STBYM Listener Mail: 2025 Mailbag Eversion

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. My
name is Robert Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
And I am Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you
some messages from the Stuff to Blow your Mind email address.
If you're a listener and you have never gotten in
touch before, why not give it a try. You can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. Messages of all types are welcome. Of course.
We really appreciate if you have anything interesting you'd like

(00:35):
to add to a topic we've talked about on the show.
If you have corrections you need to offer, those are
of course very welcome if you have If you want
to suggest a topic for the future, we like that too.
Sometimes we do follow up on topics that were suggested
by listeners. But whatever it is, send it our way
contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. So

(00:56):
this is our first recording after the Christmas week, robbed it.
Did you have a good holiday with the family.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, yeah, pretty good. I have to admit though, it
does feel like a strange nether zone that I find
myself then, because we're we're recording this between Christmas and
New Year's We've just had some unseasonably warm weather. Yes,
and you know, every day feels completely discombobulated. So I
have no idea, you know, moment to moment, what day

(01:24):
it is, what season it is, how I fit into
the world around me. All I know is that we
have a certain amount of listener mail to get to.
But how about yourself? How was your holiday?

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Oh? You know, I had a great time with the family.
Loved to see and everybody. We you know, did some
I did some cooking and some hosting, and then we
also had the different little family gatherings which were very nice.
Though on Christmas Day itself, of you know, I think
it was the same for y'all. It's like in the
seventies and I had a cold, so it's just kind
of gross. But uh but yeah, you know, good holiday

(01:59):
times and not a single exploding lollipop or flying material
was found.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Excellent. Yeah. I think Santa Claus has really been forced
via various environmental laws to really tightly contain his various
miracle candies so they do not phone to the hands.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Of the children. Okay, yeah, all right, Well should we
jump right into the emails?

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah? What do we have.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Let's see this first one. I'm gonna do this one
from Lauren, which is a late coming email about our
episodes on the Ignobel Prizes for this year. I think
this is Yeah, she'll explain which one it's about. So
Lauren says, hello, Robin Joe. I was just listening to

(02:47):
your episode on the Ignobel Prizes Part one and the
bit about narcissism made me think about different forms of
praise and how they affect human behavior according to this video,
and then she inserts a video I'll explain in a second.
Lauren says, praising kids by telling them that they are
smart or intelligent makes them fear looking unintelligent, so they

(03:12):
avoid challenges and stagnate, whereas kids who are praised for
their effort or process when engaging in a task are
more likely to develop a desire to take on challenges
and therefore are more likely to experience growth. Now, I
thought I should follow up with this video that Lauren
attached and talk about it a bit, so just to explain.

(03:33):
This is a video of part of a lecture by
the American psychologist Carol Dweck of Stanford making the case
for what Laurence said based on Dwex's own research and
I was reading a bit about this, I should note
that while focusing on process based praise or effort based
praise over attribute based praise does absolutely make sense to

(03:56):
me on an intuitive level. I've read that there's some
disagree in the field, Like, from what I can tell,
it's not so much that process based praise is bad,
but there's dispute about to what extent process based praise
actually leads to measurably better outcomes in learning and things
like that. Some other psychologists have been unable to replicate

(04:17):
the original results reported here, so I can't give you
an answer on whether it gets measurable results on average
or not. But I will say I personally try to
focus more on effort based praise with my own child,
just because it just kind of feels like the right
thing to do for us, and it seems to me
to get better results at least, you know, in our

(04:37):
one case. Yeah, So I wouldn't want to overclaim anything
that's not really proven about the potential negative effects of
like attribute based praise. You know, telling a kid you're
so smart instead of praising them for trying hard at something,
and you know, or trying again after they fail, things
like that. I do think it's it is obvious, at

(04:59):
least at some level, that there are forms of praise
that can be incredibly toxic and pathological, like praise that
makes it seem like love is conditional, or praise that
gives children a sense of superiority over their peers, things
like that. Obviously, there is such a thing as toxic praise.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you like, in my family, we
try to maintain a kind of like growth mindset with everything,
and you know, I put an emphasis on always learning,
always growing, and yeah, I can imagine various toxic forms
of praise where you're kind of implying you are perfect
as is there's no need for additional growth. Yeah. Yeah,

(05:38):
so yeah, I mean, as with all of it, there's
a careful balance to maintain.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah. Anyway, but back to Lauren's message. So about this
idea of praising process or effort versus praising attributes, Lauren says,
I think there is merit to this. I also think
it's kind of scary how certain forms of praise can
really damage people over time. It's a sad irony. I
think that's true. Yeah, because you know, when you're praising somebody,

(06:04):
it kind of feels like, well, that's always got to
be good, right, Lauren says on a somewhat related note,
I've been in a half dozen or more situations in life,
whether it be with classmates or at camp or whatnot,
where there comes a point when everyone has to write
little compliment notes to everyone else. I've experienced the best

(06:25):
results when I praise people for what I determine they
like or value most about themselves, as opposed to what
I actually like or think about them. For example, if
Jane thinks she's a really good artist, even if I
think she's a terrible artist, praising her for her abilities
seem to most effectively achieve the goal of the activity.

