Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener Mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and hey folks. As
Speaker 3: you probably heard on the past few weeks on the show,
Speaker 3: we are trying something a little bit different with our
Speaker 3: listener mail offerings. For the past few years, we've been
Speaker 3: doing listener mail every week on Mondays. Right now we're
Speaker 3: trying out a schedule where we wait a few weeks
Speaker 3: and let the mail bag accumulate a bit in between
Speaker 3: listener mail episodes, which we'll run in a Tuesday or
Speaker 3: Thursday episode slot instead of Mondays. This is how we
Speaker 3: used to do listener mail back in the day before
Speaker 3: we went to daily publication on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: And for the time being, while we're trying this out,
Speaker 3: we're going to be running Weird House Cinema Rewinds on Mondays.
Speaker 3: But hey, I think one thing we see sort of
Speaker 3: half promised at some point was that our beloved mail
Speaker 3: bot Carne would he would have to return again if
Speaker 3: we were going back to the old school way of
Speaker 3: doing listener mail. We never intended to neglect Carne. He
Speaker 3: just sort of, I don't know. Over time, in the
Speaker 3: busyness and hectic schedule of every week, we sort of
Speaker 3: forgot about him, and he became less of a thing
Speaker 3: and more of an idea. And so I think it
Speaker 3: is only fitting that upon returning Listener Mail to a
Speaker 3: Tuesday Thursday slot, that Carne the mail bot should become
Speaker 3: incarnate once again. So arise, Carne, Arise from your crypt
Speaker 3: of incorporeality and become a being. Become flesh, become circuits.
Speaker 2: Beautiful, beautiful. We have unpuffed the magic dragoned him. Now
Speaker 2: he is here once more to guide us through Listener Mail.
Speaker 3: Glistening look at that. Oh, another thing to address here
Speaker 3: at the top of this listener Mail episode. We have
Speaker 3: gotten a number of emails asking us about the reason
Speaker 3: for the change, like, oh, do you not have enough
Speaker 3: messages to read? Etc. So I'm going to address all
Speaker 3: of those questions right here at the top. No, we
Speaker 3: usually do have more email than we can get to
Speaker 3: in a week, though it varies from week to week,
Speaker 3: so like every now and then we have a week
Speaker 3: where we come up a bit short, which makes things
Speaker 3: a little bit difficult. I would say The main reason
Speaker 3: is we're just trying to have a bit more time
Speaker 3: to devote to our core offerings. Our weekly production schedule
Speaker 3: has been a lot to handle, and we just wanted
Speaker 3: to see if backing off on weekly mail episodes would
Speaker 3: give us a bit more breathing room and allow us
Speaker 3: to focus more time on core episodes.
Speaker 2: That's all, yeah, because I don't know if we drive
Speaker 2: this home a lot or enough. But when it comes
Speaker 2: to the actual just production of the show, it's a
Speaker 2: three person team. It's Joe, it's me, it's jj We're
Speaker 2: the only three people working on the production of the show.
Speaker 2: That's not counting anybody that's involved in ads and you know,
Speaker 2: the larger corporate structures around us. But in terms of
Speaker 2: making stuff to blow your mind, it's just the.
Speaker 3: Three of us. Yeah, that's right. I mean sometimes we
Speaker 3: get messages from people who seem to assume we've got
Speaker 3: some kind of like command center worrying in the background,
Speaker 3: where we have a large like army of workers who
Speaker 3: are going out and selecting topics and doing research and stuff.
Speaker 3: So nope, it's it's just the three of us on
Speaker 3: the content side.
Speaker 2: And now Carne. If we consider Carne a person, then
Speaker 2: I guess that's right. I'd say it's four. But he's
Speaker 2: very specialized. He does only one thing, and that is
Speaker 2: fetched listener mail for us, but.
Speaker 3: He does it so well, and so Carney, we're glad
Speaker 3: to have you back in the flesh. Oh and of course,
Speaker 3: if you out there listening would like to get in
Speaker 3: touch with us, you can always do so by writing
Speaker 3: our email address, which is contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com. Of course, if you have thoughts
Speaker 3: about listener mail itself, and you know how you what
Speaker 3: your ideal schedule would be, you know, if you like
Speaker 3: it the old way, you like it the new way, whatever,
Speaker 3: you can write to us at contact at stuff to
Speaker 3: blow Yourmind dot com. But you can also write with
Speaker 3: any kind of message about the show. If you have
Speaker 3: feedback to a recent episode, if you have a correction,
Speaker 3: if you have just something interesting to add to a
Speaker 3: topic we've talked about. All of that's fair game. Contact
Speaker 3: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want to join the Discord server, that's
Speaker 2: also that's also how you can you can join it.
Speaker 2: Just email us and ask for the link and we'll
Speaker 2: send it to you.
Speaker 3: All right, I thought maybe we should kick things off
Speaker 3: today with a message that's less about an episode and
Speaker 3: more on a personal note, Rob, you recently took a
Speaker 3: family vacation to Japan, and our frequent correspondent Renata got
Speaker 3: in touch about that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is a fun one, r'naa Wrights, and
Speaker 2: it says, Hi, Robin Joe, what a coincidence. Ben and
Speaker 2: I are just returning from Japan as well. Not sure
Speaker 2: if our trip overlap with yours. Rob. We got there
Speaker 2: on June eighteenth, and we are returning today.
Speaker 3: Not sure what day this email came in. I did
Speaker 3: not make a note of that, but Renata does attach
Speaker 3: a picture that looks like it was taken in the airport.
Speaker 3: We'll get to that in a minute.
Speaker 2: Renata continues, I'm curious if you made it to the
Speaker 2: Miyoshi manonok Yokai Museum. We visited it and it was delightful.
Speaker 2: The whole town of Meyoshi had a wistful, quiet, small
Speaker 2: town vibe. At the end of the museum, you can
Speaker 2: color yokai drawing, then scan it, and your yokai joins
Speaker 2: with all the others on a display on the wall,
Speaker 2: and you can touch the yokai and make them dance.
Speaker 2: My drawing was a kappa. My favorite yokai, however, is
Speaker 2: Kasa Obaki, the umbrella Yokai. I just think he's the
Speaker 2: goofiest and Japan is so full of umbrellas that it's
Speaker 2: fun to imagine all the umbrellas turning into yokai at
Speaker 2: night and having a party. We bought a huge yokai
Speaker 2: book among numerous other souvenirs at the museum, currently still
Speaker 2: in the plastic, and I guess this is a picture
Speaker 2: they included of the beautiful cover to this book.
Speaker 3: I don't know what creature this is, but it looks
Speaker 3: like an elephant made out of dirty laundry with these huge, bloodshot,
Speaker 3: bulbous eyes.
Speaker 2: Well, it might be the Baku. Remember we talked about
Speaker 2: the paku a little bit. This is more purely pachadermical,
Speaker 2: I guess than some of the depictions I've seen of
Speaker 2: the baku. But uh that's my my my initial guess. Anyway,
Speaker 2: it could be something else.
Speaker 3: I can't read the text on the cover, but the
Speaker 3: illustration absolutely makes me want to open this book and
Speaker 3: see what see what's inside?
Speaker 2: And now it continues, Can we expect you know some
Speaker 2: Yokai related episodes coming up. I haven't listened to your
Speaker 2: latest Japan episode yet, so maybe you already got into
Speaker 2: it all the best for not well, Yeah, I have
Speaker 2: to say that that museum sounds awesome. My family and
Speaker 2: I we packed as much into our trip as possible,
Speaker 2: but sadly we didn't make it to Hiroshima, and we
Speaker 2: we looked into another Yokai museum that proved to be
Speaker 2: just too far out of the way at least this
Speaker 2: trip it was even like even further south. But I
Speaker 2: hope to return to Japan in the future and check
Speaker 2: out more of the southern sides for sure, maybe some
Speaker 2: of the northern sides as well, I don't know, And
Speaker 2: of course just more Tokyo, because there's so much of
Speaker 2: it one cannot cannot get quite enough of it now.
