Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from housetop works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, looking to stuff blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb, I'm Christian Seger, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And it's Thanksgiving in America. So we're doing what a
Speaker 1: lot of you guys and gals are doing. We're about
Speaker 1: to sit down here to a little, a little little
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah, Ernie the mailbot has actually offered to
Speaker 1: prepare Thanksgiving dinner for us. But I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys noticed. He seems a little hung up at
Speaker 1: the turkey carving stage, Like he goes to carve and
Speaker 1: then he stops and resets a bunch of times. I
Speaker 1: think it maybe he's still struggling with the recent installation
Speaker 1: of Cartesian doubt that makes me pause when cutting up
Speaker 1: a bird. Yeah, is the turkey there? Whether it's kind turkey, goose, sparrow.
Speaker 1: I can just keep naming birds, guys, Yeah, penguin. Have
Speaker 1: you oll ever eaten penguin meat? Me? Neither? Future episode? Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's call Carney in here. Hell, we can't wait
Speaker 1: for him to cut into that bird all all day long,
Speaker 1: So get in here. Carney and bring us some listener
Speaker 1: to mail, because we know it's been accumulating. That's your
Speaker 1: your primary function is to provide the listener mail for us.
Speaker 1: So let's see what we got. So, as we have discovered,
Speaker 1: Carney has collected an amazing, gigantic treasure trove of wonderful
Speaker 1: email from our listeners. And we have so much great
Speaker 1: listener mail we absolutely cannot read it all today. We
Speaker 1: can't even come close. So we're gonna read a selection
Speaker 1: of some of the great messages we've gotten from our listeners.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be everything. If your email doesn't
Speaker 1: get read, please don't take it personally. We love all
Speaker 1: the correspondence we get and we will try to work
Speaker 1: it into a future episode. We will probably have another
Speaker 1: one coming up around uh around the end of the
Speaker 1: year on Christmas, New Year's That that that kind of season.
Speaker 1: Hey Joe, where where did these come from? Like? Where
Speaker 1: where do these letters come from? Where do we where
Speaker 1: do we get them at? Ah? Well, I'm glad you
Speaker 1: should ask Christian because they come straight to the account.
Speaker 1: Blow the mind at how stuff works dot com. When
Speaker 1: you email that account funny story, it goes straight into
Speaker 1: a wire that runs into Carney's head and that's how
Speaker 1: he collects the messages. Unfortunately for us, the wire is
Speaker 1: often at like human neck height, so when we're walking
Speaker 1: around the office we can often kind of get our
Speaker 1: throats lined once or twice. And you know there's another
Speaker 1: wire two that runs in all of our feeds from Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Tumbler, where we are also blow the mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so this one actually comes to us from the
Speaker 1: mail account, the clothesline wire. This is from Hannah, and
Speaker 1: she says, I'm an undergrad psychology major, a low key
Speaker 1: religious person, and a big fan of science except as atronomy.
Speaker 1: That stuff makes me anxious. I recently took a cultural
Speaker 1: anthropology course titled Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion. That sounds right
Speaker 1: up our alley, and one of the documentaries we watched
Speaker 1: in the class was about temporal lobe epilepsy and the
Speaker 1: role the disorder played in giving birth to the nascent
Speaker 1: field of nero theology. Now I have to wonder if
Speaker 1: this male is coming in reference to the episodes Robert
Speaker 1: and I did on Techno Religion. I believe that's what
Speaker 1: it's referring to. That sun temporal lobe epilepsy is exactly
Speaker 1: what it sounds like, a type of epilepsy in which
Speaker 1: seizures occur in the temporal lobes of the brain. What
Speaker 1: makes this condition even more interesting than other forms of epilepsy,
Speaker 1: which are also all very unfortunate for the sufferers, is
Speaker 1: the tendency for patients to report religious type hallucinations during
Speaker 1: their seizures. This experience has been reported by both religious
Speaker 1: and fervently atheistic patients. She's got another paragraph here. Many
Speaker 1: historical figures who were prominent in religion, such as Joan
Speaker 1: of arc and Ellen White, who's the founder of Seventh
Speaker 1: Day Adventism, have been suggested to have been affected by
Speaker 1: t l E. Other than the religious visions they reported,
Speaker 1: these figures were also documented to have fits and dissociative
Speaker 1: states consistent with t l E. Ellen White's visions actually
Speaker 1: began occurring after a significant injury to the side of
Speaker 1: the head precisely over her temporal lobe. Persengers God helmet,
Speaker 1: which I believe you guys talked about in that episode.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about it in that episode, but it's
Speaker 1: definitely come up a few different times in the past. Yeah,
Speaker 1: on the stuff, I feel like we've mentioned it before yeah, okay, persengers.
Speaker 1: God Helmet is a well known example of experimental exploration
Speaker 1: of neuro theology, though his work has been criticized and
Speaker 1: has yet to be replicated. Neuroimaging in Carmelite nuns and
Speaker 1: Buddhists and meditative states has also shown increases and activity
Speaker 1: in the temporal lobe during experiences of religious observance. Those
Speaker 1: who are interested in neuro theology are faced with the
Speaker 1: question is this evidence that religion really is all in
Speaker 1: our heads? Or does this show that our brains have
Speaker 1: an antenna for signals from deities? And then she says
Speaker 1: that she finds it fascinating from so many angles and
Speaker 1: thanks us. Well, that's an interesting question because you kind
Speaker 1: of get you get back to that idea, right, If
Speaker 1: there is a divine force from outside the universe reaching
Speaker 1: into our reality, then the hand of God, the hand
Speaker 1: of the Gods, whatever it has to make some sort
Speaker 1: of stirring of the visual universe, of the of the
Speaker 1: observable universe that we can observe. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: you could I could see someone try and make an
Speaker 1: argue to an argument to say, yes, this neural activity
Speaker 1: is a sign of such a force reaching in or
Speaker 1: the other side is just a compelling just a compelling Yeah.
Speaker 1: In general, I wonder what this means for people who
Speaker 1: who would take some religious experiences to be off dick. Like,
Speaker 1: let's say you accept these results and say, okay, there
Speaker 1: are there are definitely things you can do to the brain.
Speaker 1: Ways you can stimulate the human brain that cause experiences
Speaker 1: that seem, at least from descriptions to be very similar
Speaker 1: to the religious experiences people have of God's or visitations
Speaker 1: from angels or uh, you know the apocalypse is revelations
Speaker 1: from heaven. Uh. And you you say, okay, you can
Speaker 1: cause that with stimulation to the brain. Can you say, well,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's caused by you know, physical action in the brain.
