Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind Listener Mail. This is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And in today's very special episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind Listener Mail, the mail bought Carnie will be
Speaker 1: played by special guest star John Saxon. Everybody, get a
Speaker 1: round of applause. Okay, Robert, you ready if I jump
Speaker 1: right into this first message about the tide of gold,
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Okay, this comes from Joseph, He writes,
Speaker 1: I just recently listened to the episode from June about
Speaker 1: harvesting gold from the ocean. I wanted to share that
Speaker 1: I received my master's degree in chemistry from San Francisco
Speaker 1: State University for studying a class of proteins known as
Speaker 1: and I think this would be phido key laton's uh
Speaker 1: if it'd be pronounced kind of like the word key lation,
Speaker 1: which is about bonding to metals. And that's also what
Speaker 1: these things do, I believe, so I think it's phyto
Speaker 1: keelatons or PCs. PCs are a family of sulfur rich
Speaker 1: peptides which are induced in plants yeast and fungi exposed
Speaker 1: to heavy metals and are thought to detoxify metals by
Speaker 1: forming PC metal complexes. I specifically studied PC cadmium complexes
Speaker 1: isolated from jimsunweed, native to California. It was the first
Speaker 1: study to report the size and nature of native PC
Speaker 1: cadmium complexes from plant tissue samples. Maybe I should start
Speaker 1: trying to round up investors from my new company to
Speaker 1: get more gold out of the soil. It might just work.
Speaker 1: Check out the paper if you're interested. And then Joseph
Speaker 1: links to the paper on which he's one of the
Speaker 1: co authors, published in the Journal of Mass Spectrometry in
Speaker 1: the R nine and Joseph says, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm now subscribed on Spotify. Joseph excellently well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Joseph, apreciate the subscription. But more to the point,
Speaker 1: we appreciate the the the expert feedback here on on
Speaker 1: this past episode and always happy to give people ideas
Speaker 1: for hoaxes, scams and scammers. All right, here we have
Speaker 1: another one. We keep getting email regarding our episodes on
Speaker 1: queueing on standing in line, and we love it because
Speaker 1: we knew this would be something that everybody would have
Speaker 1: some sort of insight on, personal, cultural, historic, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Hi Joe and Robert Joe's comments about the zipper merge
Speaker 1: when lanes are closed reminds me of a similar phenomenon
Speaker 1: that I experienced in Boston. It's something that outsiders generally
Speaker 1: perceived as rude and crazy, but I think it makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense, and it is to use some new vocabulary,
Speaker 1: almost a Parado improvement. In Boston, where the roads are narrow,
Speaker 1: there are rarely left turn lanes. At traffic lights, is
Speaker 1: very common for a left turner waiting at a red
Speaker 1: light to jump the light, making their left turn as
Speaker 1: soon as the light turns green, essentially cutting off the
Speaker 1: oncoming driver who is going straight through. In general, the
Speaker 1: driver in the oncoming lane will at least be prepared
Speaker 1: for this maneuver, and often will even wave the left
Speaker 1: turner ahead to make sure all involved parties are on
Speaker 1: the same page. This all results in an imperceptible loss
Speaker 1: of time for all cars in the oncoming direction, but
Speaker 1: saves all of the cars behind the left turner from
Speaker 1: having to wait for the entire light cycle in order
Speaker 1: to drive straight through the intersection. I have never seen
Speaker 1: this done outside of Boston, but to me, it makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense. It seems like a win for everyone involved. John,
Speaker 1: I think this does take place outside of Boston. I
Speaker 1: believe this is probably something that's just common in very
Speaker 1: busy urban streets that are tight with a lot of
Speaker 1: traffic on them, and is less common and you know,
Speaker 1: places where traffic is moving at a more leisurely pace
Speaker 1: or there's more room for every ready to get around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean here here in Atlanta, we do have some
Speaker 1: some hellish left turns and some and some strains. I
Speaker 1: know other cities have these as well, obviously, but reversible
Speaker 1: turn lanes. Oh no, that that is the whoever came
Speaker 1: up with that idea. I'm sure it seemed like a
Speaker 1: good idea at the time, but I guess it's reversible
Speaker 1: lanes rather. Oh yeah, not eternally sorry, Yeah, the reverse.
