Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: Listener mail. This is Robert Lynn and this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And it's Monday, the day of the week. We read
Speaker 1: some messages from the mail bag. We got some some
Speaker 1: Halloween related email, but also some clean up on some
Speaker 1: older episodes today, so it'll be a nice assortment. All right,
Speaker 1: let's jump in. What if we got Let's get some
Speaker 1: Halloween e stuff out here. Okay, Well, first of all, yeah,
Speaker 1: this one does concern some Halloween episodes. So you remember
Speaker 1: in the episodes we did on Elf Shot, there was
Speaker 1: one remedy for cattle that had been wounded with a
Speaker 1: fairy dart or an elf arrow, and it involved having
Speaker 1: a wise woman force feed something called fairy crabs to
Speaker 1: a cow. We had no idea what fairy crabs were. Uh,
Speaker 1: there is a thing called a fairy crab, but that
Speaker 1: can't be what the text is talking about because it's
Speaker 1: on the other side of the world and the name
Speaker 1: comes from much later. So we were just at a loss.
Speaker 1: We didn't know what these what this was referring to.
Speaker 1: But listener Leanne writes in with some thoughts. Leanne says,
Speaker 1: I have a hypothesis about fairy crabs. There is a
Speaker 1: species of small crustacean uh Chirocephalus diaphanous, found in the
Speaker 1: UK in vernal pools, known as the fairy shrimp for
Speaker 1: their ability to enter diapause when the pools dry up,
Speaker 1: and seemingly magically reappear much later. Diapause refers to like
Speaker 1: a dormancy state in the development of an organism. LeAnn
Speaker 1: goes on, I don't know if people would have used
Speaker 1: the words crab and shrimp interchangeably, but I'd say it's possible.
Speaker 1: And so Rob I attached a couple of pictures I
Speaker 1: found of Chirocephalis diaphanous. It is a uh, rather magical
Speaker 1: looking little critter. And yeah, you can imagine that you
Speaker 1: might attribute fairy like powers to these if you see
Speaker 1: that there's a tide pool or some kind of body
Speaker 1: of water full of these animals and then they just
Speaker 1: seem to disappear, like you What happened to them? I
Speaker 1: don't know, and then they re emerge later. Well, maybe
Speaker 1: there's some of the fairy folk. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: looks like something you might put in a magical potion.
Speaker 1: It also does make me wonder if there is anything
Speaker 1: in the bodies of these little creatures that would have
Speaker 1: any kind of marked effect on the human if they
Speaker 1: were to consent them, like something that stood out, even
Speaker 1: if it wasn't something that really had a medicinal property
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, totally so, I would say, interesting guests, Lien.
Speaker 1: But Leanne has another idea. She writes, another possibility lies
Speaker 1: in an organism found in the pools alongside the fairy
Speaker 1: shrimp Triops cank reformists, also called tadpole shrimps and a
Speaker 1: bunch of other things. My sister had these sold as
Speaker 1: sea monkeys when we were growing up. I couldn't find
Speaker 1: any reference to them being called fairy crabs online, but
Speaker 1: they look much more crab like. I wonder if they
Speaker 1: may have been known as fairy crabs at some point,
Speaker 1: given their similarities to the fairy shrimp, they're shared habitat,
Speaker 1: and their crab like appearance. And Robi also found some
Speaker 1: pictures of Triops cank reformists for you to look at here.
Speaker 1: They are certainly more more crabby. They have more a
Speaker 1: crawling kind of anatomy. They look in a way kind
Speaker 1: of like trilobytes. Yeah, yeah, these are These are interesting critters.
Speaker 1: They have a sort of a piece of armor on
Speaker 1: the back, like a big dorsal plate, and then the
Speaker 1: skittering legs underneath, and then a tail, eyes up on top,
Speaker 1: various whiskers and do Dad's pointing out? Uh yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: this this looks like a fairy crab to me. But
Speaker 1: once again, uh, I don't know of any literature from
Speaker 1: the time period in that place making the link, but
Speaker 1: totally decent. Guess m. You know. This makes me wonder
Speaker 1: too if we should do an episode on sea monkeys
Speaker 1: at some point. So there are a number of things
Speaker 1: to talk about with sea monkeys, and they certainly have
Speaker 1: a cultural footprint, um including TV series The Amazing Live
Speaker 1: Sea Monkeys, in which Howie Mandel plays a sea monkey.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, has there ever been a killer sea monkeys
Speaker 1: horror movie? Uh? Not that I know of. That's an idea.
