Listener Mail: Halloween Hangover 2019

Halloween may be over, but Robert and Joe have a bunch of spooky listener mail to unpack before the other holidays kick in. Grab whatever is left of the Halloween candy and tune in...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Joe McCormick, and it's our yearly Halloween Hangover listener
mail episode. We always get tons of great listener mail.

(00:23):
We have got an absolutely overflowing mail bag right now,
so much so that we decided we're gonna do too
listener mail episodes this week to catch up and frankly,
to help us get through a part of the year
that is always very tight and very busy. Yeah, yeah,
this and then this is a good time to first
of all, to have one more heaping scoop of Halloween
right here in the gray zone between the end of

(00:47):
October and you know, the beginning of saying Thanksgiving and
Christmas like the full on holidays. Well, and we have
we have so much great content to read here. And
then after that it's gonna be it's gonna be all
Christmas around here. It's gonna be Holidays like like like
you've never seen it before. But also we've got some
weird science lined up for the next few weeks that
that you probably wouldn't believe, so you should be very excited,

(01:09):
all right, And I'm excited as well to have Carney
here with us, our mail bot who's been with us
the whole time, continually changing over the years, getting new
new augments, new programming, etcetera. And today is no different, right.
Carney seems to have been very interested in our episodes
about photography burned from the Mind's Eye, the idea of

(01:32):
projecting images onto film that a lot of supposed psychics
throughout the years have claimed to be able to do.
We talked about that in a couple of Halloween episodes,
and and Carney has really caught the bug. So now
instead of printing out listener mail as he normally does,
he projects it psychically robotically onto various bread products. So
we will be reading your listener mails burned from Carney's

(01:54):
Mind's Eye onto Tortilla's toast. PETA's all the like. Yeah,
he's not supposed to be paying attention into the Invention
podcast listener mail, but I think he caught a few
regarding our episode on toast, and that may have also
led to this current obsession. Here we go, should we
jump right in, Robert, let's do it? What alright, This
first message comes to us from our listener Alex. This

(02:16):
is about the Burned from the Mind's Eye episode, and
Alex writes in Hi, Robert and Joe, I just listened
to the burn from the Mind's Eye podcast. A major
and in visual studies in college, and remember to study
about retinal mapping in the mid century. They showed a
monkey a simple image and placed a radioactive film directly
on the visual cortex with the monkey's brain exposed. It

(02:39):
was basically photosensitive paper, but was sensitive to the electrical
impulses of the brain. The results were a pretty accurate
neuronal map to the visual stimulus, but slightly distorted. Basically,
the retina is mapped specially onto the brain. While the
same process probably couldn't reproduce Garfield or a complex image,
you can actually get a picture to actually from the brain.

(03:01):
Since the occipital or visual cortex is involved in mental
imagery as well as in vision, it follows that with
technology from the fifties and sixties, you might be able
to make thoughtography of an imagined simple shape. That's assuming
the visual cortex response of an imagined image is mapped
the same as a visually stimulated response. So what's going
on here is we were discussing in the episode how

(03:23):
imagery is represented in the brain, and our proposition was
that there's not a screen inside the brain that the
brain watches imagery take place on that could be projected
straight out onto thoughtography. Uh, this sort of complicates it
somewhat now, I think as Alex is saying, there's no
way you could like find an image of Garfield somewhere

(03:46):
in the brain. That doesn't seem to exist even if
you're picturing Garfield. But there does seem to be some
correlation between what parts of the visual field are being
stimulated with various types of light and what parts of
the occipital cortex in the back of the head show
the most activity. So you can sort of map places
on the retina basically parts of the visual field of

(04:08):
things you're looking at, to certain parts of the brain
showing increased activity. And I think one consequence of this
is that if you show somebody like a very simple
black and white shape, you could almost sort of see
a version of that shape represented in brain activity in
the occipital cortex. So, yeah, it all seems to be
just a matter of you know, fine tuning the technology

(04:32):
and the data needed to translate this information. Yeah, and
again this probably doesn't work as well, or almost certainly
doesn't work as well once the image has more complexity
to it. Especially, I think it makes a difference, you know,
once you consider talking talking about like the moving of
the focus of the eyes and all this. But you know,
you can represent parts of the retina, parts of the

(04:53):
visual field within a sort of uh a map of
the visual processing center of the brain. Uh. And I
didn't know this before, so thank you so much for sharing, Alex.
This is really interesting. I still don't think this would
really make thoughtography anymore plausible, because, I mean, there are
multiple problems. Uh. Photography tends to project images as you

(05:17):
would take with a camera. And again this is not
you're You're not getting maps on the brain projecting complex images.
It's more sort of like rough correlations of areas of
the brain to parts of shapes that you would look at.
But and then also like how would the signal escape
the skull. The fact that people tended to do it

(05:37):
at a distance or with the thing in the front
of the head instead of in the back. I think
they're there are multiple reasons for saying that this, this
doesn't really make photography anymore plausible unless you were to say,
remove the skull and only look at extremely simple shapes
and accept very distorted versions of them as you're projected image. Well,
and it reminds me to how we've talked in the

(05:59):
past about how, you know, a lot of times we're
reaching for an idea of how psychic transmission of ideas
could occur, how I can get the contents of my
skull into your skull. And then we overlooked the fact
that we have this thing called language that does exactly that. Uh, so, yeah,
this might be just another bridge between minds, this one

(06:21):
though technological as opposed to linguistic exactly. Uh, Robert, do
you mind if I jump onto the next one, because
it's kind of related. So we were talking about the
question it was raised in one of the papers we
looked at of whether mental imagery could be unconsciously perceived.
Can you picture something without being conscious of perceiving it?
This is a strange question, And Robert, you said, well, wait,

(06:43):
could you even see something in with regular vision without
being conscious of it? And I answered that I thought
there was some evidence for this, like in the invisible
guerilla line of research. I seemed to recall there were
some things where like people wouldn't consciously note seeing a guerrilla,
but then they might be primed on the subject of
guerrillas afterwards, so like maybe some part of them had
seen it, but they weren't conscious of seeing it. But

(07:06):
after recording the episode, some listeners brought up the condition,
and I also thought of the condition that that I
should have mentioned there, which is blind site, which we
definitely should have thought of because we're both big fans
of the Peter Wattson novel where he invokes the concept.
But basically, blind site is a neurological condition in which
people can respond to visual stimuli behaviorally, and yet they

(07:28):
believe they are blind or blind in some particular part
of their visual field. So like you can, I don't know,
for example, somebody could toss a ball at you and
you could reach up and catch it, but you are
but you are not conscious of seeing the ball, like
you don't believe you can see it or have seen it. Yeah, yeah,
I mean certainly with the ball. I think we've all

(07:49):
had that, that situation where you're just suddenly catching the
ball or I've had. I had that situation when my
son was younger, where he he fell off of some
playground equipment and suddenly I was like holding him the foot, Uh,
you know where it's It's just another in another part
of our mental machinery is kicking in to make that possible. Yes,
And so what I think this means is that it

(08:10):
seems to me the brain is perfectly capable of processing
visual imagery and reacting in some cases in some ways
without making that imagery available to the conscious part of
the brain that talks. So Yes, I think there's definitely
evidence that it's possible to see unconsciously with regular vision.
But that still leaves the other question unanswered, whether it's

(08:33):
possible to imagine visual imagery unconsciously? Can you picture Garfield
without knowing your picturing Garfield? And our next email addresses this.
So this is from our listener Tanya. Tanya says, Hey, guys,
you mentioned the question can mental imagery be unconscious? I
have some experience concerning this question. Sometimes, when I read

(08:56):
a novel or play a rather boring game on the computer,
I suddenly become aware that my mind was busy the
last hour with understanding what I read and in the
same time picturing something completely unrelated. Normally it's a landscape
of some sort, something I know more or less well,
I move in this area, similar to the movement you

