From the Vault: Kaibyō: The Strange Cats of Japan, Part 2

Spooky cats are an iconic part of Halloween, so in this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe dive into the world of Kaibyō: the various strange and supernatural cats found in Japanese tradition. (originally published 10/19/2023)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time to
go into the vault for an older episode of the show.
This one originally published October nineteenth, twenty twenty three, and
it is about the strange and supernatural cats of Japanese tradition.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
All right, let's dive right in.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
And it is October on Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
which means the Uncanny Pods continue. And today we're back
with part two in a series we started on Tuesday
about the monster cats of Japanese legend the cat yo kai.
So brief of what we talked about last time. We

(01:02):
covered a bit about the general role of cats in
Japanese history in Japanese culture, and then we discussed a
couple of famous cat yokai altered cats in monster form,
including the neko mata, which may be a sort of
giant monster cat or general large predator of the mountain forests,
or maybe a cat that reaches a certain age, like

(01:23):
a domestic house cat that reaches a certain age, maybe
the age of one hundred, and then transforms into a monster.
We also talked about the bakean eko, a sort of
a moral shape shifting cat that may play pranks, may
drink blood, may exact deadly revenge, etc. Does that about
cover it.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Rob, Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And an important thing to
keep in mind, this is something we were talking about
off mic before we came in here, is that there's
a certain amount of overlap between these different classifications. I mean,
more generally, as we've often discussed with folklore and legends
and mythology and even religion, that there's not often like

(02:01):
a strong canonizing, codifying force that is coming in and
saying like, Okay, this is this creature and this is
this other creature. You know, things shift over time, ideas merge,
ideas influence one another, And I mean really, if you
want to look outside of folklore and mythology and legend

(02:21):
to find examples of this, I mean look no further
than say like comic book characters, where like a character
like Lex Luthor or the Riddler you know, have changed
multiple times over the years to reflect different ideas in
popular culture, with like Lex Luthor becoming less of a
mad scientist in a mecha suit and becoming like a
corporate businessman and so forth. The Riddler suddenly is the

(02:43):
Zodiac Killer in recent films, you know that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Uh huh. I think that's a great comparison. But even
in that case, at least, the things you're talking about
are fixed media documents like you know, comic books and films,
which continue to exist in a fixed form. When something
is sort of oral legend and part of a culture,
there's almost a limitless kind of free flow of the
boundaries of the concept.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Right right, there's no like central publication that is to
some extent controlling the form. And you can argue just
how much even something like The Riddler is controlled by it,
say DC comics, because ultimately have fan fiction, fan art,
et cetera. But yeah, outside of that, you know, we're
dealing with situations where things are just growing organically, often

(03:29):
in oral storytelling traditions, and then it gets influenced by
various artistic renditions and so forth.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
So today we're going to be talking about some more
Japanese stories of magical cats. Not all monster cats, but
some of them are monster cats. But before we get
into that, I wanted to look at something more broadly
about the perception of cats as powerful beings. So in

(03:58):
multiple sources I was reading for the series, there would
be little comments and asides that were variations on the
perception that cats just seem to have some kind of obscure,
hidden power, that something about the nature of the cat
suggests there's more than meets the eye. And I find

(04:19):
myself intuitively very much in agreement with that. But I
would back up and say, even before you get to
the assumption about magical powers, I think there is just
something about a cat that suggests power of some sort.
Like despite the fact that cats are Internet famous for
being you know, goofy goobers, cute, goofy goobers, no doubt

(04:41):
they often are just as often when, especially when I'm
in the physical presence of a cat, I often feel
that a house cat is commanding a strange, mysterious power
and respect. And I was talking to my wife Rachel
about this, and she said, basically she had the same feeling.
She said, when in the presence of a cat, it's

(05:02):
this kind of a creature that's holding something over you. Specifically,
in her case, she talks about the feeling of the
need to impress a cat like this is an animal
that is passing judgment on you, and you are failing,
and there might be some kind of bad consequence to
the fact that you are not standing up in the
eyes of the cat. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
I mean, when you go over to a friend's house
and they have a dog, the dog may initially bark
at you, but you know, as is often the case
in my experience, then the owner will say no, no, no,
Hugo or whatever the dog's name is. This person is fine,
this person's fine, And eventually, in my experience, the dog
tends to listen to this and it's like, okay, all right,
he's fine the cat. You know, the best you can

(05:45):
do when someone comes over is say like, look, I
have nothing to do with how this cat is going
to receive you. I can give you advice, I can
tell you what not to do, but ultimately it's out
of my.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Hands, that's right. Yeah, you know, I'm not the boss
here in a way. Ye, So I can sense why
people in various cultures throughout history might start to wonder
if the domestic cat is brimming with bloodthirsty sorcery, and
all it would take is that same feeling. I have
that intuitive sense that the cat is powerful for some reason,

(06:18):
but paired with the observation that that sense of power
is incongruous with a cat's actual physical size and strength.
Like you know, that sense of power cannot be justified
through what a cat can literally actually do, So the
mind fills with magic. And I will add that, of course,
the comparison to dogs is unavoidable. I love dogs. I

(06:39):
am more of a dog person than a cat person,
and I would not say this about dogs at all.
This seems totally unique to cats. Dogs do not seem
to have hidden power or magic in this way.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, as a cat person, I find that when I
encounter a new dog, it's like things often push to
one extreme or another. You know, a dog is either
suspicious or hostile towards you, or they are just instantly
already your friend and want to, you know, get all
up in your business and see if you have treats
and so forth, And of course you know, on the

(07:12):
thread end of the spectrum. Obviously, as in my first example,
a lot of times it's like yeah, the initial barking
at a stranger, but then they're like, oh, okay, they're fine.
But with the cat, there's often there often seems to
be and again this is general, this is generality. Then
they're going to be individual exceptions with the cats, as
there are with the dogs. But they seem to occupy
this middle ground, you know, where it's like a no friends,
no enemies approach to relations.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Yeah, yeah, that's good. But anyways, so this got me wondering, like,
why is it that cats seem powerful in this way?
I don't know if they seem this way to everyone,
but I think at least a lot of people must
share this feeling I have. And this turned out to
be a difficult question question to answer in a way
that felt really solid and empirically justified. I don't think

(07:56):
I have a great answer to this question, but I've
turned up a few possible interesting ideas. So the first
place I look to try to get some empirically justified
threads on this is I was wondering, well, what are
the behavioral markers of power in humans that we might
just be sort of mapping on to the behavior of cats.

