Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and we're bringing you a listener mail.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's been a little while we've had some
Speaker 1: great listener mail build up and so we are here
Speaker 1: to share it with you and help us share the
Speaker 1: listener mail love. We have as always Carney our mail bought. Uh, Carney,
Speaker 1: say hi to the audience now. Carney. Uh, you know
Speaker 1: he always listens into our topics and then of course
Speaker 1: he feeds off of the listener mail and he you know,
Speaker 1: he was really into our series on facial recognition software,
Speaker 1: you know, because he is mostly software. But he was
Speaker 1: also very interested in my question I raised about whether
Speaker 1: dogs have faces. As we're a number of listeners. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's stirred up some I don't know, debate. I
Speaker 1: guess you could say on online about whether dogs have faces.
Speaker 1: Now mostly it's just people saying yes, I think dogs
Speaker 1: have faces. And here's why, Um, I don't feel particularly
Speaker 1: strongly about it myself. I just merely commented that I
Speaker 1: just tend not to think of the front of a
Speaker 1: dog's skull as being a face. I certainly see is
Speaker 1: having eyes and a mouth and a nose and so forth.
Speaker 1: But I still cannot believe this. This is the weirdest
Speaker 1: thing you ever said. But it's not just dogs, it's
Speaker 1: just you know, animals in general, um, that are not
Speaker 1: human or nearly so at any rate. It apparently messed
Speaker 1: with Carney a little bit as well, because now he
Speaker 1: was obsessively going around scanning the fronts of dogs skulls
Speaker 1: and trying to put together some sort of facial recognition
Speaker 1: argument based off of that. Just wait till he gets
Speaker 1: to the buck flower dog from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's gonna really throw him for a curve,
Speaker 1: isn't it. I gotta give shout out. Seth reminded us
Speaker 1: of that one that is the best human face dog
Speaker 1: of all time? Wasn't there one in there was like
Speaker 1: a similar film from the seventies that had to do
Speaker 1: with witchcraft, like alan Alda and It or something. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is ringing bells. Yeah, I just looked it up.
Speaker 1: It's called the Mephisto Waltz. I've never seen this one
Speaker 1: looks really good. You know, I don't think I ever
Speaker 1: saw it in its entirety either, but back when I
Speaker 1: was watching a lot of Sci Fi Channel, back in
Speaker 1: the old days of Sci Fi Channel, when they spelled
Speaker 1: it correctly, um, they would hopeful for it with Siffycifia.
Speaker 1: They would have a lot of promos for you know,
Speaker 1: these films that they had the rights to show, and
Speaker 1: one of them was The Mephisto Waltz and I think
Speaker 1: they showed the the Faced Dog creature in that trailer
Speaker 1: right in the middle of the Forever Night marathon. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I don't think they were showing Forever
Speaker 1: Night at that point. This is back when they were
Speaker 1: all about it was classic Doctor Who and also occasional
Speaker 1: like shows like what Man I'm Manimal? Was that it
Speaker 1: sequest I don't know, maybe se Quest definitely, Time Tunnel
Speaker 1: shows like that, movies like Gargoyle Space was another one
Speaker 1: that got a lot of play. So what was the
Speaker 1: one with the car the car that could talk? Night Writer? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I don't remember if Night Writers on there or not.
Speaker 1: We'll stay tuned for the new podcast series Robert and
Speaker 1: I are soon launching about classic sci Fi Channel programming.
Speaker 1: I would love to do that podcast. I don't know
Speaker 1: anyone else wants to listen to it. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I would make that in my free time. Uh No,
Speaker 1: but today is about stuff to blow your mind, and
Speaker 1: it is about stuff to blow your mind listener mail.
Speaker 1: We Yeah, we received a lot of great stuff related
Speaker 1: to the face recognition episodes, certainly, but also volcanoes was
Speaker 1: a big topic. Yeah, a bunch of stuff. I guess
Speaker 1: we could start by addressing one thing we got a
Speaker 1: bunch of mail about. We may have brought this up
Speaker 1: on the website before, but I figure here's a good
Speaker 1: time to say. A lot of people have just emailed saying, hey,
Speaker 1: where's your website? Or like, I'm looking for source lists
Speaker 1: links that would be on the landing page for this episode.
Speaker 1: Can you help me find them? Sorry, folks, our website
Speaker 1: has been led off to the website Slaughterhouse. It is
Speaker 1: no more. That's right. Yeah, and this I believe happened
Speaker 1: for all the shows that you know that are in
Speaker 1: the you know what was previously known as the Stuff Network.
Speaker 1: Uh So, now, if you got to Stuff to Build
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com, if you go to invention pod
Speaker 1: dot com, or if you go to the websites for
Speaker 1: shows like stuff you should know or stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class, those will direct to i Heart listings
Speaker 1: for that show. Right now, To be clear, we don't
Speaker 1: want you to be alarmed. This doesn't mean anything about
Speaker 1: the show itself. The show is not going away anything
Speaker 1: like that. It's just my Heart doesn't have individual websites
Speaker 1: for its podcasts, and they enforced that on our show
Speaker 1: among all others. Now, and if you're looking for like
Speaker 1: lists of resources that were used in a particular episode,
Speaker 1: I guess the good news there is that we kind
Speaker 1: of sucked at doing that anyway, especially recently, so there
Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of There wasn't a lot lost in
Speaker 1: that regard. I think the ain thing that was that
Speaker 1: was lost is that we had a you know, we
Speaker 1: had a pretty good, uh, you know, searchable archive system
Speaker 1: of past episodes. It was a good way to go
Speaker 1: back and look at post past episodes. And there were
Speaker 1: a lot of blog posts on there from over the years.
Speaker 1: But I had not been actively blogging for you know,
Speaker 1: at least a year, so um and no ongoing blogging
Speaker 1: efforts were interrupted on that count. Oh and while the
Speaker 1: website is no longer accessible. They assure us that it's
Speaker 1: still somewhere in the dark space, and that means that,
Speaker 1: for all we know, it could return in the future.
Speaker 1: It's just not there right now. But if there's something particular,
Speaker 1: something specific you were looking for, you can always just
Speaker 1: email us and ask. And you know, if it's a
Speaker 1: question about a source, we use like, hey, what was
Speaker 1: that book you mentioned? How do you spelled that author's
Speaker 1: last name? Uh, we can will generally be able to
Speaker 1: get back to you and let you know, we'll do
Speaker 1: our best right and likewise, if you're trying to remember,
Speaker 1: like if you are thinking back to a blog post
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, what was that blog post? What
Speaker 1: was that topic? Uh, you know, ask us via email
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe we can fish that up for you.
Speaker 1: You know, no promises, but uh, sometimes we can retrieve
Speaker 1: that information certainly. So I guess it's time to jump
Speaker 1: into the listener messages now. As always, we've got a
Speaker 1: preface this by saying we're sorry. We get so much
Speaker 1: wonderful mail. There is no way, uh in heck, for
Speaker 1: us to read it all or even get close. This
Speaker 1: will just have to be a small selection of messages,
Speaker 1: but we appreciate all the mail we get. If your
Speaker 1: message was not featured, please don't take it personally. Right
Speaker 1: again and maybe you'll get on next time. But this
Speaker 1: first message concerns our pair of episodes about the eruption
Speaker 1: of Mount Vesuvius. This comes from Seth. Seth says, hi, there.
Speaker 1: My name is Seth, and I'm a park ranger at
Speaker 1: Mount Rainier National Park. Specifically, my job title is climbing ranger.
Speaker 1: That means my duties include staffing the high camps and
Speaker 1: climbing the mountain many times each spring and summer. I've
Speaker 1: also worked for twelve years as a climbing guide on
Speaker 1: Mountain Rainier and many other mountains all over the world,
Speaker 1: including many of the ones on your list of volcanoes
Speaker 1: at the end of Lessons of Vesuvius Part two. WHOA,
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time living, climbing, skiing, and
Speaker 1: working on an active volcano, and so I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: the Vesuvius series, although the description of the victims at
Speaker 1: Pompeii and Herculaneum did give me serious pause. As I
Speaker 1: work and live both on and near Mount Rainier. Yikes,
Speaker 1: I would prefer my brain tissue to remain un vitrified.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I was also surprised that Mount Rainier did
Speaker 1: not make your list of volcanoes with large populations living
Speaker 1: in close proximity. It is the only decade volcano in
Speaker 1: the continental USA, and there are millions of people that
Speaker 1: would be affected if the volcano were to erupt. I
Speaker 1: guess the main issue, though, is really the lahars that
Speaker 1: would form from pyroclastic flows melting the largest glacier system
Speaker 1: in the lower forty eight and scouring dirt, rock and
Speaker 1: debris from the river valleys and carrying them all the
Speaker 1: way to tide water, not the explosion of the volcano itself.
Speaker 1: Your podcast really got me wondering why I have felt
Speaker 1: drawn to this mountain. I've spent nearly twenty years climbing, skiing,
Speaker 1: and working on it, and the steaming fumaroles, sulfur seeps,
Speaker 1: and crater ice caves always inspire a sense of wonder
Speaker 1: and awe, even after more than two hundred times climbing
Speaker 1: the summit. I really enjoyed the episodes, so thanks for that.
Speaker 1: I'm also really hoping you do one on the year
Speaker 1: without a summer. As an avid skier, I would love
Speaker 1: to have a year like that, just as long as
Speaker 1: we don't have any boathouse situations. Best regards, Seth, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks for getting in touch, Seth. The mention of Lahars
Speaker 1: actually brings me back to something that we did talk
Speaker 1: about in one of our Vesuvius episodes where we mentioned
Speaker 1: the volcano Catla in Iceland, which is near the village
Speaker 1: of vik Has down on the southern coast of Iceland,
Speaker 1: and I was talking about how I had been there,
Speaker 1: and Katla is in a similar situation to what you're
Speaker 1: talking about there, the threat is not so much of
Speaker 1: an explosive eruption like Vesuvius. The threat is changed by
Speaker 1: the fact that the volcano there lies under this vast glacier.
