Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: Listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today we're going to read some of the messages
Speaker 1: that you've sent in about things like the Universal Solvent,
Speaker 1: Star Wars, Aliens, sargassum, seaweed. It's gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. Are you ready to jump right in, rob
Speaker 1: Let's do it? Okay? This first message comes from Nathan Is.
Speaker 1: It is about our episode on the Dissolver of Worlds,
Speaker 1: the the Universal Solvent or the Alcahest from the History
Speaker 1: of Alchemy, And Nathan writes, Dear Robert and Joe, I
Speaker 1: recently listened to your episode Dissolver of World's about the
Speaker 1: search for a universal solvent. It reminded me of an
Speaker 1: old time radio show I used to listen to called
Speaker 1: Lights Out. In the episode oxy Chloride X, a disgruntled
Speaker 1: chemistry student creates a chemical compound which eats through anything.
Speaker 1: As soon as it's created, it begins dissolving the chemistry
Speaker 1: lab and eating through the ground below. Over the remainder
Speaker 1: of the story, the whole caused by the chemical grows
Speaker 1: larger both in depth and diameter, wreaking havoc worldwide. People
Speaker 1: even become terrified that it will eat through the entire earth.
Speaker 1: I won't spoil the ending, but here's a link where
Speaker 1: you can listen to it and find out for yourselves.
Speaker 1: And Nathan links to a couple of versions of this
Speaker 1: old radio show. Um, I'd be interested to hear you
Speaker 1: talk about other science fiction old time radio shows in
Speaker 1: the same vein of your anthology of horror episodes around Halloween.
Speaker 1: This is a good idea, Nathan says. Secondly, in the
Speaker 1: same episode Dissolver of Worlds, you talked about an alchemist
Speaker 1: who believed everything in the universe was made of water
Speaker 1: that was yonda Pista van Helmont. I wonder if this
Speaker 1: was at all influenced by a similar hypothesis from the
Speaker 1: Greek philosopher theories of Melitas, who lived in the sixth
Speaker 1: century b c. Thanks for continuing to teach me about
Speaker 1: the world and the weird. Best wishes, Nathan. Well, thanks, Nathan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a great email. So several things here. First
Speaker 1: of all, I remember in that book I was reading
Speaker 1: by Lawrence Prince, you pay about the history of alchemy. Uh,
Speaker 1: the author did mention theories of melitas in the context
Speaker 1: of talking about Van Helmont's idea that at bottom, all
Speaker 1: substances were made of water, just water in different forms.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if you specified whether van Helmont
Speaker 1: got that idea from theilies or not. But it wouldn't
Speaker 1: surprise me because obviously alchemists were usually very concerned with
Speaker 1: the thoughts of the natural philosophers of antiquity. On top
Speaker 1: of that, you mentioned this oxy chloride X episode, and
Speaker 1: I have to say that Seth also brought up the
Speaker 1: same episode to me. We were talking about this, I
Speaker 1: think one day when we were sitting around waiting to
Speaker 1: record one of these episodes, and so, so maybe we
Speaker 1: can get a clip of one of these radio shows
Speaker 1: to play for you right now, CC Barrier, I've CC
Speaker 1: so and he mocks a chloride Oh good, good, you're
Speaker 1: working out just as I plan. Who's there? Who's that
Speaker 1: working there? Professor? What do you do it? And after
Speaker 1: all my warnings, you're just in time, professor, Yes, just
Speaker 1: in time to have you thrown out of the university.
Speaker 1: What are you doing there? What is this messive equipment?
Speaker 1: It's my miracle miracle. What are you talking about? My miracle? Insane?
Speaker 1: Take it apart, all of it at once. Listen to
Speaker 1: it bubbling. A beautiful sound, isn't it, Professor? Get apart,
Speaker 1: empty outter a talk? No, I got to wait. Are
Speaker 1: you mad? Turn out the burners, all right, I'll turn
Speaker 1: them off, for it's no see where you are do it?
Speaker 1: Put down that aid. I'll smash the bottle on your head.
Speaker 1: If you touch anything on the table, no, don't throw it.
Speaker 1: Put the bottle of as down, stewart, please, my experiment,
Speaker 1: my miracle, bubbling and boiling and stewing. It will work, Professor,
Speaker 1: It's got to work. But but what is it? I
Speaker 1: told him, I create something that no other man has
Speaker 1: I told him, and I will, Professor, you hear me,
Speaker 1: I will. But what a solvent? A solvent more powerful
Speaker 1: than anything the world has ever known? What do you mean?
