January 2, 2023 • 21 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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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. Listener mail, My name is Joe McCormick. My
regular co host Robert Lamb is not with me today.
I'm recording this one solo, but Rob is going to
be back on Mike with us tomorrow. Today is Monday,
(00:23):
the day of the week we typically read back some
messages that you all of you out there, have launched
into the mail harvester. And by the way, if you've
never written into the show before and you'd like to
get in touch to give feedback, corrections, commentary on a
previous topic, or if you just want to share something
interesting or say friendly hello, you can always reach us
at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
(00:47):
By the way, Happy New Year everyone. If you are
listening from an unsustainably crowded GYM or y m C,
A good luck with that. Uh, today's mail bag might
be a little bit weird due to holiday outages. Is
I think all of these messages came in several weeks
ago now, but we will do our best to get
caught up two more recent emails in the coming weeks.
(01:09):
All right, First, up in response to our episodes on
the reptiles of the Galapagos, specifically our focus on the
marine iguana, or, as one great scientists maligned them, those stupid,
hideous looking creatures. Lurch rights the following, good morning, gentlemen.
(01:33):
I think it was near the end of part two
on the Galapagos reptiles when you mentioned the marine iguanas
have slightly webbed feet, but you didn't see an evolutionary
reason for the feature since they aren't used in swimming. Yes,
or at least in our unexpert opinion, they didn't appear
to be used in swimming, so you know, maybe they
(01:53):
are in some subtle way. But anyway, going on with
Lurch's message, I happened to be out romping with dog
at the time. Uh. And this is dog with capital D,
so I think Lurch here is referring to his dog
who is named dog. So he's out romping with dog
at the time. He listened to that episode as he
enjoyed about eighteen inches of snow. Being half mala mute,
(02:17):
cold weather and snow are like a birthday party for
him every day. At the time he raised the question
there was another dog, a German shepherd trying to keep up.
He couldn't because he had to wade through an extra
foot of snow the dog ran on top of. While
all dogs, as far as I'm aware, have webb defeat
what I call snow, dogs seemed to be able to
(02:39):
deliberately spread their toes, bringing that webbing into play on
snow and of course mud. This has the effect of
spreading their weight over a larger area, letting them sink less.
I've not seen any studies or anything on this. I'm
basing it by comparing dog's footprint on pavement to that
in snow. In the snow, his footprint is nearly twice
(03:00):
the size of the one on pavement. How is this relevant?
I know next to nothing about the Galapagos Islands, but
I wonder if the webbing on the Iguanas might be
of use when crossing sand. Well, lurch Uh, I do
not recall this observation about dogs having sort of natural
snowshoes ever crossing my mind before. But I thought this
(03:22):
was a really interesting observation about dog pause, so I
decided to look it up in the zoology literature, and
it seems to me like you are exactly right about
snow dogs and especially their near wild ancestor, the gray wolf.
So I was looking at a book called Wolves, Behavior,
Ecology and Conservation edited by L. David Metsch and Luigi Boitani.
(03:47):
This was from University of Chicago Press, two thousand seven,
and this is in a chapter by H. Match one
of the editors and rolf O. Peterson on wolf prey relations,
typically the effects of snow and other weather conditions on
interactions between wolves and the animals they hunt. One really
(04:08):
cool observation the authors make here. They say that during
midwinter thaws, wolves will sometimes sleep through the afternoon in
the early evening and then wake up to hunt prey
in the nighttime. Why is this, The authors suggest it's
because the wolves are waiting for the temperature to drop
(04:29):
at night, which facilitates the formation of a crust on
the top layer of snow, which plays to their advantage
during pursuit of prey. And so the main effect of
snow on wolves primary prey animals is to slow them
down and hinder their movements because they're wading through these
big drifts. But that's not always the case with the
(04:50):
wolves themselves, and certainly not to the same extent. So
here match and Peterson write quote, most prey probably have
a heavier foot loading than do wolves, so they would
sink deeper and be hindered more than wolves. Estimates for
footloading and deer, for example, range from two hundred and
eleven grams per cubic centimeter to four hundred and thirty
(05:13):
one to one thousand, one hundred and twenty four grams
per cubic centimeter, whereas for wolves the estimate is about
one hundred and three grams per cubic centimeter. Ungulates are
usually much heavier than wolves and possess hard hoofs that
puncture snow much more easily than the spreading, webbed toes
of a wolf foot. This difference can tilt the balance
(05:35):
toward wolves during predation attempts on animals from the size
of deer to bison. So this comes back to that
observation that wolves might sometimes sleep through a warmer part
of the day in midwinter to wake up in the
dark and hunt. The crust that forms on top of
the snow in the cold night air will support a
(05:56):
wolf running on it, running on its naturally webbed biological snowshoes,
and I think the technical term for the webbing between
the toes is interdigital webbing. But a deer hoof will
punch right through that crust and get stuck in the snow,
so the deer will be unable to run at top speed.
