Listener Mail: Tridents, Aliens, Microgravity

It's time for another dose of listener mail. Join Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick as they read YOUR feedback on recent episodes related to coffee in space, tridents, Jungfrau Park and more. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to
Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick, and it's time for August listener mail. That's right. Uh, yeah,
we almost forgot to do another one of these, but

(00:21):
we've been trying to do them more or less monthly
because that, I mean, that's how much cool listener mail
we get. I mean, we get a lot of just
nice personal comments about how much people enjoy the show.
And you know, sometimes we read one of those or
two of those just to give our you know, ourselves
a pat on the bat. But but we do receive
a lot of of of of really insightful emails about

(00:44):
content that we've covered, uh, you know, listeners sharing their
take on particular topics and occasionally pointing out something we missed.
Even Yeah, you can only patch your own back so
much before it starts to get sore. So maybe we
should just dive straight into some of the fascinating and
strange ideas that our listeners have sent us in reaction
to recent episodes. Let's do it. What do you think

(01:05):
about going back to the year old ashen light. Oh yeah,
the the strange light on the Dark Side of Venus.
You know, our mail bot Carney has has has seen
these lights in person. Oh really yeah, yeah, I didn't
hear this. So so he had a life before he
was a humble mail bot. I mean, he was a
space probe really. Yeah. Not many people realized this from

(01:26):
from which space program? American Soviet what was very hush
hush about that, especially given the current political climate. So
I'm not sure which side he was on. Was a
Bulgarian space probe that went to Venus, found the Action Light,
came back and it's been a cover up ever since. Yeah,
Like he doesn't say much, but I know he's seen
the claims to have seen the action line. So one

(01:47):
of the things we talked about in the Action Light
episode was, of course the possibility that seems like a
very strong possibility that the reports of the lights on
the Dark Side of Venus have just been observer error.
You know, that nobody, nobody is actually seeing anything, that
it was just imagination or artifacts of the technology used
at the time. And then it's kind of occurring at
like the cutting edge of perception without any kind of

(02:09):
way to like photograph or record what is being seen, right,
But of course part of the problem has been while
you've got all these sightings, if you are going to
assume people were really seeing something, what could it be?
What could it have been? And I offered a crazy
idea at the end of the episode, Well, what if
you actually do have organisms floating in the atmosphere of venus,
suspended in droplets in the atmosphere in the clouds, and

(02:31):
and they're actually bioluminescent or somehow reflecting or emitting light
at different frequencies, maybe at times when they bloom, and
this would explain the strange periodicity of the apparent ash
and light sightings. Well, we heard from our listener Michael,
who said, hello, my name is Michael, and I just
started listening to the podcast three episodes in, and I
definitely have more than I want to listen to. I

(02:53):
teach science in seventh and eighth grade, and I love
how much your podcast makes me explore different ideas. I'm
writing in about your most recent pod guests because you
said something right at the end that I thought was
so fascinating. You talked about what if the action light
was the result of micro organisms in the atmosphere. Now,
this is just total off the cuff thinking about what
could be possible, But I feel like that's kind of
exactly what your show is supposed to make you do. Yeah,

(03:15):
I hope. So what if the light is a combination
of both the solar bombardment and the micro organisms. My
thought is this, organisms living up in the atmosphere like
that would obviously be exposed to more solar radiation. They
would need to have a way to deal with the
excess that they don't use. I'm assuming they would be
photo autotrophs of some kind. What if their way of

(03:36):
dealing with the excess energy would be to absorb it.
The electrons would become excited, and then they would admit
that light when the electrons went back to their ground state.
I have no idea if this is possible, because I'm
pretty sure this is not how bioluminescence occurs on our planet,
but let's assume that it is possible. If possible, then
the action light could be the interaction of exponential microorganism

(03:56):
growth that corresponds to extreme solar activity. The high amounts
of both microorganisms and solar activity, it may produce a
light strong enough to be faintly visible to us from Earth.
Having it be the interaction between two rare events would
explain why this only happens infrequently and does not happen
with any discernible pattern to us, because even if we
can analyze solar activity, we wouldn't know when that would

(04:19):
line up with exponential microorganism growth, and after exponential growth,
we have a period of severely decreased population since they
hit their carrying capacity, which would mean that even if
there was high solar radiation, it would not trigger the
ash and light. This would also explain why the light
does not appear to be green as is produced by
the oxygen reactions. Again, pure conjecture, almost certainly incorrect, But

(04:43):
wouldn't that be cool if astronomers had been seeing signs
of life on Venus for hundreds of years and did
not realize it. That would definitely blow my mind. Anyway,
I'm excited to join your audience and most likely will
write in every now and then since I'm a science
teacher and it looks like your podcast is right up
my alley now. Of what he said there, wouldn't it
be um? Wouldn't it be interesting if they were if

(05:03):
what they were looking at was really alien life and
they didn't realize it. Uh, you know, you could say that, well,
some of these individuals were saying it was alien life.
The the version of alien life they were imagining, uh,
was was certainly not correct, right, it was von groy
thousand right. He was saying, Well, what it is is
obviously the coronation of the new Venusian king. Yeah, it's

(05:24):
all those fireworks they're throwing up over this, uh, this
dynastic change that's occurring down there. But that certainly not
the case. But it would be interesting if in a way,
in a very small way, but a pivotal way, he
was actually right. That would be a great vindication for
for von groyth thousand. Also, Michael got back after I
responded and said he'd done a little more research on

(05:44):
this and realized, quote what I was talking about would
be not would not be biolumin essence, but actually biofluorescence,
the ability to absorb in then a midlight of different frequencies.
I wasn't positive if there were organisms on Earth that
could do this, but apparently there absolutely are, so yeah,
this seems theoretically possible. I even found a paper about
scientists looking into plants on Earth needing to protect themselves

(06:06):
from increased UV radiation because of the thinning ozone layer,
and it seemed like this is a possibility they were
looking into. Uh So, yeah, thanks again for getting in
touch Michael that that is a highly interesting speculative idea.
I wonder if we already know things that could bat
down this hypothesis, things already in evidence, or if somebody
would need to do any new observations or experiments to

(06:27):
see if this, uh this kind of thing were possible.
I don't know. Carney's very hushed hush on the whole
situation though. Also just another idea that came to us
from our listener Justin on Twitter. Justin wrote a thought
that came to his mind is what if the ashen
light is venus moving fast enough in relation to the
Earth to blue shift infra red light so heat into

(06:51):
the visible spectrum? And I thought that was an interesting question.
I don't have a way of evaluating that. My guests
would be that blue shifted light from the infra red
would still I mean, you could do that if it's
moving fast enough. That's possible from the shorter wavelengths of
thermal emission. But my guests would be probably just that
it wouldn't be bright enough to see from Earth even
if it shifted into the visible spectrum. But I don't

(07:12):
know for sure. That's that's another thing worth checking with
an expert about. All right, well, I'm gonna call Carney
over here. A is some some more listener mail here
for us, and it's relating to our recent episode on
drinking coffee, more importantly, brewing coffee in microgravity in orbit. Uh, specifically,
you know, aboard the the I S. S SO first

