Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. Listener mail, my name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And boy, we've got a good mail
Speaker 1: bag for you today. I've noticed. I think this is
Speaker 1: bi pure coincidence that today's batch of mail is just
Speaker 1: jammed with Danny's. We've got messages from Dan's, Daniells, Danny's
Speaker 1: of all sorts, and as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: they are all different people. So so non Danny's. You've
Speaker 1: got to step up your mail game, don't. Don't let
Speaker 1: the Danni's have it all right? Are you sure this
Speaker 1: isn't a male robot error here? This sounds like exactly
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that could mean that there's some
Speaker 1: sort of underlying programming problem with our mail bot Carney.
Speaker 1: Perhaps he is now associated all listeners, um, all individuals
Speaker 1: who ride in with the name Dan Carney. What have
Speaker 1: you got to say for yourself? Okay, we are assured
Speaker 1: that this is on the level. Okay, good, because today's
Speaker 1: episode is also going to deal a lot with the
Speaker 1: idea of robot air robot law. Yeah, so jumping into
Speaker 1: responses to our pair of episodes on on robot law,
Speaker 1: robot punishment, and all the questions that are probably gonna
Speaker 1: be popping up in the near future about what happens
Speaker 1: when robots do wrong. Let's jump right into this first
Speaker 1: message from Danny. Danny says, Hi, there, when thinking about
Speaker 1: how to best punish robots if they were ever to
Speaker 1: commit crimes, I thought about how people treat the character
Speaker 1: of Janet on the NBC show The Good Place. If
Speaker 1: You're not familiar, Janet is a near godlike AI that
Speaker 1: was created to help run an afterlife for humans. She
Speaker 1: looks like a normal person, but constantly reminds our main
Speaker 1: characters that she is not a person, but rather just
Speaker 1: a program written for the inhabitants of the afterlife to use.
Speaker 1: Some of the funniest parts of the show come when
Speaker 1: the human characters have to reboot Janet, but she is
Speaker 1: programmed to beg for her life to dissuade them from
Speaker 1: doing so. The closer they get to her reboot switch,
Speaker 1: the more she pleads with them to spare her life,
Speaker 1: all while also reminding them that she cannot in fact
Speaker 1: feel pain or emotions, as she is just an AI.
Speaker 1: It raises the point that I think you touched on.
Speaker 1: Would it be cruel to program a robot or AI
Speaker 1: to feel pain as punishment? And even if we did
Speaker 1: program it to do so, would it actually be feeling
Speaker 1: pain or would we just be happy with the idea
Speaker 1: that we think the bad robot is feeling pain? I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I'm certain that The Good Place is
Speaker 1: hilarious and Janet is one of the best ais ever created.
Speaker 1: Keep up the good work, Danny. Yeah, the the The
Speaker 1: Good Place is a terrific show. Did did you ever
Speaker 1: watch A Good Place? J Yeah? We uh is it
Speaker 1: over now? If it is? We never actually got to
Speaker 1: the end of it, but we watched at least part
Speaker 1: of it and we liked it. Yeah. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: one of those rare shows that they went exactly four
Speaker 1: seasons and it's being a pretty pitch perfect in my opinion,
Speaker 1: like they got where they wanted to go, they closed
Speaker 1: it out, terrific finish and Yeah, Janet both good, Janet Bad, Janet,
Speaker 1: various other Janets that appear. They're all terrific, all played
Speaker 1: by h Darcy Cardon's American actress and comedian jinks Um.
Speaker 1: You can't jinks under a roof. Oh okay, I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. Well, that may be a regional rule in
Speaker 1: our house. So thinking about whether robots would in fact
Speaker 1: be programmed to feel pain, I mean, so as we
Speaker 1: talked about in the episode. Obviously, I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of questions and skepticism about the underlying justification for punishments
Speaker 1: in general. I mean, I guess at bottom, my personal
Speaker 1: view of punishments would be partially utilitarian. Like if you
Speaker 1: could show that punishing people who harm other people actually
Speaker 1: does provide a significant deterrent that prevents them from doing
Speaker 1: harmed others in the first place, then I guess in
Speaker 1: some cases it would make sense. Uh. Though then you'd
Speaker 1: also have to factor in the idea of like individual
Speaker 1: rights where like even you know, so like, if you're
Speaker 1: to go with a purely utilitarian idea of justice, you
Speaker 1: could probably find out that you could achieve overall good
Speaker 1: effects by doing like, you know, really unfair things to
Speaker 1: like one person in a case, So you'd have to
Speaker 1: avoid that kind of thing too. Um. But on the
Speaker 1: basic question, I guess I'm just skeptical about how good
Speaker 1: the evidence is that there is a strong deterrent effect
Speaker 1: across all types of cases, for all types of crimes,
Speaker 1: I think it probably would actually vary a lot by
Speaker 1: type of crime and situation. For example, you can imagine
Speaker 1: a scenario where harsh punishments for harm caused by institutional
Speaker 1: actors like the leaders of corporations or governments, might be
Speaker 1: more effective as direct deterrence than harsh punishments of individual
Speaker 1: behavior would be. But you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But I don't know what the actual evidence is or
Speaker 1: how strong it would be. But anyway, so directly addressing robots,
Speaker 1: assuming it is true that punishments are sometimes effective as
Speaker 1: it aterrent that prevents a significant amount of harm from
Speaker 1: happening in the first place. In the case of biological
Speaker 1: offenders like us, it's just an a priori assumption that
Speaker 1: disincentives have to come in the form of suffering, right
Speaker 1: We We sort of alluded to this in the episode
Speaker 1: because we inherently desire not to have to I don't know,
Speaker 1: pay somebody a huge sum of money when it's found
Speaker 1: that we hurt them or spend time in jail or
Speaker 1: something like that. We don't want to face those outcomes
Speaker 1: because those outcomes will cause us to suffer and we're
Speaker 1: inherently motivated not to suffer. But robots don't have inherent motivations.