Speaker 1: So try to imagine what happens when a volcano erupts
Speaker 1: under millions of tons of ice. The greatest danger from
Speaker 1: eruptions here comes from Lahars again. You know, these these
Speaker 1: floods of mud and water coming out of the glacier
Speaker 1: system and from a yokolaps. Oh, these are the the
Speaker 1: ice giants, right, Yeah, these are these outburst floods from glaciers. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, so like there might be a lake that
Speaker 1: is fed by the flow off of a glacier as
Speaker 1: it melts. But then suddenly lots of heat melts a
Speaker 1: lot of glacial water, and that then the lake breaches
Speaker 1: whatever container it's normally held in and there's rapid draining.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times we don't even imagine properly
Speaker 1: what the most destructive elements of a volcanic eruption would be.
Speaker 1: And one of the funniest things is that people often think, Okay,
Speaker 1: the danger of a volcanic eruption comes from flows of lava.
Speaker 1: That's like one of the least dangers to worry about.
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly, if you were in the position to
Speaker 1: be affected by the flowing lava, it's dangerous. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all these other factors, and ultimately it's in many
Speaker 1: of the scenari as we mentioned, it's it's what happens
Speaker 1: when then the population flees. Where are they going, what
Speaker 1: are the what kind of conditions are in place for
Speaker 1: them to actually evacuate the area. All right, here's another one.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Derek Derek Rites. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: just finished listening to Lessons of Vessuvious Part two and
Speaker 1: had an experience to share my wife and I visit
Speaker 1: Hawaii every few years, not as often as I'd like.
Speaker 1: During one of our trips, we rented a house in
Speaker 1: a community just outside of Pahoa on the Big Island.
Speaker 1: It was fantastic. Later I learned that in two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: several rifts opened not to even two ms away from
Speaker 1: the house where we stayed. Needless to say, it is
Speaker 1: long gone. During our twenty nineteen trip, I was excited
Speaker 1: to see if I could estimate the location of our
Speaker 1: former getaway by visiting the lava field. I certainly could
Speaker 1: have located at using a GPS, But every place at
Speaker 1: which the a road encountered the lava flow, there were
Speaker 1: many signs warning that venturing into the area was both
Speaker 1: dangerous and illegal. I read, what do you think he
Speaker 1: should have the signs? Obey the sign? Having been to
Speaker 1: volcano Volcano National Park. Don't be one of those people
Speaker 1: who disregards the sign. I know, I okay, so you
Speaker 1: did you know? Yes, obey the signs, do not cross
Speaker 1: over into the dangerous area. But I'm one who constitutionally,
Speaker 1: by nature, is drawn into areas that you are not
Speaker 1: allowed to go into. Well, I understand that, yes, anyway,
Speaker 1: he continues, I read that the area is still private property,
Speaker 1: and walking out onto the lava would have been trespassing.
Speaker 1: I was amazed at two other observations of the surrounding area.
Speaker 1: One more than a year after the lava flow, there
Speaker 1: are still areas of the field so hot that steam
Speaker 1: pours from brakes in the crust. Too. I saw many
Speaker 1: dozens of instances of trees already sprouting from the field,
Speaker 1: tiny palm seedlings amidst the black landscape, taking keen advantage
Speaker 1: of the lack of competition and nutrients. I'm sure really
Speaker 1: which astounds me more the devastating destructive power or life
Speaker 1: a blatant disregard for it. Thanks guys, keep up the
Speaker 1: good work, Derek. That reminds me of the stories of
Speaker 1: the forests pouring into the caldera on Vesuvius. Uh. Life
Speaker 1: not only finds a way, life almost just kind of
Speaker 1: gives a middle finger to the geologic danger. The I
Speaker 1: have to drive him again though that you know, anyone
Speaker 1: out there, if you have the opportunity to visit the
Speaker 1: Big Island and go to Volcano National Park, uh or,
Speaker 1: it's I just highly recommended. I went there once many
Speaker 1: years ago, and I haven't had the chance to go
Speaker 1: back yet, but I hope to because it's it's just
Speaker 1: it's it's it's amazing experience to be able to walk
Speaker 1: through these volcanic craters, uh, To to like look down
Speaker 1: into a crater and see a complete rainbow below you
Speaker 1: in the crater, or walk through a crater and see
Speaker 1: the rainbow overhead and like pass beneath it and then
Speaker 1: look back and see it behind you. And to interact
Speaker 1: with these environments that you feel like you're in another world. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then to see either you know, direct signs or
Speaker 1: these other signs of the you know, intense volcanic activity
Speaker 1: of the living earth right there beneath you. It's it's
Speaker 1: unlike anything else. Do you want to move on to
Speaker 1: Karma Mudah? Yeah, let's move on to that, that wonderful,
Speaker 1: warm feeling of Karma Muda. Okay, here come the warm fields.
Speaker 1: This first message is from Helen. Helen says, high stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. Love. Your work keeps me entertained
Speaker 1: and educated, and more importantly, indulges my intellectual curiosity in
Speaker 1: a contained way. I won't know what that means. Contained
Speaker 1: way within the limits of the podcast, episode The Limits
Speaker 1: of Sanity. Helen says, the recent episode on Karma Muda
Speaker 1: reminds me of another feeling which hasn't a direct English
Speaker 1: language correlate. It's one of my three personal life principles.
Speaker 1: A gope this is an ancient Greek word and is
Speaker 1: usually interpreted in a Christian context, is godlike love. But
Speaker 1: I was taught that it means unconditional love between humans,
Speaker 1: which is reliant upon nothing except the shared existence. The
Speaker 1: best example I can think of is showing love and
Speaker 1: care and compassion for someone even when there is hate
Speaker 1: between them, treating your enemies with respect and mercy simply
Speaker 1: because they are also human. It's hard to do to
Speaker 1: transcend the secondary feelings one has for another person, and
Speaker 1: it sometimes seems futile and grudging. But having been on
Speaker 1: the receiving end of it before, I can attest it's
Speaker 1: one of the things that could make a difference in
Speaker 1: a single person's life, So I try to practice it
Speaker 1: where I can. Thanks again, don't ever stop making us think.
Speaker 1: All right, here's another listener mail Lion comes to us
Speaker 1: from Kelly. Also on Karma Muda, Kelly riots Hi, Robert
Speaker 1: and Joe. I love the episode on Karma Muda. As
Speaker 1: a musician and a music teacher, I have tried to
Speaker 1: describe this emotion so often and can never quite find
Speaker 1: the words for it. I recently got back into playing
Speaker 1: with an ensemble, which I really missed. I would often
Speaker 1: try to articulate what I love about playing with a
Speaker 1: group that I couldn't get from playing alone, but I
Speaker 1: never felt that my explanation captured exactly what I was feeling.
Speaker 1: Listening to this episode, I realized that karma muta was
Speaker 1: exactly what I was trying to convey. Creating music with
Speaker 1: a group provides that sense of camaraderie, shared experiences, goose pumps,
Speaker 1: and often quote a sudden upwelling of uncontrollable happiness to
Speaker 1: use Joe's words. Even though I won't likely use the
Speaker 1: term karma muda and everyday conversation, I do feel that
Speaker 1: understanding the term actually has helped me understand the feeling better.
Speaker 1: Thank you both for the hard work you put into
Speaker 1: the podcast every week. That'st which is Kelly having played
Speaker 1: in a band, I absolutely know what Kelly's talking about.
Speaker 1: This feeling of like when when you kind of lock
Speaker 1: in and suddenly everything's going right when you're playing music
Speaker 1: with other people, especially, I feel like in improvising music,
Speaker 1: like if there's a moment where you're improvising music with
Speaker 1: other people and everybody like makes a change at the
Speaker 1: same time. I'm it's like that sudden moment where you
Speaker 1: you feel as if there's some kind of telepathy between
Speaker 1: you and you can get goose bumps, the feeling in
Speaker 1: the chest. It's very powerful. Interesting. I've never had that experience.
Speaker 1: I was never like in a garage band or anything
Speaker 1: like that, but but certainly in the more structured sense
Speaker 1: of just the communal creation of music, um, you know,
Speaker 1: with the high school band for example, and then UM
Speaker 1: and occasionally like church choir, is that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: like the community communal singing opportunities. I can very much
Speaker 1: understand what Kelly is talking about here. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: all kinds of music are I think, very strongly inherently
Speaker 1: unifying whenever you perform with other people. Yeah, Okay. This
Speaker 1: next message comes from Vicky. Vicky says, Dear Robert and Joe,
Speaker 1: I've been listening to stuff Table in your mind since
Speaker 1: and listening to inventions since it started. Thank you for
Speaker 1: all the thought provoking topics. I really enjoyed the Kamma
Speaker 1: Mudah show, and I wanted to add another reason why
Speaker 1: someone might want a word for this feeling. Since the
Speaker 1: feeling can be overwhelming to some of us, we can
Speaker 1: disarm it a bit if we have a word. I
Speaker 1: have a few personal experiences of creating a word for this. First,
Speaker 1: when I was a teenager growing up in Wisconsin, my
Speaker 1: dad and I were watching some kind of nature documentary
Speaker 1: with baby animals surviving against odds, which created a strong
Speaker 1: feeling of karma mudah. But I didn't want to cry.
Speaker 1: I was a teenager, and I looked at my dad,
Speaker 1: who was also trying not to cry. He was an
Speaker 1: American man, and he said, it's heartwarming, and that made
Speaker 1: us both laugh. After that, heartwarming was our secret code
Speaker 1: for when we saw something that brought up those feelings
Speaker 1: and we could laugh instead of crying. This is interesting
Speaker 1: and the idea that that you're feeling that essentially the
Speaker 1: Kama move to so strongly that it must be expressed.
