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 Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And it is Monday, the
Speaker 3: day of each week that we read back messages from
Speaker 3: the Stuff to Blow your Mind mailbox. If you have
Speaker 3: never gotten in touch before, why not give it a shot.
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com. Whatever you want to send us fine.
Speaker 3: Of course, we always appreciate feedback to recent episodes. If
Speaker 3: you have something interesting to add to a topic we've
Speaker 3: talked about, or a correction you need to make, whatever,
Speaker 3: just send it on our way that is contact at
Speaker 3: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Let's see rob.
Speaker 3: I think I'm going to kick things off today with
Speaker 3: this message from Adam, which was a response to our
Speaker 3: Vault episodes on throwing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's have it.
Speaker 3: Adam says, Hello, my favorite podcasters and producer, longtime listener,
Speaker 3: first time quote Collar on your Humans and Animals Throwing series,
Speaker 3: you discussed humans in their throws using a slingshot structure
Speaker 3: in the shoulder. I am a disc golf player and
Speaker 3: longtime martial arts practitioner and have found a different mechanism
Speaker 3: for the transfer of force momentum. When I go to
Speaker 3: throw a disc during a game, the motion I use
Speaker 3: is more analogous to a whip motion, starting at my step,
Speaker 3: moving through my hips, and being released by my arm.
Speaker 3: During this action, I notice, when I've thrown properly that
Speaker 3: the tips of my fingers feel the most force and
Speaker 3: can even bruise. I believe that this whip like motion
Speaker 3: is also present in the animal kingdom many places, and
Speaker 3: your discussion, which I listened to during a game, made
Speaker 3: me think of my anatomical structure in a way I
Speaker 3: hadn't before. Please keep doing what you're doing. You've gotten
Speaker 3: me through many day long trips and have kept my
Speaker 3: mind active with respect to Adam, well, thank you, Adam.
Speaker 3: I'm a little perplexed though, about the idea that you're
Speaker 3: listening during a game like you can. I guess maybe
Speaker 3: in disc golf, can that be kind of a solitary
Speaker 3: game where you don't need to communicate.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I'm assuming so or it. Certainly he's
Speaker 2: not listening to us during competitive play, Yeah, because I
Speaker 2: would not advise that, because you know, I think We
Speaker 2: have a pretty chill vibe going on here, and you know,
Speaker 2: we tend to be exactly what you expect out of everything.
Speaker 2: But you know, I don't want to be held responsible
Speaker 2: should we throw your game off.
Speaker 3: I think I was confusing disc golf with ultimate frisbee, right,
Speaker 3: or that's a team sport where you need to like
Speaker 3: hear what's going on and communicate.
Speaker 2: But I think so this would be penultimate frisbee.
Speaker 3: I have actually played disc golf before, and in the
Speaker 3: version I played, one thing I really liked about it
Speaker 3: was simply the the design of the holes. So like Rob,
Speaker 3: have you played this where there's sort of a pole,
Speaker 3: like a metal pole, where you're trying to get your
Speaker 3: disc to land in a cup at the bottom of
Speaker 3: the pole. And when I played, there was like an
Speaker 3: arrangement of hanging chains that function kind of like the
Speaker 3: net in a basketball hoop, except I guess it was
Speaker 3: different because what the chains would do is if you
Speaker 3: hit the chains with your with your disc, the disc
Speaker 3: would just kind of drop down into the hole, like
Speaker 3: it would absorb the energy and the thing would fall down.
Speaker 3: It was an elegant system. I liked that design.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't I haven't played that. I've thrown a
Speaker 2: frisbee around, and I've played discs of Tron. Those are
Speaker 2: those are my main activities with the disc.
Speaker 3: But anyway, thank you Adam.
Speaker 2: All Right, this next one is a response to our
Speaker 2: series on Hermit Crabs. I believe this was a response
Speaker 2: to the first episode kicking off our three part series.
Speaker 2: This comes to us from Hannah, but I'm gonna take
Speaker 2: a little creative license in reading this.
