Listener Mail: Fatberg City

It's time for another listener mail and this time we have field reports from the war on fatbergs in the world's sewers -- plus various other e-mails related to recent episodes. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Joe McCormick, and we're coming at you with listener
mail today. Now our loyal mail bought. Carney has been
through some changes. That's right. He's been uh, he's been

(00:26):
off in Fatburg City. He's been helping uh Officer Fatburg
battle the city's Fatburg problem. That's right. And in the
course of fighting a Fatburg, which of course turned out
to be sentient and alive. I guess that goes without
saying you can't be sentient without being alive, but not
for long um or maybe you can. Yeah, that's subject

(00:47):
for another day. Anyway, like the black Ooze in Prometheus,
part of that Fatburg just got right on into Carney.
It took over part of his processor. Now he's Fatberg
inside Fatberg power, uh Fatburg logic, and he's part fat
Burg bought forever. Little flies come out of his nooks
and crannies. I think that's just temporary. I think this
is going to be an equilibrium that has reached and

(01:08):
to whatever extent Carney can be fueled by fat birds. Um,
you know, I think that's exciting. I think that's the future. Uh.
That's actually gonna be the topic of another episode we're
going to be recording. Have an episode of Invention coming up.
What happens when robots can eat fat birds? We'll find out.
But this episode is about listener mail, and we did

(01:29):
receive a lot of really cool listener mail regarding our
episode on fat birds. Now, just just to refresh, uh,
to remove some of the you know, the sci fi
fun here that we've been throwing out for a second.
A fat berg is this large mass that accumulates in
a modern sewer system or even kind of I guess
an archaic sewer system, but due to modern sewage problems

(01:54):
mostly caused by the flushing or the or the the
dumping of of grease and the flush of sanitary wipes,
wet wipes primarily. Yeah, like the problem with the with
the wipe things or these things that are wet wipes.
And apparently we heard from a lot of listeners, even
people who worked in uh, you know, sewer maintenance, sewer workers,

(02:14):
who said that these things that are so called flushable
wet wipes are not flushable. Don't flush them even if
they say you can. Yeah. And you know, I I
have a kid. I've have used wet wipes plenty of times.
And after you use them, you want to be rid
of them, being able to throw them into a magical
um uh you know, vat of water and then pushing
a button and watching it disappear. That that's an attractive

(02:36):
idea when you have a poop smeared. Uh what why?
But but it doesn't really disappear, It goes somewhere and
then it it makes friends. It becomes the bones of
the soap dragon. That's right. Uh, So maybe we should
get right to our first email. This one comes from Ray. Robert,
you want to read this one? Hello Robert and Joe.

(02:56):
My name is Ray, and I could not believe how
close to home the episode of fat Bergs landed. I
am currently a sewer utility worker in Faydeville, North Carolina,
and prior to serving in the army for several years,
I was a sewer utility worker in Jersey City, New Jersey.
The issue of grease infiltrating our country sewers seems to
be almost a universal problem with no real end in sight.

(03:19):
Although there are significant differences in the capacity and complexity
between the two sewer systems. I have personal experience with
the effects of grease and non biodegradable solids such as
wet wipes and feminine hygiene products. Seems to be universal
in my experience. I have seen and worked on many
Greef related issues, and though I have seen some large blockages,
the issues I have come to find most common or

(03:41):
more are more like grease tubes. The initial blockage creates
a type of grease dam, which in turn leads to
the sewer pipe becoming completely impacted with grease. Picture this
is a tube of toothpaste. These issues can run for
hundreds of feet underground and can require days of work.
A clear the comparison made in the articles you read

(04:02):
about it and concrete cannot be more accurate when trying
to relieve a fat Burg induced blockage quote. Chipping away
at the grease gestalt monstrosity with mason tools is surprisingly
effective and brings to mind archaeologists using picks and hammers
trying to reveal the hidden past and secrets the fat
Birds hold in its subterranean lipid vaults. One point that

(04:26):
I noticed was not mentioned that absolutely needs mentioning was
the surprisingly distinct smell that grease blockages have, which, if
one enjoys fried foods, could actually be appetite inducing. Each
of the several grease blockages I have dealt with had
a small had a smell scape that one could use
to easily identify the main contributor to its unholy birth,

(04:48):
whether it be Pizzeria's Chinese food takeout or even a
rather famous diner located in downtown Jersey City. Nothing makes
you look forward to lunch like the smell of comfort
food wafting up from the depths of the sup Oh God,
thank you again guys for never failing to surprise me
with your awesome topics. This one, in particular, fat Burgs,
made me realize that even something as mundane sounding as

(05:10):
sewer utility work, it can be interesting. As a final
side note, I would often try and tell people how
serious grease problems can be in sewers and how large
and lengthy they could be. It reminded me of another
episode of Yours Great Wave, in which stories would be
told by wayward sailors, often describing waves whose proportions seemed
a drastically exaggerated I feel a shared kindred with these sailors,

(05:34):
knowing that grease abominations lurk below the streets, and those
who I tell my tales to disregard them as exaggerated fantasy.
L O L. Thanks again, Right, Well, we don't disregard them, Ray,
We believe every word, except I am a little skeptical
about the the appetite inducing qualities of the sewer smell. Well,
I think I think we have some other listener mail

(05:56):
that that speaks to the odor, But I don't know
I can and that I mean, I trust Ray on
the matter. I mean, he he has experience that I
do not have regarding uh fat bergs in their unholy kin.
So if he says there's an appetizing odor, then I
I believe it. I guess what I mean is the
only thing I doubt is whether it would be appetizing

(06:17):
to lots of people or to everyone. That seems like
it would probably very person to person, especially depending on
how maybe you're disgust reflexes and how sensitive they are,
oh you need to fast food, or to just in general, No,
I mean to general, like the association. I mean, we
we know a lot about how smell is in some
ways cognitive. You know, we've talked on the show before
about how the exact same smell if you're told it's

(06:39):
a cheese, it smells good. But if you're told you're
smelling socks and it's the exact same chemical stimulant, uh,
it's disgusting. It makes you you know, you find it revolting.
And I think the same thing would probably be true.
You know, they're different levels of sensitivity. But like, you
can smell a smell that would maybe smell good if
it's coming out of a restaurant kitchen, but if you
smell it in a sewer, might give you the gag reflex, right,

(07:01):
But then if you're working in a sewer, like I
don't know, it might turn things around, Like you're you're
in there so long exposed to this different smellscape, and
if there's a hint of something even that is uh,
you know, from beyond the sewer, then perhaps you know,
the human mind can latch onto that I don't know. Um,
there's also if I remember correctly, in our past episodes

(07:22):
about smell, we've discussed how you know how about good
smells and bad smells, and about how bad smells can
sort of fade into the background a bit, while good
smells remain in the forefront. I believe I have that right.
Um In any right, there's there's a lot going on
when we perceive odors, like even very strong odors. You know,

(07:43):
some maybe destressed and others remain stressed. Uh in at
least as you know, as far as our perceptions go,
because there might be different adaptive reasons for the brain
to remain aware of certain kinds of odors but not
of others once you've initially smelled them, right, So maybe
that would allow room for like the pleasing odor that
is mixed in amongst the foul older odors to sort

(08:06):
of resonate more after a while. This is just me guessing.
Does the Yankee Candle Company make a fat burg candle?
I don't know, but uh that we did discuss in
that episode some of the possibilities of of using fatburgs
for fuel. Yeah. Well, we actually have a great piece
of listener mail about this, do it. Let's see here
this one. This is a short one. This comes from Damian.

