Listener Mail: Another Morning

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

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and it's Monday, the day of the week that we
read back messages from the mail bag, messages you out
there and the audience have sent into our show account, which,

(00:24):
by the way, if you'd like to get in touch
is contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Uh,
get in touch for any reason at all. If you
have feedback on an episode that has aired in the past,
if you have h corrections, things to add to a topic,
suggestions for future topics, or if you just want to

(00:44):
share something interesting, email anytime. That's right. And if you
want to join the Stuff to Blow your Mind discord,
well email us and I'll send to the link. All right,
We've got no other preliminary business as far as I know,
So rob do you mind if I jump right in
with this first message? In response to our episodes about
animals throwing things, yeah, good for it. Oh and humans

(01:07):
throwing things. By the way, we we focused entirely on
humans in the fourth episode. Yeah. By by the fourth
episode it had completely evolved. So this first message was
from Maya, subject line the Throwing Madonna. And this email
was interesting because we had just finished recording an episode

(01:30):
covering exactly the subject Maya raises here when the email
came in, so it was certainly a bull's eye of
a suggestion, but she had some additional detail and color
about this idea from from William Calvin, so I thought
I would read this here on listener mail anyway, So
Maya rites, Hello Robin Joe, congratulations on the new baby

(01:51):
girl Joe. I'm sure she will contribute with a ton
of new ideas for the show. Children are so weird
and interesting. I will skip over this opportunity to go
on a baby looked at Me tangent. Maya goes on
your recent series on animals. Throwing things brought to mind.
The Throwing Madonna, a nine three book by William Calvin

(02:13):
in which he explores many ideas about the evolution of
the brain. The essay that lends the book its title is,
in Calvin's words, quote a parody involving maternal heartbeat sounds
on the typically male theories of handedness. In this essay,
he speculates that mother's would favor carrying their infant children

(02:33):
with the left arm, so the kids would purportedly be
soothed by her heartbeats. This would leave the right arm
free for throwing stones in order to hunt small game
and procure her sustenance. And the rest is evolution. On
a more serious, although equally stimulating note, Calvin also discusses
in a chapter devoted to the relationship between the act

(02:54):
of throwing and our huge brains, that the left hemisphere
quote seems to have a specialization for muscle sequencing, not
only for hand movement, but for oral facial movements as well. Thus,
those hominins that perfected pitching stones. And then a little
parenthetical here quote action at a distance one of the

(03:14):
better inventions of biological evolution, since sex, says Calvin, close
parenthetical via their left hemispheres would also be inadvertently selecting
for the evolution of language. Uh. And then she concludes,
go for it, OCTOPI all the best, Mayo. For some reason,

(03:34):
we keep coming back to this like, Okay, what's it
gonna take. What's it gonna take for the octopus to
uh to get on the path to technological intelligence, and
I feel like the big barrier for me is always
their relatively antisocial nature when compared to primates. So you know,
I uh, language, I think is a big part of
that process. And I don't know what kind of biological

(03:57):
impetus there is for developing language when you just don't
really want to be around or deal with other octopuses. Yeah,
what can they say to another octopus that they cannot
already say by throwing dirt or rocks at them? Yeah,
but no reason not to be optimistic. Yeah, a little
octo optimism for the day. Thank you for the email. Maya. Alright,

(04:24):
this next one comes to us from Carrie Carry rides
in and says Rob and Joe, I was surprised that
in your animal throwing stuff part two episodes you didn't
mention elephants throwing sand, dirt, and mud onto their backs
with their trunks. This is a well documented behavior and
it's definitely the purposeful throwing of stuff that has been
explained as them trying to ward off insects and provide
a protection from the sun. The action is not unlike

(04:46):
an octopus throwing sand at other octopuses, at least as
far as the material being thrown is concerned. Keep up
a good work carry yes, thankscry Yeah, I think I
think I kind of glossed over this detail and discussing
the evolution of the la elephant tool use as a
parasite control and a way of uh thermoregulation. But yes,

