Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And it's Monday, the day
Speaker 3: of each week that we read back messages from the
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you are
Speaker 3: a listener of the show and you have never gotten
Speaker 3: in touch before, why not give it a shot. You
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com. We accept whatever kind of messages you
Speaker 3: want to send, but we especially like feedback to recent
Speaker 3: episodes and if you've got something interesting to add related
Speaker 3: to a topic we've talked about. Let's see, Rob, do
Speaker 3: you want to kick things off today with this message? Oh,
Speaker 3: the message from Paul that mentions your Monster Fact on
Speaker 3: the Horta.
Speaker 2: Ah yeah, yeah, it's nice to hear here from another
Speaker 2: trucky on this topic, Paul says, regarding the Monster Fact
Speaker 2: episode about the star Trek Horta. In several non Cannon novels,
Speaker 2: there are Hortas mentioned. In one of them. There's a
Speaker 2: Horta ensign on the Enterprise and he's in the geology department.
Speaker 2: He analyzes samples by tasting them. I thought this was
Speaker 2: both hilarious and brilliant.
Speaker 3: Now, is that a joke related to the horta's biology.
Speaker 2: Yes, because the horta is not a carbon based life form.
Speaker 2: It's memory serves as like a silicon based life form.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so it kind of interfaces better with the
Speaker 3: rocky substances. Yeah. Though, it's funny because this connects to
Speaker 3: something that we covered last year in our Ignobels episode.
Speaker 3: One of the Ignobel prizes from twenty twenty three was
Speaker 3: awarded to an essay by a geologist named Jan I
Speaker 3: believe his name was Jan Zawashevich. I'm sorry if I'm
Speaker 3: getting that wrong, but it was a geologist who wrote
Speaker 3: an article about geologists in the real world licking rocks
Speaker 3: for information and various people eating rocks for one reason
Speaker 3: or another, and among other topics. This essay got into
Speaker 3: the history of this eighteenth century Italian geologist named Giovanni Arduino.
Speaker 3: This was the man who loved rocks, who tasted the strata.
Speaker 3: You might remember rob that he had all these like
Speaker 3: tasting notes on different types of soil and fossils and stuff.
Speaker 3: And he said that burned fossil mud rock tasted bitter
Speaker 3: and urinous, like urine, So delicious, awesome.
Speaker 2: Well see. Paul continues here and says, also, I have
Speaker 2: a suggestion for the main series. One of the worst
Speaker 2: plagues of humankind the earworm. No, I don't mean the
Speaker 2: worm that crawls into people's ears and star trek to
Speaker 2: the wrath of Khan, although that might be preferred. I
Speaker 2: mean getting music stuck in your head. I'm extremely susceptible
Speaker 2: to earworms, and unfortunately people know it and take great
Speaker 2: pleasure inflicting them on me. Admittedly, it doesn't take much effort.
Speaker 2: Just a brief SoundBite, mention, or even a vague reference
Speaker 2: can set me off. To quote Robert from a previous episode,
Speaker 2: because as everybody knows, Spider Man does whatever a spider can,
Speaker 2: ah or odd or oh you.
Speaker 3: Know, I think that should be read as like ough, oh.
Speaker 2: All right, there we go. Anyway, I think this would
Speaker 2: be a fascinating topic. Keep up the good and mostly
Speaker 2: non agonizing work. Paul from New Hampshire.
Speaker 3: Have we not done something on earworms before? It seems
Speaker 3: like something maybe we covered years and years ago.
Speaker 2: I know I've done something with earworms you know, it's
Speaker 2: way back in the catalog. I don't remember if who
Speaker 2: it was with, and I know at one point I
Speaker 2: was in recent years, I was looking into it for
Speaker 2: another project and I was really taken by the germ
Speaker 2: name for them or worm, but I don't think that
Speaker 2: ever came to fruition. So, yeah, this might be a
Speaker 2: topic worth analyzing, you know, it's something or reanalyzing. There
Speaker 2: may be some new research on it, and it's something
Speaker 2: everybody can relate to. I think on some level or another.
