January 18, 2018 • 59 mins
Join Robert and Joe for another round of Stuff to Blow Your Mind listener mail, in which they read and attend to your thoughts and insight on recent episodes. This round features discussions on the speed of Talos, homunculi generations, Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw traditions, werewolves and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And hey, it is time for a listener Mail episode.
We've got Carney the mail box here with his uh
(00:23):
the stack of mail for us absolutely bursting at the
seams from this mail bag. That's right. We we had
a lot of great listener feedback in the past month
relating to episodes involving everything from from Tallos the Man
of Bronze to Baby Jesus, a Monkey Lie the Winter People. Uh,
you know, we've just we've had some really strong episodes
that have come out and people have have provided some
(00:45):
strong commentary on them. I know we always say this,
but we get really, really awesome listener mail. I I
love what you people out there send us, and please
always keep it coming in. It is true that we
can't always get to all of it, or we can
never get to all of it in a listener mail episode.
Is there's just too much to to read it all.
So please if you send us a great message and
we don't get to it in this episode, please don't
(01:07):
take that as a slight. There's just uh, not enough
time in the world to read it all, but we
hope we can give you a smattering of some of
our favorites here. Uh. If you write into us, you
will reach our eyeballs. We just don't always have time
to respond directly or certainly to read it all on
the show, I'd say the easiest way to get our
attention is to put RoboCop in the subject line. Yeah,
(01:29):
don't don't be afraid to to h to just try
and catch our attention. That way, by all means. Well.
On that note, let's uh, let's call forth the robot.
Let's look at a little bit of listener mail. What
do we have up first here, Joe, Well, it seems
that Carney is receiving a message from another solar system
who This first email is from Alice, and it's called
(01:50):
Omuamua episode comment. And so Alice writes, I adore your show.
Here is a note intended to help improve it on
the recent episode about our inter stellar visitor Omumua. That's
about the interstellar asteroid that was recently detected just this fall.
She she writes, you guys failed to note the more
likely explanation for why it would be shaped similarly to
(02:13):
a human designed ship for interstellar travel. Now we were
talking about that's one reason people have been speculating, oh,
maybe it's some kind of alien probe or alien spaceship,
is that it was much longer than it was wide,
had this kind of cigar shape, which is an odd
shape for objects naturally found in the Solar System. Right,
you don't usually see asteroids shaped like that. Alice writes,
(02:35):
If a cigar shape is really more likely to avoid
collisions in space, then assuming that a number of randomly
shaped objects were ejected from a distant Solar system, the
ones that are not cigar shaped would be more likely
to encounter collisions and not make it to our Solar system.
Keep up the good work, Alice. I think that's an
interesting point. Yeah, yeah, And I do think it is
(02:56):
the point that was brought up in some of the
materials were looking at. I feel like this is probably
a case where maybe we are Probably I did not
hit it strongly enough when we were talking about it,
that the shape would indicate something that was designed to
survive an interstellar voyage, and this would be one of
(03:17):
the factors involved there. It's sort of establishes a cosmic
natural selection kind of thing, right, or at least a
type of anthropic principle. The types of objects would be
most likely to have entering our solar system are the
ones that are most likely to make it here, and
the ones that are not likely to make it here
we're not likely to see. That's if you're if you're
(03:38):
going with the idea that it's not a spaceship, which
I believe, that's still the the that's still the prognosis
is that it's not a spaceship. I hate to bust
the wonder, it's probably not a spaceship. But but but
luckily we we were able to air the episode. That
was our concern that after we recorded it, they would say,
actually it is a spaceship. Everybody, Um, the world has changed,
and then we'd have to go re record with an
(04:00):
it was aliens bent. Yeah, but we've never had to
do that yet. It's never come up. I am. I
can only imagine we would have to be very pro
alien in the follow up though, because I wouldn't want
them intercepting this podcast and then thinking, oh, well, those
are the those are the guys we need to take
out first. I for one, welcome our cigar shaped overlord exactly. Okay, well,
thank you very much, Alice. And our next email comes
(04:23):
from Levi and it concerns the Talos episode about the
ancient Greek automaton. This is one of two different cases
on the podcast where we essentially gave the listeners homework
and sad here uh, someone else figure out the math
of this particular scenario. Now, this concerns the fact that
in the episode, the ancient belief about Talos, or at
least what was said in the myths about him, was
(04:44):
that he would have to go around the coast of
Crete three times in a day, right, And so we
were wondering, well, assuming he's marching the whole time, because
he is an automaton, he can do that, then how
fast is he going? And maybe even what is that
reveal about his size because we had some discussions about
is is he man sized or is he a giant
(05:04):
like we see in the Ray Harryhausen version of Talos. Right,
so Levi contacts us with an email called the Talos equation.
He says, hey, guys, I am in the middle of
the Talos episode and I had to pause to do
some quick math after the comment about wanting someone to
figure out how fast how large Talis would have to
be to circle create three times a day, This sort
(05:25):
of trivial endeavor is precisely my cup of tea. So
here it goes. A rough estimate of the total shore
length of crete finds the distance to be approximately four
hundred sixty miles, and three laps around the island would
make the total daily distance thirteen hundred and eighty miles.
If we assume an eight hour day sunrise to sunset,
we can calculate that Talos would be moving at about
(05:47):
one and seventy two miles per hour. The description of
it is pretty fast, but hey, atom of time with
the the I core of the gods flowing through its vein,
so you know anything's possible. That's right, It's like the
super unleaded, so Levi continues quote. The description of Tallos
given in the Argonautica says that he strode around the
(06:08):
island as opposed to running or sprinting. And if we
assume a stride to mean a normal walking pace, we
can say that a stride is about eighty steps per minute.
Interesting variation here, given the rate of speed of one
hundred seventy two miles per hour. We convert our units
to feet per minute fifteen thousand, one hundred fifty three
point sixty ft per minute. Next, we calculate our distance
(06:31):
per step. Fifteen thousand, one hundred and fifty three point
six divided by eighty average steps per minute gives us
a figure of one hundred and eighty nine point forty
two ft per step. That's a long stride. If we
assume that the average person stride distance per step is
equal to approximately half their height, we can calculate Tallos's
total height to be three hundred and seventy eight point
(06:54):
eighty four feet. So this would definitely be supporting the
idea that Tallos is not a human sized creation but
a true giant. Now, this kind of goes counter to
what most of the ancient sources would seem to assume,
which is that Tallos was made of bronze. But he
was more like the tin man than like the Ray
Harry housing giant Taalos. He was a human sized bronze creature. Now,
(07:18):
Levi continues quote, Now that this mathematical and geeky itch
is sufficiently scratched, I can enjoy the rest of the
episode of the show, keep up the suburb work regards
LEVI did the whole thing with it on pause. Yeah,
I like that. I like that initiative. Pause the episode,
do some math homework and send to send the answers.
Now we got a slightly different calculation from our listener
(07:39):
e J. Right, Yeah, e J wrote in on the
discussion module. That's our Facebook group. An excellent way to
interact not only with us, but with other listeners to
the show. E J says, quote, I used the distance
measuring feature on Google Maps to ballpark the coastline of
Crete two six d twenty miles nine seven point seven kilometers.
(08:00):
Talos would have to go about seventy seven point five
miles per hour point seven kilometers per hour to do
three laps of the island a day. Also, I couldn't
help thinking about sky Rim during the episode, and he
included a picture from a particular meme that's popular. But
I believe, if I remember correctly from my Skyrim playing days,
Talos is a god in the world of sky Rim,
(08:22):
and there's a particular MPC that goes around preaching about Talos.
I think he's in the first major talent you encounter.
So I'm unfamiliar with Talos or with Skyrim in general.
Is Tallos bronze in Skyrim? Ah, you know, I don't.
I don't remember. There are some cool bronze automatons in it,
because the like extinct dwarves of the world, have just
(08:43):
left behind their ruins and they have these these, uh,
these these bronze automatons that walk around and kill things
that stumble into their ancient dungeons. So, you know, there's
a certain familiarity with the Talos smith I imagine with
the Skyrim creators. Now, there are some differences in these calculations,
not only with with the differences in estimation numbers, but
(09:05):
also with the number of hours that Talis would be
expected to walk per day. I think Levi had it
going at eight hours per day, whereas I think e
J was assuming just constant patrol of the shores. I
don't know if patrolling at night would make as much sense,
because would you be able to see people coming anyway? Well,
it seems like that would be a great time to
uh send in a ship of invaders. So I don't know. Interesting,
(09:29):
you know, Jason didn't quite think of that one today.
But I don't know, there's so many additional navigational questions
coming to play. Yeah, I'm not sure on that. Perhaps
our listeners have further thoughts on this whole Talas conundrum. Now,
as I said, this was not the only bit of
homework that we handed out to our listeners. You also
handed out a little a little bit of listener math
(09:51):
homework in regards to our baby Homunculi Jesus episode. Right, So,
in that episode, we were discussing the old Preformation theory
of human reproduction. And this was a theory several hundred
years ago and and before that that that human beings
and human embryos Basically that they didn't have the idea
that the sperm and the eggs cell would combine and
(10:13):
fuse together and mix their chromosomes to create a new
recombined human embryo cell. Instead, they had the idea that
either the sperm cell or the egg cell was a
fully formed human being, just very tiny, and that somehow
the the act of sex would cause that fully formed
human being to start growing within the uterus. Now, I wondered,
(10:37):
under this theory, how many generations of humans within humans
could be stored scaled down all the way so like,
because you imagine if every human sperm cell is a
fully formed human, then that tiny, fully formed human has
all future generations formed to sperm cell size within itself,
(10:58):
so it has to be purport snally smaller. The Russian
nesting dolls can only go down so far before they
run into like hard physical limits. Yeah, you'd eventually get
to something like plank length, which is, you know, a
length of space in physics that no longer makes any
physical difference to our calculations. So we asked this question
and our listener Madison supplied an awesome answer. Madison wrote,
(11:22):
I'm a big fan of your podcast, and in the
episode Baby Jesus and the Homunculous, you pose the calculation
on how many generations could exist if the theory of
a fully formed human existed in the sperm How far
back could this go before meeting the plank length. Well,
let's find out the average newborn human male length is
about fifty centimeters and the size of the average sperm
(11:43):
cell head is about five point one micrometers or microns.
This means the ratio of newborn length UH of newborn
length to sperm length is and she does the calculation.
It's about nine eight thousand, but she says we should
just round it to a hundred thousand because it's easier,
or a factor of one e five. So she says,
from here it is fairly straightforward. For that first generation
(12:06):
a human that is the length of a sperm or
five micrometers, would have a second generation of sperm that
is five E negative eleven or fifty picometers, about the
length of one helium atom. From there, you could only
progress six generations until you reached five E negative thirty
six meters or a plank link, or beyond a plank length,
(12:28):
essentially because the plank length is one point six E
negative thirty five ms. Then Madison writes, but what about
the O a site human O sytes are much larger
than sperm at a hundred micrometers in diameter. Using the
same logic, you could only reach eight or nine generations
before passing the plank length. Not only does this pose
size limitations, but eight generations is really only two hundred
(12:51):
years or so. This was a fun thought experiment. I
really enjoy your podcast, and I've been listening to them
for over a year now. I've just finished my n
a graduate in molecular and cellular biology at the University
of Connecticut, and I'm preparing to continue for a PhD
in genetics this fall. I currently do researching computational genomics,
specifically with pine trees and their massive and complex genomes.
(13:14):
At about ten times the size of the human genome.
Pine trees like the lob lolly pine, are some of
the largest genomes sequence to date. My work is essentially
building a twenty three in me for these trees so
we can breed traits like disease resistance more effectively. That's fascinating.
For a future podcast idea, it might be interesting to
talk about genomes and their sizes and complexity. What are
(13:38):
the biggest genomes and why are they so big? Why
is it so hard to sequence the wheat genome? How
are genomes assembled computationally, and why is it all so difficult?
So many people ask me about that and how humans
fit into all of it. Another idea for a podcast
could be how it could be about ancestry testing or
how twenty three and me trade profiles work and don't work.
(13:59):
I'm still trying to educate my parents on how their
test results could be slightly different from their siblings. Thank
you for all the wonderful content. Thank you so much, Madison.
This is a great email and full of great ideas
for future episodes. I think genome size and complexity is
a really fascinating area. I've just been reading something about
research that came out this year comparing the genome sizes
(14:21):
of different birds and mammals and what genome size might
actually have to do with flight. Interesting. Yeah, I would
love to to dive into that. I don't think we've
we've covered anything quite along those lines before. Alright, on
that note, we're going to take a quick break, and
when we come back we will consider some more listener
mails concerning some recent topics. Thank alright, we're back. So
(14:44):
this next bit of listener mail comes to us from
listener Stephen, titled paradox or Semantic Illusion. So already we're intrigued, Hi,
Robert and Joe. While working, I often find it helpful
to distract my mind a little. For this reason, I
listened to lots of podcasts. Stuff to Blow your Mind
is by far my favorite. I make my living as
a custom mannequin sculptor, using clay for some projects and
(15:08):
digital sculpting programs like z Brush for others. I have
never heard of that job before, but that is so interesting. Yeah,
I should have thought before how do mannequins get made? Yeah?
