Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it is Monday, the day
Speaker 3: of each week that we read back messages from the
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow your Mind mailbox. If you have never
Speaker 3: gotten in touch before, why not give it a shot.
Speaker 3: You can contact us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com. Any kind of messages or fair game.
Speaker 3: Usually people send feedback to recent episodes. Maybe if you
Speaker 3: have something interesting you want to add to a subject
Speaker 3: we talked about, if you have a question, if you
Speaker 3: want to suggest a topic for the future, if you
Speaker 3: want to offer corrections, any of that's fine. Send it
Speaker 3: on in contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Also,
Speaker 3: just social messages are fine. If you want to say hi,
Speaker 3: just let us know how you found out about the show,
Speaker 3: how you listen that kind of stuff. That's good too.
Speaker 3: Let's see, Rob, do you want to kick us off
Speaker 3: today by reading back this message from Michael about the
Speaker 3: Thing's fingers or is it the thing or just thing?
Speaker 2: I think he's the thing, Marvel's the Thing aka Ben
Speaker 2: Grimm of the Fantastic Four. Yeah, we heard from Michael
Speaker 2: in response to this is one of the Monster Fact
Speaker 2: episodes I've been doing on the theme of monsters and
Speaker 2: sort of monstrous things in the Marvel comic universe. Michael
Speaker 2: writes in and says, hey, guys, I just finished listening
Speaker 2: to the episode about the Thing and his fused fingers.
Speaker 2: I'm really loving these Marvel monster episodes. Being a comic
Speaker 2: book fan of many years. I'm not going to go
Speaker 2: through all the content of the Monster Fact episode, but
Speaker 2: basically one of the things ended up looking at was
Speaker 2: this idea that when Ben Grimm was a human, he
Speaker 2: of course had five digits on each hand, and then
Speaker 2: he goes through this cosmic radiation bombardment he becomes the Thing,
Speaker 2: the sort of stone plate covered bruiser of a superhero,
Speaker 2: and lo and behold, now he has four digits on
Speaker 2: each hand, and the book that I referenced speculates that
Speaker 2: the end digit of that hand would contain the fused
Speaker 2: bones or the fused fingers anyway of digits four and five.
Speaker 2: So anyway, this is what Michael has to say on
Speaker 2: the matter. I also speculate I compared this to a
Speaker 2: few different animals where there's some level of fusing of digits.
Speaker 2: While listening, I couldn't help myself but to force my
Speaker 2: ring and pinky finger together so I could picture what
Speaker 2: the thing's hand would look like under all that rock,
Speaker 2: much like I remember doing as a kid, also with
Speaker 2: my index and middle fingers, so that I could have
Speaker 2: the hands of a ninja turtle. In doing so, I
Speaker 2: could definitely see how making a good old clobber and
Speaker 2: fist would still be possible. I found it awkward to
Speaker 2: open and close my hand with my outer two fingers
Speaker 2: held together like that, based solely on how it felt
Speaker 2: for me. The gripping and dexterity would seemingly decrease with
Speaker 2: two fingers fused to each other, although I don't see
Speaker 2: dexterity as one of Ben Grimm's prime attributes. I kept
Speaker 2: thinking about it though, through the other examples you gave,
Speaker 2: and I think it holds up that two sets of
Speaker 2: bones in a single digit would not be something used
Speaker 2: for gripping. The kangaroo going from climbing to jumping seems
Speaker 2: applicable if the toes were previously separated when it was
Speaker 2: an animal that climbed regularly. Then by the time it
Speaker 2: was hopping, it could be better to put those toes
Speaker 2: together permanently best.