(07:32):
have to acknowledge, Nathaniel wrote in. Listener Nathaniel wrote in
and pointed out that I referred to the I S.
S Presso machine as being a four pound machine as
opposed to a forty pound machine. Okay, well that's an
order of magnitude of difference, yeah, but just about one zero.
It didn't really affect that the rest of the content
of the episode, but we did put we did tag
that old episode for people who are listening to it

(07:53):
for the first time. Um. We also heard from a
listener on Twitter. Uh this as Twitter listener r P
r P rode in and said, uh, listen this morning,
great show as always, I don't drink coffee, So my
question is can I have my mountain dew in space?
Apart from all the bad stuff, it does to me

(08:13):
curious about carbonated liquids in space, and so I thought
this was an interesting question. Uh, you know, not when
we could do a whole episode on But I looked
into it a little bit and I did find a
NASA re NASA page about this. Uh. If you look
up NASA carbonated beverages in space you'll find this as well.
But the basic answer breaks down to this. So the

(08:34):
bubbles of carbon dioxide and carbonated beverages, they aren't buoyant
in a witless environment, so they remain randomly distributed throughout
the fluid even after you swallow it. This means that
carbonated beverages, including soft drinks and of course beers, uh,
they they may become a foamy mess. Uh, NASA says
during space travel. WHOA, Now this makes me think, do

(08:56):
you burp in space? I've never thought about this for now.
Bubbles from your digestive system of gas would seem to
rise naturally through buoyancy so that you could burp. But
if you're in a microgravity environment or in zero G
would bubbles rise to the top four? Youtuberp this is

(09:17):
it's interesting. I don't know they've ever read anything about it,
or if I did, it was overshadowed by all the
content about pooping in space. Anyway, that the NASA piece continues.
It points out that the carbonation in the soda will
also not separate in micro gravity, and in the absence
of gravity, the carbon dioxide bubbles and carminated beverages go
through and astronauts digestive system rather than being yeah, rather

(09:38):
than being belched out as on Earth. So that seems
to lead that seems to lead some weight to the
idea that maybe as you're nuts, don't belch um. And anyway,
they point out that this could cause adverse side effects
as well. So if you're gonna have mountain dew in space,
um I would I would imagine it would have to
be flat mountain dew. Yeah. Wow, that that is a

(10:00):
horrible thing to imagine. But I guess it could still
be cold or hot. If you're a hot mountain dew enthusiasts,
a hot catheter of mountain dew just letting for you, nothing,
nothing gets you invigorated to to go fix that space
pro in your little urinal shaped cup. I think what
we need to design is a machine for astronauts to
burp with. It would somehow use momentum on the body.

(10:22):
Would be called like kinetic burp NG. It would be
kind of like that scene in Willy Wonka with the
fizzy lifting drink. Yeah, like centerfuge the burps out of here.
But it's just another example of all the various functions
we take for granted here on Earth, in our our
our one G of gravity. This comes to us from
our listener, Evan, and it's about space coffee. Evans says, recently,

(10:44):
I listened to Astronauts and Spaceships Getting Coffee, great episode,
and I thought i'd write in to share some experiences
that I had with an experiment testing as zero G
workaround designed for the I s S, particularly as it
involves the use of centripetal force to create artificial gravity
in ways that I don't think you've discussed before. Namely,
rather than creating gravity for the entire space station or

(11:07):
spacecraft by having the whole thing constantly revolved, instead, you
can create localized gravity within the station or craft by
spinning platforms etcetera for specific purposes such as exercise. Robert,
I think we did talk about that a little bit
in our Artificial Gravity episode, didn't Yeah, I think we did.
We may not have. I don't think we discussed it
in the coffee episode, that's true, But the Artificial Gravity episode,

(11:30):
I think we explored that angle. But if I'm wrong,
maybe that's worth a look in the future. Anyway. Evan
continues quote. It was about twelve years ago when I
was a horrendously impoverished university student. I needed money pretty
desperately and didn't have much time or willingness to work
in those days. So a friend of mine in the
biology department mentioned to me that there was a bulletin
board for the biosy med School area of the campus

(11:52):
which listed opportunities for students to take part in faculty
members experiments as paid subjects. I found one that offered
decent pay, applied and was immediately accepted, all without inquiring
about or being informed of the nature of the experiment.
The money was decent, so it seemed too good to
be true. As it turns out, a professor of surgery,
I assume it was Dr Anton jessep Uh If I

(12:14):
recall correctly, had designed a machine to counter the deleterious
effects of zero G environments on the human body, and
was having it tested to see about trying to get
it on the I s S. It was basically a
pillar installed in a small, empty room, fastened at floor
and ceiling, and outfitted with two arms which ran horizontal
to the ground. The arms could spin. One of the

(12:36):
arms terminated in a bicycle and the other in a
small platform. The idea was for one astronaut to pedal
the bicycle, thus spinning the arms, while another astronaut would
stand on the platform and do exercises. Both astronauts would
thereby get in some crucial exercise at a measurable and
adjustable level of artificial gravity. There was a monitor on
the bike with a readout about the various relevant forces

(12:59):
at play, be approximate number of gees to which the
exercisers were subjected, et cetera. Uh something that's small, man,
I would worry about Coriola's forces on that. Yeah, I mean,
I'm getting a little dizzy and nauseous just imagining this
in my head. Yeah, so Evan continues. It sounds all
well and good, but for two facts that in order
to measure the effects, muscle biopsies were required before and

(13:21):
after each workout, and that I have a propensity for
horrible motion sickness. The first time I gave it a go,
I made it through a few sets of rapidly spinning
squats that higher than normal gravity. Then when the machine
began to slow its spin, I got horribly sick and
threw up everywhere. Vomits flattered on wide swaths of floor
and wall, of course, as I was still spinning fairly

(13:42):
quickly at that point. So I went into the control group. Uh,
he says, he went into the control group, quote, which
did just normal squats to provide some frame of reference
for the efficacy of the machine. Is that something you're
supposed to do, take somebody from your test group and
then put them in your control group. Or is he
just like wandering, uh like dizzally into the into the

(14:05):
control group. Oh maybe I don't know. I don't want
to be unfair. That seems like something that might not
be something you're supposed to do, But I don't know.
Evan continues. It still wasn't a great experience, though, as
the muscle biopsies were pretty rough, since we were testing
out the efficacy of squats. They had to cut into
the skin of my calf, then screw a kind of
small metal tube down into the muscle. It was a

(14:27):
fun feeling, even with local anesthetic. The tube would then
engage a bit of suction to get some of my
muscle into it and kind of cap itself with a razor,
thus trapping a small standardized amount of leg muscle inside,
about the size of one piece of Kicks Cereal my kicks.
It's just a standard measurement of muscle tissue. Right, car

(14:51):
gets forty kicks to the hogshead and um Evan writes,
it's strange to look at one's own leg muscle. Yeah,
I bet it was much whiter than I expected, more
like chicken than pork or beef. So yeah, I would
get these muscle biopsies before and after the workout every
day for two weeks. If you think your legs are
sore after an ordinary workout, you get the idea. At

