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 Land and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And this is the part of the week where we
Speaker 1: read back some of the messages that you've sent in
Speaker 1: over the past couple of weeks, having to do with
Speaker 1: episodes on Pacific Island navigation, queuing and waiting for things,
Speaker 1: and uh oh, I think there's a good one on
Speaker 1: Fatim morgana and some stuff about weird house cinema Rob
Speaker 1: do you want to do? This one from Chelsea Sure.
Speaker 1: Chelsea says I was just listening to part two of
Speaker 1: the Waiting in Line episode and wanted to bring up
Speaker 1: the schoolyard phenomenon of back cutting. This is ours when
Speaker 1: the line exists and the cutter wants to be in
Speaker 1: line next to a friend so they can chat during
Speaker 1: the weight. The cutter asked to cut the friend, but
Speaker 1: the friend replies no, but you can back cut me,
Speaker 1: and the cutter joins the line right in back of
Speaker 1: the friend, hence back cut. I remember this as being
Speaker 1: like a situation of like, uh, I will allow you
Speaker 1: to get in front of me, and then that person
Speaker 1: obliges by letting you get in front of them, which
Speaker 1: you know is not an honest way to go about things,
Speaker 1: of course not, but it it kind of matches up
Speaker 1: with that sort of childhood level of figuring out how
Speaker 1: to blatantly cheat and how to blatantly bend the rules
Speaker 1: in your favor, uh in ways that that you know
Speaker 1: aren't gonna fly outside of elementary school anyway. They continue. Thus,
Speaker 1: the friend gets to hang out with their buddy without
Speaker 1: changing their spot in the line. The cutter gets to cut,
Speaker 1: and the person right behind them can't ultimately do anything
Speaker 1: about it. The person behind may protest about being cut,
Speaker 1: but the reply from the friend would be that they
Speaker 1: didn't front cut you, they back cut me, and that
Speaker 1: was the end of it. And I will add that
Speaker 1: this is kind of ingenious and that we one of
Speaker 1: the things we discussed in queuing is that it's the
Speaker 1: person that immediately was cut in front of that has
Speaker 1: the most like responsibility of outrage. And you're already putting
Speaker 1: them in a position where they're not going up against
Speaker 1: one cutter, but a cutter and a co conspirator, So
Speaker 1: they're already outnumbered in this scenario, right, And I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting that we internalize that as thinking of uh
Speaker 1: cutting in line as an offense primarily against the person
Speaker 1: right behind you where you cut. In fact, it's affecting
Speaker 1: everybody else in line, right, everybody else behind that point
Speaker 1: in line has now been cut in front of UM.
Speaker 1: But I think because of this social convention where it's
Speaker 1: the person directly behind the intrusion point who has the obligation,
Speaker 1: we somehow naturally see it as like purely an offense
Speaker 1: against them personally. And yet obviously, I mean, like I
Speaker 1: think from the rest of Chelsea's email, it's clear that
Speaker 1: even kids into it that there's something wrong with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you can easily get at control where if you
Speaker 1: joined the line and then you just announce that you
Speaker 1: will now be back cutting everyone. You know, everybody can
Speaker 1: backcut anyway. Yeah, they continue as the person behind them.
Speaker 1: I'll aways felt conflicted because whether the cutter was right
Speaker 1: before or right after their friend had no impact on
Speaker 1: my way time, but having the cutter right in front
Speaker 1: of me felt like my special societal role as the
Speaker 1: person immediately behind the cutter had been usurped by the friend.
