Speaker 1: My welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and it's time for August listener mail. That's right. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we almost forgot to do another one of these, but
Speaker 1: we've been trying to do them more or less monthly
Speaker 1: because that, I mean, that's how much cool listener mail
Speaker 1: we get. I mean, we get a lot of just
Speaker 1: nice personal comments about how much people enjoy the show.
Speaker 1: And you know, sometimes we read one of those or
Speaker 1: two of those just to give our you know, ourselves
Speaker 1: a pat on the bat. But but we do receive
Speaker 1: a lot of of of of really insightful emails about
Speaker 1: content that we've covered, uh, you know, listeners sharing their
Speaker 1: take on particular topics and occasionally pointing out something we missed.
Speaker 1: Even Yeah, you can only patch your own back so
Speaker 1: much before it starts to get sore. So maybe we
Speaker 1: should just dive straight into some of the fascinating and
Speaker 1: strange ideas that our listeners have sent us in reaction
Speaker 1: to recent episodes. Let's do it. What do you think
Speaker 1: about going back to the year old ashen light. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the the strange light on the Dark Side of Venus.
Speaker 1: You know, our mail bot Carney has has has seen
Speaker 1: these lights in person. Oh really yeah, yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: hear this. So so he had a life before he
Speaker 1: was a humble mail bot. I mean, he was a
Speaker 1: space probe really. Yeah. Not many people realized this from
Speaker 1: from which space program? American Soviet what was very hush
Speaker 1: hush about that, especially given the current political climate. So
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which side he was on. Was a
Speaker 1: Bulgarian space probe that went to Venus, found the Action Light,
Speaker 1: came back and it's been a cover up ever since. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like he doesn't say much, but I know he's seen
Speaker 1: the claims to have seen the action line. So one
Speaker 1: of the things we talked about in the Action Light
Speaker 1: episode was, of course the possibility that seems like a
Speaker 1: very strong possibility that the reports of the lights on
Speaker 1: the Dark Side of Venus have just been observer error.
Speaker 1: You know, that nobody, nobody is actually seeing anything, that
Speaker 1: it was just imagination or artifacts of the technology used
Speaker 1: at the time. And then it's kind of occurring at
Speaker 1: like the cutting edge of perception without any kind of
Speaker 1: way to like photograph or record what is being seen, right,
Speaker 1: But of course part of the problem has been while
Speaker 1: you've got all these sightings, if you are going to
Speaker 1: assume people were really seeing something, what could it be?
Speaker 1: What could it have been? And I offered a crazy
Speaker 1: idea at the end of the episode, Well, what if
Speaker 1: you actually do have organisms floating in the atmosphere of venus,
Speaker 1: suspended in droplets in the atmosphere in the clouds, and
Speaker 1: and they're actually bioluminescent or somehow reflecting or emitting light
Speaker 1: at different frequencies, maybe at times when they bloom, and
Speaker 1: this would explain the strange periodicity of the apparent ash
Speaker 1: and light sightings. Well, we heard from our listener Michael,
Speaker 1: who said, hello, my name is Michael, and I just
Speaker 1: started listening to the podcast three episodes in, and I
Speaker 1: definitely have more than I want to listen to. I
Speaker 1: teach science in seventh and eighth grade, and I love
Speaker 1: how much your podcast makes me explore different ideas. I'm
Speaker 1: writing in about your most recent pod guests because you
Speaker 1: said something right at the end that I thought was
Speaker 1: so fascinating. You talked about what if the action light
Speaker 1: was the result of micro organisms in the atmosphere. Now,
Speaker 1: this is just total off the cuff thinking about what
Speaker 1: could be possible, But I feel like that's kind of
Speaker 1: exactly what your show is supposed to make you do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope. So what if the light is a combination
Speaker 1: of both the solar bombardment and the micro organisms. My
Speaker 1: thought is this, organisms living up in the atmosphere like
Speaker 1: that would obviously be exposed to more solar radiation. They
Speaker 1: would need to have a way to deal with the
Speaker 1: excess that they don't use. I'm assuming they would be
Speaker 1: photo autotrophs of some kind. What if their way of
Speaker 1: dealing with the excess energy would be to absorb it.
Speaker 1: The electrons would become excited, and then they would admit
Speaker 1: that light when the electrons went back to their ground state.
Speaker 1: I have no idea if this is possible, because I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure this is not how bioluminescence occurs on our planet,
Speaker 1: but let's assume that it is possible. If possible, then
Speaker 1: the action light could be the interaction of exponential microorganism
Speaker 1: growth that corresponds to extreme solar activity. The high amounts
Speaker 1: of both microorganisms and solar activity, it may produce a
Speaker 1: light strong enough to be faintly visible to us from Earth.
Speaker 1: Having it be the interaction between two rare events would
Speaker 1: explain why this only happens infrequently and does not happen
Speaker 1: with any discernible pattern to us, because even if we
Speaker 1: can analyze solar activity, we wouldn't know when that would
Speaker 1: line up with exponential microorganism growth, and after exponential growth,
Speaker 1: we have a period of severely decreased population since they
Speaker 1: hit their carrying capacity, which would mean that even if
Speaker 1: there was high solar radiation, it would not trigger the
Speaker 1: ash and light. This would also explain why the light
Speaker 1: does not appear to be green as is produced by
Speaker 1: the oxygen reactions. Again, pure conjecture, almost certainly incorrect, But
Speaker 1: wouldn't that be cool if astronomers had been seeing signs
Speaker 1: of life on Venus for hundreds of years and did
Speaker 1: not realize it. That would definitely blow my mind. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to join your audience and most likely will
Speaker 1: write in every now and then since I'm a science
Speaker 1: teacher and it looks like your podcast is right up
Speaker 1: my alley now. Of what he said there, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be um? Wouldn't it be interesting if they were if
Speaker 1: what they were looking at was really alien life and
Speaker 1: they didn't realize it. Uh, you know, you could say that, well,
Speaker 1: some of these individuals were saying it was alien life.
Speaker 1: The the version of alien life they were imagining, uh,
Speaker 1: was was certainly not correct, right, it was von groy
Speaker 1: thousand right. He was saying, Well, what it is is
Speaker 1: obviously the coronation of the new Venusian king. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: all those fireworks they're throwing up over this, uh, this
Speaker 1: dynastic change that's occurring down there. But that certainly not
Speaker 1: the case. But it would be interesting if in a way,
Speaker 1: in a very small way, but a pivotal way, he
Speaker 1: was actually right. That would be a great vindication for
Speaker 1: for von groyth thousand. Also, Michael got back after I
Speaker 1: responded and said he'd done a little more research on
Speaker 1: this and realized, quote what I was talking about would
Speaker 1: be not would not be biolumin essence, but actually biofluorescence,
Speaker 1: the ability to absorb in then a midlight of different frequencies.
Speaker 1: I wasn't positive if there were organisms on Earth that
Speaker 1: could do this, but apparently there absolutely are, so yeah,
Speaker 1: this seems theoretically possible. I even found a paper about
Speaker 1: scientists looking into plants on Earth needing to protect themselves
Speaker 1: from increased UV radiation because of the thinning ozone layer,
Speaker 1: and it seemed like this is a possibility they were
Speaker 1: looking into. Uh So, yeah, thanks again for getting in
Speaker 1: touch Michael that that is a highly interesting speculative idea.
Speaker 1: I wonder if we already know things that could bat
Speaker 1: down this hypothesis, things already in evidence, or if somebody
Speaker 1: would need to do any new observations or experiments to
Speaker 1: see if this, uh this kind of thing were possible.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Carney's very hushed hush on the whole
Speaker 1: situation though. Also just another idea that came to us
Speaker 1: from our listener Justin on Twitter. Justin wrote a thought
Speaker 1: that came to his mind is what if the ashen
Speaker 1: light is venus moving fast enough in relation to the
Speaker 1: Earth to blue shift infra red light so heat into
Speaker 1: the visible spectrum? And I thought that was an interesting question.
Speaker 1: I don't have a way of evaluating that. My guests
Speaker 1: would be that blue shifted light from the infra red
Speaker 1: would still I mean, you could do that if it's
Speaker 1: moving fast enough. That's possible from the shorter wavelengths of
Speaker 1: thermal emission. But my guests would be probably just that
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be bright enough to see from Earth even
Speaker 1: if it shifted into the visible spectrum. But I don't
Speaker 1: know for sure. That's that's another thing worth checking with
Speaker 1: an expert about. All right, well, I'm gonna call Carney
Speaker 1: over here. A is some some more listener mail here
Speaker 1: for us, and it's relating to our recent episode on
Speaker 1: drinking coffee, more importantly, brewing coffee in microgravity in orbit. Uh, specifically,
Speaker 1: you know, aboard the the I S. S SO first
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge, Nathaniel wrote in. Listener Nathaniel wrote in
Speaker 1: and pointed out that I referred to the I S.
Speaker 1: S Presso machine as being a four pound machine as
Speaker 1: opposed to a forty pound machine. Okay, well that's an
Speaker 1: order of magnitude of difference, yeah, but just about one zero.
