Listener Mail: The Fires of Orc

It's a new year full of new topics, but first comes a final bag of listener mail from 2018. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick consider your thoughts and experiences on the previous month's episodes. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you wasn't the Stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and we find ourselves here. This is you know, every
year people ask, hey, how do you get all the
episodes into the vault so they can one day become

(00:24):
Vault episodes. Well, today's the day. It's it's ongoing. Uh.
Carney has been loading the episodes from into the vault
all day and then at the end of that effort,
there was, of course in a New Year's Eve party.
So Carney is pretty worn out. Man. I am so
sick of the sound Carney makes when he's backing up. Yeah,

(00:47):
it's it's it's a bit annoying, but you know, he
has to back up, especially when he's carrying the heavier loads,
such as, uh, the episode in the Ark of the Covenant.
But but I'm glad that has been filed away in
the vault as well. Yeah, but we're just gonna have
to get it back out again when those top top
men show up to look at it. Uh. So, yeah,
it's it's it's been a fun year and we're about
to enter into a new year for stuff to blow

(01:09):
your mind. I think it's gonna be pretty exciting. We
already have some some some pretty fabulous topics lined up there.
So of course other topics we've been meaning to get
to Allen that are now going to be twenty nineteen episodes,
like you know, you know what I realized as we
never did Science of Highlander too. I know it's we
We've been trying all year twenty nineteen. It must happen.

(01:30):
Because I want to lie and say it's our most
requested episode. I don't think that's true. It's the most
requested by by by us. But um, and then we
have a lot of sway over what gets done. We
just we just need to make an effort to it
to both see it again. Um. But I also want
to do Highlander two because there are other movie based
episodes that I would love to to cover. I would

(01:51):
love to really just dig into uh David Cronenberg video drume,
for example, I was rewatching parts of that for an
episode we're gonna recording that you know where we only
like marginally mentioned video drum. But there's so much meat
on the bone there well, especially in the digital age,
the way. Basically, I think we're living in a world
where we have all become Max Wren, brainwashed by media

(02:14):
and turned into killing machines that are doing the bidding
of the people who create our media. Yeah, indeed, I
think they're they're I think the metaphor is even stronger now.
But today we're doing the listener mail thing. Carney is
is going to be roused just enough so that he
might deliver some listener mail to us, and we once more.

(02:34):
Another month passes, and we have a number of great
bits of listener correspondence to refer to here. Alright, so
we already mentioned the Ark of the Covenant. Maybe we
should look at some mail on the subject of the
ark now, if you haven't heard it. We did a
couple of episodes in November. I think was it November.
When do we do those episodes? I believe it was
the first week in December because it ended up accidentally

(02:55):
corresponding with Hanukah this year. Okay, Well, anyway, we're talking
about the legendary artifact, the r of the Covenant as
it has appeared in of course in the Bible, but
in Indiana Jones movies and then in these scientific interpretations
where people are sort of practicing what we called bronze punk,
where they look back to legends and myths from the
Bronze Age and say, what what if actually people were

(03:17):
using some kind of science or technology here. Uh. And
so Amelia gets in touch with us in response to
these episodes, she says, Hey, Rob and Joe, your Ak
of the Covenant episodes are officially two of my all
time favorites as an unabashed lover of ancient history, both
academic and pseudo scientific. I was glued to my earbuds.
Your discussion of the mutilated Dagon statue and subsequent plagues

(03:39):
got me thinking, now, remember the story here, the ideas
that the Philistines. There's a story told in the Bible
where the Philistines took the arc from the ancient Israelites.
They took it to the temple of Dagon, their god.
But then the arc did a bunch of mischief while
it was among the Philistines. It destroyed the statue of
their god Dagon, and it in it up, giving them

(04:00):
what the original translation into English called immrods in their
secret parts. Right. And we had a lot of fun
in that episode looking at various theories regarding what those
immerrods could have been. Now, we always need to be clear,
we're not necessarily advocating the idea that this is like
a record of a historical event that actually needs explanation.
But what could these people haven't have had in mind?

(04:23):
So Amelia continues, Why would the ark myth choose mice
and quote immerrods in the philistines secret parts as a
specific punishment related to the defiling of their patron God?
Could these two plagues have had particular significance relating to
Dagon's role in Philistinian culture? And this is a great
question because so many of the answers were looking at

(04:44):
it from the modern perspective. They were saying, Hey, we
know that mice and uh and in certain swellings, we
can we can sort of build a plague theory out
of that bubonic plague theory. But indeed, like, what is
the original context? Yeah? So yeah, and what would this,
what with this imagery have meant to the people who
compose this story, so Amelia continues. In college, I took

(05:06):
a class on Biblical legs of Jesus, which refers to
critical and scholarly analysis of the ancient texts Exa Jesus
uses historically relevant, social and mythological lenses to interpret obscure
Biblical passages. One of the first things you learn from
Biblical Legs of Jesus is that the Old Testament is
riddled with allusions to Sumerian mythology. I won't bog down

(05:27):
this email with specific cases, but the overall effect is
a vivid illustration of an era fraught with interfaith lore.
The Abrahamic nomads of the Old Testament did not likely
operate within the metaphysical monotheism which characterizes later Christian theology.
In modern terms, we may interpret the Jews devotion to
Yahweh using a contemporary Christian concept of one all powerful,

(05:51):
existent deity, but Exajesus studies suggests this conclusion may be faulty.
For the Hebrews of the Bronze Age Fertile Crescent, Yahweh
more likely stands as the supreme God nested within a
culture of Sumerian devised polytheism. You alway is not the
only God, but he is the true God, and his
communication with his children of Abraham elicits an important cultural

(06:14):
shift in humanity's philosophy on relation to the divine. I
remember picking up on this as a kid in um
in Sunday school class, because when you're reading those Old
Testament stories, it's clear that there are other gods and
they are doing stuff, and yeah, you know, certain people
may explain them away as oh within other really demons,
but now in the text they really come off as

(06:35):
God's Oh yeah, I think this is absolutely clear. I mean,
this is one of the many cases where the Bible
as a whole, the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament
both represent multiplicities of theologies. You know, they're the writers
who are writing the different books and passages, and even
the stories that were compiled into these books had different
points of view, and so some of them may have
only believed that one God existed. But I think it's

