Listener Mail: Sacred Squirrels and More

It’s time for another bag of Stuff to Blow Your Mind listener mail, plus a minor update on sacred squirrels. Join Robert, Joe and your friendly neighborhood mailbot dig into your thoughts on recent episodes. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick, and we're bringing you listener mail today. Now,
of course we've got our trusty mail bought Carney here. Carney,

(00:23):
of course, used to be Arnie. Then he was subjected
to Cartesian doubt, became Carney, and then he was subjected
to an infestation of scugs, and now he's just full
of squirrels, has been for months. Uh, it's an ongoing problem.
But I've noticed some of these squirrels infesting Carney. While
they used to be more of a of a nuisance,
crawling throughout his gears and pulling out wires and stuff,

(00:43):
now I think they have taken on a kind of
a sacred or holy aura. I'm not sure what's changed
about them. Oh well, you know, I feel like our
episodes on squirrels kind of had this effect on a
lot of people. They transformed the lowly squirrel, the profane
square whirl into something of a sacred squirrel. I feel
like that was that was my experience, the sacred cannibal. Yeah, yeah,

(01:05):
because I before the King of Rats, the King of
the Rats. Yeah, I get it on a shirt at
our our T shirt store. But yeah, before I I
liked squirrels. Okay, I guess you know. I watched them,
but I would also like chase them away from the
bird feeder and all. But after our episodes, I like,
I really began to respect squirrels so much more I
would I stopped chasing them. I and now feed them

(01:28):
every day. I feed them meal worms sort of an
offering to them, and I just love watching them scamper
around and eat their meal worms and drink from the
bird feeder. I'm just I'm all on on squirrels. You
say that until they turn on you. Well, as long
as I keep the meal worms coming, I think I'm okay.
But before we get into the proper listener mail, I

(01:50):
do want to address the squirrels on Carney, and I
want to share with everybody, uh a sacred tradition of
the squirrel that um I neglected to mention in previous episodes,
and it concerns the Indian palm squirrel or three striped
palm palm squirrel of South India and Sri Lanka. This

(02:10):
is a funambulis pal marum and in Hindu traditions, the
palm squirrel is associated with Rama. Now Ramah some of
you may already be familiar, is the seventh avatar of
Vishnu and the title character of the epic Ramayana. And
in this story of the Ramayana, uh Rama's wife Sita

(02:30):
is kidnapped by the demon king Ravana and taken to
the island of Lanka. So he what he does. He
wants to get to seated back, so he assembles his
forces and his allies in order to defeat Ravanna and
bring her home, which of course means traveling to Lanka,
which is modern day Sri Lanka. So he has to
march the Nara Ape army across this this vast body

(02:52):
of water. So they need a bridge, so they build
one in the form of the Rama set to. So
the cool thing about the Rama said to is that
it actually exists in the form of a chain of
limestone shoal spread between the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka,
also known as Adams Bridge. Uh. But it's it's thought

(03:13):
to have once been a geological land bridge. So perhaps
maybe if sea levels were lower or something it could
be revealed, or if the limestone is just higher for
some reason. Yeah, I'd love to come back and do
an episode on land bridges because obviously they play an
important role in the movements of species, including Homo sapiens.
But in this myth, it involves the movement of an

(03:34):
ape army. By the way I mentioned, it is also
known as Adams Bridge, and I imagine a lot of
you might think, well, that's probably coming from Western interpretations, right,
but it's actually like Adam from like the first Man
of Genesis, and that is who it's referring to. But
according to what I was looking at, it's actually linked
to Islamic traditions and more importantly linked to the Sri

(03:56):
Lankan mountain Adam's Peak, which is a sacred mountain and Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity,
and Islam, and it's said to be the footprint of
either Shiva, the Hindu god, or Adam or St. Thomas
in christian in Islamic traditions. Anyway, according to Hindu traditions, though, uh,

(04:17):
this land bridge, this bridge was constructed in order to
march the Ape army to Lanka, and uh, most of
most of the work is being done by the Vanara,
the apes. They're they're carrying all these heavy stones, dumping
them into the ocean and building this great bridge to
march the army across. But then there's one small squirrel
that tries to help as well. And so there are

(04:40):
a few different versions I ran across here of you know,
regarding how the squirrels trying to help. There's one where
the squirrels just rolling around in the sand and then
marching out to the you know, the farthest extent of
the the bridge under construction, and then shakes off the
sand into the water. Another one is that it just
kind of fills its mouth with pebbles and then arches

(05:00):
out there and drops the pebbles off the edge. This
is a good story. Yeah, So the so the squirrel
is is devoted, the squirrel is really trying to help,
but the apes are doing most of the work. And uh.
In one version, the apes just eventually they're tired of
the squirrel being underfoot and they're like, look, we're doing it.
We're dropping boulders in here, you're you're dropping pebbles, And
so they hurl the squirrel out of the way and

(05:22):
then the squirrel lands right in Rama's lap, and Rama
is is impressed by the creature's devotion. You know, it's
it's not so much about how much work the squirrel
is getting done, but just how how how eager the
squirrel is to help, how devoted the squirrel is. And
so Rama rewards the squirrel. He takes three fingers and

(05:43):
he runs them down the squirrels back. And remember this
species is the the three striped palm squirrel. It has
three stripes down its back. So this is a classic
ideological myth. Right, you've got you've got a a fact
you observe about the world. How did it get that way?
And this story explains how exactly the fact of course
here is the three stripes. Yeah, so it is the

(06:04):
mark of a god on the squirrel's back. And uh.
And so the idea is that it is a sacred creature.
It's to be protected. You're not supposed to harm the
squirrel and uh, you know it's typically fed by families
then in devotion to Rama. So I just thought that
was a fun little tale to share with everybody. Uh,
and an example of of a sacred squirrel. So the
next time you're you're you know, entertaining profane thoughts about

(06:28):
the squirrel. Perhaps entertain a sacred interpretation of these skurrying
little beasts absolutely blessed by the caress of rama. I
will never look at our mail bots infestation the same way.
It's it's all good stuff, all right. But then on
that note, we should probably start turn into some listener
mail here. Uh. And and it's actually an ideal that

(06:48):
we we have already mentioned in this episode a sacred mountain,
because we heard from a lot of our listeners about
sacred mountains and holy mountains, holy peaks and the entities
that might be and might be encountered there. Well, then
in that spirit, maybe we should go straight to a
few of the emails we got about sacred mountains. Of course,
we did a two part episode on sacred mountain traditions

(07:10):
of the world. Uh some links so some some mountaintop psychology,
some some high altitude low pressure uh physiology and neuroscience,
and just of course many great myths about the mountains
of the gods. And we asked for uh, the experiences
people out there have had with sacred mountains. Sou do
you want to do? This? One from Cody first, Yeah,

