Boxing Day Listener Mail

It's boxing day in many holiday traditions: A time to give a gratitude box to postmen, errand boys and servants. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe present just such a box to the mailbot Karnie and read some listener mail as well.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome
to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and welcome to Boxing Day.
It is traditionally Boxing day. Uh if if you've ever

(00:23):
wondered about this one do we call it boxing Day?
As as I was a kid, I remember it would
always especially be featured on the Canadian calendar, and I
always assumed, well, this is when I guess you box
things back up. Maybe you're not supposed to have all
these gifts. Um uh. My understanding though, is that it's
tied in with the idea of this being a day
when you would traditionally give a box. You would give
a gift to um uh, you know, to to various

(00:45):
UM delivery people and whatnot. So it's another day about giving.
But you could also be inclined to make the mistake
that our mail bought Carney has made. Uh. He knows
that it is boxing day. He um. He knows that
boxing is a physical combat sport in which humans punch
each other, generally in the head region with with large

(01:05):
gloves on. And then of course he has the rockham
stock'em robot example to go by, and so so he's
become incredibly aggressive, Yes, incredibly so, I mean lucky. He's
wearing the gluckily, he's learning the gloves because otherwise Carnie's
hands are metal. But that's what we're having to put
up with today. Still, he has his primary programming is
to deliver listener mail to us, and he is still

(01:27):
doing it, granted with a little more punch than usual. Right,
we'll just have to dodge the fists of fury every
time we retrieve one. Right. Well, you know, since it's
so close to Christmas, since Christmas is still in the air, uh,
dissipating in the air around us, we should probably kick
off with some Christmas holiday related listener mail before we
get into more general listener mail. Okay, let's get ready

(01:52):
to rumble. Here's the first message. This comes from Corbin.
It's about our episode is Santa of God? Corbin said,
is Hey, Robin Joe. Your discussion about minimally counterintuitive narratives
brought to mind one of my all time favorite sci
fi series, Dune. I haven't listened to all your podcasts.
My sincerest apologies, but somehow, I feel like you're familiar

(02:14):
with the books. How little you know Corbett? Yes? Um.
I found it interesting that Frank Herbert, when depicting Leto
the Second as a god emperor, began his transformation remaining
primarily humanoid and gradually over time became more worm. So
this is the transformation of a person into a giant sandworm. Right.

(02:35):
If you only know Doune from the films, you haven't
really seen this yet. I think the TV mini series
is about as far into the books as as as
anyone has visually dared go huh uh. Corbin continues, however,
even till his last day r I P. He maintained
his human face despite the fact that his brain was

(02:55):
a distributed, collective nervous system. It's an interesting thought that
Frank Herbert this as an illustration not only to the readers,
but also to the characters in the universe that Letter
the Second was at one point a human and therefore
more easy to anthropomorphize. Leto's goal was, after all, who
rapidly spread his religion across an entire universe, albeit through

(03:16):
more nefarious means. I feel it's also easier to say, yeah,
we worship a giant worm, but he used to be
a human. He still has a human face. Then, yeah,
we worship a giant worm with a gullet filled with
rows upon rows of teeth. We won't get into the
Fremen and how their worship of Shihlu differs fundamentally. Really
enjoy listening and typing. This email really felt like a

(03:37):
good way to create some discussion, even just with myself,
about something I thought was a very interesting concept applied
to someone fundamentally more badass than a fat man in
Red Pj's regards. Corbin, Well, I mean you could combine
them right and you have Santa Santa Leto arriving. But no.
I yeah, obviously I love this email because it ties

(03:57):
in with the episode but also drags Dune into the
whole picture. I like how Corbyn is not sure whether
we've read Dune or not. Things maybe we have, so
we definitely we have, of course, uh, and we're we're fans.
We did a couple of episodes years back about the
science of done the technology of Dune. We didn't talk
about everything in the first book or certainly the the series.

(04:22):
We talked about a few things we talked about still
suit we talked about sandworm biology. We even got into
consideration of the the face dancers and how that might
work based on some folks interpretations. Yeah, somebody was recently
asking us to do an episode on Goala's Wait Wait
is that the same as face dancers are different? Different
difference I've made by the same people. Um, so yeah,

(04:45):
maybe we could come back and do Dune Part three
sometime in the future. I think so. I think basically
we would want to We need to couch the first
part of it in something familiar, something we would tie
into the first movie, especially the first book in movie,
especially since we're getting a new film adaptation coming up
in So yeah, we definitely definitely need to do it,
and there's plenty to talk about. Uh, do you want

(05:08):
to do one more quick one about whether or not
Santa counts as a god before we move on. This
comes from Clarence. Clarence says, Hey, guys, my name is Clarence.
Is my first time writing, although I've been listening for
a few years now. Um, honestly hoping to get this
read in the next Listener Mail episode. Well here you go, Clarence. Uh,
Clara says, anyway, just listened to the episode entitled is

(05:29):
Santa God? Part One? Interesting? And I oh and Clarence
appreciated the warning we put in at the beginning of
the episode. Maybe Clarence listens with some kids. Um, But
as I was listening, I thought about something few people
knew about, and even fewer still remember. Santa is actually
one of the most powerful entities in the Marvel Comics universe.

(05:49):
It has been alluded to in a few issues I've
read over the years. Most recently I can remember in
Spiderman Deadpool issue number twelve Food for thought. I'd like
to know what you guys think of Santa as a
Marvel character clearance. Well, obviously I'm in favor of this,
and I think he absolutely needs to be incorporated into
the Marvel Cinematic universe. It's a shame that he did.