Speaker 3: Anything that was long enough ago that we don't remember
Speaker 3: whether we did it or not, I think is fair
Speaker 3: game to do again.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, and yeah I get earwormed all the time,
Speaker 2: sometimes not even directly, just like something that makes me
Speaker 2: think of an infectious tune will cause that tune to
Speaker 2: get stuck in my head, and then I have to
Speaker 2: either listen to the song in its natural form as
Speaker 2: a way of exercising the earworm, or I have to
Speaker 2: find something else to just get stuck in there in
Speaker 2: its place. All right.
Speaker 3: This next message comes from Nathan. It is about cicadas,
Speaker 3: but also sort of has a weird house cinema connection.
Speaker 3: Nathan says, Glad Tidings. A few months ago, another listener
Speaker 3: pitched the film Pumpkinhead for Weird House Cinema. That one's
Speaker 3: directed by the special effects wizard Stan Winston. Yeah, Nathan says,
Speaker 3: the connection is flimsy, but it could make for a
Speaker 3: tie in with the Cicada series. Their distinctive screech is
Speaker 3: used to great menacing effect whenever the titular creature appears, Nathan. So, Nathan,
Speaker 3: I had no idea. I've seen this movie before. We've
Speaker 3: talked about it a bit on the show, though we
Speaker 3: never covered it on a full episode. But I had
Speaker 3: no idea, And you're exactly right. I looked this up.
Speaker 3: I looked up the scene where like the witch is
Speaker 3: first creating the demon, and you know, it's rising up
Speaker 3: to its full stature. And sure enough, once once we
Speaker 3: see we actually don't see the full creature yet, we
Speaker 3: see like its shadow, you know, rising up on the
Speaker 3: wall as it assumes its adult form. And right when
Speaker 3: that happens, you hear this this whirr come in and
Speaker 3: it is the same on of cicadas out there rattling
Speaker 3: their timbles in a chorus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if I've ever actually watched this
Speaker 2: film in full. It's one of those that I think
Speaker 2: would they would perhaps err on something like Joe bob Riggs,
Speaker 2: you know, on TNT back in the day, and I
Speaker 2: would catch parts of it and I was always intrigued.
Speaker 2: So I also watched this clip that was sent and yeah,
Speaker 2: you can hear the cicadas buzzn't as old. Pumpkinhead comes
Speaker 2: to life.
Speaker 3: As a horror movie. There's some good things about it,
Speaker 3: some not so good things about it. It's not a
Speaker 3: rollicking good time. It's kind of a downer of a
Speaker 3: horror movie. Like it's kind of sad and it's like
Speaker 3: a it's like a tragic revenge story. But it does
Speaker 3: have some really great special effects.
Speaker 2: And it has Dick Warlock in it, so it's got
Speaker 2: that going for it. Yeah. All right, well, thanks for
Speaker 2: writing in about that. We always love some good monster
Speaker 2: tie ins to our topics. All right, This next one
Speaker 2: comes to us from Jeff and this Jeff's warning or
Speaker 2: did you label this fear Joe?
Speaker 3: No, I just threw it in warning that this does
Speaker 3: describe some real life diving related kindegory injuries.
Speaker 2: All Right, we'll strap in. Jeffs says greeting science humans.
Speaker 2: After hearing about Joe's ill advised googling of human parrotfish victims,
Speaker 2: I was reminded of something I heard on a scuba
Speaker 2: dive boat. The dive master was explaining the life of
Speaker 2: the reef below and told a story about a guy
Speaker 2: harassing a large porcupine fish sometimes called a pufferfish, but
Speaker 2: the kind with spikes like bloat from finding nemo. If
Speaker 2: a porcupine fish is cornered, it will pretty quickly resort
Speaker 2: to its famous inflation behavior, which is impressive to see
Speaker 2: in real life. The story went that this guy found
Speaker 2: a roughly basketball sized porcupine fish, grabbed it and started
Speaker 2: spinning it on its longitudinal axis, like spinning a basketball
Speaker 2: before taking a free throw, laughing as it inflated. Surely
Speaker 2: hard for me to picture this side of like a
Speaker 2: Looney Tints cartoon. But anyway, how do you.