(09:16):
do when you use Google street View. I had this
experience long before Google and its maps was invented. Uh.
The pictures I produce are not put into words, but
stay completely visual until I become aware. Therefore, I would
call them unconscious. It happens that I come to places
I haven't been to physically in years, but as soon
as I see them again, I remember having been there

(09:37):
recently in my mind. Oh that's interesting, kind of creepy feeling.
But in the moment of picturing them, I was completely unaware.
Sometimes I'm astounded how inaccurate my inner maps are, Like
all memories are, I guess. Fascinated listener from Germany Tanya. Interesting. Yeah,
So this this whole idea, and I think this is
why it was so perplexing when we talked about it

(09:59):
the first time. Is we really have to figure out
what we mean by being conscious of seeing something or
conscious of having a visual image of it. Does that
mean that I are we just talking about? Uh? It
occurring at all, are we talking about me having uh,
like a focused awareness of it, you know, uh, And
I feel like there's there's sort of room on a

(10:22):
scale between the two. Yeah, I mean it's kind of hazy.
I understand what Tanya is talking about here, like having
the idea that you retrospectively remember that you were thinking
about something, but you don't have the impression that you
were conscious of thinking about it when you were thinking
about it. Well, like, like, here's a question when you're
in the shower and you're having like shower thoughts, like,

(10:45):
are you conscious of those thoughts? Is this there's it's
not directed cognition perhaps, you know, but it's I wouldn't
say that I am unconscious when I'm having you know,
various images and ideas rolling through my head, or if
I'm you know, staring off into space and daydreaming. Um. Yeah,
I mean it's weird. We almost think of consciousness is

(11:06):
is like the definitive property of directed cognition, right, But like,
if you are thinking about something, it's almost implied that
necessarily it's conscious, but maybe not. I don't know. Consciousness
is so weird again, It's well, let's move on to
the next listener mail that Karney has for us, because
this will add even more fuel to the fire. All right,

(11:27):
this one comes to us from Windy. Windy rides in
and says, hi, guys, First, the democ Oregan episode was tremendous. Second,
you can definitely unconsciously envisioned things I always thought I
thought in words, mostly until I started meditating. I was
surprised to realize that there was a background of images
accompanying the monologue. They impacted and augmented what I thought,

(11:48):
and I had no idea they were there. Meditation is neat,
So I love it that they brought up meditation because
that's also one of the things that I thought about,
the idea that, yes, when I engaging in a meditative state,
I will sometimes have well, very often, I think, have
engaged with visual imagery that arises, you know, um unsummoned,

(12:13):
you know. But when I really get down and start
thinking about it again, I'm asking myself, well, does that
mean that that I am unconscious of this image? Like
I am, I am aware of the imagery taking place.
It is, it is perceived by me, even if it
feels like I am less in control of it. But
does that mean that it's somehow always back there. It

(12:36):
gets gets really tricky. I feel like we end up
in a situation where we can't really see the forest
for the trees, you know, we get into that blind
brain effect. And to come back to meditation, I mean,
of course, when you're meditation is all about awareness and
about consciousness and changing the way that your awareness is focused,
taking it, you know, away from these things that you

(12:57):
would normally miss and focusing on something that is there
here in the present. Yeah, alright, here's another one. This
one comes to us from Skylar. Hey, guys, Skyler from Kansas.
Just finished listening to Burned from the Mind's Eye Part
two and the end. What you talked about a neural
network being able to draw mental images was really great.

(13:19):
It reminded me of a YouTube channel called data Bots.
It's d A d A dotta bots. I guess not
like data where a neural network is creating live death
metal and jazz music. Seven. I've actually heard this. Yeah, yeah,
it's like AI generated death metal that's just streamed constantly.

(13:40):
Is it death metal jazz? Is that? I think these
are two different things, maybe two different channels. Yeah, maybe
the one I heard it sounded kind of like like
MS sugar, you know, sort of more a tonal, but
they're definitely funk elements in sugar though, But I don't
know about I don't know about jazz. Um Okay, well
this is the sounds interesting anyway, Scotler continues. The longer

(14:03):
I listened to it, the crazier and more real the
music sounds. Just thought you would like that, love the show,
keep it up. This is interesting because it touches on
I think this this really intriguing idea of the future
of creative AI, and that is that not that you
would have a machine that makes all your death metal
or a machine that makes all your jazz, it writes

(14:24):
all your books, etcetera. Um, I you know, maybe we'll
get to that point. But I think the more exciting
idea is that, of course you have humans using AI
to augment their existing talents and creative ideas. So someone
saying I want to make a jazzy death metal album, Um,
but I want to I want to break free from

(14:45):
sort of the you know, the boxes that are enclosing
me here, and then you might turn to creative AI
as a way to sort of discover where you could
break free and also then be able to rein it
in and say, well, I don't really want to go
in this direction or this action, but here's a direction
I never even thought off before. You could almost use
AI kind of like a creative each ing or something,

(15:07):
you know, like introducing elements of of random input for
you to sort through and make your own sense of. Yeah. Yeah,
And of course there have been creative methodologies like that
performer reminded of the cut Up Machine exactly approach to
fiction totally. All right. So this next message comes in

(15:28):
response to our episode I Drink Your Blood Type, which
which had one of our favorite skits in a while,
I think about the Blood Club. Yeah, and then it
was about blood types and also about the idea of
people believing in blood type personality correlations like some of
the blood type horoscopes and things blood blood type diets
and so forth. This was a really great piece of

(15:50):
feedback from our listener Annie. She says, Hey, guys, I
love the show, and I just listened to the episode
on blood. Being a geneticist and neuroscientist, I thought I
would add my two cents worth in relation to your
comments about blood type being linked to certain personality traits.
While blood type is simply inherited by a single gene, locusts.
Personality is complex and is an interaction of many genes

(16:13):
and environment. Certain learned behaviors can be passed down through
families and in fact by different populations or ethnic groups
at the same time as blood groups are inherited, so
by pure coincidence due to specific personality traits of population groups,
both blood type and these traits may track together. In
this case, the two would be correlated with each other,

(16:34):
but there's no evidence that one will cause the other.
The other way blood groups could possibly follow inherited personality
traits is if the genes are inherited together on the chromosome,
and this is more likely to happen if the genes
are closer in proximity on the chromosome, thus having less
chance of being separated during the stages of crossing over.
During myosis, the blood group gene is on the long

(16:56):
arm of chromosome nine. Interestingly, a genetic mutation making one
more susceptible to a certain type of dementia. C nine
O r F seventy two is also on chromosome nine,
albeit on the other end of the chromosome, thus requiring
an even number of crossings over to allow them to
be inherited together. This form of dementia can cause behavioral

(17:17):
variations which may cause personality changes decades before the dementia
sets in. Finally, in regards to the comment about personality
being related to the gut microbiome, uh, and this was
when we were talking about the plausibility of the thing.
We didn't think that that the blood type predictor of
personality was very plausible, but we did say there's a
surface level kind of plausibility because you know, things about

(17:39):
the gut microbiome can predict personality, at least potentially. Uh So, so, Uh,
it might seem to people why couldn't the blood predicted
as well? Uh? But any continues about the gut microbiome.
This is much more feasible since the biota in the
gut produced neurotransmitters which can affect mood and personality, and
the stems from in reology, when the gut and spinal

(18:01):
cord were in fact one organ called the neural crest.
The neural crest separates early during development, but the resulting
gut and central nervous system are still closely linked during life,
as can be seen when we get gut reactions to
certain brain stimuli. And we are now starting to see
evidence of how the types of foods we eat affect
the gut microbiome, which in turn can affect our mood

(18:24):
and general state of mind. Looking forward to continuing to
having my mind blown by you all the best, Annie, Well,
it was great to have a geneticist and neuroscientists chime
in on that. Oh yeah, I always love when when
you'll let their share your expertise with us. All right,
On that note, I think we should probably take our
first break, but when we come back, we will turn
flesh into salt. Thank thank Alright, we're back all right now.

