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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail,

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Speaker 2: This is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And it's Monday, the day

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Speaker 3: of each week that we read back messages from our mailbox.

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Speaker 3: If you have never gotten in touch before, why not

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Speaker 3: email us. You can reach us at contact at stuff

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Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind dot com. We like messages of

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Speaker 3: any sort, especially feedback to recent episodes, and especially if

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Speaker 3: you've got something interesting to add to a topic we

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Speaker 3: recently talked about on the show. But whatever else you

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Speaker 3: want to write about, that's fine too. Send it on

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Speaker 3: in contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

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Speaker 3: What you got going on right now, Rob.

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Speaker 2: Well, nobody asked about this, but I'm going no. No

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Speaker 2: listeners asked about it, obviously, but I do want to

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Speaker 2: throw in that. In our Weird House Cinema episode about

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Speaker 2: the viewing, the topic of lopsong Soushong tea came up,

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Speaker 2: and at the time none of us had any experience

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Speaker 2: drinking it before. So after we talked about it a

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Speaker 2: little bit, I ordered some up. I've now brewed up

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Speaker 2: a few different cups of it, and I have attempted

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Speaker 2: to add the perfect amount of honey so that I

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Speaker 2: can have the proper viewing experience. And I have to say,

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Speaker 2: it's a very interesting tea. I was a little frightened

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Speaker 2: at first when I smelled just the pure smokiness of

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Speaker 2: the dried tea, but the taste is a lot more subtle,

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Speaker 2: and yeah, I think I'm growing to like it.

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Speaker 3: Taste like tea smells like a big old barbecue brisket.

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Speaker 2: Well, at first, that was kind of what the sense

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Speaker 2: I got when I opened the pouch of tea for

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Speaker 2: the first time, you know, like the whole house immediately

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Speaker 2: smelled like this, kind of like smoked, you know, deeply smoked,

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Speaker 2: almost liquid smoke, kind of a scent, but that dissipated,

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Speaker 2: and then once it's brewed up, you know, it's I

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Speaker 2: find that the aroma is not as intense and it

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Speaker 2: is not like core to the flavor.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 3: It's interesting. I find that I really enjoy smoky flavors

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Speaker 3: in food, and so I like some smoky ingredients, but

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Speaker 3: smelling the smoky ingredients on their own I often find

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Speaker 3: kind of unpleasant. Like one example is smoked paprika. If

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Speaker 3: you ever want a like vegetarian alternative to adding bacon

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Speaker 3: to a dish. Smoke paprika gets you part of the

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Speaker 3: way there. I mean, it doesn't have pork fat in it,

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Speaker 3: but it it brings a lot of that great smoky

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Speaker 3: aroma that you get from like a smoked meat product

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Speaker 3: and some of that complexity. But I find when I

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Speaker 3: just smell smoked paprika by itself, it is an overpowering

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Speaker 3: and unpleasant aroma. It's only good once it goes into

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Speaker 3: the mix with other things.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I feel the same way about honestly, about

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Speaker 2: like scotch and alcohol of that nature. You know, It's

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Speaker 2: like I just straight scotch I never had a real

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Speaker 2: passion for, but I did like some cocktails that had

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Speaker 2: scotch in them.

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Speaker 3: Well, I guess there are smoky scotches and non smoky scotches.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, some really some really go.

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Speaker 3: For the peat trolls that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, enough enough about my beverages. I'll be back

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Speaker 2: in a future Listener Mail episode to talk about the

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Speaker 2: perfect screen driver.

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Speaker 3: That's right, Okay, let's go on to our first messages.

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Speaker 3: We're going to kick things off today with a two

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Speaker 3: part response to our series on anomalous imagery. This is

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Speaker 3: two different emails from our listener Ian. Let's see, Rob,

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Speaker 3: Do you want to read the first one? Here?

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Speaker 2: All? Right? Here we go? Uh. Dear Robin Joe, I

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Speaker 2: was listening to your recent episode about the dindera light

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Speaker 2: and you your brief discussion of palam ses. That made

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Speaker 2: me realize that there is a form of palamses that

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Speaker 2: most of your listeners will be familiar with, though they've

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Speaker 2: probably never thought about it in those terms. I certainly hadn't.

