Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And hey, we're bringing you a listener Maile episode. We've
Speaker 1: got Carney the Robot out here with us today. Who
Speaker 1: seems something weird is going on with Carney. I don't
Speaker 1: have you figured out what this is, Robert, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just finished running the diagnosis software on our good mail
Speaker 1: bod here. It turns out he is suffering from symptoms
Speaker 1: of multiple Highlander personality disorder. Oh no, yeah, he was
Speaker 1: apparently infected by that recent Highlander to the Science sing
Speaker 1: episode that we did. And so he keeps altering his
Speaker 1: ego and his character personification from being uh Rami raised
Speaker 1: to being Connor, to being the Kurgan to being cycling accents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like crazy. He was in Michael Ironside mode just a
Speaker 1: few minutes ago, was really running amuck. Um, he settled
Speaker 1: down a little bit. He's back in Connor mode right now.
Speaker 1: Do you know what he was talking about a few
Speaker 1: minutes ago when he just kept saying it's pronounced Whovianuvian. Well,
Speaker 1: he was echoing the sentiments of a number of different
Speaker 1: listeners who wrote in UH to tell us that fans
Speaker 1: of the TV series and overall sci fi franchise Doctor
Speaker 1: who are referred to as Houvian's No, that's incorrect. They're
Speaker 1: referred to as uvi acts. I don't know, Joe, I
Speaker 1: don't know if the data really supports this. No, I'll
Speaker 1: be proved correct as always. Okay, al right, well, uh anyway,
Speaker 1: despite his programming issues right now, UH Carney does have
Speaker 1: quite a number of listener mails for us related to
Speaker 1: different episodes that we've we've put out over the past month. Now,
Speaker 1: as always, we don't have time to respond to every
Speaker 1: bit of listener mail or of social media interaction that
Speaker 1: comes in, and we don't have time in this episode
Speaker 1: to read all of the great listener mails that have
Speaker 1: come in over the past month or so. But we're
Speaker 1: gonna try and touch some some of the high points
Speaker 1: and respond to some of the more conversational bits that
Speaker 1: have come in. Yeah, But, just as we always say,
Speaker 1: if if we didn't have time to respond to you
Speaker 1: and you're not featured on the episode, don't worry. It's
Speaker 1: not because we didn't like your email. We just don't
Speaker 1: have have We don't have all the time in the world.
Speaker 1: Here be it known that we do appreciate all the
Speaker 1: correspondence we get, so thank you so much, and please
Speaker 1: keep it coming. But I think we should go to
Speaker 1: our first email, Robert. All right, the first couple of
Speaker 1: listener mails we're gonna read here. I have to deal
Speaker 1: with our bugs under the Skin episode. So this one
Speaker 1: is from Dominique, who writes then and says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I was listening to the Bugs under the Skin episode
Speaker 1: and thought and experience I had would be worth sharing.
Speaker 1: One night a few months ago, I was walking around
Speaker 1: our backyard with a head lamp on, and as sometimes
Speaker 1: happens with lights at night, it attracted a few different
Speaker 1: insects that proceeded to fly around my head. It was
Speaker 1: a little annoying, but no big deal until one of
Speaker 1: them flew directly into my ear. Didn't hurt or anything,
Speaker 1: but it was surprisingly loud, like someone aggressively rubbing newspaper
Speaker 1: together right by my ear. And by the feel of it,
Speaker 1: I thought it was a small moth or something, maybe
Speaker 1: a half or inch show long or so I went
Speaker 1: inside and had my wife peek in there with an
Speaker 1: autoscope we have for our kids, and to my surprise,
Speaker 1: even as I was feeling and hearing this thing, she
Speaker 1: said she couldn't see anything at all. Annoyed and somewhat
Speaker 1: in disbelief, I proceeded to a flush my flush the
Speaker 1: ear out with some warm water and was surprised when
Speaker 1: out washed a tiny little white fly, maybe two millimeters
Speaker 1: in length. Apparently a really tiny set of wings beating
Speaker 1: directly on your ear drum can both feel and sound
Speaker 1: deceptively large. I believe it. Though this did not answer
Speaker 1: my biggest question, which is what were you doing with
Speaker 1: the headlamp out in the backyard, Dominique? Were you burying
Speaker 1: a body? What's happening here? There are a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons to go into your backyard with a headlamp, but
Speaker 1: mining for lead sulfide, maybe searching for the source of
Speaker 1: the nile. I mean, there are a number of reasons
Speaker 1: to go back there. Anyway, says thanks for the podcast, guys,
Speaker 1: I love every minute of it. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: he is he is from Florida. Of course, can be
Speaker 1: quite buggy, so that also explains it. Now, Robert, you
Speaker 1: mentioned in that episode that you once when you were
Speaker 1: a kid had a bug fly into your ear and
Speaker 1: that it was very allowed. So does this match your
Speaker 1: experience in newspaper? Absolutely, as he described it it it
Speaker 1: brought back sort of the sense memory of that that time.
Speaker 1: All right, we got another one about the bugs under
Speaker 1: the Skin episode. This one is from our listener. Ming
Speaker 1: Ming says, Hey, Robert and Joe, just listen to your
Speaker 1: episode on bugs under the Skin. And I loved it.
Speaker 1: Really gross and fascinating at the same time. The copious
Speaker 1: mentions of centipedes and orifices and bugs and ears reminded
Speaker 1: me of the duan Wu festival, so I thought i'd
Speaker 1: write in about it. I grew up in central China,
Speaker 1: and every duan Wu festival, my grandfather would crush up realger,
Speaker 1: which is a arsenic sulfide mineral. I actually had to
Speaker 1: look it up. I didn't know what that was, but
Speaker 1: so he would crush up realger to make xiong huang ju.
Speaker 1: I hope, I said that right. It's a type of
Speaker 1: yellow wine people drink to ward away evil as well
Speaker 1: as poisonous creatures. As a child at the time, I
Speaker 1: was only allowed a tiny bit of the wine to drink,
Speaker 1: but my grandfather would pour drops of it inside both
Speaker 1: my ears. When I would ask why, he would explain
Speaker 1: that it was to keep centipedes from crawling into my ears,
Speaker 1: because realgar was a powerful deterrent to the creepy Crawley's
Speaker 1: This featured heavily in mythology too, where centipede monsters or
Speaker 1: snake monsters, two of the five poisons in Chinese myth
Speaker 1: would be undone by realger. It was only with research
Speaker 1: just now brought on by the episode that I found
Speaker 1: out that rialgar is an arsenic sulfide mineral. I guess
Speaker 1: what keeps people away keeps bugs away too. Thanks as
Speaker 1: always for the show, my favorite in the Stuff Network. Ming, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Ming. We're glad you like it. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: I always love to hear from listeners who have spent
Speaker 1: time in China. I want to know a little more
Speaker 1: about this though. What does that feel like in the ear?
Speaker 1: The arsenic sulfide? Does that burn? What does that do?
Speaker 1: And is it indeed a preferable to an actual centipede
Speaker 1: in the ear? I suspect that it probably is. That's
Speaker 1: probably that's probably one of the practice emerged. Somebody got
Speaker 1: a centipede in the ear, and then they said, well
Speaker 1: this this kind of sucks, but it's still far better
Speaker 1: than worrying about centipedes in the ear. Okay, this next
Speaker 1: email concerns both dangerous foods and idiophones. So this is
Speaker 1: from our listener Joe. She lives in Malaysia, and Joe writes,
Speaker 1: I discovered your podcast and have been slowly working my
Speaker 1: way through all of the episodes. I happened to cross
Speaker 1: the episodes on dangerous foods and thought it would be
Speaker 1: fun to tell you about one that I love to eat.
Speaker 1: I don't think you've mentioned this yet, but I may
Speaker 1: be mistaken Sauropus, androgynus or andrew gynus. I guess um
Speaker 1: Here it's known as ken cook, menace, or Manechai. I
Speaker 1: particularly love when it's stir fried with eggs. It's a
Speaker 1: great source of vitamins and proteins. And she attaches a picture. However,
Speaker 1: when several Taiwanese people juiced and drank it, they ended
Speaker 1: up with lung failure and then death, and she attaches
Speaker 1: an article, but she explains the cause of death has
Speaker 1: been tentatively linked to the high amounts of alkaloids. Papa varying,
Speaker 1: but the exact mechanism is not yet known. It's proposed
Speaker 1: that cooking inactivates the deadly poison inside, rendering. It's something
Speaker 1: that can be that can only be consumed cooked or
Speaker 1: in small amounts of raw. Uh. Similar to some other
Speaker 1: things we looked at in these Dangerous Foods episodes, such
Speaker 1: as just common beans kidney beans. You know you should
Speaker 1: not eat them raw. Yeah, Our various culinary practices often
Speaker 1: are ways to make that which would kill us actually
Speaker 1: something we can eat be either by transforming it chemically
Speaker 1: through the process of cooking, or just uh, you know,
Speaker 1: regulating the amount of poison that we're taking in right. Uh, So,
Speaker 1: Joe continues, I usually take all my foreign friends to
Speaker 1: try it once, and now I have to add a
Speaker 1: warning to never ever consume it raw or juiced, digressing.
