Listener Mail: Gravy, Sinkholes and Soviet Sci-Fi

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Mind listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick, and we've got a lot of great listener
mail to get into today. I say, we jumped right in.
Are you ready, Rob, Let's do it? Okay. This first

(00:26):
message comes to us from Mark. This is about the
chemical and religious transformation of the essences of foods. I
think this goes back to our episode from the past
Thanksgiving where we talked about some of the strange science
and religious beliefs about gravy, and so Mark says, Hey, guys,
I really enjoyed the show. I've listened to just about

(00:46):
every episode since I got into it several years ago.
You and stuff you should Know are kind of the
core of my podcast listening. Anyways, This is in reference
to your Thanksgiving smorge Board episode, specifically the section on gravy.
I listened to it not long after it came out,
and this email has been brewing for a while in
my head. Finally got it out in it, Joe, I
think mused about gravy and the transformation of food from

(01:09):
one thing to another in a spiritual sense. There is
such a thing today in Judaism. You may be aware
of cash root, the Jewish dietary practice. The one rule
that most people know about it is you don't mix
meat with milk. Now, this doesn't only mean cheeseburgers. It
means at the same meal, if you're having steak, you
can't have butter or sour cream on your baked potato.

(01:32):
It means having different pans to cook dairy dishes and
meat dishes in, and, depending on one's level of observance,
not eating one within six hours of each other. Like
if you have that milk chocolate for an afternoon snack,
kiss the steak dinner goodbye. But what happens if something
spills in the fridge. If you get some meat juice
in a bowl of milk, the milk is now tray ff.

(01:55):
This is t r e y f or non kosher. However,
if you got to drop of milk in a bowl
of beef chili, it may still be fined to eat,
as meat is considered a greater contaminant. Look at it
like mixing paint. A drop of white in a puddle
of black paint will make no appreciable difference, but a
drop of black paint in a puddle of white will
have a drastic effect. Cheese made with rennet obtained from

(02:19):
cow stomachs, thus considered meat is an ongoing debate. Here's
the important part. In relation to the transformation of food gelatin,
there is a principle called davar hadash. The H is
the flim hawking back of the throat. Sound not like
c H and cheese. So I hope, I said that right?
Dvar hadash in cash root that holds what that When

(02:41):
a substance has been through certain chemical transformations or deluded
to a certain point, it loses its status as meat
or milk. Food gelatin is the most common example. This
is one reason why some jello type desserts and marshmallows
are considered kosher and some are not. Just like one's
individual practice, the specifics are up for debate from rabbi

(03:04):
to rabbi, and tradition to tradition. Gelatine being rendered from
animal bones should be meat. However, in the process of
being made into gelatine, it undergoes certain processes that are
considered enough to strip it of its meat status and
make it ParvE, which means neutral, neither meat nor milk.
Some rabbis hold this, some don't. Marshmallows are usually made

(03:26):
with gelatine, and I suppose there might be some kosher
ones that are, but most kosher marshmallows are made with eisenloss,
a gelatine like extract from fish guts. Fish are usually
considered parvey. That's a whole other rabbinic discussion, so anything
derived from them shares that quality. There are some other
factories that play into gelatine's kosher or not status, but

(03:48):
dvar hadash is the one that's most relevant here. So
it may not be exactly the distillation of bear essence.
Remember the episode we're talking about bear gravy. Uh what
the idea of changing of food's essential qualities through a
cooking process is alive and well, and Judaism and probably
other cultures with dietary restrictions today, keep on with your

(04:10):
bad selves, Mark, And then, as a PS, Mark says,
I just remember the liver. Liver cannot be sold in
a kosher form, so homes that keep kosher will often
have a tray pan just to boil the liver. The
process cashiers or kosher's I think this is Cashier's Cashiers
the liver and makes it ready to be made into
your classic deli chopped liver spread. Interesting. I didn't know

(04:34):
much about all of that. That's that's that's that's very fascinating. Yeah.
By the way, you can get vegan marshmallows. I know
that because those that's what we get here at the house.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know in some recipes, Um,
there are substitutes for for when gelatine would often be used,
and say, certain types of baking or cooking where you
can substitute something like pecton, which is a plant product

(04:56):
for gelatin sometimes, but it might not work in all cases,
So I don't if anybody does that with marshmallows. All right,
here's another one. This one comes to us from Karina,
and Karina writes, Hello, I'd like to start this message
with some praise. Your show has been my favorite for years,