Speaker 3: Michael, Sorry, I'm still laughing about the idea of dexterity
Speaker 3: being one of Ben Grimm's prime attributes. Like the thing
Speaker 3: has to do a sleight of hand check.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, like I did read that. It's
Speaker 2: something in the comics where he often can't use technology
Speaker 2: correctly because he doesn't have these big, clunky digits and
Speaker 2: doesn't have the same number he had when he was
Speaker 2: human and so forth. So yeah, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: ultimately it's you know, it's a silly thing in a
Speaker 2: comic book that we needn't think too much about, but
Speaker 2: it is kind of fun to speculate, like what what
Speaker 2: purpose could that serve? If there is any purpose to
Speaker 2: have this, uh, this fused digit. On the hand, there's
Speaker 2: not nothing directly comparable to the thing in the natural world, however,
Speaker 2: but like some of the examples I looked at, there
Speaker 2: there are the there's a you know, there are different
Speaker 2: hypotheses regarding a fuse digit on certain species having being
Speaker 2: connected to some sort of arboreal lifestyle at some point
Speaker 2: in their evolution or grooming like a grooming digit, So
Speaker 2: I didn't explore that so much that it could be
Speaker 2: a grooming digit for for bonding with the other members
Speaker 2: of the Fantastic Four.
Speaker 3: I see, like picking lice off of mister mister Fantastic Doctor.
Speaker 3: Is there one that's called.
Speaker 2: I think yeahs for the stretchy guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay, because I don't think you'd have to
Speaker 3: pick lice off of the fire guy. He could just
Speaker 3: burn it off.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, unless I don't know, there's some stuff I
Speaker 2: was reading about there being like this layer between him
Speaker 2: and the fire. So yeah, I don't know. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you would actually be able to like superheat
Speaker 2: his own parasites off or not. It's a is it
Speaker 2: something probably hasn't been explored in comic books all that much.
Speaker 3: A very special episode The Fantastic Four get Lice? Yeah,
Speaker 3: all right, let's see. Do you mind if I do
Speaker 3: this follow up from a previous listener mail from Chuck Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: subject line follow up from my January listener mail past
Speaker 3: Live's book Rob you remember this one? About this listener
Speaker 3: found a book that related to the studies we had
Speaker 3: cited about about people who stare into the mirror long
Speaker 3: enough tend to start having hallucinations and imagine that they're
Speaker 3: they're seeing different kinds of monstrous features and stuff in
Speaker 3: low light. I think it was low light conditions and
Speaker 3: prolonged staring tends to cause hallucinations and otherwise typical individuals. Okay,
Speaker 3: from there, I think Chuck does a recap of what
Speaker 3: his other message was. Chuck says, Hello, Robert, Joe, and JJ.
Speaker 3: I hope you're all well. I happen to be in
Speaker 3: my local library today in San Diego when I stumbled
Speaker 3: across the book I told you about months ago. To
Speaker 3: refresh your memory. This is in regards to the mirror
Speaker 3: experiments and the connection to quote exploring Past Lives. You
Speaker 3: happen to read my email in early January of this
Speaker 3: year where I remembered reading some book when I was
Speaker 3: young about a technique to stare at a mirror in
Speaker 3: dim light to see what you may have looked like
Speaker 3: in past lives. So the book is called Your Past Lives,
Speaker 3: a Reincarnation Handbook by Michael Talbot. I've attached photos of
Speaker 3: the front and back cover.
Speaker 2: Rob.
Speaker 3: I've got the in the documents so you can scroll
Speaker 3: down and look at them if you like. Chuck goes
Speaker 3: on to say, the publishing date is nineteen eighty seven
Speaker 3: and the author's photo is very very eighties. Yeah, he
Speaker 3: seems like he'd be like the rival for the love
Speaker 3: interest of the protagonist in an eighties action movie. You know,
Speaker 3: He's like the other guy who maybe she's going to
Speaker 3: end up with, but she doesn't anyway. Chuck goes on
Speaker 3: to say. The mirror meditation is mentioned on pages one
Speaker 3: oh five to one oh six. The author states that
Speaker 3: he discovered this technique quote quite by accident, and which
Speaker 3: can be astonishingly effective. He also states that quote various
Speaker 3: other researchers have also employed this technique, no mention of
Speaker 3: who those people are. The actual procedure is incredibly similar
Speaker 3: to the one used in the scientific studies done later,
Speaker 3: including dim lighting and concentrating on your own reflection. Here's
Speaker 3: the fun part, listed straight from the book. I guess
Speaker 3: Chuck is quoting the book here A word of caution.