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Speaker 2: It is the computer hard drive. There is, of course,

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Speaker 2: the surface level comparison, wherein hard drives are erased and

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Speaker 2: overwritten repeatedly as you use your computer, but the similarities

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Speaker 2: go deeper than that. For instance, when you delete a

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Speaker 2: file on your computer, the actual data is not a

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Speaker 2: raise from the drive, only the reference to that data

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Speaker 2: that tells your computer operating system where on the drive

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Speaker 2: the file is located in order to access it. On

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Speaker 2: a mechanical hard drive or HDD, I am not sure

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Speaker 2: how applicable this information may be to newer solid state

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Speaker 2: drives or SSDs. The actual data comprising the file remains

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Speaker 2: on the drive until the computer needs that space for

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Speaker 2: another file and only then is actually overwritten. Even then,

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Speaker 2: the overwriting is not perfect, and it is sometimes possible

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Speaker 2: to use special software to recover old data that is

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Speaker 2: underneath newer data. At least partially for this reason, there

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Speaker 2: is even security software available for computers which use sensitive data,

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Speaker 2: which constantly overwrite the empty portions of the drive with

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Speaker 2: junk data to ensure that any deleted files are truly

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Speaker 2: obliterated and not recoverable. It is somewhat akin to scribbling

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Speaker 2: on and then erasing a chalkboard over and over to

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Speaker 2: ensure that everything that was once written on it can't

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Speaker 2: still be read. Finally, your discussion of what I'm going

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Speaker 2: to call open minded skepticism involving being highly skeptical of

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Speaker 2: any claims that such and such has done by aliens,

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Speaker 2: while still being open to the possibility that one day

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Speaker 2: evidence of alien intelligence may be discovered, reminded me of

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Speaker 2: a saying often used on the PBS Spacetime YouTube channel

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Speaker 2: when discussing new and strange observations in astronomy. The saying goes,

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Speaker 2: remember it's never aliens until it's aliens. Thank you for

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Speaker 2: doing more than your fair share of encouraging curiosity and

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Speaker 2: reminding us all of the importance of open minded skepticism.

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Speaker 3: Ian, Well, thank you for the kind words, Ian, And yeah,

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Speaker 3: I appreciate the shout out to the PBS Spacetime show.

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Speaker 3: I'm not a regular viewer, but I think I watched

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Speaker 3: a few episodes of that and thought they were quite good.

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Speaker 3: As for the idea of a palimpsest being sort of reproduced,

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Speaker 3: at least metaphorically or I don't know, maybe you could

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Speaker 3: say literally in a computer hard drive, Yeah, that's interesting.

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Speaker 3: So palimpsests came up in our discussion because we were

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Speaker 3: talking about how, like, so an ancient Egyptian inscription, you know,

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Speaker 3: there might be one set of hieroglyphics on it at

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Speaker 3: one point, and then there would be you know, that

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Speaker 3: would decay over time, and then there would be a

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Speaker 3: process of maybe partially plastering over that and then putting

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Speaker 3: new inscription, like new information in it, maybe new hieroglyphics

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Speaker 3: or illustrations of things on top of the old one.

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Speaker 3: And this would happen on maybe the walls of a

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Speaker 3: temple or like a monument or something like that, and

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Speaker 3: the result was that you could get these sort of

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Speaker 3: illusory emergent mixtures of the two different inscriptions, so you

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Speaker 3: could have the part on top decaying, and then heart

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Speaker 3: of the hieroglyphics represented there would sort of bleed into

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Speaker 3: where the hieroglyphics below were revealed, creating these symbols that

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Speaker 3: aren't actually part of the language. They're just sort of like,

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Speaker 3: you know, these random emergent bleed through kind of creations,

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Speaker 3: and some of them look like weird stuff, like a

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Speaker 3: helicopter or something like that. Anyway, So I wonder if

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Speaker 3: by way of this analogy with a computer hard drive

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Speaker 3: being like a palimpsest, you could get similar things like

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Speaker 3: in the future, will there be people looking back in

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Speaker 3: time at like a preserved computer hard drive, or maybe

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Speaker 3: the data image of a preserved computer hard drive and

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Speaker 3: see things emerging, see illusory like sentences or something emerging

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Speaker 3: because of splicing together of data from different points of overwriting.