(07:31):
let's hear from Cody. Okay, so Cody says, perfect timing
of the episode. As I listened to these episodes literally
driving down from my climb up and ski down of
Mount Shasta, I have spent decades hiking, rock climbing, and
skiing in the Sierra Nevada and Klamath Mountains. Yosemite and
Shasta to me, are particularly spiritual places, even though I'm

(07:52):
not a religious or spiritual person. Both having immense senses
of scale and isolation mirrors religion of the mountains as
probably the closest thing to religion for me. Regarding feeling
or seeing other beings out in high elevation wilderness, I
haven't had any experiences at the level of the ones
you talked about on Everest, but in regards to thinking

(08:14):
you're seeing things that aren't there or mistaking shapes that
can very easily happen. In my recent Shasta climb, multiple
times I mistook the silhouette created by the snow and
rock interacting as someone pausing above me. The mixture of
physical exertion and lack of oxygen from elevation on the
brain is not something to be taken lightly. Then add

(08:36):
in the parallax trickery of huge mountainous environments. Even at
sea level, physical exertion will wreck cognition, and just about
all elite athletes will do training to combat this, such
as wind sprints than doing math problems. And that's all
before you add in any sort of less than perfect weather.
Being involved with the climbing and mountaineering community. Though, I

(08:58):
feel like you don't hear as much of out the
ie HAP condition you guys coined, and I think what
did that stand. I think it was something like isolated
high altitude psychosis or international house um uh. He continues.
Certainly plenty of spiritual or larger than life feelings, even
a few that mimic micro dosing psychoactive drugs. That's interesting.

(09:22):
Maybe those do count, But it was a shame a
lot of those studies had pitiful sample sizes. Considering even
just the number of people uh professionally guided on Everest
eight people, the studies shouldn't have gotten published, in my opinion.
While the study we looked at in the episode did
a sort of literature review where they looked back at
all the pre existing studies they could find about asking

(09:44):
mountain climbers whether they'd had any kind of experiences like this.
So yeah, some of the studies had small sample sizes,
but they looked at multiple studies. Anyway, back to Cody,
So Cody says, uh, glad to hear you mentioned, Marry.
I worked for the North Face and have gotten to
spend time with Conrad Anchor talking to him about his
experiences climbing Mirru and his many, many, many other experiences

(10:05):
in the mountains. It's particularly interesting to hear about the
intersection of the beliefs and traditions of those who live
in the Himalayas and those who go to climb in
those mountains. Meru in particular, was something Conrad and team
handled carefully since it was literally the center of the
universe for a lot of people on A closer to
home example of the spiritual rituals butting up against the

(10:27):
climbing is the closing of Devil's Tower every June for
Native American ceremonies. Also many other sandstone towers in the Southwest.
I guess he means the American Southwest are permanently closed
due to their spiritual significance to Native people's in terms
of evil mountains, and this was a question we asked you,
or are there any like hell mountains or devil mountains?

(10:47):
We couldn't find examples, but surely there are, uh. Cody continues.
In terms of evil mountains, I was also hard pressed
to think of one. There are certainly peaks that carry
a stigma or curse by how many percent of climbers
have perished, such as K two or how many parties
have been rebuffed Miru for a while, but I couldn't

(11:07):
think of a spiritually evil mountain. Side note, when you
guys were talking about that British Everest climber not using
oxygen versus today. The use of supplemental O two is
certainly widely used in this day, day and age of
high altitude mountaineering. But in this day and age of
mountaineering where the style of how you do something can
be almost as important as the climb itself, i e.

(11:29):
The use of O two does diminish the level of
accomplishments since it makes it easier. So the best of
the best and high altitude mountaineering still do not use
O two. I love the wide variety of topics you
guys cover. Well, Thank you, Cody. Yeah, that was really interesting. Yeah, absolutely.
I had a feeling that, you know, given our sort
of broad listener base, so that we had to have

(11:51):
some mountain climbers out there, and I guess it makes
sense that some of them may have just climbed a
mountain and we're just ready to to chime in. I'm
interested in Cody's thing about there. It's sort of being
a badge of honor that you can climb without OH two.
Of course, we're not like recommending people do that because
obviously that increases the risk of you know, the dangers
of what you're doing. And also I am I am

(12:12):
not qualified to make any recommendations about mountain climbs. Well, no,
I mean just generally we're not saying like, yeah, don't
use O two, you know, but if that is indeed
a sort of like it makes the achievement more in
held in higher esteem by other mountaineers and uh, mountain
climbing people. I wonder if part of that might be
that if you climb without O two, you appear to

(12:33):
be more likely to have these mildly altered states of
consciousness what Cody compares to being sort of like micro
dosing certain psychogenic drugs, or more likely to cause these
kind of errors of perception that that make the world
feel a bit unreal. Yeah, yeah, I wonder, I mean,
it's I guess it's likely that it's also probably just
a little bit of like the uh, you know, sort

(12:56):
of the heroics of the thing, right, that's obviously there.
I mean, I'm just dring if it's this other thing too, Yeah,
I could see that possibly be in the case. All right,
here's another one that comes in related to sacred mountains.
This comes to us from James. James says, Hello, Robert
and Joe. I have been a long time listener, and
believe this my first email in I have recently been

(13:16):
reading into the folklore of the Crow Nations and came
across the story about the Little People of the Prior
Mountains being from Oklahoma. I thought they were referring to
the Prior here since they are arguably since they're arguably
no true mountains in Oklahoma. I learned that they were
referring to one of the many mountain ranges in Montana,
where the Crown Nation is from. The Little People were

(13:37):
another race, standing around knee height but contained containing immense strength.
They lived in the mountains and attacked those that entered
the area. However, some were allowed to pass through if
they left an offering of beads or tobacco. Uh. The
other way to pass through was to shoot an arrow
ahead of you as you passed. The little people also
sometimes met with those that went to the mountain to fast.

