Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Listener mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and it is Monday,
Speaker 3: the day of each week that we read back messages
Speaker 3: from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If
Speaker 3: you're a fan of the show and you'd like to
Speaker 3: get in touch, you can reach us at contact at
Speaker 3: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. All types of
Speaker 3: messages are welcome, but we especially appreciate feedback to recent episodes,
Speaker 3: and we really appreciate if you have something interesting to
Speaker 3: add to a topic we've talked about. Let's see, Rob,
Speaker 3: do you want to kick things off with this message
Speaker 3: about the glass frog today?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah. This is a response to one of the
Speaker 2: Anamalia Stupendium episodes. This is from Jim Jim Wrightson and says,
Speaker 2: as I listened to Argo Mandanese descriptions of the amazing
Speaker 2: glass frogs organs visible beneath transparent skin, the words of
Speaker 2: my email to Robert and Joe informing them of Fritz
Speaker 2: Lieber's ghouls manifested in my mind. But no, the KG
Speaker 2: Sorcerer beat me to the punch. I haven't read all
Speaker 2: of the and I have to note, I'm I've never
Speaker 2: been sure how to pronounce this character's name. I always
Speaker 2: read it in my mind as Fard and the Gray Mouser,
Speaker 2: but I guess you could pronounce it Fuffored. I'm not sure,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. To me in my own mental
Speaker 2: version of all this, it's Fard, but have it however
Speaker 2: you will. But anyways is if you haven't read all
Speaker 2: the Fafford or Fared in the Gray Mouser books, you
Speaker 2: should love the wizard Stick and the D and D
Speaker 2: framing in the Anomalius Topidium series. Please don't drop it.
Speaker 3: Jim, So faf hrd is not a typo. That is
Speaker 3: how this is spelled. There's not right a vowel left out.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. So these stories, for anyone not familiar with them,
Speaker 2: these the stories. They were written by American author Fritz
Speaker 2: Liber who lived nineteen ten through nineteen twenty two, and
Speaker 2: his father was also named Fritz Leiber and was an
Speaker 2: actor that was in like Shakespearean stuff and swashbucklers. So
Speaker 2: it's interesting to go into the stories knowing that because
Speaker 2: there's a fair amount of sword play in these tales.
Speaker 2: These tales were one of the many inspirations on Dungeons
Speaker 2: and Dragons, and I have not read them in many
Speaker 2: a year, like it's been over probably fifteen years. It's
Speaker 2: maybe been twenty years since I read these, but I
Speaker 2: remember them as being a lot of fun, just classic
Speaker 2: sword and sorcery adventures with this you know, kind of
Speaker 2: beefy barbarian type and it's like smaller roguelike friend and
Speaker 2: accomplice and they go on all sorts of magical and
Speaker 2: daring adventures.
Speaker 3: So is the conan set up with a beefy barbarian
Speaker 3: main hero with a rogue thief accomplice like a recurring
Speaker 3: motif in this genre.
Speaker 2: It is, off the top of my head, I'm not sure,
Speaker 2: like who really kicks it off? I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: in a way you can, you can go way back.
Speaker 2: Maybe you can make a case for like the epic
Speaker 2: of Gilgamesh having something like who is Gilgamesh's beastly sidekick
Speaker 2: in key Do? I think, yeah, I don't know, if
Speaker 2: you it's maybe not one to one, but like you know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like the most ancient buddy adventure that
Speaker 2: comes to.
Speaker 3: Mind, though I don't know if in key Do is
Speaker 3: is more of a rogue thief type or just a
Speaker 3: different type of beef beef man like he's described I
Speaker 3: think as a as a wild man, like a you know,
Speaker 3: a strong man of the wilderness, whereas Gilgamesh himself is like, he's,
Speaker 3: i don't know, more a symbol of civilization, like the
Speaker 3: warrior king of the the he's the he's the city beef,
Speaker 3: and in key Do is the country beef.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, these stories, these stories don't date back
Speaker 2: as far as Conan the Barbarian and so forth. I
Speaker 2: think these I'm just looking at a list of the
Speaker 2: collections and when they were published, but they go back
Speaker 2: at least as far as nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not familiar, but maybe I'll have to check
Speaker 3: that out at some point there.