And I guess the question is do modern domestic dog
(06:18):
breeds like the malamute have similar abilities. I didn't find
any scientific research on this, but it seems to be
just common knowledge among dog breeders that Arctic breeds like
the malamute and the husky and so forth have characteristics
that make them move well in the snow. And I
found an article on the American Kennel Club website which
does describe the malamute as having broad paws that helped
(06:41):
distribute their weight over a larger surface area so they
can run on the top of the snow. So, Larch,
I think your observation about your half mallamute dog is
probably exactly correct, and also probably not just a breed
trait specific to the mala mute and husky and so forth,
but sort of an ancestral trade that goes all the
way back to their wolf ancestors or wolf like ancestors. Now,
(07:05):
as for marine iguanas, I couldn't say. I couldn't say
if movement on sand would have anything to do with it,
though obviously I don't think the snow crust principle would
really apply to sand, unless there's some kind of sand
crusted phenomenon I've never heard of, so I don't know,
but the interesting idea anyway, lurches email goes on from here.
(07:27):
Lurch rights Iguanas hold a small special spot in my heart.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo nine, as I recall,
I spent six weeks in the Virgin Islands as part
of an emergency communications team. Nobody had electricity, including the
hotel at which we stayed, so we left our doors
and windows open at night to take advantage of the breeze.
(07:50):
The third night, I dreamt I was being buried alive,
rather terrifying, but wait, it gets worse. When I jerked
awake and opened my eyes, I was nos to know
is with the ugliest face I'd ever seen. The moonlight
decidedly did not help. Teleportation is possible. But when I
had stopped screaming, I was awake enough to realize I
(08:10):
had been cuddled by three rather large iguanas. One of
which had decided sleeping on top of me was a
good joke. For the remainder of my stay, I always
had at least one iguana share my bed at night.
Seriously cool lurch. Uh wow, well that's a great story.
Anybody else out there have that experience, Please right in
(08:31):
if you've had iguanas crawl into bed with you. I
don't think pets count. All right, This next message comes
from Carl. Carl says, dear Robin Joe. Firstly, congratulations to
Joe and family on their new arrival. Hope all are
(08:53):
well and happy. Thank you very much, Carl, We all
are indeed well and happy. In fact, I my first
attempt at recording this episode, I had the creature on
my chest in the baby Bjorn with me here. I
was like, surely we can make this work. You know,
she's just sleeping. Uh, she she can be my sort
of silent co host. But the problem was she was
(09:16):
not silent at all. In fact, she was she was
breathing like Darth Vader, and it absolutely came through on
the recording. So rather than have all the Darth Vader
breathing and the Goblin snarls and all that, I decided
to to wait to record this at at another time.
So here we are. But maybe in the future she'll
she'll join me on Mike when she's not quite so loud.
(09:38):
Karl's message goes on onto eggs consumed raw. Now this
must be related to the episode that Rob and I
did on eggnog. Karl writes, when in Peru, maeen we
drank many piece cooast sours, the national cocktail of Peru.
One was served to us at the first opportunity on
arrival and about every chance after that for two and
(10:00):
a half weeks. It's made with Peruvian Piececo as the
base liquor, UH fresh squeezed lemon juice, simple syrup, ice,
egg white, and angustura bitters. It's shaken to a froth,
strained into a glass, and topped with a few drops
of angustura bitters. Quite tasty, by the way. The cocktail
was invented by an American bartender, Victor Morris, in Peru
(10:22):
in the late night in the early nineteen hundreds. Piececo
is a high proof, local unrefined brandy that makes up
most of the drink after ice. Maybe there's enough alcohol
to kill any salmonella, but we never became ill or
heard of anyone else becoming ill from drinking Piececo sours,
which were even dispensed from vending machines in one remote area.
