March 6, 2023 • 26 mins
Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to listener mail from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind. This is Robert Land and this is Joe McCormick.
And it's Monday, the day of each week that we
reback some messages from the mail bag. If you are
a listener to Stuff to Blow your Mind and you've
(00:23):
never gotten in touch with us before, why not ride in.
You can contact us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. All kinds of messages are fair game.
Of course, feedback on the episodes we've put out in
the past, if you have things to add, corrections, you know,
general appreciation, any of that is fine. But you can
(00:44):
also just share anything you find interesting. Let's see, Rob,
do you mind if I kick things off today with
this message from Michael about our series on horror Vakawee.
Go for it, okay. Horror Vakawee was the idea of
Fear of the Void, and Michael says, Hey, Robin, Joe,
(01:06):
I'm a bit behind. I think you've done a few
listener mail episodes since these were aired, but I did
want to share a thought I had while listening to
the Horror Vakawe series. I think it was somewhere during
episode one that you mentioned the difference between nothing and
a vacuum as something people have struggled to understand throughout history.
It made me think of the Nothing from The never
(01:28):
Ending Story. The ultimate villain in that movie was purely
the lack of existence and quite literally represents the fear
of emptiness. I know it's a bit of a stretch
from the discussions you had in this series, but I'm
curious if this came to either of your minds while
thinking about Horror of Aakawee Rob. I would be shocked
if it did not come to your mind, as I
know you are a huge fan of The never Ending
(01:49):
Story in its multiple forms. Yeah, I think it did
cross my mind, but I didn't ended up not incorporating
it into the note to the discussion. But but yeah,
ever Ending Story. Both the film and Michael Enda's original
novel are both both very dear to me. So it's
at some point I would like to perhaps do an
ever ending story for Weird Helps. I think that there's
(02:10):
a lot of fun stuff to talk about there as
a refresher. This is picking up on what we talked
about in that series about like ancient philosophers, at least
in some cases, not seeming to be able to grasp
the concept of empty space, like that they couldn't envision
such a thing as they're being three dimensions of space
and it being an existing space that had nothing in it.
(02:31):
I think that for some of them, for example, like Aristotle,
they just thought, well, if there's nothing in it, then
it can't exist, because there's got to be something somewhere
for something to exist. Of Course, now we know that,
you know, space is in a way not nothing because
space has property, is like, there are characteristics of space,
So it's not the same thing as non existence. Though,
(02:55):
then you start getting into questions about like, well, what
would it mean for non existence to this? Could that?
Is that even a coherent concept? Um? But yeah, so
so I don't know where the nothing from the Never
Ending Story falls in there? Is it? Is it like
is it like sort of a destructive force or just
a negation force? How would you characterize it? Rob? Well, Um,
(03:16):
I'd need to revisit the novel to really get in,
I mean to really get in deep there, because the
novel definitely goes deeper on a lot of these concepts
and and is very contemplative on various paradoxes, because the
first half of the novel is essentially the movie, but
then there's an entire second half of the adventure that's
kind of like I would I would compare it easily
(03:39):
to Doon Messiah. You know. It's like the first one
is the rise of the of a tray you and
the Rise of Bastion, and in the second half of
the novel is kind of I wouldn't say it's necessarily
about his fall, but it's about sort of what what
happens after one achieves power, or what happens after one
achieves their dreams, et cetera. There's a lot of a
(03:59):
lot of fun, weird stuff that happens in the second
part as well. Uh, some of which is reflected in
the never Ending Story too the movie, but but not really.
That's that one's kind of a mass but it has
some many monsters in it. But anyway, the nothing um,
I guess the short version is that the nothing is
um it's it's it's a vacancy. Yeah, it's it's. It's
(04:22):
it's it's that it is erasure as well, but it's
also not a conscious entity. It is um it's kind
of a result, and there are agents behind the nothing
that are pushing it. And in in the book they
really some of the characters really get into doupth describing
or sort of teasing what those powers beyond the nothing are.
(04:44):
All right, there's a second half of Michael's message here.
Michael goes on to say, for a different concept on
the same topic. Part of my job involves writing legal documents,
and one of the things many people have probably seen
but never really put much thought into, is when a
page ends before the document ends, and instead of leaving
(05:04):
a true blank space, you will see a box in
the document that reads this space intentionally left blank. It's
always something I have to stop to think about. Is
this blank space too big and therefore needs filler? Or
can I leave a few lines empty at the end
of the page without upsetting the expectation of the document's fullness.
Thanks for everything you do, Michael. I actually went to
(05:28):
read about like the history of you know these this
page intentionally left blank markings and stuff to see if
there was anything really interesting about it. Not really, I mean,
I think it's mostly just like to avoid the avoid
confusion about whether you're looking at a printing error or
something like it. You know, was this space supposed to
(05:49):
be here? Or did something get left out that line?
Just as sure as you nothing was left out. I
don't remember if this actually happened. I remember I had
a creative writing teacher once who said that they knew
an author who tried to get their publishers behind the
idea of including a large chunk of blank pages in
(06:09):
the at the end of the novel that he was
having published, because you wanted the ending to feel more
sudden and more of a surprise. So you would be
reading through it and you'd be like, oh, it's over now,
Oh my goodness. Which I don't think the publishers end
up going for that, but you do. You still get
that experience occasion. I had that experience pretty recently with
a book where I didn't realize, like reading on a kindle,
(06:32):
I didn't realize that there was a glossary and some
sort of extra bit on the end of the novel,
and so when it ended, I was like, oh, wow,
we're already there, and I was a little surprised. That's
a great idea to have surprise for the ending, but yeah,
I feel like you couldn't do it with blank pages
because you just noticed that too easily. I mean, even
(06:53):
if you're not reading ahead, you just kind of notice
that the end of the book didn't have anything on it.
