February 5, 2024 • 21 mins
Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener mail.
My name's 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 have
never gotten in touch with us before, maybe you should
give it a try. You can reach us at contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Whatever you
want to send us fair game. But we of course
always appreciate feedback to recent episodes, especially if you have
(00:37):
something interesting you'd like to add to a topic we've
talked about. Let's see, Rob if you don't mind, I'm
going to kick things off with this message from Hannah
in response to our series on Strange Ice. Yeah, let's
have it, Hannah says, Hi, guys, I've been listening for years.
(00:58):
I love your podcast stimulating conversations with people in my
daily life that are inspired by your episodes regarding the
Strange Ice. Have you guys covered super cool liquid water?
Once my father took a water bottle from our home freezer.
It was in liquid form inside the bottle as he
opened it. And tilted it downward to poor We both
(01:20):
watched as the water began freezing from the mouth of
the bottle all the way to the end of the bottle.
It's been many years since this happened, and I know
the phenomenon exists, but I'm starting to doubt that I
saw it in real life as opposed to a dream
or something. Do you know anything about this and is
it something that can happen in a conventional domestic freezer? Again,
(01:40):
love your podcast, Keep up the good work, Robert, Joe
and team. Sincerely, Hannah. Yes, Hannah, Yes, you are right.
This is an example of what is called super cooling.
It happens when water gets below the freezing point, below
the temperature where it would normally freeze, while somehow still
remain a liquid, and in this super cooled state, it
(02:03):
can freeze very rapidly all of a sudden, and it's
not even especially rare from what I can tell. You
can look up tons of videos of this online. Often
it seems to be happening with water inside smooth plastic
bottles or water or just bottled water. You pre bottled
water that's sold in stores when it is stored in
(02:26):
the freezer or maybe outside in sub zero temperatures. And yeah,
it seems that it can happen in a normal domestic freezer.
And that's because from everything I've read, it doesn't really
actually depend very much on the environment outside the container
of water, apart from it being below the freezing temperature.
It is more related to what's inside the container. It's
(02:48):
related to the makeup of the water and the container
in which it is stored. So the common explanation is
that ice crystals need what are called nucleation points. So
that's a place where where crystals of ice can begin
to form within the mass of liquid water. And usually
(03:09):
this is some kind of impurity in the water, maybe
some kind of particle suspended within it or something dissolved
in it, or it can be a rough place in
the wall of the container in which the water is stored.
But in a smooth container with very pure water, sometimes
there isn't any nucleation point that would allow ice crystals
(03:30):
to begin to form, and the water goes sub zero
while remaining a liquid. This comes to an end when
the liquid is disturbed or agitated in some ways. So
if you bonk the bottle against something, or you shake it,
or you tip it over to pour it. In all
these cases, suddenly some kind of nucleation point is found
and then the water freezes all at once. And really
(03:53):
interesting thing I've noticed is that in all the videos
I've seen of this, the ice forms from the top
down rather than from the bottom up, so it forms
away from the Earth center of gravity, moving toward the
Earth center of gravity. I don't know exactly why that is,
but that seems curious. Another interesting fact is that a
(04:14):
similar thing can happen in the opposite direction as well,
with the creation of super heated water, and this is
one reason it can be hazardous to microwave plane water
without anything in it. Sometimes water in the microwave can
exceed the normal boiling point of water while still remaining
(04:34):
a liquid if there is no nucleation point allowing steam
bubbles to begin to form. So in the case of
like a microwaved mug or bowl of water, this can
mean the water gets above one hundred degree celsius or
two twelve fahrenheit, and then you know, it just stays
a liquid, sort of still liquid without bubbles in this
(04:55):
superheated state. And then when you put something in it
like you stick a spoon or a tea bag in it,
or you add some ingredient to it. Suddenly it has
nucleation points where it didn't have them before, and it
sort of explodes, sending a splash of boiling water all
over the place, and of course can burn people. In
both cases. Superheating and super cooling seem to be more
(05:20):
likely with very pure water, so I've read that the
microwave thing is more likely to happen. It's more dangerous
if you are using distilled water. Most of the time,
tapwater has enough impurities that bubbles will form, but it's
still better to exercise caution when microwaving water, even if
it is tapwater.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
All right, This next one comes to us from Jeff
with one f Jeff Rights, greeting Science Humans. I believe
Imma Frost's diamond powers. This is a character in the
X Men comics are supposed to make her essentially in vulnerable,
but based on your diamond episodes, it seems as though
(06:02):
her archinemy should be thor or at least anyone else
with access to hammer technology.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Very good, referring to the fact that you usually cannot
dent or scratch a diamond but you can shatter one
with a hammer.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Right, And I believe that in that episode, I kind
of just put the call out of there any other
diamond related comic book things we should know about to
write in, And so that's what Jeff gets to. Just
as in the DC Comics universe, there's a character named Jeanette,
a proper mythological banshee who kills one of her tormentors
by repeatedly mixing not diamonds but ground glass into her
(06:36):
daily meals. It did take years for the victim to
die in prolonged agony of what was thought to be
an undiagnosable disease, which is more plausible than death by
a single hit of crushed diamond. I had to look
this character up, and it looks like that at some
point in the telling and creation of this character. She
(06:56):
also ties into the household of Count Elizabeth Bathory. So
it sounds like the creators had a lot of fun
putting this character together.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yikes, And yeah, that does seem more plausible, I'd agree.
