Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind listener mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and today is Monday.
Speaker 3: With the day of each week we read back some
Speaker 3: messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind listener mailbox.
Speaker 3: If you had never gotten in touch with us before,
Speaker 3: why not give it a try. You can email us
Speaker 3: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Let's see, Rob, I think I want to kick things
Speaker 3: off with this message from Kenny in Glasgow. If you
Speaker 3: don't mind, go for it. So this is somewhat having
Speaker 3: to do with beavers, but also in response to a
Speaker 3: previous listener mail from last week. Kenny from Glasgow says, Hi, Rob,
Speaker 3: Joe and JJ. First off, in response to Constantine's listener
Speaker 3: mail can learning Canada's national animal the mighty beaver, he
Speaker 3: remarked that the UK has the lion. However that's only
Speaker 3: England's animal. Ooh, I'm sure that is a screw up there, Constantine.
Speaker 3: I hope you find contrition about this. Kenny goes on,
Speaker 3: We Scots opted for the unicorn and the Welsh went
Speaker 3: for the dragon. If you must have an animal mascot,
Speaker 3: why limit yourself to reality. Regarding the beaver, we reintroduced
Speaker 3: them in Scotland about two decades ago after a five
Speaker 3: hundred year absence. There's been a bit of resistance, especially
Speaker 3: from farmers, but they appear to have increased biodiversity, reduced
Speaker 3: pollution and downstream flooding. My direct experience of a wild
Speaker 3: beaver was actually in Connecticut, where I worked at a
Speaker 3: summer camp for many years. I always thought that the
Speaker 3: stump gnad to a perfect point was a cartoon trope,
Speaker 3: but we would regularly spot these on woodland walks. One day,
Speaker 3: I took my division out on the lake in kayaks.
Speaker 3: It was very warm and the lake was mirror smooth,
Speaker 3: and the boys and I were drifting near the shore
Speaker 3: in a blissful little group. From the corner of my eye,
Speaker 3: I noticed a shadow in the water, and when I turned,
Speaker 3: I realized there was a beaver staring right at me.
Speaker 3: It was no more than a meter away, with only
Speaker 3: its head above water. For a few minutes, we drifted
Speaker 3: in silence before, evidently bored with me, it dove, slapping
Speaker 3: the water hard with its huge tail. The lake was
Speaker 3: crystal clear and I watched it swim until I lost
Speaker 3: it in the distance. Anyway, thanks for your incredible work,
Speaker 3: Kenny from Glasgow. PS is a future topic. Maybe you
Speaker 3: could talk about the environmental effects of species reintroduction. It's
Speaker 3: a subject of some debate and I think education is vital. Yeah,
Speaker 3: thanks Kenny, that is an interesting subject. I don't think
Speaker 3: I quite realized. I know, beaver's had been hunted to
Speaker 3: extinction in the British Isles, or at least I guess,
Speaker 3: as you say, in Scotland, I think throughout the whole
Speaker 3: British Isles. But yeah, I didn't realize they'd been reintroduced.
Speaker 3: So that is interesting and I'm glad your encounter with
Speaker 3: a beaver did not go like that like that one
Speaker 3: we read about on the show with the guy on
Speaker 3: the bridge.
Speaker 2: And indeed, this is a good topic for future consideration.
Speaker 2: I feel like we've maybe touched on it a little
Speaker 2: bit in the past, but I don't know that we've
Speaker 2: ever done like a full episode on species reintroduction. Could
Speaker 2: be wrong, all right. This next one comes to us
Speaker 2: from Ian Ian writes in and says, Dear Robin, Joe,
Speaker 2: I wanted to write in just to say thank you
Speaker 2: to Robert for an offhand comment he made several weeks
Speaker 2: ago about getting something new out of Doom every time
Speaker 2: he's reread it. The reason I'm thanking you for this
Speaker 2: is kind of involved, but I wanted to share. My
Speaker 2: local library has a reading program that I participate in,
Speaker 2: where each month there is a new category of books
Speaker 2: for you to read. The May's category was a book
Speaker 2: from your past, and I had not been able to
Speaker 2: settle on anything yet. I'd been leaning towards Matter by
Speaker 2: Ian M. Banks, the first Culture series book I read,
Speaker 2: certainly a fine choice, by the way, But then when
Speaker 2: I was listening to your show, rob mentioned rereading Doune,
Speaker 2: and I knew that was the one. I first received
Speaker 2: a paperback copy of Dune as a Christmas gift from
Speaker 2: my grandfather, who recently passed away, when I was around
Speaker 2: twelve or fourteen years old. I love of science fiction
Speaker 2: was something we always shared, and he liked to introduce
Speaker 2: me to older classic sci fi, which I always appreciated.