I feel like you'd have to fill it up with
Laura ipsum or something thing. Yeah, And I do think
it's more gracefully achieved by having some sort of extra
material at the end. Or sometimes if it's like a
you know, an author with other books, or sometimes not
even the same author, you'll sometimes have like a preview
of another book at the end of a book, and
(07:15):
that can kind of accomplish the same goal, unless you're
really checking your watch on a book, which I've certainly
had that situation as well, But you're like, how how
long does this go on? Yeah? Maybe there's some sort
of a glosser at the end. Crap, there's not. Yeah, Well, anyway,
let's see Rob. Do you want to do this? Next
message from John? Yeah. This one is in a response
(07:38):
to a couple of episodes that Seth and I did
on hidden tracks while you were out on paternity leave.
John Right, Sollo, Rob, Joe and Seth hiding a track
either as a track after the last listed track or
after a long silent break in that track is all
(07:58):
too common. As you say, I remember learning of a
different form of hidden track back in the early days
of compact discs, back in the mid nineteen eighties, specifically
the hidden zero track. It didn't always work, I suppose
it varied by how the manufacturers programmed their players. But
if you put a CD in, press play in, then
(08:18):
rewound the track track back before the first song started,
there was another song hidden there. I remember I had.
They might be giants and rim discs with tracks like this,
but I haven't heard them in years because I only
have a computer CD DVD drive these days and it
doesn't work with this zero track hack. This type of
hidden track is popular enough there is a Wikipedia page
(08:40):
listing many of them, not nearly as many there as
on the more standard version hidden track page. This link
is the main page linking to an alphabetical list of
performers who have hidden tracks on their albums, and John
includes a couple of links here. Thanks for another great episode, John,
I was really combing through the list of album containing
(09:00):
hidden tracks to try to find one where it's like,
oh yeah, I remember this one. Um, I know I
had an album with a hidden zero track, but I
can't remember what it was, And all the ones I
could find on here that I recall were like, yeah,
ones where it just plays after the last track on
the CD, after a big gap, like remember there's a
there's a Queens of the Stone Age album that had
(09:21):
a track like that. But anyway, looking through this list,
the funniest example I found was that there are allegedly
two Jimmy Buffett albums with hidden tracks, and trying to
imagine Jimmy Buffett fans kind of mashing the buttons on
their CD players was it was a strongly amusing image.
(09:42):
One of the albums that as a hidden track is
allegedly called Banana wind h Well, you know, don't The
profit can be very cryptic in his messages. Yeah, I'm
looking at this list as well, and uh, I think
I'm familiar with some of these albums, Like there's an
Autecher album on here, there's some DJ Food and DK.
(10:04):
But I think most of the artists on here that
I'm into I got into after I was done with
CD players, so I don't really have any experience with
the track zero on their their work. It is amusing
that some of these artists did it more than once,
where they're like, that was great, Let's do that again. Oh,
I Monster is also in here. That's another band that
(10:26):
I really I really liked this album from two thousand
and three, never odd or even M But again I
got that album digitally at some point, and I have
no experience with the CD. Okay. This next message is
(10:47):
in response to our series on t This is from Jake.
Let's see and there there are a couple of subtopics here.
Jake begins by responding to our discussion on bertrand russell teapot,
analogy that was a tangent we did in one of
our episodes, and Jake compares Russell's teapot to the now
very well known satirical deity called the flying Spaghetti Monster,
(11:11):
which is an omnipotent wad of pasta containing several meatballs.
Jake writes quote referring to the spaghetti Monster quote. This
started as a similar type of thought experiment to the
teapot and Carl Sagan's Invisible Dragon, but more explicitly designed
to look like Christianity. In the years since the original
website went up, people have adopted the trappings of it
(11:33):
as a religion, entering it as their faith on census forms,
winning court cases, to be allowed to wear a colander
on their heads for official id as it is religious headgear,
and even churches with dedicated priests and regular services. And yeah, Jake,
this is interesting because we covered some aspects of this
(11:54):
in an episode we did many years ago now, and
I haven't heard it in a long time, so I
don't know how our discussion holds up. But we were
talking about a framework called hyper real religions, which was
basically a sociology of religion concept to describing postmodern religions
that are consciously based on explicitly fictional ideas, often from
(12:17):
pop culture. So there were a bunch of examples, but
one of them was Jediism, a religion based on the
Jedi Order from the Star Wars universe. And the Flying
Spaghetti Monster religion was another one. Though it began as
a parody, it sort of evolved to have more, I
don't know, things, kind of like a real religion would have.
And I think what's interesting is that a lot of
(12:39):
these religions by now seem to have at least some
members who claim to practice them sincerely, not just as
a joke or a parody or a way of making
a point, though obviously a lot of them kind of
started that way. And this phenomenon's interesting to me because
it suggests a religion can arise without a starting point
(13:00):
of literalist enchantment with the myths. Like no one starts
out by having a literal belief in the existence of
Jedi knights in the Force. Everybody understands Star Wars is fiction.
But nevertheless, you can kind of work up to a
feeling of sincere belief about a religion, I guess through
actions or contemplation, maybe through ritual repetition or just ongoing discourse,
(13:24):
you know, repeatedly talking about the central ideas. And even
if it starts just as a joke or something that
you did just for fun, it can kind of become
serious to you. And this in turn makes me wonder
about the origins of traditional religions. Like I've said this
on the show before, but I mean this really, Like,
(13:45):
are we so sure that the authors of the Book
of Genesis meant, for, say, the six day Creation story
to be taken as a literal, factual account of where
everything came from? Or is it possible they might have said,
we don't know where everything came from, We don't know
how it came to be, but here is an interesting
story that we tell, and this story maybe has some
(14:06):
things to say about our culture. And another thing this
connects to is something I just believe is true about people.
