Listener Mail: Dawn is a Feeling

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.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Mind listener mail. My name is Robert lamp and I'm
Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day of the week
that we bring you some messages from the mail bag,
messages that you yourselves out there, have sent into the
show account, which, by the way, you can reach at

(00:24):
Contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com if
you ever have feedback on an episode that we air,
or if you just want to share something interesting with us,
get in touch anytime contact at Stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. Let's see robbiny business before I jump
right in with this message from Ahmed. Uh no business
that I can think of, No good love a day

(00:47):
without business. All right. Uh, let's see here. Uh Ahmed
writes on a monster fact that you did about parasitic control.
I'm it, says hi Robert and Joe. I'm ed again
happy your recent monster fact about behavior controlling parasites and

(01:09):
taxo plasma Gandhi made me think of this recent paper.
And then he links to a paper from uh. Well,
it's it's on the nature domains communications biology. The exact
methodologies of the paper are way out of my wheelhouse,
but it seems like the authors looked at wolves over
many years, living in areas that overlap with mountain lions

(01:33):
where a wolf could be exposed to taxo, then looking
at those that did get infected at some point versus
those that didn't. They found that taxo infection was associated
with forty six times increased chance of becoming a pack leader.
That looks to me like a whopping effects size and

(01:54):
maybe shows a way in which taxo infection can actually
benefit the host, though I guess the full benef it
versus cost analysis would have to talk to the wolves
who shouldn't have gone for pack leader but did, but
did it anyways under parasitic overconfidence. Keep up the good work, Ahmed. Um, well,
I'm at this. Thank you for sending this. This was

(02:14):
really interesting. So I looked up the reference. Uh, it
is indeed a paper published in Communications Biology in two
by Meyer at All called Parasitic infection increases risk taking
in a social intermediate host carnivore. Uh so yeah, I
think the I think the wolf is you know, not
meant to be the primary carrier of this, this parasitic

(02:38):
organism the toxoplasmosis parasite, but it has this effect on
wolves that it seems to have on other organisms of
making them essentially more brazen take more risks, which has
uh an interesting downstream series of consequences where it might
make that animal more likely to do something danger risks

(03:00):
and get killed, but it also might make that animal
more likely to achieve some kind of big positive outcome,
the kind of thing that you get if you win
playing with high risk, high reward gambles. Yeah, Ta Gandhi
is is a fascinating subject, one that I haven't looked
at in earnest in many years, but maybe it's something
we should come back around, because there's been a lot

(03:20):
of a lot of research, and I think there continues
to be a lot of research into it. But I
think if I remember correctly at the basic level, the
parasite wants to return to the body of a cat
and therefore tries to get the host eaten by a
big cat um and uh and sometimes it's been perhaps
the wrong host to actually carry out that life cycle.

(03:43):
But again, it's been a while since I've looked at
the t gandhi in detail, but maybe that's something we
should we should come back around to see what the
latest is on TI gandhi. Well, actually, maybe let's look
at just a little more detail from this one study,
because I did think this was really interesting. So, uh,
they talked about how they were looking at animals within
Yellowstone National Park in the United States, that's up in Wyoming,

(04:05):
and uh, they have wild populations of large land predators there,
including wild wolves or Canis lupus and wild cougars or
puma concolor um. I don't know how you say that
species named concolor concolor c O N c O l
O R. And in this case they say that the
cougar is the definitive host of of T. Gandhi and

(04:29):
the gray wolf is an intermediate host and uh, to
to read from their abstract here they write quote, here,
we use twenty six years of wolf behavioral, spatial and
sero logical data to show that wolf territory overlap with
areas of high cougar density was an important predictor of infection.
In addition, zero positive wolves were more likely to make

(04:51):
high risk decisions such as dispersing and becoming a pack leader,
both factors critical to individual fitness and wolf vital rates. Okay,
So when wolves are infected with toxoplasma, they are more
likely to incur into cougar infested areas and more likely
to come in contact with cougars. They're also, as Ahmed

(05:14):
said in the original email, more likely to apparently take
social risks or confrontational behaviors that could involve them becoming
the leader of the pack, which actually does increase their
mating fitness the author's right quote. Due to the social
hierarchy within a wolf pack, we hypothesize that the behavioral

