March 22, 2021 • 35 mins
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
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and we're here. It's Monday. It's not Monday for us,
but it's Monday for you, and it's time to read
some of the messages that you have sent into the
show over the past few weeks. So if you're ready
(00:24):
to jump right in, rob, I could read this message
from Amy on our episodes on Brain and Head Theft. Okay,
this comes from Amy, she says. Hi, all, I just
finished the second episode on Brain and Head Theft today
and thought i'd drop you a note. When the episode started,
I immediately thought of the strange afterlife of Albert Einstein's brain.
(00:48):
The pathologist who performed the autopsy on Einstein took Einstein's
brain without permission and kept it for decades, and then
she attaches a BBC article for us to look at. Yeah,
we made a brief reference to this in the episode,
but it didn't go deep on this one because I
figured this story was better known than many of the
other ones we talked about, like Hayden and Ish and
uh and all those and so so I wanted to
(01:09):
focus on the lesser known ones. Also, I remembered when
I was actually looking into the story about Einstein's brain,
I encountered some like just discrepancies in the accounts. I
don't remember all the details now, but I think they
were like conflicting accounts of like whether or not there
was permission or what form that permission took and so forth. Yeah,
the article they sent is The Strange Afterlife of Einstein's
(01:30):
Brain by William Kramer for BBC. So, yeah, if you
want to look that up, that's where you'll find it.
Amy continues the second thought, I wanted to share concerns
how is She's brain was eventually returned to his tribal descendants.
I was an anthropology major focusing on physical anthropology in
the early two thousands, and the Native American Graves and
Repatriation Act or nag PRO was important to learn about
(01:54):
in light of how human remains and other artifacts were collected.
The return of is She's brain was likely nag PRO related. Finally,
my research for my master's thesis in forensic anthropology involved
looking at head trauma in people buried in a London
church crypt versus former British sailors buried at a naval
retirement home. No surprise, sailors were more likely to have
(02:16):
head trauma than the average British population. Both groups thought
they were being buried in their final resting place before
being uncovered during church renovations and archaeological excavations at the
sailor's home, and didn't expect to be used for research
a hundred plus years on. Thanks for all the fun
hours of listening enjoyment. Amy, Oh, that that's neat, but
we may have to look that up. I love a
(02:37):
good study involving uh historical head trauma. I remember there's
a really good one about gladiator um head trauma that
we we looked at a while back. Is that for
an Invention episode or for I think it's maybe come
up a couple of times, but probably for invention. Yeah,
at one point we were talking about helmets. It came up.
(02:58):
Yeah anyway, yeah, thanks me. All right. We also heard
from folks about Halo's and mirages. That was kind of
a I guess like a three episode spread of content
that we did. When comes from Robin, they say, hi,
Rob and Joe and Seth. Listening to your latest email
(03:20):
round up, I thought I would just send you a
real life example of sun dogs encountered in the wild,
quite a common sight in the winter here in Edmonton, Alberta.
Notice these while waiting at the bus stop. You can
see two sundogs to either side which are continuous with
a faint rainbow slash halo around the sun, the topmost
part of which is a little brighter, and then new
(03:41):
to me that day, there was also a little segment
of a reversely arched rainbow further up, almost directly above
the sky. If you look closely, you can also see
what looks like glitter saturating the sky, small ice crystal sparkling.
Cheers Robin. Yeah, this was really interesting. So Robin at
shched a video file for us to look at. And
(04:02):
so you see the sun dog, and the sun dog
of course has the sun in the middle, and then
it's sort of a ring around the sun with uh
with sort of flaring second sun nodes at what looked
like the nine d degree verticy is around around that ring.
And then if you pan the camera up, which Robin
does from the from that initial ring, there is another
(04:25):
inverted arch above so like I guess if you were
to shift along like the z axis nine d degrees
up from that roughly, it's like there's another circle and
you can see it reflected, but but in the mirror image,
which was really cool. And this also reminds me of
an experience I just had a few days ago when
I was using the hose in the yard, uh, and
(04:46):
I had that experience of making a rainbow around your
own shadow with the spray of the hose. You ever
you ever noticed this, Rob, Yeah, this figs about now
that you mentioned it. This is another interesting optical phenomenon
here that has to do with the fraction and reflection
of sunlight through different types of like droplets or crystals
in the atmosphere. In this case, it's a mist of
(05:06):
water droplets in the atmosphere. You can make a rainbow
around your own shadow because because if you're standing out,
you know, in the yard, in the bright sun, uh,
the rainbow is always going to form around your anti
solar point. So so like if you imagine a line
going from the sun through your head then down to
(05:28):
your shadows head, that's sort of like the the line
that will form the middle of the ring of that
you're going to see a rainbow forming around. So if
you if you squared a bunch of water up in
the air around that point sort of around that your
shadows head, you will probably be able to see a
rainbow in the bright sunlight. And it's the same principle
that causes a rainbow to form from your point of
(05:50):
view in a you know, in a storm that's going
on in the atmosphere in a distance. Uh. And this
is an interesting reminder of why you can never actually
get to the end of a rainbow, because a rainbow
is not a thing that has a fixed physical location.
Like plenty of other optical phenomenon in the sky, a
rainbows apparent location is actually determined by the sort of
(06:10):
convergence of several different things. It's the location of the
sun which shines the light, and then the location of
a bunch of water droplets somewhere in the atmosphere, and
these water droplets or would bend and reflect the light
back toward us, and then your eyes, which perceive the
frequencies of light broken apart into their individual colors when
(06:30):
they refract through those water droplets and then come back
and hit your eyes. So you could roughly say that
the rainbow is from your perspective wherever that water that's
doing the reflecting and refracting is. But if you were
to approach it, the rainbow would no longer be there
because it's a product of your point of view, your
perspective when you're looking at that water, so it wouldn't
(06:51):
be there anymore when you got there. It's the natural
place for lepre cons to send you though, in search
of their gold, because they inherent tricksters, and they of
they love sending humans, sending mortals on fruitless errands in
pursuit of their greed, but educating you about the behavior
of light in the process. Yeah, they're really into optics alright.
(07:17):
This next message comes to us from Diana. This is
about the Moses ilusion. Diana writes, Hi, Joe and Robert,
I'm listening to your episode on the Moses Solution, and
it made me remember this sort of dumb prank one
of my older cousins would play on me when we
were little. Uh mind you that this played out in Spanish.
We're from Peru, but it went what color was the
white horse of Simone Bolivard. I'll try to do the
(07:40):
Spanish deck colore era El Cabayo Blanco de Simone Bolivar,
and about Simon Bolivar, Diana writes he was known as
the Liberator as he led armies and revolutions against Spain
for the independence of several countries, including Venezuela, Columbia, and Peru.
So he is a well known historical figure in South America.