(06:45):
I don't really mind that it's kind of dishonest, because
the whole point was to make people feel special and valued.
This makes a lot of sense to me, because if
someone compliments me for something I don't value about myself,
I don't feel good or perhaps anything, don't feel anything
about their words, and often the compliment produces a negative reaction,
so the good intentions are lost. The power of different

(07:07):
forms of praise is definitely an interesting topic. Thanks for
dedicating your time and energy to crafting an intelligent, amusing,
and well researched podcast. Lauren. Well, thank you, Lauren. Several
thoughts about this. First of all, Yeah, I think the
power of different forms of praise would be a really
interesting topic to come back to. And I also agree

(07:28):
with your idea about focusing on praising what people value
about themselves instead of what they don't really care about
about themselves. That makes a lot of sense, and I
do want to come back to that in a minute. Though.
The one thing I do I please don't feel judged, Lauren,
but just I want to give my perspective. I want
to make it clear that we're not necessarily endorsing the
idea of giving untruthful praise. After I read this email,

(07:51):
I was thinking about this a lot. And of course,
you know, not trying to come off as high and
mighty or like I think I'm the King of honesty.
You know, we all, at least occasionally, you know, use
little positive exaggerations and things like that that help help
sweeten and ease our relationships. And I've done this too,
But when given the opportunity to reflect, I really do

(08:13):
think in general it's better to be as truthful as
you can with people, even if you're just talking about
praise and compliments. Even positive little lies can just create
unpredictable problems for your future self, Like if people later
find out that a compliment you gave them was insincere,

(08:33):
that will probably hurt them a lot more than not
getting a compliment in the first place. And I think
also when you misrepresent your feelings or thoughts about things,
it has the downside of essentially gumming up the works
of your mind, Like it creates these inefficiencies where you
have to remember what you've told people in the past.

(08:54):
So in computer terms, it's kind of like, you know,
you're running multiple virtual machines and your brain instead of
just running directly on the hardware. But yeah, so that
caveat aside to coming back to the first part. When
you are able to do so truthfully, I think finding
things to compliment that people value about themselves is a

(09:15):
really good insight in a way, it's having a sympathetic
identification with the person. It's a way of complimenting them
that sees them from their own perspective instead of from
the outside perspective. And like you allude to, I think
with this connection to praising process instead of attributes, if
it's something they value about themselves, I think that usually

(09:37):
means that it's something that they have put effort into,
which is its own kind of reward to have somebody
acknowledge and notice.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah. I mean, like with the couple of things, I
guess with first of all, with the example here, Jane
is an artist. Art is very subjective, so you know,
there's a lot of wiggle room there. And also I
think when complimenting someone, you know, I mean, you can
probably find something you like about the thing that they value.

(10:08):
You know, there's got to be something there, even if
it's not like your art, you know, the kind of
art you would personally put on your wall, there must
be something you can say, yeah, you know, get creative,
find that place where where truth meets praise.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
I guess, yeah, totally. All right, thank you, Lauren. Let's
see Rob, you want to grab one of these next
fore you here?

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah, we have another one here related to the Ignobel
Prizes episode. This one I think is we determine his
response to the study about rainbow lizards that steal pizza.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yeah, stealing pizza from a resort like restaurant tables in Togo,
so that and the study was about what kinds of
pizza the lizards like the most. That also led us
into talking about the most constipated lizard ever documented, which
had been found eating sand, presumably soaked in pizza, outside

(11:00):
of a Florida pizzeria. And then I think that led
to us just generally talking about animals learning to get
quite aggressive at snatching human food in these, you know,
environments where human activity and animal life meet.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
All right, well, this one comes to us from Bruce.
Bruce says, Hi, Robert Joe, your recent episode on this
year's Ignobel Prize winning research brought to mind an encounter
with a hungry, maybe angry bird. I was living in
New York City at the time and would often take
weekend day trips to Atlantic City. The casinos were in

(11:38):
competition with each other and offered varying cast back incentives
to bus riders when they would disembark at their establishment.
Sometimes the cashback would even be a dollar or two
over the cost of the ticket. Anyway, on such a trip,
I remember walking along the boardwalk. It was an overcast,
late fall day, somewhat blustery, so the summer crowds, along

(11:59):
with their drop food concessions the goals would pick up
had long since thenned out. I noticed a goal, a
seagull on a descent, flying towards me. I also then
noticed a woman walking in my direction holding a funnel
cake on a plate.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Uh oh.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
The goal had apparently also seen the funnel cake and
decided it was going to be an easy theft, as
it suddenly dove over the woman's shoulder from behind and
tried to grab the pastry. What it had not anticipated was,
since it was a windy day, the woman was holding
her treat quite firmly against the plate it was on.
The plate ended up acting like a fulcrumb, and the

(12:36):
momentum the bird had caused it to cartwheel into a
face plant beak plant against the boardwalk. It staggered to
its feet and took a couple of wobbly steps before
it tried to take off again. But I had continued
walking forward, not anticipating all this commotion, so had narrowed
the distance between myself and the location of the intended
theft and its aftermath. As the bird became airborne, it

(12:58):
swam directly into my chest, right below my chin, it
fell once again to the boardwalk. I don't really know
what an embarrassed indignant face looks like on a goal,
but if there is one, this goal had it, Bruce,
And then I believe Bruce included a note or this
might have been your note that Bruce, this is from Okay.
Bruce also reminds us that he is the former theater

(13:20):
manager who previously wrote in with memories of showing Kroll
and the Last Starfighter.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
All right, here's another amazing adventure you got to witness first.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
And seagulls, you know, they will, they will go for it.
I've watched one grab a hot dog off of a
hot grill once at the beach. They will, they will,
They'll get it if they absolutely can. Now, as for
what the funnel cake truly had to offer the bird,
I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
The seagull grabbed the hot dog off the grill with
its beak.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
You said, uh, yeah, I mean I was not the griller,
so I don't know what the temperature of the grill was, like,
what part of the grill and this was observed from
a farm, but seemed to make off with it, so
I don't know. Maybe the grill was dying down. I'm
not sure.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
I'm trying to imagine. So it's a seagull, so it
wouldn't be grabbing with talons like an eagle or something.
It would be beak down to grab I suppose.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
So again I wasn't close enough and or my memory
is not as firm. I just remember the goal getting
the hot dog, and that was the that was the
important part of the tale.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
Okay, alrighty, let's see this next message comes from Joe,
not myself, a different Joe. Joe says, oh in the
subject line is AI, chatbots and narcissistic behavior. This is

(14:45):
in response to us. Actually it's the same Ignobel winning
psychology paper which Lauren was writing about. So this was
the paper which found, among other things, that telling people
that an IQ test has deemed them very smart has
a tendency to increase, at least temporarily, a couple of
particular narcissistic traits. I think they called this state narcissism.