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? I never actually listened to
Speaker 1: this in full, but I'm gonna have to follow up
Speaker 1: and do that after, after we're done today. And I
Speaker 1: love your idea about covering old radio dramas like sci
Speaker 1: fi and horror radio dramas for for some kind of
Speaker 1: October content. I think that's fantastic. I will say, I
Speaker 1: actually don't know all that much old time radio drama,
Speaker 1: but I have a good friend who is really into
Speaker 1: that stuff, and he sent me several things to listen
Speaker 1: to last year, one of which was a great Orson
Speaker 1: Wells performance of the classic story The Hitchhiker, which was
Speaker 1: eventually made into a Twilight Zone episode. Maybe I had
Speaker 1: to hear that in um in school at one point,
Speaker 1: now that you mentioned it, because I was about to
Speaker 1: say I don't really think I've heard much in the
Speaker 1: way of of old timey radio shows either outside of
Speaker 1: you know, some familiarity with war the Worlds and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and some of the some of the classics,
Speaker 1: you know, like they the old like the Shadow and Shadow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it stands to reason there's some good stuff mixed
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah, so maybe we should have a look.
Speaker 1: I think there was some really good radio drama on
Speaker 1: the Colgate Hour alongside Roy Donk and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But also, um, there was a really good one my
Speaker 1: friend sent me that was an old horror radio drama
Speaker 1: called ghost Hunt that was from a show called Suspense
Speaker 1: that was about a radio host who if it was
Speaker 1: made today, I guess it'd be a podcaster who was
Speaker 1: like broadcasting from a haunted house that he's trying to
Speaker 1: stay in all night. Yeah, I mean, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting how you look at these old radio shows
Speaker 1: and you see similar efforts to kind of do the
Speaker 1: same thing, to reinvent the same thing in the podcast
Speaker 1: Realm Today. Um. And then of course I think British listeners,
Speaker 1: people who have listened to British radio would easily chime
Speaker 1: in and say, well, yeah, we've been listening to to
Speaker 1: uh to audio narrations auto audio versions of various works
Speaker 1: for years. I mean, they're uh, I'm I'm reminded, especially
Speaker 1: of the precursors to certain television shows that came out,
Speaker 1: like I know, there's you know or who audio dramas,
Speaker 1: and I think there was like a hobbit audio drama
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But but also, but before you got
Speaker 1: the TV show The Mighty Bush, the Mighty Bousch was
Speaker 1: a radio program. Before Chris Morris put out his excellent
Speaker 1: dark comedy Jam. He put out Blue Jam, which is uh,
Speaker 1: this kind of ambient electronic music slash dark comedy mash
Speaker 1: up that works really well. And there are other examples
Speaker 1: of that kind of thing is that you can find too. Huh. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I can't promise anything, but Nathan, I think this is
Speaker 1: a great idea. Rob and I will have to mull
Speaker 1: it over and uh and see what we think come October.
Speaker 1: All right, here's another bit of alchemy. A listener mail
Speaker 1: David writes in and responding to our discussion of the
Speaker 1: dissolver of Worlds, brings up the topic of black holes. Quote.