(05:16):
and I appreciate how you approach even the more unconventional
topics with a scientific mindset and a little lightheartedness. Keep
up the great work, and please do keep up weird
how cinema and the artifact too. The reason I finally
decided to write in is however, the recent vault episode
on Kama Muda. At first, I didn't think it was
a particularly useful term, probably due to my avoiding team sports,

(05:39):
religious groups, and even baby Yoda, who is indeed very cute.
But then I kept pondering the concept of feeling a
strong connection to strangers, and suddenly it struck me that
it can be found in many a situation. For example,
I'm a law student who had a major oral exam earlier.
Today there are always three of us being questioned in
turn these days, of with considerable physical space in between,

(06:02):
and the prompts are notoriously anything but easy. So as
I found myself rooting for the others, I started to
wonder why yes while being tested and remembered Karma Mudah.
Sometime later, I was relaxing by listening to my favorite
band uh called Muse and not particularly popular in my
neck of the global woods, while remembering a show of

(06:23):
Theirs I attended in twenty nineteen, and there was that
feeling again. Hearing some thousand other fans shout the very
same words I otherwise sing by myself in the shower
is the closest to a drug high. I will in
all probability, uh ever have In short, since being made
aware of this specific concept, I have begun to notice
this sense of community practically everywhere, and for what it's worth,

(06:47):
that is great. Quick side note, With German being my
native tongue, I would not have expected that other languages
lack for a word like schadenfreude, but it's a handy
term that we use rather frequently. I experience a little
schadenfreud and myself right now for others who can't. Just kidding,
but I do think that having a specific name for
a feeling makes it somehow less intangible. Best wishes from

(07:10):
far away Austria, Korea. That's really interesting, And that gets
into something that I think we talked about in some
other listener mail after the Kamma Muda episode that while
there I think are pretty good arguments against certain types
of linguistic determinism ideas in psychology, it seems, at least
in my experience, pretty undeniable that having a word for

(07:34):
something can change how you experience the world. That like,
there might be a thing that you never noticed until
you had a word for it, and then once you've
got a word for it, you see it all over
the place on the subject of Muse. When I was
I was in a band in high school that tried
to cover a song by Muse. I don't exactly remember
the name of the song. I remember that I was

(07:56):
supposed to be singing it and I was not doing
a good job. My main connection to muses that I
really enjoyed the French horror movie High Tension when it
came out, and with two thousand three, which is a
really entertaining horror film to watch through once, but it
prominently features the mus song Newborn and uh, it really

(08:17):
effectively utilizes it. So I always associate news with that movie,
in that movie, with that particular news track. Nice Okay.
This next message is a response to a previous listener mail,
which follows up on our episodes about spinning and dizziness.
This is from Elizabeth. Elizabeth says, thanks for regularly blowing

(08:40):
my mind. Guys, you're the best. Just listen to your
responses to the listener mail nightmare Key episode and was
intrigued by your comments on both Vertigo and YouTube videos
in combination. You see some YouTube videos give me motion sickness,
much as the early versions of Doom did. Yeah, I
just dated my of horribly, I know. Anyway, YouTube's worst

(09:02):
offenders tend to be Minecraft videos. I wonder why that is,
and if the affliction is widespread or just me. I mean,
it's not like my inner ear is moving around or anything.
Thanks again, Elizabeth, Well, Elizabeth, I think there is an
answer to this. So, first of all, the experience of
general motion sickness symptoms including vertigo dizziness while people are

(09:24):
using video games, which I think this would also include
watching videos of game play in games that is common
that is not just you. It seems to be especially
common from what I can tell, in games that are
played from a first person perspective as opposed to a
third person perspective. And I think this would line up
with both Minecraft and Doom if I'm not correct. I've

(09:45):
never played Minecraft. That's first person, and I think you
can switch it up. Okay, But anyway, there's actually a
related phenomenon in pilot training known as simulator sickness. Rob.
I know you you know a lot about airplanes. Have
you ever heard of this before? Um, I'm not remembering anything,
and simulator sickness off stuff in my head now. Well, Basically,
the deal is that pilots who use stationary flight simulators

(10:06):
to train sometimes experience vertigo, nausea, and other motion sickness
effects even though they're not moving. One interesting finding about this,
at least from what I recall, is that the more
experienced a pilot is with actual flight, the more likely
they are to experience simulator sickness in a virtual environment.
But anyway, what explains this feeling of vertigo? You know, like,

(10:30):
what what would get you feeling this way just from
interacting with video content if your body is not even
moving around? Well, I think there are multiple hypothesized explanations,
but the main one that I would put out there
would be sensory incongruity, basically disagreement between the senses. So
when your vestibular organs are telling you one thing about
your movement, such as you are sitting still, and your