(13:58):
One tail I found was of Chief Plenty Coups meeting
them when he was nine. In the Choctaw Nations creation story,
it says that the Chickasaw and Choctawl nations came from
a great mound, well, not a sacred mountain. The story
seems to fit with this as well. Sorry for the
long email. I only read about these stories recently, and
when your episode came out, it made me think of

(14:19):
the bet or Mineho phenomenon. Yeah, thank you for the
hours uh and hours and hours of informative entertainment. Best regards, James.
This is something I think maybe we uh we could
have explored more in the episode, but didn't come up
as much. Which is the idea of like myths and
religious stories that have mountains as the dwelling place. Uh,
not just of the gods, but of like other types

(14:41):
of people's or other beings, you know, the mountains being
a place of trolls, or the mountains being the place
of like the little people. Yeah, this is, this is
It would be an interesting avenue to explore more in
the future. I mean, I I instantly think two of
of goblins and creatures of that nature as well. All right,
we have another one here. This one comes to us
from him. I'm right Sin and says, hey, guys, I

(15:04):
was really surprised to not hear you touch on Mount
Sinai in the Sacred Mountains episode. I mean actual or
mythical locations that are associated with myths that have wide
cultural relevance and staying power. The first thing I think
of is Mount Sinai. I'll admit I'm biased in that
respect because I'm a former Orthodox Jew, but I understand
that it has similar or equal relevance in Christianity and

(15:25):
Islam as well. Maybe you didn't touch on it on
purpose because it would be too socially or politically controversial
to address Abrahamic religions as mythologies that share so many
similar themes to lots of ancient belief systems. That's actually
what I opened up the podcast hoping to hear the
main content be regardless. I really enjoyed the episode and
your show in general. Uh. Yeah, Mount Sinai is a

(15:47):
great one. Of course. That is for example, in the
Book of Exodus, that is where it has said that
Moses receives the Ten Commandments on top of Mount Sinai
from from God. Um, there was no reason we didn't
mention it, I think, get I think it just didn't
come up. Yeah, we we just kind of forgot to
include it, which is there. There are a whole lot
of holy mountains, so yeah, but it is true. This

(16:09):
is a this is a huge one of big cultural significance. Yeah.
And I do think like the story of Moses is
a sent into Mount Sinai or he you know, he
receives the Ten Commandments, and like there is something interesting
going on there with like he disappears into the mountain
and then what happens to the people while he's gone
while they turned to idol worship immediately while while he

(16:29):
has disappeared because they're waiting for him to come down.
Something's interesting is going on there. I haven't quite thought
about how to phrase it, but yeah, absolutely, and and
I do want to also just remind everybody, like when
we talk about myth and religion on the show. Um,
I do hope everyone understands that we you know, we
try to discuss mytho, mythology and myth as being is
having more weight than simply saying like this is a

(16:52):
story made up by people, you know, like, oh, yeah,
we're not using myth as a pejorative or the way
some people sometimes do. Like some will use the word
myth to mean like a thing that is a lie, right,
something like that. It's not like MythBusters, right, no, no no, no,
we're using it in the sense of like a traditional
or foundational story, often involving supernatural elements. Right. But what

(17:14):
a different show MythBusters would have been if that was
the cell Like we're gonna go after another myth this
this this a week, it's Prometheus the stories bs and
then they bust it somehow, I don't know. We get
some internet commenters that are like that, Like every time
we put something up about some interesting mythological topic, somebody

(17:35):
chimes in the comments is like fake bs made up.
Well yeah, like I think you're missing the point a
little bit. Yeah, well that that tends to happen on like,
you know, some of our social media accounts where you
maybe have people come in that don't really know the
show and then you see something where where like a
myth is referenced in the title or the description, and
then they kind of react, Yeah, you know, if you

(17:57):
are that person and your your yours sending no hard feelings,
but but maybe maybe think about don't do that. I mean,
certainly we always invite everyone to actually listen to the
episodes and respond to the content of the episodes. And
along those lines, I mean we we do, uh, we
do make mistakes here and there, and that's why we'd
love to hear from everybody. We we skip over things
by accident, like Mount SINAI. Uh. So you know, we're

(18:21):
we're we're on a continuous journey of discovery and self
improvement here and and we hope everybody else is engaging
with the world, uh with that kind of growth mindset
as well. Well. One last thing I'll say is someone
who creates nonfiction content, I will say not all omissions
are intentional omissions. So like, there's literally no way we

(18:42):
can talk about all the sacred mountains in the world
in our episode that was you know, a total of
however many minutes, so Uh so, I don't know. Always
keep that in mind. It's just like sometimes you just
picked the things that you pick to talk about because
they were interesting and and they're what came up. It's
not because you thought everything else should be left out right,
and then that's what listener mail episodes are ultimately four

(19:02):
to you know, we we hoped and expected to hear
from folks with examples of really cool traditions that we
uh you know, forgot to cover or just we're not
aware of. Like to go back to Adam's peak that
I mentioned at the top of this episode, I was
not familiar with that Sri lankin Um Holy Mountain until
looking at Following the Trail of the Squirrel. So yeah,

(19:24):
like I said, we're continually learning new things and trying
to share them with everybody in that spirit of open mindedness.
May we now bludge in you with an advertisement. Let's
do it, but we will be right back. Thank all right,
We're back, and uh, you know, I believe we have
some listener mail related to another recent episode, our episode

(19:46):
about the imp of the perverse. Right, this is the
impulse to do wrong simply for the reason that it's wrong,
and no other reason at all. Uh So this comes
to us from our listener, Miriam. Miriam says, Hi, Joe
and Robert, thank for the great episode The imp of
the Perverse. It was very interesting to consider all the
various ways this phenomenon can affect our lives. When you

(20:07):
talked about intrusive thoughts and the techniques that have been
shown to help some people overcome them, I was struck
by how closely it mirrored my own experience with a
form of O c D called pure Oh it differs
from traditional O c D, and of course that's an
obsessive compulsive disorder. It differs from traditional O c D

(20:27):
in that the compulsion triggered by the intrusive thought is
not a physical behavior such as handwashing, but the mental
checking of the thought and of the body's visceral responses
to it. When you talked about checking on intrusive thoughts
and how it leads to a positive feedback loop, I
was surprised by how closely you described this disorder without

(20:48):
naming it. I believe that the pure O variant of
O c D is lesser known and highly insidious, as
people can suffer tremendously for a long time without having
any visible symptoms that might more easily prompt them or
their loved ones to consider seeking professional help. I think
better awareness of this disorder could help people understand that
the techniques you described, which were exactly what I did

(21:11):
in therapy alongside CBT, can really can provide hugely from
intrusive thoughts if they begin to take over your life.
It's been more than a year since I've been bothered
by intrusive thoughts. I believe it's because I was able
to forge an entirely different, healthier relationship to my thoughts
thanks to practicing CBT and other techniques with my therapist.