Speaker 2: As for more Yokai episodes, I think one way or another.
Speaker 2: Certainly we've discussed doing one of the many Yokai movies
Speaker 2: for Weird House, and I can easily see there being
Speaker 2: more Yokai Monster Fact episodes and core episodes are even
Speaker 2: a major possibility. They're also just going to probably continue
Speaker 2: to sort of pop up in unexpected ways. Just because
Speaker 2: ultimately the Japanese Yokai, they cover a lot of ground
Speaker 2: that they you know, they touch on occasionally things that
Speaker 2: we could discuss from a scientific perspective. They certainly touch
Speaker 2: on things we can we can discuss from historical and
Speaker 2: cultural perspective. So I'm sure the okai will be back.
Speaker 2: Oh and then we're not responded to a reply that
Speaker 2: that I sent sent their way with My favorite Yokai
Speaker 2: movie for what it's worth is Yokai Monsters one hundred Monsters.
Speaker 2: But probably because Kasa Obaki is a central.
Speaker 3: Character, that's the umbrella Yokai.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one that is on our list of
Speaker 2: potential episodes. We actually considered doing it for our one
Speaker 2: hundredth episode, but we did. What do we do instead?
Speaker 3: I can't? I mean of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Of Weird House Cinema, Yes, yeah, yeah, one hundredth episode
Speaker 2: of Subsible of Your Mind that ships long, long sale.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure when that would have been, but yeah,
Speaker 2: on the on the number of films that we've covered
Speaker 2: on Weird House. Let's see what are we up to now?
Speaker 2: I can easily check by going to letterbox dot com
Speaker 2: and going to our profile weird House. I can see
Speaker 2: how many films we've covered, and the count is up too,
Speaker 2: one sixty nine. It's going to be one seventy tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Entry number one hundred was Jason X.
Speaker 3: That's perfect. Yes, well, maybe we'll do Yochai Monsters one
Speaker 3: hundred monsters for our thousandth episode.
Speaker 2: Oh there you go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. Should we do some responses to our series
Speaker 3: on the Ninja? Yes, this one is from Mike. Of course.
Speaker 3: We talked about many things in this series, about history,
Speaker 3: about alleged technology and gadgets, a bit of ninja physics
Speaker 3: and science, but also just about the pop culture ninja,
Speaker 3: the international ninja, and the ninja craze of the eighties
Speaker 3: and nineties. So Mike writes in on that subject and says,
Speaker 3: Robin Joe, I really enjoyed the first part on the
Speaker 3: Ninja when you were talking about some of the odd
Speaker 3: American family friendly ninja movies of the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 3: like Three Ninjas. I was reminded of a movie I
Speaker 3: hadn't thought about in years, Surf Ninjas. This was an
Speaker 3: odd little snapshot of society at the time. Nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 3: you had a thirty year old Rob Schneider playing a teenager,
Speaker 3: Leslie Nil Wilson as a cyborg warlord who couldn't get wet.
Speaker 3: I assume that would negatively affect his cyborginess, a game
Speaker 3: gear with the power to show the future, and Tone
Speaker 3: Loake as a wise cracking detective. I was thirteen at
Speaker 3: the time and truly loved this movie. Can't imagine it
Speaker 3: holds up all that well thirty years later. Love the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for resurfacing this movie in my memory, Mike. I
Speaker 3: don't think I ever saw this one, but it's the
Speaker 3: kind of movie I saw lots of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't see this one either, and I have
Speaker 2: to admit I think I get it kind of mixed
Speaker 2: up in my head with the nineteen eighty seven film
Speaker 2: Surf Nazis Must Die. It's like Surf Nazis Surf Ninja's.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen neither film, so they neatly combine into
Speaker 2: one unseen film for me, though, imagine they're rather different
Speaker 2: because Surf Nazis Must Die as a trauma.
Speaker 3: Picture, probably not as family friendly. Yeah, now, just looking
Speaker 3: at the plot summary, one thing that stands out to
Speaker 3: me is that it appears that the game that can
Speaker 3: predict the future or control some kind of has some
Speaker 3: divination power. Is like an actual branded game gear. It's
Speaker 3: not a case where you have some spray painted piece
Speaker 3: of technology masquerading as something else. You know, like in
Speaker 3: all these scenes where there's a there's like a robot
Speaker 3: that's actually just like a component from a Beta max
Speaker 3: player or something like that.
Speaker 2: Or the power glove and into no power glove as
Speaker 2: part of a cyborg's interface system.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, No, this seems more like it's that movie
Speaker 3: where the power glove is a power glove and it
Speaker 3: has powers. This this looks like it's a game gear
Speaker 3: that is a game gear and can control time.
Speaker 2: Wow, so this movie was game gear's big moment, right
Speaker 2: It was really sink or swim for them?
Speaker 3: Funny you should say that because what's right here on
Speaker 3: the poster it looks like a cyborged up Leslie Nielsen
Speaker 3: sinking into the waves failing to swim anyway, Thank you, Mike.
Speaker 2: All right, now, this next one comes to us from Nathan,
Speaker 2: and I believe this one came in after we recorded
Speaker 2: and published part one, but before we published subsequent episodes
Speaker 2: that got into more detailed discussions of Ninja swords and
Speaker 2: alleged ninja swords.
Speaker 3: Right, I think there was a question of talking about
Speaker 3: movies in which you see a ninja carrying a katana
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 2: Yes, anyway, Nathan writes hello again the late eighties, pre
Speaker 2: teen pedant in me is compelled to point out that
Speaker 2: samurai carried katana with a curve blade and round handguard,
Speaker 2: while ninja wielded ninjado with a shorter, straight blade and
Speaker 2: square handguard. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was perhaps the most
Speaker 2: egregious example of confusing the two, as Leonardo's signature weapons
Speaker 2: were always called katanas, despite at least in the original
Speaker 2: black and white mirage comics, being depicted as the more
Speaker 2: angular ninjada. However, as I only learned relatively recently, and
Speaker 2: this is where we're getting into something that we would
Speaker 2: talk about on the show and the subsequent episodes, much
Speaker 2: like the mythical modern ninja, ninjado seems to be a
Speaker 2: twentieth century invention. The wiki best sums up the controversy here.
Speaker 2: By the way, I think pluralizing any of the above
Speaker 2: words with an S is totally fine, as they've been
Speaker 2: anglicized and as such only a dorc would pronounce ninja
Speaker 2: as ninja, though for the record, I only ever knew
Speaker 2: one kid like that. I enjoyed the short Netflix series
Speaker 2: from a few years ago called Age of Samurai, but
Speaker 2: even more enjoyed commentary about the finished product from several
Speaker 2: featured consultants found in two parts here, and they included
Speaker 2: a couple of episodes, and they had I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: your guy Turnbull is among them.
Speaker 3: Turnbull is one of the authors we cited in the
Speaker 3: Ninja series, having written a serious historical investigation of the
Speaker 3: ninja in the historical basis of the and the development
Speaker 3: in the mythology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's also highly cited in other ninja books,
Speaker 2: like he was cited in the book that I was
Speaker 2: referencing a lot for those episodes. Anyway, they continue great
Speaker 2: topic and great coverage. As always, gentlemen, I think the
Speaker 2: only film franchise worth adding to those mentioned would be
Speaker 2: American Ninja.
Speaker 3: I know nothing about that.
