Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: Here we are again, and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Monday,
Speaker 3: the day of each week that we read back messages
Speaker 3: from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If
Speaker 3: you have never gotten in touch with the show before,
Speaker 3: you should email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com. We appreciate any kind of feedback
Speaker 3: to the show, or just anything interesting you'd like to share.
Speaker 3: We especially like it if you have something fascinating to
Speaker 3: add to a topic we've recently covered on the show.
Speaker 3: Let's see Rob, I think I'm going to kick things
Speaker 3: off today with one of these messages. In response to
Speaker 3: our series on dust, Let's do it So. One of
Speaker 3: the things we talked about in part five of that
Speaker 3: series was about dust storms and about the threat dust
Speaker 3: storms to machinery and vehicles. You don't want to drive
Speaker 3: in a dust storm, but you also just don't want
Speaker 3: to get too much dust into your vehicle, engine and stuff.
Speaker 3: And Thatcher writes in on that topic, Thatcher says, Hello,
Speaker 3: he talked about dust damaging vehicles. In your part five episode,
Speaker 3: I wanted to add that dust can clog air intake
Speaker 3: filters very quickly. My friend was a first responder on
Speaker 3: nine to eleven and when he drove his truck home afterward,
Speaker 3: he noticed that it had reduced power and wasn't and
Speaker 3: just wasn't performing the way it usually does. When he
Speaker 3: checked the air intake filter to the engine, it was
Speaker 3: completely clogged with concrete dust from the twin towers. I
Speaker 3: wonder if any other listeners have had similar experiences. Thank
Speaker 3: you for a wonderful show. I've been listening for many,
Speaker 3: many years, and I look forward to each episode every week.
Speaker 2: Thatcher, Oh wow, that's quite a story there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, obviously for how it connects to nine to eleven,
Speaker 3: but also I I mean, I wonder if different types
Speaker 3: of dust have a different sort of engine clogging or
Speaker 3: machinery wrecking powers, Like if concrete dust is of a
Speaker 3: finer grain than the standard kind of dust you'd get
Speaker 3: blowing in and say a natural dust storm coming off
Speaker 3: of the desert or something. I don't know for sure,
Speaker 3: but yeah, that's interesting either way, and one of many
Speaker 3: reasons not to drive in in clouds of dust.
Speaker 2: All right. This next one comes to us from Jeff,
Speaker 2: and I think this one's kind of dual purpose because
Speaker 2: into a little bit of dust and a little bit
Speaker 2: of weird house cinema. The subject line is dust wind Dude.
Speaker 2: Jeff writes, greeting science humans. Just wanted to thank you
Speaker 2: again for the variety of topics you investigate on your shows.
Speaker 2: It's probably the greatest era of earth history for laundry
Speaker 2: and other chores. My primary interest in horn dust is
Speaker 2: the way it activates cheap mode for sunset photography. You
Speaker 2: don't have to have nice equipment or much skill. You
Speaker 2: don't have to be on the shore or at altitude.
Speaker 2: Just point your phone west at Golden Hour with an
Speaker 2: appealingly shaped something silhouetted in the foreground, and for a
Speaker 2: spectacular photo with a brilliant orange background. Turns a quick
Speaker 2: snap of a telephone pole or a corner convenience store
Speaker 2: into frameable art and other dusty news. I've always thought
Speaker 2: the Sandman was an explanation for the gross sand in
Speaker 2: your eyes when you wake up. I also wanted to
Speaker 2: thank you for opening up old memories of Dragonslayer. Unlike
Speaker 2: some of the other eighties movies, you've featured. I hadn't
Speaker 2: thought much of it since those endless summers of HBO
Speaker 2: couch time. I haven't played YouTube clips of favorite scenes,
Speaker 2: hunted down the soundtrack, imdbat, which actor played the wizard, etc.
Speaker 2: Those memories were all locked away, waiting to be reactivated
Speaker 2: by your show. The moments that immediately jumped into my
Speaker 2: mind were telling the horrible baby dragons devouring the sacrifice,
Speaker 2: the hero levitating the egg, thus proving he actually did
Speaker 2: have access to real magic, the half second of partial
Speaker 2: nudity during the reveal scene at the pond, smashing the
Speaker 2: amulet for the win. What I definitely didn't process back
Speaker 2: then was the parallel between the old Wizards sizing up
Speaker 2: the value of the remainder of his life and the
Speaker 2: dragon doing the same, putting their energy into the generation
Speaker 2: to come. Jeff continues here he says time is a
Speaker 2: relentless B word. This is the longer of the two
Speaker 2: B words. I'll let you figure out the rest, just
Speaker 2: being just out of an abundance of caution. We don't
Speaker 2: even get flagged or labeled with anything on any of
Speaker 2: the podcast publication systems without due reason.