(21:31):
So I just wanted to emphasize how important these concepts
are for everybody and to say thanks again for talking
about them. Cheers, Miriam. Next, Wellent, Well, thanks for sharing
that with this, Miriam. Uh. By the way, that's cognitive
behavioral therapy for anybody. Yeah yeah, yes, um yeah yeah.
And so I actually hadn't really heard of this pure
oh form of o c D before, but this is

(21:52):
kind of interesting. So, you know, the traditional idea of
O c D is that you know, you have repetitive
compulsive behaviors uh that are triggered by sort of loops
in your mind. You might lock the door a bunch
of times, or you might wash your hands a lot,
or click you're the clicker on your car exactly fifteen times. Yeah.
But but this is the idea that you could have

(22:14):
the same kind of mental impulses, uh, that that caused
you to have sort of like repetitive anxieties and and
and revisit these thoughts over and over without having external
behaviors that follow from them, and that this could allow
the behavior to to just kind of like go on
and fester without people noticing that you're having a problem. Right, Well,
I'm also really glad to hear that that that CBT

(22:38):
and and therapy has worked out for you. Miriam. Absolutely
all right, here's another one. This one is coming to
us from Eric. Eric writes in and says, dear mind
blowing folk, thanks for the great show. I started listening
last year and went back to the archives, all the
way back to science stuff with Allison and Robert, and
now I'm up to mid h. I mean, everybody listens

(22:59):
to the show differently. I tend to advise against starting
at the beginning and working your way up. I don't know,
I just I often feel like a lot of the
topics we we cover, um, the older episodes, you'd run
into potential problems of the science not being like completely
up to date. Uh. And then also, you know, we're always,
we're perpetually hopefully growing and becoming better at this whole

(23:23):
podcasting thing. So I also worrying, worry about like how, um,
how I come off and past episodes, you know, um,
because I feel like some of those early ones were
kind of rough. It was like a fifteen minute show
back then. I'm sure you're great, But anyway, I appreciate
anybody who enjoys the show enough that they're going back
into the back catalog anyway, um, Eric continues. In the

(23:44):
episode Jupiter's Children, you asked off handedly whether Ganymedes icy
surface would be slippery. The answer, in short, is probably not.
Ice on Earth is slippery because when we set foot
or skate on it, the pressure, friction and high temperature
of our shoes or eates melts a tiny amount of ice,
forming a thin layer of water that acts as a
lubricant between you and the ice. On Ganny Meat or Europa, however,

(24:07):
the ice would be so cold and your space suits
boots would necessarily have to be so heavily insulated that
it would not melt and would be about equivalent to
walking on low density rock or sand. Also, the gravity
is solo that you wouldn't create very much friction or pressure.
You mentioned John Scalzes The Forever War. Uh, he actually

(24:29):
got the science wrong on this in his novel The
recruits are training on Pluto, and he incorrectly describes the
surface as covered in frozen hydrogen. In the book, the
outsides of their suits were warm enough above roughly twenty
degrees kelvin to cause the frozen hydrogen to boil, which
made it very slippery. In reality, the surface of Pluto
is minimum thirty three degrees kelvin, which is far too

(24:52):
warm for either frozen or liquid hydrogen, although still ridiculously
cold enough to seasonally have nitrogen snow regin snow. Nice.
I hope this answer is not redundant, as I'm writing
about three years after the episode in question aired. All
the best wishes and keep up the good work, Eric, No,
this is great feedback. I'm glad to know that I
wouldn't fall on my butt on Ganna made. I do

(25:14):
remember that being a real fun part of the Forever War.
It was. It was a fun novel to read. Um.
It kind of makes me want to revisit some of
these old like Space Soldier, uh, you know, Power Armor
novels that I was really into for a while. I
was speaking of those, you know, I was just the
other day thinking about thinking about Starship Troopers because I've

(25:35):
never read the Heinland novel, but I recently rewatched the
movie Paul Verehoven's Starship Troopers. You know, I saw some
of our fans talking about it on the discussion module
and they were like, yeah, it's kind of bad, kind
of good. Disagree. I think it is a masterpiece. It
is one of the best satires in American film history.
It would I would be interested to to to review

(25:57):
it and to discuss it, because I saw it when
it first came out, and I remember disliking it. But
I have a feeling that a lot of my dislike
was me kind of uh, you know, basically buying into
this story, to my like, expecting it to be a
humans Are good, Bugs Are Bad kind of story, and

(26:20):
something felt kind of icky about it. It did. It
felt it felt icky, and so it was sort of
working but it was working. But at the time, I thought, well,
this this movie is broken. I feel icky after watching
this film. But no, I think it's it's like a
genius satire. It's essentially I think it is a propaganda
film made by a future fascist society. Yeah. Absolutely, Um,

(26:43):
I would need to reread the book because I'm I'm
a little hazy on all the details. Like the main
thing I'm remembering is the Bazukas. So there's the power arm. Oh.
I mentioned it because I thought there was power in
the novels, but not in the movies. In the movie,
as I as I remember, there's no power armor in
the movie. Right. No, that's right. They cut that part

(27:05):
out because it's it's straight up space marines, uh in
the in the novel right, straight up Casper van Dean,
it's all body with him. Okay, let's take a look
at the next one. How about this one from our
recurring correspondent Jesser, who's into Egyptian mythology. Oh yes, let's
hear Okay, So Jesser says, Hi, I wanted to write

(27:26):
in to share a couple of things related to your
recent episodes on narratives. That was the one against narratives
about the possible, you know, negative consequences of our addiction
to stories, and also about sacred mountains. So Jesser writes
in the episode You Happen to use a definition of
story based on conflict. It reminded me of an essay
I had read called The Significance of Plot Without Conflict.

(27:49):
It argues that the idea that story needs conflict is
a limited view of story structure prevalent in Western culture.
To demonstrate its point, it discusses the Japanese story structure
called kisho tin ketsu uh. This structure is made up
of four acts introduction, development, twist, and resolution, where the

(28:11):
twist acts like a non sequitur, and the resolution brings
the introduction and the twist into harmony with each other.
The example they use is a four panel comic a
girl standing at a vending machine she buys a soda.
A boy is sitting on a bench. The girl appears
and gives him a soda. The essay goes on to
suggest that the focus on stories as conflict in the

(28:34):
Western perspective leads people to frame things as conflicts even
when there is none. On my initial read, I was
skeptical since you could argue in Kisho tin katsu uh
that it still uses conflict, just in the form of
conflicting images instead of a literal conflict. But if the
narratives we make affects the way we see the world,
maybe by thinking that conflict is necessary to narrative, we

(28:57):
make ourselves more prone to see ourselves in conflict with others. Interesting.
You know, this makes me think of the Miyazaki film
My Neighbor Totoro um. I don't know to what extent
this lines up with that, but like Totoro is a
film that when I watched it before becoming a parent,
I found it kind of kind of boring and and
and long, you know, beautiful, but also just kind of

(29:19):
drawn out and devoid of of much in the way
of conflict. But I've kind of seen it through my
son's eyes and now I love it, you know. I
put it right up there with with NAUSICAA is my
favorite Miyazaki film. Nasca, of course, is a film that
has lots of conflict. But Totoro, I mean there's there
is the plot element about the younger the younger child

(29:43):
running away and there being some concern over if she's
okay and having to find her, and then there's concerns
over the mother's uh illness and her recovering from it.
So I don't know if it's completely devoid of conflict,
depending on how you want to Oh no, I I
say that's definitely not without conflict, because I mean, when
you think about the role that conflict plays in narrative,
at least the way I would see it, this is

(30:04):
what I think I said in the previous episode is
that you know, what it is is that a character
that you come to identify with emotionally faces some kind
of obstacle or problem that they have to overcome, and
so this is some kind of conflict. It could be
an actual fight, you know, a conflict, like a violent conflict,

(30:24):
but it doesn't need to be. It could just be
that there's something they want to know and they don't
know it yet, so they need to find out where
it could be that they maybe, you know, they're all
these relationship stories. They are in love with somebody or
they want to be friends with somebody or something like that,
and it's not working out at first. So conflict doesn't
to me imply necessarily like violence or anything like that.