Speaker 2: I think I've probably mentioned this in the past and
Speaker 2: the show before, but there was at least one collection
Speaker 2: of these stories that I had where the illustrator decided
Speaker 2: to envision these two characters as just Robert Plant and
Speaker 2: Jimmy Page, like they're just straight up Robert Plant and
Speaker 2: Jimmy Page. Way, which worked, but it was an interesting choice.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to do this next message. We're gonna
Speaker 3: do some messages in response to our series on authenticity.
Speaker 3: This one comes from Nathan. Nathan says, Dear Robert and
Speaker 3: Joe and guest producer Paul. Oh yeah, Paul. Our coworker
Speaker 3: Paul Deckins sat in to produce one of those while
Speaker 3: JJ was out last week. Nathan says, Wow, I didn't
Speaker 3: expect to have so many thoughts sparked by your great
Speaker 3: commerc about authenticity. In part one, Joe mentioned existentialism's take
Speaker 3: on living inauthentically. Their term for this is living in
Speaker 3: quote bad faith. Jean Paul Sartre famously gave an example
Speaker 3: of a cafe waiter whose movements Sartra thought were too
Speaker 3: waiter esque, too eager to please. This waiter sees his
Speaker 3: role in life exclusively as a waiter and fulfills only
Speaker 3: that duty. Therefore, he is not being truly himself. In
Speaker 3: Part two, you brought up how seeing a computer image
Speaker 3: of a painting is not the same experience as seeing
Speaker 3: it in person, and is in a sense, not actually
Speaker 3: seeing the painting. This reminded me of one of my
Speaker 3: favorite paintings, The Treachery of Images, often called this is
Speaker 3: not a pipe by Renee mcgreet. Even though we see
Speaker 3: an image of a pipe, macgreet also wrote the phrase
Speaker 3: sorry for failing at French air to see nepaun peep,
Speaker 3: this is not a pipe at the at the bottom
Speaker 3: of the painting. This is to remind us that it's
Speaker 3: merely a representation of a pipe, not a real one.
Speaker 3: In fact, the print of this painting currently hanging in
Speaker 3: my room is not the real image either, but merely
Speaker 3: a reproduction of a representation of a pipe. You also
Speaker 3: mentioned how artists both historic and modern would learn their
Speaker 3: art precisely by trying to reproduce existing works of art.
Speaker 3: This ties into the central thesis of a YouTuber named
Speaker 3: Kirby Ferguson. In his video essay Everything Is a Remix,
Speaker 3: he argues that there is no truly original idea, and
Speaker 3: he boils down all creativity in art and culture to
Speaker 3: three steps, copy, transform, and combine. For copying, he cites
Speaker 3: a story of how, as a young young writer, Hunter S.