(15:09):
And the question was not resolved by the paper, but
the question was could this overtime lead to the actual
inculcation of trait narcissism? So, like, you know, causing these
states of narcissism makes somebody more permanently narcissistic over time.
And in our discussion of that paper, we ended up

(15:30):
talking about AI chat bots and the fact that they
often really shower the user with ridiculous flattery. You know, Oh,
that's such an intelligent question, very perceptive insight. Thank you user,
Please keep using the service.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, I think we talked about this. I've experimented with
this a little bit before and found that, yeah, I
can if I asked one of these systems about something
that is ultimately a stretch, some sort of connections stretch
between a particular movie and a particular theme or something,
it's still it still wants to compliment me on that
correct on that connection that I've made, as opposed to saying, well,

(16:05):
that's a real stretch and maybe you're the only one
thinking about it this way.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
The flattery is one of the many reasons that I
you know that these tools can be useful in certain ways,
but you just shouldn't depend on them too much for
truth or anything, because yeah, they're you know, they're doing
something other than just purely trying to serve you up
truthful information. They're they're trying to inculcate a user relationship.
So they want to flatter you, and they also are

(16:31):
going to you know, hallucinate to try to give you
stuff that fulfills what you ask for. Yeah, anyway, so
Joe says, Hey, Robin, Joe, love your Ignobel episodes, which
often provides some of my favorite anecdotes to share with
my kids. Cats are liquid is still a catchphrase in
the family castle. Oh that warms my heart. A recent

(16:51):
article in futurism that website futurism dot com shines an
interesting light on the segment on self assessed Intelligence and
your musings on AI's tendency to putting it delicately, blow
smoke up your and then Joe says, wait, that's not delicate.
Maybe skip reading this part anyway, Joe says, a thirty

(17:14):
year old IT professional wound up being repeatedly hospitalized, losing
his job, and being diagnosed with a severe manic episode
after a large language model falsely validated his theories about
faster than light travel. This is one example of a
phenomenon that's been termed AI psychosis colloquially. It's not a

(17:35):
DSM disorder or anything, and often comes back to the
way LMS ten to tend towards flattery and affirmation of
the user, even when the user is making obvious, catastrophic,
even dangerous mistakes. This lends credence to your musing about
AI and the hypothesis that repeated flattery might aggregate over time.

(17:56):
Interesting says, It's easy to see how this feature could
be dangerous to a more fragile mind. Not my mind,
of course, my mental health is the best. At least
that's what my LLM tells me. Joe, Yeah, thanks, Joe. Obviously,
I think a lot of people have probably heard of
these stories at this point about various forms of AI psychosis.

(18:18):
I mean, I think there can be similar effects, but
probably just not to the same degree that it's having
on people with typical mental health using it all the time.
But especially Yeah, if you have certain kinds of mental
health conditions, getting into a back and forth with one
of these affirming programs can definitely lead you in dangerous places. Yeah,

(18:40):
because it's just trying to hype you up and saying yes, yes,
that's right. You know, you are on the verge of
a great discovery.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah, And like so many things with technology, of course,
you know, it's already out there and we're kind of
playing ketchup figuring out exactly how everybody responds to these systems.
So yeah, interesting times, interesting times. Yeah, all right, let's
move on to one. This one comes to us from Lee,
and this is responding to our episodes Unlicking, though specifically

(19:11):
this one was a response to the first episode, so
I think it came in between the publication of one
and two. Lee says, greetings were ob, Joe and JJ
very interesting first episode on licking your request for experiences
regarding licking and spitting. I recall a number of movies
and TV shows for my youth that involved kids making

(19:33):
deals of varying types. Almost always the deal was sealed
with a handshake. A key element of the handshake was
for each deal maker to spit in their palm prior
to the handshake. This was always to emphasize the importance
of the deal on some level. Hearing about licking, I
would presume the fact that kids doing the deal were
outdoors doing well kid things. My presumption would be that

(19:54):
their hands were too dirty to lick, but that spitting
into the palm was okay. Ever thought about it that way,
I mean, I figure just kids like to spit. I
recall on multiple occasions licking my finger in an effort
to assess wind direction. Yes, another idea, more from TV
shows than written sources. With regard to the TUTSI pop.

(20:17):
More often than not, the start was to lick it,
but it would more than likely get parked between the
cheek and gum for most of the time. I don't
specifically recall if this was more an effort to make
it last or because I was working on some task
or another. Love the podcast always look forward to each episode.
Sincerely ly thank you Lee.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
On the idea about licking a finger and sticking it
into the air to see which way the wind is blowing,
because you know, it gets cold on the side of
the wind is coming from. This reminds me that I
recently was watching a movie. I'm afraid I'm misremembering this,
but I think it was a scene in the James
Bond film From Russia with Love Okay, And it's a
scene where a character is trying to test wind direction

(20:59):
and they lick a finger and hold it up in
the air, but they're doing it ends in a speeding boat.
I mean, maybe I'm wrong. I think that would probably
not work.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, I think you would feel cold. Yeah, I think
I think your results would be skewed by that. Very interesting. Yeah,
I haven't seen From Russia with Love in a long time.
Classic though, classic film. Yeah, let's see. Yeah, other I
mean good observation about the spitting and they hand there's
a lot of There is a lot of that, I