Speaker 2: He also gave me the complete Hitchhiker's Guide series another year.
Speaker 2: I loved Dune from the first time I read it,
Speaker 2: and have read it several times since, so the last
Speaker 2: time was when I was in college, longer ago than
Speaker 2: I care to admit. I still have the original paperback
Speaker 2: he gave me all those years ago. Unlike the rest
Speaker 2: of the series, it hasn't even been relegated to the basement.
Speaker 2: It's on a shelf in my home office, and that
Speaker 2: is the copy I read again this time. I think
Speaker 2: it's the same edition Joe once talked about, with some
Speaker 2: portions of the typeset slightly askew and other printing oddities
Speaker 2: like that. It had a lot of character when it
Speaker 2: was new, and even more now that it's rather the
Speaker 2: worse for wear slash Love with a beat up cover,
Speaker 2: the corners of the whole book worn to a round
Speaker 2: shape instead of a sharp corner, and water stains on
Speaker 2: the back ten percent or so of the pages. Reading
Speaker 2: it again now was very special, and in addition to
Speaker 2: getting more out of the text itself than I did
Speaker 2: when I was younger, it helped me feel closer to
Speaker 2: my grandfather. So thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh well, that's heartwarming. Regarding that copy of down
Speaker 3: Ian mentions this came up on the show at some point,
Speaker 3: But I think what I said is that the first
Speaker 3: few times I tried to read Dune. I got stalled out.
Speaker 3: I don't know, some small amount of pages in and
Speaker 3: I think it was because of this copy I was
Speaker 3: reading had like tiny print and like weird margins and stuff.
Speaker 3: It's just not a good physical printing of the book.
Speaker 3: And I got a better one later, and of course
Speaker 3: loved it once I actually read the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of these old paperbacks, I love them. I
Speaker 2: love the field, the smell of them. But I've gotten
Speaker 2: so spoiled by my Kendall reader that it's hard to
Speaker 2: go back to some of these physical books with their
Speaker 2: tiny typeset. But at any rate, Yeah, this is great
Speaker 2: to hear Ian. Yeah, I'm madter by Inan Banks as
Speaker 2: great as well. I haven't read a culture book in
Speaker 2: a while, but at this point, but I should re
Speaker 2: explore them again, because those are some great books with
Speaker 2: some wonderful ideas in them. And of course I love Dune,
Speaker 2: and of course, and I think it's great anytime you
Speaker 2: have a book like this, be it Dune or anything else,
Speaker 2: that has this sort of cherished, recurring place in your
Speaker 2: life and or a connection to people who introduced you
Speaker 2: to these books. That's my hot take. Reading is great.
Speaker 3: Okay. This next message is in response to our episode
Speaker 3: on Blue Space and on fountains. Edward says, Hi, Robin Joe.
Speaker 3: I was listening to your episode on fountains. When you
Speaker 3: mentioned the calming aspects of fountains. My mind immediately went
Speaker 3: to the bucket fountain we have in Wellington, New Zealand,
Speaker 3: because I don't think it has those aspects. Water fills
Speaker 3: up the buckets, causing them to tip out their water
Speaker 3: in the general direction of the buckets below them before
Speaker 3: they thunk back to their normal position. There isn't even
Speaker 3: any regular pattern to the buckets emptying, but it does
Speaker 3: distribute water to the nearby public, especially when it gets
Speaker 3: windy and most of the water doesn't make it into
Speaker 3: the lower buckets or the pool below them. And then
Speaker 3: Edward provides some links well, thank you, Edward. I can
Speaker 3: sense a little bit of snark in your description here.
