April 1, 2013 • 25 mins
Stuff to Blow Your Mind listeners regularly send in imaginative and jaw-dropping correspondence. Sadly, Julie and Robert rarely have time to read it all. So here's a bonus episode devoted to your listener mail, courtesy of everyone's favorite mailbot.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Tucklin. And
this is a bonus episode. Just in case you're wondering, Hey,
why why is there an episode here? I wasn't supposed
to go to download today. Well, it's a bonus episode.
And since we don't have anything particularly planned for it, um,
(00:25):
we thought we'd we'd we'd call the robot over here. Yeah.
I know, after all, we we get to talk a
lot and express ourselves. But Arnie, poor Arnie, the robot
just kind of comes back and forth on his little
wheels and that's about it. Yeah. So so co come
on over here, Arnie. How's how's it going? Well? Yeah, yeah,
I know, I know, we we we haven't had as
much time for the listener mail recently. That's what this
(00:46):
episode is all about. So this time you're you can
be more part of the episode, and you can you
can share more of the listener mail. So so let
us let us have some what have you got here?
That's interesting? Arnie? You don't need to stand so close
all This first one comes to us from Paul Paul writes,
and it says, Hi, Robert and Julie, I'm a long
time listener and have been wanting to write you guys
(01:07):
for a long time and just never got around to it.
I just listened to your Healing Power of Laughter podcast
and I wanted to let you know how inspired it
made me. I am a combat medic in the U. S.
Army and I am going through the process of getting
medically retired. I am lucky enough to be doing this
in a specialized unit called the Warrior Transition Unit. This
unit is special because it allows soldiers to do whatever
it takes to heal. One of the newest programs they
(01:28):
have implemented is recovery through music, guitar lessons, piano, et cetera.
So I know that they are willing to think outside
of the box when it comes to healing. Your podcast
pushed me to try to create a program that connects
soldiers with comedians and teaches them to laugh and make
others laugh. It's going to be complex and take some
work to develop on my part, but I think in
the end it will be a great program. I love
(01:49):
your show and couldn't do this without your inspiration. I
listen to you guys on my forty minute drive to work,
and you make it fly by. Thanks Paul. Oh that's
really cool. Yeah. Oh, but and he was in the
hundred airborne by the way, that is very cool and
I love that he put that together. I do wonder
if he is about to look into laughter yoga as well,
which in this case, I would say, yes, I think
(02:10):
laughter yoga would be very helpful. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
I think that the great thing about the program, like
you said, it's it's showing that they're willing to think
out the outside of the box about healing, and it
shows more of a focus on actually healing people instead
of going through just a regimented process to be like
all right, step one, two three, you should be healed
by now, how you know, go out and live your life.
It's it's more it seems more results oriented, which I
(02:32):
think is great. Well, and you had brought up and
we were talking about stress and stress being that paper
tiger um that that puts us on all alerts, and
how laughing is one of those things can that that
can be that chemical release, that the way that you
can return your blood pressure to normal, and the way
that you can sort of vanquish all those chemicals that
(02:52):
are building up the cortisol and so on and so
forth in your body. So very cool stuff to hear about.
And m Paul, please let us know how that turns out.
Yeah for sure. All right, here we have another one.
This one is from Chris and Baton Rouge, and Chris says, Hi,
I've been listening to you guys for a while, and
for my obligatory comment, you two have very soothing voices.
(03:13):
And don't take this the wrong way, but I often
listen to your podcast as I go to sleep. We've
heard that from people before, which I I never take
it the wrong way, but it does make me want
to do a podcast where we talk softer and softer
and softer and then either you're very sleepy right now, yeah,
and then and then start messing with them, either with
loud noises or just nightmare inducing like I said, Yeah,
(03:40):
I hope nobody's sleeping right now and they just bolted
up in their beds. Chris continues and he says, Anyway,
recently I listened to your podcasts on the Dark Side
of Creativity, and let me say mission accomplished. You successfully
blew my mind. What you described was me exactly. The
analogy of the flashlight view and the lantern view was perfect.
This was especially important to me because I feel it's
hard to explain to others my mind mindset, and often
(04:00):
I get frustrated with others not trying to get all
the facts or look at the whole picture. But I
do envy other mindsets because they are sure and uh,
and that they're better at shooting straightforward down a path
to a destination. Well, I seem to be forever scheduling
searching for the best destination, if that makes any sense. Sincerely,
Chris and Baton Rouge. I think that's uh, that's really fascinating.
(04:22):
I think it also. I mean, as we talked before,
I mean you really need the different types of viewpoint
in life. I mean the people who have the flashlight view,
Arguably they might not it might not be the best
view for like a full experience of the universe or
you know, or what have you. But in terms of
say getting done with the task on the other end
of that flashlight that's great. Likewise, people with more of
(04:42):
this lantern view of the universe, um, you know, that
may be great for for bursts of creativity and whatnot,
but maybe it means you can't focus as well on
a given test, so nothing to trade off with both.
Now the origins of those terms, um, I think we
have to talk about Alison got Nick, and she is
the child psychologist who who talks about how kids have
(05:04):
this highly creative mind, in particular babies because they have
that lantern view because they are more aware than adults
and they're streaming all of this stimuli. And um, so
that's kind of what we were talking about. We were
talking about the dark side of creativity or not necessarily
dark set of creativity, which is creativity in general. Is
this ability to tap into that and to not let
(05:27):
those details that are all around us at all times
just fly by, to be able to consider these things
and and um find sort of unique meaning in them. Yeah, alright.
This next one comes to us from a listener by
the name of Jim. Jim written to us before and
he has a book recommendation for everyone. He says, Robert
and Julie, about a year ago you did a podcast
on whether mathematics was an invention or discovery. I wrote
(05:48):
to you shortly after that that, placing myself mostly in
the invention camp. I would like to update my position
based upon a book I received for Christmas, The Joy
of X by Steven Strogatz, an applied mathematic it's professor
at Cornell. On page five, Dr Strogatz, who is a
regular contributor to Radio ad right to following. Math always
involves both invention and discovery. We invent the concepts but
(06:09):
discover their consequences, as we'll see in the coming chapters.
