Listener Mail IV: The Listening

It's that time again. Join Robert, Joe and Christian for another round of robot-delivered listener mail. They're read your missives concerning everything from the Chinese zodiac and psychopaths to solar sails, MDMA and the X-Files.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how stup
works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Christian Seger and
I'm Joe mcclormack, and we are here to do one
of our I Guess quarterly Now listener mail episodes. Well,

(00:24):
we receive a lot of feedback from from listeners. We
get it on what we get via email, we get
through social media, and uh, we don't have time on
the episodes themselves really to get into the listener mail
as much, and we get so much good content we
decided to devote to the occasional episode to it. Yeah,
and we really do get so much great correspondence from

(00:45):
from all you guys out there that we don't have
time to read it. Also, if you send us something
and you you poured your heart out to us and
we don't have time to read it today, please don't
take that as a slide against you. We just get
so much I think of stuff that there's no way
for us to read it all. It would be a
whole another podcast, not to like two to our own horn.
But I actually probably have like a moment maybe you

(01:05):
guys have this to like every day where I opened
up the listener mail folder and feel a little guilty
because I'm like, oh, I still haven't even like had
a chance to go back and read like the last
six of these, just because we're so slammed. Yeah. Indeed,
often just being the heat of getting a stuff together
for a podcast episode or some other kind of commitment
around here, and I just have to make a mental
bookmark to come back to this individual in their their comments.

(01:28):
And then we've got that whole other folder of stalker mail,
which you know, yeah, those that spend time on that, Yeah,
that was definitely that is a thick folder and waterproof
by necessity. All right, Well, let's call the robot over here, um,
and let's see what what Carney has for us. All right,

(01:49):
it looks like the first thing Carney has for us
here is from our listener. No. Well, regarding the Chinese
zodiac episode that Robert and I did, and we got
a lot of great feedback on the Chinese zodiacs, is
just one of them. It's Noel rights. Hi, guys, I
know why so many dragon children were born in nineteen
eighty eight. Eight is a good luck number. And since
the year was eighty eight. It was like a double

(02:11):
good year, making a triple good year for having a
baby dragon. Chinese culture has impacted Filipino culture with the
melting pot of Asians in the Philippines. Even though my
parents are Filipino relatives urged them to get married in
nineteen eighty eight instead of when they actually got married
in nineteen eighty seven. But I guess seven was a
lucky enough number for them. In nineteen eight was booked

(02:33):
for marriages. I guess booked no more marriages this year. Yeah,
they probably like every every uh justice of the peace
slash priest I guess was unavailable. Well, that makes sense.
That goes that ties into some of the issues we
were talking about with having these boom years for births,
because that means more hospital beds are going to be
filled for that birth year, and then that child as

(02:54):
they grow older, like their their their year in school
is always just going to be extra packed when they
all enter the workforce, more competitors. This reminds me of
the thing we were talking about in the office recently
about the Zeka virus and how because so many people
are being told that, you know, they shouldn't be having
kids because of the Zeka virus, that there's going to
be like a big jump in population, like say, eighteen

(03:17):
twenty years from now. Yeah. Well, anyway, Noel continues, my
parents also didn't choose to go for a dragon baby
after they married. I was born in nineteen as a
gold metal element of goat, gold goat, that's beautiful. That's like,
that's the thing that would be condemned in the Bible
or something. I don't I don't know what my metal is.
I just know my my animal. You mean your element. Sorry,

(03:40):
you could be like wood or metal, but gold is
is why is it gold? Well, it gets very complicated,
and it's important to to to reiterate that we didn't
go into all the depth about the inner working of
Chinese zodiac in that episode, but we did hear back
in great depth from a out of our listeners on

(04:00):
this subject. Anyway, Noel continues about the gold goat. She says,
they are supposed to be ambitious and kind hearted, with
a strong sense of responsibility and work, but sometimes too stubborn.
Compared to the other goat elements, they seem more like
a dragon, or maybe that's just me hoping to be
like a dragon. I do not believe in astrology, but
it's nice to have a mascot to cheer for your

(04:22):
positive traits. Sincerely, Noel Uh and I like the sentiment
of the inter here because this is something we talked
about in the episode. It's my theory that you don't
have to believe in astrology to be affected by it,
Like you don't have to believe it taps into a
true magical power or or has real predictive power over

(04:44):
personalities for it to have some kind of significance to you,
because we just we're always reaching out for meaning and
significance in our life, and any kind of framework people
come up with, even if there's no real magic to it,
it's kind of easy to to feel like there's something
to it. Yeah. Plus, I mean there have been studies
we've we've talked about it on the show, and I
think so much older episodes about how the research has

(05:07):
has proven that just symbols in the world around us
affect us subconsciously. So if you know, if the symbol
for Coca Cola can do that to us, then certainly
something is is culturally ingrained as gold goat. Certainly that
can work. It's magic on us as well, especially if
it's something that you're told from a very young age

(05:29):
you are this thing. Yeah. Now, our listener, Elizabeth, who
did grow up in the Chinese household, also got in
touch with us about the Chinese Zodiac episode. Yes, uh
she did, and and really she wrote a tremendous amount
to us, really fleshed out her thoughts on it um
and it shared some just extensive great thoughts on the

(05:49):
zodiac episode, including some areas that we just didn't have
time to explore as much, the cultural and mythological significance
of the of the Chinese dragon, the intricacies of the
Chinese zodiacal system, and extended thoughts on the shape of
the traditional family. So we can't read it all here. Again,
thanks Elizabeth for sharing it with us, But we did

(06:09):
want to hit just a few key points that I
think contribute to the episode. Yeah. One of them was
that Elizabeth grew up reading books on the Chinese horoscopes
by somebody named Theodora Allow and she recommends Lao's books
if you're interested in in an introduction to the Chinese zodiac.
But also she she's got great stories about how She
also says she doesn't really ascribe to the Chinese zodiac,

(06:32):
like she doesn't believe it has true magic power, but
she sort of lives her life according to it anyway,
almost as if like there's there's valence available there. Yeah,
I get that. Like it's like, uh, I dabbled in
fung shue for like a year in her apartment, like
when it got a book and everything, and was like, no, Kelly,
the table has to go here, you know that kind

(06:53):
of thing. But you know, I didn't actually believe in
any kind of like symbolic magic or anything like that
going on. It was just sort of a system to
help you organize life. Yeah, I shouldn't have overstated. I
didn't mean to say that she lives her life according
to it, but she makes some decisions according to it,
like like how she arranges the furniture in her house.
She mentioned it really okay, Yeah, but she also had