Speaker 4: Across the barren landscape of January, tattered streamers and cracked
Speaker 4: champagne flutes, rolling in the gutters in the bleak midwinter,
Speaker 4: the coldest time for toes the season when your car
Speaker 4: is somehow either freezing or way too hot. But never
Speaker 4: just write. When we return blearily to our occupations, uncertain
Speaker 4: of our grasp on reality, the universe, or anything slightly bloated,
Speaker 4: but already regretting our new workout regime, a hope came
Speaker 4: to us. Crabs are back on stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 3: Thanks for that, Thank you, Verner Hertzog.
Speaker 2: Indeed, Crabs are back on stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 2: Came back for a three part series, and like we said,
Speaker 2: who knows what the future will bring. There's so much
Speaker 2: crab content out there, and we've discussed crabs a lot,
Speaker 2: but there's so much more.
Speaker 3: I wonder if Herzog ever has done anything on hermit
Speaker 3: crabs that seems like it seems perfect for him, you know,
Speaker 3: like a like a documentary on the shell trading and
Speaker 3: the battle for the shells.
Speaker 2: I would not be surprised at all. I mean, the
Speaker 2: man has a tremendous filmography, a lot of documentaries in there.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen them all. The main ones I've seen
Speaker 2: from him are the two that he did with volcanogist
Speaker 2: Clive Oppenheimer, the one on Volcanoes and the other one Fireball.
Speaker 2: Those are both tremendous, but there are no crabs in
Speaker 2: them that I remember. But you know, occasionally there's just
Speaker 2: something that else that just wanders through the scene that
Speaker 2: bears rumination from Herzog, like like just a stray dog
Speaker 2: in the street, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine how he would pronounce the phrase merciless
Speaker 3: eviction I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: There, It would be go I would attempt it, But
Speaker 2: my impersonation is it's just a shallow, shallow attempt to
Speaker 2: to grasp the majesty of Werner Herzog's narration.
Speaker 3: All right, This next message comes to us from Matt.
Speaker 3: Matt says, hey, Robert and Joe. I was just listening
Speaker 3: to your episode about hermit crabs, and you kept bringing
Speaker 3: up the handedness of the shells and crabs several times
Speaker 3: throughout the episode, and it brought back some information I
Speaker 3: learned in biology. Though it sounded like the handed direction
Speaker 3: in crabs might be species specific. At least in some snails,
Speaker 3: the direction their shell rotates is the result of maternal effect.
Speaker 3: This means that direction isn't decided by the individual, but
Speaker 3: rather their mother. In the case we studied, the snail
Speaker 3: shell direction was genetically decided, with right handed being recessive
Speaker 3: and left handed being dominant, but it was the genetics
Speaker 3: of the mother that started the spiral. This means that
Speaker 3: you kind of a snail that is genetically left handed
Speaker 3: have a right handed shell because their mother had right
Speaker 3: handed genes, who potentially would have a left handed shell
Speaker 3: themselves based on their mother's genetics. I think it's a
Speaker 3: pretty interesting thing to think about and thought i'd share. Also,
Speaker 3: I was thinking about possible topics for discussion, and I've
Speaker 3: got a couple. First, the witching hour aka the Devil's Hour.
Speaker 3: This is something that was brought to my attention recently.
Speaker 3: The thing is, I distinctly remember that hour starting at midnight,
Speaker 3: but it seems right now it's more commonly assumed to
Speaker 3: be three am. I have clear memories of old cartoons
Speaker 3: featuring a clock striking twelve when supernatural events begin to happen,
Speaker 3: as well as poems and the like. I had also
Speaker 3: always associated this with the general belief that the veil
Speaker 3: keeping ghosts, fairies and the like out of our world
Speaker 3: is thinnest in the place between and midnight, marking the
Speaker 3: time version of this being the point between one day
Speaker 3: and the next. This could be a topic you might
Speaker 3: look into, or perhaps even the idea of a place
Speaker 3: between and its association with magical happenings. That being more cultural,
Speaker 3: I have another more science you might look into, the
Speaker 3: circadian rhythm, and in particular in things like plants. It
Speaker 3: seems everything has something like that rhythm, and there has
Speaker 3: been some research into plants related to the effectiveness of
Speaker 3: using herbicides based on the time of day it is applied.