Speaker 2: I had to look it up. This is one that
Speaker 2: I don't think I've seen, but I'm familiar with the title.
Speaker 2: It stars Michael Dudakov and co stars Steve James. This
Speaker 2: was nineteen eighty five. I mainly remember the VHS box
Speaker 2: art because it is quite stellar. A picture of you
Speaker 2: will an American flag, a black clad ninja, and then
Speaker 2: a camo clad GI locking samurai swords or Cadanna or
Speaker 2: I don't know, the swords against the backdrop of the
Speaker 2: American flag, and then there's your title, American Ninja.
Speaker 3: It's a little known fact that Benjamin Franklin was a ninja. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've seen this one, but maybe it
Speaker 2: bears a closer analysis. I'm not sure. Anyway, they continue.
Speaker 2: The arcade version of Ninja Gaiden in my memory was awesome,
Speaker 2: but I thought maybe I had imagined it until recently
Speaker 2: finding a playthrough a series of games called tin Chu
Speaker 2: Stealth Assassin is really cool, where players are rated higher
Speaker 2: for undetected kills, similar to the more recent Shinobi games.
Speaker 2: The AI has increased since PS one Days, to the
Speaker 2: point that the player now finds it necessary to hide
Speaker 2: victims bodies to avoid raising alarms. I do love a
Speaker 2: good stealth game where you end up spending say like
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes of a time hiding in a locker to
Speaker 2: keep a xeno more from eating you or random enemies
Speaker 2: from finding you. I don't know you've done right. They
Speaker 2: can be very engaging in it.
Speaker 3: You're referencing Alien Isolation, which is one of my favorite
Speaker 3: horror games of recent years. That one is really great.
Speaker 3: But the one downside I really recall from the game
Speaker 3: play is that you would spend so long not moving
Speaker 3: because you'd get scared to move, and then you just
Speaker 3: sit there and sit there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and then you're like, Okay, it's gone, and
Speaker 2: then I know it's coming back. All right, now another
Speaker 2: five minutes in here should do it. But this is
Speaker 2: where the skill of the Shinobi comes into play, right,
Speaker 2: This is the patience and pressverance. That's right, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: Nathan continues on the White Ninja. My recollection is foggy
Speaker 2: on this, but I think how did this get made?
Speaker 2: Covered Ninja three? The domination and mock the notion of
Speaker 2: bright colors on a stealth killer an audience member positive
Speaker 2: a theory that makes as much sense as anything. A
Speaker 2: true master could defy the shadows and where white in spite,
Speaker 2: and this master could boast defeating enemies unscathed, as the
Speaker 2: white would show bloody evidence of any wounds. Looking forward
Speaker 2: to the next installment. Thanks again, you guys are the
Speaker 2: best tape them.
Speaker 3: Now, what a corniacopia of twentieth century international ninja lore.
Speaker 2: I do like that that view of the white ninja.
Speaker 2: You could I mean, you could basically have a naked
Speaker 2: ninja like and he doesn't even need clothes, even if
Speaker 2: he is just obviously naked.
Speaker 3: Well, to come back to the Michael Dudikov theme, you
Speaker 3: could have a ninja wearing an American flag as his costume.
Speaker 2: There you go. This is from our discord, but it
Speaker 2: has to do with ninja's and ninja turtles, so I
Speaker 2: thought i'd read it really quickly. This one comes to
Speaker 2: us from Fletch. Fletch writes, You Only Live Twice was
Speaker 2: definitely my introduction to the concept of ninja. It was
Speaker 2: the first Bond movie I ever saw. Must have been
Speaker 2: sometime in the early eighties.
Speaker 3: In the UK.
Speaker 2: In the late eighties there was a moral panic around
Speaker 2: ninja and martial arts weapons, shuriken, nunchucks, etc. That resulted
Speaker 2: in teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles being shown on UK TV
Speaker 2: as teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.
Speaker 3: Is this real?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm seeing some articles about a ninja moral panic in
Speaker 3: the eighties nineties Britain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, you're I see references to this that European
Speaker 2: regions in general sometimes called it teenage mutant hero turtles.
Speaker 2: I was unaware, but so I was astounded to hear.
Speaker 2: This is amazing, But it makes sense too, Right when
Speaker 2: you think about the things ninjas do in films and
Speaker 2: even in Dja teenagemutant Ninja Turtles, you could see where
Speaker 2: a moral panic could easily rise up around something. You know,
Speaker 2: moral panics also typically revolve around something that is either
Speaker 2: actually imported from outside of a culture or or or
Speaker 2: are interpreted as being such, So you could imagine that
Speaker 2: factoring into it as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but what it's funny the way it would manifest as.
Speaker 3: It's not like we can't show shows on TV that
Speaker 3: have cartoon violence in them. It's that you can't call
Speaker 3: it ninja. Like they can still have the weapons and
Speaker 3: fight the bad guys, but you have to call them
Speaker 3: hero not ninja.
Speaker 2: That's true. It doesn't sound like they're actually changing content,
Speaker 2: just this one word that would somehow make it less
Speaker 2: dangerous for everyone.
Speaker 3: Okay, this next message is in response to our series
Speaker 3: on cicadas. This is from Jeremy, and it's not only
Speaker 3: responding to our series on cicadas, but it's also replying
Speaker 3: to a listener male episode that I did by myself
Speaker 3: in June, and to refresh everyone in that episode, this
Speaker 3: listener Jeremy wrote in to tell us about another species
Speaker 3: of insect that rivals the cicada in the loudness contest.
Speaker 3: This was an insect called the lesser water boatman or
Speaker 3: Micronecta Schultze, which a study in Plus one from twenty
Speaker 3: eleven found was the loudest animal on Earth relative to
Speaker 3: its body size, so not strictly the loudest on Earth,
Speaker 3: but compared to how small it is, it could make
Speaker 3: the loudest sound. So this insect is about two millimeters long,
Speaker 3: and the mail of the lesser water boatmen makes its
Speaker 3: characteristic sound by rubbing one of its twin sexual organs
Speaker 3: called parameters, against its abdomen. In some media, this was
Speaker 3: described as the insect rubbing its penis against its abdomen
Speaker 3: to make this incredibly loud noise. Whether that's a fair
Speaker 3: characterization or not, I don't know. Insects have slightly different
Speaker 3: kinds of sexual appendages, but it was a protruding sexual
Speaker 3: appendage rubbing against its abdomen, and it gets incredibly loud.
Speaker 3: This achieves roughly a seventy nine decibel sound pressure level,
Speaker 3: with peaks of ninety nine to one hundred decibels when
Speaker 3: measured at a distance of one meter. Also in that
Speaker 3: email where Jeremy shared this information, he alluded to the
Speaker 3: idea that there are no cicadas in Europe. That, of
Speaker 3: course isn't true. There are plenty of cicadas in Europe.
Speaker 3: And in his follow up here, Jeremy clarifies that he
Speaker 3: meant to say there were no periodical cicadas in Europe,
Speaker 3: only annual species, which as far as we know, is correct.
Speaker 3: But after clearing up all this, Jeremy writes in about
Speaker 3: something new, Jeremy says, on to my new point. In
Speaker 3: your recent vault rerun of the Evolution of the Horse's
Speaker 3: hoof Part two, you mentioned the medical diagnosis trope of
Speaker 3: if you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras. Please
Speaker 3: see attached and comment on how this would be interpreted.
Speaker 3: And so Jeremy attaches a photograph. What are we looking
Speaker 3: at here? So it's a pasture surrounded by a fence
Speaker 3: with horses grazing in the distance, and one of the
Speaker 3: horses is wearing what looks like a zebra patterned overcoat.