If we spend enough time being interested in something, even
in a totally ironic way, over time our interest will
start to become more earnest. I think that's just a
(14:26):
feature of human psychology. If you consistently spend your time
thinking and talking about something as a joke, you will
end up thinking and talking about it with a kind
of with a more sincere appreciation, finding serious meaning in it.
And you could chalk this up to a number of
different things. You could say it's a kind of like
sunk cost fallacy about your own time and efforts thinking
(14:48):
and talking about that thing. Or you could say that
it's just that, you know, the more you think about anything,
the more it just you notice things about it that
resonate in more profound ways. But anyway, uh, yeah, yeah,
so I think that that raises a lot of interesting questions. Yeah, yeah,
this was this was a fun topic yeah, when we
(15:09):
approached it back in the day. Again, I haven't listened
to this and forever, so I don't know how it
holds up either. But um, yeah, there were other things
like Dudaism. I think it was a big one based
on the dude from The Big Lebowski and uh, yeah,
I don't know. It's it's it's interesting to think about. Um.
You know, with Star Wars, for example, I would not
(15:30):
say that I believe in Jediism or anything. But if
you have a story like like Star Wars, and you
like see you grow up with it, uh, if you
find yourself returning to it, uh in difficult times, if
you uh if if you have like a child who
gets into it. You know, these have the last two
have been my experience, or I guess all three have
(15:52):
been my experience. Like you can find yourself um more
attached to the material than you were previously. Uh. And
and you know, not to the point again where I
think Jediism is a thing or that the force is
real or anything like that, but it kind of gets
to the point where I like where there was a
time where I would you know, I would maybe make
fun of of elements and say the prequels. But nowadays
(16:14):
it's like there's a there's a joke that's maybe like
a little too hard on the Fall of Anakin Skywalker.
I'm kind of like, you shouldn't joke about that. That's
a serious story. A lot of people take that very seriously.
I don't know, and I don't know why exactly, you know,
but I think part of it is just, yeah, sort
of like clinging to it a little bit during um,
you know, in recent years, having a child grow up
(16:35):
with it and see it through through his eyes and
his experiences, you know, it kind of changes the way
you approach some of it. If I can psychoanalyze you
a little bit, Robert I, it seems to me, just
based on things you've said to me, that a lot
of this might be based in like showing the prequels
to your son and appreciating them together. It's like when
you see them again through the eyes of a child,
(16:57):
that really makes you you experienced them in a whole
new way. They come to me and something different to you. Yeah,
which film that we've covered for Weird House should a
religion be based upon? Though, if you had to had
to push for your own hyper real religion. Well, you know,
there are a couple of different ways to answer that question,
because there are some that naturally invite occult interpretations. So
(17:20):
you know, you get you got your done which horror,
and you got your oh what's it called the Devil
rides out? You know, like Christopher Lee in that movie
is almost asking to be your your your priest and
your shaman um. But on the other hand, i'd say,
you know, transfers too, that that's got some real mythological gusto. Yeah, yeah,
(17:41):
that's that's a pretty good pick, you know. And of
course some of the films we've talked about do have
actual mythologies at the heart of them, or they have
they're based on fictional franchises that people have invested so
much in that they they either achieve or nearly achieving
hyper real status. For instance, The Keeper, which was the
Russian adaptation of The Fellowship of the Rings. So I
(18:04):
guess it'd be kind of like Russian Orthodox tokenism there.
Oh yes, oh wait, I just thought to woor the Great,
I mean to bore the Great is a god, so
there you go. Oh but anyway, sorry, I gotta return
to Jake's message. So concluding the section about the parody religion,
Jake says, all this stuff maybe an indication that the
flying Spaghetti Monster religion quote has transitioned from the realms
(18:28):
of healing driftwood into the more mainstream territory of healing crystals.
That's referring to another thing we said in the episode
about how the ideas, even if there's no evidence for them,
take on a feeling of plausibility just if they're more
familiar than if unfamiliar. Okay, second half of Jake's message,
he says, in more directly tea related talk, you ask
(18:51):
for stories about listeners tea habits. Growing up, my parents
always left the tea bag in the mug when drinking tea,
so when I started drinking it, naturally this is what
I did. I never really internalized that it was unusual
until I was quite a lot older, although I learned
fairly quickly that when making tea for guests, I should
check if they wanted their tea bags removed. I've grown
(19:11):
out of the habit since moving out, mainly because I
have a small dog who loves to grab tea bags
out of any mug left within his reach and cause
a mess, throwing them around. Wow, But I do still
occasionally indulge. I'd like it because the tea gets progressively
stronger as you drink, so no two mouthfuls taste the same.
Ghost without saying that, I don't have a problem with
(19:33):
over steeped tea. Thanks again for the podcast. Keep up
the great work. Regards Jake, This is great. Yeah, I
mean it varies so much depending on what tea you're using.
I guess like in my household, we drink a lot
Againmacha tea. That's the one with the toasted rice, and
it is amazing tea and one that I have found
(19:53):
to be very forgiving of over steeping, especially on subsequent steeps.
But even the first steep you can kind of let
it go a little bit and it doesn't it too
sharp or too strong. Other teas I have you have
to It's like that first steep. You got to give
it like thirty seconds otherwise you're dimmed. But I sometimes
I do the Jake approach if I am drinking tea
(20:13):
in the studio, because sometimes I don't give myself enough
time to steep it before I go in, so I
got to bring it in here with the tea bag
still in, but with a little like ramikin or something
to put the tea bag in when it's time to
take it out. And that allows me to sort of
like keep sipping and sort of fine tune it, like,
am I there, yad, it's time to take it out.
