May 15, 2023 • 27 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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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind listener mail.
My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day each
week we read back some messages from the mail bag.
If you have never gotten in touch with the show
before and you would like to, why not give it
a try. You can email us anytime at contact at
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. We get a
lot of emails, so we don't get a chance to
(00:37):
read all of it on the show here or respond
to all of it, but we do read it all
and we really appreciate all the messages we get, so
thank you to all the people who have written in,
who keep writing in, and if you've never done it before,
give it a shot.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
All right, let's kick things off with a pretty cool
monster fact listener mail that came in, and this was
in response to one of the four episodes that I
did on the Chaos Gods of Warhammer forty thousand. These
are fictional gods, but there's a lot of neat little
ins and outs to them, and this one is a
response to the episode on Zinch which is the chaos
(01:14):
god of change. Jay writes in and says, my name
is Jay, and I'm a costume maker. I was just
listening to your episode about the chaos demons of Zinch
and thought maybe you'd appreciate a few pictures of my
graduation piece from the twenty fifteen costume construction course at
(01:35):
toy Wakari in Wellington, New Zealand. The task for this
piece was to find a drawing or painting and recreate
it as a wearable garment. I loved this rendering of
a disciple of Zinch and Jay includes a photo and
I think they incorporate a lot of the elements described
in your episode. I tried finding the illustrator back when
(01:55):
I made this piece and had a few leads and
emails sent out, but didn't seem to find the right person.
I would love for them to see their design come
to life, so if you have some reach there, maybe
they can see it. Since graduating, my job has given
me the opportunity to work on great projects like the
new Avatar movies and the TV productions of the Lord
of the Rings and Sweet Tooth, and it has most
(02:18):
definitely been full of change and chaos, so I feel
choosing this piece was a good omen for me. Have
a great day, Jay.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Oh this is awesome. So Jay includes a lot of
photos here of is I can't quite tell from the photos.
Is this costume life size, like would fit on a person,
not on a like a model or a figure.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I'm assuming this is a full costume. If you'll look
carefully at the picture, you can see that it's like
a rolled white background. Yeah, and I only my wife
is a photographer, so I see this kind of thing
a lot, so maybe a little bitter identifying it, but yeah,
this looks like a full, full body outfit. Just really brilliant,
I mean to describe it. It's like, God, it's like
(03:03):
what has a cowl kind of a thing going on,
big shoulder extensions, there are these feather elements. It's blue
and white and gold and multiple blues and purples there,
with blue kind of being one of the primary colors
of zench What is.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
It called in a garment where you take the concept
of a collar, but you make it gigantic, like you
turn it into basically a colosseum.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, yeah, this big. You see this a lot of times,
especially in fantastic art, and I guess maybe like high fashion,
you know where it's beyond what is perhaps realistic for
a person to wear. But if you're a supermodel or
a wizard representing a chaos god's interest in the mortal
realm and real space, then yeah, go for it. Go
(03:49):
out there. It pays to be fashionable.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
So you're the one of us that knows about Warhammer,
I know nothing about zench. Here what is the deal
with these creatures? To me, this looks like a skexis,
except whereas the skexes have sort of connotations of decay
and slime and filth and decadence, this looks like a
(04:11):
sort of glorious, clean, well manicured Skexis.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, Zinch is all about appealing to like, well, there
are various interests that can lead you down the path
of heresy to Zinch. But essentially, if you're the type
of wizard or heretic who wants to acquire a great
deal of knowledge and wisdom, and also you want to
maybe you're very ambitious and you want a lot of change, well,
(04:36):
Zinch is all about forming a pact with you and
giving you just more wisdom and more change than you
can possibly imagine. And some of the major avatars of
Zench often have bird like features, which is interesting, like
a lot of things in Warhammer and Warhammer forty thousand, Like,
there are a lot of influences that clearly have gone
(04:57):
into these designs and these factions over the years, and
you can often pinpoint some of the major ones, like
you wouldn't have Warhammer forty thousand without Dune, for example,
And the same can be said of a lot of
sci fi franchises. But it's also been its own thing
long enough that it's hard to track down all of
the influences, and everything kind of takes on this novel
feeling of being its own thing.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yeah. Again, I don't know much about Warhammer, but when
I look at it, it seems to me to have
absorbed a lot of influences from other sci fi and fantasy,
Like it just straight up has orcs in it.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I think, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, do you have the
The orcs of Warhammer forty thousand are like, you know,
they're green skins, and they're there. They're a lot of fun,
They're they're very punk, I guess to a large extent,
like you know, like old school British punk. But then
they also reproduce via spores, and yeah, there's a there's
a there are a lot of elements to it that
(05:49):
are like really grim and dark and other stuff that's
a little more whimsical. Anyway, though, this costume is incredible.
So great job, Jay, and congratulations, I'm getting to work
on these pretty awesome product I've seen at least some
of all of these, and yeah, the production designs are amazing.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Now, Jay, as to your thing about helping you maybe
get in touch with the artists, I don't know exactly
the best way to do that since this is an
audio medium, but hey, if you are listening and you
are an illustrator who has I don't know, done illustrations
of these Sorcerers of Zinch and you are wondering if
this is your illustration, you can contact us and we'll we'll,
you know, try and help you figure it out.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah. I always happy to hear from artists either way.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
All right, This next message is about our episodes on
the Telephone Game. This comes from Sky Sky says Hi,
Joe and Robert. I just finished the first episode and
had a few follow up thoughts. First of all, the
alternating picture slash text version of The telephone game is,
(06:50):
as you suspect, a fantastic game. I've never heard of
it by the name mentioned on the podcast, but have
seen it go by many others telephone pictionary, illustrations, draw seption,
and drawful. It's one of our standards for board game nights.
