Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and hey folks. I know
Speaker 3: we don't usually do a preamble on our show before
Speaker 3: every episode, but I thought it'd be good in case
Speaker 3: there are some new listeners out there, to kind of
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Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind has been an audio podcast
Speaker 3: for like fifteen years or sixteen Rob and when did
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Speaker 2: We've always been here, it's been a while.
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Speaker 3: and those are about diverse topics that we get interested in.
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Speaker 3: in some way. Most Wednesdays we publish a short form
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Speaker 3: a strange film. You can find all of those episodes
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Speaker 3: recurring segment we do called Listener mail where we're going
Speaker 3: to read and respond to some email from listeners. We
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Speaker 3: All right, Rob, are you ready to get right into
Speaker 3: the messages.
Speaker 2: Yeah, A lot of these, or at least the ones
Speaker 2: at the top, are gonna have to do with our
Speaker 2: recent series on personifications of death. Anthropomorphic personification, so death
Speaker 2: like the grim Reaper certainly in Western traditions, but other
Speaker 2: related figures. We weren't able to cover everything out there
Speaker 2: because this is a sort of figure that occurs just
Speaker 2: throughout human cultures, and there's so many different varieties and
Speaker 2: yet at the same time, there are certain aspects, certain
Speaker 2: tropes that you'll find again and again, and so we
Speaker 2: reached out to listeners because we knew that people would
Speaker 2: have all sorts of personal but also cultural details to
Speaker 2: fill in for us. Right.
Speaker 3: So, Rob, if it's okay with you, I'm going to
Speaker 3: do this message from Maya. Yeah, Maya, says dear Robin, Joe.
Speaker 3: What a fascinating discussion about the personification of death and
Speaker 3: grammatical gender. As a speaker of Mexican Spanish as my
Speaker 3: first language, I found it especially compelling given my country's
Speaker 3: fascination with death and its many representations. Curiously enough, every
Speaker 3: name we give to death, and there are hundreds I looked,
Speaker 3: is a feminine noun. La morte death is feminine, but
Speaker 3: so are Laparca, one of the fates in Greek myth,
Speaker 3: and Laflaca, the skinny one. Folk images of death seem
Speaker 3: to be divided. A very well known representation of death
Speaker 3: is Lakatrina, an image created first created by the engraver
Speaker 3: Jose Guadalupe Posada, that depicts death as a high class lady.
Speaker 3: Its name means something like the well dressed one. And Rob,
Speaker 3: I went and looked up this image. I pulled it
Speaker 3: into our outline. So this is Lakatrina by Jose Guadalupe Pasada.
Speaker 3: It's a figure of a skeleton who seems to be
Speaker 3: I don't know what these kind of fluffy things around
Speaker 3: its shoulders are maybe they're bushes or clouds. I guess
Speaker 3: clouds would make sense. But it's wearing this big, elaborate,
Speaker 3: beautiful hat. It's like a gently sloping kind of domed
Speaker 3: hat with flowers on the top and big, you know,
Speaker 3: dangling feathers coming off, and then also something seemingly tucked
Speaker 3: into the skeleton's ear, though of course a skull wouldn't
Speaker 3: have an ear. But what are those things down there?
Speaker 3: Are those like tassels or flowers?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, the overall appearances yet death in a festive hat.
Speaker 2: And this this image was discussed in some of the
Speaker 2: sources that I was using for those episodes, but I
Speaker 2: I didn't get to it, but it is quite an
Speaker 2: important one, I'm to understand.
Speaker 3: Maya's email goes on to say the Maschika deities of
Speaker 3: death were a male and female skeletal figure. Mictlandakoutli was
Speaker 3: the lord of mik Dlan the underworld, and mik Takasi
Speaker 3: Watt was his wife. And Maya this you may have
Speaker 3: written this email before we discussed them on the show,
Speaker 3: but these figures did come up, I think in part
Speaker 3: four of our discussion there, where we were talking about
Speaker 3: a paper about what were the cultural inputs on the
Speaker 3: creation of Santa Marte, which does come up in this email.
Speaker 3: By the way, Maya says, in many other visual traditions,
Speaker 3: death is a male figure. Rob will be happy to
Speaker 3: note that there was a Lucha libre character known as
Speaker 3: La Parca, although he tragically died as a result of
Speaker 3: injuries sustained in a match. Rob, I think you've got
Speaker 3: some stuff on Laparca.
Speaker 2: Later I do, and we have another listener male that
Speaker 2: will also fill in some of the blanks for us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, Maya says. Punk and heavy metal depictions of
Speaker 3: death as a male, devilish figure coexist with the controversial
Speaker 3: La Santa Morte the Holy Death, a folk cult figure
Speaker 3: that appears as a female skeletal deity who personifies death
Speaker 3: and is venerated by people from all walks of life,
Speaker 3: and Argentinian equivalent, in contrast is a male figure San
Speaker 3: la Morte. And of course, during Da da Mortos, the
Speaker 3: Day of the Dead, you can write your name on
Speaker 3: the forehead of a sugar skull and add it to
Speaker 3: the altar or afrienda, and in doing so you turn
Speaker 3: a neutral, genderless confection into your own gendered alter ego.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's a nice, nice tidbit to mentioned. Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: an excellent Day of the Dead celebration here in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Every year. They hold it at the historic Cokeland Cemetery,
Speaker 2: and we generally try to go.
Speaker 3: As somebody who didn't grow up with Day of the
Speaker 3: Dead celebrations. I for a long time, I think I
Speaker 3: had the wrong idea that it was only it was
Speaker 3: like Mardi Gras, that it was only like this big
Speaker 3: public festival kind of thing. But I realized more recently, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that you know, you can have private celebrations. And I
Speaker 3: actually went to one that was hosted by some family
Speaker 3: of ours this past fall. It was beautiful and the
Speaker 3: afriendo was I don't know, I found it very touching.
Speaker 3: Oh nice, coming back to Maya's email. As for grammatical gender,
Speaker 3: its influence on our perception of external objects is still
Speaker 3: up for debate. Some studies have found that we tend
Speaker 3: to think of feminine inanimate objects such as table mesa,
Speaker 3: as having more feminine attributes than masculine objects, but other
Speaker 3: research has found these effects to be more subtle or
Speaker 3: even non existent. Yeah, we talked about that in the
Speaker 3: episodes too. There's kind of a mixed research picture on
Speaker 3: to what extent this is really happening. But Maya says,
Speaker 3: in the case of death, nothing seems to prevent us
Speaker 3: from thinking about it as both the mascular and feminine figure.
Speaker 3: Despite the grammatical gender of the noun, we used to
Speaker 3: refer to it a wonderful series. Keep up the great
Speaker 3: work and know that you have many non native English
Speaker 3: speakers as fans all over the world. Maya. Well, thank you, Maya,
Speaker 3: very nice, wonderful. It warms my heart. And then also
Speaker 3: Maya had a follow up email just to share a
Speaker 3: picture with us, She says, Dear Joe and rob By
Speaker 3: the way, here you have a picture of the Santa
Speaker 3: Morte van that makes the rounds in my brother's neighborhood,
Speaker 3: so her devotees can worship her from the comfort of
Speaker 3: their own homes. All the best, Maya, And this is wonderful.