Maybe I can push it a little further and then like, okay,
now it's the time. I used to assume that the
(20:36):
reason that tea cups were served on a little saucer
plate was so that you could take the tea bag
out and put it on the plate. But then I
thought the way that the saucer plates pre date the
use of tea bags for steeping. I'm sure like that
goes back to a time when you just have the
loose leaves in the in the pot and you pour
it out of the spout. Right, I assume I've never
(20:56):
really looked into that. I had an aunt who would
reportedly she was a great aunt, who would reportedly with
coffee or tea, I forget which would pour the tea
or coffee into the saucer so that it could cool,
which I that's not the right way to use it, right,
This has to be a novel use of the cup
and saucer. I get you know what I imagine. I
(21:18):
bet it's to rest your teaspoon on. If you're stirring
like milk indoor sugar into your tea, you got a
little teaspoon that goes on the saucer. I bet that's
why the saucer was invented. Yeah, spillage maybe as well.
I don't know. Yeah, see, we should goose should do
a whole invention on just spitball. Yeah, okay, let's see. Oh, Rob,
(21:40):
do you want to do this short one from Jeremy
about Finn McCool. Oh yeah, yeah, we've been rearing the
Finn McCool episodes from last year. As we approached Saint
Patty's Day again, Jeremy rights, Hello, Robert and Joe. While
listening to the recent Select's episode about Finn McCool, had
just reached the point of describing the Giants Causeway when
(22:03):
I rode past a sculpture representing the same formation. So
to be clear, Jeremy's not driving past the actual Giants Causeway,
but just something that looks like it and seems to
be intentionally crafted to look like it, And they included
a picture for us appears to be made out of
concrete pieces. How would you describe this concrete hexagons, little columns.
(22:26):
I guess it's to resemble the columnar basalt. But I've
never seen anything like this before, and I tried to
google it to figure out what. Jeremy does not say
where this is. So I was googling giants causeway sculpture
came up with zips, So I don't know. Yeah, you'd
have to do like a deep search based on the
There's some sort of a big house in the background,
(22:48):
kind of a manor house, but I know who knows
what that is really creepy with this, Yeah, Jeremy continues,
since it appears your podcasting powers have now reached the
point of auto generation. I was momentarily concerned the giants
would be next, but fortunately neither of them appeared. Should
I be concerned about listening to future episodes? Winky face
(23:10):
best regards Jeremy. Well, Jeremy, I think you may soon
be driving and find a gray whale encrusted with barnacles
laying across the road, so be careful going around the
tight corners. But thanks for writing him. This is amusing.
I gotta kick out of this, and it does make
me wonder about it. This has the there's an intentionality
to this work. This appears to be an actual work
(23:33):
of art here. This is not just we encounter a
lot of stuff. I guess this encountered this everywhere, but
particularly in the American South, you find a lot of
sort of like junkyard art that is kind This seems
to be kind of you know, there's an intentional, outsider
art approach to it, but there's also just sort of
like the effect of stuff piling up. And I don't
(23:53):
get that feel from what we're looking at here. Oh no, no,
this is a sculpture, definitely. Yeah. You kind of want
to climb on it like it looks. I'm surprised there's
no children on it here. I always want to climb
on everything. All right, I think we should call today's
episode there. We've got a few messages about Weird House,
but we will We'll save those for next week. All right.
Just remindered everybody that Listener Mail publishes here on Mondays
(24:15):
and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Yeah,
if you want to keep up with what we're doing
on the show, really subscribe to a feed somewhere. That's
the best way to do it because we don't really
we don't really do much in the way of letting
folks know on social when there's a new episode or
any of that right now, So subscribing is the best
way to do it, and it helps off the show.
(24:36):
But let's see what else we got going on. We
got Tuesday, Rob, Can I add something though? Yes, yeah,
as our bosses have told us many times, at least
some podcast platforms out there, I think Apple Apple Podcasts
has been singled out there. There may be some weirdness
going on with people who are subscribed to our podcast,
but the platform stops auto downloading even though you didn't
(24:57):
tell it to do that. So if you're a fan
of the show and you want to make sure you're
always getting our new stuff, go in. Make sure that
you are, Make sure that you're subscribed if you meant
to be. Make sure that auto downloads are turned on.
Even if you had them turned on before. Somehow they
might have gotten turned off on their own. I don't
know why they do that, but that's what we've heard happens,
so just check on that. And we've also been told
(25:18):
that on some platforms, again specifically Apple Podcasts, it may
stop downloading episodes even if you have it set to
download episodes if you haven't listened to the last x
number maybe five episodes or something. So if you're one
of those people out there who likes to let them,
you know, save them up and then binge them, I mean,
you know that that's your right. You do that if
(25:39):
that's what you want, but just be aware that may
stop episodes from downloading. So if you want to make
sure you're always getting new episodes downloaded and you want
to help us out, a good idea might be to
just try to stay as current as you can, or
listen to at least one fresh episode per week, even
if you are saving them up to benj them on
the weekends or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, that way they'll digitally
(26:01):
manifest on your device so that they can physically manifest
in the world as you drive around. So again, he
has stuff to blow your mind. Podcast feed Core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listenermail on Mondays. On Wednesdays, a
short form artifact or monster fact, and then on Friday's
Weirdhouse Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious
concerns and just talk about a strange film huge thanks
to our audio producer JJ Pauseway. If you would like
(26:24):
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
or just to say hello, you can email us at
contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(26:44):
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to listener mail from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind. This is Robert Land and this is Joe McCormick.
