STBYM Listener Mail: Laser Blade

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 on these episodes of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we read back messages from
the email address. If you would like to get in
touch and you've never done it before, please give it
a go. You can reach us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com. All types of messages
are welcome, especially if you would like to add something

(00:34):
interesting related to a topic we've talked about on the show.
But also corrections are always appreciated if we make a
mistake random trivia. You think we would be into suggestions
for future show topics or suggestions for movies for Weird
House Cinema. Any feedback to Stuff to Blow your Mind
Core or Weird House Cinema, send it our way contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. So today's

(00:57):
mail bag is still heavy with a bunch of older
messages we didn't have time to get to in our
last round up our October thirty eighth or whatever whenever
we did that, And we've got some new stuff, so
we'll see what we can make it through today, Rob,
do you mind if I kick things off reading this
message from Anita on a number of topics.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, go for it.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Anita says, I am truly sorry for this clumpy compendium
of communication. I've wanted to write in for a while,
but have been thinking I'd put it off until I
had something more to say. And then I had a
lot to say. So here goes. You guys are awesome.
Listening to you brings back warm memories of grad school
and listening to educated folks just shoot the breeze. So

(01:43):
many times while listening to the show, I think to myself, Yeah,
but what about and then you actually bring it up.
It's almost like you can hear me. You also give
so many good conversation starters. Thank you so much. Well,
thank you, Anita. That means a lot. But right after this,
she's going to bring out the hot iron about pronunciation. So,
Anita says, having gone to the University of Colorado, Boulder,

(02:07):
I can tell you that it is see you Boulder.
I know, but that's the way we do it. I
think this is addressing every time we talk about somebody
affiliated with University of Colorado Boulder, I'm sure I call
it u CE Boulder, but yeah, U SEE tends to
relate to the University of California and not University of Colorado.
So I apologize for the hundreds of times I've probably

(02:29):
said that.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Wrong, igniting the you know, the fear sports rivalry between
whatever these two universities teams are go big horns.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
I have no idea. Also, Anita says, having lived in Nevada,
it is pronounced Nevada with an a, like an apple.
Saying it the other way. I probably always say Nevada.
Saying it the other way is like nails on a
chalkboard to a Nevada. I know it's originally Spanish, but
it's American naw Okay.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
I feel like I mostly noticed this pronunciation when there
is national news coverage relating to elections where things are
happening in Nevada, and I can hear newscasters like pause
before they say the name of the state and then
say Nevada, as if they're having to remember to pronounce
it that way. So I don't know, maybe they're like me.

(03:24):
Maybe they said it the way I said it a
bunch of times. Anyway, The next thing is Anita says,
an article just came around from the Dane County Humane
Society about a squirrel king that was found. I live
just north of Madison, Wisconsin, in Lodi. I work in Madison,
which is in Dane County. So yeah, this relates to

(03:46):
episodes we've done in the past on the rat king phenomenon.
We've addressed the extent to which this is a real
thing and not just made up. There's clearly a lot
of rat king mythology, but there is some bay in
reality as well. So I went to this article and
I pulled in some pictures and Rob, I've got at
least one of the photos for you to look at

(04:07):
in the outline here where we see several squirrels that
are you see the distinct squirrel bodies like the you know,
the the fan blades on a pinwheel. But then yes,
their tails come together in the middle in just a
mushy mass of gray brown fur leaves what looks like
some kind of plant fiber. It's just a mess in

(04:30):
the middle, and all the tails go in. So Anita
attaches a link to a news article from the Dane
County Humane Society by I think their director named Jackie
Edmonds from October twenty eighth, twenty twenty five. I'll read
from the opening to give you an idea of the story.
Here quote. On September seventeenth, twenty twenty five, a group
of five young Eastern gray squirrels were found with their

(04:52):
tails all knotted together in a phenomenon known as a
squirrel king. The finders, who were from Janesville, successful captured
the entire scurry, which is a real term for the
group scurry of squirrels, placed them in a bucket, and
brought them to Dcchs's Wildlife Center for an emergency admission appointment.
It was theorized that these babies snuggled together for warmth

(05:16):
and comfort inside of their cavity nest or dray a
leaf nest, and came into contact with tree sap while
they were growing. As the sap spread, it thickened and hardened,
and the squirrels continued to squirm around each other while
they got bigger. In doing so, the knot in their
tails worsened over time. So that's the beginning of the story,

(05:37):
But then it goes on to describe lots of careful
rehabilitation efforts by workers and volunteers at the center, and
there are some pictures of that too, of the workers
carefully trying to take care of the squirrels to get
the the clumped up part removed, and finally at the
end they do get all the squirrels separated. And then
there's an update from November thirteenth, so just recently. The

(06:02):
article says, great news, the five squirrels that had comprised
the squirrel king were successfully rehabilitated and released on Tuesday,
November eleventh, so they're all separate now, and Edmunds says
quote after speaking with the finder, they were returned to
their property along with a nest box. The finder has
agreed to carefully supply food throughout the winter to help
the squirrels since they did not have time to collect

(06:25):
winter supplies.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
That's a nice ending to that little story. Two takeaways here,
I think, one especially for our international listeners. Yes, in
this country you do get free healthcare if you are
a bundle of rodents. Humans not so much. And then
on top of that, the idea that this knot of rodents,

(06:48):
this knot of squirrels, was successfully untied and the squirrels
were saved. If the rat king, or in this case,
the squirrel king, is indeed a dire omen. Successfully solving
it in this manner would seem to be a way
to prevent disaster and prevent some sort of looming doom

(07:12):
from occurring. So I like the metaphysical possibilities of this
as well.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
It's like knocking on wood or throwing salt over your shoulder.
You untangle the squirrel king.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, it's a lot more complicated. We tend to throw
the salt over our shoulder because it requires virtually no work,
and all you have to do is turn around and
make sure it lands in the sink. Right, Untangling the
squirrel king clearly took a lot more skill and expertise.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Anita has a little more in her message, she says,
And lastly, we have a certain metal filing cabinet here
at work that sounds like Godzilla. I think of you
two every time I need to get shipping labels. Sound
file attached. I guess we can play it here, But
warning listeners, it is squeally, so take note that it's coming.