Speaker 1: I was also listening to the episode on idiophones, and
Speaker 1: I laughed out loud. When you use kiki as an
Speaker 1: example of something to mean sharper angular, there is a
Speaker 1: word in uh oh, and I actually don't know how
Speaker 1: to pronounce this language. H O k k I E N.
Speaker 1: Is that okayen maybe or maybe hokeien? Uh? Anyway, Joe
Speaker 1: continues in that language kiki pronounced with a hard stop
Speaker 1: after each syllable. So I guess they'd be key keys
Speaker 1: or something uh, commonly used to indicate that an edge
Speaker 1: is jagged or uneven. So if I were to describe
Speaker 1: someone's haircut as key key, that would mean that their
Speaker 1: hair was uneven. I also tested out the three Japanese
Speaker 1: words from the episode on my friends, and they guessed
Speaker 1: correctly each time. I was quite surprised, as none of
Speaker 1: them knew Japanese anyway. Really enjoy your podcast and have
Speaker 1: recommended it to so many people. Keep up the good work.
Speaker 1: Joe from Malaysia. Well thank you, Joe. All right, I'm
Speaker 1: looking over here at at Carney, and Carney has switched
Speaker 1: personas and now he is drinking Scotch and being fitted
Speaker 1: for a custom suit. Oh no, yeah, so I think
Speaker 1: he's in full Connery Ramire's mode. But but it bides
Speaker 1: us little time. Uh, We're gonna start covering some of
Speaker 1: the listener mail that we received concerning lists. This one
Speaker 1: comes to us from Rachel, Hi, Joe and Robert, a
Speaker 1: list of hosts. It came to mind that we sometimes
Speaker 1: create terms or labels for things taxonomically, for instance, which
Speaker 1: represents a list of traits describing these unique things. The
Speaker 1: more obvious ones are labels like the word skateboard, which
Speaker 1: is a board with skate wheels. Less obvious would be
Speaker 1: a term like bellas parentus the common daisy, which is
Speaker 1: a label for a list of traits that must be
Speaker 1: president in order to qualify for this label. Therefore, by
Speaker 1: giving something that label, one would be indicating, at least
Speaker 1: to a botanist, that a certain list of things are
Speaker 1: true of that object. I've always loved compound words for
Speaker 1: their descriptive but sometimes easily misunderstood. Nature's take. For instance,
Speaker 1: the word chainsaw meaning a saw using a chain for cutting. Basically,
Speaker 1: one could be forgiven for thinking this referred to a
Speaker 1: saw intended for the use in the cutting of chains.
Speaker 1: Don't even get me started on chainsaw car in contest, Wow, Rachel,
Speaker 1: chainsaw is the best thing to illustrate any concept. Next
Speaker 1: item on lists came from our listener, Clayton. Clayton says
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe. I've been listening to the show for
Speaker 1: four years now, and let's make a list, and then
Speaker 1: let's make a list. Episode might be your best yet.
Speaker 1: I thoroughly enjoyed this one and was delighted to become
Speaker 1: aware of all the various reasons and types of lists
Speaker 1: humans have made throughout history. List making is a huge
Speaker 1: tenant of my life and something that my wife and
Speaker 1: I love doing together. The feeling of accomplishment when striking
Speaker 1: through an item on a to do list is so
Speaker 1: satisfying that often if we have a running list of
Speaker 1: things like household repairs, and a repair happens that is
Speaker 1: not on our list, my wife will write it down
Speaker 1: after the list is complete, then just cross it off
Speaker 1: the list. Thank you guys for the show. PS. Invention
Speaker 1: is also fantastic. Love the theme song and the podcast
Speaker 1: album artwork from Clayton. Yeah, people love love the theme
Speaker 1: song for Invention. We keep doing crazy about it, uh
Speaker 1: and I keep having to reply and tell everybody what
Speaker 1: it is and where you can find it. Only the
Speaker 1: finest stock music for our listeners ears, But no, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's from a stock music database. But you can
Speaker 1: also purchase it online if you love it that much
Speaker 1: so and you know who the artist is and stuff.
Speaker 1: I think, right, yeah, you know what, I don't have
Speaker 1: it on hand at the moment. But what I will
Speaker 1: do is after we we leave this recording session, I
Speaker 1: will add it to the Invention page. If you go
Speaker 1: to invention pod dot com, go to the about section
Speaker 1: and at the bottom, under the stuff about about about
Speaker 1: who's hosting the show, etcetera, and our beautiful picture, we
Speaker 1: will put We'll put a little information there about who
Speaker 1: the artist is and where you can buy the the
Speaker 1: the track for yourself, because it's good stuff. We we
Speaker 1: we we looked at a lot of music that was
Speaker 1: available to us before we decided on this particular track.
Speaker 1: And hey, if you're not subscribed to Invention yet, go
Speaker 1: subscribe right now. Check it out. If you like this show,
Speaker 1: you'll probably like that one. But anyway, I wanted to
Speaker 1: read this message from Clayton because I sometimes also do
Speaker 1: this thing with the with the to do list. I
Speaker 1: think it's a G eight idea. When you make it
Speaker 1: to do list, don't only include what you've got ahead
Speaker 1: of you also include some things you've already recently gotten
Speaker 1: done and then crossed them off somehow. To me, this
Speaker 1: process is really pleasing. It's highly motivating. It's like you
Speaker 1: get a breath of wind behind you. You know, the
Speaker 1: mountaintop Bear goddess, just pour strength into your mind and
Speaker 1: your muscles. It's good. His His email made me think,
Speaker 1: what if you took up this task though? To keep
Speaker 1: an ongoing list of items that you have never included
Speaker 1: on a list before. You have to maintain this and
Speaker 1: keep it current, so you're constantly putting new things on
Speaker 1: and taking old things off. Remember you have to take
Speaker 1: them off as soon as they've been as soon as
Speaker 1: they've been listed on the list somewhere. Try it for yourself,
Speaker 1: right in and let us know how the impossible list.
Speaker 1: All right, here's another one about list. This one comes
Speaker 1: to us from Tony. Hello, gentlemen. As soon as I
Speaker 1: saw there was an episode on lists, I knew it
Speaker 1: would be a winner. Several members of my family have
Speaker 1: actually referred to me as a Mr. List. Over the years,
Speaker 1: I've made dozens of lists on a variety of topics,
Speaker 1: from my fifty favorite R. E. M. Songs to the
Speaker 1: most heartbreaking losses in Chicago Bears history that I have seen.
Speaker 1: As an avid movie fan, I have always loved the
Speaker 1: Academy Awards and found my viewing of the ceremony was
Speaker 1: more enjoyable when I had seen all the Best Picture
Speaker 1: nominees beforehand. This triggered an idea that would become my
Speaker 1: greatest undertaking yet, watching all of the movies that had
Speaker 1: ever been nominated for Best Picture. WHOA. As of this writing,
Speaker 1: I have seen three of five hundred and fifty four
Speaker 1: for a list of glist completion of se which I
Speaker 1: think is pretty impressive. That's a lot of movies, Tony. Alas,
Speaker 1: it was only after I was well into this project
Speaker 1: that I discovered there is no known surviving copy of
Speaker 1: The Patriot, one of the nominees from ninety eight. This
Speaker 1: of course means that no matter what effort I give,
Speaker 1: I'll never be able to truly complete the list. I
Speaker 1: always hope one day I'll be mindlessly clicking around the
Speaker 1: Internet and run into a quick news blurb that someone
Speaker 1: found a copy of The Patriot tucked away in a
Speaker 1: way their chest, in an old producer's addict or something
Speaker 1: like that. One of the majority of readers would skim
Speaker 1: right over that news. For me, it would be like
Speaker 1: locating the Holy Grail. Thanks for your continued offering, which
Speaker 1: offering switching, enlighten and entertain us all, Tony in Chicago.