Speaker 1: I had been cut and it had been sanctioned, and
Speaker 1: there wasn't anything I could do about it. I think
Speaker 1: this was more common with the popular kids, but I
Speaker 1: may well have engaged in it myself despite not having
Speaker 1: that many friends. None of us are the angels we
Speaker 1: think we were. I grew up in California, and I'm
Speaker 1: curious to know how widespread the term phenomenon is. I
Speaker 1: remember it being relatively common in elementary school, occasionally in
Speaker 1: middle school, and non existent in high school. The bit
Speaker 1: of child lord no cuts, no butts, no coconuts is
Speaker 1: was also British common, and was extra amusing in elementary
Speaker 1: school because of the butts homophone. But that is the
Speaker 1: obvious best thing to grace an anti cutting poster. Keep
Speaker 1: up the good work, guys. I appreciate being engaged and
Speaker 1: amused as you by you both as I walked my
Speaker 1: dog into housework. I I'm not a fan of horror movies,
Speaker 1: but the Weird House episodes are grade fine. Jesse ps.
Speaker 1: Nearly every time Seth's full name is mentioned in the broadcast,
Speaker 1: I repeat his name in my head is death. Nicholas Johnson,
Speaker 1: his October alter ego haunts me year round. Oh well,
Speaker 1: that warms my heart. So I definitely got this when
Speaker 1: I was when I was in elementary school, but I
Speaker 1: don't remember being called back cutting. I remember the phrase
Speaker 1: front seat back seat. Did you ever encounter that? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think I encountered that one. I think that's
Speaker 1: more what you were talking about. It's like the person
Speaker 1: cuts in front of their friend, and then their friend
Speaker 1: cuts right back in front of them, so it's effectively
Speaker 1: the same thing, somebody just getting behind you in line.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the other thing you say, Chelsea, which I
Speaker 1: think is absolutely true, is yes, the popular kids are
Speaker 1: more likely to do this. Kids at the elementary school
Speaker 1: period are much more blatant about operating on the basis
Speaker 1: of of thinking that they're elevated. Social status just grants them, right,
Speaker 1: It's that other people don't have people. Adults behave that
Speaker 1: way too, but they try to sort of hide it
Speaker 1: more than make it. They come up with systems of
Speaker 1: making it look like that's not what's going on, right,
Speaker 1: And I think a part of this is sort of
Speaker 1: the childhood awareness of how unfair systems exist, but then
Speaker 1: they not getting the nuance of it, you know, like
Speaker 1: the gross injustice has happen every day all day, but
Speaker 1: not all of them are out in the open. A
Speaker 1: lot of the times they are hidden in ways that
Speaker 1: are not apparent in this example of back cutting, speaking
Speaker 1: of cutting based on on social status and and hierarchy,
Speaker 1: I'm I wanna read this next message from Jordan's. So
Speaker 1: Jordan's says, Dear Rob and Joe, I've been listening to
Speaker 1: the show for a couple of years, and I love
Speaker 1: being able to idly learn while I work. I've really
Speaker 1: enjoyed the recent series on queuing because well, I've never
Speaker 1: really given much thought to it. I know that I
Speaker 1: typically hate doing it. I can't remember if you discussed
Speaker 1: queuing and animals or I just missed it, but I
Speaker 1: have seen it performed in horses. I work on a
Speaker 1: nonprofit wild horse rescue ranch in California, where we have
Speaker 1: over a hundred in our care. On the hot summer
Speaker 1: days of the California desert, it's not uncommon to see
Speaker 1: a half dozen horses at a watering trough at once.
Speaker 1: While typically there is plenty of room for multiple horses
Speaker 1: to access the water at once, I have witnessed a
Speaker 1: line forming to get a drink. The difference is that
Speaker 1: horses adhere to a very strict quote pecking order, and
Speaker 1: the one at the top gets to drink first, regardless
Speaker 1: of when they join the queue, they go to the front.
Speaker 1: In the case of line integrity you mentioned, if an
Speaker 1: individual lower in the pecking order tries to line jump,
Speaker 1: the one behind will almost always run them out of
Speaker 1: the line, while the horses ahead seem to pay no
Speaker 1: mind to what is going on behind them. It's very
Speaker 1: interesting to see this play out with non human animals
Speaker 1: and makes me think that perhaps queuing is more instinctual
Speaker 1: than one may have originally thought. I have attached photo
Speaker 1: of a line forming among our older residents for you
Speaker 1: to check out, and then Jordan's does indeed attach a
Speaker 1: photo here of what looks like four horses lining up
Speaker 1: to get to a big container of water. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what's going on here. This is yeah, great point.
