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. This is Robert Land and I'm Joe McCormack,
Speaker 1: and it's Monday. This is the day of the week.
Speaker 1: We usually read back some of the messages you've sent
Speaker 1: in over the past few weeks. So Rob, if you're
Speaker 1: cool with it, I'm going to jump right into a
Speaker 1: message sent by Manuel in response to our episode on
Speaker 1: music and memory. All right, So Manuel starts off by
Speaker 1: saying some nice things, and then he also, this was
Speaker 1: the weird part I didn't quite understand, but he says
Speaker 1: that sometimes Rob, when we're explaining something, we remind him
Speaker 1: of Hugo Weaving from the Matrix. I don't quite know
Speaker 1: what this means. He assures us that he means it
Speaker 1: in a positive way. But I'm a little confused. Okay,
Speaker 1: fair enough, which one of us do you think is
Speaker 1: more like Hugo weaving? Is that you were at me?
Speaker 1: M I don't know. Do we get to choose, I mean,
Speaker 1: do get to choose different Hugo weavings from different films?
Speaker 1: Is it a broader selection or is it just uh?
Speaker 1: I think it's just the matrix, just the matrix. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I leave this to the the
Speaker 1: listeners to decide. I have no opinion on this. M
Speaker 1: Manuel says, I recently listened to your episode Music and
Speaker 1: Memory and really enjoyed it. One thing that I feel
Speaker 1: you forgot to mention is something that seemed to be
Speaker 1: taught to all of us back in elementary school in
Speaker 1: the early nineties, the fifty States song. To this day,
Speaker 1: I can recite this song and thus mention every state
Speaker 1: in the US. However, if I were tasked to write
Speaker 1: down every state's name without referencing the song, I'm ashamed
Speaker 1: to admit I would surely miss a handful of states.
Speaker 1: H Manuel, I don't think that is anything to be
Speaker 1: ashamed of because I this this may be super embarrassing,
Speaker 1: but I think even as an adult, there have been
Speaker 1: times when I've been trying to alphabetize things in my mind,
Speaker 1: and I know I have mentally referred to the alphabet
Speaker 1: song in order to remember. Wait which comes first? K
Speaker 1: or L or J. I don't know how does this
Speaker 1: song go. I don't know that I learned this song.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's it's to the tune Twinkle Twinkle, Little
Speaker 1: Star A, B, C, D E, F G M okay,
Speaker 1: j K, element o P. Surely you know that one?
Speaker 1: Oh no, okay, so you're just talking about the alphabet song,
Speaker 1: not a specific alphabet song for the wait, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the fifty state song. I know the alphabet song.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, yeah, to be confused, I was talking about
Speaker 1: the I have as an adult. I know for mentally
Speaker 1: referred to the alphabet song. Yes, I do. I also
Speaker 1: fall back on that crutch, But I don't know that
Speaker 1: I learned the fifty States song. I don't think I
Speaker 1: did either, though I've talked to Rachel. She can still
Speaker 1: sing the fifty States song, which is funny because this
Speaker 1: may just be that she's not, you know, a singer. First.
Speaker 1: I don't really it doesn't sound like a song to me.
Speaker 1: It just sounds kind of like shouting the names of
Speaker 1: states to a rhythm. Maybe maybe if I heard the
Speaker 1: tune it would be a little bit different. Rachel overheard me.