Speaker 3: I've seen this described as a kinetic sculpture more than
Speaker 3: a fountain. I don't know where the line between fountain
Speaker 3: and sculpture involving moving water is. A I don't know
Speaker 3: what you think about that, roub.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. I don't have a strong
Speaker 2: opinion about it. But looking at just still pictures of
Speaker 2: this particular fountain, I think it looks looks great. I
Speaker 2: have no problem with it. It reminds me of some
Speaker 2: kinetic structures I've seen. Had various splash pads in our area,
Speaker 2: you know, for kids on hot days to sort of
Speaker 2: play around and splash in the water without actually being
Speaker 2: in a pool. And some of these are a lot
Speaker 2: of fun for the kids because it's like, oh, is
Speaker 2: it about to tip? Is it about to spill? And
Speaker 2: then it spills and you know, it splashes water all
Speaker 2: over your head, et cetera.
Speaker 3: You know, I haven't double checked the sources on this,
Speaker 3: but the wiki tells me that during the filming of
Speaker 3: Lord of the Rings, Elijah Wood climbed on this fountain
Speaker 3: and peed in it.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, well I can't condone that, but interesting that it's
Speaker 2: been something of a cultural epicenter for a number of
Speaker 2: different things. Oh really, I mean, like we said before,
Speaker 2: all water has been p perhaps all water has been
Speaker 2: a lot would speak and you know we should just
Speaker 2: we should just accept it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how long does that take? I feel like this
Speaker 3: question has come up before.
Speaker 2: All Right, show we get into some Weird House Cinema
Speaker 2: listener mail here. This first one's pretty exciting. This one
Speaker 2: comes to us from bb BB writes in and says, Hi, guys,
Speaker 2: I love the show. I'm a truck driver who spends
Speaker 2: many hours, primarily at night, listening to podcasts, and yours
Speaker 2: is one of my very favorites. Well. I love all
Speaker 2: the episodes. I especially look forward to the Friday installments
Speaker 2: of Weird House Cinema. I've almost written in on a
Speaker 2: couple of occasions, but just never got round to it.
Speaker 2: I saw both Phantasm and The Devil's Rain in the theater.
Speaker 2: One small detail in Fantasm scarred me for life, but
Speaker 2: I digress.
Speaker 3: Last don't say what the detail is.
Speaker 2: I know I want to. There's so many disturbing details
Speaker 2: in Phantasm. It could have could have been numerous things.
Speaker 3: It wasn't the Blood Funnel. It was the performance of
Speaker 3: sitting Here at Midnight by hot As Love the Reggie
Speaker 3: what's his name band?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that's a great, often underappreciated moment in
Speaker 2: the film. Anyway, Babe continues this last Saturday morning, I
Speaker 2: was listening to the Queen of Blood episode and waiting
Speaker 2: for a good friend of mine to pick me up
Speaker 2: so he could go grab a cup of coffee. The
Speaker 2: episode was just wrapping. As he pulled up, I told
Speaker 2: him about your show and the deep dive you had
Speaker 2: just done on Queen of Blood. He said, wait, what.
Speaker 2: My friend is the son of Judy Meredith and Gary Nelson.
Speaker 2: I told him that you had some really nice things
Speaker 2: to say about his mom. She was, of course in
Speaker 2: the film. He said, how could they not. She was
Speaker 2: a wonderful person and a great actor. He went on,
Speaker 2: she was in some bad movies, but you know she
Speaker 2: had to pay the bills. It brought a smile to
Speaker 2: his face. Oh. While I personally never met Judy, I
Speaker 2: did get to meet Gary Nelson on a couple of
Speaker 2: occasions and listen to some of his stories. I also
Speaker 2: think you should cover The black Hole on Weird House.
Speaker 2: It's very rich and deep in some ways and very
Speaker 2: cheesy in others. Fun fact, The black Hole was Disney's
Speaker 2: first PG rated movie. Thanks again for all the hard
Speaker 2: work and thorough research you put into all your subjects.
Speaker 3: Bebe well. That is a connection I did not expect.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it makes me doubly glad that we had
Speaker 3: nice things to say about Judy Meredith, who again the
Speaker 3: limitations of Queen of Blood as a movie being quite apparent.