Speaker 3: It's like a blanket that extends from just behind the
Speaker 3: horse's ears all the way to its tail, and it's
Speaker 3: draped over the horse's back so that it falls over
Speaker 3: the flanks and covers the belly and goes down to
Speaker 3: the tops of the legs.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, it's like zebra pajamas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, It's like a zebra coat. Jeremy continues by saying,
Speaker 3: I'm guessing the purpose of this is to protect the
Speaker 3: horse from flies, as research indicates that zebra stripes confuse
Speaker 3: flies so that fewer flies land on zebras then similar
Speaker 3: size to mammals grazing with them, Best regards, Jeremy, and
Speaker 3: then Jeremy says, PS, this is the second time the
Speaker 3: subject matter of your podcast has coincided with my cycling
Speaker 3: past a closely related physical object. The first was the
Speaker 3: Finn McCool Giant's Causeway episode where I cycled past an
Speaker 3: art installation representing it. I remember this email Jeremy, so
Speaker 3: Jeremy has a habit of riding his bike past something
Speaker 3: that we happen to be talking about on the podcast,
Speaker 3: taking a picture of it and sending it our way.
Speaker 2: Twilight Zone esque gift, you might say.
Speaker 3: Yes. In fact, in another strange coincidence, this is not
Speaker 3: even the only email of this nature that will be
Speaker 3: in today's episode, Rob, do you remember the other one
Speaker 3: we're going to be coming up to. Oh, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: we'll keep it secret for now. We'll get there in
Speaker 3: a bit. But anyway, to come back to the zebra
Speaker 3: stripe being draped over the horse's back, Yes, Jeremy, I
Speaker 3: think your explanation for what you're seeing is correct. I
Speaker 3: can't vouch directly for it actually working, but there are
Speaker 3: agricultural suppliers who sell products called things like zebra fly
Speaker 3: sheets or zebra rugs, and I think this is exactly
Speaker 3: what we're seeing in the picture. It's a zebra costume
Speaker 3: for a horse, but the ad copy clarifies that it
Speaker 3: is meant to repel insects. And like I said, I
Speaker 3: can't directly vouch from experience whether or not this works
Speaker 3: on domestic horses, but it is based on some real science.
Speaker 3: So I found a paper published in Plus one in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen by Tim carrow at all called benefits of
Speaker 3: zebra stripes behavior of tabinid flies around zebras and horses,
Speaker 3: and to summarize this study, there have been lots of
Speaker 3: hypotheses about the evolutionary reason for zebra stripes. Some researchers
Speaker 3: think the stripes help regulate the body temperature to a
Speaker 3: void overheating in the direct sun. Others have proposed that
Speaker 3: there's some kind of predator avoidant strategy. Maybe they camouflage
Speaker 3: or visually confuse predators. But another idea is that they
Speaker 3: helped deter ectoparasites such as biting flies. This particular study
Speaker 3: investigated that hypothesis, the flybiding one, and so the author's
Speaker 3: write in their abstract quote, we examined the behavior of
Speaker 3: tabanids horseflies in the vicinity of captive planes, zebras, and
Speaker 3: uniformly colored domestic horses living on a horse farm in Britain.
Speaker 3: Observations showed that fewer tabanids landed on zebras than on
Speaker 3: horses per unit time, although rates of tabanids circling around
Speaker 3: or briefly touching zebra and horse pelage did not differ.
Speaker 3: In pellage. Of course, means like the thin layer of
Speaker 3: fur covering the skin. So what they're saying here is
Speaker 3: that in this experiment, there were equal numbers of flies
Speaker 3: swarming around the horses and the zebras, but it seems
Speaker 3: that the flies more difficulty landing on and biting the zebras,
Speaker 3: even though there were just as many flying around them.
Speaker 3: In a follow up experiment, the authors tested whether a
Speaker 3: zebra patterned coat on a horse could reduce landings from
Speaker 3: horseflies when compared to a coat of just a plain
Speaker 3: uniform color like pure black or pure white, and once again,
Speaker 3: the zebra stripes did reduce horsefly landings, though the horseflies
Speaker 3: still landed on and bit the horse's exposed heads. So
Speaker 3: why do the zebra stripes prevent horseflies from lighting, landing,
Speaker 3: and biting the author's right quote. In separate detailed video analyzes,
Speaker 3: tabanids approached zebras faster and failed to decelerate before contacting zebras,
Speaker 3: and proportionately more tabanids simply touched rather than landed on
Speaker 3: zebra pelage in comparison to horses. So it seems like
Speaker 3: there's something about the black and white stripes that prevents
Speaker 3: the flies from decelerating and landing on the animal's skin correctly,
Speaker 3: so instead they're more likely to like miss or bump
Speaker 3: into the surface of the animal and bounce off. I
Speaker 3: would add that I read an article in the BBC
Speaker 3: about the question of the biological function of zebra stripes,
Speaker 3: and there is some controversy remaining, Like some zebra researchers
Speaker 3: are not convinced this is the reason for the striping,
Speaker 3: since they think the evolutionary pressure to avoid fly bites
Speaker 3: is relatively low. So it's not like this question is
Speaker 3: totally settled by this study, but it does seem like
Speaker 3: there's pretty good evidence that zebra patterns greatly reduce landings
Speaker 3: and bites from horseflies. So yeah, that is probably what
Speaker 3: is going on in that picture, Jeremy, as you guessed
Speaker 3: from looking at it. However, I have a question about this.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's a dumb question since I don't know anything
Speaker 3: about caring for horses, But if you can get a
Speaker 3: horse to wear a cloth covering, wouldn't, like any cloth
Speaker 3: covering keep horseflies from biting them? Like, even if they
Speaker 3: land on the claw, would the cloth itself not protect
Speaker 3: the horse or could the flies bite through it? I
Speaker 3: guess I don't know, but that's what I would have thought.
Speaker 3: Farmers and ranchers. Fill me in. How does this work?
Speaker 2: I will have to ask the various horse people in
Speaker 2: my in my family. They may have the answers here
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, let me know if you hear anything. But anyway,
Speaker 3: thank you Jeremy for this interesting question. This was a
Speaker 3: fun rabbit hole to dive down.
Speaker 2: All right. This next one comes to us from someone
Speaker 2: calling themselves pilot Light. I think it'll be obvious why.
Speaker 3: In a second.
Speaker 2: They ride in and they say, Robert and Joe. I
Speaker 2: was laughing so hard at your recent Hair on Fire
Speaker 2: Part one episode that I nearly had to pull off
Speaker 2: the road on my way to work. Joe's admission that
Speaker 2: he misunderstood the phrase somebody light a match to be
Speaker 2: an expression of excitement in anticipation of some methane based
Speaker 2: pyrotechnics drove me to tears, as did the tacit suggestion
Speaker 2: that one could potentially light here to cover and especially
Speaker 2: trip to the bathroom. One can only guess at the
Speaker 2: old factory adventure that would result from the combination of
Speaker 2: those two smells in an enclosed space. Anyway, keep up
Speaker 2: the good work and thanks for the much needed pick
Speaker 2: me up on the way to a dreary friday at work.
Speaker 2: Feel free to use this on the air, and if
Speaker 2: you do, you can refer to me as pilot light.
Speaker 3: As you can see pilot light. That is exactly what
Speaker 3: we did. Well. Yes, now we want to be clear.