Speaker 1: If you mix anything with a black hole, it'll break
Speaker 1: everything down to the most elemental components, and eventually you
Speaker 1: will only have pure energy leftover Hawking radiation. Hear me
Speaker 1: out if I try to imagine how a universal solvent
Speaker 1: would work and what a jar of black holes would
Speaker 1: look like to me, at least they seem like they
Speaker 1: would both be identical. Black holes would reduce everything is mentioned,
Speaker 1: but also gravity would cause it to eat through any
Speaker 1: kind of jar and fall to the ground, where there
Speaker 1: would just be a hole going through the earth until
Speaker 1: the black hole and Earth find a gravitational equilibrium, and
Speaker 1: anything unfortunate to mix with the black hole would further
Speaker 1: be reduced. Always enjoy your insight and helping me think
Speaker 1: of things. Differently and making new connections to David actually
Speaker 1: thought while we were recording this episode about like what
Speaker 1: would be the closest thing to the idea of the
Speaker 1: universal solvent, And maybe you could say that a black
Speaker 1: hole is a kind of universal solvent. So David's on
Speaker 1: the same frequency here, but I'm not sure. Actually, uh,
Speaker 1: it'd be interested for you know, listeners with physics knowledge
Speaker 1: to write in about this. I'm not sure that if
Speaker 1: you had a tiny, tiny black hole in a jar,
Speaker 1: that it would actually eat through the jar, because I
Speaker 1: recall reading some coverage of um people having concerns that
Speaker 1: the large Hadron collider at CERN would create tiny black
Speaker 1: holes and that these would just sort of turn into
Speaker 1: that universal acid they would eat up the whole world,
Speaker 1: and the response to that being that no, actually, if
Speaker 1: you work out the physics on the creation of a
Speaker 1: microscopic black hole, that what it tends to do is
Speaker 1: actually just like dissipate. I don't know that for sure,
Speaker 1: but I've read stuff along those lines, so maybe we
Speaker 1: can revisit that in the future. All right. The next
Speaker 1: bit of listener mail is in response to the first
Speaker 1: of our Star Wars Alien Necropsy episodes, but as we're
Speaker 1: recording this listener mail episode, only the first one of
Speaker 1: those has aired, right, so I'm sure we've got a
Speaker 1: lot more alien stuff coming in. All right, This comes
Speaker 1: from Nick. Nick says, Hi, guys, I love your most
Speaker 1: recent podcast on the alien morphology seen in the Star
Speaker 1: Wars movies and franchises. When you were both talking about
Speaker 1: space faring organisms and how they could possibly evolve in
Speaker 1: the vacuum of space, it got me thinking what if
Speaker 1: amino acids could be collected in places called lagrange points,
Speaker 1: or points where the gravitational pull between two bodies allows
Speaker 1: for objects to remain in place. In fact, the Sun
Speaker 1: and Earth have five different lagrange points that are used
Speaker 1: for satellites to remain put while using very little fuel.
Speaker 1: In theory, these areas would be present throughout the galaxy
Speaker 1: and could act as a collector of amino acids and
Speaker 1: eventually become a nursery for space faring organisms. Additionally, it
Speaker 1: could be theorized that dark matter could also have the
Speaker 1: same effect, as we know that dark matter has a
Speaker 1: gravitational pull, but since we don't know what comprises dark matter,
Speaker 1: may or may not be suitable for life forms to
Speaker 1: live in just a thought. Thanks for the great podcast,
Speaker 1: and I look forward to hearing more episodes. Nick. Well, Nick,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if what you say is viable or not,
Speaker 1: but I like the idea of stuff just collecting in
Speaker 1: the lagrange points, kind of like in the Sargasso Sea, right,
Speaker 1: there's currents all around it and things just kind of
Speaker 1: drift into that still point in the middle. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And speaking of sargasm the Weed of Deceit, we also
Speaker 1: heard from Jenna, who wrote writes in and says, while
Speaker 1: listening to your Sargasm C episode, I was reminded that
Speaker 1: z frank did a true facts video on frog Fish.
Speaker 1: If you haven't already seen it, you should. It's delightful.
Speaker 1: Here's the link, um, Yeah, and then the link is
Speaker 1: to one of these z franc Um YouTube videos, which
Speaker 1: I imagine a lot of you have seen. These are
Speaker 1: these are like documentary footage, but with somebody else, uh
Speaker 1: putting in this uh, this over the top narration, and
Speaker 1: I think usually there's some some real facts in there,
Speaker 1: but also a bunch of comedic facts. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: basically comedy narration over over nature documentary footage. I mean,
Speaker 1: in the same kind of vein. It's a different person
Speaker 1: doing it, but the same kind of vein is the
Speaker 1: much UH celebrated honey Badger viral video years ago. UH.
Speaker 1: And in this case, it's talking about frog fish and
Speaker 1: at one point brings up the sargassum frog fish. Uh.
Speaker 1: The narrator, I guess this is the Z Frank guy.
Speaker 1: I was not familiar with this channel before, but I've
Speaker 1: seen videos like this, and he points out that they
Speaker 1: eat each other, and he says, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: crappy life because they hang out in this seaweed that
Speaker 1: they look like, and so it's kind of like if
Speaker 1: lions looked like couches, like that analogy. But one thing
Speaker 1: I noticed is that the narrator doesn't just make comedy points.
