So, what fascinates you about these stories? Why do you enjoy tracking down the truth about them?

Part of it is a lot of these are just really great stories; they're horrifying, they're titillating, they're funny.

But legends that we tell are an expression of what's going on in society's heart at any given moment. They're not just random bits of lore that get dropped in here and there. It's amazing because the stories we tell, although they generate spontaneously, end up through the process of natural selection becoming a very finely honed body of lore that reflects current society's concerns, fears, apprehensions, morals.

People pass along a story that resonates with them. And they don't pass along a story that they don't identify with. Because of that the stories in wide circulation are the ones that very accurately reflect current fears, current concerns, our view of morality, what we believe is right, what we believe is wrong.

What do those three urban legends say about what our current fears and anxieties are right now?

First, we're still trying to come to terms with what happened on Sept. 11 -- the sheer horror of it, the fact that it wasn't expected, the fact that our universe changed in the flash of a moment; even beyond the individual deaths and tragedies that have occurred here, there was this horrible breaching of a sense of safety.

Another thing that we're trying to deal with is a growing sense of certainty that there are more acts of terrorism to come, and that this wasn't a one-time thing, and now everyone is at risk. This wasn't just a tragedy that's happened that's over. This wasn't like the crash of TWA flight 800.

There is a very deeply perceived threat. People are trying to make their peace with that and trying to figure out what they can do to safeguard themselves, their loved ones.

Part of this is this mad scramble for information; at this point we're not really filtering well. We're not really discriminating that well between information and misinformation, between fact and rumor.

And at times it's very difficult to. because often they'll be impossible sounding stories that will turn out to be true, and the ones that nobody gave a thought to were the ones that were false.

Has anything turned out to be true that you'd thought was fake?

Oh, sure. Recently, the United pilot story. The United pilot who basically gave a pre-flight speech to the passengers who said that if any terrorists did happen to be onboard to go after them with pillows.

That's true?

Yep.

No way.

That's what I said. But it is true. Enough people off that flight have confirmed that yes that was pretty much the gist of the fellow's remarks. I've had e-mail from these people; we've also seen reports written about it in other sources. The Associated Press actually got ahold of one person who was on the flight.

United has attempted to stonewall the thing. When I called they claimed they didn't know a darn thing about it: "No, we don't know the rumor. We've got other fish to fry."

You don't want your pilot saying: "In case our security didn't prove to be reliable and there are terrorists onboard, please feel free to use the complimentary pillows."

Do you think that terrorism breeds the need for these stories to explain the world to us?

Any horrific event does.

Even in more traditional folklore we have any number of myths that explain how the world came to be the way it is, and that's because you're dealing with the inexplicable. Why does the sun cross the sky in a certain direction every day? Why does winter always follow fall? But we also do that when we're dealing with the truly terrifying. This is sort of our way of trying to make sense of a world that doesn't make sense.

It's a frightening realization that you don't control as much of your life as you always believed you did, that so much of it is random chance. Which airplane did you get on? Or, did you get on an airplane that day? And that so much of it is unforeseeable.

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