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Speaker 3: I don't know if it actually works like that, or

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Speaker 3: works in a way that would give rise to that

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Speaker 3: sort of thing, But I don't know that's interesting.

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Speaker 2: It's far less romantic. Yeah, to may anyway, but you know,

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Speaker 2: future societies. I feel differently about the matter.

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Speaker 3: Will bits of work emails appear to run straight through

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Speaker 3: into snippets of text from your discarded draft of your

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Speaker 3: erotic vampire novel.

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Speaker 2: Well, all vampire novels are erotic, Joe.

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Speaker 3: Okay, we got a second email from Ian. Ian says

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Speaker 3: Dear Robin, Joe. Last week, I wrote in about open

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Speaker 3: minded skepticism and PBS spacetimes approach that it's never aliens

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Speaker 3: until it's aliens. As of the time of writing this,

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Speaker 3: I've not yet listened to the Listener Mail episode that

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Speaker 3: previous message would have appeared on. Well, you certainly have not,

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Speaker 3: because it's this one today, Ian says, so I don't

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Speaker 3: know yet if you read it on the air. In

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Speaker 3: the interim, I have now listened to your previous listener

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Speaker 3: mail and the discussion about the difficulty of traveling between

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Speaker 3: stars making visitation by aliens unlikely. I share Joe's view

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Speaker 3: that I don't find any supposed difficulty particularly convincing when

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Speaker 3: we're presumably talking about beings with more advanced technology than

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Speaker 3: we have. By the way, for people who don't remember

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Speaker 3: that previous discussion or didn't hear it, my point was

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Speaker 3: that I wouldn't rule out the possibility of alien visitation

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Speaker 3: on Earth based on saying, Oh, it's just too difficult

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Speaker 3: to travel between stars, because my view now is just

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Speaker 3: that I don't think we know enough to say whether

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Speaker 3: that's too difficult or whether it's possible or not. That's

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Speaker 3: just an open question. But that doesn't mean I think

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Speaker 3: aliens have been visiting the Earth. I just think that

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Speaker 3: that is not a particular reason I would rule it out. Instead,

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Speaker 3: I would just say, where's the evidence. But Ian comes

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Speaker 3: back to say, once again, PBS space time has become relevant. Specifically,

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Speaker 3: the episode is Interstellar Travel Possible? That episode discusses the

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Speaker 3: dangers and difficulties posed by traveling to another star and

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Speaker 3: investigates whether they are solvable. The oversimplified version is that

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Speaker 3: traveling from one star to the next should be doable,

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Speaker 3: if not exactly with our current technology, then with technology

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Speaker 3: only a little more advanced than we currently possess Essentially,

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Speaker 3: from a physics standpoint, we know the problem is solvable,

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Speaker 3: and achieving it is what I like to call an

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Speaker 3: engineering problem. Granted, actually solving that problem would be a

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Speaker 3: massive undertaking for our current civilization, and it certainly wouldn't

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Speaker 3: be easy, but there's no reason to think it couldn't

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Speaker 3: be done. As Matt. I guess that's the host of

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Speaker 3: PBS Space Time. As Matt sums up in the episode,

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Speaker 3: the universe may be trying to kill us, but it's

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Speaker 3: not trying quite hard enough. That's good. So, given that

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Speaker 3: traveling from one star to another is conceivably achievable in

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Speaker 3: the not too distant future technologically at least, resource allocation

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Speaker 3: being an entirely different matter, just like how no one

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Speaker 3: has gone back to the Moon since the seventies despite

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Speaker 3: us clearly having the technology, A civilization, even a few

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Speaker 3: hundred or thousand years more advanced than ours, should be

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Speaker 3: able to do it without too much trouble. Certainly not

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Speaker 3: so much trouble that it serves as an explanation for

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Speaker 3: why UAPs can't be aliens or as a satisfactory answer

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Speaker 3: to the Fermi paradox. Personally, I find Akham's razor a

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Speaker 3: far more convincing argument against aaian visitation than any specific

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Speaker 3: practical objection as to why it's impossible. As always, thank

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Speaker 3: you for your wonderful and enlightening podcast. Ian, Well, thank

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Speaker 3: you for both emails. Ian, and I would say regarding

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Speaker 3: the second one, Yeah, I think you're right on the money.