Speaker 3: Judy Meredith was great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we always try and find the positive
Speaker 2: spin on the performances, and yeah, it's kind of neat
Speaker 2: to get this personal story from a listener. Not since
Speaker 2: the time we heard from the guy who was almost
Speaker 2: skewered by John Saxon also in Queen of Blood have
Speaker 2: we had this sort of listener mail.
Speaker 3: That's all right, I forgot about that. There was a
Speaker 3: sword fight for what movie?
Speaker 2: Oh, some sort of authorian sort of thing. As I recall,
Speaker 2: we've looked it up before. It was some low budget
Speaker 2: fair It was some maybe a little bit dodgy stunts.
Speaker 3: Okay. This next message is from Pat subject, Son of Frankenstein. Guys,
Speaker 3: as always, thanks, Queen of Blood was a cool choice.
Speaker 3: I remember seeing this as a release in a grindhouse.
Speaker 3: Oh man, great. We always love to hear about those experiences.
Speaker 3: But Pat tells us nothing else about that experience, so
Speaker 3: maybe it was unremarkable. Pat says, you briefly mentioned Son
Speaker 3: of Frankenstein. I'm a big fan. No, the plot is silly,
Speaker 3: but this piece is character driven, and what characters Wrathbone.
Speaker 3: I guess, referring to Basil Rathbone as Baron wolf is
Speaker 3: wonderful as the maddening scientist. I guess is that different
Speaker 3: from a mad scientist. A maddening scientist, like he maddens others,
Speaker 3: or maybe he is turning mad in the process of maddening.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Like, you know, you need a it's
Speaker 2: like having a life for career coach. A mad scientist
Speaker 2: good needs a good maddening science, just like we saw
Speaker 2: in Bride of Frankenstein.
Speaker 3: Right to Madden, you up exactly, Yeah, and that would
Speaker 3: make sense because much in the same way people. You know,
Speaker 3: some family names that are passed down originally the name
Speaker 3: of professions. People called Cooper, you know, they made barrels
Speaker 3: or whatever. John Madden's family, they were originally maddeners. Anyway,
Speaker 3: back to Pat's message, Pat says Bella Lagosi is creepy
Speaker 3: as the living hanged man. Igor Carloff's last turn is
Speaker 3: the monster and a weird House favorite Lionel Atwill as
Speaker 3: the Inspector, a role spoofed in Young Frankenstein. Plenty of
Speaker 3: strange dialogue, like Baron Wolfe in his entrance explaining to
Speaker 3: his wife about the monster quote which some of the
Speaker 3: villagers actually call this monster. And then there's a break
Speaker 3: here where Rathbone's voice is overridden by the train crew
Speaker 3: announcing arrival at Frankenstein. That's a place, now, I guess. Anyway,
Speaker 3: Thanks Pat, Yeah, I haven't seen it, but I'll put
Speaker 3: that on the list. It sounds good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the for the context if you didn't
Speaker 2: listen to the Queen of Blood episode. Basically we were
Speaker 2: talking about like the original Frankenstein Classic Bride of Frankenstein
Speaker 2: even better, like a like a shining pillar in cinema
Speaker 2: and horror cinema especially.
Speaker 3: But then the ride is the Empire strikes back to
Speaker 3: Frankenstein Star Wars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then but then this, but then I guess, yeah,
Speaker 2: Son of Frankenstein is I don't know where you wouldlass.
Speaker 2: It's not even the Return of the Jedi of the series.
Speaker 2: It's the third film in that series, but it's I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's somewhere down with the Ewok movies probably,
Speaker 2: or at least I've never seen it. That's all. That's
Speaker 2: how it seems to be discussed. But I'm you know,
Speaker 2: I'm always open to be surprised. And turn it around
Speaker 2: concerning some of these films.
Speaker 3: I think we should put it on the list fair.
Speaker 2: Enough, all right, here's one from Liam Liam Wright Sen
Speaker 2: and says, hey, just listen to the Super Mario Brothers episode,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to flag that Big Bertha is a
Speaker 2: character named after a phish from the games. No idea why,
Speaker 2: but I guess it's an extremely forced way to incorporate
Speaker 2: more game references, albeit with no relevance. The large bucket
Speaker 2: Koopa is standing in before being made to primordial sludge
Speaker 2: also looks similar to the flying machine Bowser uses to
Speaker 2: battle Mario in at least one of the games. Didn't
Speaker 2: hate the film, but feels like it could have been
Speaker 2: a prequel to Super Mario sixty four given proximity to release.
