March 11, 2024 • 27 mins
Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And I am Joe McCormick. And it's Monday, the day
of each week that we read back messages from the
Stuff to Blow your Mind email address. If you're a
listener of the show and you've never gotten in touch before,
why not give it a try. You can email us
at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
We like all kinds of messages, especially if you have
feedback or something really interesting to add to a recent
(00:37):
episode of the show. Whatever you want to send, it's
all fair game. Contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. Let's see rob Oh, we've got a good
message to start things off today. That's say response to
one of your Monster Fact episodes. You want to do
this one from Constantinos?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, Konstantinos writes in and says, good morning gents. On
your Monster Fact episode on the Hecatonkures, you mentioned the
artistic renditions of the Hecatonkures were hard to find, probably
because the Hecatonkures, they multi headed, multi limbed giant, is
such a weird and difficult creature to render. For those
of you out there, if you didn't listen to this
episode and and or are not familiar with this creature,
(01:23):
these were monsters that were created by Urunos along with
the Cyclopses, that were too horrible to look upon, so
they were cast away and imprisoned. Then Kronos comes to power,
he didn't really want anything to do with them either.
But when Zeus comes to power, he sees that they
(01:43):
have potential and he recruits, frees them, and recruits them
into his battle against the Titans. And they are briefly
described in very weird terms as having like fifty heads
and in all these arms one hundred hand ends. And
my comment was that, yeah, you don't see many illustrations
(02:04):
of these guys, or at least you don't see many
older illustrations of them. If you look around for image
of the images of them, you'll tend to find more
contemporary images of the Hecatonkrease, you know, things from the
age of surrealism and cosmic horror.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
You know, I feel like once you get more than
three or four of anything on a monster, it starts
getting kind of redundant and just hard to represent or
less appealing to represent. I think there's a similar problem
with that. There is some wild imagery in the Book
of Revelation, in the New Testament that you just don't
often see visually represented that much, and I think it's
(02:42):
because they've got they're described as having too many things there,
these creatures with like seven heads and seven wings and
seven crowns. You know, it's like seven is too many.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting when you look at
you know, multi headed beings and say Hindu iconography, where
you know, sometimes it'd be it's rather ingenious the way
that they're there's they sometimes will make even say an
odd number of heads fit on a particular entity, because
you know, it's like hard coded, it's essential, it's sacred
(03:13):
that it is a certain number of heads. But yeah,
I was, I was. I kept crunching over this thinking,
you know, you know, why don't we see more illustrations
of these clearly fascinating creatures from myth And you know,
you think to a lot of through a lot of
art history, and there's this, you know, attempt to create
realistic bodies, be they animal bodies, human bodies, or some
(03:38):
synthesis of the two. But something like even something as
simple as say Goro from Mortal Kombat, there there are
certain problems in illustrating this creature because when you start
trying to figure out what the like what's the underlying skeleton,
like how does the muscle structure work? And it becomes
increasingly difficult I would imagine to incorporate actual physiological data
(04:01):
into a realistic depiction of said monster. And that's just
with with two extra arms. I'll imagine with ninety eight
of them.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, you tried to draw a Goro skeleton, I imagine
you would. You might discover that you had an illusion
of explanatory depth there, like it seemed like it made
sense to you until you had to figure out where
all the bones go, and then you're like, oh, yeah,
this isn't how skeletons work.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
There was a great paper publically looked at on the
show years ago. I'd have to have to dig this up,
but somebody had put together a paper about how a
centaur might work, trying to figure out like how the
circulatory system would work, and I think I think they
One of the things that they argued is like, Okay,
you're going to need two hearts to run this thing
and so forth. So it's an interesting exercise at times
(04:49):
as well, but maybe it's a little more interesting when
there are fewer variables to have to consider.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Sorry, I actually did just google Goro skeleton and it's
real funny.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah. I mean, some of the later games they incorporate
a Goro skeleton in there because there's all sorts of
you know, fatalities and whatnot that occurs where you see
the skeleton and it always looks really dumb, like it's like, oh, yeah, yeah,
this wasn't thought out too much. Anyway, The email continues
here back when Disney made fun movies. I think that's
(05:24):
a matter of opinion. I think Disney still makes some
fun news. I watched the animated Hercules once worked over
twelve hundred times with my kids. In the opening musical number,
The Gospel Truth, there is a heavily stylized rendering of
the Titano Maki the War with the Titans. Among the
Titans silhouettes, there is a stylized two headed giant that
(05:45):
I always thought was a simplified image of one of
the Hecatonkreas. The movie is actually subtly quite sophisticated in
his portrayal of Greek mythology, and I do think the
image here was intentional. It is also contextually consistent with
the theme. I don't think that there is any other
polycephalic monster that participated in the Tautana monkey that could
(06:09):
have inspired this image. So there you go, a modern
Hecatonkari hiding in plain sight in American pop culture. And
he included an image from this so we didn't have
to actually pull up the movie and start watching it. Yeah,
we see a creature with two heads in this styling,
normal number of limbs. It's monstrous. Yeah, I can only
(06:32):
imagine that this was inspired by these creatures, though clearly
if they had worked out any additional limbs or heads,
they left that on the cutting room floor.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It's been a long time since I saw the Disney Hercules,
but I remember it actually having a pretty seeming to
have a pretty clever incorporation of the real Greek myth themes.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I don't know that I've ever seen it. I think
my son watched it once and he was too pick
He was like, this is not accurate, this is not
mythologically sound, and so you know, if he's not into it,
I was certainly not going to go out and watch it,
but I don't know. You know a lot of plenty
of people grew up with this movie and it's got
a pretty deep cast. I mean, you have ripped torn
(07:14):
as Zeus. How you go wrong with that?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Cannot beat that? That is perfect the Man who Fell
to Earth.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Indeed, anyway, thank you for writing in that Monster Fact episode.
