Listener Mail: The Memory of Trees

Once more, it's time for a dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
My name is Robert Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
And I am Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you
some responses to recent episodes of the show. You all
have been writing in about squirrels. You've been writing in
about pretend play, you've been writing in about Christmas, trees
in the ocean, all kinds of things to get into.
So Rob, unless you have any business to address right
here at the top, I say, let's jump right into

(00:34):
the messages.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
No business here, let's do it, Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
I think I'm going to start with this message from
Hugh in response to our sort of revival of the
squirrel topic. So refresher here if you don't recall. Many
years ago, we did a series of episodes on the brutal,
largely unknown side of squirrels, including scientific observations of squirrels
eating the flesh of other animals scavenger, sometimes even killing

(01:01):
live prey, as well as legends of squirrel on squirrel castration,
anecdotes of squirrel attacks on humans with varying levels of
evidence behind them, in plausibility etc. Then, just earlier this month,
we returned to the topic of squirrels because of a
newly published paper from December twenty twenty four. A lot

(01:23):
of you got in touch with us to let us
know about this, a paper that extensively documented a population
of California ground squirrels roughly northeast of the San Francisco area,
systematically hunting and eating live adult voles, which seemed to
be related to a concurrent explosion in.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
The vole population. Vole meat got.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Cheap, essentially, so squirrels were like, why not, let's eat
them anyway. After covering this, we heard from many listeners
with thoughts about squirrels, sometimes about their surprising ferocity or
their lesser known tendency to eat meat. So, first of all,
this message from Hugh reads, Dear Robert and Joe and JJ,

(02:10):
happiest of New Year's toe you all. I have to
agree with Rob's view of squirrel kind. Rob, maybe you
can remind us what this view was after you hear
Hugh's thoughts. Hugh says, I once saw a big, furry
orange tomcat get hold of a gray squirrel in an open,
sunny patch of lawn. I lost track of what was

(02:30):
happening for a few seconds due to the Looney Tunes
esque mailstrom obscuring the action. But when the dust and
fur had settled and a mostly orange rocket had disappeared
over the horizon, I could tell that the paradigm had
shifted for that cat. Squirrels are expletive metal. You're all
still doing a great job. I love your work, Hugh. Well,

(02:52):
thanks for the message, Hugh.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
I don't know if I've ever seen this particular thing happen,
like the squirrel sends the larger predator running, but I
can believe it. Rob, do you do you know which
of you of yours this is conforming to?

Speaker 2 (03:06):
We had just that they're for a grappling hooks. They're fierce,
their tree lions and matches up. We have the story
that I told about one chasing off a hawk in
my backyard, a girl doing squirrel business. A hawk moved
in to interfere with that business in some manner or fashion,
and the squirrel was having none of it, and the

(03:27):
hawk was like, okay, fair enough, I'll go pest or
something else.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
That makes sense. Now you referred to them as grappling hooks. This,
of course is giving me the image of an expanded
movie Ninja tool Kit where the ninja from their belt
draws a squirrel on a line and makes you know,
unthinkable use of it.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
There is a Marvel superhero named squirrel Girl. My kid
has several comic books of squirrel Girl. Very fun character,
but it's usually played up for cuteness I believe. I mean,
she's fearce and strong in her own right. But I
don't know if they completely embrace the unholy ferocity of
the squirrel, because squirrel Girl could be very metal, and

(04:11):
maybe she is very metal in some installments. If not,
I hope comic book artists out there embrace the beastly
nature of the squirrel at some point.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
All right, Rob, you want to do one of these
following messages?

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, here's one from Carl titled Squirrel's Return Dear Robin Joe.
Without intent, I've apparently created a squirrel paradise in my backyard,
which is great. Their acrobatics entertain and fascinate me and
my retriever Australian sheep dog Roxy. They are minimally destructive

(04:47):
while they go about their lives making families, building their nests, harvesting,
hickory nuts and covorting in the woods outside my kitchen
window and off the deck. Of all the creatures there,
the squirrels and birds are the least destructive, paired with
the chipmunks and rabbits that destroy plants and gardens. So
I really enjoyed this episode. I haven't seen my squirrels
dining on other animals or insects, but they might. There

(05:09):
are plenty of them out there too. It would be
interesting and very useful if my squirrels would develop an
appetite for rabbit. Here's do a great new year, Carl.
Best of luck to you, Carl. I mean, I don't
think there's a way to engineer that. Maybe we wouldn't try,
just leave it, let nature take its course there, because

(05:30):
that sounds like the beginning of a horror story. You
remember old Carl there. Oh yeah, he tried to teach
his squirrels to eat rabbit meat. Now they only eat
manfold meat.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, the backstory to Night of the Squirrels. Okay, on
to the next squirrel message. Two comments before reading this one.
One of them is context for the message Rob when
we were I think, both in the original series and
in the follow up episode we talked about your story
of encountering aggressive squirrels at Grand Canyon National Park and

(06:03):
how this related to the people feeding the animals at
places where human and humans and wildlife interface. Do you
want to what were the deats on that?

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Oh, I mean it just gets into the basics of,
you know, a fat animals, a dead animal. If you
feed any wild animals of you know, varying wildness and
overt danger to humans, if they associate humans with food,
then they'll just get closer, and the closer they are,
the more likely it is to end and bites, scratches
and so forth. We want them to remain wild, wild

(06:35):
and away from us. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
And your direct experience was that what did a squirrel
basically climb you or your wife trying to get food
out of your hands?