Speaker 3: It's a Santa Morte figure enthroned on a big chair,
Speaker 3: draped in looks like gold satin or something kind of
Speaker 3: a gold leaf texture, sitting in the bed of a
Speaker 3: trailer or the back of a pickup truck, or it
Speaker 3: might be like one of those small three wheel pickup trucks,
Speaker 3: and so she's a very dry skeleton. As we talked
Speaker 3: about she usually, you know, she's very parched. But she's
Speaker 3: wearing a pink floral gown and a mantle like a
Speaker 3: hood over the top of her head. In her right hand,
Speaker 3: she's holding a scythe. In her left hand a golden
Speaker 3: ball which I think could be the earth. It's like
Speaker 3: a globe. And then she has an owl perched over
Speaker 3: either shoulder. Do you see the two owls.
Speaker 2: Rob Oh, yeah, I didn't see them at first, but
Speaker 2: now I see.
Speaker 3: Them hiding in the ruffles of the gold on the chair.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 3: And then also in the same hand as the scythe,
Speaker 3: she's got some kind of foliage. I don't know exactly
Speaker 3: what that is. I was wondering, could that be a
Speaker 3: palm leaf?
Speaker 2: It does kind of look like a palm leaf.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I can't say for sure what that is,
Speaker 3: but this is great. Thank you so much for sending Maya.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, all right, I said, we're going to have
Speaker 2: more about La Parca the Lucha Door, and indeed we're
Speaker 2: going to read this next one from Angelo Angela, says Hi,
Speaker 2: Robert and Joe. While listening to your podcast series about
Speaker 2: the Personifications of death, mention of the Mexican Laparca immediately
Speaker 2: got me thinking about professional wrestling, the WCW promotion. This
Speaker 2: some of you may not be aware that this promotion
Speaker 2: used to exist heyday during the nineties.
Speaker 3: Wait, what's it called now? It's not that anymore.
Speaker 2: It doesn't exist. It was, yeah, it went away. It
Speaker 2: was purchased by WWE, and it is now part of
Speaker 2: that conglonerate anyway, Angelo writes the WCW promotion showcased luchadors
Speaker 2: in the mid to late nineties, including one named Laparca.
Speaker 2: He wore a skeletal mask and costume to look like
Speaker 2: a reaper, but instead of a scythe he always carried
Speaker 2: a steel chair to the ring. He would, of course
Speaker 2: use it on his opponents during matches, but he would
Speaker 2: also play guitar air guitar on it during his entrances
Speaker 2: and post match celebrations. He used the chair so much
Speaker 2: that announcers gave him the nickname the Chairman of WCW.
Speaker 2: He did well. He did use the Mexican grim reaper costume.
Speaker 2: The gimmick never really went with the subject of death
Speaker 2: in the same way that another wrestler, the Undertaker, did
Speaker 2: in his earlier days. Other wrestlers would take on the
Speaker 2: Laparca mantle, with the character making an appearance in this
Speaker 2: year's WWE Royal Rumble. Anyway, the series was great and
Speaker 2: I really learned a lot from it. Please keep up
Speaker 2: the great work. Thanks Angela. So yes Laparka. Believe me.
Speaker 2: When Laparca came up in our death episodes, I did
Speaker 2: have to fight the urge to bring him up, but
Speaker 2: I was like, we can save this for later. Somebody
Speaker 2: will write in about this and we can follow up.
Speaker 3: I don't think anybody would have minded if you'd, oh, we.
Speaker 2: Had a lot of ground to cover. It was hard
Speaker 2: to argue that we needed a side trip to louchal
Speaker 2: Libra at that point, and I knew we'd come back
Speaker 2: to it. Yes, Angelo did a I think a great
Speaker 2: job here summarizing the Laparca that wrestling fans of the
Speaker 2: nineties in the US likely remember. Tied to the Triple
Speaker 2: A promotion in Mexico at the time, and then I
Speaker 2: think he was full time with WCW for a spell
Speaker 2: there too, and he was played by a wrestler named
Speaker 2: Adolfo Ibarra born nineteen sixty five. And yeah, I believe
Speaker 2: his real name, this character, this luchador, has never been unmasked,
Speaker 2: but I believe his name and age are of public records,
Speaker 2: so we're not spoiling anything there. But when he left
Speaker 2: that promotion Triple A, Triple A retained the rights to
Speaker 2: the costume and the gimmick, and so they handed the
Speaker 2: gimmick over to Jesus Escoboza, who lived nineteen sixty six
Speaker 2: through twenty twenty. This is the Laparca that was mentioned
Speaker 2: earlier that died in twenty twenty. So but this handoff
Speaker 2: was occurring in the late nineties, and I believe there
Speaker 2: was a lot of like legal back and forth about
Speaker 2: the gimmick. But certainly by around two thousand and three, Abarra,
Speaker 2: the first Laparka, ended up altering his costume to look
Speaker 2: like a combination of Darth Maul and the Laparca skeleton
Speaker 2: costume that he had been wearing in order to perform
Speaker 2: in televise matches for CMLL. That's Mexico's biggest lush promotion
Speaker 2: and arch rival of Triple A. At this point, he
Speaker 2: changed his name to what as an English speaker, I
Speaker 2: always read as La park but I'm to understand in
Speaker 2: Spanish it is pronounced la Parka, so it still sounds
Speaker 2: like Laparca, but is spelled differently for legal regas. I see. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so he did some great work for CML during that timeframe.
Speaker 2: I watched some of his CML matches back in the day,
Speaker 2: and since then, the Laparca legacy has continued, with a
Speaker 2: third Laparka. In Triple A there was and then at
Speaker 2: different times there were various family members of Agvarres that
Speaker 2: ended up taking on some sort of Laparca gimmick. So
Speaker 2: there was a super Parka, various sons of Laparca. There
Speaker 2: was also a lark There were some La Parkitas, more
Speaker 2: than one, like many Laparca's, and for a short while
Speaker 2: there was a female Laparka as well. So it just
Speaker 2: goes to show, you know, once you've established a great gimmick,
Speaker 2: you just can't keep it down. People are gonna wear
Speaker 2: the hood no matter what.
Speaker 3: Wait, do you know how did Darth Maul get wrapped in?
Speaker 3: Was that just zeitgeist?
