February 22, 2021 • 34 mins
Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
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 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Mind listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. And boy, we got a good Batchelor listener
mail for you today, Rob, do you want to jump
right in with this message about the Shanhaijing? Sure thing.
(00:28):
This one comes to us from Jing and U Jing
says Hi, Robert and Joe hope all as well. I've
been a fan of Stuff to Blow your Mind ever
since the day I found your show. Um, they don't
say when that day is. That could have been yesterday,
it could have been years ago. I don't know. But
I like it that we won them over so quickly.
That was a Thursday, they continue. I enjoy the wide
range of the topics and the depth of your discussions,
(00:50):
which is both informational and riveting. To listen to your
recent two part episodes on the shan Haijing are particularly
intriguing to me as someone from China. Ancient China myths
and literature are very dear to me, and I really
enjoyed listening to your discussions on this ancient text. When
Joe mentioned the Chinese creation myth. During the discussion of
hun Don, it actually reminded me of the myth of Pongo,
(01:12):
who was the giant that created the world in ancient
Chinese mythology. In the story, hundon was also the word
used to describe the world before everything came into being,
which was a chaotic mass like an egg. In this
huge mass of Houndon, the giant Pogu slept. After he
woke up, he swung an axe and split the world
(01:34):
into two, the lighter part of which rose up and
became the sky, and the murkier parts sank down and
became the earth. Pangu was worried that the earth and
the sky would mingle again, so to stop the world
from retrograding into the chaotic mass like Atlas from the
Greek myth, Pangu stood on the ground with his hands
holding the sky. Each day, the sky would rise a
(01:57):
foot higher and the earth would sink down a foot lower,
and Pangu would grow his body long with the earth
and the sky until eighteen thousand years had passed. After
Pangu died of exhaustion, Like Emir in the North Smith,
the giant's body turned into the world we know today.
His breath became the wind and the cloud. His voice
became the thunder that strikes. His eyes became the sun
(02:19):
and the moon. His limbs became the mountains. His blood
became the rivers, his muscles became the soil. His hair
became the stars, his skin became the grass and trees.
His sweat became the rain. Shan Haijing is one of
the sources we have today which contained the most raw
material if the ancient Chinese myths that survived. It's not
easy to read, even for a well educated native Chinese speaker,
(02:41):
because it's so ancient and obscure, but it's also weird
and fascinating. I'm so happy that you chose to dive
into it, and as always, I feel like you did
a great job presenting it to an audience who may
not even have heard of it, while at the same
time still managing to demonstrate it's super weird and interesting aspects.
I hope you stay safe and please keep up the
good work. Jing. Oh, what a great message. Thank you, Jing. Yeah,
(03:02):
I really appreciate hearing about that. You know, this is
the story of of Pangu is really really cool, and
it's one that I actually just finished reading some about
this to my son, because as as part of Chinese
New Year, we were we busted out some some new
to us Chinese myth and folk tale books, and so
we're reading some some of that, and and of course
it's it's it's kind of mandatory that those books have
(03:24):
to have, uh, this cool creation story in there as well.
I'm interested that there are so many different creation myths
in which the world is created out of the body
of a dead god. But they're like body parts don't
always become exactly the same things. So I think we've
talked about at least one other, maybe the the inferred
(03:45):
proto Indo European creation myth, in which it's believed I
think that the the hair of the gods somehow represents
the vegetation of the earth, like the grass and the
trees here, but here the hair is the stars. I
love that difference. Yeah, I mean, I guess you're so
many different ways you could pull it apart, right, Because
on one hand, when a body dies, uh, it does
(04:05):
become the earth, you know, in a very uh you know,
in a way that would be observable to to ancient
people's But then there's the whole idea of like, how
do I make sense of the world beyond my body?
Sometimes I turn to the metaphors of my body to
do so, and then of course we kind of do
the reverse at times as well. It's funny. This also
reminds me of the thing we talked about not too
(04:27):
long ago. Which episode was it, I don't quite recall,
but about the idea that limestone land masses are often
made up largely of the body parts of things that
used to be alive. You know this rock that is
now the Earth. Uh. There, there are a biotic processes
that form limestone as well, but a lot of the
Earth's limestone is just what used to be the shells
(04:48):
and body parts of algae, coral form, and if for
all kinds of you know, shelled critters that live in
the ocean. Yeah. Absolutely, Okay, you ready for this next
message about brain and head theft, Let's do it. This
is from Danny. She says, Hey, guys, I came across
(05:10):
your show a couple of weeks ago. Love it, and
I'm working my way through your archives. I've been meaning
to send this email for a while. I thought you
might appreciate that I was listening to your recent brain
theft episode while dissecting a brain. Very good, Uh, she
goes on a rat brain, a fetal rat brain. I'm
(05:31):
not some weirdo though, or at least not that kind
of weirdo. I'm doing my PhD in nero endo chronology
at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Very interesting coincidence here, Danny,
that you probably know this, but Edinburgh was a sort
of ground zero for a lot of historical corpse theft
and cadaver shenanigans, and it was also kind of ground
(05:52):
zero for phrenology within Great Britain. At least the Edinburgh
Phrenological Society was one of the uh, the great fountains
of quackery in the early eighteen hundreds. But Danny goes on,
so at the moment, I'm dissecting out the hippocampus, mashing
it up, and growing the hippocampus cells in a dish.
I'm then going to treat those cells in a dish
(06:14):
with the stress hormone corticosterone, the rat version of cortisol,
and then collect the RNA from those cells. I'm then
going to do PCR for specific RNA sequences. I'm looking
at the sequences the cells used to make the proteins
of GABBA receptors. Remember, DNA makes RNA, makes protein, makes everything.
(06:35):
Gabba receptors are essentially the traffic lights of the brain
and tell the traffic to slow down or stop, making
them important in regulating the signals within the nervous system.
In the wider context, I'm looking at how prenatal stress
programs offspring to develop anxiety and adulthood. One reason is
likely changes to GABBA receptors during development. So stress in
(07:00):
a womb leads to weird gather receptor development leads to
increased anxiety and changes to the normal and expected physiological
stress response. Oh, that's very interesting. Maybe we'll have to
follow up and and do a do an episode on
that hypothesis. That that's very interesting. But anyway, Danny goes
on that she's attaching a picture. If we are interested, says,
(07:23):
feel free to share anything I say in this email,
but not this picture. Please, we will not share it.
It comes from a rat fetus eighteenth day of gestation,
and it's about ten centimeters long. The hippocampus is about
four millimeters long. It's fiddly work, and this is a
the little rat brain. To me, it looks like a
pink flies head, is like, with the big compound eyes
(07:44):
and the proboscis. Yeah, it was. I actually saw this
picture before I looked read the content of the email,
and I had no idea what I was looking at.
It looks like something, um, you know, a Pat might
cough up and and just cause confusion. I guess it
is literally the sort of thing that Pat might cough un.
But then Danny goes on on a completely different note.
Like I said, I'm working my way through your archives
(08:06):
and I recently listened to your episode on malapropisms and
it reminded me of my visual malapropisms. I grew up
in Vienna, Austria, and the subway system the U Bond
has these stickers letting dog owners know that dogs need
to wear a muzzle. While I do understand the picture,
my brain always see something else first. A punk dog
(08:28):
with a mohawk looking down. Maybe that says more about
my musical taste. And Robbi attached the picture for you
to see. Uh. Once I read that, I see it. Yep.
