Listener Mail: Peak Hour

Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, are you welcome to do Stuff to
Blow Your Mind listener mail. My name is Robert lamp
and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day of
the week that we usually read back messages that you
have sent into the show account. By the way, if
you've never written in and you'd like to get in

(00:23):
touch to share something interesting or with feedback on a
recent episode, you can always contact us at contact at
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Let's see Robney
business before we jump right in on these messages about throwing,
no business, Let's get right down to the business of
listener mail. Okay, So this is in response to our

(00:44):
series on throwing behavior, first in animals, and then we
eventually talked about throwing in humans. There were a couple
of emails from listeners Nobile and Marley on the subject
of octopus throwing. Not octopus is throwing, but octopus is

(01:06):
being thrown. So first, Marley writes, Hi, Joe and Robert,
I've been an avid listener since I was in high
school and your episodes on animals throwing objects was extremely
interesting to me. It just so happens that I saw
this video on my Reddit feed come up. It appears
as if a seal or sea lion throws an octopus
at a kayaking bystander, and then Marley includes a link

(01:27):
to the video. He says, hope you had a great
holiday season and I always look forward to more podcasts
from you two when they appear in my feed. Sincerely,
Marley uh Now Robinson's Nabile's message also addresses this. Should
we save reaction until after we get through that part
of the next one? Yeah, let's do them both first,
Okay okay. Nabil also writes, Hi, rob and Joe. When

(01:48):
I saw the title of the podcast animals throwing things
appear in my podcast feed, one instance of this immediately
came to mind. When you started a lengthy discussion about octopuses.
I was sure this example would come up, but it
was not mentioned. I was reminded of a video it's
seen a few years ago which does involve an octopus,
but as the throwe rather than the thrower. The animal

(02:10):
doing the throwing is a seal. Why this video sticks
with me is that the seal throws the octopus onto
a human who was kayaking nearby, right onto his face.
As far as I can remember, seals throw octopuses onto
rocks to kill them before they eat them. The seal
may have either mistaken the human and the kayak for
some rocks, or just wanted to see if doing this

(02:33):
would yield similar results. Seal of approval. I don't know
if that's upon seal of approval for use of the
scientific method. Now, Rob, did you did you watch this
video of the the octopus slap on the kayaker? Yeah? Yeah,
it's it's quite impressive footage obviously. Um for me anyway,
it's kind of hard to really decide if what I'm

(02:54):
looking at here is that it is a creature throwing
an octopus or a creature intentionally throwing an octopus at
a human. Um. You know, I think you would need
more data before you could really figure out if they
are throwing in general or throwing at Also, I can't
quite tell from the video if the octopus fully leaves
the seals mouth, if it is throwing the octopus at

(03:17):
the kayaker, or just kind of whacking the kayaker with
the octopus. Yeah, indeed, Um, yeah, I haven't looked particularly
about seals and sea lions and when it comes to
flinging prey, um, flinging prey. Maybe there's there's something to
explore in the future episode, because I know there are
examples of say, Orca doing this in the wild, and

(03:39):
of course in captivity, Orca have been trying to fling
human swimmers with the aid of their tails. Uh, they're
not with their their mouths. Um. But I also seem
to recall having a dog when I was younger that
would do this with Um. These are like moles or
shrews or something that it would hunt up and dig
up in the yard, and then it would sort of
play with them. And I recall, and this could be

(04:00):
a false recollection, but I recall something like the flinging
of the creature. Well, yeah, we'll get to some more
emails in a bit about dogs flinging things. I again
that that is a behavior I've observed in dogs, not
with live animals, but with with like a you know,
a puzzle box toy. You know, a toy that has
treats inside of this animal is not alive anymore, it's

(04:22):
pretty dead anyway. Going on with Nabile's message, uh, Nibile
rights in similar animal on human with the use of
other animals violence. I'm reminded of this story, which is
more in the realm of animals dropping things rather than
strictly throwing them. According to legend, the Greek playwright Escalus
met a tragic death one day. An eagle that had

(04:44):
caught a tortoise mistook Escalus's bald head for a shiny
rock and accidentally killed the author by dropping the animal
onto him. Apparently, it is normal for eagles to drop
tortoises onto rocks to break open their hard shell and
access the meat inside. Uh. Thanks for the tireless work
that goes into these podcasts. I enjoy the variation of
topics covered and the varying aspects that are given to them.