Speaker 3: We said this in the episode, but to be clear again,
Speaker 3: we are not suggesting that anyone light hair on fire
Speaker 3: in a bathroom to cover up a poop smell. But
Speaker 3: we were just observing that the operative thing that seems
Speaker 3: to cause a lit match to cover up any sort
Speaker 3: of body or digestion related smells is the presence of
Speaker 3: the sulfur compounds that are liberated when you strike a
Speaker 3: match head. There's usually some kind of sulfur in a matchhead,
Speaker 3: and that our noses and brains are especially sensitive to
Speaker 3: sulfur related smells. The smell of sulfur compounds like sulfur dioxide,
Speaker 3: and so they sort of take over our sense of
Speaker 3: smell and make us not smell the other smell in
Speaker 3: the background. And because there are similar sulfur based there's
Speaker 3: some similar sulfur based olfactory chemistry at work. When we
Speaker 3: smell burning hair, it's possible that a burning hair smell
Speaker 3: could do a similar job. Again, not suggesting it.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: This next message comes from Kenny, and this is a
Speaker 3: response to the papers we talked about in the first
Speaker 3: part of the Burning Hair series about research about the
Speaker 3: combustibility of human hair in enriched oxygen environments, especially for
Speaker 3: space exploration. It was all about ways that hair can
Speaker 3: catch on fire in spacecraft environments with different types of
Speaker 3: atmospheric composition. So Kenny says, Hi, Rob, Joe and jj
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed the Burning Hair episodes. I wanted to
Speaker 3: add some thoughts to Joe's discussion about the atmospheric mix
Speaker 3: in spacecraft and how that might relate to the safety
Speaker 3: of astronauts in zero G. Many astronauts report reductions in
Speaker 3: their senses of taste and smell. This is due to
Speaker 3: a build up of fluid in the face and sinuses
Speaker 3: that would normally have drained away at least for the
Speaker 3: first few weeks of emission. While these symptoms are at
Speaker 3: their worst, it's possible your colleague's hair could be on
Speaker 3: fire and you wouldn't be able to smell it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the stuffy nos astronauts syndrome is very common observation, and
Speaker 3: from what I've read, and we've talked about this on
Speaker 3: the show before, it's one reason that a lot of
Speaker 3: astronauts really enjoy, especially kind of spicy foods like the
Speaker 3: shrimp cocktail, which I guess has a kind of very
Speaker 3: horse radishing sauce.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, much preferred over the corn bread.
Speaker 3: Kenney's message goes on. Secondly, it is of course true
Speaker 3: that pure oxygen at standard atmospheric pressure enormously increases the
Speaker 3: risk and severity of fire. Yeah, And that's what these
Speaker 3: papers were about. They were about historical space missions that
Speaker 3: have had enriched oxygen atmospheres, or it was also about
Speaker 3: specific scenarios where there can be locally elevated oxygen levels,
Speaker 3: for example, if someone is being given supplemental oxygen through
Speaker 3: a mask for a medical reason. Kenny goes on, However,
Speaker 3: we have been using pure oxygen equivalent to its partial
Speaker 3: pressure in Earth's atmosphere for a long time. Put simply,
Speaker 3: if your ship has a pure oxygen atmosphere at zero
Speaker 3: point two bar, you would breathe perfectly normally and there
Speaker 3: would be no greater risk of fire than aboard the
Speaker 3: ISS with a full gas mix and one bar of pressure.
Speaker 3: There are several advantages to this. You don't need to
Speaker 3: bring a buffer gas to orbit with you, your pressure
Speaker 3: vessel doesn't have to be built to contain one bar,
Speaker 3: so it can be lighter, and your life support systems
Speaker 3: are less complex. The downside is that astronauts must endure
Speaker 3: decompression after boarding while the pressure is lowered. Anyway, Thanks
Speaker 3: for a fascinating topic, Kenny, and yep, Kenny, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: Some of the stuff I was looking at also discussed
Speaker 3: the idea of using lower pressure gas environments that did
Speaker 3: just use pure oxygen but at lower pressure to reduce
Speaker 3: the risk of fire. So yeah, that is another solution
Speaker 3: to this problem.
Speaker 2: All right. This next one comes to us from David.
Speaker 2: David writes it and says a longtime listener, second time emailer,
Speaker 2: I was listening to part one of the Hair on
Speaker 2: Fire episode and did not expect what sounded like a
Speaker 2: very niche subject to lead into so many interesting rabbit holes,
Speaker 2: so many rabbit holes, just a step in, so many
Speaker 2: rabbit holes and good stuff to belie your mind series.
Speaker 2: I wanted to write because when listening to the discussion
Speaker 2: of the danger of burning hair and of accidental ignition
Speaker 2: in spacecraft. My brain made a weird or maybe not
Speaker 2: so weird association jump. When I was growing up, I
Speaker 2: was very interested in paranormal phenomena. I watched Leonard Nimoy's
Speaker 2: In Search of had a couple books, the titles of
Speaker 2: which I don't remember anymore, etc. In addition to examples
Speaker 2: of alien abductions, psychic phenomena, encryptids, these books include another
Speaker 2: strange topic, spontaneous human combustion.
Speaker 3: So I saw so many like documentaries about this on
Speaker 3: TV when I was a kid. I thought it was
Speaker 3: an incredibly common phenomenon.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we've chatted about this before on the show,
Speaker 2: singling out things like In Search Of, which when I
Speaker 2: was a kid ran and rerun ran as reruns on
Speaker 2: any I think, also unsolved mysteries and various other topics tabloids,
Speaker 2: et cetera that just really hammered home things like spontaneous
Speaker 2: human combustion and alien abduction and UFOs, And there wasn't
Speaker 2: or at least I don't feel like I was properly
Speaker 2: exposed to the skeptical analysis of all of this media.
Speaker 2: And so as a kid, that's like I really felt
Speaker 2: like these things were possible and could occur at any moment.
Speaker 3: I feel like if they brought somebody on to provide
Speaker 3: a skeptical point of view, it would almost just be
Speaker 3: to like, look at this nerd who doesn't get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know that does get to the heart.
Speaker 2: It's like the idea of spontaneous human combustion and psychic
Speaker 2: phenomena and so forth, Like all of these ideas are
Speaker 2: are far more exciting than the idea that they don't exist.
Speaker 2: Uh So, Anyway, that being said, these topics are not
Speaker 2: all equal. They're you know, the the scientific analysis of
Speaker 2: them is different depending on the topic. So getting back
Speaker 2: to the listener mail here and more specifically to spontaneous
Speaker 2: human combustion, which we have talked about on the show
Speaker 2: in the past, I believe, and it has come up
Speaker 2: on of course Weird House Cinema as well. We did
Speaker 2: the Toby Hooper film with spontaneous combustion Spontaneous Human which.
Speaker 3: Was not about spontaneous combustion, it was about pyrokinesis.
Speaker 2: Anyway, the email continues situations where a completely charred body
Speaker 2: would be found in a house, often sitting on a couch,
Speaker 2: but other than the portion of the furniture where the
Speaker 2: person was sitting. Nothing else had burned, so the act
Speaker 2: was if the person had simply spontaneously burst into flame
Speaker 2: and been quickly consumed. Now, I think these stories are
Speaker 2: basically debunked. Like many of the paranormal reports, they tended
Speaker 2: to omit other surrounding facts, and a simple explanation was
Speaker 2: the person fell asleep drunk while holding a cigarette, which
Speaker 2: ignited some alcohol soaked on a portion of the couch.
Speaker 2: I haven't listened to part two yet, Impossibly you cover
Speaker 2: this spoiler. We did not, But given the flammability of hair,
Speaker 2: could a very simple explanation of spontaneous human combustion be
Speaker 2: something like cigarettes igniting hair.