(07:14):
some really interesting, just individual points we wanted to highlight. Again.
Her email was too long to read all of it,
but one of them was about the dragon and the episode.
We mentioned that the dragon is the only animal in
the Chinese zodiac that's purely mythical. It has no real
world equivalent, But according to Elizabeth, that's not exactly the case. Yeah,
she says, quote. It's also not entirely true that the

(07:35):
dragon has no real world equivalent the dragons real world
animal is a sea horse, because seahorses were believed to
be baby dragons because you know, they look like dragons
and they lived in the law before. Yeah, I would
have assumed that it was like a Komodo dragon like that.
That seems like what would be the real world equivalent,
but it probably the I have no idea what the
actual natural habitat of a komodo is. Well, I can

(07:57):
see where this would this would make sense because we
just us a little bit about how the celestial dragon
is kind of a composite of all these other animals,
Like there's a little horse in there, there's a little
potentially a little a clam in there as well, Chimera. Yeah,
very much. So. I can imagine the sea horse making
sense because you look at a sea horse, and a
sea horse is really weird and itself looks kind of

(08:18):
like a co laubrate. You know. The thing I'd say
about the Komodo dragon is I think that may sort
of conflate the ideas of the Western dragon with the
Eastern dragon. Yes, I think the Eastern dragon or the
Chinese dragon is less like a lizard than the dragon
we get from from maybe Middle Eastern or European folklore. Yeah, yeah,
that's true. As while you're right having grown up in Singapore,

(08:39):
which is something we're gonna talking about with another listener. Now,
that's definitely true. So Elizabeth also shares a quote for me.
My chart is four year snake, our monkey month, and
I think day of the sheet, but like I said,
that doesn't matter for names. But I'm also born in
the US, which was founded in seventeen seventy six, the
year of the Fire Monkey, which we were in again.

(09:00):
So the result of my chart was that I had
a crap town of fire and water. So I just
wanted to share this bit just because I think it
gives you an idea of what sort of deeper read
of one zodiac would be. Yeah, this is preceding this.
Elizabeth goes into a lot of detail about how it's
not just the year, but as we mentioned in the episode,
it's other elements of time that affect the things that

(09:21):
are supposed to be true about you according to the
you know, your horoscope, so it would be our of
the day you're born, day, day of the week I
think that you're born, and so forth. Hey, so I've
got a question about that episode. Maybe now is a
good time, because I don't I'm assuming you didn't cover
it in in the episode itself. The photo that you
guys used for one of the thumbnails on that of

(09:43):
that like giant sculpture of like a robot fire monkey.
Oh what's that all about? Okay? So that was that
was a photograph of a sculpture, and that was actually
on the now House Stuff Works Now article that I did.
That tied in with ten yeah, talking about how they
how some experts think that the year of the fire Monkey,

(10:04):
which we're in now will impact the birth rate. And
that's just a really cool Transformers statue of the fire Monkey. Yeah,
it was amazing. I was really impressed by the whole thing.
So I was curious if they had like some I
don't know, like other than like making a cool giant
Transformer monkey, if there was some symbolism too. I did

(10:24):
not read an artist's statement on it, but but yeah,
you can really go nuts just looking at all the
crazy cool artistic interpretations of the of the zodiac animals. Yeah,
there were a lot of great sculptures I've never seen before,
but only I saw because you turned them up for
for that episode. I do think this is also really
cool that Elizabeth points out about seventeen seventy six being
the year of the fire Monkey. Now she she tells

(10:47):
us again that she grew up in a Chinese household,
but in the United States, so she's a resident of
the US. And this is another thing we talked about
in the episode, is sort of the cross cultural uh
impact of the Chinese zodiac. For example, we found that
though this probably was not impacted by people choosing this
on purpose, the Forbes list of Richest Americans also is

(11:11):
overrepresents dragons, which is kind of strange because you wouldn't
expect the Chinese zodiac to have any influence on American birthrates.
Maybe it's just a coincidence. Who knows it could be.
And I'm going to read one more quote from her,
and this I think just expands nicely on some of
the issues that we touched on in trying to you know,
uh to in discussing why the dragon year birthrate spike

(11:36):
is a modern phenomenon, Okay, she says being able to
choose when you have kids as a luxury. Uh, it's
a luxury of those who can afford it and are able.
In modern times and with more modern medical care, there
is more access to health resources and such. They give
you in ability to care and make sure your offspring live,
aside from things like the one child policy or the

(11:56):
cultural revolution getting in the way. So there's just now
engine all more ability to choose, whereas before you flat
out and needed kids to live. China was also very confusion.
So in that belief system, there is a responsibility to
carry on the family name and line, so you try
to have as many kids as possible so that one
of them would survive into adulthood to take care of
you an old age. And also since a lot of

(12:18):
its rural, you had more help to work the field.
Surviving is a bit more important than giving a damn
when your kids are born or even sometimes what gender
they are. Yeah, so thanks Elizabeth. This whole email was
really great. Again, I regret that we couldn't read the
whole thing, but but it was really awesome, So thanks
for getting in touch. Okay, So this next one that's

(12:39):
coming out of old Carney over here. It looks like
it's directed to you guys about an episode you did,
but I actually pulled it because it's connected with me personally,
and I wrote this guy back. His name is Gary.
Gary says, gentlemen, longtime listener, first time emailer. Where a
Canadian family that moved to Singapore a couple of years ago.
I recently listened to your podcast on moral ethical decisi

(13:00):
Asians and heard you mentioned the type posen festival. Now
we should quickly say what the context of that was
in the episode. Yes, this was the New Year's episode
and the particular study, which I think has actually come
up in a couple of different podcast episodes. Um. Now
over the years, I had to do with just how
participating or even witnessing ritual pain uh can can have

(13:21):
an impact on your on how much money you give
to the poor, on how how kindly you treat your
follow humans. So if you want to be a better person,
do some ritual pain, Yeah, go for it. So this
is what the festival is about. I'm assuming it has
a connection to that. It has, Yes, that's I think
that's one element one element of it. Yes, well, Gary
says that festival is celebrated here in Singapore, and we

(13:43):
attended last year. Uh, it was definitely something that blew
our minds. My kids, they're eighteen has an eighteen year
old daughter and a fourteen year old son, refused to
attend this year. They were so freaked out by it. Additionally,
and interestingly, they also felt that as observers we were
some how intruding on a sacred pilgrimage and it didn't
feel right for them to gawk. Perhaps a generational gap,

(14:06):
But the view of my wife and I is that
as they closed down the streets and advertise it, so
they obviously want people to come out and attend and
watch it and buy drinks and food, et cetera. So
why not And he includes a link to the festival.
He says, I can't speak for elsewhere, but here they
parade several kilometers from one temple to another. This year
they allowed live music here for the first time in