Speaker 1: So there's like one major road at least here in
Speaker 1: town that for a long stretch has three lanes in
Speaker 1: the middle lane changes directions depending on what time of
Speaker 1: day it is or I don't know if it does
Speaker 1: that anymore. It usually does, it totally does, it still does.
Speaker 1: And the souper, the super infuriating and dangerous. Part of
Speaker 1: it is that, yes, some people know this, some people
Speaker 1: are not aware of it or have forgotten about it.
Speaker 1: And some people will treat that middle lane as a
Speaker 1: turn lane, regardless of what time of day it is
Speaker 1: and who is actually supposed to be in that lane. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets it gets insane anyway, John continues, I realized
Speaker 1: this is a little late, but I've spent the last
Speaker 1: two weeks on an unplanned visit to my hometown of Madison,
Speaker 1: Wisconsin to help make arrangements for my mom, who had
Speaker 1: a stroke two weeks ago. She's doing well in rehab,
Speaker 1: but I will be up here right until my teaching
Speaker 1: year starts to get her settled into a new living arrangement.
Speaker 1: Having you guys in my ear has made the driving, packing,
Speaker 1: and even the waiting much easier. So thanks for being
Speaker 1: there yours. John. Oh well, that's so nice to hear, John,
Speaker 1: and I hope for the best for your mom. Absolutely Okay.
Speaker 1: This next message is from Gabe. Gabe says dear Robert
Speaker 1: and Joe. Hello, there, I've been listening to stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind off and on for a few years now,
Speaker 1: and always come back to you. Guys for delightful science stuff.
Speaker 1: I was listening to the recent episodes on queuing, and
Speaker 1: I thought of a potentially interesting example of queueing that
Speaker 1: I've experienced. I live in Washington State, where we rely
Speaker 1: on ferry boats to get to certain islands or across
Speaker 1: bodies of water. These ferries are often either the only
Speaker 1: route or the quickest route. To get on the ferries,
Speaker 1: you often have to wait in lines of cars, sometimes
Speaker 1: for hours, and line cutting or attempted line cutting certainly happens.
Speaker 1: It is advertised and treated as a real significant threat.
Speaker 1: Signs are put up along the queuing route with numbers
Speaker 1: to call, the with numbers to call to report quote
Speaker 1: interlopers and local in queue protests to these interjections is
Speaker 1: often severe, characterized by horn honks and sometimes shouting. This
Speaker 1: example struck me as interesting because it seems to hybridize
Speaker 1: the ideas of waiting in traffic as a queue and
Speaker 1: waiting in lines for a more quantifiable commodity e g.
Speaker 1: A bagel sandwich. I was curious what psychology was at
Speaker 1: play here that, at least anecdotally, people waiting waiting in
Speaker 1: the car and ferry lines seem more eager to defend
Speaker 1: the line than queues on foot. Anyway, Thanks very much
Speaker 1: for your excellent content and I look forward to future episodes. Gabe, Well,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I mean, it instantly makes me think back
Speaker 1: to research we come in our our episode on vehicular
Speaker 1: cognition about how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive
Speaker 1: others when we're in a driving environment, and how some
Speaker 1: of these uh, some of the constraints that might be
Speaker 1: there otherwise they're washed away when we're in a vehicle.
Speaker 1: There's another distinction I wonder about, which is um I
Speaker 1: wonder if we tend to naturally behave differently when we're
Speaker 1: waiting for something like waiting for a product or service,
Speaker 1: a waiting in line and to drive through at a
Speaker 1: bank or at a restaurant, versus when we are in
Speaker 1: a transition period, meaning we're waiting to get somewhere or
Speaker 1: not to you know, not for the product or service,
Speaker 1: but we're just trying to in our minds sort of
Speaker 1: like escape wherever we are now and get you know,
Speaker 1: get back home. I think often you know, when people
Speaker 1: would be really frustrated or try to get somewhere on time,
Speaker 1: get to work on time. I wonder if we actually
Speaker 1: have less tolerance for waiting in these sort of trans
Speaker 1: positioning traveling states because the waiting for a ferry, you're
Speaker 1: still it's kind of combining the two. It's like waiting
Speaker 1: in a drive through, but it's also like waiting in traffic.
Speaker 1: As the escape says, here, m I wonder too if
Speaker 1: if there's a hint of this to it as well.
