The RHR crew explores the neuroscience of fear, the psychology of disgust, and the genre brave enough to find out exactly where terror ends and entertainment begins.
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In the 62nd episode of Rabbit Hole of Research, Joe, Nick, and Georgia welcome splatterpunk author Phrique to the Basement Studio to dig into one of horror’s most primal questions: what separates a debilitating phobia from a Tuesday night movie with friends?
Starting with the ancient alarm system wired into every human brain, the crew explores the neuroscience of fear’s two pathways; the lightning-fast response that bypasses conscious thought entirely, and the slower response that keeps you in your seat when the monster appears. From there the conversation spirals into why disgust and fear are more deeply entangled than most people realize, how the brain’s prediction engine works to build suspense, and why humor isn’t just a break from the tension, it’s a way to reset the fear dial.
Phrique breaks down the difference between extreme horror and splatterpunk, shares the political allegory and queer subtext running through his work, and explains why, no matter how hard he tries to write something purely for shock value, a moral always finds its way in. The crew also tackles the uncanny valley of flesh, the Cronenberg principle of gradual bodily transformation, the crew’s personal phobias, and why enjoying horror might actually be good for you.
Plus a stack of recommendations across film, books, video games (check the newsletter), and a spotlight on the Slay the Lake LGBTQ+ Horror Book Fest at The Final Girl Bar in Kenosha on April 18th.
Where to Find Phrique:
- All things Phrique: https://linktr.ee/phrique
- Phrique writes phoolery, not at all plain & far from simple. For legal reasons, he only writes what the voices tell him to. He willfully abuses alliteration & injects innuendo where it ought not be, with the intent to make the reader giggle, gasp, and gag at his gaiety. He wants you to laugh at things you shouldn’t, so he’s not the only one being stared at.
- Phrique’s books: Gig of the Damned, Scissor Me Timbers, Curse Me By Your Name, Rearranged Guts, In The Club We Are All Monsters
Slay the Lake
LGBTQ+ Horror Book Fest | The Final Girl Bar | Kenosha, WI Saturday, April 18, 2026 | 3PM–8PM | 18+ Event Ticketed early entry $15 (2PM–3PM) includes tote bag, blind date with a book, and early access. 10% of early entry sales go to the Transgender Law Center. Tickets: slaythelake.com
The event is also collecting book donations for LGBT Books to Prisoners — a trans-affirming, racial justice-focused, prison abolitionist project sending books to incarcerated LGBTQ+ people across the US. Check lgbtbookstoprisoners.org for their current needs list and bring donations to the event.
Check out what the RHR crew is creating:
Joe:
- Named by the Guild Literary Complex as one of the 35 Writers to Watch!
- Red Line: Chicago Horror Stories Anthology featuring a story by Joe!
- Joe’s Sci-fi physiological thriller Novel: Will You Still Love Me If I Become Someone Else?
- Joe’s Rom-Com Novella: Tomorrow May Be Too Late
- Essay by Joe: From Beyond Press: Specific Knowledge: Jotham Austin, II, PhD on Transformations in Fiction
- Joe explores how many calories it would take to transform into monsters across sci-fi and horror—think 222 Big Macs and tubs of Cherry Garcia.
Future Events to Hang with the Crew:
Podcast Cross-Appearances
- Joe on GoIndieNow: 21grams with Joe Compton talking about villains.
- RHR Crew on This Podcast Will Change Your Life with Ben Tanzer
Events & Conventions:
- 35 Writers to Watch: Celebration Party – Epiphany Center for the Arts 201 South Ashland Ave., Chicago, IL, United States (April 30th 7-9pm)
- 5th Annual Mai Fest – Blue Island, IL (May 9th 2026 12-5pm)
- Avondalia Night Out – Rosa’s Lounge in Avondale, Chicago IL (May 14th 2026 7-8pm)- Joe reading
- Creative Arts Summit – DIY Podcast Workshop at Lake County Public Library (Merrillville, IN) on May 23rd, 2026
- ConCarolinas – Charlotte, NC (May 29–31, 2026 ) – Joe attending as Guest
- Shore Leave 46 – Lancaster, PA (July 10-12, 2026)Lancaster Wyndham Resort and Convention Center
- Dragon Con – Atlanta, GA (September 3-7, 2026) – Joe attending as Professional
It’s Science for Weirdos
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We want to Hear From You (leave a comment):
- Fear without control is a phobia. Fear with control is entertainment. But where is YOUR line? Is there a horror movie, book, or game that pushed you past it?