(08:28):
Damian subject line, fat bergs are real. Hello from Little
Rock fat Burgs. Sweet Jesus. Those things can ruin your life.
My wife's grandparents had no qualms with pouring bacon grease
down the sink. They had apparently been doing so for
the last seventy years. A Router company worker that we
hired told us that our pipes were worse off than

(08:48):
a waffle house. I dug up ancient clay pipes and
they were packed with the same stuff that's clocking sewers worldwide.
It's a soap like material that is fairly stinky and
very light weight. Actually lit it on fire while it
was still wet. I'll include the fire video and offer
to send you a sample of the burg itself. If
you want some, let me know. I love your shows.
Keep it up, Damien. Okay, Damien, I don't think we

(09:11):
need a sample of the burg, but I did watch
the video and dude, yeah, it's like it's like a
tiny grease fire in puck form. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I
I glanced at this video as well, and it is.
It's it's really flaming up there. It's kind of it's
kind of making spitting sounds that might have to do
with water content or the fact that it's wet. I mean,
I'm not gonna say don't send us a piece of fatburg.

(09:36):
Let's leave that up to the stochastic gods of fat
berg face. I think I'm gonna do this next one
here from our listener Joe. In fact, hi Robert and Joe.
My name is also Joe, and I'm a plumber that
listens to your podcast. No, not that plumber. I live
in the state of Alabama. I routinely listen to your
podcast on my way to job sites, having been a

(09:59):
service lumber in the past. I have to tell you
that Donnie Don't made me twitch a little. I think
we started off the Fatberg episode with some don't do
what Donnie Don't does, pouring pouring duck fat down the
bathtub and stuff. Joe continues, Donna Don't, who also flushes
sanitary products and plants shrubs over the residential sewer line,
would have made me twitch a lot more. I don't

(10:21):
care if the packaging says flushable or not. Anything small
enough to fit down a toilet is flushable. That doesn't
mean you should flush it. I could flush one Leader
water bottles down some toilets, or even a bucket full
of golf balls. There are even some that I wholly
believe could flush small children, but that does not mean
it's a good idea. That being said, my city doesn't
have a sewer system that you can walk around in

(10:43):
as it's more modern. However, I do have some grease
stories that may interest you. Oh and old Greece is
the single worst thing to smell in plumbing, narrowly beating
out old urine. You would think that it's the pooh,
but it's not. Of course, I haven't had the displeasure
of cleaning the lines at a more refuneral home. I
know some who have, and I will not regale you

(11:03):
with those stories. I'm sure you can imagine. To preface
these stories, restaurants are required to have a grease interceptor
in their line going out, and they do just what
the name implies. They intercept and hold the grease. However,
in one case that was overlooked by the city when
I was an apprentice, we received a service call to
a dentist's office that was backing up with raw sewage.

(11:26):
The building was roughly ten feet above the city sewer,
and it was also the lowest of the surrounding buildings.
After confirming that the lines to the city sewer were clear,
we decided to pop a manhole cover the roads dirt
and grime had sealed it down. This heavy cast iron
manhole cover then proceeded to float, albeit briefly, on the

(11:46):
flood of water among other things that rose from the manhole,
and then had to direct traffic away from this open
manhole as we waited for the city's jet truck to
come clear the line. I think the jet truck is
like a high pressure water. This was a very busy
four lane road in the downtown of my city. I
almost got run over several times as people swerved into
the other lane within feet of me. I digress. When

(12:09):
the truck arrived, the twelve inch City Maine was blocked
for two hundred feet by you guessed it, fat and
grease where this restaurant's line joined the cities. They had
been pouring all of their oil down the drains. On
another note, as an apprentice, again, I have personally stood
on one foot on top of hardened grease and an
intercept or at another restaurant. The grease was about a

(12:31):
foot thick and weighed about two hundred pounds at the time,
and it did not give. We had to take a
steel bar to it to break it up so that
it could be pumped out. I wouldn't say that it's
as hard as concrete, but still rock like. I'm looking
forward to more awesome episodes from you guys. Joe all right,
another field report from the war against the fat Bergs.

(12:52):
That is an epic tale of a heroic struggle. I
wish I only had the you know, the mind of
a Homer to translated into poetry. But hey, you know
one thing we did in that Fatburg episode is we
proposed a movie crossover, which should be Fatburg copy and
Officer Fatberg. So we asked if anybody out there is,

(13:13):
you know, developer in Hollywood or anything, get Fatburg cop going.
We did hear back from a couple of people, a
couple of creative types who engage with fat Bergs one
way or another. Weird from one listener named Tom, who
shared with us a story he had written about a
fat Burg that becomes sentient. This was independent of our episode.
He had already written it in the past. But we
also heard from our listener L Robert do you want

(13:36):
to read this one? Yes? L Rights quote. I recently
listened to your episode on Fatberg's. You had mentioned how
it would be cool to create an artist rendition of
an anthropomorphic, murderous and justice seeking Fatburg. Well, being an
artist myself, I could think of nothing more than to
do just this. I wanted to make the creature humanoid,
but also not too human. I ended up with some

(13:57):
sort of a lizard man cotton made of congealed grease,
and it turned out more saying than I would have liked.
Make of that what you will. Maybe Fatburg really is
the hero. Nevertheless, I enjoyed making this a ight style
poster art. Robert had mentioned never visiting Philly, Well, come
on by, I can't recommend it enough. Also, I recently
visited the Mooder Museum uh the week before the episode. This,

(14:19):
of course, the museum with all sorts of cool um
medical oddities. I guess you'd say, men in medical uh um,
anomalous medical history, graham artifacts of medical history, etcetera. I've
long wanted to visit there and just never have had
the chance. It came up in the episode because we
were talking about the process of supponification, where like lipid
and fatty acids can turn into soap like substances, and

(14:41):
one example is a thing that's within the Mooder Museum's collection,
the soap Lady, and I think also a male uh corpse,
the soapman, which are covered in this soap like material
called adapas or that's formed out of the lipids and
flesh as it decays in certain types of environments I
think like alkaline environments. All right, l continues, I was

(15:02):
looking for something to do with friends while nearby, though
sadly not knowing what I was getting myself into. Listening
to your description of the soap Lady instantly brought a
haunting image to my head of the corps that visited
visitors are greeted with as they entered the main room. Uh.
This the main room of the Commuter Museum, at least
I think it was it. I wasn't going to stick
around to read the description. As soon as I realized

(15:24):
what I got myself into, I tried to leave as
soon as I could. Although I can see it's importance
as medical history and uh and it's importance for research,
the idea of dead body and fetuses on display just
didn't settle well with me. Not to say others would.
It would have a different experience at the very least
it was a unique experience I attached to the work
of Officer Fatburgh below. I loved listening to your episode

(15:46):
as I always do, and I loved listening to your
show every time I drive or commute. Keep it up
L from Philly. Okay, So for starters, this art that
L gave us is tremendous and as of this record thing,
I've requested that we be allowed to share this with
the world. On the landing page for this episode is
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, So hopefully that