(06:12):
He wasn't in there in that big, you know, battle
against Thanos. I think he'd be fighting on the side
of Thanos. Right, is Thanos the one that wants everybody
to be good boys and girls? He will? I think
I haven't seen them. He's all about overpopulation. Really, really,
I don't know the whole Thanos thing. Yeah, I think
that's basically it in the films, it's it's a little

(06:34):
different in the comics. As I recall the comics is
more about love, like he's in love with Death daughter
or something, or Death herself. I'm a little he's trying
to impress her by like killing everybody. Yeah, sort of thing.
But no, I would love for SANTAA to pop up
because there's so many. Every every matchup, every team up
is great. Like you could have Santa team up with

(06:57):
Blade to go after Christmas Ferrato's. That would be good.
That would be good. Um, well, this fits into our
discussion of is Santa more Superman or is he more Batman? Yeah?
This this is a good question. I guess in the
Marvel cinematic, in the Marvel universe, he is more Superman.
It sounds like I wonder if it's different in d C.

(07:18):
Does d C also have an incarnation of Santa, And
if so, is it more Batman esque? I would love
to know. All right, here is another holiday related bit,
a bit of listener mail. This one comes to us
from Martin Martin Wrightson and says, Dear Robert and Joe,
thank you for the very interesting show on Crampus. Although
I am from Austria. I've never given this tradition any

(07:40):
second thought. Crampus was just a natural part of the
folklore I was brought up with, same as Christmas. In
the Easter Bunny. On St. Nicholas's Eve, our parents filled
our stockings with sweets and my father rattled some iron
chains pretending to chase away Crampus. It was exciting for
us kids picturing my father Finn ending off some goat demon. Anyway,

(08:02):
as I grew older, I realized that Crampus was not
real and kept him as a childhood memory, again, same
as the Easter penny. One thing that came to my
mind while listening to your podcast is the role that
the Crampus actors take on. You focused on the effects
Crampus has on children, but I think it also has
some effect on the Crampus impersonator. Not having any studies
to back this up, I believe that Crampus also serves

(08:24):
as some kind of outlet, a controlled and socially acceptable
way for grown men to act out violent acts and
let go of themselves in a cathartic way. I was
wondering if you came across such an explanation while researching
Thanks again for your wonderful show. Kind regards Martin, and
he has a ps but let's talk about what he
just said before you get to the PSU. Well, that
didn't come up with respect to anything specifically about crampus,

(08:48):
but we absolutely have looked at studies before that, at
least in some cases show that people have UM reduced
inhibitions when their identity is hidden. So there have been
like studies, for example, finding that UM people are more
willing to march around in public with a sign that
says something embarrassing if their identity is hidden. That's obviously,

(09:09):
you know, that's not very surprising. But I guess one
thing that's interesting is they're more willing to do that
even probably if they're around people that you know, might
not recognize them personally. There's something about having your identity hidden,
putting on the mask, putting on the costume that allows
you to shed some of the normal barriers to behavior
that that would be inhibiting you. Yeah, and I think

(09:29):
there's also a link to animism because you see various
examples of practices around the world in which someone wears
the fur or the horn, or the skull of or
even just the the painted or tattoo likeness of the beast,
and then as a part of a ritual, becomes the

(09:49):
beast to some extent, and it sort of enables a
more you know, a wilder acting out. So I think
there's there's definite connection to that as well in the
crampus tradition. Yeah, oh yeah, that that putting on the costume.
It removes, but it also adds, you know, it takes
away some of your natural personality and inhibitions and it

(10:10):
adds to you know, you get to take on the
qualities of this character, right, And it's uh and certainly
in terms of it being you know, this outlet and
being a um me, this release valve and to a
certain extent, well, I mean we also see examples from
I think even this year there are a couple of
news stories about some perhaps overly rowdy or even um

(10:32):
offensive crampas impersonators in a few uh uh cities, and
I mean that kind of goes, I think to the
nature of what this is doing. It's it's like having
an exhaust valve on say, you know, a boiler, right,
if it's working properly, it's letting just enough steam out
to keep the tank from exploding, right, But for some

(10:52):
it could also be like an excuse to be bad, right,
So it's uh, it's one of those those aspects of
of culture that I guess you want the balance to
be just right. You don't want your crampus is rampaging
through the city actually terrorizing people. But on the other hand,
if you have a culture without the cramps, if the
cramp is cannot actually be unleashed at this part of

(11:13):
the year, then what does that mean You get like
a little more crampas in every day. That doesn't sound
good either. Keep crampas and Christmas. There's your bumper sticker. Okay,
I think maybe we're going to get away from Christmas. No,
we have one more bit. We have the psorry. So
Martin also shares this ps if you like weird traditions,

(11:34):
I bet you're into shopping. That's s h A P
P e N. It's a custom prevalent in the southern
parts of Austria where small children go from door to
door on the December and whip the grown ups buttocks
with a rod. Good, very good, And he includes a
link to a Wikipedia page about this, but it is
a German only page, so it leads me to suspect

(11:57):
that shopping is not proper really appreciated or known outside
of uh, you know, German speaking cultures. Oh, this is
like making the fool of the pope and like the
boy king stuff, you know. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, I
like it. These kind of reversals are good. They should
definitely involve children inflicting corporal punishment on adults. All right, Okay,

(12:20):
so now we are going to get away from Christmas
for a bit, but we'll come back to some holiday
theme stuff I think later in the episode. So this
one is in response to the episode we did uh
I Drink Your Blood Type, where Robert and I were
talking about uh, vampires and blood types, the real science
of blood types and pseudoscience about blood types and personality

(12:40):
and all that. And this comes from Maya. Maya says, hey, guys,
I love your podcast. I've been listening to it for
a while now. In October, I listened to your episode
on vampires and blood types, and I remember you questioning
why a vampire might ask about recent dental work. This
came up on some TV show. Oh, this was an
episode of Tales from the Cryptos. The start believe Malcolm

(13:01):
McDowell or was it Roddy McDowell, one of the two McDowell's.
For sure. Um, I thought i'd let you know that
recent dental work is a risk factor for infective indocarditis,
where the heart valves become infected. When this happens, little
flex of bacteria flick off the valves and through the
blood circulation, which would probably make the blood taste pretty gross,