It's like which which is the Ninja Turtles villain with
the mohawk is bebop right, Yeah, okay, yeah, it does
look like a mohawk, Danny continues. The other one is
(08:50):
the air bag icon in most cars. This one took
me a long time to work out. But again, even
though I understand that it's supposed to be a person
with an air bag, to me, it always looks like
a donkey carrying packs. I'm attaching both pictures. Hope this
email lis sits at least a smile your latest D
and D playing Lord of the Rings, loving science nerd fan, Danny. Yeah, well,
(09:12):
it's hard for me to see the donkey when I
look at that icon, but if I can see where
different interpretations might be possible, I see the donkey. It
reminds me of the donkey looks very put upon, like
it has a large ball on its back. It does
remind me how we have different interpretations of the stuff
to blow your mind. Logo about what what the you know,
(09:33):
the various circles and lines, uh, you know what what
it could be interpreted as? Of course, in reality, it's
just it's supposed to be obscure. It's supposed to lend
itself to two different interpretations. No, it's clearly a symbol
of our allegiance to the lizard people or whatever. What's
what's the weirdest interpretation we've heard of it? Oh? Oh man, Um,
(09:56):
it sounds like somebody riding a bicycle. I think was one.
That one is kind of hard to shake. Like if
I look at it, I can sort of see that
like some sort of stick person on some sort of
stick wheeled Susian vehicle. Um. But also if you turn
some of the circles into eyes, you can create some
sort of a weird monster face. So I like that.
It's like a Lego block, good for any game. Yeah,
(10:23):
all right, here's another one for us. This one comes
to us from Mona. I believe uh this is uh
responding to our vault episode or episodes on Mount Vesuvius. Hello,
Robert and Joe. I am enjoying the Lessons of Vesuvius episodes.
I grew up thirty miles from Mount St. Helen's. I
was very young when our most famous eruption occurred, yet
(10:44):
I clearly remember the earthquakes leading up to that day.
Forty one years ago, I worked as an educational interpreter
at Newberry, New National Volcanic Monument, Newberry A Caldera in
Newberry Volcano. Uh is northeast of Crater Lake near Bend, Oregon.
Joe loved seeing Crater Lake, technically misnamed as it is
(11:05):
a caldera, yet he felt let down by not seeing
multiple lakes and a forest in the caldera. Newberry Caldera
has two good sized lakes, separated and surrounded by obsidian
lava flows, pumice cones and domes, hardened ash cones, cinder cones,
a lot of mountain hemlock and lodgepole pine trees, beautiful
(11:26):
alpine and volcanic wild flowers, rare white bark pine, and
a Kevin Costner film credit. Paulina Creek drains the caldera
with many waterfalls and cascades as it flows off the volcano.
The first and most well known waterfall is Paulina Falls.
Paulina Falls is shot in a winter scene of The
(11:47):
Postman Circle. Did you ever see this one? Joe? I didn't,
though I the main thing I know about The Postman
is that there's a scene where Tom Petty isn't is
in it, playing like the mayor of a future post
apocalyptic settlement. And though I've never seen it, from what
I recall reading about it, Uh, Tom Petty. It is
(12:08):
implied that he's playing himself, like he's he's just he
shows up. He's unnamed in the film, and he's the
mayor of this this settlement, and I think Kevin Costner
says to him, like, hey, I know you you were famous,
and he's like, yep, ye, well that's that's kind of cool.
My only connection to this film I never saw it
is that, uh, a guy from my hometown is like
(12:31):
a kind of a professional cowboy, and or has been
at times, and he pops up in some of these films,
uh riding his horse, o horsework, and he worked on
that film apparently. Wait wait, wait, when you say professional cowboy,
do you mean actual professional cowboy as in like cattle
driver or like cat works with cattle, or you mean
he professionally portrays a cowboy. What I know of him,
(12:54):
he has he's driven big rigs, but he also like
he actively has cattle horses, like so he does actual
cowboy work. But then he'll for fun, like do a
cattle drive out in the West, and he'll pop up
doing horse work and movies like this. So he's been
all over the place. So actually I am a cowboy
and definitely went on TV. Yeah, yeah, like he's he's
(13:17):
he's a straight up Like I'm I'm not really exaggerating
when I say he's a he's a cowboy. He's a
he's a pro cowboy and has has earned income from
that anyway, um our our listener continues, I don't recall
what the scene entails. I just know when the Postman
was filmed across Oregon, the road into the Caldera was
cleared of snow that winter. This is still discussed fondly
(13:38):
by locals who are accustomed to having only the first
ten miles of the U. S. Forest Service road plowed
to reach winter recreational opportunities in the Caldera. B Well, Mona,
is this a picture you found? Drop? This is a
picture I found. I just included this just at a
quick search and included this for our benefit. Jof beautiful. Yeah. Um,
I think this is picking up on something we talked
(14:01):
about in the vesuvious episodes, which is the indifference of
nature to the geological risks. How there can be a
volcanic eruption that just paves over and basically sterilizes the
surrounding area, but pretty soon nature just pours back in
and you can see forests and trees going into the
caldera where you know it may well be the case
(14:21):
that that another eruption is coming. And then when you
get a Hollywood film crew in there, it's the open
up roads that have never been open before. It's amazing
that the kind of kind of stuff that gonna happen
when they when they hit the ground, you know, in
the wilderness, in a neighborhood. Um, they shake things up.
We know a lot about that. Okay, next message comes
(14:47):
from Alex. This is about spinning and nastagmus. Alex says, Hello,
Robert and Joe. I've been listening to your podcast for
three or four years now. It makes morning commutes and
work less boring. Well, I'm glad um. Some of my
favorite episodes are the ones about the moons of Saturn
and Jupiter. But I digress. I'm writing in about your
episode about spinning. You mentioned nastagmus in passing and I
(15:11):
thought someone was finally going to raise some awareness of
an eye condition me and others have been struggling with,
but no such luck. So I am writing in to
attempt to do so. Through your listener mail segment. Basically,
I was born with a condition called congenital nystagmus, meaning
that it has been there from birth, and it is
exactly as you described in your spinning episode. My eyes
(15:32):
constantly move from side to side, and the intensity can
increase or decrease according to stress or other factors. It
can even get to the point where my head can
move slightly in the same manner, depending on the level
of stress or if I'm focusing really hard on a
given task. The reason that I, and I'm willing to
bet anyone else with this condition wants people to be
(15:53):
aware is that it is very much impossible to make
eye contact when having conversations for obvious or reasons. So
it makes certain situations uncomfortable, and people who may not
be aware may write us off as weirdos or crazy
because they just see our eyes going crazy. But it
is very much not intentional as far as living with
(16:13):
the condition itself goes. You would think that from the
eye movements that we would always see things moving, but
in reality, we see things normally. However, this comes at
a hefty cost. Basically, the way it was explained to
me is the brain has to compensate for the movement,
so the actual vision takes a major hit. In my case,
I'm considered legally blind as a result, which is defined
(16:35):
as central visual acuity of twenty slash two hundred or
less in the better eye with best correction. I choose
not to drive, even though I passed both my practical
and written tests on the first try, due to this.
But this would also make the test you discussed for
drunk drivers that police are using a bit problematic. Yeah. Anyway,
(16:56):
that is all I know, and there is no possible
cure until stem cell research progresses more since, at least
in my case, it appears to be damaged to the
optical nerve. If you decide to research further into this
and further informed people, I would really appreciate it. Alex. Well,
thanks for letting us know, Alex, I don't know. I
didn't know anything about that. I may have seen a
(17:17):
line or something about there being other conditions that caused
a stagmas other than just like spinning around. Yeah, I
have very interesting all right, here's another listener mail. This
one comes to us from James, Dear Robert and Joe.
