Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: Listener mail. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And it's Monday, of the day of each week that
Speaker 1: we read back some messages from the mail bag. Rob
Speaker 1: do you want to kick us off today with this
Speaker 1: message about your Monster Fact episode on the Killer Rabbit
Speaker 1: from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Daniel. Daniel rides High.
Speaker 1: This is Daniel. I've spoken to you before about burning
Speaker 1: mountains in your Underground Fire episode. I loved your look
Speaker 1: at the Killer Rabbit of Carbana. You said something about
Speaker 1: some herbivores eating meat in some rare instances. When I
Speaker 1: was young, we had pet rabbits in a large enclosure
Speaker 1: along with some parrots that lived in the upper part,
Speaker 1: sort of a mix between an aviary and a hunch.
Speaker 1: One morning I found that one of the parrots had
Speaker 1: died during the night and fallen on the floor. The
Speaker 1: rabbits were eating it. I thought it was really weird
Speaker 1: at the time, but I've since seen other herbivores sometimes
Speaker 1: do the same. Anyway, thank you for your show. As
Speaker 1: a radio presenter and producer here in Australia, I know
Speaker 1: how much work it is. Cheers Daniel. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: thanks Daniel. But second of all, I am a little
Speaker 1: suspicious of this story because of the Monty python dead
Speaker 1: parrot connection. That's too much of a coincidence to be real.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, that's the thing. The more
Speaker 1: you look at reality, you more you realize that that
Speaker 1: Monty python is not that far removed from reality. But
Speaker 1: the point is it's good eating what we we We
Speaker 1: appreciate the story here, Daniel. Yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: the topic of us that we've discussed in other episodes
Speaker 1: of the show before, not just in this one Monster
Speaker 1: Fact episode. Cases where animals that are you generally might
Speaker 1: might not think about eating meat, will in some cases
Speaker 1: if if conditions are right, we'll definitely chat out on
Speaker 1: some meat. Yeah. I think a lot of animals that
Speaker 1: are considered her befores might be better thought of as
Speaker 1: animals that are not specialized at, not biologically specialized at
Speaker 1: eating meat. But a lot of them can eat meat
Speaker 1: and do sometimes. Um. One of the times I remember
Speaker 1: this coming up was in our episode about the Minotaur
Speaker 1: where we discussed meat eating cows were like cows, they
Speaker 1: would eat chickens and and other things. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: yeah that the mythological examples are pretty rich there too,
Speaker 1: uh Man eating horses and Greek tradition, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of great stuff out there. Oh yeah, I think
Speaker 1: Heracles had around some of those up right. Alright. We
Speaker 1: got a bunch of messages in response to our series Unwhistling.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this first one from Kenna, who says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe, I recently listened to your Whistling four
Speaker 1: parter and have a new appreciation for some of the
Speaker 1: context behind a show. I recently watched a Chinese drama
Speaker 1: called The un Tamed or chin Ching Ling. In it,
Speaker 1: the main character, a necromancer named way Wu Shan uses
Speaker 1: whistling or his flute to call up various ghosts, fierce corpses,
Speaker 1: or other spirits of Chinese fantasy. Other characters use what
Speaker 1: appear to be more mainstream abilities for shan cha show,
Speaker 1: but the fact that you mentioned whistling is a Taoist
Speaker 1: practice made some of the cultural background click into place
Speaker 1: for me. Secondly, you asked for personal experience with whistling,
Speaker 1: and my family is in the habit of using quote,
Speaker 1: the pony whistle, a truly piercing sound that I can
Speaker 1: only transcribe as I do. How am I supposed to
Speaker 1: read this? Okay, it's like fwu eu EO. That reasonably
Speaker 1: faithful to what I'm looking at here? I guess though, Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean, is it's supposed to be actually whistled? Right? If?
Speaker 1: If it is supposed to be whistled, Okay, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna skip to the next cent. It's I've never met
Speaker 1: someone else who has a family whistle, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: we can't be the only ones. Oh, Kenna, you are not.
Speaker 1: We heard from at least one other person here, so
Speaker 1: so that's coming up. But Kenn, it goes on. My grandfather,
Speaker 1: who seems to be the origin of the whistle, could
Speaker 1: be heard halfway across the county fair or a quarter
Speaker 1: of a mile away at the nearby creek if he
Speaker 1: wanted to summon his pack of roving grandchildren. It's also
Speaker 1: a good method for tracking down parents uh seeking shade
Speaker 1: in a crowded theme park, or to double check that
Speaker 1: everyone in your hiking party is nearby. In generations past,
Speaker 1: this sound was apparently used to call in livestock or
Speaker 1: my mother's semi feral ponies. Now it's used to summon
Speaker 1: dogs and children, but only by the older generations of
Speaker 1: the family. A good number of my cousins never seemed
Speaker 1: to have learned how to whistle. Keep up the great work, Kenna.
