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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: we're back with listener mail. That's right, we received a

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Speaker 1: great deal of cool listener feedback, and in order to

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Speaker 1: harvest it all this time, our mail bot Carney has

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Speaker 1: essentially become an aquatic humanoid, right, an aquatic humanoid robot. Now,

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Speaker 1: Carney has been our mailbot for a long time now,

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Speaker 1: and uh, we noticed that he has apparently some webbed

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Speaker 1: feet now and uh, some gills, and we're not quite

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Speaker 1: sure what that's all about, since he's a robot anyway,

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Speaker 1: but he seems to be trying. He's really trying to

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Speaker 1: get in there, become the aquatic ape that may never

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Speaker 1: have been. I assume that the gills are part of

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Speaker 1: a like a cooling system for for all of his hardware,

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Speaker 1: you know, Oh right, that's where he chills his CPU. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think that's this probably what's going on, because he

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Speaker 1: doesn't really need to breathe. But I'll tell you what

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Speaker 1: does need to breathe. All of these cool listener mails

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Speaker 1: that we've received, well, without any further ado, I say,

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Speaker 1: we jump right in the waters warm all right. This

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Speaker 1: one comes to us from Maria. Maria says, hi, guys,

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Speaker 1: I am from Columbia and I was just listening to

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Speaker 1: the Aquatic Humanoids podcast and I just couldn't stop thinking

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Speaker 1: about one of the various native cultures in my country

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Speaker 1: that had a sort of aquatic humanoid in its mythology.

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Speaker 1: The Musica culture had the belief that they're shamans were

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Speaker 1: going to become a mix of sacred animals. They became

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Speaker 1: a humanoid with the tail of a fish. Uh. Some

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Speaker 1: theories say that the penis was the body part that

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Speaker 1: will become a fish tail, the head of a jaguar,

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Speaker 1: and some other changes in some sacred parts of the

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Speaker 1: body making them gods when they pray and make and

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Speaker 1: made rituals. I don't know the complete story, but you

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Speaker 1: may want to take a look at the researchers of

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Speaker 1: this culture and others with a similar myth And if

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Speaker 1: you ever go to Columbia, you can visit the Museo

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Speaker 1: del Oro or Golden Museum, where you can learn about

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Speaker 1: a lot of cultures and native objects. To sustain the

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Speaker 1: myths with humanoids that were believed to be not inferiors,

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Speaker 1: but superiors to ordinary humans. I mean, it's kind of

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Speaker 1: hard not to imagine an aquatic humanoid as superior to humans, right,

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Speaker 1: I guess they did it with Creature from the Black Lagoon.

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Speaker 1: But I don't know. When you think of the abyss,

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Speaker 1: somehow like being under under all the water seems to

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Speaker 1: breed a kind of serenity. Yeah. Well, I would say

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Speaker 1: again with with Creature from the Black Lagoon, there seems

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Speaker 1: to be a lot of a lot of effort goes

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Speaker 1: into making the creature look weak when we have at

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Speaker 1: least one or two scenes that depict just how effective

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Speaker 1: the creature is in its natural habitat under the water.

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Speaker 1: I will say, in the Creature movies, the creature is

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Speaker 1: certainly morally superior to the humans come in and start

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Speaker 1: harassing it. But that's really interesting. I tried to look

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Speaker 1: up some stuff about this, uh this moisca idea of

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Speaker 1: the humanoid with the penis or the fish tail coming

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Speaker 1: from the penis or something. I couldn't find anything about this,

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Speaker 1: but I'm going to keep looking. I want to know more.

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Speaker 1: This sounds very interesting. It looks like Carney has another

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Speaker 1: bit of of Aquatic Humanoid listener mail here that he's

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Speaker 1: brought up from the depth right. This is from our

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Speaker 1: listener Jared. Jared says, Hello, Robert and Joe. I just

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Speaker 1: listen to the second part of the Aquatic Humanoid episode,

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Speaker 1: which I enjoyed, but it did not address one of

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Speaker 1: my primary curiosities on the matter, which is why has

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Speaker 1: an aquatic creature not evolved that disappear in intelligence to humans.

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Speaker 1: This is more of a question of evolutionary intelligence, but

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Speaker 1: the simple question is, if humans are the dominant land animal,

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Speaker 1: why is there not a hyper smart crab that dominates

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Speaker 1: the oceans. Coming from the viewpoint of an intelligent land animal,

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Speaker 1: it would seem like intelligence is one of the most

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Speaker 1: valuable adaptations, so I find it surprising that the trait

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Speaker 1: is not more commonly. Especial is not more common, especially

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Speaker 1: in animals like turtles that have existed for hundreds of

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Speaker 1: millions of years. It would also surmise that if an

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Speaker 1: animal was physically well adapted to its environment like a turtle,

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Speaker 1: then mental adaptations would be the next priority trait. If

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Speaker 1: you have any thoughts on the matter, I would be

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Speaker 1: curious to hear them. Long story, short, how did intelligence evolve?

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Speaker 1: And why are humans seemingly unique along? Yeah, that's that's

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Speaker 1: that's the simple question will tackle me. Uh well, I

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Speaker 1: think one of those obvious answers that comes to mind

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Speaker 1: is like, how much more perfect does say a sea

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Speaker 1: turtle need to be? Right? You know? Is it is

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Speaker 1: arguably as smart as it needs to be. Evolution is

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Speaker 1: a cheap skate, and brains, big powerful brains are incredibly expensive.

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Speaker 1: They are. They come with so many downsides. Your brain

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Speaker 1: is so energy hungry it's ridiculous. You need eat tons

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Speaker 1: of calories to sustain it. It also requires a lot

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Speaker 1: of development time through which you are You're very vulnerable

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Speaker 1: in your youth because you you require such a long

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Speaker 1: development period to have the powerful adult brain that you

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Speaker 1: have today. So developing a smart brain is a difficult

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Speaker 1: thing to do, and you've got to really justify it.

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Speaker 1: Another thing I would say is you bring up the

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Speaker 1: idea of physical adaptations. I would say, actually, the more

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Speaker 1: physically adapted a creature is, the less intelligent it needs

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Speaker 1: to be. Exactly. I mean that's what we see with

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Speaker 1: with humans. Do we have great clause? Now? Do we

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Speaker 1: have the natural body armor? No, we're not very strong

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Speaker 1: for our body size. The one thing we have is

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Speaker 1: that enormous brain. Yeah, everything else is done more efficiently

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Speaker 1: by some other species. I mean, we've talked before about

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Speaker 1: how if you see a hairless great ape like a

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Speaker 1: chimpanzee or gorilla, it is the muscles are hilarious. It

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Speaker 1: is jacked. These things are so much stronger than we are,

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Speaker 1: and that they need to be because they're not as

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Speaker 1: intelligent as we are. We can get around with less

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Speaker 1: physical strength because we've got these smart workarounds. But to

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Speaker 1: more directly address your question, obviously, neither of us knows

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Speaker 1: exactly what is the cause of advance human intelligence. But

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Speaker 1: I'd point to a couple of things I would suspect,

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Speaker 1: and those things are tool use and social dynamics. I

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Speaker 1: think those are probably two of the main things that

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Speaker 1: shape to the modern human brain. I'm totally welcomed. I

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Speaker 1: would love to hear opposing viewpoints, but I think those

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Speaker 1: are things that seem pretty practical to me. Now. I

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Speaker 1: think there's tons of evidence that the human brain, the

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Speaker 1: smart human brain, is a social brain that evolved primarily

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Speaker 1: to manage and maintain social relationships, to understand relationships with

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Speaker 1: other members of the group to understand facial expressions and

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Speaker 1: and nuanced social relationships and reciprocity and status and all

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Speaker 1: these kind of things that we think about in highly advanced,

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Speaker 1: very complicated social animals. Are there other animals underneath the

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Speaker 1: sea that are that have complicated social relationships in that way?

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Speaker 1: Maybe some marine mammals, right, maybe dolphins, Yes, certainly, the

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Speaker 1: marine mammals are the ones that come to mind, and

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Speaker 1: uh memory, serious, there is an example of of of

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Speaker 1: a dolphin engaging in some form of tools. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've read about dolphins, like bottlenose dolphins using marine sponges

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Speaker 1: to assist them in foraging for food. But then again,

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Speaker 1: the dynamics of tool use. I think we pointed this

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Speaker 1: out actually in part two of the Aquati Humanoids episode.

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Speaker 1: The dynamics of tool use underwater are gonna be a

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Speaker 1: little different than they are above water, right Like, if

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Speaker 1: you think about so many of the most primitive early

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Speaker 1: human tools, they appear to be things that were for

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Speaker 1: hitting and throwing, right like these hand axes. We don't

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Speaker 1: know exactly what they're for, but these sort of sharpened

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Speaker 1: stones that appear to be able to be held in

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Speaker 1: the hand look like you could use them to hit

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Speaker 1: something or cut it something, maybe for processing animal carcasses.

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Speaker 1: And then of course there are also like, uh, like

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Speaker 1: spear tips and things like that. I don't know, I mean,

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Speaker 1: is throwing as easy underwater maybe, I don't know. It

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Speaker 1: seems a little bit harder. But I wonder, I wonder

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Speaker 1: if some of just the different physics of resistance and

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Speaker 1: buoyancy and things like that in underwater environments would not

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Speaker 1: allow the same types of tool developing regimes that you

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Speaker 1: could have above water. Yeah. Yeah, And of course I

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Speaker 1: think we reference this as well, uh in that episode

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Speaker 1: we have the past episodes about the about technology and fire,

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Speaker 1: in which we we wonder, like, to what extent could

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Speaker 1: an underwater intelligence, even if they got to the point

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Speaker 1: where they had tools, could they ever have any kind

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Speaker 1: of technology based on fire with being an aquatic organism.

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Speaker 1: That's a very good point. Now, I would say that

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Speaker 1: I think the evolutionary record indicates that, or the paleo

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Speaker 1: anthropology record would indicate that human tool use and pretty

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Speaker 1: extreme levels of intelligence were already present before we mastered fire.

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Speaker 1: But but I don't know. I mean, you can definitely

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Speaker 1: say that fire was instrumental in creating human technological society,

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Speaker 1: and you couldn't create something like that underwater where there

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Speaker 1: is no fire. But I do think that's a really

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Speaker 1: interesting question, Jared and I would like to come back

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Speaker 1: to that in the future. Alright, Arnie is signaling us

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Speaker 1: now and letting us know that it is time to

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Speaker 1: cover some of the listener mail we received following our

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Speaker 1: evolution of the anus episode. We've got a lot of

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Speaker 1: anacy feedback, that's right. Uh, Yeah, that was I felt

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Speaker 1: like a really great episode. Uh, and a lot of

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Speaker 1: people really took it to heart. Uh. They were able

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Speaker 1: to sort of re see the anus or see the

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Speaker 1: anus for the first time. I think it may have

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Speaker 1: been our most popular episode ever on social media, though.

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Speaker 1: I wonder if that just has to do with it

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Speaker 1: having a picture of an anus next to it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: well it was. It was abstract picture, but that was

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Speaker 1: a tough one to pick out art for, I tell you,

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Speaker 1: and you started going on on Getty images and start

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Speaker 1: trying to find the perfect anus picture. Like, nobody's taking

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Speaker 1: a photograph of an anus without some sort of an agenda, Right,

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Speaker 1: you've got alterior motives. Yeah, A lot of like clinical

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Speaker 1: photographs came up having to do the various uh uh,

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Speaker 1: sexually transmitted diseases or not, so it was not a

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Speaker 1: it was or oh in birth effects too, so it

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Speaker 1: was not a pleasant image quest. Sometimes it's a lot

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Speaker 1: of fun, this one was more frustrating and occasionally revolting. Well, Robert,

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Speaker 1: I give you credit for finding the most pleasant stock

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Speaker 1: ardanus out there. Yeah, well, thank you. So we we

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Speaker 1: received a number of listener mails. This one comes to

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Speaker 1: us from Nis in Copenhagen. Hi, guys, just found your

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Speaker 1: podcast a few days ago, and it's really great. There

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Speaker 1: is one fun fact regarding the evolution of the anus

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Speaker 1: episode I would like to share and which is interesting

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Speaker 1: to both the humorous and the serious spectator's mind. There

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Speaker 1: is an old Chinese curse you'd wish on your most

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Speaker 1: hated antagonists which goes quote, I curse your descendants to

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Speaker 1: be born without a toll for ten generation. Sounds funny,

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Speaker 1: but in the light of the facts so you laid

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Speaker 1: out in the episode, it seems to be a very

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Speaker 1: nasty thing to wish for. That is a deeply nasty thing.

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Speaker 1: Best and thanks for the good work. Yeah. Indeed, uh

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Speaker 1: to to to have the fate of say, certain species

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Speaker 1: of scorpions that we mentioned that loses its anus if

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Speaker 1: it ends up jettison and its tail because the anus

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Speaker 1: is on one of the the outer tail segments, it

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Speaker 1: ends up just swelling with the poop until it eventually dies. However,

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Speaker 1: I did do some additional research on that scenario, and

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Speaker 1: it turns out that it kind of it's not as

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Speaker 1: terrible as it sounds, because, on one hand, without its stinger,

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Speaker 1: the scorpion is not able to get larger prey, so

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Speaker 1: it's having to depend on smaller prey anyway, it's not

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Speaker 1: eating as much, and it can still breed. So so

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Speaker 1: the idea is, once you lose your tail, you can't poop,

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Speaker 1: you can't eat as much, so you're really just kind

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Speaker 1: of a breeding missile, like you're trying to spread some

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Speaker 1: genetic material before you die. Yeah, but that's what it

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Speaker 1: was anyway, basically, So it doesn't it ultimately doesn't interfere

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Speaker 1: with the pure functionality of the adult a scorpion. Aren't

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Speaker 1: we all just an unpooping breeding missile sometimes? Yeah, when

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Speaker 1: you when you get right down to the heart of

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Speaker 1: the matter, that's all we are. Okay. This one is

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Speaker 1: also about the anus episode from our listener, Jason Jason writes, Hi,

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Speaker 1: as I was listening to this episode, I was reminded

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Speaker 1: of a poster I remember from the late nineteen sixties,

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Speaker 1: to the best of my memory. It reads the parts

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Speaker 1: of the body were arguing about who should be in charge.

