Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Study 179 - Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Part 3 (Patreon)

Published:
2026-09-17 15:53:31
Edited:
2026-09-17 15:54:08
Imported:
2026-09
Tags:

Downloads

Content

Tune in for the uplifting conclusion of Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney!

Special thanks to our reader, Erik Peabody! Check out his new horror fiction podcast: DEGENERATED!

Next up: INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHER FILMS!

Files

Comments

Rick Hound

Listening to this is reminding me of the manga series Parasyte (the details for them seem very similar to these so he likely watched or read Body-Snatchers) and the Shea story “The Autopsy”. Now I’m trying to decide which parasitical entity would be more terrifying to get taken over by…maybe the Shea one, won’t say why since that would delve into spoilers.

Wulf Mungus

"farting around" is all I've ever aspired to do..

Castle Weirdington

The world needs a horror comedy adaptation where at the climax we get a montage of 5 other groups of people we’ve never seen before who are coincidentally also doing the explosive action climaxes to their own respective fights against the pods.

Jb Lee

I've NEVER bought the conclusion of this novel. Ruins the whole thing for me. "These hooman bee-engs fight back, so we're leaving, although we could peacefully wait them out and they'll go to sleep eventually." And none of the movies I've seen have used it, either. But I'm cool with you guys enjoying it, that's great.

Wulf Mungus

Thinking back to the first episode, I couldn't help but notice all the men had been changed first. Cuz no one would believe the women.. I thought this aliens are so insidious, their using our own sexism against us! But was not expecting the characters to call it out in the story itself!

Jason Thompson

Agreed! Yeah, it’s kinda nice in the moment for the heroes to win, but it really comes off as a cliche “they can’t beat the power of love and courage!” ending. I can’t think of another example where the movies have the darker bleaker ending and the original book has the so-called Hollywood ending.

Jason Thompson

Also, if the pods have no emotion, what’s up with that overheard conversation earlier where they seem to be dripping with hatred for humanity? Inconsistent!

S Jayne Bradley

Wait a minute... you've been putting people to SLEEP for nearly 20 years on a PODcast... no wonder I feel less anxious when I listen to you

Jb Lee

Yep, just this side of "I know you're still in there, fight it!"

Wulf Mungus

It does seem to be a bit convenient, right at the most crucial moment. But it also reminds me of certain predators in Nature. A mountain lion can easily kill you, even if u fight back. But it risk getting hurt in the process, which compromises it's ability to hunt. Didn't they burn like a whole field of these pods? Maybe that was too many loses for the start. Maybe if they had a stronger foothold, they would have stuck it out... 🤔

Viking Guitar

As much as I love the whole sexism/opiate angle, I think there was an even better plan using the biggest difference between us and the pod people: reproduction. So, check this. Miles and Becky get the pod people to give them some alone time, but instead of the skeleton plan, they actually just get some sexy time. Then, they acquiesce and let the pods clone them. BUT! There's a trap. The now-cloned Becky is pregnant with Miles' baby, also in clone form. But since the pod people can't sexually reproduce, this is an anomaly. A "daywalker" if you will. Then, the pod person gives birth to this daywalker, who, fueled by rage at the death of his true parents, goes on a rampage, hunting the last of the pod people to the end of the earth.

Tara Murphy

Sorry, I'm running behind, as usual. Given that you covered The Crawling Horror and an episode of Friday the 13th, I wanted to share with you an episode of the 1970's Canadian series "The Swiss Family Robinson." This episode scared the crap out of me when I was a kid, and was my first introduction to Lovecraftian style horror. It is called "The Intruder." The father in the show played the older man in Friday the 13th, the series. https://youtu.be/CbYHfaTlVvo

Patrick Ziselberger

I know you're covering the two classic movies from the 50s and 70s, and I think you're safe in skipping the later adaptations, which are half-assed. However, I think you should consider covering Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's "The World's End" which is definitely inspired by Body Snatchers.

Jim Cannon

This is such a conservative story. Whether that's the anti-communist theme of the film, or the anti-technology theme of the book, it all looks backward at an idyllic past (which didn't exist) full of Americans with guts and gumption and telephone operators who help you make a call instead of direct, unmitigated communication between two parties. I think a lot of science fiction, in attempting to warn about some new technology, ends up being conservative in strange ways. And I type this on the eve of the oncoming AI Apocalypse, so I'm not stranger to the threats of unregulated and new technology. But the victory of the small town Americans who save the Earth just by persevering and trying hard enough is kind of a pat ending. Even though, given the behavior of predators in the animal kingdom, it makes a kind of sense that the pods would just bail at the first sign of resistance. I guess the aliens are just different, not superior.

Jb Lee

I can give you a tale where the movie has the dystopian ending and the book has the Hollywood happy finish -- A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. But Kubrick was working from the American edition, which OMITTED the final chapter. You don't know how much I'd give to have that last chapter with his cast. Worlds of If!

Our old pal Brendan Gardiner

If Chris were to throw the book right after reading a description of the dog with the human face (which doesn’t appear in the book, thank goodness), he could hardly be faulted. The urge to throw a book when you encounter a scary dog in it goes back to something primal. We think the dog will chase it and then we can escape

Doug Bolden

(Caveat: I do not think this is what was intended and I am sure the ending was literal, but...for funsies...) It is awfully convenient that right as Miles and Becky get captured and give up... suddenly "Miles" changes the story to be about how easy it is to beat the aliens and there is NO problem here and *everyone* should move to Mill Valley! All the aliens left! Cheap real estate! Good neighbors! Gray fluff is good for insulation! Don't worry about the large pods in the basement, just local fauna! And sure, you might say that the fact that Miles is writing up this story is proof he is not a pod person because they do not create but that sounds like what a pod person would *claim* to throw us off the track. Bad science? That's right, you should just ignore the whole thing.! Just don't forget to visit sunny, beautiful Mill Valley. Neighbors are really quiet. Helpful. Will visit any time you need something. In 5 years, it'll just be like everywhere else!