(10:51):
vision is telling you something different you are moving around,
this can make you feel dizzy because they're not in agreement.
It's that lack of agreement that leads to some types
of dizziness in in other scenarios um and so this
seems to be one reason that sometimes you can kind
of reduce dizziness from spinning by closing your eyes right.
But anyway, because of this, I would guess I don't

(11:13):
know this for sure, but it would be my suspicion
that video games and simulators the ones that are most
likely to cause dizziness are the ones that are best
at confusing the brain into thinking that it is just
real vision of a real environment. So I think it
would be especially bad with virtual reality, but even if
you're just looking at a flat two D display, I

(11:34):
think it would probably be the most intense with video
games that include first person perspectives of watching first person operations,
including the hands or controls or like a gun even
in a first person shooter, in front of the body,
and especially that would involve looking around a lot. I've
also found that if you hand the controller off to

(11:56):
a small child and let them just roar the row
around in circles, that can that can cause a dizzying effect. Um.
I've also found that if I pick up a controller
that someone else is using and and and they have
not inverted the y axis, then that can make me
feel a little dizzy, like maybe maybe it's just because

(12:16):
you know things aren't moving the way they're supposed to,
and it just feels kind of disordient. I don't know.
Maybe it's not full on dizziness, but it it feels
a little sickening somehow. Yeah, I know what you're talking
about there. I'm interested in this fact that it seems
like pilots who have more experience in real airplanes are
more prone to this experience in simulators. It makes me

(12:37):
think that Elizabeth Uh was dizzy by playing the original
Doom because she had all of this experience blasting demons
on Mars real life, she'd actually been on Phobos fighting
off the Horde from Hell. Exactly were you there, Elizabeth?
You gotta tell us, all right, here's another one for us.

(13:01):
This is Uh. This comes to us from Nick, and
it's regarding sinkholes. Nick writes, I spend my morning commute
listening to your podcast, as I always do, during your
discussion of sinkholes and how they have led to discoveries
about remains, such as the diet of the giant sloth.
I know it did not have much to do with
the topic, but I actually think a future discussion about

(13:21):
animals like the giant sloth would be really entertaining. Um
I would agree with that, uh. Nick continues, I'm a
young engineer. But what free time I have I spend
in the outdoors appreciating the world's natural beauty. And on
a recent trip to Joshua Tree, I learned all about
how giant sloths of that area had a diet that
largely consisted of Joshua tree fruits, and that the demise
of the giant swath led to the demise of the

(13:43):
Joshua tree, and vice versa, as one may presume. As
giant sloths began to die out, less seeds were dispersed
by the sloths, leading to less territory occupied by the
Joshua trees, leading to less territory for the sloths who
relied on the trees fruit, etcetera, etcetera. I know this
may be a bit parochial, but honestly, what is more
majestic than the idea of a giant sloth. The fact

(14:04):
that this animal ever existed has always intrigued me, and
I feel it is not talked about enough, so maybe
it would be something fun to look at. Anyway. I
love your podcast. I listened daily, and as a true fan,
I tell people all the time not to trust squirrels.
All the best, Nick Boy, it's the giants loth is

(14:25):
not talked about enough. It's like there's a conspiracy of
silence about the giants loth. Well, I mean, I I
see where they're coming from, because, yeah, the giant sloth
is this huge, fascinating creature, and sometimes there's a tendency
maybe to focus on other prehistoric animals. Um. I frequently
have this conversation with my son, because he's very vocal
about this. He's like, the t rex is not my

(14:46):
favorite dinosaur, Dad, because too many, too much attention goes
to the t rex. There are all these other cool
dinosaurs that deserve credit. And so I like along those
same lines. Yeah, so like he was into the spinosaurus
before it was cool, Yeah that sort of thing. Oh yeah,
there's just so many cool creatures and it's easy to
focus on other prehistar creatures. But the giant sloth is
is really neat and I mean and also here here

(15:09):
in our neck of the woods, like it's one we
can point to. It's saying like, yeah, there's the giant
slot that that lived here. Actually, the more that I
think about this, this is a great idea. We should
do our best to inculcate an extinct mega fauna. Counterculture.
That's all about people celebrating the virtues of lesser appreciated
extinct to giant animals. Yeah, well, um, I would love

(15:29):
to discuss the giant sloth in the future. I enjoy
our prehistar creature episodes and yeah, we'll have to We'll
have to do another one soon. I figured there'd be
a lot of room from Moa in there. But anyway, uh,
this uh, this next message comes from the exact same
listener from Nick. Uh. It's a follow up to our