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah? Yeah, it's all a snack bar and made a
play for it and we had to essentially like swatt
it away with a hat. Wow. Okay, all right.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
And then the second comment before reading this is I
want to make absolutely clear that we are not advocating
the behavior the list is about to describe in this message,
but I did think it was worth sharing to discuss
and maybe get some feedback from people who work professionally
in parks and wildlife or other places where there's a
lot of interface between humans and wild animals. So this
is from Ben, subject line trolling wildlife. Hello, gentlemen, your

(07:23):
recent episode on squirrels was fascinating and entertaining, as is
all your excellent content.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Thank you Ben.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
The discussion at the end of the episode around feeding
wildlife brought to mind the fun game I play with
excessively bold wildlife. When I encounter small animals that seem
to be accustomed to getting food from humans, I approach
them and mimic the action of giving them food. For
ducks at the local park, I toss pretend bread to them.

(07:50):
For the finches at the Trailhead parking lot at a
nearby provincial park, I hold up a handful of imaginary
bird seed. For the squirrels that live in my town
home complex, I hold out a theoretical peanut. Then, when
the animal approaches to a closer distance than they reasonably
should get to a human, I jump and shout and
startle them. I like to believe I'm doing my part

(08:11):
to ruin the trust they have developed for humans. Thanks
for the Great show. Ben Okay, Ben, Well, thank you
for the message, and maybe you can see why I
wanted to read this but also wanted.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
To caveat it.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
I see the reasoning here, like, of course, it's not
usually good for wild animals to be desensitized to the
presence of humans. We want them to avoid us, we
should avoid them. But part of me also does kind
of recoil at the idea of intentionally scaring wild animals.
So I want to be clear again that I'm not
recommending this as a good idea without knowing more. However,

(08:45):
I know we have a lot of listeners who do
work in parks and wildlife for an animal conservation. I
would love to hear your thoughts those listeners about this
kind of thing. Is this actually a good thing to do,
or is there a better strategy that accomplishes the same
goal without needlessly scaring wildlife. Is it best to just
avoid interacting with wildlife as much as possible, even if

(09:07):
the animals are brazenly approaching you for food.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Should you just run away? What should you do?

Speaker 3 (09:13):
I don't really know, but I would love to hear
from people who have professional expertise contact that stuff to
blow your mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
I mean, I know that when it comes to things
like bears and parks, there will often be you know,
people in official capacity rangers doing things like you know,
firing off a gun, creating a loud noise to scare
them away and try and you know, drive home the
idea that humans are scary and you shouldn't get too

(09:42):
close to them. So, like I said, I see both
sides of this. Yeah, what I'm cautious about would be
the idea of engaging in both behaviors at the same time,
of like mimicking bringing an animal in close only to
scare them away. I suspect, and I am no expert.
Of course, you're better off just going with the scare,

(10:02):
like you're better off like leaving your home and just
scaring all wildlife that comes close to you. So like
when I go outside, if there's a squirrel too close
to me, I'll clap my hands, I will make a noise,
and not because they're approaching me, but because like maybe
they're just a little they're lingering a little too long
on the fence, and I'm like, I don't want you

(10:22):
any closer to me, you know, you furry shackle just
go ahead and get on out of here. I don't
know that the mimicking the feeding is actually going to
be helpful in this scenario, but I could be wrong. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
So once again, people whose job it is to study
how to protect wildlife and try to try to sever this,
this link or this desensitization, please write in let us
know your.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Thoughts, all right. We also received more feedback about Hearts
and Fireplaces. That was a multi serious episode. We did
what in December holiday themed, But you can listen to
him any time of the year. I mean, it's hearts,
it's fireplace, It's good winter listening for sure. This one
comes to us from Megan. Megan says, Hi, guys, your

(11:13):
episode on Hearts was intriguing and it made me think
of a couple of personal experiences. You mentioned that some
animals used chimneys as habitat. My family moved houses a
couple of years ago in July, and the chimneys had
been left unused and clothes for a while. I noticed
a tuneless squeaking in the living room ever so often,
which I assumed was air moving through a pipe. Well,

(11:34):
did you ever see dark bat like birds swooping around
on a summer evening in an urban neighborhood and catching insects.
Those are chimney swifts, which are dependent on chimneys for
roosting and raising their young. They used cliff faces and
old trees before the arrival of Europeans. For about a month,
I listened to the chimney swift babies chirping loudly every
time their parents returned with food, and abruptly one day

(11:57):
I realized that the chimney was silent the nestlings fledged.
I never saw the nestlings, just the adult population darting
around the neighborhood, and then the adults and fledged juveniles migrated.
They returned last July. By the way, I'm afraid of
opening up the chimney and discovering the old nests glued
with saliva to the brick walls and many years of

(12:17):
bird waste. But that's for a future professional cleaning. Maybe
you guys want to cover that topic in the show
Animals and plants that have accidentally come to depend on
human settlements. Also, the description of hunter gatherers around a fire,
telling stories and entering a different mental space resonated with me.
I realize it's not the same thing as sitting around
a fireplace, But it seems that bars and restaurants replicate

(12:39):
something of that social experience by turning the lights down
and setting out candles or, in the case of a
sports bar, operating lots of glowing TVs. And indeed, it
may sound funny, but if you didn't listen to the
episodes we did talk about how the TV is essentially
the modern hearth. So, yeah, I mean as personally annoying
as I find a whole bunch of glowing TVs in

(13:01):
a restaurant or bar. Yeah, it could be what they're
doing anyway, Megan continues, if I'm not getting tipsy and
experiencing lowered social inhibitions from drinking, I find that the
ambiance has a similar effect. Thank you as always for
keeping us engaged and entertained.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Thank you, Megan. Yeah, interesting thoughts as to the last
thing about the lowered inhibitions and the different sort of
mental space you get in with different light regimes. That
is something we talked about, springboarding off of thoughts in
an anthropology paper we were looking at. Yeah, that did track,
like how conversation was different in environments that were ruled

(13:36):
by firelight versus daylight versus electric light, and the firelight
conversations were noticeably different, at least within this example of
these one people. And so, yeah, I can definitely see
how the different light conditions can lead us to not
only think differently, but relate to other people differently. And