(05:34):
effects of toxoplasmosis may create a feedback loop that increases
spatial overlap and disease transmission between wolves and cougars. So
I think the the proposed in here I'm referring to
there there's sort of a helpful flow chart illustration within
the article. I think the proposed or hypothesized chain reaction

(05:55):
goes like this. You've got both the wolves and the
cougars in the park. An infected cougar somehow infects wolves
with t GANDHI, and this could happen through uh, like
a wolf eating cougar scat, or through eating a dead
cougar's body, or through some kind of other environmental contact,

(06:16):
and then you end up with infected wolves that are
carrying this parasite. These wolves take higher risks. The wolves
that take higher risks become pack leaders or disperse, and
the infected pack leaders lead uninfected pack males into risky situations,
which include contact with cougars in cougar territory, which means

(06:38):
more uninfected wolves, Uh, get infected by cougars and they
learned to take risks like approaching cougars because that's what
their pack leader does. M h. It's kind of a
vicious cycle. Yeah, the side of things. The cycle continues
here anyway, Very cool study. Thank you for sending it
in on it. Yeah, and again they've been there's been

(06:59):
so many in US and studies over the years with
t Candy of some looking at it proposed changes to
human behavior as well. Yeah, alright. This next one comes
to us from Adam. Adam wrote in about music and

(07:20):
weird health cinema subjectal line some musical Easter eggs and
weird house cinema. So uh, this is in part a
response to the episodes that I did with Seth about
hidden material in records and musical recordings. Hello Robert Joe, Max,
and Seth, whom I see seed because this email is

(07:41):
heavily music focused. I recently listened to both episodes on
the history of back masking and other musical Easter eggs,
and I thought I could chime in with some of
my favorite examples of these and one example of back
masking allegation I find quite funny. The first of these
isn't really a musical easter egg in the sense the
you talked about in the episode, but I was reminded

(08:02):
of it while listening to your episodes about whistling and
thought now would be a good time to email about it.
In one of them, Joe went off on a brief
tangent about reconstructions of ancient music and how eerie many
of them sound. Hearing this and knowing you were both
hieronymous Bosh fans, I thought I could inform you if
you aren't already aware of the hieronymous Bosh Butt music.

(08:26):
In the right panel of Bosh's Too triptych The Garden
of Earthly Delights, a demon can be seen inscribing a
musical score on the posterior of a center which acquire
sings from recreations of this score exist on YouTube and
they're haunting accompaniment to the painting and also quite humorous
because of the origin. I would love to hear that.

(08:48):
As far as more direct cases of backmasking, time stretching,
locked grooves and other musical mayhem, there are quite a
few examples. I really enjoy the song Empty Spaces off
of the Pink Floyd album. The Wall actually contains a
backmask message, which played forward adds a fitting ambiance of
foreboding to the song. Played backwards, however, Roger Waters can

(09:09):
be heard saying, hello, looker, congratulations, you have just discovered
the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink
care of the Funny Farm chial front before producer James
Guthrie can be heard saying Roger Waters. Then wife Carolines
on the phone saying so the voice is saying Roger
Carolines on the phone. Uh. Similarly, Waters had wanted the

(09:33):
song Perfect Sense Part One on his solo album Amused
to Death to start the song with a sample of
Howe's death monologue from two thousand and one, a sample
present on the two fifteen rerelease of the album, but
was initially denied the ability to use the sample by
Kubrick in lieu of example, Kubrick, Uh, you wouldn't expect

(09:55):
him to give your permission, would you? Now you gotta
you gotta wait, wait a little bit before you can
actually go back and say, hey, can I have it now?
And the answers yes. In lieu of the sample, Waters
included a very similar sounding snippet of audio with the
same heavy breathing and a reversed vocal when played backwards,
a tongue in cheek message to kuber It can be

(10:15):
heard with Waters saying, Julia, However, in the light and
visions of the issues of Stanley, we changed our minds.
We have decided to include a backwards message Stanley for
you and for all of the other book burners, before
unintelligibly screaming in a Scottish accent. Waters seemed fond of
including secret jokes and tracks, as there's also one on

(10:37):
the nineteen sixty nine music cong Crete Pink Floyd's song
several species of small furry animals gathered together in a
cave and grooving with a picked When played at half
speed around four thirty two, Waters can be heard saying
that was pretty avant garde, wasn't it? It's funny when
you say these Roger Waters phrases without his accent. They

