Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: Listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're here. It's Monday. It's not Monday for us,
Speaker 1: but it's Monday for you, and it's time to read
Speaker 1: some of the messages that you have sent into the
Speaker 1: show over the past few weeks. So if you're ready
Speaker 1: to jump right in, rob, I could read this message
Speaker 1: from Amy on our episodes on Brain and Head Theft. Okay,
Speaker 1: this comes from Amy, she says. Hi, all, I just
Speaker 1: finished the second episode on Brain and Head Theft today
Speaker 1: and thought i'd drop you a note. When the episode started,
Speaker 1: I immediately thought of the strange afterlife of Albert Einstein's brain.
Speaker 1: The pathologist who performed the autopsy on Einstein took Einstein's
Speaker 1: brain without permission and kept it for decades, and then
Speaker 1: she attaches a BBC article for us to look at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we made a brief reference to this in the episode,
Speaker 1: but it didn't go deep on this one because I
Speaker 1: figured this story was better known than many of the
Speaker 1: other ones we talked about, like Hayden and Ish and
Speaker 1: uh and all those and so so I wanted to
Speaker 1: focus on the lesser known ones. Also, I remembered when
Speaker 1: I was actually looking into the story about Einstein's brain,
Speaker 1: I encountered some like just discrepancies in the accounts. I
Speaker 1: don't remember all the details now, but I think they
Speaker 1: were like conflicting accounts of like whether or not there
Speaker 1: was permission or what form that permission took and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the article they sent is The Strange Afterlife of Einstein's
Speaker 1: Brain by William Kramer for BBC. So, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: want to look that up, that's where you'll find it.
Speaker 1: Amy continues the second thought, I wanted to share concerns
Speaker 1: how is She's brain was eventually returned to his tribal descendants.
Speaker 1: I was an anthropology major focusing on physical anthropology in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, and the Native American Graves and
Speaker 1: Repatriation Act or nag PRO was important to learn about
Speaker 1: in light of how human remains and other artifacts were collected.
Speaker 1: The return of is She's brain was likely nag PRO related. Finally,
Speaker 1: my research for my master's thesis in forensic anthropology involved
Speaker 1: looking at head trauma in people buried in a London
Speaker 1: church crypt versus former British sailors buried at a naval
Speaker 1: retirement home. No surprise, sailors were more likely to have
Speaker 1: head trauma than the average British population. Both groups thought
Speaker 1: they were being buried in their final resting place before
Speaker 1: being uncovered during church renovations and archaeological excavations at the
Speaker 1: sailor's home, and didn't expect to be used for research
Speaker 1: a hundred plus years on. Thanks for all the fun
Speaker 1: hours of listening enjoyment. Amy, Oh, that that's neat, but
Speaker 1: we may have to look that up. I love a
Speaker 1: good study involving uh historical head trauma. I remember there's
Speaker 1: a really good one about gladiator um head trauma that
Speaker 1: we we looked at a while back. Is that for
Speaker 1: an Invention episode or for I think it's maybe come
Speaker 1: up a couple of times, but probably for invention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at one point we were talking about helmets. It came up.
Speaker 1: Yeah anyway, yeah, thanks me. All right. We also heard
Speaker 1: from folks about Halo's and mirages. That was kind of
Speaker 1: a I guess like a three episode spread of content
Speaker 1: that we did. When comes from Robin, they say, hi,
Speaker 1: Rob and Joe and Seth. Listening to your latest email
Speaker 1: round up, I thought I would just send you a
Speaker 1: real life example of sun dogs encountered in the wild,
Speaker 1: quite a common sight in the winter here in Edmonton, Alberta.
Speaker 1: Notice these while waiting at the bus stop. You can
Speaker 1: see two sundogs to either side which are continuous with
Speaker 1: a faint rainbow slash halo around the sun, the topmost
Speaker 1: part of which is a little brighter, and then new
Speaker 1: to me that day, there was also a little segment
Speaker 1: of a reversely arched rainbow further up, almost directly above
Speaker 1: the sky. If you look closely, you can also see
Speaker 1: what looks like glitter saturating the sky, small ice crystal sparkling.
Speaker 1: Cheers Robin. Yeah, this was really interesting. So Robin at
Speaker 1: shched a video file for us to look at. And
Speaker 1: so you see the sun dog, and the sun dog
Speaker 1: of course has the sun in the middle, and then
Speaker 1: it's sort of a ring around the sun with uh
Speaker 1: with sort of flaring second sun nodes at what looked
Speaker 1: like the nine d degree verticy is around around that ring.