(15:13):
the end of two weeks, I got a check for
about four and fifty dollars. Not sure if it was
worth it. The money's long spin, but I still have
the little regularly spaced incision scars on my leg makes
a good story. Though. To sum it up, I don't
know if the machine made it to the I s S,
but from what the professor was saying, it seemed like
the results were looking pretty promising, at least as the

(15:34):
experiment was finishing up. Hope you found this interesting and
thanks for your podcast. It keeps me company in my
long idle evenings. More episodes per week. Please, As you're
stitching up your test subjects, it's probably a good idea
to tell them that this looks promising. I don't want
to say, like, yeah, I guess this is a loud
goose chase. Uh yeah. Thanks for the leg though, thanks

(15:55):
for the leg muscle kernels, Thanks for the vomit samples. Yeah, well,
this I have to say this is one of This
is a thoroughly enjoyable bit of listener mail, but also
one of the more um uh kind of nauseating list
your mails because we had the spinning contraption, the vomiting,
the the the leg muscle samples. There was a lot
of squeamish content. So you know, five stars, I'm gonna

(16:18):
go to six best new email. Oh yeah, okay was
our scale. We've we've not established the scale is Wait, no,
we got the Pitchfork scale, so I I'd say eight
point three best new email. Okay, we got a lot
of great emails on the way, so maybe it'll get beaten.
Who knows. Here's another one related to the coffee episode,
and this is just an answer to some of the
sci fi questions we had. This comes from Theodore. Theodore

(16:40):
says quote, I'm sitting here drinking a hot black cup
of coffee, listening to your most recent episode on coffee
and space. I just wanted to write in and include
some other books with space coffee. You missed Dune spice coffee. This,
of course, is a big one that I'm kind of
shocked that we didn't bring it up, given we've we've
done whole episodes on Dune. Now imagine we mentioned uh
spice coffee in those episodes. But in anyway, he says,

(17:04):
quotes said to be mixed with the spice milans, giving
it a cinnamon flavor. It has never made clear if
the coffee in question here is the same beverage we
drink now, or if the word has morph to refer
to other hot beverages. That's a good point Ring World,
a book I was going to write in about for
the summer reading episode, features basically a replicator on board

(17:26):
the ship that can produce coffee. I highly recommend this
book for you guys, not because of the coffee, but
the imaginative aliens and the artifacts left behind by ancient
super galactic civilizations. I do have to say, this is
a book that's long done on my reading list and
I've never picked it up. But it's it's a famous work.
This is one of the ones where I think we
must have had at least a half dozen listener males

(17:48):
tell us, we've got to read this one lately. I
don't know why. I must be good. It must be good. Yeah,
I mean it is. It is a famous work. Like,
there's no reason for me to be I'm not, you know,
actively avoiding. Uh. The next one is Um Artemis and
it has lunar coffee. Says that this book was written
by Andy Weir, writer of The Martian. Both books are great,

(18:10):
but Artemis has better or more interesting coffee. In the
Lunar City, the primary industry is aluminum production. A waste
product of that is oxygen, and the city uses that.
The city uses to breathe. However, to replicate Earth's atmosphere,
they would need to bring tons of nitrogen up to
the Moon from Earth, too expensive. Instead, they have a
pure oxygen environment with of the air pressure of Earth.

(18:33):
This lowers the boiling coin of water to something like
sixty five degrees celsius, meaning that all coffee comes out
weak to earthling taste. That's a bummer. And then Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy something almost but not quite entirely
unlike tea. The replicator in h h G G is
unable to replicate Earth tea, and when Arthur finally gets

(18:55):
it to work, it shuts down the computer, nearly killing
everyone on the ship. You know, this is something that
I feel like doesn't get explored enough. Uh, The idea
of cooking and preparing food and everything in space. We've
talked about how foods and drinks don't necessarily taste the
same in space because if you're in a microgravity or
zero G environment, you're often congested and stuff like that,

(19:16):
Like it changes you. The environment changes your ability to
taste things. But if you are cooking in space or
preparing hot beverages, it also changes the fundamental properties of
chemical reactions. Things happen in different temperatures. You might not
be able to achieve the same tastes in prepared foods,
even if you could taste them the same way. Yeah,

(19:38):
I mean it is ultimately a fool's errand to to
try and create good space food, Like space food is
always going to be space food, or maybe it's maybe
it's just a different kind of thing. I mean, who's
going to be the first great chef beyond Earth? It's
a great question, but there's gonna also going to be
a pretty low bar to set, right, Like the first
chef on Mars is going to be the greatest mart
and chef. Ever, what do you what do you think

(20:01):
the first restaurant beyond Earth? What is that going to be? Like?
What kind of food will it serve? Well, I would
hope it would be like a Taurus pizza. I'm thinking,
you know where it spends, because it has to spend
to keep the toppings on it. So the the like
the outside of the Taurus is just the bottom of
the crust. The inside of the Taurus is the surface
of the pizza, and so the toppings are held in

(20:21):
by what's the trifcal force I think it's gonna be
one of those irritating cute cie places that thinks it's
just a hilarious to put bacon and dishes where it
doesn't belong. Well, we'll see what would be real bacon
mill or it would it be like some sort of
like a that grown um pig it's grown on the ship,
or like a Martian pig variant. So many questions bacon

(20:42):
protein product. Okay, what's up next? Well, I think next
we should take a short break and when we come back,
we will lead some listener mail related to our episode
on the Trident. Thank alright, we're back. So the first
a bit of trident to email. We did this whole
episode about the about the trident, the mythical symbolic nature

(21:05):
of the trident, and I believe we we touched on
at one point the idea that you don't really see
you don't see a trident in nature, that a that
a trident is. Is this this human construction and therefore
has all of this human meaning associated with it. We
had one listener, Cindy Leu right to us on Twitter
and she shared a photograph with us of a of
a fossil or a reconstructed fossil and says she says, quote,

(21:29):
this trilobyte, while a syrops has a trident to pick
with you. Uh. And indeed, this particular trilobyte has a
trident formation, a trident apendage coming out of its head,
like it's a unicorn trilobyte with a trident instead of
a single horn. It's the straight up devil. Yeah, she says,

(21:50):
um And I wrote her back and said, oh, well
that this is wonderful the idea, And she says, thanks.
Trilobytes fascinating me. They have such a wide collection of
weird and wonderful apendages. Too bad all we have now
are their fossils. Or is she saying she wants to
live in a world where she's completely covered in triobytes? Well,
I mean it sounds kind of nice. But anyway, I
was looking into this a little bit, like why is

(22:11):
this trident there? Why why would the organism have this structure?
And it turns out there are a few different theories
as to why it's there. We don't know for certain.
No one is that it's a means of of of
of levitating itself above the sea floor, lifting up from
the sea floor. Essentially, you know, an appendage, or it's
some sort of a sophisticated sensory organ, or it's a

(22:32):
mechanism for hiding or defending, or that this is just
an example of sexual dimorphism and it's you know, somehow
play it would have played a role in mate selection,
or it's a sexual or cast polymorphism as in social insects.
So a few different possibilities there. But indeed, uh, nature
doesn't give us a lot of tridents, but nature gave