(10:44):
I decided to serve them at a dinner after we
after we returned home, but I used pasteurized egg whites
from a carton. I still have the bottle of Piececo
in my cabinet. It's not something you would enjoy over
the rocks, say, and has no other uses I know of,
but since it's been around before piece Coast hours were invented,
it must have other uses. As always, I enjoy your podcasts.
(11:06):
It's good to have Joe back. Carl. Well, thank you, Carl,
it's good to be back. I've never tried a piaccoat sour.
I will say, I don't know if I would fully
count on the alcohol content of a cocktail to kill
salmonilla bacteria that might might be present in a contaminated egg,
especially immediately, because you might remember they found in one
(11:28):
of those experiments we talked about in the egg nog
episode that it actually took several days, from several days
up to several weeks for a batch with alcohol content
to become sterile. And I think the more likely explanation
for the fact that you never became sick after drinking
one of these drinks is that you just never got
a contaminated egg. Like most eggs are fine. The CDC
(11:51):
used to cite an estimate that it was about one
out of every twenty thousand eggs produced annually in the
United States that carried salmonella. Uh. By the way, I
after the episode, I tried to look up and find
the original source of that claim, and I believe it
is a paper called Estimating the Annual fraction of Eggs
Contaminated with Salmonella in tarot Titus in the United States,
(12:14):
and this was by Eric Ebel and Wayne Schlausser published
in the International Journal of Food Microbiology in the year
two thousand. Now that number may have changed in the
last twenty two years one out of every twenty thousand,
If so, hopefully it's even lower, But I have not
found a more recent estimate, so as far as I know,
that's that's still the most recent guests anybody's come up with. Now,
(12:36):
what does all that mean. I'm of course not advising
people to eat raw eggs. You definitely do not want
to get salmonella. It is awful. Uh so, caution with
raw eggs is great, but also I mean, no reason
to be overly fearful. Most eggs are fine. All right,
(12:56):
on to the next message. This one comes from Chuck
all so concerning egg based cocktails related to our eggnog episode,
another discussion of the piececo Sour and our Vault episodes
on the invention of the mirror and various psychological effects
related to mirrors. Chuck says, dear Robert and Joe, happy
holidays and great tidings to you both, and congratulations to
(13:19):
Joe on the new addition to the family. These are
the days that will seem so long, and it will
vanish faster than you could imagine how true that is.
And then Chuck takes a paragraph here to say some
very kind things about the show. But then he goes
on to say, I'm writing specifically because of your eggnog episode. Personally,
I want to like eggnog more than I actually do.
(13:40):
Every year I'm tempted by the ingredients and try a glass,
but then I find it particularly revolting. Maybe it's the
type of rum that's in it. I do recall, however,
that back in the nineteen eighties, when I was a
latchkey kid, Carnation made an eggnog flavored powder you put
in milk as an instant break fist. Oh boy um.
(14:04):
To my little brain, the flavor was amazing, but it
could only be purchased as part of a mixed box
of instant breakfasts containing vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate flavors. I
think my desire to like eggnog comes from that nostalgia.
That being said, I will no doubt keep trying eggnog
every year to see if I strike gold. You guys
also mentioned a dearth of egg based cocktails. If no
(14:27):
one else has said this to you, uh and as
you see now, we've got several messages about this. But
Chuck says, I'd like to offer up the Piececo sour
Piaceco is a brandy from Peru. I was introduced to
the liquor by my wife, who is originally from the
Peruvian city of cheek Clio. There are myriad varieties of
piececo Piasco sours are kind of the national cocktail of Peru.
(14:50):
Though Chile and Bolivia may claim Piececo, they, as my
wife says, are wrong. Basic piececo sours are made up
of piececo egg whites, sweet syrup, and some lime juice.
This is shaken with ice to foam the egg whites
and mix well, and then the ice is strained out.
When you poured into a glass a few drops of
Angustura bitters and you have an amazing drink. I heartily recommend.