(06:58):
a clear, strong strain of thinking in many books of
the Hebrew Bible that there are other gods. It's just
that there's only one God worth worshiping. There's only one
God that that matters, or only one God that's worthy,
and that is the God of Israel. And so I
think Amelia makes a great point about us, uh, you know,
bringing our sort of uh, bringing one theological context to

(07:20):
an ancient, ancient text, without realizing that it might not
actually be appropriate. Uh So, anyway, she continues, Assuming this
theory is correct, the Hebrew people were well versed in
the religious lore of their geographical heritage. In this case,
Dagon presents as one in a series of older rival entities,
which Yahweh's superiority lays low. Joe notes in your second

(07:42):
episode that Daygone, despite his fishy reputation, was worshiped as
a god of grain and possible sexual fertility. Taking this
into consideration, a plague of mice notorious defilers of grain
seeds past in present is humorously self evident. More disturbing
is the notion that the immrods in the philistines secret

(08:02):
parts may not be hemorrhoids or tumors in the anus,
but growths on the genitalia. Robert mentioned some studies leaning
in this direction regarding a syphilis outbreak, but whether or
not the Ark of the Covenant employed syphilitic biowarfare, the
idea of a disfiguring disease which ravages the genitals of
those whose patron is a fertility god smacks of poetic irony. Again,

(08:25):
I think this is a very good point. I think
that you know, we mentioned this in the episode, like,
is this story about what the Arc did to the Philistines?
Is it supposed to be funny? I think the outcomes
and punishments that they specify for the for the Philistines,
they came up with those because they were supposed to
be funny and like humiliating. I can't help but imagine

(08:46):
the Ark of the Covenant on an open mic stage
with the brick Wall behind it, kind of staring into
members of the audience. Yes, and so I mean even well,
one funny thing you point out there is the brick wall.
You know, often you watch the Brick Wall comedian and
the people in the audience are laughing, But we're today
like this isn't funny? What's going on? So humor definitely
gets lost, even across a single generation or two. You know,

(09:08):
you look at the stand up comics of the nineteen eighties,
not always funny anymore. Obviously, some amount of humor is
lost between the Bronze Age and now and lost in translation,
so it can be difficult to tell is it supposed
to be funny or not. I think it probably is.
I think this is supposed to be kind of like
in the Miller's Tail when the guy gets the hot
iron in his butt. Anyway, coming back to UH to

(09:30):
finish Amelia's email, she says, in short, Yahweh and his
sacred Arc don't mess around. If this interpretation has legs,
it seems Yahweh not only punishes, but take pain, but
takes pains to customize his outrage to the deity in question.
For people whose history is riddled with oppression and assault,
this sort of justice would hold special significance, possibly even

(09:50):
dark humor. And then she adds some words of thanks
and so thank you Amelia. Yeah, this makes a great point,
and I think this really adds to to our consideration
of where these stories come from and what they might
have meant. Yeah, and you know, some night out might
out there might think, well, I like the idea of
the ARC using humorless laser beams to smite its enemies

(10:12):
rather than humor. But we have to remember too that
that far more than than than than laser beams. Humor
is a power that can topple gods and topple uh
tyrannical rule, etcetera. I believe even reading the name of
the rose by and burn of Eco. Absolutely, yeah, and
that is that's one of the big themes in the book,

(10:33):
the power and the danger of comedy. Uh, to to
threaten the power of a divine being. Nothing is more
terrifying to the narcissist and the tyrant than the laughter
that people are unable to contain at him, Right, I mean,
this is the this is the agel power of the
you know, the the Emperor's new clothes, etcetera. All right, well,

(10:55):
as long as we're talking about the arc, we have
another bit of listener mail here that comes to us
from David. David says, Hello, Robert and Joe. I enjoyed
the latest podcast, as I do most of your episodes,
although as I wow, you know, I mean, we cover
a lot of different topics here. I we realized that
that every episode is not going to be for every listener.
Of course, he continues, although as I have a mild

(11:18):
case of misophonia at the front sequence, as you begin
to almost whisper, I did begin to feel slightly enraged.
Well well, but but you know it's this is another
case where some some listeners may have a problem with whispering.
We know for a fact that multiple listeners will put
us on as they're going to sweep. So you know,
it kind of goes both ways. I can't please everybody,

(11:40):
can't be everybody's dream come true. Anyway, he continues, I
thought you might like to read some observations that I
have made over multiple viewing of Raiders of the Lost Dark,
all right, because we did. We talked about Raiders of
the Lost Dark at length in those episodes. We got
a little carried away at one point. I think we
just basically accidentally turned it into a movie crush episode
for about ten in it. So sorry about that. It

(12:01):
was not on purpose, but you know it was a
little bit on purpose, alright, So he continues, So he
has several different areas he focuses on here. First of all,
the idea that Indie has no effect on the outcome.
He says, quote, this is something you touched on and
was brought up, brought to popular culture in the TV
show Big Bang Theory. It is that despite Indiana Jones's effort,

(12:24):
nothing he does stops the Nazis from accomplishing their goal
and in fact helps them. Whilst this is true, that
is not the point of the movie for me. He
is not meant to succeed. He is coming up against
one of the greatest military forces of all time, and
to have him defeat them would be ridiculous. This was
the point I made in the episode that the genius
of the climax of Raiders of the Lost Art is

(12:45):
that Indie is victorious in the end, not by fighting.
There's not a fight scene at the end of the movie.
He doesn't beat down the enemy and throw him off
a cliff or something. Instead, Indie is victorious at the
end by realizing what the arc means. That's his that's
his victory, is that the Nazis don't understand what the
arc means, and Indie finally does right. And I think,

(13:07):
you know, I also going to go maybe off on
a limb here a little bit and say that I
think our expectation that Indy should absolutely save the day
and should be a real, you know factor in this scenario,
that this is perhaps a poisoning of the well brought
on by our just obsession with superhero movies and also

(13:29):
epic narratives saying the Lord of the Rings and I
love a good superhero movie. I love uh, I love
you know. Blade two is one of my favorites. I
also enjoyed some of the recent Marvel films as well,
But in those films, the superhero absolutely has to save
the day. That is the trope. You can't have just

(13:50):
a small story or even a you know, a very
exciting story that sort of taking place uh in the
foreground or the background of larger events. Likewise, in an
epic fantasy like Lord of the Rings, it is about
the individuals who do the key things that save the world. Well,
I mean, I think it's that these modern Marvel movie
writers have read T. S. Eliot's critique of Hamlet, and

(14:11):
they're like, Okay, we don't want to have an ineffectual
hero the way Hamlet is, who's just indecisive and doesn't
ultimately fix anything. So we've we've got to go in
the opposite direction and instead of have these like boring
perfect do everything right here. Don't get me started ranting
on Marvel movies. Well again, and I'm not hating on them.