Speaker 1: But this, the creature affects in The Amazing Live Sea
Speaker 1: Monkeys I remember as a child being slightly horrific, So
Speaker 1: maybe this counts looking it up right now? Oh oh no, no, no, no, oh,
Speaker 1: it's Mac and me. Yeah, it has that kind of
Speaker 1: look to it. Yeah, they're they're they're weird. This is
Speaker 1: this is a this is some frightening makeup. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: looking up for yourselves, everybody. If you look up, Howie
Speaker 1: mandel sea monkey, you'll see this and perhaps you, like
Speaker 1: like me, you have some conflicted memories of having caught
Speaker 1: this sun like late Saturday mornings as a child. Imagine
Speaker 1: a cross between the cone heads and mac and me
Speaker 1: and the bulls eye. That's exactly what it is, all right.
Speaker 1: This next one comes to us from Ian and this
Speaker 1: is ah. This is a from the previous listener mail.
Speaker 1: Or this is a previous listener mail about allegations of
Speaker 1: inhuman numeracy. Dear Robin Joe, I just finished your July
Speaker 1: listener mail. I am quite far behind, obviously, and I
Speaker 1: had to write in in response to the listener who
Speaker 1: said her cat could come up to at least seven
Speaker 1: when dragging scraps of cloth from the basement. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that now. It reminded me of an incident
Speaker 1: with one of my cats, which strangely enough, also involves
Speaker 1: a basement. My wife and I have three cats, and
Speaker 1: when I feed them, our oldest cat, Zoro, gets fed
Speaker 1: last because otherwise he will rush to eat all of
Speaker 1: his food and then go steal the other's food before
Speaker 1: they have a chance to finish. I have him trained
Speaker 1: to where though he will follow me to the bowls
Speaker 1: of the other two and watch me dish out the food,
Speaker 1: he won't actually try to eat it. He will wait
Speaker 1: for his own. I have always wondered if he could
Speaker 1: actually count to three, or if he just knew which
Speaker 1: location he gets fed at, and a severe storm earlier
Speaker 1: this year gave me an apparent answer. One day this spring,
Speaker 1: while I was preparing dinner and waiting for my wife
Speaker 1: to get home from work, the tornado sirens went off. Luckily,
Speaker 1: in this instance, no one was hurt and no major
Speaker 1: damage was done, so I turned off the stove and
Speaker 1: went to the basement. The cats, who normally like nothing
Speaker 1: better than to try to sneak into the basin every
Speaker 1: time I opened the door, wouldn't come anywhere near. As
Speaker 1: it was close to dinner time, I tried what anyone would.
Speaker 1: I got out their food and started dishing it out
Speaker 1: in the basement. Only Zoro came down. The other two
Speaker 1: stood at the top of the stairs staring, but would
Speaker 1: not descend, and as always. He followed me to the
Speaker 1: first bowl and watched me fill it, then the second,
Speaker 1: and only started eating when I filled the third. This
Speaker 1: despite the fact that there were no other cats present
Speaker 1: trying to eat the food, the bowls were in completely
Speaker 1: different locations from normal. I was giving all of them
Speaker 1: the same food, and I had picked up and put
Speaker 1: down the bowls in no particular order, so it's unlikely
Speaker 1: he was somehow identifying the bowl itself. For the life
Speaker 1: of me, I can't think of any other explanation than
Speaker 1: that he is able to count ordinal numbers up to
Speaker 1: at least third. Though I am certainly open to having
Speaker 1: missed something, I do generally consider him to be by
Speaker 1: far the smartest of our three cats, so if any
Speaker 1: of them could do it, I would expect it to
Speaker 1: be him. As always. Thank you for the wonderful and
Speaker 1: interesting show. Ian. That is an interesting story, though, I
Speaker 1: there could be another thing going on here, which is
Speaker 1: that Zoro could be reading queues off of you. It's
Speaker 1: possible that Ian, you do something with your body or
Speaker 1: your face or something to signal now at his time,
Speaker 1: this one is yours. Yeah, yeah. The there's in my
Speaker 1: own household watching the cat and being watched by the
Speaker 1: cat around meal time for her. It uh. It leads
Speaker 1: for all sorts of theories like, okay, she how does
Speaker 1: she know that it is time and she just hungry
Speaker 1: at this time? Or have I cluded her into it
Speaker 1: by something I'm doing getting up and moving around? Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's always a puzzle with the cats. But but