When a where a few too many people are invited,
just find a pencil for everyone, rip up some paper,
(07:11):
and hilarity ensues. Second point, I appreciated the reference to
the Chinese Room thought experiment, and particularly its relation to
recent large language models like chat GPT. When self driving
cars were getting a lot of attention, it seemed to
me like the trolley problem got enough attention such that
most people have now probably heard of it and somewhat
(07:33):
understand why it's a tricky problem for that technology. I'm
somewhat frustrated seeing the ill informed debates about whether or
not large language models are conscious and hope dearly that
the Chinese Room can also enter the zeitgeist and get
more people involved in the interesting parts of the idea.
You've focused on consciousness and many of the relevant thought
(07:55):
experiments in previous episodes, but I wonder if a timely
discussion of language models in relation to those topics could help.
I'd certainly listen three. Robert's voice of the mind when
talking about alterations to the boy hides from his father's
story are hilarious. I love modeling part of your subconscious
as a bunch of study lit critics. Cheers Sky. Well, yeah,
(08:18):
thanks for the thoughts guy. You know, I've thought recently
about whether we should do something about like chat, GPT
and all of this new these recent explosions of AI.
I feel like my inclination is it's exactly when there
are a lot of takes exploding on a subject, is
(08:39):
when I feel disinclined to talk about it, you know,
because I feel kind of like, is my take here
going to be just a kind of transient, ill informed
thought that will blend in with all these others and
then fade away. I always kind of feel like I
want to give it some time and then look back
on it and then figure out what I think and
say that Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I mean, We've had a couple of guests on the show,
including David Eagleman, and we've we've we've chatted with these
experts and about the topic. But I'm of the same
mind a lot of this seems to be still developing,
and I've I've waffled a lot just with my own
experience with say, like some some of the image generators
and the chatbots, you know, Like I found that I
(09:20):
initially find them really exciting and get into using them
a little bit, but then, like two things occur at
once generally, or they have occurred at once, I'll sort
of the more I use it, I'll sort of discover
the soullessness of the experience and find that it's not
creatively satisfying me, and in fact, it feels like it's
(09:41):
causing a void to grow in me creatively, and then
again I sort of push it away.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
That's interesting. I've had a similar experience recently. So Okay, well,
I just said I'm not going to give a take.
Maybe this is not a take. I'm just explaining an
emotion more than a strong opinion. And it's hard to
put my reaction into words, but it's just kind of
a revulsion at the idea of a kind of explosion
(10:07):
of convincing insincerity in all of the content domains of
human life. And I don't know, there's something I've I've
found kind of disturbing about that.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah, now, now I do want to drive home that
you know, this is what I've just said was based
on my experience toying around with it. It's it's likely
these tools are just not for me. I don't want
to steer anyone else away from enjoying them. But and
it's you know, it's also possible that I just I
am not technically proficient enough to make the most out
of them. I don't know. There are various ways to
(10:40):
cut it. I'm not saying I'm right on the matter,
it's just my opinion. The other side of it, though,
is that, you know, I've seen plenty of artists that
I either know personally or I follow on Instagram or
something speak out against like AI art specifically, and you know,
I feel like I need to listen to them. I
need to you know, support them and here them out.
(11:00):
And so I've tried to do that as well.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah, I agree with that. I feel like I'm feeling
the poll. I'm feeling the poll to like keep blabbering
on and just get into get into the takes. I
said I wasn't going to give, So I'm not going
to give them. We'll just let's move on to something else.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah. Yeah, but you know, discussion continues if you have
thoughts about this rite in. We'd love to hear from
everyone out there if you agree with us, disagree with us,
or have more information.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Yeah, all right, We've still got plenty more messages about
childhood amnesia. We're going to do a couple here. This
one comes from Jay. Jay says, Dear Robert and Joe,
I recently listened to the Before You could Remember episodes,
and I have a memory to share. I have a
(11:46):
somewhat fuzzy childhood memory that doesn't feel like a memory
of an event, but more like a feeling or a dream.
I remember laying on my back and above me is
a pale brown surface, and on that surface is a bird,
and there is a voice without a body that again
and again says the words tweety bird or rather a
(12:07):
peepifogo in Swedish. As I grew up, the memory popped
into my mind every now and then, but I never
thought much about it. But when I was in my
late teens, I asked my mom what she thought about
the dream, or what she thought the dream meant. She
looked amused and told me that when I was a toddler.
We used to live in an old house and the
(12:28):
bathroom had an inner, rough cut natural wood roof, and
every time she needed to change my diapers, she took
me to the bathroom, laid me on my back on
the bathroom mat, and distracted me by pointing at the
roof and said, look at the tweety bird. The bird
she pointed at was a sawed off branch on the
wood roof that looked like the outline of a flying bird.
(12:51):
I've always wondered if this was a real memory or
if it was something I picked up as a child
when I after bedtime listened to the adults talking in
the living room to my bedroom. If it's a real memory,
it probably stuck because of hundreds of times I must
have seen and heard the tweety bird. Anyhow, thank you
for a great podcast and keep up the good work.
Kind regards, j oh And to be clear, this is
(13:14):
this is a different Jay than the other j who
just wrote in That was j Y. This is just
the letter J. But thank you J.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, and I like this term peepe fogo's that's very nice.
But yeah, this this whole topic of early childhood memories.