I mean you. I guess you tend to think that
you just have like a mass produce, and certainly there
are some mass produced mannequins. But you do see unique
mannequins in certain stores and they have to have an
origin story. Yeah, totally. This is the guy. This is
(15:29):
the modern datalists creating his his his mermaidis he continues
the production deadline. I have to meet can by brutal
many times when I have needed to put in crazy
hours to get things done. Stuff to blow your mind,
and has made the process less painful than it otherwise
would have been. Thank you. Your recent podcasts about the
Present Moment and by Cameralism have the lin and rust
(15:51):
coded cogs of my mind grinding into motion again. I
was unfamiliar with Julian Jayne's work prior to hearing your
podcast on bi Cameralism, but I have ed and appreciated
Joseph Campbell and Eckart Toole's ideas for many years. I'm
reaching out to you because I'm trying to reconcile Campbell,
Tole and Jane's perspectives on metaphors. So he continues, Joseph
(16:14):
Campbell told Bill Moyers during the Power of Myth interview, quote,
most people in the West take metaphors in religion literally,
mistaking the denotation with the connotation. Ekart Tole has written, quote.
As soon as something is perceived, it is named, interpreted
compared with something else liked, disliked, or called good or
(16:35):
bad by the phantom self, the ego. They are imprisoned
in thought forms in object consciousness. You do not awake
con spiritually until the compulsive and unconscious naming ceases, or
at least become aware of it and thus observe it
as it happens. And that's from page forty in a
New Earth. Anyway, Stephen continues, I'm still reading the origin
(16:56):
of consciousness in the Breakdown of the bicameral Mind, but
so far, what I'm hearing Jane say is that metaphors
make non bicameral consciousness possible, and that when people were bicameral,
they heard voices in their heads telling them what to do,
making most of their actions unconscious. Please assume momentarily for
the sake of reckless of a reckless thought experiment that
Jane's theory about the role of metaphor and consciousness is correct.
(17:20):
With this temporary assumption, in effect, I feel like there
is something glaring me in the face when these three
perspectives are laid out on the same page. The trouble
is I can't quite put my finger on it. I'm
sharing my quandary with you and the hope that you
may see what I'm missing and pointed out to me.
Would there be a chicken egg paradox surrounding consciousness where
on the one hand, it cannot emerge without the use
(17:41):
of metaphors, names, concepts, or labels, but on the other
is all but blighted out by the gross oversimplification which speech, language,
and metaphor inevitably produce. When I consider the possibility that
many violent acts which have contributed to cycles of unending suffering,
potentially exasperated by at the genetic magnification, could have been
(18:02):
the outgrowth of an unconscious bicameral haze which did not
dissipate until very recent human history, it makes my head
spin when I reconsidered Joseph Campbell's insights about dentotation being
mistaken with connotation in the realm of metaphor. The irony
would be that even after bicameral dominance faded, the misunderstanding
of metaphors by non bicameral minds would have been waiting
(18:26):
in the wings like a purveyor of hell on wheels,
continuing the mad momentum with by which bi cameralism might
have given birth to. What bothers me is that these
ideas seem to simultaneously support and contradict one another. On
a lighter note, I have included some mannequin prototype samples
that I sculpted in clay at work about a year
ago while listening to many Stuff to Blow your Mind podcasts.
(18:48):
I'm gradually making time to do my own work again
when I'm not sculpting mannequins, and I may play with
ideas about consciousness inspired by the perspectives Campbell, Tole and
James have me considering. You guys are on a roll,
and my inspirational batteries are beginning to recharge. Please keep
the podcast coming. Thank you, Steve. Well, that's really interesting stuff, Steve.
I mean, one thing I would say is that if
(19:10):
you're asking about how to reconcile these different views, I
think to some degree the views, I mean, you could
modify them and reinterpret them generally, but I think they're
sort of incompatible. Right if you're saying that the Tol's
ideas that metaphors kind of um imprison our thoughts and
limit our consciousness because we're making comparisons and and using
(19:31):
words to limit experience. And then on the other hand,
you've got Jane saying that, um that metaphors make consciousness possible,
though I think it's not just non bi cameral consciousness.
I think he would say that metaphors make both bi
cameralism and consciousness possible, and that you couldn't have either
one without metaphors. Metaphors are sort of his road out
of the stimulus response machine architecture. Uh. Now, of course
(19:56):
that's all just like if you're playing with the Julian
Jans hypothesis, we're not assuming that this is actually a
true explanation of where consciousness came from. But but yeah,
if if you do sort of entertain it as a hypothesis,
I think it's not quite compatible with the idea that
metaphors are these shackles that limit our experience, right, Yeah, yeah,
(20:18):
I agree. And now I'm thinking back on Ekartole's writings
and I seem to recall the the details he's referring to,
where basically totally is making an argument for being able
to observe the world and not depend upon metaphors, not
depend upon the language, uh to make sense of it,
(20:38):
you know, sort of like being able to stare at
a flower, stare at a rose, say, inexperience it for
what it is without bringing in the name off the
roads ironically, or or the various meanings that we have
heaped upon it to render it just completely powerless. Yeah,
it's an interesting thought. I mean, I don't know the
(21:00):
answer to whether it's even possible for a person with
a language based mind to have non language consciousness. I mean,
I've never had that experience myself that I can think of,
where like I just lose analytic language and words and
words and structure and grammar all fade away and it's
(21:22):
just raw experience of like I don't know light and
sound without any names or comparisons. I think I've mentioned
this before, but I've had the experience of playing with legos, uh,
more recently with my son, and I still have the
numbers to go by. You know, how many of those
little circles are on a block, or what color they are,
(21:45):
what basic length they are is at a big piece
or a little piece? But I don't, I at least
do not have names for those blocks, and I have
often found myself thinking about that as I'm building something
with my son that I'm I don't have names for
the thing, the components. I'm used to build something with
a name. Um, but again it's not quite the same
because I still have the number system to go off,
(22:06):
I still off of, I still have the color, and
I still have the final shape to consider. I don't
know if Steven or other artists out there that listen
to the show have any insight on this as well,
creating something out of things that perhaps don't have names,
I don't know. I'm not quite sure. I'm still trying
to think how exactly Joseph Campbell's idea fits into all this.
(22:28):
I Um, I don't know that I agree with him,
but I do think that that is a very possible concept.
I mean, something I've brought up before on the show
is you don't always know how to read ancient myths
when when he says Joseph Campbell's ideas that modern Western
audiences look at a myth and they tried to take
it literally, they tried to take it as denotation rather
(22:50):
than connotation, when really what the myth is is that
it's a bunch of symbolic resonances and meanings rather than
like a literal story about something that physically happened. But
as I probably said before, I think that's one of
the great things about myth though, is that you you
can take it out and you can you can put
it on the shelf and you can you can turn
it this way, you can turn it that way, you
(23:10):
can change your perspective, and all the different ways of
looking at it can be rewarding in slightly different ways.
So look at it as as a you know, fundamental truth.
This is a true story, a magical thing that happened.
Look at it is literature, look at it as a
story created to explain something, ETCETERA Avid refer listeners back
to our myth episode as we roll through all the
(23:32):
various ways you can explain a myth. But I find
that it's examining each of those perspectives is rewarding, and
it's not as much trying to figure out the definite
explanation for what it is. Um. Yeah, I wonder sometimes
how much of this confusion is born out of just
pure equivocation on the uses of the word truth. Like
(23:54):
when somebody would say, for example, that their Holy Book
is true. You could take that in in multiple different ways,
and you could have very different reactions to it based
on what they mean by the word true, right, Like
you could use that to mean every story told in
it literally physically happened in the past, or you could
(24:15):
use it to mean there are statements in it that
give true structure and meaning to my life, or you
could take that to mean that when I read it,
something feels right about it. Yeah. I find myself again
with my son time to explain a lot of this
stuff because he'll, you know, he has the he has
it down like if something is true obviously, and then
(24:37):
if something is completely made up. But I'm really trying
to define the idea of myth for him as being
this middle ground that a story can be true but
not factual. Like it's the way I try to explain
it is, well, this is not a story of something
that actually happened, but is it a story that means
a lot to people and has truth in it? But
(24:59):
you should get caught up on whether or not there
was an actual Garden of Eden, or I have dragons
are real, etcetera. But that's not to just dismiss them
to the realm of ninja turtles and yeah. And in fact,
people don't have all that much trouble with this when
they think about modern literature. I think, I mean people
will usually be able to acknowledge that a work of
(25:21):
fiction written ten years ago is of course not literally factual.
It doesn't describe things that happened in the world, and
yet it's full of truth. For some reason, it becomes
more difficult to sort out these meanings of truth when
it comes to like myths and and the things that
structure our lives, like religions and yeah, and I think
(25:43):
a lot of that come ends up depending upon an
inaccurate view of how ancient people's considered their beliefs to
to just look at it as, oh, well, this was
something that more primitive people believed in. They thought this
was an absolute truth. And if I'm looking at it
in a different way, than I'm I'm looking at it
with modern eyes, and it's not quite the same thing.
(26:04):
But again, I feel like on this show, when we
discuss myths, we tend to drive home the point that
that it's more complicated than that. One last thing on
that idea, I often wonder if people in ancient cultures
who you know, had Greek myths and Babylonian myths and
all that, if there was sort of a similar diversity
(26:25):
of orientation towards the myth and that you would have
among people in various religions today. So like, if you
explore Christianity in the United States, there will be lots
of people who believe in a literal six day creation,
and then a lot of people who believe in the
truth of Christianity, but they don't believe that the stories
like are literally factual descriptions of physical realities. And I
(26:47):
wonder if you'd find the same thing in ancient cultures. Actually,
you get some people who are insisting on kind of
literal interpretations of mythical stories and other people who are
who are drawing from the well of myth to provide
structure and meaning. Yeah, I mean a great deal of
that is is lost. Alright, well we'll have to move on. Obviously,
we could talk about this all day, but I also
(27:08):
want to say, Steve, thanks for sending in those images
of your mannequin work. Uh. These were really cool. That's
kind of we We can't share them with everybody because
they're they're kind of confidential, but they have a very
uh kind of sci fi meets classical Uh look to them,
you know, right, yeah, the polymers of ancient Greece. Yeah, yeah,
(27:28):
all right, Well, what do we have next from Carney?
The mail bought here? Well, Carney is giving us a
message from Julia, and it's about our Winter People episode.
So Julius says, Hi, Robert, Hi Joe, Ela Kasla. So
this email has a lot of quakwa kuk words in
it that I'm going to do my absolute best to
try to pronounce. But I I apologize if I fail
(27:51):
at pronouncing them right. But you're a braver man than I.
Jo Okay, So it starts Ela Kasla, which means thank
you for your shout out to the Kukwaku people in
your Winter People podcast. I listen to your podcasts while
out delivering beer in and around Vancouver. For how sound brewing.
I was delighted and surprised when I heard you mentioned
the Quikakubuck people's I am part Zawadnu, a tribe that
(28:15):
falls when within the Quakuala speaking languages groups. The winter
ceremonies are a big part of our culture. I have
witnessed the Hamatza being tamed in the Gootzi, which is
the big House. I appreciated your understanding that this is
more than just a performance. It's a way to transcend
reality and enter into the spiritual. When we go onto
(28:35):
the floor to dance in the Big House, we turn
around in a circle. This is a representation of us
turning into the spirit world. Our ancestors were theatrical. You
mentioned choreography in our dances. This did happen. I have
heard stories of those that knew they were being bitten
by the Hamatza putting a piece of meat on their
arms so that when the Hamassa bites them it will
(28:57):
look as though they have bitten into the flesh and
some off. These performances would often scare the Indian agents
that would come to our ceremonies. I've read that back
in the day that Knee No Sola, who are the
wise people would choose who would be initiated as the Hamatza.
They would then fake that person's death in front of
the community in a very convincing way. This person would
(29:19):
then have to secretly leave the village and go through
their initiation process, only to return during the winter ceremony. Unfortunately,
colonialism has continued to degrade our cultural connections to the
spirit world and to our ceremonies. Residential schools, genocide disease,
the potlatch band, the sixties scoop stealing our regalia, forced
(29:40):
sterilization of Indigenous women, systemic racism have all contributed to
this degradation. We no longer have these ceremonies in the winter.
We no longer have winter and summer names. We no
longer have the traditional foods that supported us through the
winter months. This is starting to shift, though. We are
relearning our old ways and adapting them to our new ways.
