Listener Mail: Time Passages

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

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Listener mail. This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick,
and today we are reading back some of the messages
that you've sent in over the past week or two. So, Robbi,
if you're ready, I think I'll jump right into one

(00:23):
of these messages about our episodes on tears. Right. Okay,
So this one comes from a listener who did share
her name, but I think I'm gonna keep this one
anonymous just in case because it gets into some potentially
dicey territory. But but this was a good one. So
this listener says, Hey, I wanted to share a funny

(00:46):
story about crocodile tears. My husband and I had only
been dating for a few weeks when he accompanied me
to a pawn shop. I needed money and decided to
sell my engagement ring from my ex fiance. While haggling
with the pawn shop employee, who was, of course trying
to give me as little as possible, I started crying

(01:06):
and giving a sob story about how sad I was
to part with it, and so on. My husband's jaw
hit the floor, and he was quietly fuming. He hated
my ex and had thought I did too. He certainly
didn't think I cared a spit about this sad little ring.
I managed to get a few more dollars from the
pawn shop guy, and when we walked outside, my husband

(01:26):
turned to me, probably ready to break things off, and
with my cheeks still wet with tears, I just started laughing.
He stared at me, dumbfounded. You're not upset, he asked me, God, No,
why would I be. I just needed as much as
I could possibly get. I told him, have you ever
done that to me? He asked, not yet? I told him,
and we both had a good laugh. He still loves

(01:47):
to tell that story because he totally fell for it
as we stood in the pawn shop. Well, that that's
that sounds like a scene from a movie. I feel
like I would see that on a like a drama
TV show. Yeah, totally, But I have more questions. I
feel like I'm one to know, like did you plan
to do this or did it just kind of happen spontaneously?
Like what what's the approach on that? I I think

(02:08):
I can honestly say I have never uh as an
adult at least used tears in an intentionally persuasive manner. Uh.
And I don't know if I would be able to
do so if I tried. Yeah, I mean, of course,
I mean we all do things with our delivery and
our our body language at times to try and influence

(02:32):
these sorts of encounters. I mean, we've all I think
read about, you know, the supposed benefits, and occasionally I
think I've seen some criticism of this idea too, of
of taking on the like the humble brontosaurus pose. Uh
when say, dealing with uh with a with a person
of sort of bureaucratic authority, or even if you've been like,
you know, pulled over that sort of thing. What is

(02:54):
the humble brontos source pose. It's sort of a I
forget the details of, but it's like, imagine you are
a Saara pod uh and one that is humble and
not threatening. It's sort of like taking on this sort
of uh, this this humble body language approach to not
so much too direct conflict, I think, but sort of

(03:16):
these these milder forms of interaction where you could potentially
be shut down by somebody and you you maybe want
like a little bit more help, uh than than they
definitely have to give you. But like I said, if
if memory serves, I think there's been some back and
forth on that, and it's certainly it certainly is not
something that's gonna be applicable to to every scenario. Okay,

(03:37):
I just looked it up. I think the phrase you've
used for this before is the kindly browntosaurus. Okay, kind
of not humble. Yeah yeah, well maybe humble, maybe not,
but it's sort of, uh, sort of the the head
is bent down a little bit and then the front
arms are sort of clasped, the hands are clasped together
in front of you. Uh, it looks very it looks

(04:00):
very humble and supplicant. Yeah. Yeah, So I mean, not
so much to really back up the pros and cons
of that specifically, but just in general, of course, we
all do things that are maybe not quite at the
level of a summoning, uh you know, the orchestrated tears
of some form or another, but doing things to lean

(04:21):
into creating a certain emotional ambiance that we want someone
else to pick up on. Like what happens Joe if
you have to go into a hardware store in a
let's say, a small southern town. Do you find things
happen to your voice? Oh that's a good question. Uh,

(04:41):
that may indeed be true. I don't know. I've never
consciously monitored myself for that, but I suspect I may
shift back into my East Tennessee roots a little bit
more depending on the context. Yeah. I think I have
at times caught myself becoming like a little folks here
in interactions like that. So so basically, what I'm trying
to say is, though even though quote unquote fake tears

