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Speaker 1: Hey you, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb.
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Speaker 1: All right now, now we got the business out of
Speaker 1: the way. Yeah, let's let's let's start getting into that mailbag.
Speaker 3: All right. Well, maybe I'm gonna kick things off with
Speaker 3: some responses to our series on mud, Rob, do you
Speaker 3: mind if I do this? One? From Lee Go for it, lisays, greetings, Rob, Joe,
Speaker 3: and JJ. Your recent episodes on mud reminded me of
Speaker 3: a couple of things from my childhood growing up in
Speaker 3: rural Virginia. We had mud daubers. Oh yeah, we talked
Speaker 3: about these in the episodes.
Speaker 1: Robbie.
Speaker 3: You revealed the fact that I don't think I knew
Speaker 3: this before, that these are parasitic wasps. The mud daubers
Speaker 3: like they fill up their little mud sarcophag guy with
Speaker 3: with like paralyzed dead spiders for their young defeat.
Speaker 1: On yep, they got to bring the meat back for
Speaker 1: the young.
Speaker 3: Well, Lee says, we often knocked the nests off the
Speaker 3: underside of our porch and the rafters of our shed.
Speaker 3: Several times during the summers, we'd have a couple of
Speaker 3: fresh nests where the mud was still soft and damp.
Speaker 3: They were constructed in courses not unlike a mud version
Speaker 3: of three D printing. Interesting. I remember dismantling these nests
Speaker 3: on occasion and separating out some of the sedated spiders
Speaker 3: that had been imprisoned. While they did not revive, they
Speaker 3: did move around some. I love the way Lee is
Speaker 3: just painting a supervillain origin story flashback. It's like the
Speaker 3: Joker as a child, you know, poking at paralyzed wasps. Anyway, another,
Speaker 3: he's not hurting the spiders here. Yes, I should have
Speaker 3: said spiders.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's just observing, observing what the wasps have wrought.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's curiosity, that's nature. Another mud construction we
Speaker 3: often saw were the chimneys built by crayfish in our yard.
Speaker 3: They were in everyday occurrence during the summer since we
Speaker 3: had a drainage creek in our yard. And then Lee
Speaker 3: attaches a link to an article. I actually got very
Speaker 3: interested in this, so I was looking for articles as well.
Speaker 3: I dug up a post on an Ohio State University
Speaker 3: blog maintained by a professor named Joe Boggs that seems
Speaker 3: to have a lot to do with like gardening and stuff,
Speaker 3: but it is covering the topic of these burrowing crayfish
Speaker 3: chimneys and rob I've attached a couple of pictures in
Speaker 3: the document here for you to look at. So they yeah,
Speaker 3: some people call them chimneys. They kind of look like
Speaker 3: little mud volcano mounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I've definitely seen these before out and about.
Speaker 1: They instantly recognize them. They stand out in the landscape.
Speaker 3: I don't think I would recognized that this was made
Speaker 3: by a crayfish. So, according to bogs you find crayfish
Speaker 3: chimneys like this in kind of surprising locations, like I
Speaker 3: would expect you'd see it on the banks of a stream,
Speaker 3: like right there where the water is. But apparently they
Speaker 3: can pop up in the middle of fields as long
Speaker 3: as those fields are like poorly drained areas with a
Speaker 3: high water table. Boggs writes quote. Burrowing crayfish in Ohio
Speaker 3: belong to one of two genera in the family Cambaridi
Speaker 3: Cambaras and Phalliccambarus. These land lobsters are sometimes referred to
Speaker 3: as terrestrial crayfish, owing to their lack of a direct
Speaker 3: connection to bodies of water. However, just like their aquatic cousins,
Speaker 3: these crayfish use gills to extract oxygen from water. Unlike
Speaker 3: their water soaked cousins, burrowing crayfish spend most of their
Speaker 3: lives on land, so that's curious. They breathe water, but
Speaker 3: they live on land. How does that work? Well, Apparently,
Speaker 3: even though they're not living in the water, they access
Speaker 3: water for the purpose of breathing, of obtaining oxygen by
Speaker 3: digging down to the ground water. And that's why they
Speaker 3: make these burrows in poorly drained areas, places with a
Speaker 3: high water table. So these grayfish make these muddy burrows.