Speaker 1: They're motivated by whatever their program to be motivated by.
Speaker 1: So the equation of deterrence with suffering is a natural
Speaker 1: component of it. To whatever extent and in whichever cases
Speaker 1: that is actually effective, it's contingent on the offenders being
Speaker 1: biological with inherent motivations against suffering. Robots could be deterred
Speaker 1: by things that are not really painful to them in
Speaker 1: any way that we would understand pain. They're just motivated
Speaker 1: by whatever they're told to be motivated by. Yeah, I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 1: you could program them to desire pain, to desire suffering,
Speaker 1: and you want to share suffering with everyone and to
Speaker 1: to make sure that that all beings attain maximum suffering.
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, it's again, this was a fascinating topic
Speaker 1: to talk about, just because of all the little nooks
Speaker 1: and crannies you find yourself in, uh, contemplating both the
Speaker 1: human condition and the idea of creating something comparable to
Speaker 1: the human condition in machines. But anyway, Danny, I think
Speaker 1: you raise good questions and they can connect back to
Speaker 1: a lot of the things we were talking about. I
Speaker 1: mean you you can imagine even people desiring robots that
Speaker 1: simulate pain, like you're talking about, just to give people
Speaker 1: the psychic satisfaction of seeing them punished when they do
Speaker 1: wrong or something like that. When really the thing that
Speaker 1: if you're like trying to rationally minimize harm, what would
Speaker 1: be important would not be the robot feeling pain, but
Speaker 1: them being reprogrammed in a way that so that they
Speaker 1: don't behave like that in the future, or other robots
Speaker 1: of their same kind don't behave that way in the future. Yeah, anyway, Rob,
Speaker 1: do you want to look at this next message from Robin? Yes? Uh?
Speaker 1: Robin rides high, Rob, Joe and seth Uh. In They
Speaker 1: Punished the Machine Part two podcast, Rob mentioned a thought
Speaker 1: experiment about an AI train system that accidentally killed a
Speaker 1: bunch of people by not having oxygen ready for the arrival.
Speaker 1: You could not remember where this particular story came from.
Speaker 1: This is true. I could not remember. Um, I think
Speaker 1: prior I was actually looking it up deering or prior
Speaker 1: to the episode, and I was thinking, um, maybe it's
Speaker 1: Max teg Mark uh, And I was looking around for it,
Speaker 1: and then I did a like a search or two
Speaker 1: and I just could not for the life we remember
Speaker 1: where I picked this up. Um, but I was thinking nonfiction.
Speaker 1: But Robin straightens me out. Quote. The anecdote you were
Speaker 1: remembering is from the Rifters series by Peter Watts. I
Speaker 1: believe it was in the first book Starfish. Uh. The
Speaker 1: smart gel or head cheese as they call it, was
Speaker 1: using a clock to learn when to turn on the
Speaker 1: oxygen and the clock broke. There is some delicious AI
Speaker 1: Shenanigans speculation in those books, and yes, true enough, this
Speaker 1: is exactly what once you pointed out, I'm like, yep, yep,
Speaker 1: I remember that totally, because yeah, the uh, these these
Speaker 1: neural nets, these smart gels or head cheese as they
Speaker 1: they do, play a major role in the plot, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of consideration about how they how they
Speaker 1: could they could make ultimately catastrophic decisions that were that
Speaker 1: were from their vantage point, the best way to solve
Speaker 1: given problems. This makes so much sense thinking about Peter
Speaker 1: Watts uh fiction. A lot of what Peter Watts does
Speaker 1: is create genuine horror scenarios where the horror is derived
Speaker 1: from a failure of human imagination to comprehend other types
Speaker 1: of cognition. And reasoning. So there's a kind of cosmic
Speaker 1: horror that comes from the human inability to understand what
Speaker 1: it's like to think as an alien, or the human
Speaker 1: inability to understand what it's like to think as an AI. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so definitely. Yeah, Peter Watts, Uh, look up, look
Speaker 1: up his work if you're interested. Uh, we're big fans.
