Listener Mail: Crab Sabbath

It's listener mail time again and Karnie the mailbot seems rather grumpy about a particular holiday. Join Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick as they read and respond to various listener mail from the past month. 

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're coming at you with new listener mail. It's a
it's our listener mail round up, our first of the
new year. Yeah. Yeah, the years starting to get away

(00:24):
from us. Here, Wait a minute, did I just lie?
I think maybe we did do one at like the
very beginning of January. Yeah, but we probably recorded that
one in the previous year. That's true. This is the
first recording of nineteen. Okay, I'm sorry. Now I have
to I have to say this. We always have assistance
from our mail bought Carney. Say, hi Carney, and UH.
Today we're having to just tiptoe around a couple of

(00:47):
topics because um looking on robot egg shells exactly, because
there's a there's a certain holiday coming up this week
which we shall not name, that Carney has become very
sensitive about, and it is UH is prone to U
two bouts of rage if it is even mentioned now.
It may have to do with a certain recent breakup

(01:08):
with a certain office machine that say, makes copies of
pieces of paper. Yeah, I think I think that's exactly
what happened. Um, so he's a little touchy. Um. We're
gonna try and avoid using the the L word and
certainly the V word. Um, but I don't, I don't.
I don't think it's gonna get in the way, but

(01:29):
it let's just be very cautious as we proceed through
these various bits of listener mail. All right, Carney's bringing
one over right now, let's let's take a look at it. Okay, Now,
this first one is I'm not going to read the
whole message. It's just part of a genre of listener
responses that Robert and I have gotten to. Uh. Back
in the was in in the summer or last fall,

(01:49):
we did a couple of episodes about the age of
the Earth because listeners were asking about this, like how
we actually know that the Earth is about four and
a half billion years old, and so we talked about that,
and then at one when in the episode we discussed
how multiple scientists we were reading had used an expression
I think was thousands of millions or something, and we

(02:10):
were like, well, just why not billions? And multiple listeners
got in touch with us to give us a very
good answer to this question to say, the reason some
scientists avoid using the word billion is because billion means
different things in different languages. Now, isn't that confusing where
different languages have different like words for orders of magnitude
that are used to mean a different order of magnitude

(02:31):
and another language that's horrible and not confusing at all.
So I think, for example, in like in French and
in Dutch, like a billion actually means in English a trillion.
So just to avoid confusion, the term they would use
sometimes would be they'd either like use scientific notation in
the number of years, which is one reason. Scientific notation

(02:53):
with like the tend to the power of something is
very useful. But then also they could just say thousands
of millions. So cleared that all right? Here's another one.
This one comes to us from A C. J. C
J Rides. Hi, Guys, I've been listening for years, but
I haven't had anything interesting to comment on until I
really listen to the episode un Biophilia. I've been working

(03:13):
with horses for almost my entire life, about two decades now.
It's my job to train grsage horses. Oh boy. One
of the things I've noticed is horses are indeed terrified
of anything that is shaped like a snake, even remotely.
Here in part of Michigan, we only have very tiny snakes,
so the horses really don't spook at real snakes, but
objects on the ground like lead ropes, pitch four candles,

(03:36):
electrical cords, large branches, pieces of plastic, rustling, leaves, their
own shadow, and hoses especially scare them to death. The
young horses are the worst with this, but all of
them are susceptible to snake meltdowns. Leaping, snorting, bucking, stomping, etcetera.
Is common. This earns them an annoyed glare and stern
knock it off from me. It's so common that it

(03:59):
really has zero fact on my fight or flight instinct anymore.
Usually I can feel it in my hands way before
they actually spook. Well, anyway, I thought you might get
a kick out of the prominent example of biophilia that
horses exhibit. Horses are also scared of puddles they look
like black holes to them because they have very little
death perception, or dark objects close to the ground, which

(04:20):
I think resemble a crouching predator. I enjoy every episode
that comes out, and it makes my long commute, much
better keep it up. A firsthand account of biophobia. Now,
I know, I can't remember if in that Biophilia episode
we talked about the idea of like, uh, like sneaking
up behind a cat with a cucumber in your hand.
We may, I know we've I know I've brought that

(04:40):
up on the show before. But yeah, I loved this.
H this account here in part because my wife what
is was a horse person and UH and her aunt
UH still has horses and we go out and visit
visit them in Arizona every so often. So I'm exposed
to a lot of people telling me about horses. And

(05:02):
the horses do come up a bit in our research
as well. I mean when you when you consider the uh,
the history of a humanity, and the horse plays a
vital role, I mean, depending on who is doing the analysis,
sometimes an essential role. Absolutely, so, thank you very much,
c J. I mean, and then on top of that,
there they are animals. We often kind of take that
for granted. Those of us who do actually work with

(05:25):
horses to realize that this is this is a like
a a a sort of a herd based prey animal
that we have domesticated for our use, but it is
still a large creature. It is still a creature with
a lot of hardwired responses to the natural world. Well,
on that note, looks like there is another animal based

(05:47):
listener mail coming in here. Oh yeah, So remember in
our episode about thought experiments, we were talking about Isaac
Newton using the you know, Cannonball Mountain to illustrate the
idea of orbital mechanics. Why things an orbit in space?
And so Isaac Newton, you'll recall, we discussed had an enemy,
the Royal astronomer John Flamsteed, who Newton just mercilessly harassed.