(22:54):
us at least one trident, and you'll find it on
a species of trilobyte. That's worthwhile. Trident. Yeah, all right,
Now Karnie is bringing me another bit of listener mail,
this one on his own tried and appendage, and this
one comes to us from Rob. Hey, Robert and Joe.
I just listened to your episode and tried its and
not only was it a great listen, but it really
got my brain grinding away on the magic of the

(23:14):
number three. That's part of what we talked about in
the episode is like why do we assigned three this
magical power? Rob says, quote, I have often bucked can
convention with my beliefs on two fundamental time measures. I
don't think of seasons in the term of spring, summer, autumn,
and winter, but more of extreme transition extreme. I also

(23:34):
don't think of the day in terms of morning, afternoon, evening,
and night, but like extreme transition extreme, I think of
it like the infinity symbol. To the early humans, there
was a cyclic pattern of time of light, a transition
of light, a time of dark, a time of transition
of light, a time of light, et cetera. Similarly, for
early humans living outside of equatorial areas, there was a

(23:57):
cyclic pattern of time of warmth and transition of Aren't
the time of cold, a transition of warmth, a time
of warmth, etcetera. Maybe that kind of perspective on cycles
of the day and seasons also led to the magic
attributed to three I guess the same could also be
said of lunar cycles full moon transition, new moon, transition,
full moon, etcetera. Additionally, there's the riddle of the sphinx. UH.
The answer speaks to three phases of life infant, adult,

(24:20):
old age UH. This holds true for plants and animals.
To the ancient paradigm is connected to the much more
modern maiden mother and chron aspects of the goddess and neopaganism,
which also helps keep the power of three alive. The
ancient Greeks had the three Fates, which were said to
tell the fate of a day of a day's old child.
Shakespeare had the three Weird Sisters in Macbeth, who also

(24:41):
prophesies the fate of Macbeth. Uh. There is a clear
multicultural attribution of magic and supernatural ability to the number three.
Pure speculation on my part, but I think the perspective
on days, season's life, human plant, animal cycles, and maybe
even lunar cycles that I mentioned earlier played a part
in this attribution. I think these are common experiences too
many early cultures that early humans would want to explain

(25:03):
and understand, defining them in a similar way three phases.
They could all be explained with a single answer, a
supernatural entity. Oh and then there's the triangle, a very
stable basic geometric shape with three corners. Three equals stable.
I remember back in high school one of the cool
English teachers I had told us to watch movies and
plays with an eye for people standing in triangles. He

(25:24):
said that pattern is often used to denote strength, especially
if there are two people standing in close proximity to
the camera and a third standing behind and slightly elevated.
That showed the third person was the leader and that
role was bestowed by the two others. The variation was
usually used when the people are moving. The leader is
in front of the triangle taking a leadership role, with

(25:46):
the other two falling in behind. He used a west
side story as an example. Not sure it holds one
of true at the time, but a fun visual exercise. Nonetheless,
it could be way off, but it has been a
fun thought exercise. Thanks for stirring the pot of my imagination.
Cheers Rock. Yeah. I think this is a bunch more
examples of the the seemingly um innate magical signaling of

(26:11):
the number three that it seems to tell us that
something important is going on, and when something important is
going on, of course something magical is going on. Yeah.
I like the point about the triangle structure and film. Uh.
I don't remember this coming up in film classes I had,
but I instantly think to say Conan the Barbarian because
you meet Falsa Doom. But it's not just Thosa Dom.
Thalsa Doom has got his to his two thugs there.

(26:33):
You wouldn't have a Thalsa Doom without a finely Thorsen, right.
And then the other guy whose name I forget that
was the football player. Yeah, he only has one line
in the whole movie, but it's the most perfect execution
of a one word line in a in a film
I've ever seen. What's the word? It's you. He just
says you like he sees and it it helps you
don't remember the dramatic music. But I was thinking it
would be great if the word is like carrots that

(26:57):
but that's just as hard, really, I feel. You know,
when a character has like a whole monologue to really
lay out how they feel about something, it's also Doom's
got great monologue. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's also Doom has
just got miles of of of of dialogue and monologues
to to just lay out whose character is and what
defines him. This character has just got that one word,

(27:17):
and yet he manages to do it, so it's it's
arguably a better performance. Nice job anyway you will contemplate
this on the Tree of Woe. Let's move on to
some emails in response to our episode about the ancient
aliens ideas, Oh yes, we got some good ones on this, Yeah,
a lot of good ones here. I was kind of surprised.
I don't think we heard from anybody who was like, hey,

(27:38):
I believe in ancient aliens and I'm mad that you
guys don't. Um. Yeah, I was, well, you know, I
guess I wasn't hoping for that, but I was thinking
we might hear from someone who would, maybe you know,
whould maybe be on towards that end of the spectrum
as opposed to the more purely skeptic, because we kind
of we we in that episode we engaged with the idea,

(28:00):
you know, as as much as we could while remaining
skeptical about it. We talked about the way Carl Sagan
engaged with it. Right, the idea is that so like
the Eric von Danecken approach is obviously you know, that's
a nonstarter, it's nonsense. But there could be an intelligent
way to approach this idea and look for evidence of it.
And Carl Sagan laid out some really good thoughts about

(28:21):
that and some stuff he wrote in the sixties and seventies. Yeah,
because while the while a lot of ridiculous stuff has
been done in the name of this hypothesis. The hypothesis
itself is is perfectly sensible. If there are aliens, then
they may have been here before. And that's there's there's
nothing so shameful about that sentence. What would evidence of

(28:41):
it look like if it were to exist, right, And
that's where we and that also is is a fair discussion.
But then when we look for that evidence, we just
do not find it. Right. But we did find a
lot of great listener response to this episode. We did,
so I am going to read our first one. Let's say,
let's let's look first at the one from Graham. Graham rights,

(29:02):
hi all, just now catching up on episodes of stuff
to blow your mind and just listen to the episode
on the Chariots of the Gods. The reason I have
to play catch up now is that I was leading
some trips of high school students for the New York
Times and nat GEO student Trips. One of those trips
was to Switzerland, where I had a chance to take
one of my students to the Young Frau Park in Interlochen. Yes,

(29:24):
I knew somebody out there had to have been there.
I'm an astrobiologist and someone with an interest in the
ancient aliens ideas. I thought i'd share my experience in
Young Frau Park. When you arrive at the park, it
has an eerie feeling of being a memorial to something dead.
While we were there, we saw only three employees and
the parking lot was almost entirely empty. There was a

(29:46):
small school group there when we arrived, but for most
of our several hours in the park, it was just
two of us and another pair of people. Since the
turnout is so low and there are only a few employees,
most of the exhibits are closed except for at two
specific times each day. This meant that one employee and
the other pair of people were with us in every

(30:07):
exhibit as we made our way around. The exhibits were beautiful,
with structures built to mimic pyramids of Egyptians and Mayans
or the vimana of ancient sanscrit stories. Most of the
exhibits have little pre show halls where you can walk
at your leisure and read about some of the artifacts
from ancient peoples that von Danikin and others think might
have come from alien influences. However, most of these pre

(30:30):
show areas can be explored in fifteen minutes or so.
Each exhibit is then really just a movie theater built
to resemble some facet of the ancient society in question.
The movies are fun to watch. The mostly seem low
budget and have c g I that feels like something
from the late nineties. Oh that's always that's the best.
Each of these movies presents that some topic related to

