Director's Notes 183 - The Nephilim

This is not an episode that requires understanding. It’s more about tone and language than story, and there are no secrets to unearth here. The weird you see is the weird you get.

However, if you do still wish to understand this episode, there are two things you must know:

The first is who the Nephilim are. They are an obscure bit of biblical lore, mentioned only three times in the Hebrew bible, and each time without much context or detail. What we know from those passages is that the Nephilim are giants and mighty warriors who lived on earth before the flood, and disappeared after. Surprisingly, these antediluvian literal giants do not warrant much detail by the writers of the text, and so after a brief mention, we quickly move on to other things. Which is to say that the Nephilim are a mystery, a weird bit of biblical lore that is rarely addressed outside of academic work.

I am a religious Jew, and got my BA in religious studies, so this subject is deeply up my alley. I decided that these loose threads of Jewish story-telling absolutely belong in the town of Night Vale even if only for a day.

The second thing you must understand is that seven years ago, in Scotland, I bought a used book on a whim called The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. This is a massive tome that attempts to catalog and provide a history for every idiom, turn of phrase, and folktale in Western history. I love the book, it’s fascinating to flip through, and it’s full of language that no one uses anymore. Like the Nephilim, they are loose threads and dead ends in the history of human story-telling. To me, then, the two belonged together.

Using a tool I often like to use in my creative work, I brought up the trusty random number generator. (I use the one at random.org) I picked several random pages from the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. On each page, I selected the antiquated idiom or turn of phrase that seemed most interesting to me, and then found a way to work it into the text of the episode.

So there you have it. A weird bit of biblical lore, pared with as many forgotten idioms as I could stuff into the text. This is not an episode the requires understanding.

As a side note, you might remember me asking you all on patreon for characters or plotlines that you wanted to hear more from. I used those suggestions in this episode, which is why we hear again from zookeeper Joanna Rey and from the Tarantula Literacy Program. Don’t worry, I made a list of your suggestions, and will incorporate more in future episodes. Thank you for your help!

-Joseph Fink