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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. A
listener mail This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe mccormay.
Can it's a Monday, the day of each week that
we read back some messages from the mail bag. If
you are a listener to Stuff to Blow your Mind
and you have never gotten in touch with us before

(00:24):
by email, why not give it a shot. You can
write us at contact at stuff to blow your Mind
dot com. All sorts of messages are fair game. Of course,
feedback on existing episodes, that's always welcome. If you've got
anything interesting to add to what we said, or if
you've got corrections or just additional thoughts, any of that,
send it our way. Also, if you want to suggest

(00:45):
topics for future episodes, that's always welcome. If you just
want to share something that you've thought of that's interesting
that you think we might be interested into, that's fair
game as well. Just send it all. Yeah, I mean,
there are whole episodes in the past from a lot
of listeners, and certain episodes generate a lot of comments,
but they're there episodes in the vault that have never

(01:06):
generated commentary from listeners before, so you could be the
first go back, find something interesting, rite in about it. Well,
we'll chat about it all right, let's see, Rob, do
you want to read this next message from Josh. Sure, Well,
let's see before this one a little introduction. This is
related to a digression in our episodes on Fear of

(01:27):
the Void about how some people need to apparently withdraw
to a relative vacuum, to a kind of void like
environment to focus on creative work. And there there are
different versions of this, you know, some people might have
like a featureless office with an empty desk and nothing
but their typewriter or computer, or like a retreat to

(01:48):
a place that's relatively free of distractions and so forth.
And of course some people are exactly the opposite and
want to surround themselves with stimulating imagery while they're while
they're working. But Josh got into touch about that. Digressions
as high Joe, Robert and JJ I found your reference

(02:09):
to vacuums for art creation interesting, as I had not
thought about why certain circumstances are so helpful for different
types of art, especially with writing. Quiet allows my brain
to fully develop an idea without interruption and for a
story follow a cogent path without being pulled aside by
unwanted inputs. With writing, I basically need the vacuum of silence,

(02:30):
whereas withdrawing and sculpture, I prefer music as it interferes
with my speech center, providing a different kind of vacuum.
Although since I live in the Netherlands and speak less
than perfect Dutch, following stranger's conversations requires effort, so I
am able to tune people out. Making public transit, whether bus,
metro or train a comfortable English vacuum for writing. It

(02:51):
also helps that on public transit. The most important vacuum
I experience is that since I am professionally a carpenter,
I have an inability to do any work household chores,
providing a guilt vacuum. Thanks for the great four partner,
Josh Oh, several interesting things there, Josh, Yes, I definitely
agree with you there about the I don't know if
I would have used the word guilt, but yeah, what

(03:13):
you call guilt vacuum or a responsibility vacuum. Sometimes it
can be helpful to like go to a different place
to get one type of work done because you are
simply unable in that place to get done the other
things that you currently have to get done, so it
like forces you to focus. Yeah, yeah, I always I
used to back in the day when I took the

(03:34):
train every day, I always like that about the train.
It's like, oh, I can I can read on the train,
but you know it's going to go underground and then
I'm not gonna be able to connect on my phone
and worry about anything else. Or at least that used
to be the way it was. I guess now they
have wireless in all the tunnels so that people can
can just stress out NonStop. But time wise, when I

(03:54):
could pull out a book and felt like, well, I
have free range to just sit here and enjoy this
book right now. So I think we've heard from quite
a few listeners who tell us that they put us
on while they're doing like a visual arts drawing or
painting or sculpture. Yeah, it's true. We've heard from a
lot of a lot of artists. We don't hear from
a lot of writers who are like, yes, I want

(04:15):
to hear you guys chatter while I try and write dialogue.
I think that would be a problem. Yeah, maybe, unless
you don't speak English. Maybe then it'd be just the thing.
I guess. I don't know that our voices are that beautiful,
just in and out themselves. But all right, what else
do we have here? Joe? Oh, we've got one message
hearkening all the way back to our series on animal

(04:37):
throwing behavior non human animals throwing objects. This is from
ian Ian, says dear Rob and Joe. In listening to
your episodes on animals throwing things and the accompanying listener responses,
I was struck by a pattern. Most of your examples
of mammals throwing things, and all of the listener males,

(05:01):
at least that I've heard so far, involve the mammals
hiking the object backwards between their legs, rather than tossing
it up, as might seem more natural to a human.
The reason this stood out to me is that my
grandparents had a dog that, when she wanted to play
fetch and no one would accommodate her, would grab her
tennis ball in her teeth by the fuzz and then

(05:23):
toss her head up and back, causing the ball to
fly up over her back and behind her. She would
then proceed to chase after it, as in a normal
game of fetch and repeat the procedure until she got
tired or someone took pity on her and threw it
for her. She had pretty good range too, the ball
often traveling ten feet or so before hitting the ground,

(05:44):
and of course it would bounce and roll farther than that.
At the time, I just thought it was funny that
she would play fetch with herself. I didn't realize the
mechanics of her throwing method were apparently so rare among
quadrupedal mammals in a similar vein. As well as similar
to the listener who said their dog would drop their
puzzle feeder down the stairs, my father in law had