(16:08):
will be the case and you all can go check
it out for yourself. It's pretty fun. It's reminiscent of
things like Maniac Cop and so forth. And then secondly,
uh yeah, I have to admit that I can as
interested as I am, and in visiting the Neuter Museum,
I can imagine it's not everybody's cup of tea, and
not necessarily everybody's cup of tea every day. Like I,

(16:29):
you know, some of my interests run uh or have
run darker or more morbid at times. But in the
air days where I don't do not want to see
a soap person or or some sort of pickled remains.
I mean, for instance, I just watched this is completely
off topic, but I just watched The Deathly Hallows Part one,
uh last night Harry Potter and How Its Part one

(16:51):
last night with my family, and the film was a
lot darker than I remember it being, uh to the
point where it really I felt kind of bummed out
into after finishing it. Yeah. I don't know if my
my tastes have just changed a lot recently, but it's
like like that was just it was that was too
dark of a film for me. Yesterday is definitely how

(17:11):
is the Last One? It's well, it's the first part
of the last one, it's the so it's the penultimate
movie and the Harry Potter sequence of films, so it is.
It does have kind of ultimately an Empire strikes Back
kind of ending, because it's like all these terrible things
that are happening and all these trials of the characters
have put through. And it's a great movie, Don't get
me wrong. I think it's a tremendously impressive what they

(17:32):
did with it. And I love Harry Potter uh and
as much as anybody, but who that one, I felt
like it really put me through the ringers, so their
days when I am not in the mood for the
darkness of a Harry Potter film Their days when I'm
I'm definitely not in the mood to see a human
cadaver that has been partially turned into soap. Fair enough, Robert,

(17:52):
I will never try to force you to go look
at the soap lady if you're not feeling it right.
And if somebody sends us a fat bird chunk, you know,
maybe it'll be a day day when I'm totally up
for looking at it. Maybe It'll be a day when
I just need a um, you know, ask you to
keep the bag closed. Okay, I think we need to
take a quick break, but we will be right back.
Thank Alright, we're back. So Carney has given us the

(18:16):
sign that we need to move on from fat Burgska
is full of fat birds. He's currently processing and digesting it,
turning it into energy. So we're gonna move on to
some other episodes that we did some listener feedback on them,
particularly our episode concerning the fundamental attribution error. Right now.
This was a while back, so we did some messages

(18:37):
about this on the last listener mail episode, but I
think this one came in since then. This is from
our listener, Matthew. Matthew says, greetings, So I am eagerly
awaiting tonight's finale episode of Game of Thrones. It is
one of the few shows or movies that I value
experiencing along with the rest of the world. This last
season has been taking a lot of flak from online critics,

(18:58):
and I myself have felt the declining quality. While thinking
through the seasons and talking to my wife, I came
to the conclusion that it was mainly because of characters
acting out of their expected behaviors as established over the
past seven seasons. Having listened to your recent cast on
fundamental attribution error, I began to think about the stories

(19:18):
players on a grander scale, about the society and why
the characters within that society are acting the way they are,
as opposed to out of solely personal motivations. It made
me feel so intelligent when I came across this article
by an actual smart person discussing this very subject with
direct references to fundamental attribution error. Basically, the show's focus

(19:40):
switched from a broad society based story where something like
the death of a main character progressed the narrative for
everyone else and he says that that's more in line
with George R. Martin's novels, and it switched to an
individual focus narrative where each character's own psychology is being explored,
which is the Hollywood's green writers more common approach. Thank

(20:02):
you for equipping me to think about even mundane things
like TV shows about dragons on a deep, almost academic level.
Keep up the good work. Invention is awesome. You guys
have long been the first thing I look for in
my new releases list each week Matthew, and Matthew links
to this article he's talking about, and this is what
I had seen shared around a while, but I actually
didn't read it until just today. It's an article in

(20:23):
Scientific American by zep two fact she is, who's a
really good writer. I'd seen it going around, but I'm
glad I read it because I think I pretty much
agree with it about a hundred percent. It's very spot
on in analyzing how the show's storytelling mode changed over time,
especially after the show ran out of book material to
work with. Um And And the essential idea is that

(20:47):
in the in the books, characters are hugely driven by
circumstances by you know, the sort of like social pressures
on them and the norms they face and by you know,
events outside their control, and we we we constantly see
characters having to deal with all of these circumstantial pressures,
and we understand the influence of circumstantial pressures. And after

(21:09):
the book material ran out and the show runners were
more out on their own, it started to feel more
like a typical Hollywood screenplay, where like characters have like
a main defining personality attribute and everything they do is
pretty much in line with that main personality attribute. Yeah,
this is interest, especially you know, coming from HBO. And

(21:30):
granted these were different show runners, but I feel like, um,
I feel it feel like The Wire, um for instance,
did a great job of really I think throughout the series,
like focusing on the societal pressures that are making people
what they are. Yeah. I mean David Simon in interviews
has talked about, you know, like in the in his work,

(21:50):
especially in The Wire, like the gods of this Greek
tragedy are instead of being like Zeus and Poseidon and
so forth, their institutions uh there, you know, it's it's government.
It's uh, it's law enforcement, it's a you know whatever.
The particular institution is that is applying this pressure to
populations to individuals. And yeah, I feel like that sort

(22:14):
of thing is is more evident in the earlier seasons
of Game of Thrones and then almost completely gone in
the later seasons. The last couple of seasons particularly yeah
and uh and actually zanat affect, she makes exactly that
comparison to the Wire, so she does, okay, so yeah, uh, yeah.
I think The Wire is a great example of that.
A lot of the great shows are like that in

(22:34):
in a way, even though it's it's more focused on
individual psychology, but even The Sopranos is kind of like this.
It has a it has a sociological kind of feel.
They're like there are large movements and pressures and trends
at play and characters. You constantly see characters struggling with
their circumstances and being moved by them and not just

(22:56):
like acting out their dominant personality traits, right, you know,
I I do not want to make it sound like
I am attributing Hollywood with all of society's woes or
blaming superhero movies in particular, but I think it is
worth noting that, you know, um, certainly Matthew here mentions
the Hollywood screenwriter approach and that being focused on individuals,

(23:20):
and of course Hollywood is epicenter for our our our
focus on celebrities. To focus on these key individuals that
we've sent singled out for deification and vilification, um to um,
to lift up into sacrifice. This need be to satiate
our our, our our need for some sort of vicarious experience.
And um, it's I wonder you know what the dangers

(23:44):
are and been putting that much. Um, you know, cultural
power within a single you know, a single system, well,
especially one that, as we talked about in the episode,
is is very often given to the fundamental attribution error.
I and like, I think a lot of especially the weaker,
shallower kinds of you know, popular Hollywood storytelling, very much

(24:07):
fall into the FA kind of category where characters behaviors
are almost entirely explained by their like innate qualities and predispositions,
and there's really not much attention paid to like broader
trends and sidal pressures and circumstances that change the way
people are right and and with superheroes, and and I

(24:27):
do again I want to stress that I enjoy superhero movies,
and I'm not I'm not meaning to criticize them just
across the board, but superhero movies are movies about individuals
that are essentially God's uh that they may have you know,
flawed characteristics and even very human characteristics in some uh
some ways, which can of course be very much in