Speaker 1: Well that's really interesting. Yeah, yeah, I mean I never
Speaker 1: had a family whistle. I don't have a family whistle now,
Speaker 1: and the family wasn't a whistling family now. I'm not
Speaker 1: familiar with this Chinese drama that Kenna mentions here, but
Speaker 1: I pulled it up briefly on IMDb and it looks
Speaker 1: interesting and I may have to check it out. I'm
Speaker 1: always looking for a good TV series to view, but
Speaker 1: it does remind me. After we finished the fourth episode
Speaker 1: of the whistling series I was watching, watched a couple
Speaker 1: of things on Hulu, both of which ended up involving whistling.
Speaker 1: I watched the new Predator movie Prey, which which is
Speaker 1: a lot of fun and has I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember, but there's some whistling at the very end.
Speaker 1: I don't what I love to pray, I don't recall
Speaker 1: the whistling, What was it? Unless unless this is a
Speaker 1: memory that I created, I believe our main character uses
Speaker 1: a whistle at one point to distract the Predator or
Speaker 1: uses it as a war cry. Um remember the exact context,
Speaker 1: but it's late in the film, sort of in the
Speaker 1: showdown portion. Yeah, okay, Well again, I don't specifically recall that,
Speaker 1: but it seems like it seems plausible it could have
Speaker 1: been there. But it's also definitely used on the Another
Speaker 1: series that's airing on Who's an FX series titled Reservation Dogs,
Speaker 1: which is a great comedy in traumas. It manages a
Speaker 1: nice balance of the serious and the and the comedic.
Speaker 1: But there's some there are some references to uh, inappropriate
Speaker 1: whistling that might summon spirits, which of course is in
Speaker 1: line with multiple folk traditions that we've discussed in those episodes.
Speaker 1: Well that's a great tie. And I haven't seen that show,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, the New Predator, I can definitely vouch
Speaker 1: for it. Uh. I never would have expected a deep
Speaker 1: Predator sequel to not only be great, just like a
Speaker 1: great action movie like the first one, but to genuinely
Speaker 1: give me feelings. There's all kinds of like Friendship Feelings,
Speaker 1: Dog Feelings. It's great. Yeah, I thought they really knocked
Speaker 1: it out of the park with that one. It's a
Speaker 1: It's a film that I think I've I've enjoyed all
Speaker 1: the Predator movies that I've seen. I have not seen
Speaker 1: the second a VP movie, but I've seen all the
Speaker 1: rest and uh, and I enjoyed all of them. And
Speaker 1: so I went into this one expecting, Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have a Predator movie set in in an historic time period. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can go go for that. Uh, it might not
Speaker 1: be good, but at least it will be entertaining. But
Speaker 1: it it went beyond that. For me. I thought it
Speaker 1: was just a great film, one of, if not the
Speaker 1: best Predator movies we've had. Oh, totally. And there's a
Speaker 1: bear in it. I keep watching movies with bears in them.
Speaker 1: It should should probably just double down and just seek
Speaker 1: out bear themed films at this point. What's that mutant
Speaker 1: bear movie you keep bringing up? Oh? That's uh what prophecy? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: is that like an evil bear created by by unholy
Speaker 1: science or something? Um? It is it's I think it's
Speaker 1: an environmental threat movie. I think it's like some sort
Speaker 1: of a pollution angle. I actually fired it up not
Speaker 1: too long ago because I was like, yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to I wanna watch a mutant bear movie with Robert
Speaker 1: Foxworth in it. Uh, but I don't know. It starts
Speaker 1: off a little it's it's almost seemed like maybe it
Speaker 1: was a little too good, a little too serious. And
Speaker 1: I think it also opens with like multiple dog deaths.
Speaker 1: I mean I think they're killed by a mutant bear,
Speaker 1: So like, that's okay. It's if it's not people killing
Speaker 1: the dogs, if it's like a monster bear killing the dogs,
Speaker 1: it's all right, what are you asking me? I'm not
Speaker 1: the boss of people's dog death reactions. I mean, I
Speaker 1: admit I don't love them, but yeah, I think some
Speaker 1: of them also died from a great fall. So it's
Speaker 1: a little mixed exactly what's going on. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: It was enough to where I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is this film is going to be
Speaker 1: as fun as I thought it was gonna be. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'll come back and look at this in another time. Okay, Hey,
Speaker 1: next message about whistling is from David, and this ties
Speaker 1: into something can ask about here about family whistles. David says, Hey,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe, this is Dave. I was listening to
Speaker 1: your series about whistling, and your discussion of whistling languages
Speaker 1: reminded me of a girl I dated in high school.
