STBYM Listener Mail: La Muerte

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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

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

Speaker 3 (00:14):
And I am Joe McCormick, and hey folks. I know
we don't usually do a preamble on our show before
every episode, but I thought it'd be good in case
there are some new listeners out there, to kind of
remind you who we are if you're new to the show.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind has been an audio podcast
for like fifteen years or sixteen Rob and when did
it actually start?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
We've always been here, it's been a while.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Our core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays of every week,
and those are about diverse topics that we get interested in.
Usually they have something to do with science or culture
in some way. Most Wednesdays we publish a short form
scripted episode, and then on Fridays we do a sub
show called Weird House Cinema where we just talk about
a strange film. You can find all of those episodes

(00:59):
in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed wherever
you get your podcasts. In today's episode, this is a
recurring segment we do called Listener mail where we're going
to read and respond to some email from listeners. We
do this at variable intervals now, usually maybe once every
month or month and a half. And I'll go ahead
and give you the email address in case you would

(01:20):
like to get in touch and send us a message
that could be featured on a show like this in
the future. That email address is contact at stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. Also, we just wanted to
check in about the fact that just within the past
month we started recording a video version of the show
that you can find on Netflix. It's the exact same content,

(01:41):
it's just with the cameras turned on, and so we're
still relatively new at this. I think we're kind of
getting used to the merciless unblinking eye. But we have
gotten some encouraging emails from listeners saying they're enjoying the
video version, So thank you for that. The kind words
really do mean a lot to us. If you happen
to be watching us on Netflix now and you want

(02:02):
to subscribe, you can click the remind me buttons so
future episodes will pop up when they publish. And please listeners,
if your game, we encourage you to just leap wantonly
from one platform to another and consume the show however
you like best. So if you found us on Netflix, please, yes,
go subscribe to our audio format wherever you get your podcasts.

(02:23):
And if you're an audio listener, please look us up
on Netflix if you're so inclined.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, if you're listening to us, if you're watching us,
whatever you're comfortable with, we're just pleased that you took
time out of your day to listen to our content,
and we're grateful.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
All right, Rob, are you ready to get right into
the messages.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, A lot of these, or at least the ones
at the top, are gonna have to do with our
recent series on personifications of death. Anthropomorphic personification, so death
like the grim Reaper certainly in Western traditions, but other
related figures. We weren't able to cover everything out there
because this is a sort of figure that occurs just

(03:02):
throughout human cultures, and there's so many different varieties and
yet at the same time, there are certain aspects, certain
tropes that you'll find again and again, and so we
reached out to listeners because we knew that people would
have all sorts of personal but also cultural details to
fill in for us. Right.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
So, Rob, if it's okay with you, I'm going to
do this message from Maya. Yeah, Maya, says dear Robin, Joe.
What a fascinating discussion about the personification of death and
grammatical gender. As a speaker of Mexican Spanish as my
first language, I found it especially compelling given my country's

(03:44):
fascination with death and its many representations. Curiously enough, every
name we give to death, and there are hundreds I looked,
is a feminine noun. La morte death is feminine, but
so are Laparca, one of the fates in Greek myth,
and Laflaca, the skinny one. Folk images of death seem
to be divided. A very well known representation of death

(04:07):
is Lakatrina, an image created first created by the engraver
Jose Guadalupe Posada, that depicts death as a high class lady.
Its name means something like the well dressed one. And Rob,
I went and looked up this image. I pulled it
into our outline. So this is Lakatrina by Jose Guadalupe Pasada.
It's a figure of a skeleton who seems to be

(04:30):
I don't know what these kind of fluffy things around
its shoulders are maybe they're bushes or clouds. I guess
clouds would make sense. But it's wearing this big, elaborate,
beautiful hat. It's like a gently sloping kind of domed
hat with flowers on the top and big, you know,
dangling feathers coming off, and then also something seemingly tucked

(04:52):
into the skeleton's ear, though of course a skull wouldn't
have an ear. But what are those things down there?
Are those like tassels or flowers?

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah? Yeah, the overall appearances yet death in a festive hat.
And this this image was discussed in some of the
sources that I was using for those episodes, but I
I didn't get to it, but it is quite an
important one, I'm to understand.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Maya's email goes on to say the Maschika deities of
death were a male and female skeletal figure. Mictlandakoutli was
the lord of mik Dlan the underworld, and mik Takasi
Watt was his wife. And Maya this you may have
written this email before we discussed them on the show,
but these figures did come up, I think in part
four of our discussion there, where we were talking about

(05:37):
a paper about what were the cultural inputs on the
creation of Santa Marte, which does come up in this email.
By the way, Maya says, in many other visual traditions,
death is a male figure. Rob will be happy to
note that there was a Lucha libre character known as
La Parca, although he tragically died as a result of
injuries sustained in a match. Rob, I think you've got

(05:59):
some stuff on Laparca.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Later I do, and we have another listener male that
will also fill in some of the blanks for us.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah, okay, Maya says. Punk and heavy metal depictions of
death as a male, devilish figure coexist with the controversial
La Santa Morte the Holy Death, a folk cult figure
that appears as a female skeletal deity who personifies death
and is venerated by people from all walks of life,
and Argentinian equivalent, in contrast is a male figure San

(06:28):
la Morte. And of course, during Da da Mortos, the
Day of the Dead, you can write your name on
the forehead of a sugar skull and add it to
the altar or afrienda, and in doing so you turn
a neutral, genderless confection into your own gendered alter ego.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Ah, that's a nice, nice tidbit to mentioned. Yeah, there's
an excellent Day of the Dead celebration here in Atlanta.
Every year. They hold it at the historic Cokeland Cemetery,
and we generally try to go.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
As somebody who didn't grow up with Day of the
Dead celebrations. I for a long time, I think I
had the wrong idea that it was only it was
like Mardi Gras, that it was only like this big
public festival kind of thing. But I realized more recently, Yeah,
that you know, you can have private celebrations. And I
actually went to one that was hosted by some family