(18:50):
This next message concerned some episodes that came before Halloween,
but since it also touches on some Halloween e stuff,
I think we're throwing it in with Halloween. Lat Yeah,
but plus the non Halloween episodes that they touched on
are also at least a little bit HALLOWEENI I mean,
you know how it goes. But this listener has written
in before and always sends great messages. This is from Jesser.

(19:14):
Jesse writes, Hey, guys, I wanted to write in to
share some thoughts on some recent episodes, along with a
little bit of monster history since it's getting close to October.
In the Flesh into Salt episodes, you talked about how
Lot's wife might have been inspired by natural formations, But
what could have been the inspiration for the story of
Sodom and go Mora as a whole. While I'm not
a scholar of the Hebrew Bible, I have a theory

(19:36):
it's a bit of Bronze Age sci fi, going off
of Isaac Asimov's definition of sci fi as stories which
deal with human response to new technology. Maybe Sodom and
Gomorrah is a pastoral culture's idea of city has gone
too far, where urbanization has destroyed the custom of hospitality.
If you start looking at Hebrew Bible stories through this lens,

(19:58):
the Tower of Babble Become is a cautionary tale about
monumental buildings, Shadrack Mishak and a Ben to Go a
story about smelting furnaces taken too far, and Joseph interpreting
the Pharaoh's dreams at parable about the importance of storing
surplus grain. These stories would have entered the oral tradition
when these ideas were still new then preserved when written

(20:19):
down as religious text. This is all speculation, but ancient
people's could have expressed their anxieties about new technologies through
stories the same way we do today. I love this idea.
I mean again, this is it's speculative. You can't like
know this is the case, really, but you could look
for clues in this and the stories. Maybe. I I
like the idea that a lot of Bible stories and

(20:41):
traditional myths might in fact be like three thousand year
old episodes of Black Mirror. Yeah. I mean, what do
we know about about the way we think about the
passage of time. We know that, yes, we are always
anxious about new technologies as they have presented. Uh, the
older generation is always suspicious of the younger generation and

(21:02):
or fearful of them. We know that technology has profound
effects on culture, that changes culture constantly. Yeah. So I
mean this, You know, on on the surface, this sounds
very plausible. And now I don't know to what extend.
Anyone has ever explored the concept of certainly of of
mythology and folklore as as sort of primitive science fiction

(21:24):
or prescience fiction sci fi. But I would be interested
to learn more about about how this might work. This
sounds like this could be a fascinating book, and if
it hasn't already been written, alright, so um Jesser continues quote,
I also have a thought about a part of what
makes the vantage Mind manuscripts so alluring. It's the fact

(21:44):
that it's so mundane. You expect a hoax or an
invention to be more flamboyant, to call more attention to itself.
But as strange as the manuscript is, it doesn't go anywhere.
In fact, it seems to get less interesting towards the end,
where you'd expect some sort of punchline or absurd conclusion.
This is This is a great point. I think this
is one of the reasons that um House of Leaves

(22:06):
is so so convincing at times, because I had that
experience where I felt that it towards the end it
gets more just reference referential, you know, and and perhaps
less engaging, but in a way that makes it more
it feels more authentic in that regard. Yeah, totally, they continue.
The Codex Serafinitus makes a good comparison because it's much

(22:27):
more obviously playful and fantastic you don't have to decipher
its text to understand the point. But because the Vontage
Manuscript appears to be so straightforward and serious about its subject,
people assume there must be some meaning behind it. The
idea that it might mean nothing is existentially unsatisfying. I
can totally see this. Yeah. The and the Codex Serafinitus

(22:50):
is a good point in comparison. We brought it up
in the Bondage Manuscript episode because it is something that
we know was intentionally created as like an art project.
It doesn't actually have a meaning, is just there to
be interesting and be you know, fun. Yeah. And in
case in point, there are multiple pages of in it
that you would potentially like frame on the wall, you know,

(23:10):
I mean, it looks like a work of art, whereas
the Vonish manuscript and not every page is really like
that interesting without knowing what it is or in fact
what it is not. Yeah, And a lot of the
more interesting pages come like, I don't know, two fifths
of the way through, Like it's in the like balneological sections,
the stuff with the weird baths and the like tentacle

(23:31):
pipes and stuff that that's where things get really weird.
And then after that it descends more into like I think,
after that it's like astrology, and then you get the
recipes towards the end, which is by far the least
interesting part. Yeah, whenever you're reading a story, especially if
you're watching a movie that that has a like a
dark book that shows up a strange book, generally it

(23:51):
looks like they can just turn to any page and
it's instantly monstrous or weird or you know, Eldric and
so forth. Though, but uh, you know, I like the
idea that a true mystery book would only its mysteries,
would only present themselves if you you knew what you're
looking for, you know. So yeah, I would take this
as at least a little bit of evidence more to

(24:12):
the side that it does have a real meaning, because
it gets less interesting as it goes on. You'd expect
if it were a hoax, that would be structured to
have more of a climax of weirdness. Absolutely so, Jesser continues, Uh,
they make a future episode suggestion regarding uh created languages
and so forth, which I think could be interesting. Uh,

(24:32):
and then there's this quote. Lastly, I wanted to toss
in some Halloween history about which is we all know
the stereotype of which is as older women wearing pointy
hats during bubbling cauldrons, flying on brooms, and hanging out
with cats. Where did this come from? It all goes
back to beer beer all right, let's hear hear all
about it. In fourteenth and fifteenth century Europe, brewing beer
was considered a woman's job, part of keeping the house.

(24:55):
Being a beer beer brewer was one of the few
professions acceptable for older married women to have, and when
the witch craze began, these women were the most targeted demographic,
both for social reasons seen as being jealous of women
who were married and had children, and and economic reasons
lacking the resources of a father's or husband's family to
protect them. The traditional brewers hat was tall and pointed

(25:16):
with a wide brim, like an anvil for a blacksmith.
The traditional symbol of a brewer was the broom. Brewers
kept cats as mousers to protect their stores of grain,
and brewing beer does involve some stirring of bubbling cauldrons.
Illustrations of typical witches had all of these traits, and
people at the time would understand as signifying beer brewers.
Over time, the cultural context was lost, but the signifiers remained,

(25:38):
leaving us with the modern image of the witch. Thanks
for all the work you do in making my favorite
poly math podcast I have. I've done some reading about
which is before I haven't even run across this beer
brewer argument. Yeah, I don't know what I think. Like,
I like the case you make here. I feel like
I'd have to do the research and check all this
for myself. But I'm definitely intrigued, Yes, sir, I mean it.

(26:00):
It does sound concise in a way that tends to
make me suspicious of of anything that's explaining a cultural
motif for a mythical monster. But I mean, I'm I'm
open to the idea that perhaps this is at least
part of the story. I mean, I definitely have read
about beer brewing in the medieval or Renaissance period being
primarily the work of women. Um, I think that is

(26:24):
true about these specific things like the symbol of the
broom and the hat and all that. I'd have to
check that out, but yeah, I'm intrigued. Yeah, I mean,
the broom was already going to be a domestic symbol
um anyway, and the hat, I don't know. You know,
the hat is maybe an area of the witch motif
that I haven't looked at a lot. Uh. It seems

(26:44):
like things that i've I've read have dealt more with
the broom. But thanks as always, jes He. This next
one comes from Billy. This is just general Halloween male
and concerns cryptids. Billy writes, Hi, this never really took off,
but earlier in the year, I made a Twitter bot
that generates random descriptions of cryptids every few hours. You're

(27:06):
speaking our language, Billy. It draws on banks of existing animals,
bits of anatomy, adjectives, and a few other variables to
produce unique and entertaining descriptions. You can find it at
twitter dot com slash Cryptid Factory. Here's one of my favorites.
Lord Alfress of Sweden has a tortoise and a glipto.
Don's delightful inverted front portion, no rear, and the body

(27:28):
of a marlin the size of an eraser. I'd love
to know if this brings you any joy. Thanks Billy. Uh, Yeah,
I I like this idea. I think this is what
Twitter is good for, is making bots like this. Yeah,
I mean, I'm always for any you know, listing of
mythical creatures and descriptions of their you know, their physical characteristics.

