Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you
Speaker 3: some messages from the Stuff to Blow your Mind email address.
Speaker 3: If you're a listener and you have never gotten in
Speaker 3: touch before, why not give it a try. You can
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com. Messages of all types are welcome. Of course.
Speaker 3: We really appreciate if you have anything interesting you'd like
Speaker 3: to add to a topic we've talked about on the show.
Speaker 3: If you have corrections you need to offer, those are
Speaker 3: of course very welcome if you have If you want
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, we like that too.
Speaker 3: Sometimes we do follow up on topics that were suggested
Speaker 3: by listeners. But whatever it is, send it our way
Speaker 3: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. So
Speaker 3: this is our first recording after the Christmas week, robbed it.
Speaker 3: Did you have a good holiday with the family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, pretty good. I have to admit though, it
Speaker 2: does feel like a strange nether zone that I find
Speaker 2: myself then, because we're we're recording this between Christmas and
Speaker 2: New Year's We've just had some unseasonably warm weather. Yes,
Speaker 2: and you know, every day feels completely discombobulated. So I
Speaker 2: have no idea, you know, moment to moment, what day
Speaker 2: it is, what season it is, how I fit into
Speaker 2: the world around me. All I know is that we
Speaker 2: have a certain amount of listener mail to get to.
Speaker 2: But how about yourself? How was your holiday?
Speaker 3: Oh? You know, I had a great time with the family.
Speaker 3: Loved to see and everybody. We you know, did some
Speaker 3: I did some cooking and some hosting, and then we
Speaker 3: also had the different little family gatherings which were very nice.
Speaker 3: Though on Christmas Day itself, of you know, I think
Speaker 3: it was the same for y'all. It's like in the
Speaker 3: seventies and I had a cold, so it's just kind
Speaker 3: of gross. But uh but yeah, you know, good holiday
Speaker 3: times and not a single exploding lollipop or flying material
Speaker 3: was found.
Speaker 2: Excellent. Yeah. I think Santa Claus has really been forced
Speaker 2: via various environmental laws to really tightly contain his various
Speaker 2: miracle candies so they do not phone to the hands.
Speaker 3: Of the children. Okay, yeah, all right, Well should we
Speaker 3: jump right into the emails?
Speaker 2: Yeah? What do we have.
Speaker 3: Let's see this first one. I'm gonna do this one
Speaker 3: from Lauren, which is a late coming email about our
Speaker 3: episodes on the Ignobel Prizes for this year. I think
Speaker 3: this is Yeah, she'll explain which one it's about. So
Speaker 3: Lauren says, hello, Robin Joe. I was just listening to
Speaker 3: your episode on the Ignobel Prizes Part one and the
Speaker 3: bit about narcissism made me think about different forms of
Speaker 3: praise and how they affect human behavior according to this video,
Speaker 3: and then she inserts a video I'll explain in a second.
Speaker 3: Lauren says, praising kids by telling them that they are
Speaker 3: smart or intelligent makes them fear looking unintelligent, so they
Speaker 3: avoid challenges and stagnate, whereas kids who are praised for
Speaker 3: their effort or process when engaging in a task are
Speaker 3: more likely to develop a desire to take on challenges
Speaker 3: and therefore are more likely to experience growth. Now, I
Speaker 3: thought I should follow up with this video that Lauren
Speaker 3: attached and talk about it a bit, so just to explain.
Speaker 3: This is a video of part of a lecture by
Speaker 3: the American psychologist Carol Dweck of Stanford making the case
Speaker 3: for what Laurence said based on Dwex's own research and
Speaker 3: I was reading a bit about this, I should note
Speaker 3: that while focusing on process based praise or effort based
Speaker 3: praise over attribute based praise does absolutely make sense to
Speaker 3: me on an intuitive level. I've read that there's some
Speaker 3: disagree in the field, Like, from what I can tell,
Speaker 3: it's not so much that process based praise is bad,
Speaker 3: but there's dispute about to what extent process based praise
Speaker 3: actually leads to measurably better outcomes in learning and things
Speaker 3: like that. Some other psychologists have been unable to replicate
Speaker 3: the original results reported here, so I can't give you
Speaker 3: an answer on whether it gets measurable results on average
Speaker 3: or not. But I will say I personally try to
Speaker 3: focus more on effort based praise with my own child,
Speaker 3: just because it just kind of feels like the right
Speaker 3: thing to do for us, and it seems to me
Speaker 3: to get better results at least, you know, in our
Speaker 3: one case. Yeah, So I wouldn't want to overclaim anything
Speaker 3: that's not really proven about the potential negative effects of
Speaker 3: like attribute based praise. You know, telling a kid you're
Speaker 3: so smart instead of praising them for trying hard at something,
Speaker 3: and you know, or trying again after they fail, things
Speaker 3: like that. I do think it's it is obvious, at
Speaker 3: least at some level, that there are forms of praise
Speaker 3: that can be incredibly toxic and pathological, like praise that
Speaker 3: makes it seem like love is conditional, or praise that
Speaker 3: gives children a sense of superiority over their peers, things
Speaker 3: like that. Obviously, there is such a thing as toxic praise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean you like, in my family, we
Speaker 2: try to maintain a kind of like growth mindset with everything,
Speaker 2: and you know, I put an emphasis on always learning,
Speaker 2: always growing, and yeah, I can imagine various toxic forms
Speaker 2: of praise where you're kind of implying you are perfect
Speaker 2: as is there's no need for additional growth. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah, I mean, as with all of it, there's
Speaker 2: a careful balance to maintain.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, but back to Lauren's message. So about this
Speaker 3: idea of praising process or effort versus praising attributes, Lauren says,
Speaker 3: I think there is merit to this. I also think
Speaker 3: it's kind of scary how certain forms of praise can
Speaker 3: really damage people over time. It's a sad irony. I
Speaker 3: think that's true. Yeah, because you know, when you're praising somebody,
Speaker 3: it kind of feels like, well, that's always got to
Speaker 3: be good, right, Lauren says on a somewhat related note,
Speaker 3: I've been in a half dozen or more situations in life,
Speaker 3: whether it be with classmates or at camp or whatnot,
Speaker 3: where there comes a point when everyone has to write
Speaker 3: little compliment notes to everyone else. I've experienced the best
Speaker 3: results when I praise people for what I determine they
Speaker 3: like or value most about themselves, as opposed to what
Speaker 3: I actually like or think about them. For example, if
Speaker 3: Jane thinks she's a really good artist, even if I
Speaker 3: think she's a terrible artist, praising her for her abilities
Speaker 3: seem to most effectively achieve the goal of the activity.
Speaker 3: I don't really mind that it's kind of dishonest, because
Speaker 3: the whole point was to make people feel special and valued.
Speaker 3: This makes a lot of sense to me, because if
Speaker 3: someone compliments me for something I don't value about myself,
Speaker 3: I don't feel good or perhaps anything, don't feel anything
Speaker 3: about their words, and often the compliment produces a negative reaction,
Speaker 3: so the good intentions are lost. The power of different
Speaker 3: forms of praise is definitely an interesting topic. Thanks for
Speaker 3: dedicating your time and energy to crafting an intelligent, amusing,
Speaker 3: and well researched podcast. Lauren. Well, thank you, Lauren. Several
Speaker 3: thoughts about this. First of all, Yeah, I think the
Speaker 3: power of different forms of praise would be a really
Speaker 3: interesting topic to come back to. And I also agree
Speaker 3: with your idea about focusing on praising what people value
Speaker 3: about themselves instead of what they don't really care about
Speaker 3: about themselves. That makes a lot of sense, and I
Speaker 3: do want to come back to that in a minute. Though.