(14:32):
I enjoy some of them as as well. To Actually
I like the Iron Man movies. Oh yeah, the third
one especially, I really doug the shame Black one. Uh yeah.
So on one hand, I think part of it is
you can't look to a move to every movie and
expected to accomplish the same things that a superhero film does.
So certainly one can't look to every film and expected to,
you know, have exactly the same beats as a superhero

(14:55):
film and have the protagonist engage in the overall narrative
and exactly the same way. I have to say that
I enjoy many a story where the the hero or
the protagonist doesn't really change the outcome of events, or
it's just a smaller story and you get the sense
of something larger, something more epic, taking place that they

(15:16):
may have limited interaction with. You know. The kind of
story I love even more is the one where the
ostensible hero is actually quite ineffectual and it is the
sidekick or some other ally who has to do all
the actual work. Of course, I guess it's the don
Keyxote model. But a great example of this is Big
Trouble and Little China. Absolutely, Jack Burton is just not
very useful in Wang is the real hero, right, But

(15:38):
then at the same time he does have at least
one key moment to shine. Uh And and this comes
back to a discussion that then I know that I
believe we we've had with Lauren Vogelbaum talking about stories, films, etcetera,
or even in a short stories as well, where there's
a lack of agency in the character, where you reach
a point where it's just stuff happening to that individual

(15:59):
and they're not actually like going beyond at least like
India is doing something. He's saving his own life and
the life of Marion towards the end, and and then
there's some arguments for some other things that are going
on there as well, but it doesn't become just a
like a psychedelic freak out of the arc, which you
know very well could have been because you're dealing with
the Ark of the Covenant anyway, David continues. So the

(16:21):
next point that he touches on is the idea that
Bellock saves Hitler. Okay, so Indie's rival in the movie
the French Guy, Yeah, fabulous character. In the movie, the
Nazi commanders are there to obtain the arc and take
it to Hitler. There is a scene near the end
where Bellock convinces them to open the arc on the
island instead of in front of Hitler. The reason is

(16:41):
obviously because of Bellock's own want to have the glory
and his chat with God. This is the holy It's
a radio for speaking to God. But if the Nazi
commanders would have been more insistent, Hitler and probably all
of his major party members in generals would have been extinguished.
I have never noticed this before, but that's an extremely
good point. It makes Bellock even worse as a villain

(17:02):
because we could have killed Hitler in the thirties, but
Belloc Bellock prevents it. Yeah, yeah, it's it's an interesting read.
I had not thought of that, but it was just
been a longer movie. If it was just at the
end of it, somebody else, Um, who's Indie's boss? Uh?
Was his name? Marcus Brody Dentdno, Elliott, Yeah, it would have.
It would have kind of sucked. At the end of

(17:23):
the movie. Was just Brody reading a newspaper and reading, Oh,
the Ark of the Covenant just took out all the
the leadership of the Third Reich. Interesting role credits wouldn't
have been the same. Yeah, okay. The next point, Nazis
don't act like Nazis, David says. What we know from
history is that the Nazis never showed restraint when taking
historical artifacts. However, when looking for the arc they do.

(17:44):
They have found the map room and other buildings the
snake room, and we hear they have been digging for months.
Why wouldn't they just dig out the buildings from the
map It took Solo's team of a few hours to
access the room. That was correct. If they did this,
then in a few months they would have found it. Uh. Yeah,
that might be a good point. Like the Nazis or
the villains of the movie, but the movie actually doesn't

(18:05):
make them bad enough. Yeah, it's I mean, it's it's
weird looking back on storybook Nazis, like it occurring at
just the right time in history where it was I
guess far far enough away from the Second World War,
but also uh, you know, further removed from our our
current struggles in the world. I mean, it's always been important,

(18:26):
I think, to to remind everyone of how awful the
Third Reich was, how awful the Nazis were, and that
there were no there were no heroes among the Third Reich.
But at the same time, I feel like it has
become more important somehow to remind people of that today.
And part of that is because we are getting further
and further away from the Second World War, We're getting

(18:48):
into a time where there are fewer uh you know,
actual there are fewer people carrying the actual flame of
that of that that whole world that we have we
thought we'd move beyond. Oh yeah, like maybe at the
time this movie was made, there was you could feel
more confident that, well, Nazism some is something the world
is now just done with, so you can make cartoonish

(19:10):
historical Nazi characters. Now it's somehow feels a little more
serious to have Nazi characters. Yeah, yeah, it's it's certainly
become a more complicated thing to tackle on your films.
In fact, I can't think of of anything recently that
is really, you know, struck a similar chord. I guess
there are, I mean, there was like a zombie. There's
Nazi zombie films that are coming out, so but I

(19:31):
haven't seen them. Perhaps we'll hear from listeners on this
whole topic. Alright, Next point where roof access hatches common
in ancient buildings. All three buildings that we see access
had roof access points and no indication that there are
traditional doors. I am unsure, but I believe there is
reference to the city being covered by a sandstorm. That
would mean that in the operation time of the city,

(19:53):
the ground level would be fairly consistent, both internal and
external to the buildings. The map room shows this also.
So why would they have a rooftop access in more
modern times? I would believe we would for this, Uh,
we would have this for maintenance. But would this city. Yeah,
that's a good point. Why do all these buildings have
openings in the roofs? I mean, I can think of