Speaker 2: I think it was just yeah, in the zeitgeist at
Speaker 2: the time, and I don't know for certain, but I'm
Speaker 2: assuming he just realized he needed to mix up the
Speaker 2: look a little bit, and so it made sense for
Speaker 2: him to do this. He might have actually done it
Speaker 2: a little bit before he became La Park, if you will,
Speaker 2: just because it was fun, you know, like sometimes costume
Speaker 2: wrestlers in Mexico, the Lucitos, will do this where they'll
Speaker 2: they'll take their existing costume and they'll tweak it a
Speaker 2: little bit, maybe a'le align it with something in pop
Speaker 2: culture beyond what they have going on. But yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: mostly familiar with the guy who would become La Park,
Speaker 2: and I generally describe him as a brawling, wild man
Speaker 2: luchador that could still bust out some really sweet maneuvers
Speaker 2: here and there. But yeah, one does not get much
Speaker 2: of a traditional mainstream grim reprovibe from him though, you know,
Speaker 2: especially the WCW days he was dancing, he was playing
Speaker 2: at your guitar. He wasn't coming for people's souls or
Speaker 2: anything like that. He was doing spin kicks. Yeah. Well, Angela,
Speaker 2: thanks for writing in about all that. It was nice
Speaker 2: to dive in on a little Laparka history. And then
Speaker 2: there's so many other lugadors that have skull motifs incorporated
Speaker 2: into their look, you know, the whole army of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you Angelo. Okay, are you ready if I
Speaker 3: do this message from Luisa? Yeah, Luisa says, Hi, guys,
Speaker 3: I hope this twenty twenty six is a great year
Speaker 3: for you and yours. I've been fascinated by your Death series.
Speaker 3: You always give such an interesting, deep analysis of obscure information.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Louisa, is what we hope for. We try. However,
Speaker 3: I had hoped you would mention Las Intermittensias de la
Speaker 3: Morte by Sarah Mago and that title is usually translated
Speaker 3: Death with Interruptions. Luisa says, if you haven't read it yet,
Speaker 3: I can't recommend it enough. It is elegantly written, with
Speaker 3: a mysterious plot and a beautiful ending. Please consider it
Speaker 3: in your reading list for this year. And if you
Speaker 3: do happen to talk about it further on the series.
Speaker 3: My apologies as always, thank you so much for your
Speaker 3: wonderful podcast, Luisa. Oh, and then Luisa says, ps, every
Speaker 3: time you go over the weekly schedule, when you say
Speaker 3: and on Fridays, we're going to say we do weird
Speaker 3: house cinema. But she says, when you say and on Fridays,
Speaker 3: I expect you to say, I'm in love pop culture
Speaker 3: and printing.
Speaker 2: I guess that's the cure, right, Yeah, yeah, that's the cure.
Speaker 2: That's a great song.
Speaker 3: So this novel is by the Portuguese author Jose Saramago.
Speaker 3: I have not read it, but Luisa, I looked it
Speaker 3: up on your suggestion and I they genuinely ended up
Speaker 3: ordering a copy of the English translation. This is the
Speaker 3: translation by Margaret Joel Costa. And just to give you
Speaker 3: a taste, the opening sentence of the book is the
Speaker 3: following day no one died. So it's a pretty cool premise.
Speaker 3: I don't want to spoil too much about the book,
Speaker 3: though I did kind of read ahead about what the
Speaker 3: plot is, and that got me hooked on wanting to
Speaker 3: actually read the book, but just to sort of sketch
Speaker 3: it out. The premise is that one day, in one country,
Speaker 3: death just stops. People become unexpectedly and suddenly immortal. And
Speaker 3: while this seems like a great blessing, actually it is horrible.
Speaker 3: It turns into a crisis because it doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: people are now eternally well, it just means they don't die.
Speaker 3: So people with fatal injuries and terminal illnesses do not
Speaker 3: get better. They just don't die, which is actually a nightmare,
Speaker 3: and so that happens. I was reading about some interesting
Speaker 3: plots in the middle of the book where the government
Speaker 3: is trying to figure out like workarounds, like what can
Speaker 3: we do with the people who are like basically.
Speaker 2: Dead but not dying.
Speaker 3: And then there is another part in the book where
Speaker 3: apparently the character of Death decides to resume allowing people
Speaker 3: to die, but she gives them a warning a week
Speaker 3: ahead of time so they can prepare and like prepare
Speaker 3: and use their final day as well, and this also
Speaker 3: seems to go disastrously. It increases dread and obsession. So
Speaker 3: it seems like the story is going to be about
Speaker 3: paradoxes in how we think about death, Like a lot
Speaker 3: of things that we want with respect to death, like
Speaker 3: knowing when it will happen or avoiding it entirely, would
Speaker 3: be absolute curses if they were to really happen. And finally,
Speaker 3: the story does seem to involve death falling in love
Speaker 3: with immortal, which we were just talking about stories like that,
Speaker 3: weren't we.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well, actually several aspects of this story match
Speaker 2: up with some much older tellings, you know, being taken
Speaker 2: out of commission to what extent death is going to
Speaker 2: give you a heads up on his or her arrival.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this sounds very interesting, like taking all these
Speaker 2: ideas and these literary motifs that we've been ruminating on
Speaker 2: and sort of updating it for a twenty first century
Speaker 2: literary treatment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so anyway, thank you for the recommendation, Luisa, and
Speaker 3: I am gonna my copies on the way and I'm
Speaker 3: going to be trying to read it this year.
Speaker 2: All right, This next one comes to us from Albert.
Speaker 2: Albert is the name of the human who assists death
Speaker 2: in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. But I think this is
Speaker 2: a different Albert.
Speaker 3: This is not a pseudonym Albert has written to us before.
Speaker 2: Okay, or it could be a different Albert, or could
Speaker 2: be the fictional character from the Discworld. Now we're about
Speaker 2: to find out. We're about to find out Albert. Right,
Speaker 2: sin and says dear Robin Joe. I have been thoroughly
Speaker 2: enjoying your exploration of the anthropomorphic p sionifications of death.
Speaker 2: I'm writing this after listening to part three. There have
Speaker 2: been many depictions of death in various media over the years.
Speaker 2: Some of my favorites are from the films, and we
Speaker 2: get a short list here, The Seventh Seal, you know,
Speaker 2: classic Monty Python in the Meaning of Life. Yes, that's
Speaker 2: another great one. And meet Joe Black. I haven't seen
Speaker 2: meet cho Blake who plays death in that?
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 3: Is that Brad Pitt?
Speaker 2: Is Is he death in that? Is he Joe Black?
Speaker 3: I think so?
Speaker 1: Or?
Speaker 2: Or is he he ages backwards in this one? Towards Death?
Speaker 2: I can't remember. I can't keep it.
Speaker 3: This is one from the nineties. In my brain, I merged.
Speaker 3: I used to merge Meet Joe Black and City of
Speaker 3: Angels the American remake of Wings of Desire into one movie.
Speaker 3: But they're different movies.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, Meet chob Blake. Maybe I should give it,
Speaker 2: give it a go on the small screen. The Hitchhiker
Speaker 2: episode from the Twilight Zone was quite memorable, and in
Speaker 2: the various comics and graphic novels. Death of the Endless
Speaker 2: in the Sandman series is my favorite. And we can't
Speaker 2: forget about death the Pale Rider in the Book of Revelations.
Speaker 2: Although side note apparently the original word describing death is
Speaker 2: not pale, but a light green, indicating that it's actually
Speaker 2: the color of rotting flesh. Anyway, in both Meet Joe
Speaker 2: Black and in Sad Sandman, death is shown to be
Speaker 2: a comforting presence, fulfilling the role of psychopomp that you mentioned.