Speaker 1: It didn't really affect that the rest of the content
Speaker 1: of the episode, but we did put we did tag
Speaker 1: that old episode for people who are listening to it
Speaker 1: for the first time. Um. We also heard from a
Speaker 1: listener on Twitter. Uh this as Twitter listener r P
Speaker 1: r P rode in and said, uh, listen this morning,
Speaker 1: great show as always, I don't drink coffee, So my
Speaker 1: question is can I have my mountain dew in space?
Speaker 1: Apart from all the bad stuff, it does to me
Speaker 1: curious about carbonated liquids in space, and so I thought
Speaker 1: this was an interesting question. Uh, you know, not when
Speaker 1: we could do a whole episode on But I looked
Speaker 1: into it a little bit and I did find a
Speaker 1: NASA re NASA page about this. Uh. If you look
Speaker 1: up NASA carbonated beverages in space you'll find this as well.
Speaker 1: But the basic answer breaks down to this. So the
Speaker 1: bubbles of carbon dioxide and carbonated beverages, they aren't buoyant
Speaker 1: in a witless environment, so they remain randomly distributed throughout
Speaker 1: the fluid even after you swallow it. This means that
Speaker 1: carbonated beverages, including soft drinks and of course beers, uh,
Speaker 1: they they may become a foamy mess. Uh, NASA says
Speaker 1: during space travel. WHOA, Now this makes me think, do
Speaker 1: you burp in space? I've never thought about this for now.
Speaker 1: Bubbles from your digestive system of gas would seem to
Speaker 1: rise naturally through buoyancy so that you could burp. But
Speaker 1: if you're in a microgravity environment or in zero G
Speaker 1: would bubbles rise to the top four? Youtuberp this is
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I don't know they've ever read anything about it,
Speaker 1: or if I did, it was overshadowed by all the
Speaker 1: content about pooping in space. Anyway, that the NASA piece continues.
Speaker 1: It points out that the carbonation in the soda will
Speaker 1: also not separate in micro gravity, and in the absence
Speaker 1: of gravity, the carbon dioxide bubbles and carminated beverages go
Speaker 1: through and astronauts digestive system rather than being yeah, rather
Speaker 1: than being belched out as on Earth. So that seems
Speaker 1: to lead that seems to lead some weight to the
Speaker 1: idea that maybe as you're nuts, don't belch um. And anyway,
Speaker 1: they point out that this could cause adverse side effects
Speaker 1: as well. So if you're gonna have mountain dew in space,
Speaker 1: um I would I would imagine it would have to
Speaker 1: be flat mountain dew. Yeah. Wow, that that is a
Speaker 1: horrible thing to imagine. But I guess it could still
Speaker 1: be cold or hot. If you're a hot mountain dew enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: a hot catheter of mountain dew just letting for you, nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing gets you invigorated to to go fix that space
Speaker 1: pro in your little urinal shaped cup. I think what
Speaker 1: we need to design is a machine for astronauts to
Speaker 1: burp with. It would somehow use momentum on the body.
Speaker 1: Would be called like kinetic burp NG. It would be
Speaker 1: kind of like that scene in Willy Wonka with the
Speaker 1: fizzy lifting drink. Yeah, like centerfuge the burps out of here.
Speaker 1: But it's just another example of all the various functions
Speaker 1: we take for granted here on Earth, in our our
Speaker 1: our one G of gravity. This comes to us from
Speaker 1: our listener, Evan, and it's about space coffee. Evans says, recently,
Speaker 1: I listened to Astronauts and Spaceships Getting Coffee, great episode,
Speaker 1: and I thought i'd write in to share some experiences
Speaker 1: that I had with an experiment testing as zero G
Speaker 1: workaround designed for the I s S, particularly as it
Speaker 1: involves the use of centripetal force to create artificial gravity
Speaker 1: in ways that I don't think you've discussed before. Namely,
Speaker 1: rather than creating gravity for the entire space station or
Speaker 1: spacecraft by having the whole thing constantly revolved, instead, you
Speaker 1: can create localized gravity within the station or craft by
Speaker 1: spinning platforms etcetera for specific purposes such as exercise. Robert,
Speaker 1: I think we did talk about that a little bit
Speaker 1: in our Artificial Gravity episode, didn't Yeah, I think we did.
Speaker 1: We may not have. I don't think we discussed it
Speaker 1: in the coffee episode, that's true, But the Artificial Gravity episode,
Speaker 1: I think we explored that angle. But if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: maybe that's worth a look in the future. Anyway. Evan
Speaker 1: continues quote. It was about twelve years ago when I
Speaker 1: was a horrendously impoverished university student. I needed money pretty
Speaker 1: desperately and didn't have much time or willingness to work
Speaker 1: in those days. So a friend of mine in the
Speaker 1: biology department mentioned to me that there was a bulletin
Speaker 1: board for the biosy med School area of the campus
Speaker 1: which listed opportunities for students to take part in faculty
Speaker 1: members experiments as paid subjects. I found one that offered
Speaker 1: decent pay, applied and was immediately accepted, all without inquiring
Speaker 1: about or being informed of the nature of the experiment.
Speaker 1: The money was decent, so it seemed too good to
Speaker 1: be true. As it turns out, a professor of surgery,
Speaker 1: I assume it was Dr Anton jessep Uh If I
Speaker 1: recall correctly, had designed a machine to counter the deleterious
Speaker 1: effects of zero G environments on the human body, and
Speaker 1: was having it tested to see about trying to get
Speaker 1: it on the I s S. It was basically a
Speaker 1: pillar installed in a small, empty room, fastened at floor
Speaker 1: and ceiling, and outfitted with two arms which ran horizontal
Speaker 1: to the ground. The arms could spin. One of the
Speaker 1: arms terminated in a bicycle and the other in a
Speaker 1: small platform. The idea was for one astronaut to pedal
Speaker 1: the bicycle, thus spinning the arms, while another astronaut would
Speaker 1: stand on the platform and do exercises. Both astronauts would
Speaker 1: thereby get in some crucial exercise at a measurable and
Speaker 1: adjustable level of artificial gravity. There was a monitor on
Speaker 1: the bike with a readout about the various relevant forces
Speaker 1: at play, be approximate number of gees to which the
Speaker 1: exercisers were subjected, et cetera. Uh something that's small, man,
Speaker 1: I would worry about Coriola's forces on that. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a little dizzy and nauseous just imagining this
Speaker 1: in my head. Yeah, so Evan continues. It sounds all
Speaker 1: well and good, but for two facts that in order
Speaker 1: to measure the effects, muscle biopsies were required before and
Speaker 1: after each workout, and that I have a propensity for
Speaker 1: horrible motion sickness. The first time I gave it a go,
Speaker 1: I made it through a few sets of rapidly spinning
Speaker 1: squats that higher than normal gravity. Then when the machine
Speaker 1: began to slow its spin, I got horribly sick and
Speaker 1: threw up everywhere. Vomits flattered on wide swaths of floor
Speaker 1: and wall, of course, as I was still spinning fairly
Speaker 1: quickly at that point. So I went into the control group. Uh,
Speaker 1: he says, he went into the control group, quote, which
Speaker 1: did just normal squats to provide some frame of reference
Speaker 1: for the efficacy of the machine. Is that something you're
Speaker 1: supposed to do, take somebody from your test group and
Speaker 1: then put them in your control group. Or is he
Speaker 1: just like wandering, uh like dizzally into the into the
Speaker 1: control group. Oh maybe I don't know. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be unfair. That seems like something that might not
Speaker 1: be something you're supposed to do, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: Evan continues. It still wasn't a great experience, though, as
Speaker 1: the muscle biopsies were pretty rough, since we were testing
Speaker 1: out the efficacy of squats. They had to cut into
Speaker 1: the skin of my calf, then screw a kind of
Speaker 1: small metal tube down into the muscle. It was a
Speaker 1: fun feeling, even with local anesthetic. The tube would then
Speaker 1: engage a bit of suction to get some of my
Speaker 1: muscle into it and kind of cap itself with a razor,
Speaker 1: thus trapping a small standardized amount of leg muscle inside,
Speaker 1: about the size of one piece of Kicks Cereal my kicks.
Speaker 1: It's just a standard measurement of muscle tissue. Right, car
Speaker 1: gets forty kicks to the hogshead and um Evan writes,
Speaker 1: it's strange to look at one's own leg muscle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bet it was much whiter than I expected, more
Speaker 1: like chicken than pork or beef. So yeah, I would
Speaker 1: get these muscle biopsies before and after the workout every
Speaker 1: day for two weeks. If you think your legs are
Speaker 1: sore after an ordinary workout, you get the idea. At
Speaker 1: the end of two weeks, I got a check for
Speaker 1: about four and fifty dollars. Not sure if it was
Speaker 1: worth it. The money's long spin, but I still have
Speaker 1: the little regularly spaced incision scars on my leg makes
Speaker 1: a good story. Though. To sum it up, I don't
Speaker 1: know if the machine made it to the I s S,
Speaker 1: but from what the professor was saying, it seemed like
Speaker 1: the results were looking pretty promising, at least as the
Speaker 1: experiment was finishing up. Hope you found this interesting and
Speaker 1: thanks for your podcast. It keeps me company in my
Speaker 1: long idle evenings. More episodes per week. Please, As you're
Speaker 1: stitching up your test subjects, it's probably a good idea
Speaker 1: to tell them that this looks promising. I don't want
Speaker 1: to say, like, yeah, I guess this is a loud
Speaker 1: goose chase. Uh yeah. Thanks for the leg though, thanks
Speaker 1: for the leg muscle kernels, Thanks for the vomit samples. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: this I have to say this is one of This
Speaker 1: is a thoroughly enjoyable bit of listener mail, but also
Speaker 1: one of the more um uh kind of nauseating list
Speaker 1: your mails because we had the spinning contraption, the vomiting,
Speaker 1: the the the leg muscle samples. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of squeamish content. So you know, five stars, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go to six best new email. Oh yeah, okay was
Speaker 1: our scale. We've we've not established the scale is Wait, no,
Speaker 1: we got the Pitchfork scale, so I I'd say eight
Speaker 1: point three best new email. Okay, we got a lot
Speaker 1: of great emails on the way, so maybe it'll get beaten.