Speaker 1: I would say. The big thing that's different between what
Speaker 1: you highlight here and and our queuing conventions is the
Speaker 1: the principle that orders access. Obviously, in all kinds of
Speaker 1: animal system in like the Animal Kingdom, there will be
Speaker 1: lots of ways of ordering access, but as you highlight
Speaker 1: uh here, it tends to be a very just directly
Speaker 1: and purely unfair pecking order based on some kind of
Speaker 1: hierarchy that's understood by the horses, some kind of dominance thing,
Speaker 1: whereas a lot of what we were talking about was
Speaker 1: the social convention of first in, first out ordering. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you get to the line and
Speaker 1: you think you're better than everybody else in line, that
Speaker 1: you know that they're not going to just say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, you're better than us. You can go to
Speaker 1: the front. Oh. And then finally the end, Jordan's says,
Speaker 1: love the show, and I have to say, I really
Speaker 1: missed regular Invention episodes. Keep up the great work, guys,
Speaker 1: and much love from Cali. Um that I think that's California,
Speaker 1: not a person named Kelly c a l I. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad to hear it. Thank you, glad to hear
Speaker 1: you liked the Invention episode. So we still do them
Speaker 1: from time to time, just not every week because I
Speaker 1: guess you note, Yeah, we can't offer regular Invention episodes,
Speaker 1: but we can offer the next best thing, irregular Invention episodes.
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And we actually have I believe we
Speaker 1: have an Invention episode coming up really soon, or at
Speaker 1: least we've been talking about doing one on a particular
Speaker 1: invention topic, so they'll they'll keep We enjoy doing invention
Speaker 1: based episodes, so they're they're definitely not going away. They
Speaker 1: just they're in the rotation at this point, right, all right.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Nan Nan Rights. Hi,
Speaker 1: Joe and Robert. I've been a fan of the show
Speaker 1: for a few years now and have especially enjoyed your
Speaker 1: recent series on queuing. When you discussed the ambiguity involved
Speaker 1: in most cases of line cutting, particularly taking another person's
Speaker 1: parking space, it made me reconsider a time when I
Speaker 1: confronted another driver who took my spot. I was waiting
Speaker 1: to turn left into a parking space at Costco while
Speaker 1: a pedestrian cross my path and another driver turned into
Speaker 1: my intended spot as his passenger looked at me and
Speaker 1: grin sheepishly. After I finally parked, I saw the family
Speaker 1: from the other car and waddled my seven months pregnant
Speaker 1: body over to them and chewed them out about their automotive.
Speaker 1: Since the driver claimed he didn't see me, Your podcast
Speaker 1: made me reconsider whether the other driver really hadn't seen me,
Speaker 1: and whether I should have tried to be more genteel
Speaker 1: in my approach despite my raging prenatal hormones. I didn't
Speaker 1: run into the family again while inside the warehouse, which
Speaker 1: leads me to believe I terrified them so much that
Speaker 1: they left without finishing their shopping trip. After listening to
Speaker 1: your discussion, I'll definitely try to slow my role moving
Speaker 1: forward and acknowledge the ambiguity and line cutting situations. Thanks for,
Speaker 1: as always, for providing such interesting food for thought and
Speaker 1: expanding my perspective on everyday situations. Always your fan. Now well, Nan,
Speaker 1: glad to hear about your your broadening consciousness on this.