Speaker 1: but yeah, like we've discussed previously, they're they're they're they're
Speaker 1: smart animals. They're smart as they need to be to
Speaker 1: do the things they do, and so when they're encountering
Speaker 1: puzzles like this, they may well be, you know, solving
Speaker 1: them incredibly. They just might not be solving them along
Speaker 1: the same logical or mathematical lines that the human brain
Speaker 1: would solve the same problem, and not dependent upon the
Speaker 1: same sense data either. But I also love this story
Speaker 1: too because it also it sounds like a setup to
Speaker 1: a horror story. Two of the cats knew not to
Speaker 1: go into the basement. Only Zora, the selfish cat ungry
Speaker 1: cat would come down, And I like, how the best
Speaker 1: you could do with training for Zoro is that, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's not going to rush in and eat the other
Speaker 1: cats food, but he will sit there and menace them
Speaker 1: while they eat and until he gets his Okay are
Speaker 1: you ready for Oh? A very spooky Halloween themed message
Speaker 1: about in response to Incense, Let's do it? Okay? This
Speaker 1: one is from Joe, just j O no e. In
Speaker 1: this one, uh, Joe writes an email with subject line
Speaker 1: the scent of the supernatural not fun. Oh and fair warning,
Speaker 1: this email contains some some rather grizzly ghost lore, so
Speaker 1: so be warned. Dear Robert and Joe. In episode two
Speaker 1: of Incense, you mentioned that the scent of incense was
Speaker 1: linked to godly encounters. Since Halloween is rapidly approaching, I
Speaker 1: thought it might interest you to know that in Malaysia
Speaker 1: and Indonesia, the scent of jazz and fringipani flowers at
Speaker 1: night is often linked to the presence of a ghost
Speaker 1: called the Pontianak in Malay or the Kunti Lanak in Indonesia.
Speaker 1: The Pontianak is the ghost of a pregnant woman who
Speaker 1: evisceerates her victims with her long finger nails. She often
Speaker 1: appears in a white, bloodstained dress with long dark hair.
Speaker 1: Some say she died at the hands of a violent man.
Speaker 1: Some say her baby was a stillborn child. Some say
Speaker 1: she died in childbirth. Whatever the reason, she lives in
Speaker 1: banana trees during the day, then comes out at night
Speaker 1: with vengeance on her mind. The only way to tame
Speaker 1: a pontianak is to drive a nail into her nape
Speaker 1: or the top of her head, after which legend says
Speaker 1: she will become a beautiful woman and a good wife.
Speaker 1: Other signs of the pontianic include the soft wailing of
Speaker 1: a baby, light feminine laughter, or a bird calling out
Speaker 1: ki ki ki as it flies overhead. In essence, if
Speaker 1: you smell something floral at night in Southeast Asia, when
Speaker 1: there aren't any flowers in the vicinity, it is time
Speaker 1: to get the hell out of dodge. Oh, this is fabulous.
Speaker 1: I wasn't aware of these uh, these scent associations with
Speaker 1: the pontianak uh and it's Indonesian counterpart, but I had
Speaker 1: I had read about this this creature before and one
Speaker 1: of my many creature books here, and also it had
Speaker 1: come out where we're always come up because we're always
Speaker 1: scouting films for weird house cinema, And this particular creature
Speaker 1: is the subject of numerous Malaysian and Indonesian horror films
Speaker 1: like going all the way back to the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: I think, and then on up to like recent films.
Speaker 1: So I haven't I haven't actually gone beyond the research
Speaker 1: phase on this and watched one of these. So if
Speaker 1: anyone out there has experienced with these movies and I
Speaker 1: would like to recommend one to me, do so, because
Speaker 1: I'm always interested to check out something like this. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: Joe goes on. Joe also has some notes about our
Speaker 1: episodes on fun. She writes, digressing your episodes on the
Speaker 1: nature of fun made me realize that there isn't a
Speaker 1: term for fun as a now. In Mandarin, the term
Speaker 1: used most commonly to refer to having fun. How one
Speaker 1: is translated as good play, So instead of did you
Speaker 1: have fun, we ask each other did you play well? Instead?
Speaker 1: Our words for fun all mean things like interesting, enjoyable, happiness,
Speaker 1: or joy. Similarly, the most common word for fun in
Speaker 1: Malay is shock or sarah knock, which both mean enjoyable. Essentially,
Speaker 1: our version of was it fun actually means was it enjoyable.