I think has stirred at a lot of discussion. I
know that I ended up talking about my like vague
childhood memory of my pediatrician being Gene Shallatte. I talked
about this with my mom and she of course confirmed
(13:44):
that Gene Shallott was not my pediatrician. But and at
first she was like, there was you know, your doctor
looked different. It didn't look anything like Gene Shallett. And
then I'm like, well, no, maybe it was, you know,
further back, and she was, And then she did confirm
that I did have a doctor pretty early on at
a mustache though I'm not sure exactly what age I
was at that point. So I think this mustachio doctor
(14:06):
was the Gene Shallatte of my memory.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Oh that's very interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
All right, here's another one. This one comes to us
from Josh, Rob, Joe, JJ and letter writer Scott. We've
got listener mail folks talking to other listener mail folks,
which is great. While listening to the podcast regarding childhood amnesia,
I wondered over my earliest memory with no satisfaction. However,
during Rob's reading of a letter replying to the episode
about a sort of first moment of consciousness from Scott.
(14:40):
My mind was absolutely blown. A memory came back to
me that I haven't thought of in what must be
like thirty five years. I remember waking up in the
morning and having a memory of the previous day, of
which I doubted the trustworthiness. I remember believing that I
began existence upon waking and stepped into oblivion when I
went to sleep. Remember devising a test wherein I resolved
(15:02):
to send myself a message and decided that if I
would remember this specific message from myself, I would lay
the question to rest and believe in yesterday. I figured
that through repeating the message many times as I fell asleep,
I created the greatest likelihood of remembering it, and that
I should keep it simple, I told myself, remember thinking this,
I did in fact remember the message, although there is
(15:23):
no way to know if it was the first time
I tried this experiment, and if my experiment is to
be trusted, every day since I have believed in Yesterday.
Thanks for the memories, cheers, Josh.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
That's interesting, Josh. This sounds like the kinds of thoughts
that I think I had when I was a little kid.
Weird psychedelic childhood thoughts.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I engaged in a bit of that,
a lot of closing the eyes and looking at the
starscape and so forth.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
All Right, maybe we should do some weird house cinema email.
Are you ready for that? Rob, Let's have it? Okay,
I'm going to do this one from Emily Hi, Robin Joe,
Whether you're finished experiencing the smorgasbord of late twentieth century
three D cinema, here's a suggestion for a non three
(16:10):
D but still deeply weird film. My husband and I
just watched Sunshine two thousand and seven, starring Killian Murphy
and Chris Evans. The tagline on IMDb is a team
of international astronauts is sent on a dangerous mission to
reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb in
twenty fifty seven, which is already compelling, But I would
(16:31):
further describe the experience of watching this film as like
trying to watch two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey, Alien,
and Solaris at the same time by flipping back and
forth between TV channels. Indeed, the director names specifically those
three films as direct influences, and it shows. I think
the film is plenty weird enough to be featured on
(16:51):
Weird House. But it also, I think prompts a broader
discussion of science fiction as a genre. Does it become
more or less difficult to write hard sci fi as
we as a global society learn more and more about
the world we inhabit and how it works? Will general
public scientific literacy ever reach a point at which the
average person will struggle to enjoy or engage with stories
(17:15):
like this because of all the scientific liberties taken for
the sake of the plot. Keep up the great work, Emily, Okay,
I'll respond to both points. On the second point, If
you know, increasing scientific literacy, I guess it's debatable whether
that is really going on overall. I want to see
some information, some stats on that. But to the extent
(17:35):
that is true, I don't know. I don't really see
that causing much of a problem because I don't feel like,
as in my life my personal scientific literacy increased, that
made me less able to enjoy unrealistic science fiction. In fact,
it's almost been exactly the opposite, Like the more kind
of scientific literacy I've had throughout my life, kind of
(17:58):
the more I've enjoyedid absurd nonsense and as you know,
the pseudoscience and sci fi plots. I don't know, it's
you know, you can suspend disbelief, it's just fun.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean they're always going to have to
suspend disbelief to some level with a science fiction motion picture,
I think. I mean, I think even the more the
hardest examples of sci fi you could point to, you're
still you know, you still have to immerse yourself in
the movie viewing experience and certain elements of the plot
and and you know, certain conveniences of storytelling. So yeah,
(18:32):
I tend to not think that's the problem. I mean,
there's probably a larger, more complex discussion to be had
about the role science fiction could play in both increasing
scientific literacy and also dulling it perhaps in some cases.
And that's that's probably more you know, the danger as
opposed to people, you know, losing out on appreciation for
films that get it a little bit or a whole
(18:54):
lot wrong. You know what.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
There is though, an area where I can see this
maybe being a problem, which is like a film that
is trying to be hard sci fi, like it is
going strongly for realism and fails at that, Like that
can kind of be a problem. But as long as
a film is just you know, committing to some kind
of pseudoscientific absurdity, you know, Yeah, I don't care, that's fine.
(19:18):
I think the problem is when it's insisting, no, this
is real, this is really how the world is, and
it's still getting it wrong.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean generally, I think a lot of
sci fi are going to take those real things that
are happening and just and use those as as a
springboard to get into other fantastic ideas.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah. Now, the other thing about Sunshine, I haven't seen
this movie in a long time, but I remember liking
it when it came out. Though. It's funny about the influences,
so it's like two thousand and one Alien Solaris. I
can see all of those influences in it, but in
my memory definitely more in the first half because spoiler
alert if you haven't seen this, doesn't it sort of
(19:58):
turn into Friday the thirteenth in space in the second half,
like it becomes a slasher movie.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, it goes a little bit of then Horizon Eate,
which I remember. I think I saw this in the
theater and I remember everyone was pretty excited for it
because I mean, it's Danny Boyle and you know, he
was riding really high at that point, could do no wrong.
Alex Garland, you know, could do no wrong. A great cast,
even outside of the people we've already mentioned here. Underworld
worked on part of the music along with John Murphy.