Speaker 1: Yet other times the similar experiences are truly caused by
Speaker 1: intervention from divine forces or you know, God's Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean when you start bringing in the supernatural, I mean
Speaker 1: it becomes increasingly difficult, right. I mean, if you're gonna,
Speaker 1: if you're going to acknowledge the existence of the supernatural force,
Speaker 1: then what are the rules for that supernatural force? I'll
Speaker 1: play molder on this one. What if it's both so? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm as writing. I mean with some people say, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: you can stimulate the brain and cause experiences this way,
Speaker 1: but some very similar experiences are for real magic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of Philip K. Dick's later work, especially
Speaker 1: that book Vallas. Have you guys read that before being
Speaker 1: contacted by an outside force? And uh yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: there's quasi scientific explanation for it, but it's also kind
Speaker 1: of like is this in his head or not? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it all comes down to interpretation and and
Speaker 1: you know, you often hear the example brought up, but
Speaker 1: when it comes to auditory hallucinations and that you hear
Speaker 1: voices and how you're not supposed to respond to the voices. So,
Speaker 1: you know, any kind of supernatural, supernatural occurrence, paranormal experience,
Speaker 1: even though the the cause is very rooted in the
Speaker 1: natural world and a natural phenomenon, if you answer the voice,
Speaker 1: if you heed the call right, then that's all it
Speaker 1: necessarily takes. Yeah. Well, I think Hannah's proposed a potential
Speaker 1: new top back for us to maybe go down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole with. Yeah, we should do have an episode
Speaker 1: or more than one episode on the god Helmet and
Speaker 1: experience theology in generals. Yeah, I have really been wanting
Speaker 1: to revisit Techno Religion because there was so much I
Speaker 1: wanted to say in that episode that we couldn't even
Speaker 1: fit into the two parts we did. Yeah, it can
Speaker 1: be an ongoing series if the folks are interested. Yeah,
Speaker 1: please let us know if you want to hear more
Speaker 1: on the electro mechanical Messiahs of the World. Now, Joe,
Speaker 1: the robot is trying to hand you another piece of
Speaker 1: mail in trails, so I think you managed to cut
Speaker 1: into that bird because Base kind of menacing with that
Speaker 1: electric carving knife in the same hand. But okay, here
Speaker 1: we go. Hi. I heard your recent podcast about echo borgs,
Speaker 1: and I was surprised that in your discussion of serenoids
Speaker 1: that you didn't really go over the reality TV hidden
Speaker 1: camera shows. So a lot of those are all about
Speaker 1: someone talking in your ear telling you to do stuff.
Speaker 1: Some of them, like what would you do, are just
Speaker 1: instructing actors for scenes to try to get reactions out
Speaker 1: of the surrounding people to test social ethics. Others are
Speaker 1: like repeat after me, or maybe a famous person or
Speaker 1: something has an earpiece and is told to do crazy
Speaker 1: stuff to unsuspecting people. I think for most of the celebrities,
Speaker 1: people just think that they're eccentric famous people or something.
Speaker 1: I've never seen a reality TV show like this, though
Speaker 1: there's a faint bell, but yeah, I've never seen it.
Speaker 1: There is a certain way in which reality TV does
Speaker 1: almost almost tickle the boundaries of of profound weird insights
Speaker 1: on what real behavior is. Yeah, I mean, I guess,
Speaker 1: like I'm not familiar with these two shows that she mentions, um,
Speaker 1: and I wonder actually if they're not available in America
Speaker 1: because I think her address looks like it might be overseas.
Speaker 1: But anyways, Uh, first of all, I like, I think,
Speaker 1: as just media literacy, it's important to be aware that,
Speaker 1: you know, reality t V as always narratively constructed, just
Speaker 1: as much as fictional television is. But but also this
Speaker 1: reminds me of are you guys familiar with a comedian
Speaker 1: Kurt brownh Hohler. He's pretty funny guy, and he does
Speaker 1: a podcast for nerds called the Khole. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: He he has this a new bit that I recommend
Speaker 1: our listeners and especially Elizabeth go listen to. That's about
Speaker 1: how he used to be one of these people on
Speaker 1: a reality type show in which he would sit in
Speaker 1: a diner and they would set up potential dates, like
Speaker 1: blind dates, and they would come in and interact with him,
Speaker 1: and he would have a ventriloquist dummy in his lap
Speaker 1: and would talk to them only through the dummy. And
Speaker 1: apparently this one woman he interacted with was deathly afraid
Speaker 1: of dummies and just lost her mind and ran out
Speaker 1: of the restaurant crying. And then, as reality show producers
Speaker 1: are wont to do, they said, chase her. Uh so
Speaker 1: he chased after her with this ventriloquist dummy. He is
Speaker 1: this much funnier version of the story, So I recommend
Speaker 1: that you go listen to it. But it sounds a
Speaker 1: lot like what She's what Elizabeth here is positing legal
Speaker 1: consequences for chasing somebody with a creepy doll. No, because
Speaker 1: if you this is my take on fear of any
Speaker 1: kind of puppets or marionettes, is if you were afraid
Speaker 1: of a storytelling medium as ancient as puppets, then you
Speaker 1: deserve to be chasing the streets. Well, the funny bit
Speaker 1: is that at the end, like maybe five years later,
Speaker 1: he goes to a party and this woman's at the party,
Speaker 1: and she just like freaks out all over again, and
Speaker 1: she says that's him, and everybody knows who she's talking about.
Speaker 1: Oh that's great. Oh wait, hold on, it looks like
Speaker 1: Carney has a message for you, Robert, and it's covered
Speaker 1: in sand. I know what this say is? This comes
Speaker 1: to us from Kelly. Kelly writes and says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: just wrapped up your two part series on Dune, referring,
Speaker 1: of course, the science of Dune. How that we did
Speaker 1: a two party on great job, Awesome picks for music too.
Speaker 1: I'll be honest. Was never a big reader growing up,
Speaker 1: and have never read the Doune novels. My introduction to
Speaker 1: Dune was originally through the movie that I recently rewatched.
Speaker 1: After the movie, it was a computer game, Dune To,
Speaker 1: developed by Westwood Studios and released in what I had
Speaker 1: never heard of. This like a command and conqueror style game.
Speaker 1: It is, yeah, because it was only loosely based on
Speaker 1: the novels. The game is fantastic for its era, and
Speaker 1: I've even found a browser version to play in recent months.
Speaker 1: It was a real time strategy game where players would
Speaker 1: select from one of the three how houses a tradees
Speaker 1: Harconan or Ordos. Each house had a specialty units and weapons.
Speaker 1: The goal was to defeat the other two houses and
Speaker 1: control all of Dune and her Spice by growing your
Speaker 1: base and defeating the enemies. Some say this was the
Speaker 1: spawn of real time strategy games, and I'll admit I
Speaker 1: enjoyed many that followed, including Command and Conquer, the Command
Speaker 1: and Conqueror series also developed by Westwood. Yeah, when when
Speaker 1: we were putting together a lot of this material, I
Speaker 1: ended up looking up some of the old Dune games,
Speaker 1: and these were fagles because they had elaborate cut scenes,
Speaker 1: which was apparently a Westwood Studios thing. Elaborate Conquer was
Speaker 1: the same way, with some hilarious bad acting too, with
Speaker 1: like early nineties graphics. Yeah, I mean it looked pretty good.
Speaker 1: I think it was the full motion video era, so
Speaker 1: the game would be animated, but then when the cut
Speaker 1: scenes came in, it was essentially like video and the
Speaker 1: examples I looked at looked pretty good. Like the makeup
Speaker 1: was nice. They kind of they went after the look
Speaker 1: and feel of the Lynch Dune movie, but with some
Speaker 1: auditions here and there. Um. It also this reminds me
Speaker 1: a bit of the board game legacy for Dune. There
Speaker 1: there was a game that came out in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine from let's see who was It was Avalon Hill.