Speaker 1: So if we're if we're waiting in line with other
Speaker 1: people to get that bagel sandwich, we know, on some
Speaker 1: level we all have a shared objective here. We all
Speaker 1: want that sweet bagel sandwich, you know. We that's that's
Speaker 1: why we're here. Maybe we feel that some of us
Speaker 1: deserve it more than others, but but we all have
Speaker 1: the same goal. Whereas if it's just people driving somewhere
Speaker 1: or you know, you can I guess you could lean
Speaker 1: into an interpretation where, hey, we're just all trying to
Speaker 1: get home, We're all trying to get to someplace where
Speaker 1: we need to be, or hey, we're all just trying
Speaker 1: to get to work in the morning, something of that nature.
Speaker 1: But it also is ambiguous enough that you could perhaps
Speaker 1: lean more into this idea of like, well, I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to get home. I don't know what this guy
Speaker 1: is trying to do. He's maybe he's he's just he
Speaker 1: just wants to go home and watch a football game
Speaker 1: or something. He's just in a hurry off or something
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter as much as my thing, which is
Speaker 1: ultimately a very unfair, um criticism to make. I mean,
Speaker 1: they maybe they have to go to the bathroom really bad.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, not that it excuses dangerous
Speaker 1: driving or anything, but um, you know, everyone conceivably has
Speaker 1: a reason for what they're doing. Oh, this is totally
Speaker 1: how we think. I mean, I think I said this
Speaker 1: in one of the queuing episodes of the difference between
Speaker 1: you and everybody else on the road is that you've
Speaker 1: got somewhere you need to be, yeah, yeah, and everyone
Speaker 1: else just wants to be somewhere and is impatient about
Speaker 1: getting there or too patient about getting there, depending on
Speaker 1: how fast they're driving. All right, here's another one who
Speaker 1: comes to us from Alex Hi, Joe, and Robert. I've
Speaker 1: listened to your podcast for a handful of years, and
Speaker 1: sometimes I get unreasonably excited at the episode titles before
Speaker 1: having played them. Recently, regression to the mean and Reconsider
Speaker 1: the Bean had me cheering with my cats. I'm not
Speaker 1: on cinema, but still love when cinema spills into your
Speaker 1: other discussions. The joy you both find in linking ideas
Speaker 1: with media is infectious, even if I don't get the references.
Speaker 1: Thanks for your hard work and love your stuff, Alex.
Speaker 1: What what's the common thread with regression to the mean
Speaker 1: and reconsider the Bean? They rhyme, That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: But could that be it? Um? Alex is just looking
Speaker 1: for the next line in the in that rap song
Speaker 1: that they've been working on forever. I mean, I get
Speaker 1: maybe it's just you know, those lined up with with
Speaker 1: with Alex's particular interests, I guess more than other things.
Speaker 1: Um and and anyway, as well as far as cinema goes,
Speaker 1: hopefully our word how cinema episodes allow us to allow
Speaker 1: room for our more obscure cinema references to to grow
Speaker 1: without you know, taking up too much space in some
Speaker 1: of our core episodes. I don't know. We'll see how
Speaker 1: it goes, all right. This next message is about the
Speaker 1: episode on the Speaking Sword. This one comes from Nada
Speaker 1: and the subject line is the animate sound Lineman. I
Speaker 1: had to look that word up. Actually, lineman L I
Speaker 1: M E N, and alignment means the the boundary of
Speaker 1: perceptibility or the threshold of perceptibility for something. So aligneman
Speaker 1: is like the point at which something goes from imperceptible
Speaker 1: to perceptible. You know, it's the lowest possible volume sound
Speaker 1: you can hear, or or amount of light you can
Speaker 1: perceive with your eyes or something. So anyway, Renata says, hi,
Speaker 1: Rob and Joe, oh, and I'm gonna skip a bit here,
Speaker 1: but she begins with the paragraph talking about saying she
Speaker 1: enjoys listening to the podcast, but also, like another listener
Speaker 1: who wrote in recently, enjoys listening to our episodes is
Speaker 1: a sleep aide, especially weird house cinema. No judgment, They're
Speaker 1: glad you're enjoying it. Um. But but then she goes
Speaker 1: on to say, anyway, I got the sleepy vibe from
Speaker 1: the whispers of the Speaking Sword until about thirty five
Speaker 1: minutes into the episode when you started to talk about agency,
Speaker 1: and then I could not fall asleep. I studied cognitive
Speaker 1: science in college, and this subject has always fascinated me.
