Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind listener mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And my name is Joe McCormick. And it's Monday, the
Speaker 3: day of tweak that we read back messages from the
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow your Mind mail bag. I almost said
Speaker 3: it was Saturday, It's not. Today is a listener mail.
Speaker 3: If you have never gotten in touch with us before,
Speaker 3: why not give it a try. You can reach us
Speaker 3: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Whatever you want to send is fine. We always appreciate
Speaker 3: feedback to recent episodes or series on the show, especially
Speaker 3: if you have something interesting you would like to add
Speaker 3: to a topic we've talked about, and we have some
Speaker 3: messages of exactly that sort today. Let's see, Rob, Do
Speaker 3: you mind if I kick things off with this message
Speaker 3: from a meal?
Speaker 2: Oh? By all means that is a good one.
Speaker 3: So this is in response to our series on diamond
Speaker 3: specifically the episode about whether diamonds or diamond powder are
Speaker 3: poisonous if ingested. Emial says, Hi, greetings from Emial from
Speaker 3: in Norway, former victim of beaver Shout Now, Rob, does
Speaker 3: this mean that this same listener got in touch before
Speaker 3: to tell us about drinking a beaver based liquor.
Speaker 2: I believe that might be the case. I can do
Speaker 2: a quick search and see, Yes, I can confirm we
Speaker 2: have a We've We've heard from a few different meals
Speaker 2: over the over the the years. Here, I'm sure, but yes,
Speaker 2: this would be the same individual who wrote in about
Speaker 2: beaver shout.
Speaker 3: This is a liquor infused I believe with glands from
Speaker 3: a beaver. Yes, okay, Emil says, regarding your episodes on diamonds,
Speaker 3: I would like to add a thought on the subject
Speaker 3: of their purported dangers to the human intestines. In my
Speaker 3: work as a dentist, I use diamond coated burrs and
Speaker 3: drills for most routine procedures. It's well known that these
Speaker 3: instruments will dull greatly over time due to the abrasive
Speaker 3: diamonds dislodging from the instrument's surface. Of course, we try
Speaker 3: to minimize any swallowing of the contaminated to coolant water spray,
Speaker 3: but it is inevitable that a few of these diamonds
Speaker 3: are inadvertently ingested by the patient. Also worth mentioning is
Speaker 3: that these micro diamonds are specifically designed with sharpness in mind.
Speaker 3: This is probably of no consequence due to the minuscule amounts,
Speaker 3: but I think that this is something that was probably
Speaker 3: considered at some point in the manufacturing process, since medical
Speaker 3: instruments go through some of the most rigorous safety trials
Speaker 3: before entering the market. Fingers crossed, I have not caused
Speaker 3: too many gastrointestinally derived deaths in my career. As always,
Speaker 3: thank you for your fantastic work. Best regards a meal. Well,
Speaker 3: thanks Emil for the message. This is a great point
Speaker 3: about diamond powder and diamond coatings being used in dental equipment.
Speaker 3: In fact, this is something I had read mentioned in
Speaker 3: I think at least one of the sources we talked about,
Speaker 3: but it never came up in the episode. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it does seem diamonds are used for coating on drill
Speaker 3: bits and stuff and also in polishing pastes that could
Speaker 3: end up in people's mouths and be swallowed, and I
Speaker 3: would assume that there's some kind of research to determine
Speaker 3: that they could be used safely in the dentistry context,
Speaker 3: where you know it is likely that patients will end
Speaker 3: up swallowing them, so I did a quick search for
Speaker 3: materials on this subject, and I found a handful of
Speaker 3: industrial chemical safety data sheets put out by companies that
Speaker 3: sell diamond powder products, especially in the dentistry context. There
Speaker 3: is some variation, but most of the hazard indications say
Speaker 3: that diamond powders are considered an abrasive, that they may
Speaker 3: cause irritation to scan or eyes or if inhaled, but
Speaker 3: that they are not considered acutely toxic. One of them
Speaker 3: listed diamond powder as non hazardous to health, but still
Speaker 3: recommended contact contacting a doctor or poison control center immediately
Speaker 3: if swallowed, which seemed contradictory. So I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 3: it's just like out of an abundance of caution. Some
Speaker 3: of these sheets will say that about anything that you swallow.