(24:48):
keeping with with you know, classical treatments of gods, but
they are they are individuals that that that apply pressure
more to society or seem to be you know, complete
the remove from societal pressure in some cases. And um,
if when those are the dominant stories that we're telling,

(25:09):
those are the ones that seem to have the most
cultural impact, and certainly have them, you know, the most
box office impact. Does that uh? Does that just serve
to to help reinforce the fundamental attribution error in our
popular storytelling. I think that's that you could very well
make that case. I think that's likely true. That being said,
I may be missing some really key examples of of films,

(25:33):
you know, particularly in non Hollywood films, but maybe some
big tent pictures as well that that run counter to this.
So I would love to hear from listeners who have
some really good examples of of films that avoid the
fundamental attribution eraor I think there's one reason you more
often see uh like non f A storytelling and more

(25:54):
like sociological or circumstance based storytelling in longer television series these. Uh.
And that's just like having to do with the efficiency
of storytelling and run time. It's hard to tell a
story that's not a little bit given to the f
A E in a short run time, you know, because
you need to identify themes really quickly and and identify

(26:15):
who characters are in a memorable way really quickly. You
don't have whole seasons to figure out who people are
and get a sense of them. Oh yeah, Well, like
with The Wire, for instance, they had the time to
provide characters and secondary character, primary and secondary characters at
all levels of society. So you had, you know, you
had you had people on law enforcement side, people that

(26:36):
were in the criminal element in the sale and the
trafficking of drugs, but then also the political spectrum, the
educational spectrum, you know, and they were able to layer
on more from season to season to provide this overall
ultimately holistic picture of how the world worked. Yeah, and
doing something doing that kind of thing. You need time

(26:56):
to do that, and it's really hard to tell a story,
uh that you know, that appropriately treats the influence of
circumstances and all that without doing something like that. So yeah,
I can see why this kind of storytelling shows up
more often on like the you know, the gold standard
TV series than it does in movies. Yeah, yeah, because ultimately,
of you know, if a movie can basically cover the

(27:18):
ground of a short story, a short story is going
to be limited generally to like one p O V. Like,
there's not a lot generally not much room for anything
beyond that. Alright, Well, speaking of created worlds, we have
a correction here. This one comes to us from Steve Um.
I can't even was this a previous Listener mail episode
we were talking about. I think it was on the

(27:38):
last Listener Mail episode we did. Somebody wrote in, uh,
wrote in with an email that incorrectly attributed the author
of a story, and we did not catch that right.
So anyway, Steve writes in and says, in your recent
listener email, uh, it was slated that John Scalz wrote
the Forever War. That is incorrect. Joe Halderman wrote the

(28:00):
Forever War, which yes, this is correct. Yes, the author
of The Forever War is Joe Halderman. Okay, we stand corrected. Yes, yeah,
I mean and I've read The Forever War, so I
should have remembered that one. But at any rate, stuff
goes by really fast while we're sitting here talking. All right,
here's another one. This one comes to us from Chris
regarding our Almost Cannibals episode, which was, you know, a

(28:23):
contemplation of well, you know, how do we classify things
that are not quite cannibalism in the animal world and
occasionally in the human world. Uh, they're not quite cannibalism,
but they're almost cannibalism. It's all almost close in one
way or another pre cannibalism. Right, So Chris writes in
and says, hey, checking in on a couple of recent
episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind and invention, and boy,

(28:43):
do I have a crossover story for you. In your
recent episode on Almost Cannibals, you mentioned a story about
an army roasting meat and eating in close proximity to
fallen soldiers from an opposing force. Uh. And this, by
the way, this was like an older you know, a
true you did detail from history that you know was
probably rolled out as a way to criticize the enemy

(29:06):
and make them seem more barbaric. Uh. You know, as
if to say, let's look at these people. They're not
cannibals yet, but they're just like just one stumble away
from it. Anyway, it continues, and that there were rumors
that the army were cannibals because of this. Well, my
story is about my grandfather who was in the ninety
five Infantry Division during World War two. Uh. And he
includes a short link to a video about them this.

(29:28):
He earned his nickname during the war as the Buzzard
as an unfortunate part of his job was to remove
bodies from the field and take them off the trucks
when they returned to the base the moniker. The buzzard
was applied because he was known to pull bodies from
the truck with one hand and have a ham sandwich
and the other WHOA, It's amazing what the human mind
can normalize during the horrors of war. I am by

(29:50):
no means in insinuating that he was a cannibal, but
the bit about eating too close to dead bodies sparked
a memory. The second tie in comes Once he returned home.
My grandp and it's house was three blocks from our
small town two thousand people funeral home. Um, here is
where the camera comes in. We recently did a whole
slew of episodes of Invention about the camera. Once he

(30:13):
came back from the war, he would go to every
week where the person was laid out at the funeral
home and take a picture of them in the casket.
You mentioned in the episode on the Camera about how
early photo photography was used to document deceased relatives. He
would then develop the film and annotate the back of
the photograph with named date of birth, death, etcetera, and
all the photos would be out in albums. When he died,

(30:36):
he had dozens and dozens of albums filled with these photos.
He never talked about the war or really anything much,
but I have to imagine that what he saw on
serving changed the way he viewed life and death, and
his photographs of those who had died were his own
way of remembering them. Cheers Chris. Wow, Well that's an
interesting story. I don't know what to make about that,

(30:56):
but thank you for sharing. Chris. Yeah, I mean it's
I think it's a very point about the horrors of war.
I mean, a lot of us, maybe most of those
listening to us, you know, we were far removed from
those horrors. Um. You know, certainly we we do hear
from time to time from individuals who have served in
combat situations or law enforcements to environments, or or you know,

(31:19):
in some way or another, have have had you know,
this level of violence impact their lives. But for a
lot of us, we are removed from it. So, you know,
we we don't know what it's like to have to
haul dead bodies around and at the same time deal
with the fact that you have to eat, you have
to have sandwich, and maybe you do have a sandwich
in one hand, and then likewise when it comes to

(31:40):
just dealing with with with death. I mean, I'm wondering
about this case with the grandfather to like being a
you know, an older individual, like perhaps they had memories
of of you know, of of a time when there
were more there was more photography to a funeral photography
taking place, and you know there therefore they're just kind
of you know, returning to those memories and um and

(32:03):
doing it themselves. I don't know, but but yeah, this
was certainly all food for thoughts, So it looks like
we need to move on to the next group of
listener mail. This was in response to our episode against
the phrase survival of the Fittest in the context of
explaining how evolution works. And so we got some responses
just to the episode in general, and we've got a

(32:24):
number of responses, some mega responses to Pokemon, which Robert,
I think you brought up at the end of the episode, right, yeah,
I mean part of it just is because I'm I'm
too old for Pokemon, was I id or at least
I didn't. I never did anything with Pokemon, so I
don't have an appreciation for it. But I realize, you know,
just from being online, that it is really important to

(32:44):
many people, and and that Pokemon becomes like a metaphor
for understanding various things in life. And so they made
me curious about, well, how does that play into understandings
of evolution. Is it helpful, is it a hindrance, etcetera.
And so we put that out the listeners to chime in.
We heard from a lot. Well, I think maybe should
do a general email about the episode first and then
we'll do the Pokemon one. Okay, So this first one