(27:50):
So I'm all in this, springs me joy. I just
looked up some of the most recent tweets, says of
the moment we're recording this. Here's one picture the widened
head of a camel spider, but also an ammonite's bosom,
commonly seen dragging herself past the undersides of leaves. Not bad.
One more, she has a shrimps select flavor, the head

(28:11):
of an evil mouse, a polar bear's waist, and the
back sections of just a couple of lynx is once
seen slithering toward carpets. The fluff of a gerbil will
sporadically also feature. You know that this reminds me of
are these these children's books? There was one that I
had when I was a kid, and there's a a
newer book that has the same concept that I also love,

(28:32):
as I think far superior art. But each page is
a different creature, and each page has also been cut
into three sections so that you can flip and match
and mismatch the different parts of a creature's body. And
then at least some versions of this design also include
text that does the same thing, so you can you

(28:54):
can just go straight through the book and get this monster,
than this monster, than this monster, or you can mix
and match and create, you know, a wider variety of
strange hybrids. I love this. I've had this book as
a kid, and I wish I could remember the name
of the at least the newer because there's a really
beautiful new book that has the same concept the one

(29:15):
I had as a kid, which I also I haven't
I literally have not seen since my childhood, had more
cartoonish art. But still I remember being really captivated by
it because there were all these different possibilities within it,
And really that gets to the heart of so much
monster creation. It is the hybridity of the of the thing.
It is the bringing together these different forms. All right,

(29:40):
here's another bit of a listener mail, and this one
comes to us from Adam, related to our anthology of
horror episodes, especially the most recent installments. So last year
we did volume one. This year we did volume two
and three. So Adam says, Dear Robert and Joe, I
find myself writing to you a lot lately. I think
it means that you've been hit ting on some especially

(30:01):
engaging topics for me. I wanted to write this email
in response to the recent anthology of horror episode in
which you discussed shadow play. This was an episode of
The Twilight Zone, right. This was the one about the
guy who claimed he was dreaming everyone around him and
if they sent him to the electric chair as he
had been sentenced to, they would all disappear because he
had stopped dreaming. So Adam continues. Uh discussed shadow play,

(30:23):
metaphysical solop sism, and the idea that separate consciousnesses may
exist in the form of other characters within our dreams.
I have something resembling firsthand experience in this matter, and
it was terrifying. Some of the details are hazy, as
it happened in a dream about three years ago. Thankfully,
I wrote an account soon after that that I was
able to refer to. I have not engaged in lucid

(30:44):
dreaming in some time, but I used to practice it,
and I've experienced it to varying degrees of success. One night,
I became lucid in a dream where I was in
a crowded room with a close friend who I will
call Ben. I was very excited and decided to tell Ben,
this is all a dream and you're a character in
my dream. At first, Ben was dismissive, saying that there
was no way he was a dream, and so forth,

(31:04):
very similar to many of the characters in shadow play.
This is the point where I wish that I had
decided to use my lucidity for something else, but unfortunately
I decided to try to convince Ben that it was
a dream. He did not take kindly to it. In
an instant, all the other people in the room with
us turned in unison to face me and stared with
expressionless faces. I somehow knew they had all become some

(31:27):
kind of hive mind with Ben as their leader. Ben's
demeanor then shifted from neutral and carefree to sinister and hostile.
It wasn't just his physical demeanor, but I felt as
if his negative energy was filling the room. Although I
was lucid, I got the impression that it was he
who was in control of the dream. He then began
to attack me verbally. He talked about a painful rejection

(31:47):
that I had recently experienced, played on some insecurities that
I had been experiencing, and told me secrets that I
have never told anyone. Then he stopped, gave me a
menacing grin, and said, that's right, I know everything about you.
At that moment, the crowd moved in unison towards me
with angry faces, and I awoke with a fright. I
took a while to get back to sleep, and thankfully,
when I did it, Ben was not waiting for me.

(32:10):
A few days later, I posted this story to the
subreddit Lucid Dreaming, and someone in the comments suggested that
that this may have been the non dominant hemisphere of
my brain trying to communicate with the dominant hemisphere. I
don't know if this is the case, but I fully
believe that during the interaction there were two separate consciousnesses
existing in my dreaming mind, and one of them, Ben

(32:32):
was hostile toward the other me. Regardless of the explanation,
I would not recommend trying to confront sollop si um
by telling people they don't exist, even if it's true.
Uh uh. It would have been far better to keep
that knowledge to myself far away out of a lucid adventure.
Best regards Adam Well, I don't know, uh, I don't

(32:52):
know if I can back up that explanation of it
being the non dominant hemisphere. But that is one of
the most horrifying dreams I've ever heard of, because it's
sort of it has implications that go beyond the dream, right,
It's like one of the few cases where you could
imagine a dream actually representing some threat that persists after
the dream is over. Yeah. And then interesting too that

(33:15):
like that basically lucidity has been introduced to a certain
extent within the dream, but then there's still you know
that the dream characters still have weight, and still have
have power, and seem to have even uh, you know,
some state of a mind of their own, which is
uh yeah, which is interesting and potentially terrifying. Here's the
question I wonder, Adam, why you thought that Ben was

(33:39):
conscious and not just like a hostile agent that you
were imagining in your dream as you would often imagine
the hostile agent. I mean, we imagine hostile agents in
our dreams all the times, things chasing us and and
all this. I introduced the possibility in that episode that
these other agents we imagine could in some sense be conscious,
because our minds are possible of anxiousness. You know, we're

(34:01):
imagining them. So maybe the brain is using some sort
of its consciousness potential in these separate simulated agents that
it creates, but there's no way there's like, while I
can't rule out that possibility, I don't know of strong
evidence that that's the case. But then it comes back
to what we were discussing too. You could say, well,
this is this doesn't mean be was conscious. This just

(34:22):
means that you, you're sleeping self was engaging in some
level of theory of mind. But as we discussed what
a theory of mind is creating some you know, semi
like low resolution conscious model of what we think another
person is thinking. Yeah, again, it's like, it's hard to
rule that out as far as we know. But but
I don't know of any strong evidence that indicates it.

(34:44):
But you seem to think that's the case. Maybe it's
just because if a if another agent that we imagine
in a dream or something is frightening and lucid and
real enough, and especially in this case, because it knows it,
it proclaims to know everything about you. Uh, maybe that
just naturally leads us to think it's conscious, kind of
the same way that we start to think robots are conscious.

(35:06):
If they're sufficiently humanoid. Does that make sense? Yes? But Adam,
if you if you have other reasons for thinking that
this been in your mind was actually a separate, truly
conscious entity, I would be interested in hearing what your
reasons are for thinking that. All right, here's another quick one.
This one comes to us from d D says love

(35:27):
the episode one bit of Barry Nelson trivia. Barry Barry Nelson,
to remind everybody, was the the actor who played the
character Ulman in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. When did Barry
Nelson come up in the anthology episode? He was in
the episode of Monsters Far Below, So he played the
lead in that that episode. This is the and this

(35:49):
is the one where he's you know, fighting the Googles
and so forth. But he was a longstanding TV and
film actor who is probably most famous for being in
The Shining in that scene where he's a Jack Nicholson's
characters there for a job interviet And in the moment
I accidentally confused him with Barry Sullivan, who was in
Planet of the Vampire. Yes, yeah, So anyway, h D

(36:10):
shares this one bit of Barry Nelson trivia. He was
the first actor to play James Bond and an adaptation
of Casino Royal, which was an episode of that of
a nineteen fifties TV show called Climax, which was also
an anthology. I've never seen that, so this apparently even
pre dates the Was it Peter Sellers who played James
Bond and like a farcical adaptation of Casino Royal before

(36:33):
they made dr No, Yeah he did. I went ahead
and look this up just to make sure, and sure enough,
Barry Nelson played James Bond and guess who played the villain?
I don't know, Peter Lorii, Peter Nice. Yes, So I
kind of want to come back and check this out.
This would be in nicing to say I've never seen this,
but I'm obviously I'm a fan of the two leads there.