(13:23):
even to a vampire. I'm a medical student and it's
something we've been told in medical school a bunch of times.
Thanks so much and love the podcast, Maya. That is interesting.
That gives me a new respect for that episode. Yeah,
I've I've heard of this before. Yeah, that like dental work.
I think some stuff from the mouth, I think maybe
you can get into the blood and then affects the heart.
So definitely if you're looking for blood to drink, keep

(13:45):
an eye out for the dental surgery. Alright. This next
one comes to us from MICHAELA and it is in
reference to our episode on prototax It t s Hello,
just listen to your Prototaxid episode. And since you were
talking about soil structure as well as fun Guy Algae
Live rewards and liking. I was a little surprised not

(14:07):
to hear the mention of biocruss. Biocruss being living soil
aggregates of soil which host communities of mosses, fun guy
like in ciano bacteria and other organisms, mainly in desert systems.
They're their own amazing little ecosystems and keep ground from
blowing away and by creating mats of filamentous ciano bacteria,

(14:29):
so possibly the ancient world might have been a bit crusty.
Biocross are super underappreciated except by the people who passionately
study them, including my master's advisor, who is uh. And
then there's a Twitter address here. It is at dry
Land Algae. That's d r y l A n d
A l g A on Twitter. I thought you guys

(14:51):
might be interested anyway as a future astrobiologist and lover
of all things strange. I adore the show Keep It Weird. Michael, Oh,
that's great, that's in interesting. I didn't know much about that,
so maybe we'll come back to that. Yeah, absolutely, all right.
We got one message from Brett. It actually wasn't much
of a message. It was it seemed to be in
response to the Monstrosity Cuteness rerun we did and the

(15:14):
Uncanny Valley rerun we did. Um, it was a link
to stuff about the new Sonic movie Sonic the Hedgehog,
where they had to redo the animation on Sonic the
Hedgehog because when they first released the trailer, people were
just horrified by the way Sonic looked. And I gotta admit,
his eyes were small, and he had human teeth, and

(15:35):
there's something wrong with human teeth on a non human animal.
It's like that fish that's got teeth that look too human,
you know, Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I, for one,
I did I didn't really have a dog in this hunt. Um,
I can't say it was particularly excited about a Sonic movie.
I wasn't. I wasn't really turned off by this image.
And even I will admit that the new version does

(15:57):
look a lot more like Sonic character that I did
enjoy playing the Guys Big Guys looks more like the character,
and I enjoyed the character in the games back then.
But um, you know, by and large, I feel like
this is this was the Internet blowing things out of proportion.
And uh, the Internet is of course the domain of
dr robotnick. Uh. That is, it's exactly the kind of
system he would inflict on the world. So, uh, you know,

(16:21):
I have suspicions about the the ultimate motivations behind the outrage. Here.
Wait a minute, I'm not sure I understand like you
think people were not actually horrified by the appearance of
the original Sonic. I just I don't know. I mean,
he it doesn't look that weird. I mean, it looks
like oh man, but the improvement just looks more like
a cartoon. Uh. Well, I will say the original looks

(16:45):
more unique. The new one just looks more like every
other cartoon character. But I guess there's a reason cartoon
characters look like that. You know, they're they're tailored to
look kind of like cute and approachable instead of like
strange and uh and unsettling. Why does it look like
Sonic is holding the one ring in this photo here? Well,
I think because Sonic the Hedgehog collects golden rings. Well,

(17:06):
that's not the one ring. That's only going to get
him into trouble if he winds up in Middle Earth. Okay,
let's let's move on to the next thing. We got
a couple of messages about our ship of theseus uh,
of all episode. This comes from Brett. I don't think
it's the same Brett as the other message. Somehow, this
is Brett who's a chemist. Yeah, this is Brett who's
a chemist. Brett says, Hello, gentlemen, great episode. Glad you

(17:28):
looked at the premise from multiple directions. My two cents.
Being a chemist, I work with very sensitive instrumentation like
an hp LC. I'm sure you'll look it up if
you've not heard of it before. Uh. Yeah, it's a
high performance liquid chromatography machine. It's a method that's used
to analyze the chemical constituents of a sample. So you
put in a sample of something, it'll separate out the

(17:48):
chemicals and tell you how much of each one there
is and stuff. Uh So, Brett says, Uh. I also
do maintenance on the instruments I use, being a GMP facility,
and I think that's good manufacturing practice. Is just like
having high standards. Uh. Any changes to the instrument must
be documented and also validated. Well, what do I mean
by this? We expect the instrument to reproduce the exact

(18:10):
same results every time we use it. Therefore, any changes
to the instrument must not affect the instruments performance. Now,
over the life of an HPLC, capillaries, frits, pumps, etcetera
do get changed. It is the same instrument, but if
it does not produce the same results, we have to
figure out why and make the proper adjustments in order
to get it back to where it used to be.

(18:32):
In this sense, the instrument is not the same anymore
because of its sensitivity, which leads me to ask if
a ship has been refurbished, So, if you know, you
go with the original thought experiment and replace all the
pieces of ship. Is it the idea of what the
ship has accomplished that we humans hold onto. The ship
still performs the same task as before, but what it

(18:53):
has been through is in the mind of those who
have used it. We could look at a replica of
the ship, but it would not conjure up the same
and thoughts and emotions as someone who used it at sea,
for example. It seems a physical object can change, but
the perception we cast upon an object can change, leading
to how stories are told about it. Wondering what you
think about this and how the human mind likes to

(19:14):
cast its perceptions into this world to make us feel reality.
Keep up the good work. Love thinking about new topics.
Your show introduces Brett Chemist. Oh wow, well, I mean
Brett really touches that a number of issues related to that.
I mean, because yeah, the story changes what the thing is,
and then the thing itself changes if you're refurbishing it.