(15:50):
episode about bonsai trees. And this is a kind of
message I love getting from somebody who has been listening
to the show for a while and then suddenly we
just stumble across their area of x pertise. So anyway,
Nick says, good morning. I just listened to your episode
on bonsai trees and I wanted to reach out in
regards to the study you guys brought up about semi
dwarf trees and the possible benefits for their use in

(16:12):
pulping processes, partially because this is the first topic I
have some sort of expertise in. I am a paper
science engineer and a chemical engineer, so I have some
experience in the science of tree fibers. When you brought
up the impact on reaction woods, my mind started racing. Essentially,
trees are made up of three major components, cellulose, hemi, cellulose,

(16:35):
and lignant. The percentage makeup varies from tree to tree
and species to species, but in general a good assumption
is about fifty percent cellulose, hemi, cellulose and lignant. UH.
In papermaking, we really only care about cellulose. That's the
part that we can use. Again, generally speaking, while lignan

(16:56):
is what you might call our arch nemesis, lignant acts
like the glue that holds everything together and is an
extremely complex chemical. Theoretically, there could be cases where the
entire lignant content of the tree is all one connected molecule.
Absolutely astonishing to me. Wow, and I had no idea
of that, Nick, that's crazy. But anyway, coming back to

(17:19):
the subject of reaction woods, Nick writes, reaction woods are
most easily explained by a branch, though, as you mentioned, slopes,
wind and other harsh weather can also cause reaction woods
to form. To use the branch example above, the branch
will build up pockets of tension would in order to
pull the branch up while uh, and here Nick says

(17:41):
above what I think Nick min below. So I'm gonna say, well,
below the branch there will develop compression would to push
the branch up. The tension woods will have a higher
proportion of cellulose, say six, while the compression woods build
up more lignant content. One might assume that this means
the tension would is per furred by paper market, since

(18:01):
we like cellulose, But this assumption is wrong. Though I
do hate compression would because of its lignant I love
this hate for wood um the can The inconsistency that
arises from reaction would makes the pulping process hard to
control and actually decreases the overall quality and or yield
of the pulp, which in turn makes the paper produced

(18:22):
that much worse. This is why the study you mentioned
that could reduce reaction woods caught me off guard. It
seems like such an easy solution with such massive impact. Anyway,
if you ever do an episode on papermaking, because it
honestly is an incredibly complex and at least to me,
deeply interesting topic, I'll be listening intently. I know there
aren't many paper scientists walking around out there, but once

(18:44):
you get one of us going about paper. We could
talk for hours. Love your show. Listen every morning and
afternoon during my commute. Thanks nick Ah, that's awesome. Yeah,
get some I got to get some paper science, uh
input from our listeners here. And you know, I don't
think we've done a full episode on like the invention
of paper and all it. It came up in an
invention episode, but I can't remember what it was. I

(19:05):
think we did one on the book that was about
the history where we talked about like overall book technology
scroll versus codax, and so we talked about some like
types of papermaking. We talked about parchment and about papyrus
making and all that. But yeah, modern paper based on
wood cellulo, so that would be interesting. Yeah yeah, um,
you know, speaking of paper making and books. This is

(19:29):
one of the things I enjoyed about the the more
recent TV adaptation of the Name of the Roads is
that there are a few scenes where you see the
monks making parchment, making the paper for the books. Interesting.
All right, let's let's get into some of that weird
house cinema listener mail here. Now, this first bit that

(19:52):
comes to us, this was actually left on um a
post at my blog side Samuta Music s E m
U t A m U S. I see. Uh, clearly
I wasn't thinking about something that that translated well to
to delivering on the podcast when I when I established
that side. But I blog about the Weirdout Cinema episodes
there and we had a listener respond we're not entirely

(20:14):
sure what their name is or what their name they
want to go by, so we're just gonna skip the
name and say a A listener wrote in and they
were responding to our episode on the Oily Maniac. Uh,
so this is what they say. Nice job. You've covered
a lot of interesting info about this Shaw Brothers flick.
As a fan of Chinese and Hong Kong cinema, I

(20:36):
have watched a couple of hundred of the Shaw Martial Arts,
horror and comedy films. The Oily Maniac is definitely one
of the lesser productions from the Shop Brothers, but it
still has its moments. Those interested in more Shop Brothers
black magic films should check out the work of director
to whom Key such as Hex eight, Hex Versus Witchcraft eighty,

(20:57):
The Gross Out Pick, Corpse Mania nineteen eight one, Hex
after Hex two and the wacky The Boxers omen three,
but my favorite has got to be hex Lies in Videotape.
Oh that would be good. Um Uh, you know I've
heard of The Boxers omen That one's been on my
radar for a while, but I've never actually seen it.