Speaker 1: I will definitely keep an eye out for fun words
Speaker 1: as I learn other languages. Now, hope you enjoyed these tidbits,
Speaker 1: looking forward to more episodes, Live long and prosper Joe
Speaker 1: without any Oh that's fabulous. I believe Joe has contacted
Speaker 1: us in the past with with really good emails about
Speaker 1: Southeast Asian uh mits and legends, So yeah, please keep
Speaker 1: it up. Love the emails, all right. This next one, Um,
Speaker 1: this one concerns a number of different topics. Um, this
Speaker 1: is from Andrew. Andrew. Oh, this one, this one has
Speaker 1: numbers in it, So we're gonna go through a few
Speaker 1: different things here. Andrew writes in and says, hello, fellas,
Speaker 1: I'm a few weeks behind on my podcast, so I'm
Speaker 1: a little behind the ball here. Thanks again for the
Speaker 1: entertainment you all beam into my ear holes. I truly
Speaker 1: enjoy it. Number one A thought came about during your
Speaker 1: discussion of interesting sensors during the Incense series. When I
Speaker 1: was a kid, a relative was stationed in Germany as
Speaker 1: a member of the United States Army. He would often
Speaker 1: send interesting gifts to family members around the holidays. One
Speaker 1: of these was called a smoker, which is apparently common
Speaker 1: in southern Germany. These are basically wooden figurine stylized in
Speaker 1: a similar fashion to a nutcracker instead of a nightmarish,
Speaker 1: unhinged jaw. There is a gaping round mouth with a
Speaker 1: tunnel extending through the torso. The top half of the
Speaker 1: figurine would be removed to reveal a platform where a
Speaker 1: conical lump of incense would be placed in lit before
Speaker 1: putting the top back on. The smoke would travel up
Speaker 1: and the figure would appear to be smoking. So attached
Speaker 1: includes an image of this mine was a boat captain
Speaker 1: and a rainslicker holding a tiny metal pipe. I thought
Speaker 1: this thing was absolutely the coolest, but we had a
Speaker 1: cat who was fond of knocking it to the ground.
Speaker 1: Some cats just want to watch the world burn, you
Speaker 1: know how it is. So you had a you had
Speaker 1: a sensor that was basically the killer from I know
Speaker 1: what you did last summer. He didn't look quite like that,
Speaker 1: and it looks more g No mish oh, No, I
Speaker 1: don't think that. I don't think the gnome attached is
Speaker 1: the one in the rainslicker. I think I think Andrews
Speaker 1: talking about a different one. There. You're imagining this as
Speaker 1: the killer from that slasherman. Okay, fair enough, all right?
Speaker 1: Number two. I was recently at a wedding where the
Speaker 1: videographer was utilizing a thirty five millimeter digital camera on
Speaker 1: a monopod equipped with a gimbal system. I was mesmerized
Speaker 1: throughout the ceremony and barely caught the valves. Fortunately, my
Speaker 1: wife was in the ceremony, so it's unlikely anyone actually
Speaker 1: caught me spacing out. I like this tidbit because for
Speaker 1: a second there, I thought the punch line was going
Speaker 1: to be that it was there. It was his own wedding,
Speaker 1: he was getting out. But that's not the case alright.
Speaker 1: Number three. During a recent Weird House episode, you suggested
Speaker 1: you discussed rather some poachers going after eagle leggs for
Speaker 1: an unexplained reason. This would have been the Extraterrestrial Visitors
Speaker 1: episode pot people. Yes, because there were proachers in there,
Speaker 1: what led by the guy who looks like a cross
Speaker 1: between Leslie Nielsen and Sam the Eagle Uh. And they
Speaker 1: were like climbing up in trees stealing eggs out of nests.
Speaker 1: As that he continues, I was reminded of the nine
Speaker 1: Disney non musical film The Rescuers Down under Way Better
Speaker 1: than It's assessor, don't at me. The villain in the movie,
Speaker 1: voiced by none other than George C. Scott, is after
Speaker 1: the eggs of a giant golden Eagle. His motivations are
Speaker 1: somewhat ambiguous in this movie as well. I suppose he
Speaker 1: can sell them. Moral of the story is poacher is
Speaker 1: going to poach. I watched that movie when I was
Speaker 1: a little kid. I remember it was it made me
Speaker 1: think Australia was really cool, and I think it was
Speaker 1: also part of a I don't know if there's a
Speaker 1: formal term for this sort of a period of a
Speaker 1: few years where there was just a lot of Australia
Speaker 1: related cinema in the United States. Yeah, like like mainstream ausploitation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the Air of Crocodile, Dundee and so forth.
Speaker 1: I remember this film as well. Um, I think I
Speaker 1: saw it in the theater. And the other thing I remember,
Speaker 1: besides George C. Scott being the villain, is that, I
Speaker 1: guess with both Rescuers movies, Bob Newhart is one of
Speaker 1: the mice. He's one of the main voices in it,
Speaker 1: which always stood out to me because we would always
Speaker 1: as a family, we would always watch Bob Newhart shows
Speaker 1: or whichever one. Whichever one it was where he had
Speaker 1: the end and he uh he ran an end somewhere
Speaker 1: in New England. Yeah, with Larry Darrell and Darryl Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one I remember about this movie that there was
Speaker 1: a I think the poacher had a pet. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you actually say the name of this lizard.