Long time. Second time. I'm writing in because of your
(17:40):
listener mail Nightmare Key episode, Rob mentions a particular relaxing
miniature painter on YouTube, but doesn't mention them by name.
I'm almost certain I know who you're talking about, but
he definitely deserves the shout out. Is it goober Town Hobbies?
Brent manages to combine a knowledge of miniature and and
and many adjacent hobbies with a laid back tone similar
(18:01):
to Norm Abraham on This Old House Great Sunday morning
coffee time programming. If it's not goober Town, shout out
to him anyway, he's great. Whomever you are referring to
totally deserves a mention, and I'm sure a portion of
your audience would love their content. Anyway. I love all
the shows you two do. Sorry to harass you about YouTuber's.
Keep doing what you're doing, all the best. James from Michigan,
(18:24):
Well thanks, James. Um, so it's not Goobertown Hobbies, but
I looked them up and they look they look very interesting.
I dig the vibe, so I'm gonna have to subscribe
to that channel. UM. I thought I may be name
dropped this individual, but here it is again. Anyway. Uh,
the main one I was talking about is this guy
named Sarastro s O r A s t r O
(18:46):
and Uh. He does these these YouTube videos where he's
painting models from Star Wars Legion, but also from the
Lord of the Rings games and a Marvel game, various stuff,
and I just find him very relaxing and also very
informative or the hobby. But I also really like some
other videos that I've seen, the official Warhammer videos that
cover basics like painting pale flesh and so forth. I
(19:08):
found those super super good and very informative. There's also
a guy from Australia named zorpas orp Uh that's also
very helpful, a little more high energy, but also just
very helpful content for anyone out there who's either learning
miniature painting for the first time or looking to make,
you know, gradual improvements in their mini painting gain. I
(19:29):
am only getting a key whole view into this world.
I have no idea. Yeah, well, that's the great thing
is that now it's there. I mean, this is one
of the great things about YouTube in the Internet, because
like when my when when I was a kid, I
remember my dad had these magazines about painting and all,
and yeah, there were hobby stores you could go to,
but but it seemed like it was a lot it
would have been a lot harder to pick up, like
(19:49):
all the little tips of the trade. And now you
can watch these videos and you know, they'll they'll list
out the things you need, they'll show you you could
actually watch, you know, like a like through their eyes
really as their painting. I find it very helpful. YouTube
is such an interesting and highly divergent force in our world.
I mean it is. It is so great and so terrible.
YouTube the great and terrible. Yeah, I mean it's got
(20:10):
like some of the absolute worst of us you can
find on YouTube. But but then there's great stuff, Like
I mentioned that that ants Canada page. Recently, my my
son's been super into that, Like he's super into ants now,
like he's he's he's telling me things about ants that
that I didn't know, you know, and we've we've done
content about ants and in the last year, but he's
he's still busting out ant species and uh and wowing
(20:34):
me with it. And it's, you know, it's from YouTube
that he's learning these things. I just tell him to
stay out of the comments, just do not look look down,
even if it's about ants. I'm sure there's some there's
some horrible stuff in the content, all right. This next
message comes to us from Blair. It is about our
(20:55):
I think we ran a vault episode about Kama Muda. Yes, Lair,
says Hi Robert and Joe. I was listening to the
recent vault episode about Kama Muda. Oh yeah, I guess
we did, uh, and it got me thinking about the
recent viral popularity of sea shanties for context, though I'm
sure it was hard to avoid hearing about this bizarre trend.
(21:16):
A Scottish mail carrier recently uploaded a video of himself
singing a shanty on the video sharing service TikTok, which
inspired many other users to layer their own videos on
top of his to create impressive harmonies. Sea shanties served
to keep sailors working in sync while performing grueling physical
labor aboard sailing vessels. Each song was designed to complement
(21:38):
a particular repetitive task. For example, the song blow the
Man Down was used to keep sailors in time while
hoisting top sail. I would speculate that sailors singing these
traditional shanties would have felt a great feeling of communal oneness.
Singing these call and response songs while working on a
common and challenging task. I also wonder how much Kamamuda
(22:00):
plays into viral internet trends more broadly. Once they given
trend gets big enough to become a thing. I imagine
that many new contributors are motivated by the feeling of
being a part of a larger movement. Thank you for
making such a quality show. I listened to your shows
as soon as they hit my feed. I love weird
house cinema, and you'll have turned me onto some amazingly
weird movies to torment my fiance with all the best blair. Uh.
(22:25):
I got to say, I was only in the vaguas sense,
peripherally aware of the TikTok sea shanty thing. I think
I realized, I'm just like I've mostly extracted myself from
social media these days, so there's a lot going on
on the Internet that I'm just not aware of. Yeah.
I didn't know about this until Stephen Colbert did a
bit on it. Yeah, but it's it's cool. I I
(22:49):
saw the footage of the different layered ce shanty singers,
and uh, it's kind of neat. They're not doing any
manual labor in it, it should be stressed. Well, there's
one thing that I don't think we actually talked about
in the Common MOODA episode, or if we did, I
forgot about it, which is the potential feelings of reciprocal
communal trusts that are often forged just by labor, by
(23:10):
like working together with people on a project, which in
certain circumstances can can easily create division and strife. But there,
I guess it depends on what type of project it
is and what the people working on it with you are.
Like there's some projects that just really naturally I think,
bring people together with uh, with bonds. Projects that are
(23:30):
like um, conceptually simple but physically difficult. Uh yeah, yeah,
I mean like certain like basic yard care can be
like that. Like I'm thinking of like, um, like church
service projects where like go and and help somebody you
know who needs their their yard cleaned up for the fall,
or they need ice scraped up in the winter, that
sort of thing. Those can be be very rewarding. You know,
(23:51):
you're not you're not doing anything that's necessarily you know,
conceptually hard to deal with. Uh. You know, like it
it's pretty basically you need to do. You need to
pick up a bunch of leaves or you know, something
of that nature. But yeah, it can bring you together,
and it can be it can be challenging, and you know,
you kind of emerge from it bonded. I guess that's
why you see, uh, you know, for for a variety
(24:13):
of reasons, workplaces sometimes do service projects, but you can
see it definitely as a as a as a way
to to to you know, build these bonds among the
various employees. Yeah, I feel like the kind of work
that's more apt to cause division between people is that
which like which could be accomplished through varying different strategies,
(24:33):
and it's not exactly clear which strategy is the best one. Yeah, Yeah,
And I guess you can run into that even with
stuff like raking leaves if you somebody's really um, you know,
firm about it and they're like, no, this is the way.
You have to pick up two rakes and use them
like clause that sort of thing. That's that's a stupid method.
I've tried it. What if you have what if you
(24:55):
have the special like Freddy Krueger raycan things that you
can get the things are a scam, all right. I
haven't really tried them, but they look kind of neat,
like they it's good marketing because they're like, hey, you
know that thing that isn't all that fun. Here's the
vague promise that it could be fun if you bought
our claws, you could do it with whole hands. Yeah, yeah,
(25:17):
I'm kidding. By the way, I was just trying to
create some unnecessary division. I'm sure if you enjoy using
the scoop hands, that's fantastic. All right, It's a wrong
way to rank folks. Uh. Now, our apologies to Blair's
fiance regarding weird House cinema, but this is a great
segue into some weird house cinema listener mail. This one
(25:43):
comes to us from rob uh and they say, Hey, Robin, Joe,
listening to you two talk about your TV and film
influences in past episodes, and then hearing you discussing where
you've seen George Booza, I think I might be able
to solve the mystery. In the TV series The Adventures
of Sinbad, George played du Bar, Sinbad's older brother. Maybe
(26:06):
I'm wrong, but that was my first time I remember
seeing George on screen. All your episodes are highlights of
my week's podcast listening time. Thanks and be safe, gentlemen,
Rob and Jove. Just for you and me and for
the two of us. I found a picture of the
Booza as this character on Sinbad and included it for us.