Speaker 3: Many of these could be a good topic for a
Speaker 3: future episode, or at least lead due to something to
Speaker 3: discuss anyway. Love the podcast. It makes my forty minute
Speaker 3: commute to work so much more bearable. Thanks Matt oh,
Speaker 3: this is fabulous. Yeah, there's some wonderful suggestions in here
Speaker 3: and now the whole mention of the cut off points
Speaker 3: for various things like the Witching Hour reminds me of
Speaker 3: something I just learned about that I was not aware of.
Speaker 3: I'm not a huge April Fool's Day fan. I think
Speaker 3: it can be, but it almost always isn't. And I
Speaker 3: was watching the first episode of the latest season of
Speaker 3: the BBC series Ghosts, and which is a fabulous series
Speaker 3: if anyone out there hasn't seen it, but they have
Speaker 3: an episode that deals with April Fool's Day and they
Speaker 3: mention that you don't want to carry out your April
Speaker 3: Fool's Day gag after midday. This is apparently the tradition
Speaker 3: in the UK that if you carry out an April
Speaker 3: Fool's Day prank after midday, you are the fool and
Speaker 3: you have stepped out of line. And I have to
Speaker 3: say I like that. I like the idea of taking
Speaker 3: a holiday that it's not even a holiday, it's sort
Speaker 3: of a holiday. Taking an April Fool's Day, a day
Speaker 3: I already don't care for, and let's just go ahead
Speaker 3: and cut it in half. Let's just go out in
Speaker 3: a half fifty percent less of that. Maybe in time
Speaker 3: we can work it down to like just twenty five
Speaker 3: percent of the day can be utilized. Now I would
Speaker 3: have a question about that, which is, okay, let's assume
Speaker 3: you work all of your April Fools into the witching hour,
Speaker 3: Like you're only allowed to do April Fools pranks between
Speaker 3: three and four am on the on the night of
Speaker 3: April first. So part of what I hate about April
Speaker 3: Fool's Day these days is the asynchronous nature of how
Speaker 3: pranks are propagated in the age of the Internet. So,
Speaker 3: like you post an article that's an April Fool's joke
Speaker 3: that a lot of these are not even funny to
Speaker 3: begin with, but imagine it is funny and you get to,
Speaker 3: you know, read it on the morning of April first.
Speaker 3: It's usually still on the internet after that. And so
Speaker 3: I think most of these pranks, which are largely online
Speaker 3: in one way or another these days, there would be
Speaker 3: asynchronous reception of the prank, even if the prank is
Speaker 3: you know, sort of quote published during the allowed time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it muddies the waters, and the waters remain to
Speaker 2: some degree muddied until they clear out a bit. But
Speaker 2: you know, on top of that, there's so much disinformation
Speaker 2: and misinformation on the internet. Do we really need one
Speaker 2: day of the year that's all about doing more of it,
Speaker 2: even if it's supposedly just for laughs, And again a
Speaker 2: lot of them are not calibrated well enough to really
Speaker 2: be laugh intensive. There's some some establishments do it well.
Speaker 2: I always like the the MPR April Fool's Day gags,
Speaker 2: But you know, it's it's a rare occurrence that I
Speaker 2: actually enjoy one of these things. But to your point,
Speaker 2: if you cut it down to like three in between
Speaker 2: three and four am, on one hand, great limiting it
Speaker 2: to just like that one hour or so, But then
Speaker 2: you're pushing it all into like the wee morning hours.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's going to inspire like even worse practical jokes
Speaker 2: you're gonna get It's gonna be, you know, trying to
Speaker 2: wake people up and so forth. I don't know, they
Speaker 2: just need to get rid of.