(19:34):
I mean, I guess a lot of it kind of
swirls around the idea that is, humans were often stuck
on this idea of there being some level of permanency
about anything like that there is a me that is me,
and it's consistent. There's a the ship is a ship,
and it's a constant that this story is constant. This
belief for an idea that even the truth is a
is a is a constant thing that does not change

(19:55):
over time. Well, this is an interesting idea that's being
introduced here about like the idea of whether something is
the same instrument actually having like epistemic relevance, Like it
matters whether or not it was the same instrument for
whether or not you can count on it to be
scientifically reliable. Yeah, And in this example, I mean, it's
easy to make the case because there's a specific thing

(20:17):
that needs to be done with this device and it's measurable.
You can you can tell if it's out of whack, right,
But with the ship, the experience of the ship, the
thing that the ship does is kind of it's all
over the place. Yeah. Is it how it makes me?
It's about how it makes us think about the ship.
Is it about the stories told about the ship, about
thinking back about what the ship once did? Um, you

(20:39):
can't reduce that to a numerical value. I will say
that one idea that comes to mind here, and this
is because you and I were talking about Star Wars
before we came in here is the idea of the
original Star Wars trilogy and the you know, of course,
George Lucas famously came back and refurbished parts of it,
the parts of the furbish. Yeah, as if they were
you know, there's the ship of theseus and of the

(21:00):
boards were a little, by some people's estimates, a little
out of date and needed to be replaced, and thus
we had c g I elements added in or other
slight changes. And from their point of view at the time,
you know, we're just we're making the ship seaworthy, we're
keeping it from sinking. But for the most of the
rest office. We're like, no, that is not that's not

(21:20):
the ship we fell in love with. You're changing the ship.
The problem is people have been enjoying this perfectly well
the way it is. We've got to go in there
and add a bunch of stuff for the new era. Yeah,
So in that I think that example would be hold
up to a certain extent with what he's talking about here.
If you changed the ship in a way, you change
the film in a way that it altered the effect

(21:42):
of experiencing it, You altered the thing that it does. Yeah. Now, this,
of course, when it comes to works of art like film,
this becomes more difficult when you start thinking about like, uh,
preservation type efforts, Like you know, say, if you've got
like old or damaged pieces of film and that's the
only copy you have, like, uh, you know, they're they're
obviously big questions about that, like should you know, should

(22:04):
you leave it as the damaged version, or like to
what extents, to what lengths should you go in trying
to quote restore it? I mean, what what is the
film at this point? Is that the are you trying
to get it too? As close to what the people
at the premiere of the film saw as possible or
something like that, or do you have another goal in mind? Yeah,

(22:26):
I mean in many cases when you're when you're dealing
with with folks who grew up in the age of VHS,
that's where we saw the film for the first time.
You know, maybe you saw it on the big screen,
but in many cases you saw it on VHS format,
on a on a TV that was maybe not all
that great. And and I mean that's why so many
people are nostalgic for the VHS era and for VHS effects,

(22:46):
and why you still have hardcore VHS enthusiasts who still
utilize VHS technology to watch their films. Why some releases
will put it out on VHS as well to uh,
you know, to to to meet that fan base. Oh yeah,
I'm also thinking about special effects that don't stand up
super well to high definition, but they look great on
you know, the crappy old version of the movie. Alright,

(23:08):
on that note, we're gonna take a quick break, but
we'll be right back. Thank thank you, thank you. All Right,
we're back. So this next one comes to us from
Landon responding to our Cars, Bodies and Minds episode an
Automotive episode that we put out in October, which we
did try and tie in a little bit to Halloween.
But but it was a really fun episode to do

(23:29):
because we're talking about what is it what changes about
the human experience when we're inside of a car, What
is the psychological effect of driving? Um et cetera. So
landon Riotson and says hello, I really enjoyed this episode
as I have had a similar theory about riding lawnmowers.
I worked at a landscaping and lawn maintenance company for
many years. We use both walk behind lawnmowers as well

(23:51):
as the ride on type. A couple of the ride
on mowers are rather large. I started to notice that
my fellow employees would drive them off of curbs and
over trash, even run over rocks. They would not do
this if they were pushing a mower. It made me
think that when they are on the bigger machines, they
feel bigger or maybe more powerful or entitled, as if

(24:13):
it does not matter what is in the path of
this giant mower because it's so powerful. I definitely think
there is something to that. The bigger the vehicle, the
bigger the bravado. If you can imagine us lowly lawn
maintenance workers with bravado. Thanks as always, Landing. There's nothing
lowly about lawn maintenance. I mean that's real work, that's essential.
But I know what you mean about like like the

(24:33):
size of the mower and all that, Like, um, I
feel like the most attuned I've ever been to what's
in front of my mower is when I was using
a non motorized push mower. Do you ever use one
of those? Are already just um my grandfather's at some point, Yeah,
but I think that was the extent of it. I
used one for a few years. It is not the easiest. Yeah,

(24:54):
I want to say I wrote a house stuff Works
article about the push lawn mower, But maybe I'm mistaking
their neat gadgets, like there's something attractive about them. But
I feel like it's a step up there to the
push motorized one, where you're more indestructible, and then yeah,
once you get on the seated one, you're just you know,
you're you are a tank. I felt entirely destructible every

(25:14):
time I used to push lawnmower, because generally all I
could imagine is slipping on wet, freshly cut grass and
going under it. Yeah, yeah, Like I was sure, like
that's how I'm gonna go. I'm gonna That's how I'm
gonna die out in the middle of of my parents yard.
I know that feel like under a lawn Moore. But
then yeah, I I only ever did the one type

(25:35):
of of seated lawnmower, and you know, that did feel
kind of powerful to a certain extent. You're roaring through
the lawn, the grass is disappearing underneath you and being
sliced away. You're leaving this nice slick path of clean
grass behind you. It makes me wonder how different it
is to use even like the next level up, like
you're driving a big combine harvester, you know. Yeah, And

(25:56):
this this also makes me wonder about even larger vehicle. Obviously,
we have listeners out there who drive large trucks for
a living. We've heard from some of you like like,
what's that, Like, what's that experience? Do you feel like
you're you have an enormous on unbeatable body. Has anyone
out there ever uh driven a tank? Uh? Now, I

(26:17):
want to know how the scales at every level. Likewise,
maybe you're you're a shriner and you drive the little
uh what is it the little tricycle thing in the
parade or some of those like microcars or something. What's
that like? A go kard enthusiasts, Let me know, I
maybe you know. It's a different experience at every possible
level up until the ultimate vehicle transcendence, which is driving

(26:38):
the doofwagon of course. Alright, so we got a couple
of messages related to our Devour of Memories podcasts that
we did about a planaria and the research of James McConnell,
the idea of memories existing outside the brain, whether or
not there's anything to that, the recent research on that.