Speaker 3: That's right, So the distinction there is that the psychopomp
Speaker 3: is the figure, like the way Hermes is sometimes depicted
Speaker 3: in Greek mythology, the guide of the soul to the
Speaker 3: afterlife takes you from one place to the next.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Albert continues, I also looked into Japanese culture's depiction
Speaker 2: of death. When I do a search on Shinigami, which
Speaker 2: literally means death god, the search shows either the soul
Speaker 2: reapers from the anime Bleach or Western depictions of the
Speaker 2: grim Reaper. As far as I know, there is a
Speaker 2: judge of the dead in the Dio who is derived
Speaker 2: from Yama of the Hindu pantheon. This judge of the
Speaker 2: dead is present in many Buddhist cultures, but a death god,
Speaker 2: a reaper, a harvester of souls seems to be absent. Anyway,
Speaker 2: looking forward to part four, impossibly part five, thanks Albert, Oh.
Speaker 3: That is interesting, So that would be if you're correct here, Albert,
Speaker 3: this would be the case of a culture that doesn't
Speaker 3: really have anything quite like a grim reaper figure like
Speaker 3: in Japanese culture. There's maybe just not a native equivalent
Speaker 3: of the figure that appears at your death.
Speaker 2: Hmm. Yeah, I haven't researched this for myself yet. One
Speaker 2: of the main sources, as I mentioned in our series,
Speaker 2: definitely focused on more on Western models, but you know,
Speaker 2: I love looking into Eastern cultures as well, so maybe
Speaker 2: in the future we'll come back and look at some
Speaker 2: of these models from Buddhism and Hinduism as well.
Speaker 3: Ready for me to do this one for Matt?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what does Matt have to say?
Speaker 3: Matt says, good day, Fellas, Happy New Year. Very much
Speaker 3: enjoyed the series on personifications of death. It's a subject
Speaker 3: I've often thought about and had a couple of thoughts
Speaker 3: based on my own cultural interest. Being a Knuk with
Speaker 3: Scott's Irish Scotch Irish ancestry, and a general fascination with
Speaker 3: Gaelic culture. I've long been interested in the myth and
Speaker 3: stories of those cultures and how they can bleed into
Speaker 3: the modern day. Halloween and various other holiday traditions being
Speaker 3: easy examples. One I was attracted to from an early
Speaker 3: age was the Banshee and the Morgan. I've written to
Speaker 3: you previously on some explorations I've done into Morigan lore,
Speaker 3: and then parenthetically a place called rath Krogan and the
Speaker 3: cave of Oafnagot, for example, I vaguely recall that, don't
Speaker 3: recall what we said about them. Is there something about
Speaker 3: a cat at that cave that sounds.
Speaker 2: Failing that sounded maybe a rabbit?
Speaker 3: Matt says, What what I find interesting about the Morgan
Speaker 3: is that she, while not exclusively a death figure, is
Speaker 3: a death figure which seems to both mock and take
Speaker 3: delight in trickery, while one who also acts on savage
Speaker 3: impulses less in the tradition of the reaper, who gets
Speaker 3: closer over time, and more in the chaotic neutral vein
Speaker 3: where anything can propel her can propel you to her
Speaker 3: cold embraces if you're not careful. So sort of like
Speaker 3: the deceiver figure we were talking about, it's a common
Speaker 3: image of death, the one who embodies a fatal irony.
Speaker 3: So Matt says, I've only listened to part one of
Speaker 3: the series at this point. So perhaps you mentioned this
Speaker 3: in part two, but I find the Morgan to be
Speaker 3: a wonderful embodiment of both the malevolence and randomness of
Speaker 3: physical danger in our lives. To me, it's a quote,
Speaker 3: nothing personal, but you are going to die now because
Speaker 3: you screwed up, and the universe has little sympathy mentality.
Speaker 3: Then there's the banshee, the ghostly version of a keening
Speaker 3: woman at a funeral, which many a person is said
Speaker 3: to see or at least here before someone they know
Speaker 3: or they themselves die. I learned of the banshee when
Speaker 3: I was about fourteen years old and had just started
Speaker 3: getting interested in my family's history, culture, and stories. We
Speaker 3: didn't have much, if anything from the old Country, but
Speaker 3: a few funny sayings about not being out in bad
Speaker 3: weather and shutting ears to strange voices. I always found
Speaker 3: that strange. Then I came to know about the banshee.
Speaker 3: And if you saw a piece of clothing, shoe, etc.
Speaker 3: In the road at night, you may want to walk elsewhere.
Speaker 3: Not sure if that's a real thing or not, but
Speaker 3: that is what I thought at the time. I remember
Speaker 3: being out hunting one night near the family farm and
Speaker 3: coming across a child's dress caught on a bush from
Speaker 3: the wind. Ugh Was it a sign? Of course it wasn't,
Speaker 3: and was likely just caught on some foliage after some
Speaker 3: critter ripped open a garbage bag during the previous pickup day,
Speaker 3: it being blown by strong winds common to my homemade
Speaker 3: home area. Regardless, it freaked me right out and I
Speaker 3: went home immediately. I'm not a religious or superstitious person generally,
Speaker 3: but must admit I still get a chill thinking about
Speaker 3: that particular evening. Anyway, I suppose the lesson, as you
Speaker 3: both put it so well, is that the personification of
Speaker 3: death is in a way a very individual process defining
Speaker 3: what we each fear, expect, and want to a degree personally.
Speaker 3: If I have to go with the Morgan cackling at
Speaker 3: me telling me how stupid a decision I had made, was,
Speaker 3: that's all right with me. As always, love the show
Speaker 3: and do keep it up. All the best from Ontario, Matt.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks, Matt. I'm gonna have to say no thank
Speaker 2: you to the Morgan with the whole death blaming thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, have a little bedside matter. Send
Speaker 2: in Joe Black instead. I guess, yeah, all right, This
Speaker 2: next one comes to us from Stephanie titled Death Listens. Hi,
Speaker 2: Robert and Joe, thanks for the episodes entitled Oh Death.
Speaker 2: This has been among my favorite series from the show.
Speaker 2: I've had a lot of fun reflecting on what I
Speaker 2: think death looks like. When you mentioned the Death Listens artwork,
Speaker 2: I looked it up since I found it interesting that
Speaker 2: one of you thought the figure looked a bit awkward
Speaker 2: or similar just hanging out. I noticed that Death was
Speaker 2: holding flowers and almost contemplating the figure playing the violin.
Speaker 2: To me, this figure is one of the comforting deaths.
Speaker 2: She knows this is hard for the humans, so she
Speaker 2: takes time to enjoy the song of the young Man
Speaker 2: before she goes about her duties. This thought was confirmed
Speaker 2: for me when I realized Seinberg also painted the Garden
Speaker 2: of Death, which features three figures tending a garden with care.
Speaker 2: One is particularly enraptured with the flowers, which is impressive
Speaker 2: to convey on a skull. Thanks again for such a
Speaker 2: fun and interesting series on this subject. It's so neat
Speaker 2: to learn about the cultural and historical differences of how
Speaker 2: death is personified. Thank you, Stephanie.
Speaker 3: So Rob four reference, I put both of the artworks
Speaker 3: that Stephanie mentions in our outline here, so first you
Speaker 3: can look at that. This is the one we were
Speaker 3: actually talking about in the series, the painting Death Listens
Speaker 3: by Hugo. I was saying, Simberg, did you say Seinberg?