(07:20):
of ours this past fall. It was beautiful and the
afriendo was I don't know, I found it very touching.
Oh nice, coming back to Maya's email. As for grammatical gender,
its influence on our perception of external objects is still
up for debate. Some studies have found that we tend
to think of feminine inanimate objects such as table mesa,
as having more feminine attributes than masculine objects, but other

(07:43):
research has found these effects to be more subtle or
even non existent. Yeah, we talked about that in the
episodes too. There's kind of a mixed research picture on
to what extent this is really happening. But Maya says,
in the case of death, nothing seems to prevent us
from thinking about it as both the mascular and feminine figure.
Despite the grammatical gender of the noun, we used to

(08:03):
refer to it a wonderful series. Keep up the great
work and know that you have many non native English
speakers as fans all over the world. Maya. Well, thank you, Maya,
very nice, wonderful. It warms my heart. And then also
Maya had a follow up email just to share a
picture with us, She says, Dear Joe and rob By
the way, here you have a picture of the Santa

(08:25):
Morte van that makes the rounds in my brother's neighborhood,
so her devotees can worship her from the comfort of
their own homes. All the best, Maya, And this is wonderful.
It's a Santa Morte figure enthroned on a big chair,
draped in looks like gold satin or something kind of
a gold leaf texture, sitting in the bed of a

(08:47):
trailer or the back of a pickup truck, or it
might be like one of those small three wheel pickup trucks,
and so she's a very dry skeleton. As we talked
about she usually, you know, she's very parched. But she's
wearing a pink floral gown and a mantle like a
hood over the top of her head. In her right hand,
she's holding a scythe. In her left hand a golden

(09:09):
ball which I think could be the earth. It's like
a globe. And then she has an owl perched over
either shoulder. Do you see the two owls.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Rob Oh, yeah, I didn't see them at first, but
now I see.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
Them hiding in the ruffles of the gold on the chair.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
That's great.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
And then also in the same hand as the scythe,
she's got some kind of foliage. I don't know exactly
what that is. I was wondering, could that be a
palm leaf?

Speaker 2 (09:33):
It does kind of look like a palm leaf.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, yeah, I can't say for sure what that is,
but this is great. Thank you so much for sending Maya.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yes, indeed, all right, I said, we're going to have
more about La Parca the Lucha Door, and indeed we're
going to read this next one from Angelo Angela, says Hi,
Robert and Joe. While listening to your podcast series about
the Personifications of death, mention of the Mexican Laparca immediately

(10:02):
got me thinking about professional wrestling, the WCW promotion. This
some of you may not be aware that this promotion
used to exist heyday during the nineties.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Wait, what's it called now? It's not that anymore.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
It doesn't exist. It was, yeah, it went away. It
was purchased by WWE, and it is now part of
that conglonerate anyway, Angelo writes the WCW promotion showcased luchadors
in the mid to late nineties, including one named Laparca.
He wore a skeletal mask and costume to look like

(10:40):
a reaper, but instead of a scythe he always carried
a steel chair to the ring. He would, of course
use it on his opponents during matches, but he would
also play guitar air guitar on it during his entrances
and post match celebrations. He used the chair so much
that announcers gave him the nickname the Chairman of WCW.

(11:01):
He did well. He did use the Mexican grim reaper costume.
The gimmick never really went with the subject of death
in the same way that another wrestler, the Undertaker, did
in his earlier days. Other wrestlers would take on the
Laparca mantle, with the character making an appearance in this
year's WWE Royal Rumble. Anyway, the series was great and

(11:22):
I really learned a lot from it. Please keep up
the great work. Thanks Angela. So yes Laparka. Believe me.
When Laparca came up in our death episodes, I did
have to fight the urge to bring him up, but
I was like, we can save this for later. Somebody
will write in about this and we can follow up.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
I don't think anybody would have minded if you'd, oh, we.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Had a lot of ground to cover. It was hard
to argue that we needed a side trip to louchal
Libra at that point, and I knew we'd come back
to it. Yes, Angelo did a I think a great
job here summarizing the Laparca that wrestling fans of the
nineties in the US likely remember. Tied to the Triple
A promotion in Mexico at the time, and then I

(12:01):
think he was full time with WCW for a spell
there too, and he was played by a wrestler named
Adolfo Ibarra born nineteen sixty five. And yeah, I believe
his real name, this character, this luchador, has never been unmasked,
but I believe his name and age are of public records,

(12:21):
so we're not spoiling anything there. But when he left
that promotion Triple A, Triple A retained the rights to
the costume and the gimmick, and so they handed the
gimmick over to Jesus Escoboza, who lived nineteen sixty six
through twenty twenty. This is the Laparca that was mentioned
earlier that died in twenty twenty. So but this handoff

(12:45):
was occurring in the late nineties, and I believe there
was a lot of like legal back and forth about
the gimmick. But certainly by around two thousand and three, Abarra,
the first Laparka, ended up altering his costume to look
like a combination of Darth Maul and the Laparca skeleton
costume that he had been wearing in order to perform
in televise matches for CMLL. That's Mexico's biggest lush promotion

(13:10):
and arch rival of Triple A. At this point, he
changed his name to what as an English speaker, I
always read as La park but I'm to understand in
Spanish it is pronounced la Parka, so it still sounds
like Laparca, but is spelled differently for legal regas. I see. Yeah,

(13:31):
so he did some great work for CML during that timeframe.
I watched some of his CML matches back in the day,
and since then, the Laparca legacy has continued, with a
third Laparka. In Triple A there was and then at
different times there were various family members of Agvarres that
ended up taking on some sort of Laparca gimmick. So
there was a super Parka, various sons of Laparca. There

(13:54):
was also a lark There were some La Parkitas, more
than one, like many Laparca's, and for a short while
there was a female Laparka as well. So it just
goes to show, you know, once you've established a great gimmick,
you just can't keep it down. People are gonna wear
the hood no matter what.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
Wait, do you know how did Darth Maul get wrapped in?
Was that just zeitgeist?