(06:06):
a dog who would take her tennis ball to the
top of the basement stairs, use her nose to gently
bump it over the edge, watch it rolled to the bottom,
then run down to retrieve it so she could do
it again, just like my grandparents dog. She would keep
doing this until she got tired or someone started an
actual game of fetch. Another thing that stood out to

(06:26):
me is that, unlike Joe's story about his dog throwing
its puzzle feeder or the listener whose dog would drop
theirs down the stairs, Neither of the dogs I've encountered
doing these things seem to be getting any tangible reward
beyond just playing, though of course fun can be a
powerful motivator. Anyway, just wanted to share those anecdotes as
I thought they had both interesting similarities and differences to

(06:49):
some of the other things you discussed. As other listeners
have said, I love the way you can take something
seemingly mundane and make it so interesting. Thanks for all
you do in well, thank you. I uh yet that
is interesting. Um. Another one of the distinctions I remember
making in these episodes was that it seemed almost all
of the non human throwing behavior we found, with a

(07:12):
few exceptions, uh you know, the ones in primates who
do targeted throwing, and possibly the examples and cephalopods and
so forth, most of the non human animal throwing behavior
seemed designed to have an effect on the projectile itself,
rather than designed to use a projectile to have an
effect on the target. So, for example, the the oh, no,

(07:36):
I forget which animal it was, there was some small
mammal that would throw millipedes in order to damage their
their armor plates. Was it a type of mongoose or something? Yeah,
And I think the dog in your example would still
fit into that category because the purpose of the throwing
is to do something to the ball, in this case,

(07:56):
to make the ball go far away so that it
can be retreat for fun, rather than to hit something
and cause an effect to the thing you're hitting. Yeah,
And you know, we just recently finished up recording our
series on gray whales and orcas. Orcas, I don't I
don't remember we mentioned them at all in our episodes
of the animals throwing things, but there are flots of

(08:18):
documented behavior, particular particularly from the bigs killer whales, of
throwing seals around, Yeah, which I think is fascinating behavior
because it's not it's not necessary for the killing of
the prey, especially with the seal, that they can make
short work of it once they have it, and at
times it's like gets really impressive. I've seen images where

(08:40):
it looks like they're they're using their mouth to sort
of throw the seal about. But then there's the one
video on the internet with someone captured footage of one
appearing to sort of like punt it a seal carcass
with its with its with its tail and make it
fly like something like eighty feet in the air. It's
quite impressive and hard to hard to think about in

(09:01):
terms of anything other than some sort of a play
type of feature. You know. I'm to understand it. Sometimes
the animals they play with they're not even necessarily things
they're going to well eat in their entirety, which they
often don't do. But also sometimes it's not something they're eating,
it's just they're seemingly playing with it. That's very strange.
I do recall when we were reading up for these

(09:23):
episodes that marine mammals were featured. I guess we just
didn't get into them in the series, but maybe we
could come back to that. I wonder, yeah, why that
would be. I think there's one theory about the loosening
skin that may then subsequently be ripped off of the animal,
but I haven't looked into it intremendous detail yet. That's grizzly.

(09:46):
That's it's a grizzly world out there for the organ
that's true. But once again, this would be something where
if it's not for fun, the imagine the purpose of
it is to do something to the projectile, not to
like hit something with it, right right, Yeah, Yeah, they're
not trying to like they're not trying to throw a
seal at a whale or something to that effect. Yeah,

(10:15):
all right, you know, turning to the world of Discord,
we do have a Discord page, and if you want
to access a Discord page, shoot us an email. We'll
send you the link. That's the best way to join it.
And it kind of keep seems to thus far keep
the Discord from being flooded. You know, it's kind of
a smaller community there, but we don't have just a
bunch of random folks there either. We have I'm gonna

(10:35):
just read. We'll start with let's sort of go through these.
First one here comes from Fletch. Fletch says, the discussion
of the Norse view of the heart. This was our
Valentine's Day episode or episodes. Reminded me of the novels
of Joe Ambercrombie where one character is advised, you must
make of your heart a stone, and that becomes something
of a mantra for her. Okay, so this is connecting

(10:57):
to those texts from ancient nor culture or I don't
know how ancient, but at least pre modern Norse culture,
with the idea that like the heart sort of is
the seed of kindness and positive emotion and caring and stuff.
And for that reason, your heart must be shriveled and
small to allow you the appropriate level of cruelty needed

(11:20):
to be an effective warrior. Yeah, it's a very grim
dark warrior ethos, So it makes sense that it might
be in a Joe Ambercrombie novel. I've not read any
Joe Ambercrombie, but I've read authors that are sort of
Joe Ambercrombie adjacent. I know nothing of Joe Abercrombie. It's
it's like dark fantasy or grim dark fantasy, depending on

(11:41):
how you want to describe it. I guess that's what
I've always heard. All right, let's see I should read
something from Discord here. Well, we got one message from
is this dricks? I guess this way? I read it
in my head? Okay, Drix says. In terms of helping