Speaker 1: There has to be an an outlet for it. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of some of the I believe it was
Speaker 1: a past episode I can't remember. I recorded this one
Speaker 1: with you or maybe this was a Julie episode, but
Speaker 1: about the desire to to bite a baby, because it's
Speaker 1: so cute that this was with Julia. Okay, yeah, uh
Speaker 1: and and as I recall, the argument here was, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just so overcome with this feeling and it needs
Speaker 1: out in some way, and like the best you can
Speaker 1: sometimes do is to like reach out and like pinch
Speaker 1: the child to just sort of deflate the overwhelming sense
Speaker 1: of kama muda. And this sounds oddly similar. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, there's this we're feeling something, something is happening.
Speaker 1: We have to say it. We have to transform it
Speaker 1: into transfigure it into some other emotion, otherwise it's going
Speaker 1: to destroy us. Yes. She tells another example about this
Speaker 1: that I think is interesting. So this one also involves singing.
Speaker 1: So she says, Now, I live in Tokyo. I've been
Speaker 1: here for more than twenty five years, married to a
Speaker 1: Japanese man. I belong to an association of quote foreign
Speaker 1: wives women currently are formally partnered with a Japanese person,
Speaker 1: and we gather once a year from all across Japan
Speaker 1: for a weekend convention. It's always a great time, but
Speaker 1: it always closes on Sunday morning with the ceremony where
Speaker 1: everyone holds hands and sings a song written by one
Speaker 1: of the members Total Karma Muda. I find it too overwhelming,
Speaker 1: so several years back I started sneaking out just before
Speaker 1: the singing, and I found several other women doing the
Speaker 1: same thing. So now we plan it. We talk about
Speaker 1: when to make our escape, a timely visit to the restroom,
Speaker 1: for example, to avoid the singing. We all know what
Speaker 1: the singing means. It's not the singing itself. I go
Speaker 1: out to karaoke with some of these people. It's that
Speaker 1: overwhelming feeling. Japanese has a word for that feeling, kendao,
Speaker 1: literally emotions moving, and people use it fairly often in conversation.
Speaker 1: When I first came here, I was surprised that people
Speaker 1: would say in English that something had moved them, but
Speaker 1: eventually I realized they were just translating the Japanese word uh.
Speaker 1: And at the end, she recommends a video that invokes
Speaker 1: mild Karma Muda. It's a promotional video made by the
Speaker 1: Kanagawa Prefecture that involves a lot of people from the
Speaker 1: area singing and dancing in costume. To this one pop song.
Speaker 1: It is indeed extremely cute and very sweet. But this
Speaker 1: is really interesting because she talks about all these these
Speaker 1: multiple methods, both like having a kind of code word,
Speaker 1: but then also having a kind of avoidance ritual, all
Speaker 1: for avoiding situations that are going to cause that karma
Speaker 1: muda reaction, the goose bumps, the tears, the you know,
Speaker 1: the warmness in the chest, because sometimes it's too much,
Speaker 1: and people do this strategically all the time. And like,
Speaker 1: you know, even though the emotion of karma mudas described
Speaker 1: as inherently pleasurable, even though it feels good, it represents
Speaker 1: a loss of control. It can be frightening, embarrassing, It
Speaker 1: can make you feel vulnerable. Yeah, I mean I can,
Speaker 1: I can. I think I can relate to that sum
Speaker 1: with movies because I certainly at times appreciate being moved
Speaker 1: by a film, you know, uh, you know, the emotional
Speaker 1: roller coaster of a of a good film, and if
Speaker 1: it's done right, you don't feel manipulated. You know, you
Speaker 1: feel as if you were you're actually actually engaging with
Speaker 1: the picture. But then there are other times where you
Speaker 1: just don't want to feel that, you know, and you
Speaker 1: certainly don't want to feel like the filmmakers are trying
Speaker 1: to manipulate you into having a particular emotional state. And
Speaker 1: maybe that's one of the reasons I'm drawn to to
Speaker 1: to bad films, is that that oftentimes you you can
Speaker 1: be sure that you're probably not going to have a
Speaker 1: strong emotional reaction unless it, I don't know, unless it's
Speaker 1: to something that is, you know, done poorly and poor
Speaker 1: done poorly in just the right way to evoke those
Speaker 1: kind of emotions. And this is basically how I feel
Speaker 1: when anyone makes like a current horror movie recommendation for
Speaker 1: him and they're like, oh, you should see such and such.
Speaker 1: Make you feel so bad, it's gonna be so shocking,
Speaker 1: it's just really gonna tear you apart. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think I'd rather just watch something with a rubber
Speaker 1: monster costume. And you were just talking about your love
Speaker 1: for the fly that's the king of genuine bad feelings. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I think the part of that is that I
Speaker 1: saw it. I saw it at a at a point
Speaker 1: in my life when I was more open to those
Speaker 1: experiences where I was like, yes, let me watch some
Speaker 1: challenging horror. I'm ready to be challenged and and uh
Speaker 1: and so now you know it already has a warm
Speaker 1: place in my heart. It's not going to shock me
Speaker 1: with anything new. I mean, I maybe you know, when
Speaker 1: you revisit a film, you always feel something. If it's
Speaker 1: a good film, anyway, you feel something different, you find
Speaker 1: new corners to it. But for the most part, I
Speaker 1: know what I'm going to get um and and maybe
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, I'm as I get older, I'm less inclined
Speaker 1: to have that kind of vulnerable experience, especially with the
Speaker 1: horror film, you know, because I don't know, it's like
Speaker 1: the the horror film does not have my my best
Speaker 1: interests at heart, necessarily just trying to hurt you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I think some films. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: films like and granted this is a this is also
Speaker 1: a risk with bad horror, you know, because it's sometimes
Speaker 1: it's even worse right because they're struggling with the with
Speaker 1: titanic feelings of like fee you're in hatred and and
Speaker 1: uh and then so forth, like all these negative aspects
Speaker 1: of of existence. And then sometimes the people managing all
Speaker 1: of these feelings, you know, they don't have the the
Speaker 1: storytelling or filmmaking. Um, expertise to really do it well.
Speaker 1: So it's like going to a pharmacy and having somebody like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know what, it could compile your spilling pills all
Speaker 1: over you and it kills all over the place, and
Speaker 1: then feeling like, oh, well, this is probably going to
Speaker 1: poison me because they have no idea what they're doing.
Speaker 1: They don't know how to dish out the appropriate dosage.
Speaker 1: And you want you want the appropriate dosage of horror. Uh.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's easier to air on underdosing yourself. Okay,
Speaker 1: dogs don't have faces, and the movies are trying to
Speaker 1: harm you. Well sometimes no, I mean I think you
Speaker 1: could be right, You could be onto something there. But
Speaker 1: you know what, Robert, I think this next this next
Speaker 1: email is gonna put you in a vulnerable place and
Speaker 1: make you feel something. All right, here we go. This
Speaker 1: one comes to us from George. I was listening to
Speaker 1: the Warm Feelings episode and was moderately skeptical of the sensation,
Speaker 1: which made me feel odd since I was hearing so
Speaker 1: much evidence. The feeling was short lived due to the
Speaker 1: explanation of the mooda scale. I perked up, knowing full
Speaker 1: well the story. After the explanation. The mention of being
Speaker 1: a wrestling fan did cause me to experience the feeling
Speaker 1: in my chest and I felt an involuntary smile in
Speaker 1: the sense of Cammoderie. Living in Orlando, I get the
Speaker 1: chance to attend in XT television with around three hundred people,
Speaker 1: and there is a special communal energy. As an aside,
Speaker 1: I am thrilled to be seeing Great Mooda live this
Speaker 1: April in Tampa. Thank you for the varied subjects and
Speaker 1: depth of research and attention. Do you make my work
Speaker 1: day that much better? George V Uh, Well, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's awesome to hear. I I I think this is
Speaker 1: a common experience with you know, with seeing uh say,
Speaker 1: professional wrestling or any kind of like performance like this,
Speaker 1: especially when you have a smaller the inside kind of
Speaker 1: like tighten it, tighten nit group, Uh, you know, certainly
Speaker 1: with three people and attendance at an inn x T taping. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it makes sense that you would have this, uh,
Speaker 1: this kind of reaction to it. You know, I naively
Speaker 1: would have expected that wrestling falls more in the bad
Speaker 1: movie category, where it's something that you can expect to
Speaker 1: only engage you in a shallow way that it's kind
Speaker 1: of funny and fun and you you wouldn't expect to
Speaker 1: be deeply emotionally moved by it. I'm surprised how much
Speaker 1: emotional investment people do seem to have in it. Well,
Speaker 1: it's you can get very invested in an emotional experience
Speaker 1: even if you know basically what's going to happen. Uh.
Speaker 1: One example wrestling based that comes to mind to explain
Speaker 1: this is I've seen people talk about Luca Libre in Mexico,
Speaker 1: and I forget who was having this conversation, but one
Speaker 1: side was like, well, I would get more into it,
Speaker 1: but it's so predictable, like you know whether the good
Speaker 1: guy or the bad guy is gonna win, and uh,
Speaker 1: and then the other and compared it more to like
Speaker 1: a passion play, you know, where the good guys win
Speaker 1: for the same reasons that the good guys win in
Speaker 1: myths and folk tales and so forth, And so you
Speaker 1: have to think of it less as a like cinematic
Speaker 1: presentation of a story and more of these you know,
Speaker 1: these these tropes, these ideals coming together and battling each other,
Speaker 1: and then the audience shares in the communal experience of this.