What what a transcendent Booza face that is so good?
(26:29):
His beard is as thick and luxurious as like Moss.
It's just, you know, it's it's otherworldly. And he does
look like he could be Sinbad's older brother because he's
you know, he I can imagine him grabbing Sinbad and
giving him nos. I only vaguely remember this Sinbad show.
I had to look it up here, like the guy
(26:50):
who played Sinbad was well, First of all, it was
not Sinbad the stand up comedian. It was a guy
named Zin guessner Um, who I don't think I was
familiar with. Uh yeah that I I don't know if
I was familiar with this show. I was when I
grew up. I was very familiar with the Ray Harry
House in Sinbad movies, especially Sinbad and the Eye of
(27:11):
the Tiger. Those movies have amazing, delicious stop motion animation.
Great monster is Sinbad and the Eye the Tiger has
a has a bunch of stop motion skeletons. It has
a robot minotar called the minoton. Maybe we should talk
about this movie for weird House sometime. But it also
like it's got a lot of the you know, tragic
(27:33):
old stuff, like the casting just like some white honk
as Sinbad and and he's just like, hello, I'm Sinbad
and it's very ridiculous. Oh and I the Tiger also
has a really funny like Greek philosopher type figure character
who comes into it, whose name is Melanthius, and he's
played like a by this classic British actor. But he's
(27:55):
supposed to be I think some kind of combination of
like Socrates and Archimedes and and also knowing magic. Yeah, yeah,
it'd be neat to We should consider doing some bad
movie in the future, or at least some sort of
Ray Harry House. And I don't think we've have we
done a proper Ray Harry Housing movie. Oh I don't
know if we have, but the some of my favorite
(28:16):
special effects of all time, or his stop motion monsters. Yeah,
I think maybe we've. We've we've discussed things that are
Harry Housing ask but not Harry Housing himself. Alright, This
next message comes from Keith. Keith says, Hello, Robert and Joe.
It was recently mentioned on one of your podcasts that
(28:38):
the correct pronunciation for what is spelled war Wick, as
in Warwick Davis, is Warwick. Uh. This made me think
about the gap between what's said and what's heard. It
was mentioned that even when the Warwick version is used,
war Wick is heard. I think you said this, right, Rob, Yeah,
that that's what I that. That's particular to me. I
(28:59):
don't know anyone else has that experience, but yeah, that
was what I said. Well, I don't know about in
this example, but I mean, yeah, it's totally common that
you can, or at least I can, have heard a
word pronounced out loud, but I would still be inclined
to pronounce it the incorrect way that I read it first,
like if I read the word for a long time
before ever hearing it. But anyway, going on with Keith's message,
(29:22):
I first noticed this when I heard my wife speaking
Spanish with someone. I took five years of Spanish, and
normally I recognize about twenty of the words a Spanish
speaker says. But when my wife speaks Spanish, I understand
somewhere around. This left me confused about why familiarity with
the speaker would increase my understanding so much. The best
(29:45):
thing I could come up with is, I'm more adept
at inferring phonetic sounds that were meant to be conveyed
as compared to what was heard when spoken by my wife.
I'm curious about how this gap plays a role in
everyone's lives. Keith. Thanks Keith, And Yeah, I think this
is a really interesting question. I think there could be
a lot of potential answers to it. But one thing
(30:06):
I would guess is that knowing your wife very well,
you were probably really attuned also to her um to
the meaning communicated through her facial expressions and body language
and all that which acts as a sort of secondary
reinforcer to the meaning of sentences. So what might normally
kind of go past you really fast in a spoken
(30:28):
language that you're not super fluent in. Uh, you can
sort of get get like a comprehension boost by getting
the visual aid of seeing someone who you know very
intimately speaking, But phonetic differences could also be the same.
Like if you're just like very familiar with the way
your wife talks, versus the way people in general talk. Yeah,
and then plus it also goes without saying you kind
(30:49):
of have that simulation version of the person that you
know in your head, and so you're sort of running
all that information through that simulation as well. Yeah. All right,
here's another one. This one comes to us from Chris. Hello, Robin, Joe,
I loved your episode on Free Jack. As the driver
(31:10):
of a wine delivery truck in southwest Ohio, I can
say for a fact that you cannot outrun a police
interceptor in one if you. Um what that does beg
the question? Does it raises the question? Um? Anyway, they continue,
keep up the great work. I've listened to you guys
for years, but this is the first time writing in
Sincerely Chris, PS. Might I suggest the movie Split Second
(31:33):
starring Rudger Howard for Weird um for for Weird House Cinema. Um? Okay,
So two things. First of all, what is he talking about?
For people who didn't listen to the Free Jack episode.
There's this fabulous uh wine it's it's I included a
picture of it here for us, Joe, It says Champagne.
It's this bulky, old looking truck, not a futuristic vehicle
at all, but our hero when free Jack jumps into
(31:56):
it and drives off and there's a big car chase
with it, I commented, it looks like looks like it
looks like the sort of vehicle that Ronnie Vino from
At Home with Amy Sadaris would drive around. At one point,
we see some bottles tumble out of it, and if
I remember correctly, they don't look like normal champagne bottle green.
They look like gatorade green. They're like bright neon green.
(32:18):
But I mean that's hey, it's the future. It's two
thousand nine, baby, Yeah, that's the that's the future. That's
the fat um and I love it. Actually in the
screenshot too, I'm pretty sure I recognize. I don't know
specifically what building that is, but that does very much
look like Atlanta in the background. It does. I think
that whole chase sequence was Atlanta. Yeah. Now, as for
Split Second starring Rudger Howard, Yes, I saw this movie
(32:41):
sometime in the last year or two, and I absolutely
loved it. I think I was. I was telling Joe
about it as well, like Joe, you gotta see this
redgre Howard is great. He's smoking a cigar, he's cussing
out a dog. There's a lot to love about this film. Okay, well,
let's let's do it. Yeah, well we'll we'll put it
on the list, the rowing list of movies to consider
for weird House Cinema. Um but but yeah, thanks for
(33:04):
writing in, Thanks for for sharing your expertise with um
uh you know, out running or the law or failing
to outrun the law in a wine truck, but also
recommending some films for us. Okay, well, I think that
about does it for today. But a huge thanks to
everybody for writing in. Yeah, and yeah, hey, you know,
since it came up, if your name is Warwick, If
(33:25):
your name is Warwick, Uh, if there's some sort of
interesting way or a specific way we should be pronouncing
your name, include that in your listener mail because that
will help us out. Uh and hey, throwing those pronouns
as well, that also helps us out. Um. We would
of course love to hear from everybody. Yeah, keep keep
the emails coming. If you have thoughts on these listener mails,
(33:45):
if you have thoughts on episodes of stuff to blow
your mind, episodes of weird How cinema, suggestions for the future,
all that's fair game, just right in let us know.
And in the meantime, if you want to check out
other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, they published
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In the Stuff to Blow your
Mind podcast feed, Weird House Cinema publishes on Fridays, and
then we got a listener mail on Monday, we got
(34:05):
Artifact on Wednesday, and a Vault episode on the weekend.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
to blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
(34:32):
Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Mind listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. And boy, we got a good Batchelor listener
mail for you today, Rob, do you want to jump
right in with this message about the Shanhaijing? Sure thing.