In mathematics, our freedom lies in the questions we ask
and how we pursue them, but not in the answers
awaiting us. So, uh, yeah, that sounds like a very
interesting text. Well, I don't have to pick up the
next time I get on a mathematics kick. Yeah. I
was talking to my friend Maria um over the weekend,
and she is a mathematician and she actually she teaches
(06:31):
in Germany now, but she teaches UM math to to
physics students, and she was saying she was kind of
talking about some of her interests in her field, and
she was talking about infinity, and so I, who don't
have a very large mathematics background, and said, look, don't
strike me down for saying this, but a lot of
what you're talking about releasing very philosophical, and she said, yes, yes,
(06:54):
that a lot of people don't realize that when they're
talking about math, they are in a sense talking about philosophy,
albeit in another language. All right, well, this one comes
to us from Charles. Charles writes in, and uh and
he isn't. He's writing in response to our Splendid Isolation
podcast a while back, where we talked about how isolation
affects us and about how there's with many of us,
(07:15):
there's this desire for it, like, oh, I don't I
don't have enough alone time in my life, and then
if you have too much alone time, then you start
going a little crazy sometimes. And we talked about it
too in the context of Astronauts, right, yes, yeah, so,
Charles writes in and says, Robert and Julie, I enjoyed
listening to your podcast Splendid Isolation. I found the concept
so intriguing that I decided I'd like to try it
myself for a full year. In June two thousand twelve,
(07:37):
at the age of forty, I charted a boat to
drop me off on an uninhabited island in Alaska with
my dog, a goat and supplies. This was my first
time to the island. I found a good spot to
build and erected a seventy seven square foot cabin. I've
encountered hurricane force winds, heavy snow, constant rain, and had
to bear encounters while filming everything. Besides a few chance
(07:59):
encounters with hunters and vacationers, I've been completely alone for
six months. As of last Friday, I post updates on
Facebook on the Alaskan Pioneer page and uh if you
want to visit that, that's Facebook dot com slash Alaskan Pioneer.
One word, he says. While I do have limited communication,
the isolation has had some interesting effects on my cognition
(08:19):
and emotions. It's increased my sleep, impaired my memory, and
at times increases aggression and vigilance. My mood has remained
consistently positive, however, and I've experienced no sense of loneliness.
I've long wondered what it would be like to live
alone in the wilderness for a full year, and now
I am finding out. While I look forward to returning
to society next summer, I suspect it will be difficult
(08:40):
to leave. I look forward to sharing my footage of
my time here when I returned. Thanks again for the
fun podcast, Charles. Wow, indeed that I mean, that's a
lot to take in, and that is amazing and and
uh I I know I had talked about like living
on a boat with one of my dreams, but that
is sort of one of my dreams too, is to
go off and to to be able to not like
(09:01):
leave my family necessarily. But there's a fantasy in being
able to go off and know what it feels like
to rely on yourself and to be out in the wilderness.
And that's just an amazing plug and everything. I think
it's neat that he brought. He brought a dog and
the goat. I'm assuming he did not eat these say
that they're both alive, they're all doing well. But I
(09:22):
feel like that would help enormously, like having some sort of,
you know, a companion, even if it's not human. We've
talked before about how how intense and how emotional our
relationships with pets can be, and and goats have a
lot of character. I love goats. Joe's Carol Oates has
a short story about a lighthousekeeper in the eighteen hundreds,
and I believe at the point where the dog runs off.
(09:44):
That's when his madness sort of give us into effect.
But anyway, that that that's of course the eighteen hundreds
and Charles, you sound like you're having a wonderful time,
and I really I think this is wonderful. I'm living
vicariously through you. Um did he say the Facebook page
is Alaskan Frontier, Alaskan Pioneer, Pioneer excuse me, Yeah, but
I definitely have to check that out. Oh and speaking
(10:05):
of Joyce Carol Oates, real quick, have you been following
her Twitter? I have. It's awesome. Yeah. I think she
maybe the best Twitter account out there. I was telling
someone the other day, like, if you just have to
do one Twitter account and just mean besides ours, right, Um,
you know, check it out because she always has something
terribly interesting to say. It is it's it's always interesting
and insightful, and I wish more more Twitter feeds were
(10:27):
like hers. Alright, here we have a couple of emails
regarding our recent Hallucinations episode. Now, this first one comes
to us from Justin Justin Wrightson and says, Hi, Robert
and Julie, I recently listened to the leprechn Hallucinations podcast
and wanted to share something from my childhood. When my
brother and I were younger, we would infrequently get what
we called small vision. For a short time, everything in
(10:48):
the world would seem to be smaller, further away than
it really was. You could even put your hands in
front of you and your arms would seem much longer
than they should be. This would be accompanied by a
slight pain pressure at the back of the head. I
believe this is where the visual cortex is located. I
have no idea why this happened, but it sounded a
lot like Alice in Wonderland syndrome you described in the podcast.
(11:11):
Until not now, I had never heard of anyone else
experiencing something like this. Thanks for sharing the information with
your listeners and giving me a little more perspective on
my own experience. Wow, that's pretty pretty fascinating. Um. Yeah,
I mean it does sound a lot like the Allison
Wonderland UH syndrome about some of the lillipution of hallucinations
we were describing, where it starts messing with the way
(11:33):
you're perceiving the size of objects and distances. Yeah, and
so it's interesting that the visual cortex was brought up right,
because just to root everybody back in that podcast for
context we talked about is that when your vision is
impaired um in a variety of different situations, your brain
doesn't like, uh, the void and will begin to construct
(11:55):
images for it. So that's why these hallucinations occur. And uh, yes,
it's very interesting to hear about that account. There anything
talking about the pain that accompanied it, which which brings
to mind like a small like I haven't even I
haven't researched this. Perhaps there's a there's a miracle blog
post out there that explains at all. But we've all,
at some point the other probably tried to bend spoon
(12:15):
with our mind or move it with our mind. Have
you done this, tried to do something psychically? Yeah, it
was probably. It was probably like when I was yesterday. Yeah,
But when you do it, did you you inevitably start
to feel strain. You feel something straining, You feel like
a slight I'm trying too hard? What what where is
that taking place? What are we straining? I have a feeling.