(30:52):
ancient people nasca lines, pyramids, vimana, etcetera, and then presents
the idea that maybe the constructions and no ledge of
the ancients came from aliens. There's even a video that
presents a giant alien space battle in Earth's orbit, although
the park does present the ideas as being merely possible.
One thing that I took away from the park is

(31:12):
that it feels like von Danikin's personal shrine to himself.
There are copies of his books all over the park.
There are pictures of him in various places. There are
even signs saying when he'll be in the park next
to give a lecture. Though I can't imagine a lot
of people are there for such events. I can't actually
see how the park even remains open. Maybe there are

(31:33):
some other days when they do more business, but I
doubt they see much more than a hundred people on
any given day. Cheers. Well, this is direct report from
the field. Amazing, this is great now. You know, one
might say, Graham, just because you you know, you didn't
see evidence for how humans are maintaining this magnificent creation.
Maybe it is because it is the work of alien

(31:56):
That is a great thing to point out. Yeah, how
could humans a loan have conceived such a wonder Another
thing this makes me think about, with all the like
pictures of him everywhere in the books, is it makes
me think about your comparison to l Ron Hubbard. Yeah,
I do get I did get a strong leron hubbard vibe,
But I mean still I am jealous that he got

(32:18):
to go there, because when I was reading about it
in UM, when we're researching that episode, I just I
really wanted to check it out for myself. You know
what this actually makes me think about is how I
would like to go to a place that's just take
out the ancient aliens aspect and just have an ancient
civilizations park that it's just like a giant imagine like

(32:40):
a Disney World, but it's all recreations of civilizations of
the ancient world, you know, trying to recreate what a
street would look like in their culture with original type architecture,
maybe re rebuildings or recreations of the wonders that they built.
That'd be awesome because they are truly wonders, and you
don't have too you don't have to see them through

(33:02):
the you know, the lens of ancient alien speculation to
to to give it that wonder Like the pyramids are amazing. Uh,
you know, these various other you know, architectural or cultural
creations are amazing and and and they are amazing just
as pure human creations. And of course you can actually
visit these the ones that still exist. You can't visit them.

(33:24):
You can't visit all of them because some of them
have been destroyed or inaccessible or whatever. But yeah, I
think it'd be great to build a place like this.
It's just easier for people to get to, you know.
We also heard from listener Kira who wrote in and
she said, hello, there, I was listening to your Chariots
of the God episode guest today, where you were discussing
the name of the uh name of the Young Frau
park in Switzerland. Young Frau actually means virgin in German,

(33:47):
which added to the weirdness of that park for me,
which might have been a loss to other listeners due
to the mistranslation. To young woman, that's what I guessed
it might have meant, So it's she says, it is
not that un com and to name mountain peaks young
Frau or version. But calling this park the Virgin park
made me chuckle a bit, since it promotes these bizarre

(34:08):
concepts of human kinds origins, whilst ancient aliens theory also
touches upon biblical stories where the virgin is obviously an
important symbol. So I thought it would be amusing to
point this out since this actually backs up your arguments
made at the end of the episode regarding the adaptation
of religious motifs for such pseudoscience alternative religion theories. Although

(34:29):
these are just my own musings about the name of
the park, keep out the good work, as your voices
helped me get through my insomnia and university stresses, So
please do not ever stop greeting from the Netherlands. Kira,
We all plan on stopping. Thanks a lot, Kira. Well, hey,
while we're talking about Young Frau Park, might as well.
Revisit our comments about Dollywood. We talked about Dollywood in
an episode for some reason. I guess it just came up,

(34:50):
and I was just talking about like the different types
of parks one comes to expect in the United States.
I think I think I admitted I'd never been to Dollywood,
so I didn't mean to judge it harshly, but I
is trying to imagine, if it's a Dolly Parton themed park,
what is it like Dolly Parton song themed rides? So
they have a Jolene roller coaster. I was confused, but
Amy enlightened us. So our listener Amy says, Hi, so

(35:13):
you guys were talking about Dollywood and implying it's not good.
I thought the same until I went with my family.
It is one of the coolest tourist places ever. When
we went it was International Week. They had acts and
vendors from all over the world. As part of the
regular permanent park. There are many local crafters who get
an excellent place to sell their crafts. They have glassblowing,

(35:34):
wrought iron, sculpture, yarn and sewing arts. They also have
a large area of free trade vendors. Next to this,
there is a bald eagle sanctuary. They have local folk
musicians and regular exhibits on conservation. Dolly's childhood home is there,
and it was about the size of a small hotel
room for her entire large family. They use newspaper ads

(35:55):
to decorate the walls. Severe Ville, Tennessee, which is basically,
if you're not familiar with East Tennessee geography, it's it's
like right next to Pigeon Forge where Dollywood is. Severe
Ville also or servier Ville is my Canadian UH College
instructors referred to it at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
Um is it. Severeville is also the setting for Corman

(36:17):
McCarthy's fantastic novel Child of God. Oh yeah, yeah, it is,
which I do not think is reflected at all in
the Dollywood attractions. I don't think they have Child of God.
Have a Child of God ride The scene where he
goes to get the axe reforged, remember that one? Oh no,
I don't. I don't remember that scene. I think it
was more traumatized by other scenes in that time. Oh no,

(36:37):
that's a great scene. And like the murderer goes to
get his ax worked on at a forge somewhere, and
the smith or the forge worker whoever the guy is,
he like tells him everything he's doing as he does
it um and then at the end he is like,
think you could do that. And then the guy goes
do what Okay, it does ring a bell does ring?
But anyway, I started picking up. She just Amy continues

(37:00):
to talk about how Severeful in Tennessee, which is in
that area, was very poor. Uh and the Dolly Pardon
put the park there and employed a lot of people,
created a bustling commercial area. She says, quote, I think
you should have an episode on one of your sister
podcasts about it and her. She does many good works
and is an especially good friend to the drag queens
who portray her. Goes to show you can't judge a

(37:23):
theme park by I don't know, well, thanks to Amy,
I I did not in any way I mean to
impugne Dolly Pardon. I don't know a whole lot about her,
but from what I know, I think Dolly Pardon is great.
Oh yeah, I agree. I did not. I certainly did
not mean to imply that Dollywood was not good. I
have heard nothing of good, great things about it from

(37:44):
family members who have gone there and uh, And I
am aware that that Dolly Parton has has done a
lot of good work in that area. Yeah, I didn't
know she did anything with like eagle conservation and all that.
I wasn't familiar with that. I knew about like the
job creation in the severe able Pigeon Forge area, but
but that was about the extent of it. Well, yeah,
good for Dolly. You know, I don't know if she

(38:04):
ever would have predicted that people would be out there
having a conversation about her in a podcast with reference
to a park in Switzerland about ancient aliens. But but
but great for Dolly. All right, here's another one from
that has to do with our our Ancient Aliens Chariot
of God's episode. This one's from Mike. Mike says, hey, guys,
listening to your recent discussion regarding ancient alien speculation and

(38:26):
its appearance in science fiction. I was struck by a
couple notable to me of missions uh in the in
the season two episode of the original Star Trek series
who mourns for an as. I won't summarize it here
other than to say that it is a It is
definitely a relevant example with Kirk at one point observing
that creatures such as he could have visited Earth informed

(38:49):
the basis of classical Greek mythology. The episode has a
thoughtful yet playful take on the idea, overlapping most with
the Carl Sagan school of thought on the topic. Star
Trek touches on the concept again in the Next Generation
episode The Chase. This time the speculation is presented in
a reversal at the end. No guilt for spoilers here.