Speaker 3: It all right now. One message we got this week
Speaker 3: was a follow up to an email we talked about
Speaker 3: last week. Last week we got an email from Jim,
Speaker 3: a listener who works as an environmental and domestic pest
Speaker 3: controller in Australia, who expressed some skepticism about the subject
Speaker 3: of rat kings. Now, we did an episode on ratkings
Speaker 3: back in December, and one of the big questions about
Speaker 3: ratkings is do they occur naturally or are they all
Speaker 3: hoaxes perpetrated by humans. We looked at some scientific sources
Speaker 3: that investigated the issue and concluded that more likely than not,
Speaker 3: they probably do occur naturally, and at least I was
Speaker 3: somewhat persuaded by that. But Jim expressed a few reasons
Speaker 3: for skepticism about whether rat kings do occur in nature.
Speaker 3: First of all, he just mentioned that in his many
Speaker 3: years of work, has you know, looked, he has found
Speaker 3: the lots and lots of rat nests, but has never
Speaker 3: come across anything like a ratking. But he also mentioned
Speaker 3: that and here's a slightly grizzly detail coming. Here's a
Speaker 3: warning that when a rat is caught by the tail
Speaker 3: in a trap, it will often sever its own tail
Speaker 3: to escape, in Jim's experience, presumably gnawing the tail off.
Speaker 3: So you know you could extrapolate from that that if
Speaker 3: rat kings were to occur in nature with live rats,
Speaker 3: you would wonder why they don't gnaw their tails off
Speaker 3: and escape. Now, I thought that was interesting information. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that's decisive one way or another, especially
Speaker 3: about the rat biting its own tail off. But I
Speaker 3: asked in the episode whether Jim was talking about the
Speaker 3: same species that has been observed in alleged natural rat kings,
Speaker 3: because if you recall from that episode, basically the supposedly
Speaker 3: natural rat kings all feature Rattus ratus, commonly known as
Speaker 3: the black rat, rather than any other species like Ratus norvegicus.
Speaker 3: So Jim writes, I wrote to you about ratkings and
Speaker 3: forgot to mention the species we were controlling. My apologies,
Speaker 3: and yes it is Ratus ratus. And he goes on
Speaker 3: to say that Ratus ratus is a serious pest in Australia,
Speaker 3: that Ratus norvegicus is also in all Australia but is
Speaker 3: mainly found in coastal areas, and that Australia also has
Speaker 3: several native species of rats, but those are threatened due
Speaker 3: to introduced species such as foxes and cats. And the
Speaker 3: introduced rats. So thank you for the update, Jim. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I would still say that the severing of the tail
Speaker 3: when trapped does seem to be relevant information to plug
Speaker 3: into the likelihood calculation there though. Another thing I would
Speaker 3: comment on is, you know, Jim, you were saying that
Speaker 3: you've never come across a ratking, and it may just
Speaker 3: be that, even if they do occur in nature, maybe
Speaker 3: they're just very rare, so you can see lots of
Speaker 3: rats nest and never see one. But another thing I
Speaker 3: would comment on is that almost all alleged ratkings come
Speaker 3: from places with very cold winter weather. The sources we
Speaker 3: were reading about them and mentioned this, So usually there
Speaker 3: are places on the north end of continental Europe like Germany, Poland,
Speaker 3: Estonia and places like that. And Jim, I wonder if
Speaker 3: where you are in Australia, I think you said you
Speaker 3: were in the area of Canberra. I wonder whether that
Speaker 3: would have cold enough winters to create rat kings if
Speaker 3: rat kings are indeed created in nature.
Speaker 4: So I don't know.
Speaker 3: Interesting question still open in my mind.