Maybe it's just something as simple as we're we're straining
(12:37):
our vision because we're kind of thinking hard, we're kind
of squinting, but but I don't know. It got me
thinking it's like if because if I can't do something,
I shouldn't feel the strain of trying to do it.
I wonder if your pupils dilate and tried to take
in more light. I have a feeling it's eye related,
But if anybody has any any feedback on that, I'd
be interested to hear. Like I said, I haven't looked
into it, but just thought about it the other day
(12:59):
in the car Car Thoughts with Robert Lamb. All right,
this one comes to us from Tony. Tony says, hey, guys,
love the podcast. Great topics to get me through my
long walks on this very large campus of Michigan State
and my long meals in the cafeteria Go meals. Fun fact,
(13:22):
Brody Hall, an area of dorms on the northwest side
of campus, actually houses the largest non military cafeteria in
America and maybe the world. I'm not sure, but anyway,
I was listening to your lepro Con Hallucinations episode and
I actually experienced very bizarre and usually arguably terrifying hallucinations
When I slip into a lucid dream. I think lucid
dreaming is an interesting category of hallucination because you were dreaming,
(13:43):
but you are aware of it, and in many cases
you're able to control what goes on. Usually, when I
dream lucidly, I like to take a back seat and
let my mind unwind the story. But there are sometimes
when things will pop up that are very jarring, and
I typically undergo a fight or flight reaction in this
dream dreamland, it stays asleep or wake up. I don't
dream lucidly very often, maybe two to three times a
(14:05):
month at most, but I've had some very bizarre encounters
with interesting creatures popping up. For instance, about a week ago,
I was dreaming that I was sitting in a room
and there was a rain storm. It wasn't actually raining
at the time, and I was really just enjoying my
night in content. Then a very large thunderclap echoes through
my mind, most likely a door slamming down the hall
in my dorm, and the lights uh in my dream
(14:27):
go out, but I can still see they various shapes
and shadows. I then turn and look to the left
physically and mentally and see a large dark shadows standing
in the doorway which I am concluding is the dresser
that is in the exact spot I was looking, So
I immediately think wake up, but instead I slipped into
sleep paralysis, which if you have ever never experienced, is
extremely bizarre. When I experienced sleep paralysis, I am still
(14:50):
able to move, but only very slowly, or so it
seems from my perspective in the dream. I wonder if
brain activity is so high or low that I am
actually moving normal, but but the speed is perceived as slow.
I am also able to open my eyes see the world,
but not actually be awake. It's easily, easily the weirdest
visual experience. So this dark figure appears, walks towards me,
(15:13):
and my body feels like it feels like it's under
immense pressure. I try to raise my arms, but it
takes ten minutes. My eyes are open, but I still
can't wake up. The figure is almost there, and then
out of nowhere, I'm awake with the most intense body
tingle and an elevated heart rate. Maybe it doesn't technically
classify as hallucinating, but I think it does. Again, thanks
(15:33):
for the cool topics, Love you guys. Tony. Well, that's
that is fascinating because for the most part. What we're
talking about there in an example isn't a hallucination, but
it is. It is sleep paralysis, which we have talked
about before in its relation to paranormal experience, which is
also something that relates to hallucination experiences where something unreal happens,
(15:54):
but but it feels real and it's observed as real. Yeah,
when first is used the concept at the beginning of
that email, I wasn't quite sure that that it could
be a hallucination. But in describing that, yeah, I mean
because you talk about sleep paralysis in the problem with
that is that your brain has not quite come back
online with your body. Because the idea is when you're dreaming,
(16:15):
you may be throwing kung fu chops and kicks everywhere,
but it's kind of like a simulation. You don't need
to actually throw kung fu chops around, So your body
is under lockdown, and when sleep prolysis occurs, your mind
wakes up, but your body is still locked down. Right,
So if you're receiving data again from your eyes visual
cortex that isn't driving with the rest of your experience,
(16:38):
then you know again the brain abhores avoid and it
will fill in for you, So I do kind of
like I said, I wasn't quite sure the beginning, but
in the description of Chinese experience, I see how that
is a possibility. Um, it would be very interesting to
see some sort of mri I studies that could correlate
with that. Of course, then you'd have to do someone
into loosen dreaming and then sleep. But the graalsa the
(17:00):
great thing here. It's Tony is applying critical thinking to
an experience that in other cases might be perceived as
something supernatural or abnormal. I mean it's still terrifying obviously,
but he was able to afterwards realize, oh, well, what's
going on. There's a scientific explanation for it, all right.
Here's one from Michela Mickello writes in in a response
to our PoCA episode, and she says, love the podcast.
(17:22):
I had my own experience with PoCA during my second pregnancy.
I craved I so strongly I started bringing cups of
it to work with me from home to keep up
with the demand. The weirder craving was was of a
smell the a c in my car. I would sit
in my driveway for fifteen minutes with my nose as
close to the then as possible, breathing in the beautiful fragrance.