(14:26):
for over forty years, and the participants increased. Not sure
on the overall attendants, but it's interesting the number of
people trying to get absolved of sins rose by having
live music. For your information, live music was banned by
Singapore forty two years ago, after the bands became competitive
and started to fist fight each other. Singapore has a

(14:48):
long memory. Below are some photos I took of the
two of the festival I thought you might find interesting.
If you are interested in posting them on your site,
you have my permission. Thanks for shutting some light the
moral decisions of the participants. And that's from Gary. So
I wanted to read that one when it came in
because I grew up in Singapore. Um, I I spent

(15:09):
most of my high school years there, and it was
just fascinating to me to kind of like, it's been
over twenty years since I've been back to Singapore, but
to read the experience of another expatriate over there right
now kind of going through the same culture shock situation.
I told Gary that I sympathized with this children. It
was kind of the same way. I felt like it
was uh like rude in some some circumstances to watch

(15:32):
certain festivals that I didn't quite understand, you know. But um,
the live music thing, I don't know that may be
true on the legal books, but when I was there,
which was not forty two years ago, I went to
a lot of live music in fact, that's when I
first got involved in the punk scene. Well maybe he
just means live music associated with the festival. Yeah, maybe

(15:54):
that's it. Yeah. So like quick short story, Uh, when
I lived there, Rawlins band came and played there, and
uh they played the festival. Uh no, no, but apparently
there was some moh ing at the Ralins band show
and some chairs got broken in the venue. And uh

(16:19):
right after that mosh ing was was banned, or at
least that's what we were told. So uh, then maybe
like two or three months later, Fugazi played in Singapore
and I went to that show and the wall of
the show was lined with armed guards. They were all
carrying rifles and they were supposed to be there to
make sure that people didn't slam dance. Um. So it

(16:41):
is a little strange. I definitely remember some of the
odd governmental restrictions there what from from living there. And
I also lived there when the whole mic faith thing
happened as well too, so there was a lot of that.
This was the caning incident. It was Yeah, I went
to school with Mike Fae Um. So but why don't
you guys respond and since it was the episode that
you guys recorded. I guess my main response is, I mean,

(17:03):
having never actually witnessed the procession, only having seen some
you know, really cool photos from it and read about it. Uh,
you know, basically I can just apply my own experience
encountering other cultures and especially like temples and the like.
You know, it does between that weird space where you
you certainly don't want to be a gawker, You don't

(17:23):
want to be an ugly American in these these situations.
You want to but you want to experience that. You
want to see these things. And at the same time,
you you know that you're an outsider and you can't
possibly experience and and and understand it in the in
the same way. So it is an odd place to
find yourself. Yeah. Um, so I should say. Gary included

(17:45):
a bunch of photos of this email of their experience
at the festival, and now we may want to share
some of them. Yeah, we could throw them on a
post for sure, because they were They were stunning, Like
the hooks embedded in these guys backs that were in
the parade and everything. I never saw anything like that
when I lived there. But it might I told Gary this,
It might just have been because my parents probably you know,
didn't want me to go down to something like that

(18:05):
by myself, for the same obvious reasons of kind of
being a cultural gawker. Yeah. I mean, one thing is
important to keep in mind too about rituals of pain
is that will they exist around the world and in
various cultures, various religions. You find them in in Christianity,
do you find them in Islam? You find them in Hinduism, etcetera.
Uh So, Um, I actually did a gallery list on

(18:28):
stuff to bull your mind dot come a while back, um,
compiling some of these, so I'll make sure that we
linked to that as well on the landing page for
this episode. Yeah that sounds fun alright, Listener David writes
in David says, so, just a note about solar sales
from your Space Mirrors episode. You couldn't use a laser
to push a solar sale. That would violate Newton's third
law of motion and would be the same concept as

(18:49):
saying you could pull yourself to the ceiling by tugging
on your belt loops or blowing a sale with a fan.
So anything the laser mounted on the ship shot out
would get the same force back that would result and
zero motion. And you responded to this, right, So I
don't think the idea was that the laser was mounted
on the ship, right, Yeah, So that the idea here
is the laser would not be mounted on the ship,

(19:10):
but rather would be mounted somewhere else, providing a new wind,
a new solar wind, a laser wind for that vessel
to sail on. UM And if anyone wants some more
information about this concept, actually did an article on the
subject years ago after interviewing Dr Gregory L. Matt Love.
You can find this at Discovery dot com. The title
of the article is our Solar Sales the Future of

(19:32):
Space Travel. Matt laff is UM an expert in the field,
and just it was just really nice guy to talk
to on the topic. But yeah, I U exchanged a
few different emails with David about this, uh and and
I just wanted to make sure that anyone else listening
UH didn't get that idea, Like maybe we didn't state
it or I didn't state it as well as I
could have. Also, David is a long haul trucker and

(19:54):
listens to our show on the road. Yeah, so we
definitely want to give a shout out to Dave and
any other truckers out there listening to us right now.
We've heard from a few of you over the years,
and we're always glad to hear that we're able to
help make those lengthy jaunts a little easier. My brother
in laws a trucker, I wonder if he listens to
the show. Cool. Oh, Carney is handing me another email

(20:16):
here and it seems to be a covered in a
blue luminescence. You know what that means. It's time for
another Will of the Whisp story. Now. Way back last October,
we did an episode about Will of the Wisp and
about how it has It seems to have partially disappeared
from the world. People don't seem to be reporting Will
of the Whisp phenomenon as often as they used to,

(20:37):
but we asked our listeners, have you seen a Will
of the Whisp? Let us know and maybe maybe we
can help collect enough stories that will give us more
information about what it really is. We've heard from at
least two or three people on this Yeah, we've heard
several people to all those stories. And here's one more
from our listener, Glenn. So Glenn says, I just listened
to your Will of the Whisp podcast, and I wanted
to share an experience I recently had with you. It's

(20:59):
mid October, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I'm on a date with
a girl I was seeing for the first time. I
decided to take her to this spot just southeast of
Milwaukee and St. Francis. There's a condominium apartment along the
lake shore that as a footpath running along the backside
of the condos, following the lake shore. At the northernmost
end of the path, there's a man made pond that's

(21:21):
on a hill which is surrounded by breakwater that's been
rocked off and diverted, so out to end it goes
lake rocks, lakewater, then the hill, and then the pond,
so it's fairly marshy as far as man made landscapes go.
At the edge of the pond, there's some benches that
look over the entire cityscape. Great view. So I take

(21:42):
her there and as we were relaxing taking in the site,
we can see a blue pulsating light down the hill,
hovering just along the water line of the lake. It's
a fairly intense light, almost comparable to a small flashing
blue led. At first glance, I thought it may have
been a person's cell phone, but the theory was quickly
disproved when the light began to rise up maybe five