Speaker 1: And then if you pan the camera up, which Robin
Speaker 1: does from the from that initial ring, there is another
Speaker 1: inverted arch above so like I guess if you were
Speaker 1: to shift along like the z axis nine d degrees
Speaker 1: up from that roughly, it's like there's another circle and
Speaker 1: you can see it reflected, but but in the mirror image,
Speaker 1: which was really cool. And this also reminds me of
Speaker 1: an experience I just had a few days ago when
Speaker 1: I was using the hose in the yard, uh, and
Speaker 1: I had that experience of making a rainbow around your
Speaker 1: own shadow with the spray of the hose. You ever
Speaker 1: you ever noticed this, Rob, Yeah, this figs about now
Speaker 1: that you mentioned it. This is another interesting optical phenomenon
Speaker 1: here that has to do with the fraction and reflection
Speaker 1: of sunlight through different types of like droplets or crystals
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere. In this case, it's a mist of
Speaker 1: water droplets in the atmosphere. You can make a rainbow
Speaker 1: around your own shadow because because if you're standing out,
Speaker 1: you know, in the yard, in the bright sun, uh,
Speaker 1: the rainbow is always going to form around your anti
Speaker 1: solar point. So so like if you imagine a line
Speaker 1: going from the sun through your head then down to
Speaker 1: your shadows head, that's sort of like the the line
Speaker 1: that will form the middle of the ring of that
Speaker 1: you're going to see a rainbow forming around. So if
Speaker 1: you if you squared a bunch of water up in
Speaker 1: the air around that point sort of around that your
Speaker 1: shadows head, you will probably be able to see a
Speaker 1: rainbow in the bright sunlight. And it's the same principle
Speaker 1: that causes a rainbow to form from your point of
Speaker 1: view in a you know, in a storm that's going
Speaker 1: on in the atmosphere in a distance. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: is an interesting reminder of why you can never actually
Speaker 1: get to the end of a rainbow, because a rainbow
Speaker 1: is not a thing that has a fixed physical location.
Speaker 1: Like plenty of other optical phenomenon in the sky, a
Speaker 1: rainbows apparent location is actually determined by the sort of
Speaker 1: convergence of several different things. It's the location of the
Speaker 1: sun which shines the light, and then the location of
Speaker 1: a bunch of water droplets somewhere in the atmosphere, and
Speaker 1: these water droplets or would bend and reflect the light
Speaker 1: back toward us, and then your eyes, which perceive the
Speaker 1: frequencies of light broken apart into their individual colors when
Speaker 1: they refract through those water droplets and then come back
Speaker 1: and hit your eyes. So you could roughly say that
Speaker 1: the rainbow is from your perspective wherever that water that's
Speaker 1: doing the reflecting and refracting is. But if you were
Speaker 1: to approach it, the rainbow would no longer be there
Speaker 1: because it's a product of your point of view, your
Speaker 1: perspective when you're looking at that water, so it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be there anymore when you got there. It's the natural
Speaker 1: place for lepre cons to send you though, in search
Speaker 1: of their gold, because they inherent tricksters, and they of
Speaker 1: they love sending humans, sending mortals on fruitless errands in
Speaker 1: pursuit of their greed, but educating you about the behavior
Speaker 1: of light in the process. Yeah, they're really into optics alright.
Speaker 1: This next message comes to us from Diana. This is
Speaker 1: about the Moses ilusion. Diana writes, Hi, Joe and Robert,
Speaker 1: I'm listening to your episode on the Moses Solution, and
Speaker 1: it made me remember this sort of dumb prank one
Speaker 1: of my older cousins would play on me when we
Speaker 1: were little. Uh mind you that this played out in Spanish.
Speaker 1: We're from Peru, but it went what color was the
Speaker 1: white horse of Simone Bolivard. I'll try to do the
Speaker 1: Spanish deck colore era El Cabayo Blanco de Simone Bolivar,
Speaker 1: and about Simon Bolivar, Diana writes he was known as
Speaker 1: the Liberator as he led armies and revolutions against Spain
Speaker 1: for the independence of several countries, including Venezuela, Columbia, and Peru.
Speaker 1: So he is a well known historical figure in South America.