Speaker 1: So it's I mean, it's it's the same with puppet
Speaker 1: shows and shadow puppetry and various performances throughout history. In
Speaker 1: that regard, don't be the guy hating on wrestling because
Speaker 1: it's not realistic. Come on, well, like an example, a
Speaker 1: fun example. Over the weekend I was in Uh, I
Speaker 1: was at Universal Studios, Florida in the Harry Potter Land
Speaker 1: with my family. My son's a big Harry Potter fan.
Speaker 1: We're all Harry Potter fans. And they had like this
Speaker 1: live performance puppet show of the story of the Three
Speaker 1: brothers as is told in The Deathly Hallows. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's a it's a fun little story
Speaker 1: like three adventurers and death and the gifts of death,
Speaker 1: the older one, the you know, this is the magical Stone,
Speaker 1: the invisibility cloak. And they so they're performing the story
Speaker 1: for everybody. Everybody knows the story because they've they've either
Speaker 1: read it, you know, or if they've seen the film. Uh.
Speaker 1: And perhaps they've seen it earlier in the day because
Speaker 1: they perform it like every half hour, so right, but
Speaker 1: everybody gets into it, like part of it is knowing
Speaker 1: the show you're about to see and uh. And there
Speaker 1: was this kind of communal vibe to it. It was
Speaker 1: pretty exciting, even though it is, you know, a performance
Speaker 1: at a theme park. All right, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, we will explore some additional entries of listener mail.
Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back. We're moving on from Kama Muda
Speaker 1: and getting into some divine territory. Right, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about messages that came in after our is
Speaker 1: Santa God episodes. Those were definitely a lot of fun. Again,
Speaker 1: we know some people occasionally listen with their kids, so
Speaker 1: the next few minutes will involve some frank discussion of
Speaker 1: the jolliest of old elves. Just be warned there, that's right,
Speaker 1: Skip ahead if you need to, all right, Taylor writes, Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe Taylor again, writing from Salt Lake City,
Speaker 1: to share my childhood experience of Santa in a Christian household.
Speaker 1: I grew up LDS or Mormon more colloquially, and Santa
Speaker 1: did experience a mild induction into my childhood faith. I've
Speaker 1: always been intensely curious, and even as a child, was
Speaker 1: very concerned about establishing a consistent ideology for the universe.
Speaker 1: So when I was four or five years old, I
Speaker 1: wondered why Santa would need to keep watch when God
Speaker 1: already knew everything that was going on. For context, my
Speaker 1: family and I have have long since left the faith,
Speaker 1: and my parents were never very fundamental about their beliefs.
Speaker 1: When I presented my Santa dilimit to my parents, they
Speaker 1: cunningly replied that God must have invested Santa with this
Speaker 1: holiday responsibility, and I was delighted that God would be
Speaker 1: concerned with which transformers I received that year. My parents
Speaker 1: never made any connection to the historical St. Nicholas, perhaps
Speaker 1: because Mormonism is an American religion far removed from Catholicism,
Speaker 1: perhaps because they weren't very interested in history back then,
Speaker 1: and most likely because, as you say, they were Santa.
Speaker 1: The belief was cemented when I stumbled across an esoteric
Speaker 1: verse in King James version of the Bible Zachariah to six. Quote, Ho, Ho,
Speaker 1: come forth and flee from the land of the north,
Speaker 1: Saith the Lord, for I have spread you abroad as
Speaker 1: the four winds of the heaven, Saith the Lord whoa
Speaker 1: unquote between the Ho Ho the land of the north
Speaker 1: and spread abroad as the Four winds. I was convinced
Speaker 1: of Santa's divine investiture, never mind the context or the
Speaker 1: rest of the surrounding versus. These revelations and a repeat
Speaker 1: encounter with a Mall Santa sustained my fundamental belief in
Speaker 1: the jolly old Elf for sever for more years, despite
Speaker 1: my investigative nature. As for the Mall Santa, I ran
Speaker 1: into him twice in a week, first at a grocery
Speaker 1: store and then at a party organized by our congregation.
Speaker 1: When I sat on Santa's lap at the church party,
Speaker 1: he handily remembered what I'd asked him for days prior
Speaker 1: to the grocery store, and that blew my little mind.
Speaker 1: The possibility that this was a man with a particularly
Speaker 1: gifted memory and not the literal Chris Kringle did not
Speaker 1: cross my mind. For some years. I didn't believe that
Speaker 1: every Mall Santa was the genuine article, but I thought
Speaker 1: the fat Man must spice it up with some special appearances.
Speaker 1: Happy holidays to you both, and thank you as always
Speaker 1: for creating such genuinely engaging content. I haven't missed an
Speaker 1: episode in years. Taylor, PS, I'm thrilled you enjoyed my
Speaker 1: Pokemon email enough to share it that one must have
Speaker 1: been a while back. Uh, this was great, And this
Speaker 1: really connected with a lot of memories I have about
Speaker 1: Santa beliefs as a kid, like trying to trying to
Speaker 1: incorporate Santa into a Christian worldview and saying, Okay, God
Speaker 1: already knows everything, but Santa all also knows everything. Santa
Speaker 1: must sort of work for God. He's like maybe at
Speaker 1: the level of the angels or something. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's weird, I you know, just despite growing up in
Speaker 1: you know, in a religious household and uh and certainly
Speaker 1: hearing talk about God and church and so forth, I
Speaker 1: don't think I have a really compared God with Santa.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't really. I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what it was, but I never really thought too
Speaker 1: long and hard about what their relationship with each other were.
Speaker 1: In a way, I kind of maybe it was kind
Speaker 1: of it was kind of like engaging with with separate worldviews.
Speaker 1: Like when I was thinking about Santa, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about like the Santa um uh, you know, version of
Speaker 1: of reality. And then when I'm engaging with with with churches,
Speaker 1: the church version of reality, and um, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: the best I can figure on that on that count. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I was always trying to make sense of
Speaker 1: it crammed together like Taylor, like putting it all in. Okay,
Speaker 1: how does this fit? Um? I also remember this similar
Speaker 1: feeling of like, Okay, I know not all of the
Speaker 1: Santa's you see at the mall and everywhere can be
Speaker 1: the real Santa, but I wonder if some of them
Speaker 1: are like this, like Taylor saying, like occasionally the real
Speaker 1: Santa shows up at the mall, but most of the
Speaker 1: mall Santa's are fake. Yeah. Yeah. Becomes just such an
Speaker 1: increasingly complex exercise when you're trying stitch that together. And
Speaker 1: I guess that's part of the situation, right. Eventually you
Speaker 1: just use there are just too many flaws, there are
Speaker 1: too many plot holes and uh and certainly if you
Speaker 1: pull out comes Razor out, then that's the end of it. Now.
Speaker 1: This next email comes from our listener Arson, and it
Speaker 1: concerns the question we asked in the Santa God episode,
Speaker 1: like what would it take for a real Santa religion
Speaker 1: to form, like an actual religion with Santa as a god?
Speaker 1: You know, meant seriously in the way people's other gods
Speaker 1: are meant seriously. Arson says, Hello, Robert and Joe. I
Speaker 1: think I have a simple solution for how Santa Claus
Speaker 1: could continue to inspire belief in adults. The first is
Speaker 1: to change physical gifts wrapped with a label staying there
Speaker 1: from Santa two gifts with less concrete origins. It's pretty
Speaker 1: common in religions focused on a deity for people to
Speaker 1: attribute fortunate things to various gods. This is also a
Speaker 1: common way to scam people out of money, most notably
Speaker 1: groups or individuals that request the person being scammed to
Speaker 1: send increasing amounts of money with the promise that there
Speaker 1: will be an exponential return on that investment. Even though
Speaker 1: there is no real result, the person being scammed can
Speaker 1: attribute their luck to the scam and thus their belief
Speaker 1: in the ideas behind it can be strengthened. It would
Speaker 1: not take much of a stretch to tell children who
Speaker 1: reach a certain age that adults do the work of
Speaker 1: distributing gifts that Santa provides for in the form of
Speaker 1: mysterious windfalls. This would have a basis in St. Nicholas history,
Speaker 1: since he was said to give money to keep people
Speaker 1: out of poverty and sin. The tradition some people have
Speaker 1: of choosing one person to play Santa and hand out
Speaker 1: gifts could work as a stepping stone for older children
Speaker 1: who would be preparing to be agents of Santa themselves.
Speaker 1: This would eliminate the need for Santa to have a
Speaker 1: physical location and to workshop and helpers. He would only
Speaker 1: need to mysteriously provide resources. This could also change the
Speaker 1: equation about who receives presents. Naughty children might lead to
Speaker 1: a family receiving less bounty during the holidays, so unfortunate
Speaker 1: circumstances might be placed on children not being good enough. Hopefully,
Speaker 1: though the blame would fall equally on everyone. In that case,
Speaker 1: everyone in the house would have incentive to keep everyone
Speaker 1: else in line. If the Elf on a shelf remained popular,
Speaker 1: it could take a darker turn and mutate into one
Speaker 1: of Santa's evil helpers. Another thing he is known for
Speaker 1: is being a protector of children, which seems to be
Speaker 1: one reason he survived various cultural and religious shifts. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend listening to the episode of Our Fake History
Speaker 1: where the host goes into detail about all of his variations.
Speaker 1: In one instance, a child who had been abducted was
Speaker 1: rescued by a flying St. Nicholas, who swooped in, grabbed
Speaker 1: him by the hair, and deposited him with his family.
Speaker 1: But St. Nicholas was also known as zealously disciplined bad children,
Speaker 1: including beating them. His various helpers have been known to
Speaker 1: enslave bad children or worse. I think it would be
Speaker 1: easy for an adult, especially apparent, to buy more into
Speaker 1: this myth because of how fragile children are. They might
Speaker 1: not fear a child being physically carried off. But what
Speaker 1: if these helpers had equally mysterious gifts to give? Was
Speaker 1: that flu a fluke? Or was the child naughty? Does
Speaker 1: my child have good enough grades or a clean enough
Speaker 1: room to be on the good list? I can imagine
Speaker 1: parents agonizing over this, especially if we end up in
Speaker 1: a world where antibiotics stop working in superbugs reign supreme.