Speaker 1: They put out a Dune game that had the circular
Speaker 1: map of the planet, and you had all these factions
Speaker 1: and characters and you're trying to harness the spice market
Speaker 1: on on a on a Racus and also manipulate other
Speaker 1: people form alliances. Really complex, needless to say. Since it
Speaker 1: was a franchise game, it's long out of print. You
Speaker 1: can get a copy, it's hundreds of bucks, but the
Speaker 1: the but print and play services make it possible now
Speaker 1: to both print and play the original as well as
Speaker 1: various stripped down fan versions. Uh there's one in particular
Speaker 1: that came out in the last year called Dune Dice
Speaker 1: or hilariously the Dice Must Flow, which which looks wonderful.
Speaker 1: I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but
Speaker 1: it's dice bace. Do you have the same map, everyone
Speaker 1: has to choose a different faction and form alliances. So
Speaker 1: it's a rich world for gaming, that's for sure. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys talked about this in the
Speaker 1: Dune episode or not, but you know how Hollywood just
Speaker 1: loves franchise universes right now, and they really, you know,
Speaker 1: they they're they're really looking for like the next Harry
Speaker 1: Potter or the next Star Wars or whatever. Dune is
Speaker 1: so great, but I also feel like it's the books
Speaker 1: that are really like the heart of what makes it great.
Speaker 1: And and I like both of the movie adaptations, by
Speaker 1: the way, But I don't know that you could turn
Speaker 1: it into a franchise like that, But I would kind
Speaker 1: of love a world where you could just go to
Speaker 1: the store and buy a Dune board game or or
Speaker 1: play a Dune video game. Oh. I think that HBO should,
Speaker 1: in the spirit of Game of Thrones make a Dune
Speaker 1: TV series. That's fantastic. That that's the problem with the movies,
Speaker 1: you know, there's just not enough there's not enough room
Speaker 1: for it to breathe. Yeah, good point, Joe. All Right,
Speaker 1: HBO producers that are listening to make it happen. So
Speaker 1: thanks Kelly for writing in. And we got another one
Speaker 1: here coming out of Arnie slash Carni that is also
Speaker 1: for Robert. Also Covered in sand, Covered in Sand and
Speaker 1: some weird all right, Well, this one comes to us
Speaker 1: from Peter Peter, and that's p E T E R.
Speaker 1: So it's not we don't have to worry about this
Speaker 1: big twisted Peter de Freeze, he says. So I loved
Speaker 1: your two part Dune podcasts. Super fun to listen to.
Speaker 1: Here's my question about read in the book. How do
Speaker 1: you guys get past the writing style of the book,
Speaker 1: by which I mean the use of so many common
Speaker 1: and non futuristic ideas, words, terms, and names like Who's
Speaker 1: going to be named Jessica in a thousand years? Flapping
Speaker 1: flying machines sand Trout. I'm just really distracted by sci
Speaker 1: fi that I that that is supposedly futuristic, high tech, etcetera,
Speaker 1: but was written long enough ago that it seems silly now.
Speaker 1: Even WILLIAMS. Gibson's early stuff seems extremely dated to me,
Speaker 1: And though I loved reading it at the time, it's
Speaker 1: impossible for me now. But I really want to read
Speaker 1: and enjoy doing and I've tried a couple of times.
Speaker 1: Just curious about how you guys handled that kind of issue,
Speaker 1: if it's an issue for you at all. Thanks, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I I do have to report that it
Speaker 1: took me quite a few tries to get going in Dune.
Speaker 1: But once I got past page I don't know, twenty
Speaker 1: or thirty, I couldn't stop. But I tried, I think
Speaker 1: literally like three or four times to start the book
Speaker 1: and didn't keep past the first twenty pages. That's the language, though,
Speaker 1: you mean more so than the scientific concepts, right. I
Speaker 1: think it's something about how the very beginning of Dune. Uh,
Speaker 1: there is so much unfamiliar stuff it throws at you
Speaker 1: right out of the gate there. It's hard to get
Speaker 1: a foothold at the very beginning, and you're just thrown
Speaker 1: right into this state. Doesn't hold your hand. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: thrown right into this truly alien world, and alien in
Speaker 1: a way that most science fiction is not alien, because
Speaker 1: most science fiction is you have very standard, conventional kind
Speaker 1: of culture and reference points, and there's just some weird
Speaker 1: technology or some aliens in it. In this you know,
Speaker 1: everything that people think is unfamiliar to us. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would have to say that in my enjoyment of Dune.
Speaker 1: First of all, when it comes to things like, oh,
Speaker 1: the character's name is Jessica, I just I read enough
Speaker 1: fantasy and sci fi that I just kind of turned
Speaker 1: that off. Occasionally I'll remind myself. Oh, well, why would
Speaker 1: they have this word in their language when that word
Speaker 1: derives from the Greek they have. Do they have Greeks
Speaker 1: in this fantasy world? Probably not, but you just kind
Speaker 1: of have to turn that off in and I'd like
Speaker 1: to think, well, this is probably a translation. This is
Speaker 1: a translation of this other world story into my world,
Speaker 1: and therefore it must conform to the language of my world. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. I mean, if it's thousands of
Speaker 1: years in the future, they wouldn't be speaking English. I
Speaker 1: mean that this is yeah, this is a translation for us.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like how you read in the Bible
Speaker 1: that there was a character named Peter. I mean they
Speaker 1: didn't say the word Peter ironic because this person's name
Speaker 1: is Peter. Right. Oh yeah, but that's like a you know,
Speaker 1: that's an anglicized adaptation of a name that you know
Speaker 1: you would have pronounced differently. So maybe maybe Jessica's real
Speaker 1: name is like Yashika. Yeah, it's just like, well, the
Speaker 1: twentieth century reader would read this as Jessica. It makes
Speaker 1: me think of some of the stuff that Robert features
Speaker 1: on Stuff to blow your mind, say, all with the
Speaker 1: retro future facts and that, like, I think all culture
Speaker 1: is cyclical, right, and potentially authors like uh like Herbert
Speaker 1: are thinking along the lines of, well, you know, the
Speaker 1: name Jessica will come back around again a thousand years
Speaker 1: from now, or or the what was one of the
Speaker 1: ones you mentioned, the flapping flying machines, like that may
Speaker 1: sound ridiculous now, but maybe at the time it would
Speaker 1: be some kind of retro version on their future technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, I like that he mentioned
Speaker 1: Gibson because Gibson is definitely an author where I can't
Speaker 1: remember what the technology was, but when I first read Neuromancer,
Speaker 1: like somebody gets a fact or something on there, you know,
Speaker 1: there's some sort of a bit of technology where you
Speaker 1: instantly think, oh, wait, this is this is the high
Speaker 1: tech near future, and yet this is something that's already
Speaker 1: uh anequated. He run into that kind of problem far
Speaker 1: more easier with nearer, nearer future sci fi. But Dune
Speaker 1: is set so far in the future and following this
Speaker 1: uh you know, massive Butlerian jaha, during which we've turned
Speaker 1: earned against so much of our technology, it's like almost
Speaker 1: anything is fair game. The technologies that we've been forced
Speaker 1: to revisit. The new technologies than the old, the old
Speaker 1: ideas that have become new through the development of meta
Speaker 1: materials or what have you. Yeah, I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the fascinating things about doing actually is the the
Speaker 1: how some things are so alien and some things are
Speaker 1: so familiar, and like picking out the weird little elements
Speaker 1: that have survived the ten thousand years in between. I
Speaker 1: love that their characters named Jessica and Paul. I think
Speaker 1: that's that's a very curious and strange and I would
Speaker 1: argue almost definitely deliberate choice on Herbert's part. It strikes
Speaker 1: me as unlikely that he just kind of like was
Speaker 1: lazy and couldn't think of a better name. But I
Speaker 1: will add that my wife, Rachel was this was one
Speaker 1: of the funniest parts of doing for her was that
Speaker 1: they're the main characters named Paul, like Paul on The
Speaker 1: Wonder Years. Come on. Looks like the next piece of
Speaker 1: mail that Carney has brought out is uh wrapped in
Speaker 1: a membrane. Okay, so this we've shaken the amniotic fluid
Speaker 1: off of this letter and uh. This one comes to
Speaker 1: us from Christa and she's writing to us about the
Speaker 1: birth Call episode that we did, she says, I under
Speaker 1: or I listened to Born under the Call with great interest.