(15:12):
Chuck goes on to say two asides to set this
first one up. It's going to reference a series of
studies we talked about in our episodes on mirrors. These
studies identified what has been called the strange face in
the mirror effect, which is a phenomenon where if you
put people in a room with dim lighting and you
have them stare at their face in the mirror for
(15:34):
at least ten minutes, the majority of subjects will report
strange visual hallucinations and illusions, including everything from blurring and
deformations of the facial features to seeing their face as
another face entirely either belonging to another person known or unknown,
or changing into a cat or a pig, or an
(15:57):
alien or a monkey monster. And basically all UH respondents
reported that in some way they came to see their
face after prolonged staring in low light, as as other
in some way as somehow not belonging to them, or
or had some kind of dissociative experience. So the main
(16:18):
study here was called the Strange Face in the Mirror
illusion illusion by Giovanni bi Caputo in the journal Perception
in two thousand ten, but it's been replicated under a
variety of conditions in other studies. Sense anyway from here,
Chuck writes one, I read a book when I was
a teenager about exploring your past lives. Oh boy, I
(16:40):
can't remember the title or author, but one of the
techniques in it was to stare in a mirror at
length in dim lighting until you quote see the faces
you had in those previous lives. I'd forgotten all about this,
but it rushed forward in my memories during your mirror episodes,
and I've been meaning to write you to let you know.
Apparently the staring in a mirror in the dimness technique
(17:03):
was known and written about at least thirty five years
ago by metaphysical believers. It's cool to get the true
science about this now. Yeah. That that is really interesting, Chuck.
And it's interesting about using the mirror to allegedly see
faces of past lives, specifically because of a similar thing
in Caputo's study. A full eighteen percent of respondents in
(17:26):
that research reported seeing their own face transformed in some
way to resemble one of their parents faces, And of course,
seeing like a parent or an ancestor seems maybe to
to suggest a similar strain of thinking to like seeing
a past life. But there was another part of the
result that was that there was an aggregate category of
(17:47):
hallucinations which included seeing quote, an archetypal face such as
that of an old woman, a child, or a portrait
of an ancestor. Now, I suppose the causation in here,
if there is any, could go either way. It could
be that the strange face in the mirror illusion naturally
tends to cause a substantial fraction of people to hallucinate
(18:11):
their own face as transforming into that of an of
a parent or what they believed to be the face
of an ancestor, and that could give rise to this
idea that you see past lives of your own in
a mirror. Or it could be that if people widely
believed you could see past lives by turning down the
lights and gazing into the looking glass, that might have
in fact primed people to report stuff like this in
(18:34):
these experiments. So interesting. I wonder how widely um believe
that that thing that you read in the book was Uh.
One last thing about the strange face in the mirror illusion.
An interesting finding of subsequent studies was that a mirror
was not strictly part of the illusion. Instead, the necessary
(18:56):
ingredients seemed to be dim light conditions, time, and a face,
though not necessarily the reflection of your own, because there
was another study that I think was also done by
Caputo in which found similar effects simply by having people
stare at each other's faces intersubjective facial gazing for prolonged
(19:16):
periods in low light, and that this also produced kind
of strange hallucinatory or perceptive illusion effects. Uh, if you
did it long enough. Anyway, back to Chuck's message, and
this is the second part of his his two part
tangent to probably everyone that writes has a weird house
cinema suggestion. And if I may, I suggest Big Trouble
(19:39):
in Little China. Not only is it my favorite movie ever,
but I know you guys referenced it all the time. Uh,
and you've said that you should do a John Carpenter movie.
I've seen it so many times I generally failed to
realize how just plain weird the movie is. It was
so odd that the marketing had no idea what to
do with it. It dealt with themes and characters no
one in the West had any deep, non colledge of,
(20:00):
and the main character, the awesome Kurt Russell, of course,
was actually the sidekick the whole time. I suspect many
of your listeners have seen this very quotable film, but
a weird house examination would be greatly appreciated. Yeah, Rob
and I do mention this movie a lot. It's it's
it's a it's a common it's a house favorite. Uh. Finally,
Check says, thank you for taking the time to read this.
(20:22):
You guys rock me. Have a great three sincerely, Chuck
right back at you, Chuck. Alright. Well, I think that
does it for today's mail bag, but we will be
back with more of your messages next week and in
the meantime, if you're new to the show, you can
check out all of our other episodes anywhere you get
your podcasts. Monday's we Read Listener mail, Tuesdays and Thursdays
(20:44):
are our core stuff. To Blow Your Mind episodes. Those
are usually about science and culture in some way. Wednesdays
are our short form episodes. Those are called the Artifact
or sometimes the Monster Fact Friday, as we do a
movie show, Rob and I just kicked back and talk
about a strange film, good or bad, on a series
we call Weird House Cinema. Saturday's we haul out an
(21:07):
episode from the Vault, and Sunday's we publish nothing at
All Big thanks to our audio producer, Max Williams. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest 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 Blow Your Mind is a production
(21:36):
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for 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. Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. Listener mail, My name is Joe McCormick. My
regular co host Robert Lamb is not with me today.