(22:03):
or six feet off the ground and started to float
its way up the hill toward us. It was very small,
a little bigger than say, your standard issue firefly, which
I love the idea of a standard issue firefly and
check out of the armory anyway, Glenn goes on. But
the light was much more dense and moved in a
much different way than fireflies do, and it didn't share

(22:26):
the yellow glow that a firefly has. It was very
true blue. It gets to the top of the hill
and then begins to float an undulating motion on a
straight course from the west towards the lake to the east,
about two yards away at eye level before it gets
out over the lake and out of vision. And then
he says, the person he was with got a little scared,

(22:46):
so they decided to leave. Uh, And Glenn says, and
as we're leaving, another one rises out of some brush
off the side of the path. I've been searching for
an explanation to this scene since that day, and after
hearing your podcast and fairly certain it, I saw what
these accounts claim to have also witnessed. I've returned to
the location several times, but have never been lucky enough

(23:06):
to see them again. Sorry for the length the email,
not at all. I have a renewed excitement now, and
it would seem that there has been some substance to
what I saw that night. I will add that it
did indeed rain a couple of days previous to my story,
so maybe there is a correlation. Thanks for getting in touch, Glynn.
I love these Will of the Whisp stories and I
still have no idea what it is, and I love

(23:28):
that it also gives us hope that whatever it is,
it's still out there, it's still going on. We haven't
squashed it by depleting our our wet lands. Yeah, that's true.
So I think the final idea we arrived on in
the episode is that one of the most likely explanations
seemed to be possible chemo lumin essence just glowing chemical
reactions from gases escaping from the ground under certain conditions.

(23:51):
Though the way he's talking about the light being very concentrated,
that doesn't seem to match exactly what he's saying here,
because he makes it sound like it's like a floating
dot rather than kind of a blue cloud. It sounds
like to me, what or gone right? I mean Reich
said it was blue right. I think for their particles
of orgon there were I think you could probably find

(24:15):
if Reich row alive today, he would easily find a
direct connection between Will of the West and organ energy.
You know, it wouldn't be unfounded because why not. Anyway,
thank you very much for getting in touch, Glenn. That
was really interesting. Hey, so it looks like we need
to take a quick break, but we will be right
back after hearing from the sponsor of this episode. Hey, everybody,

(24:40):
you know as well as we do that it's all
about your website these days. If you want to represent
yourself professionally, personally, etcetera, you gotta have a professional looking
website out there as your Internet avatar. No. Yeah, and
it's got to look great on a phone or a
tablet or a computer or a television screen. Yeah. But
here's the thing. Not everybody has the budget, Not everybody

(25:02):
has the coding expertise or the time and energy out
there and do that. Yeah, we got a record podcasts.
How am I supposed to put our site together? Uh,
you know when I'm doing research on osadas worms and uh,
the giant planetary Nebula. Well there's an answer, and that
answer is square Space. Square Space provides you with easy

(25:22):
to use tools everything you need, perfect interface to create
a professional looking website. So it's professional. It looks good.
Yeah it does. It's like a designer came in and
did that. Yeah. So hey, if you don't have a website,
if you have one you're not particularly happy with, or
you just want to fresh code of paint, now is
the time to get out there and get your squarespace

(25:44):
website done. And you know why. It's especially good because
you can start your free trial today for square Space.
If you use our offer code mind blown, you get
ten percent off after the free trial, So head on
over to squares space dot com and make sure to
use our promo code mind blown for that special discount.

(26:08):
And we're back. It looks like Carney has another message
for us. Yeah, Kate writes in with the following quote.
I recently started listening to your podcast and have really
enjoyed it so far. I had a thought about your
most recent episode Tooth, Mind and Soul. At the end
of the podcast, you mentioned the study where they found
a connection between more tweet teeth and better memory, and
you discussed several potential reasons for that correlation. I was

(26:30):
surprised that no one mentioned the possible socio economic reasons
for this finding. For example, is it possible that people
who have had access to good dental hygiene may have
lived in better conditions overall that would promote better mental
ability and thus have a memory boost as well. Uh.
You know, well, I feel like we may have touched
on this a little bit because because that is certainly

(26:51):
a huge thing that we have to keep in mind
anytime we're looking at at dental health issues and dental hygiene,
and especially any connection between we're all health, mental health,
et cetera. Yeah, I would certainly guess that good dental
hygiene has something to do with good nutrition, right, And
I think that we had that in our notes and
we may have spoken about it, uh like tangentially, but

(27:15):
we never directly address the socio economic reasons tooth modification. Yeah.
This is certainly like the solar sale issue that we
already touched on like this scenaria, where I think we
we did justice to the idea, but in you know,
just in case. Yeah, it's good to just camera that home. Yeah. Okay,
here's another short one. This is from Joyce. This is
in reference to our Chinese Zodiac episode. So Joyce writes

(27:38):
in says, just finish your Chinese Zodiac episode. Good show.
Just something to add. The different zodiac signs have different compatibility.
My family has a sheep mom and a dragon dad.
They got married in nineteen eighty five and waited on
purpose to have me nineteen eight seven rabbit because dragons
and tigers nineteen eighty six don't get along. My parents

(28:01):
are in no way firm believers, but it's so ingrained
in the culture that they waited just in case. Yet
again we're hearing this theme. We've heard this from several people. Now,
like we hypothesized in the episode, you don't really have
to believe it to to let it guide your actions somehow. Yeah,
we all live in the in the shadow of these
various cultural constructs and symbols. Just one quick note on that.

(28:23):
I remember when I when I was first learning about
the Chinese zodiac from the place Mats, I found out
that whatever I am, I think a tiger is not
supposed to get along with whatever my dad was. I
remember reading I remember reading into that and thinking, should
I be having more family strife than I do? Uh?