(05:06):
Regards Nibile, Well, thank you, Nabile. Oh yeah, we we've
talked about this story about Escalist before. To be clear
to everybody else, I don't know how much UH credence
historians generally put into that as like an event that
actually happened as you know it. It probably is more
likely a legend, but then again, who knows. I mean,
it is true that certain predatory birds drop things from height,

(05:29):
and we've talked about examples of that before. H yeah
that the lamber guy are being one that drops bones,
for example. But let's keep this bird train moving with
another message. This one comes to us from Cheryl Cheryl Rides,
Hello from New Zealand. I have just started episode two

(05:49):
of your series on animal throwing, and once again I
am amazed at how a concept that I've never really
stopped to consider can be so in depth and interesting.
This is my first time writing into any podcast, but
I wanted to share my own animal throwing story. My
parents were driving over Arthur's Pass in the South Island
of New Zealand and stopped at a rest area to
take a break, stretch their legs a little and look

(06:12):
at the view. Kia our native mountain parrots frequent this area,
and true to form, one quickly came over and started
determinedly trying to remove the rubber seals from around the
car windows. Yes, I've I've I've seen documentaries about these
amazing birds before, and they're they're highly intelligent. They often

(06:32):
factor into studies of of bird and or maybe individual studies,
but larger considerations of bird intelligence and tool use, and
they can get into a little bit of mischief with
their their curiosity the rubber seals around the car windows.
Do they also unscrew the hinges on your doors? I
think I saw a video of one like messing up

(06:53):
some windshield wiper. I mean, you know, they're curious, The're like,
what is that there for? I should take it out
to examine for brilliant Anyway, the um um cheryl continues here.
My mother waved her arms to shoo it off, but
it quickly came back when she stopped. After several repetitions
of this, the bird appeared to become annoyed, flew down

(07:13):
to the ground and picked up a stone and hurled
it at my mother, laughing emoji. It only hit her
on the ankle, and she was not hurt at all.
It just makes for a funny story about what looks
very much like retaliatory throwing behavior from an animal. That's interesting.
Kia are my absolute favorite native bird and are one
of the most intelligent bird species in the world. They

(07:36):
are said to be similar to some primates and intelligence
about the same as a four year old human child.
While they certainly have a reputation for mischief and destruction
of personal property, they are not generally aggressive towards people,
and I have never heard of any other throwing stories.
This does make me wonder where the bird learned it
from and whether it was a one off Kia. According

(07:59):
to New Zealand Department of Conservation website, have been known
to turn on the tap at a local campground, to
use tools to set off stoked traps in order to
get at the eggs, and to have locked a mountaineer
inside a toilet. One bird apparently learned that if it
took a piece of firewood to a hiking hut every

(08:21):
day and knocked on the door, it would receive a treat.
Could one have learned to throw stones after seeing someone
do it? I don't know, but it doesn't seem outside
the bounds of possibility. However it came about, it wasn't
successful in this instance because my mother still refused to
let it dismantle the car. I hope you found this interesting.
Keep up the good work. Your podcast often helps me

(08:41):
to see things I thought of his quite mundane in
a new and interesting light, and also helps brighten my
work commutes and dog box all the best, Cheryl. Oh,
thank you, Cheryl. That is certainly what we strive to do.
I'm glad to hear it's working for you, and thank
you so much for this is a wonderful email. Yeah, yeah,
I love I love accounts like this, and and certainly
to involve the Kia in a standoff with your mother

(09:04):
over the dismantling of the family automobile. This is that now,
when it locked a mountaineer in a toilet, I assume
that's a that that means in a bathroom. Yeah, though, um,
I'm trying to imagine I guess some I guess it's
not a proper report to John reporta potty because you
would need some means of locking it from the outside.