Speaker 1: Who knows. Here's another one related to the coffee episode,
Speaker 1: and this is just an answer to some of the
Speaker 1: sci fi questions we had. This comes from Theodore. Theodore
Speaker 1: says quote, I'm sitting here drinking a hot black cup
Speaker 1: of coffee, listening to your most recent episode on coffee
Speaker 1: and space. I just wanted to write in and include
Speaker 1: some other books with space coffee. You missed Dune spice coffee. This,
Speaker 1: of course, is a big one that I'm kind of
Speaker 1: shocked that we didn't bring it up, given we've we've
Speaker 1: done whole episodes on Dune. Now imagine we mentioned uh
Speaker 1: spice coffee in those episodes. But in anyway, he says,
Speaker 1: quotes said to be mixed with the spice milans, giving
Speaker 1: it a cinnamon flavor. It has never made clear if
Speaker 1: the coffee in question here is the same beverage we
Speaker 1: drink now, or if the word has morph to refer
Speaker 1: to other hot beverages. That's a good point Ring World,
Speaker 1: a book I was going to write in about for
Speaker 1: the summer reading episode, features basically a replicator on board
Speaker 1: the ship that can produce coffee. I highly recommend this
Speaker 1: book for you guys, not because of the coffee, but
Speaker 1: the imaginative aliens and the artifacts left behind by ancient
Speaker 1: super galactic civilizations. I do have to say, this is
Speaker 1: a book that's long done on my reading list and
Speaker 1: I've never picked it up. But it's it's a famous work.
Speaker 1: This is one of the ones where I think we
Speaker 1: must have had at least a half dozen listener males
Speaker 1: tell us, we've got to read this one lately. I
Speaker 1: don't know why. I must be good. It must be good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is. It is a famous work. Like,
Speaker 1: there's no reason for me to be I'm not, you know,
Speaker 1: actively avoiding. Uh. The next one is Um Artemis and
Speaker 1: it has lunar coffee. Says that this book was written
Speaker 1: by Andy Weir, writer of The Martian. Both books are great,
Speaker 1: but Artemis has better or more interesting coffee. In the
Speaker 1: Lunar City, the primary industry is aluminum production. A waste
Speaker 1: product of that is oxygen, and the city uses that.
Speaker 1: The city uses to breathe. However, to replicate Earth's atmosphere,
Speaker 1: they would need to bring tons of nitrogen up to
Speaker 1: the Moon from Earth, too expensive. Instead, they have a
Speaker 1: pure oxygen environment with of the air pressure of Earth.
Speaker 1: This lowers the boiling coin of water to something like
Speaker 1: sixty five degrees celsius, meaning that all coffee comes out
Speaker 1: weak to earthling taste. That's a bummer. And then Hitchhiker's
Speaker 1: Guide to the Galaxy something almost but not quite entirely
Speaker 1: unlike tea. The replicator in h h G G is
Speaker 1: unable to replicate Earth tea, and when Arthur finally gets
Speaker 1: it to work, it shuts down the computer, nearly killing
Speaker 1: everyone on the ship. You know, this is something that
Speaker 1: I feel like doesn't get explored enough. Uh, The idea
Speaker 1: of cooking and preparing food and everything in space. We've
Speaker 1: talked about how foods and drinks don't necessarily taste the
Speaker 1: same in space because if you're in a microgravity or
Speaker 1: zero G environment, you're often congested and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: Like it changes you. The environment changes your ability to
Speaker 1: taste things. But if you are cooking in space or
Speaker 1: preparing hot beverages, it also changes the fundamental properties of
Speaker 1: chemical reactions. Things happen in different temperatures. You might not
Speaker 1: be able to achieve the same tastes in prepared foods,
Speaker 1: even if you could taste them the same way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is ultimately a fool's errand to to
Speaker 1: try and create good space food, Like space food is
Speaker 1: always going to be space food, or maybe it's maybe
Speaker 1: it's just a different kind of thing. I mean, who's
Speaker 1: going to be the first great chef beyond Earth? It's
Speaker 1: a great question, but there's gonna also going to be
Speaker 1: a pretty low bar to set, right, Like the first
Speaker 1: chef on Mars is going to be the greatest mart
Speaker 1: and chef. Ever, what do you what do you think
Speaker 1: the first restaurant beyond Earth? What is that going to be? Like?
Speaker 1: What kind of food will it serve? Well, I would
Speaker 1: hope it would be like a Taurus pizza. I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: you know where it spends, because it has to spend
Speaker 1: to keep the toppings on it. So the the like
Speaker 1: the outside of the Taurus is just the bottom of
Speaker 1: the crust. The inside of the Taurus is the surface
Speaker 1: of the pizza, and so the toppings are held in
Speaker 1: by what's the trifcal force I think it's gonna be
Speaker 1: one of those irritating cute cie places that thinks it's
Speaker 1: just a hilarious to put bacon and dishes where it
Speaker 1: doesn't belong. Well, we'll see what would be real bacon
Speaker 1: mill or it would it be like some sort of
Speaker 1: like a that grown um pig it's grown on the ship,
Speaker 1: or like a Martian pig variant. So many questions bacon
Speaker 1: protein product. Okay, what's up next? Well, I think next
Speaker 1: we should take a short break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will lead some listener mail related to our episode
Speaker 1: on the Trident. Thank alright, we're back. So the first
Speaker 1: a bit of trident to email. We did this whole
Speaker 1: episode about the about the trident, the mythical symbolic nature
Speaker 1: of the trident, and I believe we we touched on
Speaker 1: at one point the idea that you don't really see
Speaker 1: you don't see a trident in nature, that a that
Speaker 1: a trident is. Is this this human construction and therefore
Speaker 1: has all of this human meaning associated with it. We
Speaker 1: had one listener, Cindy Leu right to us on Twitter
Speaker 1: and she shared a photograph with us of a of
Speaker 1: a fossil or a reconstructed fossil and says she says, quote,
Speaker 1: this trilobyte, while a syrops has a trident to pick
Speaker 1: with you. Uh. And indeed, this particular trilobyte has a
Speaker 1: trident formation, a trident apendage coming out of its head,
Speaker 1: like it's a unicorn trilobyte with a trident instead of
Speaker 1: a single horn. It's the straight up devil. Yeah, she says,
Speaker 1: um And I wrote her back and said, oh, well
Speaker 1: that this is wonderful the idea, And she says, thanks.
Speaker 1: Trilobytes fascinating me. They have such a wide collection of
Speaker 1: weird and wonderful apendages. Too bad all we have now
Speaker 1: are their fossils. Or is she saying she wants to
Speaker 1: live in a world where she's completely covered in triobytes? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds kind of nice. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: was looking into this a little bit, like why is
Speaker 1: this trident there? Why why would the organism have this structure?
Speaker 1: And it turns out there are a few different theories
Speaker 1: as to why it's there. We don't know for certain.
Speaker 1: No one is that it's a means of of of
Speaker 1: of levitating itself above the sea floor, lifting up from
Speaker 1: the sea floor. Essentially, you know, an appendage, or it's
Speaker 1: some sort of a sophisticated sensory organ, or it's a
Speaker 1: mechanism for hiding or defending, or that this is just
Speaker 1: an example of sexual dimorphism and it's you know, somehow
Speaker 1: play it would have played a role in mate selection,
Speaker 1: or it's a sexual or cast polymorphism as in social insects.
Speaker 1: So a few different possibilities there. But indeed, uh, nature
Speaker 1: doesn't give us a lot of tridents, but nature gave
Speaker 1: us at least one trident, and you'll find it on
Speaker 1: a species of trilobyte. That's worthwhile. Trident. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: Now Karnie is bringing me another bit of listener mail,
Speaker 1: this one on his own tried and appendage, and this
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Rob. Hey, Robert and Joe.