Speaker 3: But unfortunately, after reading a bunch of these, like industrial
Speaker 3: product safety sheets, the impression I'm left with is the
Speaker 3: same as the impression I had before reading them, which
Speaker 3: is that modern sources, even those with skin in the game,
Speaker 3: on the whole, suggests there's really not much to worry
Speaker 3: about from ingesting diamond powder. But I still don't know
Speaker 3: what the direct evidence is to support the belief that
Speaker 3: they're safe, and you know, I couldn't find anything saying, like,
Speaker 3: you know, here's the study that shows, you know, you
Speaker 3: feed rats diamond powder and they're fine, right, But.
Speaker 2: I guess the future proof things in case some sort
Speaker 2: of a weird pseudoscientific fag comes along. Don't consume diamond
Speaker 2: does just don't do it right like we've been saying,
Speaker 2: there's just let's just let you can avoid this problem entirely.
Speaker 3: It certainly wouldn't consume it on purpose. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, based on everything I've read there, I can't
Speaker 3: detect that there's likely anything to worry about from the
Speaker 3: occasional piece of a dental drill, you know, coming off
Speaker 3: microscopically and you end up swallowing it by accident.
Speaker 2: Exactly all right. We also heard from Steve on this subject.
Speaker 2: Steve writes in and says, Hello, Robert and Joe. In
Speaker 2: your recent series about diamonds, you examined a very old question,
Speaker 2: is diamond poisonous? Though there is no evidence the material
Speaker 2: is chemically toxic, you wisely recommend against ingesting it. I
Speaker 2: know many people who work with all kinds of fiberglass
Speaker 2: filler like bondo, the dust from which can become airborne
Speaker 2: and get stuck in the lungs. It's not good when
Speaker 2: that happens. Even though pure diamond powder is not chemically toxic,
Speaker 2: it is quite sharp and unlikely to disintegrate if one
Speaker 2: were to inhale this product in the process of handling
Speaker 2: it repeatedly, assuming it was not mixed into a paste
Speaker 2: or other medium to prevent inhilation, which of course reminds
Speaker 2: us of stuff we talked about with cracking diamonds using
Speaker 2: some sort of a paste or even goat's blood potentially,
Speaker 2: but he continues. The mechanical damage it would reap upon
Speaker 2: lung tissue is not pleasant to ponder. In all probability,
Speaker 2: inhaled diamond dust would lacerate lung tissue, causing internal bleeding,
Speaker 2: basically diamond silicosis. There is no cure for silicosis, only
Speaker 2: symptom slash pain mitigation measures. I found one study that
Speaker 2: explored the use of diamond dust in conjunction with cobalt,
Speaker 2: which is chemically toxic, and it seems to focus on
Speaker 2: the chemical dangers posed by cobalt. It does not provide
Speaker 2: decisive information on the danger or dangers of having diamond
Speaker 2: dust in one's lungs by itself that said no one
Speaker 2: sho should give should try to give themselves a case
Speaker 2: of diamond lung No buyo. Thank you for your commitment
Speaker 2: to placing contemporary science in a variety of historic, esoteric
Speaker 2: macob context The podcast is wonderful, Steve.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Steve. Yeah, I'd say the same thing. Even
Speaker 3: if diamond powder is not known to be toxic in
Speaker 3: a particular context. Probably you just you know, prima fasse
Speaker 3: does not seem like it would be a good idea
Speaker 3: to breathe a lot of dust airborne diamond particles, especially
Speaker 3: since you just don't want to be breathing a lot
Speaker 3: of you know, tiny pulverized rock particles of any kind
Speaker 3: as far as I'm aware. Okay, On the subject of
Speaker 3: rat kings, Chris got in touch to say good day.