(26:59):
First of all, so in that episode we talked about
James McConnell, who was born in a town in Oklahoma,
and then we heard from Jill, who lives in the
same town where James McConnell was born. Uh, and she
gently corrects our pronunciation of the town name. I think
I said oak Mulji. It's apparently oak mule Gie with
a hard g she said, she cringed. But a lot

(27:20):
of other very nice things about the podcast. But we
also heard from Jim who says, hi, guys, since discovering
your podcast about a year ago, I've not only become
a devout listener, but I've devoured your whole back catalog,
mostly in the gym, the shower, and sometimes pretending to work.
I typically try and then give up on several new
podcasts per month, and I've found no other podcasts like
Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Invention that combined scientific

(27:43):
and philosophical inquiry with history and pop culture with an
entertaining and comedic vibe. I especially love the science fiction
tie ins. Based on his references, I suspect Robert and
I were probably watching reruns of The Twilight Zone late
night on uh FF and later cable with a bowl
of Sereal simultaneously in different cities throughout the seventies and
early eighties. Oh yeah, that would that would be. He

(28:03):
was maybe a little bit ahead of me, but but
very much on the same path. Anyway, I wanted to
write here with some additional information regarding your recent Devour
of Memories episode. As you discussed James McConnell and the
unfortunate attack on him by the UNI bomber ted Kazinski,
I was literally on the edge of my seat expecting
you to mention another of the UNI bombers serendipitous brushes
with history, one that may have originally led him down

(28:25):
his path of violent rebellion against academia, psychology, and technology,
as has been documented, and then he links to an
article in the Atlantic. While a student at Harvard, Ted
Kazinski was himself a victim of a series of brutal, cruel,
and unethical psychological experiments conducted by Henry A. Murray on
a group of twenty two undergraduates without their consent or knowledge.

(28:47):
Murray's experiments used, in his own words, quote, vehemence, sweeping,
and personally abusive attacks to study how people react under stress.
In one particularly vile experiment, Murray asked students to write
about their biggest fear or secret, assuring the students that
their essays would be confidential, only to read them out
in front of the entire class. Kazinski was one of

(29:09):
the students thus humiliated. Well, no one can defend Kazinski's
use of violence. It seems plausible that this experience at Harvard,
in addition to the issues you highlighted in your podcast,
contributed to his selection of a prominent behaviorist like James McConnell.
Is a victim Anyway, that's it for now. Love the
show and keep dropping those Twilight Zone references. Oh excellent. Yeah, well,

(29:29):
hopefully we'll we'll be back with more Twilight Zone related
episodes when October comes around totally. Maybe we'll do only
political Twilight Zone episodes. Oh no, what oh no over October. Wow,
that's going to be a rough time. But anyway, back
to Jim's main point here, Yeah, I I uh, I

(29:50):
was not familiar with it, with that aspect of Kazenski's
Kazinski's background. Um, but but that's that's worth thinking about. Yeah. Yeah,
and again just to echo what Jim saying here. Obviously,
stuff like that, you know, doesn't excuse resorting to murder
or everything like that, but yeah, it doesn't make you
wonder about, you know, what kinds of stuff contributed to

(30:10):
his mind state. Yeah, all right. We heard from some
folks on our episode Psychology of Architecture, and this one
comes to us from Jonas. Greetings, I really enjoyed your
episode on architecture. I work in the trades and come
in contact with a lot of different buildings and architecture styles.
One thing I have noticed is the underlying feeling towards

(30:32):
placement of various parts of buildings. For example, doors and
windows are never placed close together nor close to the
corner of a room or building, and doing so somehow
feels looks wrong. This goes for many other things, light
fixtures off center, and a ceiling a desk play strangely
in an office, a certain amount of wall between the
door and ceiling, etcetera. It is as though humans have

(30:54):
a very strong subconscious preference for certain symmetries and ratios
in their environment. This site coology seems to play out
at both the micro and macro level, and things that
do not abide this can result in cursed architecture. Many
thanks for the excellent podcast, Jonas. Ps. After listening to
the squirrel episodes, I have decided to include them in
my next D and D campaign. Oh nice, Yeah, so

(31:16):
I certainly love that. I mean so many directions you
could go with that. You could basically take cranial rats
and do cranial squirrels instead. What are cranial rats? Cranial
rats are rats used by the elithid mind flairs, and
so like one of these rats has the intellect and
psychic ability of a normal rat, which of course is
you know, rat like intelligence and no psychic ability, but

(31:37):
too they have the combined intellect of the rats, and
so you get a big pile of them, a big
horde of them, and they have, you know, considerable intellect
and considerable psionic power. So they they're pretty fun, pretty
fun monster. How many cranial rats equal a demagargon in intelligence? Oh?
I would I would have to do the math on that,
but it would take a lot. All right. This next saidge,

(32:00):
also about a psychology of architecture, comes from Bruce Breese says, Hello, mates,
I'm a massive fan first of all, listening to the
episode on psychology of architecture. Just a thought of a
personal example. My wife and I first lived in a
black and white ultra modern home, a home where a
speck of dirt on the ground was almost blinder. We
found ourselves vacuuming and mopping daily. For our second home,

(32:22):
we moved into an older house, mostly timber. I immediately
noticed we stopped cleaning as often, mostly because the house
simply didn't look as dirty. This gave us more time
to relax and spend with the family. Bruce, Wow, Uh, yeah, Well,
I mean that's like they you know, they say don't
get a black couch, right, because you'll see all of
the stuff collecting on it. Yeah yeah, likewise a white couch,

(32:44):
I guess right. Oh yeah, maybe I think you want
you want like a textured gray or something and makes
it nice for all the dirt to just hide in
there and you don't need to worry about it. Or
my own experience from a house I lived in growing up.
Don't have wall to wall white carpeting in a bathroom?
Oh did we talk about carpeted bathroom? I think this
probably has come up anytime bad carpeting choices come up.