(05:07):
this is of course one of the major ways that
they use tools in the in in this case often
just dirt and sand as a way of covering up
that thick elephant skin that again looks so tough to us,
but it's actually quite sensitive and need to be protected
from parasites and the sun. You know, this email makes
me wonder in what ways we're limited by thinking about

(05:31):
tools often as like solid, fixed form objects like a
tool is maybe a stick or a rock. But why
isn't a tool equally constituted by you know, an amorphous
mass of substance like a clump of dirt or a
you know, uh massive water. Yeah. So, or as we
discussed in one of these episodes of primate poop, tool

(05:54):
or not a tool? Um, yeah, And I think in
this case I was clearly I was distracted by the
prospect of elephants throwing arrows, or at least stones and
and and tree limbs, uh and and maybe a horse
thrown in there as well that I just kind of
glossed over dirt and sand. It's hard to get into
and excited about dirt as as a as a tool used,

(06:14):
but it really is. Now speaking of elephant tool use, throwing,
and poop, all of these come together in the next email.
This is from Mike. Mike says, Hi, Joe and Rob.
About twenty five years ago, my future wife and I
went to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The elephants

(06:36):
there had an outdoor environment that was a half circle
with a five foot railing and a waterless moat between
them and us. There were three elephants in this area.
We noticed that about twenty five people were intently watching
and wondered why. Then we saw the dung everywhere at
our feet. It was spread across the sidewall area where

(06:56):
everyone was standing. One large elephant was standing in front,
near the edge of the enclosure. Suddenly he whipped his
trunk from between his legs and nailed one of the
three pea hens that were walking near us. This was amazing.
He threw the dung about thirty five to forty feet
and it literally knocked the bird to the ground. It

(07:16):
hit with a thud, perfect shot. Next, he counterclockwise curled
the end of his trunk, grabbed some more dung, and
hit the woman who is nearest him in the face.
She got her arms up and blocked it, but it
was accurate. A girl was yelling to her mother on
the right side of us to come see the elephant,
and he appeared to turn away from her and point

(07:38):
toward a couple of pea hens who had returned to
the area at that moment. He whipped his trunk to
the left and beamed the girl in the waste area.
She was startled and took off running. The elephant quickly
grabbed more dung and nailed her in the head as
she ran toward her mother again. Mike says, it was amazing.

(07:58):
I guess that is amazing, though I'm sure not what
people had in mind for the trip to the zoo
that day. Yeah, I hope everyone was okay anyway, Mike says,
given this, I suspect you're going to hear a lot
about such stories. When you were talking about elephants throwing spears,
I thought, with practice and help with technique, absolutely. You
didn't talk about what I believe would be the most

(08:19):
frightening situation, an elephant throwing something heavy. They are incredibly strong,
combined that with speed and accuracy. Wow. What impressed me
most was the accuracy. I got the sense he was
having fun, perhaps testing himself. He passed. Thanks, good show, Mike. Well, Mike,
as you're describing this story, I don't know that this

(08:41):
sounds to me like more consistent throwing accuracy than I
had been led to believe elephants were usually going to
be capable of as certainly without training. I don't know.
I mean, I don't think it's too surprising based on well,
I mean we did. We discussed accounts where where they
had been trained to throw arts at balloons, which clearly

(09:02):
they have been encouraged to do, but also that is
clearly taking advantage of of some sort of natural ability. Uh.
And then we do have those, uh, those clips from
the wild of an elephant throwing, for instance, a rock
at a rhino, elephant throwing a limb at a lady
in a truck on safari or something like that. So um, yeah,

(09:22):
I mean they seem to be good shots when they
are in the mood to do it. I guess a
lot of the examples I'd seen of elephants throwing stuff
in the wild, it looked more to me like a
not like a you know, super accurate pitch, but just
kind of a toss in the general direction of something. Yeah,
I guess that. You know, a lot of it comes
down to like what is being emoated by the throwing?