(13:57):
one thing we hypothesized was like, wonder if lower light
conditions make you less aware of being observed and also
make you less minutely observant of the kind of micro
expressions of other people, and there is something possibly disinhibiting
about that, But that was just kind of a.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Gas Yeah, and I'll had one more thought about multiple
bars and intelligence, multiple multiple TVs in a bar rather,
is that one of the things we talked about is
like the hearth as this centerpiece, this this focal point
that draws in the attention of multiple individuals. And granted,
especially in a restaurant or bar, you could have multiple
focal points because you ultimately may have multiple different sort

(14:37):
of social groups. But I wonder sometimes and with some
seating positions in a bar restaurant, there isn't there's that
it can be a struggle to find a focal point
because everywhere you look there is a tele vision you know,
everywhere you look it's a different or it's the same
football game or pharmaceutical commercial, and then you and it's

(14:58):
also maybe drawing each person at a given table off
in a different direction. There's no like central thing that
they're both vibing on.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
So I'm also not a huge fan of a lot
of TVs in a restaurant or bar. But one thing
I'll say is, even though I don't follow sports, I
prefer sports to the other option, which is when people
have the news on in a restaurant.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
What are you doing?

Speaker 3 (15:22):
We're sitting here like trying to have tacos, and then
up on the screen there's like a body outline or
just like pictures of police cars with the lights on,
Like what, I don't understand that.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah, I'm not a fan of that. I'm also not
a fan of it just being like a net like
open Netflix, like not playing anything but just the Netflix menu.
It's like, fine, okay, if you're gonna play a movie
on Netflix, play a movie on Netflix, or they're you know,
there are four good choices on there these days, so
put one of those on. But yeah, oh well.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
The other option though, is playing old movies, which I
I mean, there are places in Atlanta that are own
for they will project like Santo movies on the wall
or that's yeah, thumbs up, thumbs out to that.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
That's my preference. And I think Netflix has three or
four old movies. Maybe it's not to two. I'm not sure,
but you know, there's still some good stuff they could
be playing. And I do realize that, you know, from
a business standpoint, most of these places do have to
have some televisions. Like it's enough, customers are going to
want that, you're going to need to have the sports.
On that being said, you can overdo it.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
Seems like a reason to revive the old like smoking
non smoking division, except you just have a TV non
TV section of the restaurant.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yeah. Yeah, I would be all up for it or
the other way Santo non santo.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
Right, anyway, thanks again, Megan, great email. Okay, this next
message is the first one for today that's going to
get into our episodes on Pretend Play and Imaginary Friends. Now,

(16:59):
we got a bunch of response to that. We're not
going to be able to cover them all today. I'm
sure that will extend into our next listener Mail episode
whenever that is. But this first message is from Liz.
Liz says, Dear Robert and Joe. I've been enjoying the
recent series on Play, especially this last episode about imaginary friends,
which as a child I called clear people.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Hmmm, oh, I love that.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
I guess I equated imaginary with invisible and invisible with
seathrough several years ago now, I read a short story
called A Day with Cyrus Mayer by Alex Pugsley, where
the child narrator describes, quote the imaginary kid, a character
in my own private mythology who ran along the side
of the highway keeping pace with my family's car on

(17:46):
road trips, and I had this moment of recognition. I
used to imagine my clear people doing that, or sometimes
zipping along power lines on tiptoes to keep up looking
forward to the next episode. Liz, that's amazing, and I
want to come back to that. But Liz has a PS.
Also PS. I've been meaning to write with this weird

(18:07):
house cinema suggestion for years, ever since my mom, now
in her sixties, told me about this bizarre movie she
watched at a sleepover in high school. It seems to
have gone by two different titles. That's I don't know
I'm looking at this, is that seven S's in a
row amazing title or four s's at the beginning snake.

(18:31):
I have no idea how difficult it would be to
stream or get your hands on a copy, but it
sounds nice and weird. Well, thank you so much, Liz, Yeah, great,
great comments throughout. First of all, this is funny because
it's like this is making me question my own memories
of childhood. I don't recall ever really having an imaginary friend,

(18:54):
as I said in the episode. But when you talked
about the imaginary friend running outside along the highway to
keep up with the car or zipping along through the
air to keep up with the car, that that was
like a lightning bolt in my brain. It was like,
I remember that, and yet I don't remember having an
imaginary friends. So I don't know what this is. Maybe

(19:14):
this is just spurring a false memory because of the
vividness of it. But this, yeah, I felt this rumbling
in my in my heart.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, vaguely stirs something in my recollection as well. Maybe
something going on early as we adjust to the weirdness
of writing and high speed vehicles and then we lose
the novelty of it. As as we grow older. Now,
as for yes, this is a this is a pretty

(19:44):
fun movie. There was a MSG three K treatment of
this many years back, and that's the only way I've
ever seen it, but I remember it within that context
is being pretty fun and it's got I think Red
Brown's in it in a supporting role, so it's got
that going for it. Perfect that snake man.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
I've been thinking that at some point we need to
do like a month of Reb Brown, because you know,
we've done themes before. We've done like tiny People movies
back to back, and I think we could do a
Reb Brown theme. I've definitely been wanting to do one
of the non MCU Captain America movies, and one of

(20:23):
them stars Reb Brown.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
There's another.