(08:02):
I agree, it's quite kaijusque. There is a kind of squeal,
a radioactive squeal, echoing up into the stratosphere, so I
hear exactly what you're saying, and I may have actually
had that thought about squealing metal on metal sounds before.
It really does sound kind of like a giant monster.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, you just need to drop the Godzilla theme song
on top of that.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
Dun dun dun, dun dun.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Duh.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
Yeah, and Anita finally says, glad, I got that out
of my system. Thanks for giving my brain things to
chew on. Joe's gentle snickering sounds, along with Rob's mums,
especially when he doesn't quite agree.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
I need. I'd never really until I read this one
when it came in. I'd never really thought too much
about what my momms might be giving away.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
But yeah, I don't know either. I guess I say
some moms too. I have to think on that.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, sometimes they just might have no particular opinion. I
might be very neutral. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
I'd say that's the most common time I would say,
MM is when I don't feel like I have an
opinion on.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Something unless it's a downward and then I might Yeah,
it might be Yeah, I don't know. I have to
listen back and see if I can figure out this.
Since I generally know where my mind probably was when
I uttered a given all right, what do we have
next in the bag? A number of these the listener
mails seem to be a little bit sticky.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
That's right. So we're gonna do another episode on the
licking theme from before our break last week. We're going
to do another one later this week, and one listener
mail message on that subject actually inspired a segment for that.
So we'll talk about some listener mail in the Licking
Part three episode. But we got quite a few responses,

(09:36):
especially to the research on how many licks it takes
to get to the center of a Tutsi pop. This
really set people off.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
That's right. All right. This first one comes to us
from Scott subject Tutsi Pop memories, gentlemen, I was transported
back to the days of my youth during the Licking
Part one episode the discussion of the Tutsi pop. I
distinctly remember sitting cross legged on the living room floor,

(10:05):
staring rapidly at the black and white television set as
the Tutsi Pop commercial came on, and the feeling of
amusement mixed with betrayal on behalf of the kid when
that smart ass owl stole, yes, stole his candy, wise
old owl, I think not Charlotte's, and I say thief
swindler in the guise of an authority figure ahem. Sorry

(10:26):
about that. Perhaps I have some unresolved childhood issues. To continue.
Your observation that the phrase how many licks to get
to the center of a tutsi pop may be paradoxical?
May be a paradoxical riddle to prove provoke enlightenment? Is
I believe accurate. There is no answer, partially because it
is a trick question. You see, nobody actually licks a
tutsi pop. One eats a tutsi pop by sticking the

(10:48):
entire thing in the mouth, where it is bathed in saliva,
causing it to dissolve. The act of licking involves sticking
the tongue out of the mouth to make contact with
the object. I've never heard of anyone doing that, aside
from the comically large novelty lollipops the size of a
child's head you get at circuses and county fairs.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
This is a really good point. I don't think I
ever licked a lollipop when I was a kid. You
put I put it in my mouth and just passively
dissolved it. I feel like licking a lollipop is something
only oodor does.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah. I think the only time I might have done it,
or I've seen other kids doing you're probably consciously re
enacting something you saw in a cartoon. Yeah, but yes,
very good point. Yeah, you're generally you're putting it in
your mouth and it's just swirling it around and so forth,
in the same way that you don't lick any other
hard candy that's not on a stick. It just goes

(11:40):
in the mouth. Yeah. Anyway, they continue. You don't lick
at Tutsi pop, you suck on it. Indeed, where I
grew up in southwest Michigan, the common nay only name
used for Tutsi pops and their generic brethren was sucker.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Yep, I remember that too. When I was a kid,
they were suckers more than they were lollipop.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, we didn't really say lollies because it's suckers. I
think I like the term lollies more if I was
to refer to them, but that's not what we call them.
Scott continues as far as the actual question of whether
one should or shouldn't crunch through the candy shell to
get to the center. I may be an outlier in
the population of Tutsi pop eaters. As long as I
can remember, I strove to avoid the crunch. My goal

(12:22):
was always to suck on the thing until the flavor
of the chocolate ciner mixed with the Erstot's fruit flavor
of the shell. Only then did I give myself permission
to finish it off in a few bites. Ah childhood.
Thanks for dredging up the memory from the vaults, Scott, Yes,
some great points here. I may have gone into this,

(12:43):
but I think I tended to avoid the crunch as well,
in part because I wasn't as crazy about the Tutsi
center and would rather the orange exterior last as long
as possible.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
Yeah, there also seemed I don't know, when I was
a kid, I don't think I liked trying to crunch
hard candy, like hard sugar candy. That seemed dangerous. Maybe
I was a nerdy overly cautious child, but that just
seemed like that could do something to your teeth.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, and I do want to stress though, there are
plenty of people out here who loved the combination of
the flavors. I just offhand. I ended up chatting with
some friends reminiscing about their experiences with Tutsi pops, and
more than one of them were like, oh, yeah, I
love the way that the two flavors came together. So
on one hand, I may be an outlier and that
I didn't really like the Tutsi Pop Center as much,

(13:41):
And or I could be misremembering it a bit. You know.
It could be that I really actually loved it as
a kid, and I've just kind of paved over that
particular memory detail.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
Yeah, it's funny how you think you can remember things
like this, but then sometimes the more you think about them,
the more you doubt at les.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yeah, or you allow your adults views on things to
then the shape of your childhood memories, thinking like, oh,
I don't like Tutsi roles now, surely my childhood self
didn't like them either, But it's entirely possible that I did,
all right.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
This next message is also about Tutsi pops. This is
from ian Ian, says dear Robin Joe, you asked for
personal Tutsi pop stories, I shall oblige as far as
eating them normally, I didn't lick them, per se, I
would suck on the whole thing in my mouth like
a sucker, and only once I tasted chocolate would I