(20:17):
archaeological sites where there are ancient structures that have opening
and openings in the roofs. I think of like some
of the structures of like the ancestral Pueblo peoples of
of New Mexico. You know, sometimes there will be like
the entrance to a building is in the center of
the rooftop. I don't know if that kind of thing
is common in ancient Egypt or not. Well, I guess

(20:38):
one thing that that I that I do think about
is the fact that many of these the ancient structures
we've talked about on the show, you know, ziggurats for instance.
You know, part of the point of building a structure
like that was to have access to the top. In
some fashion, because you are building a sacred mountain, You're

(20:58):
building a holy place, and the peak of that place
is kind of the point. It's it's like building skyscrapers today.
Of course, you're going to have either a restaurant, hopefully
one that revolves. You can have a restaurant. You're gonna
have a tourist location, or just like some super swank
penthouse for Vladimir Putin to live in. You know, whatever
the angle is, like, the top of the thing is

(21:19):
not only important, it's kind of the point. Yeah. I
see what you're saying. Um, that's where you're gonna summon Gozer.
But is that also where you need to get into
the building from? But you could access the building, right,
I mean, this is the whole plot of Escape from
New York. Remember the snake Pliskin lands on the top
of the World Trade Center, and then that is how
he enters, uh, the penal island of New York City.

(21:43):
So I think what you're saying is that the ancient
Egyptians anticipated they would need to architecturally justify the plot
of Escape from New York. Yes, okay, I believe that's
what's happening. I don't know these are just some ideas
I don't know to what extent, you know, looking to
the zigarade, if this holds up, you know, across all cultures.
Perhaps by the time of this, uh Hollywood, ancient Egyptian structure. Uh,

(22:07):
they were just like, oh, well, Ruth's a ruth. I
don't know. Well, thanks for getting in touch, David. These
were these were some great points to discuss and some
stuff I'd never thought about before. Even though I still
hold that I think Raiders is probably the best action
adventure movie. I guess it depends on what else you count,
and you know, comparing like older and recent ones, that

(22:28):
can be kind of difficult. More recently, I don't know,
I feel like it's kind of hard to beat Fury Road, right.
Oh yeah, that one was terrific, The Mad Max film. Uh,
that's that's probably the best pure action adventure film that
that I've seen. It's come out in recent years. So anyway, yes,
always happy to talk about Rags of the Lost Arc. Alright, Well,
on that note, as we leave the Ark of the

(22:49):
Covenant behind us, let's take a quick break and when
we come back, we'll dive into even more listener mail.
Thank thank Alright, we're back all right. This next mail
came I think from an episode we did about the
concept of scientific reductionism, whether scientific disciplines all reduce ultimately

(23:10):
to h if you have a perfect understanding of them,
can they be perfectly reduced to lower level understandings of
physical reality? Like can chemistry ultimately be explained entirely by physics?
And can biology ultimately be explained entirely by chemistry? Or
at each level, are there genuinely new and unique properties

(23:31):
that emerge that you could not predict or understand just
by having a perfect understanding of the science underlying them.
Uh So anyway, Peter says, thank you for the distilled
awesomeness of your show. It makes my daily workouts and
exercise for my mind as well as my body. I'm
writing to point out that someone. Uh, And he asks

(23:52):
U Weinberg. I think he's sorry about Steven Weinberg, who
we talked about in that episode, who holds to a
theory about reductionism, that everything can be deduced to fundamental physics. Uh.
And he's pointing out that he thinks Weinberg is wrong
and is the best type of wrong, is provably wrong.
Via mathematics the mathematician Girdle proof and Ice talking about

(24:12):
Kurt Girdle there proved that not all truths that exist
in a mathematical system can be proved with the fundamental
axioms of that system. If there are fundamental physical laws
to the universe, you can't use them to deduce all
the possible behaviors of that system of truths that can
exist in the system. Based on the inside of Girdle's theorem,

(24:34):
I think that emergence is pretty much undeniable. It's provably
true in very simple mathematical systems. How much more true
must it be in our universe if it is governed,
as Weinberg holds by fundamental laws? You know this make Oh?
Thank you, Peter. Yeah, that's an interesting thought. I don't
know if I've heard uh Girdle applied to physics to

(24:56):
like the things in the world before. Girdle is usually
applied to UH logical or mathematical systems, and he's correct
about what. I think he's correct about what Girdles uh
incompleteness proofs show, which is that no system like no
system of numbers or anything like that that follows a

(25:17):
set of formalized rules can uh can possibly be used
to prove all the things that are true about that system? Interesting,
They're always going to be things that are true about
a system that you can't prove using the rules of
that system, and uh, and so yeah, I haven't thought
about how that applies to physics. That that is interesting.

(25:39):
There's been a subject I've been wanting to come back
to for a while, which is a question, a sort
of meta scientific question about the philosophy of science, which
is the question are there really universal physical laws? It
certainly is a helpful convention to say that there are
such a thing as laws of physics, but there are
some very there's some interesting philosophical work that says, you know,

(26:02):
even though we get consistent results and experiments, can we
necessarily say from that that there is such a thing
as a physical law? So anyway, I think that's worth
coming back to in the future. Oh, certainly. But but
before we go on, Carney has just alerted me that
the ARC episodes have just burnt through their their their
their their wooden crating, because we have another listener mail

(26:25):
that relates to the ARC that I can't get to Earthika.
This one comes to us from Kristen, and she says, Hi,
Robert and Joe, I really enjoyed last week's episodes on
Greek Fire. That was a vault episode we did h
and the Ark of the Covenant. In response to your
request for peaceful uses of the flamethrower, I present the
flame weeder. Last summer, I intern on an organic farm

(26:45):
and witnessed firsthand the wonders of this device. Farmers will
plant seeds like carrots and take a couple of weeks
that take a couple of weeks to germinate. Then a
few days before they are due to sprout, the farmers
will incinerate the weeds that have grown with blasts of
fire him a large portable blowtorch. Not only is it
super cool, it lets farmers weed quickly without spraying any pesticides.
I would recommend doing a YouTube search. It is pretty

(27:08):
awesome to watch now. Kristen is actually not the only
person who got in touch to let us know about this.
I remember back when the episode came out, somebody else
linked us to this and they were like, here, here's
how you use a flamethrower for peace. Oh see, I
don't remember that one. I remember people I think there
was something using flamethrowers against rampaging mice or something in Australia.
But but but yes, somehow I missed this, uh when