Speaker 3: The one thing I do I please don't feel judged, Lauren,
Speaker 3: but just I want to give my perspective. I want
Speaker 3: to make it clear that we're not necessarily endorsing the
Speaker 3: idea of giving untruthful praise. After I read this email,
Speaker 3: I was thinking about this a lot. And of course,
Speaker 3: you know, not trying to come off as high and
Speaker 3: mighty or like I think I'm the King of honesty.
Speaker 3: You know, we all, at least occasionally, you know, use
Speaker 3: little positive exaggerations and things like that that help help
Speaker 3: sweeten and ease our relationships. And I've done this too,
Speaker 3: But when given the opportunity to reflect, I really do
Speaker 3: think in general it's better to be as truthful as
Speaker 3: you can with people, even if you're just talking about
Speaker 3: praise and compliments. Even positive little lies can just create
Speaker 3: unpredictable problems for your future self, Like if people later
Speaker 3: find out that a compliment you gave them was insincere,
Speaker 3: that will probably hurt them a lot more than not
Speaker 3: getting a compliment in the first place. And I think
Speaker 3: also when you misrepresent your feelings or thoughts about things,
Speaker 3: it has the downside of essentially gumming up the works
Speaker 3: of your mind, Like it creates these inefficiencies where you
Speaker 3: have to remember what you've told people in the past.
Speaker 3: So in computer terms, it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 3: you're running multiple virtual machines and your brain instead of
Speaker 3: just running directly on the hardware. But yeah, so that
Speaker 3: caveat aside to coming back to the first part. When
Speaker 3: you are able to do so truthfully, I think finding
Speaker 3: things to compliment that people value about themselves is a
Speaker 3: really good insight in a way, it's having a sympathetic
Speaker 3: identification with the person. It's a way of complimenting them
Speaker 3: that sees them from their own perspective instead of from
Speaker 3: the outside perspective. And like you allude to, I think
Speaker 3: with this connection to praising process instead of attributes, if
Speaker 3: it's something they value about themselves, I think that usually
Speaker 3: means that it's something that they have put effort into,
Speaker 3: which is its own kind of reward to have somebody
Speaker 3: acknowledge and notice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, like with the couple of things, I
Speaker 2: guess with first of all, with the example here, Jane
Speaker 2: is an artist. Art is very subjective, so you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of wiggle room there. And also I
Speaker 2: think when complimenting someone, you know, I mean, you can
Speaker 2: probably find something you like about the thing that they value.
Speaker 2: You know, there's got to be something there, even if
Speaker 2: it's not like your art, you know, the kind of
Speaker 2: art you would personally put on your wall, there must
Speaker 2: be something you can say, yeah, you know, get creative,
Speaker 2: find that place where where truth meets praise.
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, totally. All right, thank you, Lauren. Let's
Speaker 3: see Rob, you want to grab one of these next
Speaker 3: fore you here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have another one here related to the Ignobel
Speaker 2: Prizes episode. This one I think is we determine his
Speaker 2: response to the study about rainbow lizards that steal pizza.
Speaker 3: Yeah, stealing pizza from a resort like restaurant tables in Togo,
Speaker 3: so that and the study was about what kinds of
Speaker 3: pizza the lizards like the most. That also led us
Speaker 3: into talking about the most constipated lizard ever documented, which
Speaker 3: had been found eating sand, presumably soaked in pizza, outside
Speaker 3: of a Florida pizzeria. And then I think that led
Speaker 3: to us just generally talking about animals learning to get
Speaker 3: quite aggressive at snatching human food in these, you know,
Speaker 3: environments where human activity and animal life meet.
Speaker 2: All right, well, this one comes to us from Bruce.
Speaker 2: Bruce says, Hi, Robert Joe, your recent episode on this
Speaker 2: year's Ignobel Prize winning research brought to mind an encounter
Speaker 2: with a hungry, maybe angry bird. I was living in
Speaker 2: New York City at the time and would often take
Speaker 2: weekend day trips to Atlantic City. The casinos were in
Speaker 2: competition with each other and offered varying cast back incentives
Speaker 2: to bus riders when they would disembark at their establishment.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the cashback would even be a dollar or two
Speaker 2: over the cost of the ticket. Anyway, on such a trip,
Speaker 2: I remember walking along the boardwalk. It was an overcast,
Speaker 2: late fall day, somewhat blustery, so the summer crowds, along
Speaker 2: with their drop food concessions the goals would pick up
Speaker 2: had long since thenned out. I noticed a goal, a
Speaker 2: seagull on a descent, flying towards me. I also then
Speaker 2: noticed a woman walking in my direction holding a funnel
Speaker 2: cake on a plate.
Speaker 3: Uh oh.
Speaker 2: The goal had apparently also seen the funnel cake and
Speaker 2: decided it was going to be an easy theft, as
Speaker 2: it suddenly dove over the woman's shoulder from behind and
Speaker 2: tried to grab the pastry. What it had not anticipated was,
Speaker 2: since it was a windy day, the woman was holding
Speaker 2: her treat quite firmly against the plate it was on.
Speaker 2: The plate ended up acting like a fulcrumb, and the
Speaker 2: momentum the bird had caused it to cartwheel into a
Speaker 2: face plant beak plant against the boardwalk. It staggered to
Speaker 2: its feet and took a couple of wobbly steps before
Speaker 2: it tried to take off again. But I had continued
Speaker 2: walking forward, not anticipating all this commotion, so had narrowed
Speaker 2: the distance between myself and the location of the intended
Speaker 2: theft and its aftermath. As the bird became airborne, it
Speaker 2: swam directly into my chest, right below my chin, it
Speaker 2: fell once again to the boardwalk. I don't really know
Speaker 2: what an embarrassed indignant face looks like on a goal,
Speaker 2: but if there is one, this goal had it, Bruce,
Speaker 2: And then I believe Bruce included a note or this
Speaker 2: might have been your note that Bruce, this is from Okay.
Speaker 2: Bruce also reminds us that he is the former theater
Speaker 2: manager who previously wrote in with memories of showing Kroll
Speaker 2: and the Last Starfighter.
Speaker 3: All right, here's another amazing adventure you got to witness first.
Speaker 2: And seagulls, you know, they will, they will go for it.
Speaker 2: I've watched one grab a hot dog off of a
Speaker 2: hot grill once at the beach. They will, they will,
Speaker 2: They'll get it if they absolutely can. Now, as for
Speaker 2: what the funnel cake truly had to offer the bird,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: The seagull grabbed the hot dog off the grill with
Speaker 3: its beak.
Speaker 2: You said, uh, yeah, I mean I was not the griller,
Speaker 2: so I don't know what the temperature of the grill was, like,
Speaker 2: what part of the grill and this was observed from
Speaker 2: a farm, but seemed to make off with it, so
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe the grill was dying down. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to imagine. So it's a seagull, so it
Speaker 3: wouldn't be grabbing with talons like an eagle or something.