Speaker 1: Of course, Thus the bears. That makes sense, Well, thank you, Tony.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it sounds like unless somebody finds a copy
Speaker 1: of The Patriot, your life is a lie. Um I,
Speaker 1: I know I can understand what he means about, like
Speaker 1: the desire to find something that you are into and
Speaker 1: then you set the goal of completing it. Um I.
Speaker 1: I fall into this trap sometimes, so I discover a
Speaker 1: new author that I really dig, or a filmmaker, um,
Speaker 1: an artist even or want to be a completionist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or I've I've also done this with like if I
Speaker 1: discover like a new say in the past, if I
Speaker 1: discovered like a new professional wrestler, like some new Japanese
Speaker 1: professional wrestler that I've never heard of before, and then
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, I've got to see all their matches now.
Speaker 1: And then, of course you always run into the same problem,
Speaker 1: like either it's an actual incompleteness situation where Okay, this
Speaker 1: film is not available or this book is is is
Speaker 1: ass hasn't been published in in ages and now it's
Speaker 1: too expensive to buy a used copy of or you
Speaker 1: just run into the fact that if you become a
Speaker 1: completest on something like sometimes you're that means consuming stuff
Speaker 1: that's maybe not the primo material, you know, like sometimes
Speaker 1: it's best just to stick to the top five um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, hits from this particular artist rather than dive
Speaker 1: into their full discography. But still sevent completion rate on
Speaker 1: on nominees, that's pretty good. Well, I I know, I
Speaker 1: also see the appeal of just going down the list,
Speaker 1: even when there are other things you could be doing, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: Like I was thinking about when we were getting really
Speaker 1: into the nineteen eight nine Underwater Peril movies, and it's like,
Speaker 1: even though you know that like Lords of the Deep
Speaker 1: is is not going to be good, maybe not even
Speaker 1: good bad, you're just, uh, you've just got to go
Speaker 1: down there because you've already started. Yeah, And I did that.
Speaker 1: Luckily there was a Mystery Sentence Theater three thousand episode
Speaker 1: of Lords of the Deep that came out this year
Speaker 1: or the tail into last year. But I also tried
Speaker 1: to watch for you get the name of it, Like
Speaker 1: it's like a German underwater film, not one of the
Speaker 1: like the top tier either. It was. It was, it
Speaker 1: was really bad. It was it was unwatched, but I
Speaker 1: had nothing of I That's why I have nothing to
Speaker 1: even say about it. Other than it was just complete boredom.
Speaker 1: But you got to cross it off. That's true. I
Speaker 1: did get to cross it off. Okay, Karnie's going gone
Speaker 1: into Kurgan mode. Oh no, I think he has a correction.
Speaker 1: We have wrath coming our way. Well, okay, so this
Speaker 1: is from Duncan. So Duncan begins by saying, hi, guys,
Speaker 1: a couple of minor corrections, if you will forgive my
Speaker 1: O C D. I think this might be a little
Speaker 1: more of a clarification, but we'll take it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in favor of clarity. Yeah. So uh, Duncan says
Speaker 1: about gravitational physics. In our Thought Experiment episode, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about the idea of um of uh, the
Speaker 1: the Aristotelian view of gravity versus the Galilean view of gravity,
Speaker 1: and so what Duncan says is most people get a
Speaker 1: couple of simple semantic distinctions wrong. When talking about the
Speaker 1: speed of falling bodies. In the podcast about Thought Experiments,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that if you drop a heavy object and
Speaker 1: a light object off a tall building, they will hit
Speaker 1: the ground at the same time. This is false. The
Speaker 1: correct phrasing is the rate of acceleration. Caused by gravity
Speaker 1: is the same for all objects, regardless of density. You
Speaker 1: can also say objects in a vacuum fall at the
Speaker 1: same speed regardless of density. The first distinction is using
Speaker 1: the words heavy and light as opposed to talking about density.
Speaker 1: An inflated balloon weighs more than a plastic baby pellet,
Speaker 1: but the BP pellet will hit the ground first, the
Speaker 1: denser object will fall faster. The other important distinction is
Speaker 1: about acceleration versus speed. Objects accelerate at the same speed,
Speaker 1: but air resistance builds proportional to their speeds, so all
Speaker 1: objects have a different terminal velocity based on their density
Speaker 1: and also their aerodynamic profile. If you drop two objects
Speaker 1: with different densities off of building and it is high
Speaker 1: enough for either one of them to reach its terminal velocity,
Speaker 1: that object will stop accelerating. The other will continue for
Speaker 1: a bit longer and therefore fall faster, hitting the ground first.
Speaker 1: This can be easily demonstrated with a piece of cotton
Speaker 1: wool and a marble from a height of only a
Speaker 1: meter or so. And then Duncan also goes on with
Speaker 1: some other comments about our our previous clarifications on uses
Speaker 1: of the word billion, like us usage versus non us
Speaker 1: English usage. But from what I can tell, yeah, I
Speaker 1: do want to say that Duncan's comments here about the
Speaker 1: physics of falling bodies that seems absolutely correct. I think
Speaker 1: we were speaking in a little bit of shorthand in
Speaker 1: the episode, but but that is all true. Alright, Carney
Speaker 1: has calmed down a bit, and now he has he
Speaker 1: has handed me another listener mail, and this one has
Speaker 1: to do at least partially with Blobsters. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Weldon Weldon Rights, I love
Speaker 1: your podcast catching Up. I was listening to the second
Speaker 1: Blobster episode when you were pointing out that some creationists
Speaker 1: try to force the timeline to fit what they feel
Speaker 1: the Earth creation timeline is. I am a person who
Speaker 1: has convinced that we are far too complex and amazing,
Speaker 1: even some politicians to be accidental. So I am a creationist,
Speaker 1: but I believe it is only people's misguided interpretation of
Speaker 1: multiple layers of language differences that cause so much confusion.
Speaker 1: The Earth is four plus billion years old as far
Speaker 1: as we can tell. The universe is somewhere in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood of thirteen plus billion years old. How does that
Speaker 1: not allow for God to work whatever way he chooses.
Speaker 1: When we try to cubbyhole what was accomplished, we limit
Speaker 1: his ability to only what we understand, and we aren't
Speaker 1: always that bright. Simple facts point to a longer time involved,
Speaker 1: like a tiny bacterial found miles deep in the Earth's
Speaker 1: crust Russian drilling expedition, or star starlight itself hitting our
Speaker 1: eyes at night from who knows how many light years away.
Speaker 1: So keep up the good work on a great show,
Speaker 1: and try to remember not everyone who believes in creation
Speaker 1: thinks it all happened in a few days. Thanks Weldon. Well.
Speaker 1: I think we have intentionally pointed out that that distinction
Speaker 1: before that not all people who believe in a creator
Speaker 1: of some form whatever religion they are believe in, say
Speaker 1: like a Young Earth creationist model. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: we try to be fairly careful about that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean my take has always been that if we're dealing
Speaker 1: with a creator God's scenario, and I like to, you know,
Speaker 1: look at different scenarios for this sort of thing. You know,
Speaker 1: if if that's the scenario we're playing with, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: expect that God to work their craft in a way
Speaker 1: that fits into human lifetimes and human crafting experience. It's
Speaker 1: like if if I was a cobbler, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: and then I end up thinking of God as a
Speaker 1: shoemaker like that. That can be insightful, that can put
Speaker 1: it in terms that I can understand, But then I
Speaker 1: shouldn't expect, um, you know, everything about the cosmos and
Speaker 1: the history of the cosmos to be then therefore be
Speaker 1: you know, completely relatable to say the timeline of making
Speaker 1: a pair of shoes, are fixing a pair of shoes, etcetera. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I you know, I I I think that, yes,
Speaker 1: someone can certainly believe in a creator and a divine
Speaker 1: creator and still believe in evolution and everything that that
Speaker 1: consensus science tells us about our world and our universe. Well,
Speaker 1: obviously those beliefs can co exist because they do in
Speaker 1: millions and millions of people. Yeah. One thing I do
Speaker 1: wanna take issue with and what you say, Well, then
Speaker 1: as though I don't, uh, I mean, I wouldn't try
Speaker 1: to tell you not to believe in a creator or
Speaker 1: anything like that, but you say you're convinced in the
Speaker 1: fact that there's a creator because we're far too complex
Speaker 1: and amazing to be accidental. The unstated assumption underneath this
Speaker 1: is that things can only be complex and amazing if
Speaker 1: they were intended by something. I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 1: I think things can be complex and amazing for all
Speaker 1: kinds of reasons. Well then then if you if you
Speaker 1: look at that's especially if you look at say Christian theology, right,
Speaker 1: God is complex in amaze thing, right, and yet that
Speaker 1: entity was not created by something else. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you know, you're giving privileged status
Speaker 1: to the creator deity, and in this scenario is one
Speaker 1: tends to do. But but still like it, even like
Speaker 1: the basic Christian theology doesn't say that that, uh, that
Speaker 1: it is impossible for something complex to come into being
Speaker 1: without the aid of a creator, I guess, I mean
Speaker 1: you can sort of take that in any number of
Speaker 1: directions and argue it up a tree. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: we'll getting back to the principle about accepting science and
Speaker 1: also having some you know, for various forms of theology.