Speaker 3: I think we're getting rated by AI or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, Jeff says, as is often highlighted when you're
Speaker 2: doing the connection segment and you note how many of
Speaker 2: the people involved are no longer with us. I'll think
Speaker 2: that can't be right. But forty years to the average
Speaker 2: age of a competent artist, and you're bound to see
Speaker 2: a fair bit of that. On a happier note, thanks
Speaker 2: for featuring Return to Oz on Weird House. I must
Speaker 2: have passed on it when I was a kid, since
Speaker 2: the original somehow never made much of an impression on me.
Speaker 2: I've always been allergic to musicals. However, after watching the
Speaker 2: delightful Ladies movie on your recommendation, I've since read all
Speaker 2: of the original L. Frank Baum Oz books, as well
Speaker 2: as some of his other works. The movie had the
Speaker 2: benefit of being based on the second and third OZ books,
Speaker 2: which I thought were the best. They aren't exactly great literature,
Speaker 2: but they are fun reads, and it's fascinating trying to
Speaker 2: figure out what was going on in BAM's mind as
Speaker 2: he wrote them. He led an interesting life and had
Speaker 2: interesting friends. What was he trying to tell the children?
Speaker 2: The running dialogue he had with his fans, and the
Speaker 2: preface of each book was almost as entertaining as the
Speaker 2: stories themselves. After a while, Bomb got sick of writing
Speaker 2: about Oz. He wrote other sorts of stories, but they
Speaker 2: didn't sell as well. He tried Oz books with different protagonists,
Speaker 2: but the kids constantly bombarded him with letters saying, that's nice,
Speaker 2: but what our Dorothy and Toto up to. He seemed
Speaker 2: increasingly exasperated as the series went on, but kept a
Speaker 2: sense of humor about it. Sometimes he would drop Dorothy
Speaker 2: and other fan favorites into an unrelated story, the same
Speaker 2: way Marvel editors used to try to punch up sales
Speaker 2: by adding Wolverine to a given title. Oh, I mean
Speaker 2: now I'm excited about Wolverine and Oz. So someone's done it.
Speaker 2: Someone's done it, I'm sure, so write in and tell
Speaker 2: us about it. The fan interaction reminded me of old
Speaker 2: school comic book letters pages. Bomb's books actually had a
Speaker 2: lot of shared DNA with comics, including crossovers, shared universes,
Speaker 2: and retcons. The explanation for why Toto didn't speak in
Speaker 2: the first book when other mundane animals gained the ability
Speaker 2: to talk in Oz gave me one of the better
Speaker 2: laughs in the series.
Speaker 3: I love that Jeff alludes to that, but then doesn't
Speaker 3: tell us what the explanation is.
Speaker 2: Was there an explanation? They didn't get into it and
Speaker 2: return to Ozy. I don't recall, I don't even.
Speaker 3: Recall the chicken talks, doesn't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Anyway, Jeff continues. He probably also responded to parental
Speaker 2: feed back in that the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly
Speaker 2: Lion become much less murderous as the series continues. They
Speaker 2: have a pretty high kill count in the early books,
Speaker 2: but the stories remain suburbly superbly weird. Once the rules
Speaker 2: established that no one can die in Oz itself, Bomb
Speaker 2: goes full Cronenberg with the possibilities of characters who can
Speaker 2: be carved up without experiencing the sweet release of death.
Speaker 2: The original story of the Tin Woodsmen and his ramifications
Speaker 2: are most horrible in a fun way. One king would
Speaker 2: punish subjects by having two people cut in half lengthwise
Speaker 2: and the mismatched parts sewn together. Both beings retained their
Speaker 2: sense of self and let a miserable existence in control
Speaker 2: of only one half of their body, with the other's
Speaker 2: thoughts intruding upon their own. There are also more beasts
Speaker 2: who fling their own heads at our heroes. Lots of
Speaker 2: monster fact material in those books. Good to know. Thanks
Speaker 2: again for continuing to direct us to new piles of
Speaker 2: weirdness to explore.
Speaker 3: Jeff Man love a beast that throws its own head.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Oh well, there's a lot of great stuff in
Speaker 2: this uh this feedback, I will say on the connections,
Speaker 2: you know note in older movies, Yeah, it is always
Speaker 2: it can be a little sad, little little sobering, you know,
Speaker 2: to look at up the cast and crew for a
Speaker 2: film and realize that, like everybody's dead. Like sometimes it's
Speaker 2: you know, the cast, it'll be everybody's dead except for
Speaker 2: the child actors or maybe and or maybe one of
Speaker 2: the leading ladies. That sort of thing. I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's just, uh, it's that's how it goes.