(21:29):
feel like in uh, you know kid adventure films, the
spit in the hand handshake. Uh. Sometimes they'll go for
it and do the blood bond handshake, which of course
is is ickier and makes you even more afraid for
the fact that they're outside playing and haven't washed their hands.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, adding self mutilation to the mix. But but yeah,
I guess there's a lot of spitting in palms. I'm
gonna have to be hyper aware of it now as
I watch other films. As for the TUTSI pop observation,
this this match up with what other people have been
saying as well. You know that there is active licking. Yes,
there's active crunching, but there's also a lot of just

(22:08):
having the pop in your mouth while you're doing other things. Generally,
you're not setting there actively counting the licks and only
focusing on the licking.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Okay, here's an email left over from October. This seems
to be related to our past October episodes on the
invention of the chainsaw. This is from Hugh. Hugh says, Robert,
Joe and JJ Boo. I am writing to put forward
an opinion that may not be popular among our particular
subset of humans, but I feel must be expressed. A

(22:41):
chainsaw would make a terrible weapon. First a trigger warning.
My reasons are technical and fairly pedantic, and my real
world example is sure to upset people. I would not
hold it against you if you were to stop reading
right now. So, folks, if you don't want to hear
out why chainsaws are not particularly effective on say, mammal flesh,

(23:05):
with some details from experience, and not murder, but experience
with animal carcasses, you can skip ahead. I don't know,
five minutes or something, Okay, all right, Hugh says. If
you take the way that various styles of internal combustion
engines make power, and line them up, you would have

(23:27):
a sliding scale. At one end of the scale would
be torque and at the other would be RPM. At
the torque end, you have large explosions of fuel in
large combustion chambers, pushing large and heavy components in long
strokes stroke meaning the distance of piston travel at a
relatively low rpm with high rotational mass. Once you get

(23:49):
them going, inertia does a lot of the work, and
they are very heavy. At the rpm end, you have
smaller but far more frequent explosions of fuel pushing much
lighter components in a shorter stroke with a much lower
rotational mass. This is what makes chainsaws light enough to
be practical for the average person to use mean use

(24:09):
in their hands, he says, in order to make power,
they must be able to spin freely. Therein lies the rub.
The secret to making a chainsaw work is a centrifugal
clutch that allows the engine to spin up before applying
full power to the chain. At full throttle, the chain
and the engine are spinning at roughly the same speed

(24:30):
due to the speed at which the chain is traveling.
The frictions involved will create heat, but a specially formulated
chain oil keeps things running smoothly. Each tooth on the
chain removes a small chip of wood. Due to the
speed at which the chain is traveling, The cumulative effect
is significant In order for the saw to keep working,
it must be able to clear these chips of wood efficiently,

(24:52):
or the machine will encounter resistance that it cannot produce
enough torque to overcome. Now for the upsetting bit. When
I was young, one of our neighbors shot a really
magnificent buck during hunting season. He decided that he wanted
to mount the head as a trophy. In order to
do that, he needed to remove the head so that
he could give it to a taxidermist. He decided to

(25:13):
use you guessed it, a chainsaw. The deer was hanging
head down in his shop during this time of year,
the shop was as cold as a meat locker. He
decided to remove the head right there, rather than taking
it outside. This turned out to be almost as bad
a decision as using a chainsaw in the first place.
One of his sons held onto the buck's front legs

(25:34):
in order to steady it, and our neighbors started cutting. It.
Lasted for about thirty seconds, but it seemed like much longer.
Almost immediately, the hair and flesh and fat started to
interfere with the lubrication of the chain. The temperature of
the chain skyrocketed, and the saw bogged down and quit.
The heat caused the whole mess to cook and smoke.

(25:57):
The stench was truly horrible. During the brief time that
the saw was cutting, the saw managed to spray the
inside of the shop with a chunky mist of hair
and flesh. The mess was terrible, and even though he
had cleaned up as best he could during the following summer,
it drew flies and stank. I'm sure you could design
a tool for the job, but if you were using

(26:17):
an off the shelf chainsaw, I feel you would get
you would get one good whack at best. You're all
doing a great job. Thanks for your patience. You well, Hugh,
you know your warning was correct. This was really gross.
But I also found this really interesting and I appreciate
this contribution to the fact that, Yeah, the Texas chainsawm
esker scenario is not very plausible. Like you could probably

(26:40):
you probably hurt one person really bad with the chainsaw,
I guess, and then you'd be having trouble like keeping
going at people with it.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, it does. It doesn't sound like it would be
a good active weapon, nor would it be a good
butchery tool, which is that's implied that I mean Yeah,
that's one of the main reasons that the saw your
family has the chainsaw.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
They got to make barbecue. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, and they're supposed to really know their meat, you know,
because they worked in the slaughterhouses and so forth. But
in reality, it doesn't seem like this would be a
good good tool to use.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
Well, yeah, I guess butchers mainly, well now I'm talking
about something I don't really know, but I think butchers
mainly use like sharp, very sharp little boning knives and
then like band saws to cut through bones.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah. Yeah, Now, I guess this still leaves the door
open for the possibility of like, you know, far future
space marine chain swords, where there's some sort of a
technological chain weapon that has been designed, you know, exclusively
for cutting through enemies and armor and meat. But yeah,
as for our actual chainsaws out there, yeah, I like

(27:45):
the description that we had here about how it is
designed to remove tiny bits of wood from a larger
piece of wood and all that's going to break down
if you start cutting into flesh with it.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
Yeah. Designed in part after the wood borer beetle, and
the wood boar beetle was not made to cut a
deer's head off, all right.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
This next one comes to us from Sinan, responding to
this is a long ago episode on the origins and
effects of the seven day week system. Yeah, Sinan says, Okay, okay,
I haven't been listening to you for three years, and
that's because I had switched to Spotify over a hiatus