Speaker 1: Are you listening to mer record? Apparently it's called fifty nifty? Okay, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I was not introduced to fifty nifty,
Speaker 1: but I wish I wish I had, it would probably
Speaker 1: helped a lot. Manuel goes on, I feel like music
Speaker 1: absolutely aids in memory and learning. My wife is learning
Speaker 1: English and always asks to explain what a song is saying,
Speaker 1: lay out the lyrics, etcetera. It clearly helps her with
Speaker 1: learning new words and more importantly, how phrases work in
Speaker 1: the English language. She's willing to learn English, but isn't
Speaker 1: exactly motivated to, and music definitely helps with this. My
Speaker 1: guess is that most people will enjoy a good song
Speaker 1: or melody and be eager to learn what it says
Speaker 1: or means, as opposed to reading a paragraph. Again, this
Speaker 1: taps into something we we sort of guessed about in
Speaker 1: in previous talks about music and memory, about how the
Speaker 1: music element may in factor just help is a motivational
Speaker 1: tool to repeat and rehearse the verbal content, which may
Speaker 1: help people remember and understand it better. But men Well
Speaker 1: also says for me, music absolutely plays a part in
Speaker 1: tapping into old memories. I can listen to very old
Speaker 1: Mexican music and it will instantly take me back to
Speaker 1: my youth helping my grandmother clean the house on a
Speaker 1: weekend while singing along to these songs. Even music played
Speaker 1: in movies. I'll hear a song which reminds me of
Speaker 1: a favorite movie, which in turn takes me back to
Speaker 1: when I watched the movie. The intro song to die
Speaker 1: Hard with a Vengeance is burned into my memory. I
Speaker 1: don't know who plays it or what the song is called,
Speaker 1: but if I hear it, I can play those scenes
Speaker 1: in my mind, and it reminds me of the long
Speaker 1: summer breaks when I would binge movies we had on tape. Well,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen die Hard with a Vengeance, but I
Speaker 1: just pulled up a list of the like the soundtrack,
Speaker 1: and if these are in order of appearance in the film,
Speaker 1: then maybe it's Summer in the City by the Love
Speaker 1: and Sponful. Oh yeah, hot Town, Summer in the City,
Speaker 1: back of my neck, getting dirt and gritty. I don't
Speaker 1: think i've ever seen all of the third die Hard
Speaker 1: movie either. This is the one with Jeremy Irons. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well anyway, Manuel wraps up, says some nice things about
Speaker 1: the show and signs off. So, yeah, thanks for getting
Speaker 1: in touch man. Well, and it's great that we had
Speaker 1: a chance to mention the fifty and fifty States, because
Speaker 1: I know some other listeners have written in saying something
Speaker 1: about that too. Alright. This next one comes to us
Speaker 1: from from from frequent listener mail participant Jim in New Jersey, uh,
Speaker 1: in response to our episode on the Silarian hypothesis. Jim rights,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe. While the Earth is too active to
Speaker 1: preserve ancient technology, I suspect that the Moon would preserve
Speaker 1: it quite nicely if ancient technology were to reach the Moon.
Speaker 1: I'm sure evidence would exist for a very long time.
Speaker 1: How long will the remnants of the Apollo mission remain
Speaker 1: on the Moon? And then he he shares a particular
Speaker 1: article with us here right. It is citing an answer
Speaker 1: given to ABC Science Focused by an astronomer named Alistair
Speaker 1: Gunn from the University of Manchester, and this is the quote.
Speaker 1: While the constant bombardment by energetic micro media, rights is
Speaker 1: likely to gradually erode this this being the Apollo mission
Speaker 1: material over time, current research suggested could survive for up
Speaker 1: to a hundred million years. This is I believe this
Speaker 1: is part of the plot line in the original two
Speaker 1: thousand one of Space Odyssey, right, Um, I don't recall
Speaker 1: this is mentioned in the in the movie, or if
Speaker 1: this is in the novel or a subsequent treatment, but
Speaker 1: the idea of there being some sort of us, some
Speaker 1: sort of lunar presence, right, Well, it's a monolith on
Speaker 1: the Moon, yes, which I think is not human technology
Speaker 1: but alien technology. Right. But yeah, but it's like if
Speaker 1: you wanted to keep an eye on Earth, that's where
Speaker 1: you put your monolith, right. Oh yeah, yeah, it's something
Speaker 1: can just sit on the Moon for ages and not
Speaker 1: much happens to it except I guess impacts from space.
Speaker 1: All right. On a similar note, Wayne rights In, Hello, Rob,
Speaker 1: Joe and Seth. I enjoyed your episode about the Silurian
Speaker 1: hypothesis quite a bit. It's a fascinating question. Could we
Speaker 1: tell if there had been an industrial civilization a hundred
Speaker 1: million years ago? And also could the eventual inheritors of
Speaker 1: Earth a hundred million years from now know of our existence.
Speaker 1: Evidence on Earth has a hard time persisting because this
Speaker 1: is a geologically active planet with a lot of weather.