Jason Thompson

We stop at Mill Valley for coffee whenever we are driving north out of San Francisco! I gotta be careful to check the trunk of the car from now on!

Doug Bolden

Mill Valley: Great coffee and a place to let your worries go!

Doug Bolden

Also, it occurred to me a few hours after writing the above that we have in the story a "confirmed" case of a person recording the invasion and then suddenly explaining how it was no big deal on record. So I'll see the Chekhov's Skeletons and raise you "Chekhov's Written Record being Recanted." Thank you for tuning into my "Everyone in Fiction Is an Unreliable Narrator" Podcast. See you next week where we discuss "Ishmael" crashing a ship and blaming it on a so-called white whale.

Jim Cannon

My very muddled point I guess is that technology itself is neutral, its the uses human beings put that technology to that makes the bad things happen.

Christopher T.

I feel like there was a missed opportunity for the doctor protagonist to take advantage of the Pod Person being a perfect physical simulacrum. “Wait, Dr. Kauffman’s allergies!” And then he busts out the door and throws peanuts in the Pod Replacement’s face. Like how a villain will copy Superman’s powers but also become vulnerable to Kryptonite.

KateSherrod

All these years, I assumed all those oversized skeletons in everybody's yards came from some horrible factory in China, but now I know they're just pods with no sense of scale, that got duped! You never know what you're going to learn when you Study Strange.

Eldritch Golem (JPM)

Chad's reading Vonnegut's "we’re dancing animals" quote struck me as a surprising juxtaposition to the passage in At the Mountains of Madness where Danforth and co. learn that the Old Ones created man as "a shambling, primitive mammal, used sometimes for food and sometimes as an amusing buffoon" which Chad also took time to remind listeners of a few episodes ago. So we have two visions of cosmic horror. One is Lovecraft's where the discovery that we are "dancing animals" created by prehistoric crinoids is the ultimate existential nightmare, and the other is Finney's where us being "dancing animals" is ultimately what saves us from a fate worth that death at the tendrils of unfeeling pod-people.

margarks

I know you are going to be covering the films in extra credit, just thought I'd share that I just came back from a comicon in Portland where Veronica Cartwright did a panel and someone asked her about the 1978 adaptation and how she felt about the ending. She said that she was completely shocked because the director had taken her aside and told her the movie would end one way and then taken Donald Sutherland aside and told him how the movie would actually end. So she had no idea that was going to happen and just like in the Alien chest bursting scene her reactions were completely geniune. Poor Veronica. At this point, if I were her, after Invasion and then Alien, I probably would have quit acting lol.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

Hiding in tall grass while the entire town is looking for you and expecting you to escape via the highway is very Innsmouth! In other news, my partner has been watching "Pluribus," which is body-snatcher-adjacent. Imagine if an alien virus made humanity into a sort of (non-cybernetic) Borg collective, only really polite and helpful and trying to make you happy in cheerfully creepy ways.

Matthew Henry

Vonnegut's quote says he'll see some great looking "babes" not babies. 😂

Pete Williams

Regarding Generative AI and Art. I think I've done more drawing, with pencils pen and ink on paper in the last month than I have in years. I was arguing with pro AI people and it really clarified to me that the point is not the end result, the fun is in the doing. It lit a fire under me and reminded that I love the act of drawing as much or more than the end result. I'm not doing anything special but these barbarian dudes and ladies aren't going to draw themselves.

Conor MacNamara

I like to imagine the owner of the Santa Mira Bargain Jubilee is not a pod person and is simply thrilled at all the free publicity they are getting.

Alan Ricks

The humans WIN in the book? Default Default Default!

Falconhoof

You're definitely on to something, with the parallels to AI. It's increasingly sucking the purpose out of human life, in much the same way that the bodysnatchers do in the story. I recently read an article about the number of people who use AI to apply for jobs. The twist is, that HR departments are also using AI models to read and assess those same applications. So it can happen that AI writes a job application and then evaluates it, with little to no human involvement. The applicant and the assesor both feel like they've been efficient and productive with their time, without realising that the whole exercise was entirely pointless. If this kind of activity is the end point of AI, then humans may as well be mindless automatons. Chad's point about dancing reminds me of something Alan Watts spoke about. If you view life as a journey, where you hope to reach a goal as quickly and efficiently as possible, then you've missed the point. He suggests life is more like dancing, where the movement is playful and circular, with no end point in mind. Here's an extract from a talk of his: https://youtu.be/J20NCR0KLOw?is=URn6xn9Igy6EGkby I highly recommend giving him a listen, if you have 10 minutes to spare.

Pagurus

I'd argue that the ending is unsatisfying more on a narrative level than on a logical level. In the cosmic horror genre we'd expect to see the doom of humantiy taking its course. In a pulp adventure story we'd want to see the heroes solving the problem with their own competence. This end gives us neither - and to my knowledge, there is no established genre where the problem just goes away on its own. EDIT: Okay, maybe in something like a Shakespearean comedy, everything resolves kind of on its own in the end, but that's not what you sign up for, when you pick up "Invadion of the Body Snatchers", right?

Casey

Thank you for covering this excellent story! I’m certain I wouldn’t have read it without hearing about it here. I am one of the sappy few, apparently, who, at the ending, was actually moved to entertain a glimmer of optimism on behalf of humankind. In fact, this will definitely be on my re-read list, because simply put, the book cheered me up. Cheers and applause for the coverage and the fantastic reading! 👏🏻