Listener Mail: An Index of Metals

Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind Listener Mail.
My name is Joe McCormick. My regular co host Robert
Lamb is not with me today, so I'm going to
be reading and responding to some listener messages on my own,
but Rob should be back tomorrow with the core episode
for Tuesday of this week. We read listener mail every
Monday on Stuff to Blow Your Mind. And if you'd

(00:31):
like to get in touch but you've never done it before,
why not give it a try. You can reach us
at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Any and all types of messages are welcome. If you've
got feedback on a recent episode, we love that. If
you want to provide a correction or add your thoughts
on something we've talked about, if you want to share
something random that you think we'd find interesting, if you

(00:52):
want to suggest a topic for us to cover in
the future, or if you just want to say hi,
you can contact us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Okay, the first message I wanted
to read and respond to today is about our series
on Anomalous image. Y so This was a series of
three episodes we did about weird objects in nature or

(01:16):
from ancient history that had some kind of illusory resemblance
to out of place technology. And we use these examples
that we talked about in these episodes as illustrations of
why people should think twice before seeing something that looks
weird and then thinking that it proves aliens are here.

(01:38):
We got a message about these episodes from James. James says, Hey, guys,
love the show. Thank you for being so awesome. I
love going on the journeys of the mind blowing kind
with you. So thank you again for doing all you
do About the point you guys are making about the
UFO hearings and alien technology at sea. I would like

(02:01):
to point out that the person's testifying never state quote
alien and go out of their way to make sure
they say intelligent non human, not alien. The fact is
you're claimed that the distances involved between stars is a
valid point when talking about an alien visitation being near impossible.
Is a great argument. But what about something that evolved

(02:24):
right here on good old planet Earth and is as
intelligent as humans or more intelligent. What if they were
able to evolve with the ability to travel interdimensionally. We
have almost four and a half billion years of Earth's existence.
Life started fairly quickly, and thus there has been a
lot of time to evolve an intelligent species or multiple.

(02:45):
After all, it's only a few million years for us
to go from Lucy to I Love Lucy. Right. If
they are interdimensionally evolved species from Earth, that would mean
they're hiding in the same room, so to speak. That
would be way more interesting than alien visitors. In my opinion,
let's not rush to judgment based on the alien argument.
The military officers who testified don't And besides, it's so

(03:08):
naive for us to think we know everything there is
to know about physics, biology, or evolutionary processes on this planet.
I wonder if you would comment on this side of
the argument for the audience members like me who think
there is something going on, it's just probably not something
we can understand yet. Regards James, Well, thank you so
much for the message. James. I want to partially agree

(03:30):
with you and then offer some thoughts to the contrary. Now,
I just want to assure you that when I offer
my disagreements, it's nothing personal. I'm just trying to honestly
share my perspective and you can take it or leave it.
First of all, I strongly want to agree that we
should always be humble about what we don't know and
what we can't imagine yet. So you don't want to

(03:51):
be one of those people who looks at the pyramids
and says, I can't imagine how ancient people with limited
technology could have built this. Therefore, where aliens move the
blocks with tractor beams, failures of your personal imagination are
not proof of impossibility in reality, and this is one reason,
as I said in the last Listener Mail episode, I

(04:12):
have sort of moved away from saying that alien contact
is unlikely because of the distances of travel between stars.
I used to be more persuaded by that argument, but
I don't really say that so much anymore. Instead, I
think we just don't really know what's possible in terms
of interstellar travel, so maybe it's better not to use

(04:33):
a weakly held assumption about the difficulty of that travel
as the premise in an argument. Now, coming to your
interdimensional non human intelligence argument, First of all, James, with
great respect, I think there's a rhetorical move you're making
in this email that might be causing more confusion than illumination,
So we'll see what you think about this. You're trying

(04:55):
to make the case that there's a significant possibility that
non human and intelligences, maybe interdimensional in nature, exist on Earth
and are responsible for some UAP sidings or other strange phenomena,
And the leverage you're using to get to this conclusion
is first of all, that many different types of life
forms could be produced by biological evolution. That's true, and second,

(05:19):
it would be naive to assume we know everything about nature.
I would agree with both of these premises, but I
don't think they lead to your conclusion. So I agree
there are lots of things we don't know about nature,
but the fact that our knowledge of nature is incomplete
is not evidence for any particular claim about nature, like

(05:40):
the one you're making about interdimensional beings. If it were,
it would equally be evidence that Bigfoot's real, that ghosts
are real, that fish or psychic and can read our thoughts,
That there are planet sized protozoa that fly around the
galaxy eating stars, and all kinds of things like that.
You can argue for anything by appealing to the fact