Speaker 3: They dig them out with their claws and pile up
Speaker 3: the mud around the entrances, and they usually leave their
Speaker 3: burrows at night to forage for food. They're omnivorous, so
Speaker 3: the menu includes basically whatever you got plant or animal,
Speaker 3: living or dead. Whatever they can eat. And Boggs describes
Speaker 3: how these chimneys can dry in the sun and become
Speaker 3: very hard and brick like, which proves a big problem
Speaker 3: when you hit one with a lawnmower.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, man, I bet yeah. I've never been in
Speaker 1: a position to do that, but this is fascinating, the
Speaker 1: whole idea about them. They are living on the land
Speaker 1: but having to go down and find water in order
Speaker 1: to breathe. They're basically reverse dolphins.
Speaker 3: That's great, yeah, reverse yeah, reverse marine mammals. Anyway, Lee
Speaker 3: says You're mention of safety films put me in mind
Speaker 3: of the old driver's education films we were shown in
Speaker 3: the classroom. Looking online, I found a couple of websites
Speaker 3: as well as the Internet archive where some of these
Speaker 3: can be found. And then Lee attaches some links along
Speaker 3: with a trigger warning as some of these included pretty
Speaker 3: gruesome crash footage. And then Lee says, I don't know
Speaker 3: when exactly they stopped showing these films, but they were
Speaker 3: alive and well when I was in high school Driver's
Speaker 3: ED in the late seventies. Always look forward to the
Speaker 3: next topic on tap from the Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: mind team, Thank you sincerely, Lee. Well, thanks for the message, Lee,
Speaker 3: I remember some incredibly cheesy videos that we had to
Speaker 3: watch when I was in Driver's Ed. Also, the strange
Speaker 3: thing is I remember like there were more films about
Speaker 3: the dangers of drinking and driving than there were about
Speaker 3: like how to drive a car. And I was just like, okay,
Speaker 3: So like, assuming I'm not planning on drinking and driving anyway,
Speaker 3: I could be getting a lot more out of this class. M.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I don't remember what I watched in
Speaker 1: drivers at I simply watched something, but I haven't seen
Speaker 1: a lot of these, Like basically, the only safety films
Speaker 1: I've seen, aside from of course, Shake Hands with Danger
Speaker 1: and what the aforementioned a forklift driver claus have been
Speaker 1: the ones that have been featured as short sun Mystery
Speaker 1: Science Theater three thousand in the past, and maybe a
Speaker 1: few riff tracks here and there.
Speaker 3: There's one I remember very vividly that is about how
Speaker 3: even if you are old and you think that you
Speaker 3: can handle your liquor because you've been drinking for many years,
Speaker 3: you still are impaired after you drink. So it showed
Speaker 3: a guy like drinking alcohol and then getting on a
Speaker 3: golf cart and then driving the golf cart off the
Speaker 3: golf pathway. Again, I think like most of the people
Speaker 3: in this class were like fifteen.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's some confusing messaging. I shouldn't like. Maybe
Speaker 1: that needs to be in a video aimed at like
Speaker 1: older drivers or golfers. I don't know. All right, here's
Speaker 1: another mud one. This one comes to us from Eric.
Speaker 1: Eric says, Hi, Robin Joe, great episodes on mud and
Speaker 1: mud related stuff. Regarding Arnold, one thing that occurred to
Speaker 1: me years ago was not so much weather the mud
Speaker 1: we're talking about predator. By the way, of course, not
Speaker 1: so much whether the mud would have hidden him from
Speaker 1: the predator, but whether the predator's infrared vision would actually
Speaker 1: work very well to detect warm blooded organisms in a
Speaker 1: sweltering Central American jungle. What kind of temperature resolution does
Speaker 1: the predator's vision have. Can he easily distinguish between the
Speaker 1: ninety five degree ground and the ninety nine degree human?
Speaker 1: I guess he can, because he did, right.