Speaker 1: I just listened to your episode and tried its and
Speaker 1: not only was it a great listen, but it really
Speaker 1: got my brain grinding away on the magic of the
Speaker 1: number three. That's part of what we talked about in
Speaker 1: the episode is like why do we assigned three this
Speaker 1: magical power? Rob says, quote, I have often bucked can
Speaker 1: convention with my beliefs on two fundamental time measures. I
Speaker 1: don't think of seasons in the term of spring, summer, autumn,
Speaker 1: and winter, but more of extreme transition extreme. I also
Speaker 1: don't think of the day in terms of morning, afternoon, evening,
Speaker 1: and night, but like extreme transition extreme, I think of
Speaker 1: it like the infinity symbol. To the early humans, there
Speaker 1: was a cyclic pattern of time of light, a transition
Speaker 1: of light, a time of dark, a time of transition
Speaker 1: of light, a time of light, et cetera. Similarly, for
Speaker 1: early humans living outside of equatorial areas, there was a
Speaker 1: cyclic pattern of time of warmth and transition of Aren't
Speaker 1: the time of cold, a transition of warmth, a time
Speaker 1: of warmth, etcetera. Maybe that kind of perspective on cycles
Speaker 1: of the day and seasons also led to the magic
Speaker 1: attributed to three I guess the same could also be
Speaker 1: said of lunar cycles full moon transition, new moon, transition,
Speaker 1: full moon, etcetera. Additionally, there's the riddle of the sphinx. UH.
Speaker 1: The answer speaks to three phases of life infant, adult,
Speaker 1: old age UH. This holds true for plants and animals.
Speaker 1: To the ancient paradigm is connected to the much more
Speaker 1: modern maiden mother and chron aspects of the goddess and neopaganism,
Speaker 1: which also helps keep the power of three alive. The
Speaker 1: ancient Greeks had the three Fates, which were said to
Speaker 1: tell the fate of a day of a day's old child.
Speaker 1: Shakespeare had the three Weird Sisters in Macbeth, who also
Speaker 1: prophesies the fate of Macbeth. Uh. There is a clear
Speaker 1: multicultural attribution of magic and supernatural ability to the number three.
Speaker 1: Pure speculation on my part, but I think the perspective
Speaker 1: on days, season's life, human plant, animal cycles, and maybe
Speaker 1: even lunar cycles that I mentioned earlier played a part
Speaker 1: in this attribution. I think these are common experiences too
Speaker 1: many early cultures that early humans would want to explain
Speaker 1: and understand, defining them in a similar way three phases.
Speaker 1: They could all be explained with a single answer, a
Speaker 1: supernatural entity. Oh and then there's the triangle, a very
Speaker 1: stable basic geometric shape with three corners. Three equals stable.
Speaker 1: I remember back in high school one of the cool
Speaker 1: English teachers I had told us to watch movies and
Speaker 1: plays with an eye for people standing in triangles. He
Speaker 1: said that pattern is often used to denote strength, especially
Speaker 1: if there are two people standing in close proximity to
Speaker 1: the camera and a third standing behind and slightly elevated.
Speaker 1: That showed the third person was the leader and that
Speaker 1: role was bestowed by the two others. The variation was
Speaker 1: usually used when the people are moving. The leader is
Speaker 1: in front of the triangle taking a leadership role, with
Speaker 1: the other two falling in behind. He used a west
Speaker 1: side story as an example. Not sure it holds one
Speaker 1: of true at the time, but a fun visual exercise. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: it could be way off, but it has been a
Speaker 1: fun thought exercise. Thanks for stirring the pot of my imagination.
Speaker 1: Cheers Rock. Yeah. I think this is a bunch more
Speaker 1: examples of the the seemingly um innate magical signaling of
Speaker 1: the number three that it seems to tell us that
Speaker 1: something important is going on, and when something important is
Speaker 1: going on, of course something magical is going on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like the point about the triangle structure and film. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't remember this coming up in film classes I had,
Speaker 1: but I instantly think to say Conan the Barbarian because
Speaker 1: you meet Falsa Doom. But it's not just Thosa Dom.
Speaker 1: Thalsa Doom has got his to his two thugs there.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have a Thalsa Doom without a finely Thorsen, right.
Speaker 1: And then the other guy whose name I forget that
Speaker 1: was the football player. Yeah, he only has one line
Speaker 1: in the whole movie, but it's the most perfect execution
Speaker 1: of a one word line in a in a film
Speaker 1: I've ever seen. What's the word? It's you. He just
Speaker 1: says you like he sees and it it helps you
Speaker 1: don't remember the dramatic music. But I was thinking it
Speaker 1: would be great if the word is like carrots that
Speaker 1: but that's just as hard, really, I feel. You know,
Speaker 1: when a character has like a whole monologue to really
Speaker 1: lay out how they feel about something, it's also Doom's
Speaker 1: got great monologue. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's also Doom has
Speaker 1: just got miles of of of of dialogue and monologues
Speaker 1: to to just lay out whose character is and what
Speaker 1: defines him. This character has just got that one word,
Speaker 1: and yet he manages to do it, so it's it's
Speaker 1: arguably a better performance. Nice job anyway you will contemplate
Speaker 1: this on the Tree of Woe. Let's move on to
Speaker 1: some emails in response to our episode about the ancient
Speaker 1: aliens ideas, Oh yes, we got some good ones on this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of good ones here. I was kind of surprised.
Speaker 1: I don't think we heard from anybody who was like, hey,
Speaker 1: I believe in ancient aliens and I'm mad that you
Speaker 1: guys don't. Um. Yeah, I was, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: guess I wasn't hoping for that, but I was thinking
Speaker 1: we might hear from someone who would, maybe you know,
Speaker 1: whould maybe be on towards that end of the spectrum
Speaker 1: as opposed to the more purely skeptic, because we kind
Speaker 1: of we we in that episode we engaged with the idea,
Speaker 1: you know, as as much as we could while remaining
Speaker 1: skeptical about it. We talked about the way Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: engaged with it. Right, the idea is that so like
Speaker 1: the Eric von Danecken approach is obviously you know, that's
Speaker 1: a nonstarter, it's nonsense. But there could be an intelligent
Speaker 1: way to approach this idea and look for evidence of it.
Speaker 1: And Carl Sagan laid out some really good thoughts about
Speaker 1: that and some stuff he wrote in the sixties and seventies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because while the while a lot of ridiculous stuff has
Speaker 1: been done in the name of this hypothesis. The hypothesis
Speaker 1: itself is is perfectly sensible. If there are aliens, then
Speaker 1: they may have been here before. And that's there's there's
Speaker 1: nothing so shameful about that sentence. What would evidence of
Speaker 1: it look like if it were to exist, right, And
Speaker 1: that's where we and that also is is a fair discussion.
Speaker 1: But then when we look for that evidence, we just
Speaker 1: do not find it. Right. But we did find a
Speaker 1: lot of great listener response to this episode. We did,
Speaker 1: so I am going to read our first one. Let's say,
Speaker 1: let's let's look first at the one from Graham. Graham rights,
Speaker 1: hi all, just now catching up on episodes of stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind and just listen to the episode
Speaker 1: on the Chariots of the Gods. The reason I have
Speaker 1: to play catch up now is that I was leading
Speaker 1: some trips of high school students for the New York
Speaker 1: Times and nat GEO student Trips. One of those trips
Speaker 1: was to Switzerland, where I had a chance to take
Speaker 1: one of my students to the Young Frau Park in Interlochen. Yes,
Speaker 1: I knew somebody out there had to have been there.
Speaker 1: I'm an astrobiologist and someone with an interest in the
Speaker 1: ancient aliens ideas. I thought i'd share my experience in
Speaker 1: Young Frau Park. When you arrive at the park, it
Speaker 1: has an eerie feeling of being a memorial to something dead.
Speaker 1: While we were there, we saw only three employees and
Speaker 1: the parking lot was almost entirely empty. There was a
Speaker 1: small school group there when we arrived, but for most
Speaker 1: of our several hours in the park, it was just
Speaker 1: two of us and another pair of people. Since the
Speaker 1: turnout is so low and there are only a few employees,
Speaker 1: most of the exhibits are closed except for at two
Speaker 1: specific times each day. This meant that one employee and
Speaker 1: the other pair of people were with us in every
Speaker 1: exhibit as we made our way around. The exhibits were beautiful,
Speaker 1: with structures built to mimic pyramids of Egyptians and Mayans
Speaker 1: or the vimana of ancient sanscrit stories. Most of the
Speaker 1: exhibits have little pre show halls where you can walk
Speaker 1: at your leisure and read about some of the artifacts
Speaker 1: from ancient peoples that von Danikin and others think might
Speaker 1: have come from alien influences. However, most of these pre
Speaker 1: show areas can be explored in fifteen minutes or so.
Speaker 1: Each exhibit is then really just a movie theater built
Speaker 1: to resemble some facet of the ancient society in question.
Speaker 1: The movies are fun to watch. The mostly seem low
Speaker 1: budget and have c g I that feels like something
Speaker 1: from the late nineties. Oh that's always that's the best.
Speaker 1: Each of these movies presents that some topic related to
Speaker 1: ancient people nasca lines, pyramids, vimana, etcetera, and then presents
Speaker 1: the idea that maybe the constructions and no ledge of
Speaker 1: the ancients came from aliens. There's even a video that
Speaker 1: presents a giant alien space battle in Earth's orbit, although
Speaker 1: the park does present the ideas as being merely possible.
Speaker 1: One thing that I took away from the park is
Speaker 1: that it feels like von Danikin's personal shrine to himself.
Speaker 1: There are copies of his books all over the park.