(00:28):
This one comes to us from Jing and U Jing
says Hi, Robert and Joe hope all as well. I've
been a fan of Stuff to Blow your Mind ever
since the day I found your show. Um, they don't
say when that day is. That could have been yesterday,
it could have been years ago. I don't know. But
I like it that we won them over so quickly.
That was a Thursday, they continue. I enjoy the wide
range of the topics and the depth of your discussions,
(00:50):
which is both informational and riveting. To listen to your
recent two part episodes on the shan Haijing are particularly
intriguing to me as someone from China. Ancient China myths
and literature are very dear to me, and I really
enjoyed listening to your discussions on this ancient text. When
Joe mentioned the Chinese creation myth. During the discussion of
hun Don, it actually reminded me of the myth of Pongo,
(01:12):
who was the giant that created the world in ancient
Chinese mythology. In the story, hundon was also the word
used to describe the world before everything came into being,
which was a chaotic mass like an egg. In this
huge mass of Houndon, the giant Pogu slept. After he
woke up, he swung an axe and split the world
(01:34):
into two, the lighter part of which rose up and
became the sky, and the murkier parts sank down and
became the earth. Pangu was worried that the earth and
the sky would mingle again, so to stop the world
from retrograding into the chaotic mass like Atlas from the
Greek myth, Pangu stood on the ground with his hands
holding the sky. Each day, the sky would rise a
(01:57):
foot higher and the earth would sink down a foot lower,
and Pangu would grow his body long with the earth
and the sky until eighteen thousand years had passed. After
Pangu died of exhaustion, Like Emir in the North Smith,
the giant's body turned into the world we know today.
His breath became the wind and the cloud. His voice
became the thunder that strikes. His eyes became the sun
(02:19):
and the moon. His limbs became the mountains. His blood
became the rivers, his muscles became the soil. His hair
became the stars, his skin became the grass and trees.
His sweat became the rain. Shan Haijing is one of
the sources we have today which contained the most raw
material if the ancient Chinese myths that survived. It's not
easy to read, even for a well educated native Chinese speaker,
(02:41):
because it's so ancient and obscure, but it's also weird
and fascinating. I'm so happy that you chose to dive
into it, and as always, I feel like you did
a great job presenting it to an audience who may
not even have heard of it, while at the same
time still managing to demonstrate it's super weird and interesting aspects.
I hope you stay safe and please keep up the
good work. Jing. Oh, what a great message. Thank you, Jing. Yeah,
(03:02):
I really appreciate hearing about that. You know, this is
the story of of Pangu is really really cool, and
it's one that I actually just finished reading some about
this to my son, because as as part of Chinese
New Year, we were we busted out some some new
to us Chinese myth and folk tale books, and so
we're reading some some of that, and and of course
it's it's it's kind of mandatory that those books have
(03:24):
to have, uh, this cool creation story in there as well.
I'm interested that there are so many different creation myths
in which the world is created out of the body
of a dead god. But they're like body parts don't
always become exactly the same things. So I think we've
talked about at least one other, maybe the the inferred
(03:45):
proto Indo European creation myth, in which it's believed I
think that the the hair of the gods somehow represents
the vegetation of the earth, like the grass and the
trees here, but here the hair is the stars. I
love that difference. Yeah, I mean, I guess you're so
many different ways you could pull it apart, right, Because
on one hand, when a body dies, uh, it does
(04:05):
become the earth, you know, in a very uh you know,
in a way that would be observable to to ancient
people's But then there's the whole idea of like, how
do I make sense of the world beyond my body?
Sometimes I turn to the metaphors of my body to
do so, and then of course we kind of do
the reverse at times as well. It's funny. This also
reminds me of the thing we talked about not too
(04:27):
long ago. Which episode was it, I don't quite recall,
but about the idea that limestone land masses are often
made up largely of the body parts of things that
used to be alive. You know this rock that is
now the Earth. Uh. There, there are a biotic processes
that form limestone as well, but a lot of the
Earth's limestone is just what used to be the shells
(04:48):
and body parts of algae, coral form, and if for
all kinds of you know, shelled critters that live in
the ocean. Yeah. Absolutely, Okay, you ready for this next
message about brain and head theft, Let's do it. This
is from Danny. She says, Hey, guys, I came across
(05:10):
your show a couple of weeks ago. Love it, and
I'm working my way through your archives. I've been meaning
to send this email for a while. I thought you
might appreciate that I was listening to your recent brain
theft episode while dissecting a brain. Very good, Uh, she
goes on a rat brain, a fetal rat brain. I'm
(05:31):
not some weirdo though, or at least not that kind
of weirdo. I'm doing my PhD in nero endo chronology
at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Very interesting coincidence here, Danny,
that you probably know this, but Edinburgh was a sort
of ground zero for a lot of historical corpse theft
and cadaver shenanigans, and it was also kind of ground
(05:52):
zero for phrenology within Great Britain. At least the Edinburgh
Phrenological Society was one of the uh, the great fountains
of quackery in the early eighteen hundreds. But Danny goes on,
so at the moment, I'm dissecting out the hippocampus, mashing
it up, and growing the hippocampus cells in a dish.
I'm then going to treat those cells in a dish
(06:14):
with the stress hormone corticosterone, the rat version of cortisol,
and then collect the RNA from those cells. I'm then
going to do PCR for specific RNA sequences. I'm looking
at the sequences the cells used to make the proteins
of GABBA receptors. Remember, DNA makes RNA, makes protein, makes everything.
(06:35):
Gabba receptors are essentially the traffic lights of the brain
and tell the traffic to slow down or stop, making
them important in regulating the signals within the nervous system.
In the wider context, I'm looking at how prenatal stress
programs offspring to develop anxiety and adulthood. One reason is
likely changes to GABBA receptors during development. So stress in
(07:00):
a womb leads to weird gather receptor development leads to
increased anxiety and changes to the normal and expected physiological
stress response. Oh, that's very interesting. Maybe we'll have to
follow up and and do a do an episode on
that hypothesis. That that's very interesting. But anyway, Danny goes
on that she's attaching a picture. If we are interested, says,
(07:23):
feel free to share anything I say in this email,
but not this picture. Please, we will not share it.
It comes from a rat fetus eighteenth day of gestation,
and it's about ten centimeters long. The hippocampus is about
four millimeters long. It's fiddly work, and this is a
the little rat brain. To me, it looks like a
pink flies head, is like, with the big compound eyes
(07:44):
and the proboscis. Yeah, it was. I actually saw this
picture before I looked read the content of the email,
and I had no idea what I was looking at.
It looks like something, um, you know, a Pat might
cough up and and just cause confusion. I guess it
is literally the sort of thing that Pat might cough un.
But then Danny goes on on a completely different note.
Like I said, I'm working my way through your archives
(08:06):
and I recently listened to your episode on malapropisms and
it reminded me of my visual malapropisms. I grew up
in Vienna, Austria, and the subway system the U Bond
has these stickers letting dog owners know that dogs need
to wear a muzzle. While I do understand the picture,
my brain always see something else first. A punk dog
(08:28):
with a mohawk looking down. Maybe that says more about
my musical taste. And Robbi attached the picture for you
to see. Uh. Once I read that, I see it. Yep.