And when I would say I didn't know, she'd laugh
(08:02):
about how she gave the answer in the sentence She'd
pulled the same prank on several members of our family,
and no one ever caught on. I wonder if that
could be classified as the same effect or something similar
to the Moses solution. Perhaps it works better in Spanish
since it's noun plus adjective, unlike English, where it's adjective
plus down. Your mind goes to the horse first, and
(08:24):
its color goes right over your head. That's in I
was just thinking about that, looking at never since I
have them both here in front of me, and the
listener mail, Yeah, we get to the color first in English,
but it's secondary in the Spanish. Right to repeat again,
In English, it's what color was the white horse, but
in Spanish it's what color was the cabayo blanco. Yeah, anyway,
(08:46):
Diana says, just my two cents to add to the
weirdness of human language and understanding. Love the show, and
my mind is constantly being blown. So thank you best, Diana. Yeah,
thanks for this message, Diana, This is really interesting. I'm
not sure whether this would technically constitute a form of
knowledge neglect like we were talking about like the Moses
illusion is one example of knowledge to neglect, because I
(09:09):
guess the question would be whether the problem people have
with noticing the color being given away in the sentence uh,
is like where that error arises? Is it that the
color is heard and processed and then subsequently ignored, or
is it whether people are somehow prone to hear the
question without ever processing the color in the first place,
(09:32):
Like does it just not even enter your mind? Yeah? Um,
And then I wonder I can't but also wonder on
this one, if you're if you're more familiar with the
with the figure historical figure of Simon Bolivar, you would
you might be more inclined to stumble in this one,
you know, because I think we've we've touched on this
in the episode before, like some of these that they
(09:54):
involve a historic person, you end up immediately like doing
like a flash presentation in your mind mind off of
all the history you know, all the sort of trivia
facts you know about them. And sometimes I feel like
that can do railists from from something like this. But
even the punch line of a joke, like when we
we mentioned on a recent episode the whole where did
(10:15):
General Washington keep his armies? Yeah, I mean, there's no
reason you should anticipate that the answer is in his sleevies.
But but you still, you're you're automatically going to going
to like facts stored in your knowledge bank, and thus
it I think that is one of the reasons that
it's especially funny if it is funny to you when
(10:35):
the answer is just a silly like way of pronouncing
a word. Yeah, the joke is actually that you have
been thinking about answering this question on completely the wrong level, right, Yeah,
I mean, and also I mean with with with questions
like this, I mean, yeah, it's not a question that
is in good faith because it because the answer is
hidden in the question. Um, and you're you're and if
(10:58):
you interpret it as being in faith, you you just
assume that the answer is not blatantly present in the question. Yeah. So,
whether or not this is technically a form of knowledge neglect,
I do think it's still really interesting. It does tie
into that general experience that happens every day and seems
totally mundane. But when you think about it, it's actually
pretty strange. Uh. Like we talked about in the episode,
(11:19):
that you are able to get the gist of sentences
correctly without really retaining all of the information in the sentence. Like,
how do we do that? How do our brains manage
so quickly to extract and retain the global meaning of
a statement or of a question, but not notice major
information contained inside it? All? Right, here's another one. This
(11:46):
one comes to us from Charlie. Charlie writes hello science boys,
and they spell boys bo i sum, which I think
ultimately that works better in print than it does out loud. Um,
But anyway, that's what they write. Then they continue Short
time listener, first time emailer. I have listened to the
whole archive, and don't worry, it only took me a
(12:07):
couple of years. I like to speed up my podcast.
Y'all are the only podcast I got up to. Um
uh three time speed on and you had over a
thousand episodes, no human way to listen to them all normally.
I finally weaned you down to one point eight times speeds.
Since I got caught up, this raises the number of
(12:29):
questions for me. So first of all, I mean I
always kind of cringe a little when when someone tells
me they've listened to all the episodes they went back
to the beginning. Um, you know, just because that's that's
from all, that's a white ways back and and when
we started this thing out, we had no idea of
what we were doing. So so I mean I would
generally advise people to start from the present and and
(12:51):
and work and you know, maybe work back a little
bit that sort of thing. But you know, to to
eat your them. You know, you don't have to listen
to the album in the or or that the artist
gives it. You can put it on shuffle. Who are
who are we to argue with that? But then on
the speed point, uh um, I mean I admire anyone
who can listen to a podcast at three times it's
(13:11):
normal speed. I feel like when I'm if i q
A and episode of our show before it goes out,
I'll bump it up to one point five and that's
about my limit if I do. If I go much
higher than that, then when I'm done, I feel like
I'm I'm kind of having a slight nervous breakdown. Like
it's kind of like my mind speeds up to it,
(13:33):
and then I can't take it anymore, Like I get
out of it, and it's kind of like this whiplash
of reality. Oh. I sometimes listen to podcasts in audiobooks
at an accelerated speed, and the problem is actually that
after I have done that, now regular talking speed is
intolerable to me. Like if so I do that and
then I hear myself talk at a normal speed or
(13:55):
someone else talk at a normal speed, and it sounds
like everything's happening in slow motion. Yeah, I mean, I
definitely prefer to listen to us at uh one point
five speed because it sounds just a little different, you know,
on my own voice especially, sounds just a little bit different.
So I can almost appreciate, say, an episode of Weird
How Cinema as if it were not me, uh, in
(14:18):
a weird way. But yeah, if I go too far
up it, it feels like a nightmare. Voice, I don't know,
and then it starts unsettling me. Yeah, folks out there,
if you if you never tried it, it is hard
to listen to yourself. We have to listen to ourselves
constantly to preview these episodes before they go out. And man,
that that's just consistently a tall order. All right, Well,
they continue with the email anyway, I was listening to
(14:40):
your episode on the Moses Illusion, and I realized that
I had an experience that seemed related. Apologies if you
end up discussing it later in the episode. I am
sending this part of the way through. It was the
end of my eighth grade year and my science teacher
had us doing Jeopardy esque game with buzzers and everything.
I remember very little about that day, only that I
knew the to a question who was the first person
(15:02):
to receive a lobotomy. Now, this is something that happens
to me frequently where I will think one thing and
then say something different or related. So while my brain
told me that the answer was Phineas Gauge, my mouth
shouted Nicholas Cage in response. Um, I mean I could
see Cage as Gauge in a biopic. Uh, anyway they
(15:25):
continue Q thirteen year old means intense embarrassment, to the
point that I could not even correct myself. My team
obviously did not win those points. I most frequently experienced
this phenomenon with numbers, where I will be writing a
number and do it correctly, but when I have to
say them out loud, they frequently are in the wrong order.
I used to work a job that required me to
read credit card numbers back to people over the phone,
(15:47):
and somehow never was able to train my brain to
do it consistently. Anyway, I just thought you might find
this interesting. Love the show Weird al Cinema has brought
me so much joy, and I can't wait to watch
Santo in the Treasure of drag Uh. Thanks Charlie. Oh,
thanks Charlie. Yeah, that is a great example. I guess
that that's somewhat different than the Moses solution that I
(16:08):
guess that would constitute a form of knowledge neglect, Like
your outward behavior is not, for some reason able to
perform the thing that you do know is stored in
your memory correctly. Obviously, one of the factors here seems
to be a sort of the pressure added by a
public performance I actually remember very vividly and experience I
had kind of like this where, uh, Rob, did you
(16:29):
ever do a public spelling bee at school where you
know you're in front of everybody and you're trying to
spell words? And no, I never thought, Yeah, I I
did this one time in middle school, and I remember
I spelled a word wrong, even though I was like
a hundred percent positive that I knew how to spell
it right. And the way it went was my word.
I was up at the microphone and I had to
(16:50):
spell waltz and I said waltz w a lt z,
and then they were they were about to say, like
that is correct, and then I went E. I don't
don't know why I have. No. I did not think
there was an e at the the end of the word,
but I was just compelled the Obviously, there's something about
(17:14):
being in front of an audience and having that kind
of pressure that suddenly that makes you just act out
in strange ways. Sometimes walt see walt say all right.