Speaker 3: During this meditation, you may see some extremely dramatic changes
Speaker 3: take place in your features. This can be quite frightening.
Speaker 3: Only perform a mirror meditation if you feel completely comfortable
Speaker 3: with this prospect. At any point during meditation, if you
Speaker 3: become disturbed by seeing your own features change, simply endo
Speaker 3: your meditation and turn a light on and the process
Speaker 3: will stop. And then Chuck continues his message. Now, I
Speaker 3: am glad I was not just relying on a false
Speaker 3: memory from decades ago, but it's odd to me that
Speaker 3: this particular memory stuck. Additionally, I was wondering if you've
Speaker 3: considered an episode or two about current scientific ideas that
Speaker 3: may have been previously inadvertently explored and accidentally achieved interesting
Speaker 3: results by people who were definitely not using the scientific method.
Speaker 3: Then again, many of your topics do touch on this already,
Speaker 3: e g. Ideas believed in folklore that turn out to
Speaker 3: be true for reasons completely different than the original believed reason. Apologies,
Speaker 3: this paragraph was not elegantly worth. Oh you did find, Chuck,
Speaker 3: Chuck says. Anyways, thanks for your time, Keep up the
Speaker 3: great work. Sincerely, Chuck from San Diego PS High five
Speaker 3: to Chuck five. The other listener mail Chuck, I think
Speaker 3: we've had several.
Speaker 2: Number of chucks number of checks.
Speaker 3: Yes, But anyway, to come back to Chuck's email, this
Speaker 3: does sound interesting because it sounds like outside the context
Speaker 3: of these like psychology experiments where you know, in perception
Speaker 3: and hallucination, where scientists discovered you could do this technique
Speaker 3: to pretty reliably cause hallucinations. Somebody totally outside that context
Speaker 3: also discovered the same thing that by like lowering the
Speaker 3: lights and staring in the mirror for a long time,
Speaker 3: you can see changes to your face and see all
Speaker 3: kinds of interesting stuff. Except I guess he's saying that,
Speaker 3: like he thinks this is containing genuine revelatory information.
Speaker 2: Hmm, fascinating. All right, Well enough about that, Let's get
Speaker 2: to the pokemons. Oh I guess yeah, this is actually
Speaker 2: this is a response to the dream episodes we recently did.
Speaker 2: But Matt listener Matt via Discord wrote in with the following,
Speaker 2: HI had a couple of thoughts on the Dream Fall
Speaker 2: into the Dark Part four episode, which featured the Baku.
Speaker 2: First off, I'm surprised that Drowsy wasn't mentioned, given Rob's
Speaker 2: son has weighed in as the Pokemon expert in past episodes.
Speaker 2: It's a taper resembling Pokemon that eats dreams and is
Speaker 2: explicitly referred to as being a descendant of the Baku
Speaker 2: image below, and Matt included a picture of Drowsy, and yes,
Speaker 2: now that I look at him, yes, I'm familiar with Drowsy.
Speaker 2: I've seen Drowsy in different forms on some of the
Speaker 2: different Pokemon cards, and I probably even read the description
Speaker 2: that he eats dreams and completely forgot about it when
Speaker 2: getting into the Baka research.
Speaker 3: I think I have, at least in this image, I'm
Speaker 3: interpreting Drowsy as having yellow paint spilled over half of
Speaker 3: his body. It kind of looks like it's dripping down him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does kind of have that color scheme going on.
Speaker 2: Matt continues on a more personal note. The name Baku
Speaker 2: stirred some funny emotions in me, as that was the
Speaker 2: name of my security blanket at the age of about two.