(06:10):
And there's this diary entry that we discussed in the
episode where Flamsteed was complaining that Newton was coming at
him with quote Navish talk and calling him quote puppy, etcetera.
And we wondered what that meant. Well, our listener Dolly,
got in touch to let us know, and Dolly wrote,
I got to haul out my old friends. Slang and
its analogs by Farmer and Henley, published in eighteen ninety

(06:34):
And here's the entry for puppy and this is puppy
pup or puppy dog colloquial a vain or unmannerly fool
pop a coxcomb hence puppy ish, conceit or affection, puppy
ish or puppie impertinent, puppy headed stupid. I love I

(06:57):
love it. When we can we can find a bit
of derogatory slaying that has gone extinct and kind of
pull up the fossil and look at it again and
try to imagine daily interactions in which this was the
vile thing to say that somebody would like they like
write in their diary about it, like this is really
he called me puppy. I can't believe it. Yeah, or

(07:18):
some yeah, someone drops puppy during a conversation. Everyone's like, whoa, WHOA,
cool down there, buddy, don't need to get mean about
all of this. All right, Well, we have a couple
of listener mails here regarding demon Eaters and Possessed Tools
or Lunar New Year episode. Yeah, I just came out
the other week. This is probably one of the most
recent episodes will be UH dealing with in this listener mail.

(07:41):
The first one comes from Brandon. Brandon writes in and says, hey,
Robert and Joe just finished listening to demon Eaters and
Possessed Tools episode great topic. I loved it For whatever reason.
The possessed tool portion or one of your thoughts about
why they developed a personality or traits reminded me of
a great short story by Arthur C. Clark called dial

(08:02):
f for Frankenstone. In summary, the story is set in
so pre interwebs. At O one thirty, all of the
phones in the world start to ring. People pick up
to hear strange inhuman noises. The following day, all the
crazy happens. Everything is shutting down, planes crashing, electrical grid
is erratic, missiles are launched. Then the protagonists figure out

(08:26):
the world's phone system has become so large and complex
it is now sentient. This is the plot determinator. But
like more than ten years before Terminator, around ten years
before he continues. It makes me think that over a
lifetime of handling duty and maybe different owners or at
least users would change the personality of these possessed tools,

(08:48):
like if you used a knife strictly for cutting bread
versus strictly for cutting meat. Uh ANYWOOSEL love the show?
B Well, yeah, thank you Brandon. Yeah, I've never read
that story. That is Terminator, right, like that you you
connect enough machines together and they become too smart and
become sentient. Essentially. Yeah, I think that's the basic concept.

(09:10):
I will say, I do. I do love it. Anytime
someone either writes in via listener mail or shares with
this on the Stuff to Blow your mind to Facebook
group the discussion module, uh, some bit of of old
sci fi or recent sci fi that ties into a
topic we've covered. It's always a joy because it's usually
something I've I've never heard of, or I've heard of,

(09:30):
but I don't really know about the you know, the
details of the plot. You know, I can certainly see
how obviously it sounds like this story is meant to
be a little bit funny, but I can certainly see
how in the seventies, before people had really tried this
level of networking, you could wonder like, well, what would prevent,
you know, just massive networking of machines from somehow getting

(09:54):
some kind of emergent intelligent property that we couldn't predict
from the beginning. Basically, all you need to start with
is the idea that no individual neuron is sentient or conscious,
but you network enough of them together in the right
configuration and somehow the mind emerges. But then again we
don't know, and that no individual neuron is conscious. Maybe

(10:14):
it is. Maybe consciousness is additive, you just like concatinate
enough of it inside the same skull. All right. This
next one comes to us from Clarissa. Clarissa says, I
really enjoyed the latest podcast on demon hunts and other
lunar New Year themes. One of my favorite things about
all the podcasts from How Stuff Works is is that
while it's clearly a US based network, you cover topics

(10:34):
from around the world. I love learning about other cultures.
I've heard a few podcasts can't remember exactly which ones,
but they were definitely from HSW that have reminded me
of a favorite y A book, The Demon Hunter Story
brought it to mind again, and I thought you two
might really enjoy the book. It's a very quick read
in plays with a lot of fun concepts about reality.

(10:54):
It's called The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynn Jones. She
writes a lot of really good to early y A stories,
the most well known being Howel's Moving Castle. Oh yes,
this is this would be the book that Miyazaki based
his movie house Moving Castle hun Yeah, yeah, I like
that movie. Yeah, I've never I've never read the original material,
but I absolutely adore that film. I didn't know there

(11:15):
was original material. I guess I thought it was just
a movie anyway. Uh, Clarissa continues, but I would recommend
Homeward Bounders and the game. Homeward Bounders is about a
kid whose entire world is being secretly run by people
playing intricate RPG table games. The game is about Roman
gods as kids in modern time and plays with themes

(11:36):
that run through myth worldwide. Both are really clever illustrations
of unique ways to imagine the world. I know Robert
has a son who may be old enough to enjoy
the books. I'd guess they're about the same level as
the first couple of Harry Potter novels. Thank you for
the show. Oh well, thanks for the recommendation. Yeah, indeed,
my son is. My wife is currently reading my son
um the Harry Potter novels. Indeed, they're on. I think