(20:27):
So all these things were lining up, and then the
movie itself is kind of a mess, kind of and
you know, kind of just you know it is. The
idea of switching channels definitely was part of the experience.
So I remember being a little underwhelmed by it but
finding it interesting. So in a way that makes it
the perfect kind of film to discuss on weird House cinema.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Orbit of Mercury, Chainsaw Massacre.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah. Yeah, Like there's a guy who goes nuts because
he's like, I love staring at the sun.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Well, I liked that element, actually, I thought that was cool.
So one of the themes of the movie is that,
like as the ship gets closer to the sun, there's
like a viewing deck I guess where you can see
you can look at it with reduced intensity, and some
people just get like hypnotized by it. It's almost like
it's a you know, it's an ancient god and they
become worshipers of it, and some become so obsessed with
(21:16):
the sun god in front of them that they lose
their minds. I thought that was cool, but yeah, the
slasher element, I thought, I don't know, Yeah, I'd watch
it again. I mean it's been a long time, you know,
most movies I watched like fifteen years ago. My opinion
could be very different now.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah. Yeah, so we'll have to put it on the
list of potential films for Weird House for sure. All right,
here's another one. This one comes from Anna. Hello, Robert, Joe,
and JJ boy. There are a lot of j's and
JJ's in this episode. Anna continues in your recent Weird
(21:54):
House Cinema episode about the never Ending Story, you talked
about a scene in the book where bast is in
a bookshop. This brought back a very strong memory of
reading the book Matilda by Roald Dahl. Near the start
of the book, she Matilda wants to escape her horrible family,
and she finds refuge in the library. She sits for
hours in the library reading books. Then one day the
(22:17):
librarian tells her she can take books home. She can
take as many as she likes. As long as she
brings them back. This was a pivotal moment in her life.
This huge, magical world had opened up. I think part
of the magic of the scene is also that someone
has recognized her own sense of imagination and encouraged it,
rather than try to suppress it like the other adults
in her life. I remember when the movie came out.
(22:38):
This is alluding to what the nineteen nineties adaptation. There's
a wonderful new adaptation of the stage musical that my
son is super into, and I've seen it twice already.
It's great, But I also finally remember what the nineteen
nineties adaptation. Anyway, Anna rites, I remember when the movie
(23:01):
came out. It seemed like a different story. There was
some controversy because it was depicting supernatural themes. I was
so surprised because I had completely forgotten about the parts
of the book where she moves things about with her mind.
The magic in the story of Matilda was always the
books and imagination, not the telekinesist stuff. The villains were
the people who had lost their sense of imagination, people
(23:22):
who had forgotten what it was like to be a kid.
This was a common theme in the Doll Books. A
lot of the books you were given as a kid
felt like just some adult contriving a story in order
to teach you a moral. But with the Doll Books,
it was as if he was sharing a secret with us.
Using funny words and using Quinton Blake's simple illustrations was
(23:44):
part of this. It felt like he was one of us. Okay,
now a side note about childhood amnesia. One of my
strong first memories is of putting on my own shoes.
There was a feeling that if you had to put
shoes on to do something, that meant it was important. Anyway,
I should end this email now before I ramble on
too much. Thanks Anna, Thanks Anna. It reminds me of
(24:06):
the Simpsons when they go shoe shopping for a good,
stiff church shoe. But also it's for doctor's appointments, piano recitals.
I don't remember all the other things, but yeah, you
got to put him on for anything important.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
But also, Anna, yes, this thing about the never Ending Story,
I assume you're picking up on the things we were
talking about in that episode where I think my comment
was Strangely, what stuck with me most about the never
Ending Story was the most fascinating to my imagination was
(24:40):
actually not any of the fantasy stuff, but it was
the book stuff. It was the scene in the bookshop
where Bastion speaks with the guy about, you know, the
other books being safe in this book being dangerous. And
then the scenes where he is hiding up in the attic,
just hiding all day, where nobody can find him and
he doesn't have to do what anybody else's teme telling him.
(25:00):
He just gets to be alone and read.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah. Yeah, really connecting with it was something that I
think a lot of us can relate to in our
childhoods Now, as far as Doll goes, yeah, this whole
idea of kids essentially being at war with adults. This
is a common theme in his work. You also see
it in The Witches, which, by the way, I mean
there was a nineteen ninety adaptation of The Witches, which
of course was pretty fun, had Jim Henson. It was
(25:25):
Jim Henson production, I believe, and Angelica Houston plays the
High Witch. A lot of people did not like the
twenty twenty adaptation. This is one that was directed by
Robert Zemeckis, and also the screenplay on that was at
least partially by Gimmel del Toro and Anne Hathaway plays
(25:45):
the High Witch. You know, this is very much a
modern take on it with a lot of computer effects.
But I thought this was pretty fabulous as well. I
enjoyed it. I thought Anne Hathaway was amazing in it.
I have room for two high Witches in my life.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Well, I haven't seen either one. Maybe this is one
of those gaps. I will, I will, I will close
once I'm watching movies with my daughter as she grows up.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah, all right, we're gonna go ahead and close the
mail bag there, But we'd love to hear from everyone
out there if you have thoughts on anything were discussed
in this episode of Listener Mail. Thoughts on recent episodes
of anything that we're putting out in the Stuff to
Blow Your Mind podcast feed, let us know we'd love
to hear from you. Stuff to Blow Your Mind Listener
Mail airs on Mondays and the Stuff to Blow Your
Mind podcast feed, and you know the rest of the
schedule Core episodes in Tuesdays and Thursday's Monster Factor Artifact
(26:32):
on Wednesday, Weird House Cinema on Friday, and you know
What's throwing a little rerun over the weekend.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Huge thanks as always to our audio producer JJ Posway.