Speaker 1: Her mother would whistle the name eames of her Rebecca
Speaker 1: and her sister Emily because the stress pattern on their
Speaker 1: names was so distinctive. Apparently this started when they were
Speaker 1: little and their mother couldn't speak because she was fighting
Speaker 1: throat cancer. She recovered, but the habit stuck. That's wow,
Speaker 1: that's amazing, um. Dave goes on, when you were discussing
Speaker 1: the advantages of tonal languages for whistling, this twenty five
Speaker 1: year old memory suddenly came to me. I could see
Speaker 1: how an initial quirk like this could lead to a
Speaker 1: full fledged language. Anyway, I've been enjoying the show for years.
Speaker 1: Keep up the good work, Dave. Al Right, here's another one.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Jason. Jason writes in
Speaker 1: and says, in my state and most states in India,
Speaker 1: bus conductors used whistles to signal to the driver to
Speaker 1: stop or move the bus. A single whistle means stop,
Speaker 1: and a double whistle means to move simple yet makes
Speaker 1: it easy for the conductor to communicate with the driver
Speaker 1: even in a heavy, we crowded, noisy bus. Maybe this
Speaker 1: is in use in other countries as well. Continue the
Speaker 1: great work. Oh yeah, that's the cutting through the mixed
Speaker 1: property of whistling that we talked about. Okay, next message.
Speaker 1: We got a response to Weird House Cinema that has
Speaker 1: some really excellent monster science uh going on. So this
Speaker 1: is from Eric, subject line Plan nine Solar night Bomb.
Speaker 1: You remember in Plan nine from outer space. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons that the Aliens think that we're so stupid,
Speaker 1: stupid stupid Earth minds is that we're about to create
Speaker 1: this horrible weapon called the Solar night Bomb, and it's
Speaker 1: just going to ruin everything. Uh. And then of course
Speaker 1: the main human hero is like, Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: should make this bomb that will destroy the universe. It
Speaker 1: would make us stronger as a nation. So onto Eric's message.
Speaker 1: Greetings gentlemen. I loved the episode of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: I watched this film several years ago, but I pretty
Speaker 1: much couldn't pay attention, so I only have some vague
Speaker 1: impressions of Bella Legosy wandering around and cheap graveyard and
Speaker 1: flying saucer sets. You asked a question about the quote
Speaker 1: physics unquote of the solar night bomb, specifically what the
Speaker 1: effective range would be, because remember there's the scene where
Speaker 1: the alien is saying, oh, yeah, so the bomb will
Speaker 1: travel along the rays of sunlight and it will explode
Speaker 1: every particle of sunlight and everything that the sunlight touches.
Speaker 1: And then we're like, well, I mean, you know, rays
Speaker 1: of photons just sort of like go on forever. So
Speaker 1: that would destroy an awful lot. But so, yeah, how
Speaker 1: would that work? Eric says, it really depends on the
Speaker 1: mechanism of the bomb. My first question is what kind
Speaker 1: of particle is exploding? The script I found was a
Speaker 1: bit vague. First Arrow says that quote the rays of
Speaker 1: sunlight are minute particles, and later he says, quote a
Speaker 1: ray of sunlight is made up of many atoms. The
Speaker 1: sun emits a few different kinds of particles. There are
Speaker 1: photons of a ray age of spectra from radio to gamma.
Speaker 1: There's the solar wind, which consists of electrons, protons, alpha particles,
Speaker 1: which are ionized helium nuclei, and trace numbers of other
Speaker 1: ionized atomic nuclei and there are also huge numbers of neutrinos.
Speaker 1: If the solar night bomb causes photons to explode, what
Speaker 1: exactly is the product of the explosion. Photons are essentially
Speaker 1: the fundamental form of energy, so there is no way
Speaker 1: to convert them into more energy. Pretty much all forms
Speaker 1: of explosions give off light to some degree or other,
Speaker 1: and nuclear and thermonuclear explosions give off mostly light, typically
Speaker 1: gamma radiation. Neutrinos would not make sense even though they're
Speaker 1: extremely non interactive. Nature means that there are literally trillions
Speaker 1: of them passing through your body every second. They are
Speaker 1: so ridiculously tiny that even if you converted all of
Speaker 1: the ones passing through your body in a second, it
Speaker 1: would only generate about nineteen nano jewels of energy. If
Speaker 1: you took all of the neutrinos that passed through the
Speaker 1: whole planet and converted them into energy, you would get
Speaker 1: about five hundred kilo jewels, which is about enough to
Speaker 1: power a couple of incandescent light bulbs for an hour.