(36:55):
I love that I can get a Peter Laurie and
Christopher Lambert out of the same impression. It's basically the
same voice that only just the face is more handsome
in the French model. When I also wanted to share
something that didn't come in as an email but was
shared on the Stuff to Blow your Mind Facebook discussion
module by a listener who I don't since this discussion module,

(37:16):
I don't know if she'd want to be named or not,
so I'll just leave her name off for now, um,
since we didn't discuss that ahead of time, But but
I wanted to share because she had some interesting feedback.
She said, just listen to the Anthology of Horror, Part two,
episode and I have some comments on the discussion you
had at the end about multiple consciousness is in one
mind as someone with dissociative identity disorder, This is exactly

(37:38):
what is going on for me, or at least the
only way I can describe it. It isn't a far
out speculation. It's my lived experience and I don't have
any communication with the other parts, but other people do.
And my parts leave clues like notes or cuts or
leftovers of food I never would have wanted to eat.
Each of these parts is in a way, a separate consciousness,

(37:59):
with its own reaction to events, own memories, and even
own favorite pizza topping. And your mini Carl Sagan simulation
would be what is known as an introject an alter
a part that exists in you and has its own experiences,
but is based on something in the outside world that
seemed to possess enough of the traits needed for survival
that the mind created it. Wow. I obviously may not

(38:22):
have everything right here, and I'm not speaking for anyone
except me, and I'm in no way speaking of the
experiences of other people with d I D or similar.
It just seemed odd you didn't bring this up in
your discussion. This was a really great point, and UH,
I actually had a back and forth with UH with
this listener on the subject. The main difference, UH, the
dissociative identity disorder didn't come up when I was thinking

(38:44):
about this is we were considering if it's possible for
the mind to simultaneously have more than one consciousness existing,
like in your dream. Could it be possible that both
you with your regular mind, your you know, your primary
mind are conscio us in the dream, And then also
the brain is generating some separate conscious entity, maybe a

(39:07):
kind of like less conscious or lower resolution conscious entity,
at the same time, and then so there could be
like two minds generated by the same brain simultaneously. Yeah.
I mean, for starters, I think that if we were
we would want to give a like a full proper
deep dive into into this UH topic. If we were
to to to discuss h discussed in the future. But

(39:29):
this also reminds me once again. Blindside, the novel by
Peter Watts, has a character in it that has multiple
personalities as I recall where they've through some level of
I can't remember that had been partially engineered or not.
But are you remembering this? Yeah, I seem to recall
that it was a person who had been uh, you know,

(39:50):
in this sci fi scenario, had been had had this
done intentionally for some kind of reason, like like maybe
having different kinds of expertise in the rain. Yeah, that
sounds right. Yeah, uh And and I just wanted to
say also in the responses that the same listener says,
uh that I know there's such thing as d I
D with altars being co conscious, but but they haven't

(40:14):
personally experienced it. And so I think this is worth
revisiting in a future show. Yeah, I think so too.
By the way, Tiny Carl Sagan. In my brain, I've
tried to imagine what it's favorite pizza would be, and
it's it's definitely Hawaiian pizza. It's definitely ham and pineapple.
I don't know why I have nothing to back that up.
With but for some reason that seems right. And as

(40:35):
for the tiny Terence McKenna, can you guess what his
favorite topping is. Oh, it's gotta be a root pesto.
I know, I know what you're gonna be mushrooms. Of course,
it's obviously mushrooms. But I don't know. That's a That's
an interesting that like that in of itself is an
interesting question though, because, especially with the Carl Sagan one,
it's like, to a certain extent, I do have this

(40:56):
kind of like tiny, you know, conception of who the
character is and what they like, even if I've never
stopped for a second to wonder what kind of pizza
the real life Carl Sagan preferred, or if he ever
spoke about it. What do you want to read this
message from Jim in New Jersey? Yes, absolutely all right.

(41:16):
This one comes to us from Jim and they write,
I have another TV show about dreams and reality. It
was the two thousand twelve limited series NBC show Awake.
Jason Isaacs. Jason Isaacs Always Traffic portrays the police detective
Michael Britton. The show begins with Brittain and his teenage
son grieving the death of their wife mother in a

(41:37):
car accident that involved the entire family. The next morning,
Britain awakens and finds his wife repainting the house to
occupy her to help with her grief and the death
of their son in the same accident. Brittain is living
two contradictory realities. Each morning, when he awakes, his day
flips to the other reality. One is where his son
survived the accident, and one is where his wife does.

(42:00):
He has a police department psychologist assigned in each reality.
He tells each of his duality, and both assure him
that his other reality is the dream, but they can't
really prove it. Each assumes his vivid dream is some
form of denial. Beatie Wong does a fantastic job as
one of the psychologists, But then again, Wong does a

(42:20):
fantastic job in every performance. To me, he'll always be
Henry Wu Yeah, alright, anyway, Jim continues. It was an
entertaining series, but not super sophisticated. Each reality had a
different color palette, making it easier to keep track of
where Britain was. The show does reveal which reality is
which by the end, sort of as for the Twilight series,

(42:42):
episode wouldn't the people in a dream disappear when the
dreamer wakes up, whether electrocuted or just awakening. Normally, I
think that, of course would be the case, But I
don't know that. It's like Twilight Zone logic, right, Yeah,
you got to emphasize the most dramatic elements. As for
our Descartes argument that we can't try star senses and
the only thing we can depend upon is their own reasoning.

(43:03):
I'm even starting to doubt that you've discussed consciousness before.
Where does it exist? The brain is made up of neurons,
which don't do much individually. When the number of firing
input synapses crosses the threshold, the neuron triggers its outmost synaps,
triggering other synapses. The brain is not much more than
a massively complex adding machine. Maybe the Carts would have

(43:24):
been more correct and stating I think therefore I some
or in Latin uh coquito orgo am. Even though I
can definitely perceive my consciousness, I sometimes wonder if it's
just a behavior that emerges from all of these neurons
firing uh ps. I wish I could take credit for
the some am flip in the Decards quote it's from

(43:46):
godal escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Okay, going back to
the to the dream thing, how he's saying, you know,
whether whenever he wakes up, the people will disappear, whether
he's electrocuted or not. Uh, maybe it's just grant that
the main guy in the episode being selfish and saying
he doesn't want to be electrocuted, and that's the reason
he's telling people. He wouldn't bother telling them. Also, if

(44:09):
you just let me hang out here for a while,
eventually I'll wake up and you'll all disappear. As for
consciousness being an emergent phenomenon of enough neurons firing, I mean,
I think I think that's one of the standard models
that people propose. So yeah, I think that's that's entirely plausible.
I'm very interested by this NBC show That Awake. I

(44:29):
may have to go revisiting it. I haven't seen it
came one. Maybe it came out a little before it's time.
It's sounding like, yeah, alright, on that note, we're going
to take one more break and then we'll be right back.
Thank you, thank you, Alright, We're back, all right. This
next email being burned onto a tortilla for us. Here

(44:52):
comes from our listener Rowan, and just a warning if
if you've got kids listening or something. This one mentions
the use of psychedelics. Dear Robert and Joe. I've been
meaning to sit down and write to you for a
while now, but after your recent episode on driving and
your Brain, I felt like I had to get on it.
This was one of the ones we did in October.
We sort of talked about Christine, we talked about the

(45:12):
psychological effects of driving. Rowan rights, I drive for nine
to ten hours a day, and your show was the
first one I found when I was introduced to podcasts
about three years ago, and you've been on my drive
playlist ever since. Oh well, very happy to be there.
First off, I want to thank you for the work
you do. You guys are incredibly educational and inspiring. Your
episode on urban evolution, probably two years ago at this point,

(45:35):
is the reason I decided to pick my degree back
up and graduate, and is the reason I plan on
declaring a major in forestry and a minor in urban planning.
Great to hear. I love hearing stuff like that. Warms
my heart. Rowan continues in your Driving episode, you talk
about tool use and how it can alter our perception
of distance and size. Anecdotally, I've definitely noticed this in

(45:58):
an odd way. I drive a large cargo van at
work and have a rather small personal car that I
rarely drive, as I walk most everywhere. On the times
that I do drive, my brain assumes that I'm in
my van, as in I see my car as being
much larger. The roadways feel smaller than, say, after a
vacation where I am away from the van for long periods.