I'm recording this one solo, but Rob is going to
be back on Mike with us tomorrow. Today is Monday,
(00:23):
the day of the week we typically read back some
messages that you all of you out there, have launched
into the mail harvester. And by the way, if you've
never written into the show before and you'd like to
get in touch to give feedback, corrections, commentary on a
previous topic, or if you just want to share something
interesting or say friendly hello, you can always reach us
at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
(00:47):
By the way, Happy New Year everyone. If you are
listening from an unsustainably crowded GYM or y m C,
A good luck with that. Uh, today's mail bag might
be a little bit weird due to holiday outages. Is
I think all of these messages came in several weeks
ago now, but we will do our best to get
caught up two more recent emails in the coming weeks.
(01:09):
All right, First, up in response to our episodes on
the reptiles of the Galapagos, specifically our focus on the
marine iguana, or, as one great scientists maligned them, those stupid,
hideous looking creatures. Lurch rights the following, good morning, gentlemen.
(01:33):
I think it was near the end of part two
on the Galapagos reptiles when you mentioned the marine iguanas
have slightly webbed feet, but you didn't see an evolutionary
reason for the feature since they aren't used in swimming. Yes,
or at least in our unexpert opinion, they didn't appear
to be used in swimming, so you know, maybe they
(01:53):
are in some subtle way. But anyway, going on with
Lurch's message, I happened to be out romping with dog
at the time. Uh. And this is dog with capital D,
so I think Lurch here is referring to his dog
who is named dog. So he's out romping with dog
at the time. He listened to that episode as he
enjoyed about eighteen inches of snow. Being half mala mute,
(02:17):
cold weather and snow are like a birthday party for
him every day. At the time he raised the question
there was another dog, a German shepherd trying to keep up.
He couldn't because he had to wade through an extra
foot of snow the dog ran on top of. While
all dogs, as far as I'm aware, have webb defeat
what I call snow, dogs seemed to be able to
(02:39):
deliberately spread their toes, bringing that webbing into play on
snow and of course mud. This has the effect of
spreading their weight over a larger area, letting them sink less.
I've not seen any studies or anything on this. I'm
basing it by comparing dog's footprint on pavement to that
in snow. In the snow, his footprint is nearly twice
(03:00):
the size of the one on pavement. How is this relevant?
I know next to nothing about the Galapagos Islands, but
I wonder if the webbing on the Iguanas might be
of use when crossing sand. Well, lurch Uh, I do
not recall this observation about dogs having sort of natural
snowshoes ever crossing my mind before. But I thought this
(03:22):
was a really interesting observation about dog pause, so I
decided to look it up in the zoology literature, and
it seems to me like you are exactly right about
snow dogs and especially their near wild ancestor, the gray wolf.
So I was looking at a book called Wolves, Behavior,
Ecology and Conservation edited by L. David Metsch and Luigi Boitani.
(03:47):
This was from University of Chicago Press, two thousand seven,
and this is in a chapter by H. Match one
of the editors and rolf O. Peterson on wolf prey relations,
typically the effects of snow and other weather conditions on
interactions between wolves and the animals they hunt. One really
(04:08):
cool observation the authors make here. They say that during
midwinter thaws, wolves will sometimes sleep through the afternoon in
the early evening and then wake up to hunt prey
in the nighttime. Why is this, The authors suggest it's
because the wolves are waiting for the temperature to drop
(04:29):
at night, which facilitates the formation of a crust on
the top layer of snow, which plays to their advantage
during pursuit of prey. And so the main effect of
snow on wolves primary prey animals is to slow them
down and hinder their movements because they're wading through these
big drifts. But that's not always the case with the
(04:50):
wolves themselves, and certainly not to the same extent. So
here match and Peterson write quote, most prey probably have
a heavier foot loading than do wolves, so they would
sink deeper and be hindered more than wolves. Estimates for
footloading and deer, for example, range from two hundred and
eleven grams per cubic centimeter to four hundred and thirty
(05:13):
one to one thousand, one hundred and twenty four grams
per cubic centimeter, whereas for wolves the estimate is about
one hundred and three grams per cubic centimeter. Ungulates are
usually much heavier than wolves and possess hard hoofs that
puncture snow much more easily than the spreading, webbed toes
of a wolf foot. This difference can tilt the balance
(05:35):
toward wolves during predation attempts on animals from the size
of deer to bison. So this comes back to that
observation that wolves might sometimes sleep through a warmer part
of the day in midwinter to wake up in the
dark and hunt. The crust that forms on top of
the snow in the cold night air will support a
(05:56):
wolf running on it, running on its naturally webbed biological snowshoes,
and I think the technical term for the webbing between
the toes is interdigital webbing. But a deer hoof will
punch right through that crust and get stuck in the snow,
so the deer will be unable to run at top speed.