Speaker 3: But especially when it doesn't feel like an especially old movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's true. I mean, you know, some of
Speaker 2: these these folks that are relatively young. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, it's also kind of refreshing when we cover
Speaker 2: a movie and I'm going through the connections, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I think everybody's alive. It happens every now and then
Speaker 2: it's like like like winning at Bingo.
Speaker 3: I do think this is funny hearing about Baum getting
Speaker 3: the same kinds of messages that that fans are like
Speaker 3: posting to internet forums and on Twitter today about their
Speaker 3: favorite comic book, movies or whatever. It's that like, I
Speaker 3: didn't like that this character wasn't included. How can it
Speaker 3: be that the animals talk in OZ but this animal
Speaker 3: doesn't talk. Doesn't make any sense, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I don't think I've ever read any of his works,
Speaker 2: so occasionally emails like this recommendations from various folks, it
Speaker 2: makes me want to check it out. It does sound
Speaker 2: fabulously weird.
Speaker 3: Now, as to Jeff's note about wondering if the story
Speaker 3: of the sand Man putting sand in the child's eyes
Speaker 3: to make them sleep, the explanation you gave in the episode,
Speaker 3: Rob made a lot of sense to me, because you know,
Speaker 3: sand would make you rub your eyes, and you rub
Speaker 3: your eyes when you're sleepy. But Steve also agreed with
Speaker 3: this explanation of it basically having to do with eye cruds.
Speaker 3: So Steve wrote in and said, Hi, Robin Joe, it's
Speaker 3: been a while, but in listening to your Sandman discussions
Speaker 3: from the very dust, I remember to question I never
Speaker 3: found an answer to in my childhood. When I was
Speaker 3: a little boy, the first time I woke up with
Speaker 3: eye crust in the corners of my eyes, I asked
Speaker 3: my mom, is this sand Is this why people used
Speaker 3: to talk about the sand Man? She did not know.
Speaker 3: I still wonder if there's a connection to the myth
Speaker 3: or folk tale. Then Steve provides a link and asks
Speaker 3: if we can confirm or dismiss his hypothesis. Steve, I
Speaker 3: doubt we can settle this one for you, But you
Speaker 3: and Jeff are thinking on the same frequency. Okay, Rob,
Speaker 3: do you mind if I read this message from Luisa?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's have it.
Speaker 3: Okay, Luisa says, Hi, Guys, who would have thought that
Speaker 3: something as mundane as dust would be interesting enough for
Speaker 3: five episodes? Only you? I kept putting this email off,
Speaker 3: expecting you to talk about dust in literature, but you
Speaker 3: either still have to release part six or that's it
Speaker 3: for the series. That is it for the series for now?
Speaker 3: We're done for now, Luisa says, Just in case you
Speaker 3: don't get around to it, I would like to remind
Speaker 3: you of the role that dust plays in George Orwell's
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four In the plot. Dust plays a symbolic
Speaker 3: part and is all pervasive, just as much as Big Brother.
Speaker 3: The main character. Winston begins the book feeling protected by
Speaker 3: it and ends up feeling completely overwhelmed. It is everywhere,
Speaker 3: and it also represents his own unraveling. I cannot find
Speaker 3: a better literary use of dust in a plot. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I do remember a lot of references to dust. In
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four. I think Winston talks about his neighbor
Speaker 3: in his apartment building, Missus Parsons, having creases in her
Speaker 3: face that always looked as if dust was trapped in
Speaker 3: the creases. And it's like a detail he mentions over
Speaker 3: and over, as if it represents some kind of like
Speaker 3: decay of life itself. You know, there's just kind of
Speaker 3: like ash and grime building up on our bodies. And
Speaker 3: there's one part where Winston thinking about sort of the
Speaker 3: general hopelessness of life under the Party and Big Brother,
Speaker 3: and he describes London as quote vast and ruinous, a
Speaker 3: city of a million dust bins. I think that's a
Speaker 3: really striking image. It's like it selects as the defining
Speaker 3: object of a civilization, the place where waste is discarded,
Speaker 3: and it actually reminds me of those visions of the
Speaker 3: underworld of the dead and the epic of Gilgamesh, you know,
Speaker 3: the house of dust, where dust is their food and
Speaker 3: clay is their bread. But anyway, to come back to
Speaker 3: Luisa's message, Luisa says, I can, however, tell you that
Speaker 3: I used to think dust was the bane of my
Speaker 3: domestic existence until I had German shepherds. Every time the
Speaker 3: female sheds, it's like brushing out another dog from her.