Speaker 1: It makes more sense if the bomb causes the particles
Speaker 1: of the solar wind to explode. Perhaps it's some form
Speaker 1: of matter to energy conversion that causes all free electrons
Speaker 1: and or ionized particles in a particular area to convert
Speaker 1: partially or completely into energy gamma radiation. The Sun gives
Speaker 1: off about one point five million metric tons of solar
Speaker 1: wind per second, which is equivalent to about one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five million extra jewels of energy or about
Speaker 1: thirty million giga tons of TNT. That assumes that the
Speaker 1: solar night bomb is exploding a sphere around the Sun
Speaker 1: of approximately one light second in radius. It might be
Speaker 1: a smaller radius. I can't speculate on what the effect
Speaker 1: of such an explosion would do, but even a much
Speaker 1: smaller radius would be at least a couple of orders
Speaker 1: of magnitude greater than the world's nuclear arsenal. So I'm
Speaker 1: thinking earth roasting lee powerful. I think you were speculating
Speaker 1: that perhaps the weapon quote charges solar photons to explode
Speaker 1: on contact somehow, Assuming the energy is coming from something
Speaker 1: other than the photons, such as the atom or particle
Speaker 1: it hits, this would be a pretty powerful weapon. The
Speaker 1: Sun gives off roughly ten to the forty four photons
Speaker 1: per second, even if you assume that those photons only
Speaker 1: hit and detonate hydrogen atoms. That's still about a hundred
Speaker 1: quadrillion exa jules or thirty quadrillion gigatons. It would annihilate
Speaker 1: the Solar system, cook most of our section of the galaxy,
Speaker 1: and probably cause cancer to any hypothetical aliens as far
Speaker 1: away as the Magellanic clouds. It would be way worse
Speaker 1: than the supernova. The effects would extend out too much
Speaker 1: of the observable universe, basically anywhere that light from the
Speaker 1: Sun can reach before it crosses the cosmic event horizon,
Speaker 1: the point at which distant objects become unobservable because they
Speaker 1: are traveling away too fast. Yeah, that's what I was
Speaker 1: thinking about when I was saying there would be some
Speaker 1: objects that, because of the expansion rate of the universe,
Speaker 1: are now sort of out of reach of the solar
Speaker 1: night bomb. But Eric goes on, although at anything more
Speaker 1: than a few hundred thousand light years, the number of
Speaker 1: charged photon impacts would be so few that it would
Speaker 1: not be distinguishable from ambient radiation. Sorry for the massive
Speaker 1: nerd doubt. I hope it's not too tedious. No, Eric,
Speaker 1: this is great. Um Uh. This was the very first
Speaker 1: weird house movie that I'd actually seen. But I absolutely
Speaker 1: love hearing your takes on these wacky and weird films,
Speaker 1: even when I haven't seen them. All the best to
Speaker 1: you and keep up the good work. Ps. I also
Speaker 1: wanted to mention, in reference to the Whistling episodes, the
Speaker 1: thing brought most to my mind was the kill Bill movies.
Speaker 1: Whistling has used a few different times either to convey
Speaker 1: menace or at least tension, which is very distinct from
Speaker 1: the more traditional understanding of whistling as indicating lightheartedness. Good episodes.
Speaker 1: Thanks for filling in all the empty nooks and crannies
Speaker 1: in my brain. Eric, Oh this is great. Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: I love of I love a good uh uh like
Speaker 1: like you said, a monster science kind of a journey here,
Speaker 1: And really it shows one of the great things about
Speaker 1: a film like Plan nine from Outer Space is that
Speaker 1: it has the audacity to present a concept like this,
Speaker 1: and and then and then we have to think about it,
Speaker 1: and we have to think, well, how would that even
Speaker 1: begin to work? And and there's there's so much room
Speaker 1: for contemplation, like a a better slash lesser film would
Speaker 1: have just gone with something a bit more established in trope,
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh, well, it's just we'll just stop
Speaker 1: at the at the development of nuclear weapons, or it
Speaker 1: will be just just in the next logical progression from
Speaker 1: that instead of this just galaxy destroying technology that surely,
Speaker 1: um like mid twentie century humanity is just a heartbeat
Speaker 1: away from attaining I could see so, like Edward must
Speaker 1: have realized. If the script was just about regular bombs
Speaker 1: and nuclear weapons, it would not emphasize how stupid, stupid,
Speaker 1: stupid our Earth minds are to go all the way
Speaker 1: to the sunlight destroying bomb or else the stupidity of
Speaker 1: our minds is not fully illustrated. Yeah, alright, This next
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Daniel. I assume this is
Speaker 1: a different Daniel, but I don't know for certain. Daniel
Speaker 1: Wrightson and says Hello, First, I love Weird how Cinema
Speaker 1: so very very very much, thank you for making my
Speaker 1: Friday's extra spithy. As I was listening to last Friday's episode,
Speaker 1: I was suddenly struck by the apparent similarity between the
Speaker 1: trailer music for Thrilling Bloody Sword and the theme song
Speaker 1: to the Japanese anime TV show Starblazers Battleship. Yamato is
Speaker 1: the original Japanese title. I thought that sounds much too
Speaker 1: similar to be coincidence, And then I heard you mentioning
Speaker 1: later in the episode that there were other pieces of
Speaker 1: music in the film that sounded very similar to existing songs,
Speaker 1: the U S National anthem being the most bizarre one.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if, in fact, the composer was possibly
Speaker 1: a fan of the Japanese anime show, which predates the
Speaker 1: film by several years. Thank you for both giving me
Speaker 1: and likely basilions of others a fancy treat on Friday, Sincerely, Daniel.