Speaker 3 (20:25):
Then there's the other one directed by Albert Payune in
like nineteen ninety or whatever. I've seen the latter, not
the former, but I want to talk about them both.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, they're a number of Reb I don't we haven't
done a Reb Brown film, have we. I don't recall.
I think he's just come up in Connections. But yeah,
I mean so many strong, strong film choices there, including
of course Space Mutiny, You're the Hunter, from the Future.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
That's right, We've never covered it on the show, but
I know I've talked about Your Hunter from the Future
many times. I think it is my favorite leather diaper
barbarian movie. So it's got all the barbarian tropes. It's
got him in the in the you know, speed out
in the leather speedo killing dinosaurs with a sword. But
it also is Star Wars. The villain of Your Hunter

(21:11):
from the Future is Darth Vader.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
Well, you know is actually Red Brown's cinematic debut. Yeah,
seventy three amazing.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah, well I have to Okay, we're gonna watch it.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Then.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
I've never seen the MST so I'll be coming and clean.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yeah, I vague clear, ma, I just remember the creature mostly.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
All right, Rob, you want to read one of these
next messages on Pretend to Play. I think we got
a couple more here.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, here's one from David. David rides in and says,
dear Robin, Joe, I was listening with interest to your
episodes on Pretend Play. I am currently through part two.
My kids are now young adults at college or working,
but my recollection of their Pretend Play. My older son
had a plushy that he would often have dance around.
My younger son usually didn't engage in the type of
play that involved imaginary characters. During yourcussion of object substitution

(22:01):
play and fully pretend play, I remember it as type
of play storytelling we would do. That sort of fell
between the two. Since the two of you have kids,
I suspect you were aware of the Richard scary books.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
Oh, yes, yeah, we have a number of those. We
have one that's very popular. I think it's called Look
What's Coming down the Road in Busy Town, and it's
an alphabet book about different types of cars coming down
the road. So there's an apple mobile and a banana mobile.
Most of them are not real types of cars, but
some are. I think at this firetruck.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
Yeah, the apple mobile's driven by worm, I believe. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
And there's like a xylophone mobile.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
Preposterous. Well, they continue For those who don't know, these
are mostly picture books filled with complex scenes, usually of
everyday life, such as shopping at a grocery store, workers
at a construction site, or driving on the freeway, but
with anthromorphized animals rabbits, bears, dogs instead of people. There
would be a sentence or two of story for ea scene,
but also most of the things in a scene would

(23:03):
be labeled the common noun in courier font below the
object in the picture. A favorite bedtime activity was, instead
of simply my reading them the story in the book,
to make up a story about the various characters in
the book, but using the scenes or objects shown in
the book. For example, I might ask where the animals
are going to go today, and one would say the

(23:24):
grocery store. So I would start by turning to a
page showing the cross section of a house, point to
an animal, say a dog shown sweeping in a bed,
and tell a story about dog getting out of bed,
taking a shower, going downstairs to have breakfast. Then I
turned to another page that had a picture of another animal,
say a rabbit driving a car, and I'd say something like,
here's dog's friend, rabbit. He's a teenager, so he can

(23:45):
drive a car, and then describe rabbit driving the car
up to dog's house and dog getting in the car.
Then I might ask a question for them to help
form the story, like do they need to take the
freeway to get to the grocery store? And if yes,
I turned to the picture of the freeway and talk
about them driving and some of the crazy things they'd see.
I am interested in your reaction and thoughts here. It

(24:07):
is sort of like your toy lightsaber example, and that
there is a particular image of a thing, say the dog,
that is part of the story, but then the activities
in the story need to be imagined more like the
fully pretend play. And as an even broader issue, did
you come across any discussion in your research about the
relationship of storytelling to theory of mine. I suspect that

(24:28):
listening to stories, hearing descriptions of other characters making decisions
based on their own emotions and own mental states would
help children develop a theory of mine. Thanks for the
great podcast and infotainment, David.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
Well, thanks for the message, David. In response to your
later question about whether there's a link between storytelling and
theory of mind, we did talk about that sum in
at least one of the episodes in the series. I
don't know if it was one of the ones you
hadn't heard yet, but my memory of this issue is
that essentially, yes, it does look based on so results

(25:00):
like there could be a link there, but the evidence
is sort of weak. So it's one of those things that, yeah,
it's quite possible there's a link, but we shouldn't have
super high confidence about that. I recall one of the
things was just like a study actually not in children,
but in adults that tried to see if there was
any link between reading fiction and then better theory of

(25:24):
mind skills and adults. And this study found that they
at least thought that there was.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah, yeah, but at any rate, I love this creative
storytelling exercise of you using the Richard Scary books or
anything like them to sort of come up with these
little stories and decide what's happening. I recently granted this
is my child is twelve going on thirteen now, But

(25:50):
during the recent snow we busted out another one of
these puzzles by the Magic Puzzle Company. You can look
them up in the Magic Puzzle Company, and they have
these one wonderful puzzles that are just so it's custom
art work for the puzzle. It's not like some other
piece of work that's been adapted to the puzzle. So
they put a lot of effort into making sure that

(26:12):
almost every piece has something interesting going on to it.
Little pieces have cute little characters or mysterious little characters. Overall,
very cute, very imaginative vibe, think like adventure time, that
sort of thing, And they're a real joy to put
together because everything seems to have a story, there's a
big reveal that happens, and so you spend a lot

(26:33):
of time with your family, friends, or fellow puzzlers whoever
they happen to be not only piecing together the physical
jigsaw puzzle, but also piecing together whatever kind of magical
narrative seems to be happening. Who what are the factions here,
what are they trying to do? Who is this guy?
Who is this other guy? And so forth. So that

(26:54):
experience reminds me a little bit about what you're talking
about here. Well.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah, and also, David, I can say that we do
a similar thing in our household. I don't think we
get quite as elaborate with the you know, the the
jumping off storytelling as you're describing here, at least not yet.
But we do a lot of embellishing as we read books.
So when I read a book to my daughter, I
will ask her questions about things that are not contained

(27:19):
in the story of the book. Is just like, oh,
are these two characters friends? What do they do together?
You know that kind of thing, And she does like
to embellish on that sort of thing usually, you know,
what do they do together?