(09:45):
Is it kind of just a general throwing stuff around?
Are they, you know, peppering their back with dirt or
do they have an infra some pe hens uh that
sort of thing. Are they a little disturbed that there's
a vehicle in their vicinity or a rhino near the
water gung hole or something? Think of that effect as
for throwing larger objects, And I think we did mention
them potentially throwing human beings and war horses and tree limbs,

(10:09):
and that's plenty big. I would not want anything bigger
than that thrown at me by an elephant, And I
mean I would assume nothing smaller was thrown at me
by an elephant either. But anyway, very illuminating. Thank you
for the email, Mike. All right, here's another one that's
one comes to us from Jerome Jerome rites and says,

(10:31):
listening to the first part of the animals Throwing Things episode,
I'm sure it would seem reasonable that certainly highly intelligent
animals would throw objects. However, it makes me think of
my ball python when she eats her large rat frozen
and reheated. After constricting the rat, she will then poke
her face around the rat in her grasp to try

(10:51):
to find the head, since she must swallow the rat
snout first in order for it to go down. Sometimes
it appears she will get frustrated and throw the rat
to the other side of her feeding bin to try
to reorient the feeder and try again finding the snout.
This is obviously purposeful throwing, and only observed in this
particular instance. I hope you all might find this interesting. Yeah,

(11:14):
so it sounds like the snake is using throwing as
a kind of physical reset button on a behavior. Yeah,
the way I'm picturing it, it makes sense like it's
not a situation where merely dropping the animal is the
most energy efficient thing to do, because then the snake
potentially has to then reorient its entire body. But if

(11:34):
it can just sort of like throw the rodent to
the side, then it perhaps has to use less energy
than to get in position to feed. Again. Yeah, I
also I don't think I realized that bull python had
to swallow the rats. Now first, I mean, it makes
sense now that it's it's said to me. I believe this,
not that it's mentioned, because I'm just kind of imagining

(11:56):
how that depends us, that snake would need to eat
the road. Yeah. And it's more, Um, I want to
say aerodynamic, that's not the word. More dynamic. More throw too, dynamic,
digesto dynamic. There you go. Yeah, okay, next message also

(12:22):
about throwing animals. This comes from Jasper. This involves the
pronunciation of the names of Swedish places. I apologize for
how I'm probably gonna get that wrong, but um, Jessper says,
listening to your two part series about throwing, I was
reminded of a myth I heard as a kid related
to the topic. In my home country, Sweden, you will
find tons of lakes. The two largest ones are easily

(12:45):
visible on a map, situated in the mid south of
the country and named Vaughnern and Vatern respectively. If you
take a look at the southern Baltic Sea east of Sweden,
you will find the country's largest islands, oh and Gotland.
Fun fact. Ohlan literally means island land. Okay, it doesn't

(13:07):
take a lot of imagination to see that the two
lakes and islands have a striking resemblance in shape and size.
The version of the myth I heard was about two
giants having a throwing contest. One of them picked up
a huge part of the earth and threw it into
the Baltic Sea, creating Gotland, and when the whole eventually

(13:29):
filled up with water Vonnern the other giant didn't manage
to pick up as much material or throw it as far,
but it resulted in Vatern and oh Land. M H.
I couldn't find much information about the myth on Google,
but I did run into another myth about a Swedish
giant throwing things. The giant Vista had been visiting the

(13:50):
region between the two largest lakes to attend a party
and was on his way home. He picked up a
piece of the land and threw it in Vatern to
have a patch of land to step on before he
continued his journey. This created the Lake Lens Young or
the land Lake, and the island of Visingso, situated in

(14:10):
Sodern Thanks for making my day several days a week.
Keep it up. Still looking forward to those episodes about
the moons of the Solar Systems outer planets. Oh yeah,
we did say we would do this. I think I
always fear that maybe there's less to say about them,
but surely that's not true. M Yeah. Or and if
we have to cobble them together, cover more than one's

