Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you wasn't just stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I am
Speaker 1: Christian Sager, and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we bring
Speaker 1: you yet another listener mail episode. In this case, we've
Speaker 1: been combing through and what seems like an infinite library
Speaker 1: of listener mail. That's nice, going back to your guys
Speaker 1: Library of Babbel episode. Yes, our inbox contains not only
Speaker 1: all listener feedback, but all possible listener feedback, from the
Speaker 1: positive to the negative, from the sensical to the nonsensical. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it does feel like that we get a ton
Speaker 1: of listener mail, but I must say that we also
Speaker 1: it's it's basically Crimson Hexagon stuff, and that it's almost
Speaker 1: all really good stuff. I would say we we we
Speaker 1: hear a lot of great feedback from y'all out there,
Speaker 1: and so we have to say, as always, we get
Speaker 1: uns of mail. If if what you sent us was
Speaker 1: not included, please don't take that as a slight. We
Speaker 1: we love reading whatever you get to send us, and
Speaker 1: we like to respond when we get time, but we
Speaker 1: often don't. But we're going to pick a few today.
Speaker 1: We won't be able to go through the whole barrel,
Speaker 1: but maybe we'll be able to not scrape the bottom
Speaker 1: of the barrel, but scrape some of the sides of
Speaker 1: the barrel near the top. Luckily, we have a fourth
Speaker 1: entity here to do any scraping that's necessary. And that's,
Speaker 1: of course, our good friend Carney. If the mail. But ah, yeah, hey, Carney,
Speaker 1: what's going on? I've noticed that Carney has taken on
Speaker 1: what seems to be a somewhat melancholy suicidal aspect since
Speaker 1: we entered this vast library of all possible email. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a lot to sort out, even with his his
Speaker 1: high processing. Even Carney only has so much ram ram.
Speaker 1: Oh why is it funny to talk about ram? Now?
Speaker 1: Ram used to be a thing you talk about all
Speaker 1: the time, not anymore. All right, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's jump into it. Let's call Carney over. Carney,
Speaker 1: will you bring us our first bit of listener mail? Hey,
Speaker 1: let's see. Okay, This first one is in response to
Speaker 1: the episode that Robert and I did about flying fish,
Speaker 1: jumping fish, flying fish, breaching sharks, sleeping mullets, all the
Speaker 1: fish that do the equivalent of us jumping into outer
Speaker 1: space momentarily. Uh. So this first one is from Mona
Speaker 1: and she if you remember from that episode Robert and I,
Speaker 1: we talked about a couple of species of Asian carp.
Speaker 1: They are known for occupying North American river waters, jumping
Speaker 1: out of the water when your motor boat goes by,
Speaker 1: and in some rare cases breaking your face, yes, or
Speaker 1: or worse yes. Yeah, and so, as we discussed, there's
Speaker 1: this Chinese cultural concept of the carp that leaps over
Speaker 1: the dragon gate right, literally, a mythical concept that if
Speaker 1: a river carp can leap over a certain waterfall, it's
Speaker 1: going to transform into a dragon. So it's a magic
Speaker 1: carp turning into jidos. Uh. This is exactly what the
Speaker 1: email is about. It had no idea about this, but yeah,
Speaker 1: Mona writes to us to say, hello, Robert and Joe.
Speaker 1: I just finished listening to the Leaping Mullets, Flying Fish,
Speaker 1: Breaching Sharks episode of the podcast. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: give you a fun fact about the Chinese mythology of
Speaker 1: the leaping carb turning into a dragon. If either of
Speaker 1: you have played or no of Pokemon, the video game
Speaker 1: or the popular TV show. I think that's funny. She
Speaker 1: specifies popular. It's still popular after all these years, is it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people still watched the Pokemon cartoon. Oh yeah, my wife
Speaker 1: used to work at cartoon Networking. It's a huge hit
Speaker 1: over there, so that's amazing. Yeah, they constantly are putting
Speaker 1: out new seasons of it. Really had no idea they're
Speaker 1: making more Pokemon. It's been around since I was in
Speaker 1: my twenties, so it's got to be like what They've
Speaker 1: been working on it for probably like almost twenty years,
Speaker 1: and that's the thing. It came. It really emerged after
Speaker 1: I was out of the main demographic. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: just immature enough to play the video game and watch
Speaker 1: the car a little bit in my twenties, so I
Speaker 1: know way more than thirty nine year old man shout
Speaker 1: about Pokemon. Okay, well I didn't know this, but anyway,
Speaker 1: Mona continues, Uh, if we know about Pokemon, you'd be
Speaker 1: aware of a Pokemon called Magic Carp. It has always
Speaker 1: confused my friends and I. How this pretty useless fish.
Speaker 1: I guess that means not a good fighter. So in
Speaker 1: the game, Magic Carp is like the worst possible Pokemon.
Speaker 1: It can barely do anything, but if you level it up, okay,
Speaker 1: she says, yeah, it ends up evolving into a completely
Speaker 1: overpowered dragon type Pokemon. Giara dossise, this Pokemon is actually
Speaker 1: inspired by the said myth that you mentioned in your podcast,
Speaker 1: which gives this evolution a lot more since I know
Speaker 1: mind blown and and then she says, thanks for making
Speaker 1: quality episodes, regardless of how weird they get. Sometimes love
Speaker 1: each and everyone, my favorites being the X Files episodes
Speaker 1: and the Mystery of the myth Fleshed Fossil, looking forward
Speaker 1: to more. Well, thank you so much, Mona. That is
Speaker 1: very kind of you to say. And we also got
Speaker 1: emails from a couple other listeners on the same topic.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey rode in to let us know the same thing
Speaker 1: about Magic carp and Jared do Yeah, I had no idea.
Speaker 1: Oh man, yeah, I wish I had known. Jaredos was
Speaker 1: like one of my favorites. Like when I would play
Speaker 1: the game, I would always get a magic harp and
Speaker 1: like keep them in reserve, level them up slowly, and
Speaker 1: then once you get geared does it's awesome. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you said you played the game a little in your twenties.
Speaker 1: This sounds like you played a lot. Uh. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had a game Boy and would just play what is it?