Whatever the poisonous properties or lack thereof of a you know,
single small amount of powdered diamond, I'd imagine if you
just keep feeding it to people over and over for
a long time. It's got to do something not great.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, Jeff continues on a completely different note, allow me
a moment to proselytize the tuna crab. They are a
most adorable, colorful and slightly nightmarriagh species, and I believe
worthy of your attention. And at that point, I believe
the author Jeff here included a bunch of links and Joe,
(07:45):
you dragged in some images of these creatures.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Yeah, they looks kind of like cooked crayfish. They have
crawd because you know with crawdads often they have a
more kind of well, they can have different colors, but
might have more like a bread appearance on the shell
before cooking. After you cook them, the shell turns bright red.
These in life appear bright red. And they are also
(08:08):
kind of shaped like crayfish. And that they've got these
curling tails with fins on them and claws in the front,
so they're shaped kind of like crayfish, but they have
these elongated front pincers.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Jeff continues. They spend most of their lives swimming in
the open ocean, migrating from the deep to the surface
at will. While they are very different creatures, they look
a bit like squid while swimming, traveling in a jerky,
non fish like motion, with the hydrodynamic portion of the
animal in the front in the limbs dangling behind, and
then as an aside, snorkeling near squid can be quite
(08:43):
disorienting after you've acclimatized or climated to normal fish behavior,
when you see a squadron of them in the distance,
they look like a bunch of deformed mutant fish with
all the body parts in the wrong place, which may
be an enormous jaw or possibly shredded body on the
back of the animal. I have to throw in that
I've only seen maybe one or two squid out while snorkeling,
(09:07):
but and they're isolated, but are It's a really cool
experience because they are so strange, especially if you have
been looking at fish all day. Jeff continues. Tunicrabs are
not actual crabs, but squat lobsters, which are also not
actual lobsters. They are more closely related to hermit crabs.
They are also related to the langstino red lobster that
(09:29):
got in trouble for passing off as a real lobster.
The tunicrabs been their early life floating around as plankton.
Some crustaceans have an insane life cycle with around fifteen
distinct larval stages, putting Pokemon evolutions to shame. Scientists have
a lot of trouble distinguishing between different species and simply
different forms of the same creature. One major complication of
(09:49):
domesticating marine species for aquaculture is these microscopic stages of life,
which would be inadvertently removed from any aquarium with a
normal filter system. Imagine the difficulty of raising cows or
pigs that have millions of offspring at once, all of
whom are in great danger of being sucked into the
ventilation system. Thanks for tolerating my meandering spam, and more importantly,
(10:12):
thanks for presenting us all with so many varied and
interesting topics to ponder.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Jeff, Oh, thank you, Jeff, great email. You know, I
don't think I knew that red lobster ever got in
trouble for trying to sell langestines as real lobster, especially
because I thought langestines were, like are a delicacy. I've
had them before, and I thought they were considered good.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, I mean I guess. You know, people want to
know what they're buying, but they're supposed to be in
the tank right with the rubber bands, so it should
be a situation where you're maybe there were I have
no idea about the details of the story, like were
the langostino's in the tank with rubber bands on? Because
if that's the case, it's like, as long as you
get the one you point out, then what's the problem.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Well, I do think they're typically smaller than lobsters, but
they're good. I remember the langustines I have. It seemed
like the sort of a cross between like lobster and
shrimp somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
There the mention of the complex life cycles. This reminds
me on the series Futurama, we of course have doctor
John A. Zoidberg who is a decapodian, so he has
this crustacean squid like alien species, and there's one episode
(11:24):
in particular where they outline the life cycle of a
decapodian and it has like all of these crazy life cycles,
the stages of the life cycle that are based on
what we actually see in the natural world, and it
was quite clever.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Nice all right, This next message touches on a variety
of topics, including some stuff about diamonds and some stuff
about weird house cinema. This is from Jeremy. Jeremy says, Hello,
Robert and Joe. In your recent Nature of the Diamond
(11:59):
Part four episode, the subject of body implants came up,
in particular forehead implants. I was surprised that the epic
webcomic Kill six Billion Demons wasn't mentioned here, as many
of the characters, including the main protagonist, have embedded forehead
gems as a source of power. I'm sure you've recommended
Kill six Billion Demons on one of your reading list episodes.