Speaker 1: There's very little we could build that could survive millions
Speaker 1: of years of these processes. But what about the other
Speaker 1: places that we have left a mark in recent times
Speaker 1: which don't have these processes, namely the Moon or space
Speaker 1: in general? We've placed satellites in orbit around the Earth
Speaker 1: and the Sun and left artifacts and footprints on the
Speaker 1: surface of the Moon. Could we assume that any other
Speaker 1: civilization that reached our level of technology would have done
Speaker 1: the same thing. I think that's a reasonable assumption. The
Speaker 1: final frontier must have a universal appeal for any intelligence
Speaker 1: speace these that can look at the stars. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: the satellites wouldn't last long because of orbital decay and
Speaker 1: other interactions, but maybe there are some places where we
Speaker 1: could place an artifact that would last many millions of years.
Speaker 1: The surface of the Moon, however, seems like an ideal
Speaker 1: place to put something that we want to last for
Speaker 1: a very long time. It has no weather or geology,
Speaker 1: but is subject to radiation, micro meteorites, and larger impacts.
Speaker 1: According to any links to space dot Com article by
Speaker 1: Dennis chow Uh quote, in human terms, it may seem
Speaker 1: like forever, but in geological terms, probably there will be
Speaker 1: no traces of the Apollo exploration in let's say ten
Speaker 1: to a hundred million years. But I think they are
Speaker 1: talking about erosion of footprints. A A large solid object
Speaker 1: like the Lunar lander would probably last for longer, depending
Speaker 1: on whether it could avoid a larger impact. According to
Speaker 1: and in this case um the author here sites another
Speaker 1: space dot Com article by Charles Q. Chow. By examining
Speaker 1: pairs of photos taken at different times of areas of
Speaker 1: the Moon, researchers have found two hundred and twenty two
Speaker 1: new craters of between ten and forty two ms across.
Speaker 1: These pairs of photos had intervals between a hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy six and one thousand, two hundred and forty one days.
Speaker 1: Let's simplify this and say every seven hundred and eight days,
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty two craters of a size twenty
Speaker 1: six ms across a peer, obliterating everything below them. This
Speaker 1: works out to about fifty nine thousand square meters per year.
Speaker 1: The surface area of the Moon is thirty eight million
Speaker 1: square kilometers. If we make the simplifying but incorrect assumption
Speaker 1: that the meteor strikes never overlap every one hundred million years,
Speaker 1: only one sixth of the Moon's surface will have been hit.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we've done a comprehensive survey of
Speaker 1: the Moon's surface looking for artifacts of unknown origin, but
Speaker 1: just looking forward a hundred million years, I think it's
Speaker 1: likely our traces on the Moon will still be preserved.
Speaker 1: Thanks Wayne, Well, thanks, and that's interesting. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: that adds more context. I guess the only thing I
Speaker 1: would say is, I don't know if I'm sure that
Speaker 1: all intelligent species will eventually want to travel into space
Speaker 1: and and end up leaving artifacts on on the moon
Speaker 1: of their home planet. I don't know. Is that a
Speaker 1: uh that that's one of those kinds of assumptions that
Speaker 1: seem that feels right, but it's hard to know. Well.
Speaker 1: And then also this reminds me of our past discussions
Speaker 1: on moons in general. Uh, you know, are we looking
Speaker 1: at a scenario here where a given advanced civilization will
Speaker 1: have access to moons and other bodies that are are
Speaker 1: reachable within the span of time that they have the
Speaker 1: ability and the interest in doing so. Oh yeah, well
Speaker 1: that that's another thing. Like um, access to space is
Speaker 1: not the same for all planets, especially planets with a
Speaker 1: higher surface gravity, will have a lot harder time getting
Speaker 1: getting people off that surface into space. And there, I mean,
Speaker 1: at a certain point you get to a place where
Speaker 1: traveling into space becomes incredibly unpractical, impractical, it's already pretty
Speaker 1: difficult for us. But if our surface gravity were higher
Speaker 1: and the delta V were greater, I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: at what point you hit like you just can't do it.
Speaker 1: You can't go to space, can't go to your moons.