Speaker 1: Pokemon Gold I think was what it was. And then
Speaker 1: my roommates and I got Pokemon Colosseum, which is the
Speaker 1: one where you can plug your game Boy into your
Speaker 1: Nintendo six or four and fight your Pokemon against one
Speaker 1: another on the TV. Oh boy, Yeah, yeah it was great.
Speaker 1: That sounds brutal. Okay, it looks like Carton. As my
Speaker 1: father in law says, no adult man uh spends time
Speaker 1: catching Pokemon. Clearly a false statement. I have to turn
Speaker 1: in my adult man card. Uh. So, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: Carney is holding something out here. What is it? Oh,
Speaker 1: he's got one. Uh. That is about cyborgs and trans humanism,
Speaker 1: which is something that Robert and I have been weaving
Speaker 1: in and out of over the last gosh three months.
Speaker 1: We've done various episodes that tie into this theme. And
Speaker 1: this actually came to us in May. I wish we'd
Speaker 1: read it earlier. Uh. And he originally this isn't his
Speaker 1: whole letter, but he originally wanted to ask us about
Speaker 1: doing an episode on GMOs based on the organic food
Speaker 1: episode that we did, but he tied into the cyborgs
Speaker 1: episode that we did, which was the first of I
Speaker 1: wanna say like three or four episodes where we talked
Speaker 1: about sort of the future of changing the human body.
Speaker 1: And he says, in your Cyborgs episode, you touched on
Speaker 1: the ethical quandaries of performing surgical enhancements before a child
Speaker 1: is born. I thought you might find it interesting to
Speaker 1: know that, in a way, this does already happen. My
Speaker 1: son has spina bifida, a birth defect wherein the spinal
Speaker 1: column fails to close properly. It leads to permanent parrela
Speaker 1: us and often brain damage. He actually underwent surgery before
Speaker 1: he was born to repair the defect and minimize the impact.
Speaker 1: He still lost some nerves, but probably saved enough nerves
Speaker 1: above the knees that he's able to walk, or he'll
Speaker 1: be able to walk with braces to make it weirder.
Speaker 1: Another benefit of the surgery is reversal of associated hind
Speaker 1: brain herniation, which if left unchecked, leads to hydrocephalus and
Speaker 1: malformation of the corpus colossum. A downside in my son's
Speaker 1: case is that he was born extremely premature twenty six
Speaker 1: weeks two pounds, a significant risk to the surgery and
Speaker 1: about ten percent are born early. This caused a stage
Speaker 1: four inter ventricular hemorrhage, wiping out most of the left
Speaker 1: side of his brain. Young brains can recover from this
Speaker 1: to some extent, but science does not yet understand how
Speaker 1: exactly it does. This a good lead is the subject
Speaker 1: of neuroplasticity and neural reuse. See the book after Phrenology
Speaker 1: for a rather technical intro. So my point is by
Speaker 1: saving his ability to walk, we also repaired one part
Speaker 1: of his brain and damaged another, so in at least
Speaker 1: two ways fundamentally changed the architecture of his brain and
Speaker 1: the type of person he will become. The surgery was
Speaker 1: highly experimental just a few years ago, but is now
Speaker 1: considered routine, albeit rare. I think he was number one
Speaker 1: fifty to get it since the experimental study ended. In
Speaker 1: all the discussion of ethics surrounding the surgery, which is
Speaker 1: what Robert and I talked about in the show, mainly
Speaker 1: in regards to cyborgs uh and and babies uh and.
Speaker 1: There's many conversations about the ethics. The primary concern has
Speaker 1: always been ensuring that the benefits outweigh the many risks
Speaker 1: involved with opening up a womb, pulling the kid out,
Speaker 1: putting him back in again, and closing up. Mom. Jeez,
Speaker 1: that sounds horrifying to me, like not being a parent.
Speaker 1: That sounds absolutely terrifying to me. The question of whether
Speaker 1: it should be done at all versus letting nature ticket
Speaker 1: its course ever, really crossed my mind, and to my
Speaker 1: admittedly limited knowledge, did not seem prevalent in the medical community.
Speaker 1: This may change as laparoscopic versions are perfected, minimizing risks,
Speaker 1: and surgery moves from mere repair to potential upgrades. So
Speaker 1: that's that's from Keegan. He went a weigh in on that,
Speaker 1: and he actually, you know, we we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit more over emailing. There's a lot here. Actually I'm
Speaker 1: not going to read a whole lot more, but we
Speaker 1: had a nice conversation with him, and he's continuing conversation
Speaker 1: with us about this. But it's just really interesting to
Speaker 1: hear about this real world example where you and I
Speaker 1: based on Oh I can't remember off the top of
Speaker 1: my head the name of the um of the theorist
Speaker 1: on cyborgs who came up with that idea, but basically
Speaker 1: they were very scenarios in which would it or would
Speaker 1: it not be ethical to transform someone into a cyborg,
Speaker 1: and and what does their identity become afterwards? And one
Speaker 1: of them was what if you change a child before
Speaker 1: it's born. Um, so this was a nice real world
Speaker 1: example coming back to that, and with lots of science
Speaker 1: in it. I was unaware of any of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fascinating that that. Uh. People think of this as
Speaker 1: a purely future concern, right, Like they don't think of right,
Speaker 1: they don't realize that it's happening in present day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, I genuinely we did that whole episode.
Speaker 1: We've been talking about transhumanism, bio hacking, all this stuff.