Speaker 3: I wanted to add one more rat king to the collection.
Speaker 3: The Incredible D and D show Dimension twenty has a
Speaker 3: season taking place in New York City, and one of
Speaker 3: the boss enemies was a hive minded rat king living
Speaker 3: in the sewers. Dimension twenty Ratking should have its artwork
Speaker 3: as the first result. Best wishes, Chris. I don't know
Speaker 3: this show, but I did look it up, and I
Speaker 3: like the artwork. It is rats all bunched together in
Speaker 3: the shape of sort of a big dinosaur wearing a crown,
Speaker 3: so it comes up. Search results also produced other strange
Speaker 3: looking things, apparently from the same show, including pizza rat
Speaker 3: and something called sexy Rat.
Speaker 2: Hmm, okay, well, I'm not going to search for that
Speaker 2: third one, but this does look cool. I'm not familiar
Speaker 2: with the show either, but I'll have to ask some
Speaker 2: of my fellow Dungeons and Dragons players and my Dungeons
Speaker 2: and Dragons group, because I think a few of them
Speaker 2: follow some of these shows and I hear great things
Speaker 2: about them. All right, This next one comes to us
Speaker 2: from Megan. This is a response to one of our
Speaker 2: October episodes about shadows. Megan writes, Hey, guys, I'm a
Speaker 2: few months behind in the podcast and recently listened to
Speaker 2: your Where the Shadows Lie episodes. I wanted to drop
Speaker 2: you a note about the children's fantasy book series Seventh
Speaker 2: Tower by Garth Nix that prominently features some magical shadows.
Speaker 2: The premise is that the only known population of humanity
Speaker 2: lives in a vast castle under a permanently darkened Sky,
Speaker 2: and the Chosen. Among them are magic users that are
Speaker 2: ranked by the colors of the rainbow. When they're of age,
Speaker 2: the Chosen travel to a parallel world of strange and
Speaker 2: dangerous creatures, and each captures a creature that replaces their
Speaker 2: natural shadow. Back in their home world, these spirit shadows
Speaker 2: become magical servants made of a sort of solid, mutable
Speaker 2: shadow substance that can protect or attack humans and other
Speaker 2: spirit shadows. Later in the series, we meet another population
Speaker 2: of humans who scorn and fear those who have changed shadows.
Speaker 2: The story reminds me of your discussion of mythical wizards
Speaker 2: who are said to lose their natural shadows to the
Speaker 2: devil in exchange for great powers, and who could be
Speaker 2: identified by the uncanniness of their shadows. Anyway, my son
Speaker 2: and I are finding this series a great read, and
Speaker 2: I won't go into more details that spoil the mystery
Speaker 2: of the plot. Thanks for all you do, Megan. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't think I am familiar with this particular author
Speaker 2: and work, but I'm gonna have to look into this
Speaker 2: one because my son consumes a lot of books of
Speaker 2: this nature and this one looks like it could be
Speaker 2: It could be really fun.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think we should do a couple of messages
Speaker 3: about Weird House cinema. I'm gonna start with this message
Speaker 3: from Lee, who has written in a bunch of times before.
Speaker 3: Li says, Hello, Rob, Joe, and JJ, just listen to
Speaker 3: the Apple Weird House episode. I waited until after watching.
Speaker 3: All I can say is wow, definitely weird anyway, wanted
Speaker 3: to know your thoughts regarding the BIM acronym.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: We talked about this a lot in the episode. How
Speaker 3: the movie just starts assaulting you with the term BIM.
Speaker 3: The very first song is all about the subject of BIM.
Speaker 3: How BIM is on the way and maybe it's the
Speaker 3: only way, but there's no previous explanation for what BIM is.