And I guess the question is do modern domestic dog
(06:18):
breeds like the malamute have similar abilities. I didn't find
any scientific research on this, but it seems to be
just common knowledge among dog breeders that Arctic breeds like
the malamute and the husky and so forth have characteristics
that make them move well in the snow. And I
found an article on the American Kennel Club website which
does describe the malamute as having broad paws that helped
(06:41):
distribute their weight over a larger surface area so they
can run on the top of the snow. So, Larch,
I think your observation about your half mallamute dog is
probably exactly correct, and also probably not just a breed
trait specific to the mala mute and husky and so forth,
but sort of an ancestral trade that goes all the
way back to their wolf ancestors or wolf like ancestors. Now,
(07:05):
as for marine iguanas, I couldn't say. I couldn't say
if movement on sand would have anything to do with it,
though obviously I don't think the snow crust principle would
really apply to sand, unless there's some kind of sand
crusted phenomenon I've never heard of, so I don't know,
but the interesting idea anyway, lurches email goes on from here.
(07:27):
Lurch rights Iguanas hold a small special spot in my heart.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo nine, as I recall,
I spent six weeks in the Virgin Islands as part
of an emergency communications team. Nobody had electricity, including the
hotel at which we stayed, so we left our doors
and windows open at night to take advantage of the breeze.
(07:50):
The third night, I dreamt I was being buried alive,
rather terrifying, but wait, it gets worse. When I jerked
awake and opened my eyes, I was nos to know
is with the ugliest face I'd ever seen. The moonlight
decidedly did not help. Teleportation is possible. But when I
had stopped screaming, I was awake enough to realize I
(08:10):
had been cuddled by three rather large iguanas. One of
which had decided sleeping on top of me was a
good joke. For the remainder of my stay, I always
had at least one iguana share my bed at night.
Seriously cool lurch. Uh wow, well that's a great story.
Anybody else out there have that experience, Please right in
(08:31):
if you've had iguanas crawl into bed with you. I
don't think pets count. All right, This next message comes
from Carl. Carl says, dear Robin Joe. Firstly, congratulations to
Joe and family on their new arrival. Hope all are
(08:53):
well and happy. Thank you very much, Carl, We all
are indeed well and happy. In fact, I my first
attempt at recording this episode, I had the creature on
my chest in the baby Bjorn with me here. I
was like, surely we can make this work. You know,
she's just sleeping. Uh, she she can be my sort
of silent co host. But the problem was she was
(09:16):
not silent at all. In fact, she was she was
breathing like Darth Vader, and it absolutely came through on
the recording. So rather than have all the Darth Vader
breathing and the Goblin snarls and all that, I decided
to to wait to record this at at another time.
So here we are. But maybe in the future she'll
she'll join me on Mike when she's not quite so loud.
(09:38):
Karl's message goes on onto eggs consumed raw. Now this
must be related to the episode that Rob and I
did on eggnog. Karl writes, when in Peru, maeen we
drank many piece cooast sours, the national cocktail of Peru.
One was served to us at the first opportunity on
arrival and about every chance after that for two and
(10:00):
a half weeks. It's made with Peruvian Piececo as the
base liquor, UH fresh squeezed lemon juice, simple syrup, ice,
egg white, and angustura bitters. It's shaken to a froth,
strained into a glass, and topped with a few drops
of angustura bitters. Quite tasty, by the way. The cocktail
was invented by an American bartender, Victor Morris, in Peru
(10:22):
in the late night in the early nineteen hundreds. Piececo
is a high proof, local unrefined brandy that makes up
most of the drink after ice. Maybe there's enough alcohol
to kill any salmonella, but we never became ill or
heard of anyone else becoming ill from drinking Piececo sours,
which were even dispensed from vending machines in one remote area.