(30:01):
We're starting to restore traditional governance, of which the winter
ceremonies contribute greatly to. We're fighting for our wild foods,
and we're currently on the front lines in a fight
against open net fish farms in our traditional territories. The
story about the Cannibal at the North End of the
World has been told to me differently. Bak bakwal Nuke,
the Cannibal at the North End of the World is
(30:22):
one of the four brothers in the version I know.
They are the sons of Si Kam, the cedar Man,
who is the original ancestor of the qui Quatu. Other
histories have different versions, though depending on who tells them
and what their reason for sharing the story is. I
enjoyed listening to the version you had learned. Just interesting
to note that the zoo Qua the wild Woman of
(30:44):
the Woods, is oftentimes associated with the Sasquatch. As a
young indigenous woman who has only recently started to reconnect
with her culture, it was super cool to come across
a podcast that spoke to her roots. Cheers and this
is from Julia dam gilligam Me or Abalone Shell Woman.
Well that was a real treat. I mean, we uh
(31:05):
we we kind of gambled in that episode and said, well,
we probably have some listeners out there who have some
familiarity with this culture or parts of this culture, and
uh and long behold, we we got to hear from one.
This was really cool. So thank you so much for
getting in touch, Julia. All Right, on that note, we're
gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
we're going to roll through a few more of these
wonderful listener males that we've received. Thank you, thank you.
(31:29):
All right, we're back. All right. Well, here's the here's
one from our listener, Milan. Milan writes in in response
to our Talost episode. Uh, they say, Hi, I have
just one detail you didn't get particularly right. The word
robot is a now made by famous writer uh kpec
from the check verb robota, which means uh corvet. Sincerely
(31:50):
your listener, Milan. Now I I have to add here,
indeed robot does stim from the check word robota, which
means forced labor. And I was reading about this in
Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Always a cool uh
source to have in play on on these these things. Uh.
The name comes indeed from the mechanical creatures in Carl
(32:12):
Capex play Are You Are? Or Rosum's Universal Robots, and
a nineteen twenty three production in London introduced it to
the English speech speaking world, and it was used in
reference to flying bombs of the Second World War as well.
Uh So uh, it is. It is kind of interesting
to trace the roots of this word, like how a
(32:32):
check word becomes popular among English speakers and then you know,
throughout the world. I also have to say that I'd
previously read that the term comes from a check word
roboto nick, which, interestingly enough, the villain in the Sonic
the Hedgehogs game is Dr Evo Eggman Robotic, which I
(32:53):
had forgotten about. He's the big mustachioed guy in the
various mechanical machines. Wondered. So he's he's like a sphere
here with legs and a mustache. He's like an egg man. Yeah.
Why is he a robot or does he just make robots?
Is he human? Is he a sentient egg? How deeply
dare we dive into the mythos of Sonic the Hedgehog.
(33:15):
I'm not sure, but I do have fun memories of
playing those games. I never beat them, but I you know,
it's always always fun to zip the critters around in
the first couple of levels before it became too difficult. Yeah,
fast moving. Okay, We've got another short email from our listener, Joshua,
who's who writes in with the subject line this is
a good attention getter. Were Wolves spotted in Vietnam. Joshua Rides,
(33:39):
Hey guys, longtime listener and huge fan here, just wanted
to thank you for the introduction to the game Where Wolf.
I'm currently staying in a hostel in the tiny village
of Ta Von in Vietnam, and it was a great
icebreaker with all the other travelers as the coals burned low. Sadly,
the villagers always triumphed, but there's always tomorrow night. Man.
(34:00):
That's different than our game where the Werewolves won most
of the time. Probably has to do with different numbers
of players, right, We were like at the bare minimum
of villagers to actually have a game, but but glad
to hear your villagers could put up a fighting chance. Uh,
Joshua continues. The work you all do is amazing. Thanks
to everyone who makes this podcast possible. You've been faithful
(34:20):
companions on many long airplane and bus rides as well
as just nights at home. You're valued and appreciated. Really
keep up the good work. Thank you so much for
saying so, Joshua that is it's so nice to hear
and and really glad to hear we're helping you make
friends on your travels. All right, here's another one. This
one comes to us from Jake titled Big Fans. Hi, guys,
I'm a big fan of the podcast. Started listening when
(34:40):
I heard my favorite author are Scott Baker would be
on and have been enjoying it ever since. Funny story,
I listened to your episode about various mind controlling parasites
with my eight year old daughter Molly. She really enjoyed it,
and even though it freaked her out a little, she
later asked to listen to more with me. So next
we listened to the Talos episode, which I was really
enjoying until you started to talk about how Taalos would
(35:03):
immolate people with a hug and a huge grin. No ha,
I loved it, but it was too much for Molly,
and she wanted a new one and said they really
have a way of making everything dark. They do. Indeed, Molly, oh,
you know, I feel like we don't go out of
our way to do that. But well, yeah, I we'll discuss, uh. So,
(35:23):
Jake continues, So I picked one that sounded like a nice,
easy one for the Winter People Part one. Everything was
going well until you started talking about Santa Claus and
I could tell trouble was coming by the excitement in
your voice as you said, have you heard the original
stories about St. Nicholas? Oh? I thought they only get
that excited when they were about to say something horrifying.
(35:43):
And sure enough, you dove right into the evil innkeeper
who chops up children and pickles their body parts. But
it had a happy ending they get resurrected. Well. Oh yeah,
suffice to say I was asked to stop it in
no uncertain terms. Anyway, it cracked me up that she
packed you eyes as being drawn to the dark side
of things. Definitely true and definitely part of why I
enjoy your show so much. Keep it up. I'll be listening.
(36:06):
But I can't say the same for Molly. Regards Jake, Well,
I'm sorry to have scared her off. I hope maybe
she'll come back and enjoy the few in the show
in the future when she's older. Maybe. Well, but Jake's
listening because it's dark. He likes the darkness. Um, yeah,
you know, I have. I guess we do try to
keep it fairly light. Uh. You know, some topics allow
us to do that better than others. Uh, some topics
(36:28):
kind of floorists with the dark content. You know, we don't.
We don't always set out to make a an episode
that reveals the you know, the dark, hidden nature of humanity.
But sometimes it's hiding there, just ready to jump at
you and drag you down to the ground. Well, I'd
say in both of these cases, we didn't make up
these stories, folks. These are very old myths that have
(36:49):
been around longer than us. I will say on the
Santa Clause issue at the Brown the same time we're
recording this, I was I wrote an article for how
Stuff works dot com about the kind of delightful history
and cultural usage of Santa Claus. So there is that
lighter side to me regarding the jolly old health, even
(37:10):
if it wasn't present in that episode. Maybe I was
letting my my holiday fatigue shine through a little bit.
I don't know. Anyway, Thanks for writing in, Jake, It's
great to hear from you. Okay, we are receiving one
here from our listener, Mary, who writes us about a
recent Vault episode we featured or wait, did we feature
this from the Vault? I don't think we did, did we?
(37:32):
This is just an old episode? What's the episode? The
episode is the Science of Coincidence. Oh no, it's just
a coincidence. We haven't to republish that one yet. This
was my first episode of Stuff to Plow your Mind,
or at least the first one I recorded, maybe not
the first one that aired, but this still I think
remains one of my favorites. We where we talked about
what's really going on when you think synchronicity is happening
(37:52):
in the world. And so anyway, Mary writes in about
this episode, She says, quote, I've been slowly catching upon podcasts,
and I just finished listening to the Science of Coincidence.
When you began talking about the scientist around whom machines
always seemed to break down, I believe that's Wolfgang Polly,
I think. She continues, I was reminded of a fun
(38:14):
coincidence that happened to me in college. In one of
my physics labs, one of my partners was a professional juggler.
This particular day, we were doing the experiment to prove
the speed and acceleration in which different objects fall. Basically,
we were testing gravity. Everyone else in the lab was
getting perfect results on every drop they tested. We, on
(38:35):
the other hand, could not get a consistent result. To
save our lives, our tapes showed gaps and bunches that
should absolutely not be occurring. Parenthetical. We were using equipment
and sent electric pulses out as things fell, theoretically marking
a special sort of tape that was stretched up to
the height of the device. I cannot remember its name.
(38:56):
After the third or fourth erroneous result, we began joke
about how our juggler was messing with our results. After
twenty minutes without a clean fall, we threw him out
of the lab. As soon as he stepped out the door,
we got all of our tapes. All of our falls
went perfectly. It became an incredibly easy experiment at that point.
Once we had all the data we had to have,
(39:18):
we let our juggler back in. Once again, our tape
started showing odd gaps and bunches. When we wrote up
our conclusions, in addition to the ones that the professor expected,
our group added based on our observations, we have concluded
that objects do not fall according to the accepted laws
of gravity when in the presence of a professional juggler.
(39:38):
We included all of our tapes marking the ones where
he left the room. The professor had been present for
the whole lab, so he was in on the joke.
We got an a on that one. Just a fun coincidence,
I thought i'd share. Never found an explanation for it
other than jugglers are weird. I love stuff like that.
I wonder if, now what you could go two ways
(39:58):
with the explanation there. You could say that the correlation
between the juggler's presence and the failure of the experiments
was just actually a coincidence, there was no, uh no,
no causation there. Or you could say that the juggler
was doing something that was messing up your recording equipment
or somehow otherwise interfering with the experiment. Or maybe it
(40:19):
was simply meant to be. This was a design juggler
whose presence was written in the stars. Yeah, I mean,
I think about having I don't know exactly how the
setup worked, so it could be things like having magnetic
elements on one's clothing or in one's backpack or you know,
stuff like that. But yeah, it's hard to know for sure. Interesting, Well,
(40:43):
I have one here from James, and I have to
say this is this maybe the first time, but I'm
excited to read a listener male about pronunciation. Oh boy,
because this one's actually this one's enlightening U and actually
ties in really nicely with the episode. They're responding to
our our episode on the months ferocity cuteness scale. The
idea that's something that is that is cute or it's monstrous.
(41:05):
This is all a slider. Essentially, this is all spectrum, uh,
and that is why things transition from one to the
other so easily. So James writes in and says, Hi, there, guys,
really love your work. The recent episode about Machine God
kind of did my head in great episode. I just
wanted to mention something from the Monstrosity Cuteness Scale episode.
I didn't mention this earlier because I didn't want to
be petty and I really expected a lot of people
(41:27):
to mention it, and I didn't want to pile on. However,
I have a small pronunciation note between the Japanese words
kauai and kauai. That's an a versus within an oh
in terms of you know the sound a number of
times when meaning to say kauai, meaning cute, instead you
said kauai, which means scary. Both are very common words,
(41:50):
but very different in meaning and considering the episode was
about things which are kauai over time turning kauai. It
really threw me for a loop a few time. Still
a really excellent episode, though, thanks again for all your work. Now,
I certainly never meant to pronounce the word coy ever
in the episode, But I'm going to maybe chalk this
(42:10):
up to our Tennessee accents, under which these vowel sounds
get kind of both get conflated to the uh sound,
right co if we're talking fast and being East Tennessee,
ear's kouai and kauai kind of both become ki. Yeah, yeah,
I think that may be part of it, but I
think it is. It is interesting that did any mispronunciations
(42:34):
or um our perceivedness pronunciations were so thematically appropriate in
this case, you know, the the idea that these two uh,
two words essentially words for cuteness and monstrosity could be
so closely uh a line that could resemble each other
so so so nicely. Well, I didn't even know that
before we got this email, But that makes me wonder
(42:55):
if we're having uh lexical determinism here in the culture,
as if the you know, the phonetic similarity of these
words actually leads to a linking of the concepts in
the cultural consciousness. Well, well, maybe it would make sense
within Japanese culture, right, but then you have you have
examples of this taking place outside of Japanese culture as well.
(43:18):
So I don't know, but it's wonderful food for thought
and uh and thus my excitement to read it. Okay,
next very simple one that I think we should read
for totally self serving reasons. Benjamin writes to say thank you.
He says, thank you guys for a great podcast, my
deepest appreciation, all the way from Norway, wondering how I
(43:39):
can donate some money for you to buy some snacks
or drinks. I might just end up doing it. Have
a wonderful New Year's Benjamin. And then you sent him
our Swiss bank account details right exactly, I sent him
our Cheddar bank account. No, we currently do not have
anyway for you to send us money directly, and that's
how it should be. You know, the show's free to you.
(44:00):
You don't need to pay us for it. You just listen.