(39:10):
The episode is not that strong and conforms more to
the species of ancient alien speculation we saw in Prometheus.
I don't know that I could claim either of these
as the greatest examples of the genre, but they were
both mainstream programs, and the original series episode would have
definitely left the nineteen seven viewer with something to think about.
Love the show, in my honest opinion, best pot on

(39:31):
the web. Keep it up, Mike, Yeah, and I I
appreciated this, you know, I um, I've never really watched
Classic Track. I don't know. I just I have a
certain aversion to it. I don't know, I just can't
get I didn't watch it when I was young enough
or whatever. But but I watched the heck out of
Star Trek the Next Generation, and I do find like

(39:52):
now that he mentioned, I do fondly remember the Chase episode,
and I do remember it feeling really amazing at the
time when I was watching it in like early junior
high or something. And that was probably my first encounter
with the concept of ancient aliens and like a purely
fictional work as opposed to the you know, sort of
the pseudoscience of In Search of which I think I
referenced in that episode. Well, speaking of that kind of amazement,

(40:15):
I should mention just one last listener mail we got
about ancient aliens from our listener Alexandra who she She
said that when she found out we were doing an
episode about chariots of the Gods, she lost her mind
a bit, and she said, quote that was one of
those self discovery, coming of age outlandish ideas books that
I found fascinating in college. You know, when your personal

(40:37):
reading list includes books like Celestine Prophecy and Ishmael. I
love Ishmael, by the way, I don't know. It was
a book by Daniel Quinn. It's essentially a conversation between
a human and talking gorilla covering you know, a lot
of topics about human nature and conservation, etcetera. It's I
recommend it, I recommend Ishmael. That sounds worth checking out,

(40:59):
but continues while you all were describing the passage about
Ezekiel's account of angels in the Bible, and absolutely Yen
came over me to hear a follow up to this
podcast on the book Food of the Gods. If it's
the theme, hear me out. This book explains the idea
of the forbidden fruit of the Western Adam and Eve
narrative as being the magic mushroom that when they the

(41:21):
fruit quote and their eyes were opened and they saw
the shame in their nakedness a k a. They developed consciousness.
This narrative explains the concept that psychedelics could have developed
our concept of God because we projected a creator through
hallucinations in our own image. It also has some other
noteworthy concepts regarding the development of language. YadA YadA. Anyway,

(41:42):
I'd love to hear your view on this book. It
could get met a real quick. Thanks guys. I love
your show. Well, we've actually been talking about doing an
episode on Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna. Yeah,
it's one of those that I, uh judge from a distance,
I have not yet been able to ascertain whether it's
just a bunch of pseudoscience or whether there's some good
stuff in it, so it might be worth a look

(42:04):
figure it out. Yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to looking
at it more closely. I picked up a copy of it.
I haven't started reading it yet, but uh, I believe
it was I think I read some some commentary from
I believe it was John Horrigan who who had some
nice things to say about Food of the Gods and
use it as a He was making the argument that
that this is an example of like the serious Terence mckenne,

(42:27):
or at least the the Terence McKenna that was that
that wanted to, you know, actually put on his academics
hat as opposed to his um shaman shaman hat. Yeah,
which are both were the hats. We need scientists and
we need shaman's um, you know, but you shouldn't confuse
the two. Yeah, we should not confuse the two. So
look for possibly look for an episode on that in

(42:48):
the future. We're gonna have We're gonna look, We'll look
at it and then proceed from there. If if it
looks like a good topic totally, Thanks Alexandra. So I
think we should take a look at maybe a few
short ones before we take another break. How about this
one from Heidi? I thought this was kind of interesting. Uh,
this was like some anthropology coming from the world of retail.
So Heidi says, Hey, guys, I've been in retail for

(43:12):
all of my working life and have noticed something pretty interesting.
Imagine a situation where two of the exact same items
are sitting next to each other on a shelf. This
happens a lot, especially with items that sell well. I've
noticed in an overwhelming number of cases, people choose the
item on the left over the item on the right,

(43:32):
despite those being the same item. I wonder if the
reason for this is that we as Americans read and
write starting on the left side of the paper. And
if that's the case, is it different in other countries
where they start on the right side of the paper.
Love your work, keep it up. That is first of all,
an interesting observation that I've never made. Yeah, And secondly
I think that is that sounds like a perfectly logical

(43:54):
hypothesis for what's going on there. Yeah, that that's worth investigating.
I wonder if anybody has ever looked in this into
this science quickly. I mean, if that is a real phenomenon,
which I trust your experience, it sounds like that very
well could be. Here's a variation I wonder about, Robert.
Do you find yourself not wanting to pick the first

(44:14):
item displayed on the shelf, but rather wanting to reach
behind it to take the second or third of the
same item from the shelf at the grocery store. Oh? Yes,
for two reasons, because the first one has probably been handled,
and I want something that's handled less, even if it's
in packaging for some reason. And then also there's this
perhaps wives tale. I don't know if this is true,

(44:35):
but somebody at some point told me that the fresher
items are in the back because they want, you like
if it's you know, some sort of produce, because they
want to sell off the older items which are upfront.
Again that this may be completely, uh, you know, just
a complete lives tale for all I know, Well, in
my experience, that is absolutely true. I've worked in groceries. Yeah,

(44:55):
so not plural. I have worked in a grocery store.
When I worked and grocery store, I did grocery stocking,
like dairy and stuff like that, and we absolutely tried
to order the items so that the freshest ones were
in the back and the oldest ones were in the
front because the oldest ones are expiring and you want
to give them out the door. But of course people

(45:15):
wise up to that, so they started digging through and
messing up all your stacks. Uh So, yeah, it's it's
a it's a foul game. It's a it's a real
knife in the ribs when you go shopping for dairy. Anyway,
Thanks Heidi. That that's interesting and maybe we'll return to
that in the future. All right, here's one This is
from This is a Facebook message that we've received from Tom. Hey, guys,

(45:37):
I just listened to your two part episode regarding your
summer reading list. I think it was Robert who brought
up Soma the video game and question whether or not
the game drew any inspiration from Starfish by Peter Watts. Sick.
That was actually me, but okay, so Tom continues. I
recently listened to an interview with Frictional Games developer Thomas Gripp,

(45:58):
who cited Peter Watts is one of the biggest inspirations
for their games after Lovecraft. Pretty cool, keep up the
great work, Tom. What do you know? Yeah? Well, I mean,
like I said, it makes sense when you're when when
you play Soma, which again is just a fabulous game. Um.
I mean you do see a lot of starfish DNA
in there. Definitely the most philosophically interesting video game I've played,