(08:16):
And this is great because you know, the whatever government
agencies or whatever are tracking my internet behavior must now
think I'm about to start a second career as one
of those psychopath dating advice coaches, because I'm here searching
for studies on what makes humans seem powerful? How do
humans signal dominance in high status? So TikTok, masculinity, priesthood

(08:37):
here I come.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
I imagine there's a lot out there that equates dog ownership
with strength and cat ownership with sensitivity. These are, of
course both ridiculous stereotypes, but you do see this sort
of thing reflected, like, look at this guy. He's got
a big dog. Must be must be a really powerful fellow.
Look this, this creature is clearly physically powerful, and it

(08:59):
just works for him. You know, it's observient to him.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Where is the boss?

Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah? Whereas the cat ownership, you know, is often interpreted
in the opposite direction.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
One of the seasonally appropriate examples is, of course, when
when people realized or I mean, I think this was
always kind of out in the open, but when people
realize that that metal musician Glenn Danzig is a cat
person and has cats and buys cat letter, right, people
had a lot of fun with that concept because he
pushes this hyper masculine identity out there, right, and so

(09:33):
it just dealing with like those really like outrageous gender stereotypes.
It was like, it seemed counterintuitive that this individual would
have a cat, But then again, when you get into
all the spooky stuff, right, it seems perfectly logical that
he would have multiple black cats.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
I feel like I could have told you Danzig was
a cat person. I don't know how I knew, but
I knew. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
I think there are old photos of them with with
with cats, long before the kitty or shopping photo went viral.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
But anyway, what did I come up with here? Okay?
I think about two ideas that are potentially interesting and
one that was kind of a failed rabbit trail. We'll
do the failed one first. This idea is about eye contact.
I have the impression that something about the way a
cat looks at you can feel intimidating, and that there's

(10:22):
something about the gaze of a cat that has to
do with this feeling of power that I impute to them.
And I wondered if this had something to do with
our instincts about eye contact. I think it's absolutely clear
that eye contact is one of the most potent and
complicated elements of human body language. How much you do

(10:44):
or don't connect with somebody's gaze, who engages and breaks
off eye contact, and when they do it. These gestures
that we make with our eyes are interpreted as containing
lots of socially relevant information. And if you doubt this,
just like, try to have a conversation with somebody, but
don't do what feels natural with eye contact, like force

(11:07):
yourself to maintain eye contact longer than you naturally would
or something. It will I guarantee you immediately become extremely
uncomfortable and you will both get freaked out. For whatever reason.
Humans just read a lot into how they manage eye
contact with each other. There are a bunch of studies
about this, and while there might be a lot of
different kinds of information encoded in patterns of eye contact,

(11:29):
it's clear that one of the important types of social
information that we interpret in patterns of eye contact has
to do with power, status and dominance. For example, there
are studies showing that at least in some human on
human scenarios, people perceive to be powerful or in leadership
roles are more likely to maintain eye contact once it

(11:53):
is initiated, so you meet the powerful person's gaze and
the powerful person will stare you down. Conversely, people who
are perceived in social interactions as subservient or less powerful
are more likely to break off eye contact and avert
their gaze from that of a person they perceive as

(12:13):
more powerful or higher status than them. So I was
thinking about this, and I was thinking, what this does
feel like? It squares with experiences I've had with cats
where they will just like stare into my eyes until
I feel uncomfortable and feel like I have to look away.
And this does appear to be a true dynamic for humans.
But I couldn't really connect this to any empirical evidence

(12:34):
that cats are especially prone to this, that cats are
more likely than any other animal to like hit you
with a laser beam of unbroken eye contact. Like I said,
I feel like I've had this experience before, but I
don't think it's generally true of cats. In fact, a
lot of veterinary sources I was reading claim exactly the opposite.
They say that cats tend to find sustained eye contact

(12:57):
threatening and stressful, and that you should not stare right
into their eyes because it will bother them, the reasoning
being that the cats only whole eye contact with each
other when they are preparing to fight, which would mirror
the idea that eye contact has something to do with
sort of like a you know, dominance and competition in mammals.
So if vets and other experts say that cats generally

(13:19):
avoid prolonged eye contact with humans, that's sort of the
opposite of what I was wondering about. So I don't know,
maybe there's something I'm missing, but I think my intuition
about cats was just wrong in this case.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, I've heard that cats favor a narrowing of the
eyes and a head nod, though I've never investigated it
to see if there's anything substantial backing it up. But
in my limited experience, it kind of sort of seems
to work. You know, like if I find myself staring
at my cats, sometimes I'll do that, and you know,
it seems like we have a cool moment. But in general, though,

(13:51):
I would say, in my experience is all very subjective, obviously,
but cats have very captivating eyes, very large eyes. They're
the eyes of a predator, you know, an obligate predator.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Here.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
They also are are eyes that are finely tuned for
work in low light environments. They will appear to gleam,
you know, in low light environments, which often has an
impact on various supernatural interpretations, you know, eyes gleaming in
the night, glowing in the night, and so forth. Whereas
with dogs, I don't know. Sometimes I encounter dogs and