Speaker 1: It's like Goanna or Goanna, and it was named Joanna.
Speaker 1: Yeah that does ring a bell. Yeah. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: it since then, but I remembered it as being fun
Speaker 1: like I kind of put it in the same mental
Speaker 1: filing cabinet as The Great Mouse Detective, which of course
Speaker 1: had Vincent Bryce and oh yeah, as Ratigan. All right.
Speaker 1: Number four. Finally, I previously wrote in about Sammy Terry
Speaker 1: and he used the story generator to create a tale
Speaker 1: of spooky Savings. This genuinely had me breaking into hysterical
Speaker 1: after while driving home from work. Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Now that we are fully into October, Sammy keeps popping
Speaker 1: up in my day to day. Maybe it's just a
Speaker 1: little bit ter mine, huffs he attached. And then we
Speaker 1: get some some screenshots of what is this like Reddit
Speaker 1: and Instagram and stuff of Sammy Terry popping up everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's irresistible. Many frights to you this October.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I just remember because of this email, the
Speaker 1: Spooky Savings story. Do you remember that? We I think
Speaker 1: we ran a line from a Sammy Terry commercial through
Speaker 1: the AI story Generator, and it wrote a story about
Speaker 1: how a bank was offering new special deals that gave
Speaker 1: people really tremendous savings, but everyone who took the deals
Speaker 1: ended up stranded in hell. Oh goodness, yes, yes, this
Speaker 1: was a good one. Um. Now, two things I want
Speaker 1: to mention real quick about this about the story generator.
Speaker 1: First of all, I'll share the link again for anyone interested.
Speaker 1: It's story hyphen Machines dot net. And it was released
Speaker 1: as part of this this book that came out. I
Speaker 1: talked to the author in a previous episode of the show. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the author's Mike Sharpell's. So it's a really
Speaker 1: right book. I still really recommended for anyone who wants
Speaker 1: a deeper understanding of what's going on with this technology.
Speaker 1: And and hey, as we're getting into not only Halloween
Speaker 1: but the holidays, that seems like a good excuse for
Speaker 1: folks out there to generate some holiday and Halloween stories
Speaker 1: to send into us that relate to topics we've discussed.
Speaker 1: But the other thing I wanted to bring up is,
Speaker 1: you know, not naming names or anything here. But this
Speaker 1: was in the last few weeks. Was the first time
Speaker 1: I heard like a and this is probably like a second,
Speaker 1: third or fourth hand account, but a tale coming home
Speaker 1: from my child school about somebody using AI generated text
Speaker 1: on an assignment. So that was one of those moments
Speaker 1: where I'm like, oh man, I'm feeling future shock from
Speaker 1: this because this thing that is in a topic we discussed,
Speaker 1: it's already here, it's already out there in the world
Speaker 1: that my child occupies. You know. I was reading something
Speaker 1: just the other day about students using using AI to
Speaker 1: generate text for for writing assignments, and on one hand,
Speaker 1: I thought, wait a minute, these things are still not
Speaker 1: that good yet. How could they really you like, surely
Speaker 1: you would catch that. But then the other half of
Speaker 1: me went, you're forgetting how bad some student writing is true? Yeah,
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing about it too, and this is
Speaker 1: something I talked about with with Mike Sharpele's, is that that,
Speaker 1: on one hand, yes, there's always this this this tremendous
Speaker 1: potential to exploit this kind of technology, but part of
Speaker 1: his background is in education, and he pointed out that
Speaker 1: this technology is also is also potentially great for teaching,
Speaker 1: instructing children on how to write. So it's it's not
Speaker 1: like it has no place in schools. It's just like,
Speaker 1: how do you responsibly use the technology and and and
Speaker 1: and get students to use the technology responsibly? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: totally get that. End to somebody who has taught writing before,
Speaker 1: I think I can say I I see benefits in
Speaker 1: having alternative approaches to teaching writing, and some of those
Speaker 1: approaches being more formulaic or algorithmic, not always treating writing
Speaker 1: like some kind of magic that just emerges from your brain. Yeah. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a message from Dmitri on our episodes
Speaker 1: on Fun. Dmitri says, Hi, Joe and Rob, thanks for
Speaker 1: a great and engaging podcast you do every time. I'm