Speaker 1: On that note, I hope you both have a wonderful
Speaker 1: holiday season and a happy new year. Arson. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: having a happy New Year and and and a good
Speaker 1: holiday season, Thank you, Arson. I agree with the out
Speaker 1: of this as as I think we sort of expressed
Speaker 1: in the episodes. If Santa would have any chance of
Speaker 1: actually becoming a god through cultural shifts over time. I
Speaker 1: think one of the most important changes would have to be,
Speaker 1: like Arson's talking about a trend toward abstraction and obscurity,
Speaker 1: intangible gifts at unpredictable times rather than concrete toys on
Speaker 1: Christmas Morning. But then it wouldn't be Santa. Is the thing? Like,
Speaker 1: the part of the thing about Santa is that Santa
Speaker 1: appeals to young minds who don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: space for these intangibles. You know, they want the very tangible.
Speaker 1: They want the gift that is visible under the tree,
Speaker 1: that you can pick up, that you can hold, that
Speaker 1: you can play with, the actual Santa whose lap you
Speaker 1: can say you can sit on. And I feel like
Speaker 1: the more abstract you make it, the more you make
Speaker 1: it for adults, the less it will it will actually
Speaker 1: resonate with the child, and then paradoxically, the less it
Speaker 1: will then resonate with the backward looking adults. Well, but
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly why Arson's proposing this like progression
Speaker 1: and right, where so adults play Santa and giving concrete
Speaker 1: gifts to children that the children understand is coming from Santa.
Speaker 1: And then there's a rite of passage. Whereas you grow
Speaker 1: up you realize, oh, okay, the concrete gifts that the
Speaker 1: children got, those were the you know, those were uh
Speaker 1: from adults pretending to be Santa, sort of the priests
Speaker 1: of Santa. The real Santa gives intangible benefits like health
Speaker 1: and wealth and stuff to people, to adults who are good. Okay, Um, well,
Speaker 1: I'll also say December is crazy and nobody has time
Speaker 1: for this. This is this is too elaborate a con Uh,
Speaker 1: it's enough to just do like the normal Santa thing. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean people find room to do
Speaker 1: the regular Santa thing in December and then do prosperity
Speaker 1: gospel the rest of the year. I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess so. And I know, I mean Arson makes some
Speaker 1: good points. Maybe I'm just I'm just against the idea
Speaker 1: of destroying the idea of Santa. So like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's something pure about it. Let it, let it live
Speaker 1: for the short time it can thrive. Well, I'll defend Arson.
Speaker 1: I don't think Arson is suggesting this would be a
Speaker 1: good thing to do. All right, here's another one. This
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Mark. Hey, guys, absolutely love
Speaker 1: your podcast. I'm a couple of weeks behind, and I
Speaker 1: just finished your two episodes on whether Santa qualifies as
Speaker 1: a god or not. A couple of things struck out
Speaker 1: to me, namely the processed food gods. You touched on
Speaker 1: the ridiculousness of the crunch wrap Supreme God as well
Speaker 1: as the flying spaghetti Monster. It occurred to me that
Speaker 1: both of those examples involved processed foods. I eat foods
Speaker 1: that aren't found in nature. I know certain cultures have
Speaker 1: gods that reside over certain foods, like rice gods and
Speaker 1: Asian cultures. I was wondering if in your hours upon
Speaker 1: days upon weeks of research you would come across other
Speaker 1: gods constructed by humans. There are plenty of examples of
Speaker 1: humans made items becoming animate or being possessed by spirits
Speaker 1: in many cultures, but I don't recall ever hearing examples
Speaker 1: of god's being handmade. Best regards, Mark, Yeah, the best
Speaker 1: example I could think of the this fits more into
Speaker 1: the first half of what you're talking about is the Sukamogami,
Speaker 1: the tool gods from the Japanese legends that we talked about.
Speaker 1: So these like tools that were cast out in the
Speaker 1: New Year, um they would become animate but I don't
Speaker 1: think they became You're mark you're sort of making a
Speaker 1: distinction between gods that are, like, you know, powerful creator
Speaker 1: type figures versus just kind of things that are inhabited
Speaker 1: by minor spirits. And I think the Sukamogami were more
Speaker 1: minor spirits. Yeah, like he's talking about, could you have
Speaker 1: a situation where a major deity is a rock or
Speaker 1: something to that effect or it well is is a
Speaker 1: handmade thing? Is something made by humans? Like a major
Speaker 1: deity is uh is a metal detector, or a major
Speaker 1: deity is a sword. My my, my answer would be
Speaker 1: would be two part. First of all, certainly nothing is
Speaker 1: immediately coming to mind, though of course it could be
Speaker 1: missing something. The other thing is that one of the problems,
Speaker 1: or I guess one of the problems you get into
Speaker 1: when you start asking this question about God's in various
Speaker 1: belief systems is that you run into examples where God's
Speaker 1: have multiple forms, right, they have multiple likenesses that ultimately
Speaker 1: some up the uh, the the the larger and in
Speaker 1: human quality of the god. Where so you it's conceivable
Speaker 1: you might have a god that sometimes appears as say
Speaker 1: a trident or as a sword, but inevitably that God
Speaker 1: will also have other forms, if not within the same
Speaker 1: belief system, than at least within the tradition of belief
Speaker 1: in that entity. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: There are tons of God's that can metaphorically or maybe
Speaker 1: even literally take forms of human made objects. Uh, much
Speaker 1: more often if you accept a metaphorical uses. I mean,
Speaker 1: like Jesus says I am the door. He that enters
Speaker 1: me will be saved and will go in and out
Speaker 1: to pasture, you know. But like, um, that's obviously meant
Speaker 1: as like a metaphor. It's just saying like it is
Speaker 1: through me that something will happen. Right, Surely there are myths.
Speaker 1: I didn't find any directly, but surely there are myths
Speaker 1: of gods that have sort of anthropomorphic forms, generally appearing
Speaker 1: in the forms of weapons. That's got to happen. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be interesting to look into that more and
Speaker 1: I look for specific examples of that. All right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take another break, but when we come back, we
Speaker 1: are going to consider some facial recognition emails. Thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, all right. So these messages came in response
Speaker 1: to the facial recognition episodes. We did this first one.
Speaker 1: It comes from Jim in New Jersey. Jim says, Robert
Speaker 1: and Joe, I have several thoughts in your latest facial
Speaker 1: recognition episodes. When I was a teenager, I would develop
Speaker 1: a crush on a girl, but I was also too
Speaker 1: shy and awkward to approach her. I noticed I had
Speaker 1: a very difficult time recalling her face when she was
Speaker 1: not around. I don't recall having this for anyone else.
Speaker 1: I have no idea of the cause. I figured it
Speaker 1: was a mental tick as I struggled to figure out dating.
Speaker 1: That was kind of interesting. I think we talked in
Speaker 1: the episode about the ideas of facial recognition maybe being
Speaker 1: um easier in cases where you engage less emotionally with
Speaker 1: the face. I wonder um, Jim says, advanced forward several decades.
Speaker 1: One day, I was passing a coworker in the hall
Speaker 1: and we stopped to chat. Her face disappeared. It was
Speaker 1: replaced with something kind of shimmery. I looked away and
Speaker 1: noticed it wasn't just her face, it was this. It
Speaker 1: was my center field of vision. I had previously scheduled
Speaker 1: an eye appointment soon after that, and I described it
Speaker 1: to the doctor. She very casually said that I had
Speaker 1: experienced an ocular migraine and that I should worry about it.
Speaker 1: I think maybe Jim means I shouldn't worry about it.
Speaker 1: Um she got them too. I've only had a handful since,
Speaker 1: and they tend to go away in a minute or two.
Speaker 1: Oliver Sacks had them as well and wrote of them. Finally,
Speaker 1: your discussion of law enforcement using facial recognition software produced
Speaker 1: a scene in my mind. I'm sure we've all seen
Speaker 1: in crime drama movies and television. It's the trope of
Speaker 1: the corkboard and the detective room with photos of the
Speaker 1: suspects and lines connecting them. What if facial recognition software
Speaker 1: could produce these Here's my thought. Facial recognition software finds
Speaker 1: the suspects face and photos scraped off the web. There
Speaker 1: will certainly be others faces in some of these photos.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll be able to identify these faces, which
Speaker 1: could lead to other photos with new faces, and more
Speaker 1: photos with more faces. Each photo with multiple faces would
Speaker 1: be a link establishing relationship of those in the photo.
Speaker 1: More shared photos would increase the strength of that relationship. Eventually,
Speaker 1: probably very quickly, a network of closely related individuals would
Speaker 1: emerge the gang, so to speak. We already have clustering
Speaker 1: algorithms that do this. We might even be able to
Speaker 1: identify subclusters and hierarchies within the organization. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if I find this idea really interesting or really frightening.
Speaker 1: Uh Jim in New Jersey, and Jim also says thanks.