Speaker 3: Well, I wouldn't want to make a definitive statement about
Speaker 3: what could or could not happen for sure, but I
Speaker 3: will say that the papers we were looking at in
Speaker 3: that series about hair being a potent fuel source to
Speaker 3: that would allow a flame to quickly spread if there
Speaker 3: was an ignition point saying a spacecraft. We're specifically looking
Speaker 3: at enriched oxygen environments, and I think there's a lot
Speaker 3: less concern about that if there's just the normal atmospheric
Speaker 3: composition that we live in on Earth. When there's high
Speaker 3: levels of oxygen, things, things that are not normally a
Speaker 3: dangerous source to fuel a flame can become such hair is,
Speaker 3: you know, lightly combustible in regular atmosphere, but in enriched
Speaker 3: oxygen it becomes very rapidly combustible.
Speaker 2: All right, David has just a little bit more to say.
Speaker 2: David says, now the somewhat stream of consciousness comments and questions.
Speaker 2: Did you ever do an episode on this subject before?
Speaker 2: I don't think I've heard about spontaneous human combustion in years.
Speaker 2: Is it still making the rounds as one of the
Speaker 2: unexplained phenomena. I'm also reminded of your discussion of how
Speaker 2: pseudoscience thrives in low information and environments. I think an
Speaker 2: episode on the transition of paranormal ideas into and out
Speaker 2: of public consciousness over time could be very interesting. Once again,
Speaker 2: thank you for the great podcast, David.
Speaker 3: I think that is a really interesting idea. David'scific. What
Speaker 3: I'm picking up your saying here is not so much
Speaker 3: just looking at because often when we cover these types
Speaker 3: of paranormal ideas, we look at them and say, like,
Speaker 3: what are people saying about them?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: What is the evidence? And then looking at you know what,
Speaker 3: what could a more likely explanation be than these than
Speaker 3: the supposed paranormal explanation. But a different way of looking
Speaker 3: at these things is as historical social phenomena, like what
Speaker 3: what makes a certain idea attractive at a certain time
Speaker 3: and within a certain culture? Why does it become more
Speaker 3: popular and more prevalent in people's minds? And then why
Speaker 3: does it fade away? If it does? And uh and when?
Speaker 2: Yeah. A great example of this would be some episodes
Speaker 2: we did in the past couple of years. I think
Speaker 2: maybe it's older than that on cattle mutilation as as
Speaker 2: as as an alleged phenomena. And when you get into
Speaker 2: the to the like the timeliness of it, and the
Speaker 2: like the social analysis of it, it's really interesting because
Speaker 2: it gets down to like what what kind of anxieties
Speaker 2: were it were on people's minds? Uh, you know, what
Speaker 2: was going on in the world uh, politically? Uh? And
Speaker 2: then what sort of low res information was out there
Speaker 2: to turn with all of this in mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So we looked at a paper in that
Speaker 3: episode that was about the history of agriculture in the
Speaker 3: United States, and it made some I recall very interesting
Speaker 3: arguments about why it was specifically in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 3: that people were inclined to come across a you know,
Speaker 3: a cows or a horse or you know, some animal
Speaker 3: on a ranch that had suffered some kind of death
Speaker 3: or injuries and interpret it as part of a conspiracy
Speaker 3: or a broader phenomenon had to do with like economic
Speaker 3: pressures affecting ranchers in the seventies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, it would be I think we
Speaker 2: should come back and do spontaneous human combustion because I mean,
Speaker 2: I think there is an obvious case to be made
Speaker 2: about about low res information playing a role here because
Speaker 2: I've I just remember from having read about it and
Speaker 2: watched documentaries in the past. You do see some at
Speaker 2: times rather blurry forensic photos, like crime scene photography of
Speaker 2: somebody who has burned, and you know, it's grizzly shocking,
Speaker 2: but you don't necessarily know what you're looking at. And
Speaker 2: even if you're dealing a situation like this or just
Speaker 2: in you know, in the broader sense, when you're dealing
Speaker 2: with forensic photos. Forensic photos are a great example of
Speaker 2: something that can be very impactful but requires expertise to
Speaker 2: properly analyze what you're looking at. And if you do
Speaker 2: not have the proper expertise to analyze those photographs and
Speaker 2: the context in which to analyze them, you can certainly
Speaker 2: go in various directions with them and use them to
Speaker 2: prop up any pet idea you have in your head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly as we talked about in that episode,
Speaker 3: Unjustified spurious conclusions thrive in a space where where information
Speaker 3: is low, both in the sense of the direct information
Speaker 3: you're looking at, say like the resolution of a photograph
Speaker 3: of a crime scene or the number of details you
Speaker 3: have about it, but also when information is low as
Speaker 3: background knowledge, like you don't have the expertise or the experience,
Speaker 3: you know, looking at scenes like this to know what
Speaker 3: something usually means when it's present. Anyway, thank you, David.
Speaker 3: Let's see Rob. I'm gonna do this message from Ahmed.
Speaker 2: All right, light it up.
Speaker 3: So this one is also about hair on fire, and
Speaker 3: the subject line is sulfur in hair and disulfide bonds. Again,
Speaker 3: the context of this message was the part of our
Speaker 3: discussion about the characteristic smell of burning hair and how
Speaker 3: it's primarily due to the presence of sulfur in the
Speaker 3: keratin of our hair, which gets liberated by combustion and
Speaker 3: forms volatile sulfur compounds like sulfur dioxide, which has a
Speaker 3: very pungent smell. Ahmed says, hey, guys, I wanted to
Speaker 3: write in about your recent episodes on burning hair and
Speaker 3: especially the role of sulfur. Particularly, I wanted to mention
Speaker 3: how these structural properties of hair and its high sulfur
Speaker 3: content are no coincidence. As you have mentioned on the
Speaker 3: show before, Our proteins are made of twenty one canonical
Speaker 3: amino acids that come in many flavors, differing in size,
Speaker 3: charge no charge versus positive versus negative, hydrophilicity versus hydrophobicity, etc.
Speaker 3: That dictate how a protein folds in three D space.
Speaker 3: Two of these amino acids contain sulfur, and the sulfur
Speaker 3: containing one that's relevant for this is cysteine that's spelled cystei.
Speaker 3: The cool thing about cysteine is that it has a
Speaker 3: sulfur bonded to a hydrogen jutting out from the protein backbone,
Speaker 3: but that it easily can lose the hydrogen to bond
Speaker 3: with another cysteine, and this forms the structure that sort
Speaker 3: of goes protein sulfur sulfur protein. Unlike the weaker and
Speaker 3: more wiggly bonds between positive and negative, between hydrophobic and hydrophobic,
Speaker 3: or between hydrophilic and hydrophilic, these disulfide bonds can really
Speaker 3: staple a protein into a shape, and because of the
Speaker 3: way a protein folds in three dimensions, you can have
Speaker 3: parts that are very far away in linear space looping
Speaker 3: back on each other and getting bolted into that conformation
Speaker 3: by disulfides. The twenty one natural amino acids aren't universally
Speaker 3: represented in the human proteome, and cystine is on the
Speaker 3: rarer side, making up just about two percent of amino
Speaker 3: acids used for our proteins. However, for hair keratins, the
Speaker 3: big rope like proteins that are the main component of hair, skin, nails,
Speaker 3: et cetera, a wopping eighteen percent of its amino acids
Speaker 3: are cystine. Not all cystines exist in a disulfide bonded state, though,
Speaker 3: and an even larger percentage of the cystine in nail
Speaker 3: and horn keratins exist as disulfide bonds. Again, that's protein
Speaker 3: sulfur sulfur protein, rather than as free proteins, at least
Speaker 3: partially explaining the spectrum of toughness in keratin rich tissues.