Speaker 1: I have only come across one other mention of the
Speaker 1: folklore associated with this, and I thought you might find
Speaker 1: this interesting. Forgive me if you mentioned this. I was
Speaker 1: at work while listening and may have missed this. Uh. No,
Speaker 1: we did not mention this, and yes, I did find
Speaker 1: this interesting. So this is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: factoid surrounding birth calls, and they're sort of legendary myth. Okay,
Speaker 1: she says. While studying the records of the Great Inquisition,
Speaker 1: an Italian historian Carlo Ginsburg read of a group of
Speaker 1: men from the Fruuli region of Italy who were persecuted
Speaker 1: as which is from the fifteen seventies through the sixteen forties.
Speaker 1: I think you would play them within the cunning folk tradition.
Speaker 1: We talked about cunning folk actually in our last last
Speaker 1: um episode on the Summer Reading episode, because Warren Ellis
Speaker 1: writes about cunning folk in his new nonfiction book. They
Speaker 1: called themselves the Bennan Dante, good Walkers, or the chemist
Speaker 1: Seola Born with the Call. These men were chosen only
Speaker 1: from among those who were born with the Call, which
Speaker 1: reportedly they kept with them. They would go into a
Speaker 1: trance on certain days of the year they believed they
Speaker 1: left their bodies, went to the field in spirit, and
Speaker 1: armed with fennel stocks, battled evil witches to protect the harvest.
Speaker 1: If they lost, the harvest would fail. They also may
Speaker 1: have practiced healing. Ginsburg's research was published in a book
Speaker 1: called The Night Battles. Thanks for all the weird and
Speaker 1: wonderful podcasts. Keep up the great work. Oh man, I've
Speaker 1: got to read about that. Ya. I actually think we
Speaker 1: need to do an episode on cunning folk um because
Speaker 1: it just seems to be popping up in a lot
Speaker 1: of different locations lately, and and there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of like mixture of uh villagers trying to understand the
Speaker 1: world through this tradition. Give me the one sentence pitch
Speaker 1: on cunning folk. They're great Britain's ancient wizards. So this
Speaker 1: is this is kind of in keeping with Jonathan Strange
Speaker 1: and uh, I think that right, Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: along those lines. If you didn't hear them the episode
Speaker 1: where we talked about our summer reading recommendations. Warren Ellis
Speaker 1: has a digital book out called Cunning Plans, and I
Speaker 1: believe it's maybe on Kindle or something like that. And
Speaker 1: he it's called Cunning Plans as such because he talks
Speaker 1: about the cunning folk tradition. Uh, and it's relevance to
Speaker 1: today and technology and philosophy and culture. And he's also
Speaker 1: working on a comic right now that's called Injection, and
Speaker 1: there's a character in that that is a cunning man
Speaker 1: double soldat it. I recommend checking both of them out. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: let's call Carney over here again. It looks like he's
Speaker 1: progressed somewhat with the turkey uh and is on too
Speaker 1: working on the cranberries. Well, depends on if you call progress.
Speaker 1: The legs are on the floor and there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of turkey juice on the wall. Well, it's a difficult
Speaker 1: algorithm to calibrate. Okay, Well there, yeah, we at least
Speaker 1: have another email from from Carney here. So this is
Speaker 1: an email from our listener Jack in reference to the
Speaker 1: episode Robert and I did about the science of slot
Speaker 1: machines and how they are perfectly designed to steal your
Speaker 1: money and maybe your soul. But this is what Jack says. Hey,
Speaker 1: first time email or a long time listener. The first
Speaker 1: and only time I had experience with slot machines was
Speaker 1: one day when my dad had taken me out to
Speaker 1: the movies and we had about an hour to kill beforehand,
Speaker 1: so he stuck me into a gaming lounge of the
Speaker 1: local bar. He said he was going to teach me
Speaker 1: a lesson about gambling and how you never win. That
Speaker 1: is a good lesson for kids to learn. That's my comment,
Speaker 1: not Jack's. But Jack says he started off by putting
Speaker 1: twenty dollars into the machine. After about ten minutes, this
Speaker 1: had been doubled by winning to forty, so we kept
Speaker 1: on playing. After about thirty minutes, we were on over
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars, so he decided to quit on a five.
Speaker 1: He went on to tell me that this doesn't normally
Speaker 1: happen and not to gamble. That's hilarious. Cheers if you
Speaker 1: read this. I've been listening for about three years. Love
Speaker 1: all the podcasts that How Stuff Works puts out. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, Jack. But that's funny because, of course,
Speaker 1: within the great numbers of people who do gamble all
Speaker 1: around the world, part of the statistical profile of that
Speaker 1: number is that some tiny few will come out on top.
Speaker 1: But it's such a tiny few you can't expect to
Speaker 1: be that person. What if the slot machine has life
Speaker 1: lesson detection software so that if it feels a life
Speaker 1: something coming on between a father and son, it pays
Speaker 1: out maximum. You know what we could I would imagine
Speaker 1: that slot machine builders could do that. Nowadays you just
Speaker 1: slept on like Syria or some Google voice pick up thing.
Speaker 1: It here's the fathers say, here comes a life life
Speaker 1: lesson and it's like, dude, you are the algorithm. You
Speaker 1: are kidding, But I am entirely serious that I think
Speaker 1: it's possible that someone could design a slot machine to
Speaker 1: h to essentially have a camera in it recognizes if
Speaker 1: the person sitting in front of the slot machine is
Speaker 1: probably a child, and if it's probably a child, then
Speaker 1: it pays out at a higher rate than it normally
Speaker 1: would in order to cement positive feelings and reward associations
Speaker 1: within the mind of that child. Even if the slot
Speaker 1: machine loses on that one gaming session, it'll get it
Speaker 1: back for the rest of that child's life. It's like
Speaker 1: dealing drugs on a playground exactly right. You get them
Speaker 1: hooked when they're young. The game is the game. Yeah. Oh.