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Speaker 3: I would agree with you here. I don't see any

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Speaker 3: particular reason to rule out the possibility of alien visitation.

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Speaker 3: The stuff about the difficulty of traveling that doesn't seem

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Speaker 3: like a prohibitive consideration to me, though it is something

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Speaker 3: I guess we should consider, you know, arguments of that sort,

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Speaker 3: but that's not enough to rule it out for me. Instead,

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Speaker 3: it's just the dearth of good evidence, like we've been

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Speaker 3: talking about in these episodes. It's just like you would

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Speaker 3: expect at some point to have good evidence that it's

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Speaker 3: actually aliens and not just one of the millions of

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Speaker 3: things that you know, we've seen over and over again

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Speaker 3: being mistaken for aliens, like balloon and camera artifacts and

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Speaker 3: airplanes and birds and natural geological formations and animals of

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Speaker 3: various types and all kinds of weird looking natural phenomena

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Speaker 3: and pieces of human technology always being mistaken for aliens,

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Speaker 3: and then when you get more information, oh, oh, actually

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Speaker 3: this is what it is.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. I still come back to the scale

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Speaker 2: of things though, in thinking about all this, and I

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Speaker 2: was reminded of this after our initial episodes. We were

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Speaker 2: just where we were discussing this because I was listening

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Speaker 2: to the audiobook of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and

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Speaker 2: there's one great part in there where Douglas Adams is

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Speaker 2: talking about how the sheer size of the universe is

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Speaker 2: such that the human imagination cannot contain it. And I

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Speaker 2: thought that was a well written little phrase there, to

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Speaker 2: sort of sum it up, like it is just so

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Speaker 2: big that even when we think we are understanding the

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Speaker 2: scale we're talking about here, we're only sort of summoning

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Speaker 2: up a placeholder of how truly vast it is, and

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Speaker 2: how small we are, and how insignificant we are in

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Speaker 2: terms of both location and also duration. All right, shall

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Speaker 2: we dive into a little stickiness?

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, all right.

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Speaker 2: This one comes to us from Kenny. Kenny says, Hi, Rob, Joe,

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Speaker 2: and JJ. I was fascinated by your discussion on the

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Speaker 2: atomic stickiness of gecko feet. I wonder what the evolutionary

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Speaker 2: path for that adaptation was like. Anyway, the topic reminded

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Speaker 2: me of highly polished metals sticking to one another. I'm

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Speaker 2: a PC gamer and enjoy building upgrading my machine every

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Speaker 2: few years. The central processor in a PC is covered

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Speaker 2: by an integrated heat spreader, over which a cooling fan

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Speaker 2: or water block is placed. Since the metal surfaces aren't

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Speaker 2: perfectly smooth, a thermal paste must be applied to fill

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Speaker 2: all the tiny air pockets before the cooler is screwed down.

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Speaker 2: This ensures adequate heat transfer, but better cooling means more performance,

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Speaker 2: so people will take it to the extremes. I saw

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Speaker 2: an enthusiast who had lapped the integrated heat spreader on

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Speaker 2: his CPU. He employed the quote Whitworth three plate method,

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Speaker 2: which involves three metal plates labeled A, B and C.

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Speaker 2: With the aid of an abrasive, they are used to

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Speaker 2: polish one another in alternating pairs A and B, then

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Speaker 2: B and C, than CNA, and so on. The plates

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Speaker 2: smooth one another out and can then be used to

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Speaker 2: polish other objects to very high degrees of smoothness. After

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Speaker 2: lapping both the ihs and the underside of his water block,

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Speaker 2: he achieved such high polish that they fit together perfectly

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Speaker 2: enough to effectively leave zero trapped gas to act as insulation.