It's like which which is the Ninja Turtles villain with
the mohawk is bebop right, Yeah, okay, yeah, it does
look like a mohawk, Danny continues. The other one is
(08:50):
the air bag icon in most cars. This one took
me a long time to work out. But again, even
though I understand that it's supposed to be a person
with an air bag, to me, it always looks like
a donkey carrying packs. I'm attaching both pictures. Hope this
email lis sits at least a smile your latest D
and D playing Lord of the Rings, loving science nerd fan, Danny. Yeah, well,
(09:12):
it's hard for me to see the donkey when I
look at that icon, but if I can see where
different interpretations might be possible, I see the donkey. It
reminds me of the donkey looks very put upon, like
it has a large ball on its back. It does
remind me how we have different interpretations of the stuff
to blow your mind. Logo about what what the you know,
(09:33):
the various circles and lines, uh, you know what what
it could be interpreted as? Of course, in reality, it's
just it's supposed to be obscure. It's supposed to lend
itself to two different interpretations. No, it's clearly a symbol
of our allegiance to the lizard people or whatever. What's
what's the weirdest interpretation we've heard of it? Oh? Oh man, Um,
(09:56):
it sounds like somebody riding a bicycle. I think was one.
That one is kind of hard to shake. Like if
I look at it, I can sort of see that
like some sort of stick person on some sort of
stick wheeled Susian vehicle. Um. But also if you turn
some of the circles into eyes, you can create some
sort of a weird monster face. So I like that.
It's like a Lego block, good for any game. Yeah,
(10:23):
all right, here's another one for us. This one comes
to us from Mona. I believe uh this is uh
responding to our vault episode or episodes on Mount Vesuvius. Hello,
Robert and Joe. I am enjoying the Lessons of Vesuvius episodes.
I grew up thirty miles from Mount St. Helen's. I
was very young when our most famous eruption occurred, yet
(10:44):
I clearly remember the earthquakes leading up to that day.
Forty one years ago, I worked as an educational interpreter
at Newberry, New National Volcanic Monument, Newberry A Caldera in
Newberry Volcano. Uh is northeast of Crater Lake near Bend, Oregon.
Joe loved seeing Crater Lake, technically misnamed as it is
(11:05):
a caldera, yet he felt let down by not seeing
multiple lakes and a forest in the caldera. Newberry Caldera
has two good sized lakes, separated and surrounded by obsidian
lava flows, pumice cones and domes, hardened ash cones, cinder cones,
a lot of mountain hemlock and lodgepole pine trees, beautiful
(11:26):
alpine and volcanic wild flowers, rare white bark pine, and
a Kevin Costner film credit. Paulina Creek drains the caldera
with many waterfalls and cascades as it flows off the volcano.
The first and most well known waterfall is Paulina Falls.
Paulina Falls is shot in a winter scene of The
(11:47):
Postman Circle. Did you ever see this one? Joe? I didn't,
though I the main thing I know about The Postman
is that there's a scene where Tom Petty isn't is
in it, playing like the mayor of a future post
apocalyptic settlement. And though I've never seen it, from what
I recall reading about it, Uh, Tom Petty. It is
(12:08):
implied that he's playing himself, like he's he's just he
shows up. He's unnamed in the film, and he's the
mayor of this this settlement, and I think Kevin Costner
says to him, like, hey, I know you you were famous,
and he's like, yep, ye, well that's that's kind of cool.
My only connection to this film I never saw it
is that, uh, a guy from my hometown is like
(12:31):
a kind of a professional cowboy, and or has been
at times, and he pops up in some of these films,
uh riding his horse, o horsework, and he worked on
that film apparently. Wait wait, wait, when you say professional cowboy,
do you mean actual professional cowboy as in like cattle
driver or like cat works with cattle, or you mean
he professionally portrays a cowboy. What I know of him,
(12:54):
he has he's driven big rigs, but he also like
he actively has cattle horses, like so he does actual
cowboy work. But then he'll for fun, like do a
cattle drive out in the West, and he'll pop up
doing horse work and movies like this. So he's been
all over the place. So actually I am a cowboy
and definitely went on TV. Yeah, yeah, like he's he's
(13:17):
he's a straight up Like I'm I'm not really exaggerating
when I say he's a he's a cowboy. He's a
he's a pro cowboy and has has earned income from
that anyway, um our our listener continues, I don't recall
what the scene entails. I just know when the Postman
was filmed across Oregon, the road into the Caldera was
cleared of snow that winter. This is still discussed fondly
(13:38):
by locals who are accustomed to having only the first
ten miles of the U. S. Forest Service road plowed
to reach winter recreational opportunities in the Caldera. B Well, Mona,
is this a picture you found? Drop? This is a
picture I found. I just included this just at a
quick search and included this for our benefit. Jof beautiful. Yeah. Um,
I think this is picking up on something we talked
(14:01):
about in the vesuvious episodes, which is the indifference of
nature to the geological risks. How there can be a
volcanic eruption that just paves over and basically sterilizes the
surrounding area, but pretty soon nature just pours back in
and you can see forests and trees going into the
caldera where you know it may well be the case
(14:21):
that that another eruption is coming. And then when you
get a Hollywood film crew in there, it's the open
up roads that have never been open before. It's amazing
that the kind of kind of stuff that gonna happen
when they when they hit the ground, you know, in
the wilderness, in a neighborhood. Um, they shake things up.
We know a lot about that. Okay, next message comes
(14:47):
from Alex. This is about spinning and nastagmus. Alex says, Hello,
Robert and Joe. I've been listening to your podcast for
three or four years now. It makes morning commutes and
work less boring. Well, I'm glad um. Some of my
favorite episodes are the ones about the moons of Saturn
and Jupiter. But I digress. I'm writing in about your
episode about spinning. You mentioned nastagmus in passing and I
(15:11):
thought someone was finally going to raise some awareness of
an eye condition me and others have been struggling with,
but no such luck. So I am writing in to
attempt to do so. Through your listener mail segment. Basically,
I was born with a condition called congenital nystagmus, meaning
that it has been there from birth, and it is
exactly as you described in your spinning episode. My eyes
(15:32):
constantly move from side to side, and the intensity can
increase or decrease according to stress or other factors. It
can even get to the point where my head can
move slightly in the same manner, depending on the level
of stress or if I'm focusing really hard on a
given task. The reason that I, and I'm willing to
bet anyone else with this condition wants people to be
(15:53):
aware is that it is very much impossible to make
eye contact when having conversations for obvious or reasons. So
it makes certain situations uncomfortable, and people who may not
be aware may write us off as weirdos or crazy
because they just see our eyes going crazy. But it
is very much not intentional as far as living with
(16:13):
the condition itself goes. You would think that from the
eye movements that we would always see things moving, but
in reality, we see things normally. However, this comes at
a hefty cost. Basically, the way it was explained to
me is the brain has to compensate for the movement,
so the actual vision takes a major hit. In my case,
I'm considered legally blind as a result, which is defined
(16:35):
as central visual acuity of twenty slash two hundred or
less in the better eye with best correction. I choose
not to drive, even though I passed both my practical
and written tests on the first try, due to this.
But this would also make the test you discussed for
drunk drivers that police are using a bit problematic. Yeah. Anyway,
(16:56):
that is all I know, and there is no possible
cure until stem cell research progresses more since, at least
in my case, it appears to be damaged to the
optical nerve. If you decide to research further into this
and further informed people, I would really appreciate it. Alex. Well,
thanks for letting us know, Alex, I don't know. I
didn't know anything about that. I may have seen a
(17:17):
line or something about there being other conditions that caused
a stagmas other than just like spinning around. Yeah, I
have very interesting all right, here's another listener mail. This
one comes to us from James, Dear Robert and Joe.