Speaker 1: Do you look this up? Rob? I? Well, I didn't, um,
Speaker 1: but I will say a couple of things, and this,
Speaker 1: first of all, it goes without saying. When you dealing
Speaker 1: with trailers, it is not uncommon to find the music
Speaker 1: from other films used in a trailer, like how many?
Speaker 1: I feel like there were a number of films that
Speaker 1: came out with the music from Aliens uh in it
Speaker 1: to promote a film that was not Aliens. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: stuff gets reused all the time. I think the music
Speaker 1: from what that song from Saw shows up in other trailers?
Speaker 1: I think, and oh, and what's that song from It's
Speaker 1: from Requiem for a Dream. They keep putting in other stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some probably some other good examples that I'm just
Speaker 1: not not thinking of off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, often I think sometimes the score for
Speaker 1: a given film isn't ready yet when they're putting together
Speaker 1: promotional material, or they just really really know a certain song,
Speaker 1: a certain track, or a certain piece from another music
Speaker 1: is going to definitely connect with an audience and get there,
Speaker 1: get their attention so you can drive home that they
Speaker 1: need to see this film. I just did listen to
Speaker 1: a couple of seconds of the Starblazers theme, and the
Speaker 1: melody is striking lee similar, except it has lyrics in
Speaker 1: the In the Starblazers version, it's like, you know the
Speaker 1: do do do do do? In this it's saying we're
Speaker 1: off to outer space in the English version. Now another
Speaker 1: issue I do want to highlight, and I didn't. I
Speaker 1: ended up not going into this in the Thrilling, Bloody
Speaker 1: Sword episode. But I did see some user reviews for
Speaker 1: another film that had been UH that that that had
Speaker 1: been apparently scored by the same UH composer, and there
Speaker 1: was in this individual had said, well this this movie
Speaker 1: just straight up uses music from John Carpenter's the thing.
Speaker 1: I tried to verify that. I found a rip of
Speaker 1: the movie that they were talking about online. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna listen to this, see if I can get
Speaker 1: any notes of the thing. And I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: find it. I didn't have enough time to relate to
Speaker 1: vote to watching a whole other film just to answer
Speaker 1: this sort of rabbit hole question. But it does at
Speaker 1: least raise the possibility of of maybe unlicensed score reuse
Speaker 1: in some of these films. But I really don't know
Speaker 1: for certain, So I'd love to hear from anyone out
Speaker 1: there who has more familiarity with Taiwanese cinema, Hong Kong cinema, etcetera,
Speaker 1: and and may have thoughts on this. This also brings
Speaker 1: to mind something I don't think we've talked about this
Speaker 1: on the show before, but Master the Flying Didotine from
Speaker 1: nine six is an example of a film that has
Speaker 1: a great soundtrack, but it's like it's taking music from uh,
Speaker 1: you know, acts like craft Work and Tangerine Dream, And
Speaker 1: I am not personally sure if if those are like
Speaker 1: official uses of those tracks, you know. Yeah, alright, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're out of time. We have more
Speaker 1: listener mail to get to, but we're gonna We're gonna
Speaker 1: set it aside. We'll come back to it next week,
Speaker 1: but keep the new listener mails coming. If you have
Speaker 1: thoughts on recent episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, weird,
Speaker 1: how cinema, monster, fact artifact, or just responses to other
Speaker 1: listener mail discussions, then let us know. Obviously we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Muster Mail publishes every Monday, so
Speaker 1: just check us out. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio.
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