Speaker 3: This is a great question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is one that you know. I didn't
Speaker 1: do a lot of deep, deep research into this, and
Speaker 1: I didn't rewatch the sequence, but one of the ride
Speaker 1: ups that I was looking at was alluding to the
Speaker 1: fact that, Okay, the predator has natural infrared vision, but
Speaker 1: it is not as focused and he had those some
Speaker 1: of those technological filters we see, or about him better
Speaker 1: adapting his already inhuman vision for this specialized terrestrial environment. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly how the math would work out,
Speaker 3: but I very much see Eric's point here. So they
Speaker 3: specify in the movie that the predator comes to the
Speaker 3: Central American jungle, which is going to be very hot
Speaker 3: and very humid, So he's coming to a place with
Speaker 3: high heat and high humidity. And they say that he
Speaker 3: only comes in the hottest years. So that seems kind
Speaker 3: of backwards, right, Wouldn't it be easier for him to
Speaker 3: hunt to going to like the coldest place that humans are.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess he's not really here for an
Speaker 1: easy time, though he's supposed to be. This the Challenge
Speaker 1: super Warrior game Hunter, right. Yeah, so he's drawn to
Speaker 1: places like the jungle daring, you know, some sort of
Speaker 1: a war environment. He's drawn to nineteen ninety No, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven Los Angeles. That was the future of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles as presented in the nineteen ninety film Predator two.
Speaker 3: Predator two, I recall they put like some kind of
Speaker 3: color filter on that film that makes it look like
Speaker 3: it's one hundred and forty eight degrees fahrenheit in Los Angeles. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like the sides of the buildings are vaguely red. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not sure how it actually matched up
Speaker 1: to the summer of ninety seven off hand, but I mean,
Speaker 1: we were living in a pretty hot summer right now,
Speaker 1: So I guess they're just predators out there NonStop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it may be too hot for him, Predator drops into
Speaker 1: Phoenix and it's just like, I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: don't know if I can do this. I quit.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Eric continues related to mud pots and mud volcanoes.
Speaker 1: I thought you might be interested to hear about the
Speaker 1: only known moving mudpot in the world, located in California's
Speaker 1: Imperial Valley, just north of Mexicali. Over the last few years,
Speaker 1: this mud pot has traveled several miles, endangering an important
Speaker 1: highway and a rail line. A possible cause is that
Speaker 1: a hot spring deep underground is located under a large
Speaker 1: rock plate that is slowly shifting due to the frequent
Speaker 1: earthquakes in the area, So the spring is pushing hot
Speaker 1: mud up at an angle that is gradually changing. The
Speaker 1: area is rife with geothermal activity, including several geothermal power
Speaker 1: generators and a burgeoning lithium and rare earth mud extraction industry.
Speaker 3: I think this is referring to the same moving mud
Speaker 3: puddle that we talked about in was it the last
Speaker 3: Listener Mail episode? I'm not sure, but in a recent one,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I mean, I guess it would have to
Speaker 3: be the same one, since there seems to only be
Speaker 3: one moving mud puddle. So this is the nyland in
Speaker 3: Ila and d mud puddle. Again, look that up if
Speaker 3: you haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: And Eric continues once more. Also related to your mention
Speaker 1: of Dracula on the Moon, have you ever encountered the
Speaker 1: webcomic Doctor mc ninja. It's weird and funny enough that
Speaker 1: it might just strike your fancy. There is one issue
Speaker 1: season question Mark, in which Doctor mc ninja battles Dracula,
Speaker 1: who has a base on the moon. Incidentally, would vampires
Speaker 1: be affected by exposure to vacuum? I don't think they
Speaker 1: need to breathe, and thus they wouldn't risk rupturing their lungs,
Speaker 1: and if they are exposed slowly, any gases in their
Speaker 1: bodies would dissipate, so they would not swell up. Also,
Speaker 1: I've never heard the verb to vamp before. Is that
Speaker 1: common parlance whether or not? I love it and I
Speaker 1: am going to use it from now on. Thanks again
Speaker 1: for your great work, Eric.
Speaker 3: Thanks for the message. Eric, I thought vamp was a verb,
Speaker 3: and not just in the musical sense. You know, when
Speaker 3: you bite somebody turn them into a vampire, that's vamping them, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Sure, I don't think I made that up.
Speaker 1: Also, known as dracking. I guess you could track. Yes, yeah, maybe,
Speaker 1: I don't know, just throwing that out there. I'm not
Speaker 1: familiar with doctor mc ninja, but anything with Dracula on
Speaker 1: a moon base sounds good. As for the rule of
Speaker 1: vampires in space, well, a lot of great minds have
Speaker 1: have tackled this topic. But I guess a lot of
Speaker 1: it comes down to exactly what your slice of the
Speaker 1: vampire myth or you know, some sort of speculative biology
Speaker 1: is going to.