(27:31):
when anyone else mentioned it to us. It reminds me
of the scene in uh Miyazaki's Nausica Value of the
Wind where they're going around through the Value of the winds,
food crops, and like burning the bits of spores from
the poison jungle that have spread there. Now. Of course,

(27:52):
Kristen also has some comments on the immrods in the
Secret Parts. Right, that's right, she says, on the topic
of em rods, I would propose that him roy it
would be a more effective curse than many people would realize.
It seems pretty effective, Yeah, she says. I'm an occasional
sufferer from this curse due to severe ibs. In modern times,
they are simply uncomfortable and obnoxious, but it is possible

(28:13):
they could have been very dangerous. For ancient people's chronic
hemorrhoids bleed and can lead to open fissures. With and
without germ theory or antibiotics and infection would have been
very likely. Death by hemorrhoids. What a way to go. Thanks,
so much for all the awesome podcasts and happy holidays.
This does remind me I remember hearing. I'm convinced they

(28:36):
always I always felt like they sounded potentially dangerous to
me because I would have at some point, maybe this
when I was in high school, like somebody had like
a second or third hand story of an uncle who
died from exploding gangrenous hemorrhoids. I don't know, I don't
know that they. I did not see an actual medical
paper on this. This was again second or third hand,

(28:57):
but this was the story that was going around, and
so it was enough to make me, uh, you know,
from Earth from a very early point to consider hemorrhoids
as a potential explosive death scenario. Wow, well that does
not sound true. But um okay, how about one about
our Vault episode on dangerous Foods. Oh yes, this comes

(29:18):
from our listener, Melanie. Melanie writes, Hi, Joe and Robert,
I'm listening to your Vault episode on Dangerous Foods. When
you mentioned the toxicity of uncooked or undercooked kidney beans,
I just had to write in and share my story.
One time I decided to make a triple beans summer
salad from scratch with dry beans. I thought that simply
soaking the beans overnight was enough to get them to

(29:39):
the softer texture that we're used to when they come
out of the can. I didn't know they also had
to be cooked. When I ate my beans salad for
lunch the next day, it seemed a little crunchy to me,
but I figured I just hadn't soaked them long enough
and continued to eat it. A couple of hours later,
I started having a lot of stomach discomfort, bloating, and
feelings of nausea. It's so happens that I was starting

(30:01):
my very first day of an internship with a couple
of my classmates. We were in pharmacy school. Go figure,
so I talked to them about it, but we couldn't
figure out what was wrong. When the day was over,
I sat in my car in the parking lot for
about an hour because I was too nervous that I
would get sick during my drive home. When I finally
mustered up the courage to start the forty five minute commute,

(30:21):
I made it about ten minutes down the highway before
I had to pull over and release my stomach contents
on the side of the Highway. I called my husband,
who did some online searching at home to find very
quickly that uncooked beans are in fact toxic to humans,
as you mentioned in the podcast. It was a lesson learned,
and I haven't been able to think of beans the
same way ever since. I am a fairly new podcast listener,

(30:43):
and I love your show. Is that very entertaining to
me during my long commutes to and from work. I
hope your long commutes to and from work, Melanie, do
not continue to involve uncooked being intestinal distress. I'm sorry
to hear that. All right, Well, I think the perfect
email to follow that one up is this email received
from Ellen, which touches on our farting episode that we

(31:06):
aired I think at some point in the last year,
but also the fartonomicon, the fardonomicon yes uh, and also
with some certain tie into our episode on ticks and
UH and related organisms. So Ellen writes, I just listened
to this episode referring to the fartonomicon and loved it
so much. I listened to it a second time right

(31:26):
after to make notes. It was great. I'm glad you
enjoyed it. The skid at the end is, of course
reason enough to to listen to it twice. She says,
just a note about farts. I was recently diagnosed with
lime lime disease, and in the antibiotic protocol to cure

(31:47):
my lime, I went from being one of the gasiest
humans ever to now barely farting. One of the symptoms
to lime is fibro mayalgia, which I was never diagnosed
uh to to having. But when I googled, it realized
that one of the fibros symptoms is excessive gas. It
would be interesting to know different diseases that have gas

(32:08):
involved and how I cured my flatulence while curing my line.
Just an idea for you if you want to do
another fart episode. As you asked about people who don't fart,
I went from farting two hundred times a day too
maybe twice. Thanks Ellen. Now I would have to assume
I don't know, but I would have to assume that
what happened here during the antibiotic protocol is that the

(32:29):
antibiotics cut down your gut bacteria load. Like they they
were harmful to the populations of gut floor you have,
which are what helped produce a lot of the gases
that come out of you during farting right right, or
it just simply created a magical circle into which the
the demon Lord toots for real zes could not pass. Oh,

(32:51):
they were like holy antibiotics. They've been blessed by a priest.
Oh yes, see a little cross in each one, you know.
Speaking of exorcisms and whatnot, we did hear from a
number listeners about laws against exorcism and UH and witchcraft
in Canada, and actually I think a few different individuals
shared stories about it on in our Facebook group. Our

(33:12):
Facebook group is UH the Stuff to Blow your Mind
discussion module. You can find it on Facebook. You have
to you have to apply to join, but basically to
gain access, all you have to do is know the
name of this podcast. That's the only question. It's a
pretty low bar, but you'd be surprised how many people
apply and either don't know that information or forget to
input it. Well. I think that's just an indication that

(33:34):
there are a lot of scammers on Facebook or trying
to join all groups to spam them with you know,
work from home and makes a week. Yeah, but yeah,
we have nothing nothing of that. But we don't have
any of that kind of riff raff in our discussion module.
It's just all listeners to the show posting about episodes
and sharing stuff about squirrels. Yeah. Ever since our squirrel episodes,
we have had a heck of a squirrel takeover on

(33:56):
supplemental digital content there. Yeah, I hope people aren't getting
tied tired of it. They probably are. They probably are
getting tired of squirrels. I don't know. I think there
may be some new territories being uncovered. I feel like
there is a certain amount of repetition, but every now
and then it's just some new angle that I hadn't
thought of. Well, maybe we should mention a couple of
emails we got about squirrels and and related interspecies carnivory.