(11:00):
a sound kind of goofy um. Anyway, they continue. Another
funny experimental use all the techniques you discussed in the
second part is the locked groove on the final disc
of Lou Reid's Metal Machine Music. I find this use
of the lock grow funny because the original Vinyl released
the album listed the runtime of side four as sixteen

(11:22):
o one or infinite because of it, meaning that Wikipedia
list the album's run time as sixty eleven slash infinite
infinity sign. In addition, I like that the inclusion of
this lock groove feels like a final middle finger to
listeners off an album filled with middle fingers, like the
allusions to classical music read included as an attempt to

(11:42):
get our c A to release it on their classical label. Now, wait,
did y'all actually talk about Metal Machine Music in the episode?
I don't remember us talking about it. If we did,
it may have just been a quick listing of it.
Uh yeah, But I don't think we really got around
albumtil all day. Or is this an album familiar with Joe?
I've never listened to the whole thing all the way through,

(12:03):
but I've heard parts of it, so it's you know,
Lou Reed's album that is famous for being just sort
of like squealing painful noise. Ah, that sounds like a riot. Well,
let's see um. In addition, there's an example of a
musical easter egg hiding visual information in a spectrogram, like
you mentioned in the game Minecraft. In game, there are

(12:24):
several different vinyl discs that can be collected and played.
One of these, simply titled eleven, has an in game
graphic resembling a broken record, and when played, consists of
a vinyl hiss, a series of mildly creepy sound effects
that seemed to portray someone running from a monster, and static.
I had no idea Minecraft had spooky stuff like that,

(12:45):
And I thought it was a game where you, like,
I don't know, hit blocks with a pick and then
get diamonds out. Well, you know, the monsters come for
you at night. I know I've played enough to know
that happens, but yeah, I neither I nor my son
have gotten any deeper into it. But anyway, the spectrogram.
If the file for this song is displayed as a spectagram,

(13:06):
the static at the end displays what looks like the
face of the default player character Steve, and the numbers
one to one eight. This number has been interpreted to
be a visual signature from the composer of the majority
of the game's music, C four one eight, where C
is hexadecimal for twelve. This song and the discovery of
the secret in the spectrogram has led to a lot

(13:26):
of elaborate fan theories, but like the Boch motif, this
just seems to be another musician finding an overly elaborate
way to sign their work. As well as actual uses
of back masking and other ways of hiding information, you
talked about various allegations of backmasking during the Satanic Panic.
One allegation of backmasking from this period that I find
especially egregious case of people finding Satanic messages just because

(13:51):
they're looking for them, is a claim that the theme
song to the popular television show Mr. Ed a Horse
is a Horse. Okay, I wasn't familiar with this one.
Uh more details here. In twenty years after the show
went off the air, a preacher from South Ohio claimed
that when reversed, the message reads quote the source is

(14:12):
Satan and quote. Someone heard this song from Satan could
be heard. According to a Chicago Tribune article from the time,
the preacher stated that quote Satan can be an influence
whether you know it or not. We don't think they
did it on purpose, and we're not getting down on Mr. Ed.
That would be like kicking baseball out of America. So

(14:32):
so that the idea was that they unconsciously encoded satanic
messages into the theme song and Mr. Ed, Yeah, I
guess that's the charge. But then you can't fault Mr. Ed.
So it's like we're gonna we're gonna give you a
pass on this about I mean, what what are any
of them talking about? I mean that, as we went

(14:54):
into in in that episode and has been discussed many times,
it's you have people of this caliber who just kind
of go on this unending quest to find proof of
the satanic in music played backwards, and if you play
music backwards, you'll find something, and if you lean into
it enough you can interpret some of it is satanic.
And I guess it just eventually just becomes this thing

(15:17):
you do all the time. But to your point, it
doesn't really reveal anything at that point, does it. It's
just kind of like, well, I mean, are you even
able to really hold that up as proof that the
Satanic realm and therefore the heavenly realm exists. I don't know,
It just seems kind of pointless at that point. Yeah. Anyway, Uh.
The email continues the idea that people somehow have a