(46:19):
Imagine if you will watching someone parallel park a Corolla
as if it were a box truck. That that also
sounds like a great rod Sterling rod Sterling introduction to
Twilight zentner Ni Gallery. Imagine if you will watching someone
parallel park a Corolla as if it were a box truck.
It couldn't happen, but it could the Twilight Zone. Okay,

(46:43):
on with the Mail. Another of your episodes that I
feel I should write in about is your show on
the split Brain. I have damage to the left hemisphere
of my brain from what my doctor described as a
stroke in the third trimester of pregnancy, which interrupted the
development of the right side of my body and caused
he like patches of no activity on my m R eyes.

(47:03):
For a long time, I really only considered how this
damage had affected me in a physical way. Listening to
your episodes along with one other shout out to you
are not so smart if for some reason you need
a new podcast, really got me thinking about how it
would have affected my cognitive function. There is a feeling
I have at times when I am struggling to find
a word, listen to an explanation someone is giving, or

(47:26):
think through a problem to try to explain it. It
feels like the thought is hitting a blockage, similar to
the feeling of having something on the tip of your tongue,
but slightly different. It's not that I'm trying to remember something,
more that I've already remembered it, but I can't say it.
I suffer from fairly persistent depression and anxiety. However, I

(47:47):
often feel the physical effects of them and am unable
to identify the source or even the emotion itself. At times,
it feels as if my brain gets stuck when trying
to figure out the reaction my body is having, an
doesn't quite get to communicating it with my conscious self.
If that makes sense. Okay, interesting. I mean I think

(48:07):
some of that just matches up with just normal cognition,
or at least what my brain assumes his normal cognition.
But other aspects of that might be you know, singular
to this condition. Yeah, we did an episode on the
tip of the tongue phenomenon not too long ago, and
if you've been listening for three years you probably heard
that one. Then really knows And I guess this next

(48:28):
comment comes in response to the fact that we did
that psychedelic series. The last thing I wanted to mention
in this long winded email is that, well, I did
LSD a while back, and it was a hoot. Some
friends and I spent the day in the yard with
our dog and had a wonderful time. The one major
thing I remember was feeling a connectedness to people I
was with. If you can imagine the feeling of the

(48:49):
way trees in a forest are connected through microrizal networks
as or my corpisal. I'm not sure how you pronounced that. Yeah,
I think we've touched we I can't remember if we've
touched on. Sorry, just keep meaning to touch on this more.
I think it came up a little bit in the mushrooms. Uh,
in the Psychedelics episodes, the uh, you know, the the
fungal networks to connect these trees and the and some

(49:11):
of the some really interesting work going into too, looking
at this sort of communication that occurs, and we can
come back and go deep on that sometime. But finally,
Rowan rights, As I'm writing this, I'm also starting to
get curious as to how hemispheric brain damage would alter
a psychedelic experience. Huh, yeah, I don't know anything about that. Yeah,
I don't. I don't think that I've seen that question

(49:33):
asked before. I would be surprised if there's not some
kind of ongoing research about that. Yeah, because as we
discussed like split brains were you know, or anytime you
have a brain that has, you know, suffered damage of
some sort asymmetrically affected. Yeah, like that's going to be
very useful to looking at some sort of a neurological questions.

(49:56):
So yeah, it stands to reason somebody has at least
considered that. But uh, yeah, well it was great to
hear from rolling on all of this. Now, this first
time I've heard someone say Alice d was a hoot.
Um I feel like most people would would maybe describe
it a little differently, but but fair enough. It's all
very subjective, all right. So let's move on to feedback

(50:18):
on another episode, our episode on the Garrison Swine. Uh
this was this is a really fun episode because it
had it had demons in it, it had pigs in it.
We got to donibal tool, use animal tool, use pig cognition,
Bible stories, the whole nine yards. Uh. So, first, here's
a short bit of listener mail. This one comes to
us from Chris, Robert and Joe. I listened to Stuff

(50:43):
to Blew Your Mind pretty much every week, probably my
favorite podcast. While listening to this episode, I was thinking
a couple of things. Firstly, I don't remember you ever
mentioning sea otters as animals that use tools. They're the
only marine animals to use stone tools. Add in that
their treacherous necrophiliac I don't know anything about that. Well,
did you and Christian talk about that in your necrophilia episode?

(51:05):
Might well have? Yeah. If if you want to hear
more about necrophilia, check out that episode that Christian and
I did a few years back. It's a it's a
good one. It ultimately demystifies necrophilia deals. I think we
get into human necrophilia a little bit, but we spent
a lot of time talking about animal necrophilia, which, of
course it is like the primary place you go to

(51:26):
understand what this thing is before you get into human complications.
But then Chris continues to talk about the pigs we
discussed in that episode. Yeah, they write then during your
discussion on vision wardy pigs using tools and then not
being very effective. Perhaps the use of tools is a
signal that they're building a nest versus rooting around for food.

(51:47):
Thanks for all the great shows, Chris. I think this
is an interesting possibility. So one of the questions we
had was this research into the pigs found that the
pigs using the like bark and sticks to dig in
the ground to make nests did seem to fit the
formal criteria for tool use, but it didn't seem like
they were much more efficient or at least in all

(52:10):
cases more efficient at nest building when using the tools
than they were when they were just digging with their
hoofs or snouts. So the question is, why are they
using the tools then if it doesn't necessarily give them
an advantage, like help them build a nest faster. One
thing that I offered is, well, what if the parts
of their bodies they normally dig with just get sore
from doing it or something That's that's possibility. One of

(52:32):
the things the authors brought up is that it could
just be a a social convention, almost sort of like
pig culture. Uh. And then that would, I think line
up kind of with what Chris is talking about here. Well, yeah,
I think I think the idea here is that, if
I'm understanding Chris correctly, the ideas that picking up a
tool to start digging shows the other pigs that it's

(52:56):
time to build a nest instead of just the other
pigs rooting around like you normally would when you're looking
for food, right, I mean, you could almost be interpreted.
I guess it's kind of like a like a fitness display.
I'm reminded of these documentaries in which you see birds
male birds building you know, some sort of mating structure
you know, uh, that is just about attracting the females. Now,

(53:20):
obviously this would not be exactly the same thing. But
perhaps the the idea I think that Chris is getting
at is that the use of the tool could be
part of of the city. The overall signaling saying that
I I am building the nest. Now, yeah, and and
but but tends to I think start with the females
and the pigs, and that they share the behaviors with
like they sort of teach the males how to do it.

(53:41):
It suggests to me that if that is in fact
what's going on, it could be that it's it's almost
like ringing the whistle. It's it's time to start work.
Because the nest building was a social thing. It was
like more than one pig participated in the digging of
the nest interest. So it's like maybe maybe picking up
the bark and doing that gets the other pigs on task. Possibility. Yeah,

(54:04):
all right, well, now we're going to jump into another
longer email about the Garascene demoniac. Uh. This one's long
enough in fact, that I'm going to tag out to
you during the reading of this email. All right, this
one comes to us from Sean, Hi, Joe, and Robert.
I'm a longtime listener and occasionally right in my last
email that you read out in a listener Maile episode

(54:25):
was also from Halloween last year, something about Halloween that
makes me want to write in I feel you. I
just finished listening to your episode on the Garascene Demoniac,
which was a fascinating Bible story that I hadn't heard
of before. You also covered lots of points that I'd
like to reply to, especially adding input from the other
side of the world. I live in Indonesia. The very

(54:46):
first thing I thought of while listening was a story
from Bali from a few years ago. This story is
a massive w t F from the start and gets
so much wilder by the end. A teenage boy was
caught having sex with a cow and a village in
the west of Bali. As this act spiritually defiled the
village and the boy. A wedding ceremony was then held

(55:06):
between the boy and the cow. Both were dressed up
in customary wedding attire. To complete the spiritual cleansing of
the village, the cow was drowned in the sea. The
here is the earliest report in English I could find
after a quick Google, and he points to a Metro
dot Co dot UK story. Man forced to marry cal
faints at wedding, which, uh, you know, it sounds like

(55:27):
a you know, a goofier headline than like the true story.
I feel like we're we're absorbing from this telling. Uh.
They continue, while a different animal and involving bsality, the
stories are somewhat similar. They both involve possession of demons
or bad spirits, they both involve ceremony including animals, and
they are both concluded with animals dying before the case

(55:49):
being declared closed. The Balanese religion, while called Hindu, is
not very similar to the Indian Hinduism, where cows are revered,
and incorporates a lot more animous beliefs and the ever
presence of good and bad spirits. While there might not
be a take home message from this story, it certainly
is fascinating and quite a unique insight into a unique culture.