Speaker 3: Thompson re typed whole pages of The Great Gatsby word
Speaker 3: for word quote to get the feeling of what it
Speaker 3: was like to write that way. Oh yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: think I knew that about Thompson specifically, but I would
Speaker 3: endorse this practice. I think this is also one of
Speaker 3: the benefits of memorizing passages of literature, like passages you
Speaker 3: really like, descriptive passages and stuff from fiction, or memorizing
Speaker 3: speeches or memorizing poetry. I think it something about the
Speaker 3: process of memorizing the order of the words kind of
Speaker 3: helps you imagine what it would be like to produce
Speaker 3: that style of writing from yourself, and therefore can be
Speaker 3: one part of developing a kind of synthetic, composite, original
Speaker 3: style of your own.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it reminds me that it wasn't too long
Speaker 2: ago that I saw in this is somebody's social media post,
Speaker 2: but they are resharing something that was like basically saying, hey, Christians,
Speaker 2: if you want to get a little closer to God
Speaker 2: or feel, i don't know, more in line with your faith,
Speaker 2: pick out some passages in the Bible and just copying
Speaker 2: word for word. And you know, I think maybe there
Speaker 2: might be an impulse for some to find that silly,
Speaker 2: But of course I instantly realized, like, oh, that's exactly
Speaker 2: the same exercise as this creative writing exercise, you know,
Speaker 2: of going through and copying these words. So I mean,
Speaker 2: regardless what your opinion is of a particular sacred text
Speaker 2: or its translation and so forth, I mean there is
Speaker 2: something too copying it word for word and having those
Speaker 2: words travel through your mind in a slightly different way.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean this might sound strange, but I think
Speaker 3: there's actually all kinds of There are all kinds of
Speaker 3: details in a text that we can miss when we
Speaker 3: just read it, and interacting with the text in a
Speaker 3: different way, such as by memorizing it or by copying
Speaker 3: it out manually or something like that causes you to
Speaker 3: experience it again in a different way and to maybe
Speaker 3: notice things that normally you would gloss over.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I would imagine it's probably a religious practice
Speaker 2: one way or another in various religions. You know, all
Speaker 2: these different face have sacred text. What happens when you
Speaker 2: copy it? And maybe it brings you a little closer too,
Speaker 2: whatever's being transmitted through it.
Speaker 3: Okay, one more comment from Nathan here. Nathan says, lastly,
Speaker 3: all the talk of filmmakers wanting us to experience movies
Speaker 3: as originally intended felt vindicating. I have long spoken out
Speaker 3: against watching movies on a phone for an authentic experience.
Speaker 3: I watch movies not on a television, but by projecting
Speaker 3: them onto my living room wall. That's the nearest I
Speaker 3: can get to recreating a theatrical viewing, and I have
Speaker 3: no regrets. Thanks as always for your thought provoking conversations
Speaker 3: about Everything under the Sun. Nathan. Yeah, Nathan, I think,
Speaker 3: as we talked about in the episode, I'm sort of
Speaker 3: two minds about this. I mean, on one hand, sometimes
Speaker 3: you're in a situation where all you can do is
Speaker 3: watch on your phone, so you're gonna, you know, you
Speaker 3: do what you can. On the other hand, I can
Speaker 3: totally understand if you are a filmmaker and the experience
Speaker 3: that you are imagining for the audience is like seeing
Speaker 3: it in a theater with you know, with the sigh in,
Speaker 3: the sound and all that it could be. It could
Speaker 3: be kind of disappointing to imagine people watching the movie
Speaker 3: you made on a phone, because that's not the experience
Speaker 3: you had in mind for them. And not to say
Speaker 3: there's anything wrong with them experiencing it that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, really the example, the most extreme
Speaker 2: example is probably we've talked about in Weird House Cinema
Speaker 2: in the past, is when we were looking at various
Speaker 2: three D pictures, you know, and we felt some of
Speaker 2: that frustration of wanting to try and watch these films,
Speaker 2: even just some with some form of three D, not
Speaker 2: the original form of three D that people would have
Speaker 2: experienced in the theaters, but just any form, and it
Speaker 2: was sometimes just difficult or impossible to do so, so,
Speaker 2: you know, I do get it. But then again, at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, it's like, am I going
Speaker 2: to watch House of Wax as originally intended? Or am
Speaker 2: I going to watch it in some other format or
Speaker 2: just not watch it at all? Like, obviously I'm going
Speaker 2: to watch it however I can. And if I'm on
Speaker 2: an airplane, I got to watch something. So I'm gonna
Speaker 2: cue up something to watch, and I'm just gonna have
Speaker 2: to apologize to the directors that I'm not watching it
Speaker 2: as originally intended. I can't think of a film off
Speaker 2: and that was made especially to be watched on an airplane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, better to pick your own movie, bring it with
Speaker 3: you and watch it on a phone than to on
Speaker 3: a slightly larger screen in the back of the seat
Speaker 3: in front of you watch one of six Mark Wahlberg
Speaker 3: movies that are available.