So this next message comes to us from Ryan. This
(17:35):
is also about Moses illusion. Ryan says, Hi, Robert and Joe,
I'm a longtime listener writing in for the first time.
Thank you for all the intelligent and well researched discussion
on topics that I would otherwise never encounter. Uh. The
way you discussed and draw connections into religion, philosophy, psychology,
and weird movies is unique and wonderful. Well, thank you
so much, Ryan, Ryan says, I am a middle school
(17:56):
band director, or at least I will be when we
are allowed to play instruments in a room together again.
Last week, I was listening to the Moses Illusion episode
and I began to see some connections to learning and
memory as they relate to music education, specifically to practice habits.
During the episode, you mentioned the idea that hearing incorrect
information can cloud the memory of information that we know
(18:18):
to be correct. This instantly brought to mind the way
that I teach students to practice music. I strongly encourage
students to break down a difficult passage as they practice
so that they are always playing it correctly. This can
mean putting your instrument down and clapping a rhythm you
are having trouble with, or playing a passage one note
(18:38):
at a time, or simply slowing it down. The idea
here is to make the music more simple so that
they are less likely to make a mistake. This would
mean that every time they hear it and play it,
it is correct. Contrast this with a student who simply
tries to play the passage straight away, and maybe they
do this correctly six out of ten times. That means
(19:00):
they now have four incorrect versions of the passage in
their mind. Now, there are some differences between the linguistic
and musical examples, but I think the core idea of
information interference supplies when the first student goes to perform
the piece, there is only one version of it, the
correct version in their mind. The second student, on the
other hand, has a handful of different versions of it
(19:23):
in their mind, and this student must now actively choose
the correct one. This is significantly more mental effort, which
happens to be something in short supply when we are
nervous on stage. Here's stage performance again. I never thought
of this concept in such an explicit and direct way,
but once you put a name to it, the idea
was already there in my mind. Learning like this is
(19:43):
what helps make me a better teacher. I look forward
to going on more weird journeys and learning more with
both of you in the future. Thank you, Ryan, that's great,
and I m I certainly admire anybody who can who
can and you know, not only uh, maintain their sanity,
but excel as a is a is a junior high
band director. I remember, even as a junior high kid,
(20:06):
and that's usually kind of an oblivious state to be in.
I remember, you know, looking at my director and been thinking, man,
this this guy really puts up with a lot. I
was an awful, rambunctious band kid in middle school. We
we essentially turned our middle school band class into the
ww E. Back then it was the WWF and it
(20:27):
was the attitude era. So everybody wanted to be stone
cold or the undertaker or whatever, and it was a
it was a free for all. Oh man, that's got
gotta be rough on the tubas. There's another point that
comes up here that is something that I have thought
for years and has come up in the context of
all kinds of skills like writing and stuff. You know,
there is I think often a an attitude among many
(20:50):
people that you know, practice is always good, Practice makes perfect,
and you know, you want to get any good at
any skill, you do have to practice it. But I
do think it is entirely possible. To practice yourself worse
set things. Practice is not always good. You need to
be practicing in the right kind of way because sometimes
practice if it. You know, if you are practicing counterproductive habits,
(21:12):
they can really take over and sort of prevent your
growth in the skill in the future. All right, here's
another one. This one comes to us from Scott. Hey, guys,
love the show Slash Shows. Thank you. In the most
illusion episode, you touched on the idea of how we
(21:32):
know stuff but can't relate details on how the thing
actually works. This reminded me of a story I read
long ago. In it, a NATO soldier stationed in Iceland
is mysteriously transported back in time to the Viking era.
He struggles to adapt because while he has great knowledge
of wonderful things from the future, he cannot explain how
(21:53):
to produce them with the with the existing level of technology. Worse,
he is woefully lacking in the basic knowledge of how
to survive without them. He cannot hunt, farm, make fire,
build shelter, or the myriad of other skills that even
the youngest members of the clan would do. A poignant
line is that quote, you don't have the tools to
make the tools to make the machinery to make the
(22:16):
things I can use. He eventually perishes because while he
is smart and accomplished in his own time, he lacks
the resources modern civilization has come to depend upon. Standard closing. Thanks,
keep up the good work, etcetera. Scott, Thanks Scott, Yeah,
I looked up the details here since you didn't have
the name and author. I think the story you're talking
(22:37):
about is called The Men Who Came Early by Paul Anderson.
I'm not familiar with this writer, but just a quick
googling does make it look like. One of the themes
that's visited in some of his science fiction and fantasy
writing is that of people in in modern, technologically advanced
societies really underestimating so called primitive people who have less
(23:00):
access to technology, and overestimating how clever and powerful they
are just by virtue of existing in a society with
more access to technology. And I think that's a very
good point. I mean, one way of looking at technology
is that it can greatly increase the output of human labor,
but it does that by requiring us to have fewer
and fewer general skills and to go deeper and deeper
(23:23):
on like highly specialized skills that are increasingly alienated from
the raw materials and processes of production that that make
life possible. Yeah, isn't it funny that oftentimes that are,
especially our post apocalyptic science fiction, you have you have
these cases where we present some sort of post high
tech civilization, primitive society worshiping a piece of like some
(23:47):
relic of the technological age, be it a you know,
an atomic bomb or you know, or I don't know,
some darelit computer or something. But really this has more
in common with the way we interact with a examples
of advanced technology, you know, like we are the ones
who know hasn't have no idea how they work, and
for us it is just magic. It is just a
(24:07):
gift of the gods. Uh. And granted it would be
that way for our post apocalyptic descendants as well, but
you know, it's it's not like we're not already there. Yeah,
but I think this really narrow minded way of looking
at things. Uh, This sort of like implicit superiority complex
among people in tech technologically advanced societies is absolutely there
(24:29):
and is absolutely not justified. I mean, people who did
more with less technology had like had to have way
more skills. It's mind boggling how much like intelligence and
skill it is necessary to just like build a house
without power tools and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, um, you know,
there's one example of just uh like of sort of
(24:51):
forgotten technological advancement that I've come back to a time
and time again. But I don't remember exactly who wrote it.
Maybe it was George Garrett in one of his Elizabethan novels,
but it was talking about the sailing ships of old
and about how not only could everybody on the ship
tie every knot that was necessary for the rigging, but
they could do so in the dark, in the middle
(25:11):
of a storm, um, which I don't know. I was
always found that rather rather interesting commentary on like on
on the level of personal knowledge that was required to
to keep it ship running at that time. Yeah. So,
am I really a genius because I can write some JavaScript?
I'm not sure. Try tying three different knots. Let's see
(25:33):
how that goes, much less a whole page worth of them. Okay,
now we got some messages having to do with our
episodes on Spoons. This first one comes from Randy. Randy says, Hello,
Robert and Joe, I just finished listening to your spoon
episodes and I found them both fantastic. I love hearing
(25:55):
how mundane objects in our lives have such interesting histories
and stories behind them. Uh, you've done a great job
of researching these mini mouth shovels. One thing that I
don't recall being mentioned was spoons and forks to being
used as a control to prevent left handedness. My father
told me that when he was a kid, he was
(26:15):
forced to use a spoon with a bend at the neck,
so the bowl I guess that, meaning the bowl of
the spoon pointed to the left, thus making the spoon
only usable with the right hand and forcing out any
tendencies for using one's left hand. Since using utensils is
such a social norm that we expect children to learn
(26:35):
in certain societies, having them work to force preferred eating
behaviors could absolutely be seen as a tool for control.