Speaker 1: A lot of what he does is he's just talking
Speaker 1: about a fish and then suddenly the fish will like
Speaker 1: bite another thing's head off, and he'll just start laughing.
Speaker 1: In a way. It's kind of reminiscent of the narration
Speaker 1: we get at the beginning of that the blood water
Speaker 1: is a doctor Z which of course we we discussed
Speaker 1: uh around the same time on Weird House Cinema. Partially
Speaker 1: related to this, I have to say that there's there's
Speaker 1: a wonderful video that I've watched way too many times
Speaker 1: where it's it's footage from a documentary. Here he's hosted
Speaker 1: by Brian Cox, not the the actor, but the the
Speaker 1: the astrophysicist, wonderful science communicator. Uh, taking nothing away from him,
Speaker 1: but in this video someone has dubbed over it doing
Speaker 1: a Brian Cox impersonation, and it's hilarious because he's because
Speaker 1: he's saying stuff like you might think this is Earth,
Speaker 1: but it's not, it's Mars or something something that effect
Speaker 1: is just like way out there, um, astounding. So I
Speaker 1: don't know. So sometimes these sorts of gimmicks can work
Speaker 1: really well. All right, let's let's move on to a
Speaker 1: little Weird House Cinema listener mail while we're at it.
Speaker 1: Sounds great. Let's see do you want to take this
Speaker 1: one from Katie or should I? Um? I I can
Speaker 1: take this one, so Katie writes, Hi, Rob and Joe,
Speaker 1: I love your show, and Weird House Cinema just makes
Speaker 1: it even better. I'm actually listening to an episode right now.
Speaker 1: I know you mostly do adult movies um and she
Speaker 1: means movies for grown ups. There um or green movies,
Speaker 1: not especially game films, not not especially aimed at children. Um.
Speaker 1: But she continues, but you did do the e Walk
Speaker 1: movies once, which I loved, so I thought I might
Speaker 1: suggest two movies for younger viewers that you may or
Speaker 1: may not be familiar with. The first, and probably the
Speaker 1: stranger of the two, is The five Thousand Fingers of
Speaker 1: Dr t NTE, which I believe has something to do
Speaker 1: with Dr Seuss. And uh, and she is correct on this.
Speaker 1: This was a Doctor SEUs was involved in this. I
Speaker 1: think it would ended up being not not a project
Speaker 1: that that anyone involved in it was particularly happy with.
Speaker 1: But this did come up in my research about like
Speaker 1: weird films from previous decades. Anyway, Uh, they I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it, but our our listener has, and they continue quote.
Speaker 1: I remember watching this a number of times with my
Speaker 1: best friend as a kid and loving it, even though
Speaker 1: it is very strange and at times a little scary.
Speaker 1: At some point in college I found a DVD copy
Speaker 1: and so have seen it at least once as an adult,
Speaker 1: but that was years ago. I keep meaning to show
Speaker 1: it to my kids, but I haven't had a chance yet.
Speaker 1: It's about a boy who is resisting his piano lessons,
Speaker 1: and somehow, maybe through a dream, gets taken to a
Speaker 1: strange world or castle run by Dr to Willaker as
Speaker 1: a prisoner. There are many other children being forced to
Speaker 1: play the piano there, and then he has to escape.
Speaker 1: This may not be exactly right, but it's as much
Speaker 1: as I can remember. Plot wise, this sounds similar to
Speaker 1: a goose Bumps book that I recall when they're one
Speaker 1: about a sinister piano teacher. Well, you know, certainly the
Speaker 1: way that we we think of our piano teachers sometimes
Speaker 1: can can can lean towards the villainus, so it makes
Speaker 1: sense anyway. They continue the second movie, The Return to Oz,
Speaker 1: maybe a little two main stream, but I love it
Speaker 1: still today and it is definitely a little strange. It
Speaker 1: is sort of a mash up of the Next to
Speaker 1: Oz books and has some delightful new characters and several
Speaker 1: genuinely creepy moments, including an old time asylum and a
Speaker 1: witch who takes off her head. I have shared this
Speaker 1: with my kids as well. It was a sixth grade
Speaker 1: class I taught years ago. Although at times they were
Speaker 1: a little worried, they were hooked. Anyway, Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for all the wonderful listening. I don't have much
Speaker 1: time right now to watch movies, so weird how cinema
Speaker 1: is my portal into the strange b movie world. Thanks Katie.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I've never seen all of Return to Oz,
Speaker 1: but this is one that people have told me multiple
Speaker 1: times I should watch and that they thought I would love.