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.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Stuffed Blow your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, 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 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind listener mail.
My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day each
week we read back some messages from the mail bag.
If you have never gotten in touch with the show
before and you would like to, why not give it
a try. You can email us anytime at contact at
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. We get a
lot of emails, so we don't get a chance to
(00:37):
read all of it on the show here or respond
to all of it, but we do read it all
and we really appreciate all the messages we get, so
thank you to all the people who have written in,
who keep writing in, and if you've never done it before,
give it a shot.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
All right, let's kick things off with a pretty cool
monster fact listener mail that came in, and this was
in response to one of the four episodes that I
did on the Chaos Gods of Warhammer forty thousand. These
are fictional gods, but there's a lot of neat little
ins and outs to them, and this one is a
response to the episode on Zinch which is the chaos
(01:14):
god of change. Jay writes in and says, my name
is Jay, and I'm a costume maker. I was just
listening to your episode about the chaos demons of Zinch
and thought maybe you'd appreciate a few pictures of my
graduation piece from the twenty fifteen costume construction course at
(01:35):
toy Wakari in Wellington, New Zealand. The task for this
piece was to find a drawing or painting and recreate
it as a wearable garment. I loved this rendering of
a disciple of Zinch and Jay includes a photo and
I think they incorporate a lot of the elements described
in your episode. I tried finding the illustrator back when
(01:55):
I made this piece and had a few leads and
emails sent out, but didn't seem to find the right person.
I would love for them to see their design come
to life, so if you have some reach there, maybe
they can see it. Since graduating, my job has given
me the opportunity to work on great projects like the
new Avatar movies and the TV productions of the Lord
of the Rings and Sweet Tooth, and it has most
(02:18):
definitely been full of change and chaos, so I feel
choosing this piece was a good omen for me. Have
a great day, Jay.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Oh this is awesome. So Jay includes a lot of
photos here of is I can't quite tell from the photos.
Is this costume life size, like would fit on a person,
not on a like a model or a figure.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I'm assuming this is a full costume. If you'll look
carefully at the picture, you can see that it's like
a rolled white background. Yeah, and I only my wife
is a photographer, so I see this kind of thing
a lot, so maybe a little bitter identifying it, but yeah,
this looks like a full, full body outfit. Just really brilliant,
I mean to describe it. It's like, God, it's like
(03:03):
what has a cowl kind of a thing going on,
big shoulder extensions, there are these feather elements. It's blue
and white and gold and multiple blues and purples there,
with blue kind of being one of the primary colors
of zench What is.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
It called in a garment where you take the concept
of a collar, but you make it gigantic, like you
turn it into basically a colosseum.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, yeah, this big. You see this a lot of times,
especially in fantastic art, and I guess maybe like high fashion,
you know where it's beyond what is perhaps realistic for
a person to wear. But if you're a supermodel or
a wizard representing a chaos god's interest in the mortal
realm and real space, then yeah, go for it. Go
(03:49):
out there. It pays to be fashionable.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
So you're the one of us that knows about Warhammer,
I know nothing about zench. Here what is the deal
with these creatures? To me, this looks like a skexis,
except whereas the skexes have sort of connotations of decay
and slime and filth and decadence, this looks like a
(04:11):
sort of glorious, clean, well manicured Skexis.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, Zinch is all about appealing to like, well, there
are various interests that can lead you down the path
of heresy to Zinch. But essentially, if you're the type
of wizard or heretic who wants to acquire a great
deal of knowledge and wisdom, and also you want to
maybe you're very ambitious and you want a lot of change, well,
(04:36):
Zinch is all about forming a pact with you and
giving you just more wisdom and more change than you
can possibly imagine. And some of the major avatars of
Zench often have bird like features, which is interesting, like
a lot of things in Warhammer and Warhammer forty thousand, Like,
there are a lot of influences that clearly have gone
(04:57):
into these designs and these factions over the years, and
you can often pinpoint some of the major ones, like
you wouldn't have Warhammer forty thousand without Dune, for example,
And the same can be said of a lot of
sci fi franchises. But it's also been its own thing
long enough that it's hard to track down all of
the influences, and everything kind of takes on this novel
feeling of being its own thing.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yeah. Again, I don't know much about Warhammer, but when
I look at it, it seems to me to have
absorbed a lot of influences from other sci fi and fantasy,
Like it just straight up has orcs in it.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I think, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, do you have the
The orcs of Warhammer forty thousand are like, you know,
they're green skins, and they're there. They're a lot of fun,
They're they're very punk, I guess to a large extent,
like you know, like old school British punk. But then
they also reproduce via spores, and yeah, there's a there's
a there are a lot of elements to it that
(05:49):
are like really grim and dark and other stuff that's
a little more whimsical. Anyway, though, this costume is incredible.
So great job, Jay, and congratulations, I'm getting to work
on these pretty awesome product I've seen at least some
of all of these, and yeah, the production designs are amazing.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Now, Jay, as to your thing about helping you maybe
get in touch with the artists, I don't know exactly
the best way to do that since this is an
audio medium, but hey, if you are listening and you
are an illustrator who has I don't know, done illustrations
of these Sorcerers of Zinch and you are wondering if
this is your illustration, you can contact us and we'll we'll,
you know, try and help you figure it out.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah. I always happy to hear from artists either way.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
All right, This next message is about our episodes on
the Telephone Game. This comes from Sky Sky says Hi,
Joe and Robert. I just finished the first episode and
had a few follow up thoughts. First of all, the
alternating picture slash text version of The telephone game is,
(06:50):
as you suspect, a fantastic game. I've never heard of
it by the name mentioned on the podcast, but have
seen it go by many others telephone pictionary, illustrations, draw seption,
and drawful. It's one of our standards for board game nights.