(28:44):
So it looks like that. This next one it's like
covered and covered in blood. But I'll pull it out anyways.
I mean, there's no DNA here that's really gonna implicate
us in anything, right. Uh it says, hello, I've been
listening to your show and stuff they don't want you
to know, and notice the psychopath trend among both. I

(29:04):
don't know if if if this person is speaking to
our personality is or the topics we're covering, but yes,
there there is that trend between all of us. This
is a fascinating subject and I think I can give
you a very nice fact if you read The Psychopath
Inside Me by James Fallon, which is a fascinating book
where half of it is references to research papers and

(29:24):
the rest is a good mix of views of a
psychopath about psychopathy and the biology. But there is a
small section about female psychopaths. If there is a singular
psychopath gene or if it is a cluster of them,
most researchers leaned toward the ladder, but either way they
are centered in the X chromosome, meaning that women have

(29:45):
two while men have an X and a much shorter
Y chromosome. If there is a defect in the X
chromosome and women the other chromosomes take over, while men
don't have this luxury. So for a woman to become
a quote proper genetic lea flawed psychopath, both chromosomes have
to be broken. Of course, not everybody has the same

(30:06):
predictable brain structure, so there might be other reasons, but
this isn't a noticeable trend. As a side note, it
would be fun if you did a podcast about the
men without most of their brains that can live normally.
And he shares a link with us about that, uh
and says otherwise, good job and interesting podcast. And his
name is Johnson. I believe he's from Norway. I do

(30:29):
want to throw in that James Fallon, who he mentions here.
His work is indeed quite interesting. I got to see
him at World Science Festival a few years back and
he was actually doing a moth talk about about how
in researching psychopaths he ended up identifying the same traits
within himself. And I think you mentioned this to me. Yeah,

(30:50):
that's right. Yeah, it has been like one of those
like moments of stuff to blow your mind, serendipity that
it like. I don't think we purposely chose it that way,
but psychopaths have been coming up as like a tangent
about specific topics we've been tackling, like M D M A.
And I'm not quite sure what the conspiracy guys probably
every topic. It's your influence, Christian. You keep bringing about

(31:11):
psychopath I don't know what you're talking. I think, yes,
I am probably the most the biggest psychopath. It definitely
was my idea for us to do an episodes specifically
about psychopathic children. But the M D M A thing
was a coincidence. Yeah, I mean, it's just always an
interesting topic and it's one where our understanding how it
continues to evolve. I know I've I've covered it a

(31:32):
number of times just on the blog posts. Yeah, there's
new studies identify, you know, the inner workings of the
psychopathic brain. I think it's one of those things that
like research seems to be like getting into a lot
almost accidentally. Right, People aren't intentionally looking to go discover
what makes the psychopathic brain work. There may be studying

(31:55):
other things, but it keeps popping up and it's um,
it's something that I think we're gonna have a very
different like definition and understanding of maybe ten fifteen years
from now. Yeah, yeah, all right, what's this one? Uh?
This one comes to us from William. William Wrights is
his high guys, longtime listener to stuff you should know,
and I just moved over to stuff to blow your

(32:15):
mind loving it. I have a little but I think
important correction within your the Halloween costume costume made me
do it episode. You take a moment to talk about racism,
black face and our costumes can bring slight even inadvertent
racist tendencies to the surface. My correction focuses on a
digital undergrounds frontman Shock G. While trying very hard to

(32:36):
consider racial issues. You both refer multiple times to the
MC Humpty Hump as if that was his name, while
in keeping with the respectful tone of the episode, and
just in case he is a listener, uh, maybe an
acknowledgment that his real em C name at the time
was Shocked G and I believe still is today, uh
and that the famous song was the Humpty Hump. Keep
up the great work, man. I hope Shock G as

(32:58):
a list that would be awesome. Um oh yeah, he's
He's no Matthew Modine, but he's still pretty great. Yeah
he's great. Uh oh yeah. So two things. First of all,
Humpty Hump is an alter ego of Shock G and
therefore I maintain that any reference to Shoot to Humpty
Hump as an individual, um he is accurate, I believe

(33:19):
within the narrative of that song as a character. Yeah,
I mean, Humpty Hump has his own origin story um
about how he lost his nose and its thus replaced
it with the with the signature, you know, Gratcho Mark's
glasses and nose. However, I do I do agree that yes,
we should have mentioned shock Gu specifically as the man

(33:40):
behind the nose, and I think William is right to
to write in about something like this just even though
we were I guess technically wrong, but two white dudes
sitting around talking about the issues of race and gender
that we're being extrapolated out of Halloween costumes, there's always
a potential for error. So I'm glad that he corrected
us in this sense, because otherwise I think it would

(34:01):
have just come off as kind of like white dude
man splaining and I'd also like to mention I hope
that shock g not humpty hump, got busy in a
burger king bathroom. All right, Carney's handing us another message
here and if I can, hope, if I can take
it from him, he's running waving it around in circles. Ah,
there it is. Okay. Oh, this is from our listener, Martin,

(34:23):
and Martin is writing in with reference to one of
the X Files episodes that Christian and I did. So. Yeah,
and he's not the only one who wrote about the
specific thing, right, I think we received a couple of
tweets about this too. Yeah, and so in the X
Files episode, Christian and I were talking about Leonard Betts,
the classic X Files character who gets his head cut off, survives,

(34:44):
and then regrows his head because he's made of cancer. Yes,
but but not before walking to the iodine store and
saying give me all your the way he regress his
head as by climbing into a bathtub full of iodine. Anyway, Mark,
our listener Martin writes in about this and says, hey, eyes,
I'm sure someone has already pointed this out. But a
day or so before the X Files podcast, I watched

(35:05):
an episode of Monumental Mysteries or Mysteries at the Monument
something like that, which is a branch of the show
Mysteries at the Museum Anyway. One of the monuments they
visited in the episode was of a chicken without a
head in the center of a town. The chickens name
was Mike Miracle Mike Bond, James Bold. The story is

(35:29):
that a farmer gathered up a couple of chickens to
kill for dinner. After cutting off Mike's head, he let
him run around while tending to the next victim. After
doing his thing with chicken number two, he noticed that
Mike was still going about as if nothing happened, so
he spared him and went about making dinner or whatever.
The next day, Mike was still alive, so he began

(35:49):
feeding him with an eye dropper and kind of just
letting the headless chicken do what headless chickens do. Oddly,
even without a head, he would scratch and peck at
the ground, walk around, and could bring and evidently functioned
just fine. Most of this is because his brain stem
was left mostly intact. But people were amazed by the
headless little fella, and he went on tour, living headless

(36:11):
for eighteen months. Unfortunately, one night at a hotel while
on tour, Mike began to choke, which is evidently pretty
common for a chicken without a head, and his owner
couldn't locate his eye dropper in time to clear his airway,
so he perished after eighteen months of headless life. The
second how do you choke? I don't know. I guess

(36:34):
he is an esophagus still, yeah, I mean, yeah, you
still have the neck and everything. So we we did
think about this, actually, I think I thought about mentioning
this in the episode, but didn't because you had notes
about it, for sure. Because the so we were talking
about animals that can get their heads cut off and survive.
For example, cockroaches can survive without a head for a

(36:54):
long time. But the thing with this chicken was that
it it sort of wasn't really without a head, and
the relevant sense, it was without part of a head.
So if the brain stem was left intact, that's a
different kind of thing. This would be sort of like
a person getting like the front of their head cut
off or something, which would also be impressive. Yeah, it would.