Speaker 1: But you do reach that point at some point. But yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe if something bad happens to us, if you know,
Speaker 1: there's intelligent octopuses or whatever and a hundred million years
Speaker 1: on Earth and they end up traveling to the surface
Speaker 1: of the Moon, maybe maybe they'll find our artifacts and
Speaker 1: wonder what we were like. M Okay, Rob, I gotta
Speaker 1: bring up this email because I don't understand it. It's
Speaker 1: an email from Rolf that I think the text of
Speaker 1: it just said Rob exclamation point. And then it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of pictures of something called chainsaw man, which is
Speaker 1: a guy wearing a tie who has chainsaws coming out
Speaker 1: of his arms and his head. I think I speculated
Speaker 1: in our chainsaw episodes in passing that there must be
Speaker 1: a chainsaw man, that there must be some fantastic vision
Speaker 1: of someone that's just made up of chainsaws, not merely
Speaker 1: like having a hand replaced with a chainsaw or using
Speaker 1: a chainsaw as a sword. But they just should just
Speaker 1: be some sort of chainsaw human entity, some chainsaw human hybrid.
Speaker 1: And I think I might have actually speculated as well
Speaker 1: that it could be kind of kind of a like.
Speaker 1: It seems like the kind of thing that somebody working
Speaker 1: in the world of Japanese cyberpunk or inspired by that
Speaker 1: world might have created. And I don't know who created
Speaker 1: these images, but these images that were sent to us
Speaker 1: by Rolf seemed to indicate that, yes, chainsaw Man exists
Speaker 1: in some fashion, in some sort of comic format. Just
Speaker 1: did a quick Google search to confirm it, says the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia says chainsaw Man. It's a Japanese manga and it
Speaker 1: is written and illustrated by Tatsuki Fujimoto. Nice. Looks like
Speaker 1: they may have made a or they're making a TV
Speaker 1: series of it. I don't know. I see something and
Speaker 1: IMDb that has a twenty twenty date on it. So
Speaker 1: maybe we're living in the age of chainsaw Man and
Speaker 1: chainsaw Man is about to be upon us. Yep. I
Speaker 1: see stills of him in this. Yep, it's the Age
Speaker 1: of chainsaw Man. Two thousand twenty two, the year chainsaw
Speaker 1: Man went mainstream. All right, Rob, should we do some
Speaker 1: weird House Cinema messages, I think we should take your pick.
Speaker 1: Al right, um, well, let's see. I guess I'll do
Speaker 1: this one concerning The Lift. Hi, Rob, Joe, and Seth
Speaker 1: just listened to the Weird House Cinema entry for the
Speaker 1: apparently bonkers movie The Lift. It sounds amazing. This is
Speaker 1: from listener MP. By the way, I had a couple
Speaker 1: of things that might interest you, especially Joe with his
Speaker 1: comments about how elevators can't possibly be so complex. I
Speaker 1: work in medical device software quality and in job interviews
Speaker 1: with candidates that haven't been involved with the medical world before.
Speaker 1: An elevator is often the stand in for a complex
Speaker 1: system for testing. It involves hardware, algorithms, and safety, all
Speaker 1: critical components of medical devices. When a candidate can articulate
Speaker 1: how they would test an elevator in a building with
Speaker 1: a given number of floors and other elevators, you can
Speaker 1: get a good idea of their thought processing and how
Speaker 1: they may look at med devices. Also, I was struck
Speaker 1: by a segment in Veritassium's video on self driving cars
Speaker 1: in which he compared the attitudes towards self driving vehicles
Speaker 1: with those towards automated unattended elevators. He points out that
Speaker 1: when elevators routinely had attendance, it was unthinkable that logic
Speaker 1: circuits only could take over for them, and that in fact,
Speaker 1: historically there was pushback on removing human operators from them.