Speaker 3: On a more basic biology note, cystines are said to
Speaker 3: be oxidized when disulfide bonded and to be reduced when
Speaker 3: having just a hydrogen. Many cellular pathways are devoted to
Speaker 3: striking this balance of an oxidizing versus a reducing environment
Speaker 3: just right. And this is something that can change even
Speaker 3: depending on what part of a cell you're in. So
Speaker 3: next time somebody is pushing an overpriced berry bowl on
Speaker 3: you because it's a good source of antioxidants, I encourage
Speaker 3: you to yell at them about how you don't want
Speaker 3: to undo all of your disulfides and melt into a
Speaker 3: pile of unstructured goo. Thank you very much. Anyways, keep
Speaker 3: up the great work, Ahmed. Well, thank you, Ahmed. Very
Speaker 3: interesting and informative email. Love people who love it when
Speaker 3: listeners can fill in chemistry details like this. That's wonderful.
Speaker 3: But hey, don't knock berry bowls. Berries are great. I
Speaker 3: love berries.
Speaker 2: Berry They're great and they're good for you. They're just
Speaker 2: a little pricey.
Speaker 3: Here's a science fact. I want to know. How can
Speaker 3: you tell before you bite into a blueberry, whether it's
Speaker 3: going to be like delicious and juicy or grainy. I
Speaker 3: can't figure out away by looking at the outside.
Speaker 2: You just got to go for it. That's the only
Speaker 2: way sometimes. Yeah, fruit in general, it's an experience. You
Speaker 2: don't know until you cut open that watermelon if it's
Speaker 2: going to be pretty good or great. You don't know
Speaker 2: if the candle ope is going to be life changing
Speaker 2: or like a little gross. It just it varies tremendously.
Speaker 2: For my own part, I would say the candle ope
Speaker 2: is that the riskiest of the melons to cut into.
Speaker 2: You never know what you're going to get. It could
Speaker 2: be life changing, it could be extremely bland or even
Speaker 2: a little sickly tasting.
Speaker 3: Have we ever talked about savory preparations of melons on
Speaker 3: the show before? I don't know that we have the
Speaker 3: thing that would would have come up. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm a fan of that. When you get like a
Speaker 3: good like savory salad with honeydew, melon and candleope in it,
Speaker 3: that's right. Sometimes with like pershudo, or you can just
Speaker 3: have it with a sort of like savory vinaigrette.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's the recipe we would make of the house
Speaker 2: that is a vegetarian poke bowl that uses watermelon in
Speaker 2: place of fish, and it's really quite good. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like you have the watermelon sl I says, and you
Speaker 2: have your dressing and some salt on those sliced watermelon,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it scratches the edge for sure.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, as we begin to move in towards
Speaker 2: the end of this episode, let's let's look at a
Speaker 2: few weird house cinema centric listener mails. This first one
Speaker 2: comes to us from Lex, and we teased this one
Speaker 2: out earlier. Lex writes and says, Robin Joe, this is
Speaker 2: a short message, but I felt like I had to
Speaker 2: write in. I was listening to your weird house rewind
Speaker 2: about the beast with five fingers when I walk past
Speaker 2: a statue that is near my office called Judy's Hand.
Speaker 2: Your description about disembodied hands gave me a new appreciate
Speaker 2: appreciation for this weird piece of public art in Cleveland.
Speaker 2: It is kind of hard to appreciate how strange this
Speaker 2: thing is to see in person. It is huge, twenty
Speaker 2: one feet tall in weighs seven tons. It was based
Speaker 2: on a cast of the hand of the artist's wife,
Speaker 2: and is in part of a commentary on the original
Speaker 2: form of shelter. From the elements being the hand, it
Speaker 2: is large enough for a group of people to stand underneath.
Speaker 2: I also included some links about the piece and also yeah,
Speaker 2: some photographs. They are quite quite intimidating and amazing because
Speaker 2: it is to be clear, the hand is very much
Speaker 2: in the sort of pose we imagine for a disembodied
Speaker 2: hand crawling around on a table. Looks like thing from
Speaker 2: the Adams family, except again twenty one feet tall and
Speaker 2: you know, has like a silvery or grayish coloration to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just looked it up. It's apparently it's sort
Speaker 3: of a cross from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, Ohio.
Speaker 3: And it's so it is meant in a way as
Speaker 3: a public shelter, like lex says here. So it's like,
Speaker 3: I guess, like a bus station cover, you know, like
Speaker 3: you can stand under it if it's raining. But there
Speaker 3: and the name of the the artist, by the way,
Speaker 3: is Tony Tassit, and the is his wife, Judy Ledgerwood.
Speaker 3: But the crazy thing about this is it's kind of flexed,
Speaker 3: so it looks like any moment the hand is going
Speaker 3: to close on whatever is beneath it? Do you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, there's kind of a sense of like the
Speaker 2: wrathful hand of God coming down from above here, but
Speaker 2: also the sheltering hand of God. I guess it depends
Speaker 2: on your exact theological perspective here, but.
Speaker 3: It is very, very beast with five fingers.
Speaker 2: Yes, so Le says, thanks as always for making such
Speaker 2: an awesome show. Here's hoping it goes on for many,
Speaker 2: many years to come. All right, now, I'm just going
Speaker 2: to preface for the next couple of weird house cinema messages.
Speaker 2: These have to do with the Devil Bat movie. And
Speaker 2: in our episode on the Devil Bat, I quoted a
Speaker 2: Michael Weldon review or I honestly can't remember as Michael
Speaker 2: Weldon or one of the other authors that are sometimes
Speaker 2: the reviewers in his books, but anyway, it's from the
Speaker 2: Psychotronic Film Guides, and it points out that the sequel
Speaker 2: to the Devil Bat What Devil Bat's Daughter something like
Speaker 2: that Daughter Bad something like that pointed out that it
Speaker 2: is a cheat sequel. It is a sequel that like
Speaker 2: betrays what you actually saw on scene on screen in
Speaker 2: the first film like makes you like to it basically
Speaker 2: like Gaslights, you about everything that came before in the franchise,
Speaker 2: and we heard from some people who made a connection
Speaker 2: between this and another film we've talked about on the
Speaker 2: show before.
Speaker 3: That's right, okay. So our first message, the more belligerent
Speaker 3: of the two, is from our listener Rob. The subject
Speaker 3: line Highlander two. Rob says, I tried to be open
Speaker 3: minded when you ran two episodes about Highlander two, the Quickening.
Speaker 3: You ridiculed hardcore Highlander fans like me who saw the
Speaker 3: original in the theater and then loathed that sequel when
Speaker 3: it came out, implying that we were closed minded about
Speaker 3: the movie. I usually trust your cinematic recommendations, but nope,
Speaker 3: you could not convince me. Uh okay. And then in
Speaker 3: this next paragraph, Rob makes an analogy to a movie
Speaker 3: without naming it that I'm not sure I get, but
Speaker 3: maybe we can hash this out afterwards. Rob goes on
Speaker 3: to say Highlander two is like if you were watching
Speaker 3: a certain movie about a doctor and a boy, avoiding spoilers,
Speaker 3: being blown away by the ending, then going back and
Speaker 3: rewatching the restaurant scene to find that the doctor and
Speaker 3: his wife had a long conversation argued about who would
Speaker 3: pay the check, hugged, kissed, and then walked out hand
Speaker 3: in hand. If I could rewatch Highlander and be blown
Speaker 3: away to realize that they were aliens the whole time,
Speaker 3: sure I'd be on board. But No, Highlander two is
Speaker 3: inconsistent with the original and negates everything that was great
Speaker 3: about it. I was letting your lapse in judgment about
Speaker 3: the movie slide until I just finished listening to the
Speaker 3: Devil Bat episode in which you ridicule the sequel because
Speaker 3: it is so inconsistent with the original. I couldn't hold
Speaker 3: my tongue slash pen slash keyboard any longer. Love your
Speaker 3: show except for two episodes. Well, thank you, Rob, and
Speaker 3: I appreciate the passion. Let's see. Yeah, what is the
Speaker 3: difference there?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I guess it's that, like Highlander two was, it is
Speaker 3: so silly and so fun that it's just hard to
Speaker 3: really care. I guess part of my opinion when we
Speaker 3: were doing that episode was to give give people the
Speaker 3: freedom to set yourself free from concerns about canon. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like storytelling. Storytelling is fluid that you may find that,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe you don't feel this way, but you
Speaker 3: may find you're more able to enjoy storytelling when you're
Speaker 3: less concerned about consistency.