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Speaker 1: The legs said they should be in charge because they

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Speaker 1: moved the body. The eyes said they should be in

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Speaker 1: charge because they see where the body is going. The

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Speaker 1: brain said it thinks that it thinks for the body,

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Speaker 1: and it should be in charge. The anus said it

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Speaker 1: should be in charge. The rest of the body parts

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Speaker 1: just laughed. Then the anus stopped working, The legs grew wobbly,

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Speaker 1: the eyes grew dam and the brain got foggy, and

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Speaker 1: they all agreed to let the anus be in charge.

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Speaker 1: The moral of the story is if you want to

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Speaker 1: be in charge just to be an goal. Well, it

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Speaker 1: certainly drives home. The fact that we touched on quite

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Speaker 1: a bit in that episode is that, uh, for the

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Speaker 1: most part, if the anus is working, fine, we don't

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Speaker 1: really think about it. But if it's if it's not

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Speaker 1: working fine, it's hard to think about anything else. That,

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Speaker 1: of course, isn't you know, counting any kind of fetishization

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Speaker 1: or or or sexual context, which we we basically just

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Speaker 1: didn't have room to discuss. We We did get one

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Speaker 1: mail we're not going to read here asking us why

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Speaker 1: we didn't mention sexual pleasure. Uh, not for any particular reason.

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Speaker 1: It just that was in the purview of that episode, right.

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Speaker 1: It was challenging enough just to fit all of the

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Speaker 1: or or as much of the evolution and functionality of

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Speaker 1: the anus as possible into the episode without getting into

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Speaker 1: additional um dimensions on the topic. But I mean, but

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Speaker 1: certainly the dimension of pleasure and uh in the human anus.

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Speaker 1: There is a lot of content out there. I've run

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Speaker 1: across the research before, so I would not be opposed

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Speaker 1: to exploring that or other dimensions of the anus in

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Speaker 1: the future. But but this, this bit of listener mail continues.

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Speaker 1: Oh right, So yeah, Jason says, I hope that made

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Speaker 1: it us your content filters. It did. On a side note,

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Speaker 1: I have a book recommendation. It is Lord of Light

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Speaker 1: by Rogers A. Lasnie. I've heard of this one. I um,

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Speaker 1: it's actually on my sort of short list because of it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because it's it it has sort of Eastern elements. Oh okay,

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Speaker 1: I had not heard of it, but Jason says it

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Speaker 1: won the nineteen six Hugo Award. It contains subjects you've

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Speaker 1: touched on in the podcast, from palamp cys to various

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Speaker 1: ways of obtaining immortality said in a Hindu esque world,

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Speaker 1: plus there are a few truly grown worthy puns. And

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Speaker 1: then he gives a quote from the book Jacket. Earth

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Speaker 1: is long since dead on a colony planet. A band

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Speaker 1: of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal,

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Speaker 1: and now rules the world as the gods of the

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Speaker 1: Hindu pantheon. Only one dares oppose them, he who was

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Speaker 1: once said Artha and is now Mahassa Matman, binder of demons,

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Speaker 1: Lord of Light. That sounds great. I'm I'm all in,

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Speaker 1: where how's my future in doing movie trail? It's pretty

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Speaker 1: I think it's pretty good. Joe, that's pretty good. Um yeah,

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Speaker 1: well this is this is this book made its way

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Speaker 1: into my lengthy to read list because he does end

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Speaker 1: up invoking the Hindu pantheon here and and there's just

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Speaker 1: so much in our in our science fiction and our

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Speaker 1: our fantasy that is that is so based on Western

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Speaker 1: motifs and uh and Western myth cycles that it's it's

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Speaker 1: pleasant to find even uh like, even if it's not

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Speaker 1: perfectly executed, to find an example that that actually utilizes

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Speaker 1: other mythologies. I've mentioned an author on here before, m A. R.

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Speaker 1: Baker Baker. I'm not sure how this particular author pronounces

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Speaker 1: it that these are interesting books because he creates this

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Speaker 1: kind of far future fantasy scenario that has sci fi elements,

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Speaker 1: but it's but it's based more on on on Eastern

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Speaker 1: models of of of government and mythology. It's really the

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Speaker 1: interesting world. He's well worth looking up if if if

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Speaker 1: this at all interests you. His first book is The

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Speaker 1: Man of Gold, and you can find it. I think

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Speaker 1: it's some of it may be available that that one

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Speaker 1: I think is available on kindall now. But also it

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Speaker 1: has a fabulous paper bit of paperback art that I

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Speaker 1: think was Michael Wheeling if I'm not mistaken. Oh, I

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Speaker 1: just looked it up. It's fantastic. It's got a guy

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Speaker 1: in the foreground who looks like he's wearing sort of

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Speaker 1: a yellow bathrobe holding your crystal ball, and then there's

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Speaker 1: a guy in the background who looks exactly like the

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Speaker 1: suit the main character wears in Dead Space. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: and if you look closely enough, I think you'll find

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Speaker 1: that the protagonist on the cover looks like Jermin and

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Speaker 1: Clement if you like. Far. This is decades before the

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Speaker 1: Fly of the Concords. But and yet there he is. Oh,

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Speaker 1: you know, I'm on another literary note, and entirely the

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Speaker 1: story about the the anus vying for control of the body.

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Speaker 1: That of course reminds me of a segment in Williams

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Speaker 1: Burrows Naked Lunch, and if anyone remembers that, I think

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Speaker 1: it made its way into the Cronenberg film as well.

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Speaker 1: It's been a long time since I've seen that where

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Speaker 1: similar scenario the anus is vying for control of the body.

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Speaker 1: You know, I should mention briefly that one other listener

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Speaker 1: got in touch with us about a ho Chunk legend

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Speaker 1: that is about why the anus is wrinkly, and it

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Speaker 1: goes back to this story involving the trickster figure in

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Speaker 1: the in the ho Chunk legends, uh, and he basically

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Speaker 1: he gets a burned anus and somehow this leads him

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Speaker 1: to create the wrinkles that are now in everybody's anus. Well,

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Speaker 1: every every great great work of literature has to have

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Speaker 1: a burned anus in it at some point. Uh, like

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Speaker 1: the Miller's tale. Ye, yeah, in the Cannabury Tales. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that that store spoiler for the tales, but that ends

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Speaker 1: in a burned anus as well. Okay, one more we

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Speaker 1: should look at real quick about about anuses and especially

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Speaker 1: machines that poop. I guess we don't have to read

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Speaker 1: this whole one, but we got an email from our

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Speaker 1: listener Steve who mentioned an art slash science exhibit at

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Speaker 1: the Mona or Museum of Old and New Art. I

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Speaker 1: was assuming that meant Museum of Nasty Art in Tasmania, Australia.

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Speaker 1: And uh. He says that there is this exhibit called

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Speaker 1: Cloaca by a Belgian artist named whim or Vim Delvoy.

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Speaker 1: And he says quote it was originally unveiled at a

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Speaker 1: museum in Antwerp, but it was later commissioned for specific

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Speaker 1: installation at Mona. The machine is fed twice a day

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Speaker 1: and over the course of a number of hours you

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Speaker 1: can witness the food progressing through a series of seven

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Speaker 1: glass containers that contain the appropriate enzymes and chemicals to

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Speaker 1: simulate the human digestive process. And if you time your

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Speaker 1: visit to the room at about two PM, you can

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Speaker 1: witness the smelly climax as the machine defecates through an

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Speaker 1: artificial anus. He sent a video. It's gross. Yes, So

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Speaker 1: you know, Cloaca is actually an old favorite of the

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Speaker 1: show if you go back and listen to some of

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Speaker 1: the older episodes. Uh, we definitely, uh, we definitely referenced it,

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Speaker 1: and it is if memory serves uh. He created several

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Speaker 1: different versions of the cloaca, So there was I don't

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Speaker 1: know if he had a numbered or lettered or what

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Speaker 1: have you, but I do seem to remember there were

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Speaker 1: different incarnations of this this art installation and uh. And

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Speaker 1: you know he wasn't the first to tackle this this

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Speaker 1: type of scenario, because there was the the fabulous case

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Speaker 1: of the digesting duck, created in the eighteenth century by

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Speaker 1: Jaques Deva Kansin. Uh. There was labeled at the time

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Speaker 1: as a philosophical toy. It was it was a duck,

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Speaker 1: mechanical duck that you fed and then it would poop.

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Speaker 1: But in this case, however, it didn't actually process the food. Essentially,

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Speaker 1: you put grain in one end and then the other

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Speaker 1: end would push out excrement that he had been pre placed.

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Speaker 1: But still there was the dream of Cloaco was present

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Speaker 1: even back then. If it eats like a duck, if

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Speaker 1: it defecates like a duck, it's got to be a

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Speaker 1: philosophical toy. Yeah. I also seem to recall there's a

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Speaker 1: theory that the creator to get back to where nobody

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Speaker 1: thinks about the anus unless a you're you know, um

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Speaker 1: obsessed with it or be if it's if it's failing

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Speaker 1: you in some way. There is a theory that the

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Speaker 1: artist here or the the the machine maker here, uh,

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Speaker 1: that he experienced some sort of digestive discomfort and that

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Speaker 1: might have made him fixate on the creation of this device,

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Speaker 1: the digesting duck. Look it up. In the meantime, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break and when we come back,

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Speaker 1: more listener mail. Alright, we're back. So it looks like

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Speaker 1: our mail body is bringing us another listener mail. This

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Speaker 1: one is seems to be drenched in honey and surrounded

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Speaker 1: by swarming bees. Oh boy, this is from our listener Amy.

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Speaker 1: Amy says, Dear Robert and Joe, I usually skip the

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Speaker 1: Vault episodes because I tend to keep up with the

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Speaker 1: podcast as it comes out. But I'm so glad I

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Speaker 1: didn't skip this one, so obviously it's about the Tears

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Speaker 1: of Ray episode. I'm an active Ray worshiper, with my

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Speaker 1: major annual holiday being the Egyptian New Year or web Rumpet,

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00:21:06,920 --> 00:21:09,160
Speaker 1: the first day of the new year when the sun

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00:21:09,359 --> 00:21:13,480
Speaker 1: rises before the star serious usually somewhere between July and August,

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Speaker 1: depending on your location. There is a whole beautiful mythology

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Speaker 1: surrounding web Rumpet, which I encourage you both to look

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Speaker 1: into because it's a wild ride. But I like to

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Speaker 1: take the day and throw a pot luck and share

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Speaker 1: the story of the new year with my friends. As

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Speaker 1: you can imagine, one of the foods we keep on

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Speaker 1: the table is honey, honey, lemon cakes, sliced apples with

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Speaker 1: honey and cinnamon, fresh bread with butter, and honey, spiced

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00:21:36,800 --> 00:21:40,040
Speaker 1: tea with honey, anything we can think of, along with

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Speaker 1: everything you mentioned in the podcast. Part of the importance

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Speaker 1: is in the color kmetics. Modern day practitioners of the

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00:21:46,440 --> 00:21:49,840
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian religion focus a lot on the symbolism surrounding

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00:21:49,880 --> 00:21:52,680
Speaker 1: color and for Ray, the color and element gold is

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00:21:52,760 --> 00:21:55,840
Speaker 1: highly prized and extremely important since most of us cannot

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00:21:55,840 --> 00:21:59,520
Speaker 1: afford to offer gold, honey, incense, and fire become offerings

404
00:21:59,560 --> 00:22:02,199
Speaker 1: we can call infinitely present to Ray, thank you for

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00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:05,120
Speaker 1: always being respectful to people of different beliefs while also

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00:22:05,200 --> 00:22:08,679
Speaker 1: discussing facts and science. It's very refreshing and I appreciate

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00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:12,160
Speaker 1: you both for it. Best Amy Oh. She also thanks

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00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:15,400
Speaker 1: us for pronouncing Ray's name correctly, says it was wonderful

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Speaker 1: to hear. Well. I can't promise will pronounce everything else

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00:22:18,640 --> 00:22:20,960
Speaker 1: in this email correctly. I hope I said web rom

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Speaker 1: pet right. But this is a fascinating listener email. I

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Speaker 1: really wasn't wasn't expecting to hear from modern Ray Worshiper,

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Speaker 1: never heard. I don't think we've ever heard from a

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Speaker 1: commeticist before. Maybe, but I don't recall I don't recall

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Speaker 1: it coming up before now so but anyway, I looked

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Speaker 1: up what she said the web rom pet ceremony. I

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Speaker 1: have no idea if this practice is traditional or established

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Speaker 1: in NACI in Egypt, but I just want to share

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Speaker 1: what I found on a blog post by a modern

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00:22:48,400 --> 00:22:51,119
Speaker 1: commeticist describing what at least that person does for web

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00:22:51,280 --> 00:22:54,080
Speaker 1: ron pet, which involves the practice of writing all your

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00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:56,439
Speaker 1: frustrations and things you want to get rid of on

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00:22:56,480 --> 00:22:59,040
Speaker 1: a clay pot. Then you paint the pot red I

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00:22:59,080 --> 00:23:01,320
Speaker 1: guess for the color, some bullism that aim you mentioned.