Speaker 3: It would be beak down to grab I suppose.
Speaker 2: So again I wasn't close enough and or my memory
Speaker 2: is not as firm. I just remember the goal getting
Speaker 2: the hot dog, and that was the that was the
Speaker 2: important part of the tale.
Speaker 3: Okay, alrighty, let's see this next message comes from Joe,
Speaker 3: not myself, a different Joe. Joe says, oh in the
Speaker 3: subject line is AI, chatbots and narcissistic behavior. This is
Speaker 3: in response to us. Actually it's the same Ignobel winning
Speaker 3: psychology paper which Lauren was writing about. So this was
Speaker 3: the paper which found, among other things, that telling people
Speaker 3: that an IQ test has deemed them very smart has
Speaker 3: a tendency to increase, at least temporarily, a couple of
Speaker 3: particular narcissistic traits. I think they called this state narcissism.
Speaker 3: And the question was not resolved by the paper, but
Speaker 3: the question was could this overtime lead to the actual
Speaker 3: inculcation of trait narcissism? So, like, you know, causing these
Speaker 3: states of narcissism makes somebody more permanently narcissistic over time.
Speaker 3: And in our discussion of that paper, we ended up
Speaker 3: talking about AI chat bots and the fact that they
Speaker 3: often really shower the user with ridiculous flattery. You know, Oh,
Speaker 3: that's such an intelligent question, very perceptive insight. Thank you user,
Speaker 3: Please keep using the service.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we talked about this. I've experimented with
Speaker 2: this a little bit before and found that, yeah, I
Speaker 2: can if I asked one of these systems about something
Speaker 2: that is ultimately a stretch, some sort of connections stretch
Speaker 2: between a particular movie and a particular theme or something,
Speaker 2: it's still it still wants to compliment me on that
Speaker 2: correct on that connection that I've made, as opposed to saying, well,
Speaker 2: that's a real stretch and maybe you're the only one
Speaker 2: thinking about it this way.
Speaker 3: The flattery is one of the many reasons that I
Speaker 3: you know that these tools can be useful in certain ways,
Speaker 3: but you just shouldn't depend on them too much for
Speaker 3: truth or anything, because yeah, they're you know, they're doing
Speaker 3: something other than just purely trying to serve you up
Speaker 3: truthful information. They're they're trying to inculcate a user relationship.
Speaker 3: So they want to flatter you, and they also are
Speaker 3: going to you know, hallucinate to try to give you
Speaker 3: stuff that fulfills what you ask for. Yeah, anyway, so
Speaker 3: Joe says, Hey, Robin, Joe, love your Ignobel episodes, which
Speaker 3: often provides some of my favorite anecdotes to share with
Speaker 3: my kids. Cats are liquid is still a catchphrase in
Speaker 3: the family castle. Oh that warms my heart. A recent
Speaker 3: article in futurism that website futurism dot com shines an
Speaker 3: interesting light on the segment on self assessed Intelligence and
Speaker 3: your musings on AI's tendency to putting it delicately, blow
Speaker 3: smoke up your and then Joe says, wait, that's not delicate.
Speaker 3: Maybe skip reading this part anyway, Joe says, a thirty
Speaker 3: year old IT professional wound up being repeatedly hospitalized, losing
Speaker 3: his job, and being diagnosed with a severe manic episode
Speaker 3: after a large language model falsely validated his theories about
Speaker 3: faster than light travel. This is one example of a
Speaker 3: phenomenon that's been termed AI psychosis colloquially. It's not a
Speaker 3: DSM disorder or anything, and often comes back to the
Speaker 3: way LMS ten to tend towards flattery and affirmation of
Speaker 3: the user, even when the user is making obvious, catastrophic,
Speaker 3: even dangerous mistakes. This lends credence to your musing about
Speaker 3: AI and the hypothesis that repeated flattery might aggregate over time.
Speaker 3: Interesting says, It's easy to see how this feature could
Speaker 3: be dangerous to a more fragile mind. Not my mind,
Speaker 3: of course, my mental health is the best. At least
Speaker 3: that's what my LLM tells me. Joe, Yeah, thanks, Joe. Obviously,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people have probably heard of
Speaker 3: these stories at this point about various forms of AI psychosis.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think there can be similar effects, but
Speaker 3: probably just not to the same degree that it's having
Speaker 3: on people with typical mental health using it all the time.
Speaker 3: But especially Yeah, if you have certain kinds of mental
Speaker 3: health conditions, getting into a back and forth with one
Speaker 3: of these affirming programs can definitely lead you in dangerous places. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because it's just trying to hype you up and saying yes, yes,
Speaker 3: that's right. You know, you are on the verge of
Speaker 3: a great discovery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like so many things with technology, of course,
Speaker 2: you know, it's already out there and we're kind of
Speaker 2: playing ketchup figuring out exactly how everybody responds to these systems.
Speaker 2: So yeah, interesting times, interesting times. Yeah, all right, let's
Speaker 2: move on to one. This one comes to us from Lee,
Speaker 2: and this is responding to our episodes Unlicking, though specifically
Speaker 2: this one was a response to the first episode, so
Speaker 2: I think it came in between the publication of one
Speaker 2: and two. Lee says, greetings were ob, Joe and JJ
Speaker 2: very interesting first episode on licking your request for experiences
Speaker 2: regarding licking and spitting. I recall a number of movies
Speaker 2: and TV shows for my youth that involved kids making
Speaker 2: deals of varying types. Almost always the deal was sealed
Speaker 2: with a handshake. A key element of the handshake was
Speaker 2: for each deal maker to spit in their palm prior
Speaker 2: to the handshake. This was always to emphasize the importance
Speaker 2: of the deal on some level. Hearing about licking, I
Speaker 2: would presume the fact that kids doing the deal were
Speaker 2: outdoors doing well kid things. My presumption would be that
Speaker 2: their hands were too dirty to lick, but that spitting
Speaker 2: into the palm was okay. Ever thought about it that way,
Speaker 2: I mean, I figure just kids like to spit. I
Speaker 2: recall on multiple occasions licking my finger in an effort
Speaker 2: to assess wind direction. Yes, another idea, more from TV
Speaker 2: shows than written sources. With regard to the TUTSI pop.
Speaker 2: More often than not, the start was to lick it,
Speaker 2: but it would more than likely get parked between the
Speaker 2: cheek and gum for most of the time. I don't
Speaker 2: specifically recall if this was more an effort to make
Speaker 2: it last or because I was working on some task
Speaker 2: or another. Love the podcast always look forward to each episode.
Speaker 2: Sincerely ly thank you Lee.
Speaker 3: On the idea about licking a finger and sticking it
Speaker 3: into the air to see which way the wind is blowing,
Speaker 3: because you know, it gets cold on the side of
Speaker 3: the wind is coming from. This reminds me that I
Speaker 3: recently was watching a movie. I'm afraid I'm misremembering this,
Speaker 3: but I think it was a scene in the James
Speaker 3: Bond film From Russia with Love Okay, And it's a
Speaker 3: scene where a character is trying to test wind direction
Speaker 3: and they lick a finger and hold it up in
Speaker 3: the air, but they're doing it ends in a speeding boat.