(12:21):
This is funny because I feel like this just came
up recently that like somebody else was saying we had
recommended this, but I don't. I'm not familiar with it.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I think I think I recommended it oh so ago,
But I okay, I'd forgotten a lot of the details
about it. I haven't read it since then. It's tremendously enjoyable,
beautiful art, but I had just honestly forgotten that they
had forehead diamonds or gems or what have you.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Shame on you, I know, I know, I love the
failed to mention emails. But don't worry, Jeremy, it's fine,
it's fine, Jeremy goes on. In your recent The Magic
Sword Weird House episode, concern was expressed that there would
be insufficient handy princesses available to keep the dragon healthy
(13:06):
with a regular food supply. Oh yeah, this is because
you got the impression once you got to Basil Rathbone's
castle that he's just like churning through princesses about once
or twice a week. He's got new princesses coming in
all the time. The dragon obviously, you know, takes a
lot of calories to feed a dragon. They'll only eat princesses,
I guess. And so that really has to add up
how many princesses are there? Well, Jeremy says, I suspect
(13:30):
that you underestimate the number of quote kings and hence
castles there used to be in Europe, as the number
of castles runs into the tens of thousands. For example,
there are estimates of Germany twenty five thousand, France ten thousand,
Spain six thousand, UK fifteen hundred, which includes Wales which
(13:51):
has six hundred, making it the country with the most
castles per square mile in the world.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I don't know where Jeremy is going to these numbers from,
but if that's true, that is that's a lot of
kings and I guess maybe a lot of princesses.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah, if it's any indication, then maybe it was a
good racket for an evil wizard to have.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Finally, Jeremy says, you often mentioned checking your podcast feed
on Apple devices, and I've experienced this. I switched to
the UK feed when it was released and it worked
perfectly until the fifth of January when it stopped and
I can't get it to reactivate. Thankfully, I was able
to switch back to the original global version, which still works.
Best regards Jeremy. Okay, Rob, is this a good point
(14:33):
to do another explainer on this? Just briefly, We are
very sorry for the inconvenience listeners. We love you, we
appreciate the fact that you listen, and we're very sorry
for the run around on this. But this was just
a result of stuff. We were told by corporate that
we were going to have to move UK listeners to
a separate feed, and then that requirement went away. So
(14:56):
if any UK listeners are still on that other feed,
you can come back to this one.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
It's okay now, right, And yeah, the UK feed is
I think at this point completely gone. If the emails
that I've read are accurate. So this is the only feed.
If there's another feed that says it stuff to blow
your mind, that's not it. There can be only one
that's right.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
We're extremely sorry for the inconvenience and confusion. It's out
of our hands, but.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
You did the right thing by writing in and asking
about it. Any kind of questions that come up about
the podcast feed, be at the Apple feed or the
iHeart main feed or any of the other feeds where
you get the podcast, do bring it to our attention,
because sometimes it's something that's out of our hands. Sometimes
it's something that has to do with the platform. Sometimes
it's something that has to do with publication of the
(15:42):
podcast episode and alerting it to us. Very possibly there's
something we can do to help, so we appreciate it.
We're not always able to observe the podcast in the wild,
at least not as quickly as you listeners.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Do, right. We don't always know what you're seeing in
the place and way you get the podcast. Yeah, all right,
let's do a message or two about weird house cinema.
This one comes from Maria Angela, who says, Hi, I
am a faithful Italian listener and I love your podcast.