Speaker 2: All right, This one comes to us from Jessper. Jessper
Speaker 2: writes in and says, hey, Joe and Rob thanks for
Speaker 2: another great episode. This is responding to the rat king
Speaker 2: episode from last month. There is indeed at least one
Speaker 2: metal band that uses rat king iconography, the doom metal
Speaker 2: outfit Throne List from my hometown Milmo, Sweden. You can
Speaker 2: listen to them here and they include a link for
Speaker 2: us to follow and check out some artwork below and
Speaker 2: into the email. Jasper has pasted the logo here for
Speaker 2: this band that does indeed contain a grotesque rat king.
Speaker 3: Right, and it does seem like perfect metal band iconography.
Speaker 3: An interesting connection. So the band is called Throneless and
Speaker 3: they use a rat king on at least one of
Speaker 3: their album covers or something, so some imagery associated with
Speaker 3: the band. I thought that was interesting. This is probably
Speaker 3: just a coincidence. But remember in the episode we talked
Speaker 3: about the history of the term rat king and how
Speaker 3: the book chapter that we talked about documented that the
Speaker 3: earliest uses of rat king all apparently referred to this
Speaker 3: old and venerable rat who was like loyally served by
Speaker 3: the other rats in his nest, you know, perhaps even
Speaker 3: sometimes perching on a throne made of twisted tails. But
Speaker 3: then somehow, over time the concept of a rat King
Speaker 3: became kingless and became throneless. There was no longer a
Speaker 3: king being served by the other rats. It was just
Speaker 3: the rats with the twisted tails. Though again, I would
Speaker 3: be surprised if that connection is what the band had
Speaker 3: in mind. It seems more likely, I don't know, you know,
Speaker 3: it's metal, it's probably just more like whoa, that's a
Speaker 3: gruesome image.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's most likely here.
Speaker 3: And by the way, Jasper, I will say I didn't
Speaker 3: know this band beforehand, but I checked out the band
Speaker 3: camp page you linked and listened to a couple of tracks,
Speaker 3: and yeah, I kind of liked it. It was my
Speaker 3: sort of thing. I'm less into like the death metal
Speaker 3: and metal core type stuff and more into the stoner
Speaker 3: doom kind of metal, and this was in that genre,
Speaker 3: and I it was a pretty pretty heavy example of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I listened to just part of one of
Speaker 2: the tracks, and it did seem like it was hidden
Speaker 2: on that doom metal, stoner metal kind of vibe. I
Speaker 2: have another musical response here. This one comes to us
Speaker 2: via discord. And if you're like, WHOA, what's you have
Speaker 2: a discord? Well, yeah, there is a stuff to blow
Speaker 2: your mind. Discord and if you would like to join it,
Speaker 2: you just need to email us and we'll send you
Speaker 2: the link anyway, Taylor says, it is a quick comment
Speaker 2: here per the synth Wave Conversation on the recent Listener
Speaker 2: Mail episode. I'm not old enough to have particular nostalgic
Speaker 2: ties to this kind of music, but I really dig it. Nonetheless,
Speaker 2: that said, I am old enough to have grown up
Speaker 2: with a lot of eight to sixteen bit video game
Speaker 2: tracks that gave me an early appreciation for synth music
Speaker 2: in general. And that's a great point. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: video game music has also influenced and created whole genres
Speaker 2: of electronic music.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know what the name for this genre is,
Speaker 3: but there is a thing I've heard where people will
Speaker 3: go through and like painstakingly recreate a piece of original
Speaker 3: popular music fully in the like sound textures of one
Speaker 3: of these video game consoles. So it's like the song
Speaker 3: is made all out of the sounds that you had
Speaker 3: available as a music programmer of like a game Boy
Speaker 3: game or an AS game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is what this is considered chiptune.
Speaker 3: Oh that sounds a failure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know that. I've listened to any
Speaker 2: like dedicated chiptune artists recently, you know, but it seems
Speaker 2: like there have been a number of bands that have
Speaker 2: at least been inspired by it to some degree, you know.
Speaker 2: So you'll hear a little bit of it sprinkled in
Speaker 2: here and there.