(34:19):
Let's do this one from Benjamin. Wait. I think this
is not quite squirrels, but it's close. Benjamin says, Hey, guys, first,
let me say thank you for doing what you do.
I wouldn't be able to make my hundred and twenty
mile round trip commute without you guys. That sounds rough, uh,
Benjamin writes, I just listened to the podcast about animals
eating their own feces and loved it, even though I

(34:40):
definitely considered skipping it at first. However, after listening to
the stuff you were saying about rabbits, I had to
write in wait, this is not squirrels, this is rabbit's
eating poop. That's okay. Yeah, that's another animal episode that
I think resonated with a lot of people and produced
a number of field reports. Yes, so, Benjamin writes, it
reminded me of this time I was in college walking
to class and saw a bird dive combing the ground

(35:00):
out of the corner of my eye. Intrigued, I walked
over to get a closer look and saw that there
was a rabbit on the ground being attacked by this bird.
But the rabbit didn't seem to be phazed and continued
to go about its business Reluctantly. I got closer and closer,
and I noticed the rabbit had a live baby bird
on the ground in front of it. This is squirrel territory.

(35:21):
It became clear the rabbit was trying to eat this
little bird. After about twenty minutes of this airborne avian
assault from what I assume was the mother, the rabbit
finally hopped away. When I walked over to the still
alive baby bird to get a closer look at what happened.
It was to my horror that the rabbit had eaten
the legs off of this little bird. Definitely blew my mind.

(35:41):
Thought we had a classic case of binicula on our hands.
Thought you might be interested, and was curious if this
is common? Uh this from Benjamin Nicula, by the way,
is a bunny dracula that is in some what a
young adult or children's books herbivorous though I believe, I
don't know. I've never think well, I haven't either, but
I think bunicular just sucks. The sucks vegetables in some way.

(36:07):
It sounds fun. I had not heard of it before,
but our our our colleague, Lauren Vogelbaum, has a binocular
shirt that she wears to work. Well, assuming this story
is true, I don't know how to explain it. I
do not know if carnivari is common in rabbits. I
have never heard about that before. But then again, I
hadn't heard about it in squirrels until we decided to
dive into squirrel horror. So who knows. Oh, By the way,

(36:30):
minor squirrel slash scug update from my household, Um, it
has been been decreed that the word scuggie is okay,
like Scuggy puts kind of a you know, a fun
twist on scug Oh yeah, right. The Bonnie didn't like
scug because it sounded like you were insulting the squirrel. Yeah,
she said, you know, I can't quite put a finger
on it, but it just it sounds demeaning to the

(36:52):
to the squirrel. But then I would occasionally talk about
going out to feed the scuggies and uh, and then
that she said, that sounds all right, So I'm sticking
with that scuggy. Okay, yeah, I guess it does have
that kind of sound, But as far as I know,
skug has no negative connotations whatsoever. All right, let's take
one more break and we'll be right back. Okay, we're

(37:14):
back now. A number of listeners got in touch with
us about our follow up episode on the object Omu Mua.
We talked not too long ago about how there had
been some subsequent research on the first interstellar visitor object
in our solar system that we know about, an object
that seemed to have come from another star and another
stellar system somewhere out there in the galaxy, passed through

(37:37):
our solar system earlier last year and uh, and there
have been some study since then, one of which sort
of said, you know, it meets a lot of the
characteristics of what we would expect for a light sale
alien probe, but of course we you know, did not
conclude that yes, it is aliens, though the object does
continue to remain very interesting and has gotten arguably even

(37:59):
more into sting. So anyway, here is our first message.
This is from our listener Greg. Greg says, Hey, guys,
just finished the new Omu Mu episode and really enjoyed it.
But one thing stuck out that you guys mentioned in
Passing but didn't really explore. A mumua passed the Sun
inside the orbit of mercury. This seems like an incredible
cosmic hole in one in my book, did this trajectory

(38:21):
allow mumua to gain velocity using the Sun's gravity? What
are the odds of a random object flying into the
Solar system that would have such a perfect trajectory? Thanks,
and keep up the great work. Well, I don't know
how to calculate the odds of an object being like that,
though part of the argument people have made that it
was some sort of targeted probe is that, uh, is

(38:43):
that they thought at least it was very uncommon that
we would encounter a piece of interstellar debris of this
size in these characteristics, because it would it would make
it seem like debris of this kind is much more
common than had previously been assumed. Um. Now, I think
even since we did the episode, I saw at least
a headline for an article that some new candidates for

(39:06):
interstellar debris had been sighted within the Solar System. So
I don't know if that's correct. I didn't look deeply
into that, but if so, that would make it seem well, yeah,
the issue is just that interstellar debris is much more
common than we thought it was. Right. And then, I mean,
it goes without saying that if something from from outside
of our Solar system enters our Solar System, it cannot

(39:27):
help but interact with the gravitational pull of our Sun.
Oh right, And that that's the other thing he says.
You know, would this did it get a speed boost
from the Sun's gravity? Yeah? Absolutely. I mean anything that
passes into the Sun's gravity, well like that, it gets
a tremendous boost in speed as it goes into its
par helion, you know where it's passing closest to the
sun and it's good. Yeah. I don't remember what Umu

(39:49):
MUA's peak speed was, but it was around when it
was you know, slingshotting around the sun like that, right.
But you know, it's kind of like you know, a
log on a stream and the stream is hit the
rapids and things are speeding up, like part part of
it is just that that those are the waters in
which it is moving. You know. So is if it's
intentional or or if it's accidental, which of course is

(40:11):
the more likely scenario. Uh, the the interaction is going
to be the same. Yes, So the answer is yes,
it got it definitely got a speed boost from the
sun as it went around the sun like that. As
to what the odds are that it would have that
trajectory as just a random piece of junk that was unguided,
I have no idea of knowing what those odds would be,
and I would I would suspect that you can't really

(40:32):
calculate what those odds are because you don't have enough
information to write. I mean, that still seems to be
that's an open question, that's very mution discussion, like what
are the odds of these objects? But good question, Greg.
All right, we have another Muamua listener mail, as one
comes to us from Robin, Hi, Robert and Joe. Just
a quick thought after listening to your latest update on
a muumua you mentioned looking for signals of advanced technology,