(12:01):
the show, it was mentioned a few times to download
the latest episodes even if you don't listen right away.
I never actually download episodes, but stream them the same
day or next Should I also be downloading them? Okay?
I apologize if we created any confusion on this. Okay,
So here's what we were told by our people here.
I can't speak to this directly. This is how it

(12:22):
was explained to us. There are some platforms. Apple Podcasts
specifically was mentioned where some people had it set to
download all our new episodes automatically, so they're subscribed to us,
they think they're supposed to be getting our new stuff.
But Apple was automatically deactivating these downloads for some people,

(12:43):
and the reason might have been if you had not
listened to the five most recent of our episodes to publish.
This seemed especially to affect us because, as we constantly
hear from listeners, a lot of people like to save
us up for a week or two and then binge
all our episodes in a day or a day or two.
And you know, if you want to listen that way,

(13:04):
that's fine, But a downside of that is that apparently
that will sometimes for some reason make you stop getting
new episodes in your feed. Apple might interpret that as you, oh,
you don't listen to us anymore, and just stop giving
you our show. So, if you want to be helpful
to our shows numbers in a business sense or andy,
you just want to make sure that you're always getting

(13:25):
all our new stuff. Apparently, one way around this is
to try to always make sure you have listened to
at least one of the five most recent episodes to publish.
That being said, I mean, we're super grateful for any
of our listeners out there, So if you're taking any
step to listen to our show, we're grateful for it.
So yeah, don't don't stress out about it too much. Exactly,

(13:49):
listen to us however you want to listen. Whatever you
prefer is fine. Just be aware that some weird stuff
is going on with some of these platforms, and if
if you want to take an extra step just to
make sure you are helping us out, that would be
one way to do it, all right. Dipping back into
the discord here, a lot of people share on discord
various weird house cinema suggestions. One of the users that

(14:11):
does this allotted, Eric Eric says, coming in hot with
another recommendation because he was following up some of the
recommendations he had made any of the entries in the
original Yokai Monsters trilogy from the sixties, but particularly I'll
recommend one hundred Monsters. The creepy atmosphere mixed in with

(14:34):
some silliness makes these movies especially charming. The practical effects
and use of makeup and puppetry is absolutely delightful. They're
all currently on Shutter and AMC plus two. I'm gonna
say I've got these movies on the short list for me. Yeah. Yeah.
One hundred Monsters was one we were talking about selecting
for the hundredth Weird House Cinema because it seemed like

(14:54):
that would that would make sense, but we went in
a slightly different direction. But it's still on the radar.
But speaking of weird House Cinema, maybe we'll finish this
off with a weird house email. This one comes from Tom. Tom,
says high Robin Joe. This is Tom from Canada. Robot

(15:15):
Monster is indeed an enigma. As an aside, if you
haven't listened to this episode yet or see in the movie,
this is a movie from the early fifties that Rob
and I covered where Earth is invaded by aliens or
maybe just invaded by an alien, which is a guy
in a gorilla suit with a skull mask wearing a
like a astronaut helmet. Yeah, yep, that's it, and he's

(15:41):
called Roman. It's it's a very silly very entertaining movie.
I would say almost at the levels of Edwood, like
it is that level of schlock royalty. Oh but a
piece of background for Tom's email here is we were
incredibly perplexed as to whether the movie is supposed to
be a dream or not, because as one of those

(16:03):
double fake out endings where it was all a dream
or was it? Because then the Roman from the thing
you know, it's supposed to be like the whole alien
invasion was a dream, and then Roman walks out of
the cave again. So it's like, what's going on? Yeah,
very confusing, So Tom says Robot Monster is indeed an enigma.
A part of the movie which might serve to cast
some clarity, though, is to know exactly when the Child's

(16:26):
dream starts. It has two potential starting points. Either when
young Johnny falls asleep in the desert with the others.
You remember they're out picnicking on a blanket surrounded by
rocks and they'll just like lay down on the desert
sand and fall asleep. So that could be one point,

(16:47):
but Tom goes on which would make all the following
a dream escape, including the arrival of Roman and the
shift in the roles of the adults, or the dream
starts at the cave, which makes the arrival of the
Roman reel, but the story itself just a dream. The
ending plays with both versions, as the story goes back
to reality following Johnny waking up, yet still entertaining the

(17:10):
idea that Roman did arrive all the best, Tom, Tom,
I think you've solved it. Maybe that's the second So
maybe it's it's a triple fake out. It's faking you out,
making you think that the whole movie was just a dream.
But then the reveal reveals that only part of the
movie was a dream. The part where the humans are
able to defeat Roman is the dream. It sounds to

(17:33):
me like the movies in superposition. That's that's how we
should approach it. I think that's that's a good way
of putting it. Yes, all right, well we're gonna go
ahead and close it out on that note here, But
we'd love to hear from everyone again, right in with
your thoughts on current episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Weird House Cinema Listener mail or the Artifact or Monster
Fact episodes, or writing on past episodes of these or

(17:56):
future episodes episodes you'd like to see in the future,
topic you wish that we would revisit that sort of thing.
Everything is fair game, that's all right. So before we
close out, big thanks to our audio producer JJ Pauseway.
And if you do want to get in touch for
any of those reasons we listed before, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

(18:24):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
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