Speaker 1: One thing I forgot to include but we should maybe
Speaker 1: read at some point is what we did get a
Speaker 1: comment on on our slot machines episode from somebody who
Speaker 1: works in designing slot machines, and he he said that
Speaker 1: he liked our episode, but that we were unnecessarily harsh
Speaker 1: about about slot machines, so that we were too hard
Speaker 1: on them. I don't know, were we too hard on them? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, I could see where one might have that
Speaker 1: opinion coming from the sort of the you know, from
Speaker 1: the from the technological side of the slot machine, from
Speaker 1: even the the artisan side of the slot machine, because
Speaker 1: this is this is the individual's work, you know. But
Speaker 1: we were we respect the work you do, for the
Speaker 1: skill you have. Yeah, I mean the as just pure machines,
Speaker 1: they they're phenomenal. I mean the technology involved, the way
Speaker 1: that the technology hasn't really evolved just in such a
Speaker 1: short amount of time. It's it's incredible. But their overall
Speaker 1: purpose is to take money from people. Play to extinction. Yeah. Hey,
Speaker 1: speaking of extinction, it looks like Carney has another message
Speaker 1: for you, raw Bird, and this one smells like a
Speaker 1: corpse alright. This one comes to us from Amy Amy
Speaker 1: writes in and says hello. One of the way one
Speaker 1: way of honoring remains, and she's referring to our human
Speaker 1: remains episode, is having them made into jewelry. I think
Speaker 1: it's kind of a neat way to keep loved ones
Speaker 1: quite literally with them. One company can make them into
Speaker 1: crystals or store them in small, sealed locket like containers.
Speaker 1: My friend had a Jewlior jeweler make a small metal
Speaker 1: ball necklace containing some of her mother's ashes in it.
Speaker 1: Uh oh. And apparently it's illegal to have your pets
Speaker 1: ashes mixed with your human ashes, though I have no
Speaker 1: idea how they enforce it. I also grew up around
Speaker 1: a lot of church cemeteries with sunken graves and crooked tombstones.
Speaker 1: There's a seminary in my childhood neighborhood where there were
Speaker 1: stones from the seventeen hundreds and the Jesuits that settled
Speaker 1: the area, many of which were whether to illegibility. Also,
Speaker 1: there are a few European trees they brought with them,
Speaker 1: So that's that's enter the whole the creative take the
Speaker 1: ashes and processing them into some sort of precious item. Uh.
Speaker 1: I like the jewelry idea. I've also run across. There
Speaker 1: was a company at least a few years back. They
Speaker 1: were pushing the idea of having your ashes used to
Speaker 1: press a record vinyl record, except, of course, it would
Speaker 1: be like some version of vinyl which ashes inside it
Speaker 1: and the record could contain bound of view screaming yeah,
Speaker 1: more more likely a pleasant message. Or I would think
Speaker 1: maybe your favorite album, like because what would be better
Speaker 1: in death than to become your favorite album. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: a mix of all those things. It's like the voyager
Speaker 1: recording your own memorial song for your own death. Have
Speaker 1: you if you all ever heard chriswells someone walked Over
Speaker 1: My Grave, the amazing Chris Well. Yeah, the amazing Chris
Speaker 1: Well from the beginning of Plan nine from Outer Space.
Speaker 1: If you're not familiar with him, he was a guy
Speaker 1: wh would go on TV and predict stuff about the
Speaker 1: future that was always way super super wrong. But he
Speaker 1: wore a tuxedo so people believed him. But he also
Speaker 1: ended up in ed Woods movies. So at the he's
Speaker 1: at the beginning of Plan nine from Outer Space going
Speaker 1: like great things, but friends, you are interested in the future.
Speaker 1: But anyway, he recorded a song called someone Walked Over
Speaker 1: My Grave it's on YouTube. You should look it up.
Speaker 1: It's just him talking over some piano music about how
Speaker 1: someone walked over his grave and disturbed his sleep. Well,
Speaker 1: what is that? What you'd pick? What would you pick?
Speaker 1: If you had to pick one album, I'd make my
Speaker 1: own version of that, just kind of like ominously threatening
Speaker 1: people with hauntings if they disturbed my slumber. What if
Speaker 1: you had to pick your favorite album you had to
Speaker 1: become that album in death. What would you pick? Uh,
Speaker 1: we've already established it would have to be dope thrown. Okay,
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's a good one. I think it would
Speaker 1: be like Black Flags Damaged. I would probably go with
Speaker 1: Boards of Canada's Music has a Right to Children. I
Speaker 1: think that's a pleasant album to become. Hey, so I've
Speaker 1: got another message here coming out of Carney that is
Speaker 1: also in reference to our Slot Machine episode, and this
Speaker 1: is I think a very useful math clarification. So so
Speaker 1: this comes from our listener Rhiannon and Rhannon says, Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: longtime listener, love the podcast, but as someone with a
Speaker 1: masters in mathematics specializing in probability, I had to cringe
Speaker 1: in the most recent episode on Slot Machines in the episode,
Speaker 1: you calculate the probability of winning on an eight picture
Speaker 1: slot machine as one eighth times one, eight times one
Speaker 1: eight equals one out of five d twelve. The math
Speaker 1: is sound here, but only if there was only one
Speaker 1: winning picture, assuming that you can match any set of
Speaker 1: the eight pictures and win, so all three of any
Speaker 1: one alien picture. That's referring to a specific example. I
Speaker 1: can explain in a minute. There are actually eight ways
Speaker 1: you can do this, So you need to multiply the
Speaker 1: probability by the eight ways you can win, which would
Speaker 1: be eight times one in five hundred twelve or one
Speaker 1: out of sixty four. Uh. And so what she's referring
Speaker 1: to is an example we had in this episode where
Speaker 1: there's an alien slot machine. It's got three reels one
Speaker 1: with seven crew members of the Nostromo and the alien
Speaker 1: on it. And if you want to line them up
Speaker 1: to win, what's your probability of winning? We said, the
Speaker 1: probability of getting something like three three Ripley's is one
Speaker 1: eighth times one, eight times one eight. But Rhiannon is
Speaker 1: exactly right that if you're not looking for three Ripley's
Speaker 1: or three Dallas is or three aliens, but any combination
Speaker 1: of three. The first reel doesn't matter. You're just trying
Speaker 1: to match the second two reels. So the probability is
Speaker 1: actually one in sixty four of any match, as opposed
Speaker 1: to one in five and twelve of a specified match.
Speaker 1: Um and she goes on to explain that, as she says,
Speaker 1: another way to think of it is the first picture
Speaker 1: is irrelevant. So the probability of the first picture being
Speaker 1: a success is eight out of eight, but the second
Speaker 1: picture is must match the first of the probability is
Speaker 1: one out of eight, and the same with the third picture,
Speaker 1: And then she lays out the map again. Wait, so
Speaker 1: how many people should have survived being astromo incident? Now? Can?