(33:06):
I have to share this because it was wall to
wall and like wall to toilet white carpet in a bathroom.
It was. It was awful. It was also a rental alright.
So we mentioned Twilight Zone earlier than had to do
with our anthology of horror episodes. We've done three of
them now, one the previous year and then two uh

(33:28):
parts of two and three in so this one here's
one in particular though this comes to us from Kelsey.
Kelsey writes, I'm late to this party, but I just
now listen to the horror anthology episodes of stuff to
boil your mind. I foolishly had skipped them, Uh, skipped
over them earlier in the month, in favor of topics
more familiar to me. Very foolish. And I had a

(33:50):
thought about your questions of the elf years on the
large headed evolved human. Oh yeah, we were asking what
could what could actually drive the evolution of elf shaped ears? Right,
because in this it's the sixth finger is the title
of the Outer Limits episode in question, And the individual
has had his evolution advanced by some sci fi machinery,

(34:12):
so he develops a sixth finger on each hand. Uh,
you know, I guess for improved typing, gets an enormous
swollen brain, which is supposed to be there because he
has enhanced brain power and like psychic abilities. But then
he also has eleven ears, which we kind of dismissed
as being, you know, purely aesthetic, essentially to create an

(34:32):
Elvin maybe vulcan look right anyway. Kelsey has thoughts on
this quote. Typically in animals, large ears are used for
cooling the body and hot environments. Environment doesn't seem to
be a factor here unless this evolved human also pressage
global warming in its predetermined path of refinement. But Perhaps
the issue is the oversized brain. Pumping so much blood

(34:55):
upwards would be quite taxing and thus cause an elevated
heart rate, which in urn would elevate body temperature, no
good for optimal brain function. Also, the enlarged cranium would
suffer from the issues associated with mass and surface area
not increasing at the same rate, causing heat to be
more and more difficult to disperse from the body. Thus,

(35:16):
the elephant ears provide the extra surface area needed for
optimal cooling in the human of the future. Yes, I'm
aware that all of this is nonsense, but it was
amusing to pseudoscience my way through that. On a more
general note, just wanted to say that I'm a new
listener to Stuff to Blow your mind by way of invention,
and I really enjoy both podcasts. I can't tell you

(35:37):
how much I appreciate the thoughtful and sensitive way you
approach all of your subjects. Kind regards Kelsey, uh No,
I love that this. I mean this, uh. This exercise
is the same exercise we employ a lot of times
when thinking about uh. Generally, you know of fantastic and
mythical and science fiction creatures from cinema and books, and
so forth so, um so, yeah, I love that interpretation.

(35:59):
Um and it does also make me want to do
We've never really done an episode on ears before. That
could be quite interesting, just talk about like how hearing works,
how you know, biological hearing, you know works itself. But
then also get into the various forms of ear and
even the human ear. Why does it look like that?
Why why do we have this strange shape? What's the

(36:20):
lobe for? What does that accomplish? And then why does
ear why why do we have ear hair? Like? All
of these are questions, many of them have answers. It
would be exactly the kind of thing that would make
sense to discuss here on the show. We have ear
hair because it's awesome, and it all depends to what
which which ear hair A you're talking about the inner
ear hair or the hair growing on like the lobes

(36:42):
itself like pokes out of the ears. Yeah. Yeah, it's
got to be sexual signaling to attract mates. Right, That's
that's one theory. All Right, we need to take a
quick break. We'll be right back with more. All right,
we're back and uh and and Joe, is it is

(37:03):
it just because we're just we're recording this the week
before Christmas. But do I hear holiday music? Oh? You do?
We got so much email about our Christmas music episode.
People just want to talk about it. I guess the
bells are ringing, the children are singing, and people are
sending email. So this first one comes to us from Cecile.

(37:24):
Cecil says good day, Robert and Joe. This is Cecil
from Manila, the Philippines. Here in our country, the Christmas
songs start playing and Christmas decorations start appearing as soon
as the first dash b e er month arrives, which
is September. No one knows when and how this tradition started,
though Searching online brought up this article with some good insight,

(37:46):
and she links to an NPR article called Love the Holidays.
The Philippines celebrates four months of Christmas. Uh. We have
our own Christmas earworm in the song Christmas in Our
Hearts by local artist jose Marie Chan. Imagine hearing a
song played incessantly, if not in your own house, from
a neighbor's house, in malls, restaurants, and even public transportation

(38:07):
for around four months, as well as being a karaoke
UH staple at Christmas parties. Here's the singer serenading mall
goers last year, and then another link here. Luckily, I
was able to convince my father to put up Christmas
lights and play Christmas songs in our house only at
the start of December. Wishing you a I apologize. I'm
gonna try to say this Mala guyang pasco at Manigong

(38:30):
Bagong Tawun or town, Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Cecile. Well,
that is interesting. It does make me wonder does that
mean there's no Halloween in the Philippines. I don't know.
I need a I mean, Hallow Halloween is obviously not worldwide. Yeah,
it's true, and I know it's you know, obviously it's

(38:51):
celebrated to different extents in different parts of the world.
And I seem to recall that um in Japanese culture,
Halloween has been embraced to some extent, but I've never
thought about to what extend it's uh practiced in the Philippines.
I need it. I I have friends of Philippine descent.
I need to ask them. Still, I would on the surface,