Long time. Second time. I'm writing in because of your
(17:40):
listener mail Nightmare Key episode, Rob mentions a particular relaxing
miniature painter on YouTube, but doesn't mention them by name.
I'm almost certain I know who you're talking about, but
he definitely deserves the shout out. Is it goober Town Hobbies?
Brent manages to combine a knowledge of miniature and and
and many adjacent hobbies with a laid back tone similar
(18:01):
to Norm Abraham on This Old House Great Sunday morning
coffee time programming. If it's not goober Town, shout out
to him anyway, he's great. Whomever you are referring to
totally deserves a mention, and I'm sure a portion of
your audience would love their content. Anyway. I love all
the shows you two do. Sorry to harass you about YouTuber's.
Keep doing what you're doing, all the best. James from Michigan,
(18:24):
Well thanks, James. Um, so it's not Goobertown Hobbies, but
I looked them up and they look they look very interesting.
I dig the vibe, so I'm gonna have to subscribe
to that channel. UM. I thought I may be name
dropped this individual, but here it is again. Anyway. Uh,
the main one I was talking about is this guy
named Sarastro s O r A s t r O
(18:46):
and Uh. He does these these YouTube videos where he's
painting models from Star Wars Legion, but also from the
Lord of the Rings games and a Marvel game, various stuff,
and I just find him very relaxing and also very
informative or the hobby. But I also really like some
other videos that I've seen, the official Warhammer videos that
cover basics like painting pale flesh and so forth. I
(19:08):
found those super super good and very informative. There's also
a guy from Australia named zorpas orp Uh that's also
very helpful, a little more high energy, but also just
very helpful content for anyone out there who's either learning
miniature painting for the first time or looking to make,
you know, gradual improvements in their mini painting gain. I
(19:29):
am only getting a key whole view into this world.
I have no idea. Yeah, well, that's the great thing
is that now it's there. I mean, this is one
of the great things about YouTube in the Internet, because
like when my when when I was a kid, I
remember my dad had these magazines about painting and all,
and yeah, there were hobby stores you could go to,
but but it seemed like it was a lot it
would have been a lot harder to pick up, like
(19:49):
all the little tips of the trade. And now you
can watch these videos and you know, they'll they'll list
out the things you need, they'll show you you could
actually watch, you know, like a like through their eyes
really as their painting. I find it very helpful. YouTube
is such an interesting and highly divergent force in our world.
I mean it is. It is so great and so terrible.
YouTube the great and terrible. Yeah, I mean it's got
(20:10):
like some of the absolute worst of us you can
find on YouTube. But but then there's great stuff, Like
I mentioned that that ants Canada page. Recently, my my
son's been super into that, Like he's super into ants now,
like he's he's he's telling me things about ants that
that I didn't know, you know, and we've we've done
content about ants and in the last year, but he's
he's still busting out ant species and uh and wowing
(20:34):
me with it. And it's, you know, it's from YouTube
that he's learning these things. I just tell him to
stay out of the comments, just do not look look down,
even if it's about ants. I'm sure there's some there's
some horrible stuff in the content, all right. This next
message comes to us from Blair. It is about our
(20:55):
I think we ran a vault episode about Kama Muda. Yes, Lair,
says Hi Robert and Joe. I was listening to the
recent vault episode about Kama Muda. Oh yeah, I guess
we did, uh, and it got me thinking about the
recent viral popularity of sea shanties for context, though I'm
sure it was hard to avoid hearing about this bizarre trend.
(21:16):
A Scottish mail carrier recently uploaded a video of himself
singing a shanty on the video sharing service TikTok, which
inspired many other users to layer their own videos on
top of his to create impressive harmonies. Sea shanties served
to keep sailors working in sync while performing grueling physical
labor aboard sailing vessels. Each song was designed to complement
(21:38):
a particular repetitive task. For example, the song blow the
Man Down was used to keep sailors in time while
hoisting top sail. I would speculate that sailors singing these
traditional shanties would have felt a great feeling of communal oneness.
Singing these call and response songs while working on a
common and challenging task. I also wonder how much Kamamuda
(22:00):
plays into viral internet trends more broadly. Once they given
trend gets big enough to become a thing. I imagine
that many new contributors are motivated by the feeling of
being a part of a larger movement. Thank you for
making such a quality show. I listened to your shows
as soon as they hit my feed. I love weird
house cinema, and you'll have turned me onto some amazingly
weird movies to torment my fiance with all the best blair. Uh.
(22:25):
I got to say, I was only in the vaguas sense,
peripherally aware of the TikTok sea shanty thing. I think
I realized, I'm just like I've mostly extracted myself from
social media these days, so there's a lot going on
on the Internet that I'm just not aware of. Yeah.
I didn't know about this until Stephen Colbert did a
bit on it. Yeah, but it's it's cool. I I
(22:49):
saw the footage of the different layered ce shanty singers,
and uh, it's kind of neat. They're not doing any
manual labor in it, it should be stressed. Well, there's
one thing that I don't think we actually talked about
in the Common MOODA episode, or if we did, I
forgot about it, which is the potential feelings of reciprocal
communal trusts that are often forged just by labor, by
(23:10):
like working together with people on a project, which in
certain circumstances can can easily create division and strife. But there,
I guess it depends on what type of project it
is and what the people working on it with you are.
Like there's some projects that just really naturally I think,
bring people together with uh, with bonds. Projects that are
(23:30):
like um, conceptually simple but physically difficult. Uh yeah, yeah,
I mean like certain like basic yard care can be
like that. Like I'm thinking of like, um, like church
service projects where like go and and help somebody you
know who needs their their yard cleaned up for the fall,
or they need ice scraped up in the winter, that
sort of thing. Those can be be very rewarding. You know,
(23:51):
you're not you're not doing anything that's necessarily you know,
conceptually hard to deal with. Uh. You know, like it
it's pretty basically you need to do. You need to
pick up a bunch of leaves or you know, something
of that nature. But yeah, it can bring you together,
and it can be it can be challenging, and you know,
you kind of emerge from it bonded. I guess that's
why you see, uh, you know, for for a variety
(24:13):
of reasons, workplaces sometimes do service projects, but you can
see it definitely as a as a as a way
to to to you know, build these bonds among the
various employees. Yeah, I feel like the kind of work
that's more apt to cause division between people is that
which like which could be accomplished through varying different strategies,
(24:33):
and it's not exactly clear which strategy is the best one. Yeah, Yeah,
And I guess you can run into that even with
stuff like raking leaves if you somebody's really um, you know,
firm about it and they're like, no, this is the way.
You have to pick up two rakes and use them
like clause that sort of thing. That's that's a stupid method.
I've tried it. What if you have what if you
(24:55):
have the special like Freddy Krueger raycan things that you
can get the things are a scam, all right. I
haven't really tried them, but they look kind of neat,
like they it's good marketing because they're like, hey, you
know that thing that isn't all that fun. Here's the
vague promise that it could be fun if you bought
our claws, you could do it with whole hands. Yeah, yeah,
(25:17):
I'm kidding. By the way, I was just trying to
create some unnecessary division. I'm sure if you enjoy using
the scoop hands, that's fantastic. All right, It's a wrong
way to rank folks. Uh. Now, our apologies to Blair's
fiance regarding weird House cinema, but this is a great
segue into some weird house cinema listener mail. This one
(25:43):
comes to us from rob uh and they say, Hey, Robin, Joe,
listening to you two talk about your TV and film
influences in past episodes, and then hearing you discussing where
you've seen George Booza, I think I might be able
to solve the mystery. In the TV series The Adventures
of Sinbad, George played du Bar, Sinbad's older brother. Maybe
(26:06):
I'm wrong, but that was my first time I remember
seeing George on screen. All your episodes are highlights of
my week's podcast listening time. Thanks and be safe, gentlemen,
Rob and Jove. Just for you and me and for
the two of us. I found a picture of the
Booza as this character on Sinbad and included it for us.