There's no official merchandise right now, so you can't do
that either. Maybe in the future, in the future, but
right now, you can't. That's not an option for supporting
the show. But this is a great place for us
to let you know there are some free things you
can do to support the show if you want to,
just a few suggestions. As always, give us a positive
(44:22):
rating and review on the platforms where you listen to us,
whether that's iTunes, Stitch or whatever. A thoughtful review where
you talk about what you like about the show is
going to be more helpful than just some stars floating
in the void without words. Uh. If you're in a
position to do business with our advertisers, use our promo
codes when you do it, and uh if in any
white if it's possible for you to do it, let
(44:44):
them know that you heard about them through us. Share
here's a big one. Share and interact positively with our
posts on social media. A lot of people probably aren't
aware that social media works this way. But if you're
like us and you've got a page with a bunch
of followers and you post something, it doesn't go to
all your followers. The social media platforms they kind of
(45:04):
want to keep you hostage, so they will show your
followers your posts at a at a rate to determine
buy how much you pay them to do it. And
if you don't want to pay them anything, you're not
going to be reaching most of your followers unless people
start commenting on and sharing those posts. So that's a
really easy way to help us reach more people and
help the show. Just do positive, good quality engagement like things,
(45:28):
share things and so forth. Yeah, you can collectively reach
more people than than we can with our account totally.
Even more important than social media is word of mouth.
Just if you know somebody who you think would like
our show, tell them about it. Yeah, as you're walking
down the street, just start screaming the name of the show,
right and and hopefully people will listen to you. You know,
write it on the on the walls of bathroom stalls
(45:49):
with sharpies. No, don't do that, but but you know,
just generally spread the word. If if if we share
some sort of cool idea, uh, you know, share that
cool idea with with with other people busted out at
cocktail parties and uh and and then maybe you know,
give recommendation on top of that. Yeah. Also, if you've
got a platform of your own, whether that's a podcast, blog,
video series, whatever you might be doing. Uh, and you
(46:11):
think your followers might dig us. Let them know about us.
That helps too. Yeah, so stuff to blow your mind
theme birthday parties. I'm just spit balling at this point,
but yeah, there's a lot of stuff you can do,
uh that it doesn't cost a time that actually helps
us out immensely. How about stuff to blow your mind
themed retirement parties? Sure? Yeah, I mean you can use
the basically the same cake designed too. You could form
stuff to blow your mind themed countries. Yeah, yeah, perhaps
(46:36):
maybe in the virtual realm, you know. Okay, So yeah,
that's about it for now. Can't send us any money,
but there are are things you can do if you
like the show and you want to give us a boost.
All right, here's another one. This one comes to us
from Duncan Duncan Rights and and says, Hi, there, I
was just listening to the Dangerous Foods three episode and
the question was asked whether octopy actually specifically evolved to
use choking as a defense mechanism. Although I can't definitively
(47:00):
to this, I was reminded of an episode of Blue Planet.
To this, of course, is the great one of the
great Attenborough nature documentaries, in which an octopus was attacked
by a shark. As the shark attempted to eat the octopus,
it forced its tentacles into the shark's throat and out
through the shark's gills, stopping it from breathing. This forced
the shark to let go of the octopus, which escaped
(47:21):
and survived the encounter. This strongly suggests to me that
the answer is, yes, well worth worth watching the show
if you haven't already. So this makes me think of
in the old cartoons when you would see like a
giant shark or something like that trying to eat bugs,
bunny or whatever other crafty cartoon hero. They would like
put their feet on both sides of its mouth and
(47:42):
like you know, spread spread their feet apart to like
wedge there so that they couldn't be eaten. Kind like that, Yeah,
I think so, But basically the same the same ideas
in play. And this of course is not to be
confused with the scene in Lucio Fulci's Zombie in which
an aquatic zombie battles um shark briefly right, so that
(48:02):
is one of the great scenes in cinematic history. You've
got my gears turn in next October. There will definitely
be a science of fulchy episode. It's like, what what
are the thermodynamics of human melting? It's mostly going to
be a bunch of medical journal articles about I stabbing,
I think, and the actual science behind that. I love
(48:22):
the way we laugh. Oh, I stabbing? Okay. We recently
did a vault episode version of our old episode on
a Fantasia, the Blindness of the Mind's Eye, and our
listener Lucy wrote in to get in touch about that.
As always, we love to hear from people who have
direct experience with this, and so Lucy wrote the following,
(48:44):
Hey guys, I've just listened to the episode on a
Fantasia and parts of it made me laugh. I'm twenty
five and only last year I came across this term
and realized that other people see things when they close
their eyes and try to imagine it. When I was
in primary school and they would sometimes get us to
close our eyes and imagine a scene described to us,
I genuinely thought that the teachers were just trying to
(49:06):
kill some time. You know, Lucy, that might have been.
That might have been the case, even though the other
children did have a vivid mind's eye. But going on,
it doesn't matter how hard I try to see the image,
it never appears. And the harder I tried, the more
frustrated I get, and the more frustrated, the further away
I feel from the possibility of seeing something. It's like
(49:27):
you know what you're supposed to be seeing what without
actually physically seeing it. As for hallucinations, I can confirm
that it is possible for people with a fantasia to
experience visual hallucinations. I have experienced a couple of psychotic
episodes which included visual hallucinations. Looking back on them, it
was like I was miss seeing what was in front
(49:48):
of me. So, for example, I would think any small
inconsistencies in the walls were buttons to press. It had
been snowing and there was grit on the ground, but
on top of the snow it looked to me like
blood and dns in the snow, and I thought there
were reindeer footprints. When you were talking about doing things
you would have to visualize to do, I struggled with
(50:10):
this a bit. I do agility with my dog and
it training. If we're told to do a sequence before
doing it, everyone else will picture what to do in
their heads, but for me, I need to physically do
something to remember it. So I will stand and look
at the section we're working on and will move my
arms slightly the one I would use to direct my
dog at that point for me to remember to go
(50:32):
and do it. Interestingly enough, I'm always the one at
class that remembers the courses the easiest. Great podcast, and
I really enjoyed listening to it. Lucy. Oh, very interesting,
Thanks so much, Lucy. Yeah, that's interesting that, um A
fantasia could contribute to different learning styles. When you when
you need to like memorize a pattern of movements or something,
(50:54):
you can't visualize yourself doing it, I have to throw
in that. I think every month or two I quiz
my son again to try and determine if he can
make visual images in his mind. I'll say, so, if
you close your eyes and think about a hedgehog, can
you see a hedgehog? And he'll tell me yes or no,
(51:15):
And it's it's kind of you don't want to lead
them too much on these questions, but I'm continually curious
about how he how about his perceptions of his own
inner world? Can he see one? I'm pretty sure he can't. Yeah,
But early on when I was asking about it, I
think he didn't understand what I was talking about, and
I got answers that were more negative. Well, I mean, again,
(51:37):
the it's kind of odd trying to describe the phenomenon here,
because when I imagine a visual image, I'm not seeing
it the way I see stuff with my eyes. Uh,
So it's kind of odd to try to define what
that kind of seeing is. It's not the same as
seeing with the eyes. It's not seeing in the same
(51:59):
place as seeing with the eyes. It's more like having
an awareness of the visual qualities of a concept without
having that concept in front of you. Yeah. You know,
when when I when I've talked to my my son
about consciousness, he has described what he calls his turning place.
You've told he has the He says that he can
(52:22):
remember anything. He just has to like bring the memory
out into his turning place and then he he remembers it,
which is which is wonderful. I mean, that's he's basically
describing consciousness the Cartesian theater. Yeah. Uh, speaking of consciousness,
I want to read a quick listener mail here from Chris.
Chris writes in and says, I'm sure someone has already
(52:42):
sent this to you, but in case not, I figured
to pass it along. The New York Public Library recently
reposted David Bowie's list of his one favorite books, and
right up there among some classics and avant garde British
fiction is Julian Jayne's Origin of Consciousness at number twenty one.
I wonder if Bowie sensed or channeled a voice in
(53:03):
his head through his various personas, and he provides the
link and says, in any case, thanks for making the podcast.
It's always super interesting and I appreciate the hour long
dives into curiosity for curiosity's sake amid the exhausting news
cycle these days, keep up a good work. I took
a look at this list. For a rock star, Bowie
has a very intellectual book list. Yeah, well, I really
(53:27):
one would expect that, right, I mean, but he's Bowie.
He's not just any rock star. And I'm intrigued by
this idea of the bicameral Bowie. I'm gonna have to
listen to a bunch of Bowie songs with the bicameral
mind in mind, and uh and and see what what
I find. I'll probably find something because recently I've been.
(53:47):
I was driving in the car. I turned on uh
like an oldie station and they played um Pink Floyd's
Comfortably Numb, and for a brief second, like idly listening
to the lyrics, I'm like, oh man, this is totally
about bike cameralism. This is this is what this song
is about. And then I had a little more time
to process, and I'm like, no, no, that's just because
I'm thinking about it all the time. And and then
(54:09):
I listened to Comfortably None. Well, now that I'm thinking
about it, hold on a second, is Ziggy Stardust to
b camera being Maybe maybe I'm gonna I'm gonna have
to bust out the greatest hits and find out. Okay,
one last one from Carney. I think this is the
perfect listener mail to end on this from our listener Liz,
subject line chopping Mall. Liz says, Hi, y'all, so I
(54:34):
just started listening to your episode called Talus the Bronze
Automaton and stopped in my tracks when I heard the
words chopping mall. As a teenager, there was an amazing
video store a few blocks away that literally had everything.
It was like the Library of Congress of movies. The
horror section was formidable, and my best friend and I
like to rent bad horror movies. This is a good
(54:56):
way to form an adult personality. She continues. We happened
upon Chopping Mall and watched it many times over the years.
I still think about it and actually found a stream
and watched it a few years ago. It is so amazing,
and I'm glad to hear it has not been forgotten
and is still appreciated in all of its awesome terrible nous.
(55:17):
Hopefully some listeners will take it upon themselves to check
it out. Cheers Liz. Obviously, if you are a if
you are a child listening right now, you should not
check out Chopping Mall. But if you're an adult who
loves bad horror movies from the eighties, oh it's a
good one. Yeah. Indeed, I watched it for the first
time this this past year and we discussed it on
a trailer talk I believe, Yeah, and uh yeah, it's tremendous,
(55:39):
tremendously fun eighties kill a Robot movie. Yeah, And of
course it comes up in tell Us because Talus is
the legendary progenitor of the killer robots in chopping mall.
But yeah, this is a tremendous film, and I totally
um agree with her on the wonders of the of
the video store, both as a child and even as adult.
(55:59):
I dropped by our local video store, video Drome, which
is just down the street from the House Stuff Works
office is just the other day to rent myself some
creature from the Black Lagoon and uh. And of course
the cinematic classic Leviathan. Leviathan, terrible movie, but great cast
and great poster. Yeah. Yeah, Peter Weller robocopies the main
(56:20):
dude in Leviathan. You can see him wearing a hat
that nobody's ever worn before the moment he put it
on and walked on set. It's got Hector Alisando. I
think it's got Daniel Stern. It's got Amanda Pays. It's
got Richard Krena, doesn't it. I think you're right. Also,
did you name the woman with the haunting eyes? Is
(56:42):
that not Amanda Pays? No? No, this is uh. She's
been in a number of genre films. I believe she
was in They Live as well. Oh, Meg Foster, Oh yeah, yeah,
she does have icy eyes. Yes, really, the greatest icy
eyes of all time. It's got Ernie Hudson. Oh, Ernie Hudson.
Who can forget Ernie Hudson. I mean it is just
(57:03):
it's killer and it's one of those nine underwater movies. Yes,
which I'm still that's a question I have for for
listeners out there. Here's your homework. Figure out for us
why there are so many underwater peril, underwater monster, uh,
encounter movies that came out in eighty nine, because you
have Leviathan, the Abyss, Deep Star six, Lords of the Deed. Yeah,
(57:24):
all of its seeming to converge on eighty nine. And
I don't I I for one don't know if it's
is just because the Abyss was coming out and all
these other lower budget films sort of hatched on like
Lamprey's or was there something else going on in the
culture because that made everyone make an underwater peril movie
at that moment. I'd love to know the people are
(57:46):
dying to find out exactly what a fantastic mail bag
I just love hearing from me all out there. Yeah, yeah,
so keep them coming. We're gonna try and do these
more regularly, uh these days, like maybe once a month,
maybe once every couple of months, we'll see how it
goes all right. So there you have it again, not
all the listener mails that we've received, but just some
(58:08):
of the ones that we thought were We're pretty juicy
and needed to be shared with other listeners. The rest
of you can continue to write in righte in in
response to other listeners, or hey, go on to a
Facebook find our Facebook group the discussion module and interact
with the other fans directly cut us out entirely. We're
just the middleman. Uh. Head on over to stuff to
(58:28):
Blow your Mind dot com. That's we'll find all the episodes,
as well as links out to those various social media
accounts like Facebook, Like, Twitter, Like like Instagram. Thanks as
always to our excellent producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison.