Speaker 2: I might have said Seinberg here, but at the top
Speaker 2: of my head, I'm not sure which one is correct.
Speaker 3: I don't know either, Okay, So Hugo, Simberg or Seinberg.
Speaker 3: This was painted in eighteen ninety seven. This is the
Speaker 3: one we talked about where there is an old woman
Speaker 3: lying in a bed in the background, looking very frail.
Speaker 3: And then the weird thing is that death is not
Speaker 3: oriented toward the dying woman. She is standing there draped
Speaker 3: in black. It's a skeletal figure draped in black holding
Speaker 3: flowers across from a young man playing a violin. So
Speaker 3: it's like she's listening to the violin, just kind of
Speaker 3: ignoring the dying woman, and we were wondering what to
Speaker 3: make of that. It is very curious. But then yeah,
Speaker 3: so Robi also pulled in the Garden of Death, which
Speaker 3: Stephanie brought up, and I see what you're saying, Stephanie.
Speaker 3: It's hard to convey expressions on skeletons because it's expressions
Speaker 3: are movements of the soft tissue of the face. But yeah,
Speaker 3: this one skeleton in the middle here, So the main
Speaker 3: layout is three skeletons are tending two plants in a
Speaker 3: garden with raised beds, and then also pots that are
Speaker 3: down on the ground. And there they're just one of
Speaker 3: them is watering plants. One of them is bent over
Speaker 3: looking away from us, probably looking at plants, and then
Speaker 3: one of them is just clutching a flower, almost as
Speaker 3: in like the way a child clutches their stuffy Just
Speaker 3: I love it. I'm, you know, a happy little embrace
Speaker 3: of an inanimate object clutching this flower, and it does
Speaker 3: have a big grin on its face. I think the
Speaker 3: way Simberg did this is by like curling the the
Speaker 3: mouth into like a U shape so that it looks
Speaker 3: like a smile, even though I think you would actually
Speaker 3: to convey that, you would have to move the lips,
Speaker 3: which the scale the skull does not have. So it's
Speaker 3: a bit of trickery here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think I get a real sense of
Speaker 2: sadness off of that. That middle skeleton here, they fill
Speaker 2: a closeness to human That's what I get from this
Speaker 2: and that there's a there's there's sorrow in their work,
Speaker 2: and they have mixed feelings about it, but it's part
Speaker 2: of the process, you know, it's part of the garden. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In both of these paintings, there is a mix of
Speaker 3: imagery because of course, a comforting death figure is not
Speaker 3: all that unusual. In fact, in the American psychology studies
Speaker 3: we looked at, it was the most common type of
Speaker 3: death figure. People imagine some sort of a soothing comforter,
Speaker 3: but that the comforter was usually depicted as more human,
Speaker 3: you know, fully fleshed and maybe like an old man
Speaker 3: or a woman or you know, somebody somebody coming to
Speaker 3: you with the flesh still on. Here, we're combining like
Speaker 3: the imagery of the monstrous, rotten, decayed death figure who's
Speaker 3: skeletal in nature, with the posture and the emotional tone
Speaker 3: of the comforter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's it's quite a feat to pull off
Speaker 2: visually here, but you know they managed to. I'll go
Speaker 2: ahead and ad you know, we're always referencing paintings and
Speaker 2: works of art and visual media in these episodes, and
Speaker 2: we generally cannot show it to you. So if there's
Speaker 2: ever an opportunity to look something up that we've talked about,
Speaker 2: and you know, and analyze it for yourself right in
Speaker 2: and give us your feedback. You know, that's always fair game,
Speaker 2: always fun to talk about these images more. All right,
Speaker 2: we're gonna go ahead and skip out of the Death
Speaker 2: Zone here and we're gonna talk about the Twilight Zone
Speaker 2: a little bit. This one comes to us from Paul.
Speaker 2: Paul says, hey, guys, you were talking about high end
Speaker 2: aluminum wears during the episode on the Twilight Zone episode.
Speaker 2: This is the Rip Van Winkle Caper.
Speaker 3: I guess we should re establish the context. The story
Speaker 3: of the Rip Van Winkle Caper is about some guys
Speaker 3: who steal a bunch of goal and then they go
Speaker 3: into cryo sleep for one hundred years so they can
Speaker 3: get away with the crime. And then they come out
Speaker 3: and then there's a bunch of drama in the middle
Speaker 3: where they're betraying each other, stabbing each other in the
Speaker 3: back and stuff. But the twist at the end of
Speaker 3: the episode is that in the future where they have
Speaker 3: emerged to finally take advantage of their ill gotten gains,
Speaker 3: the gold they still has become worthless because now we
Speaker 3: have the technology to just manufacture gold, so it's you know,
Speaker 3: it has lost all value. In the episode, we talked
Speaker 3: about how it's unlikely that in any real time frame
Speaker 3: we would be able to manufacture gold in enough quantities
Speaker 3: that something like this could happen. You know, it might
Speaker 3: be a byproduct of fusion technology or something, but it
Speaker 3: probably would not be manufactured in mass quantities. However, we
Speaker 3: did come up with a historical analogy, which was aluminum,
Speaker 3: which over the course of a few decades in the
Speaker 3: eighteen hundreds, in the late eighteen hundreds, went from extremely
Speaker 3: precious and rare because of how difficult it was to
Speaker 3: extract from the ore form in which it occurs on Earth,
Speaker 3: to much much cheaper. I mean, like, if you had
Speaker 3: stolen a bunch of aluminum in eighteen sixty and then
Speaker 3: waited one hundred years, you would be severely disappointed and
Speaker 3: your returns.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And so that's what Paul's following up on here.
Speaker 2: Paul says, I have a very old aluminium bread basket
Speaker 2: sort of piece that is a sheet with cutouts to
Speaker 2: mimic lace, then scrunched to form a ten inch scalloped
Speaker 2: bowl shape with textured A fourth of an inch wire
Speaker 2: coiled into disks and attached as handles. Okay, kind of
Speaker 2: hard for me to picture all that, but I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna imagine it's ornate, it's scrunchy, and it's made out
Speaker 2: of aluminum. He continues, based on the workmanship, it is
Speaker 2: probably from shortly after aluminum became more available, but before
Speaker 2: it became cheap, because the handles are clearly just cut
Speaker 2: wire bolted on. I got it at least third hand,
Speaker 2: so no origins. Now this is where Paul gets into
Speaker 2: fantasy territory, and I love it. Paul says, aluminum is mythriel,
Speaker 2: or at least that is my head canon. Mythriel is
Speaker 2: a whitish silver metal that is light, extremely hard, magically scarce,
Speaker 2: and doesn't corrode. Aluminum is a whitish silver metal that
Speaker 2: is light, extra hard at the surface, magically scarce as metal,
Speaker 2: and doesn't visibly corrode. Therefore, Mithriel is aluminum. I like
Speaker 2: a sacred metal from Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 3: Aluminum is that what Bilbo's male is made out of?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I believe so, Okay, all right, I applaud
Speaker 2: all of that, Paul. But then Paul switches over to
Speaker 2: another past episode and he says, I'm sure you've gotten
Speaker 2: this a bunch already. But in the licking episodes, you
Speaker 2: left out the movie trope of licking a blade, sometimes bloody,
Speaker 2: or licking the hostage or victim's face as a threat. Hmm,
Speaker 2: this is true. You do see the licking of the blade,
Speaker 2: I guess. I instantly think of Bromstoker's Dracula, Francisca Coppola's.