(56:11):
Another part of this episode appealing to me. As you
talked about religious taboos, particularly the eating of pork, I
should start by saying, I am a Muslim. I wasn't
born into Islam, but I converted three years ago, so
I have experienced growing up in an English culture and
living a pork free lifestyle. It seems to me that
while once you pointed out, there may have been initially

(56:33):
very good reasons to ban the eating of pork, such
as the reasons you mentioned the fact that the fact
that pork flesh is a host for parasitic worms and
more modern farming and food preparation would deem these reasons unimportant.
Your reason that pigs are indiscriminate eaters and omnivorous makes
a lot of sense, as it is also forbidden to
eat animals with things I eat carnivores. Another, however, the

(56:55):
reason given by the Koran, to my knowledge, but please
don't take my word of love own, is that the
flesh is dirty. I believe you were right in saying
that it is mostly taken nowadays to be a signal
it is not necessary a sacrifice for any Muslims who
have never even tried pork, but is definitely seen as
a we don't do this, the people who aren't in
our group do situation. I would like to add here

(57:19):
that that pork is not forbidden if there is no
other food source available. I should also mention that even
among the Balinese who are known lovers of pork, there
was really there's recently been some suspicion as there have
been a few cases of people becoming infected by bacteria
and undercooked meat that reportedly lead to meningitis. Personally, I
think the idea that we follow this rule because nonbelievers

(57:42):
do the opposite is not a particularly strong argument. It
affects me personally, as I have two dogs at home
and in Islam this is not the done thing. But
the more I try to find out why, it seems
like the reason is because nonbelievers have dogs and we
are not nonbelievers. This brings me to my response to
Gustine's view of animal rights based on his reading of

(58:03):
the scripture. All Right, I'm gonna tag out now, Joe.
All Right, Sean goes on. Like I said, many Muslims
would not have a dog. In some cases, there's a
strong dislike, hatred, or even abuse of dogs as a result.
I am, however, adamant that this is not stemming from
a reading of the Quran or other religious laws, but
from cultural upbringing. In the Koran, one of three mentions

(58:23):
of dogs is that you may eat food hunted by
your dog. Another mention is of a dog who accompanied
a group of pious believers and protected them as they
slept in a cave while fleeing persecution. I used to
work for an animal welfare organization here in Bali, for
part of which I tried to develop a curriculum that
incorporated animal welfare. So I look for religious stories or

(58:44):
texts that would promote animal welfare to children. While Islam
promotes eating meat and the general idea of humanity is
above animals, I feel there's nothing in the text that
would call for the abuse of animals. In fact, the
opposite is true. It is forbidden to spend money on dogs,
gamble on animals. It is encouraged to give water and
food to thirsty and hungry dogs. It's forbidden to slaughter

(59:05):
a younger animal. There is one story in which Mohammad
said angels do not visit a house which has a dog,
and this seems to be the only negative there is.
Of course, the doctrine of a dog's saliva is impure
and must be cleaned, but this is alleviated by the
simple process of cleaning. However, I feel that cultural leanings
have gone the way of Augustine, taking one story that

(59:26):
dogs hinder angels from entering a house and one idea
of impurity about dogs saliva, and using this as an
excuse to neglect or abuse animals. I know you focus
mainly on Christianity and animal rights, but I feel this
reflects the same ideas to summarize cleansing. Ceremonies involving bad
spirits and animals forced to their deaths are still a thing.

(59:46):
Pork is probably okay to eat if sourced well and
cooked right, but nowadays is a cultural signal. And like Augustine,
many people nowadays take one passage from scripture and use
it to allow themselves to treat others poorly, ignoring the
wealth of s pure pointing in the other direction. I'm
very sorry for the long message. I'm quite surprised I
had so much to say about a demonic pig exorcism.

(01:00:07):
But I hope there are some parts you can take
away from my email to entertain you or bring to
lights some views from different cultures. And as always, I
love the show and look forward to whatever adventure you
take me on next. All the best, Sean, No, absolutely,
I I I've really appreciated Sean's inside on this um
and and you know, I think it also shows that
you know how interesting this topic was, that you know what,

(01:00:30):
on the surface is just kind of a wtf uh
you know story from the New testament ultimately touches on
so many different aspects of human culture and human behavior. Yeah.
I mean, one of the things Sean brings up, which
I think is true, is that the element of the
pigs running in the into the sea to die afterwards.
That could reflect, I don't know, not something about the

(01:00:52):
peculiarities of that story itself, but could be a deeper
sort of motif of like the scapegoat tradition, right, you know,
putting sends her uncleanness into an animal that is then
sent out into the wilderness to its death or is
put to death or something as a way of uh,
sort of like transferring the bad stuff out. So so
I can totally see it fitting with that tradition that,

(01:01:14):
like as Sean says, is still used in many ways today. Yeah.
I mean we didn't even talk about scapegoats in that episode. Yeah. Yeah,
So clearly we could come back and do more in
the future. All Right, we're getting towards the end here,
but we have two more bits of Halloween listener mail
that Carney is insisting that we read because if we don't,
it might have to go back into the pit until

(01:01:34):
next year. So this one comes to us from Um,
this is Carrie, I believe, and Carrie rides high. Thanks
for a great show. I just listened to your show
about Jenny green Teeth. This was an episode from the
previous year, but when we ran it vault episode about
Jenny Green Teeth which ended with a recommendation about the

(01:01:56):
Hitcher and his scary song about eels Um. The Hitcher
is of course a character from the British comedy series
The Mighty Bush, which I think at this point has
been off the air for like an amazingly long period
of time, and in age where Netflix and other streaming
shows are bringing back everything, I'm a little surprised nobody
has has has given us a Boush revival. But for

(01:02:19):
fans of the Great British Bake Off, I don't know
if you've seen it. Null Fielding is a yeah, he's
the host, right, yeah, one of them, Yeah, I mean
both both the Julian as well. They've both continued to
work a lot and you can certainly find them out there.
They just aside from some live stuff, they haven't they
haven't fully come back to the Bush. Rachel and I
make a lot of baking show jokes about just baking

(01:02:40):
a little foxy Mariam. Alright, anyway, so Carrie continues. It
made me think about a book I just finished called
The Gospel of the Eels by Patrick Vincent. There is
a chapter in the book about the eel as a
creepy and scary being which has haunted us in numerous way.
It has almost crept into our subconscious and could be

(01:03:03):
claimed to have made Sigmund Freud come up with his psychoanalysis,
since he, as a young scientist, could not find its
genitals hidden and not possible to directly observe with scientific methods.
Well later it was naturally found. The way this was
done also makes up a very intriguing story, and Freud
had just been studying the wrong metamorphos stage of the

(01:03:25):
eel like that. I've never heard that before. I thought
this could be an interesting October episode, or if you
do not have the time for the for the moment,
something inspiring for a later occasion. Below is a link
to review of the book. Thank you for a great show,
Keep up the good work. Uh you know I would
I would be up for an episode on eels and

(01:03:48):
our humans relationship with eels. I've I've always found them fascinating.
Um I got to see one while snorkeling recently and
that was a lot of fun. Freud in the elusive
genital sell me on it. So yeah, yeah, yeah, And
if if Royd has something to say about them, than
than clearly there's some meat on the bone there. All right,
we have one last listener mail, would you do the honors?