(16:18):
I stumbled upon an old Hugh Grant movie, namely The
Layer of the White Worm. I watched the trailer and
I immediately thought of you. It seems quite ludicrous and hilarious,
maybe not intentionally. I immensely enjoy your work, Maria Angela
in Italy. Well, Maria Angela, thank you for bringing this
to our attention. No, I am quite familiar with Layer
(16:40):
of the White Worm, and I am quite certain it
is intentional in its hilarity. That's a favorite of Rachel
and I have watched that one many times. It's it's
so I don't even know how to describe it. It's
a hoot.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah. I mean, it's a great director and Ken Russell
based on brom Stoker Stokers work, and then you got
a great cast, not only Hugh Grant, but you've got
Peter Capaldi, You've got Katherine Oxenberg, Sammy Davis, a great cast.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
I mean, I wonder if it's scandalous in a way
that we're not brave enough to do on Weird House.
But it is great and there is a there was
so many like great, just giffable moments and it I
think of one where Amanda Donaho just like vomits acid
on a crucifix.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah, oh, yes, that's right, because she she plays the
good can you remember Snake Woman, Vampire Lady Goddess.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
She's like a serpent sorceress. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah, And it would be great to do a kN
Russell film at some point or another in Weird House,
but he's one of those directors where I'm not sure
exactly which one would be the right Kim Russell film
for us to discuss. Yeah, all right, this next one
comes to us from Chris. Chris says Joe and Robert.
(18:00):
Listener Roberta mentioned her viewing of the Magic Sword at
a drive in as a young child. This incidentally was
the listener mail that reminded us that, hey, we should
just go ahead and do the Magic Sword for Weird House,
and so we did, so, thank you, Roberta. Yeah, so
Chris continues, She referred to a comment one of you
made about attack of the puppet people, maybe wanting to
(18:20):
hear from listeners who saw the movies during their original release.
This prompted me to peruse the list of previous Weird
House Cinema episodes. I noticed that I had watched a
number of the films Gorgo, Doctor X, The Thing from
Another World, and others. You two may have opened a
bucket of blood oops, I mean can of worms. It
would be an interesting project to have listeners write in
(18:42):
about first seeing the movies, but you might want to
widen your criteria. I can remember the theater and or
other circumstances when I first saw some of them, but
not the actual date, since I might have seen them
as a second or third run. Movies were routinely part
of second or later runs, including drive ins when I
was growing up. I think such later distributions often produced
(19:03):
pairings of double features different from their original ones. Some
of us with a good number of birthdays might have
seen older films primarily on television as part of local stations,
late night chiller theater, etc. Fair rather than in a theater.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Chris Well, this is a great point, Chris. So when
it comes to listener mail for Weird House Cinema, Yeah,
I don't want to limit anybody to writing in only
about seeing a movie on the original run in the theater,
if you saw something on what was it called Thriller
with Boris Carloff or maybe I'm getting that name wrong,
any of these shows that had like late night horror
(19:40):
host shows on TV when you were a kid, or
if it was a second run or whatever, that's fine too.
We just want to hear your great stories about seeing
these movies.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah, I want to hear about you discovering movies in
the theater. I want to hear about you going to
video rental stores. I want to hear about you discovering
them in the depths of Amazon Prime, which, as I've
mentioned before, for a good minute, there had a whole
lot of like weird stuff just in the back catalog,
and I think it's still there, but you have to
(20:09):
find the right channels to subscribe to be it like
like a full Moon you know, subscribe to the full
Moon channel, or even like the MGM Plus channel. I've
noticed I had to dip into a subscription there to
watch something, and like, there's a whole bunch of fabulous
looking garbage in there that I'm gonna have to sift
(20:31):
through at some point or another. So, yeah, all of
these stories of cinematic discovery or fair game.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
I also want to hear your plot summaries of movies
that you haven't seen since you were like five years old,
with no refreshing Sure, sure, how do you remember it?
What do you think the magic Sword was about?
Speaker 2 (20:52):
All right, then we're gonna go ahead and close out
this episode, but we'd love to hear from you again.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind primarily a science podcast, core
episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and on Mondays we do
a little listener mail. On Wednesdays we do a short
form episode, and on Fridays we set aside most serious
concerns just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Yeah,
we'd love to hear from all of you if you
have any responses to past episodes, current episodes, or potential
(21:16):
future episodes for any of these publication days.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts 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 you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener mail.