I did put a call out. It's like, if you
were familiar with any additional images of the Hecatonkaris, especially
ones from throughout art history, you know, much older images
right in because I would love to be corrected on this.
I would love for someone to point out, actually, you're
missing some key images from ancient Greece or ancient Rome
(07:50):
or or medieval iconography. You know. I would love to
see that if it exists, but I just can't couldn't
find it anywhere.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
M okay. Next message concern earns the uh oh the
episode that I did while you were out rob about
Ambergrease with our friends Annie and Lauren from the Saverer podcast.
If you haven't heard that episode, yet, this was this
is a couple weeks ago now, Yeah, I guess so.
But the episode was titled I believe a delicacy from
(08:18):
realms of Insufferable Feater after a quote that is used
in Moby Dick to describe where the Ambergrease comes from.
So this message is from our h all Right, says,
enjoying the Ambergresse episode. Well listening, I recalled where I
(08:38):
first learned about Ambergrease, in the eighth volume of Donald
Soball's Encyclopedia Brown series. You know, I had awareness of
these books when I was a kid. Friends of mine
read them, but I never actually read one, and I
feel like I kind of missed out now.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
You know, I haven't thought about the name Encyclopedia Brown
in a very long time. I don't think I ever
read any of them. But yeah, like you, I remember
seeing them being passed around. I remember it being in
the mix.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
My impression was it was like Sherlock Holmes for kids
or something. Anyway, so Rh continues, If memory serves, one
of Brown's classmates found a mysterious blob of something and
sought his encyclopedic encyclopedic mind. I guess Encyclopedia Brown's encyclopedic mind.
I wonder if kids read these anymore? Dad, what's an Encyclopedia.
(09:31):
These books were great encouragement for great schoolers to be
syllogistic thinkers using deductive reasoning. I hope they are still
in heavy demand at the old Scholastic Book Fair. Keep
up the great work, rh PS. Repo Man would be
a great weird house cinema candidate. Yeah, wow, I haven't
seen Repo Man in a long long time, but I
remember that one being very weird and very fun.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, I've never seen it actually, but it's come up
on the show before just because of some of the
connections that are press there. But yeah, I mean it's
it has a strong cult following. It's it's definitely one
that's been on the list.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
It's got Harry Dean Stanton. So that's that alone is
going to get you part of the way there. Seal
of quality.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, Now on the Scholastic Book Fair questions in Encyclopedia Brown,
I have reviewed materials from various Scholastic Book Fairs over
the years here and I have to say I do
not remember seeing Encyclopedia Brown on the list. I mean,
kids these days have some amazing choices in books. Far,
They're not having to read Stephen King like I did.
(10:33):
You know. I mean I didn't just read Stephen King.
I also had I had some age appropriate books that
I read as well. But there are so many more
age appropriate books covering all sorts of cool topics. I mean,
just speaking of mythodology from earlier, Like, there's so many
wonderful books based on various world mythologies out there, you know,
fictional books that use mythology as the basis, And a
(10:55):
lot of these are written by people whose heritage, whose
country of origin lines up with said mythology. So it's
you know, it's really cool.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Mm yeah. I mean, I guess I will at some
point soon become acquainted with what the kids are reading
these days. But uh yeah, I don't know though. As
I said, I like, I never read these books either.
I am curious about what RH brings up, like a
would kids today even still be acquainted with the idea
of encyclopedia, like with the I don't know what's the
(11:24):
equivalent concept now, it's just like Facebook misinformation Brown.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, Wikipedia, Brown, That's that's what it would be.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Misleading TikTok video Brown.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
M M.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
All right, This next one comes to us from Michael,
and this is really in regard to our episode on
the illusion of control. Hello again from Tasmania. I'm a
bit late listening to this one, but I just wanted
to let Rob know that there is nothing abnormal about
clicking the button of your key fob three or more
(11:57):
times to make sure your car locked properly. But if
you can't quite hear the central locking mechanism or one
of the doors slash or the boot is ajar. I
am compelled to do mine at least three times before
I walk away, and then maybe a couple of more
times as I start to get out of range. Thank
you for keeping the show running all this time. I
have been listening for around ten years and would feel
(12:18):
a little lost without the hundreds of conversations at work
and home. Your podcast prompts me to have warm regards Michael.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Thank you, Michael. This is a wonderfully mail to get
about what's normal.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, three is good. I feel a little guilty if
I do five, but I've but three three feels appropriate.
I'm a little antsy if I do less than three.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
What if five is not enough?
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Five is enough? I mean five again. They're deities in
various traditions that have five heads. Five five.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
As a nice ring to it, you gotta click lock
on your car once for each of the beasts seven heads,
and then once for each of its ten horns. Okay,
this next message comes from Robin. Robin says, Hi, Rob, Joe,
and JJ. The recent listener mail talking about responses to
(13:08):
the illusion of control episodes got me thinking down a
related train of thought, illusion of control and magical thinking,
perhaps being more of a nature of grade than of
kind or contingent on a model of belief. As Joe
was musing, brought up some concepts to illustrate. The following
is a real life example. Perhaps we've all had this
(13:31):
kind of experience, or perhaps it's just me. Say you're
walking down the path late in the day and you
notice strangely that overhead pedestrian lights seem to be turning
on or flickering on and off as you come near them.