This became increasingly increasingly hard is my belly group. Almost
(17:45):
immediately after having my son, the smell all but disappeared
from my radar. My doctor, although pretty surprised at this
odd habit, attributed both of these to my anemic status
during my pregnancy. All Right, that is unusual because again
when we talk about pica, which I think we were
saying pick up by the way, so we have to
apologize for that, or I was when you think about it,
more is is eating dirt for the nutrients that are
(18:07):
inherent there, but not necessarily the ac coming in of
the car. I mean, I I love the smell of
air conditioning. I can remember that as a child, like
loving it, maybe because I liked you know, I like
the cool and all, and I didn't like being out
in the sweating heat. But there's something even today, like
when you when you reached that point we were suddenly
turning the air conditioning back on, kind of like the
smell that smells good. I did not even realize that
(18:30):
air conditioning had a smell. It does it has. It
has a smell and uh and a quite lovely one
if you're in if you're in the mood for it. Okay,
So now that makes me wonder, is there a large
part of the population that likes to smell or conditioning
and can't detect the smell of it? And I believe
that I cannot. Well, we talked before. I mean, smell
is a powerful thing, and we attached memories to smell
that that we almost really can't completely fathom. We've all
(18:51):
had that experience where we're walking down the street and
we smell something and we're like, and it just takes
us back to like a childhood memory, and then we
don't even know where the smell came from or even
necessarily what it was. But the press Dan Pressy and
a Madeleine's right from the story that he talks about
his memory and food. Yeah, I was at a friend's
house and they opened up a new board game and
I ended up having to like just basically huff the
(19:11):
board game box for a little bit because the smell
was taking me back to something that I had some
positive feelings about with nostalgia for and I think maybe
it ended up having the same smell as like dungeons
and dragons manuals from the mid nineties or something. I
don't know, I think that's what it was. I couldn't
quite put a pin on it, and it's so, you know,
it's probably like a weird chemical smell, you know, but
(19:32):
it pulled something out of me. Crazy game board sniffer. Yeah, alright,
this one comes to us from Antonio. Antonio writes, and
it says, Hi, Robert and Julie, my name is Tony,
and I just wanted to comment on a podcast you
did a couple of months ago about bad neighborhoods and
how people generally don't help to start. I live in
a city of about thirty thousand people, so pretty small
and not really any bad neighborhoods to speak of. But
(19:54):
I recently went to Las Vegas, and it was almost
a sickness to me to give money to every homeless
person I saw. I believe it is because I live
in a place where we don't have a homeless population,
therefore I'm not blind to it. Also, I just watched
a show on the Science Channel called Alien Encounters, and
it was mentioned that we just might be developing a
hive brain mentality with the help of the internet. Um
(20:15):
in our smartphones, iPods, etcetera, and how that could greatly
help us against not only an alien invasion, but just
about any problem human god could face. I'm curious as
to what you think about the hive brain versus the
plain old single brain. I love your podcast. I listen
to it while I work my factory job, and it
keeps me saying in my brain working, keep it up, Tony.
So two interesting things. He's he's responding to their one
(20:37):
talking about you know what happens when we encounter, you know,
say a homeless individual or somebody in need, and how
group dynamics affect that. You know, where if if if
you're seeing other people pass them by, then it kind
of becomes the norm and you want to and a
lot of times you feel like you need to keep
with the norm, or if there's kind of a culture
of not helping, you know, versus versus other environments where
(20:57):
you're going to be more in close proximity and they
seem more human to you strangers in general. Yeah, we've
seen this in countless experiments, whether conducted on the street
or you know, in an instance where someone is placed
at a situation where they could give money to another person.
But if the other person knew they were giving them money,
then they would give them it. But if they you know,
(21:19):
like there's all sorts of they are all sorts of
experiments that involve altruism, and it does seem that whoever
sort of does the first thing dictates what the protocol
will be. So if you help that stringer industry, other
people will follow suit. Yeah, we've talked about this too
in terms of corporations and industries large you know, any
(21:41):
kind of large social structure where if you have if
there's like a caring um culture at the beginning of
it and the roots of it, then that tends to
carry on out through the company as it grows. But
to whatever degree it's not there, then it's not there
in the larger social organism as well. So anyway, it
was an interesting email because he really drives home like
(22:02):
two aspects of the group think and uh and this
hive mind the idea that it can it can lead
to some great things, some some bringing together of ideas,
our potential to better the world and potentially protected against
an alien invasion, but also in our ability to all
decide not to do anything for someone that needs help. Well, now, also,
(22:24):
I think points towards the self organizing nature. And I
always think about this whenever I get an elevator. Now,
since we did the podcast on elevators, and you watch
people come in and see how they organize themselves, and
over and over again people will self organize into these
certain configurations. So um for of these invisible forces always
at play, and we just don't always realize it, all right,
(22:45):
And here's a one from a listener. Eric Eric writes
in and says on the subject of laboring, labeling food
with gross names, like writing cloaca cake on a cake.
My mother came up with a recipe she calls garbage
can casserole. She invented it shortly after getting married. She
had a can of soup, some chicken, and a little
bit of other food, but not really enough of one
thing to make a meal for two people. It's basically
(23:07):
a chicken casserole with cream of chicken and cream of
mushroom soup right from the can without deluding it so
it stays thick chow, maine noodles, water, chestnuts, and quote
unquote other stuff, topped with corn flakes and baked. She says,
it makes it. It makes you clean out your refrigerator,
and anything that's not green and fuzzy it goes into
the dish. It's not quite that easy, but the other
(23:28):
stuff usually consists of different vegetables like peas, green beans,
and or a corn i ate. It a lot growing up,
and despite its name, it's one of my favorites. I
usually make it for potlock parties and it's almost always
gone by the end, so long as I don't display
it with the name garbage can cast role. I've tried
displaying it with that name in the past as an experiment,
and if I do, it's almost always untouched, except for
(23:50):
the helping I took for myself to show it was tried.
So there you go. Eric has already done this experiment
that we were talking about to it to a certain extent.
Call it garbage cat roll. Who's gonna eat it? Call it,
you know, beautiful cast role or just cast role and
then country cast role. People will go for it. You
see the same thing with with some fish species, right
(24:10):
you have fish where it's like if it's called a
slime head or if it's called a dolphin. Because we
have the fish that is the dolphin as well as
the mammalian dolphin. People are going to be hesitant to
eat it, but you rebrand it as something I forget
what the slimehead brand it has, but with the dolphin
became my ma right yeah, yeah, um, it's true. Yeah,
(24:32):
So I still want to do the I think we should.
I think we should do it. We should film it
and uh and see see how it pans out here
in the office. All right, So there you go. Um, robot,
do you do you feel better about things now? Look good? Good? Yes?
Well I love you too, all right, and we love you, guys,
I love you. This is a lot about just sharing
(24:53):
some of your feedback with everybody else. And we love
to get this email and it makes us. It remind
is us of why we love this job so much.
And it's very nice to thanks guys. Yeah, and if
a feedback is good on this, if you guys like
this and it wasn't an annoyance, then you know, maybe
we'll do some more of bonus episodes like this. So hey.
In the meantime, if you want to send us more
listener mail and reach out to us with your various
(25:15):
comments and shares and whatnot, you can find us on Facebook.