Speaker 3: Know somebody's laughing if they're underwater.
Speaker 2: I guess there are more bubbles the bubbles have laughed
Speaker 2: in them. Anyway, as he was spinning it around, he
Speaker 2: managed to accidentally stick his finger in the poor fish's mouth,
Speaker 2: and he did what you'd expect to do and bit
Speaker 2: the tip of his finger off above the bone. While
Speaker 2: it severed the tip of the finger, it didn't cut
Speaker 2: through the glove, so he didn't lose the chunk. The
Speaker 2: story continued that he later tried to participate in the
Speaker 2: second dive of the day by simply replacing the tip
Speaker 2: on the end of his finger and tightening his glove
Speaker 2: to hold it in place. He didn't make it more
Speaker 2: than a few seconds in the water before the pain
Speaker 2: got to him and he retreated to the boat. The
Speaker 2: second part of this story is probably apocryphal, or at
Speaker 2: least exaggerated, and frankly, I'm not sure if any of
Speaker 2: the story is true. Okay, so anyway, he continues. Cautionary
Speaker 2: tales of rambo divers, inconsiderate jerks who harassed wildlife, damaged
Speaker 2: the environment, and endanger other divers with reckless behavior were
Speaker 2: a popular method of training new divers and how to
Speaker 2: not make a nuisance of themselves. Whether or not the
Speaker 2: story is true, I must say it was a successful
Speaker 2: lesson in that I have remembered it ever since hearing
Speaker 2: the tail long ago. Okay, Well, there you go. I
Speaker 2: think that also helps ground it, because I have to say,
Speaker 2: I know I'm a snorkeler as opposed to a scuba diver.
Speaker 2: But in snorkeling you often are around scuba divers, and
Speaker 2: I've personally never met any scuba divers that seemed like
Speaker 2: like jerks like this. They, you know, the ones I've
Speaker 2: met have all been very considerate of the environments that
Speaker 2: they're venturing into.
Speaker 3: But I can easily picture the rambo divers in my head.
Speaker 3: I having no experience in this world, I just know
Speaker 3: the kind of person Jeff is talking about.
Speaker 2: All right, Jeff continues, The focus of the glove makes
Speaker 2: me think that the moral of the story might have
Speaker 2: been that unless you're diving a shipwreck or similar environment,
Speaker 2: you really don't need gloves to dive, because you shouldn't
Speaker 2: be touching anything anyway. Feeling with that your hands are
Speaker 2: protected can make a person do things they wouldn't otherwise try,
Speaker 2: perhaps grabbing an angry, spiky inflatable balloon. Rambo divers were
Speaker 2: easy to recognize as the guys wearing the largest, most
Speaker 2: aggressive looking dive knives available, when really all you need
Speaker 2: is something small and convenient in case you have to
Speaker 2: disentangle yourself or some wildlife from fishing line or discarded
Speaker 2: nets at any rate. I am pleased that I have
Speaker 2: managed to remain incurious enough to not embark on Joe's
Speaker 2: Google image search journey, although I did get some perverse
Speaker 2: enjoyment from the story. In the same way I enjoy
Speaker 2: hearing you guys discuss Cory movies I would never watch myself.
Speaker 2: Thanks for continuing to keep our imaginations engaged.
Speaker 3: Jeff, Thank you, Jeff.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'll also add I haven't researched this.
Speaker 2: I haven't done like an episode of or done any
Speaker 2: show research on pufferfish. But it's my understanding, through just
Speaker 2: chatting with folks on you know, snorkeling trips and so forth,
Speaker 2: that you also shouldn't mess with them because it's like
Speaker 2: not supposedly not like a pleasant experience for them, or
Speaker 2: you know, it's not some it's not a trick they
Speaker 2: need to be able to do all the time, or
Speaker 2: it can necessarily do that many times in their life.
Speaker 3: Oh, you mean the inflation when they when they puff up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there are numerous reasons not to provoke fish
Speaker 2: in the wild or mess with them at all, but yeah,
Speaker 2: this is perhaps one of the.