And if you want to get in touch with us
directly and maybe be featured on a future listener mail episode,
you can email us at blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com for more on this, thousands of
(59:00):
other topics does it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And hey, it is time for a listener Mail episode.
We've got Carney the mail box here with his uh
(00:23):
the stack of mail for us absolutely bursting at the
seams from this mail bag. That's right. We we had
a lot of great listener feedback in the past month
relating to episodes involving everything from from Tallos the Man
of Bronze to Baby Jesus, a Monkey Lie the Winter People. Uh,
you know, we've just we've had some really strong episodes
that have come out and people have have provided some
(00:45):
strong commentary on them. I know we always say this,
but we get really, really awesome listener mail. I I
love what you people out there send us, and please
always keep it coming in. It is true that we
can't always get to all of it, or we can
never get to all of it in a listener mail episode.
Is there's just too much to to read it all.
So please if you send us a great message and
we don't get to it in this episode, please don't
(01:07):
take that as a slight. There's just uh, not enough
time in the world to read it all, but we
hope we can give you a smattering of some of
our favorites here. Uh. If you write into us, you
will reach our eyeballs. We just don't always have time
to respond directly or certainly to read it all on
the show, I'd say the easiest way to get our
attention is to put RoboCop in the subject line. Yeah,
(01:29):
don't don't be afraid to to h to just try
and catch our attention. That way, by all means. Well.
On that note, let's uh, let's call forth the robot.
Let's look at a little bit of listener mail. What
do we have up first here, Joe, Well, it seems
that Carney is receiving a message from another solar system
who This first email is from Alice, and it's called
(01:50):
Omuamua episode comment. And so Alice writes, I adore your show.
Here is a note intended to help improve it on
the recent episode about our inter stellar visitor Omumua. That's
about the interstellar asteroid that was recently detected just this fall.
She she writes, you guys failed to note the more
likely explanation for why it would be shaped similarly to
(02:13):
a human designed ship for interstellar travel. Now we were
talking about that's one reason people have been speculating, oh,
maybe it's some kind of alien probe or alien spaceship,
is that it was much longer than it was wide,
had this kind of cigar shape, which is an odd
shape for objects naturally found in the Solar System. Right,
you don't usually see asteroids shaped like that. Alice writes,
(02:35):
If a cigar shape is really more likely to avoid
collisions in space, then assuming that a number of randomly
shaped objects were ejected from a distant Solar system, the
ones that are not cigar shaped would be more likely
to encounter collisions and not make it to our Solar system.
Keep up the good work, Alice. I think that's an
interesting point. Yeah, yeah, And I do think it is
(02:56):
the point that was brought up in some of the
materials were looking at. I feel like this is probably
a case where maybe we are Probably I did not
hit it strongly enough when we were talking about it,
that the shape would indicate something that was designed to
survive an interstellar voyage, and this would be one of
(03:17):
the factors involved there. It's sort of establishes a cosmic
natural selection kind of thing, right, or at least a
type of anthropic principle. The types of objects would be
most likely to have entering our solar system are the
ones that are most likely to make it here, and
the ones that are not likely to make it here
we're not likely to see. That's if you're if you're
(03:38):
going with the idea that it's not a spaceship, which
I believe, that's still the the that's still the prognosis
is that it's not a spaceship. I hate to bust
the wonder, it's probably not a spaceship. But but but
luckily we we were able to air the episode. That
was our concern that after we recorded it, they would say,
actually it is a spaceship. Everybody, Um, the world has changed,
and then we'd have to go re record with an
(04:00):
it was aliens bent. Yeah, but we've never had to
do that yet. It's never come up. I am. I
can only imagine we would have to be very pro
alien in the follow up though, because I wouldn't want
them intercepting this podcast and then thinking, oh, well, those
are the those are the guys we need to take
out first. I for one, welcome our cigar shaped overlord exactly. Okay, well,
thank you very much, Alice. And our next email comes
(04:23):
from Levi and it concerns the Talos episode about the
ancient Greek automaton. This is one of two different cases
on the podcast where we essentially gave the listeners homework
and sad here uh, someone else figure out the math
of this particular scenario. Now, this concerns the fact that
in the episode, the ancient belief about Talos, or at
least what was said in the myths about him, was
(04:44):
that he would have to go around the coast of
Crete three times in a day, right, And so we
were wondering, well, assuming he's marching the whole time, because
he is an automaton, he can do that, then how
fast is he going? And maybe even what is that
reveal about his size because we had some discussions about
is is he man sized or is he a giant
(05:04):
like we see in the Ray Harryhausen version of Talos. Right,
so Levi contacts us with an email called the Talos equation.
He says, hey, guys, I am in the middle of
the Talos episode and I had to pause to do
some quick math after the comment about wanting someone to
figure out how fast how large Talis would have to
be to circle create three times a day, This sort
(05:25):
of trivial endeavor is precisely my cup of tea. So
here it goes. A rough estimate of the total shore
length of crete finds the distance to be approximately four
hundred sixty miles, and three laps around the island would
make the total daily distance thirteen hundred and eighty miles.
If we assume an eight hour day sunrise to sunset,
we can calculate that Talos would be moving at about
(05:47):
one and seventy two miles per hour. The description of
it is pretty fast, but hey, atom of time with
the the I core of the gods flowing through its vein,
so you know anything's possible. That's right, It's like the
super unleaded, so Levi continues quote. The description of Tallos
given in the Argonautica says that he strode around the
(06:08):
island as opposed to running or sprinting. And if we
assume a stride to mean a normal walking pace, we
can say that a stride is about eighty steps per minute.
Interesting variation here, given the rate of speed of one
hundred seventy two miles per hour. We convert our units
to feet per minute fifteen thousand, one hundred fifty three
point sixty ft per minute. Next, we calculate our distance
(06:31):
per step. Fifteen thousand, one hundred and fifty three point
six divided by eighty average steps per minute gives us
a figure of one hundred and eighty nine point forty
two ft per step. That's a long stride. If we
assume that the average person stride distance per step is
equal to approximately half their height, we can calculate Tallos's
total height to be three hundred and seventy eight point
(06:54):
eighty four feet. So this would definitely be supporting the
idea that Tallos is not a human sized creation but
a true giant. Now, this kind of goes counter to
what most of the ancient sources would seem to assume,
which is that Tallos was made of bronze. But he
was more like the tin man than like the Ray
Harry housing giant Taalos. He was a human sized bronze creature. Now,
(07:18):
Levi continues quote, Now that this mathematical and geeky itch
is sufficiently scratched, I can enjoy the rest of the
episode of the show, keep up the suburb work regards
LEVI did the whole thing with it on pause. Yeah,
I like that. I like that initiative. Pause the episode,
do some math homework and send to send the answers.
Now we got a slightly different calculation from our listener
(07:39):
e J. Right, Yeah, e J wrote in on the
discussion module. That's our Facebook group. An excellent way to
interact not only with us, but with other listeners to
the show. E J says, quote, I used the distance
measuring feature on Google Maps to ballpark the coastline of
Crete two six d twenty miles nine seven point seven kilometers.
(08:00):
Talos would have to go about seventy seven point five
miles per hour point seven kilometers per hour to do
three laps of the island a day. Also, I couldn't
help thinking about sky Rim during the episode, and he
included a picture from a particular meme that's popular. But
I believe, if I remember correctly from my Skyrim playing days,
Talos is a god in the world of sky Rim,
(08:22):
and there's a particular MPC that goes around preaching about Talos.
I think he's in the first major talent you encounter.
So I'm unfamiliar with Talos or with Skyrim in general.
Is Tallos bronze in Skyrim? Ah, you know, I don't.
I don't remember. There are some cool bronze automatons in it,
because the like extinct dwarves of the world, have just
(08:43):
left behind their ruins and they have these these, uh,
these these bronze automatons that walk around and kill things
that stumble into their ancient dungeons. So, you know, there's
a certain familiarity with the Talos smith I imagine with
the Skyrim creators. Now, there are some differences in these calculations,
not only with with the differences in estimation numbers, but
(09:05):
also with the number of hours that Talis would be
expected to walk per day. I think Levi had it
going at eight hours per day, whereas I think e
J was assuming just constant patrol of the shores. I
don't know if patrolling at night would make as much sense,
because would you be able to see people coming anyway? Well,
it seems like that would be a great time to
uh send in a ship of invaders. So I don't know. Interesting,
(09:29):
you know, Jason didn't quite think of that one today.
But I don't know, there's so many additional navigational questions
coming to play. Yeah, I'm not sure on that. Perhaps
our listeners have further thoughts on this whole Talas conundrum. Now,
as I said, this was not the only bit of
homework that we handed out to our listeners. You also
handed out a little a little bit of listener math
(09:51):
homework in regards to our baby Homunculi Jesus episode. Right, So,
in that episode, we were discussing the old Preformation theory
of human reproduction. And this was a theory several hundred
years ago and and before that that that human beings
and human embryos Basically that they didn't have the idea
that the sperm and the eggs cell would combine and
(10:13):
fuse together and mix their chromosomes to create a new
recombined human embryo cell. Instead, they had the idea that
either the sperm cell or the egg cell was a
fully formed human being, just very tiny, and that somehow
the the act of sex would cause that fully formed
human being to start growing within the uterus. Now, I wondered,
(10:37):
under this theory, how many generations of humans within humans
could be stored scaled down all the way so like,
because you imagine if every human sperm cell is a
fully formed human, then that tiny, fully formed human has
all future generations formed to sperm cell size within itself,
(10:58):
so it has to be purport snally smaller. The Russian
nesting dolls can only go down so far before they
run into like hard physical limits. Yeah, you'd eventually get
to something like plank length, which is, you know, a
length of space in physics that no longer makes any
physical difference to our calculations. So we asked this question
and our listener Madison supplied an awesome answer. Madison wrote,
(11:22):
I'm a big fan of your podcast, and in the
episode Baby Jesus and the Homunculous, you pose the calculation
on how many generations could exist if the theory of
a fully formed human existed in the sperm How far
back could this go before meeting the plank length. Well,
let's find out the average newborn human male length is
about fifty centimeters and the size of the average sperm
(11:43):
cell head is about five point one micrometers or microns.
This means the ratio of newborn length UH of newborn
length to sperm length is and she does the calculation.
It's about nine eight thousand, but she says we should
just round it to a hundred thousand because it's easier,
or a factor of one e five. So she says,
from here it is fairly straightforward. For that first generation
(12:06):
a human that is the length of a sperm or
five micrometers, would have a second generation of sperm that
is five E negative eleven or fifty picometers, about the
length of one helium atom. From there, you could only
progress six generations until you reached five E negative thirty
six meters or a plank link, or beyond a plank length,
(12:28):
essentially because the plank length is one point six E
negative thirty five ms. Then Madison writes, but what about
the O a site human O sytes are much larger
than sperm at a hundred micrometers in diameter. Using the
same logic, you could only reach eight or nine generations
before passing the plank length. Not only does this pose
size limitations, but eight generations is really only two hundred
(12:51):
years or so. This was a fun thought experiment. I
really enjoy your podcast, and I've been listening to them
for over a year now. I've just finished my n
a graduate in molecular and cellular biology at the University
of Connecticut, and I'm preparing to continue for a PhD
in genetics this fall. I currently do researching computational genomics,
specifically with pine trees and their massive and complex genomes.
(13:14):
At about ten times the size of the human genome.
Pine trees like the lob lolly pine, are some of
the largest genomes sequence to date. My work is essentially
building a twenty three in me for these trees so
we can breed traits like disease resistance more effectively. That's fascinating.
For a future podcast idea, it might be interesting to
talk about genomes and their sizes and complexity. What are
(13:38):
the biggest genomes and why are they so big? Why
is it so hard to sequence the wheat genome? How
are genomes assembled computationally, and why is it all so difficult?
So many people ask me about that and how humans
fit into all of it. Another idea for a podcast
could be how it could be about ancestry testing or
how twenty three and me trade profiles work and don't work.
(13:59):
I'm still trying to educate my parents on how their
test results could be slightly different from their siblings. Thank
you for all the wonderful content. Thank you so much, Madison.
This is a great email and full of great ideas
for future episodes. I think genome size and complexity is
a really fascinating area. I've just been reading something about
research that came out this year comparing the genome sizes
(14:21):
of different birds and mammals and what genome size might
actually have to do with flight. Interesting. Yeah, I would
love to to dive into that. I don't think we've
we've covered anything quite along those lines before. Alright, on
that note, we're going to take a quick break, and
when we come back we will consider some more listener
mails concerning some recent topics. Thank alright, we're back. So
(14:44):
this next bit of listener mail comes to us from
listener Stephen, titled paradox or Semantic Illusion. So already we're intrigued, Hi,
Robert and Joe. While working, I often find it helpful
to distract my mind a little. For this reason, I
listened to lots of podcasts. Stuff to Blow your Mind
is by far my favorite. I make my living as
a custom mannequin sculptor, using clay for some projects and
(15:08):
digital sculpting programs like z Brush for others. I have
never heard of that job before, but that is so interesting. Yeah,
I should have thought before how do mannequins get made? Yeah?