Speaker 2: Apparently I could not say blanket yet, and Baku was
Speaker 2: the best I could manage. I couldn't go to sleep
Speaker 2: without it. So while I didn't have a Baku print
Speaker 2: pillow or a Baku skin to wrap myself in, my
Speaker 2: sleep was aided by a Baku, which I thought was
Speaker 2: an interesting coincidence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is interesting.
Speaker 2: PS. One notable difference is that it seems to eat
Speaker 2: nice dreams rather than nightmares, which doesn't seem quite as helpful. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a good point. It depends how you think about
Speaker 2: the eating of dreams, Like maybe that nice dream is
Speaker 2: something you want to carry with you into the day
Speaker 2: and oops, here comes Drowsy to snatch it up. But
Speaker 2: I don't know, it depends on how you think about that. Now,
Speaker 2: after this struck my attention, of course, looked Drowsy up
Speaker 2: in one of my son's Pokemon books, and I was curious, well,
Speaker 2: what does Drowsy evolve into? Because the evolutions of the Pokemon,
Speaker 2: that's half the point, right. Indeed, Drowsy evolves into hypno
Speaker 2: hypno like a lot of the evolutions while the while
Speaker 2: Drowsy is cute and huggable, hypno is as the kids say,
Speaker 2: a little bit sus he's got his own energy going
Speaker 2: on here.
Speaker 3: What does that that mean? He's a little, a little dangerous,
Speaker 3: a little sketchy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a little suspect. He's got this big like
Speaker 2: sort of human like nose and pointed cat ears. He's slimmer,
Speaker 2: and he's carrying some sort of hypnotizing apparatus, some sort
Speaker 2: of medallion on a string. Yeah, he looks he looks
Speaker 2: like he's not up to something good here.
Speaker 3: What is this white ruffle around his neck? That's not
Speaker 3: a beard, is it. That's like it goes around his
Speaker 3: neck like an Elizabethan collar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like that, like a fluffy Elizabethan collar.
Speaker 3: It's like we're looking at Christopher Marlowe or something.
Speaker 2: As far as I can tell, there's no evolution past
Speaker 2: this one though, so I guess we're fortunate.
Speaker 3: Okay. Then after this, we've got an email from Taylor
Speaker 3: that actually mentions this Discord post by Matt.
Speaker 2: Yes, it opened the floodgate.
Speaker 3: Taylor says, Hello, Robin. Joe loved the dream Fall into
Speaker 3: the Dark series. After listening to part four, I was
Speaker 3: itching to write you about a few Pokemon based on
Speaker 3: the Baku. I noticed that Matt from the Discord had
Speaker 3: already pointed out the dream eating Drowsy, but the poke
Speaker 3: well is deep and has plenty of space for a
Speaker 3: few more dream monsters. Matt correctly noted that the pokemon
Speaker 3: Drowsy and its grown up form Hypno differ from Baku
Speaker 3: in that they eat good dreams, not nightmares. In fact,
Speaker 3: the pokemon Hypno goes so far as to abduct children
Speaker 3: whose dreams are particularly good, presumably to keep the children
Speaker 3: asleep and feast on their dreams. That's that's more than
Speaker 3: sus that's sinister.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Later games also introduce the pokemon Mana and Musharna, two
Speaker 3: monsters who more directly mirror the Baku. These pokemon eat
Speaker 3: good dreams and nightmares alike, and don't kidnap anyone. After
Speaker 3: Mna or Musharna has eaten a dream, they excrete a
Speaker 3: psychically charged mist from their foreheads. Good dreams yield pink mist,
Speaker 3: and nightmares yield black mist. As with the Baku, a
Speaker 3: dream eaten by Manna and Musharna is forgotten by the dreamer,
Speaker 3: but Muna and Musharna also pull a reverse Baku. It
Speaker 3: is said that the dreams or nightmares have awaken person
Speaker 3: who inhales their mist become a reality. Oh all right,
Speaker 3: so this one, This looks kind of like a floral
Speaker 3: print Kirby, sort of a cross between like Kirby and
Speaker 3: a water bear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're kind of egg shaped. They're not as distinctive
Speaker 2: as as as drowsy for example. So I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever seen this guy on a
Speaker 2: T shirt.