Speaker 3: I'm seriously considering buying a loom and making dog thread.
Speaker 3: Wait didn't In one of our episodes we talked about, like,
Speaker 3: you know, boutique clothing made out of dust bunnies.
Speaker 2: We discussed the possibility.
Speaker 3: Maybe I brought it up and you were you shamed
Speaker 3: me for doing so.
Speaker 2: I don't remember shaming you.
Speaker 3: I deserve to be share.
Speaker 2: I have questions about how it would work, but.
Speaker 3: Let's see. Luisa says, thanks so much, as always for
Speaker 3: your wonderful work. Best regards, Luisa. Oh, and then she
Speaker 3: attaches a picture of the hair from her dog, Alma.
Speaker 3: This is the hair shed in one sitting. That is
Speaker 3: truly wow. That it's a lot of hair. But I
Speaker 3: know a lot about shedding dogs. I've had my share
Speaker 3: of shedding dogs in my life too, and they can whoo,
Speaker 3: they can they can shed a storm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a lot. I have to stay on top
Speaker 2: of our cat with the ferminator, but still not quite
Speaker 2: this much for he comes out.
Speaker 3: Does your cat like the ferminator?
Speaker 2: Well, she loves the brush, and then she'll tolerate the ferminator.
Speaker 2: So I'll use the ferminator in the brush at the
Speaker 2: same time, one in each hand, and it's kind of
Speaker 2: a careful dance. It used to be even more of
Speaker 2: a dance because she gets so riled up that she
Speaker 2: would also try and scratch me. But she's older now
Speaker 2: she's a little slower, so I can usually stay on
Speaker 2: top of her her over excited aggressions. All right. This
Speaker 2: next one comes to us from Mike. Mike says, I
Speaker 2: love the four Dust episodes. In episode four, when you
Speaker 2: were talking about Sandman's Dust, I immediately thought about Neil
Speaker 2: gaman Sandman comic. The comic is about an entity called
Speaker 2: Dream and his realm, the Dreaming. In the early issues,
Speaker 2: he has to track down some of his tools that
Speaker 2: were stolen from him an issue three and also episode
Speaker 2: three of the television adaptation Dreams. Bag of dream dust
Speaker 2: falls into the hands of an innocent woman who becomes
Speaker 2: helplessly addicted to the dreams and fantasies that the dream
Speaker 2: dust gives her. She ends up more or less wasting
Speaker 2: away because she wants to spend more time in the
Speaker 2: dream than in real life. It's an excellent read with
Speaker 2: some pretty disturbing imagery. Thanks for the podcast. Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind is the podcast I recommend to most people. Mike, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the good good note, Mike. You know, we didn't mention
Speaker 2: the Sandman comic or the Netflix adaptation in these episodes,
Speaker 2: but both are excellent. I was. I was a fan
Speaker 2: of the comic back when I read it years ago,
Speaker 2: and I really did enjoy the Netflix adaptation as well.
Speaker 2: I thought I had a great cast, very well put together.
Speaker 2: I seem to recall that David S. Goyer is involved
Speaker 2: in that as well, has a tremendous cast.
Speaker 3: Though I am not familiar with it.
Speaker 2: Oh well, treat yourself. It's good stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, may get there someday. Goes on the list with
Speaker 3: everything else.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: This next message is in response to the series we
Speaker 3: did on the Egyptian God Osiris. This comes from Constantinos.
Speaker 3: Constantinos says, good day, gentlemen. I enjoyed your episode on
Speaker 3: Osiris and have two comments. These are big topics, but
Speaker 3: I'll try to be assistinct as possible possible. Part one
Speaker 3: a slice of pie that stands for proto Indo European.
Speaker 3: The first is that any Greek attestment to Egyptian origins
Speaker 3: of Greek mythology has to be taken with a grain
Speaker 3: of salt. I think that Greeks like Herodotus, who cited
Speaker 3: Egyptian mythological roots were simply overreaching and letting conjecture get
Speaker 3: the better of them. Oh yeah. This connects to the
Speaker 3: idea that maybe the Greek gods were in some sense
Speaker 3: the same as the Egyptian gods and just different names
Speaker 3: for them, or maybe A later take on a similar
Speaker 3: view is that the idea that the Greek mythology evolved
Speaker 3: from the Egyptian mythology, which some people have proposed, and
Speaker 3: Constantinos here is saying that that is not likely the case.