(21:17):
But I know it's supposed to be a weird one.
Um anyway, they continue. Um. He also directed one of
the all time best Shop Brothers dramatic martial arts arts films,
Killer Constable, which deserves to be better known and is
currently available free to view with an Amazon Prime subscription.
Killer Constable. I'll have to look it up. There are
also two more films in the black magic horror genre

(21:40):
by Ming Ho Ho, the director of The Oily Maniac.
They start ty Lung and are appropriately named black Magic
Nive and Black Magic two nine six. Note all of
the films I mentioned contains subject matter that can be objectionable,
nausea inducing and just playing wrong and times. I believe
forward to more great weird House cinema podcast. So clearly

(22:03):
there's a lot of great um Shaw Brothers and Hong
Kong cinema black magic content out there. If we if
we're brave enough for it in the future totally. Uh So,
I think we've got to come back to the Shaw
Brothers someday. Maybe maybe we can find one that's a
little less grimy but still just as weird. Yeah yeah,
And I think I think I have one kind of

(22:25):
in my sight, so I gotta I gotta research it
a little bit more, but we may have one that
will get to eventually. Oh boy, that's exciting. I can't wait. Okay,
uh we got a couple of messages. But this is
another thing I just love when we can be like, hey,

(22:46):
did anybody grow up in the Soviet Union that can
explain all this stuff we don't understand and teens in
the universe, And oh boy, we just got some really
great messages from I think these were both Russian listeners,
or at least listeners who had Russian family. Um. So,

(23:06):
a couple of messages about teens in the universe, the
first one from Slava, providing some interesting cultural and historical
context for this nineteen seventy four Soviet science fiction movie.
Slava says, Hi, guys, I'll try to keep this short
because I feel like I tend to ramble. The apparent
paradox in teens in the universe, which seemed to stump
the robots, is actually a riddle for kids. Remember this

(23:29):
was the A and B sitting on a rose thing
that we didn't understand. I mean, it was clear they
were using it to short circuit the robots brains, but
but I did not know what the original thing was.
So Slava says in Russian, the word for and is
just the letter in in the cyrilla. This is like
a backwards in which Slava says is pronounced like the

(23:50):
English letter E, which I will use as it stand
in to hopefully make things less confusing. The wording of
the riddle therefore becomes ambiguous. It can be read as
as A and B are sitting on the wall, or
as A E B are sitting on the wall. So
when asked what's left sitting on the wall after A

(24:10):
falls down and B falls down, the correct answer would
be the letter E. My guess is that all the
robots are too mathematically minded to understand the nuance of
human word play. I see, okay, So the issue is
that the conjunction that the sound in spoken Russian, indicating
the conjunction for and could also just be a word

(24:33):
in a list of things that are sitting on the wall.
Does that make sense? Yes? Yeah, yeah, this this uh,
this email definitely UM explained it a bit more like
you know, like you said, we from the context of
the film, you can tell it's some sort of a uh,
you know, a logic puzzle type situation. I think maybe
an English equivalent would be, uh, I'm about to say
some letters for you, memorize them, M and O. What

(24:57):
were the letters? Was it? Did I say M and
oh or m n oh? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway,
Slava goes on to say, also, those gymnast rings you
mentioned that, remember they were in Pavel's memory of his
childhood home. Those gymnast rings you mentioned were a common
occurrence in households with children. The Soviet Union led quite

(25:19):
an ambitious propaganda campaign espousing the virtues of exercise. As
for the hobby of collecting nails, this also was Pavel's hobby.
You remember you have these giant land nails. Hobby of
collecting nails. I am at a loss. I'll probe the
members of my family who grew up in the Soviet
Union to see if I can figure anything out. Keep
up the great work I've enjoyed your show for years,

(25:39):
whether at work or as a sleep aid. Uh. The
recent edition of Weird House Cinema has been quite a
treat slava. Well, we're glad you're enjoying its lava and uh.
And and we don't resent that some people use our
show to to go to sleep. We've heard that plenty
of times before. Yeah. No, I mean, however, if you're
using the show, um, go for it. How whatever use
we can we can can be all right. This one