My name's 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 have
never gotten in touch with us before, maybe you should
give it a try. You can reach us at contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Whatever you
want to send us fair game. But we of course
always appreciate feedback to recent episodes, especially if you have
(00:37):
something interesting you'd like to add to a topic we've
talked about. Let's see, Rob if you don't mind, I'm
going to kick things off with this message from Hannah
in response to our series on Strange Ice. Yeah, let's
have it, Hannah says, Hi, guys, I've been listening for years.
(00:58):
I love your podcast stimulating conversations with people in my
daily life that are inspired by your episodes regarding the
Strange Ice. Have you guys covered super cool liquid water?
Once my father took a water bottle from our home freezer.
It was in liquid form inside the bottle as he
opened it. And tilted it downward to poor We both
(01:20):
watched as the water began freezing from the mouth of
the bottle all the way to the end of the bottle.
It's been many years since this happened, and I know
the phenomenon exists, but I'm starting to doubt that I
saw it in real life as opposed to a dream
or something. Do you know anything about this and is
it something that can happen in a conventional domestic freezer? Again,
(01:40):
love your podcast, Keep up the good work, Robert, Joe
and team. Sincerely, Hannah. Yes, Hannah, Yes, you are right.
This is an example of what is called super cooling.
It happens when water gets below the freezing point, below
the temperature where it would normally freeze, while somehow still
remain a liquid, and in this super cooled state, it
(02:03):
can freeze very rapidly all of a sudden, and it's
not even especially rare from what I can tell. You
can look up tons of videos of this online. Often
it seems to be happening with water inside smooth plastic
bottles or water or just bottled water. You pre bottled
water that's sold in stores when it is stored in
(02:26):
the freezer or maybe outside in sub zero temperatures. And yeah,
it seems that it can happen in a normal domestic freezer.
And that's because from everything I've read, it doesn't really
actually depend very much on the environment outside the container
of water, apart from it being below the freezing temperature.
It is more related to what's inside the container. It's
(02:48):
related to the makeup of the water and the container
in which it is stored. So the common explanation is
that ice crystals need what are called nucleation points. So
that's a place where where crystals of ice can begin
to form within the mass of liquid water. And usually
(03:09):
this is some kind of impurity in the water, maybe
some kind of particle suspended within it or something dissolved
in it, or it can be a rough place in
the wall of the container in which the water is stored.
But in a smooth container with very pure water, sometimes
there isn't any nucleation point that would allow ice crystals
(03:30):
to begin to form, and the water goes sub zero
while remaining a liquid. This comes to an end when
the liquid is disturbed or agitated in some ways. So
if you bonk the bottle against something, or you shake it,
or you tip it over to pour it. In all
these cases, suddenly some kind of nucleation point is found
and then the water freezes all at once. And really
(03:53):
interesting thing I've noticed is that in all the videos
I've seen of this, the ice forms from the top
down rather than from the bottom up, so it forms
away from the Earth center of gravity, moving toward the
Earth center of gravity. I don't know exactly why that is,
but that seems curious. Another interesting fact is that a
(04:14):
similar thing can happen in the opposite direction as well,
with the creation of super heated water, and this is
one reason it can be hazardous to microwave plane water
without anything in it. Sometimes water in the microwave can
exceed the normal boiling point of water while still remaining
(04:34):
a liquid if there is no nucleation point allowing steam
bubbles to begin to form. So in the case of
like a microwaved mug or bowl of water, this can
mean the water gets above one hundred degree celsius or
two twelve fahrenheit, and then you know, it just stays
a liquid, sort of still liquid without bubbles in this
(04:55):
superheated state. And then when you put something in it
like you stick a spoon or a tea bag in it,
or you add some ingredient to it. Suddenly it has
nucleation points where it didn't have them before, and it
sort of explodes, sending a splash of boiling water all
over the place, and of course can burn people. In
both cases. Superheating and super cooling seem to be more
(05:20):
likely with very pure water, so I've read that the
microwave thing is more likely to happen. It's more dangerous
if you are using distilled water. Most of the time,
tapwater has enough impurities that bubbles will form, but it's
still better to exercise caution when microwaving water, even if
it is tapwater.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
All right, This next one comes to us from Jeff
with one f Jeff Rights, greeting Science Humans. I believe
Imma Frost's diamond powers. This is a character in the
X Men comics are supposed to make her essentially in vulnerable,
but based on your diamond episodes, it seems as though
(06:02):
her archinemy should be thor or at least anyone else
with access to hammer technology.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Very good, referring to the fact that you usually cannot
dent or scratch a diamond but you can shatter one
with a hammer.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Right, And I believe that in that episode, I kind
of just put the call out of there any other
diamond related comic book things we should know about to
write in, And so that's what Jeff gets to. Just
as in the DC Comics universe, there's a character named Jeanette,
a proper mythological banshee who kills one of her tormentors
by repeatedly mixing not diamonds but ground glass into her
(06:36):
daily meals. It did take years for the victim to
die in prolonged agony of what was thought to be
an undiagnosable disease, which is more plausible than death by
a single hit of crushed diamond. I had to look
this character up, and it looks like that at some
point in the telling and creation of this character. She
(06:56):
also ties into the household of Count Elizabeth Bathory. So
it sounds like the creators had a lot of fun
putting this character together.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yikes, And yeah, that does seem more plausible, I'd agree.