And it's Monday, the day of each week that we
reback some messages from the mail bag. If you are
a listener to Stuff to Blow your Mind and you've
(00:23):
never gotten in touch with us before, why not ride in.
You can contact us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. All kinds of messages are fair game.
Of course, feedback on the episodes we've put out in
the past, if you have things to add, corrections, you know,
general appreciation, any of that is fine. But you can
(00:44):
also just share anything you find interesting. Let's see, Rob,
do you mind if I kick things off today with
this message from Michael about our series on horror Vakawee.
Go for it, okay. Horror Vakawee was the idea of
Fear of the Void, and Michael says, Hey, Robin, Joe,
(01:06):
I'm a bit behind. I think you've done a few
listener mail episodes since these were aired, but I did
want to share a thought I had while listening to
the Horror Vakawe series. I think it was somewhere during
episode one that you mentioned the difference between nothing and
a vacuum as something people have struggled to understand throughout history.
It made me think of the Nothing from The never
(01:28):
Ending Story. The ultimate villain in that movie was purely
the lack of existence and quite literally represents the fear
of emptiness. I know it's a bit of a stretch
from the discussions you had in this series, but I'm
curious if this came to either of your minds while
thinking about Horror of Aakawee Rob. I would be shocked
if it did not come to your mind, as I
know you are a huge fan of The never Ending
(01:49):
Story in its multiple forms. Yeah, I think it did
cross my mind, but I didn't ended up not incorporating
it into the note to the discussion. But but yeah,
ever Ending Story. Both the film and Michael Enda's original
novel are both both very dear to me. So it's
at some point I would like to perhaps do an
ever ending story for Weird Helps. I think that there's
(02:10):
a lot of fun stuff to talk about there as
a refresher. This is picking up on what we talked
about in that series about like ancient philosophers, at least
in some cases, not seeming to be able to grasp
the concept of empty space, like that they couldn't envision
such a thing as they're being three dimensions of space
and it being an existing space that had nothing in it.
(02:31):
I think that for some of them, for example, like Aristotle,
they just thought, well, if there's nothing in it, then
it can't exist, because there's got to be something somewhere
for something to exist. Of Course, now we know that,
you know, space is in a way not nothing because
space has property, is like, there are characteristics of space,
So it's not the same thing as non existence. Though,
(02:55):
then you start getting into questions about like, well, what
would it mean for non existence to this? Could that?
Is that even a coherent concept? Um? But yeah, so
so I don't know where the nothing from the Never
Ending Story falls in there? Is it? Is it like
is it like sort of a destructive force or just
a negation force? How would you characterize it? Rob? Well, Um,
(03:16):
I'd need to revisit the novel to really get in,
I mean to really get in deep there, because the
novel definitely goes deeper on a lot of these concepts
and and is very contemplative on various paradoxes, because the
first half of the novel is essentially the movie, but
then there's an entire second half of the adventure that's
kind of like I would I would compare it easily
(03:39):
to Doon Messiah. You know. It's like the first one
is the rise of the of a tray you and
the Rise of Bastion, and in the second half of
the novel is kind of I wouldn't say it's necessarily
about his fall, but it's about sort of what what
happens after one achieves power, or what happens after one
achieves their dreams, et cetera. There's a lot of a
(03:59):
lot of fun, weird stuff that happens in the second
part as well. Uh, some of which is reflected in
the never Ending Story too the movie, but but not really.
That's that one's kind of a mass but it has
some many monsters in it. But anyway, the nothing um,
I guess the short version is that the nothing is
um it's it's it's a vacancy. Yeah, it's it's. It's
(04:22):
it's it's that it is erasure as well, but it's
also not a conscious entity. It is um it's kind
of a result, and there are agents behind the nothing
that are pushing it. And in in the book they
really some of the characters really get into doupth describing
or sort of teasing what those powers beyond the nothing are.
(04:44):
All right, there's a second half of Michael's message here.
Michael goes on to say, for a different concept on
the same topic. Part of my job involves writing legal documents,
and one of the things many people have probably seen
but never really put much thought into, is when a
page ends before the document ends, and instead of leaving
(05:04):
a true blank space, you will see a box in
the document that reads this space intentionally left blank. It's
always something I have to stop to think about. Is
this blank space too big and therefore needs filler? Or
can I leave a few lines empty at the end
of the page without upsetting the expectation of the document's fullness.
Thanks for everything you do, Michael. I actually went to
(05:28):
read about like the history of you know these this
page intentionally left blank markings and stuff to see if
there was anything really interesting about it. Not really, I mean,
I think it's mostly just like to avoid the avoid
confusion about whether you're looking at a printing error or
something like it. You know, was this space supposed to
(05:49):
be here? Or did something get left out that line?
Just as sure as you nothing was left out. I
don't remember if this actually happened. I remember I had
a creative writing teacher once who said that they knew
an author who tried to get their publishers behind the
idea of including a large chunk of blank pages in
(06:09):
the at the end of the novel that he was
having published, because you wanted the ending to feel more
sudden and more of a surprise. So you would be
reading through it and you'd be like, oh, it's over now,
Oh my goodness. Which I don't think the publishers end
up going for that, but you do. You still get
that experience occasion. I had that experience pretty recently with
a book where I didn't realize, like reading on a kindle,
(06:32):
I didn't realize that there was a glossary and some
sort of extra bit on the end of the novel,
and so when it ended, I was like, oh, wow,
we're already there, and I was a little surprised. That's
a great idea to have surprise for the ending, but yeah,
I feel like you couldn't do it with blank pages
because you just noticed that too easily. I mean, even
(06:53):
if you're not reading ahead, you just kind of notice
that the end of the book didn't have anything on it.