Speaker 1: I find this kind of historical research fascinating. As to me,
Speaker 1: I found it odd that elevators ever needed a human
Speaker 1: to work. Right on reflection, it seems obvious that the
Speaker 1: first iteration of the invention would necessarily need the quote
Speaker 1: unquote brains of a person in order to be safe
Speaker 1: and useful. Anyway, as always, keep up the great content
Speaker 1: in P. But thanks in P. It sounds like you're
Speaker 1: pushing back against something I said offhandedly. I I in
Speaker 1: the episode. I was like, I'm not sure if the
Speaker 1: Lift's idea that like you need supercomputer logic circuits to
Speaker 1: manage elevator traffic is really true, and so if I'm
Speaker 1: wrong about that, I'm wrong about that. But I still wonder.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how many variables are there,
Speaker 1: So there's like three shafts that each have one car
Speaker 1: x number of floors, um, I don't know. I mean
Speaker 1: maybe maybe maybe things were different in the eighties, all right,
Speaker 1: We got one more message also about the Lift. This
Speaker 1: is from John. Uh. It concerns bowling score tables. You
Speaker 1: remember that thing in the lift they went to what
Speaker 1: was it called. It was like Klauss fun House or something,
Speaker 1: Klaus Potty House. Yeah, it's just a bowling alley and
Speaker 1: we were like, whoa look at those those overheads, like
Speaker 1: overhead projector style of keeping score? Right, John says, Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: John from Salt Lake here, long, long time listener, occasional writer. Uh,
Speaker 1: just listen to the Weird House Cinema show on the Lift.
Speaker 1: During the show, there is a scene in a bowling
Speaker 1: alley that had score projection tables. Remember this is uh,
Speaker 1: unlike the screen the monitor screens that were used to Instead,
Speaker 1: they were I think projecting transparencies up on the ceiling
Speaker 1: or John says, yes. This was the standard scoring method
Speaker 1: for league and tournament bowling for many many years. The
Speaker 1: house meaning the bowling lane, would get plastic rolls that
Speaker 1: held dozens of pages of plastic clear score sheets. Each
Speaker 1: sheet had room for two teams of five players to
Speaker 1: bowl three games. The games were also color coded. The
Speaker 1: first game was green, the second was yellow, and the
Speaker 1: last was pink. Or red. The score was kept with soft,
Speaker 1: grease like pencils. Corrections were impossible to make without leaving
Speaker 1: a noticeable mess. The bowlers, as well as well wishers
Speaker 1: and spectators all needed to see how they and their
Speaker 1: team is doing. I spent many hours either sitting at
Speaker 1: the score table keeping score or straining my eyes to
Speaker 1: see how many more pins I needed to get to
Speaker 1: achieve some goal. In my younger years, I trained to
Speaker 1: be a pro bowler. I bowled on the amateur circuit.
Speaker 1: I was starting to get sponsors and was ready to
Speaker 1: earn my pro card. Then life stepped in and changed
Speaker 1: all that. During competitive league play or tournaments, the bowlers
Speaker 1: would pay someone to keep score for them. I paid
Speaker 1: for many bowling excursions by keeping score for quote the
Speaker 1: Big Boys League. I love the shows. Keep up the
Speaker 1: great work, John, Oh, that's that's wonderally wonderful. I was
Speaker 1: delighted to hear about this from some folks who had
Speaker 1: the knowledge, because I, like I said, I don't think
Speaker 1: I ever went to a bowling alley that had this
Speaker 1: level of of technological score keeping. The ones I went
Speaker 1: to either were a step beyond or they were a
Speaker 1: step behind. Like having you know, just pencil and paper
Speaker 1: or they had that, you know, some sort of a
Speaker 1: modern system. Nowadays it's so fancy. It makes me wonder, like,
Speaker 1: what was it like taking children to bowling alleys in
Speaker 1: the day? What would they mess around with and change?
Speaker 1: You know? Nowadays they I feel like kids spend half
Speaker 1: the time changing the format of the electronic score keeping.
Speaker 1: You know, what's going to happen when somebody gets a turkey?
Speaker 1: Will the we a cartoon turkey? Will a turkey explode? Like?
Speaker 1: These are all vital choices to be made with bowling.
Speaker 1: All right, We're gonna go ahead and close the mail
Speaker 1: back there, but we'll be back next week next Monday
Speaker 1: with more listener mail, so keep it coming. Your thoughts
Speaker 1: on current, past and future episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind, as well as Weird, How Cinema, Weird, How
Speaker 1: cinemas are time to set aside most serious matters and
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird film. That air is on Friday.
Speaker 1: Our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind are
Speaker 1: on Tuesday and Thursday, and on Wednesday we do an
Speaker 1: artifact short form episode. Oh yeah, and we have Vault
Speaker 1: episodes on the weekend. Those are reruns huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.