. I don't recall the exact number, but over the course of his career, he has more landings than takeoffs. There can't be too many pilots who can make that claim. Maybe one of you can make a lateral thinking puzzle out of it. Many thanks for the podcast. That would make a great puzzle. Might be hard to guess.

Starting point is 00:26:17 Thanks so much to everyone who writes into us. We always learn so much from our listeners, and we're really glad to get your comments and feedback. If you have any that you'd like to send, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And I still really appreciate it when you include name pronunciation tips. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation, and I have to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. In TV and movie scenes shot outdoors at night, the streets are very often wet.

Starting point is 00:26:54 Why is this? Okay. Do they spray them with something? With water, yeah, presumably, yes. They spray them with water. So the people making, presumably, yes. They spray them with water. So the people making the movie deliberately spray the streets with water? Yes.

Starting point is 00:27:09 Before they start filming? Yes. Okay, why would you do that? And this doesn't have anything to do with the fact that a lot of movies just happen to take place in the rain or something, I don't know. No, no, that's not it.

Starting point is 00:27:24 Okay, so they spray the streets with water and they do this primarily at night as opposed to during the day? Yes. Okay, does this matter where they are filming? No. Okay, so it doesn't matter, does it matter what time of year it is? No. Okay, do they want the streets to look wet? No, I wouldn't say so. Do they want the streets to look not dry? They want the streets to look not something. Would you say that or no?

Starting point is 00:27:58 That's not quite right. I wouldn't say that within the movie or TV show they want that effect. They want that effect, okay. Not for reasons of the plot or anything. Okay. Does this have anything to do with so certain things will make less noise? Like if you're rolling a camera along the street or something, if it's wet, it'll make less noise somehow? That's a good guess.

Starting point is 00:28:20 It won't raise dust? Are they trying to clean the street first because they don't want there to be debris on the street? No. Does it matter what kind of movie or TV show is being shot? No, it doesn't. Okay. And they're spraying them with water specifically. Anything besides water? Not that I know of. I mean, water would do the trick. Just water. And it's not that they're trying to clean them or settle down dust or... Do they want to change the appearance of the street in some way? Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:51 They do want to change the appearance of the street. Are they trying to obscure something that's on the street? Cover up, obscure, or hide something that's on the street? I think I'm going to say yes to that. Hmm. But spraying them would actually make them shinier. So I was thinking maybe they're trying to avoid... Does this have anything to do with light in any way?

Starting point is 00:29:15 It does have something to do with light. They want the streets to reflect more light? No. No. They want the streets to not reflect light. Yes. Somehow being wet will make them reflect less light or less of a certain kind of light. You're very much on the right track. Okay. Does this have something to do with the fact that they're using artificial lighting in the filming? Yes. Okay. So you're using artificial lighting, but you don't want that

Starting point is 00:29:45 somehow to reflect in a particular kind of way on the street. Right. So if the street is wet, that will somehow change the reflective abilities of the street. I'm dancing around if I can't quite get it. Yeah, you're super close. Okay, let me think. Does it matter where the lighting is coming from? It's just artificial lighting used in filming. That's right. Do I need to know anything more about the lighting?

Starting point is 00:30:14 No, I think that'll do it. That'll do it. You're so close, I'm wondering if I should just give it to you. Just in regular life, if you see a street wet down, what essentially changes about its appearance? I think of it as being shinier and more reflective, but apparently I'm wrong. But about its color or its... It looks blacker? Yeah, that's basically it.

Starting point is 00:30:37 These scenes are often lit from multiple directions, which casts conflicting shadows and gives the game away. The scene looks like a movie set. So wetting the road removes that problem. You don't see lighter shadows on the street, only the reflections of lights that are directly opposite the camera, as you'd see in real life. So the scene looks like an ordinary street.

Starting point is 00:30:53 Huh. Basically, wetting the road kills the shadows. Interesting. I thought that's a clever and inexpensive solution to a difficult problem. Yeah. We are always on the lookout for more lateral thinking puzzles.

Starting point is 00:31:04 So if you have a puzzle that you'd like for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. If you would like to become one of our wonderful patrons to help support our show and get bonus material such as extra puzzles, more discussions on some of the stories, outtakes, peeks behind the scenes, and updates on Sasha, our furry full-time mascot. Then check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset

Starting point is 00:31:32 or see the support a section of our website at futilitycloset.com where you can find that link or a donate button if you prefer. At the website, you can also graze through Greg's collection of over 10, 000 concise curiosities browse the futility closet store check out the futility closet books and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered if you have any questions or comments for us you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com all of our music was written and performed by the incomparable Doug Ross.

Starting point is 00:32:07 Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 235-Leon Festinger and the Alien Apocalypse

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