Whatever the poisonous properties or lack thereof of a you know,
single small amount of powdered diamond, I'd imagine if you
just keep feeding it to people over and over for
a long time. It's got to do something not great.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, Jeff continues on a completely different note, allow me
a moment to proselytize the tuna crab. They are a
most adorable, colorful and slightly nightmarriagh species, and I believe
worthy of your attention. And at that point, I believe
the author Jeff here included a bunch of links and Joe,
(07:45):
you dragged in some images of these creatures.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Yeah, they looks kind of like cooked crayfish. They have
crawd because you know with crawdads often they have a
more kind of well, they can have different colors, but
might have more like a bread appearance on the shell
before cooking. After you cook them, the shell turns bright red.
These in life appear bright red. And they are also
(08:08):
kind of shaped like crayfish. And that they've got these
curling tails with fins on them and claws in the front,
so they're shaped kind of like crayfish, but they have
these elongated front pincers.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Jeff continues. They spend most of their lives swimming in
the open ocean, migrating from the deep to the surface
at will. While they are very different creatures, they look
a bit like squid while swimming, traveling in a jerky,
non fish like motion, with the hydrodynamic portion of the
animal in the front in the limbs dangling behind, and
then as an aside, snorkeling near squid can be quite
(08:43):
disorienting after you've acclimatized or climated to normal fish behavior,
when you see a squadron of them in the distance,
they look like a bunch of deformed mutant fish with
all the body parts in the wrong place, which may
be an enormous jaw or possibly shredded body on the
back of the animal. I have to throw in that
I've only seen maybe one or two squid out while snorkeling,
(09:07):
but and they're isolated, but are It's a really cool
experience because they are so strange, especially if you have
been looking at fish all day. Jeff continues. Tunicrabs are
not actual crabs, but squat lobsters, which are also not
actual lobsters. They are more closely related to hermit crabs.
They are also related to the langstino red lobster that
(09:29):
got in trouble for passing off as a real lobster.
The tunicrabs been their early life floating around as plankton.
Some crustaceans have an insane life cycle with around fifteen
distinct larval stages, putting Pokemon evolutions to shame. Scientists have
a lot of trouble distinguishing between different species and simply
different forms of the same creature. One major complication of
(09:49):
domesticating marine species for aquaculture is these microscopic stages of life,
which would be inadvertently removed from any aquarium with a
normal filter system. Imagine the difficulty of raising cows or
pigs that have millions of offspring at once, all of
whom are in great danger of being sucked into the
ventilation system. Thanks for tolerating my meandering spam, and more importantly,
(10:12):
thanks for presenting us all with so many varied and
interesting topics to ponder.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Jeff, Oh, thank you, Jeff, great email. You know, I
don't think I knew that red lobster ever got in
trouble for trying to sell langestines as real lobster, especially
because I thought langestines were, like are a delicacy. I've
had them before, and I thought they were considered good.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, I mean I guess. You know, people want to
know what they're buying, but they're supposed to be in
the tank right with the rubber bands, so it should
be a situation where you're maybe there were I have
no idea about the details of the story, like were
the langostino's in the tank with rubber bands on? Because
if that's the case, it's like, as long as you
get the one you point out, then what's the problem.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Well, I do think they're typically smaller than lobsters, but
they're good. I remember the langustines I have. It seemed
like the sort of a cross between like lobster and
shrimp somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
There the mention of the complex life cycles. This reminds
me on the series Futurama, we of course have doctor
John A. Zoidberg who is a decapodian, so he has
this crustacean squid like alien species, and there's one episode
(11:24):
in particular where they outline the life cycle of a
decapodian and it has like all of these crazy life cycles,
the stages of the life cycle that are based on
what we actually see in the natural world, and it
was quite clever.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Nice all right, This next message touches on a variety
of topics, including some stuff about diamonds and some stuff
about weird house cinema. This is from Jeremy. Jeremy says, Hello,
Robert and Joe. In your recent Nature of the Diamond
(11:59):
Part four episode, the subject of body implants came up,
in particular forehead implants. I was surprised that the epic
webcomic Kill six Billion Demons wasn't mentioned here, as many
of the characters, including the main protagonist, have embedded forehead
gems as a source of power. I'm sure you've recommended
Kill six Billion Demons on one of your reading list episodes.