Speaker 2: I guess the thing is if it's worth watching, it's
Speaker 2: worth watching again in a different format, so you know,
Speaker 2: you can always come back later and try and make
Speaker 2: it up. Oh, coming back to the this is not
Speaker 2: a pipe. I was not familiar with this work, but
Speaker 2: it is an interesting experience just to look at it
Speaker 2: for the first time, because knowing what the text says,
Speaker 2: it makes me want to see other things in the
Speaker 2: pipe than the pipe, So it's it's kind of an
Speaker 2: interesting experience, Like I want. Part of me wants to
Speaker 2: lean in and interpret the pipe as some sort of
Speaker 2: a otter like organism or see its curves as something
Speaker 2: more like human or sensual. But then I have to
Speaker 2: like fall back to like, no, this is a pipe.
Speaker 2: My other attempts to interpret this otherwise realistic looking image.
Speaker 2: It is not a surrealistic image, and it not itself.
Speaker 2: Attempts to do so fail and I go back to pipe.
Speaker 2: All right. This next one comes to us from Thomas.
Speaker 2: Thomas says, Hi, Robert, and Joe, I just finished the
Speaker 2: two episode theory on authenticity and wanted to share some
Speaker 2: insight from my line of work. I'm a lawyer, and
Speaker 2: before any evidence can be introduced in court, it has
Speaker 2: to be authenticated. Evidence can roughly be divided into witness testimony,
Speaker 2: physical evidence, and documents, which includes photographs and recordings. Legally speaking,
Speaker 2: the distinction discussed in Part one between honesty and credibility
Speaker 2: and authenticity if a person doesn't exist, all witness testimony
Speaker 2: is evidence and it's up to a judge or jury
Speaker 2: whether to believe it. A witness does normally need to
Speaker 2: testify about how they know a particular fact to help
Speaker 2: assess their credibility, and just hearing from somebody else hearsay
Speaker 2: generally isn't good enough. Before physical evidence, for example, a
Speaker 2: gun found at the scene of a shooting can be
Speaker 2: introduced in court, the witness who collected the evidence needs
Speaker 2: to establish that it is quote the same or substantially
Speaker 2: the same condition as when it was found. This is
Speaker 2: an interesting articulation of the concept of authenticity as history
Speaker 2: that you discussed in relation to works of art in
Speaker 2: Part two. If a piece of physical evidence has any
Speaker 2: history at all since it was collected, that history has
Speaker 2: changed the character of the object so that it is
Speaker 2: no longer authentic. Authenticating a document is much simpler and
Speaker 2: in line with a basic definition of authenticity that you
Speaker 2: discussed in Part one. A document or photograph is authentic
Speaker 2: if a witness with appropriate knowledge, usually but not always,
Speaker 2: its creator testifies that it fairly and accurately represents the
Speaker 2: information it contains, the layout of an area shown in
Speaker 2: a map, or the events of a traffic stop shown
Speaker 2: on dashcam footage. In other words, documents are authentic so
Speaker 2: long as it's established that they are what they purport
Speaker 2: to be. Always appreciate the deep dives you do. Keep
Speaker 2: up the good.
Speaker 3: Work, Thanks Thomas. That is really interesting, and I think
Speaker 3: it adds a nice dimension because we were talking about
Speaker 3: how we are constantly making authenticity evaluations of people in
Speaker 3: like a social context, where in most cases you would
Speaker 3: say the stakes are are very low, like you're making
Speaker 3: judgments about people just kind of I don't know, to
Speaker 3: decide whether you like them or not, or whether you
Speaker 3: want to hang out with them or not, or something
Speaker 3: like that, you know, where there's not a whole lot
Speaker 3: on the line. Obviously authenticity in court cases the stakes
Speaker 3: are very high.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting, like you said, as to point out
Speaker 2: the like the chain of ownership and an item, like
Speaker 2: I wonder how this factors into the ownership of collectibles, like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is the stop watch that once belonged to this
Speaker 2: famous individual, but they weren't the most recent owners of it.
Speaker 2: At what point do previous owners supersede the most noteworthy
Speaker 2: owner of a given object and so forth, without even
Speaker 2: getting into the whole ship of THESEUS.