Speaker 2 (14:16):
I think it was just yeah, in the zeitgeist at
the time, and I don't know for certain, but I'm
assuming he just realized he needed to mix up the
look a little bit, and so it made sense for
him to do this. He might have actually done it
a little bit before he became La Park, if you will,
just because it was fun, you know, like sometimes costume

(14:38):
wrestlers in Mexico, the Lucitos, will do this where they'll
they'll take their existing costume and they'll tweak it a
little bit, maybe a'le align it with something in pop
culture beyond what they have going on. But yeah, I'm
mostly familiar with the guy who would become La Park,
and I generally describe him as a brawling, wild man
luchador that could still bust out some really sweet maneuvers

(15:00):
here and there. But yeah, one does not get much
of a traditional mainstream grim reprovibe from him though, you know,
especially the WCW days he was dancing, he was playing
at your guitar. He wasn't coming for people's souls or
anything like that. He was doing spin kicks. Yeah. Well, Angela,
thanks for writing in about all that. It was nice
to dive in on a little Laparka history. And then

(15:23):
there's so many other lugadors that have skull motifs incorporated
into their look, you know, the whole army of them.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yeah, thank you Angelo. Okay, are you ready if I
do this message from Luisa? Yeah, Luisa says, Hi, guys,
I hope this twenty twenty six is a great year
for you and yours. I've been fascinated by your Death series.

(15:54):
You always give such an interesting, deep analysis of obscure information.
Thank you, Louisa, is what we hope for. We try. However,
I had hoped you would mention Las Intermittensias de la
Morte by Sarah Mago and that title is usually translated
Death with Interruptions. Luisa says, if you haven't read it yet,

(16:15):
I can't recommend it enough. It is elegantly written, with
a mysterious plot and a beautiful ending. Please consider it
in your reading list for this year. And if you
do happen to talk about it further on the series.
My apologies as always, thank you so much for your
wonderful podcast, Luisa. Oh, and then Luisa says, ps, every
time you go over the weekly schedule, when you say

(16:37):
and on Fridays, we're going to say we do weird
house cinema. But she says, when you say and on Fridays,
I expect you to say, I'm in love pop culture
and printing.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
I guess that's the cure, right, Yeah, yeah, that's the cure.
That's a great song.

Speaker 3 (16:50):
So this novel is by the Portuguese author Jose Saramago.
I have not read it, but Luisa, I looked it
up on your suggestion and I they genuinely ended up
ordering a copy of the English translation. This is the
translation by Margaret Joel Costa. And just to give you
a taste, the opening sentence of the book is the

(17:11):
following day no one died. So it's a pretty cool premise.
I don't want to spoil too much about the book,
though I did kind of read ahead about what the
plot is, and that got me hooked on wanting to
actually read the book, but just to sort of sketch
it out. The premise is that one day, in one country,
death just stops. People become unexpectedly and suddenly immortal. And

(17:35):
while this seems like a great blessing, actually it is horrible.
It turns into a crisis because it doesn't mean that
people are now eternally well, it just means they don't die.
So people with fatal injuries and terminal illnesses do not
get better. They just don't die, which is actually a nightmare,

(17:56):
and so that happens. I was reading about some interesting
plots in the middle of the book where the government
is trying to figure out like workarounds, like what can
we do with the people who are like basically.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Dead but not dying.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
And then there is another part in the book where
apparently the character of Death decides to resume allowing people
to die, but she gives them a warning a week
ahead of time so they can prepare and like prepare
and use their final day as well, and this also
seems to go disastrously. It increases dread and obsession. So

(18:30):
it seems like the story is going to be about
paradoxes in how we think about death, Like a lot
of things that we want with respect to death, like
knowing when it will happen or avoiding it entirely, would
be absolute curses if they were to really happen. And finally,
the story does seem to involve death falling in love
with immortal, which we were just talking about stories like that,

(18:52):
weren't we.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah, yeah, Well, actually several aspects of this story match
up with some much older tellings, you know, being taken
out of commission to what extent death is going to
give you a heads up on his or her arrival.
So yeah, this sounds very interesting, like taking all these
ideas and these literary motifs that we've been ruminating on

(19:17):
and sort of updating it for a twenty first century
literary treatment.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
Yeah, so anyway, thank you for the recommendation, Luisa, and
I am gonna my copies on the way and I'm
going to be trying to read it this year.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
All right, This next one comes to us from Albert.
Albert is the name of the human who assists death
in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. But I think this is
a different Albert.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
This is not a pseudonym Albert has written to us before.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Okay, or it could be a different Albert, or could
be the fictional character from the Discworld. Now we're about
to find out. We're about to find out Albert. Right,
sin and says dear Robin Joe. I have been thoroughly
enjoying your exploration of the anthropomorphic p sionifications of death.
I'm writing this after listening to part three. There have

(20:03):
been many depictions of death in various media over the years.
Some of my favorites are from the films, and we
get a short list here, The Seventh Seal, you know,
classic Monty Python in the Meaning of Life. Yes, that's
another great one. And meet Joe Black. I haven't seen
meet cho Blake who plays death in that?

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Is that?

Speaker 3 (20:24):
Is that Brad Pitt?

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Is Is he death in that? Is he Joe Black?

Speaker 3 (20:27):
I think so?

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Or?