Speaker 3: Be very important. Question does Blade need to breathe oxygen?
Speaker 3: I think he does? Doesn't he?
Speaker 1: I believe so. I've never I don't remember ever seeing
Speaker 1: anything that indicated he didn't.
Speaker 3: No day walkers on the moon, but perhaps full undead.
Speaker 1: All right, what sounds like we're already venturing into weird
Speaker 1: house territory here. Do we have any weird House listener
Speaker 1: mail to read?
Speaker 3: Why? Yes, we have several here. Oh, I'm going to
Speaker 3: read this one from Carrie. Carrie says Robin Joe. I've
Speaker 3: gotten a bit behind on my listening, and I've just
Speaker 3: finished the fourth episode on mud. You mentioned science fic
Speaker 3: treatments of mud, but I don't think you mentioned X
Speaker 3: the unknown and I wondered if you were aware of it.
Speaker 3: It's a nineteen fifty six British movie that is all
Speaker 3: about the mud. It's said in rural Scotland, and the
Speaker 3: premise is that a large, deep crack appears suddenly in
Speaker 3: the ground, and soon a huge, sentient, radioactive mass of mud,
Speaker 3: a true mud monster comes and goes in and out
Speaker 3: of the hole. It feeds on radioactive elements and grows
Speaker 3: significantly every time it encounters some. Its nightly forays are
Speaker 3: in search of food, and it causes death and destruction
Speaker 3: along its path. Oh wow, I'm already seeing some parallels
Speaker 3: to the burrowing crayfish here. You know, mound of mud
Speaker 3: comes out of the earth, nocturnal foraging. Yeah, omnivorous carry
Speaker 3: goes on. A scientist has to figure out a way
Speaker 3: to defeat the monster before it can reach a nuclear
Speaker 3: power plant and grow large enough to begin to take
Speaker 3: over the world. I like the movie and feel it's
Speaker 3: weird house cinema material, But even if you don't use it,
Speaker 3: you should check it out out before if you haven't.
Speaker 3: If you haven't seen it, thanks for the great work, Carrie. Well,
Speaker 3: thank you, Carrie. I think you neglected to mention that
Speaker 3: this is a Hammer film.
Speaker 1: Always a good sign.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It was written by Jimmy Sangster, the same guy
Speaker 3: who wrote the original Hammer Dracula in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 3: with Christopher Lee as DrAk and Peter Cushing is Van Helsing.
Speaker 3: Also same guy wrote the nineteen fifty nine Hammer Mummy,
Speaker 3: which starred Christopher Lee as the Mummy and Peter Cushing
Speaker 3: as I don't know, some British guy who is opposed
Speaker 3: by the Mummy, but that one is more notable to
Speaker 3: me as a poster than as a film. The fifty
Speaker 3: nine Mummy has a really great poster where like a
Speaker 3: police officer is shining a flashlight at the Mummy's back
Speaker 3: and it pierces through the Mummy as if it were
Speaker 3: a shadow.
Speaker 1: That's a great poster. I'm not even looking at it
Speaker 1: right now, and I can I remember it clearly in
Speaker 1: my mind.
Speaker 3: It's hanging next to me on the wall right now.
Speaker 3: Speaking of posters, extually unknown, I looked up the poster.
Speaker 3: It has a very unusual looking poster. I don't feel
Speaker 3: like the color scheme makes a lot of sense. It's
Speaker 3: like a red, white and blue color scheme. I just
Speaker 3: that's that's not the palette for a horror poster.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, yeah, I know what you mean. And I think
Speaker 1: this is when like the title doesn't really get give
Speaker 1: me much to go on. It certainly doesn't say anything
Speaker 1: about in mud. There's nothing on the on the poster
Speaker 1: that really calls out to me. I had to look
Speaker 1: this one up. It sounds like it was at some
Speaker 1: point going to be a quarter Mass picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is like a whole, you know, franchise of films
Speaker 1: about Professor Bernard quarter Mass, and I haven't seen most
Speaker 1: of them, and I haven't seen them the TV series,
Speaker 1: but quarter Mass in the Pit from sixty seven is great.