(10:44):
I decided to serve them at a dinner after we
after we returned home, but I used pasteurized egg whites
from a carton. I still have the bottle of Piececo
in my cabinet. It's not something you would enjoy over
the rocks, say, and has no other uses I know of,
but since it's been around before piece Coast hours were invented,
it must have other uses. As always, I enjoy your podcasts.
(11:06):
It's good to have Joe back. Carl. Well, thank you, Carl,
it's good to be back. I've never tried a piaccoat sour.
I will say, I don't know if I would fully
count on the alcohol content of a cocktail to kill
salmonilla bacteria that might might be present in a contaminated egg,
especially immediately, because you might remember they found in one
(11:28):
of those experiments we talked about in the egg nog
episode that it actually took several days, from several days
up to several weeks for a batch with alcohol content
to become sterile. And I think the more likely explanation
for the fact that you never became sick after drinking
one of these drinks is that you just never got
a contaminated egg. Like most eggs are fine. The CDC
(11:51):
used to cite an estimate that it was about one
out of every twenty thousand eggs produced annually in the
United States that carried salmonella. Uh. By the way, I
after the episode, I tried to look up and find
the original source of that claim, and I believe it
is a paper called Estimating the Annual fraction of Eggs
Contaminated with Salmonella in tarot Titus in the United States,
(12:14):
and this was by Eric Ebel and Wayne Schlausser published
in the International Journal of Food Microbiology in the year
two thousand. Now that number may have changed in the
last twenty two years one out of every twenty thousand,
If so, hopefully it's even lower, But I have not
found a more recent estimate, so as far as I know,
that's that's still the most recent guests anybody's come up with. Now,
(12:36):
what does all that mean. I'm of course not advising
people to eat raw eggs. You definitely do not want
to get salmonella. It is awful. Uh so, caution with
raw eggs is great, but also I mean, no reason
to be overly fearful. Most eggs are fine. All right,
(12:56):
on to the next message. This one comes from Chuck
all so concerning egg based cocktails related to our eggnog episode,
another discussion of the piececo Sour and our Vault episodes
on the invention of the mirror and various psychological effects
related to mirrors. Chuck says, dear Robert and Joe, happy
holidays and great tidings to you both, and congratulations to
(13:19):
Joe on the new addition to the family. These are
the days that will seem so long, and it will
vanish faster than you could imagine how true that is.
And then Chuck takes a paragraph here to say some
very kind things about the show. But then he goes
on to say, I'm writing specifically because of your eggnog episode. Personally,
I want to like eggnog more than I actually do.
(13:40):
Every year I'm tempted by the ingredients and try a glass,
but then I find it particularly revolting. Maybe it's the
type of rum that's in it. I do recall, however,
that back in the nineteen eighties, when I was a
latchkey kid, Carnation made an eggnog flavored powder you put
in milk as an instant break fist. Oh boy um.
(14:04):
To my little brain, the flavor was amazing, but it
could only be purchased as part of a mixed box
of instant breakfasts containing vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate flavors. I
think my desire to like eggnog comes from that nostalgia.
That being said, I will no doubt keep trying eggnog
every year to see if I strike gold. You guys
also mentioned a dearth of egg based cocktails. If no
(14:27):
one else has said this to you, uh and as
you see now, we've got several messages about this. But
Chuck says, I'd like to offer up the Piececo sour
Piaceco is a brandy from Peru. I was introduced to
the liquor by my wife, who is originally from the
Peruvian city of cheek Clio. There are myriad varieties of
piececo Piasco sours are kind of the national cocktail of Peru.
(14:50):
Though Chile and Bolivia may claim Piececo, they, as my
wife says, are wrong. Basic piececo sours are made up
of piececo egg whites, sweet syrup, and some lime juice.
This is shaken with ice to foam the egg whites
and mix well, and then the ice is strained out.
When you poured into a glass a few drops of
Angustura bitters and you have an amazing drink. I heartily recommend.