(14:26):
it's like their eyes feel like they're completely dark, you know,
like they're like a doll's eyes, but not in like
a threatening Jaws fashion, but in a like this is
a stuffed animal fashion, like there's no agency here, this,
this animal is just just dumb, as I'll get out.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
I don't feel that about dogs. But yeah, not.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
All dogs, just some dogs I have encountered. Their eyes
feel very dark and like I don't read them as well.
Whereas cat eyes are are if they're wide open, certainly
they're very intense.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Well, I think with some dogs you don't really get
to see much other than the pupil, you know, like
you're not seeing a lot of the whites of a
dog's eye usually, which is something we use to interpret
the theory of mind and other humans because, like you know,
when we're trying to understand what other humans are thinking,
we look at where they're looking with their eyes, and

(15:20):
that necessarily involves being able to see the relative proportion
of the whites of the eyes on you know, Like
so we look at where their pupils are pointed with
a dog, Yeah, a lot of times, like the darker
part of the eyeball like fills up most of what
you can see. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
And a theory of mind, of course, is central to
all of this. Anybody who's familiar with animals will tell
you that, depending on the animal, it may not be
the eyes that are the prime indicator of mood and
so forth. I mean, ears are especially important in a
number of animals, like what are their ears doing, how
are their ears positioned? And so forth.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Anyway, Okay, so I think my thing about eye contact
that's not really going anywhere, But a couple of other
ideas I think might be onto something. One is about elevation.
It seems to me that cats often seek to occupy
high places in the room, on top of shelves and
tall furniture in lofted areas, looking down on others, And

(16:18):
unlike dogs, cats are climbers. They can actually get up
to the high places. So I think even if a
dog wanted to be up on top of the shelf.
It probably can't get there, but a cat can. Once again,
I didn't know if this was a real trend with
cats or just my personal, idiosyncratic experience. While I looked
it up to see if there are any studies on this,

(16:38):
and there are. So I was reading in a book
called the Domestic Cat, The Biology of Its Behavior from
Cambridge University Press, two thousand, edited by Turner and Bateson,
and they're summarizing some research on this, and they say,
quote Smith at All nineteen ninety four examined the behavior
of cats in shelters with specific reference to their space

(17:00):
distribution and object preferences. The cats used structures more often
than the floor of their pins, and high structures, which
provided vantage points, were used more frequently than low ones.
Other studies have confirmed that cats prefer high shelves and
enclosed areas. So this is not just my gut feeling.
Researchers have investigated this and they found that yes, cats do,

(17:23):
on average actually prefer to get up high and look
down on everyone else. Now pair that with the fact
that I think it's totally clear that humans frequently use
physical elevation to signal power. Think of the elevation of
the king or the queen's throne over the throne room,
the elevation of the judge's bench over the courtroom, the

(17:44):
elevation of the preacher's pulpit, etc. It seems like a
common cross cultural reality that when we went to signal
that a person is powerful and they must be respected
and even feared, we put them up on an elevated
piece of furniture. So related to this cultural convention, which
in turn might proceed from some biological realities, we regard

(18:06):
the entity up in a high place looking down on
us as a being with power over us. Cats, on
average do selectively seek out elevated perches and high vantage points.
So I guess that's one possible contributing factor to our
perceptions of the strange power of a cat. And by
the way, I was thinking, I can't think of any

(18:27):
other common domestic animal that is able to do this,
Like you know, dogs and all the common farm animals
and so forth don't climb up on shelves to peer
down at us. The only other one I was thinking
of was maybe like the goat, which does like to
get up on top of the roofs, of the pins
and so forth.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, I was about to ask you if you had
forgotten our friend the goat, because the goat seems like
the most striking example of animals that like. You go
out and you'll see you'll see goats in a field
and they have access to a hay baal or some
other elevated structure. You'll often find multiple goats enjoying that
heightened perspective. Whereas cats, I don't know, you know, I

(19:05):
don't doubt the research here, but you'll find cats enjoying
elevated positions, but also shelving and other locations that are
maybe less high, that are maybe picked out more because
they are enclosed. You know, they're they're boxy, they're like
little caves. Likewise, I mean, you'll you'll find cats sleeping

(19:26):
on shoes and so forth with ground level. So, I
don't know, it seems less pronounced in cats than with goats.
For sure, goats would seem to be the superstars uh
here when it comes to elevated positions, I think the
we do often put out like little pedestals and throne

(19:46):
like structures for them to use. Even and of course
climbing towers and so forth. So we do facilitate uh,
their their you know, their their desire to have some
sort of an elevated position, and and also you know,
that'll end up looking like we have provided a special
place for them, a throne for them to rule over
the household. Though at the same time, as we've discussed

(20:08):
in the show before, they'll also favor say a discarded
ikea instruction manual that's left on a bed. Oh, they'll
they'll they'll lay in an empty box. So it's I
don't know, I feel like they they do.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
What they want.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
You know, you can't you can't entirely expect them to
just go to the highest place. They're gonna also find
a comfy place and on that. On that count, I
would also add that one of the things about cats
that may make them seem more powerful is the way
they will recline in sudden some circumstances, especially if they're

(20:44):
say on a couch where they have something to lean
their bodies back against. They'll sometimes have this body position
that makes them look like a reclining bipedal humanoid, and
you know, their belly will perhaps be a little exaggerated
since they may be an indoor cat that eats plenty,

(21:04):
and this will sort of add to this feeling of
a rotun ruler on.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
Their throne jab of the cat.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, but at the very least to your point, Yes,
cats will take advantage of various surface levels on which
to rest and to you know, view their domain, and
a lot of times that will put them at a
certainly at a at a higher vantage point, perhaps one

(21:31):
that is more on the level with human beings as
opposed to just being on the floor.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
All right, Another idea I had about cats in the
perception of power, what if cats seem powerful because they
are non compliant or non conforming. There are multiple studies
on this dynamic and human. Just to refer to one
that seems to be cited a lot, there is a
study by Sylvia Ballesa, Francesca Gino, and a not Keenan

(22:09):
called the Red Sneakers Effect Inferring status and competence from
signals of non conformity. This is from the Journal of
Consumer Research from twenty fourteen. What seems to have incited
this research is just some anecdotal observations that run counter
to the conventional wisdom that if you want to be respected.
You need to dress sharp. You know. I've heard variations