This happens enough in a short span that you get
that spooky magical thinking mode activated in your brain. Lights
(13:51):
turning on around me. I am an electromagnetic god. Rationally,
you know nothing spooky is happening, and whatever is happening,
you simply don't understand it yet. As it happens. In
this case, it was likely some sort of timed event,
whether by internal clock software or perhaps light levels, that
triggered multiple lights turning on around the same time. You know, Robin,
(14:13):
I seemed to have vague memories years ago of something
that was like street lights near my house that had
some kind of that had some kind of daylight sensor,
or something in my friend's car would make them turn
off at night as he drove underneath them. I think
it was like the way it reflected the light back
or something. Robin goes on. An event like this and
(14:34):
the resulting thoughts make me wonder if, even with no rational,
thoughtful belief in magical thinking, it might be a kind
of itch that's just nice to scratch once in a while,
to almost pretend to yourself that you believe it. Like
experiencing a good story, it just soothed something in our
base makeup long since baked in by evolution and culture.
(14:54):
Simply put, it feels good to engage in some magical thinking,
even if you don't actually believe in it. Thank you,
as ever for the work you put into the excellent
content you deliver. Cheers Robin, Well, thank you, Robin. Yeah,
I certainly think that's totally plausible. Maybe it's just there's
some kind of itch, psychological itch that it scratches to
imagine that you have, you know, extra normal powers that
(15:18):
you you know, can affect things in ways beyond the
causative mechanisms normally available to you. And if that's true,
I guess one thing it makes me think about is like,
why that would be like? For example, one reason I
think it probably feels good to experience a fictional story
(15:39):
like you were talking about in the email, is that
a fictional story simulates real life situations of gaining useful information,
such as gaining social information about acquaintances through gossip, or
gaining information about how social situations, you know, difficult social
situations play out, maybe gaining survival information from a story
(16:02):
of someone overcoming adversity or danger. But of course, because
the fictional story is fictional, it can be crafted to
be like unrealistically juicy and rich with the most exciting
and salient kinds of details that these real life narratives
could ever contain, you know. And so if that's the case,
and if magical thinking does in fact cause pleasure because
(16:26):
it scratches some kind of similarly deep rooted itch. I
wonder what that itch is like. Could it be something like,
you know, the fact that encouraging you to think what
you would do if you had more power than you
actually have is useful because it it, you know, makes
you think through things in a way that will will
(16:47):
be useful pre planning if you actually do gain more
realistic power than you have presently. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, it's interesting to think about, and such fictions are
always going to be popular. This all reminds me of
a of a game that we will playfully do in
the car when usually when it's just me and my son,
where I guess you could call it turn green now,
where we're at a stop light. We'll try and time
it so that you know, when one of us goes,
(17:15):
we'll sort of take turn saying turn green now, and
then you know, we don't actually think we're turning the
changing the light or anything. But it's kind of satisfying
when you do occasionally hit it right on the nose
and you're like, ah, I did it. My powers are unequaled.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yeah, yeah, that's good. I mean, I guess that is
actually someonet equivalent to being pleased with yourself. When you
hit a good dice roll, it's like it wasn't actually
skill but it feels like it. Oh, I don't know,
now that I think about it, I guess the timing
the green light probably is more skill based than a
dice roll, right, it's not totally random. You're like getting
a feel for how long it usually takes.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
So yeah, and you can also check out what the
crosswalk signs are doing. You count If you can see
the countdown, you can really cheap and then there's there's
absolutely little luck involved. You can get it right down
to the wire, but you don't always have those to
go off of.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
That's a great point. But yeah, so your your turn
green game is actually mostly skill based, I would say.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, all right. This next one comes to us from Peter, Hi, Robert,
and Joe. I found your episodes on the illusion of
control most interesting. While I consider myself rational and scientifically minded,
I have realized that I indeed have this bias to
a degree, despite my understanding of odds and probability. When
(18:36):
I play games, especially involving dice, I have a belief
that I will be lucky. I often roll lucky in
pressure situations. Of course, I have probably not paid as
much attention to the unlucky roles. Yeah, this is, of course,
of course, key.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Remember the hits, forget the misses.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I guess it depends on what
kind of person you are. You know, if you focus
more on the negatives, then yeah, you're gonna be like,
something's wrong with this with these dice, or something's wrong
with this random number generator in this video game or
you know, phone game or what have it. And if
you're the other way around, then yeah, you're gonna skew
the other direction. Anyway, they continued. This all probably became
(19:16):
reinforced with a childhood event. While playing board games with
some friends, I made a challenge to roll one, two, three, four,
five six in sequence while passing the die to different people.
I began by calling out one and then proceeding to
roll a one on a six sided die. I passed
it to a friend, who called out two and rolled
a two. The challenge continued so forth, and we actually
(19:38):
rolled one, two, three, four, five six in sequence by
different people. We did it on the first try. Now
I understand that the different people didn't really affect the odds,
but it blew us away. I calculated the odds, which
came to point zero zero two one four percent, or
one in forty six thousand, six hundred and fifty six.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
That sounds pretty cool, Peter.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
This experience, although founded on randomness and basic probability, at
least subconsciously impacts my feelings, my feeling that I can
roll lucky and call out dice rolls, although I reserve
it for crucial situations. Note, I believe it only really
works with physical dice rather than video game rng's or
random number generators. I know it doesn't make rational sense,
(20:22):
but I can't shake the belief that there may be
something more to it, my weird tale of illusion of control.