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Or is he he ages backwards in this one? Towards Death?
I can't remember. I can't keep it.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
This is one from the nineties. In my brain, I merged.
I used to merge Meet Joe Black and City of
Angels the American remake of Wings of Desire into one movie.
But they're different movies.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Okay, all right, Meet chob Blake. Maybe I should give it,
give it a go on the small screen. The Hitchhiker
episode from the Twilight Zone was quite memorable, and in
the various comics and graphic novels. Death of the Endless
in the Sandman series is my favorite. And we can't
forget about death the Pale Rider in the Book of Revelations.
Although side note apparently the original word describing death is

(21:09):
not pale, but a light green, indicating that it's actually
the color of rotting flesh. Anyway, in both Meet Joe
Black and in Sad Sandman, death is shown to be
a comforting presence, fulfilling the role of psychopomp that you mentioned.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
That's right, So the distinction there is that the psychopomp
is the figure, like the way Hermes is sometimes depicted
in Greek mythology, the guide of the soul to the
afterlife takes you from one place to the next.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, Albert continues, I also looked into Japanese culture's depiction
of death. When I do a search on Shinigami, which
literally means death god, the search shows either the soul
reapers from the anime Bleach or Western depictions of the
grim Reaper. As far as I know, there is a
judge of the dead in the Dio who is derived

(21:58):
from Yama of the Hindu pantheon. This judge of the
dead is present in many Buddhist cultures, but a death god,
a reaper, a harvester of souls seems to be absent. Anyway,
looking forward to part four, impossibly part five, thanks Albert, Oh.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
That is interesting, So that would be if you're correct here, Albert,
this would be the case of a culture that doesn't
really have anything quite like a grim reaper figure like
in Japanese culture. There's maybe just not a native equivalent
of the figure that appears at your death.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Hmm. Yeah, I haven't researched this for myself yet. One
of the main sources, as I mentioned in our series,
definitely focused on more on Western models, but you know,
I love looking into Eastern cultures as well, so maybe
in the future we'll come back and look at some
of these models from Buddhism and Hinduism as well.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Ready for me to do this one for Matt?

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, what does Matt have to say?

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Matt says, good day, Fellas, Happy New Year. Very much
enjoyed the series on personifications of death. It's a subject
I've often thought about and had a couple of thoughts
based on my own cultural interest. Being a Knuk with
Scott's Irish Scotch Irish ancestry, and a general fascination with
Gaelic culture. I've long been interested in the myth and

(23:21):
stories of those cultures and how they can bleed into
the modern day. Halloween and various other holiday traditions being
easy examples. One I was attracted to from an early
age was the Banshee and the Morgan. I've written to
you previously on some explorations I've done into Morigan lore,
and then parenthetically a place called rath Krogan and the

(23:43):
cave of Oafnagot, for example, I vaguely recall that, don't
recall what we said about them. Is there something about
a cat at that cave that sounds.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Failing that sounded maybe a rabbit?

Speaker 3 (23:58):
Matt says, What what I find interesting about the Morgan
is that she, while not exclusively a death figure, is
a death figure which seems to both mock and take
delight in trickery, while one who also acts on savage
impulses less in the tradition of the reaper, who gets
closer over time, and more in the chaotic neutral vein

(24:19):
where anything can propel her can propel you to her
cold embraces if you're not careful. So sort of like
the deceiver figure we were talking about, it's a common
image of death, the one who embodies a fatal irony.
So Matt says, I've only listened to part one of
the series at this point. So perhaps you mentioned this

(24:40):
in part two, but I find the Morgan to be
a wonderful embodiment of both the malevolence and randomness of
physical danger in our lives. To me, it's a quote,
nothing personal, but you are going to die now because
you screwed up, and the universe has little sympathy mentality.
Then there's the banshee, the ghostly version of a keening
woman at a funeral, which many a person is said

(25:02):
to see or at least here before someone they know
or they themselves die. I learned of the banshee when
I was about fourteen years old and had just started
getting interested in my family's history, culture, and stories. We
didn't have much, if anything from the old Country, but
a few funny sayings about not being out in bad
weather and shutting ears to strange voices. I always found

(25:24):
that strange. Then I came to know about the banshee.
And if you saw a piece of clothing, shoe, etc.
In the road at night, you may want to walk elsewhere.
Not sure if that's a real thing or not, but
that is what I thought at the time. I remember
being out hunting one night near the family farm and
coming across a child's dress caught on a bush from

(25:46):
the wind. Ugh Was it a sign? Of course it wasn't,
and was likely just caught on some foliage after some
critter ripped open a garbage bag during the previous pickup day,
it being blown by strong winds common to my homemade
home area. Regardless, it freaked me right out and I
went home immediately. I'm not a religious or superstitious person generally,

(26:07):
but must admit I still get a chill thinking about
that particular evening. Anyway, I suppose the lesson, as you
both put it so well, is that the personification of
death is in a way a very individual process defining
what we each fear, expect, and want to a degree personally.
If I have to go with the Morgan cackling at
me telling me how stupid a decision I had made, was,

(26:31):
that's all right with me. As always, love the show
and do keep it up. All the best from Ontario, Matt.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Well, thanks, Matt. I'm gonna have to say no thank
you to the Morgan with the whole death blaming thing.
I mean, come on, have a little bedside matter. Send
in Joe Black instead. I guess, yeah, all right, This
next one comes to us from Stephanie titled Death Listens. Hi,
Robert and Joe, thanks for the episodes entitled Oh Death.

(27:00):
This has been among my favorite series from the show.
I've had a lot of fun reflecting on what I
think death looks like. When you mentioned the Death Listens artwork,
I looked it up since I found it interesting that
one of you thought the figure looked a bit awkward
or similar just hanging out. I noticed that Death was
holding flowers and almost contemplating the figure playing the violin.

(27:21):
To me, this figure is one of the comforting deaths.
She knows this is hard for the humans, so she
takes time to enjoy the song of the young Man
before she goes about her duties. This thought was confirmed
for me when I realized Seinberg also painted the Garden
of Death, which features three figures tending a garden with care.