- The crew shares their personal phobias; crowds, deep water, beaches, hobos, and clowns made the list. What’s yours, and did a horror movie give it to you or did you already have it?
- Phrique, Joe, Nick, and Georgia all have a soft spot for practical effects and the gritty texture of 70s and 80s horror. What’s a modern horror film you think actually gets it right?
Drop your thoughts in the comments. We read them all, and your ideas often shape future episodes.
Future Episodes
- Episode 64 – Into the Deep: Humans, Caves, and the Final FrontierGuest: Ernie Bell, PhD (NASA and Blue Origin)What can living underground on Earth teach us about surviving on other worlds?
- Episode 66 – Planetary Defense: Saving Earth from Other Worldly Impact
Guest: Charles Blue
Exploring asteroid detection, planetary defense systems, and what it takes to protect Earth from cosmic collisions. - Episode 68 – Hive Mind: PlubrisGuest: Wes Thorn (returning guest — Simulation Hypothesis episode)The crew dives into hive minds, collective intelligence, and the blurry line between the individual and the swarm.
For more stuff (Images, Episode Highlights, events, etc), subscribe to our Substack newsletter!
Show Notes & Fun facts
Movies, TV & Pop Culture Mentioned
- Phenomena (Dario Argento)
- Trilogy of Terror: three segments each based on unrelated short stories by Richard Matheson. (3rd segment has the Zuni fetish doll Joe was talking about)
- The Thing (John Carpenter)
- Event Horizon
- The Fly (1986)
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
- The Blob
- The Stuff (1985)
- Monkey Shines (1988)
- The Monkey (2024, based on Stephen King short story)
- Cabin in the Woods
- Rosemary’s Baby
- The Shining
- Evil Dead / Evil Dead II
- Blood Beach
- Cheerleader Camp
- When Evil Lurks
- High Tension
- Blood and Black Lace (Dario Argento)
- Deep Red (Dario Argento)
- Barbarella
- Annihilation
- Overboard (referenced jokingly)
- Dorian Gray (referenced in Phrique’s collaborative story)
- Junji Ito (artist referenced in relation to uncanny valley and body horror)
- David Cronenberg (body horror principle)
- George Romero (zombie films as political allegory)
- John Waters (disgust as art, boundary-pushing storytelling)
- Chuck Palahniuk (cited as a Phrique influence)
Books Mentioned
- The Stand — Stephen King (Franny referenced)
- Haunter — Charlee Jacob (recommended by Phrique)
- Works by Clive Barker
- Works by Grady Hendrix (mentioned by Georgia)
- Only Good Indians — Stephen Graham Jones (recommended by Georgia)
Video Games Mentioned:
- Dead Space
- The Callisto Protocol
- Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (recommended by Nick)
- Doom (referenced by Joe)
- Toxic Commander (upcoming — John Carpenter scoring)
- Fallout (Pip-Boy radio referenced)
Fun Facts to Impress Your Friends With:
- Your brain has a fear shortcut that fires in about 12 milliseconds.Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux mapped two pathways fear signals take through the brain. The “low road” bypasses conscious thought entirely, shooting straight from the thalamus to the amygdala and triggering a fight-or-flight response before you even know what scared you. That’s why you jump before you think.
- You can’t logic your way out of a phobia, and neuroscience explains why.When a phobic stimulus hits, the amygdala fires an emergency signal and the prefrontal cortex (your rational brain) partially goes offline. Stress hormones flood the body. Thinking your way through it in the moment is nearly impossible because the thinking brain has literally been sidelined.
- Horror enjoyment follows an inverted U-shape. Researchers at the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University studied 110 haunted house visitors wearing heart rate monitors. The finding: too little fear is boring, too much becomes genuinely unpleasant. The sweet spot in the middle, just enough arousal without tipping into distress, is exactly where horror lives.
- Disgust and fear are more entangled than you think, and splatterpunk exploits both. The anterior insula, your brain’s disgust processing center, doesn’t just react to gross things, it also processes your awareness of your own body. When body horror describes flesh transforming or boundaries dissolving, your insula doesn’t just file it as external information. It recruits your own body-awareness system. That’s why body horror doesn’t just look disturbing. It feels disturbing.