Cheers Peter.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Well, thanks Peter. And yet this is great. I do
think our minds work this way. And in fact, there
was some research we talked about in the series exactly
along these lines that like the research about the early
success emphasis increasing our illusions of controls, Like if you
have an early winning streak at some kind of game
of chance, you are more inclined to think after that
(20:52):
that you have control over a random process, and that
seems to perhaps be operating with you. You had a really
salient early lucky streak of roles, and as you say,
it's like hard to shake the feeling that there's something
going on.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Now. The other possibility is that Peter is simply the
chosen one.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
That's right, Yes, he did see the mouse in the
second moon, and now the spice is guiding him. This
is also just a great example of realizing how our
intuitions can be misleading about the probability of events, because
you take, even if we assume that Peter the numbers
you give or write about this being an event that's
(21:32):
like one in forty six, six hundred and fifty six
chance of happening, you still you'd say, Okay, that seems
very unlikely. But then you would have to multiply that
by like the number of times in the world that
people around the world try to do something like this,
which I imagine, given all the time that people sit
around playing with dice, is actually quite a lot. So like,
(21:54):
given all of those chances to have hits, you will
have stories like this where people have a very unlikely
series of roles. Because people are just playing around with
dice all the time, there are a lot of chances
to make it happen.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we often can We can think
to those various runs we've had or our parties have
had in Dungeons and Dragons where it's like like three
twenties in a row, you know, three natural twenties, or
or the other end of the spectrum, you know multiple
natural ones, or multiple like you low scoring roles, And yeah,
(22:27):
it's the extremes that stand out to us.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
There are a lot of roles in each game. There
are a lot of people out there gaming. If you
know a lot of people who do game, you probably
know somebody who had at some point a really unlikely streak.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah I did, we mention. I don't know if we
mentioned this before, but it always kind of I always
get a little judge when I see someone at at
a gaming table just rolling the dice over and over again,
out of any necessity to do so, just to see
what they get. Yea, because part of my irrational brain
is like, like, you're using up your twenties. Man. You know,
(23:01):
it's one thing if you're rolling ones on that, but
I just just saw you roll like an eighteen. That's
an eighteen you won't roll later because you just rolled
it now. And that's silly.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah, well, it also makes me think when I see
somebody doing that at the table, I think, are you
being opportunistic? Like you're just kind of rolling and then
like you might try to claim that most recent role
if it was good and your turn has come up.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
You know what I mean. I mean there are gaming
systems where you get to like, you know, store dice
rolls for later, but most D twenty games are not
don't work like that. You know. Irrationality in the face
of actual statistics is such an interesting concept and something
I kept thinking about during this this that these episodes,
(23:45):
and something that I think about too sometimes when when
I'm dealing with anxious thoughts and I have to share
this one bit that came up in my reading of
the book Dead House Gates. This is book two of
the malasone book of the Fallen by Steven Ericson. This
is like, you know, a high fantasy adventure stuff. But
(24:05):
there's one character who has a fear of tunnels. And
there's just one little bit in the book goes as
follows quote he hated tunnels. No, they terrified him. There
was nothing rational in it. Wrong Again, tunnels collapse, people
get buried alive, all perfectly reasonable, possible, probable, inevitable, And
(24:27):
I just love this one little bit. It's like, yes,
that is exactly the progression that your mind can go
through when you're anxiously considering something like that, Like I
shouldn't be worried about this, but wait, it has happened,
can happen, could happen, will happen.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Yes, It's so easy to jump from possible to probable
and then yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Before we close here, I want to throw out one
quick note about Weird House Cinema. On Friday, we did
part one of our look at David Lynch's nineteen eighty
four adaptation of Doune, and this Friday, if everything goes
according to plan, we'll be finishing that up with a
part two where we look at the rest of that movie.
And I just want to throw this out there. Hey,
(25:10):
if you have any thoughts about David Lynch's Dune, about
the New Dune films, and you want to write in
and chat with us about it, you want to have
it come up on the Listener Mail episodes, please do so,
because we always have a lot of fun with this.
In fact, we just had a coworker text us on
a group text asking us how do they get off
(25:32):
of the sandworms after they're done writing them? Good question,
it's a great question. The short answer is you're supposed
to write them to exhaustion and then you get off.
But I love questions like this.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
I don't know if that answers it.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
There are additional follow up questions that are very valid.
I mentioned this to my wife and she's like, well, what, yeah,
what do you do if you're going a shorter distance?
And I think the answer is you're supposed to time
your distances appropriately, you know, based on the size of
the worm you snag and so forth. But yeah, there
(26:07):
are a number of follow up questions to this that
are valid, and there are not necessarily answers for the sandworm.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Is a is a train ride not an uber ride?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah? I mean you're you're attaching yourself to a force
of nature. Uh when you you ride ride the sandworm?
When you ride the worm? So uh, you know, strap in.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I will, I will be sure to uh, I think so. Yeah,
next week, I'm sure there will be lots of dune talk.