Speaker 3: All right, this next message comes from Gerald Gerald says, Hi,
Speaker 3: Robert and Joe, greetings from Adelaide, Australia. Knowing your love
Speaker 3: for all things Crab, I immediately thought of you when I
Speaker 3: saw today's cartoon on my desk calendar. You may have
Speaker 3: seen it before, but I figure you can never have
Speaker 3: too much Gary Larson in your life, so I'm sharing
Speaker 3: it with you. So this is a Far Side calendar
Speaker 3: panel and it's a it's the The bottom text is
Speaker 3: Boxer Nightmares and it shows a man asleep in a
Speaker 3: bit sort of punching about fitfully in his sleep. He's
Speaker 3: sleep fighting, and we see a thought bubble in which
Speaker 3: he imagines that he is in between rounds in a
Speaker 3: boxing match with a crab, and he's telling his trainer
Speaker 3: I'm trying, I'm trying, but he keeps moving sideways on me.
Speaker 3: So Gary Larson did love this wildlife related jokes. I
Speaker 3: don't know if I know of any other cartoon that's
Speaker 3: as focused on details of zoology as The Far Side.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and remember in dinosaurs as well, and we
Speaker 2: have the I think the what is the unofficial name
Speaker 2: for a Stegosaurus's tail spikes? Based on a Gary Larson
Speaker 2: Fhagamizer Bagamizer. Yeah, and despite what he showed, it was
Speaker 2: for narrative effect that he showed cavemen and dinosaurs living
Speaker 2: at the same time. He did not actually think that
Speaker 2: was a reality. Yeah, there's actually at least one organism
Speaker 2: named after Gary Larson. You know, there's a there's a
Speaker 2: particular species of laus that's found only on owls, and
Speaker 2: it was named after Gary Larson. It's like Striga phyllis
Speaker 2: Gary Larceny, I believe. Yeah, it was first described in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety.
Speaker 3: Beautiful perfect that it's a little parasite. All right, Gerald continues,
Speaker 3: I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank you
Speaker 3: for all the work you put into your show every week.
Speaker 3: You never failed to find fascinating topics to cover, and
Speaker 3: your humor and open mindedness make every episode a genuine
Speaker 3: pleasure to listen to. Cheers Gerald. Oh, well, thank you.
Speaker 3: That's so kind of you to say, Gerald, thank you
Speaker 3: for listening and thanks for writing in. All right, do
Speaker 3: we want to wrap this up with a message about
Speaker 3: weird house cinema?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this one comes to us from Taylor. This
Speaker 2: is in response to our episode on Black Lizard, which
Speaker 2: starred Akihiro Miwa, and I believe in that we talked
Speaker 2: a little bit about how this actor went on to
Speaker 2: do various other things in luting a lot of voiceover work,
Speaker 2: voiceover work in a couple of Miyazaki films, but then
Speaker 2: also this Pokemon movie about Arcius, and we didn't know
Speaker 2: a lot about it. Well, luckily we have listeners to
Speaker 2: write in and tell us more. Taylor says, in my
Speaker 2: self appointed role as stuff to blow your mind's Pokemon correspondent,
Speaker 2: I have to provide some additional context on Akihiro MIA's
Speaker 2: voice role as the Pokemon Arcius. Arcius is not only
Speaker 2: the title character of a Pokemon movie, but the creator
Speaker 2: deity of the Pokemon world, and it is a deeply
Speaker 2: strange god. In its first video game appearance in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, encountering the deity triggered a surreal montage
Speaker 2: of real world photographs, completely out of keeping with the
Speaker 2: franchise's cherry cartoon style. The montage displayed image displayed images
Speaker 2: of astral bodies, nature, and natural disasters, intercut with industrial
Speaker 2: textures and city skylines. As the montage progresses, an arcane
Speaker 2: sigil slowly writes itself over the procession of images until
Speaker 2: Arcus appears in its center. The progress of the photos
Speaker 2: and a relentless synthetic track suggests that this deity presides
Speaker 2: over cycles of human progress and destruction with ambivalence. It
Speaker 2: was a very weird and heady media experience for what
Speaker 2: is mostly a children's franchise about adventures with cute monsters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this doesn't sound like what I thought Pokemon was.