Speaker 3: Situation, Yeah, totally. So it is interesting to see the
Speaker 3: difference here and how authenticity is applied to these physical objects.
Speaker 3: These have more similarity to what we were talking about
Speaker 3: with like works of art in the Walter Benjamin sense.
Speaker 3: But also coming back to personal authenticity, I was trying
Speaker 3: to think, well, does it really matter in a court
Speaker 3: case whether somebody is being true to themselves in their
Speaker 3: testimony or not. Wouldn't it just matter whether what they
Speaker 3: are saying is factually correct or not? And in some
Speaker 3: cases I think it would matter whether they're being true
Speaker 3: to themselves, because there are cases where in courts you're
Speaker 3: trying to establish what someone's true inner thoughts and feelings
Speaker 3: are when you're searching for motive, like motive greatly implicates authenticity. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So anyway, it is interesting to approach something like
Speaker 2: this from the legal standpoint because, like you know, legally,
Speaker 2: you need to reach that point of action on something.
Speaker 2: You can't just philosophize and say, well, you know, nobody
Speaker 2: really knows what's authentic. Yeah, you need to get down
Speaker 2: to brass tax at some point and say like, okay,
Speaker 2: we've got to move on this. Is this person guilty
Speaker 2: or innocent? Is are charges going to be placed or
Speaker 2: are they not? And so forth?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I guess ideally in a court case you
Speaker 3: would have really strong physical evidence to rely on, but
Speaker 3: in a lot of cases that's not how it is,
Speaker 3: and you actually do have to you know, you have
Speaker 3: juries essentially doing vibe assessments on witnesses to see like
Speaker 3: does it seem like they're telling the truth? Do I
Speaker 3: get a genuine vibe from them?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And then of course, yeah, obviously you have cases
Speaker 2: of evidence that has been corrupted but at the time
Speaker 2: it's thought to be legit or you know, later on
Speaker 2: looking back at genetic evidence and so forth. So, Yeah,
Speaker 2: authenticity has an interesting trajectory through any given legal system.
Speaker 3: I imagine, Okay, I'm gonna do this. Next message from Aurica.
Speaker 3: Aurica says, Happy Wednesday. I am enjoying your miniseries on authenticity.
Speaker 3: It is such a large topic and hard to articulate
Speaker 3: what qualities authenticity should encompass. One aspect that was left
Speaker 3: out of Part one was how authenticity and mental health
Speaker 3: are connected. The study of the NBA students was quite interesting.
Speaker 3: I also think mental health was glossed over too quickly
Speaker 3: and lumped in with mood, affecting self authenticity. As a
Speaker 3: mental health counselor, I do feel I gauge authenticity as
Speaker 3: a major factor in my career. However, I view authenticity
Speaker 3: as the amount of energy one uses to be in
Speaker 3: any given situation. People are extremely resilient and find themselves
Speaker 3: in a multitude of uncomfortable circumstances. There are indicators from
Speaker 3: the facial expressions, eye movements, tone, mannerisms, etc. To go
Speaker 3: into determining how much effort or energy a person is
Speaker 3: using to communicate. If there is a lot of effort
Speaker 3: for casual conversations or vice versa, if there is seemingly
Speaker 3: no effort for difficult ones, that is an indicator that
Speaker 3: something is off. It's the idea of masking self for
Speaker 3: protection or potentially grounds to explore further. Obviously, the everyday
Speaker 3: person is not asking strangers in class. Quote have you
Speaker 3: ever made a plan to hurt yourself or in your life?
Speaker 3: Therapists look for patterns and responses, rephrase questions and ask
Speaker 3: again to look for similar mannerisms or changing behaviors. Depending
Speaker 3: on the goal of the session, Those minute changes would
Speaker 3: be called to the attention of the patient, As some
Speaker 3: have no clue what is actually going on inside themselves.