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Speaker 1: And then you spit on the pot and you defile

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Speaker 1: it and smash it to pieces. So this is like

427
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:11,719
Speaker 1: a fictional version of the subduing I believe of apophis.

428
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:13,640
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if I'm getting that wrong, but I think

429
00:23:13,680 --> 00:23:16,840
Speaker 1: you you subdue this evil deity and sort of get

430
00:23:16,880 --> 00:23:19,960
Speaker 1: it out. You defile it, you punish it and destroy it. Wow,

431
00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:21,840
Speaker 1: you know you think, and maybe this is the case.

432
00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:25,239
Speaker 1: This would be a holiday that these paint your own

433
00:23:25,280 --> 00:23:28,600
Speaker 1: pottery places would embrace market. You know, hey, it's it's

434
00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:32,160
Speaker 1: time come in. Paint the paint the paint these these

435
00:23:32,160 --> 00:23:35,000
Speaker 1: bits of pottery with your with with sort of your

436
00:23:35,040 --> 00:23:38,600
Speaker 1: your emotional antagonists. And then you can spit on that.

437
00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:41,679
Speaker 1: Well I don't know, at least defile them there in

438
00:23:41,680 --> 00:23:43,239
Speaker 1: the shop or take them home and to file them.

439
00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:44,680
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not gonna tell anybody how to

440
00:23:44,760 --> 00:23:47,520
Speaker 1: run their pottery business, but it sounds like a great

441
00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:49,919
Speaker 1: idea to me. Well, again, I don't know how widespread

442
00:23:49,920 --> 00:23:52,200
Speaker 1: this practices. It might just be this, you know, this

443
00:23:52,280 --> 00:23:56,560
Speaker 1: one blog post author and their friends. But that's where

444
00:23:56,560 --> 00:23:59,080
Speaker 1: it begins. Right a year from now, I want to

445
00:23:59,119 --> 00:24:02,639
Speaker 1: see it popping in pottery establishments. And hey, if anybody

446
00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:06,360
Speaker 1: out there runs the pottery establishment, paint your own pottery, etcetera,

447
00:24:06,480 --> 00:24:08,680
Speaker 1: or just a pottery studio, I would I would love

448
00:24:08,720 --> 00:24:14,080
Speaker 1: to hear your thoughts on this sacred right. And speaking

449
00:24:14,080 --> 00:24:17,560
Speaker 1: of honey, here comes a rare piece of physical mail, right,

450
00:24:17,640 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 1: not even from Carney. Carney is sitting here crying because

451
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:22,919
Speaker 1: we got this through the snail mail. Right. And and

452
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 1: by the way, if you're wondering how can I send

453
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:26,440
Speaker 1: them snail mail, well, if you go to stuff to

454
00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:29,239
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com, there's an about section and

455
00:24:29,320 --> 00:24:32,879
Speaker 1: that will include a physical address to send a mail to.

456
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:35,760
Speaker 1: But yeah, we we received a physical piece of mail

457
00:24:35,960 --> 00:24:38,800
Speaker 1: along with some artwork. Yeah, so I'm gonna read it

458
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:43,440
Speaker 1: to you now. This comes to us from Gin love

459
00:24:43,520 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 1: the show. I listened to all the stuffs. Thank you

460
00:24:46,400 --> 00:24:48,840
Speaker 1: for helping my mind not turn too much during my

461
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:53,000
Speaker 1: years of raising small children. Keep it up, please, you're

462
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:55,360
Speaker 1: a recent from the Vault. Episode of Tears of Ray

463
00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:58,600
Speaker 1: was so fascinating. I love gardening and bees. One if

464
00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:01,400
Speaker 1: you pointed out that honey is in fact, be barf.

465
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:04,720
Speaker 1: That's I think this was you. It is It's true,

466
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:08,199
Speaker 1: which which made me stop in my tracks and crack up.

467
00:25:08,320 --> 00:25:11,800
Speaker 1: It is be Barf. I painted a watercolor last year

468
00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:15,120
Speaker 1: with a honey jar with more honest and funny labeling.

469
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 1: I also made a modified honey label version for my

470
00:25:18,440 --> 00:25:20,960
Speaker 1: friends and family who don't like to be reminded of

471
00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:23,639
Speaker 1: the truth. Ha ha. There are two types of people

472
00:25:23,640 --> 00:25:26,679
Speaker 1: in the world. Here are copies for you both. I

473
00:25:26,760 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 1: pegged you as be bar if people too, God bless

474
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:32,440
Speaker 1: and thanks for all you do. So she sent us

475
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:34,919
Speaker 1: a copy of this watercolor she did, and it is

476
00:25:34,960 --> 00:25:36,679
Speaker 1: a jar of honey with one of those little what

477
00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:38,800
Speaker 1: do you call the thing that's a wooden thing with

478
00:25:38,840 --> 00:25:41,359
Speaker 1: the honey comb shape on the end that you drizzle

479
00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:43,440
Speaker 1: the honey off of. I don't know if that even

480
00:25:43,480 --> 00:25:46,520
Speaker 1: has a name. Oh yeah, it's a honey dipper, which

481
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 1: I have to say, I love the appearance of a

482
00:25:49,160 --> 00:25:52,280
Speaker 1: honey dipper, but I just find it super messy when

483
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:54,240
Speaker 1: I try and use one. Maybe I'm using it incorrectly,

484
00:25:54,440 --> 00:25:57,159
Speaker 1: but I just find the squeezy bear to be the

485
00:25:57,160 --> 00:26:00,440
Speaker 1: best method. I thought that the honey dipper only existed

486
00:26:00,480 --> 00:26:02,960
Speaker 1: in honey nut cheerios commercials. I thought it was a

487
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: magical wand used by cartoon B's just the cartoon B

488
00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:09,280
Speaker 1: that was the only person who had access. But anyway,

489
00:26:09,320 --> 00:26:11,439
Speaker 1: it's leaning against a jar of honey with like a

490
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:13,960
Speaker 1: wooden stopper cork and a bee buzzing around it, and

491
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:17,200
Speaker 1: the jar of honey is labeled. I'm interested on the

492
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:20,359
Speaker 1: history of the honey dipper because it is it is

493
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:23,080
Speaker 1: a highly specialized device. It is a unitask and it's

494
00:26:23,119 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 1: not good for anything else, unlike to say a spoon.

495
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:29,280
Speaker 1: A spoon can be used for anything, including your honey.

496
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:32,879
Speaker 1: So where did this particular gadget come from. It's also

497
00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:35,879
Speaker 1: not you know, it's it's if you're looking at it

498
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:39,600
Speaker 1: from like a manufacturing standpoint or a wood maker, a

499
00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:42,639
Speaker 1: woodcraftsman's standpoint, Like it's not a I mean, it's a

500
00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:45,399
Speaker 1: simple device. I don't have any moving parts, but it's

501
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:49,399
Speaker 1: it's also fairly ornate. You have to you know, it

502
00:26:49,680 --> 00:26:52,520
Speaker 1: has these grooves that collect the honey, kind of like

503
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:54,960
Speaker 1: stripes on a bee, well, stripes on a cartoon B.

504
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:57,680
Speaker 1: I don't know if real b is look exactly like that. No,

505
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:02,639
Speaker 1: not exactly. Their eyes are a little bit different. Well, anyway,

506
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:05,360
Speaker 1: thank you so much, Jen for sharing your art with us.

507
00:27:05,400 --> 00:27:07,840
Speaker 1: It's very nice. I actually I took mine home as

508
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 1: in a little frame. Very nice. All right, we have

509
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:15,520
Speaker 1: another listener email. Lise comes to us from Jeru quote.

510
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:18,880
Speaker 1: I'm an ordained priest in training in the Soto tradition

511
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:21,280
Speaker 1: of Zen Buddhism, and I wanted to comment on the

512
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:25,320
Speaker 1: recent episode Meditation Lab, Empathy and Energy in regards to

513
00:27:25,320 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: your comments about Walmart Buddhism. I can't speak for all

514
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 1: my Dharma brothers and sisters, but my personal opinion is

515
00:27:31,520 --> 00:27:35,399
Speaker 1: that pop culture forms of meditation like iPhone apps and

516
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:39,200
Speaker 1: secular meditation practices in general are fine if all you're

517
00:27:39,240 --> 00:27:42,160
Speaker 1: after is a kind of surface level self help practice.

518
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:45,600
Speaker 1: But it is essential to know that, at least in Buddhism,

519
00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:49,199
Speaker 1: meditation is only one part of an integrated system, a

520
00:27:49,240 --> 00:27:52,399
Speaker 1: whole life practice known as the eight fold Noble Path,

521
00:27:52,720 --> 00:27:56,159
Speaker 1: which is designed to eliminate suffering and lead to spiritual awakening.

522
00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:59,359
Speaker 1: When you remove the engine from an automobile, the engine

523
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:01,960
Speaker 1: still were, but without the rest of the car, you

524
00:28:01,960 --> 00:28:04,800
Speaker 1: will not be going anywhere. And so I wonder if

525
00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:08,720
Speaker 1: those who dabble in pop culture. Meditative practice will eventually

526
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:10,919
Speaker 1: grow bored when they find that when there is no

527
00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:14,240
Speaker 1: context for their experience and either move on to serious

528
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:17,639
Speaker 1: practice or ultimately stop practicing. I love your show. It

529
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 1: never fails to entertain and sometimes even educate me. Keep

530
00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:23,000
Speaker 1: up the good work. I really appreciate this email. That's

531
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:25,360
Speaker 1: I think like there's a valid point about the UH.

532
00:28:25,560 --> 00:28:28,639
Speaker 1: I like the analogy of removing the the engine from

533
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:31,200
Speaker 1: the auto automobile and the engine still works, but it's

534
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:34,800
Speaker 1: not moving the vehicle. Yeah, I definitely appreciate you. Are

535
00:28:34,880 --> 00:28:39,080
Speaker 1: you putting it in the context of the the experience

536
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 1: of pursuing the entire ratefold noble path, I would say,

537
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:45,040
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I don't know. He might be

538
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:49,720
Speaker 1: under selling a little bit the way that experiences and

539
00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:55,480
Speaker 1: practices can be ultimately fulfilling, even decoupled from their original

540
00:28:55,960 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 1: spiritual or cultural context. I mean, I think about what

541
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:02,800
Speaker 1: if a person and was trying to achieve some kind

542
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:06,600
Speaker 1: of spiritual significance from fasting, and it was inspired by

543
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:10,040
Speaker 1: the fasting during Ramadan or something, and then you might

544
00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:12,440
Speaker 1: be able to say, well, if you're not going through

545
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 1: the entire spiritual practice of Islam, you're not really getting

546
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:19,680
Speaker 1: the full experience of the Ramadan fasting, and that's probably true.

547
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:22,320
Speaker 1: You you're not getting the full spiritual experience that a

548
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 1: Muslim would experience while they're doing that, But at the

549
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:28,400
Speaker 1: same time you might be getting some other truly worthwhile experience.

550
00:29:28,680 --> 00:29:30,800
Speaker 1: I agree. And then, of course, on the topic of

551
00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:34,880
Speaker 1: one is dabbling in and sort of pop culture meditative practices,

552
00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:39,120
Speaker 1: about how they'll they might eventually grow bored or that

553
00:29:39,200 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 1: they'll keep going and explore something deeper. I mean, I

554
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:46,240
Speaker 1: feel like that's that's going to be the case, right,

555
00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:48,400
Speaker 1: I mean, it's I think there's a value in something

556
00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:52,760
Speaker 1: being uh, sort of the introductory level of of a practice,

557
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, then they can keep moving if

558
00:29:55,040 --> 00:29:57,680
Speaker 1: they want, or if they if they grow bored with it.

559
00:29:57,720 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 1: I mean, who's to say that a more are spiritual

560
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:04,360
Speaker 1: and more even authentic version of the practice would have

561
00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 1: resonated with them if this shard of it does not.

562
00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:11,840
Speaker 1: But maybe that's just me. Like I said, everyone's minleage

563
00:30:11,840 --> 00:30:14,520
Speaker 1: may may differ on this, but but I think that's

564
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:19,280
Speaker 1: that's ultimately one of the cool things about meditative practices,

565
00:30:19,400 --> 00:30:24,680
Speaker 1: yoga practices is that you will find uh, various versions

566
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:27,560
Speaker 1: of it. You will find incredibly secular versions of it,

567
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:31,360
Speaker 1: incredibly stripped down. You will find um spiritual versions that

568
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:36,840
Speaker 1: are either you know, fairly authentic or are sort of

569
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:38,640
Speaker 1: spiritual in a new way that have gone in a

570
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:41,200
Speaker 1: new direction that or maybe not as authentic, but present

571
00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:46,040
Speaker 1: a sort of spiritual model for practitioners to involve themselves in. Yeah,

572
00:30:46,080 --> 00:30:48,680
Speaker 1: that's totally worth pointing out. Is that things that are

573
00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:54,160
Speaker 1: essentially meditation practices exist in multiple religions and outside religion. Yeah,

574
00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 1: even in hyper real religions. Right, Yeah, totally Okay. We've

575
00:30:57,560 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 1: got a couple of messages coming in about our Don't

576
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 1: Drink the Salt Water episode. One was a really great

577
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 1: email from our listener Jess, and she says, Hey, guys,

578
00:31:07,520 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 1: I've been listening to Stuffed Bill your Mind for only

579
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:11,720
Speaker 1: a couple of months now, but I really dig it

580
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: so far. I have an m f A and creative

581
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:16,640
Speaker 1: writing and write poetry in my spare time. The topics

582
00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:19,480
Speaker 1: of your show are rife with inspiration for me. First off,

583
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:21,760
Speaker 1: I wanted to share with you a bit of synchronicity.