(06:01):
that we don't know everything. So I think that's not
really a very useful observation, that we don't know everything.
That's true, but it doesn't really get us anywhere. What
we would actually be looking for is good old fashioned evidence,
some positive reason to think that non human intelligences exist.
So a second thought I had about this type of
explanation is that when you move from explanations based in

(06:25):
aliens from another planet to explanations based in interdimensional non
human intelligences that can slip in and out of our
physical reality at will, to me, that kind of brings
to mind the analogy of the car, the analogy that
Carl Sagan uses of the dragon in his garage. So
this is something Sagan writes about in his nineteen ninety

(06:47):
five book The Demon Haunted World. And in this analogy,
Sagan he says, okay, imagine I come up to you
and I say, in all seriousness, there is a fire
breathing dragon who lives in my garage. And you say,
all right, let's go see it. And then Sagan says, no, no, no, no,
well you can't see it. If you look in my garage,
you're not going to see anything except some old paint cans.

(07:09):
And ladders because it is an invisible dragon. So you
might say, oh, well that's okay. Let's spread some flour
on the floor and then we can see the dragon's footprints,
and Sagan says, well, no, that's not going to work either,
because my dragon floats in the air. So you say, well,
then let's feel around for it, you know, rub the
scales on its belly, and then Sagan says, no, my

(07:30):
invisible dragon is made of a different kind of matter,
a matter that you can't feel by touching. Maybe it's
composed of weakly interacting particles like neutrinos or something, so
you could you could pass right through the dragon without
knowing it. So then you say, okay, well let's use
a neutrino detector or some other kind of highly sensitive equipment,
and he says, no, hold on, that won't work either

(07:52):
because of X, Y, and Z. So one of the
points Sagan is making here is that an object that
cannot be reliedly detected by any physical means is indistinguishable
from an object that does not exist. But I think
one of the secondary points he's making with this analogy
is that explanations that are endlessly adaptable, so that they

(08:15):
can never be falsified. You know, they constantly shrink away
from any new proposed physical test or attempt to detect
them that you know, there's always a newly formed excuse
that's kind of characteristic of claims that we know from
experience turn out to refer to nothing in the real world.
And so again with respect, when I hear people say, well, no,

(08:38):
they're not aliens from another planet. They're from another dimension
into which they can disappear at any moment. So that's
what that would explain why they're like hard to detect physically.
At that point, my invisible dragon sensor is going off.
There's no way to know a belief like this is
wrong for sure, but I'm kind of sensing a belief

(08:58):
that's retreating further and further from sincere attempts to detect
it with clear evidence. Now, I want to be fair
to the UFO UAP enthusiast and notice some ways that
this analogy does not fit. For one thing, there's a
difference in that Carl Sagan's dragon is just him coming
up to you and saying there's a dragon there, and

(09:20):
UFOs or UAPs there is actual, real documentary evidence or
at least what is purported to be real documentary evidence.
So it's not just someone saying there are aliens. There
are photos of objects and videos of things moving around
in the sky, or photos of things at the bottom
of the ocean or other just like weird looking things

(09:40):
that people say, maybe this is evidence of aliens. So
you've got something to work with there. And here's where
I would come back to what we talked about in
our series where we discussed the idea of low information
and low resolution evidence. And if you haven't heard the
whole series, i'd recommend going back and listening to the
three episodes, starting with the core episode on the Eltanan

(10:03):
Antenna if you want to hear us develop this in full.
But essentially, we were talking about a correlation that is
pretty easily observed regarding UFOs and UAPs, which is that
these pieces of evidence, whether you're talking about photos or videos,
material or narrative, are almost always characterized by really notable

(10:23):
deficits of information. Like if it's a photo or a video,
it's hard to tell for sure what you're looking at.
You might not be able to judge scale or distance,
or color or texture. Details are obscured the picture is
generally low resolution, and there are often also deficits in

(10:43):
contextual knowledge that you would be able to apply to
the image. So maybe you don't know enough about where
and when it was taken, circumstances there, or you don't
understand the technological mediator of that image. You don't have
a deep understanding of how cameras and other types of
sensors are imaging systems work, so you're not familiar with
artifacts they produce, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And

(11:06):
for some reason, in cases where those information deficits are resolved,
where there actually is like a really sharp, high quality
image or sharp high quality video with a lot more
visual context, or maybe you either have the knowledge or
you're able to show the image to somebody who has
the knowledge about the environment that you're looking at and

(11:28):
the equipment you're using to document it and so forth. These,
for some reason tend to be the cases where oh, yeah,
that's not even actually a moving object, that's a camera artifact,
or oh this is actually a distant airplane reflecting light
in a weird way, or that's a balloon, or it's
a seagull or a group of stars, in the night sky,