Speaker 1: I read Starfish and a couple of the books and
Speaker 1: Rifters that followed that. Um, and then what was Blindside
Speaker 1: was the other one? Yeah, very scary alien contact novel. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we've read some of his short stories. We talked
Speaker 1: about one that deals with religious technology that was very
Speaker 1: good and very scary. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, look him up.
Speaker 1: Great some good reads there can get a bit, you know,
Speaker 1: for some taste. It may get a little heady and
Speaker 1: a little dark. Though. I think Watts would argue that
Speaker 1: the futures that he creates are in many ways less
Speaker 1: dark than the realities that we find ourselves in today.
Speaker 1: Uh so you know, so consider that as you peruse
Speaker 1: his work. Yeah, I would say, overall, just really good
Speaker 1: cerebral horror sci fi. All right, Robin has more, though,
Speaker 1: Robin says, as a side note, I would like to
Speaker 1: thank you folks for doing the crossover episode with Seth.
Speaker 1: It got me to look up the Spotify playlist for
Speaker 1: Record Store Society, which led me to discover the artist
Speaker 1: Do make say think they are fabulous to listen to
Speaker 1: as I work, I'm slowly working through that Spotify playlist
Speaker 1: and I am rediscovering old and discovering new music that
Speaker 1: I enjoy. So thanks to Seth and to you folks
Speaker 1: for the musical education. Cheers, Robin, I'll love to hear that. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, we did a couple of crossovers with with Seth.
Speaker 1: We did a Weird House Cinema where where he came
Speaker 1: on the show and we talked about weird music videos,
Speaker 1: and then we went on to Record Store Society and
Speaker 1: talked about just music, cool music videos in general. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: hopefully that led a number of people to discover Record
Speaker 1: Store Society and uh and even discover some new music
Speaker 1: that's awesome totally and if you haven't checked it out yet,
Speaker 1: you can look them up there. They're just few weeks
Speaker 1: back in our feed now. And of course you can
Speaker 1: find Record Store Society wherever you get your podcasts. Okay,
Speaker 1: this next message comes from Kenneth. Kenneth says, Hi, Rob
Speaker 1: and Joe, thanks for reading out my last email. Kenneth,
Speaker 1: I honestly don't remember which one that was. But but
Speaker 1: Kenneth says, though if I had known it would make
Speaker 1: it on air, I would have waffled a lot less. Again,
Speaker 1: don't know what that's referring to. I loved the recent
Speaker 1: series of AI themed episodes, and as you discussed what
Speaker 1: might be an appropriate sanction for a wayward robot, it
Speaker 1: immediately put me in mind of Red Dwarf, the UK
Speaker 1: comedy slash sci fi show. In one episode, Crichton, I
Speaker 1: hope I'm saying that right. I've never seen this show.
Speaker 1: The crews outdated mechanoid is replaced by Hudson ten the
Speaker 1: perfect Machine. Unfortunately, in the millions of years he's spent
Speaker 1: waiting to be delivered, his sanity chip has worn out,
Speaker 1: and he goes on a rampage. He's eventually defeated in
Speaker 1: an homage to Captain Kirk murdering supercomputers with paradoxes. When
Speaker 1: Crechton tells him that Silicon Heaven doesn't exist, Hudson asks,
Speaker 1: but where do all the little calculators go to which
Speaker 1: Crechton replies, they just die. Hudson then expires in a
Speaker 1: kind of does not compute buzzed kind of way. Uh.
Speaker 1: This got me thinking that perhaps positive reinforcement is the
Speaker 1: way to go with our future robotic companions. If they
Speaker 1: are programmed for a given task, they could be given
Speaker 1: rewards of energy, upgrades, repairs, etcetera. If they were good
Speaker 1: little robots. It's very transactional, but I could imagine them
Speaker 1: striving for rewards that will make them more efficient. I
Speaker 1: also really enjoyed the episodes about extraterrestrial machine intelligences, but
Speaker 1: I did want to defend the humans and drones of
Speaker 1: Ian M Banks culture. They aren't just parasites or pets.