Speaker 1: But also, you know, don't feel bad. We've all we've
Speaker 1: all had moments obviously when when somebody does cut in
Speaker 1: the parking lot. Even though you're you're like broader mind
Speaker 1: from a distance, you know, the the astral level consciousness
Speaker 1: would look down on you and say, don't overreact in
Speaker 1: the moment, it's hard not to. Yeah, alright. This next
Speaker 1: message concerns both Fat Am Morgana which is a slightly
Speaker 1: older episode, and Weird House Cinema. This is this is
Speaker 1: a great email. So this is from John, and John says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe Uh. This email is about an older episode,
Speaker 1: but I was reminded of it the other day in
Speaker 1: a funny way. Right now, I'm doing ecology work in
Speaker 1: a remote field camp in the Alaskan Arctic, right by
Speaker 1: the coast of the Beaufort Sea, where two miles from
Speaker 1: the coast, But the tundra is flat enough that for
Speaker 1: most of the summer we've been able to see the
Speaker 1: sea ice on the Arctic Ocean as it stacks up
Speaker 1: against the small barrier islands to the north. Anyway, as
Speaker 1: a coworker and I were walking across the tundra to
Speaker 1: a study area, we started talking about the ice and
Speaker 1: I had to recommend your Fati morgana episode to her.
Speaker 1: Even though the sea ice only builds up to piles
Speaker 1: about ten to twenty feet high against the barrier islands,
Speaker 1: for much of the summer, I've been able to step
Speaker 1: out of my tent, look north and see a Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones style ice wall stretching across the coast. It
Speaker 1: looks like a long, tall, white barrier separating the land
Speaker 1: from the ocean, like the supposed polar ice walls in
Speaker 1: some flat Earther theories I've attached a picture of the
Speaker 1: illusion for reference in front of one of our study areas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really impressive this image. It does, in fact
Speaker 1: look like a yeah, like a Game of Throne style
Speaker 1: ice wall. Yeah, the others are coming the optical illusions,
Speaker 1: don't in there we also get islands stretched and floating
Speaker 1: above the ground, a similar cloud wall to the west,
Speaker 1: sun dogs, and even a vertical stretching of the Brooks
Speaker 1: Range mountains to the south, resulting in what looks like
Speaker 1: an Arctic version of Monument Valley. And another picture is attached,
Speaker 1: and this one is even more interesting because it has
Speaker 1: I don't know, I can't even describe what this looks like.
Speaker 1: It they they're kind of stacked up and distorted vertically
Speaker 1: with these ripples that look like, I don't know, big
Speaker 1: tubes or waves coming out of the land. John goes on,
Speaker 1: it's super cool to see how the high latitude optical
Speaker 1: effects can dramatically distort how things look, and, as you've
Speaker 1: mentioned before, makes it easier to understand why sailors claim
Speaker 1: to see fantastic things like castles floating above the horizon.
Speaker 1: My coworker really enjoyed the episode because she also works
Speaker 1: at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, where they sometimes see icebergs
Speaker 1: and utility trucks flipped and molded like putty by tricks
Speaker 1: of the light. And then there are pictures attached to
Speaker 1: Fatim Moorgana acting on the ice field and on utility
Speaker 1: vehicles around McMurdo in Antarctica. Again looks very cool. And then, finally,
Speaker 1: on a separate note, one of the minor challenges of
Speaker 1: working up here is the constant sunlight interfering with sleep.