(14:33):
one plan. I mean, the way we do approach them
in the past two is we we discussed a lot
of the mythology, the Greek and Roman mythology that it
might be tied up in the naming. Uh So, yeah,
there's plenty to discuss. We just need to getting a
spacey mood, all right. This next one comes to us

(14:54):
from Joe the Listener. Uh. Joe the Listener says, hey, guys,
thanks for the funds. He is I'm throwing animals. When
you talked about the mere cats throwing centipedes, I was
instantly reminded of my family's backyard at chickens. Our chickens
surprized the tender morsel that is a common garden snail.
When they acquire one, a tremendous flurry of activity ensues

(15:17):
as they wrestle one another for the delicious treat. One
critical aspect of this excitement is extracting the snail from
its shell. Typically, the chickens will do this by grabbing
the unfortunate mollusk by its head and whacking it against
the ground until the shell breaks. They can and do
throw the snails. The jury is still out on whether
this is intentional or not, but the throws seem to

(15:39):
be preferentially targeted at tree trunks in large rocks, leading
credence to my hypothesis that they are being thoughtful about it.
I did a bit of research and this behavior is
not uncommonly observed in birds. Song thrushes in particular, are
known for smashing snails on rocks. The literary reference to
the thrush knocking at Smog's door is unmis stakable and

(16:00):
no doubt of special interest to you both. Yeah, oh, okay,
this is interesting. This is kind of like what I
used to observe my dog doing, throwing the puzzle, you know,
treat containing toy up against the wall, or just kind
of tossing it in general to see if you can
get the thing out from the middle. Ah, you should
have brought that up. We were talking about air bud.

(16:21):
I did we talked about it? You do we talked
about this? Yeah? No, no, I don't, okay blank that
we recorded this just the other day. I know, you
know sometimes that you know, I'm I'm I'm looking ahead
in the notes. I must have blanked on that. That's okay,
I know how that it feels. Yeah, I mean, it
wasn't a ball, it wasn't quite basketball, but that's still okay.

(16:42):
Um that now the and that you know, I also
am blanking on this particular part of the hobbit. I
don't remember the thrush knocking at smocks door. I don't either, Actually,
what what? Okay? So I'm just gonna google it. Okay,
I'd totally forgotten about this plot detail, but a quick
Google search suggests that the thrush is significant in the

(17:03):
Hobbit in helping the party, like Bilbo and the and
the dwarves, find the entrance or find out how to
open the entrance to the What's it? The Misty mountain
Ers are lonely mountain a small cavern because the thrush
is throwing a snail against the door of the cavern
to try to break it. I guess and get the

(17:23):
snail out. But this gives them some kind of indication
of how the door works. Okay, al right, that does
sound faintly familiar. Now, sorry to disappoint you, listener, Joe,
I'm sure you expected us to get that reference right away.
Let's see. Should we finish off with a couple of
messages about weird house cinema? Well, I'll do this one

(17:48):
from Pamela. Pamela says, Hi, Joe and Robert. Even though
it was over forty years ago, I absolutely remember the
advanced promos for Scanners because they told nothing about the movie.
It was a commercial that mostly showed an audience viewing
the movie with tiny clips and the ten seconds and

(18:08):
you feel the pain voice over. The audience reaction was
dramatic and profound, to say the least. And Pamela says,
A group of my teen friends and I had to
see this, uh the second it hit down, and we
did Holly, a bunch of let's see dollar signs, ampersand
even I think a euro sign in there. So this
is this is European swearing, Uh, money's worth and bragging

(18:33):
rights and spoiler rights. Hey, we were teenagers. The theater
shouldn't have even led us in. Technically, I have attached
a link to the TV spot that worked so well
on us. Maybe we can play a little bit of
the audio of this TV spot here. Yeah, let's play
a little bit at least from the beginning where you
where they established the audience. You are watching the live