Speaker 1: There are pictures of him in various places. There are
Speaker 1: even signs saying when he'll be in the park next
Speaker 1: to give a lecture. Though I can't imagine a lot
Speaker 1: of people are there for such events. I can't actually
Speaker 1: see how the park even remains open. Maybe there are
Speaker 1: some other days when they do more business, but I
Speaker 1: doubt they see much more than a hundred people on
Speaker 1: any given day. Cheers. Well, this is direct report from
Speaker 1: the field. Amazing, this is great now. You know, one
Speaker 1: might say, Graham, just because you you know, you didn't
Speaker 1: see evidence for how humans are maintaining this magnificent creation.
Speaker 1: Maybe it is because it is the work of alien
Speaker 1: That is a great thing to point out. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: could humans a loan have conceived such a wonder Another
Speaker 1: thing this makes me think about, with all the like
Speaker 1: pictures of him everywhere in the books, is it makes
Speaker 1: me think about your comparison to l Ron Hubbard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do get I did get a strong leron hubbard vibe,
Speaker 1: But I mean still I am jealous that he got
Speaker 1: to go there, because when I was reading about it
Speaker 1: in UM, when we're researching that episode, I just I
Speaker 1: really wanted to check it out for myself. You know
Speaker 1: what this actually makes me think about is how I
Speaker 1: would like to go to a place that's just take
Speaker 1: out the ancient aliens aspect and just have an ancient
Speaker 1: civilizations park that it's just like a giant imagine like
Speaker 1: a Disney World, but it's all recreations of civilizations of
Speaker 1: the ancient world, you know, trying to recreate what a
Speaker 1: street would look like in their culture with original type architecture,
Speaker 1: maybe re rebuildings or recreations of the wonders that they built.
Speaker 1: That'd be awesome because they are truly wonders, and you
Speaker 1: don't have too you don't have to see them through
Speaker 1: the you know, the lens of ancient alien speculation to
Speaker 1: to to give it that wonder Like the pyramids are amazing. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, these various other you know, architectural or cultural
Speaker 1: creations are amazing and and and they are amazing just
Speaker 1: as pure human creations. And of course you can actually
Speaker 1: visit these the ones that still exist. You can't visit them.
Speaker 1: You can't visit all of them because some of them
Speaker 1: have been destroyed or inaccessible or whatever. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it'd be great to build a place like this.
Speaker 1: It's just easier for people to get to, you know.
Speaker 1: We also heard from listener Kira who wrote in and
Speaker 1: she said, hello, there, I was listening to your Chariots
Speaker 1: of the God episode guest today, where you were discussing
Speaker 1: the name of the uh name of the Young Frau
Speaker 1: park in Switzerland. Young Frau actually means virgin in German,
Speaker 1: which added to the weirdness of that park for me,
Speaker 1: which might have been a loss to other listeners due
Speaker 1: to the mistranslation. To young woman, that's what I guessed
Speaker 1: it might have meant, So it's she says, it is
Speaker 1: not that un com and to name mountain peaks young
Speaker 1: Frau or version. But calling this park the Virgin park
Speaker 1: made me chuckle a bit, since it promotes these bizarre
Speaker 1: concepts of human kinds origins, whilst ancient aliens theory also
Speaker 1: touches upon biblical stories where the virgin is obviously an
Speaker 1: important symbol. So I thought it would be amusing to
Speaker 1: point this out since this actually backs up your arguments
Speaker 1: made at the end of the episode regarding the adaptation
Speaker 1: of religious motifs for such pseudoscience alternative religion theories. Although
Speaker 1: these are just my own musings about the name of
Speaker 1: the park, keep out the good work, as your voices
Speaker 1: helped me get through my insomnia and university stresses, So
Speaker 1: please do not ever stop greeting from the Netherlands. Kira,
Speaker 1: We all plan on stopping. Thanks a lot, Kira. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: while we're talking about Young Frau Park, might as well.
Speaker 1: Revisit our comments about Dollywood. We talked about Dollywood in
Speaker 1: an episode for some reason. I guess it just came up,
Speaker 1: and I was just talking about like the different types
Speaker 1: of parks one comes to expect in the United States.
Speaker 1: I think I think I admitted I'd never been to Dollywood,
Speaker 1: so I didn't mean to judge it harshly, but I
Speaker 1: is trying to imagine, if it's a Dolly Parton themed park,
Speaker 1: what is it like Dolly Parton song themed rides? So
Speaker 1: they have a Jolene roller coaster. I was confused, but
Speaker 1: Amy enlightened us. So our listener Amy says, Hi, so
Speaker 1: you guys were talking about Dollywood and implying it's not good.
Speaker 1: I thought the same until I went with my family.
Speaker 1: It is one of the coolest tourist places ever. When
Speaker 1: we went it was International Week. They had acts and
Speaker 1: vendors from all over the world. As part of the
Speaker 1: regular permanent park. There are many local crafters who get
Speaker 1: an excellent place to sell their crafts. They have glassblowing,
Speaker 1: wrought iron, sculpture, yarn and sewing arts. They also have
Speaker 1: a large area of free trade vendors. Next to this,
Speaker 1: there is a bald eagle sanctuary. They have local folk
Speaker 1: musicians and regular exhibits on conservation. Dolly's childhood home is there,
Speaker 1: and it was about the size of a small hotel
Speaker 1: room for her entire large family. They use newspaper ads
Speaker 1: to decorate the walls. Severe Ville, Tennessee, which is basically,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with East Tennessee geography, it's it's
Speaker 1: like right next to Pigeon Forge where Dollywood is. Severe
Speaker 1: Ville also or servier Ville is my Canadian UH College
Speaker 1: instructors referred to it at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
Speaker 1: Um is it. Severeville is also the setting for Corman
Speaker 1: McCarthy's fantastic novel Child of God. Oh yeah, yeah, it is,
Speaker 1: which I do not think is reflected at all in
Speaker 1: the Dollywood attractions. I don't think they have Child of God.
Speaker 1: Have a Child of God ride The scene where he
Speaker 1: goes to get the axe reforged, remember that one? Oh no,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't remember that scene. I think it
Speaker 1: was more traumatized by other scenes in that time. Oh no,
Speaker 1: that's a great scene. And like the murderer goes to
Speaker 1: get his ax worked on at a forge somewhere, and
Speaker 1: the smith or the forge worker whoever the guy is,
Speaker 1: he like tells him everything he's doing as he does
Speaker 1: it um and then at the end he is like,
Speaker 1: think you could do that. And then the guy goes
Speaker 1: do what Okay, it does ring a bell does ring?
Speaker 1: But anyway, I started picking up. She just Amy continues
Speaker 1: to talk about how Severeful in Tennessee, which is in
Speaker 1: that area, was very poor. Uh and the Dolly Pardon
Speaker 1: put the park there and employed a lot of people,
Speaker 1: created a bustling commercial area. She says, quote, I think
Speaker 1: you should have an episode on one of your sister
Speaker 1: podcasts about it and her. She does many good works
Speaker 1: and is an especially good friend to the drag queens
Speaker 1: who portray her. Goes to show you can't judge a
Speaker 1: theme park by I don't know, well, thanks to Amy,
Speaker 1: I I did not in any way I mean to
Speaker 1: impugne Dolly Pardon. I don't know a whole lot about her,
Speaker 1: but from what I know, I think Dolly Pardon is great.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I agree. I did not. I certainly did
Speaker 1: not mean to imply that Dollywood was not good. I
Speaker 1: have heard nothing of good, great things about it from
Speaker 1: family members who have gone there and uh, And I
Speaker 1: am aware that that Dolly Parton has has done a
Speaker 1: lot of good work in that area. Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: know she did anything with like eagle conservation and all that.
Speaker 1: I wasn't familiar with that. I knew about like the
Speaker 1: job creation in the severe able Pigeon Forge area, but
Speaker 1: but that was about the extent of it. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: good for Dolly. You know, I don't know if she
Speaker 1: ever would have predicted that people would be out there
Speaker 1: having a conversation about her in a podcast with reference
Speaker 1: to a park in Switzerland about ancient aliens. But but
Speaker 1: but great for Dolly. All right, here's another one from
Speaker 1: that has to do with our our Ancient Aliens Chariot
Speaker 1: of God's episode. This one's from Mike. Mike says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: listening to your recent discussion regarding ancient alien speculation and
Speaker 1: its appearance in science fiction. I was struck by a
Speaker 1: couple notable to me of missions uh in the in
Speaker 1: the season two episode of the original Star Trek series
Speaker 1: who mourns for an as. I won't summarize it here
Speaker 1: other than to say that it is a It is
Speaker 1: definitely a relevant example with Kirk at one point observing
Speaker 1: that creatures such as he could have visited Earth informed
Speaker 1: the basis of classical Greek mythology. The episode has a
Speaker 1: thoughtful yet playful take on the idea, overlapping most with
Speaker 1: the Carl Sagan school of thought on the topic. Star
Speaker 1: Trek touches on the concept again in the Next Generation
Speaker 1: episode The Chase. This time the speculation is presented in
Speaker 1: a reversal at the end. No guilt for spoilers here.