Send in, send in your dune talk.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
All right. Just a reminder that we're primarily a science podcast,
with our Tuesday and Thursday episodes being our core episodes,
but Monday is our listener mail time. That's when we
UH have a look through the mail bag and UH
and respond to various messages from you the listener, so
keep them coming. Uh listener mail regarding past episodes, current episodes,
(26:58):
and potential future episodes of anything we put together.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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 stuffdblow your Mind
dot com.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And I am Joe McCormick. And it's Monday, the day
of each week that we read back messages from the
Stuff to Blow your Mind email address. If you're a
listener of the show and you've never gotten in touch before,
why not give it a try. You can email us
at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
We like all kinds of messages, especially if you have
feedback or something really interesting to add to a recent
(00:37):
episode of the show. Whatever you want to send, it's
all fair game. Contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. Let's see rob Oh, we've got a good
message to start things off today. That's say response to
one of your Monster Fact episodes. You want to do
this one from Constantinos?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, Konstantinos writes in and says, good morning gents. On
your Monster Fact episode on the Hecatonkures, you mentioned the
artistic renditions of the Hecatonkures were hard to find, probably
because the Hecatonkures, they multi headed, multi limbed giant, is
such a weird and difficult creature to render. For those
of you out there, if you didn't listen to this
episode and and or are not familiar with this creature,
(01:23):
these were monsters that were created by Urunos along with
the Cyclopses, that were too horrible to look upon, so
they were cast away and imprisoned. Then Kronos comes to power,
he didn't really want anything to do with them either.
But when Zeus comes to power, he sees that they
(01:43):
have potential and he recruits, frees them, and recruits them
into his battle against the Titans. And they are briefly
described in very weird terms as having like fifty heads
and in all these arms one hundred hand ends. And
my comment was that, yeah, you don't see many illustrations
(02:04):
of these guys, or at least you don't see many
older illustrations of them. If you look around for image
of the images of them, you'll tend to find more
contemporary images of the Hecatonkrease, you know, things from the
age of surrealism and cosmic horror.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
You know, I feel like once you get more than
three or four of anything on a monster, it starts
getting kind of redundant and just hard to represent or
less appealing to represent. I think there's a similar problem
with that. There is some wild imagery in the Book
of Revelation, in the New Testament that you just don't
often see visually represented that much, and I think it's
(02:42):
because they've got they're described as having too many things there,
these creatures with like seven heads and seven wings and
seven crowns. You know, it's like seven is too many.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting when you look at
you know, multi headed beings and say Hindu iconography, where
you know, sometimes it'd be it's rather ingenious the way
that they're there's they sometimes will make even say an
odd number of heads fit on a particular entity, because
you know, it's like hard coded, it's essential, it's sacred
(03:13):
that it is a certain number of heads. But yeah,
I was, I was. I kept crunching over this thinking,
you know, you know, why don't we see more illustrations
of these clearly fascinating creatures from myth And you know,
you think to a lot of through a lot of
art history, and there's this, you know, attempt to create
realistic bodies, be they animal bodies, human bodies, or some
(03:38):
synthesis of the two. But something like even something as
simple as say Goro from Mortal Kombat, there there are
certain problems in illustrating this creature because when you start
trying to figure out what the like what's the underlying skeleton,
like how does the muscle structure work? And it becomes
increasingly difficult I would imagine to incorporate actual physiological data
(04:01):
into a realistic depiction of said monster. And that's just
with with two extra arms. I'll imagine with ninety eight
of them.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, you tried to draw a Goro skeleton, I imagine
you would. You might discover that you had an illusion
of explanatory depth there, like it seemed like it made
sense to you until you had to figure out where
all the bones go, and then you're like, oh, yeah,
this isn't how skeletons work.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
There was a great paper publically looked at on the
show years ago. I'd have to have to dig this up,
but somebody had put together a paper about how a
centaur might work, trying to figure out like how the
circulatory system would work, and I think I think they
One of the things that they argued is like, Okay,
you're going to need two hearts to run this thing
and so forth. So it's an interesting exercise at times
(04:49):
as well, but maybe it's a little more interesting when
there are fewer variables to have to consider.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Sorry, I actually did just google Goro skeleton and it's
real funny.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah. I mean, some of the later games they incorporate
a Goro skeleton in there because there's all sorts of
you know, fatalities and whatnot that occurs where you see
the skeleton and it always looks really dumb, like it's like, oh, yeah, yeah,
this wasn't thought out too much. Anyway, The email continues
here back when Disney made fun movies. I think that's
(05:24):
a matter of opinion. I think Disney still makes some
fun news. I watched the animated Hercules once worked over
twelve hundred times with my kids. In the opening musical number,
The Gospel Truth, there is a heavily stylized rendering of
the Titano Maki the War with the Titans. Among the
Titans silhouettes, there is a stylized two headed giant that
(05:45):
I always thought was a simplified image of one of
the Hecatonkreas. The movie is actually subtly quite sophisticated in
his portrayal of Greek mythology, and I do think the
image here was intentional. It is also contextually consistent with
the theme. I don't think that there is any other
polycephalic monster that participated in the Tautana monkey that could
(06:09):
have inspired this image. So there you go, a modern
Hecatonkari hiding in plain sight in American pop culture. And
he included an image from this so we didn't have
to actually pull up the movie and start watching it. Yeah,
we see a creature with two heads in this styling,
normal number of limbs. It's monstrous. Yeah, I can only
(06:32):
imagine that this was inspired by these creatures, though clearly
if they had worked out any additional limbs or heads,
they left that on the cutting room floor.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It's been a long time since I saw the Disney Hercules,
but I remember it actually having a pretty seeming to
have a pretty clever incorporation of the real Greek myth themes.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I don't know that I've ever seen it. I think
my son watched it once and he was too pick
He was like, this is not accurate, this is not
mythologically sound, and so you know, if he's not into it,
I was certainly not going to go out and watch it,
but I don't know. You know a lot of plenty
of people grew up with this movie and it's got
a pretty deep cast. I mean, you have ripped torn
(07:14):
as Zeus. How you go wrong with that?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Cannot beat that? That is perfect the Man who Fell
to Earth.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Indeed, anyway, thank you for writing in that Monster Fact episode.