584
00:31:21,800 --> 00:31:24,000
Speaker 1: Just a couple of days ago, I was rereading Good

585
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:27,680
Speaker 1: Old Sammy T. Coleridge's rhyme of the ancient Mariner, I

586
00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:30,160
Speaker 1: would say cole Ridge. I think it's more sort of Coleridge,

587
00:31:30,760 --> 00:31:33,720
Speaker 1: But Sammy T. Colly Ridge is rhyme of the ancient Mariner.

588
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:37,200
Speaker 1: So imagine my delight when I listened to this morning's episode.

589
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 1: Just wanted to give you my take on why the poem,

590
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:43,200
Speaker 1: though very very dark, is still considered a romantic poem.

591
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 1: Besides the fact of the time period and movement in

592
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:48,240
Speaker 1: which it was written, which of course is the Romantic

593
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 1: period in English poetry, one of the main themes the

594
00:31:51,040 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: poem conveys is finding love of the self and humanity

595
00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 1: by way of nature. The capital in nature, with its

596
00:31:57,600 --> 00:32:01,400
Speaker 1: glory and beauty near superseding or even standing in as

597
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:05,320
Speaker 1: the concept of God is a very romantic notion, so

598
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:07,880
Speaker 1: if you care to get into it. Although the Mariner

599
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 1: and his crew go through some very grim ordeals, and yes,

600
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:14,840
Speaker 1: everyone except the Graybeard Loon dies, the Mariner grows as

601
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:17,320
Speaker 1: a character through an act of deep affection for the

602
00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 1: remaining natural life around him that he had previously scorned.

603
00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:25,560
Speaker 1: Right after the entire crew dies, the mariner moans alone alone,

604
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 1: all all alone, alone, on a wide wide sea, and

605
00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:32,960
Speaker 1: never a saint took pity on my soul in agony.

606
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:36,440
Speaker 1: The many men so beautiful, and they all dead did lie,

607
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 1: and a thousand thousand slimy things lived on, and so

608
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:44,080
Speaker 1: did I. He is very disturbed that the only remaining

609
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:47,280
Speaker 1: living things are himself and all the gross little sea creatures.

610
00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:50,480
Speaker 1: He reviles these slimy things and himself for bringing this

611
00:32:50,600 --> 00:32:54,120
Speaker 1: misfortune on the ship, feeling utterly alone with no kinship

612
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 1: for the slimy other living things nearby, However, several stands is. Later,

613
00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:02,680
Speaker 1: something really great happens. He starts watching these water snakes

614
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:04,960
Speaker 1: swimming on the surface of the water in the moonlight.

615
00:33:05,360 --> 00:33:09,920
Speaker 1: He observes that they are in fact beautiful. He declares, Oh,

616
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:13,920
Speaker 1: happy living things, no tongue. Their beauty might declare A

617
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:16,880
Speaker 1: spring of love gushed from my heart, and I blessed

618
00:33:16,920 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 1: them unaware. Sure my kind state took pity on me,

619
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:23,760
Speaker 1: and I blessed them unaware the self same moment I

620
00:33:23,800 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 1: could pray, and from my neck so free, the albatross

621
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:31,240
Speaker 1: fell off and sank like lead into the sea, and

622
00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: Jen writes, ah ha. He blesses these shining, previously slimy

623
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:39,360
Speaker 1: creatures unaware in a bursting moment of kinship and love.

624
00:33:39,680 --> 00:33:42,160
Speaker 1: And of course this is the moment the albatross, the

625
00:33:42,200 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 1: symbol of guilt, sin and self loathing, finally falls from

626
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:48,760
Speaker 1: his neck and he is free. If that isn't romantic,

627
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:51,480
Speaker 1: I don't know what is. Of course, there's quite a

628
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:53,280
Speaker 1: bit more to the poem, but he is freed from

629
00:33:53,280 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 1: his spiritual burden from that point on, Jess, I think

630
00:33:56,840 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 1: that's a great insight. And it is true that there

631
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:01,960
Speaker 1: there is no love greater than the love for sea snakes.

632
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,720
Speaker 1: You know, I just returned from Kauai, uh and I

633
00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:08,800
Speaker 1: got to see a sea snake. Yeah. This is the

634
00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:11,239
Speaker 1: second time I've gotten to see a sea snake while

635
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 1: while snorkeling, and uh, it's always kind of a magical

636
00:34:14,200 --> 00:34:17,800
Speaker 1: experience to watch them move amongst the rocks or the coral.

637
00:34:18,239 --> 00:34:21,120
Speaker 1: Did you feel love and kinship? I did? Yeah, the

638
00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:23,200
Speaker 1: like the season, it was cool. I got to see

639
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:25,600
Speaker 1: this one with my son and so he was we

640
00:34:25,600 --> 00:34:27,800
Speaker 1: were in fairly shallow water, so I was able to

641
00:34:27,880 --> 00:34:31,319
Speaker 1: like hold him and we're looking down this time without

642
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:34,759
Speaker 1: our snorkels and watching the sea snake move around. It's

643
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:37,400
Speaker 1: kind of it's kind of magical. Wow. Now. Jess also

644
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:40,800
Speaker 1: later in the email shares a story about a sodium

645
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:43,520
Speaker 1: deficiency and her family, kind of mirroring the story we

646
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: talked about in the episode with my friend about sodium deficiency.

647
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:49,719
Speaker 1: But yeah, I really appreciate the insights on the poem, Jess.

648
00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:52,919
Speaker 1: I I feel that too. The love of the slimy things,

649
00:34:53,120 --> 00:34:56,080
Speaker 1: it matters, and yes it is romantic. I agree, this

650
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 1: is Slimy things are great. That's why we cover them

651
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:02,040
Speaker 1: all the time time on this podcast. Totally all right.

652
00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:04,440
Speaker 1: We have another bit of listener male related to the

653
00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:10,080
Speaker 1: Saltwater episode. This comes from Omere. Omere writes, Hi, Robert

654
00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:12,279
Speaker 1: and Joe, I'm a longtime listener to the show, and

655
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:14,839
Speaker 1: I'm writing to you about your newest episode, Don't Drink

656
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:17,759
Speaker 1: the Saltwater. I really enjoyed the episode, as I usually do,

657
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:19,719
Speaker 1: and it made me think about different animals that have

658
00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:23,120
Speaker 1: developed mechanisms to excrete salt from their bodies. I live

659
00:35:23,120 --> 00:35:26,279
Speaker 1: in Israel, and in the Israeli desert, you can find

660
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:30,000
Speaker 1: two species of rodents that can excrete urine with high

661
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:35,560
Speaker 1: concentrations of salt, the fat sand rat or fat jeered

662
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:40,239
Speaker 1: uh eats mostly the leaves of salty plants, like plants

663
00:35:40,239 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 1: from the Atriplex genus. Plants from that genus contain a

664
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:45,960
Speaker 1: lot of salt in them. They have a strong salty

665
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:50,279
Speaker 1: taste uh and the Hebrew name for the atroplex can

666
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:54,960
Speaker 1: only be translated as salty plant or just salty. The

667
00:35:55,040 --> 00:35:58,239
Speaker 1: sand rats have two mechanisms to survive such diet. The

668
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:00,880
Speaker 1: first is to rub their paws and of teeth against

669
00:36:00,880 --> 00:36:05,160
Speaker 1: the salty leaves to excrete some salt crystals from them.

670
00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:08,799
Speaker 1: The second mechanism is the rats ability to excrete urine

671
00:36:08,800 --> 00:36:12,840
Speaker 1: with nine salt. The sand rats never drink water in

672
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 1: the wild. Less information is available to me about the

673
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:20,359
Speaker 1: spiny golden mouse, but from what I know, it eats

674
00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:22,640
Speaker 1: mostly the same plants as the sand rat. But the

675
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:27,960
Speaker 1: golden mouse adds on that diet with stylo metaphora snails,

676
00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:31,120
Speaker 1: which are mostly made out of fresh water. Thanks for

677
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:34,719
Speaker 1: the great podcast, Looking forward for the next episodes. Well

678
00:36:34,719 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 1: thanks Omer, Yeah, yeah, I you know, I didn't even

679
00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:42,360
Speaker 1: think about the possibility of there being a particular species

680
00:36:42,560 --> 00:36:44,640
Speaker 1: uh in the area of Israel, but it but it

681
00:36:44,640 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: makes sense, uh, you know, get when we're talking about

682
00:36:47,760 --> 00:36:50,560
Speaker 1: um high salt concentrated diets. So that's cool. And I

683
00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:52,719
Speaker 1: just love the idea of of of a fat sand rat.

684
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:55,440
Speaker 1: It's just such a great name for an organism. Yeah. Oh,

685
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:59,200
Speaker 1: the scientific name of the fat sand ride is Samamas Obesus.

686
00:37:00,520 --> 00:37:04,440
Speaker 1: I like that, you know, speaking of the desert. It

687
00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:07,080
Speaker 1: looks like we have another bit of listener mail, and

688
00:37:07,239 --> 00:37:10,279
Speaker 1: this one is related to another Vault episode that's come

689
00:37:10,320 --> 00:37:15,759
Speaker 1: out recently about the science of done. Yeah. This one

690
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:19,239
Speaker 1: comes to us from Lisa, Hi, Joe, and Robert. Thank

691
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:21,920
Speaker 1: you for your recent from the Vault episodes on the

692
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:25,960
Speaker 1: technology and biology of Frank Herbert's Dune. Uh. Recent from

693
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:28,279
Speaker 1: the Vault sounds contradictory, but you know what I mean.

694
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:31,360
Speaker 1: I enjoyed them so much. I read the Dune series

695
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:33,360
Speaker 1: a long time ago. I think I was around fourteen

696
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:36,200
Speaker 1: or fifteen years old, and it truly did blow my mind.

697
00:37:36,280 --> 00:37:39,040
Speaker 1: It'll do that. Yeah, the thrill and wonder of discovering

698
00:37:39,080 --> 00:37:42,080
Speaker 1: the complex world of Dune and all those fabulous concepts

699
00:37:42,080 --> 00:37:45,320
Speaker 1: that Frank Herbert stuffed into it. It's still a vivid memory,

700
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:48,120
Speaker 1: and your excellent exposition and expansion of those concepts really

701
00:37:48,120 --> 00:37:51,080
Speaker 1: brought it all back. I'm fifty one now, although sometimes

702
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:53,719
Speaker 1: I think I'm still fourteen inside and I'm inspired to

703
00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:55,879
Speaker 1: go read them again, well, at least the first few.

704
00:37:56,800 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 1: I was known to be a bit of a bookworm

705
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:01,600
Speaker 1: when at school and always had a book on the go,

706
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:06,480
Speaker 1: always a good idea. I advised that even today, reading

707
00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:09,760
Speaker 1: it every opportunity. I recall reading God Emperor of Doom

708
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 1: while waiting for a year ten geography class to start.

709
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:15,520
Speaker 1: The teacher noticed and asked me how I found it,

710
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:19,440
Speaker 1: to which I replied quite tersely tedious, which made everyone

711
00:38:19,440 --> 00:38:22,120
Speaker 1: around me laugh. I don't know why I wasn't joking,

712
00:38:22,320 --> 00:38:24,880
Speaker 1: but maybe I need to try it again. Thanks for

713
00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:26,960
Speaker 1: the hard work you guys put into your podcast. I

714
00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:30,279
Speaker 1: love them and we'll keep listening. Well, thanks so much, Lisa. Yeah.

715
00:38:30,600 --> 00:38:34,399
Speaker 1: God Emperor of Doom can be a bit tedious. Tedious, Yeah,

716
00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:36,480
Speaker 1: but but it was rewarded like I. When I think

717
00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:40,239
Speaker 1: back on my reading of it, uh I I look

718
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:42,640
Speaker 1: back on it fondly. I don't. I don't think, oh,

719
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:44,799
Speaker 1: that was a tedious book. I I tend to think

720
00:38:44,960 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 1: I finally read that book with the cool sand worm

721
00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:51,360
Speaker 1: human illustration on the front that that I remembered seeing

722
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:54,200
Speaker 1: on the bookshelves as a child. Uh, and it has

723
00:38:54,239 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: a it's it's an entertaining sort of philosophical sci fi work.

724
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:03,279
Speaker 1: I would a lot of being preached at by by

725
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:07,960
Speaker 1: the God Emperor himself. Less of an adventure though, I

726
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:10,960
Speaker 1: mean nothing like a five hundred page space sermon. Right, Hey,

727
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:12,600
Speaker 1: if you're in the mood for it, and nothing else

728
00:39:12,640 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 1: will suit, Okay, I think we should look at a

729
00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:18,400
Speaker 1: couple of emails from our Miasma Theory Episode one is

730
00:39:18,440 --> 00:39:22,000
Speaker 1: just a quick correction that I really appreciate. Michael writes

731
00:39:22,040 --> 00:39:25,560
Speaker 1: in saying, in the opening minutes of the Miasma Theory

732
00:39:25,600 --> 00:39:27,480
Speaker 1: and the Evil Era episode, one of the host said

733
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:29,719
Speaker 1: that the first outbreak of the Black Death occurred in

734
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 1: Europe in the thirteen forties. That is factually incorrect. The

735
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:36,720
Speaker 1: Justinian plagues of the five hundreds were the first strain

736
00:39:36,760 --> 00:39:40,000
Speaker 1: of bacteria your sine epestis that caused the Black Death

737
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:44,239
Speaker 1: nearly a century later. I think meant maybe a millennium later.