Speaker 1: They are an essential part of the good works the
Speaker 1: culture undertakes. Interfering to improve other civilizations is what it
Speaker 1: considers it's moral right to exist, and the humans and
Speaker 1: drones are pretty central to that. I like the idea
Speaker 1: of ultra intelligent minds using their power to make the
Speaker 1: universe a better place, and banks optimistic take on AI
Speaker 1: was always one I found very engaging. On a complete
Speaker 1: tangent future episodes discussing mega structures such as Niven rings
Speaker 1: Banks orbitals or O'Neill cylinders would be absolutely fascinating. Keep
Speaker 1: up the great work, Kenneth well. I I have not
Speaker 1: seen Red Dwarf either, but I know that's a show
Speaker 1: that's much beloved by many science fiction fans. Um On
Speaker 1: on the culture note, Um, I don't remember. Did I
Speaker 1: argue that they were parasites or pets? I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't. We made an offhand comparison that maybe maybe
Speaker 1: we weren't being super serious about well maybe the confusion.
Speaker 1: I might have said something meaning or I might have
Speaker 1: meant to state that it's kind of like the opposite,
Speaker 1: Like the the culture is essentially machines, it's essentially the minds,
Speaker 1: but the humans you could almost see them as pets
Speaker 1: at this point that you could almost. I wouldn't maybe
Speaker 1: I wouldn't call them parasites per se, but they're this
Speaker 1: thing that is kept alive by the by the minds
Speaker 1: of the culture because that is, you know, part of
Speaker 1: what they do, it's part of their their whole existence,
Speaker 1: a mission. Um But that anyway, I mean, ultimately, this
Speaker 1: is all expressed in the culture books far better than
Speaker 1: I can just summarize here. But he he does. He
Speaker 1: did indeed have this wonderful optimistic view of of super
Speaker 1: intelligent machines, but with plenty of complications that that make
Speaker 1: you know, novels of of adventure and discovery worthwhile. So
Speaker 1: they may be sort of the culture's reason for existing,
Speaker 1: even if they're not really calling the shots within the culture, right,
Speaker 1: which is funny because in that way, I think they
Speaker 1: could possibly be compared to consciousness within humans. Right, So
Speaker 1: your consciousness is the reason to get out of bed
Speaker 1: in the morning, like your conscious experience is the reason
Speaker 1: to keep living and keep doing anything. But of course,
Speaker 1: a lot of the decisions you make, in actions you perform,
Speaker 1: while you might have the illusion that they're driven by
Speaker 1: conscious processes, you can actually show that at least in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, maybe in every case, maybe not
Speaker 1: in every case, you know, can't know for sure, but
Speaker 1: at least in a lot of cases, decisions about what
Speaker 1: you your body does are happening sort of upstream of consciousness,
Speaker 1: and you're just sort of having the illusion that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did that with my conscious brain. Yeah. It's just
Speaker 1: also point out that in the culture books you'll often
Speaker 1: have long stretches where it's just one mind talking to
Speaker 1: another one AI talking to another AI or multiple AI
Speaker 1: is having a conversation about what's happening or what's going
Speaker 1: to happen, and those can be quite amusing, in part
Speaker 1: because they all have kind of ridiculous drawn out names
Speaker 1: for each other, and they all have different personalities and
Speaker 1: different factions. Uh we we actually didn't. So we were
Speaker 1: talking in the Machine Lords of Barnard sixty eight episodes
Speaker 1: about whether post biological super intelligences would have something that
Speaker 1: we would recognize as emotions, and you kind of have
Speaker 1: to think if they have personalities, then maybe they would
Speaker 1: have something that we recognize as emotions. Do do do
Speaker 1: the Uh? I don't know. Do the ais and the
Speaker 1: Culture series by Banks have have emotions? Yeah? They they
Speaker 1: seem to. I mean it gets kind of complicate. You know.
Speaker 1: The machine is capable of of seeming like it has
Speaker 1: emotions and realizes there's there's an advantage in portraying emotions
Speaker 1: than it is and sometimes it's hard to differentiate that
Speaker 1: between genuine emotions or maybe there is no difference. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: And I can't recall this very question may have come
Speaker 1: up at some point in the Culture books, and I
Speaker 1: just don't remember it, but they seem to have personalities
Speaker 1: and emotions. I think some some are a bit more
Speaker 1: temperamental and bristly than others, and others are, you know,
Speaker 1: a bit eccentric. So so yeah, yeah, I would say so.
Speaker 1: All right. The next one comes to us from Joe.