Speaker 1: I mean, most of the scientists in history have had
Speaker 1: some kind of theology, like a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of say, these nineteenth century scientists who were involved in
Speaker 1: discovering evolution would have thought that probably there was some
Speaker 1: kind of deistic creator, you know, that there was some
Speaker 1: force behind the universe. But then they came to believe
Speaker 1: that well, maybe that God did not in fact set
Speaker 1: out animal forms or things like that those arose out
Speaker 1: of natural physical processes. Yeah. I mean, you will find
Speaker 1: a lot of atheists scientists, but you have also find
Speaker 1: a lot of scientists too, uh to varying degrees, to
Speaker 1: follow different religious worldviews. And I think there is something
Speaker 1: highly advantageous in being able to to have more than
Speaker 1: one worldview, to sort of shuffle them around depending on
Speaker 1: you know, what you're you're dealing with in your life.
Speaker 1: You know, you kind of have different It's like playing
Speaker 1: a video game where you have different power ups, right,
Speaker 1: you have different armors, different swords, right, and you you
Speaker 1: put on different power ups depending on what your character
Speaker 1: is doing. It's your character crafting something while you're gonna
Speaker 1: change your build out, you know, as your craft character
Speaker 1: battling orcs while you're gonna change your build out a
Speaker 1: little And I feel I feel like I do that
Speaker 1: a little bit with with worldview, Like what are you doing, well,
Speaker 1: what are you thinking about? Like, what's the best way
Speaker 1: to approach uh, you know the current um challenges of
Speaker 1: of the world or of the mind. Well, yes, and
Speaker 1: that shuffling can also, I think take place at I
Speaker 1: don't know why, you say, just different levels. I mean,
Speaker 1: for example, you don't have to be at a level
Speaker 1: where you ever literally believe any stories in the Bible,
Speaker 1: like literally happened in order to say, read the book
Speaker 1: with pleasure and understand what it means, or to say,
Speaker 1: read other religious poetry or here religious music that makes
Speaker 1: reference to it and try to identify with the author
Speaker 1: and like put yourself in that mindset. Alright, On that note,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna jump back into more listener mail, and eventually
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to some Highlander two specific email. Carney
Speaker 1: seems very excited. Oh yes, thank alright, we're back. So yes,
Speaker 1: Carney is very excited because now we're gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and read it a little Highlander two listener mail. Alright, alright,
Speaker 1: This first one comes to us from Dan. Dan writes
Speaker 1: in I'm writing in response to your episode on Highlander two,
Speaker 1: the Quickening. I'm so glad you finally made good on
Speaker 1: your promise. Slash threat to do this episode, as it
Speaker 1: was well worth the wait. We're glad, You're glad. While
Speaker 1: I've never seen any of the Highlander movies, I've i'd
Speaker 1: always seemed to be part of the pop culture and
Speaker 1: media landscape during my teen years in the late nineties.
Speaker 1: And indeed, while it was, it was always on either
Speaker 1: the movies, especially the you know the first, the first
Speaker 1: one especially to get was on TV constantly. Is it
Speaker 1: on USA all the time? Probably? I know I was
Speaker 1: on USA all the time, so it's probably where I
Speaker 1: watched that or TBS, TNT, those were my hangouts. So anyway,
Speaker 1: he continues, um, growing up, I watched a lot of USA.
Speaker 1: The Highlander TV series, both live action and animated, always
Speaker 1: seem to be on no matter what day or time
Speaker 1: it was. Even today, I can still sing home slash
Speaker 1: home the opening of Princess of the Universe. That's just
Speaker 1: how ingrained it is in me. I guess you could
Speaker 1: call it the let it Go of the late nineties
Speaker 1: cult cinema slash TV For me, I think that's a
Speaker 1: song from Frozen. I know this from my friends who
Speaker 1: have little kids. Oh yeah, that's that's definitely from Frozen.
Speaker 1: And yeah, Princess of the Universe is kind of our
Speaker 1: frozen even and though for the TV show the movies
Speaker 1: they never used the full version, you know, because it
Speaker 1: gets a little weird later in the in the song,
Speaker 1: it's still great, but I think it can be surprising
Speaker 1: if you you expect it to maintain that same um
Speaker 1: overtly like epic vibe that it has right at the start. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he continues, keep up all the great work you do,
Speaker 1: looking forward to a potential Science of Labyrinth or Dark
Speaker 1: Crystal episode, and then he included a link to Cisco
Speaker 1: and Ebert's review of Island or Two The Quickening, which
Speaker 1: he says Ebert called the worst movie of Cisco called
Speaker 1: the worst title of ninety one. Is this one of
Speaker 1: the ones where they were Sometimes they'd come in and
Speaker 1: they'd be like, I'm so glad that when people Sometimes
Speaker 1: people would ask them, have you seen any really bad
Speaker 1: movies lately? And they'd have to think, like, what was
Speaker 1: a really bad when I saw recently? But occasionally there'd
Speaker 1: be one so bad that they wouldn't have to think anymore.
Speaker 1: They'd just be like, here's my answer for the time being. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got to be grounding in a way, especially if
Speaker 1: you're dealing with a lot of you know, of of
Speaker 1: of sort of higher end indie pieces and artistic works,
Speaker 1: to to just dig into something that is just, you know,
Speaker 1: objectively bad. Oh there's nothing I love more than when,
Speaker 1: you know, when, when I've been deep in some cerebral material,
Speaker 1: to just back out of this and watch Attack of
Speaker 1: the Crab Monsters again, or go to some other giant
Speaker 1: animal movie. Oh what, Robert, do you hear that? Yeah? Whoa?
Speaker 1: What is that? It's something kind of cutting in cuttle
Speaker 1: Cat's cuttlefish to the second oil age and he's kingdom
Speaker 1: with burl of darkness. I don't dispute the eurostata, but
Speaker 1: if he's down here, not blood but darkness, the Earth's
Speaker 1: black riches. No, I could taste it on my lips. Today,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about the science of
Speaker 1: transgenesis tens Genesis show. No, I guess it's gone now.
Speaker 1: Maybe it wasn't anything. Yeah, yeah, I just heard like
Speaker 1: a high pitched, like like glitchy noise. Robert, you got
Speaker 1: a bit of blood in the owner of your eye.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, I yeah, I'm I'm bleeding from m
Speaker 1: I want to get get cleaned up here and we
Speaker 1: can keep going. I'm good, I'm good, all right. Here's
Speaker 1: another one about Hollander from Chris. Chris says, I love
Speaker 1: the Highlander episode. My only experience with Hiler was having
Speaker 1: a favorite uncle growing up who loved them. How do
Speaker 1: you know that about your uncle? Like, your uncle loves
Speaker 1: it so much he's talking to his nieces and nephews
Speaker 1: about it. I think if somebody loves Highland or enough,
Speaker 1: you'll know like that, it will be undeniable. His uncle
Speaker 1: was Christoph Lambart. By the way, I only had fond
Speaker 1: memories until your episode kind of pointed out some of
Speaker 1: the things in my adult brain understands his bonkers. The
Speaker 1: bit breaking down the actors slash characters slash accents made
Speaker 1: me do one of those slapped the steering wheel laughs.
Speaker 1: I had a suggestion also, with the Dune universe coming
Speaker 1: back soon in a movie form, I would love my
Speaker 1: favorite science show to dive into some of the wild
Speaker 1: sci fi Frank Herbert gave us and maybe shed some
Speaker 1: light on inspiration or real life echoes. Some episode topics
Speaker 1: could include shields and engines, sandworms, and of course the spice.
Speaker 1: Hope you guys are well and love what you do
Speaker 1: as much as I love listening. Well, Chris, We've got
Speaker 1: a treat for you because we beat you to it.
Speaker 1: That's right. We did a couple of Doune episodes, uh
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of years ago. Have we rerun those?