(12:21):
This is funny because I feel like this just came
up recently that like somebody else was saying we had
recommended this, but I don't. I'm not familiar with it.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I think I think I recommended it oh so ago,
But I okay, I'd forgotten a lot of the details
about it. I haven't read it since then. It's tremendously enjoyable,
beautiful art, but I had just honestly forgotten that they
had forehead diamonds or gems or what have you.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Shame on you, I know, I know, I love the
failed to mention emails. But don't worry, Jeremy, it's fine,
it's fine, Jeremy goes on. In your recent The Magic
Sword Weird House episode, concern was expressed that there would
be insufficient handy princesses available to keep the dragon healthy
(13:06):
with a regular food supply. Oh yeah, this is because
you got the impression once you got to Basil Rathbone's
castle that he's just like churning through princesses about once
or twice a week. He's got new princesses coming in
all the time. The dragon obviously, you know, takes a
lot of calories to feed a dragon. They'll only eat princesses,
I guess. And so that really has to add up
how many princesses are there? Well, Jeremy says, I suspect
(13:30):
that you underestimate the number of quote kings and hence
castles there used to be in Europe, as the number
of castles runs into the tens of thousands. For example,
there are estimates of Germany twenty five thousand, France ten thousand,
Spain six thousand, UK fifteen hundred, which includes Wales which
(13:51):
has six hundred, making it the country with the most
castles per square mile in the world.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I don't know where Jeremy is going to these numbers from,
but if that's true, that is that's a lot of
kings and I guess maybe a lot of princesses.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah, if it's any indication, then maybe it was a
good racket for an evil wizard to have.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Finally, Jeremy says, you often mentioned checking your podcast feed
on Apple devices, and I've experienced this. I switched to
the UK feed when it was released and it worked
perfectly until the fifth of January when it stopped and
I can't get it to reactivate. Thankfully, I was able
to switch back to the original global version, which still works.
Best regards Jeremy. Okay, Rob, is this a good point
(14:33):
to do another explainer on this? Just briefly, We are
very sorry for the inconvenience listeners. We love you, we
appreciate the fact that you listen, and we're very sorry
for the run around on this. But this was just
a result of stuff. We were told by corporate that
we were going to have to move UK listeners to
a separate feed, and then that requirement went away. So
(14:56):
if any UK listeners are still on that other feed,
you can come back to this one.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
It's okay now, right, And yeah, the UK feed is
I think at this point completely gone. If the emails
that I've read are accurate. So this is the only feed.
If there's another feed that says it stuff to blow
your mind, that's not it. There can be only one
that's right.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
We're extremely sorry for the inconvenience and confusion. It's out
of our hands, but.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
You did the right thing by writing in and asking
about it. Any kind of questions that come up about
the podcast feed, be at the Apple feed or the
iHeart main feed or any of the other feeds where
you get the podcast, do bring it to our attention,
because sometimes it's something that's out of our hands. Sometimes
it's something that has to do with the platform. Sometimes
it's something that has to do with publication of the
(15:42):
podcast episode and alerting it to us. Very possibly there's
something we can do to help, so we appreciate it.
We're not always able to observe the podcast in the wild,
at least not as quickly as you listeners.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Do, right. We don't always know what you're seeing in
the place and way you get the podcast. Yeah, all right,
let's do a message or two about weird house cinema.
This one comes from Maria Angela, who says, Hi, I
am a faithful Italian listener and I love your podcast.