(01:04:09):
Joe Sure? This is in response to another Vault episode
we released in October, or the one about monstrosity and cuteness.
Why so many monsters, especially like Japanese Yokai, I believe,
end up with these very popular cute versions of them
that exist all throughout culture. So uh land in rites
in Hello guys. I wanted to respond to this episode

(01:04:30):
in a few ways. First, I've never seen a cute
or adorable version of Suron Saruman, the nas Gul, or
the Uricai. Maybe they exist, but I've never seen them anywhere. Well,
hold on, there the whole there's the pop what is it?
The pop? Funky pop, funk? What is it? I don't
know what you're talking about. Funk pop. Seth has just
chimed in the funk pop. Yeah, the little little little

(01:04:54):
uh you know, dolls, little uh sculptures of different pop
culture with the little pill heads. Yeah, I feel like
there's a kind of cute looking Soron. I think I've
seen that somewhere. Okay, Uh, I mean it's weird because
I feel like they would have to make its head
very wide, and the whole point of Saron's head is
that his head has verticality. It's a cathedral with the helmet, right,

(01:05:15):
But I mean basically just a big head, small body,
squat little cute form. It's granted, you can only make
Soron so cute, and obviously there's nothing really you can
do with the great all Seeing Eye incarnation, but I
think I think it's been done. I think he's too
popular to not do up like that. I was a
little appalled recently when I was at a bookstore with

(01:05:36):
my son and we're looking at the Harry Potter stuff
because it's Harry Potter obsessed and lo and behold, here
are cute Voldemort's. There should not be cute Voldemort's Voldermore
Voldemore is not cute in in any way, shape or
form um. And yet we've we've made them, and I
presumably people buy them. Oh, I don't know. I can
go for a cute Sorromon. It almost writes itself. I'm

(01:05:56):
Sorromon of many colors, you know, all Landon continues. Second,
it could the idea to make all these villains and
monsters cute be related to making the hero more adorable,
to think the Flintstone Kids, Muppet babies, and even the
more recent travesty of Marvel Heroes babies. I don't know
what that refers to. There's a whole lineup of these

(01:06:18):
young children, young versions of characters. Maybe someone eventually said
why not the monster slash villain too? I don't know.
Does does Muppet babies pre date the cute Yokai? I
have no idea. Um m, I mean Muppet babies are
an interesting point. I don't know. There's this. It's like
as if the adult Muppets were not already cute and

(01:06:38):
cuddly enough, right. I mean, I watched way too too
much of the Muppet Babies. Um, but I can't say
I loved it at the same time. Oh, I don't know.
I feel like there is something going on there where.
If you take something and you essentially turn it into
a Teddy Bear, there is something going on there. Where
we're perhaps saying this means so much to me as

(01:06:59):
an adult or as a you know, or at least
a non child, that I can, I can and want
to transform it into like a larval form, into a
teddy bear form that I will been cling to now,
and in doing so, I kind of like retroactively attach
my childhood to it. Yeah, I see that. Or I
mean maybe you did read Lord of the Rings when

(01:07:21):
you're a kid. I mean I I did, so you know,
it's not that big of a stretch to like transform
it into a teddy bear or a doll and then
love it as an adult, to reconnect with the child
that you were when you first explored this world. I mean,
Lord of the Rings already has elements that are insufferably cute,
Like the Hobbits are, like they're almost too cute to
read about, you know. Yeah, that's true, But I guess

(01:07:44):
that's part of what the contrast there that makes the
story work. So you've got the doomy darkness of the
Great War and more Door and all that, and then
you've got the Hobbits, which are so quaint as too,
I don't know, make all that stuff the more powerful? Yeah,
I mean and ultimately, I guess the idea is like
the shire is what you're fighting for, right, Like the
shire is that the thing that should be protected, all right,

(01:08:06):
Landing goes on. The other idea is based on the
scripture in the Bible that speaks of Satan as transforming
himself into an angel of light and Second Corinthians, chapter eleven,
verse fourteen. That is to say, he makes bad things
look good, which accounts for much in the world. If
you ask me to think of the Japanese demons you

(01:08:26):
spoke of, for example, people lived in fear of and
acted and reacted for hundreds of years based on the
belief that these demons could harm them. Now that the
world is more quote enlightened, people do not believe in
demons as much. However, the demons still influence the lives
of people. Even if this is a new concept. Satan
has made danger seem safe. What do you guys think.

(01:08:47):
I don't know if Landing means this literally or just
sort of like as a way of I don't know.
It's a kind of a cultural pattern here. Well. In
my experience growing up in um like a Baptist church,
that whole line about Satan transforming himself in an angel
of light was generally used to explain why you shouldn't
like something that you like, or you shouldn't want something

(01:09:08):
that you want. And of course there are things, yes,
that any human may feel some desire for that it
is advisable to be reminded that there may be some
pitfalls there to wanting that, you know. But on the
other hand, there are plenty of things that are uh,
just part of like normal human behavior or just part

(01:09:28):
of of life. And it's easy for somebody to come
along and say, Nope, don't go after that. It's just
Satan in a disguise right there. Yeah. In my early
conservative Christian environments, I remember that being deployed much along
the same lines as uh, the idea that the Antichrist
will come in the name of peace. This was often
cited basically against any politician or public figure who who

(01:09:51):
was against war or who advocated peace in any kind
of way. The idea was like, ah, that's a sign
that they're bad. Yeah, so in wanting peace bad, glowing
glowing with light also potentially bad. Finally, Lyndon says, thanks
for all the good work. I love the episodes where
you read some ancient text or story at the beginning.

(01:10:11):
You both have a perfect cadence. Ah, we'll think. I'm
glad to hear that, because generally we just do it
because it's fun. But it's always nice when people connect
with the cold opens. All right, I think that does
it for this year's Halloween stuff. Yes, that wasn't I'm
sorry to say that wasn't all the mail we got.
As we said, our mail bag is overflowing, our our

(01:10:32):
cup runneth over, and we really appreciate all of the
great messages you send us. Sorry if your message didn't
make it onto this episode, but uh, feel free to
write us again in the future. Absolutely again. We're going
to follow this up with another listener mail. That's going
to be additional non Halloween listener mail. In the meantime,
if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
to Blow your Mind, well you know where to find them.

(01:10:53):
There's the website Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
You can also find Stuff to Blow your Mind wherever
you get your podcasts, and just make sure you have
subscribed and that you give us a nice rating if
you If you like the show, that really helps us out.
As for other projects, there's Invention, our Journey through human
techno History. Do check that out. If you haven't given
it a shot, you'll find that at invention pod dot com.

(01:11:14):
You'll find it wherever you get your podcasts. That comes
out once a week and it is a tremendous amount
of fun. We recently recorded an episode about the Uh
the spit Dog, which is phenomenal. I think it's maybe
one of the best episodes we we've recorded for Invention,
and I really want to encourage everyone to check that out.
And if you're in the mind for a little sci fi,

(01:11:37):
some fiction, a little bit of horror this this season,
you might want to check out the Second oil Age.
That's the fiction series that I was involved with, and
it is I think at this point, as as of
this recording, like six episodes out of ten or out.
And if you if you were to wait till go
ahead and subscribe, but you can wait till the end
of the month, and then you'll have all ten ready

(01:11:57):
to go, ready to binge. Seriously, folks, check out the
Second oil Age. Delicious dark sci fi. I think you'll
love it. If you like us, you'll love it all right.
And that's all I got. How Can they email us?
Joe Oh, of course you can contact us as always.
Wait first, I gotta give a shout out to our
wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johns. Of course, but you
can email us as always at contact at stuff to

(01:12:19):
Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind
is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
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