(11:49):
or an insect moving in the foreground, or a natural
rock formation that looks like technology, or an animal that
looks like technology. It's a sea sponge antenna, it's not
a crash UFO. It's a big rock moved by a glacier, probably, etc.
Now I would stress that observing this trend does in

(12:09):
no way proves that we're alone in the universe. In fact,
it doesn't even prove that aliens have never visited Earth.
Those are questions with what I would call effectively infinite
search spaces, So you can really never answer them in
the negative, because you can never rule out the possibility
that there's evidence you haven't found yet. The search space

(12:30):
for evidence is effectively infinite. But I think this trend
should strongly caution us against using any piece of evidence
from the low information zone or the low resolution zone
as if it were a good reason for thinking non
human intelligences are here and flying around in the skies
and leaving technology on the ocean floor and stuff like that.

(12:51):
We can never rule that out with certainty. It's always possible,
But isn't it more likely whatever weird photo or video
you're looking at would be more like these other cases
where additional information made it clear that they had explanations
from within the known range of causes. That said, on
the other hand, and as we said in the series,

(13:14):
you always want to keep an open mind if the
evidence is actually good. You don't close yourself off to say, like,
no it. You know, there is a kind of conditioning
that I think can happen to a skeptic where you
encounter so many claims that all turn out to be
false you just kind of assume the pattern will always hold.
You can't assume it will always hold. But I do

(13:35):
think it's fair to draw analogies from cases you've looked
at in the past to similar, you know, reasonably similar
cases that you encounter in the present and in the future.
But as I said, open minds are good if the
evidence is actually good. I just think we're not there yet.
So if the recent testimony from the US Congress with

(13:57):
the whistleblowers talking about claims of government possession of alien
technology and bodies and stuff like that, or sorry to
accept your correction, non human intelligences, if that ever goes
beyond the hearsay stage, if there's actual meet some kind
of physical evidence or first hand eye witness testimony. I'd
be interested to see what it is and learn more,

(14:19):
but we're not there yet, so for now I reserve
judgment and remain skeptical. So thanks again, James for the
interesting thoughts and whether or not you agree with me,
I hope I at least made my perspective clear. You
can write back if you have more questions or thoughts
to the contrary. Next message is from Tyler. Tyler is

(14:46):
also responding well. Tyler's responding to a previous Listener Male episode,
which also had to do with anomalous imagery and explanations
based in aliens or non human intelligence. And in this
previous list mail, a listener sent us a picture of
a McDonald's parking lot I think in Roswell, New Mexico,
which included a silver statue of an alien. And this

(15:09):
really got me wondering about a true alien intelligence the
logic of corporate policy. I was wondering how lenient is
McDonald's corporate headquarters about what kinds of art you can
put up outside a franchise location. I would have assumed
they'd be pretty iron fisted about visual branding issues like that,

(15:31):
but Tyler and others got in touch to share information.
To the contrary, Tyler says, hey, guys, on today's listener mail,
after some speculation on what McDonald's franchisees are allowed to
put up for displays, Joe wondered if you could put
up a statue of a t rex. I did ask that,
Tyler says, the answer is yes, there is a dino

(15:52):
themed McDonald's here in Tucson. I guess this would be Tucson,
Arizona that, to the best of my memory, was outfitted
with Dinah when the first Jurassic Park came out. I
think some of the other dinosaurs have been removed since then,
but the tyrant king still reigns. And Tyler attached a
photo of a McDonald's that looks to be on a

(16:13):
street corner. And yeah, right there, beside the drive through lane,
there is a huge t rex sculpture with its its
mouth is open. It is roaring at the red light
that is next to its head. So maybe this t
rex is experiencing some vicarious road rage even though he
cannot himself drive a car. I'm also noticing there is

(16:35):
a metal fence all the way around this animal. I
think that could be to prevent kids from climbing on it.
But I wonder if there was also a fear of
auto collisions, because running into a dinosaur in your prius
would be a really good Hall of Fame insurance claim.
All right, I'm going to do a couple of messages
about weird house cinema. This first one came from longtime

(16:57):
correspondent Jim in New Jersey. Jim says, Robert, Joe and
JJ I have a Shakespeare movie adaptation suggestion for weird
house cinema. Last time we were asking about weird Shakespeare adaptations,
Jim says, it is Scotland, Pa, which is a dark

(17:20):
comedy adaptation of Macbeth set in the nineteen seventies in Scotland, Pennsylvania.
It's currently on Amazon Prime. Scotland, Pa. Is a real
village that's about five miles outside the town where I
grew up. It's about two miles from where my mom
currently lives. I drive through the hamlet every time I
visit her. The movie didn't premiere in the town, nor