Speaker 1: I did not realize that you can, as he puts it,
Speaker 1: take a baby out of its mother, change it physically,
Speaker 1: and then put it back in. That's no pun intended
Speaker 1: for the show. Mind blowing. Alright, it looks like we've
Speaker 1: another bit of listener mail here. This one comes from
Speaker 1: listener raw raw right soon and says, hey, guys, I
Speaker 1: thought this was very topical. I enjoyed your recent show
Speaker 1: on great flood myths. You may be interested to know
Speaker 1: that the latest edition of Science August five, sixteen contains
Speaker 1: an article with evidence supporting a Chinese Great Flood myth
Speaker 1: um was the title of it, and he says the
Speaker 1: team used a range of compelling, compelling measurements of sediment
Speaker 1: compositions and radiocarbon dating to argue that it was very
Speaker 1: plausible there was one of the greatest freshwater floods of
Speaker 1: the Hollo scene in the Yellow River, coinciding with the
Speaker 1: transition of the civilization in the region from the Neolithic
Speaker 1: to the Bronze Age. In case you're you're interested enough,
Speaker 1: I've attached a PDF copy of the paper. Enjoy. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the show. Um So, as luck would have it,
Speaker 1: we starved receiving a number of different comments about this
Speaker 1: because it is very exciting. We had just done this
Speaker 1: episode on great flood myths and and then there was
Speaker 1: this really cool study that came out out of China,
Speaker 1: and the main professor on this is NN Ginge Normal
Speaker 1: University geology professor woo Ching Long, and it actually actually
Speaker 1: wrote some copy and did a video about it for
Speaker 1: Housetuff Works now, which I'll include a link to on
Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode. But as Raw points out,
Speaker 1: it's it's really fascinating because it's uh, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: actual supporting evidence for UH for essentially what would have
Speaker 1: been um A an earthquake oriented UM damming of the river,
Speaker 1: like there's a collapse of of rock uh closes off
Speaker 1: a portion of the over Hell River and then floodwaters
Speaker 1: build up behind it until they reach a breaking point
Speaker 1: and then crashed through with I believe like five hundred
Speaker 1: times the normal of uh, you know, flow strength, resulting
Speaker 1: in this uh, this flood that is actually very important.
Speaker 1: I believe we discussed a little bit about it in
Speaker 1: Chinese mythology because it's uh, it has to do with
Speaker 1: the rise of You the Great, who's the first emperor
Speaker 1: of the Shah dynasty, which is China's first dynasty, predating
Speaker 1: the second millennium BC Shan dynasty. So it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a fascinating topic because you see mythology,
Speaker 1: you see geology, UM, and history all sort of coming
Speaker 1: gather in this one. Yeah. Yeah, which is what we
Speaker 1: saw with a lot of that flood stuff. And I
Speaker 1: think the geologists that we spoke about their work on
Speaker 1: in that episode there they were probably fascinated by this
Speaker 1: paper coming out. Hey, I gotta ask a tangential question, uh,
Speaker 1: not related to floods, but related to Chinese myth. Have
Speaker 1: you seen the trailer for this new movie, The Great Wall, Yes,
Speaker 1: I have. What are your thoughts on it? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: when I first saw it, I thought, well, that looks
Speaker 1: like a bit. I tended to think about it in
Speaker 1: terms of, like the business side, like, clearly this is
Speaker 1: a like an international production. They're going for a large
Speaker 1: Chinese audience as well as the US audience by having
Speaker 1: that damon in it. But I didn't really think much
Speaker 1: about it beyond that because I'm like, I can't see
Speaker 1: what the monster looks like. I'll decide whether I'm interested
Speaker 1: or not when I see a picture of the monster.
Speaker 1: But then I I ended up running running across the
Speaker 1: commentary from from actress Constance Wu. Yeah, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: most famous, I think to to our listeners for being
Speaker 1: on the sitcom Fresh off the Boat. Yeah, and she
Speaker 1: had a lot of you know, start criticisms. I would imagine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a particular story. So for our listeners, if you
Speaker 1: don't know and Joe, you haven't seen the trailer yet,
Speaker 1: it seems the from the trailer, but it looks like
Speaker 1: it is a story about why the Great Wall was
Speaker 1: built with a fantasy angle to it, that the secret
Speaker 1: history of the Great Wall is that they were like
Speaker 1: monsters or dragons or something like that. That sounds yeah
Speaker 1: on the surface, that sounds great, but but Matt Damon
Speaker 1: is the hero. Thatt Damon and the guy who plays
Speaker 1: uh Um, one of the Dorn guys on Game of Thrones,
Speaker 1: are like these like monster killers that they bring in
Speaker 1: to help them. So it's been it's like an all
Speaker 1: Chinese cast except those two guys who ostensibly saved the day.
Speaker 1: I guess that sounds pretty Hollywood. It's a little whitewashy
Speaker 1: and problematic, but I can I can absolutely see from
Speaker 1: a business perspective why it's made the way it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's like Netflix Marco Polo, which I've watched and enjoyed,
Speaker 1: but it's like you, it's like you have this uh
Speaker 1: this this Western figure at the heart of the drama
Speaker 1: to anchor it, you know, Western expectations, and then that
Speaker 1: at times that feels really yeah. Yeah, I just I
Speaker 1: don't know. When I see stuff like that, it immediately
Speaker 1: made me think of our episode on Flood myth and
Speaker 1: how like we're we're building mythology today still with movies
Speaker 1: like this, right, but they're just not Instead of explaining
Speaker 1: the flood, they're sort of quasi explaining the history of
Speaker 1: the Great Wall in a in a fake fantasy way,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean that's kind of fun, Like I
Speaker 1: don't mind, I don't know that that sci fi revisionist history.
Speaker 1: But but in such a way as this, it seems weird. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of going back and looking at old myths and
Speaker 1: and and reinterpreting them in light of what we know today,
Speaker 1: we got a great, just awesome email from our listener
Speaker 1: Katie but responding to both the flood episode and Robert
Speaker 1: and I are episode on geomethology and monsters. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: been hitting the mythology hard. This is a couple of
Speaker 1: core themes over the last few months. Yapology, bioacking fish fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have done a number of episodes. You know, we
Speaker 1: had a Mara Heart come back on and I didn't
Speaker 1: think about that as a theme, but yeah, okay, Well anyway,
Speaker 1: Katie writes, quote love your show to pieces, especially the
Speaker 1: geo mythology episode. In the last episode about flood myths,
Speaker 1: when you guys were talking about the old Norse flood myths.
Speaker 1: You were talking about the emir who made all the world,
Speaker 1: as you guys say, very metal. Yeah, Yumer is totally brutal.