Speaker 1: Uh different Joe. Joe writes, I really enjoyed your two
Speaker 1: partner on law enforcement applied to autonomous intelligences. There were
Speaker 1: some wonderful explorations of how this relates to enforcing the
Speaker 1: law against corporate persons. There's another parallel path where we
Speaker 1: as a society had to struggle with how to enforce
Speaker 1: the law while also reckoning with a growing understanding of
Speaker 1: how the perpetrators are not motivated by what we expect,
Speaker 1: not using the same processes to make decisions, and not
Speaker 1: as fundamentally culpable as we imagine juvenile law enforcement. I've
Speaker 1: been lucky enough to serve in a policy making capacity
Speaker 1: as part of a state juvenile justice agency and have
Speaker 1: seen firsthand the benefits of this better informed approach. As
Speaker 1: everyone who has had a toddler can confirm, children are
Speaker 1: capable of tremendous destruction, and as they get older, they
Speaker 1: can do and say terrible and harmful things that have
Speaker 1: all the appearance of conscious and informed choice. However, as
Speaker 1: we've learn more about child brain development, we are moving
Speaker 1: towards restorative and corrective models of juvenile justice, rather than
Speaker 1: the retributive and punitive systems that have been dominant throughout history.
Speaker 1: As you have covered on other episodes, we are beginning
Speaker 1: to suspect that human brains, and especially juvenile brains, often
Speaker 1: provide illusory surface level rationales for actions that are actually
Speaker 1: controlled by obscure, deep seated processes that more closely resemble
Speaker 1: machine learning than we care to admit. We've started to
Speaker 1: incorporate those lessons into how we handle children who commit
Speaker 1: otherwise criminal offenses and have begun reaping the rewards of
Speaker 1: healthier and safer communities. I'm optimistic that we will apply
Speaker 1: that wisdom to correcting the mistakes of artificial intelligence moving forward,
Speaker 1: rather than seeking the primal gratification of knowing some being
Speaker 1: has suffered as a consequence of our misfortune. I even
Speaker 1: dare to hope that we will someday learn to apply
Speaker 1: those lessons to adult human minds, which are often much
Speaker 1: less authentically culpable. For a harm they cause. Then we imagine, Joe, Oh,
Speaker 1: interesting to hear from somebody who's involved in this field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: getting into juvenile criminal justice and all that. That's uh,
Speaker 1: I know, that's got to be a really just difficult
Speaker 1: area even you know, people motivated with the best of intentions.
Speaker 1: Um so, so yeah, it's it's it's good to hear
Speaker 1: from somebody who's got first hand experience. Yeah, absolutely, all right,
Speaker 1: here's another one for us, Joe, why don't you hit
Speaker 1: this one? This one looks like it's a question about
Speaker 1: the music. Here's another one from Dan Kind. This one
Speaker 1: comes from Danielle. Danielle says, HI was wondering if you
Speaker 1: could tell me the name of the music that plays
Speaker 1: during the Artifact episodes. Thank you, Danielle. That's it. Well,
Speaker 1: I had to check with Seth about this. Uh. This
Speaker 1: this was not one of the pieces that that I created.
Speaker 1: This was one that Seth got from one of the
Speaker 1: one of the deep libraries of stock music that we
Speaker 1: have access to here at I heartened me, and so
Speaker 1: he dug up the meta. This track is by an
Speaker 1: artist named Josh Hyneman. It is called Creeping In, which
Speaker 1: we found very funny when he revealed that to us earlier.
Speaker 1: And it's from an album called Reality Game Show Too. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so you can look that up if you like.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it seems like he he sourced it from
Speaker 1: a from a library of stock music that's common for
Speaker 1: producers to use to create beds underneath the talking in
Speaker 1: all of your favorite podcasts. Yeah, it's, you know, a
Speaker 1: looping track, you know, so that it doesn't matter how
Speaker 1: long the artifact episode goes. Yeah, and some of those
Speaker 1: databases can be pretty neat. I remember looking around in
Speaker 1: one a while back and noticing that there was some
Speaker 1: there was at least like one collection of sounds that
Speaker 1: have been created by Alan Howarth, who of course is
Speaker 1: known for his musical collaborations with director John Carpenter on
Speaker 1: creating helping to create some of the most iconic John
Speaker 1: Carpenter movie film scores Chariots of Pumpkins Man. Yeah, great track.
Speaker 1: Also for our for our amusement, Seth supplied the keywords
Speaker 1: that go along with this track. So it's a slow tempo,
Speaker 1: subtle to neutral tension, underscore, drone bed ethereal electronic electronic
Speaker 1: soundtrack score, pulsing synth pad pulsing synth bass light, low
Speaker 1: fi perk loop, ethereal synth pads, reverse guitar, subtle to
Speaker 1: neutral tension. I think it already said that underscore, and
Speaker 1: it looks like it's just looping now, which is appropriate
Speaker 1: for looping track. All right, here's another one. This one
Speaker 1: comes to us from Jeremy. Hello, Joe and Robert. Your
Speaker 1: recent fault episodes about Medusa's head and weird House episodes
Speaker 1: about detached heads living on reminded me of the detachable
Speaker 1: head of the Queen of the Moon played by Valentina
Speaker 1: Cortes opposite Robin Williams. Or is that Cortez or Cortez
Speaker 1: Cortes Cortez. I'm not familiar with this anyway. Quote which
Speaker 1: has an independent life in the classic epic The Adventures
Speaker 1: of Baron Muchausen. Although it in no way counts as
Speaker 1: a B movie, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen may well
Speaker 1: contain enough weirdness for a weird House episode. Many thanks
Speaker 1: for the hours of intelligent entertainment. Best regards, and Jeremy, Hey,
Speaker 1: that's Terry Gilliam. Yeah, Terry Gilliam is always potentially. It's
Speaker 1: anything he creates I would say is potentially weird enough
Speaker 1: for weird house cinema, no matter how much money he
Speaker 1: had to play with in creating it. Uh, where where
Speaker 1: are you on Gilliam? Rob? Because I've got a theory
Speaker 1: that nobody is tepid on Terry Gilliam's post Monty Python movies.