(28:26):
and forgot to carry over my liked podcast from the
Apple podcast app. This is a great reminder, though, I
guess it's kind of futile, right if you're if you're
not currently listening to the show, you can't be listening
to this episode.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
But if you're, if you're listening and not subscribed on
the platform where you listen, please do subscribe. I mean,
assuming you want to be subscribed, but yeah, you do,
please please do that now that helps you and helps us.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, yeah, and it's yeah, absolutely so Anyway, Sinan continues,
now that we're back together, and yes, it is so
great to be back together. I have a great many
episodes to listen to and catch up on. Yeah. I
moved to Norway from Turkey and have come across this
weird phenomenon of numbered weeks, apparently in the Scandic countries

(29:11):
Norway and Denmark for sure, probably for Sweden as well.
Use week numbers for scheduling stuff, especially for the school calendars,
like winter break on week eight, fall break on week forty.
But also businesses have delivery deadlines set to weeks. Sometimes
colleagues tell me some deadline is on week twenty five,

(29:32):
and I'm like, what's the date. I don't speak weeks.
So there and back to listening, Sona, that is fascinating.
I did not know this was a thing.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
I did not know that either. Interesting, Thank you, Sonan.
I had no idea that. I can see how that
makes some sense but also would be annoying to get
used to if you're new to it.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, I'm not sure. I have mixed feelings. I guess
I'm resistant to change in general. But I can see
where this would maybe be much more efficient because you
get down to just you know, week number one, week
number two, week number three, But because when you go
by months, it's of course you have uneven amount of
weeks per month. Months also bring in additional like emotional

(30:16):
baggage as well, or at least I find that's my case.
So it's like thinking about things planned for July and
thinking about some things that are practical from a planning standpoint,
but other things are just more about the vibe of
July and my past with July, and maybe it is
better to just break it down, break that year down
into a set number of weeks, and plan accordingly.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah, though, I wonder if then you would just form
emotional associations with numbers of weeks. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Maybe, so you're like week one, Oh, don't get me started.
Week one is always a chaotic. Week two still don't
have it together. Call me when we get to week five.
Maybe week ten.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
I've really complicated emotional relationships with some months. It's not
a clean Oh I like that month that don't like
that one. I would say, for example, like October is
both my favorite and one of my least favorite months
of the year. Yeah, I love the autumn. I love
the Halloween season obviously, so it's like my favorite. You know,
it's great, but it also just tends to be, for

(31:16):
various reasons, a time of extreme stress for me.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah. I mean, fourth quarter in general is always there's
just so many moving pieces, and I imagine that's that
goes for a lot of different industries.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, so I end I end up sort of favoring
those sort of lost weeks. Uh, those those rare almost
normal weeks you might think of where there's nothing particular
going on except whatever your work demands are. But I
don't know. Those those seem increasingly rare. You don't know
until you're in them. But maybe if you're doing a
week a week by week like numbered system, you'd know,

(31:49):
like eventually week sixteen is coming. In weeks, Week sixteen
is going to be really sweet.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, at what point do you hit the realization though?
They're like, oh yeah, things are never going to go
back to normal.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yes, yeah, there's no such thing as a normal week.
All right, Well, should we jump into some weird house
cinema messages here? Joe?

Speaker 3 (32:17):
Sure, let's see. Do you want me to do this
one from Greg?

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Yeah? Why not? Let's do it.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
Okay, this is about Night of the Comet, Greg says,
Robert and Joe, your recent weird house cinema episode on
Night of the Comet was great. Joe remarked that part
of the coziness and appeal of the film are the
depictions of empty locations around Los Angeles that are usually
filled with people. This is very much part of what

(32:44):
draws me to this film, and it got me thinking
about the concept of liminal spaces. For those who are unaware,
liminal spaces are vacant places that feel eerie or uncanny
due to the lack of human activity. They often evoke
a feeling of nostalgia in the Observer. Examples include schools
and playgrounds at night, empty airport terminals and train stations,

(33:08):
and abandoned amusement parks. I work at a library and
get to experience this every time I work a closing shift.
Some people find liminal space is unsettling, but I find
the familiar yet mysterious atmosphere comforting. Liminal spaces and nostalgia
in general might be an interesting topic for a show

(33:29):
if it was given a similar treatment to the recent
episode on cynicism. I love the show and I am
so grateful to have multiple episodes to look forward to
each week. Keep up the great work in twenty twenty six. Greg.
Thank you, Greg. Yeah, I really appreciate this. You know,
I've had some confusion about the idea of liminal spaces
over time, because I have like two different understandings in

(33:51):
my head of what it means. In one of my
understandings is exactly what you're talking about, kind of eerie
empty places, you know, the kind of place you would
normally imagine activity happening, but now it is. It is ghostly,
and you know, you can hear your footsteps echoing. It's
defined by an absence in a way. But my other

(34:14):
understanding of liminal spaces is that it's about like transitional spaces,
spaces where people are not usually meant to be. So
you know, the sides of roads where there are no sidewalks,
just places people aren't or you know, long empty hallways
places people don't stop and stay. Maybe it's come to
encompass both of these definitions over time. I don't know,

(34:37):
but I agree Greg, it is really interesting. I mean,
we talked about this in the Night of the Comet episode,
and you bring it up in the email here as well.
It's interesting how these spaces feel both creepy and cozy
at the same time. There's something about them that is
slightly off putting, a little bit threatening, also a little

(35:01):
bit comfortable and inviting and makes you want to walk
around in them. And so it's this weird sort of
opposite feelings working in tension with each other. And I
wonder if something about that duality is related to the
idea that they somehow evoke something like nostalgia.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it reminds me two of things that
I've I've read regarding how paintings affect us, And like,
we look at a painting of a landscape and there's
this argument that you know, it's maybe tying into some
very you know, archaic coating in our minds about hunting
and gathering. We can't help but sort of place ourselves

(35:40):
within the landscape and imagine the most ideal place to
be within that landscape. So yeah, it's I love these
these conversations where we're trying to figure out, like, why
is a certain visual representation affecting me the way it
seems to be affecting me, And how much of it
is I am in that space now or I am

(36:01):
imagining myself in that space? Yeah, and how deep is
that connected to me?