The alternative would be to eat with the wrong hand
and be seen as a heathen. Can you imagine as
an adult my father uses his right hand for his
work and daily tasks. But I can't help but wonder
if there is another dimension where my father is left handed.
(26:58):
Thanks for the great show. Randy Rob Have we ever
done an episode on on this kind of thing, like
the demonization of left handedness, because I remember hearing about
this from adults when I was a kid, that like
if they were coming up in schools where they were
essentially taught that being left handed was evil and you
had to be like worked out of you, you know.
I don't remember exactly. I feel like I did something
(27:21):
on left handedness, maybe with uh with Alice In louder Milk,
the original co host on the show back in the day.
I think we did something on left handedness. Um. But
it's one of those things I'd love to go back
to because I'm sure there's more, there's more literature on
the topic now it would uh yeah, it's worth another dive.
And I'm not sure we really got into the the
(27:43):
evilness of it so much as the the way that
left handed people sometimes um um, excel in a right
handed world, especially when you're looking at things like sword fights,
you know, violent conflict, but also sports. Oh I see, man,
we would get so much lefty mail left yeah, lefties
would love it, and and right these maybe not so much.
(28:06):
I don't know, but there are the lefties are the
ones who wanted on your side because they're the ones
who are good in a knife fight. All right, we
have one left. It's not a weird house response usually
to the weird house stuff at the end um. This
one does relate to a movie episode that was that
(28:27):
you know, in many respects kind of a kind of
a weird proto weird house episode. It has to do
with the star lac um. This one comes to us
from Eric Hi, Robin Joe, and producer Seth. I was
listening to your recent Listener Maile episode, so this is
a listener male about listener mail. Anyway, when you read
the listeners comments about the star lac digesting people for
(28:47):
a thousand years, it occurred to me that the only
person I can recall who died of old age in
the Star Wars films was Yoda, who was nine years old.
Everyone else who died was killed, as far as I
can recall. What if Yoda was not abnormal for his longevity.
Maybe everyone lives for the better part of a millennium,
or would if they weren't always at war. Just a
(29:08):
random idea, but I don't think it's too incongruous with
anything in the films. Although I can't speak for the
whole expanding universe. Keep up the great stuff or keep
the great stuff coming, Eric, Uh, this is a this
is a great question. It's making me think back on
the various deaths in the Star Wars films um of
non combat related deaths. The only two that are really
(29:31):
coming to mind are, Yeah, Yoda dying of old age, uh,
pad Me dying due to complications with childbirth. Trying to
think of there any others. I think the Rank Corps
Handler died of a broken heart. That that would have
been like off screen, probably a short story that that
part is always sad. Yeah, that's the worst part of
(29:52):
Return of the Jedi for me is when the Rank
Corps Handler starts crying and I'm just like, oh no,
Luke is the villain. Yeah, plut I had that action
figure of the Rank Corps Handler, So it kind of
made it sadder because like I had here, like I
had his physical manifestation and the Rank Corps um. Yeah,
it was it's sad to think about um. But so
(30:13):
this is very interesting. Now. Of course you could look
at this as it is a product of just sort
of the storytelling conventions of adventure fiction, right, that. Uh.
You know, in the same way that people in Star
Wars don't stop to go to the bathroom, they also
don't die of old age because it's just not dramatic.
But the other thing I was thinking about was how
well this would actually be if this were true, that
(30:35):
in the Star Wars galaxy, you know, people just don't
die of old age. They only die violent deaths. Isn't
that explicitly true of the elves in in Tolkien, like
that they don't die of well basically they live forever
unless they're killed in battle. Uh maybe I don't remember specifically,
you get into that whole business of them sailing off
to the other land and all. Um, if they live
(30:58):
long enough and they grow bored enough. Uh, and you know,
based on what, given what they're based on, you know,
the ideas of fairy folk and and all that, that
would make sense. Yeah. Um, I don't know. With Star
Wars though, I you know, you could certainly point to
the high degree of medical technology that is in cybernetics,
that is that is possible in this world. But at
(31:20):
the other hand, there's great inequality in the Star Wars universe,
so you know, everybody's not benefiting from that technology, so
that alone cannot account for um for extended lifespans. Not
everybody gets to become more machine now than Matt right
the bank the bat. What is at the back to tank?
I believe it only seats one. You can only have
(31:42):
one diaper clad JETI in there at the time, um
regrowing their their their skin. So uh, yeah, it's an
interesting thoughts experience, though, I'll have to uh, I'll have
to ask ask my son about it. He he ultimately
knows more about Star Wars at this point than I do.
He's always correcting me on uh the specific names of
(32:02):
individual vehicles and whatnot. Okay, here's what I bet you
have the answer too, because you're in that headspace. Now,
what's the deal with like four see people who when
they die in Star Wars, they just completely disappear, like
they just vaporize. Happens to Obi Wan, happens to Yoda?
Don't when Yoda dies of old age, he's just like
it's just blanket there now, no Yoda. There's some sort
(32:24):
of trick about becoming a forced ghost, and I don't
remember all the details about it, but it comes up
in the Clone Wars series. Um that it yeah, it's
it's like an ability you take on. I think, Okay,
so that disappearing is not something that happens to you,
but something you do. Like if you you die, you
can develop a skill maybe if you've practiced and honed
(32:46):
it over time, to disappear upon death and become a ghost.
I think it's like this is um what I've absorbed
through cannon and this is also fifty percent me to
spit balling. But I think it's like if you were
able to die with the serenity, like the sort of
thinking about you know, uh, Tibetan Buddhism and all the
idea of of putting yourself in a headspace to to
(33:08):
navigate that pathway between our life and the next. Like
if you're able to to to do that correctly, if
your trajectory is sound, then yeah you can. You can
live on as this forced ghost in the next life.
But you've got to you kind of have to get
into the into the right frame of mind, you know,
you have to sort of enter that moment of calm
like Obi Wan does before he dies, that sort of thing.
(33:30):
Oh yeah, I just remembered in the middle one of
the New trilogy, Luke also he just disappears, it's just
to the winds. Yeah, and I believe he has like
a meditative state before that. So yeah, uh, you know,
I like that that motif. I like that idea. Um
that you know, if you're, like I said, like a
lot in Star Wars, it kind of squares up well
with with at least some models of Eastern religion and philosophy.
(33:54):
I think that's a wise and serene place to end today,
if you're ready. Yeah, it this plane of existence. Yeah,
but we'll be back though, uh and in in force
ghost form to watch over you. Uh. We'll be back
next Monday, in fact, with more listener mail. So in
the meantime, right in with more listener mail. Respond to
(34:15):
listener mails, respond to responses to listener mail, respond to
new episodes, old episodes, weird how cinema, artifact, episodes, you
name it. Let us know what you're digging, what you're
not digging. We're always open to, uh, criticisms, corrections, and
just in general just added information about the topics we cover. Uh.
You know, that's always the most delightful thing when when
(34:36):
when when the listeners share things from their own life
and their own experience Uh. Even my mom got in
on this after we did the spoon episode. Uh spoon episodes.
I knew she was gonna dig these because she's really
into utensils. So I was receiving a number of different
photos from from various spoons in her collections. So um.