(05:03):
may seem like an extreme manipulation I mean to to some,
I don't think it's really that extreme when you take
into account all the various other ways that we augment
our emotional ambiance for others. Yeah, yeah, totally. Okay, So
if we do this next message from Matthew, I just

(05:24):
wanted to preface this by saying this touches on some
of the same Dune content mentioned by a previous listener,
but kind of expands on the idea. So, rob do
you want to do this one? Sure? Uh, they write, Hey,
Robert and Joe. One interesting example of cultural meaning of
tears can be found in the Dune series I guess
at some point during his initial stay at the taveris
speech or seeched. I never know how to say this.

(05:46):
There's so many words and phrases and dune that they
kind of just ricochet through through my brain and I'm
not necessarily using them in everyday conversation anyway. Paul weeps
for the man whom he has recently killed than a duel.
The Fremen are deeply touched by his tears. In the
harsh desert environment of Aracus, wasting vital bodily fluid for

(06:08):
someone or somebody can be seen as an honest signal
of commitment and emotional investment. I was surprised that you
hadn't mentioned it, since I know both of you are
big fans of Doone. Yeah, so this expands. Another listener
wrote in about the scene and Done, where where Paul
cries after he has has killed one of the firm
in a in a duel um. But Yeah, I like

(06:30):
the idea that the stakes of the water content of
someone's body being so high in the environment of Done
makes the tear signal especially important, and you could view
it as consequently honest, like an honest signal to a
much greater extent because water is so precious in this environment. Uh.

(06:52):
And and this does kind of relate to the idea
I I pondered in one of the Tier episodes. Again,
this is not something that I know of any direct
evidence for. Is just something I was kind of wondering
out loud about, which was, what if adult tears could
in part be an adaptation, uh to the complexity of
the human capacity for deceit. So because humans can lie

(07:15):
not only about external matters of fact, but about internal
subjective states. So for example, you can claim to care
about someone when in fact you don't. Tears being difficult
to fake could help serve as an honest signal of
an internal emotional states that could help bonding and trust
between humans. And I remember when I was researching tears.

(07:37):
One one way this occurred to me, I think, was
I was reading several stories of someone who said they
had been planning to break up with a romantic partner
and you know, thinking that that partner didn't really care
about them until that partner began to cry during the
breakup conversation they were having, and then they changed their mind.
They changed their mind and decided they wanted to stay

(07:58):
with that person. Uh and you know, you could all
argue that there could be all kinds of reasons for that,
But one could be that something about the crying makes
it look like their emotional commitment to you is more real,
you can trust it more m hmm. Interesting, they continue. Also,
one could argue in favor of the view of the

(08:19):
function of emotional tears as making us seem more childlike
on the basis that we are already a highly neotenic
species compared to our closest relatives like chimpanzees or even
more archaic subspecies of the genus Homo. We retain many
juvenile characteristics into adulthood. Shedding emotional tears could be just
one more such factor, maybe even making a case for

(08:41):
humans being uniquely high on on the otany in the
entire animal kingdom. And then they close up by saying also,
the expression crocodile tears is also very common in Polish,
but I had no idea what it meant until I
listened to your episode. Best regards, Matthew. All right, well,
thank you, matt f you. Um let's see, I'm gonna
move on to a message about nail biting from a

(09:05):
listener another Matthew. This one's named Matt uh. And this
is funny because this is Matt responding to a third listener,
also named Matt. So the Matt we have, Mats have
plenty of cornucopia of Matt's here in the in the
Stuff to Blow your Mind verse. But Matt says Robert

(09:26):
and Joe, Hello, my name is Matt, and I'm writing
in response to another person named Matt. He had written
to tell you how he randomly quit biting his nails.
I also was a nail biter for the first twenty
five years of my life, but I quit. I can
point to naval boot camp as the catalyst of my quitting.
In boot camp, the drill instructors are always yelling at

(09:48):
people for touching their faces. This makes a lot of
sense because of the large numbers of people living in
close proximity to one another. They don't want to spreading disease.
So anyway, we were issued nail clippers, and I was
motivated to use them to keep my nails too short
for me to bite them. I love you guys in
the show. You've got me into watching old horror movies
and enjoying them much more than I ever thought I would.