(26:06):
comes to us from Georgia. Hello Robert, Hello Joe. This
is Georgia from St. Petersburg, Russia. I've been listening to
your podcast for over a year now, mostly to your
Invention series, which I really enjoy. I must admit that
I almost overlooked your teams in the Universe episode, as
I normally skipped the Weird House Cinema episodes. Sorry, too
much weird Soviet movies on my list to watch. I

(26:27):
just cannot possibly afford adding anything more to that. They continue.
But while my podcast app was marking it as listened to,
the description caught my eye with the keywords that, as
a rule make me alert Soviet and nineteen seventies. You see,
I'm no fan of sci fi and no expert on that,
including the Soviet sci fi. Moreover, when these two movies,

(26:50):
as it turns out this was supposed to be one
movie but judged too long and split into two came out,
I was not even around, and yet, as someone born
just before the breakup of the uss ARE, I'm drawn
to that part of my country's history. Plus having my
parents who can tell me quite a lot about it,
I just couldn't pass by this discussion. The most curious
thing for me was your decoding of the cultural codes. Uh,

(27:13):
actually the way that you react to the quote unquote
normal Soviet stuff in the movie, which might not seem
weird to Russian viewers even all those years later. So
let me share some thoughts with you. And don't get
me wrong, I do understand that for an outsider, getting
all the cultural codes in a Soviet movie right is
a hard task. I can imagine how many of them
would slip from my attention if I were watching, say,

(27:36):
an old Chinese movie or something. I think we talked
about this in the episode that like at least half
of the weirdness in our reaction to this was probably
actually just in us not understanding what some of these
like cultural symbols were, And it's hard to know one
thing from another, like do the gymnastis se So it
seems like gymnast rings were just a common thing in
Russian households that wasn't meaning anything in particular in the movie.

(27:59):
But no, but he so far as said anything about
Russian about nails nail collecting. I think that's just actually
weird maybe yeah, yeah, And and like I said, it's
it's always kind of an interesting um thought experiment or
an interesting project for a movie viewer to sort of
figure this out, whether you're watching something from a movie
from another part of the world or even from another time.

(28:22):
You know, sometimes you have that a similar situation going
on when you stay watching a film from the nineteen
forties or something, and you're like, what what am I
looking at? Was this just was this the technology of
the day, was the current fad? Or is this just
some genuine weirdness of this picture? Sausage man on the
train with a dog in his basket and mad love? Yeah,
exactly alright, Georgia continues. I should also point out that

(28:44):
although I had heard the title, I watched the movie
only yesterday. Both parts together with my parents. At least
one of them claims having watched both parts back in
the seventies, but being fifteen or sixteen at the time,
my parents just weren't interested in those quote unquote kids
film movies anymore, they say, even for them back then,
it seemed too slow and childish. Okay, I I appreciate

(29:07):
that my tastes are too slow and childish for your parents,
So let's start. The title itself is somewhat weird because
oh trock that o t r okay um a boy
in between being a child and a young man is
a pretty old fashioned word, which you will normally find
somewhere in either classic Russian literature c. Tolstoy's trilogy um

(29:28):
uh debt that stavo childhood um and then um ultra
chest Fox boyhood, uh uhnst youth and some moralistic literature. Here,
I guess it is used for the effect to make
it sound like a high style sci fi title crimea
used as a set in many Soviet and Russian movies,
including Lilac Ball. It's actually a kind of sequel to

(29:51):
other famous sci fi team movie uh Guests from the
Future and weird stuff such as Asa, a merge of
a crime story, a love story and row music now
and then the Georgia discusses the Soviet King of acting,
you know, Kenty Smutnovski. And then they this is their

(30:11):
their words, not mine, They say, God, that's a hard
one to pronounce. I can imagine. It's a very much
is a very much loved actor. Not necessarily a king, though,
but definitely a very good one, particularly in that sixty
four hamlet you mentioned. His performance is worth all the
oscars in the world. Not kidding, well, I should look
that up. Actually, yeah. His title in Russian is ioo,

(30:32):
a kind of play of words because i O is
a common abbreviation for acting, literally executing someone else's responsibilities.
Plus they added an extra for special so the move
in the movie he's executing special responsibilities, the meaning of
acting in lieu of disappears Love. Durov the Academic is

(30:54):
also a very famous Soviet actor, well known to kids,
also for his roles in kids movies. For a Weird
One the Story of Voyages. Oh boy, this one has
a good poster. You should look this up right now. Oh,
it's like a man's face on the back of a
shroud or a cape or on the front of a cape,
also known as a fairy tale of wanderings. Interesting. Uh,