Speaker 2: I mean Pokemon, I've I haven't seen anything quite like this,
Speaker 2: but I've seen some weird episodes of Pokemon over the
Speaker 2: past several years here, but anyway, Taylor continues. The Pokemon
Speaker 2: universe is said to have begun when Arcus hatched from
Speaker 2: an egg and berthed or created three cosmic dragons embodying space, time,
Speaker 2: and antimatter, putting Arcius on par with creator gods like
Speaker 2: Autumn and Fanas. Encounters with Arcus throughout the video game
Speaker 2: French emphasize its danger and unknowable motives. Aki hero Miua
Speaker 2: is fantastic in all of his performances, and I had
Speaker 2: to contextualize the weight of casting him as this particularly
Speaker 2: strange and artistically transgressive Pokemon. As always, thank you for
Speaker 2: doing what you do. The curious wonder with which you
Speaker 2: explore your topics is infectious and appreciated. Cheers Taylor. PS.
Speaker 2: I've included a link to the Arsius video if you'd
Speaker 2: like to check out the weirdness I've described, and they
Speaker 2: add that it all begins at about what about a
Speaker 2: minute and twenty seconds into the video. I pulled it up,
Speaker 2: and indeed it is. It is bizarre.
Speaker 3: It is so weird. So this isn't a game I
Speaker 3: never played, but it does have a very Pokemon for
Speaker 3: game Boy style in art style, but it's in color.
Speaker 3: I don't know what system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't know. This is not a switch. This
Speaker 2: is some pre switch system.
Speaker 3: I don't know what this is for. But it looks
Speaker 3: like a Nintendo game. It's like a top down a
Speaker 3: top down you know, Pokemon or Zelda style ination, and
Speaker 3: it's it looks very cute until the Arsiest Thing starts
Speaker 3: and then, like Taylor says, what you get is this
Speaker 3: montage of things that are not rendered in the art
Speaker 3: style of the game, but they're like photos that are
Speaker 3: digitized into the pixelated into the pixel space. So it
Speaker 3: looks nothing like the the art style that you were seeing. Before.
Speaker 3: It's like when it's like in the that Treehouse of Horror,
Speaker 3: when like Homer Simpson is suddenly pulled out into the
Speaker 3: real world and you're seeing live action.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, something like that. It also reminds me maybe
Speaker 2: a little bit in its trippiness, of something Solid Bass
Speaker 2: would do in one of his in his his work,
Speaker 2: you know, especially in his Aunt movie Phase four. But yeah,
Speaker 2: this is this is impressive. I had no idea that
Speaker 2: this went down in a Pokemon video game. But of
Speaker 2: course it's not too terribly surprising because I mean, just
Speaker 2: through my son's interest in Pokemon, I have learned that,
Speaker 2: like you know, you have all these different Pokemon and
Speaker 2: some of them, many of them are based on mythological creatures,
Speaker 2: folkloric creatures, dinosaurs, you name it. So when you cast
Speaker 2: a net like that, you're going to bring in ideas
Speaker 2: inevitably associated with those beings. So you're going to end
Speaker 2: up populating the waters of the franchise with with some
Speaker 2: of this energy.
Speaker 3: I guess all right, does that do it for today?
Speaker 2: I think so? Yeah. Yeah, thanks for writing in about
Speaker 2: the Pokemon, Thanks for writing in everyone else about all
Speaker 2: the other topics, and we have more listener mail that
Speaker 2: we didn't get to in this episode. We'll be back
Speaker 2: next week with more listener mail, so we'll catch up.
Speaker 2: Keep it coming. In the meantime, write in about past episodes,
Speaker 2: even the long past episodes, right in about current episodes,
Speaker 2: potential future episodes. It's all fair game.
Speaker 3: Huge things 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 Stuffdblow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
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