(33:05):
comes from our listener Lloyd. Lloyd says, Hi, guys, love
your podcast. I listened with interest to your episode on
natural selection and Survival of the Fittest. I agree with
your point that the latter phrase is not linguistically apt
when a modern sembilance of the phrase is applied. However,
I wondered if this overlooks the fact that fittest may
have had a slightly different meaning at the time when

(33:25):
Spencer Wallace and Darwin We're discussing it. You considered fittest
to mean the biggest and the strongest, as in the
bigger batterism you talked about. However, the word fittest literally
means the best fit, most fit, or most suitable. Fit
has only recently come to mean physically fit, and has
in the past meant something more akin too suitable, as

(33:46):
in the phrase this man is a fit and proper person.
In your podcast, you also considered survival to mean survival
of the individual. However, it also means survival of the
species considered this way, survival of the fittest, survival of
the species best fitted, or you might say, most suitable
to its environment. I therefore find myself agreeing with Wallace

(34:07):
to some extent that it is a good and in
some sense is better descriptor of the evolutionary process than
the phrase natural selection. I would suggest that the better
argument for use of the term natural selection is that
it suggests a kind of positive advancement or natural refinement.
By contrast, survival of the most suitable or the fittest
draws on the more nihilistic side of evolution that those

(34:30):
who are not the most suitable are destined to decline.
That is, of course true, but it's pretty depressing. Yours faithfully, Lloyd.
Um Well, Lloyd, I mean I think I accepted a
lot of the sense of what you're saying. I mean,
what you're describing is I think how Darwin and Wallace,
since Spencer meant it as we discussed in the episode.
I mean, I don't think they were they were saying

(34:50):
anything incorrect when they use the phrase. We were talking
more about the the modern implications that people get from
the baggage of these words. It's not that like Darwin
and Wallace were incorrect and how they used it. Yeah,
I mean, certainly the words uh, words can change over time,
or at least the they can. They can skew different directions. Uh,

(35:12):
and then we have to, um, we have to you know,
account for that. Also, words tend to I mean, when
there's a phrase like natural selection or survival of the fittest,
we have to deal with the fact that, in Darwin's context,
this is a phrase that's appearing within a book, you know,
so he's got a whole book to explain what he means.
But these phrases now are just sort of floating free

(35:35):
within the culture and there you know, people invoke these
phrases to explain how evolution works, but they might not
necessarily bring with them all of the explanation that comes,
like say, in on the Origin of species. So you
don't have a book in front of you all the time.
You have to think about how phrases are just received
in in a vacuum. All right, Well here's one. Here's

(35:55):
one of the Pokemon of spots. This this comes to
us from Taylor. Hey, Robert and Joe Taylor here, another
long time fan and email writer. When Robert asked the
audience to reach out with their Pokemon experiences at the
end of against Survival of the Fittest, it was a
bespoke question for me, as a student of evolutionary biology
and one of the biggest Pokemon nerds you'll ever meet.
I couldn't resist saying everything I could, so let's get

(36:17):
right to it. When a Pokemon quote unquote evolves within
the context of the game, it matures into a larger,
more powerful form and benefits from increased combat stats. Well,
this might look like a terrible case of bigger batterism
on the surface, the Pokemon franchise approaches adaptation and biodiversity
with much more nuanced than you might expect. While the
game uses the term evolution to describe this growth, it's

(36:39):
clear within the context of the game the Pokemon evolution
is a descriptive is a is a is descriptive of
a Pokemon species maturation and natural life cycle, and not
of natural selection. This distinction is especially clear when Pokemon
evolution represents the metamorphosis of a species. For example, when
the larval Pokemon wheel evolved into the pup eight Kakuna

(37:02):
before emerging as the wasp like be Drill at the
end of its life cycle, or when the tadpole like
uh Dratini matures into the dopey amphibian dragon Pokemon called
dragon Eyed, but Wait, there's more. The Pokemon games also
do a great job of describing symbiotic relationships, sexual dimorphism,
and yes, even natural selection. Many Pokemon species exhibit important

(37:25):
symbiotic relationships. For example, the seafaring mantle like Pokemon manteen,
is rarely depicted without a remorade. I like that. It's
like the gatorade of remoras. Yeah, that would be I
guess it's the genesis there clinging to its underside as
you might have guessed. Their relationship is illustrative of the
real life symbiosis of ramorras and open ocean predators like

(37:48):
blue sharks. A lot of Pokemon also exhibits sexual dimorphism.
One of my favorite examples is Burmy, a Pokemon based
on real life bagwarm moths. Like their real world world
on our parts, Burmi build protective cloaks around themselves out
of whatever detritus is available to them. If you encounter
Burmy with a forest within a forest, it is covered

(38:10):
in leaves, whereas a desert dwelling Burmi would be covered
in sand and pebbles. But it gets more interesting. Female
burmi exhibit neatany they evolve into werma dam, a larger
bagworm Pokemon that remains sessile but male burmy evolve into
moth motham, a flying insect that can flit from one

(38:31):
from female to female. Another great example is the grouse
like Pokemon un Phasant, whose males boast resplendent plumage that
the drab females lack and Pokemon doesn't have. Doesn't leave
other examples of adaptation untouched. Several species illustrate coevolution, as
is the case with heat More and Durant. Heat More

(38:53):
as an ant eater Pokemon whose lava hot tongue allows
it to bore through the metal exoskeleton of the insect Durant.
The franchise is explicit in describing this predatory relationship's role
in the evolution of both heat morse tongue and Durance
metal shell. Finally, the most recent generation of the game's Pokemon,
Sun and Moon, introduced regional variants. Sun and Moon take

(39:15):
place on the Polynesian themed islands of Aloa. Regional variants
represent Pokemon species that have been introduced to Alloa from
elsewhere in the Pokemon world and have adapted to life
on the islands. For example, the armadillo like sand shrew
and its mature form sand slash are usually encountered in
desert biomas, but in Aloa their regional variants have adapted

(39:36):
to frigid mountain caves and both thicker bodies. Ultimately, Pokemon
is a fantastical king. While I've put forth plenty of
fascinating biology on display in the Pokemon world, there are
still other Pokemon based on ghosts, dolemns, and inanimate objects,
which may be unsurprising because of its Japanese origins. Nevertheless,
I think it does a fantastic job of illustrating biodiversity

(39:57):
and the mechanisms that relate to it the Pokemon games.
It shouldn't be a child's textbook revolution, but for this
childhood Pokemon fan become biologists, they played an extraordinary role
in following in love with the natural world. Cheers Taylor. Ps.
I highly recommend looking up images of the Pokemon I've
described here because their designs are simply delightful. Let me

(40:17):
show you my Pokemon's. Thank you so much, Taylor, you
know what you've brought me around. Yeah, I am not.
I am not a Pokemon nerd like you. I did
not ever really get deep into Pokemon I think the
deepest ever got was when that original game Boy game
Play came out. I played it, but I never finished it.
Oh yeah, the most I think I played when that