(12:00):
they're about ready to start the fourth one. I read
him The Hobbit. We started on The Lord of the
Rings and we kind of petered out for the time
being because there's a lot of there's a lot of
not much happening at the beginning of that book. What
was the story? He asked about the Hobbit, like, you've
been reading it, awhile, and he said, like, when does
the story started? The Hobbit was all gold, it was
it was Lord of the Rings reading and you know,

(12:22):
there is a lot of material at the beginning about
the life of Hobbits and you know, their various meals
and whatnot. And he was he asked me, he said,
is it the Lord of the Rings yet? And so
it will come back to that one. But I would
love to have, you know, some some sort of good
chapter book that I could read to him that I
have some attachment to, or can you know something I

(12:42):
can discover for the first time. So I've been I'm
currently reading, uh like a kid's adaptation of the Ramin
Yana to In and after that maybe yeah, maybe this
maybe maybe the last Unicorn. I can't decide. That sounds
like a good problem to have. Oh yeah, alright, On
that note, we're going to take a quick right and
when we come back, more listener mail than Alright, we're back.

(13:06):
So this next group of emails came in about our
episodes on the split brain experiments where the there were
experiments in like the nineteen sixties on patients who had
undergone a corpus callisotomy where their two brain hemispheres were
severed in order to cure epilepsy, and that that involved
the severing of the corpus closum and it produced these

(13:27):
very strange effects. So this first message comes from our listener,
Chris nij She says, Hey, Rob and Joe, I listen
to your two party on the split brain and was
amused with the parts regarding the nuances of language coming
from the left brain versus a very rudimentary grasp of
it from the right brain, and that is something we discussed.

(13:48):
In most cases, most people's left hemisphere is very dominant
in language. Uh, she continues, I have temporal lobe epilepsy,
and one of the symptoms of that is aphasia, which
is trouble with speech or understanding or generating speech, whether
as part of an absence seizure or after a tonic
chronic seizure. When others are around me after the seizure,

(14:10):
including paramedics, I can understand them perfectly, but have a
very hard time coming up with words. To communicate since
the epilepsy affects the left side of my brain. Three
things I usually can say though, are um and sorry,
Yes I'm Canadian. Uh. I think it reassures people to

(14:31):
hear me swear because they know it's me. Now, I'm
glad I can explain to these people that these words
are probably so ingrained in me that my right brain
can handle them while my left brain no pork too good.
Those were very fascinating episodes. I look forward to hearing
more podcasts about the other topics touched on in these ones.
All the best, Chris Nash, Well, thanks so much for

(14:52):
sharing your experience. Uh yeah, this, uh, this seems to
line up with a lot of what we were reading
that like, in some cases it seems to very from
person to person, and in some cases, the right brain
can understand much more language than it can generate, like
it can sometimes respond to speech but not really create
much speech. It looks like you've got three words here,
and I wish you great power in using them. All right,

(15:13):
here's another one from Shannon. Shannon writes in and says,
Dear Robert and Joe, thanks for the fascinating two parter
unsplit brains. I've been interested in the topic ever since
my sixth grade science fair, where I attempted to determine
if left handed people are more typically right brain creat
a visual, intuitive, etcetera, and vice versa. Only later did
I learn the left brain versus right brain people concept

(15:34):
is largely a myth, which explains why I found little
to no correlation on the question you, Hey, I want
to say a null result is a good result. It's
worthwhile to do that. Yeah, it's It's still a good
science experiment. On the question you raise of how it's
possible that corpus calacotomy patients display such little behavioral change
after the surgery, specifically when it comes to moral reasoning

(15:54):
and theory of mind, I have two thoughts you brought up.
How odd it is that these patients apparently not noticeably
change in everyday moral decision making, where they are presumably
using a system one reasoning. This made me wonder if
perhaps the area in the right parietal lobe has been
linked to this type of moral reasoning is in fact
part of a system to mechanism, and maybe there is

(16:17):
a separate system one process that is harder to replicate
in a lab In other words, when calasotomy patients are
making quick, everyday judgments, maybe they are using a different,
quicker neurological process that is not affected by splitting the brain,
and it is only when they are made to sit
down and rationalize slowly through choices in an experimental hypothetical

(16:37):
that this right brain process occurs or fails too. On
the other hand, I also like the idea of various
compensation mechanisms that work in real world situations but not
in the lab. One of these might be experiential memory,
as you touched on while discussing the band or snatch.
We do make theory of mind related moral judgments every day,

(16:58):
but perhaps not too many of our novel situations. For example,
maybe you have a friend who sometimes makes inappropriate jokes,
but you know not to take him seriously because you
understand he doesn't mean to be insulting. Then one day
your corpus colossum gets cut. The next time he makes
an inappropriate comment. You might not be able to imagine

(17:18):
his intentions in the same way, but you can still
remember dismissing him as harmless in the past, and maybe
you can even remember imagining his attention is his intentions
in some way the neural pathway is already there, so
maybe you don't have to rely on the same cut
off right brain area to make that judgment. Just some
wild speculations of mine. Hope they make some kind of sense.