When a where a few too many people are invited,
just find a pencil for everyone, rip up some paper,
(07:11):
and hilarity ensues. Second point, I appreciated the reference to
the Chinese Room thought experiment, and particularly its relation to
recent large language models like chat GPT. When self driving
cars were getting a lot of attention, it seemed to
me like the trolley problem got enough attention such that
most people have now probably heard of it and somewhat
(07:33):
understand why it's a tricky problem for that technology. I'm
somewhat frustrated seeing the ill informed debates about whether or
not large language models are conscious and hope dearly that
the Chinese Room can also enter the zeitgeist and get
more people involved in the interesting parts of the idea.
You've focused on consciousness and many of the relevant thought
(07:55):
experiments in previous episodes, but I wonder if a timely
discussion of language models in relation to those topics could help.
I'd certainly listen three. Robert's voice of the mind when
talking about alterations to the boy hides from his father's
story are hilarious. I love modeling part of your subconscious
as a bunch of study lit critics. Cheers Sky. Well, yeah,
(08:18):
thanks for the thoughts guy. You know, I've thought recently
about whether we should do something about like chat, GPT
and all of this new these recent explosions of AI.
I feel like my inclination is it's exactly when there
are a lot of takes exploding on a subject, is
(08:39):
when I feel disinclined to talk about it, you know,
because I feel kind of like, is my take here
going to be just a kind of transient, ill informed
thought that will blend in with all these others and
then fade away. I always kind of feel like I
want to give it some time and then look back
on it and then figure out what I think and
say that Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I mean, We've had a couple of guests on the show,
including David Eagleman, and we've we've we've chatted with these
experts and about the topic. But I'm of the same
mind a lot of this seems to be still developing,
and I've I've waffled a lot just with my own
experience with say, like some some of the image generators
and the chatbots, you know, Like I found that I
(09:20):
initially find them really exciting and get into using them
a little bit, but then, like two things occur at
once generally, or they have occurred at once, I'll sort
of the more I use it, I'll sort of discover
the soullessness of the experience and find that it's not
creatively satisfying me, and in fact, it feels like it's
(09:41):
causing a void to grow in me creatively, and then
again I sort of push it away.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
That's interesting. I've had a similar experience recently. So Okay, well,
I just said I'm not going to give a take.
Maybe this is not a take. I'm just explaining an
emotion more than a strong opinion. And it's hard to
put my reaction into words, but it's just kind of
a revulsion at the idea of a kind of explosion
(10:07):
of convincing insincerity in all of the content domains of
human life. And I don't know, there's something I've I've
found kind of disturbing about that.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah, now, now I do want to drive home that
you know, this is what I've just said was based
on my experience toying around with it. It's it's likely
these tools are just not for me. I don't want
to steer anyone else away from enjoying them. But and
it's you know, it's also possible that I just I
am not technically proficient enough to make the most out
of them. I don't know. There are various ways to
(10:40):
cut it. I'm not saying I'm right on the matter,
it's just my opinion. The other side of it, though,
is that, you know, I've seen plenty of artists that
I either know personally or I follow on Instagram or
something speak out against like AI art specifically, and you know,
I feel like I need to listen to them. I
need to you know, support them and here them out.
(11:00):
And so I've tried to do that as well.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah, I agree with that. I feel like I'm feeling
the poll. I'm feeling the poll to like keep blabbering
on and just get into get into the takes. I
said I wasn't going to give, So I'm not going
to give them. We'll just let's move on to something else.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah. Yeah, but you know, discussion continues if you have
thoughts about this rite in. We'd love to hear from
everyone out there if you agree with us, disagree with us,
or have more information.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Yeah, all right, We've still got plenty more messages about
childhood amnesia. We're going to do a couple here. This
one comes from Jay. Jay says, Dear Robert and Joe,
I recently listened to the Before You could Remember episodes,
and I have a memory to share. I have a
(11:46):
somewhat fuzzy childhood memory that doesn't feel like a memory
of an event, but more like a feeling or a dream.
I remember laying on my back and above me is
a pale brown surface, and on that surface is a bird,
and there is a voice without a body that again
and again says the words tweety bird or rather a
(12:07):
peepifogo in Swedish. As I grew up, the memory popped
into my mind every now and then, but I never
thought much about it. But when I was in my
late teens, I asked my mom what she thought about
the dream, or what she thought the dream meant. She
looked amused and told me that when I was a toddler.
We used to live in an old house and the
(12:28):
bathroom had an inner, rough cut natural wood roof, and
every time she needed to change my diapers, she took
me to the bathroom, laid me on my back on
the bathroom mat, and distracted me by pointing at the
roof and said, look at the tweety bird. The bird
she pointed at was a sawed off branch on the
wood roof that looked like the outline of a flying bird.
(12:51):
I've always wondered if this was a real memory or
if it was something I picked up as a child
when I after bedtime listened to the adults talking in
the living room to my bedroom. If it's a real memory,
it probably stuck because of hundreds of times I must
have seen and heard the tweety bird. Anyhow, thank you
for a great podcast and keep up the good work.
Kind regards, j oh And to be clear, this is
(13:14):
this is a different Jay than the other j who
just wrote in That was j Y. This is just
the letter J. But thank you J.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, and I like this term peepe fogo's that's very nice.
But yeah, this this whole topic of early childhood memories.