738
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:48,600
Speaker 1: But yeah, Michael is correct about that. If that is

739
00:39:48,640 --> 00:39:51,239
Speaker 1: indeed how we put it, that their forties outbreak was

740
00:39:51,280 --> 00:39:54,400
Speaker 1: the first you're sending epestis outbreak in Europe, that is

741
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:57,680
Speaker 1: not actually true. Michael is right. The plague of Justinian

742
00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 1: is definitely believed to have been caused by your sending pestus,

743
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:03,480
Speaker 1: and that is backed up by solid DNA evidence from

744
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:06,920
Speaker 1: contemporaneous early medieval grave sites. So Michael's right, there was

745
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:10,360
Speaker 1: a plague in Europe before the forties. A second email

746
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:13,440
Speaker 1: about the miasma theory episode, Rick writes in with an

747
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:17,760
Speaker 1: interesting idea. Rick writes, Hey, guys, longtime listener of the show,

748
00:40:17,840 --> 00:40:20,440
Speaker 1: and I really enjoy it. I recently listened to the

749
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:24,040
Speaker 1: miasma theory episode and kept waiting for radon gas to

750
00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:28,280
Speaker 1: be discussed. It's interesting how the obsolete bad air theory

751
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:31,279
Speaker 1: actually has some sense of validity when radon gas is

752
00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 1: considered as it literally is bad air that emanates from

753
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:39,200
Speaker 1: the ground. This poisonous area is actually naturally occurring radioactive

754
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:41,520
Speaker 1: gas that seeps up from the ground from the decay

755
00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:44,920
Speaker 1: of uranium that is hazardous to one's health, i e.

756
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:48,040
Speaker 1: Bad air from within the earth. Of course, people in

757
00:40:48,080 --> 00:40:50,400
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages had no concept of rate on gas,

758
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 1: but if you take the simple into our modern sense

759
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:54,920
Speaker 1: is laughable. Notion of bad air that comes in the

760
00:40:55,040 --> 00:40:57,319
Speaker 1: night to make you sick and put it against rate

761
00:40:57,400 --> 00:41:00,640
Speaker 1: on gas. Well, it's actually accurate in the plain meaning

762
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:04,760
Speaker 1: of this antiquated theory. It is fascinating when people create superstitious,

763
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:08,040
Speaker 1: spooky causes for real world effects and end up accidentally

764
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:12,919
Speaker 1: kind of sort of getting close to real scientific explanations. Thanks, Rick,

765
00:41:13,120 --> 00:41:14,960
Speaker 1: and I think that's sort of what that episode was

766
00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:18,240
Speaker 1: all about. I mean, they were very wrong about the causes,

767
00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:22,279
Speaker 1: but sort of onto something. All right. Here's one that

768
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:24,480
Speaker 1: comes to us from Sarah regarding the tomb of the

769
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:27,280
Speaker 1: first Chinese Emperor. Hey, Rob, Hey Joe. I've been listening

770
00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:28,880
Speaker 1: to the podcast for a couple of years now, and

771
00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:31,279
Speaker 1: I love hearing what new and exciting things you talk

772
00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:35,040
Speaker 1: about each week. This past week's episode on the mausoleum

773
00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:38,239
Speaker 1: for she Huong d how I've always been told to

774
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:41,680
Speaker 1: write to write his name, reminded me of a conversation

775
00:41:41,760 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 1: I had with the history teacher I had back in

776
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 1: high school. Now, he generally taught U S History, but

777
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:49,279
Speaker 1: our class was the only World history class. Yeah, he

778
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 1: had that year. He was one of those spectacular teachers

779
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:54,880
Speaker 1: who could just lecture and students actually paid attention and learned.

780
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:57,440
Speaker 1: He was actually the first person to point me in

781
00:41:57,480 --> 00:42:01,640
Speaker 1: the direction of anthropology rather than teaching. We were actually

782
00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:04,320
Speaker 1: discussing World War two at the time, the massacre of

783
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:07,520
Speaker 1: Nan King. Actually after class, I was asking him about

784
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:10,640
Speaker 1: other tragedies in China for a research paper for English

785
00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:12,839
Speaker 1: and he kind of joked about how no one had

786
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:16,640
Speaker 1: gone down into the tomb of she Wong D. Now

787
00:42:16,719 --> 00:42:18,839
Speaker 1: I didn't know what he was talking about at the time,

788
00:42:18,920 --> 00:42:22,840
Speaker 1: but he reminded me of the Terracotta warriors. Ultimately renewed

789
00:42:22,840 --> 00:42:25,680
Speaker 1: my interest in why the warriors were there. I remember

790
00:42:25,719 --> 00:42:27,719
Speaker 1: that I couldn't find much at the time. It was

791
00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:30,720
Speaker 1: two thousand seven and I didn't know about Google scholar,

792
00:42:31,040 --> 00:42:35,320
Speaker 1: but I did present a rather interesting theory. My general

793
00:42:35,360 --> 00:42:38,480
Speaker 1: idea was that she hongd was someone to not give

794
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:41,839
Speaker 1: up on trying to live forever, even after death. Yeah,

795
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:45,680
Speaker 1: that's that's accurate. Uh. He might have had some shamans

796
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:48,640
Speaker 1: or wizards or necromancers bring him back, and he would

797
00:42:48,719 --> 00:42:52,360
Speaker 1: need a deathless army. Hence the terra Cotta warriors. Terracotta

798
00:42:52,520 --> 00:42:54,759
Speaker 1: is surprisingly more durable than a lot of people tend

799
00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:58,440
Speaker 1: to think. It made sense to my seventeen year old mind,

800
00:42:58,480 --> 00:43:00,879
Speaker 1: and it makes sense to my twenty seven year old mine,

801
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:03,320
Speaker 1: and I hope it makes sense to other people too.

802
00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:05,759
Speaker 1: I was very excited to see this episode pop into

803
00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:07,680
Speaker 1: my cue, and it gave me a reason to finally

804
00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:10,040
Speaker 1: write to you guys. This subject has always interested me,

805
00:43:10,080 --> 00:43:12,520
Speaker 1: and I always love to babble about it whenever it's

806
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:16,000
Speaker 1: brought up, not very often, if you were curious, Well,

807
00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:18,760
Speaker 1: it won't be my area of study when I finally

808
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:21,160
Speaker 1: go back to college. I will always love hearing more

809
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 1: about it. Thank you for doing another awesome episode. I

810
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:25,960
Speaker 1: can't wait to hear what you guys present to us

811
00:43:26,160 --> 00:43:30,520
Speaker 1: next week from a possible future anthropologist. Sarah. Well, that's

812
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:33,560
Speaker 1: great to hear, Sarah. I love that. I don't know.

813
00:43:33,760 --> 00:43:36,160
Speaker 1: I don't know about your theory. That's interesting and so

814
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:39,840
Speaker 1: he definitely did want to live forever if he could,

815
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:43,799
Speaker 1: and he definitely was envisioning some kind of afterlife. I

816
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:46,320
Speaker 1: don't know about the idea of whether he thought maybe

817
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:48,520
Speaker 1: he could be brought back from the dead and would

818
00:43:48,560 --> 00:43:52,480
Speaker 1: need a deathless army to accompany him. But that's fascinating. Yeah,

819
00:43:52,520 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 1: I mean it. I certainly encourage anyone who listened to

820
00:43:55,560 --> 00:43:58,960
Speaker 1: that episode and had similar thoughts to listen to The

821
00:43:59,080 --> 00:44:02,880
Speaker 1: Jade Immortal, the episode that I did with Christian, because

822
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:07,160
Speaker 1: we talk about a Chinese funeral custom that existed for

823
00:44:07,200 --> 00:44:11,920
Speaker 1: a while where the dead kings and various other important

824
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:16,200
Speaker 1: royal figures would be entombed in armor of jade essentially

825
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:20,879
Speaker 1: stone armor um and it gets into we get into

826
00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:27,840
Speaker 1: the various religious and superstistious ideas about the protective powers

827
00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:30,879
Speaker 1: of the stone. I don't I don't know of any

828
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 1: qualities like that that would have been associated with terra

829
00:44:34,040 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 1: cotta offhand. I guess I tend to I tend to

830
00:44:37,520 --> 00:44:40,640
Speaker 1: buy more of that idea that this was presented as

831
00:44:40,640 --> 00:44:44,680
Speaker 1: an alternative to human sacrifice, because it makes sense that, Okay,

832
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:48,440
Speaker 1: if I'm dying and going somewhere else or becoming some

833
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 1: other form after death, and warriors, yeah, and I need

834
00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: I need warriors. These warriors are great. I want to

835
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: take them with me. And then it would fall to

836
00:44:57,600 --> 00:45:02,840
Speaker 1: perhaps a very clever adviser to say, well, your lordship,

837
00:45:03,560 --> 00:45:06,000
Speaker 1: this is a fine plan, but I know of a

838
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:10,080
Speaker 1: way that we can do this without totally destabilizing the

839
00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:13,799
Speaker 1: empire after you have passed over, right, yeah, all right,

840
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:15,279
Speaker 1: well I think it's time to take one more quick

841
00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:17,200
Speaker 1: break and when we come back we will read a

842
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:22,640
Speaker 1: few more listener mails. Thank thank alright, we're back. What

843
00:45:22,680 --> 00:45:24,200
Speaker 1: have we got? What have we got? Now? What is

844
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 1: Carney bringing forth? Well, Carney is handing out a mail

845
00:45:27,600 --> 00:45:31,920
Speaker 1: that is waving claws about wildly with scuttling legs up

846
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:35,680
Speaker 1: in the air. Crab mail. Crab male strikes again. So

847
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:39,840
Speaker 1: we've got several messages all expressing a similar idea about

848
00:45:39,880 --> 00:45:42,480
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan and the Samurai crabs. This is something that

849
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 1: there was convergence of thoughts from many of our listeners.

850
00:45:45,960 --> 00:45:51,240
Speaker 1: For example, just one of these expressing this idea, Michelle writes, Hello,

851
00:45:51,360 --> 00:45:54,520
Speaker 1: Mr McCormick and Mr lab No need to be so formal, Michelle,

852
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:57,600
Speaker 1: But yes, uh glad to hear from you, she says,

853
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:00,239
Speaker 1: I just listen to your podcast Carl Sagan in the

854
00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:04,239
Speaker 1: Samurai Crabs. Being of an artistic mind more so than scientific,

855
00:46:04,280 --> 00:46:06,920
Speaker 1: I kept thinking of a completely backward sort of theory

856
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:09,920
Speaker 1: as an explanation for the stunning appearance of the samurai

857
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:12,600
Speaker 1: warrior's face on the back of the crab. It's probably

858
00:46:12,680 --> 00:46:16,440
Speaker 1: ridiculously stupid, but I'm sharing it anyway. It's not ridiculously stupid.

859
00:46:16,480 --> 00:46:19,040
Speaker 1: Don't feel bad, I'm glad you sent it. So here's

860
00:46:19,040 --> 00:46:22,920
Speaker 1: her idea. The samurai mask is an extremely stylized depiction

861
00:46:22,960 --> 00:46:26,000
Speaker 1: of the human face. Is it possible that the artisans

862
00:46:26,080 --> 00:46:29,240
Speaker 1: designing the mask were familiar with these crabs and based

863
00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:32,359
Speaker 1: the masks on the patterns of the crabs rather than

864
00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:34,919
Speaker 1: the other way around. Artists do this all the time,

865
00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:38,840
Speaker 1: taking designs and inspiration from nature. People see faces anywhere

866
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 1: there is symmetry, and these crabs look like very stylized faces.

867
00:46:42,760 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 1: As an artist, it makes more sense to me that

868
00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:47,360
Speaker 1: some ancient Japanese dude saw one of these crabs and

869
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:49,880
Speaker 1: thought that would make a dope mask for a samurai

870
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:53,480
Speaker 1: totally fierce. Well there you have. It makes sense to me,

871
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:58,279
Speaker 1: but I am fairly dim. Thanks for listening. Love your podcast. Hey,

872
00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:01,279
Speaker 1: no need to neg yourself on that. Lots of people

873
00:47:01,320 --> 00:47:03,560
Speaker 1: got in contact with this idea that what if it

874
00:47:03,600 --> 00:47:06,319
Speaker 1: went the other way around, what if people saw Of course,

875
00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:08,239
Speaker 1: it wouldn't just be the masks. The mask were just

876
00:47:08,360 --> 00:47:12,800
Speaker 1: one realization of this type of depiction of the samurai face.