(40:38):
uh that that that phone game came out recently. That
was all the craze where you find Pokemon on the street,
that had people wandering around waving their phones at stuff. Yeah.
I checked that out of out, out of curiosity, and
I think I like, I encountered a Pokemon in my
house and then like I saw one down the street,
and then um, but that was it. But I I
appreciated what seemed possible with that game. Would did that

(41:00):
game not turn out to be a massive data mining operation?
I don't know. I haven't. I I have friends who
I think still play it, still really into it, and
they enjoy going on like walks and even trips and
searching for Pokemon while they're out there. So I don't know.
I gotta look into that more. But anyway, you've brought
me around on the basic Pokemon concept. I love the

(41:20):
Pokemon's now and you know what, some of the illustrations
are really great. You got me there, alright. One that note,
We're gonna take one more break, But when we come back,
we will leave the realm of Pokemon behind and we
will venture to the Holy Mountain. Thank thank Alright, we're back.
So this is a straggler email that came in I

(41:41):
think after the last batch that we read about sacred mountains,
and this is from our listener, Dave. Dave writes, Hi,
Robert and Joe Medium the longtime listener, first time writer.
I'm a big fan of your podcast and your new
one invention. I'm writing in regard to the two episodes
focused on Sacred Mountains. I live in the Pacific Northwest
and I'm an amateure mountaineer. I wanted to share a

(42:02):
couple of things with you that you were curious about
from your listeners. First, I've experienced altitude sickness a few times,
but the worst of it was when I summitted Mount
Whitney in California, the tallest peak in the country within
the contiguous United States at fourteen thousand, five hundred and
five feet. My partner and I were hiking the Pacific
Crest Trail in SI from Mexico to Canada. We had

(42:24):
stopped off to meet my mom and toured around Las Vegas,
the Eastern Sierra and Death Valley National Park. So we
went to Death Valley, which has the lowest point in
the US at two hundred and seventy nine ft below
sea level. Three or four days later we were back
on the trail in the heart of the Sierra and
summitted Mount Whitney. We had we we had lost all
of our altitude acclimatization since we took a break, and

(42:47):
it was certainly felt. I made it up the summit
relatively fine, slowly moving to some degree. Then on the
way down it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I could barely move, had the worst migraine I had
ever had, and was completely disoriented. I felt like I
was going to explode at both ends constantly. Eventually I
made it to camp at about eight thousand feet and

(43:07):
recovered over the next twelve hours. I drank plenty of
water eight and slept. After that, I was more or
less back to normal. Secondly, you had both mentioned when
researching the episode, you didn't come across any evil mountains. Really,
When I was listening, one popped into my head that
I find fascinating. According to the Native American tribe the Klamath,
the Good God is Mount Shasta, in northern California, and

(43:29):
the evil god was Mountain Massama in central Oregon. Apparently
eight thousand years ago. The two gods had an awesome
battle and ultimately the good prevailed. This resulted in Mountain
Azama exploding and collapsing in on itself and then creating
the clearest and cleanest lake in the world, Crater Lake,
which is an amazing place to go to. If you've
never been, Crater Lake is definitely worth the trip. David says,

(43:52):
keep doing what you're doing. Love your stuff, and he
also attaches a photo of himself on Mount Whitney. He says,
quote before my world crashed in on me. Well, thanks David.
All right, here's another one that comes into us, and
this one um. You know, you know, no one ever
has to use the real name when they're right in um,
and this particular individual wrote in as Daddy. So at

(44:15):
any rate, this is what Datty had to say. Dear
Robert and Joe, I've been listening to your show for
the last few months, and I would like to say
thank you. You have provided me with such nutritious brain food.
I have been bingeing on episodes while working out in
the fields, mostly I sit a cross legged planting vegetables.
While the setting is quite peaceful, the labor is quite monotonous.
Listening to your podcast has prevented my mind from turning

(44:37):
into mud. I have so many compliments and comments about
various topics you discussed, but it would make for quite
the read. To save time, I have neared it down
to a list of three. Number one, you both have
such great taste in film. Well many would disagree. Arguable,
I guess, but but you know I'm glad we see I.
He continues, I was so excited when I started listening

(44:58):
and discovered that many of the tapes you discussed I
own on VHS because it's the only way to go. Also,
films you have mentioned that I haven't seen. I now
have to thank you you also for the recommendations. Uh.
Then number two, the Cube film would make for a
killer episode. Not only could you explore the science behind
such a structure, I was reminded of the Library of Babel,

(45:21):
but the themes submerged in the film would also provide
quite the thought adventure. Have you seen Cube Horring of
its sequels? Joe, Yes, it's been a while. I remember it. Uh,
I remember it? Was a movie that definitely held my
attention but was also kind of bad. Yeah, I remember,
I think I watched it like on the Sci Fi
channel on a Sunday afternoon, Uh, sort of a thing,

(45:44):
and I remember being intrigued by it because it does
have an intriguing concept like it. It has certain Kafka
esque elements to it, you know, where people were trapped
in this machine that is lethal and full of lethal traps,
but they don't know why they're in it or what
purposes it serve ing. And I think it's also you know,
it stated or implied that, like the people who made it,

(46:05):
we're working on different parts of it and had no
idea what the complete hole was. I think one of
the guys in the Cube, it turns out like, helped
build it, but he didn't know what it was going
to be. Yeah, And I think like those some of
those ideas are very thought provoking. It gets into you know,
ideas of the Panopticon and uh, you know, modern modern

(46:25):
society itself and uh, in in a way like the
Cube movies, or at least the first one. You know,
it's kind of a predecessor to the Song movies, but
kind of like elaborate traps, but I feel like the
elaborate traps were more the cube set up for the
elaborate traps. I think I far prefer than just like

(46:45):
crazy serial killer with way too much time on their hands.
We got another exquisite movie recommendation coming next though. Oh yes,
number three Zar does. It was somewhat off handedly suggested
by Joe in an episode I cannot remember which, but yes,
please for apps you can break the tavernac. What did
I say about Zardas? I don't. I don't remember because
I suggest science of Zardas. Maybe you did, because we're

(47:08):
probably talking about Highlander or Highlander too. I've actually never
seen Zardas. It's a I've never checked it out. WHOA,
this is a game changer, Robert. Would you like to
see Sean Connery with a long braided ponytail and a
red diaper and a mustache? Well, I absolutely I would,
especially if there's some sort of weird flying heads. Yeah,

(47:31):
there's weird flying heads. That's all I know about it.
But those two elements are alone are enough to get me. There.
Didn't somebody interesting to the music? Is there something about
the music? But I should be aware music because I
think it was directed by the same guy who made Deliverance. Uh,
very very strange movie. Anyway, I think both of those

(47:52):
sound like solid suggestions. We I think we have yet
to do them. So we basically we've been doing these
movie episodes where once a month, generally will will pick
a movie and we'll use it as an excuse to
you know, talk about topics we've discussed before, but in
light of the film, or as a way to talk
about topics that might not otherwise come up on the
show in their own episode. And generally there's some sort

(48:13):
of you know, approach to be made there. And we've
talked about stuff like two thousand one of Space Odyssey,
the Dark Crystal. We've talked about Highlander too. Um, we've
talked about Silent Running. Um am I missing one in there.
I don't know, maybe maybe yeah. At any rate, it's
a fun exercise and we're hoping to continue doing it
and it's and we enjoy hearing recommendations from folks. Maybe