I mean you. I guess you tend to think that
you just have like a mass produce, and certainly there
are some mass produced mannequins. But you do see unique
mannequins in certain stores and they have to have an
origin story. Yeah, totally. This is the guy. This is
(15:29):
the modern datalists creating his his his mermaidis he continues
the production deadline. I have to meet can by brutal
many times when I have needed to put in crazy
hours to get things done. Stuff to blow your mind,
and has made the process less painful than it otherwise
would have been. Thank you. Your recent podcasts about the
Present Moment and by Cameralism have the lin and rust
(15:51):
coded cogs of my mind grinding into motion again. I
was unfamiliar with Julian Jayne's work prior to hearing your
podcast on bi Cameralism, but I have ed and appreciated
Joseph Campbell and Eckart Toole's ideas for many years. I'm
reaching out to you because I'm trying to reconcile Campbell,
Tole and Jane's perspectives on metaphors. So he continues, Joseph
(16:14):
Campbell told Bill Moyers during the Power of Myth interview, quote,
most people in the West take metaphors in religion literally,
mistaking the denotation with the connotation. Ekart Tole has written, quote.
As soon as something is perceived, it is named, interpreted
compared with something else liked, disliked, or called good or
(16:35):
bad by the phantom self, the ego. They are imprisoned
in thought forms in object consciousness. You do not awake
con spiritually until the compulsive and unconscious naming ceases, or
at least become aware of it and thus observe it
as it happens. And that's from page forty in a
New Earth. Anyway, Stephen continues, I'm still reading the origin
(16:56):
of consciousness in the Breakdown of the bicameral Mind, but
so far, what I'm hearing Jane say is that metaphors
make non bicameral consciousness possible, and that when people were bicameral,
they heard voices in their heads telling them what to do,
making most of their actions unconscious. Please assume momentarily for
the sake of reckless of a reckless thought experiment that
Jane's theory about the role of metaphor and consciousness is correct.
(17:20):
With this temporary assumption, in effect, I feel like there
is something glaring me in the face when these three
perspectives are laid out on the same page. The trouble
is I can't quite put my finger on it. I'm
sharing my quandary with you and the hope that you
may see what I'm missing and pointed out to me.
Would there be a chicken egg paradox surrounding consciousness where
on the one hand, it cannot emerge without the use
(17:41):
of metaphors, names, concepts, or labels, but on the other
is all but blighted out by the gross oversimplification which speech, language,
and metaphor inevitably produce. When I consider the possibility that
many violent acts which have contributed to cycles of unending suffering,
potentially exasperated by at the genetic magnification, could have been
(18:02):
the outgrowth of an unconscious bicameral haze which did not
dissipate until very recent human history, it makes my head
spin when I reconsidered Joseph Campbell's insights about dentotation being
mistaken with connotation in the realm of metaphor. The irony
would be that even after bicameral dominance faded, the misunderstanding
of metaphors by non bicameral minds would have been waiting
(18:26):
in the wings like a purveyor of hell on wheels,
continuing the mad momentum with by which bi cameralism might
have given birth to. What bothers me is that these
ideas seem to simultaneously support and contradict one another. On
a lighter note, I have included some mannequin prototype samples
that I sculpted in clay at work about a year
ago while listening to many Stuff to Blow your Mind podcasts.
(18:48):
I'm gradually making time to do my own work again
when I'm not sculpting mannequins, and I may play with
ideas about consciousness inspired by the perspectives Campbell, Tole and
James have me considering. You guys are on a roll,
and my inspirational batteries are beginning to recharge. Please keep
the podcast coming. Thank you, Steve. Well, that's really interesting stuff, Steve.
I mean, one thing I would say is that if
(19:10):
you're asking about how to reconcile these different views, I
think to some degree the views, I mean, you could
modify them and reinterpret them generally, but I think they're
sort of incompatible. Right if you're saying that the Tol's
ideas that metaphors kind of um imprison our thoughts and
limit our consciousness because we're making comparisons and and using
(19:31):
words to limit experience. And then on the other hand,
you've got Jane saying that, um that metaphors make consciousness possible,
though I think it's not just non bi cameral consciousness.
I think he would say that metaphors make both bi
cameralism and consciousness possible, and that you couldn't have either
one without metaphors. Metaphors are sort of his road out
of the stimulus response machine architecture. Uh. Now, of course
(19:56):
that's all just like if you're playing with the Julian
Jans hypothesis, we're not assuming that this is actually a
true explanation of where consciousness came from. But but yeah,
if if you do sort of entertain it as a hypothesis,
I think it's not quite compatible with the idea that
metaphors are these shackles that limit our experience, right, Yeah, yeah,
(20:18):
I agree. And now I'm thinking back on Ekartole's writings
and I seem to recall the the details he's referring to,
where basically totally is making an argument for being able
to observe the world and not depend upon metaphors, not
depend upon the language, uh to make sense of it,
(20:38):
you know, sort of like being able to stare at
a flower, stare at a rose, say, inexperience it for
what it is without bringing in the name off the
roads ironically, or or the various meanings that we have
heaped upon it to render it just completely powerless. Yeah,
it's an interesting thought. I mean, I don't know the
(21:00):
answer to whether it's even possible for a person with
a language based mind to have non language consciousness. I mean,
I've never had that experience myself that I can think of,
where like I just lose analytic language and words and
words and structure and grammar all fade away and it's
(21:22):
just raw experience of like I don't know light and
sound without any names or comparisons. I think I've mentioned
this before, but I've had the experience of playing with legos, uh,
more recently with my son, and I still have the
numbers to go by. You know, how many of those
little circles are on a block, or what color they are,
(21:45):
what basic length they are is at a big piece
or a little piece? But I don't, I at least
do not have names for those blocks, and I have
often found myself thinking about that as I'm building something
with my son that I'm I don't have names for
the thing, the components. I'm used to build something with
a name. Um, but again it's not quite the same
because I still have the number system to go off,
(22:06):
I still off of, I still have the color, and
I still have the final shape to consider. I don't
know if Steven or other artists out there that listen
to the show have any insight on this as well,
creating something out of things that perhaps don't have names,
I don't know. I'm not quite sure. I'm still trying
to think how exactly Joseph Campbell's idea fits into all this.
(22:28):
I Um, I don't know that I agree with him,
but I do think that that is a very possible concept.
I mean, something I've brought up before on the show
is you don't always know how to read ancient myths
when when he says Joseph Campbell's ideas that modern Western
audiences look at a myth and they tried to take
it literally, they tried to take it as denotation rather
(22:50):
than connotation, when really what the myth is is that
it's a bunch of symbolic resonances and meanings rather than
like a literal story about something that physically happened. But
as I probably said before, I think that's one of
the great things about myth though, is that you you
can take it out and you can you can put
it on the shelf and you can you can turn
it this way, you can turn it that way, you
(23:10):
can change your perspective, and all the different ways of
looking at it can be rewarding in slightly different ways.
So look at it as as a you know, fundamental truth.
This is a true story, a magical thing that happened.
Look at it is literature, look at it as a
story created to explain something, ETCETERA Avid refer listeners back
to our myth episode as we roll through all the
(23:32):
various ways you can explain a myth. But I find
that it's examining each of those perspectives is rewarding, and
it's not as much trying to figure out the definite
explanation for what it is. Um. Yeah, I wonder sometimes
how much of this confusion is born out of just
pure equivocation on the uses of the word truth. Like
(23:54):
when somebody would say, for example, that their Holy Book
is true. You could take that in in multiple different ways,
and you could have very different reactions to it based
on what they mean by the word true, right, Like
you could use that to mean every story told in
it literally physically happened in the past, or you could
(24:15):
use it to mean there are statements in it that
give true structure and meaning to my life, or you
could take that to mean that when I read it,
something feels right about it. Yeah. I find myself again
with my son time to explain a lot of this
stuff because he'll, you know, he has the he has
it down like if something is true obviously, and then
(24:37):
if something is completely made up. But I'm really trying
to define the idea of myth for him as being
this middle ground that a story can be true but
not factual. Like it's the way I try to explain
it is, well, this is not a story of something
that actually happened, but is it a story that means
a lot to people and has truth in it? But
(24:59):
you should get caught up on whether or not there
was an actual Garden of Eden, or I have dragons
are real, etcetera. But that's not to just dismiss them
to the realm of ninja turtles and yeah. And in fact,
people don't have all that much trouble with this when
they think about modern literature. I think, I mean people
will usually be able to acknowledge that a work of
(25:21):
fiction written ten years ago is of course not literally factual.
It doesn't describe things that happened in the world, and
yet it's full of truth. For some reason, it becomes
more difficult to sort out these meanings of truth when
it comes to like myths and and the things that
structure our lives, like religions and yeah, and I think
(25:43):
a lot of that come ends up depending upon an
inaccurate view of how ancient people's considered their beliefs to
to just look at it as, oh, well, this was
something that more primitive people believed in. They thought this
was an absolute truth. And if I'm looking at it
in a different way, than I'm I'm looking at it
with modern eyes, and it's not quite the same thing.
(26:04):
But again, I feel like on this show, when we
discuss myths, we tend to drive home the point that
that it's more complicated than that. One last thing on
that idea, I often wonder if people in ancient cultures
who you know, had Greek myths and Babylonian myths and
all that, if there was sort of a similar diversity
(26:25):
of orientation towards the myth and that you would have
among people in various religions today. So like, if you
explore Christianity in the United States, there will be lots
of people who believe in a literal six day creation,
and then a lot of people who believe in the
truth of Christianity, but they don't believe that the stories
like are literally factual descriptions of physical realities. And I
(26:47):
wonder if you'd find the same thing in ancient cultures. Actually,
you get some people who are insisting on kind of
literal interpretations of mythical stories and other people who are
who are drawing from the well of myth to provide
structure and meaning. Yeah, I mean a great deal of
that is is lost. Alright, well we'll have to move on. Obviously,
we could talk about this all day, but I also
(27:08):
want to say, Steve, thanks for sending in those images
of your mannequin work. Uh. These were really cool. That's
kind of we We can't share them with everybody because
they're they're kind of confidential, but they have a very
uh kind of sci fi meets classical Uh look to them,
you know, right, yeah, the polymers of ancient Greece. Yeah, yeah,
(27:28):
all right, Well, what do we have next from Carney?
The mail bought here? Well, Carney is giving us a
message from Julia, and it's about our Winter People episode.
So Julius says, Hi, Robert, Hi Joe, Ela Kasla. So
this email has a lot of quakwa kuk words in
it that I'm going to do my absolute best to
try to pronounce. But I I apologize if I fail
(27:51):
at pronouncing them right. But you're a braver man than I.
Jo Okay, So it starts Ela Kasla, which means thank
you for your shout out to the Kukwaku people in
your Winter People podcast. I listen to your podcasts while
out delivering beer in and around Vancouver. For how sound brewing.
I was delighted and surprised when I heard you mentioned
the Quikakubuck people's I am part Zawadnu, a tribe that
(28:15):
falls when within the Quakuala speaking languages groups. The winter
ceremonies are a big part of our culture. I have
witnessed the Hamatza being tamed in the Gootzi, which is
the big House. I appreciated your understanding that this is
more than just a performance. It's a way to transcend
reality and enter into the spiritual. When we go onto
(28:35):
the floor to dance in the Big House, we turn
around in a circle. This is a representation of us
turning into the spirit world. Our ancestors were theatrical. You
mentioned choreography in our dances. This did happen. I have
heard stories of those that knew they were being bitten
by the Hamatza putting a piece of meat on their
arms so that when the Hamassa bites them it will
(28:57):
look as though they have bitten into the flesh and
some off. These performances would often scare the Indian agents
that would come to our ceremonies. I've read that back
in the day that Knee No Sola, who are the
wise people would choose who would be initiated as the Hamatza.
They would then fake that person's death in front of
the community in a very convincing way. This person would
(29:19):
then have to secretly leave the village and go through
their initiation process, only to return during the winter ceremony. Unfortunately,
colonialism has continued to degrade our cultural connections to the
spirit world and to our ceremonies. Residential schools, genocide disease,
the potlatch band, the sixties scoop stealing our regalia, forced
(29:40):
sterilization of Indigenous women, systemic racism have all contributed to
this degradation. We no longer have these ceremonies in the winter.
We no longer have winter and summer names. We no
longer have the traditional foods that supported us through the
winter months. This is starting to shift, though. We are
relearning our old ways and adapting them to our new ways.