Speaker 1: It reminded me of a thought experiment. I sometimes do
Speaker 1: when I'm bored and I've been looking for an excuse
Speaker 1: to write to you two about this. I think of
Speaker 1: the perceptual boundary between non agency and agency as a
Speaker 1: type of lineman or perceptual threshold, though I might be
Speaker 1: stretching the term too much. In the episode, you talked
Speaker 1: about movement as being key to the human perception giving
Speaker 1: agency to an object. So here's my thought experiment. What
Speaker 1: is the lineman of ascribing sentience or agency to a sound?
Speaker 1: And then, to take that a step further, what is
Speaker 1: the lineman to hear a sound as music. I can
Speaker 1: no longer remember where I was when I first thought
Speaker 1: about this, but probably outside and heard a sound that
Speaker 1: I couldn't immediately tell if it was coming from a
Speaker 1: human being or if it was just an ambient nature noise.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you experience this, but I often
Speaker 1: find myself hearing a weird sound than waiting until I
Speaker 1: hear it a few more times to decide if it's
Speaker 1: from a human, animal, electronic device, or just a noise.
Speaker 1: I don't have the answer to this question, and I'd
Speaker 1: love it if you could look into whether it has
Speaker 1: been studied. I since that rhythm has something to do
Speaker 1: with it. Either a sound is too regular and it
Speaker 1: is probably a faucet dripping, for example, or the sound
Speaker 1: is too irregular, like a branch hitting the side of
Speaker 1: the house in the wind, which brings me to music.
Speaker 1: I listened to ambient music sometimes again as a sleep aid,
Speaker 1: and you might be surprised how sparse and amorphous an
Speaker 1: ambient track can get. Before you say to yourself, this
Speaker 1: is just noise. I know. There have been studies on
Speaker 1: the extent to which animals have musical rhythm. Birds seem
Speaker 1: to get the closest to dancing and making music like
Speaker 1: sounds our music and rhythm on the same sentience continuum.
Speaker 1: Is there alignment for being able to detect that a
Speaker 1: sound was definitely intended as music by a human being
Speaker 1: versus an animal sound? And where does AI fit in?
Speaker 1: Thanks for inspiring me to ask these questions. Sorry, last time,
Speaker 1: I I think this is referring to a previous email. Uh,
Speaker 1: last time I said that your show doesn't give me chills.
Speaker 1: I was just being cheeky. I have I have a
Speaker 1: blast listening to you guys, even when it's putting me
Speaker 1: to sleep. Cheers, Renata. I think that other email was
Speaker 1: in response to the episode that Seth and I did
Speaker 1: about free so on. Yeah, but these are really interesting questions,
Speaker 1: I think, like, what are the limits of what we
Speaker 1: perceive as music? To some degree? I think that's going
Speaker 1: to be partially uh, you know, subjective, like some people
Speaker 1: just have you know, or you might say, more open
Speaker 1: minded about what they're willing to listen to and say, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: this is music. But I guess to ask the question
Speaker 1: a little bit differently on average, like how much can
Speaker 1: you deviate from, say, the rhythmic norms of music before
Speaker 1: most people don't recognize a sound as even something intended
Speaker 1: to be music, you know. Yeah, I mean, on one hand,
Speaker 1: I think it's definitely gonna it's gonna vary from person
Speaker 1: to person. Um. I got to interview Stephen hill Uh,
Speaker 1: the creator of the Hearts of Space radio program years
Speaker 1: and years ago, and he spoke of people having an
Speaker 1: ambient DNA, of having sort of an innate inclination to
Speaker 1: um to love the more ambient styles of music out there,
Speaker 1: be it something you know, modern and synth based, or
Speaker 1: something that is more versed in classical music, or some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, cultural tradition. But that some people
Speaker 1: maybe are more inclined to uh, to to lean into
Speaker 1: those kind of sounds um. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: that actually is something that matches up with with anything