(48:36):
one day we'll even come up we'll cover a movie
that came out in the last couple of decades. You
seem to be you know, uh narrowing in on like
what the sixties, seventies, and eighties thus far. Why would
we change that? Yeah, as as a golden age, right,
But it's not just old media that we talked about
on this show. We also talk about new media. We
also talk about social media, um and and that can

(48:58):
sometimes be quite a duze. Social media is certainly it
is the cube and the czar DAWs of our world. Um. So, yeah,
it's the tabernacle, it's the cube maze, it's all those things.
The cube cube. Actually, that whole scenario we just talked
about about people creating this thing, working on their individual
um corners of it. It's a giant murderous weapon field traps, yeah,

(49:21):
and ultimately making a giant murder machine. Um. I think
there are a lot of comparisons to be made between
that and various big name social media platforms um, which
I think will be exploring in greater detail and subsequent
episodes of the show. But we have been discussing aspects
of it already. Yeah. Well, let's talk about some listener
feedback to the episode we did about the Doppelganger Network,

(49:44):
where we discussed the idea, of course of doppelgangers and
all that. But then also we discussed an article by
Robert Zapolski, the neuro indo Chronologist, where he made a
connection between the psychological syndrome known as Capgras delusion, where
people and to believe that the people they know have
been replaced by impostors or doubles or doublegangers, that and

(50:06):
the kinds of psychological effects that are brought about by
social media, and he in the main comparison he makes
is that, uh, social media may be causing a similar
kind of situation of recognition without familiarity uh and its inverse.
So one of the things we talked about in that episode,
of course, is you know, often Robert and I, especially

(50:27):
lately or or we will tend to gripe about the
evils of social media, and we talked about the possibility
of could anything be improved if you just took the
corporate influence out of it and just had like nonprofit,
open source social media platforms. I do want to reiterate
my feeling that even if we took the corrupting influence
of the profit motive out of these platforms, I'm still

(50:47):
not sure they'd be a good thing. I think it's
highly possible they could still overall like even a nonprofit
open source Facebook might be a bad thing for the world.
And I also want to drive home to come back
to the you scenario, is that a lot of the
people that we've been reading on this topic, like they're
not saying that there is UM. I think Jarren Lantier,

(51:11):
uh is the exact phrase, and he says that there's not.
He doesn't believe that say it Facebook, that there is.
There's a room. There's like an evil room in which
an evil person plots out evil things for this particular
company that that it emerges more like the death machine
in Cube, where where a company is trying to do

(51:31):
various things, and some of those things may be quite
noble or at least have noble ambitions to them. Other
things have far more corporate leanings, and all of these
things like come together in the just bake and the
the alchemy of of a major corporation, and then the
results uh may not be the best for us. Yeah,

(51:53):
And so so it's there's no guarantee all of these
negative effects that we associate with social media platforms would
go away if you say, like distributed the creation of
that platform and took away the profit motive. But it
still might possibly be a step in the right direction.
So we're asking about this, and several listeners got in
touch to name a few things. One is Keith who's
a data scientist and software developer. He mentions a few

(52:16):
platforms that are open source or nonprofit social media platforms. Quote.
The main one I'd like to point out is mastadon.
This one has been gaining interraction, and it's pretty much
a clone of Twitter. Some major differences are that it's
open source, and they also encourage users to self host,
so you can use the code to have your own
social media. The main site says that there are three

(52:38):
d and twenty thousand users, which is not a large amount,
but it is growing. I'd also like to note some
more obscure social media. There are chat room social media
platforms like discord and Slack where communities form too. Open
source alternatives are getter and rocket chat. So I hadn't
heard it of those. I think maybe i'd heard of Mastodon,
but I didn't really know what it was. Mainly, I'm

(52:59):
just familiar with the band end Right, which I don't
think have any involvement in this, uh this at all.
We're a thrash metal platform. Yeah, I massad On of
course local local band. Occasionally I will I'll run into
folks from Mastadon at various events. It's great seeing him.
There was one band member in particular that UM and
I'm I'm not like, I'm not super familiar familiar with Mastadon,

(53:22):
but one of the members of Mastodon has like really
cool sideburns, or has in the past, and I would
occasionally see him at different events and I would like
kind of look at him and be like, hey, guy's
got some pretty good sideburns, you know, And I'm kind
of like admiring his sideburns from afar and then he'll
kind of look back at me and they'll be like
kind of a not a look of fear, but a
look of like like you know, like I'm staring at him,
you know. And but and I didn't. I didn't put

(53:44):
it together till later. Then I'm like, oh, he's in
a famous band, and he thought that I was maybe like,
you know, you know, fan boying out and that might
like I might approach him and uh, you know, disruptive,
you know, whatever he's doing. And really I was just
admiring his sideburns. UM. Anyway, for whatever that's but I

(54:04):
also admire their music that. Oh yeah, I think they're
they're top tier modern metal. Okay, so I think let's
look at this next email from Sammy. This one came
in after the Doppelganger Network episode. Sammy says, hey, guys,
I just started listening to your new episode the Doppelganger
Network and you brought up cap cross syndrome. I've never

(54:25):
heard of it. Uh. And at first, when you guys
said that this famous frenchwoman thought her loved ones were
replaced by doppelgangers, I thought, how is this even possible?
But as you started explaining it more as when the
face recognition part of our brain knows it's someone we know,
but the feeling of familiarity does not arise, I started
thinking this is what I have. I was diagnosed with

(54:47):
depression about eight years ago and put it on an
s s R I. But as I started my treatment
and doing research, my dad and I came across a
term called de personalization. This is exactly what you described
when you know you know the person you see, but
you don't feel the warmth of familiarity. In the first
two years of my illness, I dealt with this probably
about nine percent of the time. It was horrifying seeing

(55:10):
my parents, my friends, my boyfriend, and knowing I'm supposed
to feel something but I don't. Quite a few times
I almost broke up with my boyfriend because I felt
guilty that I didn't love him. At the peak of this,
when I was with my therapist, I told her, if
you brought another man into this room and told me
he was my dad, I'd believe you. Fortunately, now several

(55:30):
years later, I rarely experienced episodes like this. My last
full on depersonalization episode was about two years ago. However,
to this day, I hold myself back from certain situations
because I know that they have caused me to have
these episodes in the past. Anyways, I felt immense gratitude
when you guys mentioned this in the first part of
the episode, because this issue is something I find so

(55:51):
hard to explain to people, but you guys and Sepolski
put it into the perfect words. I don't know if
what I have dealt with is related to this syndrome,
as I don't think people have been replaced, but I
thought it was interesting. My official diagnosis now is panic disorder.
Thank you for everything you guys, do you're one of
the three podcasts I always listened to Sammy. Uh Well,

(56:12):
first of all, thank you for sharing with us, but
also I'm really glad to hear you're doing better these days. Yeah. Absolutely,
And you know, I think as we try and stress
on the podcast, you know, anybody out there if you're
experiencing if you ever find yourself experiencing symptoms that were
discussing on the show, Um, I mean, certainly they are
dangers and self self evaluation, but don't hesitate to to