Speaker 1: There's gotta be some metal band out there named anyway,
Speaker 1: Katie continues, there is another mythological flood in old Norse
Speaker 1: mythology that comes from the poem vols Bo, And she says,
Speaker 1: vols Bo is a poem found in the poetic Edda,
Speaker 1: wherein you get everything about Norse mythology. For some context,
Speaker 1: the volvar where the female soothsayers, and the poem, which
Speaker 1: translates to the seeing of the year, is meant to
Speaker 1: be a recitation of a volva uh that she gives
Speaker 1: to an unnamed audience about the forthcoming Ragnarok the twilight
Speaker 1: of the gods. That she didn't you just record an
Speaker 1: episode about that before I walked in the studio. We
Speaker 1: just talked about talk about yeah uh. But anyways, she writes,
Speaker 1: Among the many awesome epic verses are several at the
Speaker 1: end that described the world falling into the sea. Now
Speaker 1: we can't read all of these, She's put a bunch
Speaker 1: in there. Really cool. I just want to read one,
Speaker 1: she says, quote or she doesn't write this she copies
Speaker 1: in the translation of the head. Yeah. Um, the sun
Speaker 1: turns black, Earth sinks in the sea, the hot stars
Speaker 1: down from heaven or world fierce grows the steam and
Speaker 1: the life feeding flame until fire leaps high about heaven itself. Nice.
Speaker 1: That sounds like some man o war lyrics right there.
Speaker 1: Oh that is so much better than man o war
Speaker 1: lyrics and would be more about brave things with the hammer.
Speaker 1: That's awesome though. I love that how that stuff plays
Speaker 1: out in present present context and the mythology of it too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So anyway, Katie quotes more of the poem,
Speaker 1: and she goes on to say, so, a giant flood
Speaker 1: comes and destroys the earth in a very Noah's Deluge
Speaker 1: type of way. Stars fall in this flood. Uh like
Speaker 1: possible comets coming to Earth that was referenced in the episode,
Speaker 1: but the falling stars seem more to set the cataclysmic
Speaker 1: stage rather than recording any cause and effect occurrence with
Speaker 1: commets like the pished Him and Noah's floods. The world
Speaker 1: emerges from the waters, renewed, and the gods come back
Speaker 1: to their halls and everything is beautiful and growing again.
Speaker 1: In this poem, However, the world ends again when a
Speaker 1: dragon flying up from the earth, bringing uh forth darkness
Speaker 1: and destruction. You guys talked about dragons in the geomethology episode,
Speaker 1: and I forget if you had made any kind of
Speaker 1: speculations about dragons being connected with volcanoes or not. We
Speaker 1: only very briefly mentioned it, but we did. Is this
Speaker 1: dragon she's referring to the mid Guard serpent, I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but as part of the ragnar Yeah, but she says
Speaker 1: the poetic edit was transcribed in Iceland, where they definitely
Speaker 1: have volcanoes. That's certainly true. Skipping ahead just a little
Speaker 1: for time, she says, it's a pretty cool thing to
Speaker 1: think about, especially because this dragon brings darkness that destroys men,
Speaker 1: like clouds of ash that have been known to cover
Speaker 1: Iceland in northern Europe in ash clouds that block out
Speaker 1: the sun and caused the summer to be basically winter.
Speaker 1: On a sort of related geomethology note, in the eddic
Speaker 1: poem and I'm going to do my best here, vath
Speaker 1: prude Nis small Odin is discussing how humans will survive
Speaker 1: fimble Winter, cataclysmic winter that proceeds Ragnarok. There were a
Speaker 1: series of extreme weather events in five thirty six or
Speaker 1: so that scholars believe were a historical fimble Winter where
Speaker 1: Europe basically didn't have a summer for a while and
Speaker 1: tons of people died. In or Old Norse religion, there
Speaker 1: is a distinct difference between an earlier religious period where
Speaker 1: human and bog sacrifices were made, complete with distinct artifacts,
Speaker 1: and a later period where Odin, Thor and co. Are
Speaker 1: tramping around killing giants and whatnot, and where the customs
Speaker 1: found in archaeology changed. People think this separation of practice
Speaker 1: came about because of social dislocation that happened because of
Speaker 1: this fimble winter around the five thirties. Going back to
Speaker 1: the Voluspo In earlier verses, they talk about the war
Speaker 1: between two sets of gods, with the group belonging to
Speaker 1: Odin being victorious. Some of the older gods, Freyer and
Speaker 1: Freya of particular note, were taken as prisoners by Odin's
Speaker 1: groups and were assimilated into their pantheon. And then she
Speaker 1: gives some verses about it, uh that are also cool,
Speaker 1: But for time, I'm going to skip on to the
Speaker 1: end of her message. Here she says, quote, I love
Speaker 1: this theory because there's geological evidence that there were extreme
Speaker 1: weather patterns around the time. The archaeological evidence shows a
Speaker 1: dramatic change in customs, which resonates in the mythological poems
Speaker 1: that trickled down. I'd be happy to go in more
Speaker 1: depth with the evidence, but this email is getting so long. Anyways.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed this, and I would highly
Speaker 1: recommend reading the vels BO if you haven't. It's the
Speaker 1: poem where the stuff with Emir comes from, along with
Speaker 1: the creation of the world and its destruction during Ragnarok
Speaker 1: War into the world by flood, rebirth and destruction again
Speaker 1: by dragon. It's a pretty badass poem in all sixty
Speaker 1: six stanzas should be read with lots of notes because
Speaker 1: there are tons of names for the names of God's
Speaker 1: keep up the good work. Well, thank you, Katie. That
Speaker 1: was an excellent email and we really appreciate all of
Speaker 1: you educating us on the totally the horrors of the North.
Speaker 1: I think it's also one thing that I got out
Speaker 1: of this that I liked is mentioning like multiple flood
Speaker 1: myths within the North tradition. And you know, indeed, not
Speaker 1: only are there you know, multiple flood myths from around
Speaker 1: the world in different cultures. Within cultures, you have multiple version.
Speaker 1: Chinese culture alone has has several different flood mythologies. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the one that we talked about in our episode
Speaker 1: and that I alluded to earlier is just like the
Speaker 1: most dominant. Yeah. And I you know, like after that
Speaker 1: episode and after hearing her reading her letter, I kind
Speaker 1: of wish I could take like a a course on
Speaker 1: Norris mythology now, like I have like a passing familiarity
Speaker 1: with it, and I'm sure like I could do like
Speaker 1: a sort of self guided deep dive into it on
Speaker 1: my own, but I'd really like somebody who understands it
Speaker 1: to kind of walk me through it. Like you wake
Speaker 1: up on a on a ship, you know, thatched freezing
Speaker 1: ocean and if your studies begin, yeah, nice, like a
Speaker 1: wilderness adventure slash Norris mythology they use they blood the
Speaker 1: keel with your body and this is how you learn. Well.