(40:55):
looking for something like a dicen sphere. This spirit of thought,
what a dark matter is dycens feares? Follow me for
a moment. Here, Large objects in the universe, like galaxies,
behave in a way that makes it seem like there's
a lot of matter out there, a lot of mass
that we cannot see. Thus, dark matter something out there
affecting things, something we cannot detect. Okay, now the dicense
here part. Imagine a efficient dicense fear, somehow capturing and

(41:19):
converting the from nefarious use by dastardly aliens all electromagnetic radiation.
We would then have the mass of a star affecting
everything nearby as usual, but invisible in electro in in
the e M spectrum, we cannot see it. And so
follows my far fetch conclusion. What if dark matter is
a bunch of dycens fears out there, a bunch of

(41:41):
e M invisible stars we cannot detect but which still
exert the gravitational influence. Perhaps a bit far out in
the ort is a theory, but food for thought. In
any case, Thanks for another thought provoking episode and keep
up the great work. Now, I love this as sort
of a sci fi scenario for alien technology, but I think,
uh uh, you know, I could be wrong, but I

(42:01):
think this can't be the case. And I think the
reason is that Dyson's fears would necessarily, according to the
laws of physics, have an e M signature. They would
be detectable by the electromagnetic radiation they produced. Now you
might say, wait a minute. I thought the whole point
of a dicensphere is that it absorbs all of the
light that a sun puts out and it makes that

(42:23):
into useful energy. Well yeah, okay, but then what happens
to that energy? Energy doesn't disappear, it gets used to
do work, and then it gets released as waste energy,
which is heat. So you would be able to see
the infrared heat coming off of these dicense fhares. They
would appear like dark objects that you know, we're not
producing light, but they're producing a kind of light, which

(42:46):
is the infrared radiation that indicates exhaust heat, and of
course the dicens fear would put out a heck of
a lot of exhaust heat. I mean, just imagine all
of the energy coming off of a star getting converted
into heat that's radiating into space. Because we're talking about
a hypothetical civilization here that had to turn to enslaving
stars in order to meet their energy demands. Yeah, so

(43:08):
you know they're they're they're really playing some high powered
video games. Right. Then again, maybe it's some kind of
you know, exotic matter thing that we don't even understand. Yeah,
that seems unlikely, but who knows. That's a great question anyway, Robin,
all right, this next piece of mail comes to us
from our listener Pat. Pat says, Hi, guys, my memory

(43:29):
was jogged when I heard your discussion about to Serve Man,
and this was in our horror Anthology episode at the
end of October, specifically your speculation on chirality and whether
aliens might need differently handed molecules as food. The author
James Blisch adapted Star Trek the original series episodes into
collected short stories during the nineteen sixties and seventies, but

(43:51):
he also wrote an original Star Trek novel called Spock
Must Die. The plot revolves around a transporter accident that
creates a duplicate version of Spock, who, like all such
sci fi mirror beings, is also morally reversed. He's a
bad guy. The problem is that both Spots are physically
identical Vulcans have perfect bilateral symmetry, so much of the

(44:15):
tension of the story comes from not knowing which of
them to trust. One of the Spots barricades himself in
Sick Bay, and when the story all resolves itself, the
reason he chose Sick Bay is revealed. He was mirror Spock,
and sick Bay was the only place on the ship
where he could manufacture the correctly handed molecules to ingest
he couldn't gain sustenance from the ship's normal food. Love

(44:38):
the show keep blowing my mind regards that's awesome. I
didn't expect there to be, because that was the thing
we talked about. It is like the idea that some
an alien creature would not be able to eat any
food on Earth, even if it depended upon you some
sort of similar organic matter, right, that our entire biosphere
might be somewhat poisonous to them in a nesting and

(45:00):
so here's an example of some science fiction that that
that definitely tackles this scenario. All Right, we have a
bit of listener mail here that this one is pretty
exciting because this might be our first bit of listener
mail related to our new podcast Invention. Invention for those
of you are not aware, this is the new show
that Joe and I are putting out. It publishes every Monday.

(45:22):
You can find the website for this podcast at invention
pod dot com. And we recently dropped an episode of
the of this show on the Guillotine into the Stuff
to Blow Your Mind feed And I also made sure
that the landing page for that episode of Stuff to
Blow Your Mind for the Guillotine episode has links out
to the different places you can subscribe to it. Now,
if you like our show, you want to help us out,

(45:43):
don't just listen to an episode of Invention, click that
subscribe button. That is what will really help us out,
and we'll help you out to keep getting episodes in
the future for your enjoyment and edification. Exactly. So Christie
rights corruption, and so Christie right in and says at
the end of the Vending Machine podcast. It was mentioned

(46:03):
in so many words if there were an online equivalent
to reaching your arm up the vending machine to cheat
it or steal from it. This made me think of
the idea of the vending machine double prize. Every now
and again, you put your money in the vending machine,
then get two treats by accident. I don't know if
this has happened to anyone, but I think the online

(46:24):
equivalent would be when some something you buy online is defective.
Usually the company you buy you buy it from lets
you keep it and then send you a new functional product,
kind of like a double prize if you can live
with one defective product. Anyways, I always enjoy listening to
the Invention and Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast on
a weekly basis. You can't have been listening to Invention
on a weekly basis all that long. Well, by that

(46:48):
when we're reading this, there have been what three episodes,
and by the time this episode publishes, they will be
what four or five episodes. So so now is a
great time to get into Invention because you can you
can really start bending them, get in on the ground floor,
like one of those pyramid schemes. Yea Pyramid future episode
of invention. Um we we. We've also heard from some
people just recommending topics for invention. I know we've heard

(47:10):
it the other day. This may have been on the
discussion module, which against stuff, but you mind discussion module
is also a fine place to talk about invention. But
someone said, hey, do one on soap, and that sounds fabulous.
I'd love to do an episode on soap. Yeah, so Christie.
I think this is a really good point because part
of what we were raised in the vending machines episode
is just from my own anecdotal personal experience as a child.