(16:18):
I stumbled upon an old Hugh Grant movie, namely The
Layer of the White Worm. I watched the trailer and
I immediately thought of you. It seems quite ludicrous and hilarious,
maybe not intentionally. I immensely enjoy your work, Maria Angela
in Italy. Well, Maria Angela, thank you for bringing this
to our attention. No, I am quite familiar with Layer
(16:40):
of the White Worm, and I am quite certain it
is intentional in its hilarity. That's a favorite of Rachel
and I have watched that one many times. It's it's
so I don't even know how to describe it. It's
a hoot.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah. I mean, it's a great director and Ken Russell
based on brom Stoker Stokers work, and then you got
a great cast, not only Hugh Grant, but you've got
Peter Capaldi, You've got Katherine Oxenberg, Sammy Davis, a great cast.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
I mean, I wonder if it's scandalous in a way
that we're not brave enough to do on Weird House.
But it is great and there is a there was
so many like great, just giffable moments and it I
think of one where Amanda Donaho just like vomits acid
on a crucifix.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah, oh, yes, that's right, because she she plays the
good can you remember Snake Woman, Vampire Lady Goddess.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
She's like a serpent sorceress. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah, And it would be great to do a kN
Russell film at some point or another in Weird House,
but he's one of those directors where I'm not sure
exactly which one would be the right Kim Russell film
for us to discuss. Yeah, all right, this next one
comes to us from Chris. Chris says Joe and Robert.
(18:00):
Listener Roberta mentioned her viewing of the Magic Sword at
a drive in as a young child. This incidentally was
the listener mail that reminded us that, hey, we should
just go ahead and do the Magic Sword for Weird House,
and so we did, so, thank you, Roberta. Yeah, so
Chris continues, She referred to a comment one of you
made about attack of the puppet people, maybe wanting to
(18:20):
hear from listeners who saw the movies during their original release.
This prompted me to peruse the list of previous Weird
House Cinema episodes. I noticed that I had watched a
number of the films Gorgo, Doctor X, The Thing from
Another World, and others. You two may have opened a
bucket of blood oops, I mean can of worms. It
would be an interesting project to have listeners write in
(18:42):
about first seeing the movies, but you might want to
widen your criteria. I can remember the theater and or
other circumstances when I first saw some of them, but
not the actual date, since I might have seen them
as a second or third run. Movies were routinely part
of second or later runs, including drive ins when I
was growing up. I think such later distributions often produced
(19:03):
pairings of double features different from their original ones. Some
of us with a good number of birthdays might have
seen older films primarily on television as part of local stations,
late night chiller theater, etc. Fair rather than in a theater.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Chris Well, this is a great point, Chris. So when
it comes to listener mail for Weird House Cinema, Yeah,
I don't want to limit anybody to writing in only
about seeing a movie on the original run in the theater,
if you saw something on what was it called Thriller
with Boris Carloff or maybe I'm getting that name wrong,
any of these shows that had like late night horror
(19:40):
host shows on TV when you were a kid, or
if it was a second run or whatever, that's fine too.
We just want to hear your great stories about seeing
these movies.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah, I want to hear about you discovering movies in
the theater. I want to hear about you going to
video rental stores. I want to hear about you discovering
them in the depths of Amazon Prime, which, as I've
mentioned before, for a good minute, there had a whole
lot of like weird stuff just in the back catalog,
and I think it's still there, but you have to
(20:09):
find the right channels to subscribe to be it like
like a full Moon you know, subscribe to the full
Moon channel, or even like the MGM Plus channel. I've
noticed I had to dip into a subscription there to
watch something, and like, there's a whole bunch of fabulous
looking garbage in there that I'm gonna have to sift
(20:31):
through at some point or another. So, yeah, all of
these stories of cinematic discovery or fair game.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
I also want to hear your plot summaries of movies
that you haven't seen since you were like five years old,
with no refreshing Sure, sure, how do you remember it?
What do you think the magic Sword was about?
Speaker 2 (20:52):
All right, then we're gonna go ahead and close out
this episode, but we'd love to hear from you again.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind primarily a science podcast, core
episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and on Mondays we do
a little listener mail. On Wednesdays we do a short
form episode, and on Fridays we set aside most serious
concerns just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Yeah,
we'd love to hear from all of you if you
have any responses to past episodes, current episodes, or potential
(21:16):
future episodes for any of these publication days.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts 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
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