Speaker 1: I now have the Friends theme song repeating in my
Speaker 1: head as an earworm. I think that comes from us
Speaker 1: talking about Jennifer Aniston cells Ester, Jennifer Anderson Cellsis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we talked a little bit about about about the
Speaker 1: about sitcoms and the house. Sometimes the characterism sitcoms are
Speaker 1: so familiar that they are like actual friends. Right, here's
Speaker 1: another one when comes to us from Liam Liam Wrights. Hey,
Speaker 1: Joe and Robert. First of all, love the show as
Speaker 1: well as invention I made to jump over from stuff
Speaker 1: you should know just over a year ago and have
Speaker 1: smashed your catalog in that time. Both your intellectual insights
Speaker 1: and tight research really does blow my mind. Just finished
Speaker 1: listening to the three part facial recognition apps. I'm the
Speaker 1: kind of person that usually takes the side of if
Speaker 1: you have nothing to hide, who cares, mainly because trying
Speaker 1: to stop technology seems futile, so just go with the
Speaker 1: flow and try and enjoy the terrifying ride. At the
Speaker 1: start of the first episode, I thought, man, what's the
Speaker 1: big deal? But by the end I was fully aboard
Speaker 1: the bannit until we figured this out, boat. I do
Speaker 1: find it interesting to think that for half a century
Speaker 1: or more we've been waiting and hoping for a personal
Speaker 1: helper robot to clean in our homes and make our dinner.
Speaker 1: But this would require facial recognition to be a thing
Speaker 1: and work flawlessly. Now it looks like we were very
Speaker 1: close to it being a reality. I find it a
Speaker 1: little creepy to imagine to help a robot that could
Speaker 1: recognize me, even with a partially covered face, nefarious government
Speaker 1: taps into your domestic robots to be spies, and the
Speaker 1: home the story rights itself. Anyway, keep it up. I
Speaker 1: recommend your show to anyone standing nearby who says the
Speaker 1: word podcast cheers Liam. So it sounds like we scared you.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we meant to scare you. I
Speaker 1: guess we did mean to give you a fuller picture.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well, I mean, I guess we did intend
Speaker 1: to scare people, at least, I mean I felt a
Speaker 1: little scared after researching it. I mean part of it.
Speaker 1: I think the importance of it is that there is
Speaker 1: a lot in technology that we have that we're anxious about.
Speaker 1: But this is an area where, like our cultural anxiety
Speaker 1: around it, I don't think has generally speaking, has not
Speaker 1: risen to the appropriate level. So, you know, whatever we
Speaker 1: can do to to help you fear the things in
Speaker 1: technology that you should fear more like this, and perhaps
Speaker 1: a little less in other categories that you might have
Speaker 1: been freaking out about, like this is one that we're
Speaker 1: also at a point where some things can be done,
Speaker 1: Some things can uh, some you know, restrictions can be
Speaker 1: put in place. It's not necessarily too late. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is followed through in the next email. This comes from Kenna.
Speaker 1: Kenna said, Hi, Robert and Josh. Oh, thanks Kenneth, thanks
Speaker 1: a lot. It's okay. I understand. Well, you know, she
Speaker 1: maybe she thinks you're Robert and I'm Josh, so it
Speaker 1: could go either way. Hi, Robert and Josh. I just
Speaker 1: listened to all your facial recognition episodes back to back,
Speaker 1: and I think, uh, and I think the people arguing
Speaker 1: for only restricting these sorts of technologies by the end
Speaker 1: user legal agreement covered in episode three are missing a
Speaker 1: very major point tech monopolies and coercive end user agreements,
Speaker 1: wherein you have to agree to the term terms in
Speaker 1: order to access a necessary service. We talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about this, I think, when we talked about like
Speaker 1: using facial recognition for payment, but can it continues? For example,
Speaker 1: one of the earlier episodes mentioned using facial recognition to
Speaker 1: compile medical records of livestock applied to cows. This seems
Speaker 1: like a good idea, but if it were instituted as
Speaker 1: part of your electronic medical records or as your real
Speaker 1: idea for voting, opting in would be a requirement for
Speaker 1: civic participation or access to healthcare. Extrapolate that to public
Speaker 1: school access, receiving government unemployment or disability benefits, or citizenship
Speaker 1: verification for employment, and you can quickly make facial recognition
Speaker 1: not only an insidious tool of surveillance, but an extremely
Speaker 1: insecure one, much like social security numbers are becoming as
Speaker 1: we're required to give them out more and more often
Speaker 1: to verify our identity, our credit, and the like. Love
Speaker 1: the episodes. They really clarified the reasoning behind my instinctive
Speaker 1: dread of this particular form of surveillance. Kenna very good points,
Speaker 1: I think. All right, here's another one. This one comes
Speaker 1: to us from Eli. Hey, they're a big fan of
Speaker 1: the show. I just had to write in because when
Speaker 1: Robert said that dogs don't have faces, I mentally did
Speaker 1: a double take. If that makes sense. I actually lost
Speaker 1: my train of thought. I was listening to the podcast
Speaker 1: at work because I instantly was gripped by the question
Speaker 1: do people not think dogs have faces? And it's just me?
Speaker 1: And then when Joe laughed, it seemed that my world
Speaker 1: was turning right side back up. Not that my experience
Speaker 1: is representative of a larger swath of humanity, but as
Speaker 1: I thought about it, I've never heard of someone who
Speaker 1: doesn't consider dogs, cats, or birds birds to have faces.
Speaker 1: Here shocked and newly shocked, and it just seems like
Speaker 1: a bird has less of a face. Faces anyway, Eli
Speaker 1: continues frequently, both my wife and sister will refer to
Speaker 1: dogs faces as they interpret their emotions or when describing
Speaker 1: how cute they are. So thanks for saying that you
Speaker 1: don't see it that way, Robert, because I had never
Speaker 1: even suppose there was another way to see it. Keep
Speaker 1: up the good work, Eli, you know, I share realized thoughts.
Speaker 1: I know, seriously, I I don't see how you could
Speaker 1: think dogs don't have faces. But I'm glad you don't.
Speaker 1: I think that's very interesting. You have expanded my mind.
Speaker 1: I mean that, Like I said, I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: convince anybody of this um this way of thinking about
Speaker 1: about faces. But if I were to, if there was
Speaker 1: like a you know these kind of like um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, human identity tests that they give you sometimes,
Speaker 1: like there'll be a grid of squares and you have
Speaker 1: to highlight all the squares that have stop signs in them.
Speaker 1: If I were presented with one of those, and you
Speaker 1: had like human faces and some and then you had
Speaker 1: some pictures of like cats and dogs and the others,
Speaker 1: and it says mark all the ones that have faces,
Speaker 1: I guess I would fail that test and they would
Speaker 1: consider me to be some sort of Internet scrying robot.
Speaker 1: But no, that'd be good you You'd be sabotaging the
Speaker 1: machine for our for our benefit in the long run. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I think we should transition to talking about some feedback
Speaker 1: we got on our episode on Band or Snatch, where
Speaker 1: we talked a good bit about free will, whether this
Speaker 1: concept makes any sense, how issues of it are highlighted by,
Speaker 1: you know, the ways that technology may be accommodating our
Speaker 1: preferences without us even knowing it. This first message comes
Speaker 1: to us from Andreas. Andrea says, Hi, guys, on the
Speaker 1: band or Snatch episode, you mentioned the possibility of movie
Speaker 1: content to be specifically tailored to specific audiences, based on,
Speaker 1: for example, their ideological or political profiles, and I think
Speaker 1: you insinuated that this might be a positive experience for
Speaker 1: the user, the underlying reasoning being, of course, that their
Speaker 1: own world view is reinforced. To clarify, I definitely didn't
Speaker 1: mean it would be positive, but I uh. We did
Speaker 1: talk about how companies might assume that this would be
Speaker 1: more palatable to a wider range of users, which I
Speaker 1: think is probably true. That might be different than being
Speaker 1: actually beneficial. Andreas continues to challenge this. I would posit
Speaker 1: the following two options, but with their own worldly consequences.
Speaker 1: A human beings are inherently flawed, and that we instinctively
Speaker 1: seek to reinforce our own beliefs and that technology will
Speaker 1: inevitably drive us towards an increasingly polarized world of ideological bubbles.
Speaker 1: This option would confirm your thesis on the Bandersnatch episode.
Speaker 1: But there's another option. Be human beings are inherently flawed,
Speaker 1: and that we have a longing and desire for stories
Speaker 1: and legends to contain our own ideologies, and very importantly,
Speaker 1: for those ideologies to be disseminated to and adopted by
Speaker 1: more people, not to reinforce our own beliefs, but to
Speaker 1: impose or bring those beliefs on others, perhaps with the
Speaker 1: motivation of growing and strengthening the tribe with which we identify.
Speaker 1: If B is true, assuming that the movie watching audience
Speaker 1: is aware that the content they're watching is specifically tailored
Speaker 1: to them, So again, this would be like you know,
Speaker 1: you watch the movie and it just like there are
Speaker 1: multiple versions of each scene filmed, where you can get
Speaker 1: the version that that the computer thinks is most suitable
Speaker 1: to your personality. Um, and they would arguably not find
Speaker 1: any additional pleasure in watching a story with a worldview
Speaker 1: consistent with their own, since they would know that it
Speaker 1: was only themselves who got to see it, and that
Speaker 1: their world view would not be disseminated to others who
Speaker 1: disagreed with it. As an example, would you rather watch
Speaker 1: a a political commentator on your favorite political TV channel
Speaker 1: stating a point with which you agree, or be watched
Speaker 1: the same political commentator go on a news show that
Speaker 1: typically hosts different political views and make the same statements there.
Speaker 1: In both cases, your world view is reinforced, but the
Speaker 1: second option, it is also disseminated to people who disagree
Speaker 1: with it. Uh and Andreas thinks that people will find
Speaker 1: this much more satisfying. I think that we want to
Speaker 1: see our beliefs reinforced, but only in so far as
Speaker 1: they are communicated to others. Hence, the pleasure someone might
Speaker 1: take in, for example, watching a strongman's speech in a movie,
Speaker 1: does not solely come from the speech matching their belief
Speaker 1: but from them agreeing with it and into more importantly,
Speaker 1: knowing that others will hear this supposedly important speech. I
Speaker 1: wonder what you think. Thanks for the great show, Andreas. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think this makes a sort of good point. But
Speaker 1: I think that these are both true to some extent,
Speaker 1: because hearing statements we strongly already agree with is inherently pleasing.