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Speaker 2: What he discovered after the test fitting was that the

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Speaker 2: CPU adhered to the bottom of the cooling block. It

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Speaker 2: was sticky enough to pull the CPU from the socket

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Speaker 2: when he lifted the block. I now realize this must

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Speaker 2: have been due to the Van der Waals force, as

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Speaker 2: the atoms of the two components were close enough to

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Speaker 2: act as if they were in a single piece of metal.

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Speaker 2: I saw the Action Lab exploring a similar phenomenon in

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Speaker 2: this video about gauge blocks, and Kenny includes a link.

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Speaker 2: I'd meant to send you a topic idea, but this

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Speaker 2: turned into a pretty lengthy email, so I'll save it

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Speaker 2: for next time. Thanks for everything you do, Kenny.

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Speaker 3: Thank you, Kenny. That's really interesting. So if I'm understanding correctly,

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Speaker 3: you're saying like that with enough polishing and smoothing of

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Speaker 3: a flat piece of metal, it will stick to another

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Speaker 3: polished flat piece of metal. So like even without an adhesive,

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Speaker 3: you just like touched them together and then they get

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Speaker 3: stuck as if they are glued, And that would make

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Speaker 3: sense that I want to be clear that I don't

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Speaker 3: feel confident to judge what are the operative forces here,

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Speaker 3: especially since like even experts in this area sometimes disagree

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Speaker 3: about like what are the most operative forces in why

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Speaker 3: things are sticking together? But Vanderval's force, from what I know,

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Speaker 3: does seem like a plausible explanation. So like normally things

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Speaker 3: don't stick to one another. Dude to Vanderval's forces because

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Speaker 3: not enough of their atoms are actually getting close enough

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Speaker 3: together for Vanderval's forces to activate. But that's like how

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Speaker 3: the gecko feet work.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 3: They've got so many of these extremely tiny little hairs

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Speaker 3: on them that fill in all the nooks and crannies

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Speaker 3: of whatever surface they're touching and get so close to

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Speaker 3: the atoms in the surface that Vanderval's forces take over

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Speaker 3: and they stick. Most normal things, even when they're touching

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Speaker 3: each other, just can't get that close. And so it

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Speaker 3: sounds like that could be what's happening with these highly

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Speaker 3: polished pieces of metal, though I would wonder also if

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Speaker 3: there is if there's a suction cup thing going on here,

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Speaker 3: Like if the gas between two things is evacuated in

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Speaker 3: some sense, but there is some kind of cavity between them,

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Speaker 3: if it's kind of like pushing a suction cup onto

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Speaker 3: a piece of glass or something. I don't know. I

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Speaker 3: don't know, maybe if the polishing wouldn't really leave enough

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Speaker 3: pockets for there to be voids with negative pressure. I

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Speaker 3: don't know.

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Speaker 2: Well, I mean, one thing that we learned from just

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Speaker 2: looking at the research for guarding gecko feet is that

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Speaker 2: you know, it's possible that there are more than one

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Speaker 2: adhesive situation going on at once with a given scenario.

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Speaker 3: Though we have to acknowledge that that's right, more than

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Speaker 3: one mechanism could be working at the same time. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: very interesting, Kenny, thank you. Okay, I think we're going

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Speaker 3: to finish things out today with a message about Weird

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Speaker 3: House Cinema. We have some more good messages, but for

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Speaker 3: time reasons, I think we need to save them for

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Speaker 3: next week. So one more today. This is about Weird

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Speaker 3: House Cinema. And this comes to us from Chalk. Chock says, Hi,

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Speaker 3: guys on Weird House Cinema on September first, and as

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Speaker 3: an aside, this would be talking about the Devil's Men

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Speaker 3: aka Land of the Minotaur. Chock continues, saying, you said

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Speaker 3: the priest and comrade went to the church to get weapons,

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Speaker 3: specifically a crucifix and some holy water. Apparently the filmmaker

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Speaker 3: was also lazy about checking facts. Holy water is just

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Speaker 3: water blessed by a priest. He didn't have to go

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Speaker 3: looking for it. He could have just made some because

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Speaker 3: he was a priest, right, Yeah, he is a priest,

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Speaker 3: so he could just get some out of the tap,

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Speaker 3: I guess, and less sure, but Chock says, well, what

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Speaker 3: doo anti climactic? Probably anyway, thanks for all your shows, Chock.