I did put a call out. It's like, if you
were familiar with any additional images of the Hecatonkaris, especially
ones from throughout art history, you know, much older images
right in because I would love to be corrected on this.
I would love for someone to point out, actually, you're
missing some key images from ancient Greece or ancient Rome
(07:50):
or or medieval iconography. You know. I would love to
see that if it exists, but I just can't couldn't
find it anywhere.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
M okay. Next message concern earns the uh oh the
episode that I did while you were out rob about
Ambergrease with our friends Annie and Lauren from the Saverer podcast.
If you haven't heard that episode, yet, this was this
is a couple weeks ago now, Yeah, I guess so.
But the episode was titled I believe a delicacy from
(08:18):
realms of Insufferable Feater after a quote that is used
in Moby Dick to describe where the Ambergrease comes from.
So this message is from our h all Right, says,
enjoying the Ambergresse episode. Well listening, I recalled where I
(08:38):
first learned about Ambergrease, in the eighth volume of Donald
Soball's Encyclopedia Brown series. You know, I had awareness of
these books when I was a kid. Friends of mine
read them, but I never actually read one, and I
feel like I kind of missed out now.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
You know, I haven't thought about the name Encyclopedia Brown
in a very long time. I don't think I ever
read any of them. But yeah, like you, I remember
seeing them being passed around. I remember it being in
the mix.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
My impression was it was like Sherlock Holmes for kids
or something. Anyway, so Rh continues, If memory serves, one
of Brown's classmates found a mysterious blob of something and
sought his encyclopedic encyclopedic mind. I guess Encyclopedia Brown's encyclopedic mind.
I wonder if kids read these anymore? Dad, what's an Encyclopedia.
(09:31):
These books were great encouragement for great schoolers to be
syllogistic thinkers using deductive reasoning. I hope they are still
in heavy demand at the old Scholastic Book Fair. Keep
up the great work, rh PS. Repo Man would be
a great weird house cinema candidate. Yeah, wow, I haven't
seen Repo Man in a long long time, but I
remember that one being very weird and very fun.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, I've never seen it actually, but it's come up
on the show before just because of some of the
connections that are press there. But yeah, I mean it's
it has a strong cult following. It's it's definitely one
that's been on the list.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
It's got Harry Dean Stanton. So that's that alone is
going to get you part of the way there. Seal
of quality.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, Now on the Scholastic Book Fair questions in Encyclopedia Brown,
I have reviewed materials from various Scholastic Book Fairs over
the years here and I have to say I do
not remember seeing Encyclopedia Brown on the list. I mean,
kids these days have some amazing choices in books. Far,
They're not having to read Stephen King like I did.
(10:33):
You know. I mean I didn't just read Stephen King.
I also had I had some age appropriate books that
I read as well. But there are so many more
age appropriate books covering all sorts of cool topics. I mean,
just speaking of mythodology from earlier, Like, there's so many
wonderful books based on various world mythologies out there, you know,
fictional books that use mythology as the basis, And a
(10:55):
lot of these are written by people whose heritage, whose
country of origin lines up with said mythology. So it's
you know, it's really cool.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Mm yeah. I mean, I guess I will at some
point soon become acquainted with what the kids are reading
these days. But uh yeah, I don't know though. As
I said, I like, I never read these books either.
I am curious about what RH brings up, like a
would kids today even still be acquainted with the idea
of encyclopedia, like with the I don't know what's the
(11:24):
equivalent concept now, it's just like Facebook misinformation Brown.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, Wikipedia, Brown, That's that's what it would be.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Misleading TikTok video Brown.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
M M.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
All right, This next one comes to us from Michael,
and this is really in regard to our episode on
the illusion of control. Hello again from Tasmania. I'm a
bit late listening to this one, but I just wanted
to let Rob know that there is nothing abnormal about
clicking the button of your key fob three or more
(11:57):
times to make sure your car locked properly. But if
you can't quite hear the central locking mechanism or one
of the doors slash or the boot is ajar. I
am compelled to do mine at least three times before
I walk away, and then maybe a couple of more
times as I start to get out of range. Thank
you for keeping the show running all this time. I
have been listening for around ten years and would feel
(12:18):
a little lost without the hundreds of conversations at work
and home. Your podcast prompts me to have warm regards Michael.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Thank you, Michael. This is a wonderfully mail to get
about what's normal.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, three is good. I feel a little guilty if
I do five, but I've but three three feels appropriate.
I'm a little antsy if I do less than three.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
What if five is not enough?
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Five is enough? I mean five again. They're deities in
various traditions that have five heads. Five five.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
As a nice ring to it, you gotta click lock
on your car once for each of the beasts seven heads,
and then once for each of its ten horns. Okay,
this next message comes from Robin. Robin says, Hi, Rob, Joe,
and JJ. The recent listener mail talking about responses to
(13:08):
the illusion of control episodes got me thinking down a
related train of thought, illusion of control and magical thinking,
perhaps being more of a nature of grade than of
kind or contingent on a model of belief. As Joe
was musing, brought up some concepts to illustrate. The following
is a real life example. Perhaps we've all had this
(13:31):
kind of experience, or perhaps it's just me. Say you're
walking down the path late in the day and you
notice strangely that overhead pedestrian lights seem to be turning
on or flickering on and off as you come near them.