I feel like you'd have to fill it up with
Laura ipsum or something thing. Yeah, And I do think
it's more gracefully achieved by having some sort of extra
material at the end. Or sometimes if it's like a
you know, an author with other books, or sometimes not
even the same author, you'll sometimes have like a preview
of another book at the end of a book, and
(07:15):
that can kind of accomplish the same goal, unless you're
really checking your watch on a book, which I've certainly
had that situation as well, But you're like, how how
long does this go on? Yeah? Maybe there's some sort
of a glosser at the end. Crap, there's not. Yeah, Well, anyway,
let's see Rob. Do you want to do this? Next
message from John? Yeah. This one is in a response
(07:38):
to a couple of episodes that Seth and I did
on hidden tracks while you were out on paternity leave.
John Right, Sollo, Rob, Joe and Seth hiding a track
either as a track after the last listed track or
after a long silent break in that track is all
(07:58):
too common. As you say, I remember learning of a
different form of hidden track back in the early days
of compact discs, back in the mid nineteen eighties, specifically
the hidden zero track. It didn't always work, I suppose
it varied by how the manufacturers programmed their players. But
if you put a CD in, press play in, then
(08:18):
rewound the track track back before the first song started,
there was another song hidden there. I remember I had.
They might be giants and rim discs with tracks like this,
but I haven't heard them in years because I only
have a computer CD DVD drive these days and it
doesn't work with this zero track hack. This type of
hidden track is popular enough there is a Wikipedia page
(08:40):
listing many of them, not nearly as many there as
on the more standard version hidden track page. This link
is the main page linking to an alphabetical list of
performers who have hidden tracks on their albums, and John
includes a couple of links here. Thanks for another great episode, John,
I was really combing through the list of album containing
(09:00):
hidden tracks to try to find one where it's like,
oh yeah, I remember this one. Um, I know I
had an album with a hidden zero track, but I
can't remember what it was, And all the ones I
could find on here that I recall were like, yeah,
ones where it just plays after the last track on
the CD, after a big gap, like remember there's a
there's a Queens of the Stone Age album that had
(09:21):
a track like that. But anyway, looking through this list,
the funniest example I found was that there are allegedly
two Jimmy Buffett albums with hidden tracks, and trying to
imagine Jimmy Buffett fans kind of mashing the buttons on
their CD players was it was a strongly amusing image.
(09:42):
One of the albums that as a hidden track is
allegedly called Banana wind h Well, you know, don't The
profit can be very cryptic in his messages. Yeah, I'm
looking at this list as well, and uh, I think
I'm familiar with some of these albums, Like there's an
Autecher album on here, there's some DJ Food and DK.
(10:04):
But I think most of the artists on here that
I'm into I got into after I was done with
CD players, so I don't really have any experience with
the track zero on their their work. It is amusing
that some of these artists did it more than once,
where they're like, that was great, Let's do that again. Oh,
I Monster is also in here. That's another band that
(10:26):
I really I really liked this album from two thousand
and three, never odd or even M But again I
got that album digitally at some point, and I have
no experience with the CD. Okay. This next message is
(10:47):
in response to our series on t This is from Jake.
Let's see and there there are a couple of subtopics here.
Jake begins by responding to our discussion on bertrand russell teapot,
analogy that was a tangent we did in one of
our episodes, and Jake compares Russell's teapot to the now
very well known satirical deity called the flying Spaghetti Monster,
(11:11):
which is an omnipotent wad of pasta containing several meatballs.
Jake writes quote referring to the spaghetti Monster quote. This
started as a similar type of thought experiment to the
teapot and Carl Sagan's Invisible Dragon, but more explicitly designed
to look like Christianity. In the years since the original
website went up, people have adopted the trappings of it
(11:33):
as a religion, entering it as their faith on census forms,
winning court cases, to be allowed to wear a colander
on their heads for official id as it is religious headgear,
and even churches with dedicated priests and regular services. And yeah, Jake,
this is interesting because we covered some aspects of this
(11:54):
in an episode we did many years ago now, and
I haven't heard it in a long time, so I
don't know how our discussion holds up. But we were
talking about a framework called hyper real religions, which was
basically a sociology of religion concept to describing postmodern religions
that are consciously based on explicitly fictional ideas, often from
(12:17):
pop culture. So there were a bunch of examples, but
one of them was Jediism, a religion based on the
Jedi Order from the Star Wars universe. And the Flying
Spaghetti Monster religion was another one. Though it began as
a parody, it sort of evolved to have more, I
don't know, things, kind of like a real religion would have.
And I think what's interesting is that a lot of
(12:39):
these religions by now seem to have at least some
members who claim to practice them sincerely, not just as
a joke or a parody or a way of making
a point, though obviously a lot of them kind of
started that way. And this phenomenon's interesting to me because
it suggests a religion can arise without a starting point
(13:00):
of literalist enchantment with the myths. Like no one starts
out by having a literal belief in the existence of
Jedi knights in the Force. Everybody understands Star Wars is fiction.
But nevertheless, you can kind of work up to a
feeling of sincere belief about a religion, I guess through
actions or contemplation, maybe through ritual repetition or just ongoing discourse,
(13:24):
you know, repeatedly talking about the central ideas. And even
if it starts just as a joke or something that
you did just for fun, it can kind of become
serious to you. And this in turn makes me wonder
about the origins of traditional religions. Like I've said this
on the show before, but I mean this really, Like,
(13:45):
are we so sure that the authors of the Book
of Genesis meant, for, say, the six day Creation story
to be taken as a literal, factual account of where
everything came from? Or is it possible they might have said,
we don't know where everything came from, We don't know
how it came to be, but here is an interesting
story that we tell, and this story maybe has some
(14:06):
things to say about our culture. And another thing this
connects to is something I just believe is true about people.