(34:57):
So yeah, you you listeners, you can send in your
spoon pictures as well. In the meantime, if you want
to listen to other episodes, just find Stuff to Blow
Your Mind and Stuff to Blow your Mind feed wherever
you get your podcasts. Huge thanks as always to our
excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
(35:18):
or just to say hello, you can email us at
contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and we're here. It's Monday. It's not Monday for us,
but it's Monday for you, and it's time to read
some of the messages that you have sent into the
show over the past few weeks. So if you're ready
(00:24):
to jump right in, rob, I could read this message
from Amy on our episodes on Brain and Head Theft. Okay,
this comes from Amy, she says. Hi, all, I just
finished the second episode on Brain and Head Theft today
and thought i'd drop you a note. When the episode started,
I immediately thought of the strange afterlife of Albert Einstein's brain.
(00:48):
The pathologist who performed the autopsy on Einstein took Einstein's
brain without permission and kept it for decades, and then
she attaches a BBC article for us to look at. Yeah,
we made a brief reference to this in the episode,
but it didn't go deep on this one because I
figured this story was better known than many of the
other ones we talked about, like Hayden and Ish and
uh and all those and so so I wanted to
(01:09):
focus on the lesser known ones. Also, I remembered when
I was actually looking into the story about Einstein's brain,
I encountered some like just discrepancies in the accounts. I
don't remember all the details now, but I think they
were like conflicting accounts of like whether or not there
was permission or what form that permission took and so forth. Yeah,
the article they sent is The Strange Afterlife of Einstein's
(01:30):
Brain by William Kramer for BBC. So, yeah, if you
want to look that up, that's where you'll find it.
Amy continues the second thought, I wanted to share concerns
how is She's brain was eventually returned to his tribal descendants.
I was an anthropology major focusing on physical anthropology in
the early two thousands, and the Native American Graves and
Repatriation Act or nag PRO was important to learn about
(01:54):
in light of how human remains and other artifacts were collected.
The return of is She's brain was likely nag PRO related. Finally,
my research for my master's thesis in forensic anthropology involved
looking at head trauma in people buried in a London
church crypt versus former British sailors buried at a naval
retirement home. No surprise, sailors were more likely to have
(02:16):
head trauma than the average British population. Both groups thought
they were being buried in their final resting place before
being uncovered during church renovations and archaeological excavations at the
sailor's home, and didn't expect to be used for research
a hundred plus years on. Thanks for all the fun
hours of listening enjoyment. Amy, Oh, that that's neat, but
we may have to look that up. I love a
(02:37):
good study involving uh historical head trauma. I remember there's
a really good one about gladiator um head trauma that
we we looked at a while back. Is that for
an Invention episode or for I think it's maybe come
up a couple of times, but probably for invention. Yeah,
at one point we were talking about helmets. It came up.
(02:58):
Yeah anyway, yeah, thanks me. All right. We also heard
from folks about Halo's and mirages. That was kind of
a I guess like a three episode spread of content
that we did. When comes from Robin, they say, hi,
Rob and Joe and Seth. Listening to your latest email
(03:20):
round up, I thought I would just send you a
real life example of sun dogs encountered in the wild,
quite a common sight in the winter here in Edmonton, Alberta.
Notice these while waiting at the bus stop. You can
see two sundogs to either side which are continuous with
a faint rainbow slash halo around the sun, the topmost
part of which is a little brighter, and then new
(03:41):
to me that day, there was also a little segment
of a reversely arched rainbow further up, almost directly above
the sky. If you look closely, you can also see
what looks like glitter saturating the sky, small ice crystal sparkling.
Cheers Robin. Yeah, this was really interesting. So Robin at
shched a video file for us to look at. And
(04:02):
so you see the sun dog, and the sun dog
of course has the sun in the middle, and then
it's sort of a ring around the sun with uh
with sort of flaring second sun nodes at what looked
like the nine d degree verticy is around around that ring.
And then if you pan the camera up, which Robin
does from the from that initial ring, there is another
(04:25):
inverted arch above so like I guess if you were
to shift along like the z axis nine d degrees
up from that roughly, it's like there's another circle and
you can see it reflected, but but in the mirror image,
which was really cool. And this also reminds me of
an experience I just had a few days ago when
I was using the hose in the yard, uh, and
(04:46):
I had that experience of making a rainbow around your
own shadow with the spray of the hose. You ever
you ever noticed this, Rob, Yeah, this figs about now
that you mentioned it. This is another interesting optical phenomenon
here that has to do with the fraction and reflection
of sunlight through different types of like droplets or crystals
in the atmosphere. In this case, it's a mist of
(05:06):
water droplets in the atmosphere. You can make a rainbow
around your own shadow because because if you're standing out,
you know, in the yard, in the bright sun, uh,
the rainbow is always going to form around your anti
solar point. So so like if you imagine a line
going from the sun through your head then down to
(05:28):
your shadows head, that's sort of like the the line
that will form the middle of the ring of that
you're going to see a rainbow forming around. So if
you if you squared a bunch of water up in
the air around that point sort of around that your
shadows head, you will probably be able to see a
rainbow in the bright sunlight. And it's the same principle
that causes a rainbow to form from your point of
(05:50):
view in a you know, in a storm that's going
on in the atmosphere in a distance. Uh. And this
is an interesting reminder of why you can never actually
get to the end of a rainbow, because a rainbow
is not a thing that has a fixed physical location.
Like plenty of other optical phenomenon in the sky, a
rainbows apparent location is actually determined by the sort of
(06:10):
convergence of several different things. It's the location of the
sun which shines the light, and then the location of
a bunch of water droplets somewhere in the atmosphere, and
these water droplets or would bend and reflect the light
back toward us, and then your eyes, which perceive the
frequencies of light broken apart into their individual colors when
(06:30):
they refract through those water droplets and then come back
and hit your eyes. So you could roughly say that
the rainbow is from your perspective wherever that water that's
doing the reflecting and refracting is. But if you were
to approach it, the rainbow would no longer be there
because it's a product of your point of view, your
perspective when you're looking at that water, so it wouldn't
(06:51):
be there anymore when you got there. It's the natural
place for lepre cons to send you though, in search
of their gold, because they inherent tricksters, and they of
they love sending humans, sending mortals on fruitless errands in
pursuit of their greed, but educating you about the behavior
of light in the process. Yeah, they're really into optics alright.
(07:17):
This next message comes to us from Diana. This is
about the Moses ilusion. Diana writes, Hi, Joe and Robert,
I'm listening to your episode on the Moses Solution, and
it made me remember this sort of dumb prank one
of my older cousins would play on me when we
were little. Uh mind you that this played out in Spanish.
We're from Peru, but it went what color was the
white horse of Simone Bolivard. I'll try to do the
(07:40):
Spanish deck colore era El Cabayo Blanco de Simone Bolivar,
and about Simon Bolivar, Diana writes he was known as
the Liberator as he led armies and revolutions against Spain
for the independence of several countries, including Venezuela, Columbia, and Peru.
So he is a well known historical figure in South America.