Speaker 3 (36:06):
Absolutely? Yeah, But I just want to emphasize again, Greg,
I do think there is something really true and interesting
about the link you make between the feelings evoked by
liminal spaces and nostalgia. That's like, that's quite mysterious. I
don't understand why that link would be there, but I
feel that too, there is something in common between. I

(36:27):
don't know, the feeling of like walking through an empty,
you know, long empty hallway at night, or you know,
an empty airport terminal at night and there's nobody else there.
That feels kind of like when you see a toy
or item from your childhood. You know, it's just like,
oh wow, I remember that thing.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah, there's I don't know much about this. I haven't
looked at this stuff recently, but I know that in
the genre of vapor wave, especially with like vapor wave
videos and vapor wave of course, you know, like sonically
often engages a certain amount of nostalgia, but a number
of these videos also invoke liminal space. And if you

(37:09):
just do a quick search like vapor wave liminal space,
a lot of results come up where they're just they're
making it overt, an overt part of the product that's
been put out there. So again, not an area I
know a whole lot about, but I think just in
this one example, we might see, oh yeah, here's an
obvious crossover between nostalgia and liminal spaces, and that that

(37:31):
liminal space nostalgia can also work with other sorts of
nostalgic media. But it does. Yeah, it films like this
and other like apocalyptic media. Yeah, there is something inviting
about it. We both want to be there and also
realize that it is a nightmare scenario that we wouldn't
want to be a part of. And that applies to

(37:51):
various aspects of say, you know, like zombie apocalypse media.
All right, let's let's see here. Oh, we had a fun,
fun one here from Jeff subject line mosquitoes don't give
a damn about Christmas time. This is a response to
a musical discussion in our episode on the film Future Kick. Hmmm,

(38:18):
Jeff Wrights, Hey guys. When Rob mentioned that Stan Ridgway
did the soundtrack for Future Kick, I had another listen
to his catalog, and now I have all these great
songs stuck in my head enough that now I feel
the urge to try to get them stuck in your heads.
Stan's music has a cool desert Southwest vie with lots
of emphasis on setting, tone, storytelling, and underused instruments, at

(38:41):
least for rock music. There's a lot of harmonica, accordion, saxophone,
and what I think might be electric violin, unless maybe
they're just faking it all a sep He's just amazing
with the catchy hooks. Thus all the earworms I've got
crawling around in my head at the moment. Probably his
most successible song and a straight bang, is Going Southbound.

(39:01):
It's got his trademark dark humor, a real sense of
place and atmosphere, and it just rocks. If you only
listen to a couple of songs, I'd recommend that one
and The Roadblock, which tells a complete story with a
great sense of inevitability. Peg and Pete and Me is
a noir story that's only going one place. Once you
hear the setup, or maybe just the title, it's fun

(39:23):
to listen to get there. He also takes weird turns
into sci fi with memorable lyrics like these from The Overlords.
There is something in the air that is burning in
my throat. A big black cloud is passing dropping acid
on my coat. If those songs don't grab you, you
probably won't be into his stuff. Calling Out to Carol

(39:43):
and A Mission in Life are great snapshots of life.
Mission also manages to be both optimistically cheesy and cynically
bleak at the same time. It's funny, a little sad,
then turns sort of beautiful at the end. Some songs
are just philosophical comedy. And I want to be a
boss the narrator's story by wishing he could take long
lunches and eventually spirals into a Howard Hughes fantasy of

(40:05):
buying Mars and building an amusement park. Up There a
quote better than Old Walt's Place.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
That somehow sounds like it could be a Warren's Evon song.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
It does it does sound that reminds me of a
little bit of like splendid isolation. Yes Can't Complain is
one weird extended gag with a cartoon ending, and Harry
Truman only two thousand views on YouTube drops lines like
John Wayne was always bald and he had a woman's name.
This observation from newspapers frequently pops into my mind when

(40:35):
I catch myself doom scrolling quote. Now, lately, I've been thinking,
what would the world do without the news? You wouldn't
know when wars were started or when they ended, win
or lose. It'd probably be a much better world to
live in, But the question would be who's and what
side you're on, or who's right or wrong? You'd never
have to choose anyways, It's not exactly about songs about

(40:58):
wolfmen and atomic mons us, but I think you'd both
enjoy a deep dive into his stuff or not. Your
mileage may vary, as they say, thanks for continuing to
stir up the neurons in my mind, Jeff.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Should we do a brief off Mike listening party to
one of these songs and come back?

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I listen to some of his music
when we were working on this episode. But I do
need a reminder here.