Speaker 3: Same here, Gary Oldman, it's the the shaving razor there
Speaker 3: where he's shaving, he's giving him a shave, and then he's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think of that. Every time I lick peanut
Speaker 2: butter off of a butter knife, I think of I
Speaker 2: think of Dracula.
Speaker 3: Even a butter knife. That creeps me out.
Speaker 2: If you know what you're doing like I do, it's
Speaker 2: never an issue.
Speaker 3: Don't tell the people that we're gonna get sued. Don't
Speaker 3: look a knife.
Speaker 2: Yeah, be careful out there, everyone. You're not a vampire.
Speaker 2: You can't regrow your tongue. You don't know how many
Speaker 2: tongues Gary Oldman's Dracula lost over the years perfecting that
Speaker 2: little trick. So yes, the good point that is a
Speaker 2: common trope, especially the blade licking. Sometimes the face lick.
Speaker 2: I don't know, the face licking sometimes is a bit much.
Speaker 2: Paul continues, I sent you a suggestion for content a
Speaker 2: while back on the theme of you Are what You Eat,
Speaker 2: citing several animals that concentrate poisons from their food, and
Speaker 2: wanted to expand on that idea microplastics, mercurial tuna see
Speaker 2: fourteen dating land reclamation using heavy metal, sequestering plants, flamingo, feathers,
Speaker 2: Sam and fletch. I forget a couple, lol. Keep up
Speaker 2: the good work, Paul.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Paul.
Speaker 2: Now that's that's a good that's a good topic idea. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you are what you eat?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. Another response to that episode comes from Brian.
Speaker 3: This is subject line death from gold Happy New Year, Robert,
Speaker 3: Joe and JJ loved your Twilight Zone question can you
Speaker 3: die from being painted gold We didn't actually answer that
Speaker 3: question in the episode. It just came up because we
Speaker 3: were talking about Goldfinger and m is that is that?
Speaker 3: What is from Goldfinger?
Speaker 2: Yes? I think I mentioned that. Growing up everything I
Speaker 2: knew about gold I learned from Goldfinger that you could
Speaker 2: paint somebody to death with it and that if you
Speaker 2: radiated a large supply of gold, then your supply of
Speaker 2: gold would be worth more.
Speaker 3: Gold Finger science. Well, so we talked in the episode
Speaker 3: about whether that's actually true, that you can be painted
Speaker 3: gold or not, but we didn't research it for the episode.
Speaker 3: It just kind of came up in passing, so we
Speaker 3: didn't know the answer. Brian says, believe it or not,
Speaker 3: someone did it, as in, killed someone by painting them gold.
Speaker 3: His example is Pope Leo the tenth, a Medici and
Speaker 3: arguably the worst pope of all time, had a boy
Speaker 3: fully painted gold to celebrate the Pope's return to Florence.
Speaker 3: The boy died mere days later. I'm sure paint in
Speaker 3: the sixteenth century was highly questionable in and of itself,
Speaker 3: so presumably any of the substances in the paint could
Speaker 3: have been the cause. But yes, we do have death
Speaker 3: by gold paint, and maybe also Ian Fleming's inspiration for
Speaker 3: the Goldfinger Woman. All the best, Brian, Well, Brian, I
Speaker 3: looked this up. So obviously with stories like this you
Speaker 3: never know how much faith to put in. But I
Speaker 3: did look this up, and this is a real historical
Speaker 3: anecdote that part of this big festival in whatever year
Speaker 3: this was, this was the sixteenth or seventeenth century that
Speaker 3: whatever year this was, there was a big parade, a
Speaker 3: big festival, and yeah it was. A baker's son was
Speaker 3: painted gold as one of the dancers at this festival,
Speaker 3: and it is said that he died later and it
Speaker 3: gives the measly sum of money that was paid to
Speaker 3: his family. As I was saying, you never know for
Speaker 3: sure how much accuracy stories like that have from that
Speaker 3: far back in history, but I guess it does seem plausible.
Speaker 3: The commonly given interpretation is the one they talk about
Speaker 3: in Goldfinger, where you have to breathe through your skin
Speaker 3: and painting your skin gold prevents you from breathing. That,
Speaker 3: from what I can tell, is not true. I mean,
Speaker 3: as we talked about a bit in the Twilight Zone episode,
Speaker 3: you breathe with your lungs, not significantly through your skin,
Speaker 3: but painting your skin could still be dangerous for other
Speaker 3: reasons not related to preventing you from getting oxygen. You
Speaker 3: can breathe through you lungs, but you need to say
Speaker 3: sweat and you know, exchange heat with the environment through
Speaker 3: your skin. So painting the whole body, not just gold,
Speaker 3: but painting the whole body any color could quite possibly
Speaker 3: prevent you from getting heat out of your body and
Speaker 3: could lead to overheating and heat stroke, which, if this
Speaker 3: story is true, could be the more likely cause. Or
Speaker 3: what Brian is saying, since we don't know what was
Speaker 3: in the paint, could also be the paint was fairly toxic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's harder to do this on MythBusters. I
Speaker 2: guess right, all right, we'll probably hear from them. Maybe
Speaker 2: they did. They'll be like, yeah, they did it on MythBusters.
Speaker 2: Multiple people died.
Speaker 3: I don't know they painted Jamie Gold, so I would
Speaker 3: say questions remain there, but yes, thank you, Brian.
Speaker 2: All right, here's a quick one. This one comes to
Speaker 2: us from Zach. This is a response to a Vault
Speaker 2: episode about the Rowan Tree. Zach says, greetings, Robert and Joe.
Speaker 2: During the episode on lightning struck trees in the Rowan Tree,
Speaker 2: you mentioned using Rowan sticks to protect milk. This reminded
Speaker 2: me of a practice continuing until as late as the
Speaker 2: early twentieth century, of putting frogs in fresh milk to
Speaker 2: keep it fresh. Researchers recently have found that anti microbials
Speaker 2: on the frog's skin probably helped in this. It also
Speaker 2: harkens back to the protective properties of frogs in magic
Speaker 2: mentioned in the Heart episodes. Thanks for the wonderful content, Zach.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Huh, yeah, let's try this out too. Let's get some
Speaker 2: frogs in our milk. Does it work with oat milk?
Speaker 2: Do I have to use a different frog? Maybe I'm slift.
Speaker 2: He's a toad in that case, or a newt I'm
Speaker 2: not sure.
Speaker 3: Okay, next message, David got in touch with an email
Speaker 3: that does not seem to be related to a particular episode.