(46:23):
and with great undersea environments, and so that that's the
starfish thing the start, well, the undersea environments and the
creepy nihilism horror. Yeah, okay, one more uh. In our
summer reading episode, we had a brief discussion about the
idea of the word soul, which is a word that
I think is in a lot of ways really linguistically valuable.
It's like a really powerful good word, but it also

(46:45):
has all this supernatural baggage attached to it, and I
was wondering if the word could be rehabilitated for something
that doesn't have any supernatural meanings, or if there's a
good alternative word that's as powerful as soul is but
but doesn't mean like something ghostly or anything like that anywhere.
Our listener Vassilis got in touch to say, how about

(47:06):
the word see hey or psyche. It's free of religious connotations.
Also happens to be the Greek word for soul now
and three thousand years ago. Oh and it's science is,
of course psychology. Well that's pretty good psyche psyche. It
also makes me think of dungeons and dragons and psychic
damage they can be inflicted. So how do you get

(47:27):
psychic damage? Oh, you know, we've you know, various spells
and effects, or you know, gazing into a demon lord's
eyes too long, that sort of thing. They'll just snap
you mind flairs, messing with you. They're a whole host
of ways you can get some psychic damage. Let's do
one more for Michelle and then let's take a break.
Michelle also writes about our Summer Reading episodes. She says, Hello,

(47:50):
I've enjoyed your podcast for many years, from way back
in the Julie days. I wanted to let you know
your Summer Reading episode cracked me up and solved an
ongoing debate between my parents. My parents have a beach
house in a small town on the central coast of
California called Cambria, just down the highway from Hurstcastle, which
is worth a visit if you ever make it out
to this coast. When I was listening to the intro

(48:11):
to the first episode, all about the Tom Clancy books
at beach houses, I thought, how do they know they've
been to my parents house? My parents have two large
built in bookcases in their beach house, one whole shelf
of which is filled entirely with Clancy novels. I went
up this weekend for a family reunion. My dad asked
if I listened to your podcast, and started telling me
about the episode. We just stood there, looking at the

(48:33):
bookshelf and laughing. He now feels very self conscious about
his reading choices, but finally realized that he doesn't actually
plan to ever reread them, and is willing to finally
give in to my mom, who's been bugging him to
get rid of them for years. So thank you for
much entertainment and information, and for the extra two feet
of room on the bookshelf. I guess I'll just have
to go buy more books. Oh well, now I feel bad.

(48:55):
I did not at all mean to make you or
your dad feel bad about Tom Clancy books I read,
but you want to read? Yeah, yeah, no, no Clancy
shaming here. I I read well first of all, my
dad read a lot of them, uh, and I remember
like leafing through him. He had a bunch of old
spy and novels and read. He read a lot of
other stuff too, But I read I think Cardinal and

(49:15):
the Kremlin. I think that was the Clancy book I read.
In it, I remember it does have a very like
creepy scene towards the beginning where um, a spy has
been put in this uh uh, this state of sensory deprivation,
like in a tank in a close suit like kind
of the original like dark arts John C. Lily version
of sensory deprivation. Uh. So, I mean, yeah, there's a

(49:39):
there's a lot of good stuff in those books. I'm
sure beyond that. So yeah, read what what entertains you,
what makes you happy? Absolutely it is. It is not
at all our mission to make people feel bad about
their reading pleasures. You know, narrative is a sacred retreat,
and you make that retreat alone. So you know, it's
not up to us to tell you where you should go.
But we will tell you this. Uh, don't go away,

(50:00):
because we're gonna be right back after one more ad
break and we'll read some more. Listener mails all right,
thank alright, we're back. What does Carney have for us
next here? Joe, Well, here's the one that came in
with reference to our episode about the illusory truth effect.
I thought this was interesting. This comes from Chris, and
Chris says, Hi, Robin, Joe. When I was around four

(50:21):
years old, we visited a fair and my parents took
a photo of me holding a monkey. I have a
very vivid memory of the monkey biting me on the hand,
and remember the handler taking the monkey off of me.
I'm thirty six years old now and still remember this
event happening, and my parents still have the photo of
me and the monkey. The thing is, the monkey never

(50:41):
actually bit me. Apparently, while I was holding the monkey,
I was so scared that it would bite me that
my parents quickly took the photo and dragged me away
to do something else. Every time I saw this photo
as a child, I would say that the monkey bit me,
and my parents would always try and correct me. I
knew they were wrong. Is I distinctly remember the bite

(51:02):
whereas my parents knew I was wrong as they were
the ones who took the picture. It seems the fear
of the bite as a child caused me to believe
it actually did happen, and the repetition by myself of
this lie instilled to false memory into my brain. It's
bizarre how how over thirty years later, I can still
remember this false event happening, even though as an adult,

(51:23):
I've come to accept the fact it never actually did. Weird. Huh, Yeah, Chris,
that that's that's fascinating, And I think that is absolutely
in line with what the research tells us about what
our brains are capable of. You. I mean, we we
create false memories like this all the time. Maybe not
always as vivid as that one, but tons of the
stuff you remember doing in your life you almost definitely

(51:46):
didn't do. Yeah, And childhood can be very confusing too,
about it when it comes to this, because you know,
as we discussed, as we kind of explored here, you
have memories, kind of faint memories at times about what happened,
and you have stories that are told about what happened.
And between the two is you know, you you have this, uh,
you have what's stored in your head. But anyway, Chris,

(52:06):
thanks for sharing that. That is interesting. Here's a quick
one that came to us from from Diane uh, and
she says, Hi, Joe and Robert, I'm a huge fan
of your podcast. I thought i'd send you a pick
of what I found while looking through my husband's latest
edition of the British science magazine New Scientists in the
culture section. The articles are mostly over my artistic head

(52:27):
and there's always something to glean. Keep up the fantastic work, Diane,
and she sent us a picture where our podcast was
mentioned in the pages of the British New Scientists magazine.
Thanks New Scientists. Yeah, and and thanks Diane, because this
is one of those cases where you know, some of
you might if you see something as you might think, oh, well,
they probably let Robert and Joe know that they were
going to do this, or somebody else tells us know

(52:48):
that Diane is the only person who's brought this to
our attention. So we appreciate you guys looking out for
us like that. Okay, This next one comes to us
from Atata is also writing about Lou Sorry Truth Auto Rights. Hi.
Agreeings from Helsinki, Finland. From a big fan of your show.
I was listening to your latest episode, Illusory Truth Part one,

(53:09):
where in the beginning you mentioned the study about scientific
knowledge of the American public, and how people had a
poor understanding of boiling water physics but a better understanding
about the use of uranium. This brought one case of
the illusory truth to my mind popular misconceptions about nuclear power.
Working both as a researcher and local politician with climate
and energy issues, I'd say misconceptions about nuclear energy are

(53:32):
among the most popular and most harmful. Nuclear energy is
widely thought as horrible for the environment and dangerous for people,
Yet when compared to other energy sources and taking into
account the scale of energy produced, this is simply not true. Popular,
if not so widely spread, are also even more weird misconceptions,
such as that nuclear power plants could blow up like

(53:53):
a nuclear explosion, or that they emit nuclear radiation continuously
in their environment. I suppose these mis conceptions result from
the constant exposure to these ideas in popular culture, and
also from the deliberate fearmongering by some organizations. Issues you
also discussed in the episode. While nuclear power is by
no means without challenges, it is a tried and true, scalable,