(09:28):
But obviously there could be various examples of some sort
of public toilet scenario in which you can lock it,
latch it, or a latch can be dropped into place
from the outside, and it must have been a scenario
like that. I can't imagine the keya installed a dead
boulder or anything. I will have to learn more about
the bird toilet imprisoning incident. Yeah, these are fascinating creatures

(09:49):
in general. Um, I like to say I've I've watched
documentaries about them before. It might be fun to look
at them in the future. All right, This next message
is from Renata who rides high rob and Joe. Well,
at first you said you weren't going to talk about
animals throwing things that were produced by their body, so

(10:11):
I thought poop throwing was off the table. But then
you brought it up with chimpanzees, which is great because
now I have an excuse to tell another embarrassing story
about Ben. Nada, by the way, has written in a
number of times before. I think Ben would be a
reference to her partner, who has come up in previous emails.
Apologies if I'm remembering that wrong. Um, but so I

(10:35):
think that is that this listener's partner anyway. Uh, she continues.
We were in Borneo, going on nature tours every day
on a boat down a river. One day we see
some macaques as we turn into a canal with a
canopy of trees. At first, we were all delighted to
see monkeys up close. Then sure enough the guide said
maybe we should move away as the monkeys seemed agitated.

(10:58):
Moments later, Ben said, um, I got hit with monkey
poo right in his lap. It was definitely thrown as
we had moved enough away that we weren't directly under
the monkeys, and also I think it was aimed purposefully.
Ben was in fact the largest mail on the boat.
Thankfully one of the other tourists had moist wipes. This

(11:19):
is horrifying, so I guess they're going to target the
tallest person that that kind of makes sense. We're not
A continues with a second example here. Another animal that
I saw doing a throwing like behavior similar to what
you described with the mongoose are platypuses. I wasn't able
to find a video, but Ben and I saw it
happened to some poor crayfish in a tank in Melbourne. Uh.

(11:42):
The platypus seemed to be flinging the crayfish into rocks
with incredible speed and force, and then circled back to
eat it. I'm not sure what part of their body
the platypus is used to smash the crayfish. It all
happened so fast. Platypuses would make a great episode or episodes.
Unto themselves, love the throwing episodes. Keep up the great work,

(12:02):
best Renata. Oh wow, that is interesting. Um. Yeah. For
some reason, one, or at least I tend not to
think about platypus is being the sort of species that
do interesting things. Because they are so intrinsically interesting themselves,
you know, um, Whereas it makes sense that that a
less a specialized, more generalized body plan would engage in uh,

(12:27):
you know, in in novel acts. This makes sense though,
because this would be another example of a UM. I
was gonna say a mammal, but as a platypus and
mammal I guess, not as a platypus or supial or
I don't know, it's one of those Australian animals we
just checked. I guess a platypus is a is an
egg laying Mammal's so sort of a I don't know,

(12:50):
spanning categories UM, an egg laying mammal like a platypus.
In in the other case it was a mongoose, but
some mammal like creature uh, throwing a a prey species
to get at the meat inside. In both cases here
it would be an animal with an exo skeleton. So
in the other case it was the mongoose throwing the millipede,
which rolled up into a hard ball that the other

(13:12):
animals couldn't get inside. And the crayfish, of course, is
is armored. It's covered with the tough exoskeleton all over. Yeah, so,
in both of these cases, very interesting examples observed in
the wild. All right, here's another one. This one comes

(13:34):
to us from J J. Not R J. J Uh.
This J J says, good morning, Joe and Rob. I
enjoyed your four part series on animals and people throwing,
and I have my own anecdote to share. My family
had a Chiesu growing up. While she wasn't a particularly
bride dog, she would display one specific type of throwing behavior.

(13:55):
When the mood struck her. She would take her tennis
ball and hike it between her legs, then run and
retrieve it. Sometimes the ball would travel several feet behind her,
but most of the time it would get slowed down
by her long hair and wind up only inches behind her.
Very comical to watch, as she never seemed to know
exactly where the ball was after the hike. Nevertheless, she

(14:15):
seemed to enjoy it immensely. R. I. P. Pepper. Oh, now,
this is just one of the messages we received that
reminded us that in American football, the reverse granny shot
is indeed called a hike, which I realized we should
have known because they actually say it when they do it.
They don't yell out reverse granny shot, they say hike.