Speaker 3 (41:21):
Yeah, let's check out Going Southbound.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
All right? Yeah, I like this, and I think, you know,
I have to come back to the Warrens eve on comparison.
You know they don't you know, not that they sound
tremendously alike, but there's a similar sense of sort of
an outsider trueadoor giving you an insight into a certain
world and painting that world with a fair amount of
weird detail.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
Yeah. Well, the lyrics are a very cynical indictment of
the rat race. Yes, you know, it's like, oh, you're
sitting in traffic, you know you got a job. It's
all a bunch of hooey. But yeah, the guy's voice.
He's got more twang in his voice than I expect
to doing, kind of a cowboy accent. Uh and he

(42:04):
uh man. The production on it is so eighties. It's
like a you know, textbook example of what people mean
when they think about nineteen eighties rock production.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Yeah, which is another thing you do find with with
Warren Zevon music.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
Of that later album. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, but but yeah, I love his voice does have
that twang again what as we discussed in the in
that Weird House Cinema episode, a lot of people are
going to be most familiar with his voice from the
the Wall of Voodoo track Mexican Radio. Yeah, he's in
full twang on that as well. He was the it
was a new wave group and he was he was

(42:43):
the vocalist at that point.

Speaker 3 (42:45):
Okay. In the video for the song by the way,
he's wandering around in this like drab coat in what
looks like an antiques warehouse. So they're just a bunch
of old furniture around and like a cage with an
armadillo in it. I think people playing violins and saxophones.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Yeah, armadilla might be a vampire around there somewhere.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
I guess so all right.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
Well, Jeff, thanks for writing in. Yeah anytime. I love
it when we can find out more about a particular
artist or actor that comes up in a Weird House
Cinema episode.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
Yeah, oh hey. Also, we got some messages related to
Night of the comment about there was an arcade game
in the movie. Remember the Katherine Mary Stewart's character. She's
like all time great at this arcade game, and it
was called Tempest. And at first we were like, is
this a real game? But it is. Neither of us
had ever played it. It was what was called a

(43:39):
tube shooter genre we were not familiar with, and so
a couple of people wrote in about Tempest. One message
is from Lee. Lee says subject line Tempest arcade game.
Merry Christmas, Rob, Joe, and jj I hope you all
are having a great holiday season. In Day of the Commet, lea,

(44:02):
come on, it's night Night of the Living Comet. In
the Day of the Comet Weird House episode, you mentioned
the video game Tempest. I was in college in the
eighties and there were a couple of arcades in town.
While for me the Tempest was a guaranteed loss of
a quarter, I did try it several times. Anyway, the
graphics were pretty rudimentary, line based. The concept of a

(44:25):
tube shooter works, but is a new phrase for me.
Here's the gameplay picture. An outline of a stop sign
draw lines from the inside corners to the center. This
drawing creates the tube. The shooting position is around the
outside edge of the stop sign shape. You move around
the outside to target adversaries as they come towards you

(44:46):
out of the distance. This movement is accomplished with a
rotating maybe Lee means rotating arrow here. The second control
is a fire button. When you clear a level, you
advance or fall through the tube to the next level,
a new different polygon, more enemies, faster pace, et cetera.

(45:07):
This is the basics I can recall from forty years ago,
prompted by a scene from the film Thank you for
your work on stuff to blow your mind in Weird House.
Happy New Year to you all, sincerely, lye uh yeah,
thanks Lee. You know, I'm kind of intrigued by this
idea of a tube shooter, like a game based on
shooting at things in a tunnel. This obviously is a

(45:28):
more basic geometric version of it. But then I was like, Oh,
this actually is not all that unfamiliar of a concept.
I mean, a lot of early first person three D
first person shooter games are called like, you know, corridor
shooters or hallway shooters, where you're basically always in some
kind of hallway and you know you're shooting at something
down the hallway. And it also makes me think of

(45:49):
there was a game I recall called something like Descent.
Do you remember this game? It's it seemed like a
game where you're in some sort of vehicle, like a
shift for a mech of some kind, and you're going
through tunnels or tubes shooting at things.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Yes, I remember this game this. I think maybe I
only played like a demo of it, but it was
one of those that, you know, the the the disc
were being passed around for it back in the day.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
Yeah, it might have been a popular freeware game, yes,
or sharewear yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Yeah, around the time of you know, the popular I
forget it where where it falls in like Doom and
Quake timeline?

Speaker 3 (46:26):
But yeah, yeah, Oh this is funny because I just
pulled up the wiki for Descent trying to remember what
this is, and there's a line on here that says
it was inspired by the scene in Return of the
Jedi where the Millennium Falcon is going through the middle
of the second Death Star to blow it up.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
Yeah, at this point, like any amount of three D
and video games was just astounding. And I guess, more
to the point, it would have been during the original
release window for Tempest, so that you know, there's you know,
maybe there's something lost on us as we look at
the game plan now because we have so many different
three DEU worlds around us from video games. But maybe

(47:06):
this is a bit revolutionary at the time. Yeah, it
seems to have struck a chord because I was looking
up a little bit more about Tempest than I was
reminded that it factors into the novel Ready Player one,
which is loaded with all sorts of nostalgia from the
eighties of you know, pretty much every media sort, and
which it makes for a fun reading experience because you

(47:29):
end up looking things up. I've read it with my
kid and we would have to stop every few paragraphs
and I'd have to explain what something is, or other
times they already knew what it was. But yeah, pretty
fun novel and I think I'm to understand it. Also,
this game also pops up in Twilight Zone the movie,
just another example of it being culturally important, I guess.