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Speaker 3: You know, this is a case where I think it

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Speaker 3: was just more important to be dramatic than to be factuals.

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Speaker 3: They wanted to send him to a roadside chapel, kind

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Speaker 3: of kind of decaying scenic roadside chapel to get the

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Speaker 3: holy water and get all the tools of holiness, which,

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Speaker 3: by the way, I don't even recall them using the

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Speaker 3: holy water in the movie. Did they use it? I

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Speaker 3: think dub pleas he just says some Latin and they

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Speaker 3: all blow up.

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Speaker 2: But I thought that he also like splashes holy water

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Speaker 2: on them or on the minotaur. But yeah, he makes

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Speaker 2: everybody blow up, and I'm not sure everybody was touched

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Speaker 2: by the holy water, so it's a little foggy.

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Speaker 3: The Latin would have done it. But I agree if

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Speaker 3: Rob said in the episode that it was you know,

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Speaker 3: it was a nice dramatic moment, and I agree. Then

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Speaker 3: a movie that was somewhat lacking in nice dramatic moments,

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Speaker 3: I felt like that one kind of worked.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, some of the nicest scenes where Donald Pleasant's doing

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Speaker 2: church stuff, Like there's a scene where he's praying in

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Speaker 2: that where you know, it's just establishing his character. Really,

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Speaker 2: there's nothing amazing about it, but it's a nice sequence.

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Speaker 2: It's well framed and all, and then we get a

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Speaker 2: similar vibe. I mean these were probably shot at the

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Speaker 2: same location, like the same afternoon. They were particularly inspired

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Speaker 2: that day. I don't know.

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Speaker 3: I think that's probably right. Okay, does that do it

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Speaker 3: for today?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? I think we're gonna go ahead and close up

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Speaker 2: the mail bag. But we'd love to hear from everyone. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: keep them coming in. If you have thoughts about current,

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Speaker 2: past and future episodes of stuff to blow your mind,

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Speaker 2: you have any thoughts about the various movies we've discussed

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Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema on Fridays, you know, also just

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Speaker 2: responses to other listener males or our short form artifact

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Speaker 2: in Monster Fact episodes, or the thoughts about where else

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Speaker 2: the monster fact artifact concept can go, like is there

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Speaker 2: something else or some other kind of fact to be born?

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Speaker 2: I was thinking like, oh, you know, crime, true crime

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Speaker 2: is all the gauge. Should I start doing the murder fact?

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Speaker 2: Probably not. I would vote against against the murder fact Okay,

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Speaker 2: but your brain. We're brainstorming here, so all you know,

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Speaker 2: all ideas are valid.

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Speaker 3: What if it's the mino fact and it's just minotaur

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Speaker 3: facts every week?

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Speaker 2: Oh well, you know, we could, we could get we

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Speaker 2: could make that work for for probably a month. But

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Speaker 2: then again, we're just basically doing a sub show of

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Speaker 2: the monster fact. So it would be the monster fact,

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Speaker 2: mento fact or something to that effect.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess.

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Speaker 2: Accept when we're talking about artifacts, then it's the monster fact,

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Speaker 2: mat of fact, artifact, and then it starts getting complicated.

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Speaker 2: Then we're lost in the labyrinth. Okay, I think we

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Speaker 2: got to wrap it up all right, take us home,

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Speaker 2: Jeff Huge.

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Speaker 3: Thanks to our regular audio producer JJ Posway and our

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Speaker 3: guest audio producer today Chandler Mays. If you would like

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Speaker 3: to get in touch with us once again, you can

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Speaker 3: reach us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

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Speaker 3: dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 1: more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.