Speaker 1: It's it's making me you just question everything I saw
Speaker 1: an alien? Now? Well, you know, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of characters who we never explicitly see die. You never
Speaker 1: know if they survived, though the ship does kind of
Speaker 1: explode in a nuclear vaporization events. There are two survivors, oh,
Speaker 1: including the cat Jones. Yeah yeah, Jones is a one,
Speaker 1: but also so Rhann and finishes by saying, thanks for
Speaker 1: all that you do and keeping my runs interesting. I'm
Speaker 1: a professional marathon runner hoping to make my country's Canada
Speaker 1: Olympic standards have lots of miles to learn. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for that clarification, Rhian. We always really appreciate
Speaker 1: when are incredibly smart listeners can can correct and clarify
Speaker 1: if there's something we say that sounds fishy. So we
Speaker 1: we really appreciate that. And also, I thought it's interesting
Speaker 1: that you mentioned running, because I do feel like we
Speaker 1: hear from a lot of people who listen while running.
Speaker 1: This is a common thing. I listen to podcasts like
Speaker 1: that sometimes. Yeah. Well I I don't run, so I
Speaker 1: can't speak of that, but I'm glad that we're air
Speaker 1: with people as they run. Rhiannon sounds pretty awesome, getting
Speaker 1: a masters degree in mathematics and a professional marathon runner,
Speaker 1: and I feel humbled. Yeah, and possibly which that's a
Speaker 1: powerful person. Yeah. Okay, so it looks like we've got
Speaker 1: another message here, and oh, this one has a warning
Speaker 1: on it that we should not handle it without gloves. Okay,
Speaker 1: about that, I I think I can guess. Let me
Speaker 1: get my gardener's gloves on here. Okay, it says hi, guys,
Speaker 1: I love the podcast and have been a listener for years.
Speaker 1: I just finished the wolf Spain episode and wanted to
Speaker 1: help with Christian's confusion about the Nazi bullet experiment. This
Speaker 1: is one of those moments usually happens about once or
Speaker 1: twice an episode where I posit something really stupid scientifically,
Speaker 1: and then listener writes in and it comes up with
Speaker 1: a good answer to it. So he says, it all
Speaker 1: comes down to the bullet expansion. So what I was
Speaker 1: talking about was whether or not you could put wolf
Speaker 1: Spain inside a bullet, because Nazis were doing tests with
Speaker 1: with Nite to see if they could weaponize it. So
Speaker 1: he says, it all comes down to bullet expansion. A
Speaker 1: lot of bullets are engineered with hollow points to help
Speaker 1: them expand when they hit animals, meet legs, et cetera.
Speaker 1: This hollow portion can carry a small amount of an
Speaker 1: alternate substance and not substantially hurt the metals bullets metal
Speaker 1: bullets expansion. A tricky part to this is that each
Speaker 1: bullet has to be designed to expand when fired from
Speaker 1: the right gun as well. A bullet designed for a
Speaker 1: pistol won't expand well when fired from a long barreled rifle.
Speaker 1: The velocity would be all wrong. This is my bet
Speaker 1: for why the test bullets failed to expand and overpenetrated.
Speaker 1: On a somewhat lighter note, if you rewatch Jaws now
Speaker 1: you'll better understand the scene where the police chief pours
Speaker 1: mercury into his hollow point bullets. Expanded discussion points include
Speaker 1: the Geneva Conventions and ethical military bullet design. Thanks for
Speaker 1: the great podcasts bonus, and yeah, because if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: it turned out that the Nazi experiments did not work.
Speaker 1: It did not They were shooting people of aconite, and
Speaker 1: there is no other than being shot there would with
Speaker 1: no poison effects from the aconite. But in it sounds
Speaker 1: like he's questioning their their methodology. All right, here's another
Speaker 1: bit of a listener mail coming into us here from
Speaker 1: Joyce Joyce Rights, and it says, Hi, I'm listening to
Speaker 1: your Ghoule's episode and at the end of it, it's
Speaker 1: about human cannibalism. My uncles grew up during World War
Speaker 1: Two in China, and my parents grew up during the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War and food was extremely scarce. They remember seeing
Speaker 1: people eat dead babies to survive in order to get
Speaker 1: around the emotional attachment to the dead child. The people
Speaker 1: ate each other's babies, So I guess it isn't ancient
Speaker 1: history or morally wrong given some culture circumstances. War stories
Speaker 1: they tell me growing up make me very glad and
Speaker 1: thankful for the semi peaceful times we live in now,
Speaker 1: keep up the good work. Loved the Sane Insane episode.
Speaker 1: Referring to the rose, and Han asked, Uh, this is
Speaker 1: a great point that Joyce brings up. Certainly, we we
Speaker 1: got into human cannibalism as the taboo on nonviolent cannibalism, right,
Speaker 1: why Like we know, it's obvious why there would be
Speaker 1: a taboo on killing people should eat them. But if
Speaker 1: somebody is already dead, why do we have a taboo
Speaker 1: against eating their flesh if it's not going to hurt them,
Speaker 1: like the alive scenario. Yeah, survival cannibalism, which is an
Speaker 1: important part of any discussion of human cannibalism history because
Speaker 1: that's where you see it pop up. This choice you
Speaker 1: have to make, well, what what do I do to survive?
Speaker 1: What am I willing to do to survive? And uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean if the circumstance. My opinion on this is, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're in circumstances where survival kind of cannibalism is
Speaker 1: the only way to survive. Somehome's you gotta do what
Speaker 1: you gotta do. Yeah. So here, Joyce says, one of
Speaker 1: the things is that they got around I think some
Speaker 1: of the the emotional distress caused by the violation of
Speaker 1: this taboo by eating each other's dead children or babies
Speaker 1: instead of their own. So they I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: that could help put some kind of distance between you
Speaker 1: and uh, the horror of it. I guess. I mean
Speaker 1: there's the again to her point, I mean, thank god
Speaker 1: that that you know, we don't live we're not living
Speaker 1: currently in time, so dire that we have to make
Speaker 1: that kind of choice and figure out how to compartmentalize it,
Speaker 1: uh and and make it work for our survival. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the expeditions that went through the
Speaker 1: Northwest Passage in the nineteenth century, because a lot of
Speaker 1: those ships went missing, especially the Franklin Expedition is really
Speaker 1: famous for it. Uh. And they believe that not only
Speaker 1: did the ships think and go missing, in fact, they
Speaker 1: recently have found evidence of Franklin ships, but that there
Speaker 1: was cannibalism that went on and it was not survival cannibalism.
Speaker 1: The bones that they have found of some of the
Speaker 1: sailors had marked indentations on their bones of cutting. All right,
Speaker 1: So we got another one coming out of the machine
Speaker 1: here and it's blowing. It's really I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of far away. I don't know if I can
Speaker 1: reach it, but I think it's for you, Joe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is from our listener Eric, who is responding to
Speaker 1: the episode Robert and I did in our Halloween season
Speaker 1: about Will of the Wisp, the glowing light in the
Speaker 1: bog and uh and what is it. One of the
Speaker 1: things we talked about in the episode is the fact
Speaker 1: that Will of the Whisp sidings seem to have sharply
Speaker 1: dropped off in the past hundred years or so. People
Speaker 1: used to report these all the time. Writers from the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds and before talk about it as if it's
Speaker 1: extremely common, something people would just be familiar with in
Speaker 1: their day to day lives, and they'd be very likely
Speaker 1: to have seen it. I've never seen a Will of
Speaker 1: the Whisp, and it seems like most people haven't. So
Speaker 1: and I wasn't on the episode, but I told you
Speaker 1: guys off air that the only reason I knew what
Speaker 1: it was was because there was a spider man villain
Speaker 1: called Willow the Whisp that appeared in the eighties comic
Speaker 1: I read, well, apparently a lot of people are familiar
Speaker 1: with it from D and D. So oh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: another friends point we talked about in the episode. But anyway,
Speaker 1: we as scar listeners, Hey, have you ever seen the
Speaker 1: Will of the Wisp phenomena? And if you have, ride
Speaker 1: us and tell us and so. A couple of people did.