Speaker 2: Loved the episode all the best. Liam.
Speaker 3: This kind of, uh, what we like, A non resonating
Speaker 3: simple reference is I think so common in comic book
Speaker 3: movies now that we've kind of like learned to ignore it,
Speaker 3: like not notice that it's strange anymore. I bet somebody
Speaker 3: has written a good piece on this, but I'm kind
Speaker 3: of interested in this phenomenon, the phenomenon of cramming a
Speaker 3: piece of media with references to other related media. I
Speaker 3: think this is mostly understood today as you know, what
Speaker 3: people call fan service, like a series of little gifts
Speaker 3: to people who are in the know, Like, Oh, did
Speaker 3: you hear that the character was named Bertha? That's what
Speaker 3: the fish in the Mario game is called. I got
Speaker 3: that reference. And obviously some people find this very pleasing.
Speaker 3: I guess sometimes in some contexts, I also find it pleasing,
Speaker 3: though in others I just find it a little perplexing.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what makes the difference, but like, why
Speaker 3: is it fun to notice things like this in the
Speaker 3: cases when it is fun? And how far back does
Speaker 3: this practice go? I mean, they're doing it in this
Speaker 3: nineties movie. I would have to assume that things like
Speaker 3: this were happening even before movies existed. In literature, there
Speaker 3: must have been people burying little references to pre existing
Speaker 3: literature that were just like fun things for people to
Speaker 3: pick up on and get and don't really have any
Speaker 3: relevance other than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure about this. This might be something
Speaker 2: to sort of keep our our eyes open for in
Speaker 2: future episodes of Weird House, you know, Like, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking back to say the Dunwich Horror, which was
Speaker 2: such a fun, fun film based on Lovecraft stories, or
Speaker 2: one particular Lovecraft story of the Dunwich Car. But I
Speaker 2: don't recall that having any winks or nods to any
Speaker 2: other Lovecraft tales or anything of that nature. I could
Speaker 2: be wrong, but because that kind of thing is generally
Speaker 2: it's unnecessary in order to tell the story. It's all about, like,
Speaker 2: to what degree do you want to engage a more
Speaker 2: hardcore audience or I guess sometimes it maybe feels like
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe maybe it's just me overthinking it,
Speaker 2: but like if you have enough little nods and sort
Speaker 2: of cryptic references that it kind of creates a substructure
Speaker 2: to what you're doing, or the illusion of a substructure.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I guess. Also there's a discussion to
Speaker 2: be had about how subtle it is, how forced it feels,
Speaker 2: you know, and that's just going to vary from work
Speaker 2: to work. All Right, what else do we have? This
Speaker 2: can't be the only person to have written in about
Speaker 2: Super Mario Brothers.
Speaker 3: Oh no, we got quite a few. Let's see. Here's
Speaker 3: one from Dan. Dan says, Hello, Robert and Joe. I'm
Speaker 3: currently listening to your Super Mario Brothers Weird House Cinema episode.
Speaker 3: From a couple of weeks ago. You had asked for
Speaker 3: Lance Hendrickson movie suggestions, and I have two. First, Stan
Speaker 3: Winston's nineteen eighty eight supernatural horror revenge movie Pumpkinhead, which
Speaker 3: stars Hendrickson, and Jim Jarmusch's nineteen ninety five art house
Speaker 3: acid western dead Man, in which Hendrickson plays a supporting
Speaker 3: role as a cannibalistic bounty hunter in a cast that
Speaker 3: also stars Johnny Depp when he was Good, Gary Farmer,
Speaker 3: Robert Mitcham, Michael Wincott, and Iggy Pop, with an electric
Speaker 3: horror score by Neil Young, whoa Both are quite weird
Speaker 3: in their own distinct ways and would be worthy of discussion,
Speaker 3: though personally I lean more towards dead Man. Dan Well,
Speaker 3: thank you Dan. I watched dead Man back when I
Speaker 3: was in college. Weirdly, I don't remember much about the movie,
Speaker 3: but I do remember Neil Young's guitar score.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you are a big Neil Young fan, I am. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know. It might be one to consider. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't think i've I don't think i've seen it.