(22:31):
on this my whole life. Dress for the job you want,
not the job you have, and they don't actually include,
like in that statement, what you're supposed to wear, But
the unspoken assumption is that this means dress up, not
dressed down. You know where in my case, the this
is interpreted as wear a tie, shine your shoes, et cetera.
But the authors here point out that counter to this

(22:53):
conventional wisdom in certain sectors of business and culture, they
cite observations in Silica Valley, there seems to be a
principle operating in exactly the opposite direction. People in these
contexts seem to try to signal their power, competence, and
high status by dressing down relative to their peers. So like,

(23:15):
you know, the CEO, because they will not tuck their
shirt in, they're showing up at the board meeting in
flip flops. So that's just an anecdotal observation. But the
authors here wanted to put together experiments to investigate empirically whether,
in some contexts, non conforming behaviors or non compliance with
social expectations, whether that does on average confer the appearance

(23:39):
of power, competence, and high status, and generally in their
experiments which involve different kinds of you know, like staged
encounters you might imagine in a university or business setting
or whatever. They did indeed find that sometimes non compliance
and non conformity are interpreted by others as signs of power,

(23:59):
and they compare non conformity and non compliance with social
expectations to a form of conspicuous consumption. Conspicuous consumption is
a classic concept where people try to show off their
high status by showing off that they can afford luxury goods, so,

(24:20):
you know, having like expensive jewelry on or wearing you know,
something that is impractically expensive and expensive car or something
like that to make people think that you are powerful
and important. In their discussion section, the authors write, quote,
we demonstrate that non conforming behavior as a costly, invisible signal,
can operate similarly to conspicuous consumption and compared to conforming behavior,

(24:45):
lead to inferences of enhanced status and competence in the
eyes of others. Across a series of lab and field studies,
we explore observer's reactions to a variety of non conforming
behaviors in different settings and find that observers can for
higher status and competence to non conforming individuals compared to
conforming ones. At a process level, our investigation reveals that

(25:08):
the positive inferences from signals of non conformity are driven
by perceived autonomy and moderated by observer's need for uniqueness.
So the theory here seems to be that people interpret
non conformity as an honest display of autonomy. Somebody who
is not complying with social expectations is sort of conveying

(25:30):
I will be fine without your approval, I don't need it,
which ironically in some cases makes some people seem more competent,
more powerful, and more worthy of respect. So what are
the boundaries of this effect? Because it obviously does not
apply in every scenario, the authors in this paper, across
their multiple studies think that. Well, they say, they find

(25:51):
that this effect only appears when the observer is familiar
with the environment and social expectations within it. So you know,
when there are quote established norms of formal conduct in
the given context, and when the observer knows what they are.
So like, there have to be implied social rules in
a place, and the observer has to know what they are.

(26:12):
They also find that the perception of status and competence
associated with nonconformity only appears if the observer believes that
the person in question, the non conforming person, is violating
the norms on purpose. If it seems like they're simply
not aware that they're dressing or speaking inappropriately, that doesn't
confer any sense of power. The power comes from willful

(26:36):
flaunting of social expectations. So how does this connect to cats?
Obviously cats don't dress themselves or use language, so it
wouldn't make sense to talk about them intentionally flaunting expected
dress codes or ways of speaking. But I think basically
anybody would have to agree that cats exude an air

(26:57):
of non compliance in nonconformitypecially victually when contrasted with other
domestic animals like the dog. The dog, of course, you know,
highly social and usually quite eager to please. The dog
will put on a tie for you if it can,
by God, But there is something about the way that
like if you try to train a cat, I mean,
it's it's not true that you can't train a cat.

(27:19):
Sometimes people do do it, but it is notoriously difficult,
and often when people try it on their own. The
cat just ignores you, often not just ignoring you, but
like staring right in your face while it ignores what
you want it to do. And I think that does
maybe convey a sense of willful flaunting of social expectations

(27:42):
that could map on to these intuitions we have about
human behavior that when somebody is just like, no, I'm
just not going to comply with the social norms, that
makes them seem like, oh wow, this is a powerful
person and I have maybe I should respect them.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
Well, it is true that cat are quite ungovernable, the
notoriously so. It's also one of their their charms too,
but one of the frustrations of keeping them as well.
There's a sticker design out there. I don't know. I
get served ads for it all the time on like Instagram,
I guess because I look at cat videos and it's
like a cartoon cat with two middle fingers up and

(28:19):
it says you can't stop me, which I love because
it does perfectly capture the spirit of the cat. They
will do what they want. And yeah, like I imagine
it's different like if a dog, say, were to poop
on your bed, you know, this would what would that
be like Joe, what is a dog owner? How does

(28:41):
that go down?

Speaker 2 (28:41):
You get the sense that when a dog, I mean,
all dogs are different, of course, so we're speaking in generalizations,
but I think on average dog owners will probably say
that a dog can be made to feel ashamed about
like that. You show the dog that they pooped on
the bed, there's a sense that like, the dog couldn't
help it. It just got caught up in the moment,

(29:02):
or it really needed to go and it pooped on
the bed. And then it looks at the poop and
it's like, I'm sorry. A cat, you don't get that
at all.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
That's right with a cat. The first part may still
obviously be true. The cat could various circumstances just made
it to where the cat ended up leaving its poop
on the bed. But there is this feeling that the
cat is saying, actually, this is where my poop goes. Now,
this is just how it is. I have made this decision,
and what.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Are you going to do about it? I don't need
your approval.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah you don't like it, there move it. You're the
one who handles my poop for me. But yeah, I
mean that you encountered this all the time with cats,
Like you attempt to get them a new litter that
will be better for them and better for the whole household,
and they reject it, or you get them a comfany
new bed, but instead they're going to go sweep on
the instructions for putting together the fancy cat bed that