(31:17):
I'm wondering if weird, how cinema may just get like
a Soviet takeover of Soviet genre films from the seventies.
Will will sort of be all we do for a bit. Yeah,
I'm sure we'll come back to him for sure. Uh.
They continue Barregavoy as a consultant for both films. I
wasn't able to find any details of his trip to
the USA, but probably I just didn't put much effort

(31:39):
into my research. By the way, according to Wikipedia, he
was shot at during an official meeting with cosmonauts in
the Kremlin because of his resemblance with Bresnev, who is
in a similar looking car often referred to as a
Sheldon Sheldon of Oz or member carrier, member of the party,
and then uh. The characters mentioned a law a nickname

(32:00):
meaning forehead but also a shortened version of his surname,
sneaks into the spaceship because no one wanted to take
him on board in the first part. Ah, he was
a stowaway. He was very much into reading sci fi
and can be seen holding I robot in Russian and
some compilation of sci fi stories in the first part,
hence his knowledge of all sorts of things from those books,
including the dragonfly uh Strekova Coscacoza classification. In Russian. He

(32:26):
talks about stre strechozoids or dragonfly OIDs, apparently a sort
of knowledge he got from so many sci fi stories. Okay,
so when they're saying Lob has expertise on alien civilizations,
what that means is he's read a lot of Isaac Asimov.
There you go, all right, Misha. He recites Tolstoy at
heart because of his special ability to memorize many pages

(32:48):
of print for which he was selected for this mission
in the first part, and then Pavel. His parents celebrate
his birthday in a dim lit kitchen just for the
sake of the candles on his on the birthday cake.
We usually turn the light off uh for that moment
when the kid blows all the candles out. Also, his
gymnastics kit in the hall of his apartment was quite
common stuff in a Soviet family with kids. It's called

(33:10):
uh shedskaya stinka Swedish wall. We still have some leftovers
from it in my apartment. When celebrating his birthday. On
board of the spaceship, the children chant happy birthday altogether
in a typical way, certainly not menacing. We usually do
that when we want to wish happy birthday to someone altogether. Well,
I'm sorry I read a menacing tone into the birthday shout.

(33:33):
I think that was probably just me not being familiar
with that chant. Okay. Picking up with a few more
things here, Georgia says that all of the kids were
equipped with a smeezlu love vitel um. In the first
part of the movie. They have it on their chest
and this is the translator box. You remember that before
so it was translating the whistles and the gestures of

(33:55):
the robots so that they could speak. But apparently they
used this in the first half in Moscow Cassiopeia, and
it allows them to translate the words of aliens or
even animals. Uh. That some kind of Google Translate type machine,
Georgia says. Now, you remember the press conference scene where
there is Biff Wayned, You remember him with the the

(34:18):
yellow turtleneck and the cool leather jacket. Well, Georgia says
the French journalist from peef Viante. That might be a
translation of that might be through which we got the translation.
Biff Wayuned also appears in the first part. Apparently he
doesn't change even after twenty seven years have passed. He

(34:39):
is also a sort of spy as he tries to
make some shots with his mini camera in the first film.
Huh uh. And then this part was interesting finally about
the music that makes the humanoids go nuts. You remember
the crazy scramble horns and the bass and the drums
that were the sonic weapon that draw drove Agapit out
of his mind. Um to my mind, it sounds like

(35:01):
that sort of corrupting music from the capitalistic world you
would hear in Soviet propaganda about the poisonous influence of
the Western music or dance moves. It certainly does. And yes,
I do think that apart from being an entertainment, the
movie is definitely trying to get across its message about
teens being our future, their role in bringing the society forward,

(35:23):
about friendship, support, etcetera, etcetera. This message about the bad
influence of the West on the youth was such a
commonplace back then. It looks almost as organic in this
film as the Red Square and the obligatory salute to
Lennon's mausoleum. That the Pioneers a much more politicized group
than your Scouts. By the way, that was the second

(35:43):
step in the ideological education of a Soviet citizen, after
Octia Briannoch derived from October for the very small children.
Preceding the third. Uh comes some mulletz for the youth
and eventually being a member of the part. Uh the
and oh, sorry, this is a there's a big parenthetical

(36:05):
in the middle of that sentence. So apparently the Pioneers
in the first movie, Uh, they salute Lennon's mausoleum in
in Russia before they depart for Alpha Cassiopeia. But anyway,
Georgia wraps this up, saying I might have forgotten some
of the points. It's getting too long. Anyway, I hope
this email was not as boring as it looks. Keep
on investigating into the Soviet realm of weird movies. We