Speaker 2: I think maybe I watched like the first five minutes
Speaker 2: of it once and for some reason didn't watch the
Speaker 2: rest of it. But I don't really remember much other
Speaker 2: than noticing that it's in black and white, that it
Speaker 2: and it looks good in black and white, and obviously
Speaker 2: it has a great cast. Now.
Speaker 3: Pumpkinhead, on the other hand, as a movie I have
Speaker 3: seen multiple times, that's one of those I have very
Speaker 3: mixed feelings about it. I think overall it is not
Speaker 3: a great horror movie, but it has some elements, especially
Speaker 3: some visual elements that work really really well, extreme strong
Speaker 3: atmosphere in certain isolated moments, and some really good creature
Speaker 3: effects and designs. But overall, I think it doesn't really
Speaker 3: work as a narrative. It doesn't really have very compelling characters.
Speaker 3: It's it's one of those where you can see the
Speaker 3: much much better movie that it could have been.
Speaker 2: Great monster though, no matter what a monster that that
Speaker 2: lurked and haunted so many vhs and DVD rental stores
Speaker 2: back in the day, you know, I think it's like
Speaker 2: just the form of that monster like cast a longer
Speaker 2: shadow than the film itself.
Speaker 3: Totally agree, And again, as I said, I think almost
Speaker 3: everything that's really great about it is a visual element,
Speaker 3: which kind of makes sense because it was directed by
Speaker 3: a visual effects guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so thanks for the suggestions. We'll well, we'll take
Speaker 2: both of them into account. Anytime we get suggestions, we
Speaker 2: kind of add them to the to the list. Either
Speaker 2: the I think I have two, you know, yeah, at
Speaker 2: least two like digital lists going. And then there's sort
Speaker 2: of the internal mental list, and then we kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes we look at those and consider those,
Speaker 2: and sometimes we just kind of go with our gut.
Speaker 2: But yeah, both of these sound really interesting. All right.
Speaker 2: Here's one comes to us from Michelle. Michelle writes, Greetings, gentlemen,
Speaker 2: I appreciate your wit and wisdom. I've been trying to
Speaker 2: locate a great sci fi nineteen fifties black and white
Speaker 2: movie that I saw on TV a few years ago.
Speaker 2: I'm reminded of it whenever I think Siri. In the movie,
Speaker 2: a woman rejects her macho human boyfriend in favor of
Speaker 2: the caring robot boyfriend. It gives one a lot to
Speaker 2: think about. Do you remember what this movie is?
Speaker 3: Thanks Michelle, Well, thanks Michelle. I do not know what
Speaker 3: this movie is, and I did try to figure it out.
Speaker 3: This description stuck in my crawl for some reason, so
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, I got to search around and
Speaker 3: try to figure out what this is, and I could
Speaker 3: not figure it out. I even thought, maybe this is
Speaker 3: what chat GPT is good for. You know, that would
Speaker 3: kind of make sense, right, to feed some plot details
Speaker 3: into an AI and it can tell you what the
Speaker 3: movie is. That made sense to me. So I tried
Speaker 3: feeding this prompt into it several ways to see if
Speaker 3: I could identify candidate films, and you know what, I
Speaker 3: made the AI launch into a magnificent arc of hallucinations
Speaker 3: where it repeatedly identified real existing science fiction films as
Speaker 3: containing this plot line. And as best as I can tell,
Speaker 3: this does not happen in any of the movies it mentioned,
Speaker 3: So just as one example, it was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're talking about the nineteen fifty six British sci fi
Speaker 3: films Satellite in the Sky, in which it told me
Speaker 3: that a character named Evelyn rejects her human boyfriend in
Speaker 3: favor of a more caring robot lover. I haven't seen
Speaker 3: this movie. It's some kind of space adventure that I
Speaker 3: think has no aliens. Instead, it has a plot involving
Speaker 3: like a struggle over the ethics of nuclear weapons and stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh and it also has I noticed a journalist played
Speaker 3: by Lois Maxwell, who is a moneypenny in the early
Speaker 3: James Bond films. But anyway, so I haven't seen it.