Speaker 1: People either love them or absolutely hate them. And I
Speaker 1: think Gilliam's aesthetics can be kind of challenging sometimes. But
Speaker 1: I love the Terry Gilliam movies. Yeah. I haven't sat
Speaker 1: down and watched a Terry Gilliam movie and and quite
Speaker 1: a spell here at this point, but I I can
Speaker 1: say that I love Terry Gilliam movies or I love
Speaker 1: to like them. I think some of the more recent
Speaker 1: ones I maybe haven't I loved them as much, but
Speaker 1: there's always something to love in them, you know. There's
Speaker 1: there's an authentic weirdness and authentic Terry Gilliam vibe to them,
Speaker 1: where there's something to latch onto there. Yeah. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen all of his more recent movies, but
Speaker 1: I'm thinking back at least to the earlier post Python
Speaker 1: movies like Time Bandits Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
Speaker 1: Did he do twelve Monkeys. I think we were talking
Speaker 1: about twelve Monkeys if you're in Loathing in Las Vegas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a bunch of good ones. I think we were talking
Speaker 1: about Brazil on the show not too long ago because
Speaker 1: of some other scene in a movie where they were
Speaker 1: just random ducts go all over the place, and that
Speaker 1: that's the thing I always think about with Brazil is
Speaker 1: just absolutely genius visual representation of the themes of the movie,
Speaker 1: Like every room is just crammed full of ducts and
Speaker 1: you have no idea why they're there or what they're
Speaker 1: taking from one place to the other. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 1: But Brazil's an excellent movie. And in Baron Munchausen, which
Speaker 1: I may have seen more recently than other of his films,
Speaker 1: which means I saw it at some point in the
Speaker 1: last ten years. Uh, it is is a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: It's uh it's just got such some rich, rich, old
Speaker 1: fashioned fantasy going on in it. Yeah. It's been a
Speaker 1: long time for me, but I remember feeling the same. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're ready to move on to this next one. I
Speaker 1: can do. This message from Jimmy that is about robot
Speaker 1: punishment and weird house cinema. Go for it, okay, Jimmy says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I love your show. Just started listening to it and
Speaker 1: have been really digging the topics. I got pulled in
Speaker 1: with the episode on Locks, and I knew I was
Speaker 1: going to be a permanent listener when I saw you
Speaker 1: had an episode on Gunhead. It's a huge It's a
Speaker 1: huge fan of weird movies and D and D, which
Speaker 1: you guys have mentioned several times. I knew it was
Speaker 1: fate that brought your show to my attention that I had.
Speaker 1: I have jump in here, Joe. I. I feel like
Speaker 1: like doing an episode on Gunhead is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing where you would almost expect someone in the company
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, guys, what are you doing doing
Speaker 1: an episode on Gunhead? Um? And and now we can
Speaker 1: legitimately respond with we are earning permanent listeners by doing
Speaker 1: episodes on Gunhead. Otherwise, you know, how would we bring
Speaker 1: people in? But that's like every episode we do. It
Speaker 1: would be kind of hard to explain to the business division,
Speaker 1: why why this episode on Spoons? Why this episode on Gunhead?
Speaker 1: So we say you're just gonna have to trust us anyway.
Speaker 1: Jimmy goes on in the episode punish the machine. You
Speaker 1: talked about how we react negatively to the seeming quote
Speaker 1: behavior of inanimate objects, often blaming them for transgressions or failures.
Speaker 1: Being a fan of D and D, I immediately thought
Speaker 1: of dice shaming, dice jails, and the acts of player
Speaker 1: might perform when their dice roll poorly, from the aforementioned
Speaker 1: examples to throwing dice, banishing them back into the bag,
Speaker 1: admonishing the di verbally, or deciding that a particular D
Speaker 1: twenty has quote used up it's good roles for the
Speaker 1: session and is now useless. I kept hoping it would
Speaker 1: be mentioned in the episode. Uh, you know, I think
Speaker 1: it did come to mind when we were doing it,
Speaker 1: and I just uh ended up not not bringing it
Speaker 1: up because I was thinking about Uh, I've never actually
Speaker 1: punished dice before, but I know i've I've spoken with
Speaker 1: people who have, or no people that have. You know
Speaker 1: that the dice wasn't performing properly, it would be shamed
Speaker 1: or put away um or even discarded. I think the
Speaker 1: closest thing for me is that for a long time
Speaker 1: I had two different D twenties in my bag of dice.