877
00:47:13,239 --> 00:47:16,080
Speaker 1: So there's the samurai face as depicted in medieval Japanese

878
00:47:16,200 --> 00:47:19,880
Speaker 1: artwork and painting and also on the samurai armor masks

879
00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 1: and wherever you'd see a samurai's face, And quite a

880
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:26,080
Speaker 1: few people echoed that same kind of idea. What if

881
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:28,880
Speaker 1: somebody saw the crab and that's what created the faces

882
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:32,960
Speaker 1: that looked like that in the various artworks and craftworks. Um,

883
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:36,439
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's possible. But then again, we're

884
00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:38,719
Speaker 1: we're sort of seeing a similar thing, which is that

885
00:47:39,239 --> 00:47:43,960
Speaker 1: both of them are stylized depictions of what essentially cues

886
00:47:44,160 --> 00:47:49,279
Speaker 1: from this very easy to signal face structure. Right, You've

887
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:51,959
Speaker 1: got these lobes at the top, two of them side

888
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:54,480
Speaker 1: by side, which looked like eyes, and then that comes

889
00:47:54,520 --> 00:47:57,919
Speaker 1: down into some kind of central structure below which looks

890
00:47:57,960 --> 00:48:00,759
Speaker 1: like a nose and a mouth. Uh uh. And so

891
00:48:01,239 --> 00:48:04,799
Speaker 1: maybe it really does look like Samurai warriors. But if

892
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:06,839
Speaker 1: it didn't look like the mask, and if it didn't

893
00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:08,759
Speaker 1: look like the art, it would still look a lot

894
00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:13,399
Speaker 1: like a face of some kind. I also tend to think,

895
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:17,480
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm certainly no expert on Japanese armor or

896
00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:20,640
Speaker 1: or Japanese medieval art, but I would tend to think,

897
00:48:20,640 --> 00:48:24,640
Speaker 1: if one we're going to adopt the crab motif for

898
00:48:24,840 --> 00:48:28,440
Speaker 1: decorative purposes. You would you would you would invoke the

899
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:31,680
Speaker 1: full crab. You wouldn't invoke just the the the what

900
00:48:31,840 --> 00:48:33,600
Speaker 1: may look like a face on the back, but there

901
00:48:33,600 --> 00:48:37,719
Speaker 1: would be uh, you know, fancy uh you know there

902
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:41,919
Speaker 1: there would be there would be claws and legs as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

903
00:48:41,920 --> 00:48:44,279
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. They're also the fact that

904
00:48:44,360 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 1: these crabs are not particularly fearsome creatures, right, They're tiny.

905
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:50,359
Speaker 1: So I wouldn't necessarily think that somebody would look at

906
00:48:50,360 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 1: a crab like this and think, oh, that's what I've

907
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:55,160
Speaker 1: got to make all the samurai and my art and

908
00:48:55,239 --> 00:48:58,040
Speaker 1: my in my armor and everything look like I would

909
00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 1: think more that there is an artistic tradition established that

910
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:06,000
Speaker 1: has certain types of ways of exaggerating the facial features

911
00:49:06,040 --> 00:49:11,040
Speaker 1: of a human being, and that this artistic tradition, by coincidence,

912
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:14,360
Speaker 1: resembles what's on the backs of the crabs. And I

913
00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:16,680
Speaker 1: would write that is more likely, given the stuff we

914
00:49:16,719 --> 00:49:19,719
Speaker 1: talked about in the episode, than the there being a

915
00:49:19,760 --> 00:49:23,359
Speaker 1: causative factor going either way, that either the crabs established

916
00:49:23,760 --> 00:49:27,440
Speaker 1: the faces as depicted in these traditions, or the faces

917
00:49:27,560 --> 00:49:31,000
Speaker 1: shaped the crabs through artificial selection. But that's my take now.

918
00:49:31,239 --> 00:49:35,160
Speaker 1: I'm I'm, I'm I am reminded, however, that there there

919
00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:38,279
Speaker 1: was a Japanese pro wrestler who wrestled under the name

920
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:42,680
Speaker 1: Grand Naniwa, and he had a mask. It was kind

921
00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:44,520
Speaker 1: of a comedic gimmick that he had, but he hit

922
00:49:44,640 --> 00:49:49,160
Speaker 1: his his lucha libre style mask looked like a crab,

923
00:49:49,600 --> 00:49:53,040
Speaker 1: and he would perform moves with the mannerisms of a crab.

924
00:49:53,880 --> 00:49:56,520
Speaker 1: So he had this move where he would stand would

925
00:49:56,520 --> 00:49:58,279
Speaker 1: be inside the ring and he'd stand on the middle

926
00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:01,520
Speaker 1: rope and then he'd hold his his arms up and

927
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 1: he did like a crab walk back and forth from

928
00:50:03,719 --> 00:50:06,200
Speaker 1: the road, and then he would jump with like a

929
00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:11,960
Speaker 1: diving elbow. Oh that's good, but definitely invoked the full crab. Robert,

930
00:50:11,960 --> 00:50:14,800
Speaker 1: I've got a problem because I cannot finish doing this episode.

931
00:50:14,880 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 1: I just want to go watch videos of that. It's

932
00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:20,160
Speaker 1: pretty great. You you could you could do far worse

933
00:50:20,200 --> 00:50:23,440
Speaker 1: than than spending a few minutes looking at at a

934
00:50:23,560 --> 00:50:27,879
Speaker 1: comedic Japanese pro wrestling. Yeah, but to clarify, I don't

935
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:29,919
Speaker 1: think that's a stupid idea. I mean, I think it's

936
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:32,440
Speaker 1: good to think in that direction. So all the people

937
00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:35,600
Speaker 1: who contacted us with that idea. I think maybe that

938
00:50:36,200 --> 00:50:40,040
Speaker 1: something like that could be just as likely as the

939
00:50:40,120 --> 00:50:43,279
Speaker 1: idea of the artificial selection happening the other way. It's

940
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:45,839
Speaker 1: just that I think it's a coincidence and that's more

941
00:50:45,920 --> 00:50:48,640
Speaker 1: likely than either one. Yeah, either way, it's it's very

942
00:50:48,640 --> 00:50:51,279
Speaker 1: scientific thinking to say, well, why that way or not

943
00:50:51,400 --> 00:50:54,160
Speaker 1: this way? Then to explore that. That's always a really

944
00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:57,480
Speaker 1: good exercise to try out. When you're seeing a correlation

945
00:50:57,560 --> 00:51:01,360
Speaker 1: between things and you're assuming the cause and goes one way,

946
00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:04,880
Speaker 1: entertain the opposite. What if it's going the other way. Yeah,

947
00:51:05,040 --> 00:51:08,080
Speaker 1: for instance, Grand naniwa, Uh, did he do the crab

948
00:51:08,120 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 1: walk because he had the crab mask? Or did he

949
00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:12,359
Speaker 1: have the crab mask because he did the crab walk?

950
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:14,560
Speaker 1: That's a great question. Yeah, we may never know the

951
00:51:14,560 --> 00:51:16,839
Speaker 1: full answer on that one though, So Michelle and all

952
00:51:16,880 --> 00:51:19,440
Speaker 1: the others who contacted us with that idea good thinking.

953
00:51:19,480 --> 00:51:22,400
Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting possibility to consider. Before we

954
00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:24,920
Speaker 1: leave the topic of Karl Sagan and the Samurai crabs,

955
00:51:25,160 --> 00:51:28,399
Speaker 1: I have to mention that our listener, Kevin wants us

956
00:51:28,440 --> 00:51:31,800
Speaker 1: to make giant mutant crabs. Oh, this is a solution

957
00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:34,560
Speaker 1: to the green crab scenario was talking about the invasive

958
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:37,399
Speaker 1: green crabs and how we have to go to all

959
00:51:37,400 --> 00:51:40,680
Speaker 1: of these various kind of technological extremes, or at least

960
00:51:40,680 --> 00:51:44,719
Speaker 1: we have to contemplate advanced technology to properly process them

961
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:48,840
Speaker 1: for culinary purposes. Yeah, so, Kevin writes, still in the

962
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:52,200
Speaker 1: middle of your podcast about the green crab, considering much

963
00:51:52,200 --> 00:51:54,680
Speaker 1: of the discussion had to do with possible selective breeding

964
00:51:54,680 --> 00:51:57,360
Speaker 1: of the samurai crab, I was positive you would suggest

965
00:51:57,440 --> 00:52:00,439
Speaker 1: that one solution to the invasive green crab problem would

966
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:03,920
Speaker 1: be to selectively breed them to be much larger and

967
00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:07,640
Speaker 1: therefore becoming a better food source. Then continue to release

968
00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:10,359
Speaker 1: these larger crab into the ocean. Over time, as they

969
00:52:10,400 --> 00:52:13,520
Speaker 1: breed with the smaller green crab, the entire population will

970
00:52:13,560 --> 00:52:18,680
Speaker 1: grow in size as a more practical source of food. Well, there,

971
00:52:18,800 --> 00:52:22,600
Speaker 1: I can see various complications arising with that plan, and

972
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:25,200
Speaker 1: also it would be a very it would be a

973
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:30,640
Speaker 1: very long form scheme generally would take a while. Yeah, well,

974
00:52:30,680 --> 00:52:36,320
Speaker 1: I mean, changing wild populations for foods for food reasons

975
00:52:37,000 --> 00:52:40,239
Speaker 1: is not always a great idea, and also is so

976
00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:42,960
Speaker 1: that's gonna be something somebody would be paying to do.

977
00:52:43,200 --> 00:52:46,080
Speaker 1: But then everybody who fishes these crabs would benefit from

978
00:52:46,120 --> 00:52:49,799
Speaker 1: them instead of just the person who did the investment initially.

979
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:52,880
Speaker 1: And then also it seems like it might not work

980
00:52:53,040 --> 00:52:55,480
Speaker 1: because you're dealing with wild conditions and can you keep

981
00:52:55,520 --> 00:53:00,040
Speaker 1: these populations contained and control them properly? And I don't know.

982
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:02,120
Speaker 1: I can see a lot of reasons that people probably

983
00:53:02,120 --> 00:53:05,920
Speaker 1: aren't going to do that, right, Uh yeah, yeah, but

984
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:08,600
Speaker 1: I anytime you want to write in to or just

985
00:53:08,680 --> 00:53:11,479
Speaker 1: to create giant mutant crabs, you can do that. That's

986
00:53:11,520 --> 00:53:15,000
Speaker 1: okay to use our email address that way. Yeah, Joe

987
00:53:15,120 --> 00:53:17,520
Speaker 1: is definitely going to notice your email if it includes

988
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:21,759
Speaker 1: some discussion of mutant crabs, be they telepathic or not.

989
00:53:22,120 --> 00:53:24,920
Speaker 1: So thanks, Kevin. Al Right, here's here's one of our

990
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:30,600
Speaker 1: emails that received regarding the Proteus Effect episode. Sky writes in, Hey,

991
00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:33,359
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe, kudos for another great episode. This one

992
00:53:33,400 --> 00:53:36,240
Speaker 1: felt like it had mini strings connecting to other topics

993
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:39,000
Speaker 1: that I've looked into, including your episode on the Tetris effect.

994
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:41,240
Speaker 1: I can't seem to find a source at the moment,

995
00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:44,040
Speaker 1: but I've also read an interesting point that notes the

996
00:53:44,080 --> 00:53:47,360
Speaker 1: difference in perspective while playing role playing games. There's a

997
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:50,879
Speaker 1: subtle difference between I attacked the goblin or I tried

998
00:53:50,920 --> 00:53:54,520
Speaker 1: to jump over the gumba and Rodner attacks the goblin

999
00:53:54,640 --> 00:53:57,400
Speaker 1: or I tried to make Mario jump over the gumba.

1000
00:53:57,880 --> 00:54:03,440
Speaker 1: You know, this reminds me of playing video games as

1001
00:54:03,480 --> 00:54:06,680
Speaker 1: like a young rude child. Uh. And some of you

1002
00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:08,479
Speaker 1: may say, say, is there any other kind of child

1003
00:54:08,520 --> 00:54:11,239
Speaker 1: that plays the video game but a rude one? But

1004
00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:15,719
Speaker 1: I remember like being interrupted and charging people with you.