And when I would say I didn't know, she'd laugh
(08:02):
about how she gave the answer in the sentence She'd
pulled the same prank on several members of our family,
and no one ever caught on. I wonder if that
could be classified as the same effect or something similar
to the Moses solution. Perhaps it works better in Spanish
since it's noun plus adjective, unlike English, where it's adjective
plus down. Your mind goes to the horse first, and
(08:24):
its color goes right over your head. That's in I
was just thinking about that, looking at never since I
have them both here in front of me, and the
listener mail, Yeah, we get to the color first in English,
but it's secondary in the Spanish. Right to repeat again,
In English, it's what color was the white horse, but
in Spanish it's what color was the cabayo blanco. Yeah, anyway,
(08:46):
Diana says, just my two cents to add to the
weirdness of human language and understanding. Love the show, and
my mind is constantly being blown. So thank you best, Diana. Yeah,
thanks for this message, Diana, This is really interesting. I'm
not sure whether this would technically constitute a form of
knowledge neglect like we were talking about like the Moses
illusion is one example of knowledge to neglect, because I
(09:09):
guess the question would be whether the problem people have
with noticing the color being given away in the sentence uh,
is like where that error arises? Is it that the
color is heard and processed and then subsequently ignored, or
is it whether people are somehow prone to hear the
question without ever processing the color in the first place,
(09:32):
Like does it just not even enter your mind? Yeah? Um,
And then I wonder I can't but also wonder on
this one, if you're if you're more familiar with the
with the figure historical figure of Simon Bolivar, you would
you might be more inclined to stumble in this one,
you know, because I think we've we've touched on this
in the episode before, like some of these that they
(09:54):
involve a historic person, you end up immediately like doing
like a flash presentation in your mind mind off of
all the history you know, all the sort of trivia
facts you know about them. And sometimes I feel like
that can do railists from from something like this. But
even the punch line of a joke, like when we
we mentioned on a recent episode the whole where did
(10:15):
General Washington keep his armies? Yeah, I mean, there's no
reason you should anticipate that the answer is in his sleevies.
But but you still, you're you're automatically going to going
to like facts stored in your knowledge bank, and thus
it I think that is one of the reasons that
it's especially funny if it is funny to you when
(10:35):
the answer is just a silly like way of pronouncing
a word. Yeah, the joke is actually that you have
been thinking about answering this question on completely the wrong level, right, Yeah,
I mean, and also I mean with with with questions
like this, I mean, yeah, it's not a question that
is in good faith because it because the answer is
hidden in the question. Um, and you're you're and if
(10:58):
you interpret it as being in faith, you you just
assume that the answer is not blatantly present in the question. Yeah. So,
whether or not this is technically a form of knowledge neglect,
I do think it's still really interesting. It does tie
into that general experience that happens every day and seems
totally mundane. But when you think about it, it's actually
pretty strange. Uh. Like we talked about in the episode,
(11:19):
that you are able to get the gist of sentences
correctly without really retaining all of the information in the sentence. Like,
how do we do that? How do our brains manage
so quickly to extract and retain the global meaning of
a statement or of a question, but not notice major
information contained inside it? All? Right, here's another one. This
(11:46):
one comes to us from Charlie. Charlie writes hello science boys,
and they spell boys bo i sum, which I think
ultimately that works better in print than it does out loud. Um,
But anyway, that's what they write. Then they continue Short
time listener, first time emailer. I have listened to the
whole archive, and don't worry, it only took me a
(12:07):
couple of years. I like to speed up my podcast.
Y'all are the only podcast I got up to. Um
uh three time speed on and you had over a
thousand episodes, no human way to listen to them all normally.
I finally weaned you down to one point eight times speeds.
Since I got caught up, this raises the number of
(12:29):
questions for me. So first of all, I mean I
always kind of cringe a little when when someone tells
me they've listened to all the episodes they went back
to the beginning. Um, you know, just because that's that's
from all, that's a white ways back and and when
we started this thing out, we had no idea of
what we were doing. So so I mean I would
generally advise people to start from the present and and
(12:51):
and work and you know, maybe work back a little
bit that sort of thing. But you know, to to
eat your them. You know, you don't have to listen
to the album in the or or that the artist
gives it. You can put it on shuffle. Who are
who are we to argue with that? But then on
the speed point, uh um, I mean I admire anyone
who can listen to a podcast at three times it's
(13:11):
normal speed. I feel like when I'm if i q
A and episode of our show before it goes out,
I'll bump it up to one point five and that's
about my limit if I do. If I go much
higher than that, then when I'm done, I feel like
I'm I'm kind of having a slight nervous breakdown. Like
it's kind of like my mind speeds up to it,
(13:33):
and then I can't take it anymore, Like I get
out of it, and it's kind of like this whiplash
of reality. Oh. I sometimes listen to podcasts in audiobooks
at an accelerated speed, and the problem is actually that
after I have done that, now regular talking speed is
intolerable to me. Like if so I do that and
then I hear myself talk at a normal speed or
(13:55):
someone else talk at a normal speed, and it sounds
like everything's happening in slow motion. Yeah, I mean, I
definitely prefer to listen to us at uh one point
five speed because it sounds just a little different, you know,
on my own voice especially, sounds just a little bit different.
So I can almost appreciate, say, an episode of Weird
How Cinema as if it were not me, uh, in
(14:18):
a weird way. But yeah, if I go too far
up it, it feels like a nightmare. Voice, I don't know,
and then it starts unsettling me. Yeah, folks out there,
if you if you never tried it, it is hard
to listen to yourself. We have to listen to ourselves
constantly to preview these episodes before they go out. And man,
that that's just consistently a tall order. All right, Well,
they continue with the email anyway, I was listening to
(14:40):
your episode on the Moses Illusion, and I realized that
I had an experience that seemed related. Apologies if you
end up discussing it later in the episode. I am
sending this part of the way through. It was the
end of my eighth grade year and my science teacher
had us doing Jeopardy esque game with buzzers and everything.
I remember very little about that day, only that I
knew the to a question who was the first person
(15:02):
to receive a lobotomy. Now, this is something that happens
to me frequently where I will think one thing and
then say something different or related. So while my brain
told me that the answer was Phineas Gauge, my mouth
shouted Nicholas Cage in response. Um, I mean I could
see Cage as Gauge in a biopic. Uh, anyway they
(15:25):
continue Q thirteen year old means intense embarrassment, to the
point that I could not even correct myself. My team
obviously did not win those points. I most frequently experienced
this phenomenon with numbers, where I will be writing a
number and do it correctly, but when I have to
say them out loud, they frequently are in the wrong order.
I used to work a job that required me to
read credit card numbers back to people over the phone,
(15:47):
and somehow never was able to train my brain to
do it consistently. Anyway, I just thought you might find
this interesting. Love the show Weird al Cinema has brought
me so much joy, and I can't wait to watch
Santo in the Treasure of drag Uh. Thanks Charlie. Oh,
thanks Charlie. Yeah, that is a great example. I guess
that that's somewhat different than the Moses solution that I
(16:08):
guess that would constitute a form of knowledge neglect, Like
your outward behavior is not, for some reason able to
perform the thing that you do know is stored in
your memory correctly. Obviously, one of the factors here seems
to be a sort of the pressure added by a
public performance I actually remember very vividly and experience I
had kind of like this where, uh, Rob, did you
(16:29):
ever do a public spelling bee at school where you
know you're in front of everybody and you're trying to
spell words? And no, I never thought, Yeah, I I
did this one time in middle school, and I remember
I spelled a word wrong, even though I was like
a hundred percent positive that I knew how to spell
it right. And the way it went was my word.
I was up at the microphone and I had to
(16:50):
spell waltz and I said waltz w a lt z,
and then they were they were about to say, like
that is correct, and then I went E. I don't
don't know why I have. No. I did not think
there was an e at the the end of the word,
but I was just compelled the Obviously, there's something about
(17:14):
being in front of an audience and having that kind
of pressure that suddenly that makes you just act out
in strange ways. Sometimes walt see walt say all right.
So this next message comes to us from Ryan. This
(17:35):
is also about Moses illusion. Ryan says, Hi, Robert and Joe,
I'm a longtime listener writing in for the first time.