Speaker 1: One of them was Eric, who wrote us this very
Speaker 1: interesting story. Eric says, hey, gentlemen, you ask for anyone
Speaker 1: who's seen the elusive Will of the Wisp. I have
Speaker 1: had an experience with such an entity. I live in
Speaker 1: upstate New York, Nango County, Chenango, Chenango County. I love
Speaker 1: to hike on the Mini Finger Lake trails, or any
Speaker 1: trail that spreads across the woods. The area of land
Speaker 1: behind where I grew up had several pond marshy areas
Speaker 1: connected by a series of streams, generally just a wet place,
Speaker 1: no bog or swamp. Though at the age of fourteen,
Speaker 1: eight years back or so, I was several miles from
Speaker 1: home when darkness fell. I know all the woods there
Speaker 1: pretty well for my copious times wandering through them. It's
Speaker 1: also hard to get lost. If you walk in any
Speaker 1: direction for a little while, you will find a road,
Speaker 1: not a vast wilderness, for sure. I was casually walking
Speaker 1: on a trail back with the moon is the only light,
Speaker 1: when off to my right, about three hundred feet into
Speaker 1: the woods, I see a bobbing, whitish blue light. I walked,
Speaker 1: keeping an eye on it, thinking if there were any
Speaker 1: houses out that way. There were not. Not only that,
Speaker 1: but it seemed to be moving parallel to me. This
Speaker 1: is an awesome, creepy pasta. Yeah, I thought to myself.
Speaker 1: I'm not starving or near a dehydration. I'm not delirious
Speaker 1: or mad. But I had a profound skeptical curiosity in
Speaker 1: the supernatural. I thought it might be a ghost. My
Speaker 1: neighbor liked to tell ghost stories about people getting lost
Speaker 1: in the woods by following a large white buck during
Speaker 1: deer season, or a girl in distress that they could
Speaker 1: never seem to find. I think he just liked to
Speaker 1: scare me. I liked it at the buck. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a more recent take on the same troupe anyways,
Speaker 1: I followed it off the trail, taking note of where
Speaker 1: I was. I followed it, never seeming to be able
Speaker 1: to get closer than a hundred feet or so from it.
Speaker 1: But it looked like a dim blue flame, bobbing and
Speaker 1: swaying in the dark, dancing around trees, egging me on
Speaker 1: to follow it. Prevaricating my worst thoughts, I kept following
Speaker 1: it meandered through the woods. I had to walk over
Speaker 1: many little streams and around wet areas where it became
Speaker 1: hard to pass through. This went on for about an
Speaker 1: hour before I lost sight of it. I walked to
Speaker 1: where it last was, and it was the edge of
Speaker 1: one of the old farmer's fields. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of old fields that are not near any roads or anything,
Speaker 1: just isolated in the woods. I saw the bobbing light
Speaker 1: on the other side of the field. I knew exactly
Speaker 1: where I was and had had enough and decided to
Speaker 1: walk home. The road was only a little less than
Speaker 1: a mile from where I was. I followed the edge
Speaker 1: of the field to a path at one of the
Speaker 1: corners in The light followed me, but at some point
Speaker 1: during this time it split off into three smaller bobbing lights.
Speaker 1: They never went too far from each other. One would
Speaker 1: get ahead and the others would quickly catch up. But
Speaker 1: they went parallel to me till I got to the
Speaker 1: path and I couldn't see them in the woods anymore.
Speaker 1: But I glanced back and saw them at the end
Speaker 1: of the path after I walked a little ways in.
Speaker 1: At this point, I began to walk fast, getting more
Speaker 1: and more unnerved. They never seemed to catch up. Even
Speaker 1: after I started to run and ran out of breath
Speaker 1: and stopped to grab my breath, they didn't seem to
Speaker 1: get any closer, even though I wasn't moving. A few
Speaker 1: minutes later, I got to the road, I turned to
Speaker 1: see if they were still following me. I could still
Speaker 1: see them, but way farther off than they had been
Speaker 1: the entire time. I watched them fade back into the
Speaker 1: woods behind the trees and brush. I walked back home,
Speaker 1: haunted by what I saw. I never told many people
Speaker 1: about that, because it obviously sounds crazy. I researched it
Speaker 1: and came across the term Will of the Whisp in
Speaker 1: later weeks, but had never seen anything saying there were
Speaker 1: any sightings in the area. I never saw them again though,
Speaker 1: despite many night hikes since then. Well, I thought you
Speaker 1: guys would enjoy one of my more horrifying memories from
Speaker 1: my confusing, anks filled adolescent battling with the existential dread
Speaker 1: of wondering about life after death and other planes of existence. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you guys are the best. I enjoy listening to you
Speaker 1: another house Stepp Works podcast. You feed the nerd in me.
Speaker 1: Uh Ps, Robert, you have inspired me to grow sideburns
Speaker 1: the way they elegantly compliment your face. I hope I
Speaker 1: can pull them off half as well as you do.
Speaker 1: Always will be listening here here Robert has excellent sideburn
Speaker 1: he does always jealous. Thank you so much for the story, Eric,
Speaker 1: This was great. I I don't know, I I'm envious
Speaker 1: of this. I mean, I know it sounds like it
Speaker 1: was scary at the time. I wish I could see
Speaker 1: a will of the wisp and why aren't there stories
Speaker 1: like this all over? So? I gotta say, like just
Speaker 1: the way that he wrote this like it was I
Speaker 1: was joking about the creepypasta thing, but there was a
Speaker 1: haunting way that this was written. It reminded me of
Speaker 1: like a layered barren story or one of those old
Speaker 1: Algernon Blackwood stories story. Uh yeah, that's creepy. So Eric,
Speaker 1: I'd be interested to hear what you think it was,
Speaker 1: having actually seen it. You if you listen to our episode,
Speaker 1: we talked about the different hypotheses about what could be
Speaker 1: causing the will of the whist, but the fact that
Speaker 1: there's really a lot of difficulty in deciding what it
Speaker 1: is because we can't like catch one and look at
Speaker 1: it in the lab and examine it. You're just trying
Speaker 1: to match explanations to written descriptions of phenomena. Alright, looks
Speaker 1: like Carney is handing me another listener mail, only he's
Speaker 1: handing this one to me with what appears to be
Speaker 1: a cadaver arm with the strength attached to it. I
Speaker 1: think I know what this might be about. This must
Speaker 1: be in reference to our fist punch theory of evolution.