Speaker 1: And so I've seen some clips from it. I recall
Speaker 1: it has some creepy pumpkinheads in it. Uh oh yeah,
Speaker 1: people with wheels skates for hands. It's uh. I think
Speaker 1: I saw it when I was younger, and it does
Speaker 1: have a lot of weird stuff in it, and um uh,
Speaker 1: you know it's and it's got It's got a pretty
Speaker 1: decent cast too. It's got some interesting connections there. So
Speaker 1: Dorothy played by Ferusa Bulk it is yep, and uh,
Speaker 1: let's see who else is that. Gene marsh is in it.
Speaker 1: Um uh. Brian Henson does a voice, so it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It might be the sort of film to consider. Is
Speaker 1: it in two mainstream? I don't know. We've we sometimes
Speaker 1: asked that question about things we're considering for Weird House,
Speaker 1: because we don't have a firm definition of what exactly
Speaker 1: a weird house cinema selection is I know there's at
Speaker 1: least one very mainstream children's movie that I have I've
Speaker 1: been kicking around the idea of doing, but I haven't
Speaker 1: quite pulled the trigger on yet. I'd say the criteria
Speaker 1: for weird house inclusion or not super solid. I mean,
Speaker 1: we don't have hard boundaries, but but yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: guess we do tend to the more obscure. But you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We did a Star Wars movie. I
Speaker 1: mean it was He Walks, but that's about as mainstream
Speaker 1: as you can get. True true. All right, So this
Speaker 1: next message came to us from James. This is a
Speaker 1: follow up email he I think wrote in the last
Speaker 1: Listener Mail episode. It was the one where he told
Speaker 1: us about all those turbographics sixteen names, including the racing RPG,
Speaker 1: which is still just that was just clanging around in
Speaker 1: my head like a big copper kettle. Uh that that
Speaker 1: you would like go to different towns and talk to
Speaker 1: people and like talking I don't know, have a random
Speaker 1: encounters for racing. That just sounds amazing. But anyway, he
Speaker 1: also said he was seeking out a copy of Frogs
Speaker 1: or I think maybe he'd already gotten one, and so
Speaker 1: he writes again. James says, Wow, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: reading my letter in the latest Listener mail segment. That
Speaker 1: totally made my day, and I look forward to showing
Speaker 1: it off to my brother, who shares most of the
Speaker 1: same memories. I think he's talking about the terbographic sixteen.
Speaker 1: James says, I just finished watching Frogs last night. Between
Speaker 1: the shots attempting to make geckos appear menacing and the
Speaker 1: horrific acting, it elicited plenty of laughter and was well
Speaker 1: worth the four dollar eBay purchase. I'm glad you brought
Speaker 1: this odd little Jim to my attention. And then James
Speaker 1: attaches a photo I suppose of his copy of Frogs
Speaker 1: sitting on a table. I guess this is in his house,
Speaker 1: but it's next to a gecko that I can tell
Speaker 1: if that's like a plastic fake gecko or a real
Speaker 1: that looks real that looks like a real gecko. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then behind the gecko, yeah, I guess this looks
Speaker 1: like a gecko habitat sort of. There's like a place
Speaker 1: with like a water bowl and things be strange if
Speaker 1: that was fake. And then behind it there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of art, and one of the pieces of art has
Speaker 1: this like cool looking gecko with sunglasses. Is this GEX
Speaker 1: from those Gets video games? You remember these things? I
Speaker 1: don't know. It looks like it's a Frogger poster based
Speaker 1: on the term above it, so maybe it was like
Speaker 1: a latter day Frogger video game poster. I'm I'm almost
Speaker 1: certain this character here is GEX. I mean, you should
Speaker 1: google Gets if you don't. I don't. I never play
Speaker 1: these games myself, but somehow I knew about them, and
Speaker 1: maybe friends I knew had them. GEX is a lizard
Speaker 1: game adventure hero who like makes wise cracks about TV.
Speaker 1: He's like a stand up comedian geck action hero, and
Speaker 1: it looks a little Pucci. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very Pucci.