Speaker 3: Taylor goes on a few other Pokemon delve into the
Speaker 3: domain of dreams. The wraith like Pokemon Dark Cry defends
Speaker 3: itself by dropping trespassers on its territory into nightmare filled comas.
Speaker 3: Oh wow. A person afflicted by dark Rise Nightmare Sleep
Speaker 3: can only be healed with the feather from its counterpart, Crysalia.
Speaker 2: Yes. Now, I'm not familiar with with the with the
Speaker 2: with the first guy, but Chris Chrysalia or Chrysalia. Uh,
Speaker 2: this one, I think is one that my son really
Speaker 2: likes and has drawn before Chrysalea.
Speaker 3: It kind of looks like the Lockness Monster, but crossed
Speaker 3: with a faery with pink wings.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like a splendid space pheasant or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and it also has a sort of a
Speaker 3: bunch of Banana's swoop haircut crescent moon shaped haircut. Anyway,
Speaker 3: Taylor goes on to say, while the Pokemon franchise is
Speaker 3: primarily targeted at children, it's rich with fascinating and sometimes
Speaker 3: shockingly dark monsters. My childlike adoration for the franchise has
Speaker 3: never left me. I also can't write in about dream
Speaker 3: monsters without making reference to the Slake Months from China.
Speaker 3: Mieville's Perdido Street station talking about them too much would
Speaker 3: spoil major plot reveals from the book. But if you
Speaker 3: are fascinated by dreams and dream monsters, I couldn't recommend
Speaker 3: a better novel than Perdido Street Station. I hope you've
Speaker 3: enjoyed what has not been my first and will not
Speaker 3: be my last, Pokemon themed email. As a closing note,
Speaker 3: I think there's something too Joe's theory about spatial reasoning
Speaker 3: and dreams. I play a lot of video games, and
Speaker 3: I find that the ones with the greatest dream relevance
Speaker 3: are those focused on manipulating objects in space. I've had
Speaker 3: quite a few dreams about Tetris and map based strategy
Speaker 3: games like Fire Emblem. I don't know what that is.
Speaker 3: H Taylor finishes by saying, may the Baku devour your nightmares.
Speaker 2: Taylor, Oh wow, it seems possible. Then with the Pokemon
Speaker 2: card game, you could have an entire deck of just
Speaker 2: maybe just dream based creatures, and then you could also
Speaker 2: just expand that to sleep as well and throw a
Speaker 2: few snore Laxes in there.
Speaker 3: What does snorlax do? Just put you to sleep?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: He sleeps, He just sleeping. He beats you by sleeping.
Speaker 3: He's great, he just sleeps, Yeah, sleep him to beat him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have. You know, I've only watched a few
Speaker 2: of the Pokemon cartoons. There's one I watched with my
Speaker 2: son that has like a like a jungle narrative and uh,
Speaker 2: and that one was that one was actually really good.
Speaker 2: I had a lot of it was like a movie
Speaker 2: and it had some almost mia Zakis qualities to it,
Speaker 2: and I like that one a lot. But uh, he
Speaker 2: showed me like one random episode and it was just
Speaker 2: some of the weirdest stuff I'd ever seen. It was
Speaker 2: it was, It was great. So there's some I think
Speaker 2: it's it's easy to sort of dismiss the Pokemon franchise. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just sort of video game silliness. But yeah,
Speaker 2: there there are a lot of dark monsters, and I
Speaker 2: keep hearing about darker ones here, and there's a lot
Speaker 2: of just really weird choices that go into the franchise
Speaker 2: or have gone into it over the years.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking about how I have no idea,
Speaker 3: uh if Pokemon will still be an age relevant obsession
Speaker 3: when my daughter's old enough to get into things like that, Like,
Speaker 3: do I have Pokemon in my future or did she
Speaker 3: just miss the wave.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, it's curious the way that nostalgia
Speaker 2: bumps go on the things, But I don't know. It
Speaker 2: seems seems like it's a big enough deal that it's
Speaker 2: probably still going to be around. So we'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 3: Maybe one day i'll know them all. I'll be the
Speaker 3: one saying like, oh, yeah, that's going to be your snore. Lax.