Speaker 1: And when I would say I didn't know, she'd laugh
Speaker 1: about how she gave the answer in the sentence She'd
Speaker 1: pulled the same prank on several members of our family,
Speaker 1: and no one ever caught on. I wonder if that
Speaker 1: could be classified as the same effect or something similar
Speaker 1: to the Moses solution. Perhaps it works better in Spanish
Speaker 1: since it's noun plus adjective, unlike English, where it's adjective
Speaker 1: plus down. Your mind goes to the horse first, and
Speaker 1: its color goes right over your head. That's in I
Speaker 1: was just thinking about that, looking at never since I
Speaker 1: have them both here in front of me, and the
Speaker 1: listener mail, Yeah, we get to the color first in English,
Speaker 1: but it's secondary in the Spanish. Right to repeat again,
Speaker 1: In English, it's what color was the white horse, but
Speaker 1: in Spanish it's what color was the cabayo blanco. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: Diana says, just my two cents to add to the
Speaker 1: weirdness of human language and understanding. Love the show, and
Speaker 1: my mind is constantly being blown. So thank you best, Diana. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for this message, Diana, This is really interesting. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure whether this would technically constitute a form of
Speaker 1: knowledge neglect like we were talking about like the Moses
Speaker 1: illusion is one example of knowledge to neglect, because I
Speaker 1: guess the question would be whether the problem people have
Speaker 1: with noticing the color being given away in the sentence uh,
Speaker 1: is like where that error arises? Is it that the
Speaker 1: color is heard and processed and then subsequently ignored, or
Speaker 1: is it whether people are somehow prone to hear the
Speaker 1: question without ever processing the color in the first place,
Speaker 1: Like does it just not even enter your mind? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: And then I wonder I can't but also wonder on
Speaker 1: this one, if you're if you're more familiar with the
Speaker 1: with the figure historical figure of Simon Bolivar, you would
Speaker 1: you might be more inclined to stumble in this one,
Speaker 1: you know, because I think we've we've touched on this
Speaker 1: in the episode before, like some of these that they
Speaker 1: involve a historic person, you end up immediately like doing
Speaker 1: like a flash presentation in your mind mind off of
Speaker 1: all the history you know, all the sort of trivia
Speaker 1: facts you know about them. And sometimes I feel like
Speaker 1: that can do railists from from something like this. But
Speaker 1: even the punch line of a joke, like when we
Speaker 1: we mentioned on a recent episode the whole where did
Speaker 1: General Washington keep his armies? Yeah, I mean, there's no
Speaker 1: reason you should anticipate that the answer is in his sleevies.
Speaker 1: But but you still, you're you're automatically going to going
Speaker 1: to like facts stored in your knowledge bank, and thus
Speaker 1: it I think that is one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: it's especially funny if it is funny to you when
Speaker 1: the answer is just a silly like way of pronouncing
Speaker 1: a word. Yeah, the joke is actually that you have
Speaker 1: been thinking about answering this question on completely the wrong level, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and also I mean with with with questions
Speaker 1: like this, I mean, yeah, it's not a question that
Speaker 1: is in good faith because it because the answer is
Speaker 1: hidden in the question. Um, and you're you're and if
Speaker 1: you interpret it as being in faith, you you just
Speaker 1: assume that the answer is not blatantly present in the question. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: whether or not this is technically a form of knowledge neglect,
Speaker 1: I do think it's still really interesting. It does tie
Speaker 1: into that general experience that happens every day and seems
Speaker 1: totally mundane. But when you think about it, it's actually
Speaker 1: pretty strange. Uh. Like we talked about in the episode,
Speaker 1: that you are able to get the gist of sentences
Speaker 1: correctly without really retaining all of the information in the sentence. Like,
Speaker 1: how do we do that? How do our brains manage
Speaker 1: so quickly to extract and retain the global meaning of
Speaker 1: a statement or of a question, but not notice major
Speaker 1: information contained inside it? All? Right, here's another one. This
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Charlie. Charlie writes hello science boys,
Speaker 1: and they spell boys bo i sum, which I think
Speaker 1: ultimately that works better in print than it does out loud. Um,
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's what they write. Then they continue Short
Speaker 1: time listener, first time emailer. I have listened to the
Speaker 1: whole archive, and don't worry, it only took me a
Speaker 1: couple of years. I like to speed up my podcast.
Speaker 1: Y'all are the only podcast I got up to. Um
Speaker 1: uh three time speed on and you had over a
Speaker 1: thousand episodes, no human way to listen to them all normally.
Speaker 1: I finally weaned you down to one point eight times speeds.