You can find us on tumbler We are Stuff to
blow your Mind on both of those, and on Twitter
we go by the handle blow the Mind, and you
can always draw us line at blow the Mind at
discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(25:36):
other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Tucklin. And
this is a bonus episode. Just in case you're wondering, Hey,
why why is there an episode here? I wasn't supposed
to go to download today. Well, it's a bonus episode.
And since we don't have anything particularly planned for it, um,
(00:25):
we thought we'd we'd we'd call the robot over here. Yeah.
I know, after all, we we get to talk a
lot and express ourselves. But Arnie, poor Arnie, the robot
just kind of comes back and forth on his little
wheels and that's about it. Yeah. So so co come
on over here, Arnie. How's how's it going? Well? Yeah, yeah,
I know, I know, we we we haven't had as
much time for the listener mail recently. That's what this
(00:46):
episode is all about. So this time you're you can
be more part of the episode, and you can you
can share more of the listener mail. So so let
us let us have some what have you got here?
That's interesting? Arnie? You don't need to stand so close
all This first one comes to us from Paul Paul writes,
and it says, Hi, Robert and Julie, I'm a long
time listener and have been wanting to write you guys
(01:07):
for a long time and just never got around to it.
I just listened to your Healing Power of Laughter podcast
and I wanted to let you know how inspired it
made me. I am a combat medic in the U. S.
Army and I am going through the process of getting
medically retired. I am lucky enough to be doing this
in a specialized unit called the Warrior Transition Unit. This
unit is special because it allows soldiers to do whatever
it takes to heal. One of the newest programs they
(01:28):
have implemented is recovery through music, guitar lessons, piano, et cetera.
So I know that they are willing to think outside
of the box when it comes to healing. Your podcast
pushed me to try to create a program that connects
soldiers with comedians and teaches them to laugh and make
others laugh. It's going to be complex and take some
work to develop on my part, but I think in
the end it will be a great program. I love
(01:49):
your show and couldn't do this without your inspiration. I
listen to you guys on my forty minute drive to work,
and you make it fly by. Thanks Paul. Oh that's
really cool. Yeah. Oh, but and he was in the
hundred airborne by the way, that is very cool and
I love that he put that together. I do wonder
if he is about to look into laughter yoga as well,
which in this case, I would say, yes, I think
(02:10):
laughter yoga would be very helpful. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
I think that the great thing about the program, like
you said, it's it's showing that they're willing to think
out the outside of the box about healing, and it
shows more of a focus on actually healing people instead
of going through just a regimented process to be like
all right, step one, two three, you should be healed
by now, how you know, go out and live your life.
It's it's more it seems more results oriented, which I
(02:32):
think is great. Well, and you had brought up and
we were talking about stress and stress being that paper
tiger um that that puts us on all alerts, and
how laughing is one of those things can that that
can be that chemical release, that the way that you
can return your blood pressure to normal, and the way
that you can sort of vanquish all those chemicals that
(02:52):
are building up the cortisol and so on and so
forth in your body. So very cool stuff to hear about.
And m Paul, please let us know how that turns out.
Yeah for sure. All right, here we have another one.
This one is from Chris and Baton Rouge, and Chris says, Hi,
I've been listening to you guys for a while, and
for my obligatory comment, you two have very soothing voices.
(03:13):
And don't take this the wrong way, but I often
listen to your podcast as I go to sleep. We've
heard that from people before, which I I never take
it the wrong way, but it does make me want
to do a podcast where we talk softer and softer
and softer and then either you're very sleepy right now, yeah,
and then and then start messing with them, either with
loud noises or just nightmare inducing like I said, Yeah,
(03:40):
I hope nobody's sleeping right now and they just bolted
up in their beds. Chris continues and he says, Anyway,
recently I listened to your podcasts on the Dark Side
of Creativity, and let me say mission accomplished. You successfully
blew my mind. What you described was me exactly. The
analogy of the flashlight view and the lantern view was perfect.
This was especially important to me because I feel it's
hard to explain to others my mind mindset, and often
(04:00):
I get frustrated with others not trying to get all
the facts or look at the whole picture. But I
do envy other mindsets because they are sure and uh,
and that they're better at shooting straightforward down a path
to a destination. Well, I seem to be forever scheduling
searching for the best destination, if that makes any sense. Sincerely,
Chris and Baton Rouge. I think that's uh, that's really fascinating.
(04:22):
I think it also. I mean, as we talked before,
I mean you really need the different types of viewpoint
in life. I mean the people who have the flashlight view,
Arguably they might not it might not be the best
view for like a full experience of the universe or
you know, or what have you. But in terms of
say getting done with the task on the other end
of that flashlight that's great. Likewise, people with more of
(04:42):
this lantern view of the universe, um, you know, that
may be great for for bursts of creativity and whatnot,
but maybe it means you can't focus as well on
a given test, so nothing to trade off with both.
Now the origins of those terms, um, I think we
have to talk about Alison got Nick, and she is
the child psychologist who who talks about how kids have
(05:04):
this highly creative mind, in particular babies because they have
that lantern view because they are more aware than adults
and they're streaming all of this stimuli. And um, so
that's kind of what we were talking about. We were
talking about the dark side of creativity or not necessarily
dark set of creativity, which is creativity in general. Is
this ability to tap into that and to not let
(05:27):
those details that are all around us at all times
just fly by, to be able to consider these things
and and um find sort of unique meaning in them. Yeah, alright.
This next one comes to us from a listener by
the name of Jim. Jim written to us before and
he has a book recommendation for everyone. He says, Robert
and Julie, about a year ago you did a podcast
on whether mathematics was an invention or discovery. I wrote
(05:48):
to you shortly after that that, placing myself mostly in
the invention camp. I would like to update my position
based upon a book I received for Christmas, The Joy
of X by Steven Strogatz, an applied mathematic it's professor
at Cornell. On page five, Dr Strogatz, who is a
regular contributor to Radio ad right to following. Math always
involves both invention and discovery. We invent the concepts but
(06:09):
discover their consequences, as we'll see in the coming chapters.