(27:41):
One is particularly enraptured with the flowers, which is impressive
to convey on a skull. Thanks again for such a
fun and interesting series on this subject. It's so neat
to learn about the cultural and historical differences of how
death is personified. Thank you, Stephanie.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
So Rob four reference, I put both of the artworks
that Stephanie mentions in our outline here, so first you
can look at that. This is the one we were
actually talking about in the series, the painting Death Listens
by Hugo. I was saying, Simberg, did you say Seinberg?

Speaker 2 (28:13):
I might have said Seinberg here, but at the top
of my head, I'm not sure which one is correct.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
I don't know either, Okay, So Hugo, Simberg or Seinberg.
This was painted in eighteen ninety seven. This is the
one we talked about where there is an old woman
lying in a bed in the background, looking very frail.
And then the weird thing is that death is not
oriented toward the dying woman. She is standing there draped
in black. It's a skeletal figure draped in black holding

(28:38):
flowers across from a young man playing a violin. So
it's like she's listening to the violin, just kind of
ignoring the dying woman, and we were wondering what to
make of that. It is very curious. But then yeah,
so Robi also pulled in the Garden of Death, which
Stephanie brought up, and I see what you're saying, Stephanie.
It's hard to convey expressions on skeletons because it's expressions

(29:00):
are movements of the soft tissue of the face. But yeah,
this one skeleton in the middle here, So the main
layout is three skeletons are tending two plants in a
garden with raised beds, and then also pots that are
down on the ground. And there they're just one of
them is watering plants. One of them is bent over
looking away from us, probably looking at plants, and then

(29:21):
one of them is just clutching a flower, almost as
in like the way a child clutches their stuffy Just
I love it. I'm, you know, a happy little embrace
of an inanimate object clutching this flower, and it does
have a big grin on its face. I think the
way Simberg did this is by like curling the the
mouth into like a U shape so that it looks

(29:44):
like a smile, even though I think you would actually
to convey that, you would have to move the lips,
which the scale the skull does not have. So it's
a bit of trickery here.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Yeah, I don't think I get a real sense of
sadness off of that. That middle skeleton here, they fill
a closeness to human That's what I get from this
and that there's a there's there's sorrow in their work,
and they have mixed feelings about it, but it's part
of the process, you know, it's part of the garden. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
In both of these paintings, there is a mix of
imagery because of course, a comforting death figure is not
all that unusual. In fact, in the American psychology studies
we looked at, it was the most common type of
death figure. People imagine some sort of a soothing comforter,
but that the comforter was usually depicted as more human,

(30:35):
you know, fully fleshed and maybe like an old man
or a woman or you know, somebody somebody coming to
you with the flesh still on. Here, we're combining like
the imagery of the monstrous, rotten, decayed death figure who's
skeletal in nature, with the posture and the emotional tone
of the comforter.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's quite a feat to pull off
visually here, but you know they managed to. I'll go
ahead and ad you know, we're always referencing paintings and
works of art and visual media in these episodes, and
we generally cannot show it to you. So if there's
ever an opportunity to look something up that we've talked about,

(31:15):
and you know, and analyze it for yourself right in
and give us your feedback. You know, that's always fair game,
always fun to talk about these images more. All right,
we're gonna go ahead and skip out of the Death
Zone here and we're gonna talk about the Twilight Zone

(31:35):
a little bit. This one comes to us from Paul.
Paul says, hey, guys, you were talking about high end
aluminum wears during the episode on the Twilight Zone episode.
This is the Rip Van Winkle Caper.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
I guess we should re establish the context. The story
of the Rip Van Winkle Caper is about some guys
who steal a bunch of goal and then they go
into cryo sleep for one hundred years so they can
get away with the crime. And then they come out
and then there's a bunch of drama in the middle
where they're betraying each other, stabbing each other in the
back and stuff. But the twist at the end of

(32:12):
the episode is that in the future where they have
emerged to finally take advantage of their ill gotten gains,
the gold they still has become worthless because now we
have the technology to just manufacture gold, so it's you know,
it has lost all value. In the episode, we talked
about how it's unlikely that in any real time frame

(32:34):
we would be able to manufacture gold in enough quantities
that something like this could happen. You know, it might
be a byproduct of fusion technology or something, but it
probably would not be manufactured in mass quantities. However, we
did come up with a historical analogy, which was aluminum,
which over the course of a few decades in the

(32:54):
eighteen hundreds, in the late eighteen hundreds, went from extremely
precious and rare because of how difficult it was to
extract from the ore form in which it occurs on Earth,
to much much cheaper. I mean, like, if you had
stolen a bunch of aluminum in eighteen sixty and then
waited one hundred years, you would be severely disappointed and
your returns.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah. Absolutely, And so that's what Paul's following up on here.
Paul says, I have a very old aluminium bread basket
sort of piece that is a sheet with cutouts to
mimic lace, then scrunched to form a ten inch scalloped
bowl shape with textured A fourth of an inch wire
coiled into disks and attached as handles. Okay, kind of

(33:38):
hard for me to picture all that, but I'm just
gonna imagine it's ornate, it's scrunchy, and it's made out
of aluminum. He continues, based on the workmanship, it is
probably from shortly after aluminum became more available, but before
it became cheap, because the handles are clearly just cut
wire bolted on. I got it at least third hand,

(33:58):
so no origins. Now this is where Paul gets into
fantasy territory, and I love it. Paul says, aluminum is mythriel,
or at least that is my head canon. Mythriel is
a whitish silver metal that is light, extremely hard, magically scarce,
and doesn't corrode. Aluminum is a whitish silver metal that

(34:19):
is light, extra hard at the surface, magically scarce as metal,
and doesn't visibly corrode. Therefore, Mithriel is aluminum. I like
a sacred metal from Lord of the Rings.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Aluminum is that what Bilbo's male is made out of?

Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah? Yeah, I believe so, Okay, all right, I applaud
all of that, Paul. But then Paul switches over to
another past episode and he says, I'm sure you've gotten
this a bunch already. But in the licking episodes, you
left out the movie trope of licking a blade, sometimes bloody,
or licking the hostage or victim's face as a threat. Hmm,

(34:57):
this is true. You do see the licking of the blade,
I guess. I instantly think of Bromstoker's Dracula, Francisca Coppola's.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Same here, Gary Oldman, it's the the shaving razor there
where he's shaving, he's giving him a shave, and then he's.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, I think of that. Every time I lick peanut
butter off of a butter knife, I think of I
think of Dracula.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
Even a butter knife. That creeps me out.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
If you know what you're doing like I do, it's
never an issue.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
Don't tell the people that we're gonna get sued. Don't
look a knife.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, be careful out there, everyone. You're not a vampire.
You can't regrow your tongue. You don't know how many
tongues Gary Oldman's Dracula lost over the years perfecting that
little trick. So yes, the good point that is a
common trope, especially the blade licking. Sometimes the face lick.
I don't know, the face licking sometimes is a bit much.

(35:52):
Paul continues, I sent you a suggestion for content a
while back on the theme of you Are what You Eat,
citing several animals that concentrate poisons from their food, and
wanted to expand on that idea microplastics, mercurial tuna see
fourteen dating land reclamation using heavy metal, sequestering plants, flamingo, feathers,

(36:13):
Sam and fletch. I forget a couple, lol. Keep up
the good work, Paul.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Thank you, Paul.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Now that's that's a good that's a good topic idea. Yeah, yeah,
you are what you eat?

Speaker 3 (36:25):
Yeah, okay. Another response to that episode comes from Brian.
This is subject line death from gold Happy New Year, Robert,
Joe and JJ loved your Twilight Zone question can you
die from being painted gold We didn't actually answer that

(36:45):
question in the episode. It just came up because we
were talking about Goldfinger and m is that is that?
What is from Goldfinger?

Speaker 2 (36:51):
Yes? I think I mentioned that. Growing up everything I
knew about gold I learned from Goldfinger that you could
paint somebody to death with it and that if you
radiated a large supply of gold, then your supply of
gold would be worth more.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Gold Finger science. Well, so we talked in the episode
about whether that's actually true, that you can be painted
gold or not, but we didn't research it for the episode.
It just kind of came up in passing, so we
didn't know the answer. Brian says, believe it or not,
someone did it, as in, killed someone by painting them gold.
His example is Pope Leo the tenth, a Medici and

(37:28):
arguably the worst pope of all time, had a boy
fully painted gold to celebrate the Pope's return to Florence.
The boy died mere days later. I'm sure paint in
the sixteenth century was highly questionable in and of itself,
so presumably any of the substances in the paint could
have been the cause. But yes, we do have death
by gold paint, and maybe also Ian Fleming's inspiration for

(37:51):
the Goldfinger Woman. All the best, Brian, Well, Brian, I
looked this up. So obviously with stories like this you
never know how much faith to put in. But I
did look this up, and this is a real historical
anecdote that part of this big festival in whatever year
this was, this was the sixteenth or seventeenth century that

(38:14):
whatever year this was, there was a big parade, a
big festival, and yeah it was. A baker's son was
painted gold as one of the dancers at this festival,
and it is said that he died later and it
gives the measly sum of money that was paid to
his family. As I was saying, you never know for

(38:35):
sure how much accuracy stories like that have from that
far back in history, but I guess it does seem plausible.
The commonly given interpretation is the one they talk about
in Goldfinger, where you have to breathe through your skin
and painting your skin gold prevents you from breathing. That,
from what I can tell, is not true. I mean,

(38:57):
as we talked about a bit in the Twilight Zone episode,
you breathe with your lungs, not significantly through your skin,
but painting your skin could still be dangerous for other
reasons not related to preventing you from getting oxygen. You
can breathe through you lungs, but you need to say
sweat and you know, exchange heat with the environment through
your skin. So painting the whole body, not just gold,

(39:20):
but painting the whole body any color could quite possibly
prevent you from getting heat out of your body and
could lead to overheating and heat stroke, which, if this
story is true, could be the more likely cause. Or
what Brian is saying, since we don't know what was
in the paint, could also be the paint was fairly toxic.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, well, it's harder to do this on MythBusters. I
guess right, all right, we'll probably hear from them. Maybe
they did. They'll be like, yeah, they did it on MythBusters.
Multiple people died.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
I don't know they painted Jamie Gold, so I would
say questions remain there, but yes, thank you, Brian.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
All right, here's a quick one. This one comes to
us from Zach. This is a response to a Vault
episode about the Rowan Tree. Zach says, greetings, Robert and Joe.
During the episode on lightning struck trees in the Rowan Tree,
you mentioned using Rowan sticks to protect milk. This reminded
me of a practice continuing until as late as the
early twentieth century, of putting frogs in fresh milk to
keep it fresh. Researchers recently have found that anti microbials

(40:21):
on the frog's skin probably helped in this. It also
harkens back to the protective properties of frogs in magic
mentioned in the Heart episodes. Thanks for the wonderful content, Zach.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Huh, yeah, let's try this out too. Let's get some
frogs in our milk. Does it work with oat milk?
Do I have to use a different frog? Maybe I'm slift.
He's a toad in that case, or a newt I'm
not sure.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
Okay, next message, David got in touch with an email
that does not seem to be related to a particular episode.
I think he just wanted to share something that he
thought would appeal to us. He attached a photo he
took from Visalia, California. It's a bit of graffiti on
the side of a building that just says one word,
and the word is Cthulhu. Scene. So the word play

(41:13):
here seems to be on the names of geological epics
like the Pleistocene or the Holocene. And I originally interpreted
this to just be a joke, meaning that we live
in a particularly wretched and monstrous time. It is the
cursed era. At the time of Cthulhu. We are being
We're living under the reign of a wretched, hateful, monstrous being,

(41:36):
and maybe that is it. But I decided to look
up this word to see if it's actually from something,
and it is. So I found references to this term
used by an American scholar and critical theorist named Donna Harroway,
who is a professor emeritus at University of California, Santa Cruz.
She wrote a famous essay from the nineteen eighties called

(41:57):
the Cyborg Manifesto. Did you ever talk about this on
the show, Rob?