Speaker 1: For multiple reasons. For example, processing fluency. You know, we've
Speaker 1: talked about this on the show before. We naturally find
Speaker 1: ideas all kinds of stimuli, not just statements about politics,
Speaker 1: but you know, art and stuff like that, more pleasing
Speaker 1: when we're more familiar with it, when it is easily
Speaker 1: processed by the brain, because the brain is lazy and
Speaker 1: it likes things that are easy to take in and
Speaker 1: make sense of. But then also, you know, there are
Speaker 1: other reasons why it might feel good, like creating a
Speaker 1: feeling of social inclusion. Uh. But I agree with Andreas
Speaker 1: that we also like the idea of statements we agree
Speaker 1: with being spread to others in the context of a
Speaker 1: fictional TV show. Um, you know, we're watching it for
Speaker 1: entertainment and relaxation. Usually I can see pure processing fluency
Speaker 1: advantage driving a big slice of the behavioral pie about
Speaker 1: how people would actually express their preferences. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: Andreas brings brings up some good points here. I feel
Speaker 1: a little differently about the uh, you know, the the
Speaker 1: the possibility a versus possibility be because possibility be in
Speaker 1: which you know, your your favorite political commentator or whatever
Speaker 1: goes on a show and shares this idea with others.
Speaker 1: That sounds a lot like to put it in a
Speaker 1: like a film connotation, like a movie going connotation, like
Speaker 1: watching a film that you're into with a hostile audience
Speaker 1: and that does not sound pleasant to me. That sounds
Speaker 1: like something I would wish to avoid at all costs,
Speaker 1: because I don't want I would prefer to enjoy something
Speaker 1: I like with like minded people that will also enjoy
Speaker 1: it and I and I I'm not one of those
Speaker 1: people that it's where I want to then see my
Speaker 1: the things I love like battered into other people like
Speaker 1: I would. I would like to share things that I
Speaker 1: like with other people that might be receptive to them.
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to stand around trying to convince
Speaker 1: somebody that say The Fly is a great movie if
Speaker 1: I know they're just not the type of person who
Speaker 1: likes this film. Well, here's a here's a counterpoint I'll
Speaker 1: give you. I have a very specific memory about a
Speaker 1: film with you know that could be interpreted in a
Speaker 1: political way and a seemingly hostile audience. I remember when
Speaker 1: I was in very conservative East Tennessee going to a
Speaker 1: movie theater and seeing Brokeback Mountain in the theater and
Speaker 1: I remember, specifically at the time, being concerned that there
Speaker 1: would be people who would be in the audience with
Speaker 1: like I don't know, with anti gay points of view,
Speaker 1: reacting in a hostile way to the film in the theater,
Speaker 1: and I remember early in the film there were some
Speaker 1: people around me who, you know, they weren't hostile, but
Speaker 1: they were kind of like snickering, like like the movie
Speaker 1: was funny. And then at the end some of those
Speaker 1: same people were walking out of the movie in tears,
Speaker 1: and that I don't know that that was an interesting
Speaker 1: experience because I felt like the movie um to to
Speaker 1: an audience of people who might not necessarily have been
Speaker 1: very sympathetic to the idea of of a romance between
Speaker 1: two men originally for some reason ended up in the
Speaker 1: theater watching this movie and then we're emotionally moved by it.
Speaker 1: I guess one of the things that they had that
Speaker 1: is most comforting about this scenario is that it comes
Speaker 1: down to the fact that there is there is a
Speaker 1: concrete version of this film. So if if anyone is
Speaker 1: won over by some aspect of it, they are still
Speaker 1: one over by the film Brokeback Mountain or or well
Speaker 1: whatever the you know, the specific film. Example is but
Speaker 1: you if we go into this like full future band
Speaker 1: or snacks scenario, which I just to clarify again, I
Speaker 1: was not bringing that up in the episode because I
Speaker 1: was saying it's good. No, no, like yeah, like the
Speaker 1: bad thing about it would mean that it would mean
Speaker 1: nothing to say that you like a particular film exactly.
Speaker 1: Brokeback Mountain is different for everybody who views it based
Speaker 1: on their own pre existing uh, you know, religious or
Speaker 1: political viewpoint. Then it means absolutely nothing to say you
Speaker 1: like it because everybody will like it because the version
Speaker 1: they are served will be the version that matches their
Speaker 1: expectations and their values exactly. And I think that's a
Speaker 1: very good wrinkle. Yeah, I mean it would. It would
Speaker 1: totally change what it means to say that you that
Speaker 1: you liked a movie or that you liked a TV show.
Speaker 1: It would it would mean more like, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: version of this the machine put together for me because
Speaker 1: it thought I would like it, did indeed trigger my
Speaker 1: pleasure centers. It would not represent a statement that was
Speaker 1: applicable to anybody else's experience. And then how would people
Speaker 1: have hot takes on films anymore? Right? Well, that might
Speaker 1: be good but all right, here's another one. This one
Speaker 1: comes to us from m Cat m cat Rights. As
Speaker 1: you discussed in the Basilist episode, the free will of
Speaker 1: people are hard to predict, and I just wanted to
Speaker 1: put in my input on your band or Snatch episod
Speaker 1: it when I played through the episode of Bandersnatch, and
Speaker 1: I believe m Kat is talking about actually watching the
Speaker 1: episode of Black Mirrors. Yeah, I hated that they pushed
Speaker 1: me to only two choices. Every time a choice came up.
Speaker 1: As I played, I came up on the choice of
Speaker 1: watching one of two characters die on screen. I really
Speaker 1: didn't like it, so I chose a third option. Never prompted,
Speaker 1: I quit watching. I stopped the episode and never watched
Speaker 1: it again. I refused the two choices always put forth.
Speaker 1: I kind of felt heroic, feeling like I saved a
Speaker 1: life doing it. But I feel like you didn't even
Speaker 1: possibly think of this on the episode you recorded on
Speaker 1: the Bandersnatch. Personally, I hate being forced to an A
Speaker 1: or be choice. There's many ways to think about an option,
Speaker 1: but I feel like personally that people don't think outside
Speaker 1: the box. Hopefully someone else also said this to help
Speaker 1: think on the options, but also I love your podcast
Speaker 1: and you help my three year old son fall asleep
Speaker 1: with your calm voices. Plus I get to learn on
Speaker 1: the side. Thanks for your critical thinking skills, and I
Speaker 1: will always be a fan m cat. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: certainly one always has the option of turning it off,
Speaker 1: which which is it's I think it's valuable to h
Speaker 1: to keep that in mind, is that you can always
Speaker 1: just reject the thing that you're you're interacting with. Like
Speaker 1: I actually had this conversation with my son recently because
Speaker 1: we were watching we happen to come come across like
Speaker 1: shortlisted films for Best Animated Short, uh, and we watched
Speaker 1: this one about this um these two stuffed animals that
Speaker 1: live in a sushi restaurant, and it was really sad.
Speaker 1: It was like a sad, little little short and he
Speaker 1: didn't like it. It made him feel sad, and so
Speaker 1: I had to explain to it's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things about about watching shows and you know,
Speaker 1: engaging with art is that if you don't ultimately don't
Speaker 1: like it, it's totally okay to just to not like it,
Speaker 1: to reject it and say I'm not gonna let this
Speaker 1: one you know, really be a part of my mind
Speaker 1: anymore than it has to be. Uh So, I mean
Speaker 1: that's kind of an over explanation of the obvious. But
Speaker 1: if you don't like it, uh yeah, turn it off.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that starthily, but we have to
Speaker 1: we have to. I think sometimes we have to remember that,
Speaker 1: given especially given like how important media is in our culture,
Speaker 1: that it's okay to just opt out of things that uh,
Speaker 1: you know don't make us happy, and we should be
Speaker 1: doing a lot more opting out. Yeah, okay. To address
Speaker 1: one more thing in response to band or Snatch, I
Speaker 1: just have to uh address a Taylor wrote in We're
Speaker 1: not going to read this one in full, but but
Speaker 1: Taylor mentions quote in the episode Joe remarks that interactive
Speaker 1: storytelling in video games was a mostly failed device. I'll
Speaker 1: forgive you, Joe, because I know you aren't a big gamer,
Speaker 1: but this absolutely is not the case. Player driven narratives
Speaker 1: are hugely popular and Triple A and indie video game
Speaker 1: titles alike, and are arguably the most popular method of
Speaker 1: storytelling in video games. Um So, whatever I said here,
Speaker 1: I probably failed to communicate what I meant to communicate,
Speaker 1: which I was trying to refer back to the style
Speaker 1: of interactive movie games that were popular on CD ROM
Speaker 1: and laser disc in the nineties. Do you remember these, Robert, Yeah,
Speaker 1: where it's it's more in keeping with banner snatches, it's
Speaker 1: a movie. Yeah, Like, there were several like high profile
Speaker 1: ones that were like major flops that were widely criticized. Uh.