(15:39):
subconscious pro Satan bias, but not a subconscious bias to
hear messages they deliberately want to hear despite them not
being there. Is demonstrative of how absurd this whole phenomenon
was agreed. Furthermore, this disclaimer didn't stop the preacher's accusation
from angering the founder of the International Mr. Ed Fan Club,
who said that quote, I am completely astounded. We have
Kadafi bomb people in airports, we have starving homeless people

(16:02):
right here in America, and this so called Christian chooses
to lambass Mr Ed wake Up and smell the road.
Apple's Reverend Brown a truly devastating reply that makes me
worry about the consequences of ever upsetting a Mr. Ed fan.
I guess this was before the age of of social
media and like BEF related clickbait news websites, but you

(16:23):
can you just imagine the headlines like Mr ed Fan
roasts Reverend Brown, it's a different time, alright. Finally, Adam
gets around to a Weird House and says, I've also
enjoyed Weird House cinema and have a few suggestions listed below,
So yeah, we get take we can take uh, take
these one by one. Here Joe Eyes without a Face
nineteen sixty. I think this one briefly came out from

(16:44):
the show. In regards to films in the Criterion collection,
it may be a little too poetic for Weird House
that you've covered other art films, but it's one of
my favorite films and I'd be interested hearing your thoughts. Oh,
I don't know if there's such a thing as too
poetic for Weird House. I mean, I think we lean
more on kind of lower brow or B movies. But yeah,
we we're we're open to anything good or bad on

(17:06):
Weird House as long as it's you know, as long
as it's weird and interesting and fun. Yeah, we have
we we we try to keep a very diet and
then try and spread it out as long as it's
presentable for others at the table. Then within then we'll
we'll potentially look at it. I was in fact, just
looking at eyes without a face the other day, considering

(17:28):
watching it or rewatching. I think I saw it many
many years ago, um and reading a little bit more
about it, and yeah, it's it's a groundbreaking one, um
and one that uh that that still holds up and
its creepiness alright. The next one the Phantom of the
Paradise four. This is a rock opera retelling of Phantom
of the Opera Faust and Portrait of Dorian Gray, directed

(17:51):
by Brian to Palmer. It maybe too mainstream for Weird House. Also,
I wouldn't be surprised if you've both seen it already,
but I'd also be interested in hearing your thoughts. We
love Phantom of the Paradise. Uh, I've watched that one
a number of times. It's it's a it's a house
favorite here I I have not yet watched it. So
this one, this one would be a fun selection at
some point. It's come up on the show before due

(18:13):
to some of the connections in it. I think Garrett Graham,
isn't it Garrett Graham plays a glam rock Frankenstein named Beef. Uh.
It's really good alright. The next one, House from seven.
This is an absolutely insane Japanese horror comedy with special
effects glore that has been seen. It has to be
seen to be believed. The film was partially inspired by

(18:35):
ideas from the director's daughter, which makes sense as it
feels like a child's fever dream. Yeah, that doesn't make sense.
House Is Uh is of course horrifying. It is a
horror movie, but it also very much it sounds like
it comes from the mind of a child. It has
a very end then and then quality. Yeah, amazing poster too.

(18:56):
All right, now, this next one, Hyperspace slash Rim Illinois.
It's four. This is the very first feature laying Star
Wars spoof and the origin of Lord Buckethead, a character
who would later become a satirical political candidate in the UK.
In addition to Star Wars, it features scenes spoofing many
other sci fi films, ranging from War of the Worlds
to Phantasm. It also has some wild connections for being

(19:19):
a low budget spoof film from the mid eighties. Overall,
it's a wonderful, funny and thoroughly underrated film. Never seen it.
I haven't seen it either, but I have I have
met and uh and and worked with the actor who
played the original Lord Buckethead some kind of the yeah, yeah,
all right, and then finally they suggest Labyrinth from six.