(37:15):
I mean, not that this is not interesting I really
appreciate all of you who got in touch with us
about Miracle Mike. I love that his name is Miracle
Mike because it makes me think of magic Mike. And
therefore I can't help but imagine a dream scenario and
which you have a movie about a headless mail stripper.
But I'm imagining Miracle Mike double XL. No, what I'm
imagining is that song Pony, you know, with the Miracle

(37:38):
Mike running around without a head back in at the ground.
Jump on it my brain stem anyway. But Martin continues
for referencing another episode, saying, the second odd thing was
right before I listened to the Mirrors podcast thing that's
talking about the one YouTube did on space mirrors. There's
also an older stuff to Blowing my Hand episode just

(37:59):
on mirrors. Oh well, I wonder it could be the
one he talks about a sun gun. I think it
was this so so, Martin says, I watched the new
episode of Scorpion and go figure. They were chasing down
some warlord who had acquired panels the Germans had planned
to use on the sun gun. I won't go through
the whole timeline of the episode, but both are really
great shows and definitely worth watching. Anyway, I just thought

(38:21):
there were some weird synchronicities worth sharing. Keep the awesome
podcast coming. Thanks so much, Mike, even I thought not Mike,
Thanks so much, Miracle Mike, Thanks so much, Martin, Miracle, Martin,
I've never heard of Scorpion before. It sounds I don't
know what it is. Yeah, I'm not familiar with it.
I thought he was talking about the nineteen eighties glam
band that would be the Scorpions. Is that right? They

(38:45):
were just Yeah, that was a that was an interesting
period of time in the history of music. Speaking of music,
uh Ann Lee writes in with the following Robert, I
am late to the podcasting scene and have been trying
to work my way through the backlog of episodes. Almost
every other episode I find myself thinking, has Robert played
Silent Hill? How has he not played Silent Hill? Is

(39:06):
he ever going to mention Silent Hill? Do you ever
mentioned Silent Hill? Did I just not make it far enough?
And yet I was certain you'd say something on the
Uncanny Music episode, et cetera. If by some strange turn
of fate, a man who loves monsters, grotesque and poigning
imagery and the psychology of horror hasn't explored the Silent
Hill series. I thought you'd be interested play Look up

(39:27):
Silent Hill one through three, with the pinnacle being Silent
Hill to perhaps considered an episode on horror gaming active
participation versus passive watching, as in film and books as well.
So I will say, yes, I have played the first
three Silent Hills, and I can't remember the room was

(39:48):
Silent Hill three or the one that came after Silent
Hill three, but uh, yeah, I've seen I've played those,
and I have seen the Silent Hill movie. And uh,
I actually own the soundtrack to Silent Hill to. All
the music for the entire franchise games and films I
was composed by a Kira yama Oka. Uh and it's indeed,
it's great stuff. A mixture of uncanny music, uh, some

(40:12):
just wonderful sort of industrial noise and occasional J pop sensibility.
Sound Hill was one of those things we get asked
about a lot, like on periscope. People have asked about
it multiple times, specifically about you know that Soulent Hill
game that Gamma del Toro was working on. Is it
pt is that way? Oh? Yeah, that's apparently, but then
it's not. Yeah, I don't think it's happening, um, but

(40:32):
they wanted to know what our thoughts were about it.
I've watched like a game play, like somebody playing through it,
but I don't have I think it's It was only
available on PC or maybe PlayStation, so I wasn't able
to play it. I've always been told I should play
Silent Hill. I've never played any of the Yeah, I mean,
they love horror, but I I was not playing that

(40:53):
console generation when those games came out. Well, they've done
HD remakes of at least one in two, so I
would say just skip right to two because we have
busy lives. When I have time for sling Hill Wind,
they're fun. Salent Hill too, Salent Hill too is Yeah,
it's fun, and I loved that it. It never really fleshed.
My memory of it anyway, is that it never really

(41:14):
fleshed out exactly what was happening. It left him and
just content continual confusion and mystery about this place in
the setting and the events that have transpired, and there's
all sorts of just of just weird stuff in the background.
I'm not steeped enough from the Laura. I don't know
if they ever explained it fully. I think there was
a second movie too, wasn't there There was? I know
Lauren has seen it, Lauren Vocabam. We'll have to ask

(41:37):
her about it. I know Kit Harrington I think was
in it. Um really yeah, I think he was. I
might be mixing mixing him up. Maybe somebody out there
is going no, it wasn't. John Snow you know nothing.
Christian's acre. Okay, we got another one here that's coming
out and it is covered in tiny little pink pills.

(42:00):
It says, I just listened to your series on m
d m A. One thing not mentioned that has been
researched is m d M A for Tonight's treatment. People
have recorded that their TONIGHTUS goes away while using m
d m A. Thank you for the podcast. I really
enjoy the subject matter. I actually think TONIGHTUS would be
a great standalone episode topic. I have TONIGHTUS myself. With

(42:20):
all the research being done on causes and treatments, it's
amazing how much is still unknown about the condition. Thank you, Stephanie. Yeah,
that would be fun. I actually wrote a brain stuff
episode about Tonight's UM. You know, brain stuff is our
general science kind of video series. So it's a real quick,
like two or three minute explanation of how Ringing Year
works is how we refer to it in that. But

(42:42):
that's interesting. I have TONIGHTUS, so I'm curious. I mean,
I don't know that. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's
from being in punk bands, um and not wearing proper protection.
I have I Ringing Year pretty much all the time. Um,
but it's one of those things where like I've lived
with it for so long now that I can kind
of tune it out, but in certain situations it comes

(43:04):
on really strong. Yeah, like wow, M D M A.
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if i'd want
to be a guinea pig for that. I wouldn't want
to pull a John C. Lily and start testing on myself.
But that's interesting, and TONIGHTUS would be one that's interesting
because she's right, they haven't really nailed it down yet.
I think that though there's several different theories as to
why it happens, but they haven't. They don't have anything definitive.