(14:34):
bite through the very last thin layer of hard candy
coating to the core. The crunch was very satisfying. I
also did the licking experiment ones as I'm sure many
other children did. I sat down with a Tutsi pop
and a legal pad and made a tally mark every
time I licked it. I can't remember my technique other

(14:55):
than that I counted exposing any part of the chocolate
core as reached out the center. When all was said
and done, it took me six hundred and sixty six
licks to reach the center. Really, at the time, I
was unfamiliar with the satanic connotations of that number, and
now I wonder what the significance of my result is.
Perhaps Tootsi Pops are the candy of the devil. Thanks

(15:17):
for the show, Keep up the good work, ian Ian.
I'm going to trust you on that that you're not
just making that up because it's a good story.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Made up or not, I am going to assume it
is the correct answer. Now, six hundred and sixty six
licks seems appropriate and actually not that far off. From
I mean, we talked about the wide variety of numbers
that some of these actual studies resulted in, so it
seems possible that you could get six hundred and sixty
six totally.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
In fact, I think the next message from Matt addresses
the question of the wide variety of results.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah, Matt says, Hey, guys, just wanted to jump in
with my own experience that might shed some light on
why that one study found a number of licks uch
higher than the others. For context, I was a weird
kid who had entertained himself with tedious projects like counting
to a thousand. I've also tried to count to one million,
but when I got to a few hundred, I realized
how long it was taking to even be one two

(16:14):
thousandth of the way to the goal, and gave up
on that one. In any case, I did undertake finding
the answer to how many licks does it take to
get to the center of a Tutsi pop? And I
got a similar number to the three thousand plus sided
in the one study. I think they, like myself, defined
to get to the center to me not only to
drill a hole that reached the center, but to completely

(16:34):
liberate the Tutsi roll from its hard candy prison. In
my mind, we were getting to the center in the
same way you were getting to a buried treasure. That is,
you haven't gotten it until you have got it all
the way out of the substance it's buried in.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
Mmmm, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
I also wondered, WHI while doing this, what kind of
lick should I be doing? A dainty lick with the
top of your tongue must take more licks than an
aggressive lick that envelops the entire pop after all. Anyways,
thought i'd share, man.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
I think this really emphasizes how much exercise is actually involved,
Like how much work it would be to again lick
the entire Tutsi pop down instead of just yeah, passively
dissolving it inside your mouth. Like that's a lot of
work in the tongue muscle. Yeah, okay. This next message

(17:24):
is also a response to the licking episodes, but not
about the Tutsi pop. It's about when we were talking
about the licking of wounds and also about the idea
of licking one's own eye. Oh, Robin, I think this
was in the context of talking about lizards that can
lick their own eyes.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
To clean, yes, particularly geckos, but.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
We were discussing how you know, some animals might have
special adaptations for this, but in other cases, licking or
spitting in the eye obviously can transfer bacteria from one
place to the other, and the eye can be very
sensitive to certain kinds of infections, so you know, it's
something to be avoided if possible. Rachel says, Hi, guys,

(18:08):
I just listened to the episode about licking, and it
reminded me of the time one of my rabbits had
an eye infection and after finishing the course of medications,
the problem still persisted until I realized it was because
my other rabbit wouldn't stop licking his eye. As soon
as I separated them, the infection was resolved. Ugh, I

(18:29):
feel bad because my rabbit was just trying to help
the other one, but it was actually making it worse. Anyway,
love the podcast. I've been a long time listener.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Great detail, great story. I like it.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
That is interesting. But one thing that I don't think
I read about rabbits in any of the research I
was looking at in communal wound looking. I'm not saying
they don't do it, but I don't know of any
evidence other than this email that they do. So I
wonder if rabbits regularly engage in group communal wound looking
to help each other decontain emanate wound areas, or otherwise

(19:02):
help each other heal, or if maybe there was just
you know, this one rabbit had a kind of idiosyncratic
taste for eyeball.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
I remember it factoring into Watership Down a lot, oh
when they were treating wounds. Not enough to say that
that's that it should be the primary source in order
to answer this question, but that does bring back to
my mind a number of scenes in which the rabbits
in that story that that work of fiction are tending
to each other's wounds.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
Oh okay, well, then I would bet that's probably based
on something in reality. So yeah, I guess they probably
do it all right.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
This next one, I don't even precisely remember the call
out for this, but I still greatly appreciate the answer.
Skyler sent us a message with the subject line giant
pilgrim skeleton in neighbor's yard from mid November. And indeed

(19:57):
it is one of these giant skeletons like we've seen
pop up in yards in recent years. And this one
has been decorated to look like a Pilgrim for Thanksgiving,
for American Thanksgiving apparently, which I think is wonderful. Hey,
I think these I love that these skeletons are staying
up year round and are getting different seasonal costumes. And also,

(20:20):
I mean, if you're gonna go with Pilgrim decorations nowadays,
I feel like scary Pilgrim is the way to go.
Scary skeletal, undead Pilgrim a plus in my book.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
Now there's also an update that Skylar sent us after
the first message that came on November twentieth, so so this,
I guess was several days later they like completed the look.
So it started just giant skeleton with a Pilgrim upper
body costume. They added a skeleton dog, the kind with

(20:52):
ears and dogs don't have the bones in their ear,
but you know, so that you know it's a dog.
So there's skeleton dog right next to it. Okay, it's
got a puppy. And then also Pilgrim hat. And also, Rob,
did you notice this little detail eyeballs in the skull.
I didn't see them in the first picture. Maybe they're
hiding back there sort of. But doesn't look like it
to me. It looks like somebody went in there and

(21:14):
updated the skull with freaky eyeballs.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, yeah, I think this is. This also nicely illustrates
the realization that one steadily gets leaving Halloween and realizing
that Thanksgiving is about to occur. The Pilgrim costume, the
the insane eyes of the dog specter. Yeah, it all tracks.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
Big old buckle on the hat. What's that buckle for?
I guess it holds the hat together.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
It's like it keeps the brain chaste, right, because that's
the reason.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
It's a chastity belt for the crown of the skull.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, yeah, for the mind. Yeah, your thoughts only.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Okay, Rob, let's see what do you think about digging
into some of the messages left over from the previous
episode's mailbag. Some of these older ones from September. We
have a bunch of responses to our episodes from Star
Trek week.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, engage all right.