In mathematics, our freedom lies in the questions we ask
and how we pursue them, but not in the answers
awaiting us. So, uh, yeah, that sounds like a very
interesting text. Well, I don't have to pick up the
next time I get on a mathematics kick. Yeah. I
was talking to my friend Maria um over the weekend,
and she is a mathematician and she actually she teaches
(06:31):
in Germany now, but she teaches UM math to to
physics students, and she was saying she was kind of
talking about some of her interests in her field, and
she was talking about infinity, and so I, who don't
have a very large mathematics background, and said, look, don't
strike me down for saying this, but a lot of
what you're talking about releasing very philosophical, and she said, yes, yes,
(06:54):
that a lot of people don't realize that when they're
talking about math, they are in a sense talking about philosophy,
albeit in another language. All right, well, this one comes
to us from Charles. Charles writes in, and uh and
he isn't. He's writing in response to our Splendid Isolation
podcast a while back, where we talked about how isolation
affects us and about how there's with many of us,
(07:15):
there's this desire for it, like, oh, I don't I
don't have enough alone time in my life, and then
if you have too much alone time, then you start
going a little crazy sometimes. And we talked about it
too in the context of Astronauts, right, yes, yeah, so,
Charles writes in and says, Robert and Julie, I enjoyed
listening to your podcast Splendid Isolation. I found the concept
so intriguing that I decided I'd like to try it
myself for a full year. In June two thousand twelve,
(07:37):
at the age of forty, I charted a boat to
drop me off on an uninhabited island in Alaska with
my dog, a goat and supplies. This was my first
time to the island. I found a good spot to
build and erected a seventy seven square foot cabin. I've
encountered hurricane force winds, heavy snow, constant rain, and had
to bear encounters while filming everything. Besides a few chance
(07:59):
encounters with hunters and vacationers, I've been completely alone for
six months. As of last Friday, I post updates on
Facebook on the Alaskan Pioneer page and uh if you
want to visit that, that's Facebook dot com slash Alaskan Pioneer.
One word, he says. While I do have limited communication,
the isolation has had some interesting effects on my cognition
(08:19):
and emotions. It's increased my sleep, impaired my memory, and
at times increases aggression and vigilance. My mood has remained
consistently positive, however, and I've experienced no sense of loneliness.
I've long wondered what it would be like to live
alone in the wilderness for a full year, and now
I am finding out. While I look forward to returning
to society next summer, I suspect it will be difficult
(08:40):
to leave. I look forward to sharing my footage of
my time here when I returned. Thanks again for the
fun podcast, Charles. Wow, indeed that I mean, that's a
lot to take in, and that is amazing and and
uh I I know I had talked about like living
on a boat with one of my dreams, but that
is sort of one of my dreams too, is to
go off and to to be able to not like
(09:01):
leave my family necessarily. But there's a fantasy in being
able to go off and know what it feels like
to rely on yourself and to be out in the wilderness.
And that's just an amazing plug and everything. I think
it's neat that he brought. He brought a dog and
the goat. I'm assuming he did not eat these say
that they're both alive, they're all doing well. But I
(09:22):
feel like that would help enormously, like having some sort of,
you know, a companion, even if it's not human. We've
talked before about how how intense and how emotional our
relationships with pets can be, and and goats have a
lot of character. I love goats. Joe's Carol Oates has
a short story about a lighthousekeeper in the eighteen hundreds,
and I believe at the point where the dog runs off.
(09:44):
That's when his madness sort of give us into effect.
But anyway, that that that's of course the eighteen hundreds
and Charles, you sound like you're having a wonderful time,
and I really I think this is wonderful. I'm living
vicariously through you. Um did he say the Facebook page
is Alaskan Frontier, Alaskan Pioneer, Pioneer excuse me, Yeah, but
I definitely have to check that out. Oh and speaking
(10:05):
of Joyce Carol Oates, real quick, have you been following
her Twitter? I have. It's awesome. Yeah. I think she
maybe the best Twitter account out there. I was telling
someone the other day, like, if you just have to
do one Twitter account and just mean besides ours, right, Um,
you know, check it out because she always has something
terribly interesting to say. It is it's it's always interesting
and insightful, and I wish more more Twitter feeds were
(10:27):
like hers. Alright, here we have a couple of emails
regarding our recent Hallucinations episode. Now, this first one comes
to us from Justin Justin Wrightson and says, Hi, Robert
and Julie, I recently listened to the leprechn Hallucinations podcast
and wanted to share something from my childhood. When my
brother and I were younger, we would infrequently get what
we called small vision. For a short time, everything in
(10:48):
the world would seem to be smaller, further away than
it really was. You could even put your hands in
front of you and your arms would seem much longer
than they should be. This would be accompanied by a
slight pain pressure at the back of the head. I
believe this is where the visual cortex is located. I
have no idea why this happened, but it sounded a
lot like Alice in Wonderland syndrome you described in the podcast.
(11:11):
Until not now, I had never heard of anyone else
experiencing something like this. Thanks for sharing the information with
your listeners and giving me a little more perspective on
my own experience. Wow, that's pretty pretty fascinating. Um. Yeah,
I mean it does sound a lot like the Allison
Wonderland UH syndrome about some of the lillipution of hallucinations
we were describing, where it starts messing with the way
(11:33):
you're perceiving the size of objects and distances. Yeah, and
so it's interesting that the visual cortex was brought up right,
because just to root everybody back in that podcast for
context we talked about is that when your vision is
impaired um in a variety of different situations, your brain
doesn't like, uh, the void and will begin to construct
(11:55):
images for it. So that's why these hallucinations occur. And uh, yes,
it's very interesting to hear about that account. There anything
talking about the pain that accompanied it, which which brings
to mind like a small like I haven't even I
haven't researched this. Perhaps there's a there's a miracle blog
post out there that explains at all. But we've all,
at some point the other probably tried to bend spoon
(12:15):
with our mind or move it with our mind. Have
you done this, tried to do something psychically? Yeah, it
was probably. It was probably like when I was yesterday. Yeah,
But when you do it, did you you inevitably start
to feel strain. You feel something straining, You feel like
a slight I'm trying too hard? What what where is
that taking place? What are we straining? I have a feeling.