(19:42):
This one needs no introduction. It has come up several
times on both Weird House and Stuff to Play your
Mind episodes, but I'd love to see an episode dedicated
to it. It could even get the Dark Crystal treatment
and have a stuff to Blow your Mind episode dedicated
to the biology or folklore of the many fantastic and
wonderful creatures we see throughout the film. Yeah, Labyrinth is
a goal. Yeah, yeah, I was thinking about Labyrinth recently. Actually,

(20:04):
I put together one upcoming Monster Fact episode deals with
something from Labyrinth because I ended up getting a copy
of the new Labyrinth Bestierry Uh that came out that
has all new illustrations and stuff about all the creatures
in the film, and also I think some creatures from
perhaps some follow up fiction related to Labyrinth um or

(20:24):
perhaps prequel fiction related to Labyrinth. I don't I haven't
gotten into that section as much, but yeah, there's there's
a lot going on in Labyrinth. There's a lot to
potentially discuss. So many great creative minds and talents went
into it. I mean obviously you have Jim Hinson, Brian
Fraul and David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly. But I mean
you also have Terry Jones of Monty Python, uh there

(20:46):
on on the screenplay, so they're all these absurd touches
there as well. Yeah, and it's also just in terms
of like compared you can't help but compared to Dark Crystal.
Dark Crystal of course takes its world building very seriously
and does a fabulous job with it. Labyrinth also does
a fabulous job, but it is a it is a musical,
and it has this absurd quality to it, so it

(21:08):
goes in all these other different directions, and in a way,
it might it might be a more fun film to
discuss on on a Weird House episode because you do
have a lot of questions like what how does the
Goblin Army function? What exactly do do does Sarah want?
What exactly does does Jareth want? I mean there's a
lot to tie sack there. Yeah, I would say that

(21:30):
The Dark Crystal is more like a myth where you
get a view from a higher vantage point, whereas Labyrinth
is more like a fairy tale or you know, you
were just sort of injected into a world for a
series of events. Yeah, so all all solid suggestions here.
I mean, really, if we were if we were forced

(21:50):
to do all of these that were suggested, I think
we'd probably be doing pretty well. And then finally, Adam
wraps things up, says congratulations to Joe and the rest
of the McCormick family for the new arrival, farewell to Steth,
a warm welcome to Max. That's kind of ironic, and
it thanks to all of you for creating a wonderful,
fascinating and entertaining show. Sincerely, Adam. Oh, thank you, Adam.

(22:13):
I mentioned its ironic because Max is going to be
stepping back from being one of two producers and j
J is going to be stepping forward to be like
the prime producer. So nothing, nothing tragic going on. Max
is still very much around. Okay. One last message for today.

(22:34):
This is about weird house cinema. Lawrence says, Hey, guys,
thanks for your entry on Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
I first saw this film with my brother and sister
back when it was in theaters. I have Wow, I
have the DVD and we'll be viewing it later today
as part of my Christmas ritual. I wanted to suggest
that maybe the right word to describe drop Oh as

(22:56):
a kind of lieutenant Santa on Mars is viceroy. Drop
O is Santa's viceroy of Mars. Thanks again, Lawrence. Uh, yeah,
that's interesting. I don't think I knew the exact definition
of viceroy, so I looked it up. It is a
ruler exercising authority in a colony on behalf of a sovereign.

(23:16):
That can make sense. So Santa Claus is the king,
but he's back on Earth. His representative on his I
guess his colonial influence over Mars is his viceroy. Yeah,
absolutely works. Yeah, drop O Viceroy of Mars. I'd like
to see the treatment of this for like a nineties
seventies sci fi paperback. It would would be amazing. Yes,

(23:39):
can you imagine how how Michael Whelan would render drop Oh?
I would have loved to have seen it. All Right,
we're gonna go and close the mail bag here, but
we'll be back next week with more listener mail as
long as you all keep it coming. So if you
have any thoughts about current episodes, past episodes, potential future
episodes of Core stuff, to Blow your Mind, weird house

(24:01):
sent uh, monster facts or even just stuff we having
to be talking about in other listener mail episodes right
in we would love to hear from you big thanks
to our audio producer today, Max Williams. Max has been
stepping in to help us out since Seth's departure. And uh, Max,
I know this is your your last regular episode. Maybe
you'll you'll you'll step in every now and then if

(24:23):
if JJ is out of town or something. But uh,
I just wanted to say it's been been really great
having you work on the show here and uh and
and hats off to you, thank you so much. He
is silently doing the handheart on the video chat for
you listening at home. Uh so, yeah, thanks thanks a lot, Max. Um.
Let's see. Oh, if you ever want to get in
touch with us here on the show, maybe have your

(24:45):
own message featured on Stuff to Blow your Mind listener mail,
you can write us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from

(25:05):
my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.