Speaker 3 (22:15):
This message comes from Ian. It is about our episode
on transporters in Star Trek and teleportation paradoxes. Ian says,
just finished your episode on Star Trek Transporters and wanted
to write in with a few thoughts that you might
find interesting. Your discussion about transporter accidents had me thinking
about ian Embank's Culture civilization and how its approach differs

(22:37):
drastically from the Federation. Where the Federation is roughly a
Kardashev level one point five civilization, the culture is more
around a two point five, and though they do have
transporter technology in the ultra safe culture civilization, the one
in several billion chants of a teleportation accident is considered

(22:57):
far too dangerous to use unconscious being, so it is
restricted purely for cargo transport outside of extreme situations such
as emergencies or military operations. I found this to be
an interesting and subtle extension of the way our own
society's perception of acceptable risks changes as we're able to
mitigate more and more dangers that in the past would

(23:19):
have been considered just an everyday part of life.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
This is a great point and something I've either I
forgot about it from the culture books that I've read,
or maybe it wasn't stressed as much in the particular
culture novels that I have read in the past. But
a great point and very much on, very much in
keeping with the culture. The culture. If anyone out there

(23:43):
isn't aware, or you haven't read Ian in Banks, or
you haven't heard me talk about it on the show
in a while, Scottish Authory and in Banks, the late
great In Banks envisioned this far future vision of humanity
and various alien species in which the culture is a
post scarcity anarchist utopia, and so it's it's such an interesting,

(24:10):
thought provoking and I think ultimately, you know, optimistic vision
of the future in the same way that Star Trek is,
but with its own distinctive flavors. You know, certainly getting
into some difficult problems, you know, philosophically, politically and so forth,
but at the root, you know, having this vision of

(24:31):
a far future society in which human beings enjoy a
great deal of freedom and equality. So if you find
yourself needing a vision like that in the year twenty
twenty five, or certainly in twenty twenty six, yeah, there's
never a better time to pick up one of Ian M.
Banks culture novels.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
In my opinion, I have not read these books, but
from what I remember, they have a very positive vision
of the ultimate sort of integration of artificial intelligence into
into human biological life.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah. But at the same time there, I mean, there's
there's one novel in particular that gets into like the
dangers of artificial intelligence and self replicating machines and so forth,
So you know, it's it's not one hundred percent you know,
techno optimist in that regard. Again, very very thought provoking

(25:23):
works that take these various problems and potential problems seriously,
from from self replicating machines to you know, theologies of
hell and virtual realms and so forth.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
One of these days I'll have to get around to
reading them. And You've been talking about them for years
and I've been meaning to. I know, Ian and Banks
is greatly revered by many people whose taste I share.
I think.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
So.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
But getting back to Ian, I guess coincidence the name
here different spilm yes Ian's email. Ian says when discussing
the episode Star Trek episode Second Chances, in which Reiker
is duplicated, you briefly discuss the idea of meeting another
version of yourself who has had different experiences, and how

(26:09):
you may or may not even like that person. That
idea is explored quite in depth in a recent video game,
The Altars though not involving teleportation. The Altars involves a
loan technician stranded on a hostile alien planet who uses
a quantum scanning device to create alternate versions of himself
to help man the ship and escape the planet. The

(26:31):
device allows him to see all of the different critical
moments in his life that send him down different paths
and generate a version of himself who made the other choice.
So the ship's reactors broken, quantum duplicate the version of
yourself who became an engineer. Someone have an injury, simply
summon the version of yourself who went to medical school.
Each version has a different personality, outlook on life, etc.

(26:53):
Many don't like each other, and managing the interactions between
them is critical to surviving. It's a really interesting game
that does sound interesting.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, I wasn't this one flu under my radar. I
had to look it up and it sounds fascinating from
the developers, I believe of frost Punk, which I was
familiar with by reputation.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
Yeah, I never played it. Ian says, finally, my last
thought is actually related to Star Trek. At the end
of the episode, Joe was musing about different ways the
transporter could be used for medical treatment since it can
filter out problematic infectious agents and the like. Uh yeah,
The question was like, if it turns you into information

(27:33):
and then decodes you back into matter, could you basically
turn medical problems into information debugging problems? You know, you
just like edit the code basically and then spit out
the healthy version. Ian says, as I recall, there are
several episodes of the various Trek series where the crew

(27:53):
does things like that, but the one that immediately sprang
to mind was an episode of Voyager, which begins with
the doctor assisting a woman in labor when things begin
to go wrong, and then he says, we're going to
have to perform an emergency C section, then walks purposefully
across the room to a computer console, where he proceeds
to beam the baby out of the mother's body and

(28:15):
directly into an incubator a few feet away, saving the day.
It's an amusingly anti climactic ending to a scene that
up to that point had been presented as if part
of a tense medical drama. Anyway, I know I've run long,
so I promise I won't be offended if you edit
any of this out. Well, we did not, I guess
apart from a few line edits. Please keep up the

(28:35):
good work, look forward to each episode. Ian, Thank you.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
Ian. Yeah, yeah, great point. I have not really seen
any Voyager and this episode did not come up in
my research for that episode. So that's a great one
to share, all right. This next one comes to us
from Scott. Scott says, Hi, Joe and Rob. I am

(28:58):
a philosopher who also loves Star Trek and hence have
much familiarity with the philosophical debates around personal identity and transporters.
They actually led me to wonder if the history of
these debates would have been different if Gene Roddenberry had
explained the transporter differently as simply moving bodies intact through
some kind of temporary wormhole or tunnel. Actually, the idea