Speaker 2 (27:31):
They play? What do they play? Dinosaurs? All right, what
do we have next here? Oh, let's see.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
We got a message about pretend to play from frequent
correspondent Renata. Renata says, Hi, guys, the topic of play,
and particularly imaginative play, is near and dear to my heart.
I could listen to ten stuff to blow your mind
episodes on this topic and write you ten letters, but

(27:59):
I'll try to keep it brief for now. First of all,
I had a bee friend. Oh yeah, Rob, we talked
about be friends. Ranada's befriend, She says. His name was Buzz. Basically,
any rotund, bumblebee I found hanging on the side of
the house was Buzz. I don't remember having in depth
conversations with Buzz, but I acted as though he was

(28:21):
a single bee who remembered me and was my friend.
I also had a friend who was a ghost named Boo.
I was not very creative with naming my imaginary friends.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
Apparently.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
I am the youngest of four and fairly sure. I'm
the only one who had any imaginary friends. Incidentally, my father,
in his sixties befriended a mouse he named Kluegie. My
dad insists he was friends with this mouse for seven
years and that he knew it was the same mouse
because of a kink in its tail for a period
of a couple of years. During this time, Kloogie did

(28:55):
live in a cage but got loose often. I think
that this gets at the blurriness you touched on concerning
the subtle difference between a pet and an imaginary friend.
In college, I spent a semester working with Pascal Boyer,
who is well known for his work in the anthropology
of religion, but at the time he was exploring children's
beliefs about what objects can have sentients and how that

(29:19):
relates to theory of mind. For example, why is the
idea of a sentient helicopter perfectly acceptable to children? What
can the sentient helicopter know and do that regular helicopters can't, And,
as you bring up in the episode, how close do
these pretend sentient objects come to being gods or spiritual beings?

(29:40):
A related topic I like to ponder is why do
children today love dinosaurs and vehicles like trucks and helicopters?
Are they somehow easier to personify than other objects and animals?
Before it was dinosaurs and trucks, What were kids obsessed with. Finally,
I'm wondering, if you're going to touch on pro wrestle,

(30:00):
maybe you still will. Ben has gotten me into wrestling,
which we see in Milwaukee a couple of times a year,
and we saw in Japan last summer. I find that
being at a wrestling event is one of the few
times as an adult that comes close to that feeling
of pretend play from childhood. You brought up other types
of adult play like theater and sports, and wrestling is

(30:20):
definitely those things, but it's also an invitation to the
audience to play and participate in the pretend That feels unique.
My new favorite wrestler is Dan the Dad. His persona
is he is your dad. Yes, it gets weird, but
he probably got the most enthusiasm from the crowd at
the last event we went to because he's a relatable character.

(30:41):
You know, he's the good guy. No one wants to
see their dad get punched anyway. Excited for the remainder
of the pretend play episodes, and I couldn't wait to
write in all the best renata m Rob, you're the
one with the wrestling knowledge.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
I don't know Dan the dad, but I'm vaguely aware. Yeah,
I've never seen them perform, but yeah, there are a
lot of kookie characters like this, especially in the ndie scene.
And yeah, I mean you deal with something like wrestling,
you're dealing with that, you know, that willing suspension of disbelief,

(31:17):
which you know is obviously there in other mediums as well.
It's certainly there in film, for example. But uh, yeah,
I guess there is something about like the live wrestling
experience where the crowd is participating to a certain degree,
they are engaged in the k fabe reality. So yeah,

(31:39):
that's probably worth thinking about. It does have its own
sort of unique flavor that doesn't compare one to one
with anything else out there. I mean, that's why it's
so popular and it remains popular, and I think that's
also why you do find plenty of examples of it
sucking new people in. Like it's it's not just this
niche thing that you have to have grown up up

(32:00):
on it and be primed you know, I have no
numerous people who take in a show when they go
to say Mexico City, or they go to Tokyo or
somewhere else in Japan, and you know, they have the
opportunity to go to a live show and it's a
lot of fun. So yeah, live pro wrestling is can
be pretty neat, so you know, shop around, but try

(32:23):
one out if you're interested.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
I think a lot of people who are not into
it and then first sort of discover it as adults
are surprised to find how much drama there is in it,
like comedy and drama. Like they think of it primarily
just as the wrestling, the physical activity, you know, the
moves and the flips and all that, and don't realize
how much talking there is, and you know.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
That it's like a soap opera.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
There are these relationships and sort of hyping and talking
up matches and establishing conflicts and that a lot of
it is very funny.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Yeah, yeah, honestly some of the I haven't done tons
of live but of the shows I've been to, the
most fun I've found. The matches have all been like
lower card matches, so not you know, it's not some
sort of like a main storyline, not a not any
kind of like a championship match, not even like you know,
the top performers in a given promotion. But they're just

(33:17):
putting on a fun match. They're engaging with the crowd
to a certain degree. They're throwing in some humor and
some stupid slapstick. And really those are the matches that
I've enjoyed the most, far more than any of the
main events.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
Yeah, the lower card matches. Again, I don't have as
much wrestling experience as you, but they seem to me
often more like this is when you bring out the
zany characters, like the you know, the equivalent the wrestling
equivalent of the character in a Coen Brothers movie who
has six lines, but as hilarious and you remember them exactly.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
All right, here's another and this one is in response
to our episodes on Sacred Trees. This was another one
of our series in the latter half of the previous year.
This one comes to us from Rodri. Rodri writes in
and says, Hi, Robert, Joe, and JJ I've been a
listener since the stuff from the Science Lab days. That
was the original title of this podcast. This podcast feed

(34:21):
back in the very early days, back when you really
had to describe and explain what a podcast was to
everyone you knew they continue, but I've never had a
good enough reason to contribute to listener mail. That all
changed when I heard the episodes on Sacred Trees and
especially in light of Robert Trees and exploits in Wales.
I live in Swansea in South Wales and grew up here.