Thank you for all the intelligent and well researched discussion
on topics that I would otherwise never encounter. Uh. The
way you discussed and draw connections into religion, philosophy, psychology,
and weird movies is unique and wonderful. Well, thank you
so much, Ryan, Ryan says, I am a middle school
(17:56):
band director, or at least I will be when we
are allowed to play instruments in a room together again.
Last week, I was listening to the Moses Illusion episode
and I began to see some connections to learning and
memory as they relate to music education, specifically to practice habits.
During the episode, you mentioned the idea that hearing incorrect
information can cloud the memory of information that we know
(18:18):
to be correct. This instantly brought to mind the way
that I teach students to practice music. I strongly encourage
students to break down a difficult passage as they practice
so that they are always playing it correctly. This can
mean putting your instrument down and clapping a rhythm you
are having trouble with, or playing a passage one note
(18:38):
at a time, or simply slowing it down. The idea
here is to make the music more simple so that
they are less likely to make a mistake. This would
mean that every time they hear it and play it,
it is correct. Contrast this with a student who simply
tries to play the passage straight away, and maybe they
do this correctly six out of ten times. That means
(19:00):
they now have four incorrect versions of the passage in
their mind. Now, there are some differences between the linguistic
and musical examples, but I think the core idea of
information interference supplies when the first student goes to perform
the piece, there is only one version of it, the
correct version in their mind. The second student, on the
other hand, has a handful of different versions of it
(19:23):
in their mind, and this student must now actively choose
the correct one. This is significantly more mental effort, which
happens to be something in short supply when we are
nervous on stage. Here's stage performance again. I never thought
of this concept in such an explicit and direct way,
but once you put a name to it, the idea
was already there in my mind. Learning like this is
(19:43):
what helps make me a better teacher. I look forward
to going on more weird journeys and learning more with
both of you in the future. Thank you, Ryan, that's great,
and I m I certainly admire anybody who can who
can and you know, not only uh, maintain their sanity,
but excel as a is a is a junior high
band director. I remember, even as a junior high kid,
(20:06):
and that's usually kind of an oblivious state to be in.
I remember, you know, looking at my director and been thinking, man,
this this guy really puts up with a lot. I
was an awful, rambunctious band kid in middle school. We
we essentially turned our middle school band class into the
ww E. Back then it was the WWF and it
(20:27):
was the attitude era. So everybody wanted to be stone
cold or the undertaker or whatever, and it was a
it was a free for all. Oh man, that's got
gotta be rough on the tubas. There's another point that
comes up here that is something that I have thought
for years and has come up in the context of
all kinds of skills like writing and stuff. You know,
there is I think often a an attitude among many
(20:50):
people that you know, practice is always good, Practice makes perfect,
and you know, you want to get any good at
any skill, you do have to practice it. But I
do think it is entirely possible. To practice yourself worse
set things. Practice is not always good. You need to
be practicing in the right kind of way because sometimes
practice if it. You know, if you are practicing counterproductive habits,
(21:12):
they can really take over and sort of prevent your
growth in the skill in the future. All right, here's
another one. This one comes to us from Scott. Hey, guys,
love the show Slash Shows. Thank you. In the most
illusion episode, you touched on the idea of how we
(21:32):
know stuff but can't relate details on how the thing
actually works. This reminded me of a story I read
long ago. In it, a NATO soldier stationed in Iceland
is mysteriously transported back in time to the Viking era.
He struggles to adapt because while he has great knowledge
of wonderful things from the future, he cannot explain how
(21:53):
to produce them with the with the existing level of technology. Worse,
he is woefully lacking in the basic knowledge of how
to survive without them. He cannot hunt, farm, make fire,
build shelter, or the myriad of other skills that even
the youngest members of the clan would do. A poignant
line is that quote, you don't have the tools to
make the tools to make the machinery to make the
(22:16):
things I can use. He eventually perishes because while he
is smart and accomplished in his own time, he lacks
the resources modern civilization has come to depend upon. Standard closing. Thanks,
keep up the good work, etcetera. Scott, Thanks Scott, Yeah,
I looked up the details here since you didn't have
the name and author. I think the story you're talking
(22:37):
about is called The Men Who Came Early by Paul Anderson.
I'm not familiar with this writer, but just a quick
googling does make it look like. One of the themes
that's visited in some of his science fiction and fantasy
writing is that of people in in modern, technologically advanced
societies really underestimating so called primitive people who have less
(23:00):
access to technology, and overestimating how clever and powerful they
are just by virtue of existing in a society with
more access to technology. And I think that's a very
good point. I mean, one way of looking at technology
is that it can greatly increase the output of human labor,
but it does that by requiring us to have fewer
and fewer general skills and to go deeper and deeper
(23:23):
on like highly specialized skills that are increasingly alienated from
the raw materials and processes of production that that make
life possible. Yeah, isn't it funny that oftentimes that are,
especially our post apocalyptic science fiction, you have you have
these cases where we present some sort of post high
tech civilization, primitive society worshiping a piece of like some
(23:47):
relic of the technological age, be it a you know,
an atomic bomb or you know, or I don't know,
some darelit computer or something. But really this has more
in common with the way we interact with a examples
of advanced technology, you know, like we are the ones
who know hasn't have no idea how they work, and
for us it is just magic. It is just a
(24:07):
gift of the gods. Uh. And granted it would be
that way for our post apocalyptic descendants as well, but
you know, it's it's not like we're not already there. Yeah,
but I think this really narrow minded way of looking
at things. Uh, This sort of like implicit superiority complex
among people in tech technologically advanced societies is absolutely there
(24:29):
and is absolutely not justified. I mean, people who did
more with less technology had like had to have way
more skills. It's mind boggling how much like intelligence and
skill it is necessary to just like build a house
without power tools and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, um, you know,
there's one example of just uh like of sort of
(24:51):
forgotten technological advancement that I've come back to a time
and time again. But I don't remember exactly who wrote it.
Maybe it was George Garrett in one of his Elizabethan novels,
but it was talking about the sailing ships of old
and about how not only could everybody on the ship
tie every knot that was necessary for the rigging, but
they could do so in the dark, in the middle
(25:11):
of a storm, um, which I don't know. I was
always found that rather rather interesting commentary on like on
on the level of personal knowledge that was required to
to keep it ship running at that time. Yeah. So,
am I really a genius because I can write some JavaScript?
I'm not sure. Try tying three different knots. Let's see
(25:33):
how that goes, much less a whole page worth of them. Okay,
now we got some messages having to do with our
episodes on Spoons. This first one comes from Randy. Randy says, Hello,
Robert and Joe, I just finished listening to your spoon
episodes and I found them both fantastic. I love hearing
(25:55):
how mundane objects in our lives have such interesting histories
and stories behind them. Uh, you've done a great job
of researching these mini mouth shovels. One thing that I
don't recall being mentioned was spoons and forks to being
used as a control to prevent left handedness. My father
told me that when he was a kid, he was
(26:15):
forced to use a spoon with a bend at the neck,
so the bowl I guess that, meaning the bowl of
the spoon pointed to the left, thus making the spoon
only usable with the right hand and forcing out any
tendencies for using one's left hand. Since using utensils is
such a social norm that we expect children to learn
(26:35):
in certain societies, having them work to force preferred eating
behaviors could absolutely be seen as a tool for control.