(29:20):
of scrambling and reassembling doesn't make much sense, as it
requires extra work on top of the assumption that we
can transmit some matter or energy instantaneously, and it seems
especially strange that this can be done without any mechanism
at the remote end. I compare this to the mantra
often given by cognitive scientists that quote, the best model

(29:41):
of the world is the world itself, explaining why we
don't have perfect memories of everything in the world, but
often rely on imperfect ones, which then allow continual updating
from the world itself so we can navigate it. Likewise,
the best model of the complex arrangements of the atoms
in our body is the body itself. Why not just
transmit this as a piece. Perhaps the idea was that,

(30:04):
given current physics, could we can transmit energy faster than matter.
But since the whole premise of Star Trek assumes a
warp drive which can move matter faster than light, going
well beyond current physics, I don't see why an instantaneous
conduit for matter over shorter distances couldn't have seemed just
as plausible. Indeed, the idea of reassembling atoms is so

(30:28):
implausible that I wonder if it would have ever occurred
to someone as a philosophical problem about whether the reassembled
person was identical to the dismantled one, if it hadn't
already been introduced as a possibly unnecessary science fiction plot device.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Scott, that's a good question. Would you even have people
in philosophy departments proposing, you know, questions about the swamp
man type scenario if there had never been a science
fiction idea of teleportation by these sorts of means.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting if you think of
it as a potential flaw. Maybe not a plot hole,
but maybe some sort of a flaw. It's been such
a thought provoking flaw, you know. Sometimes it is the
it's the wrinkles, it's the imperfections in a work that
fascinate us the most. Not that I'm saying that I

(31:20):
think this model of teleportation is a flaw in the
Star Trek franchise. Again, I think it's something that keeps
my mind tumbling over and over.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
Okay. This next message comes from Eric. It has the
subject line Transporters and Consciousness. Hi, Robin Joe, thank you
for your fun and lighthearted exploration of teleportation from Star Trek.
As a moderate Trek fan, I enjoyed your coverage of
the topic. You mentioned the Next Generation episode Rascals from
season six. I don't remember what we said about that,

(31:53):
rob Wait, is that the one where they're like the
transporter turns them into children?

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Yes? Okay, And if I remember, we kind of just
mention it in passing and I made I think I
made a comment where I didn't necessarily recognize who all
the characters were that had been transformed into children.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
Okay, okay, so Eric says. A minor clarification is that
the fourth character who was childified was Kiko O'Brien. Am
I saying that right? I think so Okay played by
Rosalind Chow, the wife of Chief Miles O'Brien played by
Cole Meanie. They are frequent guest characters in the Next Generation,

(32:29):
and Miles in particular is a regular character on Deep
Space nine. Miles, as a working class petty officer, often
acts as a good foil for the more staid and
intellectual officers of the Enterprise, and this episode is a
good example. He has a very difficult time processing the
fact that this little girl is actually his wife and
keeps trying to take care of her like a child.

(32:51):
He's well intentioned, but emotionally clumsy. The O'Brien's aren't really
thinking about the philosophical implications or even the long term
ramifications the other crew members are. They're just trying to
get through the day as a family. While I wouldn't
hold the episode up as a Next Generation must see,
I think this subplot is very endearing and relatable. Thanks

(33:11):
again for a great episode and for a fun week
in tribute to Trek. Eric. Thanks Eric. Yeah, that's a
whole other philosophical question, like how do you deal with
an adult who suddenly transformed into a child.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
I wouldn't want to imagine what would be needed to
take care of me if I were suddenly five again.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah, yeah, this is a yeah. I appreciate getting more
info on this episode, which is probably one that I
only watched once back in the day in syndication. You know,
of course, watching these shows in syndication, you didn't really
have the liberty of picking out the best episodes or
or knowing what are the strong episodes and overarching episodes

(33:54):
that I need to watch. In my Star Trek the
Next Generation Journey, now, it was just whatever was on
at like nine pm. That was the Star Trek you
were watching.

Speaker 3 (34:02):
I'm actually sitting here getting like ashamed and mortified, thinking
like if I were suddenly transformed into my daughter's age,
would I play nicely with her? Or would I not
be sharing my toys? What if I was a really
rotten little toddler and I was like not sharing and
being mean, it's horrifying me.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, I mean it's a thought provoking question too, because
we've seen shows like this where the adult brain, the
adult is transformed into a child, but they retain the
mind of an adult. But would that be the case?
Like how much of childhood? I mean, how do you
separate the tube? You know, would you? And then what

(34:39):
would it be like to then be a child with
a child's brain, but with perhaps the memories of an adult, Like,
I don't know, it's very complicate. It's kind of the
Tutsi pop scenario. Yeah, Like there's a simple version of
imagining it, but the more questions you ask about it,
the more complicated it becomes.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Fortunately, transporter incidents of this kind are very rare, so
we don't have to worry about this for the most part.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Though it is again it's just the things I love
about the transporters in Star Trek is like this. The
list of potential side effects are just wild. You might
be turned into a child, you might end up with
an evil doppelganger. There's just so much that can happen.
It probably won't, but there's a non zero chance.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
Do you remember the transporter incident from spaceballs where Melbrook's
top half gets put on backwards so his butt is
in the front.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yeah. Oh yeah, that's a good one. I'd forgot we
should have mentioned that in the episode.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
Yeah, that's a good one, actually, one of I mean,
not great, but one of the less horrifying outcomes.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
I can't remember. Did they fix it or was it
just stuck that way? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (35:43):
I think they've beam him back and fix it. Okay,
but briefly he's looking down at his own butt and
that would be a strange experience.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
All right. This next one comes to us from a
listen Joe. Joe says, huge fan of Wookie, so I
love Star Trek week. Kidding, kidding. There is a wearable
headset designed to help folks with limited vision called the Jordie.
You can probably guess what it looks like before you
google it. As a geek and fan of your show,
I enjoyed the myriad episode topics on the various episodes