(30:47):
But it's but it does kind of feel like they're
they're sort of conflict with a capital C, especially in
Western traditions, where it's got to be like that Disney
movie conflict where somebody dies or is or it's you know,
it's it's it's mythic in the sense that somebody's kidnapped
by say a tin headed demon king. But if the if,
the if the conflict is is more of you know,
subtle it's like you know, maze feelings about her mother

(31:10):
and totoro, uh, that sort of thing, like it's it
seems like a slightly different animal. I mean, likewise, to
go back to this example of of the girl standing
by a vending machine buying a soda, a boy setting
on a bench, and then a girl appears to give
him a soda, like arguably to their point, you know,
this could be seen as conflict like she she perhaps

(31:33):
it says, oh, there's somebody without a soda I should share,
and that that in and of itself, there's a problem
to resolve, problem that needs to be resolved, some sort
of growth that needs to take place within that character. Yeah,
I'm I'm totally open to the idea that there are
are other forms of narratives. I mean, I still do.
When I look at stuff like this, it does seem

(31:54):
to me like there is there is like empathy with
characters and a desire to resolve some kind end of obstacle.
I mean, even when I think about this, this four
panel comic, I start imagining things like that. So maybe
that's just me projecting on it, but I start to imagine,
um a subtextual conflict where the boy sitting alone on

(32:14):
the bench was lonely, and now this girl appears and
gives him a soda, and now there's a friendship, which
is a kind of resolution of a psychic conflict. Right,
Or if you just really you get the thing about
narrative that you can just really go hog wild with it, right,
and you can say she's a vampire. She never intended
to drink that soda. She bought that soda in order
to gain the boys trust so that she might drain

(32:35):
his vital essence. But I'm obviously reading way too much
into it. Well yeah, I mean, obviously we want to
read conflicts into it. But this is a really good point.
Maybe thinking of narrative in terms of conflict is somehow
limiting or or I don't know. You've definitely given me
something to think about, so thank you, Jesser. But the
email is not over. As usual, Jesser has something to

(32:56):
say about Egyptian mythology, so uh, the listener continues here.
You also made passing reference to cyclical and linear time,
and I can't pass up an opportunity to share a
fact about ancient Egypt. Robert, I know you love cyclical
and linear time, so strap in here. The Egyptian language
has two terms for eternity, depending on whether you were

(33:19):
talking about eternity in cyclical nine or linear diet time.
In the Search for God in Ancient Egypt, Jan Osman
described the dual eternity ees quote, it is often said
of nine time that it comes. It is time as
an incessantly pulsating stream of days, months, seasons, and years.

(33:41):
Yet time, however, remains, lasts and endures. And then Yesser says,
for bonus points, nene could be an idiophone for repetition.
An interesting yeah. In your episode about Sacred Mountains, you
mentioned the myth of king like Haon feeding human flesh
to Zeus and the evidence that sugg Us there was
once human sacrifice to Zeus on Mountain, like ka On.

(34:04):
Maybe the myth was a bit of pr work on
the part of the priests of Zeus like Chaos, explaining
why Zeus used to take human sacrifices, but reassuring us
that it was a mistake, not a bad theory. Yeah.
In fact, I've read about theories like this before, and
not things that are known for sure, but like the
idea that religions that have animal sacrifices often they be

(34:28):
over time. They came in as a sort of substitute
for a previous practice of human sacrifice, and there's often
a myth saying like why the god does not accept
human sacrifices anymore. It's like the priests are like working
over time to say like, that's not the deal anymore.
I mean, it's almost perfectly there. Again, not knowing that
this is the correct explanation, but it's a very interesting

(34:51):
way of interpreting, like the binding of Isaac. Yeah again
it is. We've We've discussed in the show before. It's
important to realize that that religions and mythologiculture to sans
evolved there. They are not set in stone. Okay, one
last thing from Jesser here, Jesser says. Also, the book
Banner in the Sky, written in the nineteen fifties by
the mountaineer James Ramsey Ullman, features third man syndrome as

(35:14):
a plot point. While climbing the mountain alone, the young
protagonist Rudy feels as though he's being followed by some
sort of demon or spirit, but as he overcomes his
initial fear, he comes to think of it as if
it's his father's ghost guiding him. I always thought it
was just symbolic, but maybe it was inspired by actual experience.
Thanks for all the work you put into making the
podcast so consistently interesting and insightful, your pseudonymous Egyptologist Jesser, Well,

(35:40):
thank you so much. As usual, great email. Awesome. Yeah,
I got to touch on several different episodes that we've
covered recently in that one. Alright, Well, on that note,
we're gonna take one more break, but when we come back,
we have even more listener mail to share with you.
Thank thank Alright, we're back. This one comes to us

(36:00):
about our Sender Raven episode or send an Owl's into
pigeon uh into this from our listener, Anna, Anna says, Hi,
Robert and Joe I love your podcast, and I'm listening
to your other podcast, Invention and enjoying that too. See
Anna's enjoying it. If you're not listening yet, you should
get on that. Go over there subscribe to Invention. Absolutely.
Uh so, Anna says, I've gotten a little behind on

(36:21):
my podcast. I just listen to your episode about the
use of birds as messengers. You're not that behind. That
was just like last week. Yeah. Um, I do not
know about other birds used as a messenger, but I
do remember a fact about other uses for ravens. Perhaps
other fans have emailed you about this already, they had not, Anna,
Anna says ravens are part of Vikings slash Norse mythology,

(36:42):
but apparently Vikings also had a real world use for
ravens too. In this case, they're short flying range that
you spoke of in the episode came to the advantage
of the Vikings. When the Vikings were out on a
long sea voyage, they would send out a raven, and
if the raven came back, they knew they were far
from land. If the raven did not come back, they
knew the raven must have landed and they would soon

(37:03):
find land. Maybe there is a link with the biblical
story of the arc. Perhaps Noah sent out a raven
to see if the flood was over. Remember in the
in the story of Noah's Ark, before he sends out
the doves, he sends out a raven. Then it just
never says what happened with the ravend And I just
wanted to add, yeah, this is actually a part of
the letter. I don't know if this is historically factual

(37:24):
or if it's just part of the legend, but either way,
the story of the discovery of Iceland or maybe not
the discovery, like the first deliberate journey to Iceland by
a Viking sea voyager, it was that ravens were used
to locate Iceland from out in the sea. And it
seems to me like that might probably work because the
idea is, you know, like you have a crow's nest
in a boat to get up there and see farther

(37:46):
to see if you can find land. If you allow
a bird to fly up, it can go way up
in the sky and and look around for land, and
if it sees something, then you're in luck. Sort of
like extending your crow's nest like hundreds of feet Uh. Anyway,
Anna continues. Another random fact I learned recently is that
recent research shows that all birds originally evolved from Australia.