If we spend enough time being interested in something, even
in a totally ironic way, over time our interest will
start to become more earnest. I think that's just a
(14:26):
feature of human psychology. If you consistently spend your time
thinking and talking about something as a joke, you will
end up thinking and talking about it with a kind
of with a more sincere appreciation, finding serious meaning in it.
And you could chalk this up to a number of
different things. You could say it's a kind of like
sunk cost fallacy about your own time and efforts thinking
(14:48):
and talking about that thing. Or you could say that
it's just that, you know, the more you think about anything,
the more it just you notice things about it that
resonate in more profound ways. But anyway, uh, yeah, yeah,
so I think that that raises a lot of interesting questions. Yeah, yeah,
this was this was a fun topic yeah, when we
(15:09):
approached it back in the day. Again, I haven't listened
to this and forever, so I don't know how it
holds up either. But um, yeah, there were other things
like Dudaism. I think it was a big one based
on the dude from The Big Lebowski and uh, yeah,
I don't know. It's it's it's interesting to think about. Um.
You know, with Star Wars, for example, I would not
(15:30):
say that I believe in Jediism or anything. But if
you have a story like like Star Wars, and you
like see you grow up with it, uh, if you
find yourself returning to it, uh in difficult times, if
you uh if if you have like a child who
gets into it. You know, these have the last two
have been my experience, or I guess all three have
(15:52):
been my experience. Like you can find yourself um more
attached to the material than you were previously. Uh. And
and you know, not to the point again where I
think Jediism is a thing or that the force is
real or anything like that, but it kind of gets
to the point where I like where there was a
time where I would you know, I would maybe make
fun of of elements and say the prequels. But nowadays
(16:14):
it's like there's a there's a joke that's maybe like
a little too hard on the Fall of Anakin Skywalker.
I'm kind of like, you shouldn't joke about that. That's
a serious story. A lot of people take that very seriously.
I don't know, and I don't know why exactly, you know,
but I think part of it is just, yeah, sort
of like clinging to it a little bit during um,
you know, in recent years, having a child grow up
(16:35):
with it and see it through through his eyes and
his experiences, you know, it kind of changes the way
you approach some of it. If I can psychoanalyze you
a little bit, Robert I, it seems to me, just
based on things you've said to me, that a lot
of this might be based in like showing the prequels
to your son and appreciating them together. It's like when
you see them again through the eyes of a child,
(16:57):
that really makes you you experienced them in a whole
new way. They come to me and something different to you. Yeah,
which film that we've covered for Weird House should a
religion be based upon? Though, if you had to had
to push for your own hyper real religion. Well, you know,
there are a couple of different ways to answer that question,
because there are some that naturally invite occult interpretations. So
(17:20):
you know, you get you got your done which horror,
and you got your oh what's it called the Devil
rides out? You know, like Christopher Lee in that movie
is almost asking to be your your your priest and
your shaman um. But on the other hand, i'd say,
you know, transfers too, that that's got some real mythological gusto. Yeah, yeah,
(17:41):
that's that's a pretty good pick, you know. And of
course some of the films we've talked about do have
actual mythologies at the heart of them, or they have
they're based on fictional franchises that people have invested so
much in that they they either achieve or nearly achieving
hyper real status. For instance, The Keeper, which was the
Russian adaptation of The Fellowship of the Rings. So I
(18:04):
guess it'd be kind of like Russian Orthodox tokenism there.
Oh yes, oh wait, I just thought to woor the Great,
I mean to bore the Great is a god, so
there you go. Oh but anyway, sorry, I gotta return
to Jake's message. So concluding the section about the parody religion,
Jake says, all this stuff maybe an indication that the
flying Spaghetti Monster religion quote has transitioned from the realms
(18:28):
of healing driftwood into the more mainstream territory of healing crystals.
That's referring to another thing we said in the episode
about how the ideas, even if there's no evidence for them,
take on a feeling of plausibility just if they're more
familiar than if unfamiliar. Okay, second half of Jake's message,
he says, in more directly tea related talk, you ask
(18:51):
for stories about listeners tea habits. Growing up, my parents
always left the tea bag in the mug when drinking tea,
so when I started drinking it, naturally this is what
I did. I never really internalized that it was unusual
until I was quite a lot older, although I learned
fairly quickly that when making tea for guests, I should
check if they wanted their tea bags removed. I've grown
(19:11):
out of the habit since moving out, mainly because I
have a small dog who loves to grab tea bags
out of any mug left within his reach and cause
a mess, throwing them around. Wow, But I do still
occasionally indulge. I'd like it because the tea gets progressively
stronger as you drink, so no two mouthfuls taste the same.
Ghost without saying that, I don't have a problem with
(19:33):
over steeped tea. Thanks again for the podcast. Keep up
the great work. Regards Jake, This is great. Yeah, I
mean it varies so much depending on what tea you're using.
I guess like in my household, we drink a lot
Againmacha tea. That's the one with the toasted rice, and
it is amazing tea and one that I have found
(19:53):
to be very forgiving of over steeping, especially on subsequent steeps.
But even the first steep you can kind of let
it go a little bit and it doesn't it too
sharp or too strong. Other teas I have you have
to It's like that first steep. You got to give
it like thirty seconds otherwise you're dimmed. But I sometimes
I do the Jake approach if I am drinking tea
(20:13):
in the studio, because sometimes I don't give myself enough
time to steep it before I go in, so I
got to bring it in here with the tea bag
still in, but with a little like ramikin or something
to put the tea bag in when it's time to
take it out. And that allows me to sort of
like keep sipping and sort of fine tune it, like,
am I there, yad, it's time to take it out.