Speaker 3: So he says, here is a mainstream academic view of
Speaker 3: Greek mythology origins. In summary one, proto Indo Europeans migrated
Speaker 3: from the Russian Steps to Greece. Proto Indo European settlers
Speaker 3: were pastoralists, their economy center around cattle. Meanwhile, the indigenous
Speaker 3: Greeks were in agricultural society. We know precious little about
Speaker 3: the Proto Indo Europeans and indigenous Greeks, but the Proto
Speaker 3: Indo European settlers brought the Greek language to Greece. Proto
Speaker 3: Indo European settlers brought their pastoral gods Zeus at All
Speaker 3: and melded them into the indigenous people's agricultural gods demmeter
Speaker 3: at All, and together they created the Olympian Pantheon. There
Speaker 3: are other non Proto Indo European and non indigenous influences
Speaker 3: on Greek mythology Parentheses, Apollo, question Mark, maybe Dionysus. The
Speaker 3: latter's origin is still controversial, but they seem more Anatolian,
Speaker 3: maybe Cypriot or in Cretan than Egyptian. I tend to
Speaker 3: view Greek mythology as sedimentary rock with layers upon layers
Speaker 3: of development, rather than one single thing. Anyway, there does
Speaker 3: not seem to be a lot of evidence for direct
Speaker 3: imports of Egyptian myths during the early formative phases of
Speaker 3: the Greek mythos. But that is not to say that
Speaker 3: it did not happen. We just have clearer paths to
Speaker 3: other places. Part two, Resurrecting the resurrecting god's debate. This
Speaker 3: is a reference to us bringing up the question of
Speaker 3: whether Osiris and other gods from the ancient world should
Speaker 3: be thought of as gods that die and then rise
Speaker 3: again in the way that say Jesus, or maybe some
Speaker 3: of the figures from other mystery religions would would be
Speaker 3: said to die and rise again. And Constantinos is about
Speaker 3: to bring up one of the gods of one of
Speaker 3: these mystery religions. He says, I'm surprised that your discussion
Speaker 3: on resurrecting gods did not include Dionysus and Orpheus. Again,
Speaker 3: this is a huge subject, but I will try to
Speaker 3: just hit the high points. The god Dionysus was killed
Speaker 3: and torn apart by evil Titans. At the direction of
Speaker 3: the goddess Hera. Athena saved Dionysus's heart, and Zeus resurrects him.
Speaker 3: Orpheus may have been the name of a religious figure
Speaker 3: from northern Greece, regardless of whether he existed. Orpheus is
Speaker 3: credited as being the prophet that founded a mystery cult
Speaker 3: centered around the resurrected Dionysus. Orphists believed that humans are
Speaker 3: born of the original sin parentheses the dust of the
Speaker 3: burnt Titans, but also have a divine spark, the soul.
Speaker 3: Long story short, be good and your soul gets to
Speaker 3: heaven the Elysian Fields. Orphism is old and foundational to
Speaker 3: Western religious traditions. In fact, the oldest surviving European written text,
Speaker 3: the fourth century BC Dirveni Papyrus, is an orphic hymn.
Speaker 3: Many have drawn direct lines from orphism to Neoplatonism and Christianity.
Speaker 3: It is a deep rabbit hole to go down, and
Speaker 3: the case is compelling its links to Christianity. Aside, Dionysus
Speaker 3: is demonstrably one of the earliest resurrecting gods that did
Speaker 3: indeed spawn a religion centered on his resurrection. Hope you
Speaker 3: found that interesting. Thank you all for a love podcast
Speaker 3: that I cannot stop recommending to any that will listen. Cheers.
Speaker 2: Oh that's excellent. You know, I do think we could
Speaker 2: come back in the future and do a proper Orpheus
Speaker 2: or Dionysus podcast series, you know, focus it because you
Speaker 2: know we do love our deep dives into mythology. All right,
Speaker 2: We're gonna go ahead close up the mail bag here.
Speaker 2: We had some that we didn't have time to get
Speaker 2: to today, but we will come back to those in
Speaker 2: a future installment of Listener Mail, so keep them coming.
Speaker 2: We'd love to hear from you on episodes past, episodes
Speaker 2: present or episodes future, your recommendations and so forth. And
Speaker 2: if you're on the fence, if you're like, I'm kind
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Speaker 2: done it before. I don't know if this is interesting enough,
Speaker 2: go ahead and give it a shot. We'd love to
Speaker 2: hear from you regardless, and we do. We do read everything,
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Speaker 2: even though we don't respond to everything via email, we
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Speaker 2: Mind podcast, feed core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short
Speaker 2: form episode on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside
Speaker 2: most series concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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