(38:08):
Now I think, and I think this is actually a
typo here. I think she meant to say all songbirds
originated from Australia. Because I looked this up, I couldn't
find evidence about all birds, but all songbirds did evolve
from a common ancestor in Australia. And songbirds, of course
are a huge subset of all birds, comprising the clade Passeri.

(38:28):
In their line did originally come from Australia about twenty
four million years ago. So I think that's what she meant,
She continues. I learned this on a podcast by Dr
Carl Cruisel Nikki cruizal Nikki. Here in Australia, we just
call him Dr Carl. Sounds kind of sketchy, but I
looked him up and he looks legit. I like Dr Carl.
She says. He has a few podcasts, he's written something

(38:50):
like fifty books, and he's been declared a National Treasure
of Australia. He's even won an ig Nobel Prize. There,
I enjoy your scientific approach, an open minded skepticism. And
I think Dr Carl has some of the same approach
keep up the good work and uh uh so I
wasn't familiar with Dr Carl, but I read a bit
on him. He sounds interesting and apparently he's affected by prosopagnosia,

(39:12):
which we've talked about, yeah, on the show before, and
he's got like strategies for how to identify people interesting.
I should mention, as long as we're talking about that
Sender Raven episode. Somebody on the the Stuffable in your
Mind discussion module, which of course is our our Facebook
discussion group, which is really the the the only place
if you want to um, you know, interact with us

(39:34):
on social media or of course interact with plenty of
other listeners. But somebody brought up that Frank Herbert's Dune
features a plot element in which the Freeman, the the
the the sort of nomadic people of Iracus use bats
to send messages, and i'd completely yeah, I've read Dune
like multiple times and and it is if you listen

(39:57):
to the show. You know, I am usually not shy
about thrown in a Dune reference, but I completely spaced
on the bats. Totally makes sense on a Racus, they
can cross distances without the threat of worms, right if
they can fly? Yeah, but maybe we should come back
and do an add on to that episode and look
at the bats, yeah you know it or any inats
that come up, messenger bats, could you know, could it

(40:17):
be done? What? What? We just we should approach them
as well and sort of you know, a tack on
a segment to that episode. Speaking of things that fly.
We also got an email from a listener named Christian.
Not our former co host Christian, but a listener Christian
about Cupid's Lead arrows. That was a fun episode, Yeah, yeah,
where we talked about Cupid and this like the mythological

(40:40):
use of lead, and then also we just got into
lead itself. But Christian writs in and says, hey, guys,
I'm listening to Cupid's Lead an arrow and heard one
of you say that you wouldn't want a lead hammer.
In fact, I have one. What I think that was
me that said it, But I mean it makes us
lead as kind of soft. If you're beating something with
lead for a long time, would probably deformed the hammer head.

(41:02):
When we were talking about you have the limits of
using lead in in in weaponry, yeah, uh, anyway, Christian
continues quote. British cars from the sixties frequently had wheels
attached using a spinner basically a large single lug nut
at the center of the hub. A lead faced hammer
is used to remove the spinner by whacking the blades

(41:23):
that protrude out from the center of the cab. Because
the lead is soft, this doesn't damage the chrome finish
of the spinner. Okay, as always keep up the good work, Christian,
I stand corrected. Lead hammer is totally a thing there
you go, not so much for whacking skulls, but when
you need, but when you need a subtle approach as
as clearly as the case with the with these spinners.

(41:47):
You know, I do want to say that I'm sure
you could probably hurt somebody really bad with the lead hammer.
It's not that like it wouldn't I mean would be heavy.
You could still hurt somebody. It just probably wouldn't hold
up over time, right, And of course the weaponry and
the history of military technology, it's about usually about inflicting
the most harm and then also having uh you know,

(42:07):
some sort of durability to the weapons you've created, right, Okay.
Quick email from our listener Emily In response to the
bugs under the Skin episode, Emily says, Hey, I'm sure
you've been sent this already, but just in case you haven't,
regarding bugs under the skin, check this out. She sends
a link. It's a link to the story that you
may have seen already about the woman who had four

(42:28):
bees living under her eyelid eating her tears. Did you
come across this everywhere? Right after our episode came out? Everywhere?
I found her right up in the Atlantic by Hailey
weiss Uh. Just to read a quick quote from it,
beastings hurt like hell, but there's a reason to consider
yourself lucky if a venomous prick is the worst you've
suffered from bees. Last week, Taiwan CTS News Channel reported

(42:52):
the twenty nine year old woman had gone out for
a walk in the mountains and returned home with I
pain that wouldn't go away. The next day, an optimologist
hold four bees, all still alive, from under her right eyelid.
So the stories they were living under her right eyelid
and they've been feeding on her tears. A little later
in the article, quote as Hung Cheating, who treated the

(43:13):
woman at Fuyan University Hospital in Taiwan explained at a
press conference, these dark colored bees were ant size members
of the family known as how lick. Today, colloquially they're
called sweat bees, named after one of their favorite foods.
And apparently these insects are attracted to our protein and
sodium rich body fluids like sweat, but they like tears

(43:34):
even more than sweat because tears are more nutrient rich.
There's something almost mythological about this, right, just the idea
of like the bees feasting on her tears and living
in her eyes. Um Like, I think the first time
I saw it, after our episode came out, I kind
of dismissed it. I'm like, nope, that that can't be right.
That just sounds too too perfect. Somehow, it's just too

(43:56):
there's too much um structural integrity to the idea. It
couldn't have actually have happened, but it seems like it happened.
That it's been covered enough. Yeah, it's one of those
times where reality feels like a story. Yeah, all right.
We have a couple of bits of listener mail that
came in about our our episodes and f a of

(44:17):
the fundamental attribution error. Uh, those were some I think
some very thought provoking episodes and fun. I think we
really put the fun in fundamental attribution here. I think
so too, Now, quick refresher, that's just are sort of
bias or tendency to um over ascribe things to people's
fundamental internal qualities and under ascribed behaviors to people's unique