(39:12):
I would agree that four months of Christmas does sound
like a little much like I say, I'm trying to.
I'm trying to lean into the holidays this year, but
that's I don't know if I can lean in that far.
You know, every culture has their own It's like, you know,
some cultures are into into my Fiji and other people
other cultures are not. You just gotta get used to it. Yeah, yeah,
uh well I'm either way. I'm excited to hear more about,

(39:34):
you know, the varieties of of holiday experience around the world.
All right, here's another Christmas music bit of listener mail
Listen comes to us from Sarah, Dear, Robert, and Joe.
First of all, this is one of my favorite podcasts,
so thanks for making it. I just finished listening to
your latest episode, and I thought there was an important
perspective which was missing in the discussion. As a practicing Jew,

(39:56):
being inundated with Christmas music serves to make me really
feel my other us at this time of year, I
and many of my friends find going to such places
to be both unpleasant and depressing, and a few stores
which throw in a token Hanukah song or two earn
both my undying loyalty and my dollars. Not everyone celebrates Christmas,
and I have often wondered at the blinders of marketers

(40:17):
who think that all shoppers can be wooed this way,
especially places like grocery stores, which are patronized by folks
who are looking for normal fare rather than presents. Thanks
again for your great show regards, Sarah. Yeah, I think
this is this is an excellent point to make, um
one that at least I did try to touch on
this a little bit. Uh. I thought it came up

(40:38):
a little bit because we talked about the idea of
like again not comparing like annoying Christmas music to actual
torture in a significant way, but like, one of the
things we talked about was like when detainees are blasted
with music to kind of like break them for interrogation,
it often intentionally is like culturally unfamiliar music. And so
what could be geographically culturally unfamiliar could also just be

(41:02):
like in terms of subculture or religious culture unfamiliar, you know,
the the music of the other culture. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
But I also I will admit that in discussing that
particular episode especially, I did get an autobiographical a lot,
and I guess I was considering sort of my own
stare down with Christmas to a certain extent, which you know,

(41:24):
for me, it's like Christmas is kind of like this, Um,
it's like this. Uh it's what is the big tractor
trailer rig from maximum Overdrive with the with the green
goblin on the front. I don't know if I had
a name, but it was it was a goblin like
that's Christmas, just Christmas hat on it and it's coming
at you and then you have to react and figure
out how you're going to take it. Uh So yeah,

(41:45):
I was probably I probably did lean a bit into
just thinking about my own relationship with the holiday, with
the various you know, biases they are going to be
present to that, but it is it is essential to
to realize, Yeah, not everybody has the same uh you know,
cultural experience of the holidays, certainly of Christmas and uh
and yeah, when you think of of the marketing techniques

(42:09):
used by something like something like a grocery store, it
does get get kind of weird, right. I Mean it's
like people where they're just they want to buy bread,
they want to buy rice, they want to buy vegetables,
and they have to listen to jingle bells the whole time.
I will say, ever, since we did this episode, I
have actually noticed even more than usual when when in
which stores are playing Christmas music. And yeah, I'm kind

(42:31):
of surprised that it happens in grocery stores and stuff.
I would expect it to be more common in stores
where you might reasonably be expected to be buying something
like Christmas gifts. It's strange to go into Kroger or
Publix or whatever and hear the Christmas music playing. But yeah,
I guess that's where we're at. But anyway, Yeah, very
important perspective, Sarah, and thank you so much for sharing.

(42:53):
All right, This message comes from Michelle. Michelle says, do
Robert and Joe. I really enjoyed the recent episode on
of hate relationship with Christmas music. I am an amateur
classical bassist, and I've been playing in school or community
orchestras for over thirty years. This means, subjectively, I believe
I've played at least parts of The Nutcracker approximately eighteen
million times. I'm sure the actual number is only in

(43:16):
the hundreds, but it feels like much much more, and
the hundreds is a lot. I find that my tolerance
for this music depends largely on the context. I enjoy
playing it. I love sitting in in a ballet with
a live orchestra hearing it, but listening to it on
commercials around the radio makes me in vision swatting the
sugar plum ferry with a rolled up newspaper. To me,

(43:37):
the greatest Christmas music offense on commercials is not playing
the whole song, or at least whole versus so that
I can mentally finish it and get it out of
my head. There's currently a car commercial that plays the
same two measures of a song over and over without
finishing the phrase. He causes physical discomfort and anxiety, and
I have to turn the channel or mute the TV.

(43:58):
I also wanted to thank you fortifying my squirrel phobia.
There used to be a squirrel near you. No, we're
not trying to justify phobia. I hope we can do. Okay.
We we seek to justify a healthy respect and and
maybe to a certain extent, fear of close contact with
the squirrel. Fear that is more like awe, yeah, yeah,

(44:18):
the consideration of the squirrel as indeed a wild creature,
the way you would react to a sandworm from dune. Uh.
Michelle goes on there used to be a squirrel near
my house that would come up to the window and
torment my indoor cat, or would chase me when I
walked to my car, and would dive bomb neighbors from trees. Wow,
I'm glad I wasn't the only one seeing their true

(44:39):
evil nature. Now again, they're not evil, They're just animals.
But they don't you know, don't underestimate them. That squirrel sound,
that sounds excessive though, even what we're looking at, like,
perhaps that's a squirrel that somebody was feeding, and you
know that, because this is one of the dangers of
feeding any wild animal is that it changes it's it's

(45:00):
like natural inborn association of human beings and human habitats
and so forth. It begins to associate them with food,
and then it might be inclined to to violate the
sort of predetermined safe space between you and itself. Uh So,
I my, you know, just shooting from the hip here,
But I wonder if that was a squirrel that had

(45:20):
been essentially mistreated through feeding. That's a good point. Uh yeah,
So just a good reminder for everyone out there, do
not feed wild animals like that. I mean, I mean,
you might not be able to stop them from getting
into your meal worms or whatever. Right, Yeah, I mean
well feeding, it's one thing of the squirrel is eating

(45:41):
from your bird feeder. If the squirrel is eating from
your hand, then things have gone too far. Michelle goes
on going back even further. I wanted to let you
know how perfectly the timing of your January episode on
creating the World's Most Unpleasant Room fit into my life.
It was exactly the episode I needed at a very
stressful time. I was listening to that episode along with