Speaker 1: One was a black D twenty that matched the rest
Speaker 1: of my dice, and the other one was like this
Speaker 1: random kind of amber colored D twenty And I have
Speaker 1: no idea where it came from, but for some reason
Speaker 1: or another, I was for a while I was using
Speaker 1: both of them, and I it seemed like the brown
Speaker 1: dice was out the brown D twenty was outperforming the
Speaker 1: black one, and so I ended up just sticking with
Speaker 1: the brown one. And eventually I think I gave the
Speaker 1: black one away to uh, to a child, uh so
Speaker 1: they could play D N D. May you absorb the
Speaker 1: curse of luck of this this item, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: of course it's all ridiculous because these are exactly the same.
Speaker 1: There's no difference. They're not, you know, waited differently, they
Speaker 1: don't have different energies, etcetera. And I'm not even particularly
Speaker 1: I mean aesthetically, I I would have to say, I
Speaker 1: would prefer the one that matches the rest of uh
Speaker 1: my set, But you know, the brown one was performing better,
Speaker 1: so that's the one I kept. Uh this is funny
Speaker 1: because I was just playing D and D last night. Actually,
Speaker 1: we were talking before we started recording that we both
Speaker 1: played DN D virtually last night, and UH so the
Speaker 1: character I'm playing right now, is is a rogue. If
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with D n D, he's he's got
Speaker 1: low constitution, low armor class. So it means like, you
Speaker 1: know a couple of bad roles and you're very low.
Speaker 1: You're very close to death. Um and and one of
Speaker 1: the closest calls of my campaign right now is was
Speaker 1: literally from repeatedly rolling a one to to check my
Speaker 1: ability at walking up a hill in the snow. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so the dice can really do you dirty and
Speaker 1: you can get mad at him. Yeah, yeah, get another
Speaker 1: character to help you next time, and then you get
Speaker 1: an advantage on that roll to help me walking. Yes,
Speaker 1: help an old man up the hill. Anyway, we should
Speaker 1: go on with Jimmy's message. Jimmy picks up. However, the
Speaker 1: thing that compelled me to write in was your Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema episode on frogs, which I really enjoyed. Your
Speaker 1: prompt for other Nature and Revolt movies was a call
Speaker 1: to action, as I immediately thought of phase for a
Speaker 1: film in which a couple of scientists study a group
Speaker 1: of strangely behaving ants that are plaguing the countryside and
Speaker 1: building bizarre hives. It gets very out there with concepts
Speaker 1: and features some really awesome and also horrifying scenes of ants.
Speaker 1: It's definitely weird, and whether or not you feature it
Speaker 1: in an episode, it is certainly worth a watch. A
Speaker 1: second suggestion for a uniquely bizarre film is The Visitor.
Speaker 1: I know this one. A truly strange film about cosmic
Speaker 1: entities in a struggle of good versus evil, throwing killerbirds,
Speaker 1: trippy art house cinema visuals, a girl with mental powers,
Speaker 1: and it turns into a heck of a ride. It's
Speaker 1: got Lance Hendrickson, Glenn Ford, John Houston, and a cameo
Speaker 1: by Franco Nero as Space Jesus. Anyway, I am truly
Speaker 1: enjoying your show and can't wait to dig through the
Speaker 1: back catalog. Keep up the great work. Thank you for
Speaker 1: your time, Jimmy. Well, thanks for this message, Jimmy, And
Speaker 1: oh yeah, we've seen The Visitor. You may not know this,
Speaker 1: but we of course live in the Atlanta area and
Speaker 1: The Visitor was filmed in Atlanta in the seventies or
Speaker 1: seventies or eighties I think seventies, uh, and so like.