Speaker 1: scientific at all, or it's just kind of a fun
Speaker 1: way to think about these things. But but I do
Speaker 1: think it does vary from person to person. As someone
Speaker 1: who does listen to a fair amount of of ambient
Speaker 1: music and also some things that are categorized as noise music,
Speaker 1: I know that I I have a different thresh old
Speaker 1: compared to say my wife, Like there's stuff that that
Speaker 1: I will enjoy that that she might barely tolerate, and
Speaker 1: and we're continually working out those borders as we play
Speaker 1: music in the house. One example of variation on this
Speaker 1: that I wonder about, I can't remember if I mentioned
Speaker 1: this a minute ago, but I wonder about, like, what
Speaker 1: are the natural limits on tempo? So if if you
Speaker 1: have something that is occurring at regular intervals, uh, people
Speaker 1: will you know, can eventually start to pick that out
Speaker 1: as a kind of rhythm and maybe if there are
Speaker 1: certain tonalities associated with it, most people would say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I think this is the sound is intended to be
Speaker 1: a kind of music. But like how slow can the
Speaker 1: repetition of of whatever that sound is get or how
Speaker 1: fast can it get before you have foreclosed the possibility
Speaker 1: that anybody listening to it will think that it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be musical sound. If you imagine a song has
Speaker 1: has one beat per minute, would most people who hear
Speaker 1: that sound likely to perceive that as rhythm or perceive
Speaker 1: it as music spontaneously unless they were primed to in
Speaker 1: some way? I would guess probably not, But like what's
Speaker 1: the limit there? Like how slow can a tempo get?
Speaker 1: And consequently also how fast can it get before you
Speaker 1: reach the point where people are not hearing music, They're
Speaker 1: just hearing kind of a buzz or a whir As
Speaker 1: I say, this thunder is rumbling right outside my window.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he likes picking that up. It
Speaker 1: also reminds me of the the fictional drug in the
Speaker 1: Dune novels, Simuda, which that that which, of course you
Speaker 1: In the books, we're told that individuals will take Simuda
Speaker 1: in in order to enjoy Simuda music, which is a
Speaker 1: special kind of music that is just going to sound
Speaker 1: like just straight garbage unless you are currently using this
Speaker 1: mysterious narcotic was it like a chopped in screwed kind
Speaker 1: of thing. I don't know, but it also I think
Speaker 1: there was something similar in uh in a Brass Eyes Get,
Speaker 1: the British satire series from Chris Morris Um in which
Speaker 1: there were people who would take this fictional drug called
Speaker 1: cake and they would listen to some sort of music
Speaker 1: and of course it likes Samuda music. It sounds like
Speaker 1: garbage unless you are on this fictional drug. Have you
Speaker 1: seen the Cake episode, Joe, No, I haven't pressed. Oh
Speaker 1: it's it's so good. They are actually trolld um, actual
Speaker 1: British politicians into comment to commenting on the cake epidemic.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, nice, well like condemning this, this epidemic of
Speaker 1: degenerate culture. Yes, yes, calling out the cake in particular. Nice.
Speaker 1: Al right, Well, why don't we do a little bit
Speaker 1: of weird house cinema listener mail while we're at it. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is a really fun one. And this is where
Speaker 1: we got the title for this particular episode of listener mail.
Speaker 1: We heard from the home dad abroad, who I've I
Speaker 1: believe it was written in before because I remember that
Speaker 1: that moniker um. So they say, hey, Robert and Joe,
Speaker 1: just a silly little personal connection to John Sackson, the
Speaker 1: star of your Weird House Celebration Cannibal Apocalypse that I
Speaker 1: thought you might enjoy. And at this point the home
Speaker 1: Dad Abroad points out that they were employed as a
Speaker 1: key grip on a small budget film many years ago.