(43:26):
Now you know what you're doing this weekend? Yeah, dropping
some M D M A and listening very delicately. Okay,
we've got another This is just a real short one
from our listener Eric in England. But this is in
reference to, uh, to our X Files episode where Christian
and I were talking about how it seems like they
can never get the alien cloning invasion plan straight in
the X Files. It's like they let let's just go,

(43:48):
Like they still can't. Yeah, we were one episode away
from the new series finishing and it's no better. Well,
they keep giving different explanations of what's going on that
seemed like they just couldn't possibly all fit together somehow. Uh.
And so what Christian and I talked about was, well,
maybe the deal is just that the Aliens haven't made
up their mind. This is actually the plot of the

(44:09):
show is that the Aliens are incredibly disorganized and cannot
get it together and agree on a plan. Well, it
comes back to Invader Zim, which I believe we talked
about right recently, talk about that. This is exactly what
Eric's comment is. So Eric writes in to say, hey, guys,
great shows usual. Just check out Invader Zim for a
great example of a disorganized invasion plan plus just a

(44:30):
fun watch. Cheers Eric. So I've never seen Invader Zim
and I don't know what he's talking about, but now
I feel like I've got to check it out. Obama
has also recommended this to me. She told me to
watch it and it's I believe it's on Amazon Prime.
So I had maybe it was a Nickelodeon show and
it's just the whole, the whole run of it. As
this tremendous friend of mine works on the Invaders Zim
comic book too. Yeah, so I I should give it,

(44:54):
give it a chance. It's got kind of like a
Johann Vasquez vibe. It is. Yeah, Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, cool, Yeah,
it was his his deal, all right. Here's one more
that touches on our recent coverage of psychedelics uh from Kristen.
She says, big fan of the podcast and particularly enjoying
the coverage of the use of psychedelics for therapeutic purposes.

(45:16):
It touches on a subject I'm very passionate about. Ayahuasca
was my first psychedelic a little over a year ago.
After my first time using it, I quit my job
in the corporate oil industry immediately upon trying ayahuasca. My
life has taken a completely different path, and I've spent
the last year working with different teachers psychedelics to explore
myself in my connection to others in the world. Not

(45:38):
to mention I had a lot of fun doing so.
In the process, I started going to private meetings in
Los Angeles in researchers homes to discuss tripped reports, share experiences,
and collect data. I wish more people understood how psychedelics
could impact our lives without it sounding like hippie nonsense.
My mom is still convinced M D m A puts

(45:58):
holes in your brain and that LSD is addictive. That's
funny because right before we did the M D m
A episode, Joe said to me, are you going to
talk about the holes in the brain? Myth? And I
had never even heard of that even with doing the research,
but I was taught this in school when I was
growing up. Your brain, Yeah, I am pretty sure from
all the research we did for that double party, that's
not true. That is true, uh, and that LSD is addictive.

(46:21):
Thank you for taking up airtime exploring these substances and
the benefits they can provide people with. I hope my
mom gives it a listen, uh, and then she says,
I went to a MAPS conference a while ago. We
talked about MAPS in that episode. There are a group
that works on the therapeutic applications of it uh and
when she was there, she said, they discussed a really
interesting study they're doing. They're using m d m A

(46:42):
on people with autism. It was fascinating. I recalled Dr
Alicia dan Forth telling a story about a patient that
had issues making eye contact with people after his m
d m A therapy. He was standing in line at Walmart.
The cashier asked him how he was doing, and he said,
for the first time ever in his life, he was
able to make eye contact with and respond with good,
how are you. I can't recall all the t details,

(47:05):
but I'm pretty sure it was an older man who
had been living with autism for a long time. Awesome work, Kristen, Well, yeah,
and I'm glad that Kristen liked this, and a lot
of people seem to respond positively to those two episodes
so much so that we're definitely talking about doing more
on UM, not just psychedelics, but other kind of drugs
and therapeutic applications. Yes, definitely, we definitely are going to

(47:26):
hit some some more drug topics in the months ahead.
Ayahuasca is on the top of my list personally not
to take, but to go out for the show. I
uh my first introduction to ayahuasca, I mean outside of
reading Williams Burrows talking about it as the age was
on Pete Holmes You Made It Weird podcast, he talked

(47:47):
with a guest about her whole experience doing the sort
of thing where you go, uh and you you pay
money to like a tribe, I believe in order to
be able to take it quote unquote legally. Yeah, and
my understanding is that it's it's it's been slightly commercialized
in recent years, so you can actually book travel to
a resort type of place to engage in these uh

(48:09):
these experiences. And we're living in william S Burrow's world now.
Not only that he just came up in the In
the Right orgon episode he built himself an organ accumulator
to write in huh um. I will mission mentioned as
well there were a pair of older episodes of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind that I did with the Julie
Douglas uh title of the Scientist and the Shaman, and

(48:30):
that goes that those episodes go into some of these
issues as well, particularly the use of psilocybin and diahuasca. Cool. Well,
while in the meantime, while we're putting those together, maybe
Kristen and others who are interested in this canna go
back and listen to those. Yeah, you just go to
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and type in drugs. Yeah,
I mean seriously, I think there are all those episodes
and in blog poster our tag at the drugs. Yeah,

(48:53):
we try, We try to tag him pretty well with
our metadata. All right. Uh, this next one comes in
from linked In, of all places linked Yeah, you're kidding. Yeah,
I mean, it's about a headless chicken. No, but I
had to share it because it's a nice, nice little
bit of listener mail. But it also came to me
personally through LinkedIn. Was like one of two times that
LinkedIn has been helpful. Yeah, LinkedIn is the one social

(49:15):
media network that makes me feel like an old man,
Like I feel like I just totally don't understand what's
going on here. It makes you feel like an old man.
It makes me feel like a little kid. Really makes
me feel like I'm on there with all these adults
doing their adult things, and I'm like, hey, I've been
endorsing you for stuff all. I think we all, I
think all three of us are on there right Yeah yeah,

(49:36):
look yeah, so hey adds to your network? Do you
want to hire us? But but Melanie wrote in on
LinkedIn and said, thanks for accepting, even though we actually
haven't done business together. Devouring your podcasts since Joe Rogan
commented on it, looking forward to listening and reading more.
Thanks for the warning about polar bear livers that was
from our Danger Foods episodes. Could have had that for

(49:58):
lunch yesterday. And she also thought it was on email
and recommended that we we potentially do an episode on
color and color blindness. Oh yeah, we've gotten some good
feedback about the Dangerous Foods episode. I've been emailing back
and forth with one listener named Mary, who has been
contacting us about her experiences in Iceland. First, she got
in touch with us about the Pink Snow, Blue Snow episode,

(50:21):
the episode we did about All the Weird Snow where
she was talking about the colors of glaciers that she
had seen in Iceland and what was exactly the cause
of them. And we found out that we had been
to one of the same glacier lagoons like she and
her fiance at the time had been there when she
was in Iceland, and I had been there with my
wife Rachel when we were there. And if you ever
get a chance to see a glacier in real life,

(50:42):
it's worth it because it is a very strange, uh,
different kind of thing to see if you're not used
to it. I still can't get over that you went
to Iceland and you guys didn't go to the Blue Lagoon.
Of all the lagoons and glaciers, you didn't go to
the weird uh Silica sex pond. Another thing Mary mentioned
is that she actually ate the shark from the Dangerous