Speaker 1: I got one here from Dr Britt M. Starkovic, who
Speaker 1: is a professor at the University of Tubingen in Germany.
Speaker 1: I believe is how you pronounce it. Looks like she
Speaker 1: is an archaeo zoologist professor, and she writes to us
Speaker 1: about our our episode on academ Gora Doc. She says,
Speaker 1: Dear Robert and Christian, I love your show. You really
Speaker 1: caught my attention in your academ Gora Doc episode when
Speaker 1: you talked about the Russian domestic foxes. I teach archaeology, okay,
Speaker 1: archaeology at the University of Tubingen in Germany, and this
Speaker 1: is one of my all time favorite topics. I specialize
Speaker 1: in the human use of animals in the past, what
Speaker 1: humans eight, what different species were domesticated, etcetera. I wanted
Speaker 1: to send you a link to some videos of foxes
Speaker 1: interacting with people. These these are the specific boxes from
Speaker 1: academ Gora Doc. She says, I find the quote aggressive
Speaker 1: or normal wild version a bit depressing, but the tame
Speaker 1: one is absolutely absolutely adorable. They're cool videos. I recommend
Speaker 1: checking them out. They're hosted on Illinois University's website. She
Speaker 1: also says, you mentioned in your episode the different coloring patterns.
Speaker 1: I assume in your research you saw it's called piebald,
Speaker 1: which is also coloring that shows up in a lot
Speaker 1: of other domesticated animals, border collies, jersey cows, tuxedo cats,
Speaker 1: spotted picks and horses. The physical changes in these foxes,
Speaker 1: given that they were only being selected for behavioral traits,
Speaker 1: has totally caused us to rethink how we understand domestication
Speaker 1: and the modern diversity found among different breeds of animals.
Speaker 1: The last thing I wanted to mention is that for
Speaker 1: a time, this is awesome. There was a guy in
Speaker 1: the United States who would help arrange the import of
Speaker 1: one of these domesticated foxes to Europe or America if
Speaker 1: you had an extra nine thousand dollars lying around. So
Speaker 1: if you wanted to get an academ GOORADOC fox, some
Speaker 1: shady dude would get you one. Uh. And she says
Speaker 1: his website hasn't been updated in a few years. She
Speaker 1: provides a link, and she says, I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: the deal is. I'm a huge pet lover, but find
Speaker 1: it unethical to keep a non domesticated animal as a pet.
Speaker 1: These little guys have enough genetic changes, though that I
Speaker 1: dream of someday having one. Well see, that's all well
Speaker 1: and good until the fox gets too big and people
Speaker 1: flush it down the toilet, and then they'll become mutant
Speaker 1: sewer foxes. Is it gonna be academ gera dock fox
Speaker 1: the movie? Is that? Is that what you're pitching here, Joe?
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Britt that that's really cool to learn.
Speaker 1: I didn't, I mean when we talked about it. I
Speaker 1: think I may be casually said as an aside, I
Speaker 1: wonder if you can get one of these foxes? Um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm sorry, I'm still working on this. I
Speaker 1: think it's your teenage mutant academ goa doc Foxes? Oh nice? Well,
Speaker 1: you know? And in the teene mut Ninja Turtle comics
Speaker 1: there is a fox ninja there hang out with it.
Speaker 1: Is it a lady Foxes? It is? Yeah, the Fox Spirit? Yes, yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: What's her name? I can't remember the name of it.
Speaker 1: It begins with an a. She's like a white fox
Speaker 1: with some markings and stuff. But she's occasionally an ally
Speaker 1: of the Teenage Ninja Turtles. And yet again showing how
Speaker 1: much I know about eighties cartoons, is there a fox Pokemon? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's multiple fox Pokemon. What how do you not know this? Alright,
Speaker 1: here's another one. This one comes to us from Sarah.
Speaker 1: She says, longtime listener, first time writer, I'm a huge
Speaker 1: fan of the show and listen to every new episode
Speaker 1: as soon as I can. Your episode about incomplete art
Speaker 1: was incredibly fascinating, But of course you weren't able to
Speaker 1: include every unfinished project. But I wanted to point out
Speaker 1: a noticeable piece of unfinished art, the musical Rent. I
Speaker 1: didn't know this. The writer of the musical, Jonathan Larson,
Speaker 1: died the night before the show was to start preview performances.
Speaker 1: According to the production staff, the show still had a
Speaker 1: lot of issues that needed to be worked out, but
Speaker 1: they were hesitant to move forward without the show's creator.
Speaker 1: They chose not to write anything else, only to rework
Speaker 1: the existing material. The shows that exist today is only
Speaker 1: a portion of the vision that Larson had for the show.
Speaker 1: We will never know how the show could have changed
Speaker 1: if Larson had been able to finish it, but what
Speaker 1: we're left with maintains Larson's legacy while being a highly
Speaker 1: popular and hugely influential production. This is important because it
Speaker 1: shows how I work can be finished without betraying the
Speaker 1: original ideas of its creator. I can't wait to see
Speaker 1: what else shall have in store for your podcast, and
Speaker 1: hopefully y'all will never be included in the list of
Speaker 1: things that went on unfinished. Thanks for blowing my own
Speaker 1: mind with every new episode. Well, I will have to
Speaker 1: say unfortunately, I think by nature we will have to
Speaker 1: be unfinished. How can we finish talking about all the
Speaker 1: things that will blow your mind? Well, speak to yourself.
Speaker 1: I believe we can. We can complete three of our
Speaker 1: minds into Carni and we just continue talking for eternity.