(46:01):
several others. It was a long few days while trying
to make my house as completely perfect as possible for
my first social worker visit for my adoption home study.
I know from experience that that can be very stressful. Yeah. Yeah,
it made me realize how ridiculous I was being in
my cleaning frenzy. Your show has been a saving grace
when I get too much in my own head with

(46:21):
all the ups and downs that go along with the
adoption process as I wait for a match. Thank you
so much. Keep the great episodes coming, Michelle. Yeah, well,
thanks for writing in and best of luck with your
adoption journey. Absolutely. Oh wait, no, I forgot. Michelle also
has a ps oh, let's have it. I have had
simply having a wonderful Christmas time stuck in my head
all evening just that one line. Don't actually know the

(46:44):
rest of the song. I'm off to listen to any
other song to try to get that particular worm out
of my ear. Well, best of luck with that too,
I hope it worked out. Yeah, that's your favorite, right,
That is the worst of all time. In addition to
the cultural chauvinism of Christmas music, sometimes there is some
geograph cold Christmas chauvinism as well. UH. That was mentioned
by several listeners, Like we had several uh people from

(47:06):
like Australia and New Zealand get in touch with us
about Christmas music. About the fact that lots of Christmas
music mentioned snow. It's all about winter time and stuff.
But if you're in Australia, Christmas is in the middle
of the summer because the seasons are inverted the southern hemisphere.
That's right. We heard from an about this, She writes, High,
Robert and Joe recently listened to your episode about Christmas music.

(47:28):
You asked for emails from people from other countries and
people who are subjected to Christmas music. I fit into
both of these categories. I live in Australia and I
work in a supermarket. The thing about in Australian Christmas
is it is very hot right now. We're in the
middle of a terrible drought and there are catastrophic fire conditions.
Brush fires have devastated different parts of the country over
the past few weeks. The annoying thing is retail stores

(47:50):
will still play songs like Winter Wonderland or let It Snow.
These seem highly inappropriate, but it is just all part
of the tradition. In response to this, there there are
some Awese Christmas songs. Most of them are really annoying
Awese versions of Christmas carols, but there are a few exceptions.
One of my favorite is how to Make Gravy by

(48:11):
Paul Kelly. Okay, this is a song written as a
man who is in jail at Christmas time. He is
the one who usually makes the gravy. He is calling
his brother to get advice on how to make it.
What he is really calling about is to say how
much he will miss his family and that he is sorry. Well,
that makes me think of one of my favorite Christmas
songs actually Christmas in Prison by John Priyan. It's beautiful. Oh,

(48:34):
I remember phil Oaks had one called they Don't Have
Christmas in Kentucky. It was about, you know, impoverished conditions
and whatnot. Um. You know a good like a good
sad Christmas song? That's a long way, doesn't it? Um? Anyway?
Anna continues. Another Christmas song I like is by an
artist called Darren Handlin. He has a song called The Loaf.

(48:58):
This is about a family preparing for a Christmas. The
eldest boy has just been dumped. He spends time crying
and his family makes fun of him, saying tears will
never bring her back. It's cold. Yeah. A loaf of
bread has been put in the oven. During the night,
the boy creeps in and throws all his love letters
into the oven so they will all burn up in

(49:18):
the morning. The loaf is huge, but when they pierce
it with a knife, all his words explode out and
the family is killed by exploding bread. What now? That
is a song that you will never hear in any
retail setting. It is really about the power of words.
Thanks and Mary Xmas. Anna. I've never heard the Loaf,
but I got to look that up right now? That
is so good? Yeah? How long before that becomes a standard?

(49:42):
Hopefully soon? In googling it, all I'm getting is meat
Loaf singing Christmas Thilms songs. Oh, not quite the same thing, So,
I though it depends. Um, did Jim work on those
those songs? Stan, No, they're not. I mean they're Christmas songs?
You mean, like where they Jim Steinman original that I into?

(50:05):
You had that kind of like, uh, you know, the
sort of gothic uh, sleazy biker vampire feel that a
proper a song from that collaboration should have. Sorry, I'm
trying to think of a good Jim Steinman type song title.
It would be something like baby, it's not Christmas yet parentheses,
but it's the New Year. Yeah, it makes you think, Yeah,

(50:28):
I like it. I would be I would be into that.
All right. When we're gonna go ahead and close up
the bag there, we're gonna send Carney back on his
his his his boxing way and we will uh yeah,
we'll close out the episode here. In the meantime, if
you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Blow Your Mind, well, you can go to Stuff to

(50:49):
Blow Your Mind dot com. That'll get you where you
you need to go. But you can find the podcast
anywhere you get your podcast wherever that happens to be.
Just make sure that you subscribe, make sure that you
rate and review. These are great ways to help out
the show. Let's see other things. There is a merch store. Well,
we've got some new designs coming up. There's the recent
uh monster map uh T shirt design and I believe

(51:12):
we have a psychedelic mushroom inspired logo design coming out soon.
Maybe by the time you hear this, it will be out.
It's like the stuff to blow your mind glyph but
in prehistoric fungus. Yeah, they sent us a preliminary illustration.
I said, it looks good, but could we make it
look more like a black light poster? And uh and
and I think that that really brought it in the

(51:33):
right direction. Uh. So you know, check that out and
see what I'm talking about. I can only describe the
visuals so well. Other shows you can check out. There
is the second oil Age, a little sci fi horror
thing that a work done. That one is out in
its entirety now, so you can just binge the whole thing. Invention.
Our other podcasts that Joe and I do together. Uh.

(51:54):
We finished the first year of Invention episodes and you
can find them all at invention pod dot com or
where every you get your podcasts rate review subscribe to
that as well, because if you like what we're doing here,
but we think you'll enjoy Invention as well. Huge thanks
as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

(52:16):
topic for the future, or just to say hi, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a
production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app,

(52:36):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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