Speaker 1: So at some point it would be interesting to come
Speaker 1: in and watch either a quarter Mass film or one
Speaker 1: of these sort of related films in this genre. Rob.
Speaker 3: I have to note because I think I spent my
Speaker 3: entire life saying quarter but when I zoom in on
Speaker 3: the word, it appears it is quator mass.
Speaker 1: It's quator mass.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, quator Mass. I mean I've said quarter
Speaker 3: Mass probably a million times.
Speaker 1: Yep. I've just been seeing that Invisible are in there
Speaker 1: full time? Okay, quator Mass in the Pit. If you
Speaker 1: will I will get it right if if we do
Speaker 1: one of these films speaking of British franchises and mud monsters.
Speaker 1: I do, and also mention real quick that Susan in
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind discussion module, which you
Speaker 1: can join as well if you just shoot us an
Speaker 1: email we'll send to the information about how to join,
Speaker 1: points out that one of the recent seasons of Doctor Who,
Speaker 1: I think series eleven, had some sort of mud monsters
Speaker 1: running about, So so Doctor Who fans out there, we
Speaker 1: are now aware.
Speaker 3: Doctor Who has a lot of monsters. That would be
Speaker 3: a really rich well if I knew it. But I've
Speaker 3: only seen a very little bit of Doctor Who, so
Speaker 3: I'm mostly ignorant on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Same. I dip into it a little bit every
Speaker 1: now and then when I visit my wife's uncle and aunt,
Speaker 1: who were big Doctor Who fans, and I'll watch a
Speaker 1: little bit of old Doctor Who. Usually there was the
Speaker 1: really old stuff, And I'm really not up on the
Speaker 1: more recent adventures, but.
Speaker 3: It does look like a lot of fun. Maybe maybe
Speaker 3: I'll get in there one day.
Speaker 1: All right, here's another one. This one comes to us
Speaker 1: from Aldrin. Aldrin writes Sen and says, hi, Robert and
Speaker 1: Joe wonderful episode on Pirana Mandir loved it. I can't
Speaker 1: remember if I've ever watched this movie. As a kid,
Speaker 1: we used to watch a lot of Bollywood movies, but
Speaker 1: they were typically love romances with some drama. The horror
Speaker 1: genre was not mainstream at the time, so I probably
Speaker 1: missed this movie. Wanted to say a couple of things
Speaker 1: in general. Number one, like you mentioned, almost all of
Speaker 1: these movies had to have a few musical numbers. Some
Speaker 1: movies even had a very feeble story and only the
Speaker 1: songs were what attracted audiences. Songs were almost never sung
Speaker 1: by the actors, but by actual solo singers. The those
Speaker 1: singers would often have very successful careers as a solo artist,
Speaker 1: singing for numerous movies. We would even have MTV type
Speaker 1: programs with just the musical sequences from the movies. Huh.
Speaker 3: Interesting Now, the next point, Aldrin shares is interesting because
Speaker 3: we were asking for Hindi speakers to weigh in on this.
Speaker 3: In the movie, there was something that in the subtitles
Speaker 3: kept being translated as Satan, but the religious context of
Speaker 3: the movie is Hindu and so and also I thought
Speaker 3: I heard in the in the Hindi audio people saying
Speaker 3: a word that sounded like shaitan or something like that,
Speaker 3: and so we were asking, what is the significance of
Speaker 3: this word in the cultural context, Like it probably wouldn't
Speaker 3: mean exactly the Christian Satan, So like, what is it
Speaker 3: they're talking about.
Speaker 1: Right, And so Aldrin writes about the words chaetan. As
Speaker 1: far as I know, this means devil. I don't think
Speaker 1: it refers to Satan unless they are etymologically derived from
Speaker 1: the same thing. Chaetan is the word often used to
Speaker 1: admonish mischievous children, so its meaning is more towards devil
Speaker 1: than satan. Just wanted to point it out. Love your podcast,
Speaker 1: Keep rocking tears, Aldron.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you very much, Aldrin. Okay, so that makes sense,
Speaker 3: Like if you would admonish unruly children by calling them
Speaker 3: little chatans like they're being little demons, they're being a
Speaker 3: little imps, that would make sense that it means more
Speaker 3: just like a wicked creature, wicked spirit of some kind. Yeah, well,
Speaker 3: thanks again, Aldron. All right, I'm gonna finish us off
Speaker 3: today with this message from Joe also about Pirana Mandir.