(51:05):
Foods episode. Yes, she she ate it while she was there,
chased it with some kind of unknown clear liquor, and
that that's it. And so I gotta I gotta respect
her power and honor. Well. To her point about us
doing something about color blindness, again, I think i'm brain stuff.
I didn't write it. Maybe you did. Um, there's a
color blindness episode. In fact, we did it because our

(51:28):
colleague Ben Boland has a certain kind of color blindness, uh.
And so that's why we covered it, so maybe if
we did an episode on that topic, we could bring
Ben and he could be our guinea pig. Yeah, we
could give him M D M A in ayahuasca and
see how it affects color blindness. All right, it looks
like we have one last email here from Carney. All right, Carney,
what if we got here? Ah? This is from our

(51:49):
listener Catherine, and it's in reference to our episode that
Robert and I did for New Year's about science and
moral behavior. And Catherine writes, hey, guys, I started listening
to your podcast, asked after getting all caught on your
brother and sister podcasts and now slowly chipping away at yours.
Yesterday I was listening to your episode Moral Behavior, and
I got so excited. For my psychology undergraduate, I conducted

(52:12):
a study on this exact topic. My thesis was titled Shame,
Guilt and Religiousness in Adolescent sexual Offenders. And I can't
resist an opportunity to talk about it, which is basically
never because people think it's super boring. I was looking
for a link between religion and adolescent offenders and their
feelings of shame and guilt, which are commonly closely tied

(52:33):
to moral behavior. Because I was dealing with children and
I was a lowly undergrad student, it was difficult to
conduct my study and ended up with a total sample
size of seven, which doesn't make my results very reliable. Uh.
We we admire your work. Anyway, That sounds like a
larger sample size than Mahomewich worked with. Yeah, it was
possible anyway, Catherine continues, However, I did find that at

(52:57):
at least among that sample size of seven, and she
says how I did find that there was no connection
between religion and the moral feelings of the participants, but
was more connected to their own intrinsic feelings about themselves
and their offenses. Anyway, if you ever can't sleep, I'll
be more than happy to assist with a copy of
the paper. Keep up the great work. Love listening to
your podcast. It makes my monotonous day so much more enjoyable. Well,

(53:20):
that is too kind, Catherine, and thank you for sharing
this with us, you know, on the subject of content
that puts one to sleep. Um, we're talking about this earlier.
I don't know if we've actually mentioned it on the podcast,
but we had one listener write in at least one
at least one. Yeah, well, I've heard from other How
Stuff Works podcasts they've heard similar things to that people
listen to the podcasts while falling asleep. But the one

(53:42):
individual in particular thought that the music should be tweaked.
Our excellent music by our producer Noel should be tweeked
so as to allow them to gently move into into
slumber at the end of the episode. Yeah, I'd love
to hear from more of you if you fall asleep
to to our episodes. I never really thought that the
k of our voices would be something that would knock
people out. Now, I think that from now on, all

(54:04):
of our episodes should each be an MP three file
that's about three hours long, where we talk for the
normal amount of time, and then the rest of the
file is just waves coming, just seegulls every now and
the rain patterns. Yeah. Well, you know one thing that
I took away from this last one that you read,
and it seems like a common theme with what our
letters throughout the entire episode. Today, there's been a lot

(54:26):
of cross pollination between the shows here at How Stuff Works. Lately,
it seems like a lot of people are listening to
us and jumping to other shows are listening to other
shows and jumping over to us. I hear that all
the time. I hear from people who started with stuff
you should know and then moved on to stuff you
missed in history class and to us. Yeah. Well, and
and if so, I guess if there are people out
there that are listening and they're unfamiliar, I guess with

(54:46):
the larger world of what we operate, and you know,
there's there's a lot more here at how stuff works. Uh.
And the best way to kind of find out what
all those other shows are is if you go to
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Just scroll to
the bottom of any page. They're all lists it. They're
including Joe's other show, Forward Thinking. Yeah, I mean, they're
all great shows and there's no stuff to blow your mind.
But no, I mean, but they're great. I can't imagine

(55:08):
that on car Stuff that they're gonna talk about ayahuasca
anytime soon. You know, I do want to mention Car
Stuff has been putting some great stuff on Facebook recently,
like they've been at least a couple of different things
that have had to share to the Stuff to Blow
your Mind Facebook page because uh, Scott Benjamin is great
about bringing out these like really weird things from automotive
history that even appeal to me, like the least automotively

(55:32):
inclined person in the office. Probably, I'd say you and
I could compete for being for being the lowest on
the car guys scale. Yeah, and so it appears that
stuff appeals to us. Then if you're at all interested
in I guess done that show before. I'm not a
car person really at all, but those guys are a
lot of fun to talk what they have you on
to talk about. We talked about, um, pony cars, you know,

(55:53):
like that style of car that's somewhere between like a
muscle car and like a sedan, So like a Ford
Mustang or a Dodge Challenger, stuff like that cars in
death Proof. Yes, actually, um, and it has a pony
in it. Well, they're called pony cars because they're named
after the Mustang. So it's like not a Mustang, ak
not a full grown horse that is a pony. Right. Well,

(56:15):
so that's a good segue for us to just remind
people in general to visit stuff to blow your mind
dot com, which is where you're gonna find everything by
the three of us. That's where we write things, we blog,
there's videos by us or that we host, and they're
all the podcasts are there as well. Yeah, and there's
even there even links out to all the other House
of Work shows as well, so that can be your

(56:35):
first stop on a continuing health Stuff Works journey. And
I just wanted to remind you out there again. If
you've gotten in touch with us and we didn't have
time to read your email today, I'm sorry that we
couldn't get to it today, but please right in in
the future. We we love getting all of the feedback
that we get from you all and and the wonderful
things you contribute, and hopefully we'll be able to read
it in a future listener mail. So yeah, we're open

(56:57):
to emails about new episodes, old episodes, whatever you have
to share with us. Uh. So, there are some other
ways that you can get in touch with us too, right,
I mentioned them at the top. We do the social
media's were on Facebook, we're on Twitter, We're on Tumbler.
You can write to us there or you can follow
us there and see all the weird science stories that
we post throughout the week. It's not just our own stuff.
We also do periscope every Friday at noon Eastern Standard time.

(57:21):
So if you want like a more intimate setting to
sit down and talk to us and ask us some questions,
were usually around for about twenty or thirty minutes on
those those slots. And if you want to get in
touch with us the old fashioned way, simply shoot us
an email at blow the Mind at how stuff works
dot com. We're more on this than thousands of other topics.

(57:50):
Is it how stuff works dot com. Blavet joined the
foot pro