Speaker 1: Actually he's got sunglasses and they definitely pouchified him by
Speaker 1: ten percent. So he'll jump on a big mushroom or
Speaker 1: something and then say, this reminds me of when the
Speaker 1: fawns jumped over the shark or I don't know, I
Speaker 1: just made that up, but he he like, he makes
Speaker 1: jokes about pop culture in a video game, which I
Speaker 1: think was innovative at the time. Okay, yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: not really familiar with him. But but speaking of Frogs,
Speaker 1: you know who else like the Frog's episode? My mom? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think she can really. Yeah, she tends to skip
Speaker 1: the Weird House sent in the episodes, but she was
Speaker 1: telling me it's like I saw the Frogs one and
Speaker 1: I saw that had Sam Elliott discussed in it. So
Speaker 1: I listened to it and it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So who doesn't like Sam Elliott? Yeah, she has not
Speaker 1: seen the movie, but she expressed an interest in seeing
Speaker 1: it after having listened to the episode, So there you go.
Speaker 1: I briefly brought up the idea of my wife that
Speaker 1: maybe I could give a copy of Frogs to my
Speaker 1: mom for Mother's Day, but that was shot down. Apparently
Speaker 1: that's not Mother's Day material that that particular movie. I
Speaker 1: guess not. Hey, do you mind if I do this?
Speaker 1: Next message also about Weird House Cinema from Mike. Here
Speaker 1: go for it, alright, So let's see. Mike writes in
Speaker 1: to say he he enjoyed our Weird House Cinema on
Speaker 1: silent movies, and he talks about appreciating that we discussed
Speaker 1: the importance of live music to accompany silent films back
Speaker 1: in the original time. Like. He shares a story of
Speaker 1: when he was in college, he went to see the
Speaker 1: movie Intolerance from nineteen sixteen and says it was It
Speaker 1: was accompanied by piano, and he says it was a
Speaker 1: lovely experience. He says the pianist was like a conduit
Speaker 1: between the audience and the film part of and separate
Speaker 1: from both simultaneously. But then he shares a personally anecdote,
Speaker 1: I wanted to read this part. Sometime after the showing
Speaker 1: slash performance of Intolerance. I mentioned it to my grandmother
Speaker 1: and was treated to a story that I hold dear.
Speaker 1: As a young woman in Rochester, New Hampshire, she played
Speaker 1: the piano for silent movies at the local theater. As
Speaker 1: she accompanied a film one night, her attention drifted. She
Speaker 1: was surprised when the audience started to laugh. No one
Speaker 1: had laughed at that film before. After a moment, she
Speaker 1: realized that everyone was laughing because she was playing a
Speaker 1: jaunty polka during a somber funeral scene. Never wanted to
Speaker 1: mind what people thought about her, she kept on playing,
Speaker 1: bringing it back to a more appropriate tune. I love
Speaker 1: this story because it captures both my grandmother's personality and
Speaker 1: a particular movie going experience specific to the Silent Era.
Speaker 1: Thanks for all you do, Mike. I've never considered this before,
Speaker 1: that you just have like a like a like a
Speaker 1: pianist improvising. I guess I always assumed they'd be playing
Speaker 1: from sheet music that was timed to accompany the music, right,
Speaker 1: But if they're improvising, yeah, who knows what they're going
Speaker 1: to make the movie feel like? Yeah? Or if there
Speaker 1: was some mix up with the sheet music, perhaps because
Speaker 1: you could you could imagine a scenario where you had
Speaker 1: the sheet music for a different film and it might
Speaker 1: and everything might line up well enough for a while
Speaker 1: until you get to that section where you are playing
Speaker 1: polka music over a funeral. Yeah, that's rough, Mike. Al Right,
Speaker 1: here's another. Um. I guess this is kind of I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is weird house related or just
Speaker 1: movie related, but this one comes to us from Tom, Hi, Robert,
Speaker 1: and Joe. I just finished listening to listener mail Fire
Speaker 1: of Unknown Origins. The question came up, why does Sean
Speaker 1: Connery's character in Highlander have a Scottish accent? My take
Speaker 1: is Sean Connery's character probably learned English in Scotland if
Speaker 1: he was from Egypt. He had to learn English somewhere else.