Speaker 3: Most people try counseling because they do not know who
Speaker 3: they are or how to access their inner world. A
Speaker 3: slightly different take on authenticity, I do love the notion
Speaker 3: that a person can never truly know another's inner self
Speaker 3: and therefore cannot make a judgment about their external behaviors
Speaker 3: as being authentic. People are so complex. It's worrying to
Speaker 3: think how many decisions are made based on other's abilities
Speaker 3: to determine authenticity. Thank you for this one, Aurica. Well
Speaker 3: thanks Arca. Really interesting thoughts there, and I really like
Speaker 3: your adding this other understanding of authenticity because I think
Speaker 3: this is something that already squares with part of our
Speaker 3: lay understanding of authenticity. Like, when you're making authenticity checks
Speaker 3: on people outside of a therapeutic context, I think part
Speaker 3: of what you are looking for is whether it appears
Speaker 3: that they are are struggling in a social interaction and
Speaker 3: that may lead to totally unfair judgments. But I can
Speaker 3: see in the case of a therapist, how it could
Speaker 3: be really useful for a person to get that information
Speaker 3: reflected back to them like that. They might not realize
Speaker 3: it's coming off like they are struggling to engage in
Speaker 3: a simple interaction, or maybe they are seeming to be
Speaker 3: very disconnected or take too easily a difficult topic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right. This next one comes to us
Speaker 2: from Brittany. Brittany writes sa It says, Dear Robin Joe,
Speaker 2: your episodes on authenticity prompted me to write in about
Speaker 2: a recent experience. Salom dancing before herod and eighteen seventy
Speaker 2: six oil painting by Gustav Moreau. It is one of
Speaker 2: my favorite works of art. Last month I had the
Speaker 2: opportunity to see it on a trip to Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: It was wonderful to see the minute detail and brushstrokes,
Speaker 2: the lush colors and crackling from age. I was able
Speaker 2: to get very close and look at it from various angles.
Speaker 2: It was a true pleasure, an almost sublime experience. Seeing
Speaker 2: this painting in pixels years ago didn't lead to any
Speaker 2: disappointment and seeing it in person, because I might have
Speaker 2: never known it existed if it weren't for an online reproduction.
Speaker 2: As Rob noted on Booklan's Isle of the Dead, the
Speaker 2: lighting effected his viewing experience as it did mine. Of
Speaker 2: the Moreau. It makes me wonder if any work of
Speaker 2: art is truly authentic outside of the circumstances in which
Speaker 2: it was created. That's interesting, Like is the can you
Speaker 2: accurately understand the painting outside of the artist's studio, Like
Speaker 2: you'd really have to go to Pablo Picasso's, you know,
Speaker 2: his his art studio while he's there, while he's alive
Speaker 2: in his lifetime, and have him show it to you.
Speaker 2: And even then you're seeing it at the point of
Speaker 2: completion and not the like you weren't there for the
Speaker 2: experience of it being made. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe one of those things where you can't identify
Speaker 3: what actually would be the true experience of a work
Speaker 3: of art, but you can identify increasing layers of alienation
Speaker 3: and artificiality as you get further and further from the
Speaker 3: original experience. Does that make sense? Like there there there
Speaker 3: isn't a one hundred percent true experience, but somehow there
Speaker 3: are things that are more artificial.
Speaker 2: And of course, another thing to think about is that
Speaker 2: when you go to an art gallery, and this of
Speaker 2: course is going to be something that is exploited by
Speaker 2: art galleries. You know, certainly if they're good, if the
Speaker 2: person behind it is good and knows what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Is that you're not just viewing individual pieces. You're viewing
Speaker 2: pieces in sequence. You're viewing pieces in relation to other pieces.
Speaker 2: They might be. It might be in relation to another
Speaker 2: piece by the same artist, it might be in relation
Speaker 2: to another piece in a similar vein a similar subject matter,
Speaker 2: similar timeframe. You know, there's so many ways to approach it,
Speaker 2: and that can lead to some very interesting things going on.