Speaker 1: Since I got caught up, this raises the number of
Speaker 1: questions for me. So first of all, I mean I
Speaker 1: always kind of cringe a little when when someone tells
Speaker 1: me they've listened to all the episodes they went back
Speaker 1: to the beginning. Um, you know, just because that's that's
Speaker 1: from all, that's a white ways back and and when
Speaker 1: we started this thing out, we had no idea of
Speaker 1: what we were doing. So so I mean I would
Speaker 1: generally advise people to start from the present and and
Speaker 1: and work and you know, maybe work back a little
Speaker 1: bit that sort of thing. But you know, to to
Speaker 1: eat your them. You know, you don't have to listen
Speaker 1: to the album in the or or that the artist
Speaker 1: gives it. You can put it on shuffle. Who are
Speaker 1: who are we to argue with that? But then on
Speaker 1: the speed point, uh um, I mean I admire anyone
Speaker 1: who can listen to a podcast at three times it's
Speaker 1: normal speed. I feel like when I'm if i q
Speaker 1: A and episode of our show before it goes out,
Speaker 1: I'll bump it up to one point five and that's
Speaker 1: about my limit if I do. If I go much
Speaker 1: higher than that, then when I'm done, I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm I'm kind of having a slight nervous breakdown. Like
Speaker 1: it's kind of like my mind speeds up to it,
Speaker 1: and then I can't take it anymore, Like I get
Speaker 1: out of it, and it's kind of like this whiplash
Speaker 1: of reality. Oh. I sometimes listen to podcasts in audiobooks
Speaker 1: at an accelerated speed, and the problem is actually that
Speaker 1: after I have done that, now regular talking speed is
Speaker 1: intolerable to me. Like if so I do that and
Speaker 1: then I hear myself talk at a normal speed or
Speaker 1: someone else talk at a normal speed, and it sounds
Speaker 1: like everything's happening in slow motion. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: definitely prefer to listen to us at uh one point
Speaker 1: five speed because it sounds just a little different, you know,
Speaker 1: on my own voice especially, sounds just a little bit different.
Speaker 1: So I can almost appreciate, say, an episode of Weird
Speaker 1: How Cinema as if it were not me, uh, in
Speaker 1: a weird way. But yeah, if I go too far
Speaker 1: up it, it feels like a nightmare. Voice, I don't know,
Speaker 1: and then it starts unsettling me. Yeah, folks out there,
Speaker 1: if you if you never tried it, it is hard
Speaker 1: to listen to yourself. We have to listen to ourselves
Speaker 1: constantly to preview these episodes before they go out. And man,
Speaker 1: that that's just consistently a tall order. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: they continue with the email anyway, I was listening to
Speaker 1: your episode on the Moses Illusion, and I realized that
Speaker 1: I had an experience that seemed related. Apologies if you
Speaker 1: end up discussing it later in the episode. I am
Speaker 1: sending this part of the way through. It was the
Speaker 1: end of my eighth grade year and my science teacher
Speaker 1: had us doing Jeopardy esque game with buzzers and everything.
Speaker 1: I remember very little about that day, only that I
Speaker 1: knew the to a question who was the first person
Speaker 1: to receive a lobotomy. Now, this is something that happens
Speaker 1: to me frequently where I will think one thing and
Speaker 1: then say something different or related. So while my brain
Speaker 1: told me that the answer was Phineas Gauge, my mouth
Speaker 1: shouted Nicholas Cage in response. Um, I mean I could
Speaker 1: see Cage as Gauge in a biopic. Uh, anyway they
Speaker 1: continue Q thirteen year old means intense embarrassment, to the
Speaker 1: point that I could not even correct myself. My team
Speaker 1: obviously did not win those points. I most frequently experienced
Speaker 1: this phenomenon with numbers, where I will be writing a
Speaker 1: number and do it correctly, but when I have to
Speaker 1: say them out loud, they frequently are in the wrong order.
Speaker 1: I used to work a job that required me to
Speaker 1: read credit card numbers back to people over the phone,
Speaker 1: and somehow never was able to train my brain to
Speaker 1: do it consistently. Anyway, I just thought you might find
Speaker 1: this interesting. Love the show Weird al Cinema has brought
Speaker 1: me so much joy, and I can't wait to watch
Speaker 1: Santo in the Treasure of drag Uh. Thanks Charlie. Oh,
Speaker 1: thanks Charlie. Yeah, that is a great example. I guess
Speaker 1: that that's somewhat different than the Moses solution that I
Speaker 1: guess that would constitute a form of knowledge neglect, Like
Speaker 1: your outward behavior is not, for some reason able to
Speaker 1: perform the thing that you do know is stored in
Speaker 1: your memory correctly. Obviously, one of the factors here seems
Speaker 1: to be a sort of the pressure added by a
Speaker 1: public performance I actually remember very vividly and experience I
Speaker 1: had kind of like this where, uh, Rob, did you
Speaker 1: ever do a public spelling bee at school where you
Speaker 1: know you're in front of everybody and you're trying to
Speaker 1: spell words? And no, I never thought, Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: did this one time in middle school, and I remember
Speaker 1: I spelled a word wrong, even though I was like
Speaker 1: a hundred percent positive that I knew how to spell
Speaker 1: it right. And the way it went was my word.
Speaker 1: I was up at the microphone and I had to
Speaker 1: spell waltz and I said waltz w a lt z,
Speaker 1: and then they were they were about to say, like
Speaker 1: that is correct, and then I went E. I don't
Speaker 1: don't know why I have. No. I did not think
Speaker 1: there was an e at the the end of the word,
Speaker 1: but I was just compelled the Obviously, there's something about
Speaker 1: being in front of an audience and having that kind
Speaker 1: of pressure that suddenly that makes you just act out
Speaker 1: in strange ways. Sometimes walt see walt say all right.