Speaker 1: Oh it's true. Once we process the entire library library
Speaker 1: of Babel, we will have exhausted synchronicity. Yeah, uh so
Speaker 1: was the I'm curious now if the version of Rent
Speaker 1: didn't have five hundred twenty four hours six hundred minutes,
Speaker 1: did you I think the numbers are probably wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all I know about round. It's yeah, I I
Speaker 1: have to plead ignorance on on the product. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting to learn about it though. Um. I want to
Speaker 1: mention real quick as for us incomplete works go. This
Speaker 1: is one that I learned about researching the episode that
Speaker 1: Joe and I uh just put together that has to
Speaker 1: do with rapture and utopian trans humanism but apparently average averaging. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a work. An incomplete utopian novel by Sir Francis
Speaker 1: Bacon UM six six or so titled The New Atlantis
Speaker 1: UH that deals with a post trans human proto trans humanist,
Speaker 1: utopian society on the island of Ben Salem, where there's
Speaker 1: no slavery, slavery or poverty and everybody's ruled over by
Speaker 1: a group of religiously tolerant scientific elites. So it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that was apparent. Yeah, that was the published
Speaker 1: I think a year after his death UM, but a
Speaker 1: very early proto trans humanist work, but also complete. Picking
Speaker 1: up on that, I can offer a couple of ideas
Speaker 1: about Incompleteness that we heard back from listeners are our
Speaker 1: listener Jim in New Jersey, who often emails us with
Speaker 1: with great email and awesome feedback. He wrote us about
Speaker 1: the Incompleteness episode and I can't read his whole email.
Speaker 1: He talked about the TV show Nashville, but he also
Speaker 1: big hit I believe with the um Smithy ladies, they're
Speaker 1: huge nash I didn't know that. But anyway, he offers
Speaker 1: some psychological feedback on the idea of why why we
Speaker 1: stick with incomplete works of art? You know, why we've
Speaker 1: got to know the end, even maybe if we're not
Speaker 1: loving it anymore. I I used the example of Lost,
Speaker 1: how like I I got to the point where I
Speaker 1: don't think I liked the show anymore, but I had
Speaker 1: to keep going because I wanted to see how it ended.
Speaker 1: And then I was very disappointed. But anyway, Uh, Jim says, quote,
Speaker 1: sticking with something you've invested in falls into the sunk
Speaker 1: cost fallacy. This is the economic my idea, that you
Speaker 1: stick with something wasteful only because you've already invested a
Speaker 1: lot of resources into it. I think of someone remaining
Speaker 1: in a bad relationship because they've already invested five wasted
Speaker 1: years into it. I think this is a good example.
Speaker 1: Once you've already put the time in with something. And
Speaker 1: our relationships with media are in many ways kind of
Speaker 1: like our relationships with people, even if you know they're
Speaker 1: not really changing based on our behavior, we sort of
Speaker 1: feel like it's transactional. Uh. You feel like, well, I've
Speaker 1: put so much into this, I've got to know how
Speaker 1: it turns out. So even if you know you're at
Speaker 1: season five, episode four, and if that's the first episode
Speaker 1: you saw, you probably wouldn't continue. Now that you've watched
Speaker 1: everything that came before, you're stuck with it psychologically. But
Speaker 1: then he goes on to say the related term to
Speaker 1: this is the lost opportunity cost. By sticking with a
Speaker 1: failed endeavor, you're not available for something better. So the
Speaker 1: person who's stuck in a bad five year relationship because
Speaker 1: of sunk cost is also missing out on the opportunity
Speaker 1: to start a relation and ship with their soul mate.
Speaker 1: And I think this also applies to media. You know,
Speaker 1: we we've got limited time in our lives to to
Speaker 1: read books and watch movies and and experience all the
Speaker 1: great stories that we want to interact with and and
Speaker 1: have informed our brains. You can't, You can't experience at all.
Speaker 1: So it kind of sucks to realize that you spent
Speaker 1: a lot of times stuck with a story that you
Speaker 1: didn't really love because you were motivated by the desire
Speaker 1: to see how it ends. And here's one more about
Speaker 1: the Incomplete Unfinished episode uh and and Unfinished workspart from
Speaker 1: our listener Taylor. Taylor says, uh, dear, stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. I was just listening to your episode on
Speaker 1: Incomplete and Unfinished Works, particularly your discussion of TV shows
Speaker 1: and book series that are unfinished, and I was surprised
Speaker 1: how little you discussed fandom. I think we did mention
Speaker 1: it a little, but I think it a little bit.
Speaker 1: We didn't get very deep into it, I guess h
Speaker 1: Taylor writes. When people come across the series where they
Speaker 1: have to wait for the next installment or when there
Speaker 1: will be no more installments, many times they finish it
Speaker 1: them selves. Huge communities online around fan art, fan fiction,
Speaker 1: and other fan works thrive, especially for source material that
Speaker 1: is unfinished. Fan creators at the Firefly Serenity community. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Taylor continues, fan creators will also complete, quote quote complete
Speaker 1: the source material by adding elements they feel should have
Speaker 1: been in the story or would just like to see
Speaker 1: in the story, even if it's completely unrealistic. They'll get
Speaker 1: characters together that did not end up together in the Cannon,
Speaker 1: revive characters that died in the Cannon, sometimes completely replaced
Speaker 1: the universe the Cannon exists in altogether. The episode also
Speaker 1: reminded me of my own worst experiences with unfinished works.
Speaker 1: I do a lot of cooperative writing and role playing,
Speaker 1: and I can attest that the story ended prematurely is
Speaker 1: all the more painful when you had a hand in
Speaker 1: creating it. I have even taken to writing shorter stories
Speaker 1: to avoid that feeling. That's interesting anyway, Taylor's think we've
Speaker 1: all been there, all of us who write fiction. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so, I'll just finish up, Taylor says, I want
Speaker 1: to thank you in the Whole House Stuff Works Podcast crew,
Speaker 1: I haven't written in before, but I've been following this
Speaker 1: in a few of your other podcasts, like Stuff You
Speaker 1: Should Know and Stuff They Don't Want You to Know
Speaker 1: for a while. I always feel as if I'm smarter,
Speaker 1: have more topics for conversation, and I'm better suited to
Speaker 1: analyzing things when I'm done listening. Good luck, and I
Speaker 1: have a mind blowing summer. You can tell this came
Speaker 1: from a while ago. But thank you so much, Taylor.