(56:35):
ask a professional about what you're feeling and to bring
it to their attention. Yeah, I think that is always
a it's always a wise move, that's what that's what
they're there for, and they're the ones that can can
ultimately help you, uh or or tell you that you're
if you're if you are worrying about nothing, if you
are you know, self diagnosing based on a podcast and
jump into conclusions like they're they're the ones to rein

(56:58):
you in on that as well. Yeah, exactly. I mean,
nothing nothing good ever comes out of keeping stuff like
this hidden. If you are experiencing symptoms like this, it's
important to talk to your loved ones about it to
seek professional help. These are not the kind of things
that it is best to deal with on your own
right now. As But again though, as for social media
inducing symptoms like this in a and a more widespread scale,

(57:22):
I mean, that's kind of new territory in some regards.
I wonder, I wonder how the therapeutic world is is currently,
you know, adapting to all of this, and how they
will be adapting in the near future, because I mean,
I look at my own experience with say Facebook, and
I go on there, and I think what I experienced
some like level of just large scale depersonalization with everybody

(57:46):
on there. These days, I feel like I am not
encountering real versions of the people that I know or new,
and that I am not presenting a real version of
the person I am. And it's it's it's weird and
and off putting and and granted, some of this may
be due to some of the research we've been doing,
I mean, it's certainly is a possibility, but I also

(58:06):
think a large part of it is the platforms. Again
will hopefully be discussing more of this in future episodes
of the show. Yeah, totally. But also I just want
to say again. We're really glad to hear you're doing better, Sammy,
and best of luck in the future. All right, here's
another one. This one comes to us from Kate high
Stuff to blow your mind. Recently, listen to your episode
about Doppelgangers. At one point you were talking about para

(58:28):
social relationships and start listening some examples, but you completely
forgot to mention the very medium you're using, podcasts. Sometimes
I listen to podcasts more than I communicate with my friends, family,
or even boyfriends. There was a time when I used
to us to consider Ira Glass from This American Life
like a brother, Stephen Dubner from Freakonomics like a father figure,
and still to this day, you guys are like my friends.

(58:50):
Interesting that this is based purely on personality and nothing
to do with age. Stephen Dubner, five years old, is
younger than Ira Glass sixty years old. I have mentioned
this to friends, and they have also revealed that they
consider some of the podcast hosts they listen to like
their friends. I would never consider these paras social relationships
as a negative because it genuinely enriches many of my

(59:13):
face to face relationships. Thank you anyway, f Y, I
The Myths and Legends podcasted an amazing episode about people
in real life who have experiences seeing their doppelgangers. Definitely
worth a listen. And she includes a link but the
uh and I won't read the whole link, But basically
the website is myth podcast dot com. So that sounds
like a phone we to check out. Always always happy
to check out new podcasts, especially if they concerned something

(59:36):
like mythology. Yeah, so I will try to give that
a look if I find some time. But also I
have to report, Yeah, I sometimes have a feeling like this.
I mean, you can definitely, when listening to a podcast,
start to feel like the people you're listening to are
just your buddies, especially if it's a conversational podcast. I
have had this experience plenty of times. I think, um,

(59:59):
and yeah, I guess the question about whether you know
whether these counts para social relationships and whether or not
they're destructive, I think is a question of what role
they play in in your life, because yeah, I've also
had the experience of listening to podcasts and sort of
feeling when I'm listening to these people talk like they're
my buddies. But I think it's okay because I don't

(01:00:20):
find them like preventing me from spending time with my
real friends or my real loved ones. Um, if if
I did find that that it was like interfering with
my relationships, I think I would be concerned then yeah, yeah,
or you know, certainly I would be concerned if if
a listener showed you sor at my doorstep and wanted
to borrow my xbox or something, right, yeah, that would

(01:00:41):
probably right. I mean, also, yeah, it's important to have
like realistic perspective and know that, you know, while it
can feel like you're being social with people when you
listen to a podcast, of course you know they're not
actually you're you know, you don't actually know each other. Well,
like let's say, take um Paul Kennedy, the hosts of Ideas,
the CBC radio show I've spoken on spoken about it
on the show before because it's one of my favorites,

(01:01:03):
and like I can I can catch myself kind of
looking at Paul Kennedy kind of like a father or
grandfather figure. Um, And you know, especially since you know
I don't I don't really have any of I don't
have a real father or grandfather figure, in my life anymore.
So maybe I'm more inclined to to find that in
uh an individual from the uh you know, from the

(01:01:26):
podcast world. But I think it's ultimately, like this particular example,
like it's it's a healthy attachment, like like you don't
think you're actually gonna go like meet Paul Kennedy, right I.
I I know Paul Kennedy does not know me. And
the ultimately is just this this friendly voice that shares
uh you know, wonderful topics with me via this medium

(01:01:47):
of podcast and uh and yeah, I think it's that
that is a beneficial para social relationship, if that is
indeed what it is. It sounds like it to me,
and I I hope we can only be if we
are a par of social or relationship for anybody, I
hope we can only be a beneficial one. Don't don't
don't let our voices replace your real relationships with your
friends and family. They're more important. Go talk to them

(01:02:09):
about fat bergs. Well that's you know, that's all. That's
ultimately what what I I love to hear from listeners
is when we've been able to turn you onto a
topic and then you know you can, then you pick
it up and you run with it, or you take
it out and you share it with people and you
should and it becomes a you know, conversation. It becomes
at least a catalyst for you to then go out

(01:02:30):
and interact with the world, interact with with with friends
and family members and make new friends, make new family
members for that matter. Um, if if such as possible
with some of our topics, uh, you know, I think
that's that that's ultimately the best case scenario for any
any episode that we put out there. Not that I
don't think I've ever heard of anybody like actually acquiring

(01:02:50):
a new family member through the show, but I would
love to hear if if anybody out there has ever
met a significant other U through listening to our show,
I would absolutely love to hear about. Oh my god, yes,
please send us your stories if that happened. Maybe Fatbirg
is doing it right now. Somewhere out there. A love
story is brewing through um just strangers meeting and talking

(01:03:13):
about the fat Burg episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind.
It's a romance between so Plady and Fatbird Cop. Yeah,
that would be the sequel, right, Fat Bird too, Fat
Birds in Love La who's upontificating? Now there you go.
All right, Well, hey, we we have a whole stack
of emails here that Carney the mail bot brought us.

(01:03:34):
We were not able to read them all at all,
but we we we did what we could. We read
some of them. There are plenty that we read to
ourselves and you know, and we didn't read on the show.
But hey, some of them will say for next time.
And we encourage everyone to keep writing in. You have
thoughts about episodes, you have corrections about episodes. Uh, you
have criticisms, you have little tidbits to share. Uh. We

(01:03:55):
love to hear from everybody. We'll share the email address
here at the end of the show. You can also
reach out to us. The main way really is if
you go to the Facebook group associated with the show,
which is the Stuff to Blew your Mind discussion module. UH.
That's probably one of the better ways to interact with
us these days. And of course Stuff to Bow your
Mind dot Com is the mothership. That's our O n

(01:04:16):
O website, as they say, that's where you'll find all
the episodes of the show, uh, and the various other
bits of information that you might need. Huge thanks as
always to our excellent audio producer Tory Harrison, and to
our guest producer today my Cole. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

(01:04:37):
just to say hello, you can email us at contact
dot stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(01:04:59):
listen your favorite shows. The