The alternative would be to eat with the wrong hand
and be seen as a heathen. Can you imagine as
an adult my father uses his right hand for his
work and daily tasks. But I can't help but wonder
if there is another dimension where my father is left handed.
(26:58):
Thanks for the great show. Randy Rob Have we ever
done an episode on on this kind of thing, like
the demonization of left handedness, because I remember hearing about
this from adults when I was a kid, that like
if they were coming up in schools where they were
essentially taught that being left handed was evil and you
had to be like worked out of you, you know.
I don't remember exactly. I feel like I did something
(27:21):
on left handedness, maybe with uh with Alice In louder Milk,
the original co host on the show back in the day.
I think we did something on left handedness. Um. But
it's one of those things I'd love to go back
to because I'm sure there's more, there's more literature on
the topic now it would uh yeah, it's worth another dive.
And I'm not sure we really got into the the
(27:43):
evilness of it so much as the the way that
left handed people sometimes um um, excel in a right
handed world, especially when you're looking at things like sword fights,
you know, violent conflict, but also sports. Oh I see, man,
we would get so much lefty mail left yeah, lefties
would love it, and and right these maybe not so much.
(28:06):
I don't know, but there are the lefties are the
ones who wanted on your side because they're the ones
who are good in a knife fight. All right, we
have one left. It's not a weird house response usually
to the weird house stuff at the end um. This
one does relate to a movie episode that was that
(28:27):
you know, in many respects kind of a kind of
a weird proto weird house episode. It has to do
with the star lac um. This one comes to us
from Eric Hi, Robin Joe, and producer Seth. I was
listening to your recent Listener Maile episode, so this is
a listener male about listener mail. Anyway, when you read
the listeners comments about the star lac digesting people for
(28:47):
a thousand years, it occurred to me that the only
person I can recall who died of old age in
the Star Wars films was Yoda, who was nine years old.
Everyone else who died was killed, as far as I
can recall. What if Yoda was not abnormal for his longevity.
Maybe everyone lives for the better part of a millennium,
or would if they weren't always at war. Just a
(29:08):
random idea, but I don't think it's too incongruous with
anything in the films. Although I can't speak for the
whole expanding universe. Keep up the great stuff or keep
the great stuff coming, Eric, Uh, this is a this
is a great question. It's making me think back on
the various deaths in the Star Wars films um of
non combat related deaths. The only two that are really
(29:31):
coming to mind are, Yeah, Yoda dying of old age, uh,
pad Me dying due to complications with childbirth. Trying to
think of there any others. I think the Rank Corps
Handler died of a broken heart. That that would have
been like off screen, probably a short story that that
part is always sad. Yeah, that's the worst part of
(29:52):
Return of the Jedi for me is when the Rank
Corps Handler starts crying and I'm just like, oh no,
Luke is the villain. Yeah, plut I had that action
figure of the Rank Corps Handler, So it kind of
made it sadder because like I had here, like I
had his physical manifestation and the Rank Corps um. Yeah,
it was it's sad to think about um. But so
(30:13):
this is very interesting. Now. Of course you could look
at this as it is a product of just sort
of the storytelling conventions of adventure fiction, right, that. Uh.
You know, in the same way that people in Star
Wars don't stop to go to the bathroom, they also
don't die of old age because it's just not dramatic.
But the other thing I was thinking about was how
well this would actually be if this were true, that
(30:35):
in the Star Wars galaxy, you know, people just don't
die of old age. They only die violent deaths. Isn't
that explicitly true of the elves in in Tolkien, like
that they don't die of well basically they live forever
unless they're killed in battle. Uh maybe I don't remember specifically,
you get into that whole business of them sailing off
to the other land and all. Um, if they live
(30:58):
long enough and they grow bored enough. Uh, and you know,
based on what, given what they're based on, you know,
the ideas of fairy folk and and all that, that
would make sense. Yeah. Um, I don't know. With Star
Wars though, I you know, you could certainly point to
the high degree of medical technology that is in cybernetics,
that is that is possible in this world. But at
(31:20):
the other hand, there's great inequality in the Star Wars universe,
so you know, everybody's not benefiting from that technology, so
that alone cannot account for um for extended lifespans. Not
everybody gets to become more machine now than Matt right
the bank the bat. What is at the back to tank?
I believe it only seats one. You can only have
(31:42):
one diaper clad JETI in there at the time, um
regrowing their their their skin. So uh, yeah, it's an
interesting thoughts experience, though, I'll have to uh, I'll have
to ask ask my son about it. He he ultimately
knows more about Star Wars at this point than I do.
He's always correcting me on uh the specific names of
(32:02):
individual vehicles and whatnot. Okay, here's what I bet you
have the answer too, because you're in that headspace. Now,
what's the deal with like four see people who when
they die in Star Wars, they just completely disappear, like
they just vaporize. Happens to Obi Wan, happens to Yoda?
Don't when Yoda dies of old age, he's just like
it's just blanket there now, no Yoda. There's some sort
(32:24):
of trick about becoming a forced ghost, and I don't
remember all the details about it, but it comes up
in the Clone Wars series. Um that it yeah, it's
it's like an ability you take on. I think, Okay,
so that disappearing is not something that happens to you,
but something you do. Like if you you die, you
can develop a skill maybe if you've practiced and honed
(32:46):
it over time, to disappear upon death and become a ghost.
I think it's like this is um what I've absorbed
through cannon and this is also fifty percent me to
spit balling. But I think it's like if you were
able to die with the serenity, like the sort of
thinking about you know, uh, Tibetan Buddhism and all the
idea of of putting yourself in a headspace to to
(33:08):
navigate that pathway between our life and the next. Like
if you're able to to to do that correctly, if
your trajectory is sound, then yeah you can. You can
live on as this forced ghost in the next life.
But you've got to you kind of have to get
into the into the right frame of mind, you know,
you have to sort of enter that moment of calm
like Obi Wan does before he dies, that sort of thing.
(33:30):
Oh yeah, I just remembered in the middle one of
the New trilogy, Luke also he just disappears, it's just
to the winds. Yeah, and I believe he has like
a meditative state before that. So yeah, uh, you know,
I like that that motif. I like that idea. Um
that you know, if you're, like I said, like a
lot in Star Wars, it kind of squares up well
with with at least some models of Eastern religion and philosophy.
(33:54):
I think that's a wise and serene place to end today,
if you're ready. Yeah, it this plane of existence. Yeah,
but we'll be back though, uh and in in force
ghost form to watch over you. Uh. We'll be back
next Monday, in fact, with more listener mail. So in
the meantime, right in with more listener mail. Respond to
(34:15):
listener mails, respond to responses to listener mail, respond to
new episodes, old episodes, weird how cinema, artifact, episodes, you
name it. Let us know what you're digging, what you're
not digging. We're always open to, uh, criticisms, corrections, and
just in general just added information about the topics we cover. Uh.
You know, that's always the most delightful thing when when
(34:36):
when when the listeners share things from their own life
and their own experience Uh. Even my mom got in
on this after we did the spoon episode. Uh spoon episodes.
I knew she was gonna dig these because she's really
into utensils. So I was receiving a number of different
photos from from various spoons in her collections. So um.
(34:57):
So yeah, you you listeners, you can send in your
spoon pictures as well. In the meantime, if you want
to listen to other episodes, just find Stuff to Blow
Your Mind and Stuff to Blow your Mind feed wherever
you get your podcasts. Huge thanks as always to our
excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
(35:18):
or just to say hello, you can email us at
contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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