This happens enough in a short span that you get
that spooky magical thinking mode activated in your brain. Lights
(13:51):
turning on around me. I am an electromagnetic god. Rationally,
you know nothing spooky is happening, and whatever is happening,
you simply don't understand it yet. As it happens. In
this case, it was likely some sort of timed event,
whether by internal clock software or perhaps light levels, that
triggered multiple lights turning on around the same time. You know, Robin,
(14:13):
I seemed to have vague memories years ago of something
that was like street lights near my house that had
some kind of that had some kind of daylight sensor,
or something in my friend's car would make them turn
off at night as he drove underneath them. I think
it was like the way it reflected the light back
or something. Robin goes on. An event like this and
(14:34):
the resulting thoughts make me wonder if, even with no rational,
thoughtful belief in magical thinking, it might be a kind
of itch that's just nice to scratch once in a while,
to almost pretend to yourself that you believe it. Like
experiencing a good story, it just soothed something in our
base makeup long since baked in by evolution and culture.
(14:54):
Simply put, it feels good to engage in some magical thinking,
even if you don't actually believe in it. Thank you,
as ever for the work you put into the excellent
content you deliver. Cheers Robin, Well, thank you, Robin. Yeah,
I certainly think that's totally plausible. Maybe it's just there's
some kind of itch, psychological itch that it scratches to
imagine that you have, you know, extra normal powers that
(15:18):
you you know, can affect things in ways beyond the
causative mechanisms normally available to you. And if that's true,
I guess one thing it makes me think about is like,
why that would be like? For example, one reason I
think it probably feels good to experience a fictional story
(15:39):
like you were talking about in the email, is that
a fictional story simulates real life situations of gaining useful information,
such as gaining social information about acquaintances through gossip, or
gaining information about how social situations, you know, difficult social
situations play out, maybe gaining survival information from a story
(16:02):
of someone overcoming adversity or danger. But of course, because
the fictional story is fictional, it can be crafted to
be like unrealistically juicy and rich with the most exciting
and salient kinds of details that these real life narratives
could ever contain, you know. And so if that's the case,
and if magical thinking does in fact cause pleasure because
(16:26):
it scratches some kind of similarly deep rooted itch. I
wonder what that itch is like. Could it be something like,
you know, the fact that encouraging you to think what
you would do if you had more power than you
actually have is useful because it it, you know, makes
you think through things in a way that will will
(16:47):
be useful pre planning if you actually do gain more
realistic power than you have presently. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, it's interesting to think about, and such fictions are
always going to be popular. This all reminds me of
a of a game that we will playfully do in
the car when usually when it's just me and my son,
where I guess you could call it turn green now,
where we're at a stop light. We'll try and time
it so that you know, when one of us goes,
(17:15):
we'll sort of take turn saying turn green now, and
then you know, we don't actually think we're turning the
changing the light or anything. But it's kind of satisfying
when you do occasionally hit it right on the nose
and you're like, ah, I did it. My powers are unequaled.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yeah, yeah, that's good. I mean, I guess that is
actually someonet equivalent to being pleased with yourself. When you
hit a good dice roll, it's like it wasn't actually
skill but it feels like it. Oh, I don't know,
now that I think about it, I guess the timing
the green light probably is more skill based than a
dice roll, right, it's not totally random. You're like getting
a feel for how long it usually takes.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
So yeah, and you can also check out what the
crosswalk signs are doing. You count If you can see
the countdown, you can really cheap and then there's there's
absolutely little luck involved. You can get it right down
to the wire, but you don't always have those to
go off of.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
That's a great point. But yeah, so your your turn
green game is actually mostly skill based, I would say.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, all right. This next one comes to us from Peter, Hi, Robert,
and Joe. I found your episodes on the illusion of
control most interesting. While I consider myself rational and scientifically minded,
I have realized that I indeed have this bias to
a degree, despite my understanding of odds and probability. When
(18:36):
I play games, especially involving dice, I have a belief
that I will be lucky. I often roll lucky in
pressure situations. Of course, I have probably not paid as
much attention to the unlucky roles. Yeah, this is, of course,
of course, key.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Remember the hits, forget the misses.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I guess it depends on what
kind of person you are. You know, if you focus
more on the negatives, then yeah, you're gonna be like,
something's wrong with this with these dice, or something's wrong
with this random number generator in this video game or
you know, phone game or what have it. And if
you're the other way around, then yeah, you're gonna skew
the other direction. Anyway, they continued. This all probably became
(19:16):
reinforced with a childhood event. While playing board games with
some friends, I made a challenge to roll one, two, three, four,
five six in sequence while passing the die to different people.
I began by calling out one and then proceeding to
roll a one on a six sided die. I passed
it to a friend, who called out two and rolled
a two. The challenge continued so forth, and we actually
(19:38):
rolled one, two, three, four, five six in sequence by
different people. We did it on the first try. Now
I understand that the different people didn't really affect the odds,
but it blew us away. I calculated the odds, which
came to point zero zero two one four percent, or
one in forty six thousand, six hundred and fifty six.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
That sounds pretty cool, Peter.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
This experience, although founded on randomness and basic probability, at
least subconsciously impacts my feelings, my feeling that I can
roll lucky and call out dice rolls, although I reserve
it for crucial situations. Note, I believe it only really
works with physical dice rather than video game rng's or
random number generators. I know it doesn't make rational sense,
(20:22):
but I can't shake the belief that there may be
something more to it, my weird tale of illusion of control.