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe I'm wrong. I think that would probably
Speaker 3: not work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you would feel cold. Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: I think your results would be skewed by that. Very interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I haven't seen From Russia with Love in a long time.
Speaker 2: Classic though, classic film. Yeah, let's see. Yeah, other I
Speaker 2: mean good observation about the spitting and they hand there's
Speaker 2: a lot of There is a lot of that, I
Speaker 2: feel like in uh, you know kid adventure films, the
Speaker 2: spit in the hand handshake. Uh. Sometimes they'll go for
Speaker 2: it and do the blood bond handshake, which of course
Speaker 2: is is ickier and makes you even more afraid for
Speaker 2: the fact that they're outside playing and haven't washed their hands.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, adding self mutilation to the mix. But but yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess there's a lot of spitting in palms. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have to be hyper aware of it now as
Speaker 2: I watch other films. As for the TUTSI pop observation,
Speaker 2: this this match up with what other people have been
Speaker 2: saying as well. You know that there is active licking. Yes,
Speaker 2: there's active crunching, but there's also a lot of just
Speaker 2: having the pop in your mouth while you're doing other things. Generally,
Speaker 2: you're not setting there actively counting the licks and only
Speaker 2: focusing on the licking.
Speaker 3: Okay, here's an email left over from October. This seems
Speaker 3: to be related to our past October episodes on the
Speaker 3: invention of the chainsaw. This is from Hugh. Hugh says, Robert,
Speaker 3: Joe and JJ Boo. I am writing to put forward
Speaker 3: an opinion that may not be popular among our particular
Speaker 3: subset of humans, but I feel must be expressed. A
Speaker 3: chainsaw would make a terrible weapon. First a trigger warning.
Speaker 3: My reasons are technical and fairly pedantic, and my real
Speaker 3: world example is sure to upset people. I would not
Speaker 3: hold it against you if you were to stop reading
Speaker 3: right now. So, folks, if you don't want to hear
Speaker 3: out why chainsaws are not particularly effective on say, mammal flesh,
Speaker 3: with some details from experience, and not murder, but experience
Speaker 3: with animal carcasses, you can skip ahead. I don't know,
Speaker 3: five minutes or something, Okay, all right, Hugh says. If
Speaker 3: you take the way that various styles of internal combustion
Speaker 3: engines make power, and line them up, you would have
Speaker 3: a sliding scale. At one end of the scale would
Speaker 3: be torque and at the other would be RPM. At
Speaker 3: the torque end, you have large explosions of fuel in
Speaker 3: large combustion chambers, pushing large and heavy components in long
Speaker 3: strokes stroke meaning the distance of piston travel at a
Speaker 3: relatively low rpm with high rotational mass. Once you get
Speaker 3: them going, inertia does a lot of the work, and
Speaker 3: they are very heavy. At the rpm end, you have
Speaker 3: smaller but far more frequent explosions of fuel pushing much
Speaker 3: lighter components in a shorter stroke with a much lower
Speaker 3: rotational mass. This is what makes chainsaws light enough to
Speaker 3: be practical for the average person to use mean use
Speaker 3: in their hands, he says, in order to make power,
Speaker 3: they must be able to spin freely. Therein lies the rub.
Speaker 3: The secret to making a chainsaw work is a centrifugal
Speaker 3: clutch that allows the engine to spin up before applying
Speaker 3: full power to the chain. At full throttle, the chain
Speaker 3: and the engine are spinning at roughly the same speed
Speaker 3: due to the speed at which the chain is traveling.
Speaker 3: The frictions involved will create heat, but a specially formulated
Speaker 3: chain oil keeps things running smoothly. Each tooth on the
Speaker 3: chain removes a small chip of wood. Due to the
Speaker 3: speed at which the chain is traveling, The cumulative effect
Speaker 3: is significant In order for the saw to keep working,
Speaker 3: it must be able to clear these chips of wood efficiently,
Speaker 3: or the machine will encounter resistance that it cannot produce
Speaker 3: enough torque to overcome. Now for the upsetting bit. When
Speaker 3: I was young, one of our neighbors shot a really
Speaker 3: magnificent buck during hunting season. He decided that he wanted
Speaker 3: to mount the head as a trophy. In order to
Speaker 3: do that, he needed to remove the head so that
Speaker 3: he could give it to a taxidermist. He decided to
Speaker 3: use you guessed it, a chainsaw. The deer was hanging
Speaker 3: head down in his shop during this time of year,
Speaker 3: the shop was as cold as a meat locker. He
Speaker 3: decided to remove the head right there, rather than taking
Speaker 3: it outside. This turned out to be almost as bad
Speaker 3: a decision as using a chainsaw in the first place.
Speaker 3: One of his sons held onto the buck's front legs
Speaker 3: in order to steady it, and our neighbors started cutting. It.
Speaker 3: Lasted for about thirty seconds, but it seemed like much longer.
Speaker 3: Almost immediately, the hair and flesh and fat started to
Speaker 3: interfere with the lubrication of the chain. The temperature of
Speaker 3: the chain skyrocketed, and the saw bogged down and quit.
Speaker 3: The heat caused the whole mess to cook and smoke.
Speaker 3: The stench was truly horrible. During the brief time that
Speaker 3: the saw was cutting, the saw managed to spray the
Speaker 3: inside of the shop with a chunky mist of hair
Speaker 3: and flesh. The mess was terrible, and even though he
Speaker 3: had cleaned up as best he could during the following summer,
Speaker 3: it drew flies and stank. I'm sure you could design
Speaker 3: a tool for the job, but if you were using
Speaker 3: an off the shelf chainsaw, I feel you would get
Speaker 3: you would get one good whack at best. You're all
Speaker 3: doing a great job. Thanks for your patience. You well, Hugh,
Speaker 3: you know your warning was correct. This was really gross.
Speaker 3: But I also found this really interesting and I appreciate
Speaker 3: this contribution to the fact that, Yeah, the Texas chainsawm
Speaker 3: esker scenario is not very plausible. Like you could probably
Speaker 3: you probably hurt one person really bad with the chainsaw,
Speaker 3: I guess, and then you'd be having trouble like keeping
Speaker 3: going at people with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. It doesn't sound like it would be
Speaker 2: a good active weapon, nor would it be a good
Speaker 2: butchery tool, which is that's implied that I mean Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's one of the main reasons that the saw your
Speaker 2: family has the chainsaw.
Speaker 3: They got to make barbecue. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're supposed to really know their meat, you know,
Speaker 2: because they worked in the slaughterhouses and so forth. But
Speaker 2: in reality, it doesn't seem like this would be a
Speaker 2: good good tool to use.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I guess butchers mainly, well now I'm talking
Speaker 3: about something I don't really know, but I think butchers
Speaker 3: mainly use like sharp, very sharp little boning knives and
Speaker 3: then like band saws to cut through bones.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Now, I guess this still leaves the door
Speaker 2: open for the possibility of like, you know, far future
Speaker 2: space marine chain swords, where there's some sort of a
Speaker 2: technological chain weapon that has been designed, you know, exclusively
Speaker 2: for cutting through enemies and armor and meat. But yeah,
Speaker 2: as for our actual chainsaws out there, yeah, I like
Speaker 2: the description that we had here about how it is
Speaker 2: designed to remove tiny bits of wood from a larger
Speaker 2: piece of wood and all that's going to break down
Speaker 2: if you start cutting into flesh with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Designed in part after the wood borer beetle, and
Speaker 3: the wood boar beetle was not made to cut a
Speaker 3: deer's head off, all right.