(17:38):
Thank you again for consistently delivering entertaining and thought provoking shows.
And I'm loving Invention too, sincerely, Shannon. Oh, thanks Shannon. Yeah,
those are some really interesting ideas. So one of the
things when you talk about the idea of system one
versus system too, that's sort of along the lines of
what the authors speculate in their conclusion, though they might
have had it inverted from what you say. Um, but yeah,

(18:00):
I really like this idea of using memory. Like one reason,
even if you can't access certain parts of the brain
you would commonly use for moral reasoning, you might just
rely on your memory of how you normally interact with
certain people. And and the fact is probably most of
the people you're making important moral judgments about throughout the day,
or probably people you already know, unless you're like a

(18:22):
judge or in a jury or something. Now, I love
that she also mentioned that she's listening to Invention because
we we have had some exciting episodes of Invention come
out come out recently, including one on the Wheel, while
we have two part are on the wheel actually, um,
where we discuss, of course just key archaeological cultural evidence
for the emergence of wheel technology, but also with you know,

(18:45):
throw in some discussion of everything from Gary Larson's Far
Side cartoons to you know, Tibetan Buddhism. Well, I'm gonna
high five you across the table mime wise for remembering
to plug invention. If you haven't checked out Invention yet,
go check it out, check it out and subscribe. It'll
do you good, It'll do us good. But anyway, let's
get to the next message. This is from our listener Adam.

(19:08):
So Adam writes and says, Hi, Robert and Joe, I
was just listening to the episode Split Brain, Part two
and wanted to share a thought no pun intended. I'm
not sure if that's a pun, Adam, but okay, um,
your final point was to encourage people to think for
themselves rather than base their beliefs on someone else's, such
as those of a public figure. I found myself pausing
and thinking about this for a minute. On one hand,

(19:30):
I agree that being able to think for yourself is
very important, and that that skill is undertaught. On the
other hand, there's been a very clear increase in a
distorted faux critical thinking recently. I think I know where
you're going with this, Adam, and I think I agree.
This is manifested in Michael Gove's sick of Experts vision
of the world, where people feel their feelings hold the

(19:50):
same objective value as an expert's actual knowledge. In years
of experience, we've seen the downsides of this in public
discourse already. Worse we see in the failure to solve
major problems such as climate change. I'm quite confident this
isn't what you meant, but I thought it was worth
bringing up, since to a degree, we must rely on
others as a source of information. Since none of us

(20:12):
can be an expert in everything or experience everything, the
outside world acts almost as a third hemisphere to our brains. Unfortunately,
it feeds in both necessary and incorrect information. Even the
post talk rationalizations that you talked about being used to
explain what the brain did unconsciously sounds a lot like
the political and non political tribalism we're seeing so much of. Somehow,

(20:35):
I feel this may tie together as one side of
the brain responds to a message that the other side
would not, but still needs to defend anyway. Apologies if
I ranted too long. I just wanted to comment also
and say thank you for the work you do. I
started listening to podcasts to keep me occupied during my
daily train commute, but now have so many that I'm
rarely not listening to something. Stuff to Blow your Mind

(20:56):
is a lot of fun and a good bit different
than most of my economics, politics, news and side shows.
Keep up the great work, best Adam. Oh thanks, Yeah,
thanks Adam, and Adam, I think you make a really
excellent point part of what I what I think I
was trying to say in this episode has been a
while now, but I remember talking about the idea that,
you know, the the left brain. If Michael Gazzaniga's left

(21:17):
brain interpreter theory is correct, it just sort of like
immediately incorporates the deliverances of the right hemisphere into the
idea of self and says, this is just me thinking,
and that is kind of normal because like that's your brain, right.
But the idea was that we were discussing Peter Watts
and uh, and his idea that well, if you can,
like if you could insert thoughts into the brain, like

(21:40):
via a direct brain to computer interface or brain to
brain interface, what would prevent the brain from taking those
inserted thoughts just as if they were coming from the
right hemisphere and saying like, Okay, this is just me thinking,
this is actually just me like not even detecting that
the thoughts are alien. But then I think that this
other thing came up because Robert you pointed out that
we often do this with with external actors anyway. I mean,

(22:03):
the idea is that often to find out what we
think about an issue, we just go and consult somebody
who we listen to, and whatever their view is, that
just gets incorporated directly as self. Yeah, that's just what
I think now, And I guess that's what I was
trying to discourage, the direct and automatic incorporation of the
views of others as your own view. Instead, you should

(22:24):
consider do I have a good reason to listen to
this person's opinion on this subject? Yeah? I know, I
don't know a lot about the uh this Michael Gove's
UH six Sick of Experts vision that that is mentioned
in this listener mail. But I do wonder sometimes that
you do encounter people who, you know, they do have
that idea like I, you know, I this is my
gut feeling on this particular topic. And you know, granted

(22:47):
they're probably influenced by voices here and there, you know,
as we all are. But but still they have this
idea that Nope, I'm I'm making up my own mind
on this, and in my opinion on this has has
as value and is you know, screw it, the correct
vision of reality. And I wonder if sometimes this is

(23:07):
an attractive way of thinking about say, scientific concepts, uh,
because we erroneously turn to examples in artistic creation or
music or you know, you name it outsider art where
we say, well, you know that the story of like
the self taught individual who never went to to art school, uh,

(23:30):
you know, can't read cheap music, but can play you know,
you know that creates all these beautiful songs and so
and some of these models. And you can sort of
certainly you can get into a big argument within any
artistic medium about uh, you know, the you know, outsider
artists versus you know, the highly trained artists and traditions, etcetera.