(36:20):
this week. I don't know why, but it compelled me
to suggest a potential topic for the future. The Jordi
wearables were inspired by fiction, but now they are clearly
or could clearly become brigenitor tech to an actual visor
that works like Jordie's visor in Star Trek. For those
of you who aren't aware, this is Jeordie LaForge played

(36:40):
by the great LeVar Burton. He was visually impaired and
had to wear this visor device that I think had
some sort of a neural link system as well that
enabled him to see any right, Joe continues, have y'all
covered this topic before or do you see any meat
on the bone for an episode that inspires science, which

(37:01):
inspires fiction into this perpetual cycle of innovation and then
is a complete Aside myself and a fellow blind buddy,
we're straining our brains the other day trying to make
a list of seminal Jordy centric episodes. Do any come
to mind? Do you happen to have a Jordy episode
or moment you particularly are fond of? Anyway, as ever,

(37:23):
thanks for the work y'all put in each episode and
the fun informative content it creates all the best.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Well, thank you, Joe. Now, I don't have a lot
of memory because the only Next Generation I watched, and
it's been a while on this was like the first
season or so, so I have less exposure than Rob,
does Rob, do you have a Jordy moment?

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Oh? Well, man, I wish I had better answer here,
And I think I would if I'd watched all these
episodes more recently, and I could tell you. Okay, I
think this is the episode where Jordie's character is presented
in the strongest fashion and developed, and it has a
lot to do plot wise. But I guess the main
one that comes to mind is an episode titled The

(38:06):
Next Phase that I think we even referenced in our
teleportation episodes. This is one where Jordie and in Sign
Row are lost in a teleporter accident and become like
transporter ghosts on the ship. So my memory of this episode,
which could be highly flawed, is that is that these
two characters are front and center, and you know, therefore

(38:29):
have a lot of agency and are directly involved in
the threat and the problem of the episode, and therefore
that one stands out. And then I have a lot
of vague memories of different episodes where, of course Jordi
is an instrumental member of the team in solving a
particular crisis.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
Yeah, I wish I could remember more about the show
other than I remember somebody getting eaten by mud puddle.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah, that was the key early episode. Yeah, that was
pretty terrifying. But getting back to this idea of this
sort of cyclical loop of science fiction and science yeah,
I think there might be something there, maybe some sort
of an invention catch all episode or series. It looks
for possible inventions that line up with this. I feel

(39:14):
like there's I'd have to think about it, but I
think we've covered one or two things like this in
the past. But yeah, I'll I'll have to give it
some thought.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
All right. This next message is still about Star Trek,
comes from Ken. Ken says, I'm way behind on episodes,
but wanted to comment on your Star Trek transporter episode.
I've heard this debate on if you die every time
you're transported, but in Star Trek, it's clearly established that

(39:43):
your consciousness stays with you the entire process. The idea
that you are in one place then suddenly another as
your atoms are put back together isn't canon in the show.
There are multiple episodes where you see how the place
you're at slowly fades to gray in the new place
slowly materializes. That would not be possible if you weren't conscious.

(40:05):
Until being realigned. There's an episode of the Next Generation
titled Realm of Fear where Lieutenant Barkley sees something in
the transporter stream in between one place and the destination
and later grabs one of the creatures to pull it
out of the stream. Clearly Barkley's consciousness travels unbroken the
entire transport just some food for thought, Ken, Well, thank you, Ken.

(40:29):
So on one hand, I don't want to argue with
stuff that's just axiomatically part of the show. So if
it's axiomatically part of the Star Trek universe that your
consciousness is the same and survives the whole process, I
can't really argue with that. But even though what you
say intuitively makes sense that you know, being conscious through

(40:50):
a kind of fading in and out process would eliminate
the worries about, you know, the person going in dying,
I don't think that actually does solve that problem, because
how could you ever verify that the experience was continuous
for the person that went in this This is a
sort of restating the original problem again. But if the

(41:13):
person that comes out has the memories of the person
that went in, it will seem always to have been
continuous for them. But is there any way the output
Spock could tell the difference between existing continuously the entire
time is one person versus being a newly created Spock
with all of input Spock's memories and input Spock is

(41:36):
now dead. I think technically there's just no way to
verify that, And in fact, there's no way to verify
that this doesn't happen every single second of our lives.
That you know, there's some you that died and is
gone now and you're just a new you with the
memories of that old you. But I think the reason
we don't assume that about every single second of our

(41:56):
lives is that we don't have any reason to believe
that's the case. Molecular disassembly and then reassembly of the
brain especially does give you a reason to wonder that. So,
in my opinion, that would hold true whether the experience
was an instantaneous copy paste into a new place or
kind of gradual fading in and out. At some point

(42:19):
during the fade, you would have to wonder did the
old Spock cease to exist? And the new Spok wouldn't
have any way to figure that out. It would feel
continuous to the newspak either way.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah, and especially since that an individual in this scenario
would still be narratively defining and understanding the human experience
and telling stories about who we were in r and
how these two are connected or more than two, how
every little person in this chain of being are connected,

(42:52):
and not seeing them as distinct others that have like
a tiny death standing between each one. Yeah, but why
not you could easily put that forward. I don't know
how compelling that would be, you know, if you were
to try and force that on a civilization or I
don't know, you know, to get into sort of like
world building and sci fi, like what kind of a
civilization would have that kind of worldview for themselves and

(43:17):
what it would accomplish. But it's interesting to think.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
About would it have any effect on reality other you know,
like would that actually change anything?