Speaker 3: This is from Joe. That's just Jo not Joe, Joe
Speaker 3: says Joe and Robert. In the Weird House episode of
Speaker 3: Piranha Mandir, you mentioned that the characters would say a
Speaker 3: line in Hindi then repeat it in English, and wondered
Speaker 3: if it was a cultural thing. In my experience, it
Speaker 3: is a bilingual slash multi lingual quirk. Malaysians speak anywhere
Speaker 3: from two to six languages, and it is not uncommon
Speaker 3: for us to say something then repeat it in several
Speaker 3: other languages for emphasis or comedic effect. The same appears
Speaker 3: to be true in Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Oh okay,
Speaker 3: that makes sense. Oh but interestingly, Joe then pivots here
Speaker 3: to some responses to our dream Fall series. Oh nice,
Speaker 3: she says. On another note, I learned to lucid dream
Speaker 3: as a teen in order to escape frequent nightmares. However,
Speaker 3: realizing that you're in a dream and actually waking up
Speaker 3: or two vastly different things. I've gotten trapped inside my
Speaker 3: nightmares before, knowing for sure that it was not reality.
Speaker 3: But every time I tried to wake up, I'd sit
Speaker 3: up in my bed and realize I was still asleep
Speaker 3: because of some detail that was out of sorts.
Speaker 1: I e.
Speaker 3: The furniture was wrong. It was the wrong bedroom. I
Speaker 3: was holding something that I don't usually bring to bed,
Speaker 3: et cetera. It usually me a few tries to actually
Speaker 3: wake up, and the sensation was like fighting through mud
Speaker 3: or trying to swim against a strong current of water.
Speaker 3: Although I dreamt less and less as I got older,
Speaker 3: and now I rarely recall my dreams, the ability to
Speaker 3: wake myself up whenever I want has proved handy a
Speaker 3: few times. And then finally, Joe ins with a reference
Speaker 3: to the Butterfly dream poem by juang Zhou and a
Speaker 3: meme about it, which is, I don't know what do
Speaker 3: you call this meme? The guy like releasing a butterfly
Speaker 3: or gesturing toward a butterfly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know exactly what you call it in
Speaker 1: sort of like memology, I guess, But you see this
Speaker 1: one a lot, and.
Speaker 3: We got the labels one is I guess. Sometimes this
Speaker 3: guy's name is pronounced different ways. Sometimes it's Zwangzi. I've
Speaker 3: heard it juang Zhou, So you got Zwangzi or juang Zhou.
Speaker 3: And then a butterfly labeled as a butterfly, And then
Speaker 3: the bottom text is this a man? Joe finishes mud
Speaker 3: love a butterfly dreaming of being Joe. Well, thanks for
Speaker 3: the email, Joe. And you know what, this made me think?
Speaker 3: That the Butterfly Dream is one of those literary objects
Speaker 3: that I am very familiar with in principle, but not
Speaker 3: actually in text. I don't know if I'd ever read
Speaker 3: the original text of it, so I decided to look
Speaker 3: up a translation of the original text. So the Butterfly
Speaker 3: Dream Passage attributed to a traditional Chinese author named Chuangzhou.
Speaker 3: It is from a Chinese text dating back to the
Speaker 3: Warring States period. I think it's usually placed in the
Speaker 3: third century BCE, and the text is usually just referred
Speaker 3: to eponymously by the author's name, so it's known as
Speaker 3: the Xuangzhou or the Zwangzi, and it is a book
Speaker 3: of Taoist wisdom, containing a bunch of anecdotes and parables
Speaker 3: that demonstrate the ideal Taoist way of seeing the world.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to start by reading the translation of
Speaker 3: the Butterfly Passage by Burton Watson, which goes like this,
Speaker 3: Once Juangzhou dreamt he was a butterfly, butterfly flitting and
Speaker 3: fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased.
Speaker 3: He didn't know he was huang Zhou. Suddenly he woke
Speaker 3: up and there he was solid and unmistakable Chuangzhou. But
Speaker 3: he didn't know if he was juang Zhou. Who had
Speaker 3: dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he
Speaker 3: was juang Zhou. Between Juangzhou and a butterfly, there must
Speaker 3: be some distinction. This is called the transformation of things.