Speaker 1: So this next message comes to us from Ryan. This
Speaker 1: is also about Moses illusion. Ryan says, Hi, Robert and Joe,
Speaker 1: I'm a longtime listener writing in for the first time.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all the intelligent and well researched discussion
Speaker 1: on topics that I would otherwise never encounter. Uh. The
Speaker 1: way you discussed and draw connections into religion, philosophy, psychology,
Speaker 1: and weird movies is unique and wonderful. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Ryan, Ryan says, I am a middle school
Speaker 1: band director, or at least I will be when we
Speaker 1: are allowed to play instruments in a room together again.
Speaker 1: Last week, I was listening to the Moses Illusion episode
Speaker 1: and I began to see some connections to learning and
Speaker 1: memory as they relate to music education, specifically to practice habits.
Speaker 1: During the episode, you mentioned the idea that hearing incorrect
Speaker 1: information can cloud the memory of information that we know
Speaker 1: to be correct. This instantly brought to mind the way
Speaker 1: that I teach students to practice music. I strongly encourage
Speaker 1: students to break down a difficult passage as they practice
Speaker 1: so that they are always playing it correctly. This can
Speaker 1: mean putting your instrument down and clapping a rhythm you
Speaker 1: are having trouble with, or playing a passage one note
Speaker 1: at a time, or simply slowing it down. The idea
Speaker 1: here is to make the music more simple so that
Speaker 1: they are less likely to make a mistake. This would
Speaker 1: mean that every time they hear it and play it,
Speaker 1: it is correct. Contrast this with a student who simply
Speaker 1: tries to play the passage straight away, and maybe they
Speaker 1: do this correctly six out of ten times. That means
Speaker 1: they now have four incorrect versions of the passage in
Speaker 1: their mind. Now, there are some differences between the linguistic
Speaker 1: and musical examples, but I think the core idea of
Speaker 1: information interference supplies when the first student goes to perform
Speaker 1: the piece, there is only one version of it, the
Speaker 1: correct version in their mind. The second student, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, has a handful of different versions of it
Speaker 1: in their mind, and this student must now actively choose
Speaker 1: the correct one. This is significantly more mental effort, which
Speaker 1: happens to be something in short supply when we are
Speaker 1: nervous on stage. Here's stage performance again. I never thought
Speaker 1: of this concept in such an explicit and direct way,
Speaker 1: but once you put a name to it, the idea
Speaker 1: was already there in my mind. Learning like this is
Speaker 1: what helps make me a better teacher. I look forward
Speaker 1: to going on more weird journeys and learning more with
Speaker 1: both of you in the future. Thank you, Ryan, that's great,
Speaker 1: and I m I certainly admire anybody who can who
Speaker 1: can and you know, not only uh, maintain their sanity,
Speaker 1: but excel as a is a is a junior high
Speaker 1: band director. I remember, even as a junior high kid,
Speaker 1: and that's usually kind of an oblivious state to be in.
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, looking at my director and been thinking, man,
Speaker 1: this this guy really puts up with a lot. I
Speaker 1: was an awful, rambunctious band kid in middle school. We
Speaker 1: we essentially turned our middle school band class into the
Speaker 1: ww E. Back then it was the WWF and it
Speaker 1: was the attitude era. So everybody wanted to be stone
Speaker 1: cold or the undertaker or whatever, and it was a
Speaker 1: it was a free for all. Oh man, that's got
Speaker 1: gotta be rough on the tubas. There's another point that
Speaker 1: comes up here that is something that I have thought
Speaker 1: for years and has come up in the context of
Speaker 1: all kinds of skills like writing and stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: there is I think often a an attitude among many
Speaker 1: people that you know, practice is always good, Practice makes perfect,
Speaker 1: and you know, you want to get any good at
Speaker 1: any skill, you do have to practice it. But I
Speaker 1: do think it is entirely possible. To practice yourself worse
Speaker 1: set things. Practice is not always good. You need to
Speaker 1: be practicing in the right kind of way because sometimes
Speaker 1: practice if it. You know, if you are practicing counterproductive habits,
Speaker 1: they can really take over and sort of prevent your
Speaker 1: growth in the skill in the future. All right, here's
Speaker 1: another one. This one comes to us from Scott. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: love the show Slash Shows. Thank you. In the most
Speaker 1: illusion episode, you touched on the idea of how we
Speaker 1: know stuff but can't relate details on how the thing
Speaker 1: actually works. This reminded me of a story I read
Speaker 1: long ago. In it, a NATO soldier stationed in Iceland
Speaker 1: is mysteriously transported back in time to the Viking era.