I think has stirred at a lot of discussion. I
know that I ended up talking about my like vague
childhood memory of my pediatrician being Gene Shallatte. I talked
about this with my mom and she of course confirmed
(13:44):
that Gene Shallott was not my pediatrician. But and at
first she was like, there was you know, your doctor
looked different. It didn't look anything like Gene Shallett. And
then I'm like, well, no, maybe it was, you know,
further back, and she was, And then she did confirm
that I did have a doctor pretty early on at
a mustache though I'm not sure exactly what age I
was at that point. So I think this mustachio doctor
(14:06):
was the Gene Shallatte of my memory.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Oh that's very interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
All right, here's another one. This one comes to us
from Josh, Rob, Joe, JJ and letter writer Scott. We've
got listener mail folks talking to other listener mail folks,
which is great. While listening to the podcast regarding childhood amnesia,
I wondered over my earliest memory with no satisfaction. However,
during Rob's reading of a letter replying to the episode
about a sort of first moment of consciousness from Scott.
(14:40):
My mind was absolutely blown. A memory came back to
me that I haven't thought of in what must be
like thirty five years. I remember waking up in the
morning and having a memory of the previous day, of
which I doubted the trustworthiness. I remember believing that I
began existence upon waking and stepped into oblivion when I
went to sleep. Remember devising a test wherein I resolved
(15:02):
to send myself a message and decided that if I
would remember this specific message from myself, I would lay
the question to rest and believe in yesterday. I figured
that through repeating the message many times as I fell asleep,
I created the greatest likelihood of remembering it, and that
I should keep it simple, I told myself, remember thinking this,
I did in fact remember the message, although there is
(15:23):
no way to know if it was the first time
I tried this experiment, and if my experiment is to
be trusted, every day since I have believed in Yesterday.
Thanks for the memories, cheers, Josh.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
That's interesting, Josh. This sounds like the kinds of thoughts
that I think I had when I was a little kid.
Weird psychedelic childhood thoughts.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I engaged in a bit of that,
a lot of closing the eyes and looking at the
starscape and so forth.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
All Right, maybe we should do some weird house cinema email.
Are you ready for that? Rob, Let's have it? Okay,
I'm going to do this one from Emily Hi, Robin Joe,
Whether you're finished experiencing the smorgasbord of late twentieth century
three D cinema, here's a suggestion for a non three
(16:10):
D but still deeply weird film. My husband and I
just watched Sunshine two thousand and seven, starring Killian Murphy
and Chris Evans. The tagline on IMDb is a team
of international astronauts is sent on a dangerous mission to
reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb in
twenty fifty seven, which is already compelling, But I would
(16:31):
further describe the experience of watching this film as like
trying to watch two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey, Alien,
and Solaris at the same time by flipping back and
forth between TV channels. Indeed, the director names specifically those
three films as direct influences, and it shows. I think
the film is plenty weird enough to be featured on
(16:51):
Weird House. But it also, I think prompts a broader
discussion of science fiction as a genre. Does it become
more or less difficult to write hard sci fi as
we as a global society learn more and more about
the world we inhabit and how it works? Will general
public scientific literacy ever reach a point at which the
average person will struggle to enjoy or engage with stories
(17:15):
like this because of all the scientific liberties taken for
the sake of the plot. Keep up the great work, Emily, Okay,
I'll respond to both points. On the second point, If
you know, increasing scientific literacy, I guess it's debatable whether
that is really going on overall. I want to see
some information, some stats on that. But to the extent
(17:35):
that is true, I don't know. I don't really see
that causing much of a problem because I don't feel like,
as in my life my personal scientific literacy increased, that
made me less able to enjoy unrealistic science fiction. In fact,
it's almost been exactly the opposite, Like the more kind
of scientific literacy I've had throughout my life, kind of
(17:58):
the more I've enjoyedid absurd nonsense and as you know,
the pseudoscience and sci fi plots. I don't know, it's
you know, you can suspend disbelief, it's just fun.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean they're always going to have to
suspend disbelief to some level with a science fiction motion picture,
I think. I mean, I think even the more the
hardest examples of sci fi you could point to, you're
still you know, you still have to immerse yourself in
the movie viewing experience and certain elements of the plot
and and you know, certain conveniences of storytelling. So yeah,
(18:32):
I tend to not think that's the problem. I mean,
there's probably a larger, more complex discussion to be had
about the role science fiction could play in both increasing
scientific literacy and also dulling it perhaps in some cases.
And that's that's probably more you know, the danger as
opposed to people, you know, losing out on appreciation for
films that get it a little bit or a whole
(18:54):
lot wrong. You know what.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
There is though, an area where I can see this
maybe being a problem, which is like a film that
is trying to be hard sci fi, like it is
going strongly for realism and fails at that, Like that
can kind of be a problem. But as long as
a film is just you know, committing to some kind
of pseudoscientific absurdity, you know, Yeah, I don't care, that's fine.
(19:18):
I think the problem is when it's insisting, no, this
is real, this is really how the world is, and
it's still getting it wrong.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean generally, I think a lot of
sci fi are going to take those real things that
are happening and just and use those as as a
springboard to get into other fantastic ideas.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah. Now, the other thing about Sunshine, I haven't seen
this movie in a long time, but I remember liking
it when it came out. Though. It's funny about the influences,
so it's like two thousand and one Alien Solaris. I
can see all of those influences in it, but in
my memory definitely more in the first half because spoiler
alert if you haven't seen this, doesn't it sort of
(19:58):
turn into Friday the thirteenth in space in the second half,
like it becomes a slasher movie.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, it goes a little bit of then Horizon Eate,
which I remember. I think I saw this in the
theater and I remember everyone was pretty excited for it
because I mean, it's Danny Boyle and you know, he
was riding really high at that point, could do no wrong.
Alex Garland, you know, could do no wrong. A great cast,
even outside of the people we've already mentioned here. Underworld
worked on part of the music along with John Murphy.
(20:27):
So all these things were lining up, and then the
movie itself is kind of a mess, kind of and
you know, kind of just you know it is. The
idea of switching channels definitely was part of the experience.