(10:10):
Science is awesome, and so are you. It was very,
very very sweet, Matt. Thank you. All right, let's jump
ahead of some weird house cinema feedback here. This one
comes to us from Susan. Hey, guys, I just wanted
to write in about Time after Time. I almost didn't

(10:33):
listen to this episode because I remember seeing the movie
at the cinema with my parents when I was about
eight years old. I had nightmares for months. The scene
that got me was when Wells goes into an apartment
and it's a complete blood bath. Now, more than forty
years later, I can picture that severed arm and it
still gives me chills. Of course, after that introduction to horror,

(10:54):
I spent the nineteen eighties watching all the now classic
flasher films. Thanks for a fun travel through time to
the early days of scary movies. Funny, I don't remember
the love part of that movie, just the blood. No love,
only blood. Yeah. I mean, it is kind of a
shocking scene when you get that, because there hasn't really
been much blood in the film at that point, I

(11:15):
mean a little here and there, but but then suddenly, yes,
severed arm. Uh. I could see where that would definitely
be a lot of you were eight years old. Yeah, yeah,
well I think we mentioned this in the Time Aftertime episode,
But it's kind of amazing what could get a PG
in nineteen nine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a it's a
it's a it's in late seventies PG. So it's certainly

(11:37):
anybody looking to pick that up to think about it.
But I guess it follows a trend that you know,
has been widely observed for a long time that for
some reason, the people who issue ratings classifications for movies
tend to be far more motivated to kick up ratings
in response to, say, harsh language or sexuality than they

(11:57):
do in response to violence. So you can get away
with a big, bloody dismemberment as long as people aren't
saying the bad words. Yeah. I'm always I'm always fascinated
when people share their stories about what was like the
first or one of the first scary movies to really
kind of you know, get to them when they were kids,
Because for me, it was it was almost certainly Toby

(12:18):
Hooper's poulter Geist. I remember seeing part of that when
I was a kid, and uh bathroom mirror scene who
uh I don't know if it was that's and I
don't even know how I was watching it per se um,
but there was I don't know, just stuff. Some of
it was probably not even like the really grizzly stuff,
but just like scenes of children being afraid in dark rooms.

(12:40):
You know, like some of that can really get to
you at a at a young age. I mean, it's
it's surprising, how you know, how scary certain concepts and
ideas can be to young children. I was trying to
tell my son about the duck that said that there
were recordings of the duck speaking and saying you bloody fool,
and he was like, that's too much. He I got
upset that I was telling him this before bed, and

(13:02):
I was like, wow, I didn't think about the speaking
ducks saying you bloody fool would be nightmare material. But
I don't know. Maybe so, I mean, who am I
to argue with this reaction here? What about Billy Bass?
He'd probably be amused by Billy bass um, but I
have not introduced him to that technology either. Billy Bass
will haunt your dreams. It's funny what you're talking about.

(13:22):
It makes me remember one movie that I got very
freaked out by as a kid. I remember was the
movie Cat's I in which there it's a sort of
horror anthology film or I don't know if it's all horror.
At least one of the segments is horror and features
this little weird, creepy gremlin running around in a bedroom
that does battle with a cat. Uh. And I remember

(13:44):
that gremlin really creeped me out. Yeah they had it
was a great design on that critter. Okay, This next
weird house cinema response comes from Simon. This is a
very long email, so I'm doing some regiments in editing.
So Simon says, hey, fellas, welcome from the royal town

(14:05):
of Sutton Coalfield, West Midland's UK birthplace of ken Gt,
forty miles uh from I guess this is somebody from
Ford versus Ferrati, which which I haven't seen. Um. But
Simon says it's also mentioned in Shakespeare when fall Staff says,
Bardolf get thee before to Coventry, fill me a bottle

(14:25):
of sack. Our soldiers shall march through wheel to Sutton
coal Field tonight. And then finally Simon says it is
the location of a shower of Frogs in nineteen fifty four.
I think to look that one up, but Simon says,
apologies in advance for the long email. I guess an
epic podcast deserves epic feedback. I love stuff to blow