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This has been discussed in the show
in the past and much older episodes, so certainly something
we could come back to. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
So I was trying to understand what she means by
the term Cuthulhu scene I looked at Obviously, I haven't
read the book that is mainly about this idea, and
I was trying to understand it by reading some summaries.
I think I apologize if I'm misunderstanding this in any way,
but I think she is proposing it as an alternative
to the term. Some people have used the term entroposcene

(42:31):
to describe our current age. The entroposcene is the idea
that the age we live in now is the geological
age that will be defined by human influence. So it's
our influence on the climate, on geology, on the environment,
and ecology. Again, this is my best attempt to understand
what her work means.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
Here.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
It's that anthroposcene is too human centric a term, and
so she uses Cuthulhu scene as the name for an
age in which the illusion that humankind is separate from
and dominant over nature will no longer be sustainable, and
it will become obvious that we are not discrete individuals,

(43:12):
that we are not separate from the natural world, that
everything has its tentacles in everything else, us in nature,
nature in us, because we're not actually separate, we're just
fully entangled. Again, apologies to Hairway if I've mischaracterized this
in any way, but that is my understanding of this word,
and so I feel like I understand it less as

(43:33):
a as a graffito with that meaning, though I don't know,
maybe it's just trying to bring awareness of this concept.
I can't rule out that it's just a coincidence and
somebody independently came up with this word to mean like
we live in the age of monsters.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
M yeah, yeah, I don't have to read more about
this Cuthus scene idea. It does kind of feel like
a shoehorning of Cthulhu into something that didn't require Cthulhu.
But yeah, or know, the general idea sounds really fascinating.
Maybe we'll come back to it. All right, here's another one.

(44:15):
This one comes to us from Lawrence subject line flower
to Disappear.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
And I guess we should establish the context in which
this came up. I was looking back and trying to
figure it out. I think it was we were talking
about Star Trek and the question was does the Flower
to Disappear from the Mexican Santa Claus movie have the
same philosophical problem as the Star Trek Transporter, where we
can't know that it doesn't just kill you every time.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
I think this was I think this connection specific connection
was brought up by a listener. I think maybe this
is this is a listener mail response to another listener mail,
which is totally fine, Oh okay for folks to do.
I thought we brought that up, but maybe I'm totally wrong.
We ended up talking about it.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Lawrence gets in touch with an email that kind of
obviates that debate.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Yes, he says, hey, guys, just a quick correction of
what I think is a mistaken conclusion from your last
mailback episode. You consider that Santa in the nineteen fifty
nine Santa Claus dies when he uses the flower to
disappear and is recreated when he reappears. I just rewatched
the film this past Christmas. If you're not familiar with
this film, look it up. We also did a past
Weird House Cinema episode about it. It's one of our favorites,

(45:22):
and MSD three K fans are well aware of it
as well. But Lawrence says it's pretty clear. The Flower
to Disappear is not teleportation. Is not a teleportation device.
It's an invisibility device. Santa sniffs it once and once
when visible to become invisible, and sniffs it again while

(45:43):
invisible to reappear. He doesn't demateialize. He can see here,
think and act while invisible. This is made pretty clear
in his dialogue with Merlin. Yes, if you're nothing here
with this movie, Merlin is also in the picture. Thanks guys, Lawrence.

Speaker 3 (46:00):
Thank you Lawrence. Now that you say this, I think
you're exactly right. I remember scenes like this in the movie.
But is it not actually both ways I thought I
remembered teleportation as well. Doesn't Santa sniff the flower to
disappear and then like appear on the roof above or something.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
I'm gonna have to watch it again now I'm blanking
as well. What is the sense of it?

Speaker 3 (46:21):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Rob?

Speaker 3 (46:21):
Should we skip ahead to some messages for about Weird
House Cinema?

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
Okay, I'm gonna read this one from Hannah. Hannah says,
subject line, Happy New Year, Justice for Kiefer.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
I thought this was going to be about the drink,
but it's about the actor.

Speaker 3 (46:41):
Oh, Kiefer Sutherland. Yes, yeah, Hannah says, Hi to your hosts,
I had a sort of potpourrie of remarks to share
this time, but I wanted to start with heartfelt gratitude
again for the companionship and brain candy your show provides.
Spotify tells me I'm in the top zero point five
percent of listeners this year, which was delightful but unsurprising
since in addition to keeping up with new episodes, I

(47:04):
frequently re listen to old ones when there's an idea
I want to return to and nibble upon, like a
squirrel knowing on an unsuspecting tourist.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
I like it. I support it that, thank you, Hannah.

Speaker 3 (47:16):
Hannah says, Plus, there were a couple of weird house
selections this year that made me audibly squeal with delight
when I saw their titles in my feed. On that topic,
Dark City controversial opinion, perhaps, but I don't totally hate
Key for Sutherland's performance. I speculate the intention might have
been to imply that he was a polio survivor with
the breathless speech plus the limp. Just a thought interesting.