Speaker 1: He struggles to adapt because while he has great knowledge
Speaker 1: of wonderful things from the future, he cannot explain how
Speaker 1: to produce them with the with the existing level of technology. Worse,
Speaker 1: he is woefully lacking in the basic knowledge of how
Speaker 1: to survive without them. He cannot hunt, farm, make fire,
Speaker 1: build shelter, or the myriad of other skills that even
Speaker 1: the youngest members of the clan would do. A poignant
Speaker 1: line is that quote, you don't have the tools to
Speaker 1: make the tools to make the machinery to make the
Speaker 1: things I can use. He eventually perishes because while he
Speaker 1: is smart and accomplished in his own time, he lacks
Speaker 1: the resources modern civilization has come to depend upon. Standard closing. Thanks,
Speaker 1: keep up the good work, etcetera. Scott, Thanks Scott, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I looked up the details here since you didn't have
Speaker 1: the name and author. I think the story you're talking
Speaker 1: about is called The Men Who Came Early by Paul Anderson.
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with this writer, but just a quick
Speaker 1: googling does make it look like. One of the themes
Speaker 1: that's visited in some of his science fiction and fantasy
Speaker 1: writing is that of people in in modern, technologically advanced
Speaker 1: societies really underestimating so called primitive people who have less
Speaker 1: access to technology, and overestimating how clever and powerful they
Speaker 1: are just by virtue of existing in a society with
Speaker 1: more access to technology. And I think that's a very
Speaker 1: good point. I mean, one way of looking at technology
Speaker 1: is that it can greatly increase the output of human labor,
Speaker 1: but it does that by requiring us to have fewer
Speaker 1: and fewer general skills and to go deeper and deeper
Speaker 1: on like highly specialized skills that are increasingly alienated from
Speaker 1: the raw materials and processes of production that that make
Speaker 1: life possible. Yeah, isn't it funny that oftentimes that are,
Speaker 1: especially our post apocalyptic science fiction, you have you have
Speaker 1: these cases where we present some sort of post high
Speaker 1: tech civilization, primitive society worshiping a piece of like some
Speaker 1: relic of the technological age, be it a you know,
Speaker 1: an atomic bomb or you know, or I don't know,
Speaker 1: some darelit computer or something. But really this has more
Speaker 1: in common with the way we interact with a examples
Speaker 1: of advanced technology, you know, like we are the ones
Speaker 1: who know hasn't have no idea how they work, and
Speaker 1: for us it is just magic. It is just a
Speaker 1: gift of the gods. Uh. And granted it would be
Speaker 1: that way for our post apocalyptic descendants as well, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not like we're not already there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think this really narrow minded way of looking
Speaker 1: at things. Uh, This sort of like implicit superiority complex
Speaker 1: among people in tech technologically advanced societies is absolutely there
Speaker 1: and is absolutely not justified. I mean, people who did
Speaker 1: more with less technology had like had to have way
Speaker 1: more skills. It's mind boggling how much like intelligence and
Speaker 1: skill it is necessary to just like build a house
Speaker 1: without power tools and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, um, you know,
Speaker 1: there's one example of just uh like of sort of
Speaker 1: forgotten technological advancement that I've come back to a time
Speaker 1: and time again. But I don't remember exactly who wrote it.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was George Garrett in one of his Elizabethan novels,
Speaker 1: but it was talking about the sailing ships of old
Speaker 1: and about how not only could everybody on the ship
Speaker 1: tie every knot that was necessary for the rigging, but
Speaker 1: they could do so in the dark, in the middle
Speaker 1: of a storm, um, which I don't know. I was
Speaker 1: always found that rather rather interesting commentary on like on
Speaker 1: on the level of personal knowledge that was required to
Speaker 1: to keep it ship running at that time. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: am I really a genius because I can write some JavaScript?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Try tying three different knots. Let's see
Speaker 1: how that goes, much less a whole page worth of them. Okay,
Speaker 1: now we got some messages having to do with our
Speaker 1: episodes on Spoons. This first one comes from Randy. Randy says, Hello,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe, I just finished listening to your spoon
Speaker 1: episodes and I found them both fantastic. I love hearing
Speaker 1: how mundane objects in our lives have such interesting histories
Speaker 1: and stories behind them. Uh, you've done a great job
Speaker 1: of researching these mini mouth shovels. One thing that I
Speaker 1: don't recall being mentioned was spoons and forks to being
Speaker 1: used as a control to prevent left handedness. My father
Speaker 1: told me that when he was a kid, he was
Speaker 1: forced to use a spoon with a bend at the neck,
Speaker 1: so the bowl I guess that, meaning the bowl of
Speaker 1: the spoon pointed to the left, thus making the spoon
Speaker 1: only usable with the right hand and forcing out any
Speaker 1: tendencies for using one's left hand. Since using utensils is
Speaker 1: such a social norm that we expect children to learn
Speaker 1: in certain societies, having them work to force preferred eating
Speaker 1: behaviors could absolutely be seen as a tool for control.