Speaker 1: I love the podcast. I'm a field service engineer and
Speaker 1: do a lot of windshield time. Your podcast keeps me
Speaker 1: entertained and also educates me. So time well spent. Thanks again, Tom,
Speaker 1: And yes, Tom, this is a solid theory. I mean
Speaker 1: why not. Yeah, Well, so I've I've got I've got
Speaker 1: a counter theory though. I do think this is an
Speaker 1: interesting possibility, and I appreciate you sharing it, Tom. But
Speaker 1: one complication is that a language is not just built
Speaker 1: out of words, but actually built out of phonetic building
Speaker 1: blocks that are the sub parts of words. You know
Speaker 1: that the individual sounds you make with your mouth to
Speaker 1: make a word, and different languages build words out of
Speaker 1: different sets of phonemes like the individual letter sounds. Often
Speaker 1: the differences are subtle enough that when we're used to
Speaker 1: one language and we learn a new one, we build
Speaker 1: the words of the new language not out of the
Speaker 1: same phonemes as a native speaker, but out of the
Speaker 1: nearest approximation of those phonemes from our own native language.
Speaker 1: So if you're an English speaker and you're trying to
Speaker 1: learn French, I think a lot of times. At first,
Speaker 1: you're you're going to be building the sounds. You're like
Speaker 1: approximating the sounds of French words based on English phonemes.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that Sean Connery's character and Highlander Ramiers
Speaker 1: would not be speaking English with a Scottish accent. He
Speaker 1: would be speeda king English with an ancient Egyptian accent. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe not accent, but like, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess if you're immersed long enough, then maybe because
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's had plenty of time to get immersed,
Speaker 1: maybe then you really do incorporate like the full range
Speaker 1: of phonemes that a native speaker if that language, would use,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, the accent is fully there. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I guess it would depend on how long he's been
Speaker 1: speaking English. You know. One thing that it makes me
Speaker 1: wonder about, and I've probably wondered about this in the
Speaker 1: show so before, so apologies, but what is the nero
Speaker 1: plasticity of an immortal in the Highlander world? You know,
Speaker 1: because on one level, their bodies don't really change, and
Speaker 1: if and if they suffer injury like something, I don't know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it seems like they heal sometimes maybe not, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, you know, they have stayed the
Speaker 1: same across the centuries. Yet, on the on the other hand,
Speaker 1: and yeah, and certainly I guess maybe they hold onto
Speaker 1: old ideas like the Kuragan doesn't seem to have really evolved.
Speaker 1: He hasn't really evolved that much when it comes to
Speaker 1: his you know, his moral philosophy or anything. Uh. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, in order to survive across the centuries,
Speaker 1: you would have to have a certain amount of neuroplasticity.
Speaker 1: You would have to you know, you'd have to be
Speaker 1: able and willing to make drastic changes in your ability
Speaker 1: to acquire new languages, new cultures, new technologies. Maybe what
Speaker 1: the quickening does is it undoes synaptic pruning so that
Speaker 1: your brain is sort of reset to a childlike state
Speaker 1: where you can have that incredibly protein neo plasticity you
Speaker 1: see in a child's brain, where a child can just
Speaker 1: acquire languages at a rate that's unimaginable to adults. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the quickening that occurs when you be head
Speaker 1: another immortal and will assume their power, or is this
Speaker 1: the quickening thing where you're just running next to a horse.
Speaker 1: I think it'd be the beheading, so you got you
Speaker 1: have to go behead another immortal every time you want
Speaker 1: to learn a new language, or actually be able to
Speaker 1: pronounce all the dinosaur names if you haven't learned them before.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing. Okay, makes sense. I like this theory. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right. On that note, Carney, the mail body is
Speaker 1: telling us that he has done. This is all the
Speaker 1: listener mail for today. Of course, we still have other
Speaker 1: bits of listener mail we didn't have time to get to. Uh.
Speaker 1: New listener mails coming in all the time, so keep
Speaker 1: it coming. We read all of it, even if we
Speaker 1: don't have a chance to read it all on the show.
Speaker 1: We appreciate your your thoughts, your riffs, your suggestions for
Speaker 1: the future, your you know, occasional corrections as needed, and
Speaker 1: just in general, like your feedback, your experience with the
Speaker 1: information that we're discussing. In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind Listener Mail, those come out on Monday, Core episodes
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Speaker 1: you in the form of a vault episode. Huge thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
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