(29:54):
you just bought. You know, they're gonna do what they want.
They're not necessarily They may do what you want in time,
but they're not going to do it on your schedule.
They have their own agenda in place.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
So to summarize, I don't think I have a comprehensive
theory about why cats seem powerful, but I think we
got a few interesting ideas there. I think the non
compliance and nonconformity thing maybe a big part of it.
I think the elevation might possibly be a part of it.
I don't think the eye contact thing really goes anywhere,
but I'd be interested what listeners think, especially if you

(30:26):
have a I don't know if you're like a vet
you work with cats or anything, or even if you
know you just got a lot of cats and you
want to tell us about them, Like, where do you
think the sense that cats have a hidden power comes
from I think.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Another area that comes to mind is this sort of
idea that there is a vanity, like like a king
Lee or queenly vanity to the cat. And I was
thinking about this specifically last night because my son and
I are I'm slowly reading Watership Down to him when
we still do some story time. He does lots of
reading on his own, but I was like, Watership, you're

(31:00):
into all these animal books. Let's do Watership Down. And
we were just reading a part in this in which
the rabbits encounter a cat. A cat in Watership Down
is a deadly illegal in one of the thousand enemies
of the rabbit people, but in this encounter they managed
to outrun the cat. And one of the rabbit's comments

(31:20):
that the cats quote hate to look foolish, and this
matches up with a lot of the things that one
sees in cat behavior. They will often seemingly walk off
stumbles and mistakes with a kind of nonchalant that didn't
happen vibe. This is, of course all theory of mind
and personification on our part, but that's how we often
end up interpreting it. So the cat may seem prideful

(31:42):
and powerful in a way, you know, kind of like
eager to cover up a stumble it made, when of course,
in reality, the cat is just doing some mix of
just recovering from whatever they did wrong and moving on
or conserving energy instead of wasting you know, time focusing
on it. It's also coming back a little bit to
the subjects that we discussed in the last episode, this

(32:05):
idea of cats catching on early in Japan, with with royalty,
with nobility, and you have this, this this clear mental
picture of a Japanese emperor, someone who is in a
position where I'm you know, I'm imagining there's a lot
of a lot of yes men surrounding them, there's a
you know, a lot of power, there's a lot of

(32:26):
things being done in such a way as to please
the emperor, and then into their life strolls a cat,
which which you know is adorable and interesting, but also
is not going to do what an emperor wants the
cat to do. Like again, they are ungovernable to the
last of them, to a fault. Even so, I think
it's it's interesting to imagine that scenario and being part

(32:48):
of there, and it's almost like they occupy would have
occupied like this gesture's place, uh, in the presence of
the emperor. Like here is here is a creature that
will not do whatever I want, And in a way
there's something liberating about that.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
I think that's a really good comparison. Yeah, like the
power of the jester, like the one who can criticize
the king because they're a goober. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
All right, Now, coming back a bit to Japanese lore
and legend and tradition concerning cats. I want to get
into a few other ideas here. I want to mention
again that two of my primary sources here are kaid
Yo The Supernatural Cats of Japan by Zach Davison, and
then also a book titled the Japanese Myths The Guide
to God's Heroes and Spirits by Joshua Friedman. The first

(33:35):
cat I want to touch on, I think I may
have mentioned this one in passing, but is the cat
is the Meneki Neko, the inviting cat. This is a
cat that I think everyone a cat statue if you will,
that I think everyone has seen, probably in person, probably
in multitudes at times. If you haven't seen one in person,
surely you've seen an image of this. This is a

(33:57):
little statue of a cat gesturing with it, with it
with a face down paw, welcoming good luck into a space.
A lot of times these are like solar and or
battery powered as well, and so you get that little
motion of the inviting paw.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
I don't think I knew what this was called, but
I thought of this as the lucky cat, and it
kind of has a in some forms. It has a
paw that waves like the lever of an old school
cash register.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yeah, that's right. It's its origins are in the Edo period,
when it was apparently observed that cats sometimes manipulate their
paw in this way that resembles the Japanese traditional hand
gesture to come inside. I think in Western traditions it's
often easy to look at that and think of like
waving or like you say, pulling a lever, But in

(34:47):
Japanese tradition, I believe this would be more like yeah,
come inside. And the cat then is welcoming good luck.
Generally inside a home or business, they are not, and
I can't stress this enough, not welcoming in vampires. So
if you were a vampire out there, do not misinterpret
a lut cat as being an open invitation to come

(35:08):
inside because it's not gonna work.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
I can't believe this has never come up before. Does
when a vampire has to be invited in? Does that
apply to places of business or only to homes? And
if it applies to places of business, is the open
sign welcome enough or does it have to come out
of a person's mouth?

Speaker 1 (35:27):
I don't know. It depends on the interpretation. Yeah, if
it's by appointment only, I think the vampire cannot come
inside all right. Now, As for the luck cats, though
Davison shares several more tidbits, I wasn't familiar with any
of this. I'm gonna stress though, that there's no real
canon here regarding what any of these details mean. And
some he'll apparently find traditions that are the opposite of

(35:52):
some of the standards here, But in general, you look
at one of these lut cats, you may see a
red bib or collar. This is a symbol of Buddhist vinage.
Oftentimes you'll see it holding a coin, a gold coin.
This is from the Edo period as well. It's called
a cobine. It represents like vast wealth. And I think
there's also this idea too, that is kind of like,

(36:12):
as Davidson points out, like pearls before swine. You know,
it's like a coin for a cat is something that
a cat cannot actually appreciate, but it's kind of fun
that it has it.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
The cat would rather have a lot of aluminum foil.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, the colors mean a lot. Apparently you often see
white ones. A white luck cat typically means happiness. It's
inviting in happiness, red color real it's inviting in relationship
success or and or protection from illness. The black color
is protection from evil spirits. Gold cats obviously mean money.