(14:46):
your mind and the content that you provide. I store
up episodes to play while I undertake my artwork at home.
Weird how cinema is especially my favorite as a long
term cinephile myself. Beloved movies that I have collected include
ref Madness from nineteen thirty six, The Outlaw from nineteen
forty three, the movie for which Howard Hughes designed the

(15:06):
cantilever bra and Carry On Up the Kaiber from sixty eight,
the ninety nine greatest British movie of all time and
one of the funniest. I think. Actually the only one
of those I've seen is read for Madness, But Simon says,
I'm mainly writing a response to your reference to the
TV movie The Day After in your Weird House Cinema

(15:28):
episode on Time after Time. Remember that was the another
film that was made by Nicholas Meyer, the writer and
director of Time after Time, which was a television film
about what would happen in the aftermath of a nuclear
war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Simon
goes on, you reference the cultural impact of the Day After,

(15:49):
but I guess that you're already aware of the UK
film that it is constantly compared to Threads from nineteen
eighty four, the UK BBC DOCU drama about the horrific
of effects of and after a nuclear war. Scariest movie
ever made by a country mile directed by the man
who would later direct The Bodyguard. Um massively well researched,

(16:11):
with input by Carl Sagan. Interesting in its comparison to
the U S movie The Day After, which, although had
a higher budget, has nowhere near the nightmare depicted by Threads.
Plus the latter does tend to eschew drama for information.
Not an easy watch, perhaps undermined a little by use
of stock footage and televisual feel, but utterly essential viewing.

(16:33):
I own both movies, but only Threads keeps me awake
at night, uh per and then uh Simon includes a
quote from The New York Times. The film is not
a balanced discussion about the pros and cons of nuclear armaments.
It is a candidly biased warning, and it is as calculated,
unsettlingly powerful. I like the New York Times warning you

(16:54):
that it that it does not reveal the prose of
nuclear war um. The director of this, Mike I'm sorry,
Mick Jackson, not a guy I'm that familiar with. But
he also directed Volcano in and uh The Temple Grand
and Bio that came out in two thousand ten starring

(17:16):
Claire Danes. Oh. Okay, well, anyway, Simon goes on to say, obviously,
the input of Carl Sagan and the almost documentary feel
of the film make this irrelevant subject for consideration by
you chaps. Science the Cold War psychology of fear, paranoia,
and mutually sure destruction. The final scene of the birth
of a child born of rape and fallout is beyond

(17:38):
terrifying and is reminiscent of the effects of depleted uranium
ordinance on unborn children in recent wars. On a personal note,
my grandfather was part of the Allied occupation of Japan
in nineteen forty five and experienced firsthand what was left
of Hiroshima. It happened to be the forty anniversary five
that he began to describe it to me The same year.

(17:59):
I leave that Threads was shown on TV. It took
me from age fourteen to forty five to summon the
courage to watch it, and that thirty one years of
preparation was essential, as I was by now a father's stuff.
Yes it is. But from here the message gets lighter.
Simon goes onto list and suggest a bunch of movies
that he thinks we would be interested in. For weird House,

(18:21):
I'm not going to go through the whole list here,
but I'll read one of them that's on the lighter
side of the nuclear cinema uh catalog, he says. On
a connected theme, can I suggest the fantastic Protect and
Survive UK information films? They are terrifying and hilarious in
their naivety. Don't forget to brush the fallout from your jacket.

(18:42):
It's pure public service nostalgia for Cold War addicts, and
he includes some some links for us to view. I've
watched at least one of these clips and and the
one of the parts that stuck out to me is
this very dry British radio voice saying, uh, if someone
has died, move their body to another room. Cover it
in poly eurythene I, I seem to recall that there

(19:05):
was a parody of this on The Young Ones back
in the day. Oh yeah, I think in fact, even um,
I think Simon may mention that later in his email. Okay, sorry, Simon,
that is still in your thunder here. But I think
I think that's all we're doing from Okay, alright, so
well I'm not stealing your thunder then well I'm completely
stealing it, I guess, because then we're not even reading
where you mentioned that. But um, telepathically you're robbing him