Cheers Peter.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Well, thanks Peter. And yet this is great. I do
think our minds work this way. And in fact, there
was some research we talked about in the series exactly
along these lines that like the research about the early
success emphasis increasing our illusions of controls, Like if you
have an early winning streak at some kind of game
of chance, you are more inclined to think after that
(20:52):
that you have control over a random process, and that
seems to perhaps be operating with you. You had a really
salient early lucky streak of roles, and as you say,
it's like hard to shake the feeling that there's something
going on.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Now. The other possibility is that Peter is simply the
chosen one.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
That's right, Yes, he did see the mouse in the
second moon, and now the spice is guiding him. This
is also just a great example of realizing how our
intuitions can be misleading about the probability of events, because
you take, even if we assume that Peter the numbers
you give or write about this being an event that's
(21:32):
like one in forty six, six hundred and fifty six
chance of happening, you still you'd say, Okay, that seems
very unlikely. But then you would have to multiply that
by like the number of times in the world that
people around the world try to do something like this,
which I imagine, given all the time that people sit
around playing with dice, is actually quite a lot. So like,
(21:54):
given all of those chances to have hits, you will
have stories like this where people have a very unlikely
series of roles. Because people are just playing around with
dice all the time, there are a lot of chances
to make it happen.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we often can We can think
to those various runs we've had or our parties have
had in Dungeons and Dragons where it's like like three
twenties in a row, you know, three natural twenties, or
or the other end of the spectrum, you know multiple
natural ones, or multiple like you low scoring roles, And yeah,
(22:27):
it's the extremes that stand out to us.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
There are a lot of roles in each game. There
are a lot of people out there gaming. If you
know a lot of people who do game, you probably
know somebody who had at some point a really unlikely streak.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah I did, we mention. I don't know if we
mentioned this before, but it always kind of I always
get a little judge when I see someone at at
a gaming table just rolling the dice over and over again,
out of any necessity to do so, just to see
what they get. Yea, because part of my irrational brain
is like, like, you're using up your twenties. Man. You know,
(23:01):
it's one thing if you're rolling ones on that, but
I just just saw you roll like an eighteen. That's
an eighteen you won't roll later because you just rolled
it now. And that's silly.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah, well, it also makes me think when I see
somebody doing that at the table, I think, are you
being opportunistic? Like you're just kind of rolling and then
like you might try to claim that most recent role
if it was good and your turn has come up.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
You know what I mean. I mean there are gaming
systems where you get to like, you know, store dice
rolls for later, but most D twenty games are not
don't work like that. You know. Irrationality in the face
of actual statistics is such an interesting concept and something
I kept thinking about during this this that these episodes,
(23:45):
and something that I think about too sometimes when when
I'm dealing with anxious thoughts and I have to share
this one bit that came up in my reading of
the book Dead House Gates. This is book two of
the malasone book of the Fallen by Steven Ericson. This
is like, you know, a high fantasy adventure stuff. But
(24:05):
there's one character who has a fear of tunnels. And
there's just one little bit in the book goes as
follows quote he hated tunnels. No, they terrified him. There
was nothing rational in it. Wrong Again, tunnels collapse, people
get buried alive, all perfectly reasonable, possible, probable, inevitable, And
(24:27):
I just love this one little bit. It's like, yes,
that is exactly the progression that your mind can go
through when you're anxiously considering something like that, Like I
shouldn't be worried about this, but wait, it has happened,
can happen, could happen, will happen.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Yes, It's so easy to jump from possible to probable
and then yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Before we close here, I want to throw out one
quick note about Weird House Cinema. On Friday, we did
part one of our look at David Lynch's nineteen eighty
four adaptation of Doune, and this Friday, if everything goes
according to plan, we'll be finishing that up with a
part two where we look at the rest of that movie.
And I just want to throw this out there. Hey,
(25:10):
if you have any thoughts about David Lynch's Dune, about
the New Dune films, and you want to write in
and chat with us about it, you want to have
it come up on the Listener Mail episodes, please do so,
because we always have a lot of fun with this.
In fact, we just had a coworker text us on
a group text asking us how do they get off
(25:32):
of the sandworms after they're done writing them? Good question,
it's a great question. The short answer is you're supposed
to write them to exhaustion and then you get off.
But I love questions like this.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
I don't know if that answers it.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
There are additional follow up questions that are very valid.
I mentioned this to my wife and she's like, well, what, yeah,
what do you do if you're going a shorter distance?
And I think the answer is you're supposed to time
your distances appropriately, you know, based on the size of
the worm you snag and so forth. But yeah, there
(26:07):
are a number of follow up questions to this that
are valid, and there are not necessarily answers for the sandworm.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Is a is a train ride not an uber ride?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah? I mean you're you're attaching yourself to a force
of nature. Uh when you you ride ride the sandworm?
When you ride the worm? So uh, you know, strap in.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I will, I will be sure to uh, I think so. Yeah,
next week, I'm sure there will be lots of dune talk.
Send in, send in your dune talk.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
All right. Just a reminder that we're primarily a science podcast,
with our Tuesday and Thursday episodes being our core episodes,
but Monday is our listener mail time. That's when we
UH have a look through the mail bag and UH
and respond to various messages from you the listener, so
keep them coming. Uh listener mail regarding past episodes, current episodes,
(26:58):
and potential future episodes of anything we put together.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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 stuffdblow your Mind
dot com.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
1. The Podium
The Podium: An NBC Olympic and Paralympic podcast. Join us for insider coverage during the intense competition at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. In the run-up to the Opening Ceremony, we’ll bring you deep into the stories and events that have you know and those you'll be hard-pressed to forget.
2. In The Village
In The Village will take you into the most exclusive areas of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to explore the daily life of athletes, complete with all the funny, mundane and unexpected things you learn off the field of play. Join Elizabeth Beisel as she sits down with Olympians each day in Paris.
3. iHeartOlympics: The Latest
Listen to the latest news from the 2024 Olympics.