Speaker 2: First of all, thematically, like what happens when I look
Speaker 2: at this painting by this artist and then I look
Speaker 2: at this other one that is maybe similar in scope
Speaker 2: or something. And then likewise, when you get into pieces
Speaker 2: that are more three dimensional and or potentially either cast
Speaker 2: light themselves or reflect light in interesting ways, those can
Speaker 2: create there can be an interplay between these pieces. For instance,
Speaker 2: if you're in a room there's a piece piece by
Speaker 2: Anish Kapoor, who often uses, you know, these these mirror
Speaker 2: surfaced objects, and then there are pieces by other artists,
Speaker 2: like his work is going to interact with those pieces,
Speaker 2: and the way you experience those pieces is defined by
Speaker 2: what else is in the room, including other people. So
Speaker 2: it's it's fascinating to think about all that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know. I was also just thinking because
Speaker 3: I had to look up this painting that Britney shared,
Speaker 3: the Salome Dancing before Herod by Gustav Moreau. It's a
Speaker 3: great painting. I love this and I have seen this before,
Speaker 3: I realized once I pulled it up here, but it
Speaker 3: made me think about how there are just esthetic qualities
Speaker 3: of a work of art, maybe you know, conceptual qualities,
Speaker 3: but aesthetic qualities as well that can cause one, I think,
Speaker 3: to have a a an either closer or further reaction
Speaker 3: to it. To either react to it very much by
Speaker 3: getting lost in the work and just experiencing it directly,
Speaker 3: or qualities that cause one to kind of step back
Speaker 3: and think about it. So I think a great example
Speaker 3: would be the Treachery of Imagery or whatever it was,
Speaker 3: the you know, the Magret painting we talked about earlier.
Speaker 3: This is literally it's almost like an essay in a painting,
Speaker 3: it's like presenting a concept to you and asking you
Speaker 3: to think metacognitively about what art means and how you're
Speaker 3: processing it. And then there are other works of art
Speaker 3: that invite you more to just have an emotional response,
Speaker 3: to imagine you were almost in the room with the
Speaker 3: subject of the painting, or to experience it in a
Speaker 3: less thinking way. And it's funny. I think this painting
Speaker 3: by Moreau kind of does both at the same time.
Speaker 3: In one sense, it's an incredibly emotionally evocative image. It
Speaker 3: does invite me to get lost in it. But on
Speaker 3: the other hand, it kind of makes me think because
Speaker 3: the way it is painted, and this may just be
Speaker 3: Moreau's style, I don't know Moreau very well. It looks
Speaker 3: almost like an image projected into mist. It has this
Speaker 3: very airy, cloud life like ethereal ephemeral quality. It looks
Speaker 3: like the the image is almost like a dream that
Speaker 3: could could disappear at any moment, and it makes me
Speaker 3: it makes me wonder if it's suggesting something about the
Speaker 3: ephemerality of art or of the story on which this
Speaker 3: is based.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's to me. It has the look of
Speaker 2: like you can imagine that this chamber is just choked
Speaker 2: with like incense, smoke or something, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, thank you, Brittany.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some great, great points in this, and I think
Speaker 2: we could go on and on just about the way
Speaker 2: that viewing art is such a singular experience. All right. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, at this point, we have so many more
Speaker 2: listener mails that we had on the document here for today,
Speaker 2: but we didn't have time to get to them, you know,
Speaker 2: stuff dealing with other Weird House episodes, more Dune, more authenticity.
Speaker 2: So we're just gonna have to come back to all
Speaker 2: of this and the next Lister Mail. Lister Mail comes
Speaker 2: out on Mondays, and the Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: podcast feed our core episodes come out on Tuesdays and
Speaker 2: Thursdays short form episode ons that might be a monster fact,
Speaker 2: an artifact, or Anamalia stupendium. Though I can't do that
Speaker 2: one every week because the voice is a bit it's
Speaker 2: a bit rough on the old throat here. But then
Speaker 2: on Fridays, we of course do Weird House Cinema. That's
Speaker 2: our time to set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 2: talk about a weird movie. So hey, go ahead and
Speaker 2: write in about anything we've covered in the past, on
Speaker 2: present episodes or potentially for future episodes of any of
Speaker 2: these shows.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.