(19:30):
at any rate. Yes, it is my understanding, uh, and
my faint memory that it is lampooned on The Young Ones.
All right, the fantasy Bomba Deal casting continues. We heard
from Casey. Casey right right, wrote in and says hello,

(19:51):
I've been listening to you guys since around the time
of the Bicameral Mind episodes that have been a regular
listener ever since. I often think about writing in, but
usually dissuade myself from it. However, in light of the
ongoing Bomba Deal debate, I decided I had better speak up.
In general, I think adaptations are a bad idea. The
particular impact of a story is often bound up with
the specific medium it's told in and something always gets

(20:14):
lost in translation, no matter how well executed. Because bomba
Deal is one of my favorite parts of the books,
I'm glad he hasn't been realized on the screen. All
the same, if I had to pick a human bomba Deal,
one could do worse than the wayfaring stranger himself. Burl Ives.
He's jovial, plump and sings in a friendly, folksy style. Anyway,
thanks for continuing to deliver interesting, engaging, and eclectic content,

(20:38):
Casey burl Ives, Okay, interesting option, Yeah, yeah, I mean
when he's he's in that uh the Rudolph Um animated
Um show, as I recall, he's the narrator in that
and plays the what the Snowman, So he's already we
already know that he can play a musical elemental force.

(21:00):
This sort of stands outside of the story, so it
makes sense. I would say, you want to make sure
that he's not in cat on a hot tin roof mode,
because although bomba Deal maybe a sort of god or elemental,
he is no big Daddy. We'll tell me this, Joe,
I know you're a big Jim Steinman fan. If Jim
Steinman had adapted The Fellowship of the Ring. Uh do

(21:23):
you think you could have seen meat Loaf as bomba
Deal without a word? Oh that's the sweet spot. Yeah,
I could see that kind of a rock Obomba Deal.
Hey don Mary do? Oh? Yeah? R I p Jim Steinman.
He passed away just earlier this year. The world is
a less melodramatic place without him. All right, how about

(21:52):
I read this one from Hannah also about Bomba Dill's subject,
and keep it coming right Bomba dil opinions. I like
how this is the new subgenre of listener mail, Hi,
Robert and Joe. If I could pluck any actor from
any point in their career to play Bomba Deal, I'd
pick top All exactly as he was in Fiddle around
the Roof ninety one. I've always pictured Tom Bomba Dill

(22:14):
with a similar playfulness and warmth to his character. Uh.
That's a great idea, Hannah, But then she goes on
along that train of thought. But considering the annoying limitations
of the passage of time or whatever, I went looking
for some actors who are still currently working and have
tavy on their resumes and came up with two interesting
but very different possibilities. Alfred Molina and Harvey Firestein thoughts

(22:38):
all the best, Hannah. Uh yeah, both great, both great choices,
great actors in their own regard. You know, Harvey Fierstein,
uh did a voice of one of the Skexis on
the The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance and I loved it.
That's right, Yes, he was great in that. Yeah, yeah,
I've yeah, I like both of those actors. Uh so, yeah,

(23:00):
I could see them now. I'm not sure if if
Harvey Fierstein is maybe getting a bit of I don't know,
he's I mean, how old we're Christopher Lee and Ian
McKellan when they made uh, you know, the Fellowship of
the Ring. So I don't know. He seems fine. Let
him do it. We're just talking here anyway. Let him
do it. I'm not going to stand in the way

(23:21):
of this fantasy casting. Let them bomba dil Alright, Well,
it looks like we're already out of time here. I
really don't know where the time went on this episode
of feel like we we just started it, but here
we are. We'll have to get to the other bits
of listener mail next time around. In the meantime, if
you would like to listen to other episodes of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind. Listener mail what airs every Monday.

(23:42):
We got our core episodes on Tuesdays, and Thursday's Artifact
on Wednesday, Weird How Cinema on Friday. That's our time
to set aside most of the science and deeper concerns
and discuss a weird movie. And then over the weekend
we have a vault episode, which is just a fancy
way of saying we do a rerun. You just thinks.
As always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

(24:03):
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for

(24:25):
my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.