Speaker 1: We have? We rerun them once, Chris, Yes, go into
Speaker 1: our archive, do a little search, and I'm sure you
Speaker 1: find a search bar somewhere. Look up Dune Parts one
Speaker 1: and two. I think those are those are a couple
Speaker 1: of personal favorites of mine that we've done, and i'd actually,
Speaker 1: i'd actually love to come back and explore a little
Speaker 1: more about the Dune universe. I have a book titled
Speaker 1: The Philosophy of Dune with it with different essays about
Speaker 1: you know, phil Philoso, offical treatments of some of the
Speaker 1: ideas that Herbert uh used in the in the novels.
Speaker 1: So I I think we could come back and do
Speaker 1: more done in the future, certainly as we get closer
Speaker 1: to the release of the next Dune film or films,
Speaker 1: which which I'm very excited about. You know, one thing
Speaker 1: I can say about that upcoming Dune movie, I think
Speaker 1: they made a good choice casting Paul not as an
Speaker 1: ultra likable young actor, but as a kind of like
Speaker 1: maybe kind of a little jerk, kind of torpy guy
Speaker 1: that that Timothy Challome guy, like the jerk character he
Speaker 1: plays in Ladybird. I can see it. That's I haven't
Speaker 1: seen Lady Bird yet. Ladybird is great. Okay, they certainly
Speaker 1: nailed some of the other casting. I do like the
Speaker 1: idea of of Stelen scars Guard as as harconin We'll
Speaker 1: see how that goes. Yeah, Okay, looks like we got
Speaker 1: a great one up here from Amelia Amelia Wrightson and says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe, I'm so happy you finally did a
Speaker 1: Highlander themed episode. Well, I never had the pleasure of
Speaker 1: seeing the Quickening. Was tickled to hear you mentioned among
Speaker 1: Highlanders various spin off series the two animated films. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't claim to be a Highlander connoisseur, as I've
Speaker 1: only seen the original film and one of these animated features,
Speaker 1: namely Highlander Quest for Vengeance. But although objectively terrible, Highlander
Speaker 1: Quest for Vengeance was my initial introduction to the series
Speaker 1: and remains my most supreme guilty pleasure views of all time.
Speaker 1: It's directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, better recognized for his work
Speaker 1: on Ninja Scroll. Yeah, I love Ninja Scroll back in
Speaker 1: the day. I don't know what Vampire Hunter d blood Lust.
Speaker 1: I may have seen that. I can't watch some sort
Speaker 1: of Vampire Hunter anime back in the day and the Animatrix.
Speaker 1: It's also written by David abrama Witz, who gave us
Speaker 1: Highlander the Series and Highlander The Raven. It's one of
Speaker 1: those the cop show The Raven is the Cops. So
Speaker 1: we may have another listener mail by this, but I
Speaker 1: think she was technically a thief and she like works
Speaker 1: with a cop. It's still it's still a cop show. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, she continues, I won't spoil too much in
Speaker 1: case other listeners check it out, but we'll say this
Speaker 1: addition to the Highlander series is absolutely worthwhile for the
Speaker 1: Celtic and Roman history buffs like myself. It's epic scope,
Speaker 1: definitely plunges into the ridiculous, and like many of Kawejeri's films,
Speaker 1: the animation alone makes it worth a watch. It functions
Speaker 1: well as a standalone film, so even if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen other Highlander related material, it's very accessible. I recommend
Speaker 1: it to anyone who's a fan of the original. Well,
Speaker 1: and now I want to see that too, because I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I definitely have nostalgia for for the Highlander series,
Speaker 1: and uh, I have a little bit of I think
Speaker 1: I'm almost to the point in my life where I
Speaker 1: can be nostalgic about watching some of these anime films
Speaker 1: in college. Now, you know what, I think. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize this until just now. I think this is not
Speaker 1: the first time Amelia has gotten in touch with us
Speaker 1: about Highland. Oh yeah, I think she might be a
Speaker 1: listener who has written to us multiple times whenever we
Speaker 1: mentioned Highlander on the show. So we we could be
Speaker 1: dealing with a with a hardcore super fan here. We've
Speaker 1: been cultivating, um a subset of our listeners who are
Speaker 1: hardcore Highlander fans. Okay, this next one is response to Highland.
Speaker 1: Is a response to Higlander two. And this comes from
Speaker 1: our listener, Rami. Ramy says, Hi, guys, I just finished
Speaker 1: listening to your episode Highlander to the science thing and
Speaker 1: wanted to provide some additional information on decapitation in the
Speaker 1: natural world. Yes, this is the right kind of listener mail, Yes, Ramy,
Speaker 1: so Rami says there is a type of hornet called
Speaker 1: the Asian giant hornet Vespa mandarinia, which prays on honeybee larvae.
Speaker 1: The hornets, which can grow up to two inches in length,
Speaker 1: would descend on a hive of honey bees in groups
Speaker 1: and start decapitating them with their huge mandible to get
Speaker 1: access to the larvae. A single hornet can decapitate as
Speaker 1: many as twenty bees a minute. A small group of
Speaker 1: hornets can eliminate an entire colony of thirty thousand or
Speaker 1: more bees. The honey bee stingers are not strong enough
Speaker 1: to pierce the hornets thick armor, but they have however
Speaker 1: evolved another defense strategy against the hornets. Once a hornet
Speaker 1: is spotted in the hive, the honey bees form a
Speaker 1: tight ball around it and start vibrating furiously. This increases
Speaker 1: the hornet's body temperature, essentially cooking it to death. You
Speaker 1: can watch these awesome battles taking place by searching giant
Speaker 1: hornet versus honeybees on Google or YouTube. The giant hornet
Speaker 1: is an invasive species to Southern Europe, thought to be
Speaker 1: brought here by cargo ships, and it has decimated honeybee
Speaker 1: populations in the region. But it's nice to see the
Speaker 1: honey bees starting to evolve defenses to a completely foreign predator.
Speaker 1: Evolution at work right in front of your eyes. Keep
Speaker 1: up the great work. I listen to your podcast every
Speaker 1: morning on my way to work, and it certainly makes
Speaker 1: my one hour commute uh and enjoyable one. I particularly
Speaker 1: enjoy episodes about the natural world, space or history, but
Speaker 1: you guys never disappoint Thanks for your time, Rammy, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Rommy. This is great. I don't know how
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I never came across this. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a this is a fascinating organism. All right. We have
Speaker 1: one more, just one more listener male that is directly
Speaker 1: related to Highlander to this one comes to us from France.
Speaker 1: Thank you, gentlemen for your varied and always interesting podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm a newbie with podcast, but I've probably already listened
Speaker 1: to around a hundred of yours invention stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind and stuff you should know. I also love
Speaker 1: the ladies of stuff you missed in history class. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm a diet in the wool Highlander fan, but far
Speaker 1: more the TV show than the movies. She's a Highlander
Speaker 1: frand Frank fan fran gotcha anyway. Anyway, she continues, by
Speaker 1: the way, I agree with you that Highlander to the
Speaker 1: Quickening is one of the truly bad movies of all time.
Speaker 1: I would like to hear what MST. Three K could
Speaker 1: do with it. Oh, that'd be great. But I own
Speaker 1: the video tapes of all six seasons of the TV show,
Speaker 1: as well as the one season of The Raven. I
Speaker 1: mostly love the show because they found an excuse for
Speaker 1: Adrian Paul to take off his shirt in almost every episode.
Speaker 1: I admit it. I can be shallow. That man has
Speaker 1: a totally ripped body, and as a martial artist, his
Speaker 1: fights were things of beauty. The Raven and here here
Speaker 1: we get a further breakdown and what the Raven was
Speaker 1: really like. The Raven is about an immortal who also
Speaker 1: is a quite accomplished thief. Amanda the thief has known
Speaker 1: Duncan Duncan McLeod, Adrian Paul's character from the TV show
Speaker 1: for several hundred years, and she's beautiful and very smartass.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of episodes of Highlander that had
Speaker 1: Roger Daltrey. Yeah, of the who I remember these now
Speaker 1: as the guest immortal and they were mostly comedy and
Speaker 1: everyone seemed to be having a good time. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember seeing Roger Daltrey on there, and now I've got
Speaker 1: to look this up. I can't wait to see Roger Dalton.