(14:36):
Shout out to listener Carlos, who also alerted us to this,
who said, uh, yeah, I think he said in his message,
you have both mentioned not being sports fans. True guilty.
Uh And Carlos was like, I'm not really an American
football player or watcher either, but I do know that
when you throw a ball backwards between your legs, it
is called a hike. So thanks Carlos and uh and

(14:57):
for this message by by j J. Yeah, like it's
it's in enough things that just refer to football and
football culture that I should have remembered that. Okay. On
a similar subject about dogs throwing, this is from Cody.
Cody says, I know this isn't throwing, but the recent

(15:19):
series of podcasts reminded me about my dog. One day,
while working from home, I heard thudding in checking my
dog had dropped his treat puzzle down the stairs. Not
thinking much about it, I heard it again a few
days later. After this, it made me curious. I put
some more treats in the treat puzzle. He proceeded to
take the treat puzzle up the stairs and drop it

(15:40):
as it fell down the stairs, the treats would fall out,
so he could then enjoy treats at his leisure. Thanks
for your work. I enjoyed the podcast, Cody, very interesting.
This is smart learned behavior by these dogs here. I
mean when there's a treat involved. I guess that's where
the operant conditioning comes in, right, if there's an immediate
food reward. Again that you know, dogs can learn all

(16:00):
kinds of things. All right, here's one that comes to
us from Albert. Albert says, Hi, Robert and Joe in
part two, I think you asked for any throwing mythology.
I was surprised you did not remember the throw anything
at balder party, where believing nothing can hurt him, all
the Norse gods amused themselves by shooting and throwing all

(16:23):
manner of things at balder. Of course, Loki finds out
that the lowly missiletoe did not swear to not hurt Balder,
and thus blind Huther is tricked into hurling a missiletoe
at Balder, killing him. That is a really mean trick, Loki. Yeah, no,
you know it's this thing. In part three, you mentioned

(16:43):
the suggestion that mothers cradled their babies with their left arm,
which is closer to the heart. But this is a
chicken and egg question. Did mothers cradle their babies therefore
the right arm became dominant to do all manners of work,
concluding throwing to defend themselves. Or did mothers cradle their
babies because they were right handed and wanted their dominant
arm free for labor and defense. Thanks and keep up

(17:04):
the great work, Albert. Well, Albert, thanks for the email.
First to your second point about that hypothesis from I
think the researcher was William Calvin, who suggested that maybe
right hand lateralization for throwing evolved because mothers would be
holding an infant in the left arm while trying to
throw with the right. Again, any hypothesis like that that's

(17:25):
like very specific about how things like that evolved. It's
really hard to prove something that specific is actually what happened,
So it's this is just sort of like a guess
sort of to play with in your mind. But I
think at least Calvin's argument for why the cradling in
the left arm went first and the throwing in the
right hand developed after that is because of the initial

(17:46):
starting fact that there is an asymmetrical placement of the
heart in the chest. So, according to that story, would
be that the babies were on the left side because
they wanted to be closer to the soothing sound of
the heartbeat, and then the right hand lateralization for throwing
could develop from there rather than it being the other
way around. Yeah, that's fascinating. Um. Now on the on

(18:09):
the mythology, uh point, I know we didn't. I don't
think we really did an exhaustive search for myth about throwing,
but but certainly anymore out there, keep them, keep them coming. Um.
I did a little looking around after this email came in,
and uh, I did run across something that I wasn't
familiar with. And that's um this bit from ancient Greek

(18:29):
tradition where chunking an apple at someone could be considered
a seduction ploy, though not a marriage proposal, as some
memes and uh sort of online factoids would seem to insist. Uh.
There's an excellent blog post about this on Tales of
Times Forgotten by Spencer McDaniel. I believe it was the
twenty nineteen blog post about chunking apples that your beloved. Uh,

(18:54):
So go check that out if you're at all interested
in this, but also don't throw apples at people that
you're romantically interested in. Leave that to the past. Maybe
throw apple sauce. You know that's not gonna hurt anything. No,
I don't think that's bad. I mean, maybe that's less dangerous,
but don't the apple sauce. But it does. It kind