Maybe I can push it a little further and then like, okay,
now it's the time. I used to assume that the
(20:36):
reason that tea cups were served on a little saucer
plate was so that you could take the tea bag
out and put it on the plate. But then I
thought the way that the saucer plates pre date the
use of tea bags for steeping. I'm sure like that
goes back to a time when you just have the
loose leaves in the in the pot and you pour
it out of the spout. Right, I assume I've never
(20:56):
really looked into that. I had an aunt who would
reportedly she was a great aunt, who would reportedly with
coffee or tea, I forget which would pour the tea
or coffee into the saucer so that it could cool,
which I that's not the right way to use it, right,
This has to be a novel use of the cup
and saucer. I get you know what I imagine. I
(21:18):
bet it's to rest your teaspoon on. If you're stirring
like milk indoor sugar into your tea, you got a
little teaspoon that goes on the saucer. I bet that's
why the saucer was invented. Yeah, spillage maybe as well.
I don't know. Yeah, see, we should goose should do
a whole invention on just spitball. Yeah, okay, let's see. Oh, Rob,
(21:40):
do you want to do this short one from Jeremy
about Finn McCool. Oh yeah, yeah, we've been rearing the
Finn McCool episodes from last year. As we approached Saint
Patty's Day again, Jeremy rights, Hello, Robert and Joe. While
listening to the recent Select's episode about Finn McCool, had
just reached the point of describing the Giants Causeway when
(22:03):
I rode past a sculpture representing the same formation. So
to be clear, Jeremy's not driving past the actual Giants Causeway,
but just something that looks like it and seems to
be intentionally crafted to look like it, And they included
a picture for us appears to be made out of
concrete pieces. How would you describe this concrete hexagons, little columns.
(22:26):
I guess it's to resemble the columnar basalt. But I've
never seen anything like this before, and I tried to
google it to figure out what. Jeremy does not say
where this is. So I was googling giants causeway sculpture
came up with zips, So I don't know. Yeah, you'd
have to do like a deep search based on the
There's some sort of a big house in the background,
(22:48):
kind of a manor house, but I know who knows
what that is really creepy with this, Yeah, Jeremy continues,
since it appears your podcasting powers have now reached the
point of auto generation. I was momentarily concerned the giants
would be next, but fortunately neither of them appeared. Should
I be concerned about listening to future episodes? Winky face
(23:10):
best regards Jeremy. Well, Jeremy, I think you may soon
be driving and find a gray whale encrusted with barnacles
laying across the road, so be careful going around the
tight corners. But thanks for writing him. This is amusing.
I gotta kick out of this, and it does make
me wonder about it. This has the there's an intentionality
to this work. This appears to be an actual work
(23:33):
of art here. This is not just we encounter a
lot of stuff. I guess this encountered this everywhere, but
particularly in the American South, you find a lot of
sort of like junkyard art that is kind This seems
to be kind of you know, there's an intentional, outsider
art approach to it, but there's also just sort of
like the effect of stuff piling up. And I don't
(23:53):
get that feel from what we're looking at here. Oh no, no,
this is a sculpture, definitely. Yeah. You kind of want
to climb on it like it looks. I'm surprised there's
no children on it here. I always want to climb
on everything. All right, I think we should call today's
episode there. We've got a few messages about Weird House,
but we will We'll save those for next week. All right.
Just remindered everybody that Listener Mail publishes here on Mondays
(24:15):
and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Yeah,
if you want to keep up with what we're doing
on the show, really subscribe to a feed somewhere. That's
the best way to do it because we don't really
we don't really do much in the way of letting
folks know on social when there's a new episode or
any of that right now, So subscribing is the best
way to do it, and it helps off the show.
(24:36):
But let's see what else we got going on. We
got Tuesday, Rob, Can I add something though? Yes, yeah,
as our bosses have told us many times, at least
some podcast platforms out there, I think Apple Apple Podcasts
has been singled out there. There may be some weirdness
going on with people who are subscribed to our podcast,
but the platform stops auto downloading even though you didn't
(24:57):
tell it to do that. So if you're a fan
of the show and you want to make sure you're
always getting our new stuff, go in. Make sure that
you are, Make sure that you're subscribed if you meant
to be. Make sure that auto downloads are turned on.
Even if you had them turned on before. Somehow they
might have gotten turned off on their own. I don't
know why they do that, but that's what we've heard happens,
so just check on that. And we've also been told
(25:18):
that on some platforms, again specifically Apple Podcasts, it may
stop downloading episodes even if you have it set to
download episodes if you haven't listened to the last x
number maybe five episodes or something. So if you're one
of those people out there who likes to let them,
you know, save them up and then binge them, I mean,
you know that that's your right. You do that if
(25:39):
that's what you want, but just be aware that may
stop episodes from downloading. So if you want to make
sure you're always getting new episodes downloaded and you want
to help us out, a good idea might be to
just try to stay as current as you can, or
listen to at least one fresh episode per week, even
if you are saving them up to benj them on
the weekends or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, that way they'll digitally
(26:01):
manifest on your device so that they can physically manifest
in the world as you drive around. So again, he
has stuff to blow your mind. Podcast feed Core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listenermail on Mondays. On Wednesdays, a
short form artifact or monster fact, and then on Friday's
Weirdhouse Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious
concerns and just talk about a strange film huge thanks
to our audio producer JJ Pauseway. If you would like
(26:24):
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
or just to say hello, you can email us at
contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(26:44):
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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