(34:44):
When we were kids, our dad often took my brother
and I to visit all kinds of natural and historical
places in South and West Wales. One of these places
of interest was a small eleventh century church in the
village of Nevern. Never In is situated in the west
of Whales, in an area rich in historical and natural wonders.
Apart from the castles and dramatic landscapes, it is near

(35:06):
to the site where the famous bluestones of Stonehenge were quarried.
It is still something of a mystery how the two
to five ton stone pillars were transported five thousand years
ago the one hundred and eighty miles from the Priscilli
Hills to Stonehenge. The reason he took us there was
to see the bleeding yew tree in Saint Brannock's Church.
The tree is one of four gnarled and ancient ewes

(35:29):
lining the path to the church, each said to be
seven hundred years old. The blood oozes from the sight
of an amputated limb a dark red sap that leaves
vivid streaks down the trunk. You wood is red, but
the sap is usually white. So there has been no
satisfactory explanation for the phenomenon. It has of corresponded many legends.

(35:50):
The most popular reason is that the tree started bleeding
in sympathy for Jesus as he was crucified. Sounds likely.
I think that's probably it. Continue. The church itself has
many other historic features, several inscriptions written within the church
written in Augham, the ancient Celtic writing system, and a
large stone cross decorated with intricate Celtic not designs. But

(36:13):
as the Never and Castle website laments quote, the church
has become a favorite on the tourist trail in West Wales.
The numbers signing the visitor's book would suggest about fifteen
thousand a year. Unfortunately, their interest is drawn to the
so called bleeding you more than the Christian heritage and
relevance of the place. They're mad. Yeah, I mean, I

(36:37):
accept any blame that may be appropriate for being a
tourist in Wales, though I don't think I know we
did not get to see the bleeding YOUW tree. I
would have probably gone for it. Sorry. You trees are
commonly found in graveyards throughout the UK, Ireland and parts
of Europe, and the folklore surrounding the species is fascinating,
worthy of another episode in the Sacred Tree series. If

(36:57):
I may be so bold, you was doxically symbolic of
good and bad luck, of death or eternal life. The
U is one of Ireland's five magical trees, and there
are many suggestions why they are so often found in cemeteries.
Norman churches were often located near the sites of older
sacred temples, and the U was imported to Druids, who

(37:18):
viewed it as an emblem of the soul's immortality. It
has been proposed that because you would was used to
make long bows, planting them could provide a supply to
protect the church and surrounding areas. Another idea is that
they were grown to discourage local farmers grazing their livestock
in the church grounds. According to Britain's Best Guides dot

(37:40):
Org quote, there have been many practical reasons for planting
ewes near to dead bodies. U seeds, needles, and bark
carry an alkaloid poison called taxine that would kill cattle
that graze on them. According to one study, a dose
of one hundred grams of chopped leaves could kill an adult.
That's a fine reason to keep cattle out of graveyards,

(38:00):
helping to preserve the ground and the bodies beneath. Some
people even believe that the ues produced these poisons from
the vapors escaping from the graves. The toxicity was well known.
The witches in Shakespeare's Metbeth concoct a poisonous brew, including
slips of U silvered in the moon's eclipse. Really, rodri

(38:20):
here has done our research for us here. There's some
more material there sighting here. In her book The Folklore
of Plants, Margaret Baker says, quote, Finnman believed that witches
sheltered under ues, and sensible people should avoid them. In Brittany,
a churchyard, U spread a root to the mouth of
every corpse buried there sprigs of you hang from Spanish

(38:42):
balconies against lightning and hebridine thatch against fire over the
kneading trough Easter gathered you prevents heavy bread. Hmm, hey,
don't want that heavy bread. How Marie Trevelyan wrote in
Folklore and Folk Stories of Whales in nineteen oh nine, quote,
the U was regarded as the gentle guardian of the

(39:02):
dead and was formally revered so much in Wales that
to cut it down was considered an act of desecration,
while to burn any part of it was looked upon
as sacrilege. I could go on, but I'm in danger
of getting lost down this rabbit hole forever, so I'll
leave it there. Cheers Rodri.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
Well, thank you so much, Rodri. Amazing message and full
of interesting folklore there.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
Actually I remember looking a bit at the U tree
when we were doing the Sacred Trees episode, but didn't
end up selecting that as my main research focus.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
But we could absolutely come back to that, absolutely. Yeah,
I too glanced at some of the sources on the you.
Some of the sources I was looking at regarding the
trees we did cover like they also discussed the U.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
Yeah, so yeah, all right, this next message comes to
us from Jeff. This is in response to a few
different things. One is our Christmas is an episode on
Christmas Trees in the Deep in which we talked about
the biology of various undersea organisms like certain tube worms

(40:07):
and seaweed which resemble or are named after Christmas decorations.
This one also touches on rock and roll, wolf and
other subjects. Jeff says subject line Easter eggs and Troubled Kids.
Hey guys, just catching up on the holiday episodes. Your
episode on Sunken Christmas Trees reminded me of something I
saw regarding the harvesting of herring eggs in Sitka Sound

(40:31):
in Alaska, although this is done closer to Easter than Christmas.
When the herring spawn in the springtime, the locals will
submerge stuff such as kelp tree branches and sometimes entire
trees in the sound. The herring eggs will stick to
anything in the water, and when they're pulled up, they
look like they've been tinseled or maybe timpurud. With glistening

(40:53):
fish eggs. They look absolutely delicious and are considered quite
the treat. Although I suppose it's also possible that it's
a super fishy acquired taste situation.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
I hope to find out someday.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
And then Rabbi looked up an image of this and
included it here in the outline. So this is somebody
who has submerged some tree branches, look like some spruce branches,
into the water and pulled them up. I perfectly described
to Jeff. They looked tempora battered and fried.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
They really did look delicious.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
Making me hungry right now, crunchy. Then Jeff goes on
even more tangentially. In the Weird House episode on Rock
and Roll Wolf, you discussed the fairy tale of the
Wolf and the Seven Kids. This is the fairy tale
that that movie was loosely based on. Jeff says, I
don't think this one is very popular in America, and
I certainly never heard of it when I was a kid.