Speaker 3: I like that last little line that like gives some terminology.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting idea of sort of like intellectual completeness
Speaker 3: on it. Added by that sentence, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I feel like seen this form in
Speaker 1: Chinese writing before. I'm not sure exactly what to call
Speaker 1: this style, but it is familiar.
Speaker 3: But anyway, while I was looking at the Burton Watson
Speaker 3: translation of various passages in this text, I came across
Speaker 3: another one that I thought was really interesting, And I
Speaker 3: think we may have alluded to part of to a
Speaker 3: story discussed in this passage before. Maybe when we talked
Speaker 3: about the Hundun the in the episodes we did on
Speaker 3: the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, we did talk about this a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's been a wha.
Speaker 3: Well, allow me to read this passage. If you don't mind,
Speaker 3: go for it. Do not be an embody or of fame.
Speaker 3: Do not be a storehouse of schemes. Do not be
Speaker 3: an undertaker of projects. Do not be a proprietor of wisdom.
Speaker 3: Embody to the fullest what has no end, and wander
Speaker 3: where there is no trail. Hold on to all that
Speaker 3: you have received from heaven. But do not think you
Speaker 3: have gotten anything. Be empty. That is all. The perfect
Speaker 3: man uses his mind like a mirror, going after nothing,
Speaker 3: welcoming nothing, responding but not storing. Therefore he can win
Speaker 3: out over things and not hurt himself. And then it
Speaker 3: transitions to a little narrow It says the emperor of
Speaker 3: the South Sea was called Sho, meaning briefor the emperor
Speaker 3: of the North Sea was called Who, meaning sudden, and
Speaker 3: the emperor of the Central region was called Hondun Chaos
Speaker 3: Shoe and Who. From time to time came together for
Speaker 3: a meeting in the territory of Hondun, and Hondun treated
Speaker 3: them very generously. Shoe and Who discussed how they could
Speaker 3: repay his kindness. All men, they said, have seven openings,
Speaker 3: so they can see here, eat and breathe. But Houndun
Speaker 3: alone doesn't have any let's try boring him some every day.
Speaker 1: I should I should jump in here for a second.
Speaker 1: And just if you're not familar with this story, the
Speaker 1: Hondun is often depicted. It's kind of this amorphous, fleshy creature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a quadrupedal creature. So I think it helps to sort
Speaker 1: of picture something like that before we get to the
Speaker 1: actual boring of the thing.
Speaker 3: Then the last line is every day they bored another hole,
Speaker 3: and on the seven, the day Hondun died. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: Houndun is this creature without any without a face, without
Speaker 3: any holes that they bore all the holes in him.
Speaker 3: And so I think it is supposed to be a
Speaker 3: lesson against trying to over engineer your will on the
Speaker 3: way of things, and instead you should sort of like
Speaker 3: let things be according to their nature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I guess you could take this into the
Speaker 1: future and like kind of kind of like transhuman direction
Speaker 1: and be like, if someone comes along and they're like,
Speaker 1: we need more sensory inputs for human beings, well remind
Speaker 1: them of this story in which case, in which case,
Speaker 1: the poor Hundun died because they tried to they thought
Speaker 1: it needed more sensory inputs.
Speaker 3: I think it was in the episode on the Classic
Speaker 3: of the Mountains and Seas that am I getting the
Speaker 3: name of that right? That was the name of that
Speaker 3: text I talked of it. Yeah, the illustration in the
Speaker 3: text we had of the Honduan where it looked kind
Speaker 3: of like a like a cushion with legs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And also, by the way, you see this
Speaker 1: basic creature design pop up in the Marvel of the
Speaker 1: shun Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. I highly recommend that one one
Speaker 1: of my favorite NCU films that has come out.
Speaker 3: I would be tempted by any movie that has a
Speaker 3: hond doing next Predator franchise film Predator versus Hondown.
Speaker 1: Oh, don't throw the Honduan against the against the Predator.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we'll go and close out this episode
Speaker 1: of Listener and Mail, but we'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: everyone out there. Just a reminder that our core episodes
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Speaker 1: Form Artifactor, Monster Fact on Wednesdays, and on Friday. We
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns just talk about a weird
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
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