Speaker 2: All right, here's another. When this one comes to us
Speaker 2: from Jim. I'm not sure which gym.
Speaker 3: This is one of the gyms not in the New
Speaker 3: Jersey gym right right.
Speaker 2: This gym sends us an email titled time Traveling Vampires. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: I've been wanting to bring this up for a while.
Speaker 2: In your discussion on Dracula, time traveling seems like the
Speaker 2: best time to talk about this. In the late sixties,
Speaker 2: there was a supernatural soap opera called Dark Shadows. It
Speaker 2: had a vampire named Barnabas Collins. In seventeen ninety five,
Speaker 2: he became a vampire through a witch's curse. His father
Speaker 2: was going to put a stake through his heart, but couldn't,
Speaker 2: so instead he chained Barnabas up in his coffin in
Speaker 2: the late nineteen sixties and let him out. Eventually, he
Speaker 2: overcame the curse and became human again, But a year
Speaker 2: or two later, some ghosts started haunting the family home.
Speaker 2: The solution was to go back in time and prevent
Speaker 2: the people from becoming ghosts. To do that, Barnabas used
Speaker 2: the eaching to travel back one hundred years. He astral
Speaker 2: projected to a hall with eaching hexagrams on different doors.
Speaker 2: He had to find the one that had the hexagram
Speaker 2: called change. When he found it, he opened the door
Speaker 2: and saw the coffin he was imprisoned in for two
Speaker 2: hundred years. He had to become a vampire again to
Speaker 2: solve the crisis. Thanks for letting me vent, Jim.
Speaker 3: Is that venting? Okay? Thanks for sharing. I don't think
Speaker 3: I fully understood the last part there. Wait, how did
Speaker 3: becoming a vampire again fix the ghost issue? I think
Speaker 3: I've missed something here.
Speaker 2: That I'm not entirely sure either, But there does seem
Speaker 2: to be some sort of a time travel and changing
Speaker 2: the timeline in order to deal with the situation. It
Speaker 2: sounds complex and a little bit ludicrous, so I like it.
Speaker 2: I remember seeing episodes of Dark Shadows on I think
Speaker 2: they showed them on Sci Fi Channel back in the day,
Speaker 2: and I remember like digging the vibe, but never Maybe
Speaker 2: I just wasn't patient enough to get into the show
Speaker 2: because I remember it feeling kind of slow paced but
Speaker 2: has all the elements that I would love and of
Speaker 2: course I like, you can't help it, like Barnabas Collins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've never seen it. I think I recall having
Speaker 3: a friend whose mom was really into it. That's about
Speaker 3: as close as I've come.
Speaker 2: Well, anyway, Jim, thanks for writing in and letting us
Speaker 2: know about this incident of vampire time travel. We just
Speaker 2: we need to be made aware of all time travel
Speaker 2: incidents involving Dracula or any other major vampire. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: on that note, we're going to go and close out
Speaker 2: this episode of Listener Mail, but we'll be back next
Speaker 2: Monday with more listener mails to read. We have a
Speaker 2: backlog of them to get to, and you all just
Speaker 2: keep sending neat, neat and thoughtful stuff into us, so
Speaker 2: keep it coming. We love hearing from everyone. A reminder
Speaker 2: that our core episodes publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and
Speaker 2: the stuff to blow my podcast feed on Wednesday's short
Speaker 2: form artifact or monster fact. They're mostly monster facts these days,
Speaker 2: but occasionally I throw in an artifact. And then on
Speaker 2: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film on a weird house cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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