Speaker 1: It was like a medieval themed film that starred Mark Singer,
Speaker 1: Claudia Christian, and John Saxon, who, he says, it was
Speaker 1: a quote a quiet, contemplative and kind man if there
Speaker 1: ever was one. So wait, so Mark Singer was that
Speaker 1: beast Master. That's beast Master himself. Yes, and we confirmed
Speaker 1: before we started recording this. Claudia Christian was in another
Speaker 1: movie that we did for Weird House Cinema, which was Arena,
Speaker 1: the alien boxing movie. Yes, yes, she was the love
Speaker 1: interest in Arena. Yeah, as she's also I think we
Speaker 1: didn't realize this when we recorded that episode, but I
Speaker 1: just recently found out that she was also in one
Speaker 1: of the movies that many years ago was one of
Speaker 1: my favorite terrible, terrible movies, which was the Steven Seagal
Speaker 1: film Half Past Dead starring Seagal and jaw Rule and
Speaker 1: Morris Chestnut. And uh, it's it is a truly awful film,
Speaker 1: but I remember it got one of the best Roger
Speaker 1: Ebert descriptors of any movie I've ever seen. In his review,
Speaker 1: he said that half Past Dead is is like an
Speaker 1: alarm that is going off in an unoccupied room. It
Speaker 1: does its job, it stops, and no one cares. All right, well,
Speaker 1: the home dat abroad continues here quote. During the shooting
Speaker 1: of the climactic sword fight betwixt Singer's Lancelot and Saxon's
Speaker 1: I want to say Voldemort, but definitely predated Harry Potter,
Speaker 1: I was moving along with the actors, holding a four
Speaker 1: by four soft bounce board for reflecting sunlight as phil
Speaker 1: onto the actor's face is to soften the harsh shadows
Speaker 1: on mostly overtight handheld close ups. I don't think the
Speaker 1: camera could even see the swords a good thing at
Speaker 1: that as Saxon lost his grip on the unnecessarily heavy
Speaker 1: and sharp punk of metal that the art department provided
Speaker 1: that took the kinetic energy from singer swords impact to
Speaker 1: carry it hurtling through the air, finding a point first
Speaker 1: purchase in the upper left center of the bounce board,
Speaker 1: I held an inch away from my chest, knocking me
Speaker 1: backwards and stumbling to the ground. The sword plunged through
Speaker 1: the inch thick layer of styrofoam, through the quarter inch
Speaker 1: foam core board, jutting out half an inch from my flesh,
Speaker 1: almost perfectly poised above my heart woe. After the director
Speaker 1: murmured cut and a couple of people asked if I
Speaker 1: was okay. I looked up to the smiling silhouette of
Speaker 1: John Saxon extending a hand to help me up. Next time.
Speaker 1: I won't miss he said, I have that bounced board
Speaker 1: to this very day, signed by him in character. Oh
Speaker 1: what a story. Uh? And then and then they had uh.
Speaker 1: And my son, who was twelve at the time, was
Speaker 1: unimpressed by the controversy surrounding the unexceptional Cannibal Holocaust. After
Speaker 1: he watched it, cheers the home dat Abroad. Okay, well
Speaker 1: you heard it here, every all twelve year old holocaust. No. No,
Speaker 1: I would say, absolutely, absolutely not. Um. Maybe, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if the Home Dad Abroad meant cannibal Apocalypse
Speaker 1: of cannibal Holocaust. But I I don't think either film
Speaker 1: is necessarily for twelve year olds. But that's just me.
Speaker 1: But I don't know twelve year olds are different. I
Speaker 1: don't know, twelve year olds are different these days. Everything
Speaker 1: is different. When you've had a brush with a sword
Speaker 1: through the heart from the hand of John Saxon, I
Speaker 1: think that's got to change you in in in every
Speaker 1: conceivable sense. Anyway, that's a great story. Yeah, okay. One
Speaker 1: last message, this comes from our WA area, says, Hello, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm emailing you about your recent weird house cinema episode
Speaker 1: on Deep Blue Sea. My friend and I recently watched
Speaker 1: this movie together and I can't seem to get over
Speaker 1: this scene in the shot where L L cool J
Speaker 1: is hiding in the oven and it is suddenly turned on.
Speaker 1: Did the shark do that on purpose because it is
Speaker 1: a super intelligent shark or was it just a lucky coincidence? Uh?
Speaker 1: Very good question. Are I do not know how the
Speaker 1: shark turned on the oven? I mean, you know how
Speaker 1: oven knobs are there. You can occasionally turn them on
Speaker 1: just with your body if you're like squeezing past somebody
Speaker 1: in the kitchen or something. So I imagine a giant
Speaker 1: shark might do that as well. I want to hear
Speaker 1: from people out there, how many have had this perilous
Speaker 1: problem of doing things in the kitchen while listening to
Speaker 1: earbuds or headphones and having that dastardly chord grab and
Speaker 1: snag and hook over things like knobs and drawer handles,
Speaker 1: and oh that's dangerous. You know, even a you got
Speaker 1: a knife handle kind of off the edge of the counter.