Speaker 2: This next one comes to us from Sinan, responding to
Speaker 2: this is a long ago episode on the origins and
Speaker 2: effects of the seven day week system. Yeah, Sinan says, Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: I haven't been listening to you for three years, and
Speaker 2: that's because I had switched to Spotify over a hiatus
Speaker 2: and forgot to carry over my liked podcast from the
Speaker 2: Apple podcast app. This is a great reminder, though, I
Speaker 2: guess it's kind of futile, right if you're if you're
Speaker 2: not currently listening to the show, you can't be listening
Speaker 2: to this episode.
Speaker 3: But if you're, if you're listening and not subscribed on
Speaker 3: the platform where you listen, please do subscribe. I mean,
Speaker 3: assuming you want to be subscribed, but yeah, you do,
Speaker 3: please please do that now that helps you and helps us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's yeah, absolutely so Anyway, Sinan continues,
Speaker 2: now that we're back together, and yes, it is so
Speaker 2: great to be back together. I have a great many
Speaker 2: episodes to listen to and catch up on. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: moved to Norway from Turkey and have come across this
Speaker 2: weird phenomenon of numbered weeks, apparently in the Scandic countries
Speaker 2: Norway and Denmark for sure, probably for Sweden as well.
Speaker 2: Use week numbers for scheduling stuff, especially for the school calendars,
Speaker 2: like winter break on week eight, fall break on week forty.
Speaker 2: But also businesses have delivery deadlines set to weeks. Sometimes
Speaker 2: colleagues tell me some deadline is on week twenty five,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, what's the date. I don't speak weeks.
Speaker 2: So there and back to listening, Sona, that is fascinating.
Speaker 2: I did not know this was a thing.
Speaker 3: I did not know that either. Interesting, Thank you, Sonan.
Speaker 3: I had no idea that. I can see how that
Speaker 3: makes some sense but also would be annoying to get
Speaker 3: used to if you're new to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure. I have mixed feelings. I guess
Speaker 2: I'm resistant to change in general. But I can see
Speaker 2: where this would maybe be much more efficient because you
Speaker 2: get down to just you know, week number one, week
Speaker 2: number two, week number three, But because when you go
Speaker 2: by months, it's of course you have uneven amount of
Speaker 2: weeks per month. Months also bring in additional like emotional
Speaker 2: baggage as well, or at least I find that's my case.
Speaker 2: So it's like thinking about things planned for July and
Speaker 2: thinking about some things that are practical from a planning standpoint,
Speaker 2: but other things are just more about the vibe of
Speaker 2: July and my past with July, and maybe it is
Speaker 2: better to just break it down, break that year down
Speaker 2: into a set number of weeks, and plan accordingly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though, I wonder if then you would just form
Speaker 3: emotional associations with numbers of weeks. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Maybe, so you're like week one, Oh, don't get me started.
Speaker 2: Week one is always a chaotic. Week two still don't
Speaker 2: have it together. Call me when we get to week five.
Speaker 2: Maybe week ten.
Speaker 3: I've really complicated emotional relationships with some months. It's not
Speaker 3: a clean Oh I like that month that don't like
Speaker 3: that one. I would say, for example, like October is
Speaker 3: both my favorite and one of my least favorite months
Speaker 3: of the year. Yeah, I love the autumn. I love
Speaker 3: the Halloween season obviously, so it's like my favorite. You know,
Speaker 3: it's great, but it also just tends to be, for
Speaker 3: various reasons, a time of extreme stress for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, fourth quarter in general is always there's
Speaker 2: just so many moving pieces, and I imagine that's that
Speaker 2: goes for a lot of different industries.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I end I end up sort of favoring
Speaker 2: those sort of lost weeks. Uh, those those rare almost
Speaker 2: normal weeks you might think of where there's nothing particular
Speaker 2: going on except whatever your work demands are. But I
Speaker 2: don't know. Those those seem increasingly rare. You don't know
Speaker 2: until you're in them. But maybe if you're doing a
Speaker 2: week a week by week like numbered system, you'd know,
Speaker 2: like eventually week sixteen is coming. In weeks, Week sixteen
Speaker 2: is going to be really sweet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at what point do you hit the realization though?
Speaker 3: They're like, oh yeah, things are never going to go
Speaker 3: back to normal.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, there's no such thing as a normal week.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, should we jump into some weird house
Speaker 2: cinema messages here? Joe?
Speaker 3: Sure, let's see. Do you want me to do this
Speaker 3: one from Greg?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Why not? Let's do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is about Night of the Comet, Greg says,
Speaker 3: Robert and Joe, your recent weird house cinema episode on
Speaker 3: Night of the Comet was great. Joe remarked that part
Speaker 3: of the coziness and appeal of the film are the
Speaker 3: depictions of empty locations around Los Angeles that are usually
Speaker 3: filled with people. This is very much part of what
Speaker 3: draws me to this film, and it got me thinking
Speaker 3: about the concept of liminal spaces. For those who are unaware,
Speaker 3: liminal spaces are vacant places that feel eerie or uncanny
Speaker 3: due to the lack of human activity. They often evoke
Speaker 3: a feeling of nostalgia in the Observer. Examples include schools
Speaker 3: and playgrounds at night, empty airport terminals and train stations,
Speaker 3: and abandoned amusement parks. I work at a library and
Speaker 3: get to experience this every time I work a closing shift.
Speaker 3: Some people find liminal space is unsettling, but I find
Speaker 3: the familiar yet mysterious atmosphere comforting. Liminal spaces and nostalgia
Speaker 3: in general might be an interesting topic for a show
Speaker 3: if it was given a similar treatment to the recent
Speaker 3: episode on cynicism. I love the show and I am
Speaker 3: so grateful to have multiple episodes to look forward to
Speaker 3: each week. Keep up the great work in twenty twenty six. Greg.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Greg. Yeah, I really appreciate this. You know,
Speaker 3: I've had some confusion about the idea of liminal spaces
Speaker 3: over time, because I have like two different understandings in
Speaker 3: my head of what it means. In one of my
Speaker 3: understandings is exactly what you're talking about, kind of eerie
Speaker 3: empty places, you know, the kind of place you would
Speaker 3: normally imagine activity happening, but now it is. It is ghostly,
Speaker 3: and you know, you can hear your footsteps echoing. It's
Speaker 3: defined by an absence in a way. But my other
Speaker 3: understanding of liminal spaces is that it's about like transitional spaces,
Speaker 3: spaces where people are not usually meant to be. So
Speaker 3: you know, the sides of roads where there are no sidewalks,
Speaker 3: just places people aren't or you know, long empty hallways
Speaker 3: places people don't stop and stay. Maybe it's come to
Speaker 3: encompass both of these definitions over time. I don't know,
Speaker 3: but I agree Greg, it is really interesting. I mean,
Speaker 3: we talked about this in the Night of the Comet episode,
Speaker 3: and you bring it up in the email here as well.