Speaker 1: That was a thoughtful and very nice email. Yeah. So, like,
Speaker 1: I'm very interested in this topic, as you guys know,
Speaker 1: Like I have a background in cultural studies and did
Speaker 1: a lot of work on fandom in particular, Henry Jenkins
Speaker 1: has a whole basically established a whole discipline on fandom.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to hear their perspective on this. That
Speaker 1: might be something fun to tackle in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know an author that I really enjoy and I
Speaker 1: know you've been reading some of this stuff recently. Michael Shayum,
Speaker 1: I love him, I I love how some of that.
Speaker 1: I think his earliest, if not his first novel was uh,
Speaker 1: basically an unofficially fiction, Yeah, basically fan fiction. He was
Speaker 1: a big fan of Jack Vance's um books in the
Speaker 1: Dying Earth series, and he caught him up. They wrote
Speaker 1: him and said, hey, I'm right, I've written this, uh
Speaker 1: the sequel, uh, a book that would go on to
Speaker 1: be published as in Yanna as the title, and it's
Speaker 1: a fabulous Jack Vancy adventure that has it has, you know,
Speaker 1: a distinctive Michael Shay twist on everything. And he he
Speaker 1: was basically Jack Vance uh said well, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna read it, but you have my blessing. Go,
Speaker 1: you know, get it published whatever. It's amazing. It never happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine happening now, but in this case,
Speaker 1: you know, it launched this guy's career. He went on
Speaker 1: to write a number of this wonderful books that are
Speaker 1: very much distinctively his. If you haven't heard us sing
Speaker 1: his praises before on other episodes, are especially on our
Speaker 1: summer reading episodes. Michael Shay is fantastic. And uh, I'm
Speaker 1: actually borrowing the incomplete and if the Lean stories from
Speaker 1: Robert right now, and it's I read a couple of
Speaker 1: pages every night before bed. It's just so good. It's
Speaker 1: the best fantasy, Like the smartest fantasy I think I've
Speaker 1: ever read. He could just construct these amazing worlds. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So this next one is from Rowan, who is local
Speaker 1: to us here in Atlanta, and I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to it's a longish letter, so I'm gonna try to
Speaker 1: edit it down a little bit. Um. He just lets
Speaker 1: us know that he's a bio nerd and he's written
Speaker 1: into us before, and he used to work in an
Speaker 1: HPV lab and is in love with the d I
Speaker 1: Y bio hacking community. So when he heard us doing
Speaker 1: episodes about trans humanism bio hacking, he got excited. So
Speaker 1: he wrote in to tell us this regarding the man
Speaker 1: who developed e V and this is in relation to
Speaker 1: our tree Man Disease episode. E V as the shorten
Speaker 1: name for tree Man disease after cutting his knee as
Speaker 1: a teenager. That makes sense to me. Wounds are great
Speaker 1: for introducing germs. HPV, for instance, usually infects mucous membranes
Speaker 1: like genitalia, mouth, throat, et cetera, not places like your
Speaker 1: knee where there's a thicker barrier, but a wound could
Speaker 1: circumvent that barrier and let infection get a foothold. I
Speaker 1: don't have time to dive into the research, but I
Speaker 1: wonder if there's some correlation between people getting the infection
Speaker 1: in unusual places and people developing extreme symptoms like tree
Speaker 1: man disease. Who knows the HPV strains you guys listed
Speaker 1: off are not super common. They it might be part
Speaker 1: of the reason that it's so rare if it requires
Speaker 1: a rare strain and a rare genetic mutation plus sunlight
Speaker 1: and mysteries, which is yeah, and they just don't have
Speaker 1: real answers yet to what's going on with it. Another
Speaker 1: thing about HPV infection usually have more than one strain.
Speaker 1: It would be interesting to know if particular combination showed
Speaker 1: up more often, or if different strains interacted with each
Speaker 1: other somehow. None of the ones you listed are in
Speaker 1: the vaccines, but they're working on a more general vaccine
Speaker 1: that would protect against all HPV streams. It wouldn't help
Speaker 1: people who already had the disease, but it could prevent
Speaker 1: any more cases. A bit of hope for your depressing episode.
Speaker 1: Last fun fact about HPV, you guys said, it's super common.
Speaker 1: It's so common, in fact, that we have a hell
Speaker 1: of a time finding negative controls for our tests. It's
Speaker 1: hard to find anyone who hasn't been exposed to HPV.
Speaker 1: That's comforting. Most of the negative controls end up coming
Speaker 1: from children's samples. And then he gets into bio hacking. Okay,
Speaker 1: he says, bio hacking. The episodes that we did were
Speaker 1: pretty needy, says thank you very much. As a kind
Speaker 1: of not really bio hacker myself, I enjoyed them, though.
Speaker 1: I'd like to note that trans humanists are just a
Speaker 1: tiny section of the bio hacking and d I Y
Speaker 1: bio community. Anyway, I happen to be local and thought
Speaker 1: that you might want to know that at least two
Speaker 1: maker spaces hacker spaces in Atlanta are trying to get
Speaker 1: a bio hacking scene going. Maybe we'll be like, we can,
Speaker 1: we can get together with these guys and get some magnets.
Speaker 1: Putting our fingers, I am a member at Freeside, Atlanta.
Speaker 1: We're in the process of setting up a lab. We
Speaker 1: have a class on engineering glow bacteria, which will run
Speaker 1: again as soon as I get things together. I'm editing
Speaker 1: that he mentioned some other ones that are around town.
Speaker 1: For people who aren't local, you probably wouldn't be familiar
Speaker 1: with the suburbs of Atlanta. Um and And says that
Speaker 1: there's some people working on brain computer for computer interfaces,
Speaker 1: uh and teams that are building an e G from scratch.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like Atlanta's got a burgeoning bio hacking community. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's very interesting. He's plugging for that. So if
Speaker 1: you are out there, you listen to our bio hacking
Speaker 1: episodes and our trans humanism episodes and you thought that
Speaker 1: sounds like it's something for me, you might want to
Speaker 1: look into this, he says. Says that the spaces have
Speaker 1: public events that are listed on meetup dot com. You
Speaker 1: can check those out. UH. Side note, a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: unrelated to us doing those episodes, became interested in getting
Speaker 1: mag magn 's put in his fingers and went out
Speaker 1: and found h tattooist I guess or a tattoo artist
Speaker 1: who performs that function. As well, So he's getting the
Speaker 1: he's doing the magnet thing. Yeah, alright, Well, here's a
Speaker 1: one more piece of listener mail. This one is a
Speaker 1: quick one. And oh this one comes. It's another one
Speaker 1: from Jim. I hate to read one too, by the
Speaker 1: same author, but this is just a real quick one
Speaker 1: with a book book a recommendation in it Robert Joe
Speaker 1: and Christian As for synthetic meat and or cannibalism and fiction,
Speaker 1: I have two suggestions, pursue at your own peril. Um.