(23:51):
But there's certainly not. It's it's apples and oranges. I
think when you're comparing um the artist to the scientist, Yeah,
I think that's exactly right. I mean, arts or a
field in which we highly prize intuition and sort of
inherent skillfulness over over training a lot of times. And
also the purpose of art is to create a response

(24:11):
in the audience, and if it creates that response, then
in a way it's successful. There's not like I mean,
people could have arguments about this, but I don't think
that there's a way to be right or wrong in
art or music or whatever. Well the artist is, you know,
whatever the medium they're they're they're trying to create a
shape based on something inside themselves that maybe inside another

(24:34):
person as well. They're creating something, you know, based on
an intimate knowledge, inner knowledge, but say something like someone
like a like a climate scientist, they are or or
um um, you know, various other scientific field You're you're
trying to take something that we do not have innate
knowledge of. You know, it's a complex system that is

(24:54):
beyond the human experience. There is a shape out there,
it's like buried in the sand, and you're trying to
un cover it and get a good model of what
it looks like. And you can't use that that intuition
it works so so well in many cases on the
inner exploration, you can't use that on the outer exploration. Yes,
I think that's a really good way of thinking about it,
and I really appreciate Adam getting in touch her because

(25:16):
this is I think one of the big tensions of
modern intellectual life is the tension between thinking for yourself
and listening to people who know what they're talking about.
And these two things, like, they're both very important and
an important part of like practicing good critical thinking and
being a well informed person who's more likely to come
to the you know, to know what's true about things,

(25:38):
is finding the correct balance of wind exercise these two thoughts.
I mean, I think one thing is it's it's good
to think for yourself. But as Adam points out, you
don't have time to think for yourself on every issue.
It's impossible. So you have to know what a real
expert looks like and sounds like versus somebody who's just
claiming to be an expert and be able to like
know when to listen to them on subjects that you

(26:00):
don't have the time to become fully educated on yourself. Yeah,
there's so many topics I do not want to be
an expert in. I don't want to be an expert in.
Uh uh, you know auto mechanics. That that's somebody else's domain,
and I'll gladly refer to their expertise. All right. I
think Carney has one more dripping bit of brain listener
mail for us here. This one comes also from an atom,

(26:23):
but a totally different atom. Hello, Robert and Joe. I'm
a longtime listener of the show for him North Carolina,
but I've never felt like I had something worth writing
in about until now. I have a condition known as
confusional arousal, also called sleep drunkenness. While I have not
been formally diagnosed, I have had several textbook episodes. Uh.

(26:43):
This is just an expression, as I don't believe there
is much literature on the condition. After doing a little research,
I have found that it is not even mentioned in
the D S M five, but there are several articles
about it online. My experiences with the condition have all
been told to me by others, as I have virtually
no memory of the events, but several people, including my
mother and former girlfriend have shared similar reports. It goes

(27:05):
something like this. I fall asleep while trying to stay awake.
Someone wakes me up. I am seemingly alert, but extremely confused,
unable to recognize people or where I am, and sometimes
mumbling or talking nonsensely. Then I go back to sleep
and wake up with no memory of the event, although
sometimes I have sort of a feeling that something happened.
One particular episode was quite frightening. I was watching TV

(27:27):
with my then girlfriend and fell asleep on her couch.
The next thing I remember, she was driving and we
were nearly to my house, about a fifteen minute drive
from hers. She was very upset, and I eventually got
her to tell me that I had an episode, and
along the way I said I hate you. I remember
saying something like that. Wasn't me in response, but I
believe still that because I have no memory of it,

(27:47):
and my conscious self would never have thought, much less
said something like that. Still, it raised the question to
her and myself of whether part of my unconscious mind
felt that way. Even before I listened to your split
brain episode, I had the intuition that this episode was
due to parts of my brain, perhaps one whole hemisphere
remaining asleep on the rest was awake. I recognize that
this assumption could be false, as this phenomenon is barely

(28:09):
recognized in psychology, must let much less explained, but I
don't know how else this could be explained. Any insight
you could give would be appreciated, and I believe this
would fit in well with any future paras omnia episodes
you would record. Anyway, Thank you for this seemingly endless,
insightful and fascinating content you have me. Uh. You have
brought me hours of entertainment and blown my mind many times.

(28:31):
I especially enjoy your episodes related to space travel and
science fiction, but all of them are great. Best regards, Adam, Well,
thanks Adam. Uh yeah, I mean, I think the realm
of sleep is one of the easiest places people can
go to to understand what it's like to not know
your own brain, you know, because they're everybody's had the
experience I bet of doing something in a dream that

(28:55):
you would you would think you would never do in
normal life, and you would never want to do. You
feel horrible about right, and then you wake up and
you think, oh my god, you know, I just had
a dream. Where I slapped my grandmother or something that
that would just be horrible, Um, why did I do that?
Is that part of what my brain really wants to do?
It You're you're confronted with the idea that you have

(29:15):
things going on in your brain that are not part
of your volition, you know, not not part of your
normal will or your normal understanding of yourself that you know,
I can't say that I ever really have dreams where
I do things that I wouldn't do in reality. Really yeah,
like and not now. I certainly have dreams where the
protagonist of the dream is not me, you know, where

(29:37):
it's more of a narrative dream, it's a dream about
somebody else or some other people. But dreams in which
I am myself. I am often like really inconveniently tied
to my own um uh, you know, moral behavior, like
they would be. It would be a lot more fun
if in some of these cases if I was just

(29:58):
essentially lucid dreaming and could you know, play the bad
guy internal grand theft autoing essentially, But it never goes
that way. It's more like it's just me being like,
I know I really can't do that, I shouldn't do that. No,
I'm gonna say no to that as well. And then
later I wake up and I told that was a dream?
Why did I say say no? I should have just
I should have just you know, flown through the ceiling

(30:20):
and been got in my own universe. And I really
need to make this lucid dreaming thing happen at some point. No,
it sounds like you're saving yourself a lot of guilt.
I mean, I think it is normal for people to
have dreams where they do things they don't feel good
about when they wake up, even though they didn't actually
do them. You can just be worried that, like, why
did my brain produce that? I'll see, I I don't know.