(36:50):
But then there are all sorts of newer colors that
have apparently been introduced just in general popular culture, like
blue for academic success, green for health, pink for love,
and then Kaliko apparently is considered the luckiest of all,
I guess because you get a combination of colors and
calicos of like luck associations like traditionally in Japan, also

(37:12):
depending on which hand is doing the waving, Some traditions
say left hand invites in money, right brings in customers,
though sometimes apparently this is reversed so it depends who
you're asking about it. Some say right is for home
left is for business left hand. It also apparently has
a connotation with holding one's liquor, which apparently ties into

(37:33):
the idea, particularly with a luck cat in a restaurant,
of keeping clients drinking so that they're ordering more food.
But again that nothing is there's no strict canon re
coat here. You'll find various interpretations of this. Again, origins
go back to the Edo period. You would have these
motionless clay models, and there are a number of stories

(37:56):
that lay out how these clay statues.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Came to be.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
There are some stories apparently in which you have a
situation where a hero is saved from ill, luck or
attack by a becketting cat in the night, and therefore
after the fact they're like, oh, well this cat saved
my life, I will now honor it. There's one story
that Davison relates in which there's like a samurai protecting

(38:22):
this woman. They're going through the dark streets at night.
This cat jumps out, he thinks it's a threat, He
slays the cat and then realizes, oh, this cat was
protecting us or warning us, and then he feels vast
guilt and a shrine is built to the cats. There's
also a cat temple origin story of sorts. There's an
actual cat temple in Japan, Gotukuji, I believe, is what

(38:46):
it is called. So the cat is apparently, in some
traditions said to be one of only two animals that
did not weep upon the death of the Buddha. I've
seen it also put other ways that the cat does
not accept the Buddha's teaching. Whatever the details, you know,
it matches up with the spirit of the cat. The
cat does not seem likely to be greatly emotionally disturbed

(39:09):
by the death of even the Buddha, and also is
going to be rather neutral on Buddhist teachings.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
The cat is like, I will keep my attachments, thank
you very much.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yes, But the story goes that, okay, cats are not
really lined up with the spirit of Buddhist teachings. Therefore
they're not a great animal to have at a holy site.
But the story is that a monk kept one anyway
because it was cute, adorable, et cetera, et cetera, so
he hides it from the abbot there. But then one
night during a storm, the cat invites a powerful lord

(39:39):
to the temple for refuge, and that temple Kotukuji becomes
the Cat Temple and today hosts thousands of luck cats.
You can find various pictures of this place online and
just yeah, tons and tons of white luck cats.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Wow. I'm looking at a picture you included in the
outline and it looks like drifts of snow with strawberry. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Yeah, there are a bunch of them. Now, again we
discuss that there's a lot of overlap with these different
stories about the cats, supernatural cats of Japan, and this
general idea that there's kind of an evolution. A cat
becomes old enough, a cat becomes one hundred years old,
and then the tail splits, it becomes something else. More
tails mean more power, even to change its shape and

(40:24):
take on human form and manipulate aid or hunt humans
for sport, that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Oh and when you said this, I just realized I
forgot to mention when I did the recap at the
beginning that yes, the nekomata has a forked taiale or
two tails. That's like primary characteristic. I left out apologies
about that.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Now, while a lot of these ideas with supernatural cats
are or they become the idea that this is something
that a normal cat can and will turn into one.
Exception to this is the idea of the neko musumi.
This is the cat daughter. Zach Davison discusses this in
the book The Cat Daughter in Question. Here is a

(41:12):
cat human hybrid, but her origin isn't situated in the
domestic cat at all. She's not a former domestic cat
that is transformed into this state. She's also attributed with
certain acts that are feline in nature, like cat bathing
and killing of rodents in line with her feline qualities. Now,
as Davison lays out the origins of this one and

(41:34):
the path of his evolution, kind of walks through a
couple of centuries of weird tales and oddities in Japanese culture.
The earliest version of the tail stems from the Missy
Momo or Seeing Things shows in the seventeen hundreds. These,
he writes, were quote a combination of American freak shows,
haunted houses, and the believe it or Not style of

(41:56):
exhibitions still popular today. So amid so this would this
would be a situation for you to encounter various Jokai artifacts,
including the original Fiji mermaid, which originated here in this setting,
and then you know, ended up traveling into the west,
but this is where the original Cat Daughter is said
to have existed. It's unknown, however, if this was somebody

(42:20):
that had a birth defect, if it was somebody who
had been made up with special makeup or lighting, or
if it's with some combination of different elements. But there
was supposedly an individual that was the Cat Daughter, and
you would pay to see them.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Are there even any physical descriptions other than that, in
some sense, some vague sense, she looks like a cat.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
I don't think so. I think we don't have a
lot to go on here, based on my reading of Davidson.
So the misimomo shows they die out, maybe they're no
longer popular. But the story here of the Cat Daughter
comes back during the Edo period in the Kaiden or
ghost story collections. Sometimes she's called the Licking Girl again

(43:04):
because she's half cat half human and she does things
that a cat will do, like bathe herself by licking
or fur, and of course killing various rodents. That's also huge.
But again, her origins in these cases are still mysterious.
Nobody's saying that she was a domestic cat at one point.
She's just this anomaly, and apparently accounts during the Edo

(43:25):
period also sometimes present her again as a historical fact.
Davidson points out that there's like one particular work that's
primarily a historical and political diary, and they just refer
to the cat daughter as a fact, like this is
a person that exists or existed, which I guess makes
sense if its origins are in this Missy Momo seeing

(43:46):
things show. But then things continue to evolve, and finally,
in the nineteen thirties, the story takes on this form
of a Buddhist morality lesson. So in this story, you
have a father who makes his living producing cat skin
shamasin's this is a stringed instrument that was sometimes traditionally
made with cat or dog skin. And so in this story,

(44:10):
the father has killed something like five hundred cats in
his trade to make these these nice musical instruments that
he sells. But this ends up cursing his bloodline, causing
his daughter to be born as park cat.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
So this is something kind of like a karmic punishment.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah, exactly. Now I want to point out there are
also illustrations of the Niko mata from the seventeen hundreds.
We talked about the Nikomada in the last episode, which
depicts this creature in sort of like a cat humanoid
form playing a shamasen, and this was, I guess apparently
amusing because the shamasin might have been made out of
cat skin. All Right, the next one I want to