Speaker 1: The episode is not that strong and conforms more to
Speaker 1: the species of ancient alien speculation we saw in Prometheus.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I could claim either of these
Speaker 1: as the greatest examples of the genre, but they were
Speaker 1: both mainstream programs, and the original series episode would have
Speaker 1: definitely left the nineteen seven viewer with something to think about.
Speaker 1: Love the show, in my honest opinion, best pot on
Speaker 1: the web. Keep it up, Mike, Yeah, and I I
Speaker 1: appreciated this, you know, I um, I've never really watched
Speaker 1: Classic Track. I don't know. I just I have a
Speaker 1: certain aversion to it. I don't know, I just can't
Speaker 1: get I didn't watch it when I was young enough
Speaker 1: or whatever. But but I watched the heck out of
Speaker 1: Star Trek the Next Generation, and I do find like
Speaker 1: now that he mentioned, I do fondly remember the Chase episode,
Speaker 1: and I do remember it feeling really amazing at the
Speaker 1: time when I was watching it in like early junior
Speaker 1: high or something. And that was probably my first encounter
Speaker 1: with the concept of ancient aliens and like a purely
Speaker 1: fictional work as opposed to the you know, sort of
Speaker 1: the pseudoscience of In Search of which I think I
Speaker 1: referenced in that episode. Well, speaking of that kind of amazement,
Speaker 1: I should mention just one last listener mail we got
Speaker 1: about ancient aliens from our listener Alexandra who she She
Speaker 1: said that when she found out we were doing an
Speaker 1: episode about chariots of the Gods, she lost her mind
Speaker 1: a bit, and she said, quote that was one of
Speaker 1: those self discovery, coming of age outlandish ideas books that
Speaker 1: I found fascinating in college. You know, when your personal
Speaker 1: reading list includes books like Celestine Prophecy and Ishmael. I
Speaker 1: love Ishmael, by the way, I don't know. It was
Speaker 1: a book by Daniel Quinn. It's essentially a conversation between
Speaker 1: a human and talking gorilla covering you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of topics about human nature and conservation, etcetera. It's I
Speaker 1: recommend it, I recommend Ishmael. That sounds worth checking out,
Speaker 1: but continues while you all were describing the passage about
Speaker 1: Ezekiel's account of angels in the Bible, and absolutely Yen
Speaker 1: came over me to hear a follow up to this
Speaker 1: podcast on the book Food of the Gods. If it's
Speaker 1: the theme, hear me out. This book explains the idea
Speaker 1: of the forbidden fruit of the Western Adam and Eve
Speaker 1: narrative as being the magic mushroom that when they the
Speaker 1: fruit quote and their eyes were opened and they saw
Speaker 1: the shame in their nakedness a k a. They developed consciousness.
Speaker 1: This narrative explains the concept that psychedelics could have developed
Speaker 1: our concept of God because we projected a creator through
Speaker 1: hallucinations in our own image. It also has some other
Speaker 1: noteworthy concepts regarding the development of language. YadA YadA. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear your view on this book. It
Speaker 1: could get met a real quick. Thanks guys. I love
Speaker 1: your show. Well, we've actually been talking about doing an
Speaker 1: episode on Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those that I, uh judge from a distance,
Speaker 1: I have not yet been able to ascertain whether it's
Speaker 1: just a bunch of pseudoscience or whether there's some good
Speaker 1: stuff in it, so it might be worth a look
Speaker 1: figure it out. Yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to looking
Speaker 1: at it more closely. I picked up a copy of it.
Speaker 1: I haven't started reading it yet, but uh, I believe
Speaker 1: it was I think I read some some commentary from
Speaker 1: I believe it was John Horrigan who who had some
Speaker 1: nice things to say about Food of the Gods and
Speaker 1: use it as a He was making the argument that
Speaker 1: that this is an example of like the serious Terence mckenne,
Speaker 1: or at least the the Terence McKenna that was that
Speaker 1: that wanted to, you know, actually put on his academics
Speaker 1: hat as opposed to his um shaman shaman hat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which are both were the hats. We need scientists and
Speaker 1: we need shaman's um, you know, but you shouldn't confuse
Speaker 1: the two. Yeah, we should not confuse the two. So
Speaker 1: look for possibly look for an episode on that in
Speaker 1: the future. We're gonna have We're gonna look, We'll look
Speaker 1: at it and then proceed from there. If if it
Speaker 1: looks like a good topic totally, Thanks Alexandra. So I
Speaker 1: think we should take a look at maybe a few
Speaker 1: short ones before we take another break. How about this
Speaker 1: one from Heidi? I thought this was kind of interesting. Uh,
Speaker 1: this was like some anthropology coming from the world of retail.
Speaker 1: So Heidi says, Hey, guys, I've been in retail for
Speaker 1: all of my working life and have noticed something pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Imagine a situation where two of the exact same items
Speaker 1: are sitting next to each other on a shelf. This
Speaker 1: happens a lot, especially with items that sell well. I've
Speaker 1: noticed in an overwhelming number of cases, people choose the
Speaker 1: item on the left over the item on the right,
Speaker 1: despite those being the same item. I wonder if the
Speaker 1: reason for this is that we as Americans read and
Speaker 1: write starting on the left side of the paper. And
Speaker 1: if that's the case, is it different in other countries
Speaker 1: where they start on the right side of the paper.
Speaker 1: Love your work, keep it up. That is first of all,
Speaker 1: an interesting observation that I've never made. Yeah, And secondly
Speaker 1: I think that is that sounds like a perfectly logical
Speaker 1: hypothesis for what's going on there. Yeah, that that's worth investigating.
Speaker 1: I wonder if anybody has ever looked in this into
Speaker 1: this science quickly. I mean, if that is a real phenomenon,
Speaker 1: which I trust your experience, it sounds like that very
Speaker 1: well could be. Here's a variation I wonder about, Robert.
Speaker 1: Do you find yourself not wanting to pick the first
Speaker 1: item displayed on the shelf, but rather wanting to reach
Speaker 1: behind it to take the second or third of the
Speaker 1: same item from the shelf at the grocery store. Oh? Yes,
Speaker 1: for two reasons, because the first one has probably been handled,
Speaker 1: and I want something that's handled less, even if it's
Speaker 1: in packaging for some reason. And then also there's this
Speaker 1: perhaps wives tale. I don't know if this is true,
Speaker 1: but somebody at some point told me that the fresher
Speaker 1: items are in the back because they want, you like
Speaker 1: if it's you know, some sort of produce, because they
Speaker 1: want to sell off the older items which are upfront.
Speaker 1: Again that this may be completely, uh, you know, just
Speaker 1: a complete lives tale for all I know, Well, in
Speaker 1: my experience, that is absolutely true. I've worked in groceries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so not plural. I have worked in a grocery store.
Speaker 1: When I worked and grocery store, I did grocery stocking,
Speaker 1: like dairy and stuff like that, and we absolutely tried
Speaker 1: to order the items so that the freshest ones were
Speaker 1: in the back and the oldest ones were in the
Speaker 1: front because the oldest ones are expiring and you want
Speaker 1: to give them out the door. But of course people
Speaker 1: wise up to that, so they started digging through and
Speaker 1: messing up all your stacks. Uh So, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a foul game. It's a it's a real
Speaker 1: knife in the ribs when you go shopping for dairy. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Thanks Heidi. That that's interesting and maybe we'll return to
Speaker 1: that in the future. All right, here's one This is
Speaker 1: from This is a Facebook message that we've received from Tom. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I just listened to your two part episode regarding your
Speaker 1: summer reading list. I think it was Robert who brought
Speaker 1: up Soma the video game and question whether or not
Speaker 1: the game drew any inspiration from Starfish by Peter Watts. Sick.
Speaker 1: That was actually me, but okay, so Tom continues. I
Speaker 1: recently listened to an interview with Frictional Games developer Thomas Gripp,
Speaker 1: who cited Peter Watts is one of the biggest inspirations
Speaker 1: for their games after Lovecraft. Pretty cool, keep up the
Speaker 1: great work, Tom. What do you know? Yeah? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: like I said, it makes sense when you're when when
Speaker 1: you play Soma, which again is just a fabulous game. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean you do see a lot of starfish DNA
Speaker 1: in there. Definitely the most philosophically interesting video game I've played,
Speaker 1: and with great undersea environments, and so that that's the
Speaker 1: starfish thing the start, well, the undersea environments and the
Speaker 1: creepy nihilism horror. Yeah, okay, one more uh. In our
Speaker 1: summer reading episode, we had a brief discussion about the
Speaker 1: idea of the word soul, which is a word that
Speaker 1: I think is in a lot of ways really linguistically valuable.
Speaker 1: It's like a really powerful good word, but it also
Speaker 1: has all this supernatural baggage attached to it, and I
Speaker 1: was wondering if the word could be rehabilitated for something
Speaker 1: that doesn't have any supernatural meanings, or if there's a
Speaker 1: good alternative word that's as powerful as soul is but
Speaker 1: but doesn't mean like something ghostly or anything like that anywhere.
Speaker 1: Our listener Vassilis got in touch to say, how about
Speaker 1: the word see hey or psyche. It's free of religious connotations.