Speaker 3: It's interesting how these spaces feel both creepy and cozy
Speaker 3: at the same time. There's something about them that is
Speaker 3: slightly off putting, a little bit threatening, also a little
Speaker 3: bit comfortable and inviting and makes you want to walk
Speaker 3: around in them. And so it's this weird sort of
Speaker 3: opposite feelings working in tension with each other. And I
Speaker 3: wonder if something about that duality is related to the
Speaker 3: idea that they somehow evoke something like nostalgia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it reminds me two of things that
Speaker 2: I've I've read regarding how paintings affect us, And like,
Speaker 2: we look at a painting of a landscape and there's
Speaker 2: this argument that you know, it's maybe tying into some
Speaker 2: very you know, archaic coating in our minds about hunting
Speaker 2: and gathering. We can't help but sort of place ourselves
Speaker 2: within the landscape and imagine the most ideal place to
Speaker 2: be within that landscape. So yeah, it's I love these
Speaker 2: these conversations where we're trying to figure out, like, why
Speaker 2: is a certain visual representation affecting me the way it
Speaker 2: seems to be affecting me, And how much of it
Speaker 2: is I am in that space now or I am
Speaker 2: imagining myself in that space? Yeah, and how deep is
Speaker 2: that connected to me?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? Yeah, But I just want to emphasize again, Greg,
Speaker 3: I do think there is something really true and interesting
Speaker 3: about the link you make between the feelings evoked by
Speaker 3: liminal spaces and nostalgia. That's like, that's quite mysterious. I
Speaker 3: don't understand why that link would be there, but I
Speaker 3: feel that too, there is something in common between. I
Speaker 3: don't know, the feeling of like walking through an empty,
Speaker 3: you know, long empty hallway at night, or you know,
Speaker 3: an empty airport terminal at night and there's nobody else there.
Speaker 3: That feels kind of like when you see a toy
Speaker 3: or item from your childhood. You know, it's just like,
Speaker 3: oh wow, I remember that thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's I don't know much about this. I haven't
Speaker 2: looked at this stuff recently, but I know that in
Speaker 2: the genre of vapor wave, especially with like vapor wave
Speaker 2: videos and vapor wave of course, you know, like sonically
Speaker 2: often engages a certain amount of nostalgia, but a number
Speaker 2: of these videos also invoke liminal space. And if you
Speaker 2: just do a quick search like vapor wave liminal space,
Speaker 2: a lot of results come up where they're just they're
Speaker 2: making it overt, an overt part of the product that's
Speaker 2: been put out there. So again, not an area I
Speaker 2: know a whole lot about, but I think just in
Speaker 2: this one example, we might see, oh yeah, here's an
Speaker 2: obvious crossover between nostalgia and liminal spaces, and that that
Speaker 2: liminal space nostalgia can also work with other sorts of
Speaker 2: nostalgic media. But it does. Yeah, it films like this
Speaker 2: and other like apocalyptic media. Yeah, there is something inviting
Speaker 2: about it. We both want to be there and also
Speaker 2: realize that it is a nightmare scenario that we wouldn't
Speaker 2: want to be a part of. And that applies to
Speaker 2: various aspects of say, you know, like zombie apocalypse media.
Speaker 2: All right, let's let's see here. Oh, we had a fun,
Speaker 2: fun one here from Jeff subject line mosquitoes don't give
Speaker 2: a damn about Christmas time. This is a response to
Speaker 2: a musical discussion in our episode on the film Future Kick. Hmmm,
Speaker 2: Jeff Wrights, Hey guys. When Rob mentioned that Stan Ridgway
Speaker 2: did the soundtrack for Future Kick, I had another listen
Speaker 2: to his catalog, and now I have all these great
Speaker 2: songs stuck in my head enough that now I feel
Speaker 2: the urge to try to get them stuck in your heads.
Speaker 2: Stan's music has a cool desert Southwest vie with lots
Speaker 2: of emphasis on setting, tone, storytelling, and underused instruments, at
Speaker 2: least for rock music. There's a lot of harmonica, accordion, saxophone,
Speaker 2: and what I think might be electric violin, unless maybe
Speaker 2: they're just faking it all a sep He's just amazing
Speaker 2: with the catchy hooks. Thus all the earworms I've got
Speaker 2: crawling around in my head at the moment. Probably his
Speaker 2: most successible song and a straight bang, is Going Southbound.
Speaker 2: It's got his trademark dark humor, a real sense of
Speaker 2: place and atmosphere, and it just rocks. If you only
Speaker 2: listen to a couple of songs, I'd recommend that one
Speaker 2: and The Roadblock, which tells a complete story with a
Speaker 2: great sense of inevitability. Peg and Pete and Me is
Speaker 2: a noir story that's only going one place. Once you
Speaker 2: hear the setup, or maybe just the title, it's fun
Speaker 2: to listen to get there. He also takes weird turns
Speaker 2: into sci fi with memorable lyrics like these from The Overlords.
Speaker 2: There is something in the air that is burning in
Speaker 2: my throat. A big black cloud is passing dropping acid
Speaker 2: on my coat. If those songs don't grab you, you
Speaker 2: probably won't be into his stuff. Calling Out to Carol
Speaker 2: and A Mission in Life are great snapshots of life.
Speaker 2: Mission also manages to be both optimistically cheesy and cynically
Speaker 2: bleak at the same time. It's funny, a little sad,
Speaker 2: then turns sort of beautiful at the end. Some songs
Speaker 2: are just philosophical comedy. And I want to be a
Speaker 2: boss the narrator's story by wishing he could take long
Speaker 2: lunches and eventually spirals into a Howard Hughes fantasy of
Speaker 2: buying Mars and building an amusement park. Up There a
Speaker 2: quote better than Old Walt's Place.
Speaker 3: That somehow sounds like it could be a Warren's Evon song.
Speaker 2: It does it does sound that reminds me of a
Speaker 2: little bit of like splendid isolation. Yes Can't Complain is
Speaker 2: one weird extended gag with a cartoon ending, and Harry
Speaker 2: Truman only two thousand views on YouTube drops lines like
Speaker 2: John Wayne was always bald and he had a woman's name.
Speaker 2: This observation from newspapers frequently pops into my mind when
Speaker 2: I catch myself doom scrolling quote. Now, lately, I've been thinking,
Speaker 2: what would the world do without the news? You wouldn't
Speaker 2: know when wars were started or when they ended, win
Speaker 2: or lose. It'd probably be a much better world to
Speaker 2: live in, But the question would be who's and what
Speaker 2: side you're on, or who's right or wrong? You'd never
Speaker 2: have to choose anyways, It's not exactly about songs about
Speaker 2: wolfmen and atomic mons us, but I think you'd both
Speaker 2: enjoy a deep dive into his stuff or not. Your
Speaker 2: mileage may vary, as they say, thanks for continuing to
Speaker 2: stir up the neurons in my mind, Jeff.
Speaker 3: Should we do a brief off Mike listening party to
Speaker 3: one of these songs and come back?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I listen to some of his music
Speaker 2: when we were working on this episode. But I do
Speaker 2: need a reminder here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's check out Going Southbound.
Speaker 2: All right? Yeah, I like this, and I think, you know,
Speaker 2: I have to come back to the Warrens eve on comparison.