(44:40):
situations and moment to moment, right, Like a rough version
would be like those those people who ate those other
people in the mountains. Uh, they turned to cannibalism because
they are cannibals, as opposed to saying they turned to
cannibalism because they were in like a really harsh environmental
condition and we're in a high stress survival situation. Yeah,
and that's an extreme version. But well, and of course

(45:02):
all behaviors are explained by both, you know, internal qualities
and external factors, but we just tend to over emphasize
internal qualities when we assess why things happen, right, certainly
in the West. Yeah, So our listener Justin wrote in,
and first of all, Justin recommended that we do an
episode on the name of the Rose. I think that's
an interesting idea. Oh yeah, it's one of my favorite

(45:23):
books you've recently read. It and uh and I also
really dig the movie, and there's a new adaptation coming
out with John Taturo as a brother Williams. I can't
wait to see that. But yeah, I loved this book also.
I will say it's one of the few mystery stories
I've read where the ending solution to the mystery is
actually truly satisfying. Usually I feel like the end of

(45:45):
a mystery is a letdown. Uh. Not so with the
name of the Rose. But anyway, so yeah, I think
that's a great idea. We may come back to that
in the future. But then Justin wrote with it, Oh,
you know what, I put this in the wrong place
in our outline. So we do have some emails about
fundamental attribution error. Will get to in a minute. This
one actually is in response to our narrative episode. Uh,
so fa the explanation we just gave. Put that on

(46:07):
hold for the fun is on the way, But first
a little more narrative. Okay, So Justin Wrights, thank you
so much for your cast on storytelling. As a guy
developing new drugs to treat bacterial infections, the notion of
storytelling is heavily marketed for scientists and also for venture capitalists.
Story is important, but selectively as a tactic. Unfortunately, what
we've seen in the industry is that fundraising dollars are

(46:29):
flowing from venture capitalists to companies that have spent many
years and tremendous effort on developing good stories, rather than
dedicate that heavily time intensive effort on the science and
understanding of disease biology of the drug they are trying
to develop. The result of this behavior is that these
quote unquote over storied biotech companies are largely, with few exceptions,

(46:50):
creating drugs that are marginal improvements on existing treatments, and
because they soak up so much of the venture capital funding,
they indirectly harm more innovative company is with novel solutions
to significant and long standing, unaddressed problems in medicine. Tactically,
I've made a time for my company to delay creating
and marketing the story of our technology until the final

(47:11):
animal study comes in to confirm as UH as such
without reasonable doubt. Thank you so much. I hope this
was thought provoking. Best justin, Well, that's interesting justin to
hear from you in the industry. I think you're exactly
right that like of course, stories are huge in marketing,
and something I often recognize as you know, it's not

(47:32):
just going to be in biotechnology and uh and and
you know, developing new pharmaceuticals and all that. It's in
all kinds of industries. That I noticed that the free
market often tends to invite people to focus as much
or more on marketing a product as they do on
coming up with a good product to begin with. And

(47:52):
the huge part of that marketing is trying to tell
a story. Well, yeah, I mean, certainly this is the
case in advertising. I caught an ad just the other
day for a medic cation I think it was for
It was something to do with digestion and bowels and
and it was like a couple and they were trying
to decide whether to go this way or that way,
but thanks to the medication, they were able to go
across a giant rope bridge. And I mean, it's I

(48:15):
have to admire. It's like there's some subtle storytelling there
that makes the whole advertisement more memorable and makes you
place the problem and the solution that they're marketing within
the context of story. Well, ultimately, what a lot of
these advertisers are trying to do is not advertise the
inherent superiority of the product they're selling. They're trying to

(48:38):
get you to associate their brand name with a good
feeling that you got from watching a story. Yeah, and
also I can't this is kind of slightly unrelated, but
you know, it reminds me of another great or awful
use of storytelling is is in you know, scare tactics. Um,
you know, generally in the case of you know, propaganda
about uh you know, um you know, given uh, you know,

(49:02):
perceived threat or something that they that that people want
you to perceive as a threat, you place it within
the confines of son probably unbelievable awful story uh you know,
be it, you know, somebody taking you know, too many
drugs and trying to force their way through a keyhole
or something to that extent, you know, uh, um, you know,
or worse examples that we don't even want to get

(49:23):
into on the show. But uh, they're trying to use
the you know, the the dark art of narrative to
influence people's thoughts and opinions. Well. As we discussed in
the episode, Yeah, constantly, narrative is used to short circuit people,
people's better judgment or rational evaluation of evidence. I mean,
if if you don't have the evidence on your side,

(49:44):
just tell a good story, you might convince people. Anyway.
I'm not advising people to do that. I'm saying that
is how it often works. All right, let's get to
the fund though, let's get to the fundamental attribution error. Well,
this one combines the last two topics. So this is
uh an email about fundamental attribution error and end our
episode about narratives. So it is from Amelia. Amelia says, yes,
it's Amelia again. I think Amelia wrote us a lot

(50:06):
of emails about Highlander, maybe if I remember so. She says,
sorry for all the emails these last few months. I
vowed after I wrote about how Yep Okay, I vowed
after I wrote in about Highlander that i'd cut back.
It's okay, you can email UM. I don't want my
emails to get in the way of new writers or
other great ideas. However, your recent podcasts on questioning of
narrative and the phenomenon of fundamental attribution error coincide with

(50:30):
my specific area of study. I'll try to keep it short.
And you're against narrative podcasts, You brought up very good
points about how the role of story making can promote
faulty perceptions, for example, the notion of the isolated self
and the bias for pattern interpretation. Narrative structures can be
blamed for perpetuating concepts like these, concepts which often on

(50:51):
closer inspection, don't necessarily map onto our scientific knowledge. Having
said that, I want to muddy the waters by arguing
that narrative, especially fiction, builds cognitive fortitude against the FAE fallacy.
Subverting fae I argue is one of the primary reasons
we not only need narratives but continually construct them. FAE

(51:12):
as an evolutionary development is inhospitable if contemplating its isolating
qualities as a human being or beings incapable of escaping
FA to promote a cohesive community would, by Darwin's estimation,
fail to thrive. Narrative structures, to that end, provide an
evolutionary benefit by encouraging the unification of human minds through

(51:33):
the projection of self into alternative forms of perception and circumstance.
This projection is possible with nonfiction, but the array of
situational circumstances fiction permits is limited. Only by mankind's imagination.
Following that line of thought, fiction arguably encapsulates as much
of the situational human experience as can be imagined or projected.