Speaker 1: Did they ever have Robert Plant as an immortal? No? No,
Speaker 1: they lost their heads long ago, sadly, but but Daltry
Speaker 1: was still still kicking. Uh. She also adds a little
Speaker 1: bit about invention. She says, you asked an invention a
Speaker 1: Toilets Part two about any science fiction toilets, and the
Speaker 1: only one I can remember is from the original four
Speaker 1: hour long two thousand and one. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: four four hours. I think she's she's having a little
Speaker 1: fun there. I sixteen when it was released. I saw
Speaker 1: that twice, and then a three hour long version, both
Speaker 1: in Cinerama. In the long version, Dr Floyd is in
Speaker 1: the pan Am shuttle heading to the space station. There's
Speaker 1: a shot of him reading the instructions for the zero
Speaker 1: gravity toilet. Thank you again for the entertainment and education
Speaker 1: you've given me. Well, fran Uh. If you want to
Speaker 1: know more about the zero gravity toilet, I think we
Speaker 1: talked about it a bit in our episode on two
Speaker 1: thousand one of Space obusely from earlier last year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did. We did talk about it just a little bit.
Speaker 1: That was the one of the one of the the
Speaker 1: earlier movie episodes that we did. Uh. That scene is great.
Speaker 1: That's Kubrick the comedian at work. Well, especially because it's
Speaker 1: immediately preceded by him drinking out of a carton of
Speaker 1: corn with the straw and then it just cuts to
Speaker 1: him like staring at the toilet instructions you got to
Speaker 1: kind of put things together in your mind. Okay, we
Speaker 1: got one here from Adam that does involve Highland or two,
Speaker 1: but it's also about our ninth planet episode. So, Adam says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe, I'm writing in to help answer some
Speaker 1: questions posed about various sci fi franchises in the past
Speaker 1: few episodes. The first is about the planet Mandus, the
Speaker 1: original home world of Doctor Who's Cybermen. Ah, this must
Speaker 1: be an email from a huve on Ian. Now I
Speaker 1: don't think that's right juvii on Ian. Uh. So, Adam
Speaker 1: says Manda's is indeed both a parallel planet to Earth
Speaker 1: as well as the ninth planet in our solar system. However,
Speaker 1: the serial in which it first appeared was named The
Speaker 1: Tenth Planet because it was released in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: forty years before Pluto was reclassified to a dwarf planet.
Speaker 1: And I think that would also be about forty years
Speaker 1: after Pluto was discovered, right, Oh, perfect, Yeah, so Adam continues,
Speaker 1: the geography of Mandus is very similar to Earth, with
Speaker 1: the main and only apparent difference being that the continents
Speaker 1: are upside down. Manda's drifted into deep space long before
Speaker 1: humanity existed, possibly because of the Moon's orbit around Earth. Luckily,
Speaker 1: there's no problem that television sci fi from the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties can't solve, because the Cybermen were able to pilot
Speaker 1: their planet back to Earth, where it was eventually destroyed,
Speaker 1: which is much less of a problem in the show
Speaker 1: where the main component is time travel. Also, the term
Speaker 1: used to describe doctor who fans is Huvian, in case
Speaker 1: that comes up again, No, I think, yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: believe he could be this wrong. I think I think
Speaker 1: you have to trust Adam here. He seems to know
Speaker 1: what he's talking about. I don't know how Adam could
Speaker 1: be a doctor who fan without knowing that they're called Huvedn's.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the other question I wanted to answer was
Speaker 1: from the episode about the Silence Science of Highland or two.
Speaker 1: The question asked was whether or not the Alien franchise
Speaker 1: had ever had a face burster concerning the pseudaction flies,
Speaker 1: because remember the Pseudactian or the Highlander fly. We talked
Speaker 1: about It decapitates the ant, the larva grows within the
Speaker 1: ant's head, and then it pops out of the ant's face,
Speaker 1: and we were saying, was there ever a horror movie
Speaker 1: or something popped out of someone's face? Specifically, was there
Speaker 1: ever an alien and the Alien franchise that instead of
Speaker 1: bursting out of the chest like coming out of John
Speaker 1: Hurt's es ut, it pops out of somebody's face. I
Speaker 1: still maintain no, I don't remember ever seeing that. I
Speaker 1: think I would know. Well, Adam says the answer is
Speaker 1: both yes and no. While the official franchise has not
Speaker 1: had a chest burster burst out of somebody's face. Instead,
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty unauthorized sequel Alien to colon on Earth,
Speaker 1: which I had no idea this even existence. It's a novelization.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I gotta look this up. Uh, maybe
Speaker 1: it's a fan of Alien to on Earth did have
Speaker 1: a scene like this. Whether this was for copyright reasons
Speaker 1: or for pure gross out, I do not know. I
Speaker 1: have included a link to the trailer for the film
Speaker 1: that includes a very similar scene. Certainly, in the wake
Speaker 1: of Alien you see a lot of needless scenes where
Speaker 1: creatures bust out of people. Um uh, you know, specifically,
Speaker 1: Humanoids from the Deep comes to mind, is a film that,
Speaker 1: among its various problems, one is that they were like,
Speaker 1: we got to end it in a chest blair bursting scene,
Speaker 1: work it into the plot, and they're like, yes, Corman,
Speaker 1: we will. I'm only half listening to you because I'm
Speaker 1: watching this trailer now and uh oh yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just got to a face bursting scene. This looks to
Speaker 1: me like a alien Okay, it's called Alien to on
Speaker 1: Earth nineteen eighty. It looks like a work of sort
Speaker 1: of cinema italianissimo going on here. Uh, sort of like
Speaker 1: all the Italian Jaws sequels and whatnot. Exactly. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: getting that vibe. Okay, Well, I'm well, the time frame
Speaker 1: is right, Uh yeah, I'm on board. I'll watch it. Sure.
Speaker 1: If it was made in the eighties by Italians and
Speaker 1: it has blood in it. Yeah, I'll probably do it.
Speaker 1: Is that blood orange? I hope? So Okay, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should take another break there and then come
Speaker 1: back and uh and do a few more and then
Speaker 1: wrap up. Thank alright, we're back. Uh. I want to
Speaker 1: make a take a quick moment here to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about another sword wielding um warrior and that
Speaker 1: being uh the legendary Irish hero uh Ko Holland or
Speaker 1: Ku Collen or Cocallen. We had a lot of Irish
Speaker 1: listeners right in about this and uh uh correct us
Speaker 1: on the pronunciation or give their two cents on the pronunciation. Um. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, I want to mention that I reached
Speaker 1: out to my friend Lynus online, who is not a
Speaker 1: listener to the show because he sucks but he but
Speaker 1: he is Irish and so he I asked him away,
Speaker 1: what your how would you say this? And he said
Speaker 1: he told me that it would be uh Collen. Granted
Speaker 1: this wasn't much help, as it occurred after we recorded
Speaker 1: the episode. We also heard from listener Ben in the
Speaker 1: discussion module that's our Facebook discussion group stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind discussion module, and he said, uh quote their
Speaker 1: three dialects in Irish donegal, uh, kannamara and munster, and
Speaker 1: they all vary. I've heard the second see pronounced as
Speaker 1: a hard see and your pronunciation as well. Irish people
Speaker 1: always disagree I'm unciation depending on where they're from. You
Speaker 1: guys did a great job and I love the episode.
Speaker 1: And then it was also pointed out that the Popes
Speaker 1: have a song on the album Rum Saw tom Me
Speaker 1: in the Lash, which I listened to a lot. Um
Speaker 1: yeah years back. It just wasn't in my my head
Speaker 1: to go back and um, you know, I didn't remember
Speaker 1: uh that there was a poge song that mentioned him.
Speaker 1: But in that song you hear Shane mcgallen saying more
Speaker 1: like Kokleen Collen. Uh So if we were to go
Speaker 1: with Shane McGowan, um, then yeah, we were incorrect in
Speaker 1: our episode for sure. Well it sounds like they can't
Speaker 1: even make up their own minds. Well, my interpretation is
Speaker 1: that we were probably wrong. But if we really wanted
Speaker 1: to like dig our heels in and say no, we
Speaker 1: know what we're talking about with I re pronunciation foolishly,
Speaker 1: then we would be able to perhaps back up our
Speaker 1: case by pointing to a particular dialect. But uh, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm happy to say we probably uh messed up the
Speaker 1: pronunciation a little bit there, but it seems like everybody
Speaker 1: really enjoyed the episode regardless, so our apologies. Well, I'll
Speaker 1: try to do cuculin from now on. But man, those
Speaker 1: Irish ones are they're harder than most languages. They're mouthful,
Speaker 1: all right. Continuing on the subject of pronunciation, we also
Speaker 1: got quite a few communications about the productive pronunciation of
Speaker 1: uranus a k a uranus. It's perfectly we're going from
Speaker 1: cuculin to uranus, right, since that's exactly where the guy
Speaker 1: bowl go went exactly goes straight into Whereon knows. Apparently
Speaker 1: that's another way to do it. So listener Nile writes
Speaker 1: and says, sorry, but when you went off on your
Speaker 1: pronunciation of uranus, it reminded me of one of my
Speaker 1: favorite jokes, which you're welcome to use. I'm sure I
Speaker 1: heard it from someone somewhere, you know how jokes go.