Speaker 2: You know they don't you know, not that they sound
Speaker 2: tremendously alike, but there's a similar sense of sort of
Speaker 2: an outsider trueadoor giving you an insight into a certain
Speaker 2: world and painting that world with a fair amount of
Speaker 2: weird detail.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, the lyrics are a very cynical indictment of
Speaker 3: the rat race. Yes, you know, it's like, oh, you're
Speaker 3: sitting in traffic, you know you got a job. It's
Speaker 3: all a bunch of hooey. But yeah, the guy's voice.
Speaker 3: He's got more twang in his voice than I expect
Speaker 3: to doing, kind of a cowboy accent. Uh and he
Speaker 3: uh man. The production on it is so eighties. It's
Speaker 3: like a you know, textbook example of what people mean
Speaker 3: when they think about nineteen eighties rock production.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is another thing you do find with with
Speaker 2: Warren Zevon music.
Speaker 3: Of that later album. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but but yeah, I love his voice does have
Speaker 2: that twang again what as we discussed in the in
Speaker 2: that Weird House Cinema episode, a lot of people are
Speaker 2: going to be most familiar with his voice from the
Speaker 2: the Wall of Voodoo track Mexican Radio. Yeah, he's in
Speaker 2: full twang on that as well. He was the it
Speaker 2: was a new wave group and he was he was
Speaker 2: the vocalist at that point.
Speaker 3: Okay. In the video for the song by the way,
Speaker 3: he's wandering around in this like drab coat in what
Speaker 3: looks like an antiques warehouse. So they're just a bunch
Speaker 3: of old furniture around and like a cage with an
Speaker 3: armadillo in it. I think people playing violins and saxophones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, armadilla might be a vampire around there somewhere.
Speaker 3: I guess so all right.
Speaker 2: Well, Jeff, thanks for writing in. Yeah anytime. I love
Speaker 2: it when we can find out more about a particular
Speaker 2: artist or actor that comes up in a Weird House
Speaker 2: Cinema episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh hey. Also, we got some messages related to
Speaker 3: Night of the comment about there was an arcade game
Speaker 3: in the movie. Remember the Katherine Mary Stewart's character. She's
Speaker 3: like all time great at this arcade game, and it
Speaker 3: was called Tempest. And at first we were like, is
Speaker 3: this a real game? But it is. Neither of us
Speaker 3: had ever played it. It was what was called a
Speaker 3: tube shooter genre we were not familiar with, and so
Speaker 3: a couple of people wrote in about Tempest. One message
Speaker 3: is from Lee. Lee says subject line Tempest arcade game.
Speaker 3: Merry Christmas, Rob, Joe, and jj I hope you all
Speaker 3: are having a great holiday season. In Day of the Commet, lea,
Speaker 3: come on, it's night Night of the Living Comet. In
Speaker 3: the Day of the Comet Weird House episode, you mentioned
Speaker 3: the video game Tempest. I was in college in the
Speaker 3: eighties and there were a couple of arcades in town.
Speaker 3: While for me the Tempest was a guaranteed loss of
Speaker 3: a quarter, I did try it several times. Anyway, the
Speaker 3: graphics were pretty rudimentary, line based. The concept of a
Speaker 3: tube shooter works, but is a new phrase for me.
Speaker 3: Here's the gameplay picture. An outline of a stop sign
Speaker 3: draw lines from the inside corners to the center. This
Speaker 3: drawing creates the tube. The shooting position is around the
Speaker 3: outside edge of the stop sign shape. You move around
Speaker 3: the outside to target adversaries as they come towards you
Speaker 3: out of the distance. This movement is accomplished with a
Speaker 3: rotating maybe Lee means rotating arrow here. The second control
Speaker 3: is a fire button. When you clear a level, you
Speaker 3: advance or fall through the tube to the next level,
Speaker 3: a new different polygon, more enemies, faster pace, et cetera.
Speaker 3: This is the basics I can recall from forty years ago,
Speaker 3: prompted by a scene from the film Thank you for
Speaker 3: your work on stuff to blow your mind in Weird House.
Speaker 3: Happy New Year to you all, sincerely, lye uh yeah,
Speaker 3: thanks Lee. You know, I'm kind of intrigued by this
Speaker 3: idea of a tube shooter, like a game based on
Speaker 3: shooting at things in a tunnel. This obviously is a
Speaker 3: more basic geometric version of it. But then I was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: this actually is not all that unfamiliar of a concept.
Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of early first person three D
Speaker 3: first person shooter games are called like, you know, corridor
Speaker 3: shooters or hallway shooters, where you're basically always in some
Speaker 3: kind of hallway and you know you're shooting at something
Speaker 3: down the hallway. And it also makes me think of
Speaker 3: there was a game I recall called something like Descent.
Speaker 3: Do you remember this game? It's it seemed like a
Speaker 3: game where you're in some sort of vehicle, like a
Speaker 3: shift for a mech of some kind, and you're going
Speaker 3: through tunnels or tubes shooting at things.
Speaker 2: Yes, I remember this game this. I think maybe I
Speaker 2: only played like a demo of it, but it was
Speaker 2: one of those that, you know, the the the disc
Speaker 2: were being passed around for it back in the day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it might have been a popular freeware game, yes,
Speaker 3: or sharewear yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, around the time of you know, the popular I
Speaker 2: forget it where where it falls in like Doom and
Speaker 2: Quake timeline?
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, Oh this is funny because I just
Speaker 3: pulled up the wiki for Descent trying to remember what
Speaker 3: this is, and there's a line on here that says
Speaker 3: it was inspired by the scene in Return of the
Speaker 3: Jedi where the Millennium Falcon is going through the middle
Speaker 3: of the second Death Star to blow it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at this point, like any amount of three D
Speaker 2: and video games was just astounding. And I guess, more
Speaker 2: to the point, it would have been during the original
Speaker 2: release window for Tempest, so that you know, there's you know,
Speaker 2: maybe there's something lost on us as we look at
Speaker 2: the game plan now because we have so many different
Speaker 2: three DEU worlds around us from video games. But maybe
Speaker 2: this is a bit revolutionary at the time. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: seems to have struck a chord because I was looking
Speaker 2: up a little bit more about Tempest than I was
Speaker 2: reminded that it factors into the novel Ready Player one,
Speaker 2: which is loaded with all sorts of nostalgia from the
Speaker 2: eighties of you know, pretty much every media sort, and
Speaker 2: which it makes for a fun reading experience because you
Speaker 2: end up looking things up. I've read it with my
Speaker 2: kid and we would have to stop every few paragraphs
Speaker 2: and I'd have to explain what something is, or other
Speaker 2: times they already knew what it was. But yeah, pretty
Speaker 2: fun novel and I think I'm to understand it. Also,
Speaker 2: this game also pops up in Twilight Zone the movie,
Speaker 2: just another example of it being culturally important, I guess.
Speaker 2: During the nineteen eighties we also heard from Matt on
Speaker 2: Discord included some video footage of himself playing the game.