What what a transcendent Booza face that is so good?
(26:29):
His beard is as thick and luxurious as like Moss.
It's just, you know, it's it's otherworldly. And he does
look like he could be Sinbad's older brother because he's
you know, he I can imagine him grabbing Sinbad and
giving him nos. I only vaguely remember this Sinbad show.
I had to look it up here, like the guy
(26:50):
who played Sinbad was well, First of all, it was
not Sinbad the stand up comedian. It was a guy
named Zin guessner Um, who I don't think I was
familiar with. Uh yeah that I I don't know if
I was familiar with this show. I was when I
grew up. I was very familiar with the Ray Harry
House in Sinbad movies, especially Sinbad and the Eye of
(27:11):
the Tiger. Those movies have amazing, delicious stop motion animation.
Great monster is Sinbad and the Eye the Tiger has
a has a bunch of stop motion skeletons. It has
a robot minotar called the minoton. Maybe we should talk
about this movie for weird House sometime. But it also
like it's got a lot of the you know, tragic
(27:33):
old stuff, like the casting just like some white honk
as Sinbad and and he's just like, hello, I'm Sinbad
and it's very ridiculous. Oh and I the Tiger also
has a really funny like Greek philosopher type figure character
who comes into it, whose name is Melanthius, and he's
played like a by this classic British actor. But he's
(27:55):
supposed to be I think some kind of combination of
like Socrates and Archimedes and and also knowing magic. Yeah, yeah,
it'd be neat to We should consider doing some bad
movie in the future, or at least some sort of
Ray Harry House. And I don't think we've have we
done a proper Ray Harry Housing movie. Oh I don't
know if we have, but the some of my favorite
(28:16):
special effects of all time, or his stop motion monsters. Yeah,
I think maybe we've. We've we've discussed things that are
Harry Housing ask but not Harry Housing himself. Alright, This
next message comes from Keith. Keith says, Hello, Robert and Joe.
It was recently mentioned on one of your podcasts that
(28:38):
the correct pronunciation for what is spelled war Wick, as
in Warwick Davis, is Warwick. Uh. This made me think
about the gap between what's said and what's heard. It
was mentioned that even when the Warwick version is used,
war Wick is heard. I think you said this, right, Rob, Yeah,
that that's what I that. That's particular to me. I
(28:59):
don't know anyone else has that experience, but yeah, that
was what I said. Well, I don't know about in
this example, but I mean, yeah, it's totally common that
you can, or at least I can, have heard a
word pronounced out loud, but I would still be inclined
to pronounce it the incorrect way that I read it first,
like if I read the word for a long time
before ever hearing it. But anyway, going on with Keith's message,
(29:22):
I first noticed this when I heard my wife speaking
Spanish with someone. I took five years of Spanish, and
normally I recognize about twenty of the words a Spanish
speaker says. But when my wife speaks Spanish, I understand
somewhere around. This left me confused about why familiarity with
the speaker would increase my understanding so much. The best
(29:45):
thing I could come up with is, I'm more adept
at inferring phonetic sounds that were meant to be conveyed
as compared to what was heard when spoken by my wife.
I'm curious about how this gap plays a role in
everyone's lives. Keith. Thanks Keith, And Yeah, I think this
is a really interesting question. I think there could be
a lot of potential answers to it. But one thing
(30:06):
I would guess is that knowing your wife very well,
you were probably really attuned also to her um to
the meaning communicated through her facial expressions and body language
and all that which acts as a sort of secondary
reinforcer to the meaning of sentences. So what might normally
kind of go past you really fast in a spoken
(30:28):
language that you're not super fluent in. Uh, you can
sort of get get like a comprehension boost by getting
the visual aid of seeing someone who you know very
intimately speaking, But phonetic differences could also be the same.
Like if you're just like very familiar with the way
your wife talks, versus the way people in general talk. Yeah,
and then plus it also goes without saying you kind
(30:49):
of have that simulation version of the person that you
know in your head, and so you're sort of running
all that information through that simulation as well. Yeah. All right,
here's another one. This one comes to us from Chris. Hello, Robin, Joe,
I loved your episode on Free Jack. As the driver
(31:10):
of a wine delivery truck in southwest Ohio, I can
say for a fact that you cannot outrun a police
interceptor in one if you. Um what that does beg
the question? Does it raises the question? Um? Anyway, they continue,
keep up the great work. I've listened to you guys
for years, but this is the first time writing in
Sincerely Chris, PS. Might I suggest the movie Split Second
(31:33):
starring Rudger Howard for Weird um for for Weird House Cinema. Um? Okay,
So two things. First of all, what is he talking about?
For people who didn't listen to the Free Jack episode.
There's this fabulous uh wine it's it's I included a
picture of it here for us, Joe, It says Champagne.
It's this bulky, old looking truck, not a futuristic vehicle
at all, but our hero when free Jack jumps into
(31:56):
it and drives off and there's a big car chase
with it, I commented, it looks like looks like it
looks like the sort of vehicle that Ronnie Vino from
At Home with Amy Sadaris would drive around. At one point,
we see some bottles tumble out of it, and if
I remember correctly, they don't look like normal champagne bottle green.
They look like gatorade green. They're like bright neon green.
(32:18):
But I mean that's hey, it's the future. It's two
thousand nine, baby, Yeah, that's the that's the future. That's
the fat um and I love it. Actually in the
screenshot too, I'm pretty sure I recognize. I don't know
specifically what building that is, but that does very much
look like Atlanta in the background. It does. I think
that whole chase sequence was Atlanta. Yeah. Now, as for
Split Second starring Rudger Howard, Yes, I saw this movie
(32:41):
sometime in the last year or two, and I absolutely
loved it. I think I was. I was telling Joe
about it as well, like Joe, you gotta see this
redgre Howard is great. He's smoking a cigar, he's cussing
out a dog. There's a lot to love about this film. Okay, well,
let's let's do it. Yeah, well we'll we'll put it
on the list, the rowing list of movies to consider
for weird House Cinema. Um but but yeah, thanks for
(33:04):
writing in, Thanks for for sharing your expertise with um
uh you know, out running or the law or failing
to outrun the law in a wine truck, but also
recommending some films for us. Okay, well, I think that
about does it for today. But a huge thanks to
everybody for writing in. Yeah, and yeah, hey, you know,
since it came up, if your name is Warwick, If
(33:25):
your name is Warwick, Uh, if there's some sort of
interesting way or a specific way we should be pronouncing
your name, include that in your listener mail because that
will help us out. Uh and hey, throwing those pronouns
as well, that also helps us out. Um. We would
of course love to hear from everybody. Yeah, keep keep
the emails coming. If you have thoughts on these listener mails,
(33:45):
if you have thoughts on episodes of stuff to blow
your mind, episodes of weird How cinema, suggestions for the future,
all that's fair game, just right in let us know.
And in the meantime, if you want to check out
other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, they published
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In the Stuff to Blow your
Mind podcast feed, Weird House Cinema publishes on Fridays, and
then we got a listener mail on Monday, we got
(34:05):
Artifact on Wednesday, and a Vault episode on the weekend.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
to blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
(34:32):
Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio 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
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.