Speaker 1: So anyway, why is the Starship Enterprise like a roll
Speaker 1: of toilet paper? Because they both circle uranus looking for Klingon's.
Speaker 1: That is that's one of the worst jokes ever. Worse
Speaker 1: off for having heard that should we cut it out now?
Speaker 1: We gotta keep it now sadly? Okay, Albert gets in
Speaker 1: touch and says, hey, guys, on the topic of pronunciation,
Speaker 1: I had an observation. I speak Japanese, which uses a
Speaker 1: phonetic alphabet in Japanese uh uranus or uranus is. And
Speaker 1: then he uses some Japanese characters which you would write
Speaker 1: as uranusu, which is pronounced with all short vowels uh
Speaker 1: short vowels. So I guess that'd be URANUSU like uranusa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds good. Or oranassa maybe I don't know. I
Speaker 1: guess that would be oranassa maybe I don't know. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Albert says, this got me thinking that your two ways
Speaker 1: uranus and urinus might both be wrong. Well, it's acceptable
Speaker 1: in English, but what does the original Greek sound like?
Speaker 1: And then he sort of points us to the fact
Speaker 1: that from what I can tell, it might be that
Speaker 1: the Greek uranus or oh you are a n u
Speaker 1: s might be pronounced something kind of like where a
Speaker 1: no use where. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say that for the planet. I think I'm gonna say uranus. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: how about what about the mythological entity. How if the
Speaker 1: if if Uranus appear to you and you had to
Speaker 1: to greet them by name, which pronunciation would you use? Again,
Speaker 1: bearing in mind that you were dealing with an entity
Speaker 1: from Greek mythology and that they are a a tiresome
Speaker 1: and spiteful bunch. If I had to do that, I
Speaker 1: think I go neither of our ways. Uh, it would
Speaker 1: not be Uranus. It would not be Uranus. It would
Speaker 1: be uran Us. Okay, it's probably safe and it does
Speaker 1: sound regal enough, I think. But you're not gonna get
Speaker 1: me to call the planet uran us. I'm sorry. Still,
Speaker 1: we greatly appreciate the thoughts on pronunciation here. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: of course. All right, what have we gotten next? Drabberty?
Speaker 1: Oh let's see. We still we have a plethora of
Speaker 1: things we could potentially read, but we are beginning to
Speaker 1: run out of time. All right, here's another bit of
Speaker 1: listener mail. This one comes to us from Simon. I
Speaker 1: believe high stuff to blow your mind. Team. I'm an
Speaker 1: Australian researcher working in the north of Sweden. I discovered
Speaker 1: your podcast a few months ago, and in that time
Speaker 1: I've listened to an embarrassing amount. I've been a fan
Speaker 1: of the podcast medium for a long time, but your
Speaker 1: podcast is, without a doubt, the finest I've listened to.
Speaker 1: Oh that's super nice. Robert and Joe are the perfect host,
Speaker 1: somehow striking the ideal balance of intelligence, humor, and approachability
Speaker 1: no mean feat. The other thing that sets your podcast
Speaker 1: apart is your diverse choice of topics, which are often
Speaker 1: surprising and always fascinating. I've been telling everyone I can
Speaker 1: to give it an invention a listen. Well, you're two kinds, Simon,
Speaker 1: we appreciate it. This brings me to an idea for
Speaker 1: a potential episode. Having moved around a lot, I've noticed
Speaker 1: a peculiar side to many of the cultures I've come across,
Speaker 1: the presence of folkloric household spirits. Growing up, my Welsh
Speaker 1: mother would tell my brothers and I about the boab Buck,
Speaker 1: a generally benevolent spirit that tended the home while we
Speaker 1: all slept. If treated with respect and occasionally given a
Speaker 1: bowl of milk or some bread and honey, the bow
Speaker 1: would continue its role as a kindly steward of the house.
Speaker 1: If disrespected or neglected, the Bobbach could take on a
Speaker 1: more ambivalent or a mischievous role. The archetype can be
Speaker 1: found repeated in many cultures. In England and Scotland, it
Speaker 1: is known as the brownie or the hob in Ireland,
Speaker 1: the puka in Germany, the cobalt in Denmark, the nie
Speaker 1: s in Spain, the Duinde in France, the lutin, and
Speaker 1: here in Sweden the tom tape. It's obviously a Western
Speaker 1: European bias here, likely stemming from a common ancestor spirit
Speaker 1: such as the Laures of ancient Rome, but there are
Speaker 1: certainly analogs in African and Eastern cultures. There are also
Speaker 1: a number of great examples of these creatures in literature
Speaker 1: and films, such as Puck from Amid Some of the
Speaker 1: Night's Dream and the character of Hinselman from American Gods,
Speaker 1: and even the Gremlins from the nineteen eighties could be
Speaker 1: linked to this concept. Having listened to your previous episodes
Speaker 1: on folklore, particularly Jenny Green Teeth and The Willow of
Speaker 1: the Wisp, I believe your team could do an amazing
Speaker 1: job of dealing with the many facets of these creatures
Speaker 1: and beliefs. Why do some cultures have them and some not?
Speaker 1: Why do they What do they say about is how
Speaker 1: did some of these pagan concepts survive Christianity and formalized
Speaker 1: religion and modernization while others were lost though not as
Speaker 1: immediate as other folk laric entities where wolves, vampires, etcetera.
Speaker 1: There's something so enigmatic and disturbing about the idea of
Speaker 1: creatures lurking in the peripheries of our homes. Best regards
Speaker 1: from Snowy, Sweden, and thanks again for the wonderful podcast. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Simon. I think that's a great idea for
Speaker 1: an episode to explore. Yeah, totally, And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: immediately reminded that there there are variations of this that
Speaker 1: you see in uh in Chinese mythology. I mean, the
Speaker 1: most obvious being like that of like of of certainly
Speaker 1: of of a household spirit or god, you know, the
Speaker 1: kitchen god. But you do see this kind of thing echoed.
Speaker 1: I think in a lot of different mythologies and folklore's
Speaker 1: the idea that there are there are not only the
Speaker 1: strange entities and spirits of the woods and the waste,
Speaker 1: but also of the immediate domicile. I can absolutely see
Speaker 1: how beliefs like this are especially likely to survive the
Speaker 1: sort of devastating sweep of an organized religion that conquers
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, you might see, like Christianity conquers Europe
Speaker 1: and it largely gets rid of organized pagan religion, and
Speaker 1: yet pagan beliefs that are sort of private and concerned
Speaker 1: with with the secret parts of life remain. Does that
Speaker 1: make sense? Oh? Absolutely, and especially if there's not you know,
Speaker 1: something in the new religion that really scratches the same itch.
Speaker 1: You know, that's not going to it's not going to
Speaker 1: satisfy the you know this particular you know, dark or
Speaker 1: just unstated corner of everyday experience. In fact, I remember
Speaker 1: reading stories when I visited Iceland a few years ago.
Speaker 1: We were learning about the history of Iceland and they're
Speaker 1: they're like National Museum and Ricky vic And one of
Speaker 1: the one of the things I remember reading about there
Speaker 1: and some of their exhibits was the Christianization of Iceland.
Speaker 1: So they I think, I don't remember which they were under,
Speaker 1: different like imperial powers from northern Europe at different times,
Speaker 1: under like Denmark or Norway or Sweden, I guess, but
Speaker 1: at some point the Christianization impulse came from abroad and
Speaker 1: they were like, Okay, Iceland, you've got to become Christians now.
Speaker 1: So the leaders of their clans got together and they
Speaker 1: essentially negotiated a compromise. And the negotiated compromise was that
Speaker 1: they would be Christians and do Christian worship in public
Speaker 1: as long as they could still keep doing their pagan
Speaker 1: practices in private at home. Interesting, well, that's a great
Speaker 1: way for the your more minor household spirits to survive
Speaker 1: the change, all right. So we've got another message here.
Speaker 1: This comes to us in response to our episode about
Speaker 1: tunneling underground. This is from our listener Lee. Lee writes,
Speaker 1: greetings from Australia. I'm guessing you're going to get a
Speaker 1: lot of these because we were taught this in school.