Speaker 1: a longtime listener. I have recently finished all three parts
Speaker 1: of the Nature of Fun episodes and have a lot
Speaker 1: of thoughts. First, as one with Russian as a mother
Speaker 1: tongue and living in Israel for years, I constantly use Russian, Hebrew,
Speaker 1: and English, often interchangeably, sometimes complimentary. My approach to translation
Speaker 1: is to feel the word by using it in some
Speaker 1: common sentences in different languages. So in Russian the word
Speaker 1: used similarly to noun. Usage of fun is udo volstfi,
Speaker 1: which is also pleasure, not a very close relative. In Hebrew,
Speaker 1: to say I did it for fun or it was fun,
Speaker 1: we use the word kief, which I don't even know
Speaker 1: how to translate directly. So my opinion here is that
Speaker 1: the perception of fun might be also language dependent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, uh, I think we concluded that is true
Speaker 1: to a large extent. In those episodes. Dmitri goes on,
Speaker 1: speakers of different languages can mean different things by the
Speaker 1: term fun itself, since it might differ from one language
Speaker 1: to another. Maybe that's a reason why it's hard to
Speaker 1: explore fund in psychology. The concept itself is ambiguous. Second,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about having fun in sports. I'm
Speaker 1: an amateur runner, and yes, runners love talking about running. Uh,
Speaker 1: amateur runner who runs for fun and competitively. For me,
Speaker 1: there are several very different funds in running. Let's say,
Speaker 1: when I run alone on the trails, the fun is
Speaker 1: being submerged in nature. It sounds and changing view. Also,
Speaker 1: the feeling of the body working as a well oiled
Speaker 1: machine is kind of fun. However, when I run with friends,
Speaker 1: it's totally different fun the social aspect, the feeling of togetherness,
Speaker 1: the talking. And when I run with my son he's eighteen,
Speaker 1: not a kid anymore, and he often accompanies me, it's
Speaker 1: a third kind of fun. It's like a bonding trip
Speaker 1: with a bit of competing and fooling around. Yet I'm
Speaker 1: still the responsible adult, so sport can be fun even
Speaker 1: in the process of doing it. Oh and running on
Speaker 1: a treadmill is not fun, too boring and repetitive. Lastly,
Speaker 1: about swimming, I also swim laps and rob I think
Speaker 1: this is responding to your comments about whether or not
Speaker 1: swimming is fun. Um Dmitri says, if you want to
Speaker 1: make it more fun, instead of just swimming laps, try
Speaker 1: varying the speeds full speed twenty five ms followed by
Speaker 1: easy laps or add various technique exercises. It's less repetitive,
Speaker 1: so more fun and improved swimming. Overall. Here I follow
Speaker 1: the advice of my son swimming coaches. He swam competitively
Speaker 1: for many years. Sorry for the long message, Dmitri. Dmitri,
Speaker 1: no need to be sorry, Yeah, these may some good points,
Speaker 1: especially the changing of the intensity. I'll have to try that.
Speaker 1: I don't think i've really tried that. I did have
Speaker 1: some good results, like mixing things up to where instead
Speaker 1: of saying, all right, i'm gonna hit I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: X number of of laps to break it up into segments.
Speaker 1: So like now, I break my laps up into segments
Speaker 1: of five. And sometimes sometimes my mind will just kind
Speaker 1: of wander, But other times I find it a good
Speaker 1: exercise to be like, Okay, this is lap number one,
Speaker 1: and I definitely don't want to forget what number I'm on.
Speaker 1: So for this entire lap, I'm only gonna think about
Speaker 1: the movie Alien, and then for lap number two, I'm
Speaker 1: only going to think about Aliens. For lap number three,
Speaker 1: go into Alien three. But lap four, oh no, there's plenty.
Speaker 1: There's plenty to think about with the with the with
Speaker 1: the fourth Alien movie. UM. But you know, I can
Speaker 1: do it with various film franchises, UM, various series. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a good way too, because for me, the
Speaker 1: big thing is you get up into the higher numbers,
Speaker 1: even if it's not that high. If you're only like
Speaker 1: on four or five, Um, you can easily let your
Speaker 1: mind wander and forget which lap you were on. And
Speaker 1: I don't have an avocus or anything or beads that
Speaker 1: I'm using to keep track of them, So if I
Speaker 1: have forgotten where I am, then the only logical solution
Speaker 1: is to say, Okay, I think I'm on three, so
Speaker 1: I'll back it up one just to make sure. So
Speaker 1: now I'm on two and even though, and then I'm
Speaker 1: kind of punishing myself for forgetting what lap I'm on.