Speaker 2: He said, here's Tempest, albeit on my a Joust machine
Speaker 2: rather than an original Joust, another classic arcade game which
Speaker 2: also factors into Ready Player one. Joe mentioned it as
Speaker 2: a tube shooter. I suspect it was originally done with
Speaker 2: vector graphics instead of pixels, and you play as a
Speaker 2: ship question mark at the top of the tube. Joystick
Speaker 2: moves you clockwise or counterclockwise around the mouth of the
Speaker 2: tube as enemies come up the tube towards you getting
Speaker 2: hit by a shot or enemy kills you. And if
Speaker 2: an enemy gets to the top, they chase you around
Speaker 2: the mouth of the tube where you can't shoot them.
Speaker 2: Oh no, he says, I am, by no means an expert,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure this would make my favorites list
Speaker 2: even in the nineteen eighties. But if they had it
Speaker 2: at a movie theater I was working at, it'd be
Speaker 2: better than work, I guess.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I think that was Reggie's attitude as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's another thing to factor into all
Speaker 2: of this is like availability of video games. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: know nowadays, you know, using certainly we need to get
Speaker 2: demos and free freeware and you know even various and
Speaker 2: so options. You have so many games to choose from.
Speaker 2: And you know, there was a time where it was
Speaker 2: whatever was physically present at the arcade, if you had
Speaker 2: an arcade, it might be what was physically present at
Speaker 2: your pizza hut or in the you know, just outside
Speaker 2: your walmart, that sort of thing. I certainly remember those days.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it used to be a lot more finding what
Speaker 3: you like about what you can get.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and certainly, I mean when I was growing up,
Speaker 2: you know I had when I had a Nintendo and
Speaker 2: then later when I had a Saga Genesis. You know,
Speaker 2: we could rent games on occasion, but in general, it
Speaker 2: was like you decided what game you wanted, you got it,
Speaker 2: and then that was the game, Like good or bad.
Speaker 2: You're going to spend a lot of time with it.
Speaker 2: You were going to figure out its flaws. It wasn't
Speaker 2: going to be one of these situations where it's like,
Speaker 2: well I'll try it out for ten minutes and then
Speaker 2: if I like it, I'll keep going, but I also
Speaker 2: might like it and never play it again. Like that's
Speaker 2: I feel like that's where I am today. Great game.
Speaker 2: I played five minutes of it. Maybe I'll play some
Speaker 2: more of it one day, but I won't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess the other thing being, you know, in adulthood,
Speaker 3: there's like a big time issue. It's like, oh I
Speaker 3: could I could enjoy this if I had a lot
Speaker 3: of time to figure it out, but I don't have
Speaker 3: time to figure it out.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, the enemies are approaching up the two.
Speaker 2: It's not that much time. All right, We're gonna do
Speaker 2: it at least one more here. This one comes to
Speaker 2: us from Charles. Charles says, Hi, Rob, Joe, and JJ.
Speaker 2: Your Star Trek Week was cool. We did Star Trek
Speaker 2: Week a while back, and yeah, enough, folks what wrote
Speaker 2: in about it. I think we may do Star Trek
Speaker 2: Week again in twenty twenty six, so stick with us.
Speaker 2: My folks are longtime Trek fans who love nature. I'm
Speaker 2: excited to show them the episode you did on the
Speaker 2: Salt Vampire. I didn't realize The Man Trap was the
Speaker 2: first episode of Star Trek for Halloween this year. Would
Speaker 2: you do nineteen forty two's Cat People, and quick note,
Speaker 2: we did not do nineteen forty twos Cat People, as
Speaker 2: discussed in a minute, it remains on our list. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the themes of repression, conformity, and sexuality stuck out to
Speaker 2: me for an old movie. I've heard it has the
Speaker 2: earliest jump scare in a movie, and I believe it's
Speaker 2: loosely based on a story by the great Algernon Blackwood.
Speaker 2: I think the movie holds up. I enjoy its creepy
Speaker 2: and magical noir style. The Leopard Man is also an
Speaker 2: unseen gem from the same creative team. YouTube's mysterious algorithm
Speaker 2: suggested it. I was surprised that I'd never heard of
Speaker 2: it before because it was also excellent and seemed ahead
Speaker 2: of its time with its themes misdirection and scares, live
Speaker 2: long and prosper charms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my wife and I watched Cat People several years back,
Speaker 3: and I recall we enjoyed it. The jump scare is
Speaker 3: interesting because it's a not to spoil anything, but you know,
Speaker 3: it's a very old movie. At this point. It's a
Speaker 3: Cat People movie, so you might think it's like the
Speaker 3: classic jump scare, which is a cat jumps out, but no,
Speaker 3: it's a bus. The jump scary is a bus?
Speaker 2: Buzzes can be scary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Dethly can.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Cat People is a classic, and yeah I
Speaker 2: watched part of it. I think it was one of
Speaker 2: these situations where I was, like, I checked out a
Speaker 2: bunch of movies. I was looking specifically for something for
Speaker 2: weird House, and for some reason or another I put
Speaker 2: Cat People on the back sheelf and didn't actually finish it.
Speaker 2: But I'd love to come back to it because because yeah,
Speaker 2: it has a great reputation. I liked what I saw,
Speaker 2: and it definitely definitely ties in with the sorts of
Speaker 2: films that I value, and the nineteen eighty two Cat People,
Speaker 2: I guess still technically on the list as well. I
Speaker 2: think I had expressed disinterest in that one, but then
Speaker 2: we had a listener write in and said, hey, eighty
Speaker 2: two's Cat People is also fun, So okay, fair enough,
Speaker 2: It's still on the list as well. Alrighty, but I
Speaker 2: don't think we can do eighty two's Cat People unless
Speaker 2: we can't just do eighty two's Cat People, like eighty
Speaker 2: two's Cat People is a possible add on much further
Speaker 2: down the line after we've done the other Cat People
Speaker 2: movie Leopard People. I'm not sure question mark on that.
Speaker 3: Oh hey, before we end today's episode, Uh, maybe we
Speaker 3: should mention this message from Shadow Rat on discord about
Speaker 3: Santa Claus the movie. Right, Oh yes, yes, do you
Speaker 3: want to read this one wrong?
Speaker 2: You go ahead, and you have a cute up.
Speaker 3: There, Shadow Rat says, short message. I can't help but
Speaker 3: wonder if the magic that moves characters up and down
Speaker 3: chimneys in Santa Claus the movie is killing and resurrecting
Speaker 3: these characters in a similar fashion to Star Trek's Transporter Bravo,
Speaker 3: the flower to disappear is actually a murder device.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it. It alters the the destiny
Speaker 2: of the clause. Right, you know, maybe not only doom
Speaker 2: to not die and to live forever, but to die endlessly, endlessly,
Speaker 2: you know, death after death after death. Every time he
Speaker 2: teleports in and out of a child's home, and maybe
Speaker 2: that's part of his longevity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very good observation, Shadow.
Speaker 2: App Yeah, anytime we can shoehorn some weird teleportation philosophy
Speaker 2: into a Christmas tradition, I'm.
Speaker 3: All for it, all right, Does that do it? For today.
Speaker 2: I guess that does it for today, but we'll be back,
Speaker 2: you know, stay tuned. We should have a new episode
Speaker 2: on Thursday unless we can't get it together. But I
Speaker 2: think we can get it together. We're going to try
Speaker 2: in the meantime and definitely write in with any of
Speaker 2: your questions, concerns, suggestions for the futures, seasonal well wishes,
Speaker 2: and so forth. All of it is fair game. Just
Speaker 2: reminder of Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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