Speaker 1: It can be it can be perilous. That's a good
Speaker 1: reason why if you listen to headphones in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: invest in some wireless ones. Oh wow, I never even
Speaker 1: thought about that. I mean, it's frustrating enough when your
Speaker 1: head like earbuds, cord or whatever gets caught on something,
Speaker 1: but if there's their knives and fire and boiling water involved,
Speaker 1: all the worse live lobsters getting caught up in your
Speaker 1: headphone cord lying across the room. My cooking and kitchen
Speaker 1: experiences in general became became filled with a lot less
Speaker 1: screaming and and and swearing once I got some some
Speaker 1: bluetooth headphones. But anyway, I'm going with the shark did
Speaker 1: turn on the oven on purpose, because that's a smart shark.
Speaker 1: You know, they can use their they've got their surprisingly
Speaker 1: uh dexterous with the tip of their nose. Yeah and true,
Speaker 1: I mean that's what that's what's up in Deep bluecy
Speaker 1: and the shirt. The sharks are super intelligent, they have
Speaker 1: an agenda, so we have every reason to lean into
Speaker 1: that explanation. We didn't even touch on this, did we,
Speaker 1: in the our deeply seated discussion, But that's ultimately the
Speaker 1: reveal that the sharks are not just harassing the humans
Speaker 1: for revenge. They're escaping from their prison and they're using
Speaker 1: the humans to achieve this. Right, Yeah, they want to
Speaker 1: get out. Yeah, they want freedom, which again is weird
Speaker 1: that we're supposed to be anti shark in this. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's just the sharks versus still in
Speaker 1: Scars Guard and Saffron Burrows, you might be more sympathetic
Speaker 1: to the shark's side. But hey, what did ll cool
Speaker 1: j Ever do to them? He's just he's just a
Speaker 1: great cook. And they go in there and they start
Speaker 1: messing up his kitchen. They try to burn him in
Speaker 1: an oven. That you can't do that to LLL I know,
Speaker 1: all he wants to do is create the perfect omelet.
Speaker 1: That's for any of this, Okay, so are what goes on?
Speaker 1: Another scene that made us burst out laughing was the
Speaker 1: one where they are explaining the background of the research
Speaker 1: and why they decided to use quote big brain sharks
Speaker 1: to the Samuel L. Jackson character, and he replies by saying,
Speaker 1: using sharks to harvest more protein, like it was a
Speaker 1: logical expected course of action. This is especially funny to
Speaker 1: us because we are both researchers in the biology field
Speaker 1: and often have to produce proteins for lab experiments. However,
Speaker 1: the commonly used practice involves using programmed bacteria or yeast
Speaker 1: to produce the proteins, as they can produce very large
Speaker 1: amounts of the desired protein fast and at very low costs,
Speaker 1: especially compared to a research facility in the middle of
Speaker 1: the sea that houses only three sharks. Very astute. I
Speaker 1: agree that the movie that it would have been harder
Speaker 1: to make this movie if they had gone with bacteria
Speaker 1: or yeast instead of sharks. But I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: you could have done it smart yeast. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess if you wanted to make a blob film, that's
Speaker 1: one way to go about it, you know. Oh yeah, yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: R says, thank you so much for the great podcast.
Speaker 1: It has really helped me stay in enlightened during those long,
Speaker 1: tedious lab experiments. Best area. Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's that's what we have for you
Speaker 1: here today. That is the mail bag for this installment
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind Listener Mail. But we'll
Speaker 1: be back because there's more stuff we didn't read. There's
Speaker 1: more stuff we're still reading and processing, and of course
Speaker 1: we asked that you keep it coming. If you have
Speaker 1: thoughts on episodes that are coming out now, thoughts on
Speaker 1: past episodes, rerun to of Vault episodes, Weird How Cinema episodes,
Speaker 1: or thoughts about what future episodes of the show could be,
Speaker 1: let us know we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you can check out Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind Listener Mail on Monday's core episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind on Tuesday and Thursday. On Wednesday
Speaker 1: we do the Artifact and on Friday's we do Weird
Speaker 1: How Cinema. That's our time to just look at a
Speaker 1: weird or interesting film. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
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