Maybe it's just something as simple as we're we're straining
(12:37):
our vision because we're kind of thinking hard, we're kind
of squinting, but but I don't know. It got me
thinking it's like if because if I can't do something,
I shouldn't feel the strain of trying to do it.
I wonder if your pupils dilate and tried to take
in more light. I have a feeling it's eye related,
But if anybody has any any feedback on that, I'd
be interested to hear. Like I said, I haven't looked
into it, but just thought about it the other day
(12:59):
in the car Car Thoughts with Robert Lamb. All right,
this one comes to us from Tony. Tony says, hey, guys,
love the podcast. Great topics to get me through my
long walks on this very large campus of Michigan State
and my long meals in the cafeteria Go meals. Fun fact,
(13:22):
Brody Hall, an area of dorms on the northwest side
of campus, actually houses the largest non military cafeteria in
America and maybe the world. I'm not sure, but anyway,
I was listening to your lepro Con Hallucinations episode and
I actually experienced very bizarre and usually arguably terrifying hallucinations
When I slip into a lucid dream. I think lucid
dreaming is an interesting category of hallucination because you were dreaming,
(13:43):
but you are aware of it, and in many cases
you're able to control what goes on. Usually, when I
dream lucidly, I like to take a back seat and
let my mind unwind the story. But there are sometimes
when things will pop up that are very jarring, and
I typically undergo a fight or flight reaction in this
dream dreamland, it stays asleep or wake up. I don't
dream lucidly very often, maybe two to three times a
(14:05):
month at most, but I've had some very bizarre encounters
with interesting creatures popping up. For instance, about a week ago,
I was dreaming that I was sitting in a room
and there was a rain storm. It wasn't actually raining
at the time, and I was really just enjoying my
night in content. Then a very large thunderclap echoes through
my mind, most likely a door slamming down the hall
in my dorm, and the lights uh in my dream
(14:27):
go out, but I can still see they various shapes
and shadows. I then turn and look to the left
physically and mentally and see a large dark shadows standing
in the doorway which I am concluding is the dresser
that is in the exact spot I was looking, So
I immediately think wake up, but instead I slipped into
sleep paralysis, which if you have ever never experienced, is
extremely bizarre. When I experienced sleep paralysis, I am still
(14:50):
able to move, but only very slowly, or so it
seems from my perspective in the dream. I wonder if
brain activity is so high or low that I am
actually moving normal, but but the speed is perceived as slow.
I am also able to open my eyes see the world,
but not actually be awake. It's easily, easily the weirdest
visual experience. So this dark figure appears, walks towards me,
(15:13):
and my body feels like it feels like it's under
immense pressure. I try to raise my arms, but it
takes ten minutes. My eyes are open, but I still
can't wake up. The figure is almost there, and then
out of nowhere, I'm awake with the most intense body
tingle and an elevated heart rate. Maybe it doesn't technically
classify as hallucinating, but I think it does. Again, thanks
(15:33):
for the cool topics, Love you guys. Tony. Well, that's
that is fascinating because for the most part. What we're
talking about there in an example isn't a hallucination, but
it is. It is sleep paralysis, which we have talked
about before in its relation to paranormal experience, which is
also something that relates to hallucination experiences where something unreal happens,
(15:54):
but but it feels real and it's observed as real. Yeah,
when first is used the concept at the beginning of
that email, I wasn't quite sure that that it could
be a hallucination. But in describing that, yeah, I mean
because you talk about sleep paralysis in the problem with
that is that your brain has not quite come back
online with your body. Because the idea is when you're dreaming,
(16:15):
you may be throwing kung fu chops and kicks everywhere,
but it's kind of like a simulation. You don't need
to actually throw kung fu chops around, So your body
is under lockdown, and when sleep prolysis occurs, your mind
wakes up, but your body is still locked down. Right,
So if you're receiving data again from your eyes visual
cortex that isn't driving with the rest of your experience,
(16:38):
then you know again the brain abhores avoid and it
will fill in for you, So I do kind of
like I said, I wasn't quite sure the beginning, but
in the description of Chinese experience, I see how that
is a possibility. Um, it would be very interesting to
see some sort of mri I studies that could correlate
with that. Of course, then you'd have to do someone
into loosen dreaming and then sleep. But the graalsa the
(17:00):
great thing here. It's Tony is applying critical thinking to
an experience that in other cases might be perceived as
something supernatural or abnormal. I mean it's still terrifying obviously,
but he was able to afterwards realize, oh, well, what's
going on. There's a scientific explanation for it, all right.
Here's one from Michela Mickello writes in in a response
to our PoCA episode, and she says, love the podcast.
(17:22):
I had my own experience with PoCA during my second pregnancy.
I craved I so strongly I started bringing cups of
it to work with me from home to keep up
with the demand. The weirder craving was was of a
smell the a c in my car. I would sit
in my driveway for fifteen minutes with my nose as
close to the then as possible, breathing in the beautiful fragrance.