(36:25):
have so many of them, and even weirder than the
one you've just seen best, Georgia, Uh, well, sounds promising. Yeah,
I'm excited. Thank you for all of this context. This
was deep. Yeah, yeah, this was this really answered a
lot of questions and raise new questions, and and also
presenting some new movies for us to check out. So
I'm excited. Yeah, I definitely want to check out the

(36:46):
Story of Voyages and that awesome one too. Yeah. Alright,
let's wrap up with one last message here. This is UH,
also about weird Cinema. This is from Brian. Brian says, Hey,
Joe and Rob. I wanted to write in and say
how much I've been enjoying Weird House cinema. Not to

(37:07):
say I don't enjoy everything you do, because I do,
but there's something fascinating to me about how you both
explore and discuss these films. I haven't seen any of
the films discussed so far, but somehow, after listening, it's
like I've always loved them and feel a kind of nostalgia. Anyway,
there were two films I wanted to throw out since
I'm already emailing. Keep in mind I was born in
nineteen ninety and I am far from a film buff.

(37:29):
First is the film Planet of the Dinosaurs. When I
was a child, my grandmother had a VHS copy of
this movie, and I have memories of watching it over
and over. The intro music always gave me the creeps
and the film overall terrified me, but I still liked it.
After listening to a Weird House episode, I attempted watching
it available on Prime and was pleased to see My

(37:51):
six year old son was also terrified by the intro music,
and my wife made me turn it off. Um, this
to me feels like a house film, but you are
the experts. Well, I looked it up and it looks
very promising, Brian. It's got some very cheesy looking I
think stop motion dinosaurs kind of had a slight remind
slight similarity to The Daytime Ended, which is a movie

(38:14):
we might have to get into someday. Yeah. Yeah, but
this looks great Planet of the Dinosaurs. Brian goes on
to say the second film I'm not sure fits quite
as well, but I wanted to mention it anyway. And
it is troll Hunter or troll Yagharon. This is a
Norwegian film from two thousand ten and I love it. However,

(38:34):
everyone I ever attempted to show it to hated it.
Uh that that's the best kind of film to love,
a film you can love alone. Long story short, It
is filmed cam quarter style and they hunt massive trolls
and get into some dangerous situations kind of scary, very fun.
Ha ha, Brian, I have seen this movie and I
will tell you I liked it, so maybe I I

(38:57):
love Troll Hunter when it came out. Yeah, this one
for if if anyone out there's not familiar with it,
don't let the cam quarter style thing throw you, because
I know a lot of us got kind of over
the found footage sort of approach to filmmaking. Uh. Troll
Hunters really great and it has so much wonderful monster
science already just baked into the film itself, like they

(39:18):
really thought out this whole troll thing and troll petrification. Yeah,
it's it's a great flight. I highly recommend. Yeah. But finally,
Brian says sorry for the long email, But lastly, I
love you guys and all your work. I came across
your podcast as well as stuff you should know three
years ago while my daughter was in the hospital having
corrective heart surgery. Needless to say, I needed some distraction

(39:40):
at that time, and you helped provide it. Thanks so much, Brian. PS.
My daughter is as normal as any other three year
old these days and in great health. Uh and so
I'm really happy to hear that, Brian, thanks for the note. Yeah,
and I'm glad that the guy that we could help
you out in some small way through a hard time.
I know what it's like being in the hospital with

(40:00):
a kiddo. Uh So, uh yeah, that was good. That
was a great one to hear. And now we have
two other well at least one other movie. I don't
know if Troll Hunter, I don't know. If it's it's
weird cinema, weird house cinema might be too recent. Is
that is that past our cutoff point? What do you think? Um?
I don't know that it's too recent. I just feel
like I don't know like it. It kind of like

(40:22):
I couldn't really talk about the monster science of it
because they do it so well in the film itself.
You know. Um, I don't know, it's it's it's a
weird it's a weird, like it's definitely a weird film.
I just don't know, um, what we could say about
it really other than it's good and people should see it.
So I highly recommended. All right, Well we're gonna go
ahead and uh tell Carnie the mail bot that's gonna

(40:44):
be it. For today, but hey, we'll be back next
week with another round of listener mail. We'd love to
hear from everyone out there about uh, you know, current
recent episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, recent artifacts,
recent episodes of Weird House Cinema, also suggests for the
future on any of these, uh these product types that
we're putting out. Also, if you have thoughts regarding a

(41:06):
Vault episode that we've republished, we'd love to hear about that,
Or if you have a response to a particular listener
mail that we've featured on listener Mail, that's open game
as well. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. 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, just

(41:27):
to say hello, you can email us at contact at
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