(30:40):
I would. I don't think I've ever had that experience.
I almost would would would like to try something different differently,
because yeah, I've just had I just have way too
many dreams, especially now, like there's like nothing even interesting
happens in the dream. It's just, uh, in large part
because I end up playing by the rules so much
in them. You know, I bet somewhere out there there's

(31:01):
somebody who's got a book it's like the five step
process for becoming bad in dreams. I mean, certainly their
their their process is to help you with lucy dreaming.
And if i've I've known people who have had get
some success with it. But it's just it's a lot
of work and and there's so many other things I'm
trying to do as as as I'm you know, ramping
up to bedtime. Well, maybe your brain is just saving

(31:22):
all your creativity for your waking hours. That would be
a thing to be thankful for. Maybe that's what's happening.
That's the positive spin. Alright, Well, on that note, we're
going to take one more break and when we come
back a little more listener mail. Alright, we're back. So
this next message comes from our listener Emmett and it's
on the subject of Omamua and im it rights Hi again.

(31:44):
In the recent listener Mail episode, you mentioned that Omumu
gained momentum by traveling past our son. This is not
likely to be the case in the sense I think
you meant as a traveling object inners a gravity well,
it does gain momentum, but it would then lose all
that momentum as leaves the well. I think that's correct,
and it says there are two maneuvers that you can
gain momentum from a gravity well. The one we usually

(32:07):
hear about is a slingshot maneuver, which can't be used
by objects from our Solar system when it comes to
the Sun because the Sun's momentum is zero from our
reference frame. Mumua is not from our solar system, true,
but it's momentum is similar to the Sun's, so I'm
not sure it could effectively steal momentum from the Sun
this way. Even if it could, it would depend on

(32:27):
what side of the Sun it passed by on. If
it passed in front of the Sun's motion, it would
actually lose speed. There's another way for an object to
get a speed boost from the Sun's gravity well, through
the oh Birth effect. Drive systems in spacecraft are more
efficient at higher speeds up to a point, and you
can use the fall into the Sun's gravity well to

(32:47):
build up some velocity and then activate your drive. This
will give your drive a small but very real efficiency boost.
The last way that applies to Mumua is that near
the Sun, radiation pressure is going to be high, so
the boost Omumua felt was probably just because it was
getting blasted with more intense solar wind and radiation um
And yeah, I think im it's correct about that, And

(33:09):
what we were talking about in the episode was probably
that the radiation pressure led to the net gain in
momentum that omum experience. But I think immats responding to
somebody asking us um if omumu would gain speed by
traveling near the Sun, and I think we said it would,
which of course it would. But immage is entirely correct
that as it leaves it also loses that speed as well,

(33:31):
so it would be at the fastest point near its parahelion,
when it's closest to the Sun in that parabola. So
you're saying it might be aliens. No, well, what does
it might mean? I don't know. You know, how small
of a chance does that encompass. I'm still clinging to
the the out of control alien derelict ship possibility. Okay, yeah,

(33:53):
I put a higher chance on it being aliens than
I do on it being humans from the future. All right,
I want to read a quick listener mail here that
came to us. So is related to an older episode
one that I did with Christian about Chinese ghost marriage.
Oh yeah, this one comes to us from Nicole. She says, hey, guys,
I was just listening to your episode on Chinese ghost marriage,

(34:14):
and I know I'm late to the party, but I
have a story for you. A couple of years ago,
my dad attended his father's funeral in Northeast China. A
man dressed in white, which is typically warned by family
members of the deceased, approached my dad and greeted him
as a brother. Neither my dad nor any of his
sisters had met this man before. As it turns out,
my grandfather had an older sister who passed away before

(34:35):
she was married. Around the same time, a boy from
the same village died, also unmarried. The two were married posthumously.
The boy's family then went the extra mile and adopted
a son on behalf of their dead son and daughter
in law, without the knowledge of my family. That son
was my dad's cousin. He had come to pay his
respects to his uncle. Just thought you might like an

(34:57):
example of how this seemingly archaic rite exists in living memory.
Keep up the good work, Nicole from Australia. Well, thank you, Nicole.
That was a wonderful tidday. Yeah that this this was
an older episode. Uh that that that looked at Chinese
ghost marriage and uh and you know, tried to get
to the heart like, you know what why it exists
and existed as as a practice and what it says

(35:19):
about um these you know, these traditional Chinese models of
a family and ideas about uh, you know what, what
what happens when we die? Now we deal with the
passing of individuals who have h you know, haven't to
quite fit into the ideal family form. Uh. So it