(47:40):
I wouldn't have even had the background knowledge to understand
that reference.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Yeah, that that that could make sense. Yeah, I mean,
obviously it's It's often the case where actors will will
make their specific choices based on things that are maybe
no longer in the actual of shooting script or it's
just outside research something that they need to do to
stitch together their approach to the performance internally.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Hannah goes on next topic, Crabs. Last year, or maybe
the year before, you read my letter about Crabs in
a Werner Herzog voice, which has indelibly associated Herzog with crabs.
In my mind, imagine the end scene of his nose
Ferratu with the rider galloping into the mist, but instead
it's a crab. Okay Anyway, I was driving to work

(48:30):
in the breaking dawn the other day after an ice
storm took down the last of the leaves, and I
thought it's I thought, it's getting pretty bleak out here.
Makes me think about crabs. I am not demanding a
crab episode by any means, because it's much more fun
to hear about whatever y'all are y'all feel inspired to cover.
But I did ponder the idea that, just like the

(48:50):
process of carsonization, all podcasts may eventually become about crabs. Finally,
a weird House cinema recommendation Delicatessen, the nineteen ninety one
French dystopian romantic comedy about cannibalism, warmly Hannah. Well, thank you, Hannah.
By total coincidence, it was not because of your message.

(49:11):
Just last night I was looking into, like, is there
any really good crab stuff we haven't covered yet? I
just feel an itching to come back to crabs. I
was coming across a few things. I was having to
get deeper into the more obscure corners of crab science
and crab history. But I was getting some good stuff,
so Rob, we may go there in the future.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Yeah, I mean, I think tomorrow's weird hat. I'm sorry,
tomorrow's Monster Fact episode is going to deal with a
fictional crab. Just happens to be the case. And I'm
not one dred percent certain, but i think there's like
a thirty forty percent chance of crabs in the next
Core episode that'll publish this Thursday. Don't hold me to that,

(49:51):
you know, just just a thirty to forty percent chance.
So there may be no crabs. Don't blame don't blame
the forecast if that is the case. But yeah, thanks
for this this email. I I appreciate the insight on
on Keefer's performance in Dark City. Always always open to
discussion on that sort of thing. And as far as

(50:14):
Delicatessen goes, Yeah, I've thought about doing a Geneau film
at some point. Maybe this or City of Lost Children
would be appropriate. Amilae even that one's that one's still
plenty weird and very very visual. Used to be one
of my favorite films. I haven't seen it in a
long time though, And of course there's Alien Resurrection.

Speaker 3 (50:36):
Wait. Sorry, I just had to look this up because
I was thinking, Wait, Jean Pierre Jine did I I
was sure that we're mixing up two people here, but
you're right. All of those are City of Lost Children,
Amile Delicatessen.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Alien Resurrection, Yeah, I mean Alien re Resurrection is definitely
one of his films. I mean it's the visual fingerprints
are all over it. Say what you will about it.
It has a distinctive visual style. All right, here's another one.
This when it comes to us from Scott. Scott says,

(51:11):
I look forward to each Friday when the latest Weird
House episode drops. It is always interesting to hear your
take on those with which I'm already familiar and have
added several to my to watch list based on your
reviews and dissection. It recently occurred to me that Ralph
Bakshi's Wizards would fit nicely as a Weird House candidate.

(51:32):
I was rather surprised on checking the past episode lift
on Letterbox to see that you haven't covered any of
Boxshi's work. While his films can be somewhat uneven in
terms of quality, they almost universally tick the weird checkbox.
I'd love for you to cover any of his work. Granted,
several of them aren't exactly conducive to being covered in
a family friendly podcast, But there are several very good ones,

(51:54):
including my favorite Wizards.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
Oh, I mean, we shure we one day do Lord
of the Ring, but then it's like, oh no, it's
this one.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah, I mean, that has greatness in it. But it
is a very very uneven film. But there are some
great stretches. There's some weird choices, and you know, it
feels rather unfinished for a number of reasons. But we
very well could.

Speaker 3 (52:19):
Isn't it the one that after the Battle of Helm's Deep,
it's like and thus concludes the tail.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
Of the Ring?

Speaker 3 (52:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (52:26):
Yeah, and well you also have the Wizard. They call
him Araman in that instead of Sorrowmon because they didn't
want the son Sorrowmon confusion to take it.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
It looks like Santa Claus.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Yeah, well you know they do. Look he does look
like a wizard.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
Oh I thought maybe I'm misremembering. I thought he was
wearing a red robe on the white is wearing a
red robe.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yeah, But like I say, I still have a lot
of love for that picture, but it is very uneven.
Scott continues the classic good versus evil theme mixes well
talking about wizards here with a magical natural lifestyle struggling
against corrupting technology conflict premise. The movie is mostly classical
predigital animation, mixed with rotoscope snippets from classic war movies

(53:11):
such as Zulu, The Battle of the Bulge, and Alexander Nevsky.
Some of the animation is stunningly beautiful. The movie combines
a generous amount of humor with an examination of some
disturbing aspects of human nature and history. There are lots
of nods to underground comic legends Robert Crumb and Von Bode.
I'm not familiar with this latter figure anyway, Scott concludes here,

(53:33):
if you haven't seen Wizards, I highly recommend it. As always,
thanks for all the content you provide. Great stuff.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
Yeah, I've never seen it. I've seen images from it
and it always looks interesting, but never seen it.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
Yeah, we'll put it on the list, all right.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
Do we need to call it there for today?

Speaker 2 (53:49):
Let's go ahead and call it. This will be an
end to this episode of Stuff to Blidmind listener mail,
but there will be another one in the future, so
continue to write in. Write in about new episodes, episodes
episodes from the Vault, episodes you would like to hear
in the future, weird house cinema selections you would like
to gleefully discover that are coming to fruition. All of

(54:12):
it is fair game. Just right into say hi if
you want just a reminder to everyone out there that
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a
short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays. I'm in love.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
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 hi,
you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.