Speaker 3: But in reading about this film, I could find no
Speaker 3: evidence whatsoever that it contains a robot romance. Nor does
Speaker 3: it contain a robot, nor does it contain a character
Speaker 3: named Evelyn. And when I called this out on chat GPT,
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, yeah, sorry, I just made that up.
Speaker 3: So I don't know these are the machines that our
Speaker 3: bosses want to replace us all with. But anyway, humans
Speaker 3: out there, I think that this may be a better
Speaker 3: solution here. We can consult the wisdom of the crowd.
Speaker 3: Can any of you figure out what Michelle might be
Speaker 3: thinking of? If so, you can email us with your
Speaker 3: with your candidate answers, contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one doesn't ring a bell for me, but
Speaker 2: but uh yeah, I think we've we've we've timed in
Speaker 2: before on cases like this where someone sort of half
Speaker 2: remember as a movie, and I think we all have
Speaker 2: a situations like this as well. Like, like, for my part,
Speaker 2: I remember being you know, the catching movies on TV,
Speaker 2: and you'd see part of one as a kid, and
Speaker 2: you don't get to watch the rest of it, so
Speaker 2: you have even less context, but being like really floored
Speaker 2: by it. One of them. I remember seeing part of
Speaker 2: Nasica Valley of the Wind before I knew anything about Miyazaki,
Speaker 2: and fortunately I came back around to that one and
Speaker 2: got to experience it many more times. One of my
Speaker 2: favorite movies. But then there's like another film where like
Speaker 2: there's a there are kids in a flooded house and
Speaker 2: they're living in the attic of the house. And I've
Speaker 2: never found out what that is, but it and and
Speaker 2: I guess maybe you know minute to men and it
Speaker 2: doesn't concern me, but occasionally I'll think back and I'll
Speaker 2: be like, wow, that I remember that really impacting me,
Speaker 2: like the kids had lost their parents or something. And
Speaker 2: and I've never looked up or been able to find
Speaker 2: out what that movie was. So yeah, I think we
Speaker 2: probably all, especially in the TV ah, we all have
Speaker 2: cases like that. And we have to add into that that,
Speaker 2: you know, the fact that our memories of movies are fallible. Yeah,
Speaker 2: y'all are other memories, so like you can easily start
Speaker 2: combining them, like yeah, like the kids were in the
Speaker 2: attic and it was flooded, and then Robert Mitcham shows
Speaker 2: up and he's got tattoos on his knuckles, and yeah,
Speaker 2: you can easily get things like scrambled into movies that
Speaker 2: never existed just within your own head, and there's no
Speaker 2: need to bring chat GPT into the mix.
Speaker 3: One of his hands said love and the other ones
Speaker 3: said bake, so maybe he loved to bake. Does that
Speaker 3: make sense.
Speaker 2: The other hand had babysitting written on the knuckles because
Speaker 2: he had multiple fingers on a monstrous CG a computer
Speaker 2: generated hand.
Speaker 3: It is funny, though, whenever you do this, like you
Speaker 3: try to figure out what this memory is from the
Speaker 3: piece of media, is almost always disappointing. It's like not
Speaker 3: some epic, great film or something. It's the one that
Speaker 3: really stuck in my mind is I I saw a
Speaker 3: part of a movie on TV as a kid that
Speaker 3: really horrified me, and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: what is this? And I did searching around. I finally
Speaker 3: figured it out as an adult, and it turned out
Speaker 3: it was like a Michael du dekof movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, they don't altern out to be nausicaa in
Speaker 2: the end.
Speaker 3: Oh, but hey, speaking of Nausica, that could be good
Speaker 3: for Weird House. That's a weird and beautiful movie it is.
Speaker 2: That's Uh, that's that's one. We might have to come
Speaker 2: back to one of my favorites. And uh, and I
Speaker 2: also have the the source material here in the house,
Speaker 2: the original manga by by Miyazaki. Beautiful stuff.
Speaker 3: All right, should we cap it there for today?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go ahead and close the mail bag for today,
Speaker 2: but keep it coming. Uh, and we will come back
Speaker 2: to them in future conversations on Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind listener mail which publishes every Monday, and the Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind podcast feed We're primarily a science
Speaker 2: podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays
Speaker 2: we do a short form monster fact or artifact episode,
Speaker 2: and on Fridays we set aside most series concerns to
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
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