(44:49):
discuss very briefly. I don't think I'm gonna go into
this one much, but if you happen to be on
any of our social media profiles, you may have seen
an image selected to promote this episode, and it consists
of what appears to be just a giant chonker of
a cat, maybe not even leaping, but just sort of

(45:09):
reaching out of the of the high bushes and small
trees to swat at a human or a pair of
humans and cause them great agony and fear.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Elephant sized cat rising like steam out of the weeds.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Yeah, and the cat I love his, this very sort
of neutral look on its face. Like it it doesn't
look fearsome. And there are plenty of depictions of cats
taking on you know, sort of evil and terrifying facial features,
but this one, this cat looks very neutral as he
as he sort of you know, emerges from the bushes,

(45:47):
and yeah, he's a total chonker. Very much reminds me
of the cat meme of Oh laud he come in.
I don't know if you've seen this one. This is
the highest level on the chalk spectrum for how chunky
a cat.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Maybe I'm not familiar, but I understand the concept. Okay,
This picture is a nineteenth century image from Kawanabi Kyoshi.
This is supposed to be a giant cat attacking people
in the forest. Now, this is supposed to be a
depiction of the aeromote o ya maneko or the aeromote

(46:23):
great mountain cat. So this is a remote island of Japan,
and it is indeed home to a small aeromote cat,
a subspecies of leopard cat that is only found there.
It's critically endangered. It is not giant, but there are
legends of a much bigger cat with shining eyes that

(46:43):
lives in the mountain. So I guess you could say
it's kind of a cryptid of Japan. And you know,
who knows if there's anything to this. Again, cats when
they're they may have that appearance.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Of glowing eyes in the dark, and you can image
and how just just sighting one of these normal small
wildcats could have led to this idea that there's something
bigger lurking in the wilds.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
I was thinking about this after we recorded part one
the other day, because of course, the world is full
of actual big cat predators, lions, tigers, leopards, you know,
these are large predatory felines that can could really mess
you up. But it seems that the idea of taking
like even if you live in a place where there
are no large predatory cats, you could almost like invent

(47:33):
the idea yourself just by looking at a house cat
and thinking, wow, this we're bigger and stronger, I'd really
be in trouble.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's obviously always a concern
with cats. You know, there's always the joke about like
if a cat we're larger than a human, you know,
you would just eat you that sort of thing. Yeah,
but yeah, I guess it's it's always you never want
to air just entirely on the side of oh, well,
there's a tradition in this culture of a giant animal
that animals certainly existed, because obviously that's not always the case.

(48:03):
I mean, because the human imagination is powerful enough to
imagine large and small versions of any animals. There are
no giant man sized spiders in Japan, but there are
still stories about them exactly.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Yeah, And we make this point a lot on the show.
Sometimes weird stories and myths and legends do go back
to some kind of historical event that maybe is getting
altered through retelling. But it doesn't have to be that way.
You don't have to assume that every crazy story goes
back to something that really happened. People just are creative
people make things up.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's really a disservice at times
to the human imagination and to and also to the
traditions of various peoples to say like, oh, well, they
clearly didn't think of this on their own. It must
have been encrypted or Another version of this, of course,
is the idea like, oh, look at this weird thing
in their art. It has to be ancient aliens. Like

(48:57):
when you do that, there are a number of problems
with the aliens. I bought this, as we've touched on
many times before, but a big one too, is like
you're you're doing a disservice to whatever traditional society you're
commenting on by saying that this thing that they that
they imagined, interpreted, that you know, has this important role
in their belief system. When you just say, oh, that's

(49:21):
that's people from another planet. That's not nothing they did.
This is nothing that is a part of them. This
is something external to.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Them, right, And of course that applies to like real
human accomplishments, you know, buildings and structures. Saying like, oh,
people couldn't have done that without without alien help. That
is wrong, misguided, not an appropriate reaction to the evidence,
and it is insulting to you know, people who worked
hard and we're clever. But also it applies to stories.
You know, stories were say like, oh, you know, this

(49:48):
being came out of the water and it had these
physical features and all those things. There's no reason you
have to assume that that's based on people actually encountering
some being they didn't understand. People were creative in the past,
just like they're creative now. People today make up stories
about fantastical beings and beasts. They did then too, right,
But then again, you know, we are creatures that live

(50:10):
in the natural world, and we are often inspired by
the natural world, and we kind of get back into that.
In the final example, I want to highlight here this
may be one of my favorites. It is the idea
of the kasha. This one's interesting because in its origin
it is not a cat at all, but a terrifying
flaming cart with or without only attendants, so terrifying, you know,

(50:34):
troll like demon beings attending it or sometimes not attending it.
It comes down from the sky to drag away the
souls of sinners who are living in the end times,
drag them down to Hell and its many torments because
the cycle of reincarnation has run its course. Oh you know,
there's everything is broken, so it's time for the hell

(50:56):
cart to come and just drag people away. Or at
least that's how Kamakura Buddhists of the twelfth through fourteenth
centuries apparently viewed matters. But much later, during the eighteen hundreds,
you have influential yokai chronicler Tori Yama Sekan coming around.
We've talked about him before because a very influential figure
in sort of laying out what various yo kai looked

(51:20):
like and also just straight up making things up, like
very much like creating things on his own. I think
we've touched on some of these before where when you
many yokai have you know, very you know, cultural origins
within the larger culture and in traditional folk beliefs, and
particularly in rural areas, but also in many in urban
areas as well. But sometimes Sekan just sort of made