1005
00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:18,560
Speaker 1: You made you made me die? You killed me, you

1006
00:54:18,640 --> 00:54:21,000
Speaker 1: killed me? And I do wonder like why did I

1007
00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 1: put it that? Why Why didn't I say you made

1008
00:54:22,719 --> 00:54:26,040
Speaker 1: my guy die? Like you know, what, is it one

1009
00:54:26,040 --> 00:54:28,680
Speaker 1: more syllable to to go that far? And and or

1010
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:31,799
Speaker 1: is I just so connected to the character that I

1011
00:54:31,880 --> 00:54:37,280
Speaker 1: thought of Mario as myself. It's weird. It is very weird. Anyway,

1012
00:54:37,320 --> 00:54:42,320
Speaker 1: Sky continues to your open question about the proteus effect

1013
00:54:42,320 --> 00:54:45,120
Speaker 1: and Werewolf. Oh yeah, and just to revisit, I think

1014
00:54:45,160 --> 00:54:47,640
Speaker 1: what we said was, does playing a game like Werewolf

1015
00:54:47,680 --> 00:54:50,400
Speaker 1: also change you? Like if you are trying to pretend

1016
00:54:50,400 --> 00:54:52,440
Speaker 1: you're not a werewolf and lying in the game, does

1017
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:56,120
Speaker 1: that make you more deceptive after the game's over? So

1018
00:54:56,160 --> 00:54:58,920
Speaker 1: Sky says, I have a recent anecdote that fits right

1019
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:03,160
Speaker 1: in some friends and I. We're playing Insider recently, which

1020
00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:06,680
Speaker 1: plays similar to Mafia Werewolf, but with a focus on

1021
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:10,239
Speaker 1: figuring out a secret word all our twenty questions. If

1022
00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:13,720
Speaker 1: you were assigned the Insider role, you know the word

1023
00:55:13,880 --> 00:55:17,280
Speaker 1: the whole time and have to guide the comments towards

1024
00:55:17,320 --> 00:55:19,560
Speaker 1: the right answer without making it obvious you know the

1025
00:55:19,600 --> 00:55:22,799
Speaker 1: word already by some bizarre string of chance, I ended

1026
00:55:22,880 --> 00:55:25,120
Speaker 1: up playing the Insider for seven out of the nine

1027
00:55:25,200 --> 00:55:28,759
Speaker 1: rounds we played out of eight players. By the end

1028
00:55:28,800 --> 00:55:31,040
Speaker 1: of the sounds like you were cheating. The odds on

1029
00:55:31,080 --> 00:55:33,160
Speaker 1: that are not good. I mean, it happens, though, and

1030
00:55:33,160 --> 00:55:34,839
Speaker 1: where will if you see like the person who ends

1031
00:55:34,880 --> 00:55:37,480
Speaker 1: up being a werewolf all night, and it it ends

1032
00:55:37,520 --> 00:55:39,640
Speaker 1: up you know, it ends up working to their favor,

1033
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:43,719
Speaker 1: because what are the odds? Right After a while, by

1034
00:55:43,760 --> 00:55:45,719
Speaker 1: the end of the night, it became a running joke

1035
00:55:45,800 --> 00:55:47,920
Speaker 1: to just assume I was the Insider if no one

1036
00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:50,480
Speaker 1: had any good ideas for anyone else, which ended up

1037
00:55:50,520 --> 00:55:53,920
Speaker 1: working for the rest of the night. After the game, however,

1038
00:55:53,960 --> 00:55:56,600
Speaker 1: I felt hyper aware of everything I said and double

1039
00:55:56,680 --> 00:55:59,000
Speaker 1: checked my words before I said anything to think about

1040
00:55:59,040 --> 00:56:01,319
Speaker 1: how they might be interpret did. I couldn't help but

1041
00:56:01,400 --> 00:56:05,520
Speaker 1: analyze the complexity of my and others communications even when

1042
00:56:05,560 --> 00:56:08,600
Speaker 1: we had returned to normal conversation after the game, and

1043
00:56:08,640 --> 00:56:11,160
Speaker 1: this didn't really fade until I went to sleep a

1044
00:56:11,160 --> 00:56:14,520
Speaker 1: few hours later. It was truly exhausting. Thanks again for

1045
00:56:14,560 --> 00:56:18,280
Speaker 1: all you do. Looking forward to the next episode. Well, Sky,

1046
00:56:18,440 --> 00:56:21,719
Speaker 1: that is really interesting. So that's one more example of

1047
00:56:21,760 --> 00:56:24,680
Speaker 1: the way that gameplay mechanics and the type of character

1048
00:56:24,800 --> 00:56:28,040
Speaker 1: you have to be inside a game doesn't just affect

1049
00:56:28,480 --> 00:56:31,600
Speaker 1: you in the moment, but really does follow you home. Uh,

1050
00:56:31,719 --> 00:56:34,480
Speaker 1: it's a question of how long it always lasts and

1051
00:56:34,520 --> 00:56:36,759
Speaker 1: how intense it is. But now that you mentioned it,

1052
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:39,440
Speaker 1: I think I have noticed that after playing as a werewolf,

1053
00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:44,520
Speaker 1: I mainly retain a feeling of mischievousness that follows me

1054
00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:46,960
Speaker 1: around after the game's over. That's if I've been one

1055
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:50,120
Speaker 1: of the werewolves, not so much if I've been a townsperson.

1056
00:56:50,200 --> 00:56:53,200
Speaker 1: But in my experience, this feeling is retained. Robert, what

1057
00:56:53,239 --> 00:56:55,560
Speaker 1: do you think about this? You retain the feeling of

1058
00:56:55,640 --> 00:56:59,839
Speaker 1: mischievousness if you were a werewolf, and if the were

1059
00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:05,400
Speaker 1: wolves one like the winning and determines the extent to

1060
00:57:05,520 --> 00:57:08,600
Speaker 1: which that feeling carries over after the game, And I

1061
00:57:08,640 --> 00:57:13,400
Speaker 1: wonder how proteus like effects are modulated by win lost dynamics, Like,

1062
00:57:13,480 --> 00:57:17,680
Speaker 1: for example, I know personality manifestation can be controlled by hormones,

1063
00:57:18,160 --> 00:57:21,640
Speaker 1: and hormone levels can apparently be affected by winning and losing,

1064
00:57:21,680 --> 00:57:25,040
Speaker 1: Like I remember, I've read studies about how like winning

1065
00:57:25,040 --> 00:57:29,680
Speaker 1: tennis players have elevated testosterone levels compared to losing players.

1066
00:57:30,840 --> 00:57:33,600
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's interesting the idea of retaining the

1067
00:57:33,680 --> 00:57:38,080
Speaker 1: sense of mischievousness after you've played, because it I wondered

1068
00:57:38,080 --> 00:57:42,560
Speaker 1: to what extent the framing mechanism works, because obviously we're

1069
00:57:42,600 --> 00:57:44,440
Speaker 1: humans playing the world wolf games, so we tend to

1070
00:57:44,520 --> 00:57:49,680
Speaker 1: frame it as a struggle between humanity and bloodthirsty monsters, right,

1071
00:57:49,720 --> 00:57:52,200
Speaker 1: but what if you played it the other way? You like,

1072
00:57:52,280 --> 00:57:55,120
Speaker 1: open your eyes where wolves, you were the last two

1073
00:57:55,200 --> 00:57:58,920
Speaker 1: members of your species just trying to survive, fighting against

1074
00:57:58,920 --> 00:58:02,360
Speaker 1: these bloodthirsty human And look how bloodthirsty they are. They're

1075
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:05,480
Speaker 1: murdering each other just on the suspicion that one of

1076
00:58:05,520 --> 00:58:09,080
Speaker 1: their their their their fellow villagers might be awarewold they

1077
00:58:09,120 --> 00:58:11,360
Speaker 1: deserve to be eaten? Yeah, So, like if you frame

1078
00:58:11,400 --> 00:58:12,880
Speaker 1: it like that. I wonder how that would frame the

1079
00:58:12,920 --> 00:58:15,320
Speaker 1: way people feel at the end, would you Maybe you'd

1080
00:58:15,360 --> 00:58:18,680
Speaker 1: still feel mischievous, but you might feel more like I

1081
00:58:18,680 --> 00:58:22,080
Speaker 1: don't know if like truly victorious that you've it's not

1082
00:58:22,120 --> 00:58:26,680
Speaker 1: that you've You've you've overcome the odds against a righteous opponent.

1083
00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:29,600
Speaker 1: You've overcome the odds against the monsters. You are. You

1084
00:58:29,640 --> 00:58:34,400
Speaker 1: are the winning uh noble player here and not not

1085
00:58:34,520 --> 00:58:37,440
Speaker 1: the others. Now, I probably sound like a werewolf sympathizer. Now,

1086
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:41,560
Speaker 1: so anyone playing werewolf of the uh will likely suspect

1087
00:58:41,640 --> 00:58:44,280
Speaker 1: me right off the bat. Okay, I think we got

1088
00:58:44,280 --> 00:58:47,440
Speaker 1: time for two more short ones, all right, uh. First

1089
00:58:47,520 --> 00:58:50,800
Speaker 1: one this comes from Tricia on our Animal Lies episode.

1090
00:58:51,120 --> 00:58:54,040
Speaker 1: Tricia Rights, Hey, guys, loved your most recent episode on

1091
00:58:54,080 --> 00:58:57,120
Speaker 1: animal lies. I work in dog training and behavior, and

1092
00:58:57,160 --> 00:58:59,880
Speaker 1: this episode reminded me of a study on dog deception

1093
00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:03,480
Speaker 1: published in the journal called Animal Cognition. It proves that

1094
00:59:03,600 --> 00:59:07,880
Speaker 1: dogs are definitely capable of deception for personal gain, sneaky

1095
00:59:07,920 --> 00:59:11,439
Speaker 1: little things. Uh. Here's an article she shares, and she says,

1096
00:59:11,680 --> 00:59:13,880
Speaker 1: for the record, I definitely think you should make animal

1097
00:59:13,920 --> 00:59:17,760
Speaker 1: lies a regular feature like Dangerous Food. All the best Trish,

1098
00:59:17,840 --> 00:59:19,560
Speaker 1: I just wanted to share this because I looked up

1099
00:59:19,600 --> 00:59:21,040
Speaker 1: the study to see what it was. So yeah, it

1100
00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:25,040
Speaker 1: was published an Animal Cognition in March. The lead author

1101
00:59:25,120 --> 00:59:29,520
Speaker 1: was Marian Haberline of the University of Zurich. And here's

1102
00:59:29,520 --> 00:59:32,280
Speaker 1: the short version. So you've got a bunch of dogs

1103
00:59:32,640 --> 00:59:35,760
Speaker 1: and you train the dogs to lead human partners to

1104
00:59:35,840 --> 00:59:38,520
Speaker 1: a container of food on command. So you say take

1105
00:59:38,560 --> 00:59:40,960
Speaker 1: me to food, and the dog takes you there. There

1106
00:59:40,960 --> 00:59:44,520
Speaker 1: were multiple containers. There'd be one container that's empty, no food,

1107
00:59:44,560 --> 00:59:46,920
Speaker 1: another one has a dry biscuit, and another one has

1108
00:59:46,920 --> 00:59:52,040
Speaker 1: an awesome sausage. And some human partners of the dogs

1109
00:59:52,280 --> 00:59:55,600
Speaker 1: were the dogs learned were cooperative, meaning when the dog

1110
00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:58,360
Speaker 1: takes them to food, the human partner would get the

1111
00:59:58,360 --> 01:00:00,600
Speaker 1: food and then give it to the dog, and other

1112
01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:03,640
Speaker 1: human partners were competitive, meaning when the dogs showed them

1113
01:00:03,640 --> 01:00:06,160
Speaker 1: where the food was, the human partner would keep the

1114
01:00:06,200 --> 01:00:09,360
Speaker 1: food for themselves. And after the task was done, the

1115
01:00:09,400 --> 01:00:11,439
Speaker 1: dogs learned that they would get a chance to eat

1116
01:00:11,480 --> 01:00:15,760
Speaker 1: whatever treats were left over in the unopened containers. So eventually,

1117
01:00:15,800 --> 01:00:18,600
Speaker 1: can you guess what happened When the humans would give

1118
01:00:18,600 --> 01:00:21,280
Speaker 1: the command to lead them to food, The dogs would

1119
01:00:21,280 --> 01:00:24,840
Speaker 1: act differently depending on whether you were cooperative or competitive,

1120
01:00:25,400 --> 01:00:27,560
Speaker 1: And if you were one of these competitive humans who

1121
01:00:27,600 --> 01:00:30,120
Speaker 1: did not share the food with the dogs, the dog

1122
01:00:30,200 --> 01:00:32,880
Speaker 1: would answer the take me to food command by leading

1123
01:00:32,880 --> 01:00:35,200
Speaker 1: you to an empty container that had no food in it.

1124
01:00:35,520 --> 01:00:38,640
Speaker 1: I don't know where the food went. So basically the

1125
01:00:38,720 --> 01:00:41,280
Speaker 1: dogs began to behave like, Hey, if you're not gonna share,

1126
01:00:41,320 --> 01:00:44,720
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna show you where the sausage is. Interesting, huh.

1127
01:00:45,200 --> 01:00:47,880
Speaker 1: I wonder if if there any I wonder how this

1128
01:00:47,960 --> 01:00:51,080
Speaker 1: impacts any use of of of the you know, the

1129
01:00:51,120 --> 01:00:56,640
Speaker 1: various uses of dogs for say, detection of illicit substances

1130
01:00:56,720 --> 01:01:01,040
Speaker 1: or explosives or even some of these areas we're figuring

1131
01:01:01,080 --> 01:01:04,120
Speaker 1: out how to use dogs to just detect illnesses. Like,

1132
01:01:04,200 --> 01:01:06,280
Speaker 1: it does kind of change things to know that if

1133
01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:12,720
Speaker 1: you don't have the the parameters uh laid out correctly,

1134
01:01:12,920 --> 01:01:16,000
Speaker 1: that you're gonna have to deal with dog deception right

1135
01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:18,919
Speaker 1: as part of the the ordeal. Yeah, if the dog,

1136
01:01:19,000 --> 01:01:21,120
Speaker 1: if the dog figures out this isn't working out in

1137
01:01:21,160 --> 01:01:24,440
Speaker 1: its favor, it's gonna lie to you. Interesting, all right.