(18:53):
filming of the theater audience reaction to scenes from the
motion picture scanners. Ten seconds the pain begins its gree
seconds you can't twenty seconds you explode, experience the terrifying
power of anyway, Pamela says, love everything you guys do

(19:17):
looking forward to Weird House number one d Pamela, this
is a great spot because it's kind of like William Castle,
except without tazing the audience. It's just letting the movie
actually do what William Castle was always suggesting it would do,
you know, have people like screaming in the aisles and
nearly vomiting in the in their seats. This trailer does
a great job of, first of all, implying that this

(19:38):
is a spectacle that you need to behold, and you
need to view it communally. You need to be a
part of the movie going uh public in order to
fully appreciate this, which is sound. That's as a sound
argument I think for going to the movies in general.
But then it's kind of implies that your head might
blow up on watching the film too, Like they don't

(19:59):
tell you that's not going to happen, and they kind
of imply that it will, and that we don't get
enough of today and trail looks like nobody's saying if
you set and watch all of Avatar too, your skin
will turn blue. Like the Voice of God isn't telling
us that, and they're not. They're not daring us to
enter the theater anymore. Yeah, it's really a shame. I

(20:20):
I do like the brand of movie marketing that explicitly
says this film will harm you. And certainly movies today
still have vast potential to harm. So there's a lot
to warn about. All right, here's one more that SI
comes to us from Eric via our discord. Eric says,

(20:43):
so I recently watched The Werewolf versus the Vampire Woman.
It was enjoyable enough, but the standout was the lead.
He was absolutely great. I looked him up and found
out it was Paul Nashi, who I had never heard
of anyway, It's fast forward to today and continuing my
catchup of the cast by the podcast by listening to

(21:04):
the Weird House Cinema episode of Horror Rises from the Tomb.
I was delighted to hear this man has a dozen
other werewolf movies under his belt. Definitely looking to add
more of his films to my watch list, not to
mention Horror Rizes and also Assignment Terror. Still need to
listen to this episode, Eric, I gotta say I was
surprised by this message because I did not expect we

(21:26):
would get pre existing Paul Nashy fans coming in on
our episodes. Yeah. I mean, we're trying to spread the
gospel of Paul Nashy. Uh, but I mean he does,
he does have, he already has a following. But it
was nice to hear from someone who had encountered him, uh,
you know, in the wild as it were. And I
also agree with Eric, it is inherently comforting to know
that the strategic reserves of Paul Nashy films is well stocked. Um,

(21:49):
you know, there's there's so much out there to explore.
It's nice on one level, you know, you want to
watch all the movies you want to watch, especially though
you know older films. Having a blog of films that
you won't have time to watch all of them. I
mean that can be that can get you down, I guess,
but also it's nice to know that you have all
that untapped potential. So um, as far as Weird House goes,

(22:11):
it's it's too soon to start thinking about the next
Paul Nashy movie, but I will say one. I'm very
interested in his nine Hunchback of the Morgue, in which
you guessed at Paul Nashi plays a hunchback who works
in a morgue. Is he also a werewolf? No? I
don't think he's a werewolf from this one. He's just
a hunchback who falls in love with a dying woman.

(22:31):
Look at my range. All right, We're gonna go ahead
and close the mail bag then for another day, but
we'll be back next week. We have messages we didn't
even get to in this one, and I'm sure more
will come in so so keep it coming. If you
have thoughts on past episodes, current episodes, potential future episodes
of stuff to blow your mind of Weird House Cinema

(22:52):
of other listener male episodes of Artifact or Monster Fact
episodes right in We would love to hear from you.
In the meantime, we'll just remind you, yeah, it was
your mail comes out every Monday. Core episodes of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind on Tuesday and Thursday, Monster Factor
Artifact on Wednesday, and on Friday. We set aside most
serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Weird House Cinema. Huge thanks to our audio producer J J. Pauseway.

(23:14):
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, to share something interesting, or just
to say hello, you can email us at contact at
stuff to blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow

(23:36):
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