Speaker 1: But You're weird House cinema episodes, while interesting, have helped
Speaker 1: me drift off even when it's one am and still
Speaker 1: light out. In particular, your Devil's Express episode has been
Speaker 1: an excellent sleep aid on several brightly lit nights. Also,
Speaker 1: my whole field crew watched Troll two together and absolutely
Speaker 1: loved it. For several weeks this summer, a remote monitoring
Speaker 1: device with the six digit code Nilbog kept watch over
Speaker 1: the Arctic tundra, thanks in no small part to your
Speaker 1: tireless b movie advocacy. Thanks for all the fun and
Speaker 1: thought provoking conversations. Sincerely, John, look at that troll to
Speaker 1: keeping people alive? Is this a life support device? Or
Speaker 1: is it this maybe a piece of scientific keeping people
Speaker 1: on on track on the job. I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: it's been a while since we've heard from someone who
Speaker 1: goes to sleep with the episode. These is our episodes
Speaker 1: as sleep aid, and I'm always I'm always interested to
Speaker 1: hear that and glad that we, uh, we can help
Speaker 1: you you know, achieve you know, proper level of sleep.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, totally. We would never take it personally. People
Speaker 1: are always very nice. They're always like, I use your
Speaker 1: episodes to sleep, but not because they're boring. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm want to close out with part of a listener
Speaker 1: mail here from James. James rode in basically to share
Speaker 1: with us UH an Atlantic article by Ed Young uh
Speaker 1: and this one was about monitor lizards in Australia digging
Speaker 1: incredible corkscrewed nests. I haven't read this one yet, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put it on the to read list. I
Speaker 1: mainly wanted to read James's email, though, because he weighs
Speaker 1: in on a on a popular intellectual pastime of hours
Speaker 1: and and uh pastime of our listeners trying to figure
Speaker 1: out why Sean Conner Race character has a Scottish accent
Speaker 1: Ian Highlander solved the mystery? James, Well, James, James does
Speaker 1: have an interesting hypothesis. Year he says, uh quote also
Speaker 1: Sean Connery Scottish accent in Highlander is from beheading a
Speaker 1: Scottish immortal and acquiring his English language through the quickening
Speaker 1: accent and all, thank you for your fantastic podcast, James,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. Pretty good. I don't know. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: what is the quickening for if it is not for
Speaker 1: acquiring things like like language? I don't know that This
Speaker 1: also leads into what is the quickening for? Well, it's
Speaker 1: about power and uh, you know, amassing that power? And
Speaker 1: I don't it's explained to the film. But but this
Speaker 1: does bring up something I was thinking about just uh
Speaker 1: in the background the other day, and it's something I've
Speaker 1: thought about before. The immortals in the Highlander movies. To
Speaker 1: what extent are they capable of change? Are they capable?
Speaker 1: Did they have neuroplasticity? You know? Can they truly acquire
Speaker 1: new language? Is or do they? Or is James right?
Speaker 1: Do they only acquire these things through the quickening? Is
Speaker 1: it only by absorbing the power and maybe to some
Speaker 1: extent the intellect of others? That they are able to adapt.
Speaker 1: Otherwise are they just always gonna because like the Kurgan,
Speaker 1: the Kurgan is always the Kurgan. You don't get a
Speaker 1: sense that he's really changed much. He's just updated his
Speaker 1: look a little bit and learned how to drive a vehicle,
Speaker 1: but otherwise he's he's still Kurgan to the core. See
Speaker 1: that's a lesson to all of us. If you're not
Speaker 1: willing to learn, grow and change as an adult, you
Speaker 1: become the Kurgan. Yeah, but that meanwhile, I mean Connor McCloud,
Speaker 1: I mean, he since he's still the sweet lad he
Speaker 1: always was. But I guess there is a sense that
Speaker 1: he's grown and he's learned, you know, he's had to
Speaker 1: wrestle with loss and move through it. Uh, certainly in
Speaker 1: ways that the Kurgan never has had to. So uh
Speaker 1: maybe that's ultimately what what what what the film is
Speaker 1: trying to say to us here? We are all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and close the mailbag for today,
Speaker 1: but we'd love to hear from you about any of
Speaker 1: the topics we discussed here about recent episodes, upcoming episodes,
Speaker 1: along past episodes. I mean, I don't know, fat A MORGANA.
Speaker 1: I didn't even feel like that one was that old.
Speaker 1: I feel like we just recorded that one. So I
Speaker 1: was a little shocked to hear that one referred to
Speaker 1: as an older episode. But I guess that's just how
Speaker 1: time works now. Yeah, I guess it's a few months
Speaker 1: of this time. Yeah, I don't know. It depends on Eily.
Speaker 1: It's all relative anyway, So right in let us know
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you, huch, thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot
Speaker 1: com Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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