Speaker 3: I think he just wanted to share something that he
Speaker 3: thought would appeal to us. He attached a photo he
Speaker 3: took from Visalia, California. It's a bit of graffiti on
Speaker 3: the side of a building that just says one word,
Speaker 3: and the word is Cthulhu. Scene. So the word play
Speaker 3: here seems to be on the names of geological epics
Speaker 3: like the Pleistocene or the Holocene. And I originally interpreted
Speaker 3: this to just be a joke, meaning that we live
Speaker 3: in a particularly wretched and monstrous time. It is the
Speaker 3: cursed era. At the time of Cthulhu. We are being
Speaker 3: We're living under the reign of a wretched, hateful, monstrous being,
Speaker 3: and maybe that is it. But I decided to look
Speaker 3: up this word to see if it's actually from something,
Speaker 3: and it is. So I found references to this term
Speaker 3: used by an American scholar and critical theorist named Donna Harroway,
Speaker 3: who is a professor emeritus at University of California, Santa Cruz.
Speaker 3: She wrote a famous essay from the nineteen eighties called
Speaker 3: the Cyborg Manifesto. Did you ever talk about this on
Speaker 3: the show, Rob?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This has been discussed in the show
Speaker 2: in the past and much older episodes, so certainly something
Speaker 2: we could come back to. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I was trying to understand what she means by
Speaker 3: the term Cuthulhu scene I looked at Obviously, I haven't
Speaker 3: read the book that is mainly about this idea, and
Speaker 3: I was trying to understand it by reading some summaries.
Speaker 3: I think I apologize if I'm misunderstanding this in any way,
Speaker 3: but I think she is proposing it as an alternative
Speaker 3: to the term. Some people have used the term entroposcene
Speaker 3: to describe our current age. The entroposcene is the idea
Speaker 3: that the age we live in now is the geological
Speaker 3: age that will be defined by human influence. So it's
Speaker 3: our influence on the climate, on geology, on the environment,
Speaker 3: and ecology. Again, this is my best attempt to understand
Speaker 3: what her work means.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: It's that anthroposcene is too human centric a term, and
Speaker 3: so she uses Cuthulhu scene as the name for an
Speaker 3: age in which the illusion that humankind is separate from
Speaker 3: and dominant over nature will no longer be sustainable, and
Speaker 3: it will become obvious that we are not discrete individuals,
Speaker 3: that we are not separate from the natural world, that
Speaker 3: everything has its tentacles in everything else, us in nature,
Speaker 3: nature in us, because we're not actually separate, we're just
Speaker 3: fully entangled. Again, apologies to Hairway if I've mischaracterized this
Speaker 3: in any way, but that is my understanding of this word,
Speaker 3: and so I feel like I understand it less as
Speaker 3: a as a graffito with that meaning, though I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe it's just trying to bring awareness of this concept.
Speaker 3: I can't rule out that it's just a coincidence and
Speaker 3: somebody independently came up with this word to mean like
Speaker 3: we live in the age of monsters.
Speaker 2: M yeah, yeah, I don't have to read more about
Speaker 2: this Cuthus scene idea. It does kind of feel like
Speaker 2: a shoehorning of Cthulhu into something that didn't require Cthulhu.
Speaker 2: But yeah, or know, the general idea sounds really fascinating.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll come back to it. All right, here's another one.
Speaker 2: This one comes to us from Lawrence subject line flower
Speaker 2: to Disappear.
Speaker 3: And I guess we should establish the context in which
Speaker 3: this came up. I was looking back and trying to
Speaker 3: figure it out. I think it was we were talking
Speaker 3: about Star Trek and the question was does the Flower
Speaker 3: to Disappear from the Mexican Santa Claus movie have the
Speaker 3: same philosophical problem as the Star Trek Transporter, where we
Speaker 3: can't know that it doesn't just kill you every time.
Speaker 2: I think this was I think this connection specific connection
Speaker 2: was brought up by a listener. I think maybe this
Speaker 2: is this is a listener mail response to another listener mail,
Speaker 2: which is totally fine, Oh okay for folks to do.
Speaker 2: I thought we brought that up, but maybe I'm totally wrong.
Speaker 2: We ended up talking about it.
Speaker 3: Lawrence gets in touch with an email that kind of
Speaker 3: obviates that debate.
Speaker 2: Yes, he says, hey, guys, just a quick correction of
Speaker 2: what I think is a mistaken conclusion from your last
Speaker 2: mailback episode. You consider that Santa in the nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: nine Santa Claus dies when he uses the flower to
Speaker 2: disappear and is recreated when he reappears. I just rewatched
Speaker 2: the film this past Christmas. If you're not familiar with
Speaker 2: this film, look it up. We also did a past
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema episode about it. It's one of our favorites,
Speaker 2: and MSD three K fans are well aware of it
Speaker 2: as well. But Lawrence says it's pretty clear. The Flower
Speaker 2: to Disappear is not teleportation. Is not a teleportation device.
Speaker 2: It's an invisibility device. Santa sniffs it once and once
Speaker 2: when visible to become invisible, and sniffs it again while
Speaker 2: invisible to reappear. He doesn't demateialize. He can see here,
Speaker 2: think and act while invisible. This is made pretty clear
Speaker 2: in his dialogue with Merlin. Yes, if you're nothing here
Speaker 2: with this movie, Merlin is also in the picture. Thanks guys, Lawrence.
Speaker 3: Thank you Lawrence. Now that you say this, I think
Speaker 3: you're exactly right. I remember scenes like this in the movie.
Speaker 3: But is it not actually both ways I thought I
Speaker 3: remembered teleportation as well. Doesn't Santa sniff the flower to
Speaker 3: disappear and then like appear on the roof above or something.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to watch it again now I'm blanking
Speaker 2: as well. What is the sense of it?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: Rob?
Speaker 3: Should we skip ahead to some messages for about Weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm gonna read this one from Hannah. Hannah says,
Speaker 3: subject line, Happy New Year, Justice for Kiefer.
Speaker 2: I thought this was going to be about the drink,
Speaker 2: but it's about the actor.
Speaker 3: Oh, Kiefer Sutherland. Yes, yeah, Hannah says, Hi to your hosts,
Speaker 3: I had a sort of potpourrie of remarks to share
Speaker 3: this time, but I wanted to start with heartfelt gratitude
Speaker 3: again for the companionship and brain candy your show provides.
Speaker 3: Spotify tells me I'm in the top zero point five
Speaker 3: percent of listeners this year, which was delightful but unsurprising
Speaker 3: since in addition to keeping up with new episodes, I
Speaker 3: frequently re listen to old ones when there's an idea
Speaker 3: I want to return to and nibble upon, like a
Speaker 3: squirrel knowing on an unsuspecting tourist.
Speaker 2: I like it. I support it that, thank you, Hannah.
Speaker 3: Hannah says, Plus, there were a couple of weird house
Speaker 3: selections this year that made me audibly squeal with delight
Speaker 3: when I saw their titles in my feed. On that topic,
Speaker 3: Dark City controversial opinion, perhaps, but I don't totally hate
Speaker 3: Key for Sutherland's performance. I speculate the intention might have
Speaker 3: been to imply that he was a polio survivor with
Speaker 3: the breathless speech plus the limp. Just a thought interesting.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have even had the background knowledge to understand
Speaker 3: that reference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that that could make sense. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously it's It's often the case where actors will will
Speaker 2: make their specific choices based on things that are maybe
Speaker 2: no longer in the actual of shooting script or it's
Speaker 2: just outside research something that they need to do to
Speaker 2: stitch together their approach to the performance internally.