Speaker 1: Also happens to be the Greek word for soul now
Speaker 1: and three thousand years ago. Oh and it's science is,
Speaker 1: of course psychology. Well that's pretty good psyche psyche. It
Speaker 1: also makes me think of dungeons and dragons and psychic
Speaker 1: damage they can be inflicted. So how do you get
Speaker 1: psychic damage? Oh, you know, we've you know, various spells
Speaker 1: and effects, or you know, gazing into a demon lord's
Speaker 1: eyes too long, that sort of thing. They'll just snap
Speaker 1: you mind flairs, messing with you. They're a whole host
Speaker 1: of ways you can get some psychic damage. Let's do
Speaker 1: one more for Michelle and then let's take a break.
Speaker 1: Michelle also writes about our Summer Reading episodes. She says, Hello,
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed your podcast for many years, from way back
Speaker 1: in the Julie days. I wanted to let you know
Speaker 1: your Summer Reading episode cracked me up and solved an
Speaker 1: ongoing debate between my parents. My parents have a beach
Speaker 1: house in a small town on the central coast of
Speaker 1: California called Cambria, just down the highway from Hurstcastle, which
Speaker 1: is worth a visit if you ever make it out
Speaker 1: to this coast. When I was listening to the intro
Speaker 1: to the first episode, all about the Tom Clancy books
Speaker 1: at beach houses, I thought, how do they know they've
Speaker 1: been to my parents house? My parents have two large
Speaker 1: built in bookcases in their beach house, one whole shelf
Speaker 1: of which is filled entirely with Clancy novels. I went
Speaker 1: up this weekend for a family reunion. My dad asked
Speaker 1: if I listened to your podcast, and started telling me
Speaker 1: about the episode. We just stood there, looking at the
Speaker 1: bookshelf and laughing. He now feels very self conscious about
Speaker 1: his reading choices, but finally realized that he doesn't actually
Speaker 1: plan to ever reread them, and is willing to finally
Speaker 1: give in to my mom, who's been bugging him to
Speaker 1: get rid of them for years. So thank you for
Speaker 1: much entertainment and information, and for the extra two feet
Speaker 1: of room on the bookshelf. I guess I'll just have
Speaker 1: to go buy more books. Oh well, now I feel bad.
Speaker 1: I did not at all mean to make you or
Speaker 1: your dad feel bad about Tom Clancy books I read,
Speaker 1: but you want to read? Yeah, yeah, no, no Clancy
Speaker 1: shaming here. I I read well first of all, my
Speaker 1: dad read a lot of them, uh, and I remember
Speaker 1: like leafing through him. He had a bunch of old
Speaker 1: spy and novels and read. He read a lot of
Speaker 1: other stuff too, But I read I think Cardinal and
Speaker 1: the Kremlin. I think that was the Clancy book I read.
Speaker 1: In it, I remember it does have a very like
Speaker 1: creepy scene towards the beginning where um, a spy has
Speaker 1: been put in this uh uh, this state of sensory deprivation,
Speaker 1: like in a tank in a close suit like kind
Speaker 1: of the original like dark arts John C. Lily version
Speaker 1: of sensory deprivation. Uh. So, I mean, yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a lot of good stuff in those books. I'm
Speaker 1: sure beyond that. So yeah, read what what entertains you,
Speaker 1: what makes you happy? Absolutely it is. It is not
Speaker 1: at all our mission to make people feel bad about
Speaker 1: their reading pleasures. You know, narrative is a sacred retreat,
Speaker 1: and you make that retreat alone. So you know, it's
Speaker 1: not up to us to tell you where you should go.
Speaker 1: But we will tell you this. Uh, don't go away,
Speaker 1: because we're gonna be right back after one more ad
Speaker 1: break and we'll read some more. Listener mails all right,
Speaker 1: thank alright, we're back. What does Carney have for us
Speaker 1: next here? Joe, Well, here's the one that came in
Speaker 1: with reference to our episode about the illusory truth effect.
Speaker 1: I thought this was interesting. This comes from Chris, and
Speaker 1: Chris says, Hi, Robin, Joe. When I was around four
Speaker 1: years old, we visited a fair and my parents took
Speaker 1: a photo of me holding a monkey. I have a
Speaker 1: very vivid memory of the monkey biting me on the hand,
Speaker 1: and remember the handler taking the monkey off of me.
Speaker 1: I'm thirty six years old now and still remember this
Speaker 1: event happening, and my parents still have the photo of
Speaker 1: me and the monkey. The thing is, the monkey never
Speaker 1: actually bit me. Apparently, while I was holding the monkey,
Speaker 1: I was so scared that it would bite me that
Speaker 1: my parents quickly took the photo and dragged me away
Speaker 1: to do something else. Every time I saw this photo
Speaker 1: as a child, I would say that the monkey bit me,
Speaker 1: and my parents would always try and correct me. I
Speaker 1: knew they were wrong. Is I distinctly remember the bite
Speaker 1: whereas my parents knew I was wrong as they were
Speaker 1: the ones who took the picture. It seems the fear
Speaker 1: of the bite as a child caused me to believe
Speaker 1: it actually did happen, and the repetition by myself of
Speaker 1: this lie instilled to false memory into my brain. It's
Speaker 1: bizarre how how over thirty years later, I can still
Speaker 1: remember this false event happening, even though as an adult,
Speaker 1: I've come to accept the fact it never actually did. Weird. Huh, Yeah, Chris,
Speaker 1: that that's that's fascinating, And I think that is absolutely
Speaker 1: in line with what the research tells us about what
Speaker 1: our brains are capable of. You. I mean, we we
Speaker 1: create false memories like this all the time. Maybe not
Speaker 1: always as vivid as that one, but tons of the
Speaker 1: stuff you remember doing in your life you almost definitely
Speaker 1: didn't do. Yeah, And childhood can be very confusing too,
Speaker 1: about it when it comes to this, because you know,
Speaker 1: as we discussed, as we kind of explored here, you
Speaker 1: have memories, kind of faint memories at times about what happened,
Speaker 1: and you have stories that are told about what happened.
Speaker 1: And between the two is you know, you you have this, uh,
Speaker 1: you have what's stored in your head. But anyway, Chris,
Speaker 1: thanks for sharing that. That is interesting. Here's a quick
Speaker 1: one that came to us from from Diane uh, and
Speaker 1: she says, Hi, Joe and Robert, I'm a huge fan
Speaker 1: of your podcast. I thought i'd send you a pick
Speaker 1: of what I found while looking through my husband's latest
Speaker 1: edition of the British science magazine New Scientists in the
Speaker 1: culture section. The articles are mostly over my artistic head
Speaker 1: and there's always something to glean. Keep up the fantastic work, Diane,
Speaker 1: and she sent us a picture where our podcast was
Speaker 1: mentioned in the pages of the British New Scientists magazine.
Speaker 1: Thanks New Scientists. Yeah, and and thanks Diane, because this
Speaker 1: is one of those cases where you know, some of
Speaker 1: you might if you see something as you might think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they probably let Robert and Joe know that they were
Speaker 1: going to do this, or somebody else tells us know
Speaker 1: that Diane is the only person who's brought this to
Speaker 1: our attention. So we appreciate you guys looking out for
Speaker 1: us like that. Okay, This next one comes to us
Speaker 1: from Atata is also writing about Lou Sorry Truth Auto Rights. Hi.
Speaker 1: Agreeings from Helsinki, Finland. From a big fan of your show.
Speaker 1: I was listening to your latest episode, Illusory Truth Part one,
Speaker 1: where in the beginning you mentioned the study about scientific
Speaker 1: knowledge of the American public, and how people had a
Speaker 1: poor understanding of boiling water physics but a better understanding
Speaker 1: about the use of uranium. This brought one case of
Speaker 1: the illusory truth to my mind popular misconceptions about nuclear power.
Speaker 1: Working both as a researcher and local politician with climate
Speaker 1: and energy issues, I'd say misconceptions about nuclear energy are
Speaker 1: among the most popular and most harmful. Nuclear energy is
Speaker 1: widely thought as horrible for the environment and dangerous for people,
Speaker 1: Yet when compared to other energy sources and taking into
Speaker 1: account the scale of energy produced, this is simply not true. Popular,
Speaker 1: if not so widely spread, are also even more weird misconceptions,
Speaker 1: such as that nuclear power plants could blow up like
Speaker 1: a nuclear explosion, or that they emit nuclear radiation continuously
Speaker 1: in their environment. I suppose these mis conceptions result from
Speaker 1: the constant exposure to these ideas in popular culture, and
Speaker 1: also from the deliberate fearmongering by some organizations. Issues you
Speaker 1: also discussed in the episode. While nuclear power is by
Speaker 1: no means without challenges, it is a tried and true, scalable,
Speaker 1: low emission technology, without which our efforts to combat climate
Speaker 1: change and loss of biodiversity become greatly more difficult, if
Speaker 1: possible at all. In my work, it is frustrating to
Speaker 1: correct the widely spread misconceptions over and over again. Understanding
Speaker 1: the mechanisms of how such misconceptions are created and spread, however,
Speaker 1: makes it easier to fight ignorance with scientific knowledge. So
Speaker 1: thank you for discussing this interesting topic. Looking forward to
Speaker 1: more in part two. Thanks again for your great podcast. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Ata, and I hope part two is useful
Speaker 1: for you. I gotta say there there are true challenges
Speaker 1: about what to do about nuclear power and in terms
Speaker 1: of say, making sure that facilities are secure, and especially
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what to do with leftover high
Speaker 1: level waste and stuff like that. But but I agree
Speaker 1: with you. I mean, nuclear power has a lot of
Speaker 1: gre it advantages too, especially as a as a low
Speaker 1: emission alternative to fossil fuel based energy. Yeah, this might
Speaker 1: be something we might want to come back in and
Speaker 1: revisit for an episode in the future. All right, here's
Speaker 1: one from Nadine responding to our Proteus Effect episode. Hi, there,
Speaker 1: I'm a bit late to this party. That's all right,
Speaker 1: The party has always open um, she says, But I
Speaker 1: just listened today to the episode discussing the proteus effect.