Speaker 3: Man, those Anys game soundtracks were really good at pumping
Speaker 3: you up. There are some that I know I'll never forget.
Speaker 3: You remember the original nes Batman side scroller game and
Speaker 3: the music in that, the music.
Speaker 2: But I think I remember the game, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where you could like cling to the walls and
Speaker 3: it was cool.
Speaker 2: All right, Joe, I think we have time for one
Speaker 2: weird house cinema listener mail. What do you have for us?
Speaker 3: Oh? We got this one from Fernando. This is in
Speaker 3: response to I Come in Peace starring Dolph Londergren. Fernando says, Hello,
Speaker 3: Robert and Joe. Longtime listener, and I might have written
Speaker 3: to you before. I just finished listening to your episode
Speaker 3: on I Come in Peace. I am old enough that
Speaker 3: I actually saw that movie in theaters with my buddies. Congratulations, Fernando.
Speaker 3: Fernando says, anyway, since at the end of the episode,
Speaker 3: you were talking about notable alien buddy cops. I thought
Speaker 3: I would bring to your attention one of my favorite
Speaker 3: movies of the genre, The Hidden It is gory, suspenseful,
Speaker 3: and I believe would fit right in weird house cinema. Also,
Speaker 3: I wanted to say hello, see you later, keep up
Speaker 3: the good work. Cheers Fernando, well Fernando, thank you, hello back,
Speaker 3: and thank you for getting in touch. I looked up
Speaker 3: the trailer to this and this does look quite quite
Speaker 3: amusing there. So it looks like a cop movie, sort
Speaker 3: of a cop movie variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Speaker 3: So an Earthling gets possessed. Everybody's like, I've known him
Speaker 3: for years, you know, he's he's my neighbor. He's a
Speaker 3: nice guy. So why is it that he is now
Speaker 3: robbing banks and looting pawn shops like the replicant. The
Speaker 3: alien replicants are just doing crimes, and it seems that
Speaker 3: only an odd couple of mismatched cops can stop them,
Speaker 3: and one of those cops is Kyle McLaughlin. The other
Speaker 3: weird thing is that it appears to have at least two,
Speaker 3: maybe more cast members from Twin Peaks. M Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so of course there's coll MacLaughlin, agent Cooper. He plays
Speaker 3: one of the cops here, but one of the bad
Speaker 3: guys from Twin Peaks seems to be one of the
Speaker 3: alien crime doers.
Speaker 2: And then you also got a klue Galligher in there.
Speaker 2: So it's a it's a great cast. Have you seen
Speaker 2: this one, Rotten, I haven't seen this one. This is
Speaker 2: this is not one I'm really familiar with. I don't
Speaker 2: even recognize the poster art in the VHS art that's
Speaker 2: popping up here, So I don't know this one. This
Speaker 2: one's off my radar.
Speaker 3: We'll give it a look. Well, we'll see, we'll see
Speaker 3: if it is right.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close out
Speaker 2: this episode of Listener Mail, but hey, keep them coming,
Speaker 2: keep writing in about past, current and future possible episodes
Speaker 2: of Stuff to bliwl Your Mind, Weird House Cinema, anything
Speaker 2: else we're doing in the Stuff to Blil Your Mind
Speaker 2: podcast feed. And hey, speaking of that feed, if you
Speaker 2: haven't reviewed it, rated it, given it a bunch of
Speaker 2: nice stars. That's something you can do that helps out
Speaker 2: the show. Go go where they allow you to do
Speaker 2: that and do that for us, we would greatly appreciate it,
Speaker 2: and if you have critiques of the show, you know, hey,
Speaker 2: write in about it. That's the best way to get
Speaker 2: in touch with us to air your grievances or whatnot.
Speaker 2: And finally, if you listen to the show on an
Speaker 2: Apple device, if you use Apple Podcasts and so forth,
Speaker 2: why don't you go on in there and check and
Speaker 2: make sure you're still subscribed and that you are receiving downloads.
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
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