(17:41):
was it ever shown there. Scotland, Pennsylvania is about two
or maybe three blocks long, and there's definitely no movie theater.
The movie is rated R for language, adult content. Heck,
it's Shakespeare and brief nudity, so it's not for the kids.
From what I remember of Macbeth in high school, the
movie follows the plot pretty faithfully, but with some obvious

(18:03):
time period, location, and language changes. And there are several
dark humor laughs too. Jim in New Jersey but from Pa, well,
thank you, Jim. I watched this movie in high school.
This came out when I was in high school, and
I think I watched it with my girlfriend at the time,
who is now my wife, and we, yeah, I remember,

(18:24):
we thought it was really weird. I believe that Macbeth
and Lady Macbeth kill Duncan, who is the owner of
a drive through restaurant that sells donuts, by dipping him
in a deep friar, which is really gross. Uh, and
they're oh, oh well. The other thing I remember about
it is that McDuff, the hero who comes and kills

(18:47):
Macbeth at the end, is played by Christopher Walken, who
I think is a police inspector. I do not recall
how they handle the burnham Wood dunsinane thing. One last
message today. This comes from Pamela. Pamela says Dear Joe
and Rob when listening to the Weird House episode on
the Maze, you had me at Weird Twist ending. I

(19:10):
turned the pod off, and later that evening found the
movie on YouTube and watched. I feel qualified to give
you a cold watch review of how the movie worked.
First of all, I completely forgot it was three D.
I was baffled and horrified by the dance sequence in
the club, and this is something we talked about in
the episode. There is a dance that is quite impressive.
I mean, yeah, they're good dancers, but it involved like

(19:34):
swinging a female dancer so that it looked extremely dangerously
like her head was going to crash into the floor.
But she never did. She was all right anyway. Sorry,
Pamela goes on, I don't even know what to say
about the intermittent testimonials from the aunt, whose name I
have already forgotten, except that is a choice, especially since
it seemed to be from a room that was not

(19:56):
used for any of the other shots in the movie.
I think that's right. It's like the predecessor of the
confessional in a modern reality show, where they put them
in a special place and make them wear the same
hair and makeup and outfit so they can edit it
into whatever they want later. I must also admit I
had to fight to stay awake during parts, and I
sincerely hope the dialogue in the book was better than

(20:18):
that of the movie. More importantly, though I couldn't tell
what the print on the stair was. Oh yeah, at
some point in the movie, the monster leaves a strange
footprint on the stair, so Pamela says, I actually thought
it was a weird large leaf print, and it wasn't
until the creature but escaping into the wall that I
knew there was a creature at all. Parentheses as a woman,

(20:40):
I need to add, how infuriating is the plot device
of a woman fainting after seeing something she does not
understand or is scary. Yep, yep, Pamela goes on. By
the time we see the giant frog and hear the explanation,
I was at the sure just want the movie to
be overpoint. The only people in this movie I really
felt much compassion for or worthy Aunt because Kitty is

(21:02):
kind of insufferably wilful, and the frog, who did not
get enough screen time. I agree about that with the frog.
The movie was way too long for the week payoff
at the end in my humble opinion, but I would
like to make a case for a much better and
far more entertaining movie that Weird House needs to add
to the cannon. Nineteen eighty seven's Dolls. It is an

(21:22):
almost fairy tale like cautionary tale about being a good
person and a respectful guest or else. Filmed in Italy
but in English by director Stuart Gordon. Brilliant story of
a miserable family that breaks down in a terrible storm
outside the house of an elderly couple that makes dolls.
Other guests end up trapped there as well. The stop

(21:43):
motion animation of the creepy porcelain faced dolls is amazing.
Love all the different flavors of the podcast offered cross
each week. Thanks for all the hard work. You guys
are the best. Pamela. Oh well, thank you, Pamela. Thank
you for the kind words, and thank you for sticking
it out through the movie to give us your unbiased thoughts.
So yeah, I really appreciate you getting in touch. I

(22:04):
think that's going to do it for the mail bag today,
but we will have more listener mail to feature next Monday.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays of each week, that's when we
do our core Stuff to Blow Your Mind episodes, which
are usually about science and culture in some way. On
Wednesdays we do a short feature called the Artifact or
the Monster Fact. On Fridays we do a series called

(22:25):
Weird House Cinema where each Friday we just watch and
discuss a strange film can be good or bad, well
known or obscure, as long as it is weird. And
on Saturdays we run an episode from the Vault, an
older episode of the show. If you're not subscribed to
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(22:45):
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Mind UK feed huge thanks to our excellent audio producer
jaj J Pousway. 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 even just

(23:07):
to say hi, you can email us at contact at
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Speaker 1 (23:17):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
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