Speaker 1: Episode deals with the work of David Carrier and his
Speaker 1: research team into how the human fist might have evolved
Speaker 1: to punch other humans in the face. Um, which is
Speaker 1: a fascinating theory explored in that in that episode, And
Speaker 1: hey is it turns out this bit of email comes
Speaker 1: to us from David Carrier himself. Wow, that's flattering. I'm
Speaker 1: flattered that he listened to the episode. But then what
Speaker 1: seems to be written here is also go ahead and
Speaker 1: read it's this comes to m from again from David Carrier, Professor,
Speaker 1: Department of Biology, University of Utah. Hi, Robert and Christian,
Speaker 1: Thanks very much for the thoughtful and entertaining podcast and
Speaker 1: video you did on our recent article. Your podcast provides
Speaker 1: the best discussion of our work that I know of.
Speaker 1: Best wishes Dave, Wow, that really we love hearing from
Speaker 1: the scientists who actually create the work that we reference
Speaker 1: in our episodes. Every now and then we do. I know,
Speaker 1: we we heard from the person behind the echo Borg
Speaker 1: study when we did the echo Borg episode, and this
Speaker 1: one too, and that is I'd say it's one of
Speaker 1: the most rewarding feelings is when I don't know, as
Speaker 1: a as a science communicator, I at least often have
Speaker 1: the feeling of I really hope I'm representing this well
Speaker 1: and everything, and just having the person who actually did
Speaker 1: the work get in touch with you and let you
Speaker 1: know that, in one way or another you didn't completely
Speaker 1: screw it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it feels like our least,
Speaker 1: if nothing else I was, I was accurate, and I
Speaker 1: was able to convey the the truth of the study.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and this reminds me. Actually, we did receive
Speaker 1: a few messages, both as emails and through Facebook from
Speaker 1: listeners who have martial arts backgrounds, and they were adding
Speaker 1: in that they questioned the relevancy of the fist as
Speaker 1: the way that our hands would evolve for the best
Speaker 1: potential way to hit somebody in the face, because apparently
Speaker 1: the palm strike is known as a much better way
Speaker 1: to do so without hurting your own hand. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about this, but we heard from
Speaker 1: several people about it, So I don't wanna inherently criticize
Speaker 1: people who say that they may entirely be right. But
Speaker 1: that also sounds a little bit like it could be
Speaker 1: bro science. Well it might be. We talked extensively about
Speaker 1: bro science in that episode you came up. I mentioned
Speaker 1: your your disdain for bro science. Well, I mean bro sciences,
Speaker 1: bro science. Well, you know, we may just have to
Speaker 1: have Professor carry Will talk to us sometime. And yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe his next thing could be about palm strikes.
Speaker 1: Who knows, He's He's produced several different studies. He's read
Speaker 1: like at least four or five for that episode. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: Now I want to be clear about that. I'm not
Speaker 1: criticizing doctor carriers stuff, because if it's real science, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't call it bro science. You've got good, good methodology
Speaker 1: and empirical verification. I don't consider that bro science. Bro
Speaker 1: science is Oh man, you're doing your protein stack all wrong.
Speaker 1: All right, it looks like we have one final bit
Speaker 1: of listener mail here, and this one again is is
Speaker 1: wrapped in a membrane of some sort. All right, let
Speaker 1: me see if I can chew it off. I think
Speaker 1: this is actually a website comment, and hopefully on our
Speaker 1: next listener mail episode we can get into a few
Speaker 1: more of the great comments that have been left on
Speaker 1: our yeah web. It's harder for us to keep track
Speaker 1: of those sometimes because we don't get it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: paying us when those go up. We have to go
Speaker 1: back and and if you're if you're unfamiliar with what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, on the landing page at stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com for the page where each
Speaker 1: episode is embedded, there's a comment section at the bottom there,
Speaker 1: and I believe it posts to your personal Facebook, but
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily see it because it doesn't go directly
Speaker 1: to the stuff to blow your d This means a
Speaker 1: little tweaking, but we still try and go back and
Speaker 1: read them. So by all means, UH, feel free to
Speaker 1: interact with us there. This was a particularly good one
Speaker 1: about the birth Call episode. It's from Jenna and she says,
Speaker 1: I'm a student midwife in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia.
Speaker 1: I feel extremely lucky that my first ever solo birth
Speaker 1: two weeks ago was an on call birth. I'd like
Speaker 1: to share my experience. As the baby was exiting the
Speaker 1: birth canal, we could feel that the omniotic amniotic sac
Speaker 1: membrane was still intact. As you mentioned, normally the amniotic
Speaker 1: sack will burst. However, as the baby was born, I
Speaker 1: very briefly held it within the amniotic sack like a
Speaker 1: baby in a big water balloon. It was a thin,
Speaker 1: opaque membrane, very full of baby and amniotic fluid. I
Speaker 1: pierced the amniotic sack with my hands and remove the
Speaker 1: membrane from the baby. Both mother and baby are doing fine.
Speaker 1: Thanks for your brilliant podcast. As always, so as we
Speaker 1: talked about in the episode, It's exceedingly rare to be
Speaker 1: born with a birth call, but it's even more rare
Speaker 1: to be born on call, which is your the amniotic
Speaker 1: sack is completely intact and hasn't ripped or broken at all.
Speaker 1: Uh this and and and you know, as we've talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, there are a lot of myths about such
Speaker 1: babies and the powers that they may hold. Well, let's
Speaker 1: hope that this baby is imbued with vast and powerful ability.
Speaker 1: What I want to know, Jenna, is what did you
Speaker 1: do with the sack afterwards? Because that also holds power.
Speaker 1: You know, you can, as we talked about in the episode,
Speaker 1: you can bury it in the yard behind the house,
Speaker 1: or you can sell it to a sailor for good luck,
Speaker 1: can keep you from drowning. There's so many things that
Speaker 1: that these uh, these birth calls can do. But but
Speaker 1: to have an entire sack, that's that's useful. Wait wait,
Speaker 1: I can I assume you're meaning like according to legend?
Speaker 1: Are you saying they're like also scientific things that there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of legends about birth calls. Yeah, lots
Speaker 1: of legends about different variations depending on the color, depending
Speaker 1: on how big they are, whatever of the various effects
Speaker 1: they can have. Yeah, I think the only issue we
Speaker 1: ran into is that we we wished we could have
Speaker 1: found more stories from Asia and Africa. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: the thing. A lot of the legends were mostly European based.
Speaker 1: Uh it Actually Jenna's in Australia, So I wonder what
Speaker 1: kind of you know, legends may have risen up around
Speaker 1: birth calls there. Oh yeah, yeah, but thanks for writing
Speaker 1: in it. Just that sounds like a thing that you
Speaker 1: would be in awe of. I know people talk about
Speaker 1: babies being born like that anyways, but like it coming
Speaker 1: out in the membrane like that would just be like whoa, yeah, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: Like I think Carney's bringing out our meal. Oh but
Speaker 1: there's even a little toe furky for me. But it's
Speaker 1: the birth call. Yeah, it looks like there's some there's
Speaker 1: some sand in the center of the Turkey cadaver, and
Speaker 1: there are some corpse jewelry mixed in stuffing. That's kind
Speaker 1: of rough, Carney, But I mean, what what else can
Speaker 1: you do? I mean, it's it's way your programs. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess we better dig in guys. Okay, so if
Speaker 1: you want to send more information to us, what maybe
Speaker 1: you want to respond to some of these, or maybe
Speaker 1: you want to respond to some of the other episodes. Well,
Speaker 1: you can write us at blow the Mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more, almost and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics is how stuff works dot com.