Speaker 1: But I would rather not do that. I'd rather just
Speaker 1: did swim the number of laps I set out to swim,
Speaker 1: And sometimes a film franchise can help with that. It's
Speaker 1: a great way to assess one's fitness achievements. So you're like, today,
Speaker 1: I finally made it all the way to the hell
Speaker 1: Raiser where evil goes online. I don't use the hell
Speaker 1: raizor films, but but but I have done fun Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the things that have at least five UM installments
Speaker 1: are pretty good for this. I think that one's like
Speaker 1: seven or eight by the way. Yeah, And then I
Speaker 1: would I would just get confused later on because I
Speaker 1: don't have a clean enough memory about the later hill
Speaker 1: Raiser movies. I'd be like, all right, one, two, three, four,
Speaker 1: and then the rest, so all right, well, hey, speaking
Speaker 1: of horror and film franchises, the next one comes to
Speaker 1: us from Jim. I'm not sure which Jim out of
Speaker 1: the league of Jim's out there, but Jim, but I
Speaker 1: should say Jim specifies Jim parentheses not from New Jersey. Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: non New Jersey gym, but not be non New Jersey gym,
Speaker 1: because there's more than one gym that's not from New
Speaker 1: Jersey anyway, this Jim says, Hey, guys, I love the
Speaker 1: artifact episode about Freddie's claw. It reminded me of the
Speaker 1: end of the movie Into the Dragon starring Bruce Lee.
Speaker 1: The head bad guy Han had a fake left hand
Speaker 1: that he could attach different weapons on. These include a
Speaker 1: bear or animal claw, and one that had a couple
Speaker 1: of blades or state knives in a row. Of course,
Speaker 1: Bruce wins in the end. The other interest in connection
Speaker 1: between these two movies is a man that acted in both.
Speaker 1: John Saxon. In Nightmare he played uh police lieutenant who
Speaker 1: was father of one of the teenagers and at that
Speaker 1: time got top billing for the film And Into The Dragon.
Speaker 1: He played a buffed martial artist looking forward to Halloween
Speaker 1: fun this October. Jim Not from New Jersey. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And when I first saw these two movies in uh,
Speaker 1: in college, I think they were the only two movies
Speaker 1: I knew John Saxon from. I saw them almost nearly
Speaker 1: back to back, I imagine, like freshman year, uh, because
Speaker 1: that year I was getting really into into horror. But
Speaker 1: I also had a big Bruce Lee phase. So yeah,
Speaker 1: like eighteen year old me had intense John Saxon awareness. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are two big and iconic films that
Speaker 1: he had had roles in, and then of course his
Speaker 1: his filmography is really really deep on top of that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Enter the Dragon. Some very memorable fight scenes
Speaker 1: with that bad guy with the different attachments that go
Speaker 1: in his hand. Uh. They ultimately don't aid him too much.
Speaker 1: He's still defeated by Bruce Lee, as I think everybody
Speaker 1: is defeated by Bruce Lee in that movie. But I
Speaker 1: hadn't thought about that so much. When I was putting
Speaker 1: together that that Artifact episode, I was like looking thinking
Speaker 1: about Freddie's claw and asking the question, what do we
Speaker 1: have in the real world of weaponry? That matches up
Speaker 1: with it at all. And basically the bottom line is
Speaker 1: you don't have weapons like that because weapons like that
Speaker 1: would probably break your fingers if you tried to use them.
Speaker 1: They only work if you're a dream master, supernatural horror
Speaker 1: battye uh. You know, torpedo in your arm, your arm
Speaker 1: through people's torsos in a nightmare. So I'm unsure about
Speaker 1: this claw weapon and Enter the Dragon without I'd have
Speaker 1: to review the footage to even guess at how believable
Speaker 1: this is. I guess it would. A lot of it
Speaker 1: would have to do with, like ow it's mounted and
Speaker 1: how it's supported. Is it supported more on the wrist?
Speaker 1: Is it supported at the stump? I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of There are a lot of ways that it
Speaker 1: would be a terrible idea, but there may be some
Speaker 1: ways that you could actually have it well supported on
Speaker 1: the wrist. I guess I can shed no light on
Speaker 1: the on the knife hand or the claw. But one
Speaker 1: fact I do remember about John Saxon in uh Enter
Speaker 1: the Dragon, as I think in the original version of
Speaker 1: the script, his character was supposed to get killed with
Speaker 1: that claw, but Saxon didn't want his character to die,
Speaker 1: so he said, I'll sign on if you rewrite it
Speaker 1: so that Jim Kelly's character gets killed instead of mine,
Speaker 1: and oh man, that's a bummer. John Saxon should have died.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like they ended up doing anything
Speaker 1: else with that character, did they. Was was that his thinking, like,
Speaker 1: let's let's do the franchise. Oh, like he thought he
Speaker 1: would get his own kung Fu series afterwards. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's that's an interesting detail. I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to ponder that one. I mean, as much as I
Speaker 1: love John Saxon, my memory is that he is by
Speaker 1: far the least cool of the three heroes of that movie.