1138
01:01:24,480 --> 01:01:27,000
Speaker 1: We have one last bit of listener mail. This comes

1139
01:01:27,000 --> 01:01:29,920
Speaker 1: to us from Kennedy Kennedy says, first off, I'd like

1140
01:01:29,960 --> 01:01:31,520
Speaker 1: to say that I love the podcast. I've learned a

1141
01:01:31,560 --> 01:01:34,120
Speaker 1: lot from listening to it, and I really appreciate what

1142
01:01:34,200 --> 01:01:36,200
Speaker 1: you guys are doing. It helps me get through long,

1143
01:01:36,240 --> 01:01:38,760
Speaker 1: boring nights at work. A lot of the time. It

1144
01:01:38,800 --> 01:01:41,280
Speaker 1: makes me uncomfortable though. That sounds like a bad thing,

1145
01:01:41,360 --> 01:01:44,000
Speaker 1: but it's not. There's been a lot of things I've

1146
01:01:44,080 --> 01:01:46,880
Speaker 1: learned on the show that directly contradict the things I

1147
01:01:46,960 --> 01:01:50,120
Speaker 1: was taught when I was younger. Growing up in religious household,

1148
01:01:50,160 --> 01:01:52,520
Speaker 1: my parents put a lot more stock into religion than

1149
01:01:52,560 --> 01:01:55,200
Speaker 1: they did science. I'm not religious, and I know that

1150
01:01:55,240 --> 01:01:57,440
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff they told me was wrong,

1151
01:01:57,760 --> 01:02:01,200
Speaker 1: not because they intentionally misled me, but because as they themselves,

1152
01:02:01,200 --> 01:02:04,160
Speaker 1: believed what they said. But even when you know things

1153
01:02:04,200 --> 01:02:07,600
Speaker 1: are wrong, it's hard to hear that something you've believed

1154
01:02:08,120 --> 01:02:10,560
Speaker 1: for a large part of your life was wrong. Thank

1155
01:02:10,600 --> 01:02:13,360
Speaker 1: you for bringing all of this information out, and thank

1156
01:02:13,400 --> 01:02:16,040
Speaker 1: you for making me uncomfortable. I hope that as time

1157
01:02:16,080 --> 01:02:18,080
Speaker 1: goes by, I can learn to have a better grasp

1158
01:02:18,160 --> 01:02:20,720
Speaker 1: on how the world really is and outgrow what I

1159
01:02:20,800 --> 01:02:22,720
Speaker 1: was taught when I was younger. Love the show, Thanks

1160
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:26,120
Speaker 1: for all the fantastic episodes. Kennedy, Well, Kennedy, thanks so

1161
01:02:26,200 --> 01:02:28,280
Speaker 1: much for getting touched on. I'm glad we could play

1162
01:02:28,320 --> 01:02:29,840
Speaker 1: that role for you. I mean, it's one of the

1163
01:02:29,880 --> 01:02:34,640
Speaker 1: hardest things to seek out things that make us uncomfortable,

1164
01:02:34,640 --> 01:02:38,320
Speaker 1: but it's something we should all try to do more, right, Yeah, Yeah,

1165
01:02:38,360 --> 01:02:40,800
Speaker 1: I mean, we we cover topics on the show that

1166
01:02:40,840 --> 01:02:44,480
Speaker 1: make me uncomfortable. Sometimes you know it, and it is

1167
01:02:44,680 --> 01:02:48,160
Speaker 1: part of kind of putting yourself in that uncomfortable state

1168
01:02:48,200 --> 01:02:51,800
Speaker 1: where you're willing to have your preconceived notions, your preconceived

1169
01:02:51,840 --> 01:02:55,520
Speaker 1: beliefs challenged or or even toppled. I mean, and it's

1170
01:02:55,560 --> 01:02:57,800
Speaker 1: really easy for us to say that, it's a harder

1171
01:02:57,840 --> 01:03:00,520
Speaker 1: thing to actually make yourself do it. You know, like

1172
01:03:00,600 --> 01:03:04,640
Speaker 1: everybody acknowledges it's good to think critically about your ideas.

1173
01:03:04,680 --> 01:03:07,920
Speaker 1: Everybody acknowledges it's good to try to seek out disconfirmation

1174
01:03:07,960 --> 01:03:10,400
Speaker 1: of your biases. But you you sit there and you

1175
01:03:10,440 --> 01:03:12,400
Speaker 1: say that, and then what do you really do? I mean,

1176
01:03:12,440 --> 01:03:14,680
Speaker 1: most of the time you seek confirmation of what you

1177
01:03:14,720 --> 01:03:18,360
Speaker 1: already thought. Uh, And it's just really hard to make

1178
01:03:18,440 --> 01:03:20,960
Speaker 1: yourself do that in the moment. But it's also a

1179
01:03:21,080 --> 01:03:24,440
Speaker 1: very rewarding thing to do that pays off in the

1180
01:03:24,480 --> 01:03:26,640
Speaker 1: long run when you can make yourself do it. I

1181
01:03:26,680 --> 01:03:29,880
Speaker 1: also have to say in this email, Kennedy talks about

1182
01:03:29,920 --> 01:03:32,720
Speaker 1: things that they were taught that they now see as

1183
01:03:33,040 --> 01:03:36,200
Speaker 1: as wrong. I have to say that, like, certainly they're

1184
01:03:36,200 --> 01:03:38,040
Speaker 1: gonna be things where you reach your point in life

1185
01:03:38,040 --> 01:03:39,520
Speaker 1: and you look back on something you used to believe

1186
01:03:39,560 --> 01:03:41,640
Speaker 1: and you think, well, that that was incorrect or that

1187
01:03:41,720 --> 01:03:44,959
Speaker 1: was maybe wrong and more of a like a moral

1188
01:03:45,080 --> 01:03:49,920
Speaker 1: or ethical way. But I think also in my experience,

1189
01:03:50,320 --> 01:03:52,280
Speaker 1: there are times when I can look back on something

1190
01:03:52,440 --> 01:03:56,200
Speaker 1: that I used to believe and maybe I can still

1191
01:03:56,360 --> 01:03:59,320
Speaker 1: value it, but now I see it from an additional

1192
01:03:59,360 --> 01:04:03,520
Speaker 1: per inspective, or maybe like two additional perspectives, and sometimes

1193
01:04:03,520 --> 01:04:06,439
Speaker 1: it can actually make that that thing more valuable. Yeah,

1194
01:04:06,480 --> 01:04:09,000
Speaker 1: you know, totally. I mean, well, is so the example

1195
01:04:09,160 --> 01:04:12,840
Speaker 1: that Kennedy uses in this email is religious beliefs, and

1196
01:04:12,920 --> 01:04:15,840
Speaker 1: I think, obviously this being a science podcast, they're going

1197
01:04:15,920 --> 01:04:19,760
Speaker 1: to be a lot of religious like literal interpretations of

1198
01:04:19,800 --> 01:04:22,640
Speaker 1: a lot of religious beliefs that are just gonna kind

1199
01:04:22,640 --> 01:04:24,920
Speaker 1: of come into conflict with science. Right if you believe

1200
01:04:24,960 --> 01:04:28,320
Speaker 1: in like a literal six day creation, like sorry, science

1201
01:04:28,360 --> 01:04:30,760
Speaker 1: isn't gonna help you there, that's going to come into conflict.

1202
01:04:31,040 --> 01:04:35,040
Speaker 1: But also I don't think inherently that the nature of

1203
01:04:35,080 --> 01:04:39,120
Speaker 1: our show is necessarily hostile to religion, or certainly not

1204
01:04:39,200 --> 01:04:42,560
Speaker 1: hostile to it in all of its interpreted forms. Right. Uh,

1205
01:04:42,640 --> 01:04:46,200
Speaker 1: it's if if you believe in like literal historical facts

1206
01:04:46,200 --> 01:04:48,720
Speaker 1: through your religion, a lot of times, yeah, the scientific

1207
01:04:48,720 --> 01:04:51,520
Speaker 1: approach is gonna come into collision with that. But there

1208
01:04:51,520 --> 01:04:54,000
Speaker 1: are also just a lot of ways of being a

1209
01:04:54,040 --> 01:04:57,560
Speaker 1: religious person, of having religious beliefs that tend to not

1210
01:04:57,640 --> 01:05:01,120
Speaker 1: really overlap with the territory of science. Yeah. I always

1211
01:05:01,120 --> 01:05:05,160
Speaker 1: come back to the idea of the tele teleological and

1212
01:05:05,240 --> 01:05:09,640
Speaker 1: the causative why you know, one answering like a very

1213
01:05:09,680 --> 01:05:12,880
Speaker 1: like fact based why am I here? And one dealing

1214
01:05:12,960 --> 01:05:16,200
Speaker 1: with the more like the reason for being, you know,

1215
01:05:16,840 --> 01:05:19,960
Speaker 1: a more existential idea of of of who I am

1216
01:05:20,000 --> 01:05:24,080
Speaker 1: and why I am here? And in science can answer

1217
01:05:24,120 --> 01:05:26,200
Speaker 1: a lot of those questions, but but not necessarily all

1218
01:05:26,240 --> 01:05:28,200
Speaker 1: of them, not in a way that maybe as satisfying

1219
01:05:28,240 --> 01:05:31,440
Speaker 1: to an individual. And uh, I think it's it can

1220
01:05:31,480 --> 01:05:35,360
Speaker 1: be valuable to have a religion and or spirituality or

1221
01:05:35,480 --> 01:05:38,640
Speaker 1: or even mythology too to fall back on that. That's

1222
01:05:38,680 --> 01:05:41,320
Speaker 1: one thing I always try and stress too with discussions

1223
01:05:41,360 --> 01:05:44,400
Speaker 1: of mythology and legend and folklore is that these are

1224
01:05:44,480 --> 01:05:47,760
Speaker 1: stories that did not happen, but they are still stories

1225
01:05:47,920 --> 01:05:51,600
Speaker 1: that have importance, uh certainly to the to the cultures

1226
01:05:51,640 --> 01:05:53,960
Speaker 1: from which they emerged, and to other cultures as well

1227
01:05:54,160 --> 01:05:58,120
Speaker 1: that have adopted them. Different did not literally happen is

1228
01:05:58,200 --> 01:06:00,880
Speaker 1: sort of a different question than is it true or

1229
01:06:00,960 --> 01:06:04,320
Speaker 1: not right? I mean, it's one way of interpreting the

1230
01:06:04,360 --> 01:06:07,040
Speaker 1: word true. Yeah, But I mean my bottom line is

1231
01:06:07,120 --> 01:06:09,880
Speaker 1: just to say again, I hope that you don't ever

1232
01:06:09,960 --> 01:06:12,880
Speaker 1: walk away from our show with the idea that you know,

1233
01:06:13,040 --> 01:06:16,320
Speaker 1: adopting scientific skepticism and all that means that you need

1234
01:06:16,400 --> 01:06:19,600
Speaker 1: to to throw out all of your beliefs and meaning

1235
01:06:19,680 --> 01:06:22,240
Speaker 1: structures and everything like that. I mean, that's not a

1236
01:06:22,320 --> 01:06:24,840
Speaker 1: message I want to promote at all. It is, uh,

1237
01:06:24,920 --> 01:06:27,640
Speaker 1: the idea that you should critically examine it, and when

1238
01:06:27,640 --> 01:06:31,240
Speaker 1: the facts are in obvious contradiction with beliefs, well then yeah,

1239
01:06:31,360 --> 01:06:33,520
Speaker 1: you should pay attention to the facts. But I hope

1240
01:06:33,560 --> 01:06:35,640
Speaker 1: we never create the false impression that we're trying to

1241
01:06:35,680 --> 01:06:40,560
Speaker 1: create an environment where beliefs mythology that gives meaning and

1242
01:06:40,640 --> 01:06:42,640
Speaker 1: structure and all that that, all that, all that needs

1243
01:06:42,680 --> 01:06:45,160
Speaker 1: to get chucked down the drain. That's not what I feel. Yeah,

1244
01:06:45,680 --> 01:06:48,480
Speaker 1: I mean neither. But that being said, if something doesn't

1245
01:06:48,520 --> 01:06:51,840
Speaker 1: bring you peace and happiness, then junk it out. What's

1246
01:06:51,880 --> 01:06:55,560
Speaker 1: it there for? Yeah, that's my take alright. Well, on

1247
01:06:55,720 --> 01:06:58,960
Speaker 1: that note, we've reached the end of our listener mail episode.

1248
01:06:59,160 --> 01:07:02,400
Speaker 1: If you would lie to send us listener mail, well,

1249
01:07:02,440 --> 01:07:04,640
Speaker 1: we have a few suggestions of how to go about it.

1250
01:07:04,880 --> 01:07:07,880
Speaker 1: First of all, we're on social media pretty much all

1251
01:07:07,960 --> 01:07:10,840
Speaker 1: the social media's I think we're on the Facebook, the Twitter,

1252
01:07:11,360 --> 01:07:14,560
Speaker 1: the Instagram, we're still on the tumbler. And you can

1253
01:07:14,640 --> 01:07:17,160
Speaker 1: get in touch with this via all of those websites,

1254
01:07:17,240 --> 01:07:19,520
Speaker 1: as well as our home page, the mothership stuff to

1255
01:07:19,560 --> 01:07:22,120
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. You'll find links out to

1256
01:07:22,160 --> 01:07:25,200
Speaker 1: all of those different websites, as well as all of

1257
01:07:25,240 --> 01:07:29,160
Speaker 1: the podcast episodes and various blog posts. Thanks as always

1258
01:07:29,200 --> 01:07:32,320
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison.

1259
01:07:32,480 --> 01:07:34,080
Speaker 1: And if you'd like to get in touch with us

1260
01:07:34,160 --> 01:07:36,439
Speaker 1: and send us some listener mail that might get read

1261
01:07:36,480 --> 01:07:38,200
Speaker 1: on the show in the future, you can email us

1262
01:07:38,280 --> 01:07:41,400
Speaker 1: at Blow the Mind at how stuff Works dot Com

1263
01:07:50,840 --> 01:07:53,280
Speaker 1: for more on this and bathands of other topics. Does

1264
01:07:53,320 --> 01:08:10,480
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot Com, The two four four

1265
01:08:10,720 --> 01:08:10,840
Speaker 1: four