(35:40):
was great to get great to hear from somebody that
has you know, personal family experience of of this. Yeah,
totally thank you for getting in touch, Nicole. All Right,
this next one, we got at least a couple of
messages in response to the episode Robert and I did
back in October about curses. It was an episode called
The Curse, and I was kind of surprised given the
norm all approach to the show. But we heard from

(36:02):
a couple of listeners who were unhappy with the episode
because they thought we were too dismissive or closed minded
about the idea that magic spells literally work. Um. And
and of course we did discuss plenty of the potential
psychological power and meaning of of spell work and witchcraft
and all that. But uh, they seem to think we

(36:22):
were too dismissive of spells literally having an effect. Well, well,
let's let's hear what she had to say. Okay, so
this is from Michelle. I found your episode on curses
very interesting, and I have a link to information about
book curses that you may find interesting as well. However,
in the podcast, you mentioned more than once that course
curses were invoked by common folk that the end that

(36:43):
they had no scientific understanding, and you even stated with
certainty that magic isn't real. This is surprising because you
normally keep such open minds. I think you make these
statements based on the belief that magic is supernatural. But
what if magic is as naturally possible as gravy or
quantum physics. I'm no expert on many scientific things, but
I accept them to be true without clear evidence presented

(37:06):
to my eyes. I'd encourage you to do some reading
on magic and modern paganism. You may find it interesting.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft is a
good place to start. It was highly recommended to me
by the proprietor of a local witchcraft store, and I
did find it to be informative as promised. Blessed be Michelle. Well,
thanks for getting in touch, Michelle, and Um, I while

(37:28):
I'm going to disagree with you partially, I take your
point seriously. Um. The first thought I have is that,
as we talked about in the episode, I think it's
really important to distinguish between like literal magical causation, like
the power of spells to levitate objects or strike a
cloak thief dead at a distance, um, and like the
personal psychological power of sacred rights like spells. Yeah. I

(37:51):
mean I've had people cast spells, you know, pagan spells,
say in my house as a protective you know, sort
of housewarming kind of uh an effect. I've had spells
cast on me that have kind of like a healing objective.
And certainly neither of these am I going to expect
you know, them to work. To these two it's for

(38:13):
the home protection spell to be like a security system
or the or the the healing spell to be as
good as uh, you know, going to see a doctor
about my knee or you know, something to that effect.
But they certainly have social value. They certainly have There
is a value in somebody saying I care about you
or your circumstance, and here is here is a ritual

(38:36):
that proves it out. I mean, that's that's just how
I look at it. Yeah, exactly. I mean I feel
very much the same way about religious rights and rituals
that you don't have to believe that there's literal supernatural
power at work in order to see them as valuable,
because they are psychological dramas. They have meaning and significance
between people that they establish feelings and relationships. Like when

(38:58):
I listened to the Song of the Tiger Um. I
know that it doesn't actually have a magical effect on me,
but it but it certainly gets me pumped up. It
makes me feel like like I'm a little bit uh invincible.
Yeah yeah, And in many ways, I think magic and
spells and rites and all that can be a lot
like music. It's not like music is invoking the you know,

(39:20):
the literal might of some god that exists somewhere, But
it does something to the people who listen to it
and the people who play it, and it can be.
It can be it can be a driving force in
your life. It can be a reason to live the
same with with with magic, with religion, with various supernatural
ideas if we choose to layer them over the objective
reality that we deal with now. But more directly to

(39:44):
Michelle's point, so when it does come to like the
literal magical causation she's talking about, I mean she she
is correct that I don't like believe in it, and
we don't tend to consider it on the show as
like a serious possibility and explaining why things happened, and
I don't think. Essentially my point is, I don't think
that it is closed minded to not attribute things to

(40:05):
literal magical causation, because I think being open minded means
being opened evidence. And if there's good evidence that there's
literal magical causation in the world, I think, of course
we would be open to it. I think we demonstrate
that all the time. But I just say, personally, since
like I'm really interested in this sort of thing, and
I read about this sort of thing a lot, and
I've never come across anything that seems like good evidence

(40:27):
of literal magic, I couldn't honestly claim on the show
to think that maybe magic is actually a good explanation
for something. So I would feel disingenuous if I was
on here saying like, maybe magical curses are real. I
just don't think that's likely to be true. And I
wouldn't feel honest if I was saying that. But ultimately,
our show it's not about it's not about say, dismissing

(40:49):
the idea of curses, is about like saying, well, but
but look, but look at what Look at all these
these rituals and all these beliefs that have existed that
do involve curses, Like why do we have curses? It's
finding what's important and powerful about curses even if there
is no literal magic. Yeah, Like none of these things
are meaningless, like anytime we talk about uh, you know,

(41:09):
religious concept, mythological concept, like these are not just meaningless
doodles in the corners of of the the Earth's scientific narrative,
like these are these are important things. That's say, important
things about us, about our world and how we interact
with it. And uh and yeah, I I feel like
that we always try and keep that part of the
mission here on stuff to blow your mind. I totally agree.