(51:56):
In this sense, the more a person reads from a
fictional perspective of the stronger their capacity to cognitively navigate
past the impulse of fa intuition. It's interesting to contemplate
the evolution of myth and narrative is a cognitive defense
against f a E. Though I haven't found any hard
evidence of this anyway. Just wanted to share this idea

(52:16):
and happy podcasting, best Amelia. Uh, that is an interesting idea.
I mean, I'm not sure how you'd prove something like that,
but it is a sort of interpretive framework that that
that piques my interest. Yeah, what if? Uh? Fiction? Because
we should remember one thing that does appear to be
sort of true at least. There's some evidence of this
in social psychology, that that manipulating perspectives can help people

(52:41):
overcome fundamental attribution error, Like if you put put somebody
in somebody else's shoes, you know, almost literally, like you
give them their perspective on a situation or a room.
That's actually my new um box subscription service that I'm
offering is that you you get a copy of Moby
Dick and they come with a paradish males shoes, So

(53:01):
you get to read the book well literally being in
ishmail shoes. Well you all, but you do get to
be in Ishmail's shoes a little bit because you're you're
hearing his first person perspective in the story. Uh. That
is sort of what I think fiction does. I mean,
one one good quality of fiction is that it puts
you in somebody else's mind. It's an imagine to mind,

(53:22):
but I mean it works pretty much the same way
you inhabit this other character. You see the world from
their perspective, and then you see the way that their
reactions to things are changed and charged by circumstance. Yeah,
and you're privy to sort of a lot of things.
I mean, well, it's it's often such an interesting experience
to read a first person account that encapsulately two inside

(53:44):
of a you know, a very flawed character, or or
you know a character that is um uh that is
perhaps that even you know an antagonist. Uh there. I
mean another thing that I think is kind of interesting
is that what the one of the things that the
best fiction does is that it balances dispositional versus situational

(54:05):
factors in the characters. Like you can have sort of
one dimensional characters that are overly dispositional. They're just like
a pure quality and they always do that thing and
there's no complexity to them. And then you, on the
other hand, you've got characters that are might often be
called like ciphers, that don't really have any qualities. They're
just sort of reacting to the world in a way

(54:26):
that's entirely situational and they have no personality. And like,
good characters are in between these, right, Like they've got
fundamental characteristics, but they they're complex, they're nuanced, they change
according to circumstance. Yeah, you know, all this reminds me.
It's been a while since I thought about this, but
there was this was like a blog I think that
I was following years and years ago, and the individual

(54:47):
that that was maintaining the blog had kind of I
think that they had a very like physical career prior
and then they were blogging, you know, kind of after
that had come to a close, and then they it
they were also blogging about their reading, like they basically
it sounded like maybe the individual had not read a
lot previously and they're kind of like a late bloomer

(55:07):
in a literary sense. And I remember when they talked
about having read a first person narrative for the first time,
like they had not read the first person uh novel
uh and uh. At the time, I was, you know,
maybe a little I was like, what, really, had you
never you know, read that before? But but you know,
it's making me think, like what would that be, Like

(55:29):
I don't remember what it was like to read a
first person uh, you know, narrative for the first time.
It was just kind of like always there. But it
would be kind of magical, I guess, And I imagine
picking it up and having never read that before. We're
used to it. But it is a strange way of
inducing kind of an altered state of consciousness. It's like you,
you know, you get to transport your mind into a

(55:51):
certain degree. This happens with any good fiction, is that
there's sort of there's this identification process where you come
to empathize with the fictional character. Their goals sort of
become your goals, their wishes become your wishes. You feel
what they feel. But even more so in the first
person perspective than in even like a close third. Yeah,

(56:11):
it reminds me. I'm currently reading um Food of the
Gods by Terence McKenna, and there's a bit where he's
was talking about just how I was talking about language
and about how we're it is just invisible to us,
you know, and he's talking about other things that are
in our lives that influence our behavior, that they are
invisible to us. That with you know, we just don't

(56:32):
we don't think about them, we don't notice them, but
they are defining the nature of our reality. Culture is
mostly invisible and as you stop to think about it,
Uh yeah, language, language constantly amazes me. It's one of
those things that I wish every day I could remind
myself to stop and appreciate how bizarre and magical language is. Yeah,
but but it it's so easy to to just keep

(56:55):
going and just breathe it and breathe it out without
thinking about the breath that you're taking. All right, Well,
we're gonna go and close it out right there. That's
that's your allotment of listener mail for the month or so.
But we'll be back. And as as always, we do
not we don't have time to respond to everybody that
writes in. We we don't have the space to uh

(57:17):
to feature every bit of listener mail that comes in.
But we we really do appreciate it all, but we
do read it all. So so don't you know, never
feel like you're you're just throwing your missive into the
void here. Uh. And like I say, it's part of
part of our way of you know, it's it's a
communication between us and uh and our listeners. It's a
way for us to continue to grow, uh, for us

(57:38):
to uh, you know, correct anything that needs to be corrected. Uh.
But but generally it's more it's it's more additive in nature.
It's like we get to bring in your experiences, your
specialized knowledge and experiences uh to uh to to better
understand these topics that we're discussing on the show. Yeah,
we love all the stuff we hear from you. Also,
please keep it coming. Oh hey, and I have just
one little insert I want to throw row in here

(58:01):
doing this post recording, but I want to remind everybody
that the World Science Festival is coming up. Ah, yes, yeah,
the World Science Festival. This is the annual celebration of
science and the Arts, which takes place May two through
June two in New York City. So Yeah join in
for this year's festival to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of
the confirmation of Einstein's theory of relativity with over sixty

(58:24):
events that take science out of the lab and into
the streets, parks, museums, and premier performing arts venues of
New York City. The festival kicks off with light falls
and original work for the stage on Mayo, which will
portray Einstein's general theory of relativity, followed by eye opening discussions,
vibrant debates, mind expanding explorations, powerful theatrical works, works, insightful films,

(58:46):
hands on experiments, and major outdoor experiences. Again May through
June two, festivalgoers of all ages will join the world's
leading thinkers for an unforgettable celebration of science that's sure
to inspire and excite. I am going to be there
in attendance myself. In the meantime, you can check out
more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we'll find

(59:08):
all the episodes. Links out to uh such as two
places like our our discussion module group on Facebook. There's
also that T shirt store where you can uh you
can check out our our our various squirrel shirts that
are currently for sale. Oh and I also want to
mention at the top of this episode, I I talked
about the the sacred squirrel and Hindu traditions. I read

(59:31):
about that in a wonderful little book titled Sacred Animals
of India by Nandatha Krishna. Uh. It's available. Um, you
can get it online. It's available as an e book
or it's a physical book. UH, it's a it's a fun,
little little read. I highly recommend it. Awesome, huge thanks
as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and
Tari Harrison. If you would like to get in touch

(59:53):
with us to uh let us know feedback on this episode,
to suggest a topic for us to cover in the future,
just to say hello, let us know you know, how
you found out about the show, all that kind of stuff.
You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

(01:00:18):
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