(30:01):
We're starting to restore traditional governance, of which the winter
ceremonies contribute greatly to. We're fighting for our wild foods,
and we're currently on the front lines in a fight
against open net fish farms in our traditional territories. The
story about the Cannibal at the North End of the
World has been told to me differently. Bak bakwal Nuke,
the Cannibal at the North End of the World is
(30:22):
one of the four brothers in the version I know.
They are the sons of Si Kam, the cedar Man,
who is the original ancestor of the qui Quatu. Other
histories have different versions, though depending on who tells them
and what their reason for sharing the story is. I
enjoyed listening to the version you had learned. Just interesting
to note that the zoo Qua the wild Woman of
(30:44):
the Woods, is oftentimes associated with the Sasquatch. As a
young indigenous woman who has only recently started to reconnect
with her culture, it was super cool to come across
a podcast that spoke to her roots. Cheers and this
is from Julia dam gilligam Me or Abalone Shell Woman.
Well that was a real treat. I mean, we uh
(31:05):
we we kind of gambled in that episode and said, well,
we probably have some listeners out there who have some
familiarity with this culture or parts of this culture, and
uh and long behold, we we got to hear from one.
This was really cool. So thank you so much for
getting in touch, Julia. All Right, on that note, we're
gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
we're going to roll through a few more of these
wonderful listener males that we've received. Thank you, thank you.
(31:29):
All right, we're back. All right. Well, here's the here's
one from our listener, Milan. Milan writes in in response
to our Talost episode. Uh, they say, Hi, I have
just one detail you didn't get particularly right. The word
robot is a now made by famous writer uh kpec
from the check verb robota, which means uh corvet. Sincerely
(31:50):
your listener, Milan. Now I I have to add here,
indeed robot does stim from the check word robota, which
means forced labor. And I was reading about this in
Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Always a cool uh
source to have in play on on these these things. Uh.
The name comes indeed from the mechanical creatures in Carl
(32:12):
Capex play Are You Are? Or Rosum's Universal Robots, and
a nineteen twenty three production in London introduced it to
the English speech speaking world, and it was used in
reference to flying bombs of the Second World War as well.
Uh So uh, it is. It is kind of interesting
to trace the roots of this word, like how a
(32:32):
check word becomes popular among English speakers and then you know,
throughout the world. I also have to say that I'd
previously read that the term comes from a check word
roboto nick, which, interestingly enough, the villain in the Sonic
the Hedgehogs game is Dr Evo Eggman Robotic, which I
(32:53):
had forgotten about. He's the big mustachioed guy in the
various mechanical machines. Wondered. So he's he's like a sphere
here with legs and a mustache. He's like an egg man. Yeah.
Why is he a robot or does he just make robots?
Is he human? Is he a sentient egg? How deeply
dare we dive into the mythos of Sonic the Hedgehog.
(33:15):
I'm not sure, but I do have fun memories of
playing those games. I never beat them, but I you know,
it's always always fun to zip the critters around in
the first couple of levels before it became too difficult. Yeah,
fast moving. Okay, We've got another short email from our listener, Joshua,
who's who writes in with the subject line this is
a good attention getter. Were Wolves spotted in Vietnam. Joshua Rides,
(33:39):
Hey guys, longtime listener and huge fan here, just wanted
to thank you for the introduction to the game Where Wolf.
I'm currently staying in a hostel in the tiny village
of Ta Von in Vietnam, and it was a great
icebreaker with all the other travelers as the coals burned low. Sadly,
the villagers always triumphed, but there's always tomorrow night. Man.
(34:00):
That's different than our game where the Werewolves won most
of the time. Probably has to do with different numbers
of players, right, We were like at the bare minimum
of villagers to actually have a game, but but glad
to hear your villagers could put up a fighting chance. Uh,
Joshua continues. The work you all do is amazing. Thanks
to everyone who makes this podcast possible. You've been faithful
(34:20):
companions on many long airplane and bus rides as well
as just nights at home. You're valued and appreciated. Really
keep up the good work. Thank you so much for
saying so, Joshua that is it's so nice to hear
and and really glad to hear we're helping you make
friends on your travels. All right, here's another one. This
one comes to us from Jake titled Big Fans. Hi, guys,
I'm a big fan of the podcast. Started listening when
(34:40):
I heard my favorite author are Scott Baker would be
on and have been enjoying it ever since. Funny story,
I listened to your episode about various mind controlling parasites
with my eight year old daughter Molly. She really enjoyed it,
and even though it freaked her out a little, she
later asked to listen to more with me. So next
we listened to the Talos episode, which I was really
enjoying until you started to talk about how Taalos would
(35:03):
immolate people with a hug and a huge grin. No ha,
I loved it, but it was too much for Molly,
and she wanted a new one and said they really
have a way of making everything dark. They do. Indeed, Molly, oh,
you know, I feel like we don't go out of
our way to do that. But well, yeah, I we'll discuss, uh. So,
(35:23):
Jake continues, So I picked one that sounded like a nice,
easy one for the Winter People Part one. Everything was
going well until you started talking about Santa Claus and
I could tell trouble was coming by the excitement in
your voice as you said, have you heard the original
stories about St. Nicholas? Oh? I thought they only get
that excited when they were about to say something horrifying.
(35:43):
And sure enough, you dove right into the evil innkeeper
who chops up children and pickles their body parts. But
it had a happy ending they get resurrected. Well. Oh yeah,
suffice to say I was asked to stop it in
no uncertain terms. Anyway, it cracked me up that she
packed you eyes as being drawn to the dark side
of things. Definitely true and definitely part of why I
enjoy your show so much. Keep it up. I'll be listening.
(36:06):
But I can't say the same for Molly. Regards Jake, Well,
I'm sorry to have scared her off. I hope maybe
she'll come back and enjoy the few in the show
in the future when she's older. Maybe. Well, but Jake's
listening because it's dark. He likes the darkness. Um, yeah,
you know, I have. I guess we do try to
keep it fairly light. Uh. You know, some topics allow
us to do that better than others. Uh, some topics
(36:28):
kind of floorists with the dark content. You know, we don't.
We don't always set out to make a an episode
that reveals the you know, the dark, hidden nature of humanity.
But sometimes it's hiding there, just ready to jump at
you and drag you down to the ground. Well, I'd
say in both of these cases, we didn't make up
these stories, folks. These are very old myths that have
(36:49):
been around longer than us. I will say on the
Santa Clause issue at the Brown the same time we're
recording this, I was I wrote an article for how
Stuff works dot com about the kind of delightful history
and cultural usage of Santa Claus. So there is that
lighter side to me regarding the jolly old health, even
(37:10):
if it wasn't present in that episode. Maybe I was
letting my my holiday fatigue shine through a little bit.
I don't know. Anyway, Thanks for writing in, Jake, It's
great to hear from you. Okay, we are receiving one
here from our listener, Mary, who writes us about a
recent Vault episode we featured or wait, did we feature
this from the Vault? I don't think we did, did we?
(37:32):
This is just an old episode? What's the episode? The
episode is the Science of Coincidence. Oh no, it's just
a coincidence. We haven't to republish that one yet. This
was my first episode of Stuff to Plow your Mind,
or at least the first one I recorded, maybe not
the first one that aired, but this still I think
remains one of my favorites. We where we talked about
what's really going on when you think synchronicity is happening
(37:52):
in the world. And so anyway, Mary writes in about
this episode, She says, quote, I've been slowly catching upon podcasts,
and I just finished listening to the Science of Coincidence.
When you began talking about the scientist around whom machines
always seemed to break down, I believe that's Wolfgang Polly,
I think. She continues, I was reminded of a fun
(38:14):
coincidence that happened to me in college. In one of
my physics labs, one of my partners was a professional juggler.
This particular day, we were doing the experiment to prove
the speed and acceleration in which different objects fall. Basically,
we were testing gravity. Everyone else in the lab was
getting perfect results on every drop they tested. We, on
(38:35):
the other hand, could not get a consistent result. To
save our lives, our tapes showed gaps and bunches that
should absolutely not be occurring. Parenthetical. We were using equipment
and sent electric pulses out as things fell, theoretically marking
a special sort of tape that was stretched up to
the height of the device. I cannot remember its name.
(38:56):
After the third or fourth erroneous result, we began joke
about how our juggler was messing with our results. After
twenty minutes without a clean fall, we threw him out
of the lab. As soon as he stepped out the door,
we got all of our tapes. All of our falls
went perfectly. It became an incredibly easy experiment at that point.
Once we had all the data we had to have,
(39:18):
we let our juggler back in. Once again, our tape
started showing odd gaps and bunches. When we wrote up
our conclusions, in addition to the ones that the professor expected,
our group added based on our observations, we have concluded
that objects do not fall according to the accepted laws
of gravity when in the presence of a professional juggler.
(39:38):
We included all of our tapes marking the ones where
he left the room. The professor had been present for
the whole lab, so he was in on the joke.
We got an a on that one. Just a fun coincidence,
I thought i'd share. Never found an explanation for it
other than jugglers are weird. I love stuff like that.
I wonder if, now what you could go two ways
(39:58):
with the explanation there. You could say that the correlation
between the juggler's presence and the failure of the experiments
was just actually a coincidence, there was no, uh no,
no causation there. Or you could say that the juggler
was doing something that was messing up your recording equipment
or somehow otherwise interfering with the experiment. Or maybe it
(40:19):
was simply meant to be. This was a design juggler
whose presence was written in the stars. Yeah, I mean,
I think about having I don't know exactly how the
setup worked, so it could be things like having magnetic
elements on one's clothing or in one's backpack or you know,
stuff like that. But yeah, it's hard to know for sure. Interesting, Well,
(40:43):
I have one here from James, and I have to
say this is this maybe the first time, but I'm
excited to read a listener male about pronunciation. Oh boy,
because this one's actually this one's enlightening U and actually
ties in really nicely with the episode. They're responding to
our our episode on the months ferocity cuteness scale. The
idea that's something that is that is cute or it's monstrous.
(41:05):
This is all a slider. Essentially, this is all spectrum, uh,
and that is why things transition from one to the
other so easily. So James writes in and says, Hi, there, guys,
really love your work. The recent episode about Machine God
kind of did my head in great episode. I just
wanted to mention something from the Monstrosity Cuteness Scale episode.
I didn't mention this earlier because I didn't want to
be petty and I really expected a lot of people
(41:27):
to mention it, and I didn't want to pile on. However,
I have a small pronunciation note between the Japanese words
kauai and kauai. That's an a versus within an oh
in terms of you know the sound a number of
times when meaning to say kauai, meaning cute, instead you
said kauai, which means scary. Both are very common words,
(41:50):
but very different in meaning and considering the episode was
about things which are kauai over time turning kauai. It
really threw me for a loop a few time. Still
a really excellent episode, though, thanks again for all your work. Now,
I certainly never meant to pronounce the word coy ever
in the episode, But I'm going to maybe chalk this
(42:10):
up to our Tennessee accents, under which these vowel sounds
get kind of both get conflated to the uh sound,
right co if we're talking fast and being East Tennessee,
ear's kouai and kauai kind of both become ki. Yeah, yeah,
I think that may be part of it, but I
think it is. It is interesting that did any mispronunciations
(42:34):
or um our perceivedness pronunciations were so thematically appropriate in
this case, you know, the the idea that these two uh,
two words essentially words for cuteness and monstrosity could be
so closely uh a line that could resemble each other
so so so nicely. Well, I didn't even know that
before we got this email, But that makes me wonder
(42:55):
if we're having uh lexical determinism here in the culture,
as if the you know, the phonetic similarity of these
words actually leads to a linking of the concepts in
the cultural consciousness. Well, well, maybe it would make sense
within Japanese culture, right, but then you have you have
examples of this taking place outside of Japanese culture as well.
(43:18):
So I don't know, but it's wonderful food for thought
and uh and thus my excitement to read it. Okay,
next very simple one that I think we should read
for totally self serving reasons. Benjamin writes to say thank you.
He says, thank you guys for a great podcast, my
deepest appreciation, all the way from Norway, wondering how I
(43:39):
can donate some money for you to buy some snacks
or drinks. I might just end up doing it. Have
a wonderful New Year's Benjamin. And then you sent him
our Swiss bank account details right exactly, I sent him
our Cheddar bank account. No, we currently do not have
anyway for you to send us money directly, and that's
how it should be. You know, the show's free to you.
(44:00):
You don't need to pay us for it. You just listen.