(15:12):
Chuck goes on to say two asides to set this
first one up. It's going to reference a series of
studies we talked about in our episodes on mirrors. These
studies identified what has been called the strange face in
the mirror effect, which is a phenomenon where if you
put people in a room with dim lighting and you
have them stare at their face in the mirror for
(15:34):
at least ten minutes, the majority of subjects will report
strange visual hallucinations and illusions, including everything from blurring and
deformations of the facial features to seeing their face as
another face entirely either belonging to another person known or unknown,
or changing into a cat or a pig, or an
(15:57):
alien or a monkey monster. And basically all UH respondents
reported that in some way they came to see their
face after prolonged staring in low light, as as other
in some way as somehow not belonging to them, or
or had some kind of dissociative experience. So the main
(16:18):
study here was called the Strange Face in the Mirror
illusion illusion by Giovanni bi Caputo in the journal Perception
in two thousand ten, but it's been replicated under a
variety of conditions in other studies. Sense anyway from here,
Chuck writes one, I read a book when I was
a teenager about exploring your past lives. Oh boy, I
(16:40):
can't remember the title or author, but one of the
techniques in it was to stare in a mirror at
length in dim lighting until you quote see the faces
you had in those previous lives. I'd forgotten all about this,
but it rushed forward in my memories during your mirror episodes,
and I've been meaning to write you to let you know.
Apparently the staring in a mirror in the dimness technique
(17:03):
was known and written about at least thirty five years
ago by metaphysical believers. It's cool to get the true
science about this now. Yeah. That that is really interesting, Chuck.
And it's interesting about using the mirror to allegedly see
faces of past lives, specifically because of a similar thing
in Caputo's study. A full eighteen percent of respondents in
(17:26):
that research reported seeing their own face transformed in some
way to resemble one of their parents faces, And of course,
seeing like a parent or an ancestor seems maybe to
to suggest a similar strain of thinking to like seeing
a past life. But there was another part of the
result that was that there was an aggregate category of
(17:47):
hallucinations which included seeing quote, an archetypal face such as
that of an old woman, a child, or a portrait
of an ancestor. Now, I suppose the causation in here,
if there is any, could go either way. It could
be that the strange face in the mirror illusion naturally
tends to cause a substantial fraction of people to hallucinate
(18:11):
their own face as transforming into that of an of
a parent or what they believed to be the face
of an ancestor, and that could give rise to this
idea that you see past lives of your own in
a mirror. Or it could be that if people widely
believed you could see past lives by turning down the
lights and gazing into the looking glass, that might have
in fact primed people to report stuff like this in
(18:34):
these experiments. So interesting. I wonder how widely um believe
that that thing that you read in the book was Uh.
One last thing about the strange face in the mirror illusion.
An interesting finding of subsequent studies was that a mirror
was not strictly part of the illusion. Instead, the necessary
(18:56):
ingredients seemed to be dim light conditions, time, and a face,
though not necessarily the reflection of your own, because there
was another study that I think was also done by
Caputo in which found similar effects simply by having people
stare at each other's faces intersubjective facial gazing for prolonged
(19:16):
periods in low light, and that this also produced kind
of strange hallucinatory or perceptive illusion effects. Uh, if you
did it long enough. Anyway, back to Chuck's message, and
this is the second part of his his two part
tangent to probably everyone that writes has a weird house
cinema suggestion. And if I may, I suggest Big Trouble
(19:39):
in Little China. Not only is it my favorite movie ever,
but I know you guys referenced it all the time. Uh,
and you've said that you should do a John Carpenter movie.
I've seen it so many times I generally failed to
realize how just plain weird the movie is. It was
so odd that the marketing had no idea what to
do with it. It dealt with themes and characters no
one in the West had any deep, non colledge of,
(20:00):
and the main character, the awesome Kurt Russell, of course,
was actually the sidekick the whole time. I suspect many
of your listeners have seen this very quotable film, but
a weird house examination would be greatly appreciated. Yeah, Rob
and I do mention this movie a lot. It's it's
it's a it's a common it's a house favorite. Uh. Finally,
Check says, thank you for taking the time to read this.
(20:22):
You guys rock me. Have a great three sincerely, Chuck
right back at you, Chuck. Alright. Well, I think that
does it for today's mail bag, but we will be
back with more of your messages next week and in
the meantime, if you're new to the show, you can
check out all of our other episodes anywhere you get
your podcasts. Monday's we Read Listener mail, Tuesdays and Thursdays
(20:44):
are our core stuff. To Blow Your Mind episodes. Those
are usually about science and culture in some way. Wednesdays
are our short form episodes. Those are called the Artifact
or sometimes the Monster Fact Friday, as we do a
movie show, Rob and I just kicked back and talk
about a strange film, good or bad, on a series
we call Weird House Cinema. Saturday's we haul out an
(21:07):
episode from the Vault, and Sunday's we publish nothing at
All Big thanks to our audio producer, Max Williams. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest 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 Blow Your Mind is a production
(21:36):
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
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