Speaker 2 (43:29):
I mean, I mean one way that comes to mind
is like criminal justice, right, I mean, if you have
a world in which there's more of an intrinsic understanding
that we are not the person we used to be,
that that person is like many deaths removed from who
we are now and just shares certain memories and so forth,

(43:50):
maybe there's a stronger inclination to believe than change in
an individual, and the ability to move on from past transgression.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (44:00):
Yeah, well, I guess that if that were the if
you were to apply it in that way, that would
sort of apply to every single thing in life. You
would sort of not ever believe any person had any
connection to anything they had already done.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah, you could just write on your coattails because those
aren't your coatails or someone else's. But that's always the
case too, right, So yeah, there's a there's a lot
of interesting room for thought here. If listeners, if you
know of a work of fiction, science fiction, speculative work
out there that has entertained any of these ideas right in,
we'd love to hear from you. All right, we'll skip

(44:33):
ahead to some weird house send them a listener mail
here as we begin to close out this episode, Let's
see what we have in the old mail bag here.
Let's see this is an older one. This one was
I think pre Halloween, so it was responding to a
call out for Halloween episode suggestions. But it's always there's

(44:53):
always another Halloween on the way, and we will presumably
be around for that Halloween. So I would say, yeah,
keep him coming. This one comes to us from Carry.
Carrie says, Dear Robin Joe. Here are my three Vincent
Price movies that you haven't covered on Weird House that
might fit in. Only one has horror vibes, but they

(45:17):
all have Price in different roles. Okay, let's hear it first.
Up His Kind of Woman nineteen fifty one. Other stars
are Robert Mitcham, Jane Russell, and Raymond Burr, who portrays
a menacing mob boss. Price is a rich dilettante who
steps up when the situation requires it. It's set on
a tourist island in the Caribbean. I have not seen this,

(45:42):
never seen this one. Like the cast list, love Robert Mitcham. Yeah,
and I do probably need to see more Vincent Price
films where he's not where he's not just a horror
figure and you know some sort of a either haunted
or haunting individual because you know he's a great actor.
Let's see the next one. Dan Juris Mission nineteen fifty four.

(46:02):
Other star stars are Piper Laurie, who plays a woman
fleeing from assassination after witnessing a mob killing, and Victor
Mature who plays an undercover an undercover cop trying to
prevent the mob from getting Laurie Price plays the assassin
sent to kill her. It's set in Glacier National Park.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
Oh beautiful. Victor Mature came up on Weird House several
years back when I did an episode with with Seth
Nicholas Johnson about the Monkey's movie head. There's a recurring
joke in that movie where they they're like, now we're
going to address the darkest thing in the universe, Victor

(46:41):
Mature's hair.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Yeah. I mean it's pretty. It's a pretty dark head
of hair, as I can see see from some of
these photos.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
Luxurious, tremendous hair.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
Yes, all right. And then the third film recommended by
Carrie Here is The Comedy of Terrors nineteen sixty three.
Other stars are Boris Karloff, Peter Lourie, and Basil Rathbone.
Prize plays an evil man with a scheme involving an
inheritance and his sister or niece, I don't remember which.
The whole thing is played for laughs. If you're not
already familiar with the three movies, I think you would

(47:12):
enjoy them, And if they make the cut for Weird
house all the better. Keep up the good work. Care
Thanks for the suggestions. Yeah, I would watch all three. Yeah,
of the three, the only one I was really familiar
with this comedy of terrors. I mean, how can you
not be given the stars involved here? All right? Uh?

Speaker 3 (47:37):
You cool? If I do this message from Lawrence, Yeah,
let's do it. Lawrence says, Hey, guys, shooting you a
note to comment on your rewind of Deep Blue Sea.
I missed it the first time around. Let me start
by saying I've only listened to the first half hour
or so. I stopped at the spoiler warning. I've requested
the DVD through an inter library loan extept to pick

(47:57):
it up at my local branch in five days or so.
After I've seen it. I'll listen to the rest and
maybe I'll have more to say then. But there are
a couple of things I'd like to comment on from
what I've heard. Beautiful, oh man, getting Deep Blue Sea
at the library from between libraries. This is interlibrary commerce.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Yeah, take advantage of it. You know, we've We've heard
from other listeners out there, and I have family members
who do this as have done this as well. You know,
getting movies through their local library. Yeah, the resources there.
Take advantage of it, oh man, though I do have
to confess something. Just reading or hearing the phrase interlibrary
loan triggers like cringing of guilt in me because of

(48:36):
a time in grad school when I was working on
a research project and I was getting a lot of old,
rare books interlibrary loan, and there was one that I
had out way too long.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
It took me. I was late getting it back, like
severely late, and I've felt guilty ever since.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Did are you sure you returned it?

Speaker 3 (48:51):
I did finally, it was like months late, and I
felt horrible.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Yeah, well, I think we all have we a lot
similar memories. Right, there's a little bit of nervousness. Will
we return it on time? But again, definitely take advantage
of these. This is I'm comfortable with my tax dollars
being used to move copies of Deep Flucy around the
Tri County area.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
Presumably this is not like a rare book that you
will be severely missed, but still you should return it
on time of course. Anyway, Lawrence goes on, probably others
have pointed this out from the first podcasting, but I
balked at your assertion that there have been eighteen point
six billion shark movies made in the US. I don't
remember saying that, but this sounds about right, Lawrence says.

(49:35):
I had to pause, rewind, and listen again to make
sure I heard you right. I'm pretty sure there haven't
been that many movies made in the history of cinema worldwide,
never mind shark movies. Now. I didn't do real research,
but I did a little quick googling. When I asked
Google how many shark movies had been made, the number
it gave me was one hundred and eighty psh. Definitely

(49:56):
more than that. When I googled how many movies have
been made in the history of cinema, it's at estimates
range from hundreds of thousands to perhaps more than a million.
Google isn't the be all and end all, but those
numbers sound reasonable. For there to be eighteen point six
billion shark movies made in the US, there would need
to be about fifty four for each person living there

(50:17):
who made all these shark movies. I didn't make my
fifty four shark movies. On a more serious note, I
can't agree with your gushing praise of Jaws to be fair,
it may fall into the category of films I might
have liked had I not read the book first. The
film isn't as good as the novel, and the novel
isn't exactly a masterpiece. It's been a long time since