(47:32):
I was commenting that I never would have stolen from
a store that had humans operating it. But I didn't
see I didn't feel like there was any problem trying
to reach up into a vending machine to steal something
out of it, which I don't think I ever accomplished,
but it seemed like a fruitful use of time. And
if this is a generalizable distinction, people make like they're
more comfortable trying to steal from a machine than they

(47:54):
would be trying to steal from anything that has a
visible human involved. Does that also extend online commerce? And
the more that I think about it. Yeah, I think
it probably does, right, because people are all the time.
I mean, even people who would never like shoplift from
a store that has humans operating it, they will i
don't know, maybe claim that they didn't get a package
when they did or something like that from Amazon, right, Yeah,

(48:15):
I mean, especially the Amazon being such a colossal engine
of product delivery. I feel like there'll be occasional situations
by that where yeah, they just say, hey, keep the
original even though it's defective, and you're stuck, like she said,
with one functional product and one maybe slightly dysfunctional product.
But I guess there are probably people out there that
try and gain the system, and then likewise, I'm sure

(48:37):
Amazon has a whole fraud department to deal with that.
I'm not saying I I do that. By the way,
even though when I was a kid, I would have
reached step into the vending machine, I don't do that
with online commerce, but I have I've heard tell of
people doing such a thing. Now. Speaking of the vending
machine episode, we also and I apologize I don't remember
the individual's name offhand, but it was on the discussion
module and they brought up that there is an automat

(48:59):
seeing in Dark City, we discussed it. We discussed that absolutely. Yeah, Okay,
I kind of forgot about that, But this is just
another reason. I just I find myself really wanting to
rewatch Dark City as well, uh, to see that automatic scene,
but also just see all the other spectacular weirdness in
that particular motion picture. Yeah. I haven't watched it in
a while, but I remember it was one of my

(49:20):
favorites back in the day. It's a great movie. Yeah,
and uh, I think the individual that brought up Dark
City on in the discussion module, I think they also
mentioned that they had visited an automat in New York
City at some point, um or it almost visited, or
something to that effect. So yeah, the call is still
out there for anyone who has had it. Really, if

(49:41):
you've had any experience with a weird vending machine, or
or if you you've encountered vending machines of the past
and have tales to tell of them, we would love
to hear hear from you about that. But either way,
if you haven't yet, go check out and invention click subscribe.
All right, maybe one last one here. This came to
us from Drew Drew says, Hey, guys, I was just
listening to part one of your episode on illusory truth,

(50:04):
and that was the pair of episodes we did about
the psychological phenomenon where once you have been exposed to information,
even if that information is false, you're more likely to
believe it later on. Basically, it's like a conditioning you
to information makes it seem more believable even when it's
like obviously untrue. But anyway, Drew says, in that episode,

(50:27):
you brought up how people tend to find more humor
in a joke when they're already familiar with it. I
can't help but wonder if the rise in popularity of
Internet memes can be partly attributed to the same idea.
If you were looking at a trending meme without any context,
it might come across as nonsensical and you wouldn't give
it a second thought, whereas if you're already aware of

(50:47):
the meme, you may be more likely to find it
funny because you already know the punchline. Anyways, I love
the podcast, and I hope you guys can continue to
do it for a long time to come. Thanks. I
think so. I think that would that would why here.
But I find that especially with memes, memes like any
punch punch line, any joke. Uh, there's there's kind of
I think there's a there's a curve right Uh there.

(51:11):
You hear it and then you hear it again and
maybe it's a little funny, but then there's going to
be a dropping off point, like you can only see
a particular memes so many times, particularly I'm thinking like
gift responses on Facebook, uh where where you've seen it
so many times you can predict that it will be
dropped into somebody's comments feed and it loses all comedic value.

(51:32):
You know. This makes me think about a book that
that I've recently been reading is by you You ever
heard of Amusing Ourselves to Death? By Neil Postman. No,
he's this cultural critic, this guy he wrote a book
in the nineteen eighties about about how television was changing
American culture. He basically had this idea that a lot

(51:52):
of what culture is is determined by the dominant forms
of media within it, and so there are some inherent
differences between cult tears where information exchanges dominant dominated by
say like printed text versus television or something like that. Uh,
and of course this was the eight so it was
before the Internet. But the Internet I think preserves a

(52:12):
lot of the elements of television that he was talking about.
I don't know if I agree with his theory or not,
but basically his theory was that one of the effects
of a television based culture is that it becomes that
knowledge is not so much understanding things, but knowing of things.
So knowledge becomes not so much having a deep understanding

(52:33):
or comprehension it it becomes about like recognizing that something
is a thing and that this I I sort of
get the feeling that I don't know. I don't know
if he's right overall, but I see this in trends
in humor, where, like so much modern humor and television
humor seems to be the mere recognition of a thing

(52:53):
that one has encountered before becomes the basis of a joke,
you know, like all those move vies, like the parody
movies that just like put characters from other movies in
them and that's the joke. It's like, oh, there's Napoleon
Dynamite in the background. Now they that that that does
That does make sense. This also makes me think that
we we definitely have to do video drupe at some

(53:15):
point in the in the future because you're already doing
the research for it. Well, UH, just to clarify again,
I'm finding that book very interesting, but I'm certainly not
endorsing it to something that I necessarily where I necessarily
agree with this final conclusion. I haven't finished it yet,
and I don't fully know what I think, but it's
it's certainly provoking thought, alright, but it will tune in

(53:37):
in the future to find out more, all right, So
there you have it. I think all the episodes are
moved into the vault. Um, we've knocked out the first
listener mail episode and really the first episode of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind for twenty nineteen. So UH, we
hope you have enjoyed the ride, and we hope that
you will remain with us as we continue to explore
uh this weird and wonderful world of our us. In

(54:00):
the meantime, head on over to stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. That is the mothership. That's where you'll
find all the podcast episodes, links to our social media accounts,
UH store where you can buy some cool merchandise to
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Rate and review us wherever you have the power to
do so, and again subscribe to Invention, rate and review

(54:22):
Invention as well. Uh and that will really help us
out huge Thanks as always to our excellent audio producers
Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you would like to
get in touch with us directly to let us know
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic
for the future, or just to say hi, you can
email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

(54:54):
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