(51:42):
something up because it was clever, or you know, it
commented on some social or political element of the time, that.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
Sort of thing. So he comes along and he reinterprets
the kasha as a cat creature covered in flames, a
fearsome cat creature. And Joe, I've included an image.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
Of the kasha here as a yokai for you that
is brutal. The flames are coming off of its sideways.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
Yeah, and there's these wonderful like Japanese flames that kind
of feel like tendrils or tentacles, you know, like they're
reaching out to grab you. There's also this kind of
like spiral motif behind it, like it has just come
out of a warp from the hell domains. So, yeah,
a fearsome creature come to get your soul.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
I guess the sideways flames suggests like a whipping wind
or a storm or something.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
Yeah, so a very chaotic entity. And according to Davison,
this is purely a product of Sakan's creativity, but his
work was again highly influential, so it stuck. The kasha
was now a flesh eating animal spirit, and especially for
the wicked, the idea is that during your funeral possession,

(52:55):
a great wind may blow everything over. Knock over your casket,
open up the cask, your body comes rolling out, and
then in swoops the kasha to consume your corpse.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Now, eventually those Nikomata stories we talked about in the
first episode, they end up influencing this kasha legend, making
it a normal house cat that has been transformed due
to its proximity to the human dead. So allow a
normal cat to access a dead human body and they
will transform into a kasha and drag it away, you know,

(53:31):
and you know it may its tail may split, and
all the other motifs that we've discussed. But something about
being near the dead body, or drinking blood of the dead,
or you know, licking the body of the dead as
something of this nature will cause this transformation. Now, in
the last episode we mentioned that stories concerning the bacan

(53:52):
eko in the dead, how these were probably linked on
various levels. To observations of post mortem predation of human
corpses by cats. Now it's not just cats, Dogs and
other pets have also been observed to do this, to
have a little to eat off of a dead human body.

(54:13):
Apparently dogs wait a while and are a little more
concerned about it in regards to cats. I think cats
do it. I didn't look up any hard data on this,
but Davidson alludes to this, but at any rate, cats
will get in there and have a little to eat
off of the dead.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
One of the probably disturbing realities to humans coming on
the scene is that I've read when this happens, the animals,
including cats, often go for the face first.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
Yeah, and it's not personal, it's just nature. Cats are meteors.
But this is a case where the Kasha legend seems
to be linked to these observations as well. So you
get this idea that like, look, keep the cats away
from the dead or they will interfere with them, which
on one level, yes, absolutely true. They will. They will

(55:03):
probably have a little bite, they will investigate the meat.
And you can imagine how this takes on fantastic exaggerated proportions.
The idea that the cat is not just going to
eat of the dead. The cat may do something more
directly that impacts the soul of the deceased. They may
drag them to hell, they may take on the form

(55:23):
of the deceased, or as pops up in stories concerning
both the Kasha and the Nikomata, they may leap over
the body, and in doing so they kind of unleash
invisible strings that then reanimate the dead.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
They raise the dead through invisible strings. Wow, I love that.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Yeah. Yeah, So here we have a very you know,
necromantic view of the powers of the cat, you know,
and and again it's it's fascinating because yes it is fantastic,
and it ties into all these other ideas in the
given culture here. But also a lot of it is
that did in just our experiences of living with cats,

(56:03):
that cats do seem to have this this secrecy, this neutrality,
and they do things at times that seem to imply
some some darker agenda, some some hidden system of rules
and laws that govern their behavior, you know, either in
this world or the next. Uh. They're they're they're they're
constantly fascinating and constantly forcing us to wonder, like, what

(56:26):
are they up to? What are they on about? What's
their whole deal?

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Well, Rob, I have greatly enjoyed this exploration of the
various magical cat morphs and altered cats of Japan.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. And next week
we'll have an all new exploration for the Halloween season.
I don't think we've entirely decided what it is yet,
but it'll it'll be awesome, trust us. Now. On another note,
I mentioned social media earlier. Go check out our various
social media presences if you haven't had a chance, because
they're all back up and running. You can find them

(56:57):
all linked on stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
We are STBYM podcast on Instagram. If you use any
of these things, go check them out. If you don't
use any of these things, hey, don't go sign up
for them because we said we were using them.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
It's not worth it. But if you're already there.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
If you're already there, it's a way to keep up
with what we're doing on the show. You may notice
that we have some new host photos. You can see
new photos of Joe and myself. These were taken at
the Museum of Illusions, Atlanta, a delightful and educational attraction
located in Atlantic Station here in Atlanta. This facility features

(57:34):
a whole host of visual illusions, including illusion rooms you
can walk into and interact with. They also have cameras
there and also you can bring in your own devices,
take your own selfies, and enjoy all sorts of strange illusions, mirror,
unreal reflections, that sort of thing. Joe, we had a
really good time looking into various infinity mirrors. There's even

(57:57):
an upside down room.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
You remember this one. Yes, I really enjoyed the hatch
that goes down forever. It gave me evocations of the
House of Leaves.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
Yeah. Yeah, that was a really fun one. We tried
to get some photo We got a few photos there,
but it was really hard to capture that infinity feeling.
But yeah, Museum Evolutions Atlanta. It's fun for all ages.
You can learn more about it at m OI Atlanta
dot com. Oh and while we're at it, hey, it's
Halloween season. We have a new logo design for the
Halloween season. You can get it on various merch if

(58:30):
you go to our merch store go to stuff to
Blow Yourmind dot com and click the store tab. You
can also find images of this on our various social
media accounts. But it's the Stuff to Blow your Mind logo,
but with some various occult images added to it, and
you can get that on any shirt color.

Speaker 2 (58:45):
Get one in time for Halloween.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
Yeah, get a sticker, get of whatever else they make.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
Yeah, if you want one, don't let us pressure you.
Come on.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
It's there for fun. It's there for fun if you want,
how do you as well?

Speaker 2 (59:00):
What's the most non coercive way to encourage people to buy?
Go buy, but you don't have to, but go buy.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
We made something that we think is fun, but it's
totally optional.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
It's not required.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
In the meantime, Hey, if you want to check out
other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you know
where to find us anywhere you get your podcasts. On
Tuesdays and Thursdays we have a core episode. On Mondays
we do listener mail. On Wednesdays we usually do a
short form artifact or a monster Fact episode. There will
be a Monster Fact episode next week. And then on
Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.