(47:49):
During the nineteen eighties we also heard from Matt on
Discord included some video footage of himself playing the game.
He said, here's Tempest, albeit on my a Joust machine
rather than an original Joust, another classic arcade game which
also factors into Ready Player one. Joe mentioned it as
a tube shooter. I suspect it was originally done with

(48:10):
vector graphics instead of pixels, and you play as a
ship question mark at the top of the tube. Joystick
moves you clockwise or counterclockwise around the mouth of the
tube as enemies come up the tube towards you getting
hit by a shot or enemy kills you. And if
an enemy gets to the top, they chase you around
the mouth of the tube where you can't shoot them.
Oh no, he says, I am, by no means an expert,

(48:33):
and I'm not sure this would make my favorites list
even in the nineteen eighties. But if they had it
at a movie theater I was working at, it'd be
better than work, I guess.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
Okay, yeah, I think that was Reggie's attitude as well.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
Yeah, I mean that's another thing to factor into all
of this is like availability of video games. Yeah, you
know nowadays, you know, using certainly we need to get
demos and free freeware and you know even various and
so options. You have so many games to choose from.
And you know, there was a time where it was
whatever was physically present at the arcade, if you had

(49:08):
an arcade, it might be what was physically present at
your pizza hut or in the you know, just outside
your walmart, that sort of thing. I certainly remember those days.

Speaker 3 (49:18):
Yeah, it used to be a lot more finding what
you like about what you can get.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
Yeah, and certainly, I mean when I was growing up,
you know I had when I had a Nintendo and
then later when I had a Saga Genesis. You know,
we could rent games on occasion, but in general, it
was like you decided what game you wanted, you got it,
and then that was the game, Like good or bad.
You're going to spend a lot of time with it.
You were going to figure out its flaws. It wasn't

(49:45):
going to be one of these situations where it's like,
well I'll try it out for ten minutes and then
if I like it, I'll keep going, but I also
might like it and never play it again. Like that's
I feel like that's where I am today. Great game.
I played five minutes of it. Maybe I'll play some
more of it one day, but I won't.

Speaker 3 (49:59):
Yeah, I guess the other thing being, you know, in adulthood,
there's like a big time issue. It's like, oh I
could I could enjoy this if I had a lot
of time to figure it out, but I don't have
time to figure it out.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
So yeah, yeah, the enemies are approaching up the two.
It's not that much time. All right, We're gonna do
it at least one more here. This one comes to
us from Charles. Charles says, Hi, Rob, Joe, and JJ.
Your Star Trek Week was cool. We did Star Trek

(50:32):
Week a while back, and yeah, enough, folks what wrote
in about it. I think we may do Star Trek
Week again in twenty twenty six, so stick with us.
My folks are longtime Trek fans who love nature. I'm
excited to show them the episode you did on the
Salt Vampire. I didn't realize The Man Trap was the
first episode of Star Trek for Halloween this year. Would

(50:52):
you do nineteen forty two's Cat People, and quick note,
we did not do nineteen forty twos Cat People, as
discussed in a minute, it remains on our list. Yeah,
the themes of repression, conformity, and sexuality stuck out to
me for an old movie. I've heard it has the
earliest jump scare in a movie, and I believe it's
loosely based on a story by the great Algernon Blackwood.

(51:15):
I think the movie holds up. I enjoy its creepy
and magical noir style. The Leopard Man is also an
unseen gem from the same creative team. YouTube's mysterious algorithm
suggested it. I was surprised that I'd never heard of
it before because it was also excellent and seemed ahead
of its time with its themes misdirection and scares, live
long and prosper charms.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
Yeah, my wife and I watched Cat People several years back,
and I recall we enjoyed it. The jump scare is
interesting because it's a not to spoil anything, but you know,
it's a very old movie. At this point. It's a
Cat People movie, so you might think it's like the
classic jump scare, which is a cat jumps out, but no,
it's a bus. The jump scary is a bus?

Speaker 2 (51:58):
Buzzes can be scary.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
Yeah, yeah, Dethly can.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
But yeah, Cat People is a classic, and yeah I
watched part of it. I think it was one of
these situations where I was, like, I checked out a
bunch of movies. I was looking specifically for something for
weird House, and for some reason or another I put
Cat People on the back sheelf and didn't actually finish it.
But I'd love to come back to it because because yeah,
it has a great reputation. I liked what I saw,

(52:22):
and it definitely definitely ties in with the sorts of
films that I value, and the nineteen eighty two Cat People,
I guess still technically on the list as well. I
think I had expressed disinterest in that one, but then
we had a listener write in and said, hey, eighty
two's Cat People is also fun, So okay, fair enough,
It's still on the list as well. Alrighty, but I

(52:44):
don't think we can do eighty two's Cat People unless
we can't just do eighty two's Cat People, like eighty
two's Cat People is a possible add on much further
down the line after we've done the other Cat People
movie Leopard People. I'm not sure question mark on that.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
Oh hey, before we end today's episode, Uh, maybe we
should mention this message from Shadow Rat on discord about
Santa Claus the movie. Right, Oh yes, yes, do you
want to read this one wrong?

Speaker 2 (53:12):
You go ahead, and you have a cute up.

Speaker 3 (53:13):
There, Shadow Rat says, short message. I can't help but
wonder if the magic that moves characters up and down
chimneys in Santa Claus the movie is killing and resurrecting
these characters in a similar fashion to Star Trek's Transporter Bravo,

(53:35):
the flower to disappear is actually a murder device.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it. It alters the the destiny
of the clause. Right, you know, maybe not only doom
to not die and to live forever, but to die endlessly, endlessly,
you know, death after death after death. Every time he
teleports in and out of a child's home, and maybe
that's part of his longevity.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
Yeah, very good observation, Shadow.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
App Yeah, anytime we can shoehorn some weird teleportation philosophy
into a Christmas tradition, I'm.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
All for it, all right, Does that do it? For today.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
I guess that does it for today, but we'll be back,
you know, stay tuned. We should have a new episode
on Thursday unless we can't get it together. But I
think we can get it together. We're going to try
in the meantime and definitely write in with any of
your questions, concerns, suggestions for the futures, seasonal well wishes,
and so forth. All of it is fair game. Just
reminder of Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a

(54:33):
science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
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 (55:04):
Stuffed Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.