(41:31):
I'm finding what's interesting and meaningful about things, no matter
what those things are. I mean, like, and I would
also say that I feel like this way of looking
at the world goes way beyond just like magic and
spell work, paganism and witchcraft, for example, I know of
Christians who pray for their loved ones without believing the
prayer will literally bring supernatural benefits to the people they

(41:54):
pray for. Instead, it's more like performing an inner drama,
like reinforces value of selflessness and love and goodwill. It's
sort of a self conditioning Yeah, I mean, I I
we employee prayer in my house. It's uh, you know,
if nothing else, it is a reason to stop and
think about someone other than yourself, you know. And uh,

(42:14):
and that alone I think has value in one's life.
That again, this is just my take on the topic
totally man, So, I mean, I guess my final thought
here is that even when it comes to non practitioners,
a person doesn't have to believe in literal magical causation
to see what's fascinating and wonderful about things like paganism

(42:34):
and witchcraft and religious rituals in general. It's is fascinating phenomena.
It's something I want to understand and learn more about.
And if we didn't think these were worthy subjects, we
wouldn't talk about them so much on the show. Now,
on that note, I am glad that we still have
not uttered the V word or the L word, and
thus enraged are our our male body here? That would

(42:55):
be like invoking the wrath of an angry god. However,
we do have one last spit of listener mail here
that does relate to certain red little packages showing up
on your doorstep. Uh during certain parts of the year,
We're gonna we have a little bit of regarding Christmas
Island crabs. Boy. This two comes to us from Dan.

(43:17):
Dan says, I recently finished listening to the second part
of your Christmas Island Crab episode, and also, on your recommendation,
watched Roger Corman's Attack of the Crab Monster. Yeah, I'm
spreading the love. After watching the movie, I had an
idea for a possible remake that is also partially based
on your episode. The basic plot would stay the same.
A group of scientists and soldiers land on a remote

(43:39):
island to discover what happened to the previous group of
scientists and beyonder a giant, super intelligent crab monster bent
on world domination. But here's where the remake would differ
from the nine seven original. It would be set during
Christmas on Christmas Island and involve enormous, super intelligent coconut
crabs who have used their psychic powers to turn the

(44:00):
coal human population into slave labor, who worshiped the giant
decapods as God's continuously clear roads and build homes for them,
before ending up as a food source when their usefulness
runs out. Now, if you had a giant like god
sized coconut crab, can you imagine the amount of limpid oil?
What's more frightening a God sized crab or a crab

(44:24):
sized God. I'm not sure. Okay, Dan continues, and in
case you're wondering, Yes, it would involve radiation. Some ideas
are just too good to change. It has to be
atomic radiation. It's up to a rag tag group of
scientists and soldiers led by Brian Cox and Peter Stormare
to put an end to the crabs tyranny and liberate

(44:45):
the human slaves. Maybe we could use Robert's Wonderful Christmas
song during the end credits, coming soon into a theater
near you. Keep up the great work. I look forward
to more mind blowing episodes in the new year. Somebody
get Dan in touch with twenty century Fox their paramount.
I don't know. I don't know what studios do, what
whoever would make this movie get them going. Yeah, I
think we're overdue for a Giant Crab movie. Somebody's gonna

(45:07):
do it. It's gonna come back. There's going to be
another Giant Crab movie. Might as well be this one.
This one sounds pretty fun, And we have one. More
about Christmas Islands comes from Chris. Chris writes, Hi, Robert,
and Joe. I couldn't believe my ears when my wife
Michelle told me that you guys did not one, but
two pods about Christmas Island, a place I called home
for ten years between nine and two thousand six. Wow.

(45:31):
We we were like, hey, have you lived on Christmas Island?
If so? Right in we heard from multiple people who
had been to Christmas Island. I couldn't believe this. Yeah,
it was it was multiple people. But I knew there
would there would be at least one person out there.
I knew. I knew, So I guess it's not too surprising.
But Chris and Michelle actually lived there. They lived on
Christmas Island. So Chris continues, we thoroughly enjoyed both episodes,

(45:52):
and so I thought i'd dig up a few old
family photos from my childhood featuring days spent amongst the
red crabs. Every year we look forward to the onset
of the rainy season, which, as you described so wonderfully,
initiated the annual crab migration. We'd spend hours running around
the quiet streets, studying the crabs and watching the hordes
go by. Thanks for the great podcast and spreading the

(46:14):
word about my beautiful former home. Hope you like the photos.
And Chris attached some photos that are so good. One
is children playing in the street surrounded by crabs. Another
one is a cat sitting on like a looks like
a front lawn walkway, just lying there in that wonderful,
perfect lazy cat repose, surrounded by crabs on all sides.

(46:36):
The cat does not seem worried. Yeah, this looks like
a cat that was maybe in really into messing with
these crabs are checking him out a while ago, and
now it's just like so over it and it's just
just napping in the sun. But it looks like the
cat just is just gonna let the crabs crawl right
over him. Well, you got a nap somewhere. That's our

(46:56):
new motto. All right, Well, we're gonna close it off
there for today, but certainly we we had so much
more listener mail we didn't have time to get to.
Hopefully we'll come back to some of it in the
next installment in about a month or so. But but
again we thank everybody for writing in because we we
we really try and read it all. We don't have
time to respond to it all. We don't have time

(47:17):
on the show to feature it all, but we just
we do always appreciate hearing from all of our listeners. Yeah,
as always, we we really love all the mail we get.
We're sorry we can't read it all on the show,
and and please keep it coming. Thank you so much.
All right, So, hey, you all have listened to the
show enough to know the basics here. Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com that's the mother ship. That's what

(47:39):
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Discussion model. That's the official place if you want to
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(48:00):
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(48:23):
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(48:43):
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(49:04):
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(49:26):
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