This became increasingly increasingly hard is my belly group. Almost
(17:45):
immediately after having my son, the smell all but disappeared
from my radar. My doctor, although pretty surprised at this
odd habit, attributed both of these to my anemic status
during my pregnancy. All Right, that is unusual because again
when we talk about pica, which I think we were
saying pick up by the way, so we have to
apologize for that, or I was when you think about it,
more is is eating dirt for the nutrients that are
(18:07):
inherent there, but not necessarily the ac coming in of
the car. I mean, I I love the smell of
air conditioning. I can remember that as a child, like
loving it, maybe because I liked you know, I like
the cool and all, and I didn't like being out
in the sweating heat. But there's something even today, like
when you when you reached that point we were suddenly
turning the air conditioning back on, kind of like the
smell that smells good. I did not even realize that
(18:30):
air conditioning had a smell. It does it has. It
has a smell and uh and a quite lovely one
if you're in if you're in the mood for it. Okay,
So now that makes me wonder, is there a large
part of the population that likes to smell or conditioning
and can't detect the smell of it? And I believe
that I cannot. Well, we talked before. I mean, smell
is a powerful thing, and we attached memories to smell
that that we almost really can't completely fathom. We've all
(18:51):
had that experience where we're walking down the street and
we smell something and we're like, and it just takes
us back to like a childhood memory, and then we
don't even know where the smell came from or even
necessarily what it was. But the press Dan Pressy and
a Madeleine's right from the story that he talks about
his memory and food. Yeah, I was at a friend's
house and they opened up a new board game and
I ended up having to like just basically huff the
(19:11):
board game box for a little bit because the smell
was taking me back to something that I had some
positive feelings about with nostalgia for and I think maybe
it ended up having the same smell as like dungeons
and dragons manuals from the mid nineties or something. I
don't know, I think that's what it was. I couldn't
quite put a pin on it, and it's so, you know,
it's probably like a weird chemical smell, you know, but
(19:32):
it pulled something out of me. Crazy game board sniffer. Yeah, alright,
this one comes to us from Antonio. Antonio writes, and
it says, Hi, Robert and Julie, my name is Tony,
and I just wanted to comment on a podcast you
did a couple of months ago about bad neighborhoods and
how people generally don't help to start. I live in
a city of about thirty thousand people, so pretty small
and not really any bad neighborhoods to speak of. But
(19:54):
I recently went to Las Vegas, and it was almost
a sickness to me to give money to every homeless
person I saw. I believe it is because I live
in a place where we don't have a homeless population,
therefore I'm not blind to it. Also, I just watched
a show on the Science Channel called Alien Encounters, and
it was mentioned that we just might be developing a
hive brain mentality with the help of the internet. Um
(20:15):
in our smartphones, iPods, etcetera, and how that could greatly
help us against not only an alien invasion, but just
about any problem human god could face. I'm curious as
to what you think about the hive brain versus the
plain old single brain. I love your podcast. I listen
to it while I work my factory job, and it
keeps me saying in my brain working, keep it up, Tony.
So two interesting things. He's he's responding to their one
(20:37):
talking about you know what happens when we encounter, you know,
say a homeless individual or somebody in need, and how
group dynamics affect that. You know, where if if if
you're seeing other people pass them by, then it kind
of becomes the norm and you want to and a
lot of times you feel like you need to keep
with the norm, or if there's kind of a culture
of not helping, you know, versus versus other environments where
(20:57):
you're going to be more in close proximity and they
seem more human to you strangers in general. Yeah, we've
seen this in countless experiments, whether conducted on the street
or you know, in an instance where someone is placed
at a situation where they could give money to another person.
But if the other person knew they were giving them money,
then they would give them it. But if they you know,
(21:19):
like there's all sorts of they are all sorts of
experiments that involve altruism, and it does seem that whoever
sort of does the first thing dictates what the protocol
will be. So if you help that stringer industry, other
people will follow suit. Yeah, we've talked about this too
in terms of corporations and industries large you know, any
(21:41):
kind of large social structure where if you have if
there's like a caring um culture at the beginning of
it and the roots of it, then that tends to
carry on out through the company as it grows. But
to whatever degree it's not there, then it's not there
in the larger social organism as well. So anyway, it
was an interesting email because he really drives home like
(22:02):
two aspects of the group think and uh and this
hive mind the idea that it can it can lead
to some great things, some some bringing together of ideas,
our potential to better the world and potentially protected against
an alien invasion, but also in our ability to all
decide not to do anything for someone that needs help. Well, now, also,
(22:24):
I think points towards the self organizing nature. And I
always think about this whenever I get an elevator. Now,
since we did the podcast on elevators, and you watch
people come in and see how they organize themselves, and
over and over again people will self organize into these
certain configurations. So um for of these invisible forces always
at play, and we just don't always realize it, all right,
(22:45):
And here's a one from a listener. Eric Eric writes
in and says on the subject of laboring, labeling food
with gross names, like writing cloaca cake on a cake.
My mother came up with a recipe she calls garbage
can casserole. She invented it shortly after getting married. She
had a can of soup, some chicken, and a little
bit of other food, but not really enough of one
thing to make a meal for two people. It's basically
(23:07):
a chicken casserole with cream of chicken and cream of
mushroom soup right from the can without deluding it so
it stays thick chow, maine noodles, water, chestnuts, and quote
unquote other stuff, topped with corn flakes and baked. She says,
it makes it. It makes you clean out your refrigerator,
and anything that's not green and fuzzy it goes into
the dish. It's not quite that easy, but the other
(23:28):
stuff usually consists of different vegetables like peas, green beans,
and or a corn i ate. It a lot growing up,
and despite its name, it's one of my favorites. I
usually make it for potlock parties and it's almost always
gone by the end, so long as I don't display
it with the name garbage can cast role. I've tried
displaying it with that name in the past as an experiment,
and if I do, it's almost always untouched, except for
(23:50):
the helping I took for myself to show it was tried.
So there you go. Eric has already done this experiment
that we were talking about to it to a certain extent.
Call it garbage cat roll. Who's gonna eat it? Call it,
you know, beautiful cast role or just cast role and
then country cast role. People will go for it. You
see the same thing with with some fish species, right
(24:10):
you have fish where it's like if it's called a
slime head or if it's called a dolphin. Because we
have the fish that is the dolphin as well as
the mammalian dolphin. People are going to be hesitant to
eat it, but you rebrand it as something I forget
what the slimehead brand it has, but with the dolphin
became my ma right yeah, yeah, um, it's true. Yeah,
(24:32):
So I still want to do the I think we should.
I think we should do it. We should film it
and uh and see see how it pans out here
in the office. All right, So there you go. Um, robot,
do you do you feel better about things now? Look good? Good? Yes?
Well I love you too, all right, and we love you, guys,
I love you. This is a lot about just sharing
(24:53):
some of your feedback with everybody else. And we love
to get this email and it makes us. It remind
is us of why we love this job so much.
And it's very nice to thanks guys. Yeah, and if
a feedback is good on this, if you guys like
this and it wasn't an annoyance, then you know, maybe
we'll do some more of bonus episodes like this. So hey.
In the meantime, if you want to send us more
listener mail and reach out to us with your various
(25:15):
comments and shares and whatnot, you can find us on Facebook.
You can find us on tumbler We are Stuff to
blow your Mind on both of those, and on Twitter
we go by the handle blow the Mind, and you
can always draw us line at blow the Mind at
discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(25:36):
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