Speaker 3: Lee is giving the answer here. Lee says it is
Speaker 3: an acronym for Boogalow International Music. The head of this
Speaker 3: company is named mister Boogalow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this one was. This was hard for me
Speaker 2: to reflect on because having seen the movie before, I
Speaker 2: don't remember how my what kind of confusion I had initially,
Speaker 2: But at some point I picked up on this and
Speaker 2: went into rewatching it knowing this already. But to your point,
Speaker 2: like they don't really do anything to establish.
Speaker 3: This, no, and certainly not in I think they do
Speaker 3: maybe say it later in the movie, but like, I
Speaker 3: didn't realize what BIM meant until I went to the
Speaker 3: Wikipedia page for the movie and it specified that BIM
Speaker 3: was the acronym. Lee's message goes on, while it's pretty
Speaker 3: easy to get from viewing the film from and center
Speaker 3: on the building exterior prior to the atrium scenes, if
Speaker 3: you happened to not view the film, maybe not Google
Speaker 3: O music was referenced late in the episode, but otherwise
Speaker 3: no mention of it. Just curious if this was an
Speaker 3: oversight or intentional omission. Hmly, I don't quite know how
Speaker 3: to answer that, but I think, as we discussed a
Speaker 3: bit in the episode, I did want to help the
Speaker 3: listener occupy that state of confusion that I felt while
Speaker 3: watching the movie and not knowing what BIM meant, which
Speaker 3: I was a pleasing state of confusion to be in,
Speaker 3: you know, like it kind of took the magic away
Speaker 3: when I saw what it stood for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's one of the great things about
Speaker 2: so many of these films, is like when there is
Speaker 2: accidental mystery in the film, it creates room for the
Speaker 2: imagination to fill in the blanks, and I often enjoy that.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Another thing that happens in The Apple is that later
Speaker 3: in the film we get a couple of totally out
Speaker 3: of nowhere characters, both played by the actor Joss Ackland.
Speaker 3: In one sense, he plays a sort of wizard like
Speaker 3: hippie cult leader. I don't know about cold. He he's
Speaker 3: the hippie, the leader of the hippie group, the Hippies
Speaker 3: who live in the cave underneath the bridge. And then
Speaker 3: he also plays God who shows up at the end
Speaker 3: to to rescue everyone aka mister Big Mister Tops. Mister Tops, right,
Speaker 3: not mister big Mister, not bird Eye Gordons.
Speaker 2: So we just recorded our episode, our our latest weird
Speaker 2: House episode. So I've got I've got bird Eye Gordon
Speaker 2: on the brain.
Speaker 3: Sorry, okay, anyway, with this in mind, Lee's message goes
Speaker 3: on also throwing back many episodes. Would Joss Ackland be
Speaker 3: a candidate for Tom Bombadill.
Speaker 2: Absolutely he would have. He would have made a good
Speaker 2: Tom Bombadill, now that you.
Speaker 4: Mention it, a wonderful suggestion. Yeah, great singing voice, so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I can just hear it in his voice now Hey,
Speaker 4: don't Mary doll. Let's see you know he's blue as
Speaker 4: jacket is and his boots are yellow. He's a he's
Speaker 4: a merry fellow, some kind of verse about Fatty Lumpkin
Speaker 4: the pony. Yeah, this is a great suggestion. Lee Lee says,
Speaker 4: Ackland was cast as perone in a vita, So he's
Speaker 4: a baritone.
Speaker 3: Just a thought. Love the podcast in the weekly Weird
Speaker 3: House dos sincerely, Lee, Thank you Lee, excellent piece of
Speaker 3: listener mail.
Speaker 2: All right, This next one comes to us from another Rob.