(50:39):
I've read it, But as memory serves, the novel offered
credible characters behaving in ways I found consistent with each character,
and a good balance between subplots and the main storyline.
The film discards most of the subplot, probably to save
on length, and focuses on the main plot, which I
find less engaging. And in the film, I don't find
the shark hunt credible at all. Richard Dreyfus knows a

(51:01):
good deal about sharks, but he can't tie a knot,
let alone sail a boat. Roy Scheider is terrified of
the water, never mind a shark, and Robert Shaw is
constantly drunk. These guys don't need a shark to kill them.
They're bound to capsize the boat and drown. I'm hoping
I'll like Deep Lucy better find out in five days
or so. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Lawrence, Well, Lawrence,

(51:23):
I don't know what I think. I could not possibly
disagree with you more about Jaws the novel and Jaws
the movie, but I respect your opinion, you know, respectfully disagree.
I think I've read the novel and seen the movie.
I think the movie is marvelous, and I almost hated
the novel.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Yeah, I never read the original novel. I did read
his giant squid novel Beast, Yeah, which had a big
squid arm on the front and it was textured so
you could you could rub your fingers over it and
kind of like read the suckers on it.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
Oh man, I want to feel that right now.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
Yeah. Yeah, I think they actually made a film version
of that, But I haven't seen the film adaptation, so,
but I have seen Jaws. I do love Jaws. But
Jaws is one of those films that was is such
an important film in the history of American cinema, especially
blockbuster American cinema. You can't discount it's it's importance and

(52:20):
its impact. But on the other hand, you know, we
don't know all have to like every movie, so I
can understand people maybe not digging it as much, or
maybe finding certain aspects of it a little bit dated
in light of everything that has come in its wake,
you know, playing off of and in some cases, I'm
sure improving on some of the concepts and ideas. As
for Deep Blue c I don't know. I hope by

(52:41):
the time you listen to this, you've you've man, You've
gone into the film, and you've gotten to watch it
for yourself. It's a it's a it's it's a fun
time and it has it has a couple of great
twists in it. Is it better than Jaws? Well, intelligent
intelligent folks can disagree. I think the book of Deep
Blue cy was better. There may be and there may

(53:05):
have been a no I had no idea.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
I just assumed there wasn't Maybe there was a novelization.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
A quick search would indicate that there was not a
novelization of Deep Blue Sea. Though you know, I'm very
mention in favor of film novelizations, so I wish that
it was not the case. All Right, We're going to
do one last weird House Cinema listener mail. This one's
from David and it contains major spoilers for Dark City.

(53:30):
This is a response to our episode, our two part
look at the movie Dark City. So if you haven't
seen Dark City and you would like to avoid those spoilers,
and maybe this is a good time to go ahead
and end your listening of this episode, But for those
of you who are on boards or spoilers will continue.

(53:55):
David says, hey, guys, it was great to hear you
discuss Dark City on the two part Weird House Cinema.
I remember first seeing this back in the nineties and
have rewatched it earlier this year. There is definitely a
post matrix and other CGI movie lens that make some
of the effects seem a little pedestrian. One thing that
I never thought of until listening to the part two
episode was the food situation. Your discussion of the automat

(54:18):
and not being touched by human hands really sparked this.
In the end, John defeats the aliens and gives everyone
a beach, but is he now responsible for feeding all
of them? How did the aliens create the food? There
are no farms, crops, or even livestock unless they are
elsewhere housed on the ship. I presume that the aliens
had to prepare all the food for the human's survival,

(54:39):
or did they maybe use another methods such as injected nutrition.
Either way, it's now John's responsibility to ensure this population
does not starve. It's all well and good to give
them hope of the beach, but I just don't know
how he can manage the nutritional infrastructure. There are also
other things that go into functioning city that the aliens
were taking care of. I can just imagine the massive

(55:02):
amount of work that John just gave himself and wonder
if he would have been better off the other way.
The sequel to Dark City should be subtitled Getting Tired
of This anyway. Thanks for the episode and the podcast. David,
very good question.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
Yeah, it's almost like you you go into a zoo
and set all the animals free, and it's like you're great,
now go live. But it's like, how are they gonna
get food?

Speaker 2 (55:25):
Yeah, Like we see those those great scenes where the
strangers are meticulously like an assembly line preparing the pocket
contents for everyone in the city. I can easily imagine
they're also making sandwiches for the automad and so forth,
you know, engaging in all of this work. And who's
going to do that work? Now?

Speaker 3 (55:42):
Yeah? No, I guess it's it's actually worse than the
zoo example, because then you could imagine at least animals
can forage, there'd be some chance, like this is a
thing floating in space. Where does any of the food
come from?

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Yeah, unless unless on the other side, where presumably the
sun or the sunlike energy so has been hanging out
the whole time. Maybe they're vast crops and gardens and
farms there. But yeah, we just don't know.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
I guess one question is do we ever see what
is the full extent of the tuning power that the
aliens and John Murdock possess. Is it like the Star
Trek Replicator. Can they just imagine objects into full existence
out of bear atoms or do they do they? Is
it more just kind of a telekinesis kind of shaping

(56:29):
and moving power.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Yeah, we never see him tune a sandwich into existence.
That would have answered a lot of questions.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
Or the green jello from the automatic Yeah, make me
green yellow.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
Now it's the greenest food they know of in Dark City.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
No one in Dark City has ever had a salad.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
It's gonna blow their mind. Yeah, it's a.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
City of just fried eggs and green jello. All right,
does that do it for this episode?

Speaker 2 (56:55):
I think that does it for this episode? But hey,
we still had a list of males that we didn't
get to for this episode, and you should certainly keep
sending them in because we read everything that comes in.
We don't get to read everything on the show, but
if you send it, we will read it, at least
to ourselves. And as we continue our journey through the holidays,
we're going to do more listener mails. We try to

(57:16):
do one every month or so anyway, but there may
be an opportunity to fit in an extra one as
we proceed. In the meantime, we'll just remind everyone out
there that's Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a science
and culture podcast with core episodes on two season Thursdays
and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
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 Stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
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.