(19:14):
of comes back to that that sort of cliche moment
often from cinema that we did reference about throwing of
the pebbles at the windows. So I don't know, Uh,
we didn't look into this, but I wonder how like
throwing things factors into the history of human courtship. There
are other interesting traditions out there than involved like trying
to peg somebody with a with a rock or a

(19:36):
pebble or a fruit. Okay, finally here we're gonna do
a message about Weird House Cinema. This is from Lawrence,
subject line Scanners slash danger Man. Hey, guys, I was
listening to your Weird House Cinema episode on scanners, and
I was struck to hear one of you briefly trying

(19:58):
to explain danger man to the other. I don't know
if this is any help, but here goes. Danger Man
was a British TV series that was shown in the
US under the alternate title Secret Agent. It's theme song,
Secret Agent Man was a top forties hit in the
US in the sixties and seventies. Oh yeah, I know
that one. Uh. It starred Patrick McGowan as the titular

(20:21):
Secret Agent or I suppose the titular Danger Man, John Drake.
Danger Man inspired the iconic seventeen episode series The Prisoner,
which is was a sort of sequel to it. This
gets me thinking, it's not cinema strictly speaking, but maybe
you could bend the rule of it. The Prisoner would
make for a great episode of weird House Cinema. Thanks

(20:42):
for the episode, Lawrence. Yeah this, um um, this, this
was actually something I wasn't really all that um clued
into previously. Like I knew the song Secret Agent Man,
and I knew the TV series that we know as
Secret Agent Man in the US, but I really wasn't

(21:02):
aware of the whole connection to Danger Man and that
Danger Man was Secret Agent Man except in the original
UK broadcast and then as as I was looking it up.
This this a little more complicated too, because there was
also a year two thousand TV series on up n
uh titled Secret Agent Man that used a trip hop
cover of the Johnny Rivers hit Secret Agent Man, the

(21:25):
song that we're talking about as its theme song. But
that show had nothing to do with Danger Man or
the Prisoner just used the same theme song. I gotta
look that up. Um oh I did. I'm not sure
that there's much worth seeking out in this up n
show from from two thousand. Oh no, I mean the
cover of Secret Agent Oh yeah, No, I mean the

(21:47):
cover might be pretty good trip hop cover of Secret
Agent Man. Anyway, the lead actor in it was in
a bunch of Saw movies, so if you're a big
Saw fan, then you know it might be of interest.
Was the Prisoner of the TV show that had a
had like a killer ball, like a bouncy ball that
would attack that big bouncy ball that. I have to
admit The Prisoner as a show that I never did

(22:08):
a dedicated viewing of. It would come on I think
on any like you know, in the afternoons sometimes and
I would I would watch an episode or part of
an episode, But I don't think it's a series that
really lends itself to that sort of viewing. I think
you really have to get in there and watch it,
and I never did. Yeah, if if we ever break
the TV barrier, I could be into checking that out.

(22:29):
We've done made for TV movies. Yeah yeah, oh in
this picture from Patrick McGowan looks kind of like Roy
Schier in this one shot. Anyways, Should we wrap it
up there for today? I believe so. We'll go ahead
and close the mail back, but we have much more
to discuss and to read, so we'll be back next Monday.
So uh, certainly keep the messages coming. If you have

(22:50):
thoughts on past episodes, president episodes, future episodes right in,
we'd love to hear from you, you know, responses to
core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, which publish
on two days and Thursdays, um, other listener mail episodes
on Monday's, episodes of The Monster Fact or Artifact on Wednesdays,
or of course episodes of Weird House Cinema which published
on Fridays. I always love to hear from folks who

(23:12):
uh you know, solve these films in the theater or
on some past medium. Uh. We always like to hear
from folks, So whatever the topic happens to be right
in and uh, perhaps we'll read your message on a
future episode of Listener Mail Big thanks to our audio
producer J J. Paseway. If you would like to get

(23:32):
in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
just to say hello, you can email us at contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
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(23:55):
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