Speaker 2: Rob says, Hi, Robert and Joe. While listening to this
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema episode, I could not stop thinking about
Speaker 2: Devo and the energy dome. Hats is bim a stand
Speaker 2: in for whip it? Perhaps the apple is a cautionary
Speaker 2: tale to Mark Mothersbaugh and the rest of Devo about
Speaker 2: the risk of making a deal with Satan. For me,
Speaker 2: this added another layer of craziness to what was already
Speaker 2: a pretty wild movie. Have a great day, guys, Rob.
Speaker 3: Now, I like the frequency Rob is on here, but
Speaker 3: I'm not quite quite sure. I understand you know more
Speaker 3: about Devo than I do. I think, Rob, can you
Speaker 3: decode for me?
Speaker 2: Well? I mean I'm not a you know, a super
Speaker 2: Devo fan. I appreciate Devo. I did own an Energy
Speaker 2: Don't hat for a spell, but an official one, mind you.
Speaker 2: But I mean yeah, I mean Devo's energy is weird
Speaker 2: and wonderful, and you know it's not unrelated to the Apple.
Speaker 2: You know, those energy don't hats would have fit well
Speaker 2: in the costuming that we see in the Apple.
Speaker 3: I agree. You can just imagine people in mister Bougalow's apartment,
Speaker 3: like the hanging out with the lawyers and stuff, wearing
Speaker 3: those hats.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I will say real quick, I don't think we've
Speaker 2: watched a film that was scored by Mark mothersbaw on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. But he is frequently someone whose work
Speaker 2: I admire in more recent contemporary films because he works
Speaker 2: a lot, and he can contributes compositions to all sorts
Speaker 2: of TV and film product projects and on more than
Speaker 2: one o K and I've been like, oh, this is
Speaker 2: this sounds pretty good? Who did this? And then I'll
Speaker 2: pull out my phone go to IMDb and of course
Speaker 2: it's Mark mark Motherspot, so not surprising at all he did.
Speaker 3: I'm just looking at his filmography on his wiki apparently
Speaker 3: he did the theme to the nineteen ninety one Super
Speaker 3: Mario World TV show.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean they're not all winners in this filmography.
Speaker 2: He works a lot. But like one that comes up
Speaker 2: is Thor Ragnarok, and I remember that was one specifically.
Speaker 2: I was watching thora Ragnall Rock, which I greatly enjoyed
Speaker 2: about halfway through rewatching it with my son right now,
Speaker 2: he had not seen it before. Great all around, but yeah,
Speaker 2: there are moments in that where initially I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this music's pretty great, and I've got to look up
Speaker 2: who's behind it, and yeah, it's Mark.
Speaker 3: Ooh though I just saw he apparently did music for
Speaker 3: I forgot this existed. The like year roughly year two
Speaker 3: thousand live action Rocky and Bullwinkle movies starring Renee Russo
Speaker 3: as Natasha and Jason Alexander is Boris. Looks like it
Speaker 3: also had Robert de Niro and Randy Quaid.
Speaker 2: All Right, I had kind of forgotten that this existed.
Speaker 2: I might have dismissed it as a dream, But now I.
Speaker 3: Know Ebert gave it three out of four stars.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, maybe there's something there. All right. Well,
Speaker 2: on that note, we're gonna go ahead and call this episode,
Speaker 2: but we'd love to hear from you if you have
Speaker 2: thoughts on past president and future episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind or Weird House Cinema or anything and
Speaker 2: the Stuff to Blow Your Mind feed right in. We'd
Speaker 2: love to hear from you. If you have general feedback,
Speaker 2: you know what sort of episode you'd like to hear,
Speaker 2: If you have feedbacks on anything from like advertising to
Speaker 2: I don't know what this is the best way to
Speaker 2: get in touch with us is to email us with
Speaker 2: your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, your criticism, whatever happens
Speaker 2: to me. We're happy to hear from you. Just a
Speaker 2: reminder that listener mail Arizon Mondays Core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, short Form on Wednesday and on Fridays. We
Speaker 2: said us I most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge things. As always, you are excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind dot com.
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