Speaker 2: But you know, to each their own, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: I agree with that. I mean I also agree with
Speaker 2: what Rob said. It's I mean, it's a fair cop
Speaker 2: that that Highland Or two does make drastic changes to
Speaker 2: what worked in the first film and what people loved
Speaker 2: about the first film. So yeah, you know, I want
Speaker 2: to be clear, if you don't like high Or two
Speaker 2: and you're like a Highlander one is all you want
Speaker 2: and all you need, it's totally fine. Highlander one is
Speaker 2: a super fun film, says. I think it's still a
Speaker 2: super weird film and it definitely has its own goofiness
Speaker 2: going on. But you know, fair enough if you don't
Speaker 2: want to ride the Highland or two train as well.
Speaker 3: I think we were scoffing at the idea of Devil
Speaker 3: Bat's daughter, I would say, at least for my part,
Speaker 3: because I hadn't seen it, and it sounded like a
Speaker 3: movie that there aren't actually any devil bats in so
Speaker 3: so I don't know that made me less sympathetic to it.
Speaker 3: I think maybe if I saw a devil Bat's daughter
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh, this is a this is
Speaker 3: a heck of a fun ride. Then I would probably
Speaker 3: also be saying about that, like who cares that it
Speaker 3: completely negates everything that happened in the first movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, as for the film with the doctor and
Speaker 2: the Boy that he's referencing, I could be wrong. I
Speaker 2: think maybe he's referencing the sixth sense here and more
Speaker 2: maybe more generally, referencing a certain type of twist ending
Speaker 2: film that doesn't really bear repeat viewings, because if you
Speaker 2: know what the twist is, it doesn't work, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think two thousand and three is high tension as
Speaker 2: an example of this for me. I mean it has
Speaker 2: some other I think noticeable flaws that don't hold up
Speaker 2: well for other reasons, but it also depends a lot
Speaker 2: on a twist, and if you rewatch it knowing what
Speaker 2: the twist is, I don't know if it works.
Speaker 3: But I'd say extra credit to a movie that where
Speaker 3: the twist makes a rewatch even more interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, that's one thing that I
Speaker 2: often stick to. It's like spoilers, Yeah, avoid spoilers, Yeah,
Speaker 2: go into a film fresh. But a really good movie
Speaker 2: is not going to be spoiled by its spoilers, you know,
Speaker 2: because it's not just about what will happen, it's how
Speaker 2: are you going to get there, How are you going
Speaker 2: to portray it, how are you going to bring that
Speaker 2: to life on the screen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I would say a really good story is
Speaker 3: not going to be completely spoiled by knowing plot things
Speaker 3: that come. There are other pleasures than just the discovery
Speaker 3: of the plot, but the discovery of the plot is
Speaker 3: one of the pleasures of a story. So, like, you know,
Speaker 3: there's still a you know, there's still a reason to
Speaker 3: want to not know the ending in advance, if it's
Speaker 3: if it's a really great story, and especially if the
Speaker 3: ending is something that's not formulaic and one wouldn't be
Speaker 3: likely to see coming. Yeah, but I agree with you,
Speaker 3: it's not everything there is.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, here's another take on it. This is
Speaker 2: from Lawrence. Lawrence says, Hey, guys, I'm writing you immediately
Speaker 2: following viewing Devilbats Daughter, the sort of sequel to the
Speaker 2: Devil Bat which you recently discussed on Weird House. I
Speaker 2: love the initiative. Way back when you covered Highlander two,
Speaker 2: I got on my phone just minutes into the podcast
Speaker 2: and purchased both the Zeist and Renegade versions. I found
Speaker 2: a package deal on eBay where I could buy them
Speaker 2: both on two VHS tapes for six dollars total. Back
Speaker 2: to that later.
Speaker 3: Wow, hats off to you, Lawrence getting those VHS tapes
Speaker 3: from eBay. That's beautiful.
Speaker 2: When you started talking about The Devil Bat having a sequel,
Speaker 2: I went on Amazon and order DVDs of both films.
Speaker 2: The original came in a couple of days, but I
Speaker 2: had to wait longer for the second film. I really
Speaker 2: enjoyed The Devil Bat, thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Speaker 2: I like Devil Bat's Daughter as well, but it's a
Speaker 2: rather different film. While the first film has much of
Speaker 2: the look and feel of the Warner Brothers horror franchise,
Speaker 2: Daughter doesn't fit easily into any genre. It's part psychological drama,
Speaker 2: part romance, part detective story, and maybe a little film noir.
Speaker 2: Like the first film, it has a few lovely performances
Speaker 2: in small character roles, and while No One and Daughter
Speaker 2: has the star power of Legosi, Rosemary Laplanche is compelling
Speaker 2: as Nina, the late doctor Carruthers strange daughter and Michael
Speaker 2: Hale is deliciously creepy as her strict and controlling psychotherapist
Speaker 2: daughter is a bit of a slow burn, especially toward
Speaker 2: the start. But I think it's worth going the distance
Speaker 2: about Highlander too. When I listened to your podcast, I
Speaker 2: couldn't remember if i'd seen it. When I viewed it,
Speaker 2: I knew I had my brother, my dad, and I
Speaker 2: had rented Highlander on VHS and watched it together. We
Speaker 2: loved it. When the sequel out on VHS, we watched
Speaker 2: that as well. We enjoyed it, but it felt more
Speaker 2: like a send up of the original than a sequel,
Speaker 2: and more comedy adventure than a fantasy film. We especially
Speaker 2: thought Sean Connery was magnificent in it. He does have
Speaker 2: that great monologue towards the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, most people have a full measure of life.
Speaker 2: In some ways. Perhaps the relationship devil Bat's daughter has
Speaker 2: to the Devil Bat is a bit like that of
Speaker 2: the quickening to Highlander. In each case, the second film
Speaker 2: stands well enough on its own, but neither is an
Speaker 2: especially satisfying sequel to its other. Both sequels feel disconnected
Speaker 2: from their predecessors, at least to me, but both very
Speaker 2: worth watching in their own ride. If you haven't seen
Speaker 2: Devil Bat's Daughter yet, I recommend it. Oh and I
Speaker 2: didn't care for the renegade version of the Quickening at all.
Speaker 2: They got it as right as they were going to
Speaker 2: get it the first time. Thanks guys, Lawrence.
Speaker 3: Bravo Lawrence. Well, I think that's going to have to
Speaker 3: be it for today's listener mail episode. But we still
Speaker 3: have some great messages that we did not have time
Speaker 3: to get to today, so we may be doing another
Speaker 3: one of these sooner than expected. Who knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, these may be a nice option to roll
Speaker 2: out in between series, you know, three or four part
Speaker 2: series and so forth. So yeah, there will be more
Speaker 2: listener mails, so keep them coming in. We also had
Speaker 2: plenty that we didn't get to in this episode, so
Speaker 2: we will be back for more. Just a reminder. The
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 2: culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On
Speaker 2: Wednesdays we do a short form episode. On Fridays we
Speaker 2: do a weird House Cinema episode. That's when we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film,
Speaker 2: and then we have a Vault episode on Saturdays, and
Speaker 2: then currently in the Monday slot, we're doing Weird House
Speaker 2: Cinema rewinds.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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