(54:14):
low emission technology, without which our efforts to combat climate
change and loss of biodiversity become greatly more difficult, if
possible at all. In my work, it is frustrating to
correct the widely spread misconceptions over and over again. Understanding
the mechanisms of how such misconceptions are created and spread, however,
makes it easier to fight ignorance with scientific knowledge. So

(54:35):
thank you for discussing this interesting topic. Looking forward to
more in part two. Thanks again for your great podcast. Well,
thank you, Ata, and I hope part two is useful
for you. I gotta say there there are true challenges
about what to do about nuclear power and in terms
of say, making sure that facilities are secure, and especially
trying to figure out what to do with leftover high
level waste and stuff like that. But but I agree

(54:57):
with you. I mean, nuclear power has a lot of
gre it advantages too, especially as a as a low
emission alternative to fossil fuel based energy. Yeah, this might
be something we might want to come back in and
revisit for an episode in the future. All right, here's
one from Nadine responding to our Proteus Effect episode. Hi, there,
I'm a bit late to this party. That's all right,

(55:17):
The party has always open um, she says, But I
just listened today to the episode discussing the proteus effect.
As part of the enormously fascinating discussion, you touch on
the idea of RPG's specifically D and D characters, and
how noticeably or not a player may emulate the character
outside of the game's context. In particular, my interest was
piqued by the discussion of whether or not one might

(55:38):
deliberately make use of the proteus effect to consciously make
changes to one's own personality based on those characters. I
find this intriguing for a number of reasons, not least
of which is that I've previously had similar conversations. We
didn't specifically refer to proteus effect, of course, not being
aware of it at the time, but there are significant
parallels for context. I play tabletop RPGs which have been

(56:00):
modified for use in an online text based platform. Old
school nerds will probably know what I'm talking about. It's
efectionally known as uh mushing, it's m U s H,
and then I m G m U s H, standing
for multi user shared hallucination. In this setting, I have
played a minor multitude of character types and personalities. This

(56:21):
includes villains by the way. As a writer, I find
them fascinating, and because mushing is text based, playing them
serves as an excellent exercise and characterization. More to the point,
a couple of these characters have been stronger and more
well rounded than others. Their personalities were nuanced and clearly developed,
with distinctly defined characteristics, and through them I was able
to more completely immerse myself in the role play experience.

(56:43):
It was thoroughly enjoyable, and in the aftermath of that experience,
outside of the context of the game, I discovered something
unexpected I find myself. I found myself leaning into some
of these characters quite heavily to borrow traits that were
quite well developed in them, but which I felt a
bit lacking in myself. For example, one of my favorite
characters possessed an unflappable sense of self confidence, which was

(57:05):
admittedly more than a little bit wish fulfillment on my part.
Since playing her, I have frequently deliberately put myself back
into the mindset I occupied while in character in the
game in order to assume that quality for a while.
For job interviews or difficult conversations, etcetera. Any situation in
which I feel a little out of my depth and
would like to borrow some confidence is fair game. I

(57:27):
suppose in a way it's wearing the character like a
mask in talking to other players in this hobby. I'm
certainly not alone in that tendency. Phrases like Alice is
very much in my head today, or o MG, Stephen
is so mad at you right now I'm in response
to something that the character would not have appreciated are
fairly common parlance among my particular play group, and I've

(57:49):
observed it in the wider hobby population as well. I
don't know how well this experience fits into the overall
framework of the proteus effect, is defined by various studies,
but it seemed at lee peripherally related enough that I
felt I should share it. I adore the podcast. I
came to it late, but I'm catching up, and every
episode feeds my brain and piques my curiosity. I'm grateful

(58:11):
for the amazing content. It's engaging and insightful, and it's
soul food for a poly math like me, looking impatiently
forward to the next episode. Thank you so much for
doing what you do, Nettie. Well, thanks Standin. This is
not the only email we've gotten like this. We've heard
from multiple people who talk about the idea of um
of using some form of role playing outside the confines

(58:35):
of the game to change the way they live their life,
essentially to get in character to do things. And yeah,
I wonder about that. I mean I wonder about how
I mean, I know there are like role playing forms
of therapy right there, they're like, I don't know all
that much about them, but I wonder to what extent

(58:55):
And people get kind of literal and deep with that,
like going to role playing game for ms of therapy,
where like if you lack confidence, they will give you
a character to play. I think I've come across some
examples of of this being used, um at least in
some therapy environments where they're essentially using tinners and dragons
or some uh you know, boiled down version of of

(59:16):
role playing tabletop role playing now, Nadine and know you
asked how that fits with the original produce effect, and
I think it seems like a kind of elastic concept
now because originally it was referring specifically to physical avatars.
It was like, if you play as a character having
certain physical attributes, UM. But I think, yeah, you can

(59:38):
definitely expand the idea to at least a version of
itself that is more all encompassing about playing characters and
simulated environments and how those qualities come back to the
person playing the character. I wonder about that. I mean it,
I think I feel like part of the problem here
is that people have different levels of tolerance for situations

(59:58):
like role playing. You know, Robert, you probably don't have
this because you actually do play D and D. But
I know a lot of adults would probably be like, oh,
that's silly. You know, I'd be too embarrassed to do
something like that. But it seems like something that's worth
giving a try, even if you feel like it might
be embarrassing or like you don't know how to do it.
I bet it's worth checking out for most people who

(01:00:20):
feel some kind of character based inadequacy, or like there's
something that you want to do but can't. Yeah, I
mean to to to tie into another episode. I feel
like this is one of the great appeals of Werewolf,
which which if depending on how you play it, can
incorporate at least some mild role playing elements or you know,
or or you can get a little more robust with it,

(01:00:41):
but it does have players engaging in these extremes of
human behavior they don't necessarily get to, you know, employ
on a regular basis, namely, um, actively deceiving your friends
and or family, or persecuting your friends and family, um
and ordering their execution for lecanthropy. Uh. You know, all

(01:01:03):
these sort of you know, extreme modes of human social behavior. Yeah,
except is it good to practice lying? I don't know, Uh, well, good, Uh,
I don't know if good is the word. I don't know.
That just sounds like we're wolf talk there, Joe. Is
it good to practice persecuting? Yes? Or maybe it's an
outlet for persecution. I don't know, you know, I mean,

(01:01:25):
it's it's something humans are obviously good at. And if
you're gonna do it, I would prefer it be the
be fictional werewolves within a you know, a parlor game.
They should be the ones to suffer. Yes, swing your
silver sword at a werewolf, not at somebody who made
you mad on the internet. Right, all right, So that
you have it another installment of listener Mail. There were
still a few great ones that we didn't get to

(01:01:46):
that we had lined up. Maybe we'll get to those
uh next month or so when we do another listener
mail installment, and certainly uh feel free to write in
with new comments about new episodes, new comments about old episodes,
new revelations, et cetera. We'd love to hear from all
of you. It's true, we really do love hearing from you,
and uh so as always we apologize that we can't

(01:02:08):
respond to or read out every great message we get,
but we we really do appreciate them, So keep them coming,
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(01:02:51):
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