Speaker 3: Hannah goes on next topic, Crabs. Last year, or maybe
Speaker 3: the year before, you read my letter about Crabs in
Speaker 3: a Werner Herzog voice, which has indelibly associated Herzog with crabs.
Speaker 3: In my mind, imagine the end scene of his nose
Speaker 3: Ferratu with the rider galloping into the mist, but instead
Speaker 3: it's a crab. Okay Anyway, I was driving to work
Speaker 3: in the breaking dawn the other day after an ice
Speaker 3: storm took down the last of the leaves, and I
Speaker 3: thought it's I thought, it's getting pretty bleak out here.
Speaker 3: Makes me think about crabs. I am not demanding a
Speaker 3: crab episode by any means, because it's much more fun
Speaker 3: to hear about whatever y'all are y'all feel inspired to cover.
Speaker 3: But I did ponder the idea that, just like the
Speaker 3: process of carsonization, all podcasts may eventually become about crabs. Finally,
Speaker 3: a weird House cinema recommendation Delicatessen, the nineteen ninety one
Speaker 3: French dystopian romantic comedy about cannibalism, warmly Hannah. Well, thank you, Hannah.
Speaker 3: By total coincidence, it was not because of your message.
Speaker 3: Just last night I was looking into, like, is there
Speaker 3: any really good crab stuff we haven't covered yet? I
Speaker 3: just feel an itching to come back to crabs. I
Speaker 3: was coming across a few things. I was having to
Speaker 3: get deeper into the more obscure corners of crab science
Speaker 3: and crab history. But I was getting some good stuff,
Speaker 3: so Rob, we may go there in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think tomorrow's weird hat. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: tomorrow's Monster Fact episode is going to deal with a
Speaker 2: fictional crab. Just happens to be the case. And I'm
Speaker 2: not one dred percent certain, but i think there's like
Speaker 2: a thirty forty percent chance of crabs in the next
Speaker 2: Core episode that'll publish this Thursday. Don't hold me to that,
Speaker 2: you know, just just a thirty to forty percent chance.
Speaker 2: So there may be no crabs. Don't blame don't blame
Speaker 2: the forecast if that is the case. But yeah, thanks
Speaker 2: for this this email. I I appreciate the insight on
Speaker 2: on Keefer's performance in Dark City. Always always open to
Speaker 2: discussion on that sort of thing. And as far as
Speaker 2: Delicatessen goes, Yeah, I've thought about doing a Geneau film
Speaker 2: at some point. Maybe this or City of Lost Children
Speaker 2: would be appropriate. Amilae even that one's that one's still
Speaker 2: plenty weird and very very visual. Used to be one
Speaker 2: of my favorite films. I haven't seen it in a
Speaker 2: long time though, And of course there's Alien Resurrection.
Speaker 3: Wait. Sorry, I just had to look this up because
Speaker 3: I was thinking, Wait, Jean Pierre Jine did I I
Speaker 3: was sure that we're mixing up two people here, but
Speaker 3: you're right. All of those are City of Lost Children,
Speaker 3: Amile Delicatessen.
Speaker 2: Alien Resurrection, Yeah, I mean Alien re Resurrection is definitely
Speaker 2: one of his films. I mean it's the visual fingerprints
Speaker 2: are all over it. Say what you will about it.
Speaker 2: It has a distinctive visual style. All right, here's another one.
Speaker 2: This when it comes to us from Scott. Scott says,
Speaker 2: I look forward to each Friday when the latest Weird
Speaker 2: House episode drops. It is always interesting to hear your
Speaker 2: take on those with which I'm already familiar and have
Speaker 2: added several to my to watch list based on your
Speaker 2: reviews and dissection. It recently occurred to me that Ralph
Speaker 2: Bakshi's Wizards would fit nicely as a Weird House candidate.
Speaker 2: I was rather surprised on checking the past episode lift
Speaker 2: on Letterbox to see that you haven't covered any of
Speaker 2: Boxshi's work. While his films can be somewhat uneven in
Speaker 2: terms of quality, they almost universally tick the weird checkbox.
Speaker 2: I'd love for you to cover any of his work. Granted,
Speaker 2: several of them aren't exactly conducive to being covered in
Speaker 2: a family friendly podcast, But there are several very good ones,
Speaker 2: including my favorite Wizards.
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean, we shure we one day do Lord
Speaker 3: of the Ring, but then it's like, oh no, it's
Speaker 3: this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that has greatness in it. But it
Speaker 2: is a very very uneven film. But there are some
Speaker 2: great stretches. There's some weird choices, and you know, it
Speaker 2: feels rather unfinished for a number of reasons. But we
Speaker 2: very well could.
Speaker 3: Isn't it the one that after the Battle of Helm's Deep,
Speaker 3: it's like and thus concludes the tail.
Speaker 2: Of the Ring?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and well you also have the Wizard. They call
Speaker 2: him Araman in that instead of Sorrowmon because they didn't
Speaker 2: want the son Sorrowmon confusion to take it.
Speaker 3: It looks like Santa Claus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you know they do. Look he does look
Speaker 2: like a wizard.
Speaker 3: Oh I thought maybe I'm misremembering. I thought he was
Speaker 3: wearing a red robe on the white is wearing a
Speaker 3: red robe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But like I say, I still have a lot
Speaker 2: of love for that picture, but it is very uneven.
Speaker 2: Scott continues the classic good versus evil theme mixes well
Speaker 2: talking about wizards here with a magical natural lifestyle struggling
Speaker 2: against corrupting technology conflict premise. The movie is mostly classical
Speaker 2: predigital animation, mixed with rotoscope snippets from classic war movies
Speaker 2: such as Zulu, The Battle of the Bulge, and Alexander Nevsky.
Speaker 2: Some of the animation is stunningly beautiful. The movie combines
Speaker 2: a generous amount of humor with an examination of some
Speaker 2: disturbing aspects of human nature and history. There are lots
Speaker 2: of nods to underground comic legends Robert Crumb and Von Bode.
Speaker 2: I'm not familiar with this latter figure anyway, Scott concludes here,
Speaker 2: if you haven't seen Wizards, I highly recommend it. As always,
Speaker 2: thanks for all the content you provide. Great stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've never seen it. I've seen images from it
Speaker 3: and it always looks interesting, but never seen it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll put it on the list, all right.
Speaker 3: Do we need to call it there for today?
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and call it. This will be an
Speaker 2: end to this episode of Stuff to Blidmind listener mail,
Speaker 2: but there will be another one in the future, so
Speaker 2: continue to write in. Write in about new episodes, episodes
Speaker 2: episodes from the Vault, episodes you would like to hear
Speaker 2: in the future, weird house cinema selections you would like
Speaker 2: to gleefully discover that are coming to fruition. All of
Speaker 2: it is fair game. Just right into say hi if
Speaker 2: you want just a reminder to everyone out there that
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 2: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a
Speaker 2: short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays. I'm in love.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our 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 hi,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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