Speaker 1: The alternative would be to eat with the wrong hand
Speaker 1: and be seen as a heathen. Can you imagine as
Speaker 1: an adult my father uses his right hand for his
Speaker 1: work and daily tasks. But I can't help but wonder
Speaker 1: if there is another dimension where my father is left handed.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the great show. Randy Rob Have we ever
Speaker 1: done an episode on on this kind of thing, like
Speaker 1: the demonization of left handedness, because I remember hearing about
Speaker 1: this from adults when I was a kid, that like
Speaker 1: if they were coming up in schools where they were
Speaker 1: essentially taught that being left handed was evil and you
Speaker 1: had to be like worked out of you, you know.
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly. I feel like I did something
Speaker 1: on left handedness, maybe with uh with Alice In louder Milk,
Speaker 1: the original co host on the show back in the day.
Speaker 1: I think we did something on left handedness. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's one of those things I'd love to go back
Speaker 1: to because I'm sure there's more, there's more literature on
Speaker 1: the topic now it would uh yeah, it's worth another dive.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure we really got into the the
Speaker 1: evilness of it so much as the the way that
Speaker 1: left handed people sometimes um um, excel in a right
Speaker 1: handed world, especially when you're looking at things like sword fights,
Speaker 1: you know, violent conflict, but also sports. Oh I see, man,
Speaker 1: we would get so much lefty mail left yeah, lefties
Speaker 1: would love it, and and right these maybe not so much.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but there are the lefties are the
Speaker 1: ones who wanted on your side because they're the ones
Speaker 1: who are good in a knife fight. All right, we
Speaker 1: have one left. It's not a weird house response usually
Speaker 1: to the weird house stuff at the end um. This
Speaker 1: one does relate to a movie episode that was that
Speaker 1: you know, in many respects kind of a kind of
Speaker 1: a weird proto weird house episode. It has to do
Speaker 1: with the star lac um. This one comes to us
Speaker 1: from Eric Hi, Robin Joe, and producer Seth. I was
Speaker 1: listening to your recent Listener Maile episode, so this is
Speaker 1: a listener male about listener mail. Anyway, when you read
Speaker 1: the listeners comments about the star lac digesting people for
Speaker 1: a thousand years, it occurred to me that the only
Speaker 1: person I can recall who died of old age in
Speaker 1: the Star Wars films was Yoda, who was nine years old.
Speaker 1: Everyone else who died was killed, as far as I
Speaker 1: can recall. What if Yoda was not abnormal for his longevity.
Speaker 1: Maybe everyone lives for the better part of a millennium,
Speaker 1: or would if they weren't always at war. Just a
Speaker 1: random idea, but I don't think it's too incongruous with
Speaker 1: anything in the films. Although I can't speak for the
Speaker 1: whole expanding universe. Keep up the great stuff or keep
Speaker 1: the great stuff coming, Eric, Uh, this is a this
Speaker 1: is a great question. It's making me think back on
Speaker 1: the various deaths in the Star Wars films um of
Speaker 1: non combat related deaths. The only two that are really
Speaker 1: coming to mind are, Yeah, Yoda dying of old age, uh,
Speaker 1: pad Me dying due to complications with childbirth. Trying to
Speaker 1: think of there any others. I think the Rank Corps
Speaker 1: Handler died of a broken heart. That that would have
Speaker 1: been like off screen, probably a short story that that
Speaker 1: part is always sad. Yeah, that's the worst part of
Speaker 1: Return of the Jedi for me is when the Rank
Speaker 1: Corps Handler starts crying and I'm just like, oh no,
Speaker 1: Luke is the villain. Yeah, plut I had that action
Speaker 1: figure of the Rank Corps Handler, So it kind of
Speaker 1: made it sadder because like I had here, like I
Speaker 1: had his physical manifestation and the Rank Corps um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it's sad to think about um. But so
Speaker 1: this is very interesting. Now. Of course you could look
Speaker 1: at this as it is a product of just sort
Speaker 1: of the storytelling conventions of adventure fiction, right, that. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, in the same way that people in Star
Speaker 1: Wars don't stop to go to the bathroom, they also
Speaker 1: don't die of old age because it's just not dramatic.