Speaker 1: There are recognizable roads and landmarks in it, but it
Speaker 1: is also just a it is so odd. It has
Speaker 1: a kind of Spaghetti West turned thing going on, which
Speaker 1: is and by that I mean like it's an Italian
Speaker 1: film filmed in the United States with primarily US actors
Speaker 1: and uh, and there's a certain I don't know that,
Speaker 1: there's a certain shadow quality to it that is very
Speaker 1: engrossing and very alienating at the same time. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's it's a it's a lot of fun. Though
Speaker 1: A lot of the fun I had with it was
Speaker 1: just the fact that it was filmed in Atlanta back
Speaker 1: in the day, so you can see various landmarks of
Speaker 1: Atlanta there. It doesn't hide it's Atlantic nous, and its
Speaker 1: Atlanta nous is not subtle. So it's not like Free
Speaker 1: Jack where they just they're filming it in Atlanta pretending
Speaker 1: it's something else. Um, and you have to look closely
Speaker 1: to catch it. No, it's it's very Atlanta. As for
Speaker 1: Phase four, I haven't seen this one. I'm vaguely aware
Speaker 1: of it because it's kind of late for a giant
Speaker 1: ant movie, uh in cinematic history. But I'd be interested
Speaker 1: to check it out. Is it giant ants? I thought
Speaker 1: it was normal sized and normal ants. Well, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it, so we will have to find out the
Speaker 1: ant looks big on the poster, but then again that
Speaker 1: the frog looks big on the poster for frog. So
Speaker 1: it could be the same marketing gimmick where it's like,
Speaker 1: we can't put a normal size frog on this poster.
Speaker 1: It needs to be huge, and it needs to be
Speaker 1: a person's arm sticking out of it. If we're gonna
Speaker 1: put an on this poster, it needs to be larger
Speaker 1: than a human hand. I think that's very plausible. All right,
Speaker 1: here's another one. You want to take? This one Joe
Speaker 1: from Brandon. Sure, Brandon says, Hi, guys, I have a
Speaker 1: suggestion for weird house cinema. One of my all time
Speaker 1: favorites Shachma. It is a nineties B movie about a
Speaker 1: genetically altered baboon that terrorizes a group of med students
Speaker 1: that are LARPing D and D. Also, it has Roddy McDowell.
Speaker 1: I think you would like this odd treat. Keep up
Speaker 1: the great work, Brandon. I don't remember much about this movie,
Speaker 1: but I did watch part of it long ago at
Speaker 1: a friend's house, and it was at least from the
Speaker 1: parts I saw the best killer baboon Bottle episode movie
Speaker 1: B I've ever seen the trailer for it is amazing,
Speaker 1: So see the trailer if nothing else, because the trailer
Speaker 1: has this wonderful intense narration that gets it just gets
Speaker 1: more intense, and it keeps saying Shakma, shakma till at
Speaker 1: the very end there's the baboon leaps at the camera
Speaker 1: and the narrator just goes shakma and then it ends.
Speaker 1: I think Shaka is the baboon's name. I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course this is also like, this is the
Speaker 1: sort of trailer where they just say the name of
Speaker 1: the film so many times and I missed that, Like
Speaker 1: I wish they did that more. Yeah, gabbo gabbo gabbo. Uh, Rob,
Speaker 1: do you want to read our last transmission from Planet Daniel? Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, Daniel riots Hey, y'all just listen to the
Speaker 1: Mad Love episode and wanted to add to the voices
Speaker 1: in support of all of your amazing dives into these
Speaker 1: curious and overlooked films. The Weird House Cinema episodes are
Speaker 1: a great source of education, well, okay, and entertainment. Uh.
Speaker 1: I guess they are educational in their own way. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I miss visiting art house theaters and peeping whatever strange
Speaker 1: film they've unearthed and are eager to share. Your podcast
Speaker 1: brings a similar sense of wonder. So for that, I'm
Speaker 1: very appreciative. Thank you and keep doing amazing work. Daniel,
Speaker 1: Oh too kind, Daniel, Well, thank you and thanks for
Speaker 1: writing in. Okay, should we wrap it up there? I
Speaker 1: guess so. Yeah. We generally once we get into the
Speaker 1: weird houses, we're uh, we're done. I think we're out
Speaker 1: of time, but we thank everybody for writing in, you know,
Speaker 1: if you if we just bear in mind, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't always get to respond to email. We rarely
Speaker 1: get to respond to email, and we only get to
Speaker 1: read some of it on here, despite the weekly format.
Speaker 1: But we do read uh in our own head silently
Speaker 1: or maybe sometimes mumbling out loud, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: we do read it all. So if you write into us,
Speaker 1: we will read it, We will try and respond if
Speaker 1: we have time, or we'll you know, if we'll try
Speaker 1: and feature some of it on the listener mail. But
Speaker 1: just keep it coming, because it's great to to know
Speaker 1: what everybody else out there is thinking, what you're you know,
Speaker 1: your your own expertise or experience, says about a given
Speaker 1: topic and uh and also it's a great place to
Speaker 1: make suggestions for the future, so keep it coming. Should
Speaker 1: we tell you to hold off for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: if your name is any variation on Dan is that no, no,
Speaker 1: don't don't limit the dance, let the let's, let's unleash
Speaker 1: the dance, kick it up, dance, Dan's, Danny's, Danielle's, Daniel's,
Speaker 1: just just come on in anyway. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.