(41:44):
It's interesting how some oji Esop's fables and grim tails
resonate in some cultures but not others. Now, Jeff has
some other great stuff in this message, but I'm gonna
skip over it because it contained some spoilers for a
Japanese novel. The novel is called The Lonely Castle in
the Mirror by an author named Mizuki Sujimura, and apparently

(42:05):
there's also an anime film adaptation of this novel. I'm
not familiar at all, but it sounds very interesting based
on Jeff's description, and apparently the fairy tale The Wolf
and Seven Goats plays a role in.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
The plot of this story.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
But Jeff wraps up by saying, anyway, that was quite
the digression. But what I really meant to say was
thanks for all the mental stimulation you gift us with
every week looking forward to a new year of stuff. Jeff,
thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Jeff. Yeah, awesome. I had to look up this manga
and film adaptation. I'm not familiar with these, but I'll
have to put it on the list. There's so many,
so much great Japanese media that I still need to
get to. I'm constantly adding new things. I just watched
Cats on Park Avenue, though, so I'm one ahead on

(42:53):
all the great Japanese classics, especially in terms of cat
based musicals. I'm gonna have to check that one out.
It's very sweet. If you want a what an eighties
musical that's all about street cats, It's it's really the
only film for you. Perfect all right, Let's go ahead
and skip on to some Weird House cinema listener mail.

(43:15):
This one comes to us from Stephen. Steven says, Hey,
Joe and Robert, I have to say your episode's on
Weird House are so in depth, colorful, thorough and engaging
that I often don't feel a need to go watch
the movies you discuss. Well, I don't know. It feels
like it's kind of a failure on our part. Then wait,
is it? You can watch them if you want to,

(43:37):
not if you don't, But I don't want to make it.
You know, the situation where people like I don't need
to watch that now because they watched it for me.
I guess it's fine, But anyway, Stephen says, this is
because your journey through the movies is an artful form
of entertainment all on its own. I sometimes think watching
the film would be a disappointment after the movie that's

(43:57):
played in my head listening to you guys discussing it.
Thank you, Steven, You're very kind. I guess I can imagine.
It does remind me, for instance, of the example of
growing up hearing other kids talk about horror movies that
I hadn't seen. And you know what I ended up
in my building, up in my head was far more
frightening than anything that was actually in most of these films.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah, yeah, that's true. I think we've discussed that before.
You know, one thing I will say, playing off of
Stephen's comment here, is that I think that how good
our weird house cinema episodes are is not necessarily related
to how good the movie is. You know, Like I
feel like some of my favorite episodes that we've done
have been about some of the Duller movies that we've covered.

(44:44):
Sometimes they just are fun to talk about.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah yeah, I mean, in a great movie, it might
make for a really fun episode and that we really
get to gush about it, or maybe it has really
interesting connections, or there's some sort of social commentary going on.
It's a lot of fun to discuss. But I don't know,
there are plenty of films and great weird films that
we haven't covered in part because it's like, well it's great,
we talk about how great it is. But I don't know,

(45:09):
you have to find the right balance.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
I mean, I don't mean to suggest the inverse either.
I don't think the worse a movie is the better
an episode.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
It makes.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
It just feels like is kind of unrelated to the
quality of the film.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
Yeah, yeah, I agree, all right, Steven continues says, Anyway,
I have to recommend a movie for you. I'm not
sure it's up to snuff for an episode, but I
do think it's so outlandish, derivative and not quite brilliant
that I have to at least tell you about it.
It's called Revenge of the Radioactive Reporter nineteen ninety. I
watched it almost the whole way through, and every couple

(45:42):
of minutes some action or line of dialogue was so
stupid that I was surprised constantly and even laughed a
fair amount, probably an uncomfortable laugh, but laughter. Nonetheless, I'd
caught it for free last year in English on YouTube,
but I think it's been removed. I hope you can
find a decent copy of it, queue it up for someone,
and enjoy the odd rid it offers. Thanks for so

(46:04):
many years of high quality edutainment on your show. Whenever
someone asked me what podcast I listened to, Yours is
the first I mentioned, Stephen, Are you not edutained? Well,
I have never heard of this film. I'm looking at
it now, and I recognize no one involved in it,
so I am intrigued on that alone. Yeah, from the

(46:27):
director of nothing else that I've seen.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Thank you for the recommendation, Stephen. We'll have to give
it a look. Oh, here's a very brief message from
a different Stephen.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Stephen All.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
The message says is I recently watched Dracula's Dog aka
Zoltan colon hound of Dracula and feel it would be
right up your guys, Ali, your guys Ali. And then
Stephen this difference even just attaches a poster where we
get Dracula's dog and kind of the oh, is that

(47:07):
a calligraphy font or is that in frocture perhaps you know,
it's something that looks like pen strokes. And then we
get Dracula standing in a big ball of fire and
he's got his arms outstretched and a head of a
Doberman or something like that in the foreground, with pure
white eyes and fangs.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
The the tagline is there's more to the legend than
meets the throat.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
Very clever.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
This has come up on the show several times. We
keep getting connections to Dracula's Dog.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
How do we get there? I don't remember the exact connections,
but yeah, it's come up a number of times. I
think I falsely referred to it as Zoltan Colon Dracula's
actual dog once, so that that alternative titles stuck in
my head. It's just such a ridiculous concept, and I
am intrigued. I love I love the Dracula adaptation, but