Speaker 1: Just following up regarding your episode about tunnelers in Cooper Petty.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm saying that right, but uh
Speaker 1: c O O B E R P E d Y,
Speaker 1: South Australia, about eight hundred kilometers north of the state's capital, Adelaide.
Speaker 1: People live underground, but it is a fairly recent development.
Speaker 1: The community did begin as one of the largest opal
Speaker 1: mining communities in the world. However, people began living underground
Speaker 1: in dugouts because the heat and the painted desert can
Speaker 1: be extreme over thirty degrees celsius and dry for six
Speaker 1: months of the year and in winter it will usually
Speaker 1: be in the twenties. They also didn't have to pay
Speaker 1: or seek permission to extend their houses, and it's relatively
Speaker 1: cheap and quick to get materials when you are an
Speaker 1: independent miner to build a house underground. Underground in Cooper Petty,
Speaker 1: the temperature is a constant twenty six. I guess that's
Speaker 1: also celsius, which is quite nice and cool. However, they
Speaker 1: are not necessarily caves or underground. They also build mounds
Speaker 1: and live within them like in the picture, and these
Speaker 1: are the most common and Lee attaches a picture. Noticeably,
Speaker 1: this town is only about four hundred kilometers north of Woomera,
Speaker 1: the old rocket base in the middle of nowhere, with
Speaker 1: air conditioning and modern transport. Uh and uh. Lisa's mail
Speaker 1: was delivered by camel to Alice Springs till the nineteen sixties. UH.
Speaker 1: It is easier to build houses above ground, but these
Speaker 1: houses are staple and a tourist attraction, particularly when teaching
Speaker 1: students about using resources for practicality. It's also interesting to
Speaker 1: hear about Neanderthals going underground. Indigenous Australians of multiple cultures
Speaker 1: would not, and did not, as a general rule, enter
Speaker 1: deep caves where it was dark for extended periods of time,
Speaker 1: whether lava tubes or limestone. Predominantly we only find geological
Speaker 1: history or animal remains in these environments, with human artifacts
Speaker 1: found in shallow caves on or near cave entrances, but
Speaker 1: it would still be freaky sleeping near a deep cave
Speaker 1: system when you were unsure what was behind you in
Speaker 1: the dark. The Iwamian people, for example, at and around
Speaker 1: the Dara lava tubes in northeast Queensland, refused to enter
Speaker 1: the caves or drink water from them. They believe that
Speaker 1: the caves would curse them and if they didn't die
Speaker 1: in there, corditya which is a boogeyman think birds in
Speaker 1: the village style well would come and get them. Scientifically,
Speaker 1: the caves actually fill with dangerous levels of gas. Can't
Speaker 1: remember which one, and this creates an unhealthy environment. The
Speaker 1: Cutter Cut a limestone caves in Catherine, Northern Territory, whilst
Speaker 1: seeing an experienced by the jaw Win and mentioned in
Speaker 1: their dreaming was not widely used as climbing in and
Speaker 1: out of a dark cave where you can't actually see
Speaker 1: something would be very annoying and not useful for everyday life.
Speaker 1: Kind regards Lee. Oh, excellent, I love hearing about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember the this particular Australian town came up in
Speaker 1: some of our our research, but we ended up not
Speaker 1: really uh you know, pulling on that thread. So it's
Speaker 1: it's great to hear it broken down a little bit
Speaker 1: by a native Australia. All right, here's we're getting down
Speaker 1: through the end here, but here just a few more.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Adam. Hey, guys, I'm
Speaker 1: listening to the episode on the white spotted puffer fish
Speaker 1: and you men and that other animals like bower birds
Speaker 1: have elaborate behaviors or physical characteristics purely for fitness demonstration
Speaker 1: to attract mates. However, there is an emerging hypothesis that
Speaker 1: these actually evolved because of female esthetic preferences, with no
Speaker 1: relationship or even a negative relationship with fitness. This was
Speaker 1: originally proposed by Charles Darwin, but fell out a favor
Speaker 1: until recently. It is not the consensus idea for selection
Speaker 1: of these characteristics, but it is gaining an acceptance. There's
Speaker 1: also a link to a full text article on pub
Speaker 1: med Central below. This topic could be worth a mention
Speaker 1: during listener mail or as an episode keep up the
Speaker 1: great work, Adam ps all hail the great basilisk just
Speaker 1: in case, and then he included a link for us
Speaker 1: to check out. Well, that's a good point, Adam. I
Speaker 1: I don't remember us saying that we knew it was
Speaker 1: purely for fitness demonstration as opposed to so fitness demonstration.
Speaker 1: I guess would be either way, you are trying to
Speaker 1: appeal to mates by showing off a particular characteristic. And
Speaker 1: I guess the debate would be, is the characteristic in
Speaker 1: in biology what's known as like an on a signal,
Speaker 1: Does it like actually signal fitness in the way that
Speaker 1: it might be perceived to versus is it just purely
Speaker 1: a decoration? Is it something that serves no actual purpose,
Speaker 1: doesn't actually show whether or not you're fit in some
Speaker 1: other way like free of parasites, are healthy or something
Speaker 1: like that and whatever we actually said in the episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Adam's right. We we don't always know the
Speaker 1: difference there. Sometimes there might be Uh, might be ways
Speaker 1: in which a signal is useful in ways we don't realize,
Speaker 1: or or use less in ways we don't realize. All right, Joe,
Speaker 1: I think we only have time for one more here,
Speaker 1: because Carney has has gone full on Highlander three and
Speaker 1: is now in Mario Van People's mod Oh, so you've
Speaker 1: gotta you gotta gotta pick one and then and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to call it. Well, it looks like
Speaker 1: this is from our listener Aaron, regarding the Jumping Fish
Speaker 1: episode that we re aired recently as a as a
Speaker 1: Vault episode on Saturday. Aaron says, Howdy, been listening to
Speaker 1: the podcast for a month and a half. Now I
Speaker 1: was listening to one from the vault just now, and
Speaker 1: you discuss whether or not the Kendru has swam up
Speaker 1: a person's urethra or remember in the Jumping Fish episode,
Speaker 1: that's where we talked about this urban legend or possible
Speaker 1: urban legend, that this Amazonian fish called the Candru can
Speaker 1: get into men's your e throws by swimming up the
Speaker 1: stream of a man's urine as he peas into the river.
Speaker 1: We said that, you know, it might actually be able
Speaker 1: to get get in there. We don't know, but it's
Speaker 1: definitely not going to be swimming up a stream of
Speaker 1: urine through the air. Continuing with Aaron's email, Aaron says,
Speaker 1: Jeremy Wade actually interviews a victim and doctor that removed
Speaker 1: the fish in one episode of River Monsters. I think
Speaker 1: that's a show about scary fish. It is, Yes, I've
Speaker 1: seen it before. It pretty good. Uh, there was actual
Speaker 1: video of them removing the fish. Regardless of whether or
Speaker 1: not the mode of the fish inserting itself happened, it
Speaker 1: appears as though it did happen. Indeed, it is rare,
Speaker 1: but it can happen if you're to believe the story.
Speaker 1: If you watch season one, episode fit, episode Fish, episode six,
Speaker 1: you will see that the canderu is quite a scary
Speaker 1: little fish. Well, okay, I still don't believe they can
Speaker 1: swim up through the air through a stream of urine.
Speaker 1: But I you know, if there's a candio around and
Speaker 1: you've got to your ether, I'd say, don't put it
Speaker 1: in there. Don't let it get in there. Always good advice.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, it looks like Carney has finally calmed down.
Speaker 1: It looks like his his his infection has run its course,
Speaker 1: he has reached the quickening state and is now one again.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna have close out this episode. We think
Speaker 1: everybody who wrote in, whether we got to read your
Speaker 1: email or not, we do try and screen everything ourselves.
Speaker 1: There is there is no other member of the the
Speaker 1: Email team. You're you're listening to him right now. Uh So,
Speaker 1: even if we didn't respond or read your email, here,
Speaker 1: you know we we are reading. We are listening. We
Speaker 1: would love to hear from all of you in the future.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to hear more episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your Mind, check out Stuff to
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Speaker 1: Basilist T shirt that we put out that will help
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Speaker 1: of evil AI overlord takes over in the future. Um.
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Speaker 1: give us a review. It helps us in our our
Speaker 1: battle against the almighty algorithm. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tary Harrison. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us directly
Speaker 1: to let us know feedback on this episode or any other,
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Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind at how
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Speaker 1: They believe I think the big