Speaker 1: So the first one he mentions is The Food of
Speaker 1: the Gods by author C. Clark, which I read decades
Speaker 1: ago in the Wind from the Sun, a book of
Speaker 1: short stories, and I really mean short stories. I think
Speaker 1: each story was no more than a page or two long,
Speaker 1: so like flash fiction before it was called that. I've
Speaker 1: heard of this story, but I haven't read it. He says.
Speaker 1: This short story addresses the very questions you brought up
Speaker 1: in your synthetic meat episode by Clark d plus years
Speaker 1: ago before the technology existed, um, which we're basically, would
Speaker 1: you eat synthetic meat or would you eat synthetic human meat? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like if it was it was synthesized human flesh. Would
Speaker 1: you eat it? The problem? Yeah, that's what I said.
Speaker 1: I mean, I said, I'm a vegetarian. The problem with
Speaker 1: eating human meat is that it comes from it had
Speaker 1: to come from a human. Yeah, well so, so easily
Speaker 1: have more. He said, there was a second one. There's
Speaker 1: a second one, and this one. I imagine we we
Speaker 1: have probably all three. Read The Survivor Type by Sephen
Speaker 1: King with an entry Yeah, and also book of short
Speaker 1: Stories pretty just pretty. It's pretty disturbing in a Stephen
Speaker 1: King kind of way. I think. I I think I
Speaker 1: read a quote from Stephen King where he was saying, like,
Speaker 1: I think my favorite types of stories to write are
Speaker 1: the really nasty, grizzly ones. But on this one, I
Speaker 1: think I went too far. There's also been and I
Speaker 1: didn't add this to the listener mail, but several people
Speaker 1: have written into us, both over mail and on Facebook
Speaker 1: about because I mentioned Wolverine on that episode and whether
Speaker 1: he cuts his own skin off and eats it at
Speaker 1: any point because he can just regrow his own flesh.
Speaker 1: And they pointed out that there's an issue of X
Speaker 1: Force that I forgot about that I've read where Deadpool,
Speaker 1: the famous character who just had a movie this summer. Uh,
Speaker 1: does that to himself and feeds bits of himself to
Speaker 1: another character who's like dying and starving. So he cuts
Speaker 1: off his own skin and little chunks of arm flesh
Speaker 1: and feeds into him. Gross where the mask come from? Like,
Speaker 1: he's really not even beginning to obey. Basically, Oh, I
Speaker 1: think Deadpool it's yeah, I mean it's not fiction. But
Speaker 1: he's like Wolverini regrows. Why is he fighting good crime
Speaker 1: or superviance when he could be feeding the masses. He's
Speaker 1: not Deadpools a mercenary. Now alright, he's got an outfre
Speaker 1: Sorry we shouldn't we We just went off in geek territory.
Speaker 1: We we didn't explain what happens in the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very brief synopsis. There is a drug smuggler who has
Speaker 1: a bunch of heroins terrific, Yeah, but has a bunch
Speaker 1: of heroin with him. He got stranded on a desert
Speaker 1: island with nothing to eat, so he realized he's starving
Speaker 1: to death. And he realizes that, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: could just drug myself so I don't feel pain and
Speaker 1: then cut my foot off and eat it and that,
Speaker 1: and it proceeds from there. Yeah. Yeah, I guess in
Speaker 1: that scenario, I would probably odon the heroine before I
Speaker 1: would uh just use it as a pain cut off
Speaker 1: my own limbs. See, the thing is he found a
Speaker 1: pamphlet from the airplane that says, um, auto cannibalism is
Speaker 1: it for you, and it's all about surviving a plane
Speaker 1: cracks through auto canniba. That would be amazing if stewardesses
Speaker 1: had had to explain auto cannibalism to you before a
Speaker 1: plane took off. It's it's definitely a disturbing one. And
Speaker 1: want to remember well from from when I read it
Speaker 1: the first time I can Junior, Yeah, I read it
Speaker 1: when I was a kid too. Okay, So on that note,
Speaker 1: you probably wrapped things up on the auto cannibalism. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is only just a slice of the vast
Speaker 1: listener mail, um flesh chunk consume for you today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we only were able to cut a little bit off
Speaker 1: and chew on it for forty five minutes. Sorry, but
Speaker 1: we will get two more in the next couple of months. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And like I said before, if if we didn't get
Speaker 1: your to your email, please don't take that as a
Speaker 1: as a slide against the wonderful feedback that you send
Speaker 1: us there. There's just too much good stuff for us
Speaker 1: to get to use. Podcast is just reading letter mail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so please keep sending it. We we love to
Speaker 1: read what you'all out there have to say. So maybe
Speaker 1: you're listening and you're thinking to yourself, Hey, I didn't
Speaker 1: know that I could get my messages read on a
Speaker 1: podcast that I like listening to all the time. How
Speaker 1: do I do that? Well, there's a number of ways
Speaker 1: that you can do that. You can always reach out
Speaker 1: to us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: and Instagram. Although I would not recommend that you write
Speaker 1: us a letter on Instagram. That's gonna be a bad
Speaker 1: format for it. But you can see lots of cool
Speaker 1: pictures on there from us, uh, all of those we
Speaker 1: are blow the mind. Write us there, you can write
Speaker 1: us messages. You could follow us and see all the
Speaker 1: things that we post, not just our own content, with
Speaker 1: the weird, bizarre science oddities that we find throughout the week.
Speaker 1: Where else can they find his boys, Well, you can
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the mother ship. That's where you'll find all of
Speaker 1: our videos or podcast episodes, blinks after those, social media
Speaker 1: accounts and more, And of course you can always email
Speaker 1: us directly and blow the mind at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Well more on this and basands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com