(47:59):
I really love of Dracula adaptations that are multiple steps
removed from the source material.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
It's absurd, but it's also a logical progression because you
get right of Frankenstein, then you get son of Frankenstein,
daughter of Dracula. You kind of exhaust all of the
immediate family relations there, and so what's next. Are you
gonna go uncle of Dracula, No, you go Dracula's dog.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Plus, it also seems like it's maybe a crossover situation
here with this film, because it is definitely a vampire film,
but it's also like a nineteen seventies doberman'sploitation picture, you know,
I feel like there were a lot of scary Doberman's
going on in nineteen seventies motion pictures. I guess I'm
thinking mostly like the Boys from Brazil, but there are

(48:43):
multiple other examples that I feel like some chase James
Bond a little later in the nineteen eighties, but.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
In Moonrakers Drags You'd played by Michael Lonsdale.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
He's got a couple of killer dogs that in that.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
I watched a lot of James Bond movies when I
was a kid. I don't know if that was a
good influencer not probably not. But one thing I really
remember being scary was that there's like a lady in
moon Breaker who the villain just like sicks his dogs
on to kill her.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
It was horrifying. Yeah, Like growing up watching that and
various other seventies pictures prepared me for the idea that
Doberman's were scary monsters. And then when I think it
was when I first started seeing my future wife, her
parents had I just completely terrifying Doberman to be clear,

(49:31):
Like I think, you know a Doberman that had been
through a lot before it was adopted, you know, but
more afraid of people than I was of it. But
I was pretty afraid of it because I found this
Doberman rather terrifying, and it seemed to back up everything
that these films taught me. To believe about them. That
doberman eventually died and they got a new Doberman who

(49:52):
was very sweet, So that changed. That helped soothe my
understanding of the breed. Dracula's dog. However, Zultan does look
like a complete nightmare. This is a bad dog. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:05):
Does it not matter if you hold out your hand
to let him sniff you first, all the etiquette fails.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
Yeah, don't invite him in. Oh here's another one, another
weird house when this one comes from Dick subject, didn't
everyone's ancestors come over on the sandwich? There? Am I
missing something? Kudos on your excellent episode on Innerspace. I

(50:32):
never thought of it as a weird house type film,
but there it was. Ride in plain sight this whole
time special thanks to David Streepy. Great job. Yeah, this
was a weird house episode where David Streepy friend and
fellow podcasts who joined me on the show to discuss
let him pick out a film. He picked Innerspace and yeah, Interspace,
whatever your memories of it are, it's a pretty weird film.

(50:54):
It's pretty bonkers and has a one of the stranger
love trying I think ever committed to cinema.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
Is that the shrink and go inside a body movie
that's intentionally funny, or the one that's not intentionally fun.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
Oh, it's it's intentionally funny. It's Joe Dante, so it
does you know, it certainly doesn't reach Grimlins two heights
of hilarity, but it goes for it. It's it's pretty
bonkers and just keeps laying, adding layer upon layer of bonkers.
And the reference didn't Everyone's ancestors come over on the
sandwich that's from Futurama. We were talking about how we

(51:32):
haven't really had a shrink movie in a while with
miniaturization and then insert into the human body, but over
in previous decades, and I guess this is several decades
back now. With a Futurama example, you did have that
episode where Fry gets intestinal worms from eating a sandwich
that he buys out of a I believe a bathroom
condom machine, and he gets the worms. The worms make

(51:55):
him super intelligent, and his friends have to go in
and like take out the warm colony.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
Sorry, I was just trying to think of the name
of this other movie. The other shrink can go inside
a body in a submarine movie. Is it Fantastic Voyage that's.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Got rockel welch. Yes, Yeah, Fantastic Voyage is the big one,
and that's the granddaddy of all miniaturization films. I was
a huge fan of that one growing up. I read
Isaac Asimov's novelization. Yeah, I mean that without Fantastic Voyage
you wouldn't have things like Innerspace obviously, but I haven't

(52:30):
seen nineteen sixty six. Is Fantastic Voyage in quite a while?
Probably merits a revision. Donald Pleasance is in it. That's right,
all right. Well, on that note, we're gonna ahead wrap
up this episode of Stuff to Will Your Mind. Listener mail,
We'll be back with a new core episode this Thursday.
I think it'll I think you'll find it to be

(52:51):
a sweet selection. In the meantime, feel free to write
in with other thoughts on any of the episodes we
talked about here, any of the topics we talked about
here past episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Weird House, Artifact,
Monster Fact, It's all fair game, as well as recommendations
or suggestions for future episodes films for Weird House. All

(53:12):
of it is fair game. Let's see a few links
to throw out. We're on Instagram, STBYM Podcasts. You can
find us there. You can find us on multiple social
media accounts. We haven't added any new ones. I know
there's a lot of energy out there to sign up
for new things. I don't know that I have that
energy to sign up for new things, but the accounts

(53:33):
that exist are being updated. For Weird House Cinema, we
are on letterboxed. You can find us there. Our username
is weird House and that's a cool way to keep
up with what we're doing on the Weird House Cinema episodes.
We have an ongoing list of all the movies we've
covered over the years, as well as sometimes a peek
ahead at what's coming up next.

Speaker 3 (53:52):
Oh hey, and can we add While we're talking about
following accounts, it's a great thing to just subscribe to
our feed and get all the episodes right in your
podcast app if obviously, if you don't want to, you
don't have to. But if you're an a la cart
listener and you like the show you want to help
us out, A good thing you could do would just
be subscribe. Make sure you're always getting new episodes when
they when they publish.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
That's right. That's ultimately more important than all the social
media nonsense.

Speaker 3 (54:15):
Yes, huge, Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer
JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest 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 (54:38):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.