Speaker 1: But the other thing I was thinking about was how
Speaker 1: well this would actually be if this were true, that
Speaker 1: in the Star Wars galaxy, you know, people just don't
Speaker 1: die of old age. They only die violent deaths. Isn't
Speaker 1: that explicitly true of the elves in in Tolkien, like
Speaker 1: that they don't die of well basically they live forever
Speaker 1: unless they're killed in battle. Uh maybe I don't remember specifically,
Speaker 1: you get into that whole business of them sailing off
Speaker 1: to the other land and all. Um, if they live
Speaker 1: long enough and they grow bored enough. Uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: based on what, given what they're based on, you know,
Speaker 1: the ideas of fairy folk and and all that, that
Speaker 1: would make sense. Yeah. Um, I don't know. With Star
Speaker 1: Wars though, I you know, you could certainly point to
Speaker 1: the high degree of medical technology that is in cybernetics,
Speaker 1: that is that is possible in this world. But at
Speaker 1: the other hand, there's great inequality in the Star Wars universe,
Speaker 1: so you know, everybody's not benefiting from that technology, so
Speaker 1: that alone cannot account for um for extended lifespans. Not
Speaker 1: everybody gets to become more machine now than Matt right
Speaker 1: the bank the bat. What is at the back to tank?
Speaker 1: I believe it only seats one. You can only have
Speaker 1: one diaper clad JETI in there at the time, um
Speaker 1: regrowing their their their skin. So uh, yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting thoughts experience, though, I'll have to uh, I'll have
Speaker 1: to ask ask my son about it. He he ultimately
Speaker 1: knows more about Star Wars at this point than I do.
Speaker 1: He's always correcting me on uh the specific names of
Speaker 1: individual vehicles and whatnot. Okay, here's what I bet you
Speaker 1: have the answer too, because you're in that headspace. Now,
Speaker 1: what's the deal with like four see people who when
Speaker 1: they die in Star Wars, they just completely disappear, like
Speaker 1: they just vaporize. Happens to Obi Wan, happens to Yoda?
Speaker 1: Don't when Yoda dies of old age, he's just like
Speaker 1: it's just blanket there now, no Yoda. There's some sort
Speaker 1: of trick about becoming a forced ghost, and I don't
Speaker 1: remember all the details about it, but it comes up
Speaker 1: in the Clone Wars series. Um that it yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's like an ability you take on. I think, Okay,
Speaker 1: so that disappearing is not something that happens to you,
Speaker 1: but something you do. Like if you you die, you
Speaker 1: can develop a skill maybe if you've practiced and honed
Speaker 1: it over time, to disappear upon death and become a ghost.
Speaker 1: I think it's like this is um what I've absorbed
Speaker 1: through cannon and this is also fifty percent me to
Speaker 1: spit balling. But I think it's like if you were
Speaker 1: able to die with the serenity, like the sort of
Speaker 1: thinking about you know, uh, Tibetan Buddhism and all the
Speaker 1: idea of of putting yourself in a headspace to to
Speaker 1: navigate that pathway between our life and the next. Like
Speaker 1: if you're able to to to do that correctly, if
Speaker 1: your trajectory is sound, then yeah you can. You can
Speaker 1: live on as this forced ghost in the next life.
Speaker 1: But you've got to you kind of have to get
Speaker 1: into the into the right frame of mind, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to sort of enter that moment of calm
Speaker 1: like Obi Wan does before he dies, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I just remembered in the middle one of
Speaker 1: the New trilogy, Luke also he just disappears, it's just
Speaker 1: to the winds. Yeah, and I believe he has like
Speaker 1: a meditative state before that. So yeah, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I like that that motif. I like that idea. Um
Speaker 1: that you know, if you're, like I said, like a
Speaker 1: lot in Star Wars, it kind of squares up well
Speaker 1: with with at least some models of Eastern religion and philosophy.
Speaker 1: I think that's a wise and serene place to end today,
Speaker 1: if you're ready. Yeah, it this plane of existence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we'll be back though, uh and in in force
Speaker 1: ghost form to watch over you. Uh. We'll be back
Speaker 1: next Monday, in fact, with more listener mail. So in
Speaker 1: the meantime, right in with more listener mail. Respond to
Speaker 1: listener mails, respond to responses to listener mail, respond to
Speaker 1: new episodes, old episodes, weird how cinema, artifact, episodes, you
Speaker 1: name it. Let us know what you're digging, what you're
Speaker 1: not digging. We're always open to, uh, criticisms, corrections, and
Speaker 1: just in general just added information about the topics we cover. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, that's always the most delightful thing when when
Speaker 1: when when the listeners share things from their own life
Speaker 1: and their own experience Uh. Even my mom got in
Speaker 1: on this after we did the spoon episode. Uh spoon episodes.
Speaker 1: I knew she was gonna dig these because she's really
Speaker 1: into utensils. So I was receiving a number of different
Speaker 1: photos from from various spoons in her collections. So um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you you listeners, you can send in your
Speaker 1: spoon pictures as well. In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to listen to other episodes, just find Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind and Stuff to Blow your Mind feed wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.