Speaker 1: When I when I do play modern video games, it's
Speaker 1: absolutely good story driven games that I like, I don't
Speaker 1: mess around with, you know, multiplayer games or whatever that
Speaker 1: stuff is. So yes, I am aware of, uh, like,
Speaker 1: narrative based video games, and we've talked about some on
Speaker 1: the show before, like Soma and things like that. So
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if I was inarticulate about that. I the
Speaker 1: ones I meant had failed had been the CD ROM
Speaker 1: interactive movies, which like, Yeah, basically, I think the point
Speaker 1: you and I were both trying to make is that
Speaker 1: this idea of a cinematic experience, like a purely cinematic
Speaker 1: experience that is also subject to audience choices, has never
Speaker 1: full taken off, and certainly has never rivaled the more
Speaker 1: traditional cinematic experience. Yeah, I think the narrative can work
Speaker 1: in a more consistently active experience like a video game.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one thing that's jarring about something
Speaker 1: like Band or Snatch or any of these interactive movies
Speaker 1: is that you're constantly being sort of jostled back and
Speaker 1: forth between experiencing it in a passive way and then
Speaker 1: suddenly having to engage. And that is just not It's
Speaker 1: not a very smooth experience. It's not it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a very pleasurable experience. It's better to be more in
Speaker 1: the fully active mode consistently, or in the fully passive
Speaker 1: mode consistently. Either want to be a driver or a passenger,
Speaker 1: but you don't want to suddenly have to switch back
Speaker 1: and forth between the two. That's a that's a great metaphor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like what would it be like to be writing where
Speaker 1: you kept having to reach over and take the wheel
Speaker 1: every few miles? All right, let's get to a few
Speaker 1: more listener mails here. We have something that came in
Speaker 1: regarding our our tenth anniversary episode. This is the episode
Speaker 1: where Alison louder Milk, my original co host on the show,
Speaker 1: came back on board and we we all caught up
Speaker 1: about We've got everybody caught up about like what's going
Speaker 1: on with how Stuff Works? And uh the former stuff
Speaker 1: podcast like Stuff to Build your Mind. We talked about
Speaker 1: what How Stuff Works is up to, what Alison is
Speaker 1: up to, and reminist a little bit about the the
Speaker 1: early days of of podcasting and how stuff Works. Now.
Speaker 1: When I pasted these into our document here, I made
Speaker 1: some abridgements in all of them, so these won't be
Speaker 1: read in full, just a few comments from each. This
Speaker 1: first one comes from Jim are frequent correspondent Jim in
Speaker 1: New Jersey. He says, congratulations on ten years. I think
Speaker 1: I've been listening since episode one. I checked my sent
Speaker 1: email and as best I can tell, I've written to
Speaker 1: you seventy seven now seventy eight times, he says. The
Speaker 1: first time he wrote in was two thousand eleven. About
Speaker 1: whether mathematics is an invention or a discovery, he argued
Speaker 1: as kind of both, I think, he argued, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like the rules of chess. You know, like you
Speaker 1: can discover strategies, but you also like invent the rules
Speaker 1: to be with uh, And then Jim says, may you
Speaker 1: have many more years to educate and entertain us. Jim
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. Jim, Yeah, Jim has an ability there
Speaker 1: with the emails that we do not have because we've
Speaker 1: changed owners enough time and we've changed email addresses enough
Speaker 1: time that like I have no I have no access
Speaker 1: to the old emails anymore. Yeah, you can't, can't search
Speaker 1: all the way back, all right? This one comes to
Speaker 1: us from Nathan to Robert Allison, Julie and all the
Speaker 1: hosts who followed after. Thank you for being part of
Speaker 1: my life. Ten years ago, I finished a decade in
Speaker 1: the Army and got my first smartphone, where I found
Speaker 1: a podcast out. The first podcast I listened to was
Speaker 1: Quirks and Quarks, followed in a few weeks with Stuff
Speaker 1: in the Science Lab. Your show became so much more
Speaker 1: than I expected. For the next five years I listened
Speaker 1: and became a legitimately different person. Despite being interested in science.
Speaker 1: I was raised as a Young Earth creationist and had
Speaker 1: lots of barriers to scientific thinking that we're just a
Speaker 1: part of my learning. Your clear explanation of scientific ideas
Speaker 1: and your willingness to revel in not knowing everything was
Speaker 1: one of the most refreshing things I could have at
Speaker 1: that time. And then Nathan goes on to say, so
Speaker 1: some other nice things. But but that's the quick summary there.
Speaker 1: I will say, I think a strength of our show
Speaker 1: is that we revel in not knowing everything. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: um yeah. I think that that is important is to
Speaker 1: ye to realize that there's there's not just knowing and
Speaker 1: not knowing. There is there is the journey between the
Speaker 1: two and and certain the ultimate knowledge, ultimate whatever you know.
Speaker 1: It's like we're all on a on a continuing journey
Speaker 1: of exploration and self betterment. And uh, that's just we
Speaker 1: that the more willing we are to accept that, I think,
Speaker 1: the more peaceful our lives are. Alright. This next message
Speaker 1: comes from Josh. Josh says, Hello, Robert and Joe and
Speaker 1: Christian two. I heard you guys mentioned on the tenth
Speaker 1: anniversary show how much you appreciate it when listeners tell
Speaker 1: you the show changed their lives. I thought you might
Speaker 1: appreciate my story. I'm currently an engineering PhD students studying
Speaker 1: how bacteria interact with engineered nano materials. A large part
Speaker 1: of why I decided to pursue a PhD is because
Speaker 1: of the attitude towards science is a continuous quest for knowledge.
Speaker 1: Shows like Stuff to Blow Your Mind have imparted on me.
Speaker 1: I started listening to podcasts about four years ago, and
Speaker 1: while many shows have been added or cut from my feet,
Speaker 1: I've always kept stuff to blow your mind. Sincerely, Josh,
Speaker 1: oh that that that is that is really sweet to
Speaker 1: hear and and and certainly, yeah, we are super grateful
Speaker 1: of anyone who who hangs with the show or or
Speaker 1: even discovers as a new because there's just so much.
Speaker 1: There's so much out there today. There's so many podcasts.
Speaker 1: Every you know, every expert seems to have a podcast
Speaker 1: these days. Every celebrity has a podcast. There's so many
Speaker 1: wonderful shows and also just a lot of noise as well.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, we feel privileged anytime we listeners
Speaker 1: continue to keep us in their feet, and you know,
Speaker 1: we we don't take that lightly. We realized that that
Speaker 1: is the place that that has that has to be earned, alright.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Anne and writes in
Speaker 1: and says, Hi, Robert and Joe, congratulations on hitting ten
Speaker 1: years of the podcast. I've listened to nearly the entire archive.
Speaker 1: I just need to listen to the first two episodes,
Speaker 1: How Fighting Asteroids Works and Amazing Infestations, which were mentioned
Speaker 1: in today's anniversary special Allison was a great blast from
Speaker 1: the past. Uh. And then she goes on to suggest
Speaker 1: that some day someday we should explore the concept of
Speaker 1: deja rev. Is it deja rev I don't know literally
Speaker 1: translating to already dreamed? Have we ever experienced it? I
Speaker 1: assume she means, um, if we've ever had a dream
Speaker 1: that we feel like we've we've dreamt before. I think
Speaker 1: it's the other way around. I think it's you ever
Speaker 1: have the experience. It's like deja vou. But instead of
Speaker 1: thinking I already did this, you think I dreamed this,
Speaker 1: I've absolutely had that experience. I remember feeling that very
Speaker 1: strongly as a child. I there's one that's stuck out
Speaker 1: in my mind where um, I was in the front
Speaker 1: yard playing with some friends and I was running around
Speaker 1: and I ran into a low lying branch like hit
Speaker 1: me in the eye. And I remember that at the
Speaker 1: time just having this powerful feeling of this just happened
Speaker 1: to me in a dream. I dreamed this entire scene
Speaker 1: with the branch in my eye and and all the
Speaker 1: people here. And I don't think that was true, but
Speaker 1: it was a powerful sensation. I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: experienced that. I think I certainly have situations where I
Speaker 1: certainly experienced deja vu, and I've certainly had dreams that
Speaker 1: I either remember or misremember having had before. But I've
Speaker 1: never I don't think I've ever experienced anything in life
Speaker 1: and and felt like it was a reenactment of something
Speaker 1: that occurred in a dream. I think that's something we
Speaker 1: could definitely come back to. Thank you man anyway, and
Speaker 1: says thank you for reading my email. I think this
Speaker 1: would be a great topic to cover on the show.
Speaker 1: Cheers to ten more years, and all right, it sounds good,
Speaker 1: ten more, put it down for ten more. All these
Speaker 1: people breaking my heart. Seriously, y'all out there are are
Speaker 1: so kind to get in touch with us with these
Speaker 1: words of encouragement, and uh it feels so nice, so
Speaker 1: so thank you, Thank you the listener. Absolutely, and hopefully
Speaker 1: in ten years, when Carney is the sole host of
Speaker 1: the show, Carney will have us back on to to
Speaker 1: reminisce about the old days. Occasionally he'll bring on our
Speaker 1: jarred heads like in Futurama and we can argue with
Speaker 1: the Richard Nixon head. I'm looking forward to les. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll be good. All right, Well, like I said, we
Speaker 1: receive a lot of listener mail and we we we
Speaker 1: we generally read it all. We don't have time to
Speaker 1: respond to it all, and we don't have time to
Speaker 1: share it all here. But just you know, be assured
Speaker 1: that if you send it in, our eyeballs will linger
Speaker 1: over it. Uh. And you know, if you didn't know,
Speaker 1: if you're stuff didn't get read today, maybe we'll fit
Speaker 1: it in next time, because again we've just received so
Speaker 1: much great content in meantime, if you want to check
Speaker 1: out other episodes of stuff to blow your mind, perhaps
Speaker 1: you heard reference to an episode that you haven't listened
Speaker 1: to yet, Well you can go back and find it
Speaker 1: where you can. Where can you find the show. You
Speaker 1: can find the show anywhere you get your podcasts, wherever
Speaker 1: that happens to be. Just help us out by subscribing,
Speaker 1: by rating, and by reviewing. Those are the things you
Speaker 1: can do that help out the show in the long run,
Speaker 1: and certainly right in because we would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. 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 topic for the future, just to
Speaker 1: say hello. You can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio is the iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. Biddy Present point four point Far Far