So I remember being a little underwhelmed by it but
finding it interesting. So in a way that makes it
the perfect kind of film to discuss on weird House cinema.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Orbit of Mercury, Chainsaw Massacre.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah. Yeah, Like there's a guy who goes nuts because
he's like, I love staring at the sun.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Well, I liked that element, actually, I thought that was cool.
So one of the themes of the movie is that,
like as the ship gets closer to the sun, there's
like a viewing deck I guess where you can see
you can look at it with reduced intensity, and some
people just get like hypnotized by it. It's almost like
it's a you know, it's an ancient god and they
become worshipers of it, and some become so obsessed with
(21:16):
the sun god in front of them that they lose
their minds. I thought that was cool, but yeah, the
slasher element, I thought, I don't know, Yeah, I'd watch
it again. I mean it's been a long time, you know,
most movies I watched like fifteen years ago. My opinion
could be very different now.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah. Yeah, so we'll have to put it on the
list of potential films for Weird House for sure. All right,
here's another one. This one comes from Anna. Hello, Robert, Joe,
and JJ boy. There are a lot of j's and
JJ's in this episode. Anna continues in your recent Weird
(21:54):
House Cinema episode about the never Ending Story, you talked
about a scene in the book where bast is in
a bookshop. This brought back a very strong memory of
reading the book Matilda by Roald Dahl. Near the start
of the book, she Matilda wants to escape her horrible family,
and she finds refuge in the library. She sits for
hours in the library reading books. Then one day the
(22:17):
librarian tells her she can take books home. She can
take as many as she likes. As long as she
brings them back. This was a pivotal moment in her life.
This huge, magical world had opened up. I think part
of the magic of the scene is also that someone
has recognized her own sense of imagination and encouraged it,
rather than try to suppress it like the other adults
in her life. I remember when the movie came out.
(22:38):
This is alluding to what the nineteen nineties adaptation. There's
a wonderful new adaptation of the stage musical that my
son is super into, and I've seen it twice already.
It's great, But I also finally remember what the nineteen
nineties adaptation. Anyway, Anna rites, I remember when the movie
(23:01):
came out. It seemed like a different story. There was
some controversy because it was depicting supernatural themes. I was
so surprised because I had completely forgotten about the parts
of the book where she moves things about with her mind.
The magic in the story of Matilda was always the
books and imagination, not the telekinesist stuff. The villains were
the people who had lost their sense of imagination, people
(23:22):
who had forgotten what it was like to be a kid.
This was a common theme in the Doll Books. A
lot of the books you were given as a kid
felt like just some adult contriving a story in order
to teach you a moral. But with the Doll Books,
it was as if he was sharing a secret with us.
Using funny words and using Quinton Blake's simple illustrations was
(23:44):
part of this. It felt like he was one of us. Okay,
now a side note about childhood amnesia. One of my
strong first memories is of putting on my own shoes.
There was a feeling that if you had to put
shoes on to do something, that meant it was important. Anyway,
I should end this email now before I ramble on
too much. Thanks Anna, Thanks Anna. It reminds me of
(24:06):
the Simpsons when they go shoe shopping for a good,
stiff church shoe. But also it's for doctor's appointments, piano recitals.
I don't remember all the other things, but yeah, you
got to put him on for anything important.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
But also, Anna, yes, this thing about the never Ending Story,
I assume you're picking up on the things we were
talking about in that episode where I think my comment
was Strangely, what stuck with me most about the never
Ending Story was the most fascinating to my imagination was
(24:40):
actually not any of the fantasy stuff, but it was
the book stuff. It was the scene in the bookshop
where Bastion speaks with the guy about, you know, the
other books being safe in this book being dangerous. And
then the scenes where he is hiding up in the attic,
just hiding all day, where nobody can find him and
he doesn't have to do what anybody else's teme telling him.
(25:00):
He just gets to be alone and read.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah. Yeah, really connecting with it was something that I
think a lot of us can relate to in our
childhoods Now, as far as Doll goes, yeah, this whole
idea of kids essentially being at war with adults. This
is a common theme in his work. You also see
it in The Witches, which, by the way, I mean
there was a nineteen ninety adaptation of The Witches, which
of course was pretty fun, had Jim Henson. It was
(25:25):
Jim Henson production, I believe, and Angelica Houston plays the
High Witch. A lot of people did not like the
twenty twenty adaptation. This is one that was directed by
Robert Zemeckis, and also the screenplay on that was at
least partially by Gimmel del Toro and Anne Hathaway plays
(25:45):
the High Witch. You know, this is very much a
modern take on it with a lot of computer effects.
But I thought this was pretty fabulous as well. I
enjoyed it. I thought Anne Hathaway was amazing in it.
I have room for two high Witches in my life.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Well, I haven't seen either one. Maybe this is one
of those gaps. I will, I will, I will close
once I'm watching movies with my daughter as she grows up.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah, all right, we're gonna go ahead and close the
mail bag there, But we'd love to hear from everyone
out there if you have thoughts on anything were discussed
in this episode of Listener Mail. Thoughts on recent episodes
of anything that we're putting out in the Stuff to
Blow Your Mind podcast feed, let us know we'd love
to hear from you. Stuff to Blow Your Mind Listener
Mail airs on Mondays and the Stuff to Blow Your
Mind podcast feed, and you know the rest of the
schedule Core episodes in Tuesdays and Thursday's Monster Factor Artifact
(26:32):
on Wednesday, Weird House Cinema on Friday, and you know
What's throwing a little rerun over the weekend.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Huge thanks as always to our audio producer JJ Posway.
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.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Stuffed Blow your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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