There's no official merchandise right now, so you can't do
that either. Maybe in the future, in the future, but
right now, you can't. That's not an option for supporting
the show. But this is a great place for us
to let you know there are some free things you
can do to support the show if you want to,
just a few suggestions. As always, give us a positive
(44:22):
rating and review on the platforms where you listen to us,
whether that's iTunes, Stitch or whatever. A thoughtful review where
you talk about what you like about the show is
going to be more helpful than just some stars floating
in the void without words. Uh. If you're in a
position to do business with our advertisers, use our promo
codes when you do it, and uh if in any
white if it's possible for you to do it, let
(44:44):
them know that you heard about them through us. Share
here's a big one. Share and interact positively with our
posts on social media. A lot of people probably aren't
aware that social media works this way. But if you're
like us and you've got a page with a bunch
of followers and you post something, it doesn't go to
all your followers. The social media platforms they kind of
(45:04):
want to keep you hostage, so they will show your
followers your posts at a at a rate to determine
buy how much you pay them to do it. And
if you don't want to pay them anything, you're not
going to be reaching most of your followers unless people
start commenting on and sharing those posts. So that's a
really easy way to help us reach more people and
help the show. Just do positive, good quality engagement like things,
(45:28):
share things and so forth. Yeah, you can collectively reach
more people than than we can with our account totally.
Even more important than social media is word of mouth.
Just if you know somebody who you think would like
our show, tell them about it. Yeah, as you're walking
down the street, just start screaming the name of the show,
right and and hopefully people will listen to you. You know,
write it on the on the walls of bathroom stalls
(45:49):
with sharpies. No, don't do that, but but you know,
just generally spread the word. If if if we share
some sort of cool idea, uh, you know, share that
cool idea with with with other people busted out at
cocktail parties and uh and and then maybe you know,
give recommendation on top of that. Yeah. Also, if you've
got a platform of your own, whether that's a podcast, blog,
video series, whatever you might be doing. Uh, and you
(46:11):
think your followers might dig us. Let them know about us.
That helps too. Yeah, so stuff to blow your mind
theme birthday parties. I'm just spit balling at this point,
but yeah, there's a lot of stuff you can do,
uh that it doesn't cost a time that actually helps
us out immensely. How about stuff to blow your mind
themed retirement parties? Sure? Yeah, I mean you can use
the basically the same cake designed too. You could form
stuff to blow your mind themed countries. Yeah, yeah, perhaps
(46:36):
maybe in the virtual realm, you know. Okay, So yeah,
that's about it for now. Can't send us any money,
but there are are things you can do if you
like the show and you want to give us a boost.
All right, here's another one. This one comes to us
from Duncan Duncan Rights and and says, Hi, there, I
was just listening to the Dangerous Foods three episode and
the question was asked whether octopy actually specifically evolved to
use choking as a defense mechanism. Although I can't definitively
(47:00):
to this, I was reminded of an episode of Blue Planet.
To this, of course, is the great one of the
great Attenborough nature documentaries, in which an octopus was attacked
by a shark. As the shark attempted to eat the octopus,
it forced its tentacles into the shark's throat and out
through the shark's gills, stopping it from breathing. This forced
the shark to let go of the octopus, which escaped
(47:21):
and survived the encounter. This strongly suggests to me that
the answer is, yes, well worth worth watching the show
if you haven't already. So this makes me think of
in the old cartoons when you would see like a
giant shark or something like that trying to eat bugs,
bunny or whatever other crafty cartoon hero. They would like
put their feet on both sides of its mouth and
(47:42):
like you know, spread spread their feet apart to like
wedge there so that they couldn't be eaten. Kind like that, Yeah,
I think so, But basically the same the same ideas
in play. And this of course is not to be
confused with the scene in Lucio Fulci's Zombie in which
an aquatic zombie battles um shark briefly right, so that
(48:02):
is one of the great scenes in cinematic history. You've
got my gears turn in next October. There will definitely
be a science of fulchy episode. It's like, what what
are the thermodynamics of human melting? It's mostly going to
be a bunch of medical journal articles about I stabbing,
I think, and the actual science behind that. I love
(48:22):
the way we laugh. Oh, I stabbing? Okay. We recently
did a vault episode version of our old episode on
a Fantasia, the Blindness of the Mind's Eye, and our
listener Lucy wrote in to get in touch about that.
As always, we love to hear from people who have
direct experience with this, and so Lucy wrote the following,
(48:44):
Hey guys, I've just listened to the episode on a
Fantasia and parts of it made me laugh. I'm twenty
five and only last year I came across this term
and realized that other people see things when they close
their eyes and try to imagine it. When I was
in primary school and they would sometimes get us to
close our eyes and imagine a scene described to us,
I genuinely thought that the teachers were just trying to
(49:06):
kill some time. You know, Lucy, that might have been.
That might have been the case, even though the other
children did have a vivid mind's eye. But going on,
it doesn't matter how hard I try to see the image,
it never appears. And the harder I tried, the more
frustrated I get, and the more frustrated, the further away
I feel from the possibility of seeing something. It's like
(49:27):
you know what you're supposed to be seeing what without
actually physically seeing it. As for hallucinations, I can confirm
that it is possible for people with a fantasia to
experience visual hallucinations. I have experienced a couple of psychotic
episodes which included visual hallucinations. Looking back on them, it
was like I was miss seeing what was in front
(49:48):
of me. So, for example, I would think any small
inconsistencies in the walls were buttons to press. It had
been snowing and there was grit on the ground, but
on top of the snow it looked to me like
blood and dns in the snow, and I thought there
were reindeer footprints. When you were talking about doing things
you would have to visualize to do, I struggled with
(50:10):
this a bit. I do agility with my dog and
it training. If we're told to do a sequence before
doing it, everyone else will picture what to do in
their heads, but for me, I need to physically do
something to remember it. So I will stand and look
at the section we're working on and will move my
arms slightly the one I would use to direct my
dog at that point for me to remember to go
(50:32):
and do it. Interestingly enough, I'm always the one at
class that remembers the courses the easiest. Great podcast, and
I really enjoyed listening to it. Lucy. Oh, very interesting,
Thanks so much, Lucy. Yeah, that's interesting that, um A
fantasia could contribute to different learning styles. When you when
you need to like memorize a pattern of movements or something,
(50:54):
you can't visualize yourself doing it, I have to throw
in that. I think every month or two I quiz
my son again to try and determine if he can
make visual images in his mind. I'll say, so, if
you close your eyes and think about a hedgehog, can
you see a hedgehog? And he'll tell me yes or no,
(51:15):
And it's it's kind of you don't want to lead
them too much on these questions, but I'm continually curious
about how he how about his perceptions of his own
inner world? Can he see one? I'm pretty sure he can't. Yeah,
But early on when I was asking about it, I
think he didn't understand what I was talking about, and
I got answers that were more negative. Well, I mean, again,
(51:37):
the it's kind of odd trying to describe the phenomenon here,
because when I imagine a visual image, I'm not seeing
it the way I see stuff with my eyes. Uh,
So it's kind of odd to try to define what
that kind of seeing is. It's not the same as
seeing with the eyes. It's not seeing in the same
(51:59):
place as seeing with the eyes. It's more like having
an awareness of the visual qualities of a concept without
having that concept in front of you. Yeah. You know,
when when I when I've talked to my my son
about consciousness, he has described what he calls his turning place.
You've told he has the He says that he can
(52:22):
remember anything. He just has to like bring the memory
out into his turning place and then he he remembers it,
which is which is wonderful. I mean, that's he's basically
describing consciousness the Cartesian theater. Yeah. Uh, speaking of consciousness,
I want to read a quick listener mail here from Chris.
Chris writes in and says, I'm sure someone has already
(52:42):
sent this to you, but in case not, I figured
to pass it along. The New York Public Library recently
reposted David Bowie's list of his one favorite books, and
right up there among some classics and avant garde British
fiction is Julian Jayne's Origin of Consciousness at number twenty one.
I wonder if Bowie sensed or channeled a voice in
(53:03):
his head through his various personas, and he provides the
link and says, in any case, thanks for making the podcast.
It's always super interesting and I appreciate the hour long
dives into curiosity for curiosity's sake amid the exhausting news
cycle these days, keep up a good work. I took
a look at this list. For a rock star, Bowie
has a very intellectual book list. Yeah, well, I really
(53:27):
one would expect that, right, I mean, but he's Bowie.
He's not just any rock star. And I'm intrigued by
this idea of the bicameral Bowie. I'm gonna have to
listen to a bunch of Bowie songs with the bicameral
mind in mind, and uh and and see what what
I find. I'll probably find something because recently I've been.
(53:47):
I was driving in the car. I turned on uh
like an oldie station and they played um Pink Floyd's
Comfortably Numb, and for a brief second, like idly listening
to the lyrics, I'm like, oh man, this is totally
about bike cameralism. This is this is what this song
is about. And then I had a little more time
to process, and I'm like, no, no, that's just because
I'm thinking about it all the time. And and then
(54:09):
I listened to Comfortably None. Well, now that I'm thinking
about it, hold on a second, is Ziggy Stardust to
b camera being Maybe maybe I'm gonna I'm gonna have
to bust out the greatest hits and find out. Okay,
one last one from Carney. I think this is the
perfect listener mail to end on this from our listener Liz,
subject line chopping Mall. Liz says, Hi, y'all, so I
(54:34):
just started listening to your episode called Talus the Bronze
Automaton and stopped in my tracks when I heard the
words chopping mall. As a teenager, there was an amazing
video store a few blocks away that literally had everything.
It was like the Library of Congress of movies. The
horror section was formidable, and my best friend and I
like to rent bad horror movies. This is a good
(54:56):
way to form an adult personality. She continues. We happened
upon Chopping Mall and watched it many times over the years.
I still think about it and actually found a stream
and watched it a few years ago. It is so amazing,
and I'm glad to hear it has not been forgotten
and is still appreciated in all of its awesome terrible nous.
(55:17):
Hopefully some listeners will take it upon themselves to check
it out. Cheers Liz. Obviously, if you are a if
you are a child listening right now, you should not
check out Chopping Mall. But if you're an adult who
loves bad horror movies from the eighties, oh it's a
good one. Yeah. Indeed, I watched it for the first
time this this past year and we discussed it on
a trailer talk I believe, Yeah, and uh yeah, it's tremendous,
(55:39):
tremendously fun eighties kill a Robot movie. Yeah, And of
course it comes up in tell Us because Talus is
the legendary progenitor of the killer robots in chopping mall.
But yeah, this is a tremendous film, and I totally
um agree with her on the wonders of the of
the video store, both as a child and even as adult.
(55:59):
I dropped by our local video store, video Drome, which
is just down the street from the House Stuff Works
office is just the other day to rent myself some
creature from the Black Lagoon and uh. And of course
the cinematic classic Leviathan. Leviathan, terrible movie, but great cast
and great poster. Yeah. Yeah, Peter Weller robocopies the main
(56:20):
dude in Leviathan. You can see him wearing a hat
that nobody's ever worn before the moment he put it
on and walked on set. It's got Hector Alisando. I
think it's got Daniel Stern. It's got Amanda Pays. It's
got Richard Krena, doesn't it. I think you're right. Also,
did you name the woman with the haunting eyes? Is
(56:42):
that not Amanda Pays? No? No, this is uh. She's
been in a number of genre films. I believe she
was in They Live as well. Oh, Meg Foster, Oh yeah, yeah,
she does have icy eyes. Yes, really, the greatest icy
eyes of all time. It's got Ernie Hudson. Oh, Ernie Hudson.
Who can forget Ernie Hudson. I mean it is just
(57:03):
it's killer and it's one of those nine underwater movies. Yes,
which I'm still that's a question I have for for
listeners out there. Here's your homework. Figure out for us
why there are so many underwater peril, underwater monster, uh,
encounter movies that came out in eighty nine, because you
have Leviathan, the Abyss, Deep Star six, Lords of the Deed. Yeah,
(57:24):
all of its seeming to converge on eighty nine. And
I don't I I for one don't know if it's
is just because the Abyss was coming out and all
these other lower budget films sort of hatched on like
Lamprey's or was there something else going on in the
culture because that made everyone make an underwater peril movie
at that moment. I'd love to know the people are
(57:46):
dying to find out exactly what a fantastic mail bag
I just love hearing from me all out there. Yeah, yeah,
so keep them coming. We're gonna try and do these
more regularly, uh these days, like maybe once a month,
maybe once every couple of months, we'll see how it
goes all right. So there you have it again, not
all the listener mails that we've received, but just some
(58:08):
of the ones that we thought were We're pretty juicy
and needed to be shared with other listeners. The rest
of you can continue to write in righte in in
response to other listeners, or hey, go on to a
Facebook find our Facebook group the discussion module and interact
with the other fans directly cut us out entirely. We're
just the middleman. Uh. Head on over to stuff to
(58:28):
Blow your Mind dot com. That's we'll find all the episodes,
as well as links out to those various social media
accounts like Facebook, Like, Twitter, Like like Instagram. Thanks as
always to our excellent producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison.
And if you want to get in touch with us
directly and maybe be featured on a future listener mail episode,
you can email us at blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com for more on this, thousands of
(59:00):
other topics does it how stuff works dot com
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