- The uncanny valley was first described in 1970, and horror has been using it ever since. Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori coined the term to describe the deep unease triggered by something that looks almost-but-not-quite human. Body horror, transformation narratives, and creature features have been weaponizing this response for decades. Something fully alien can be processed as “other.” Something almost human forces your mirror neuron system to engage, and when the simulation hits a violation, empathy flips to horror.
Episode Highlights
00:00 — Basement Crew Intro The whole crew is in person and accounted for: “We’re all crewed up down here. All in person. Surviving. Living.”
00:26 — Meet Phrique Splatterpunk author Phrique introduces themselves: “In that year and a half I put out like five books.”
02:17 — Fear vs. Fun Monologue Joe sets the stage with his opening monologue: “We seek out the exact sensation that in any other context we’d call trauma. Same chemicals, same brain regions firing, same body braced for horror.”
04:08 — What Is Splatterpunk? Phrique draws the line between extreme horror and splatterpunk: “Extreme horror is literally for shock value, splatterpunk is basically all that, but for a reason, with a moral, with some kind of commentary.”
06:23 — Stories With a Message Phrique breaks down the allegory running through their work: “When you hold things in, it manifests.”
10:43 — Fear Psychology and Tropes Joe connects splatterpunk to the brain’s ancient fear hardware: “Our brain, our hardware and software… it’s pretty ancient. A lot of our fear structure is based on keeping us safe.”
17:38 — Humor as Misdirection Phrique explains the strategic use of comedy in horror: “I like that the humor takes you… I’ll usually do it right after I just killed like 12 drag queens and I make you love them.”
24:39 — Creepy Toys and Old Horror The crew riffs on childhood horror memories and cursed toy movies: “Don’t remove this tag… and then it comes to life.”
28:55 — Final Destination Phobias Phrique connects the log truck scene to real workplace anxiety: “I work in a steel mill, they tell us someone dies there probably about once a month.”
30:13 — Defining Phobias and Disgust Phrique offers a working definition and connects germophobia to evolution: “A phobia would be when it causes distress, when it affects you and causes you to go out of your way to avoid it.”
35:26 — Music Sets the Mood The crew unpacks how music rewrites a scene’s emotional DNA: “You go to a minor key versus a major key, it could be the happiest scene ever, but you feel it internally.”
40:28 — First Horror Memories Phrique recalls their earliest horror experience: “I knew you are not supposed to be watching this. This is going to mess you up.”
41:34 — Favorite Horror Classics Georgia names her all-time favorites: “Rosemary’s Baby. And The Shining.”
42:38 — Why We Love Horror The crew lands on horror’s core appeal: “It’s almost like a rollercoaster… I survived that. And now I know don’t run upstairs.”
44:50 — PhD Dreams and Fear Research Phrique reveals their abandoned psychology path: “My dissertation was going to be on basically what you talked about when did we take this emotion that is literally built into us and turned it into something we seek out?”
47:13 — Splatterpunk and Body Horror Joe introduces the Cronenberg principle: “Make it slow, make it last, you begin to buy into that transformation happening in front of you.”
49:37 — Retro Creature Features The crew geeks out over classic creature horror: “The Stuff is one of my favorites, people just eating some stuff that bubbles out of the ground.”
52:04 — Sci-Fi Horror Crossovers Phrique shares their reluctant foray into sci-fi horror writing: “Dead Space is one of my favorite games ever, I played all of those.”
54:47 — Uncanny Valley Explained Joe traces the concept back to its origin: “Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori in 1970, when you look at things that are personified in human form but not quite human, it triggers that deep unease.”
58:35 — Art Covers and Romcom Gore Phrique reveals their new book cover and genre mashup: “It’s literally an office romcom about Bloody Mary, but I’m calling it a romcom with a body count. The body count is 29.”
01:03:35 — Slay the Lake Community Phrique reflects on finding their people: “It’s a safe space, but also you’re being basically celebrated…yep, we’re going to, we got stuff to say, we have books to put out.”
01:10:07 — Phobias and Top Picks The crew shares personal phobias and recommendations: “When Evil Lurks, that’s my new favorite. It was High Tension before, but When Evil Lurks was just great.”
01:16:02 — Wrap Up and Slay the Lake Event Plug Joe sends everyone off with the details: “Go out, support a lot of great authors. You’re supporting a lot of good causes going there.”
“Stay curious, stay safe… Love Y’all!”
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