Speaker 1: I mean, you gotta love Bruce and Jim Kelly Moore,
Speaker 1: But I don't know. Yeah, well, it does remind me
Speaker 1: a little bit of the details that we've discussed regarding
Speaker 1: Cannibal Apocalypse, where he was like, I'm not gonna I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that scene where I eat human flesh.
Speaker 1: You know, let's skip that part. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe he had an aversion to just the gore of it.
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't want that blow on me. John Saxon.
Speaker 1: Did we catch you trying to protect your dignity while acting.
Speaker 1: Come on, it's not about you, You're playing a character.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he had his reasons. Yeah, okay, are you
Speaker 1: ready to finish off with a couple of short messages
Speaker 1: about weird house cinema? Let's do it all right? Uh?
Speaker 1: This one comes from Pat. Pat says Joe Rob. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you get a lot of recommendations for weird House.
Speaker 1: May I add mine? Watched again today The Black Cat
Speaker 1: from nineteen thirty four, first and best pairing of Bella
Speaker 1: Legosie and Boris Karloff. The film is dense, impressionistic, satanic, mysterious.
Speaker 1: There's a torture scene, necrophilia, and much more. One of
Speaker 1: the earliest film scores. As an aside, many Legosi detractors
Speaker 1: say he didn't get roles because of his thick accent.
Speaker 1: The accent works better for him in this film than
Speaker 1: in Dracula. Should you pass this by? I know I
Speaker 1: will get great entertainment weekly, Thanks ever so much? Pat? Uh? Well, Pat, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we will definitely consider that. We'll put it on the
Speaker 1: list and see what we think. This is a movie
Speaker 1: I have wanted to watch for a long time and
Speaker 1: I've just never gotten around to until now. But one
Speaker 1: of my good friends I remember years ago, was telling me,
Speaker 1: you've got to watch The Black Cat. Yeah. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a film I also haven't seen, but I know
Speaker 1: it's It's been personally recommended to me, and I've definitely
Speaker 1: talked to people who hold it up as a very
Speaker 1: fine horror film, especially of the genre of the time period.
Speaker 1: But when they just just stands out genre wide as well.
Speaker 1: All Right, this one comes to us from Tom. The
Speaker 1: subject is Phantasm Death Metal. Hello, Robert and Joe. Thank
Speaker 1: you for the almost frame by frame analysis of the
Speaker 1: movie Phantasm. This film was foundational for my little eight
Speaker 1: year old brain. I'm glad you pointed up the heavy
Speaker 1: lifting that the music is doing to create that dreamlike
Speaker 1: atmosphere throughout the film. You know, I'm all for indulging
Speaker 1: the child's natural love of monsters. I feel like aig
Speaker 1: is a little young for Phantasm. Well we we we
Speaker 1: say that now, but you know, the nineties and eighties
Speaker 1: they were a different time. I don't know when I
Speaker 1: first saw clips of Phantasm. I don't think it was eight,
Speaker 1: but at any rate, um Tom continues, knowing that Joe
Speaker 1: is something of a metal head. I was hoping you'd
Speaker 1: bring up the Swedish death metal band Entombed and the
Speaker 1: titular song on their debut album, Left Hand Path. The
Speaker 1: ultro dirge of that song is straight up fantas as
Speaker 1: a main theme with h M two pedals turned all
Speaker 1: the way up. When I first heard that, it blew
Speaker 1: my then eighteen year old brain. Thanks for the show.
Speaker 1: It has survived many pod purges and is one of
Speaker 1: my favorites. Tom oh Well, thanks for the note, tom
Speaker 1: uh I. So, yeah, you're right. I do enjoy some
Speaker 1: some metal albums, though I don't really know any Scandinavian metals,
Speaker 1: so I don't know this band at all. But I
Speaker 1: did look up the song and I got to the
Speaker 1: part where they played the phantasm theme and it was
Speaker 1: pretty wicked cool. Yeah, I'm not really familiar with them either,
Speaker 1: but but I'll have to check out this track. So
Speaker 1: at any rate, we always enjoy musical recommendations from our listeners,
Speaker 1: especially when they converge with the weird house cinema topics.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, on that note, we're gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and close this one out, but we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. Keep the listener mails rolling in. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know where to send them. We'll throw out that email
Speaker 1: in just a second, but just as a reminder, our
Speaker 1: listener Mail episodes run every Monday, Core episodes Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays you
Speaker 1: get a short form artifact or monster fact, and on
Speaker 1: Fridays we do Weird how Cinema. That's our time to
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
Speaker 1: strange film. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at stuff to blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio.
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