Speaker 1: As part of the enormously fascinating discussion, you touch on
Speaker 1: the idea of RPG's specifically D and D characters, and
Speaker 1: how noticeably or not a player may emulate the character
Speaker 1: outside of the game's context. In particular, my interest was
Speaker 1: piqued by the discussion of whether or not one might
Speaker 1: deliberately make use of the proteus effect to consciously make
Speaker 1: changes to one's own personality based on those characters. I
Speaker 1: find this intriguing for a number of reasons, not least
Speaker 1: of which is that I've previously had similar conversations. We
Speaker 1: didn't specifically refer to proteus effect, of course, not being
Speaker 1: aware of it at the time, but there are significant
Speaker 1: parallels for context. I play tabletop RPGs which have been
Speaker 1: modified for use in an online text based platform. Old
Speaker 1: school nerds will probably know what I'm talking about. It's
Speaker 1: efectionally known as uh mushing, it's m U s H,
Speaker 1: and then I m G m U s H, standing
Speaker 1: for multi user shared hallucination. In this setting, I have
Speaker 1: played a minor multitude of character types and personalities. This
Speaker 1: includes villains by the way. As a writer, I find
Speaker 1: them fascinating, and because mushing is text based, playing them
Speaker 1: serves as an excellent exercise and characterization. More to the point,
Speaker 1: a couple of these characters have been stronger and more
Speaker 1: well rounded than others. Their personalities were nuanced and clearly developed,
Speaker 1: with distinctly defined characteristics, and through them I was able
Speaker 1: to more completely immerse myself in the role play experience.
Speaker 1: It was thoroughly enjoyable, and in the aftermath of that experience,
Speaker 1: outside of the context of the game, I discovered something
Speaker 1: unexpected I find myself. I found myself leaning into some
Speaker 1: of these characters quite heavily to borrow traits that were
Speaker 1: quite well developed in them, but which I felt a
Speaker 1: bit lacking in myself. For example, one of my favorite
Speaker 1: characters possessed an unflappable sense of self confidence, which was
Speaker 1: admittedly more than a little bit wish fulfillment on my part.
Speaker 1: Since playing her, I have frequently deliberately put myself back
Speaker 1: into the mindset I occupied while in character in the
Speaker 1: game in order to assume that quality for a while.
Speaker 1: For job interviews or difficult conversations, etcetera. Any situation in
Speaker 1: which I feel a little out of my depth and
Speaker 1: would like to borrow some confidence is fair game. I
Speaker 1: suppose in a way it's wearing the character like a
Speaker 1: mask in talking to other players in this hobby. I'm
Speaker 1: certainly not alone in that tendency. Phrases like Alice is
Speaker 1: very much in my head today, or o MG, Stephen
Speaker 1: is so mad at you right now I'm in response
Speaker 1: to something that the character would not have appreciated are
Speaker 1: fairly common parlance among my particular play group, and I've
Speaker 1: observed it in the wider hobby population as well. I
Speaker 1: don't know how well this experience fits into the overall
Speaker 1: framework of the proteus effect, is defined by various studies,
Speaker 1: but it seemed at lee peripherally related enough that I
Speaker 1: felt I should share it. I adore the podcast. I
Speaker 1: came to it late, but I'm catching up, and every
Speaker 1: episode feeds my brain and piques my curiosity. I'm grateful
Speaker 1: for the amazing content. It's engaging and insightful, and it's
Speaker 1: soul food for a poly math like me, looking impatiently
Speaker 1: forward to the next episode. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: doing what you do, Nettie. Well, thanks Standin. This is
Speaker 1: not the only email we've gotten like this. We've heard
Speaker 1: from multiple people who talk about the idea of um
Speaker 1: of using some form of role playing outside the confines
Speaker 1: of the game to change the way they live their life,
Speaker 1: essentially to get in character to do things. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder about that. I mean I wonder about how
Speaker 1: I mean, I know there are like role playing forms
Speaker 1: of therapy right there, they're like, I don't know all
Speaker 1: that much about them, but I wonder to what extent
Speaker 1: And people get kind of literal and deep with that,
Speaker 1: like going to role playing game for ms of therapy,
Speaker 1: where like if you lack confidence, they will give you
Speaker 1: a character to play. I think I've come across some
Speaker 1: examples of of this being used, um at least in
Speaker 1: some therapy environments where they're essentially using tinners and dragons
Speaker 1: or some uh you know, boiled down version of of
Speaker 1: role playing tabletop role playing now, Nadine and know you
Speaker 1: asked how that fits with the original produce effect, and
Speaker 1: I think it seems like a kind of elastic concept
Speaker 1: now because originally it was referring specifically to physical avatars.
Speaker 1: It was like, if you play as a character having
Speaker 1: certain physical attributes, UM. But I think, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: definitely expand the idea to at least a version of
Speaker 1: itself that is more all encompassing about playing characters and
Speaker 1: simulated environments and how those qualities come back to the
Speaker 1: person playing the character. I wonder about that. I mean it,
Speaker 1: I think I feel like part of the problem here
Speaker 1: is that people have different levels of tolerance for situations
Speaker 1: like role playing. You know, Robert, you probably don't have
Speaker 1: this because you actually do play D and D. But
Speaker 1: I know a lot of adults would probably be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's silly. You know, I'd be too embarrassed to do
Speaker 1: something like that. But it seems like something that's worth
Speaker 1: giving a try, even if you feel like it might
Speaker 1: be embarrassing or like you don't know how to do it.
Speaker 1: I bet it's worth checking out for most people who
Speaker 1: feel some kind of character based inadequacy, or like there's
Speaker 1: something that you want to do but can't. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean to to to tie into another episode. I feel
Speaker 1: like this is one of the great appeals of Werewolf,
Speaker 1: which which if depending on how you play it, can
Speaker 1: incorporate at least some mild role playing elements or you know,
Speaker 1: or or you can get a little more robust with it,
Speaker 1: but it does have players engaging in these extremes of
Speaker 1: human behavior they don't necessarily get to, you know, employ
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, namely, um, actively deceiving your friends
Speaker 1: and or family, or persecuting your friends and family, um
Speaker 1: and ordering their execution for lecanthropy. Uh. You know, all
Speaker 1: these sort of you know, extreme modes of human social behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except is it good to practice lying? I don't know, Uh, well, good, Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know if good is the word. I don't know.
Speaker 1: That just sounds like we're wolf talk there, Joe. Is
Speaker 1: it good to practice persecuting? Yes? Or maybe it's an
Speaker 1: outlet for persecution. I don't know, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's something humans are obviously good at. And if
Speaker 1: you're gonna do it, I would prefer it be the
Speaker 1: be fictional werewolves within a you know, a parlor game.
Speaker 1: They should be the ones to suffer. Yes, swing your
Speaker 1: silver sword at a werewolf, not at somebody who made
Speaker 1: you mad on the internet. Right, all right, So that
Speaker 1: you have it another installment of listener Mail. There were
Speaker 1: still a few great ones that we didn't get to
Speaker 1: that we had lined up. Maybe we'll get to those
Speaker 1: uh next month or so when we do another listener
Speaker 1: mail installment, and certainly uh feel free to write in
Speaker 1: with new comments about new episodes, new comments about old episodes,
Speaker 1: new revelations, et cetera. We'd love to hear from all
Speaker 1: of you. It's true, we really do love hearing from you,
Speaker 1: and uh so as always we apologize that we can't
Speaker 1: respond to or read out every great message we get,
Speaker 1: but we we really do appreciate them, So keep them coming,
Speaker 1: that's right. And in the meantime, you can check out
Speaker 1: everything we do. It's stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes. There's also
Speaker 1: a store button up there that's a cool way to
Speaker 1: support the show. You like our our revamped logo, Get
Speaker 1: it on a mug, get it on a sticker, get
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stickers, and and just tag things
Speaker 1: all over your city. Uh It's and if you want
Speaker 1: a cheaper like the the Economy version of supporting the show.
Speaker 1: As in addition to downloading us, you can also rate
Speaker 1: and review us wherever you get the podcast. Big thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and
Speaker 1: Terry Harrison. If you want to get in touch with
Speaker 1: us to give us feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to share ideas you've had, to name a topic you
Speaker 1: might like us to cover in the future to perhaps
Speaker 1: get an email featured on a future Listener Mail episode.
Speaker 1: You can email us at blow the Mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: The Big