Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day
Speaker 3: of each week that we read back messages to the
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you have
Speaker 3: never gotten in touch before and would like to give
Speaker 3: it a shot, send something please. You can reach us
Speaker 3: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Whatever you want to send us fair game. We appreciate
Speaker 3: all kinds of messages, especially if you have something interesting
Speaker 3: to add to a recent topic we've talked about. Let's see,
Speaker 3: rob I'm going to start with a message about the
Speaker 3: recent total solar eclipse that pass through the middle of
Speaker 3: the United States. We didn't do an episode about eclipses
Speaker 3: because we've done that in the past, especially tied to
Speaker 3: eclipses in the past. But we did do a weird
Speaker 3: house cinema episode on the movie Dragon Slayer because it
Speaker 3: features an eclipse that'll come up again later in the episode.
Speaker 3: But we also just got a response seemingly about the
Speaker 3: eclipse itself, and this is from Hannah. Hannah says subject
Speaker 3: line moon exploration via swan power. Hannah says, Hi, Robin Joe,
Speaker 3: I'm helping my husband prepare a lecture that covers the
Speaker 3: eclipse for his physics students. I ran across this book
Speaker 3: and I had to share love the podcast. Keep up
Speaker 3: the good work, my best, Hannah. And what Hannah shares
Speaker 3: is a link to a seventeenth century book called The
Speaker 3: Man in the Moon. And this is Moon spelled n E.
Speaker 3: I like the extra e in there makes it fancier.
Speaker 3: It's almost like a more costly version of the Moon.
Speaker 3: The Man in the Moon or a discourse of a
Speaker 3: voyage thither. So this is a book that was published
Speaker 3: under the pseudonymous name Domingo Gonsales. The real author was
Speaker 3: an English bishop named Francis Godwin. And this is a
Speaker 3: novel that was published in sixteen thirty eight, several years
Speaker 3: after the author's death, said by some to be the
Speaker 3: first science fiction novel written in English. So it's a
Speaker 3: first person narrative telling the story of a Spaniard named
Speaker 3: Domingo Gonzalez who travels to the Moon on an aircraft
Speaker 3: powered by swans and discovers that the moon is filled
Speaker 3: with people who have an advanced civilization of their own,
Speaker 3: and I think also are significantly involved in like kidnapping
Speaker 3: children from Earth.
Speaker 2: On Kaladan, we ruled with air and land power, but
Speaker 2: on Earth we will rule with swanpower.
Speaker 3: How did you describe this Swan machine? Like, there's an
Speaker 3: illustration on the inner fold of the title page I
Speaker 3: found so we can look at this. Rob It's like
Speaker 3: a it looks sort of like the Swan copter. Well,
Speaker 3: it's got a mounted seat really just kind of a
Speaker 3: crossbar on the bottom and the rest is just bars.
Speaker 3: It's like an electrical transmission tower. And they taped a
Speaker 3: bunch of birds to the tower by the feet. And
Speaker 3: also in this this illustration, they're they're like flying him
Speaker 3: over the moon or to the moon and passing over
Speaker 3: the mountain of purgatory.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, it raises a lot of questions. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's kind of like a kite scenario. It looks like
Speaker 2: like the bare minimum harvesting of the power of the
Speaker 2: Swan and uh it yeah, right, And then the amount
Speaker 2: of purgatory being there also raised his questions, like how
Speaker 2: does that factor into it? Are you using some sort
Speaker 2: of using that as some sort of like a slingshot technique,
Speaker 2: sling shotting off of the mount of Purgatory via eton
Speaker 2: or not that sort of a donic zone on the top,
Speaker 2: so that you can just go right to the moon.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Purgatory O gravity assist, Yeah, yeah, But anyway, so I started.
Speaker 3: I found a full text of this book, and I
Speaker 3: was scanning through it, and a few things caught my eye. First,
Speaker 3: I'll quote a passage here with some edits, just describing
Speaker 3: how the character attains spaceflight on the swan copter. He says,
Speaker 3: it was now the season that these birds were wont
Speaker 3: to take their flight away, as our cuckoos and swallows
Speaker 3: do in Spain towards the autumn. They as after I perceived,
Speaker 3: mindful of their usual voyage. Even as I began to
Speaker 3: settle myself for the taking of them in as it were,
Speaker 3: with one consent, rose up, and, having no other place
Speaker 3: higher to make toward to my unspeakable fear and amazement,
Speaker 3: struck bolt upright, and never did linn linn, meaning cease,
Speaker 3: never did cease, towering upward and still upward for the space,
Speaker 3: as I might guess of one whole hour. Truly, I
Speaker 3: must confess the horror and amazement of that place was
Speaker 3: such as if I had not been armed with a
Speaker 3: true Spanish courage and resolution, I must needs have died
Speaker 3: there with very fear. But the next thing that did
Speaker 3: most trouble me was the swiftness of motion, such as
Speaker 3: did even almost stop my breath. If I should liken
Speaker 3: it to an arrow out of a bow, or to
Speaker 3: a stone cast down from the top of some high tower,
Speaker 3: it would come far short and short. So he's describing
Speaker 3: mind bending speeds. And this passage starts to give a
Speaker 3: hint of how interestingly this novel is not just an
Speaker 3: exercise in imagination. It actually engages significantly with scientific theories
Speaker 3: of the day of the seventeenth century, engaging with the
Speaker 3: works of Galileo and Kepler. For example, I came across
Speaker 3: a passage where the narrator is using his fictional observations
Speaker 3: to make the case that the Earth does in fact rotate,
Speaker 3: and it is not the heavens that spin around a
Speaker 3: stationary Earth. And the author also makes points related to
Speaker 3: the idea of gravity and to the speed of the
Speaker 3: motion of the objects in the heavens, and so forth.
Speaker 2: Nice nice kind of fitting them that we see the
Speaker 2: amount of purgatory in the background here, because as we've
Speaker 2: at least discussed in Passing before you know you have
Speaker 2: you have a number of scientific ideas wrapped up in
Speaker 2: Dante's divine comedy as well, something that we might come
Speaker 2: back to again in the future and do a proper
Speaker 2: deep dive on.
Speaker 3: Totally agree, though I should be clear, I was just
Speaker 3: saying it's the amount of purgatory because it looks like
Speaker 3: it to me. I couldn't find that it says that text. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's just my editor.
Speaker 2: I love the idea of it amount of purgatory. I
Speaker 2: accept no other interpretation.
Speaker 3: However, there is another thing that I found really interesting
Speaker 3: about this book, which is that this early science fiction
Speaker 3: novel does mix in elements of horror. On the journey
Speaker 3: to the Moon, while traveling through the space between, Gonzalez
Speaker 3: is surrounded by spirits of a wicked nature. In his view,
Speaker 3: space is full of devils. I'm gonna read from the
Speaker 3: text here another thing there was exceeding and more than
Speaker 3: exceeding troublesome unto me, and that was the illusions of
Speaker 3: devils and wicked spirits who the first day of my
Speaker 3: arrival came about me in great numbers, carrying the shapes
Speaker 3: and likeness of men and women, wondering at me like
Speaker 3: so many birds about an owl, and speaking diverse kinds
Speaker 3: of languages, which I understood not do birds wonder about
Speaker 3: an owl. I'm not sure what that means, but I
Speaker 3: like the image, so anyway. The devils of the space
Speaker 3: make him all kinds of promises. They tell him they
Speaker 3: can take him safely back to Spain, they can give
Speaker 3: him earthly comforts and pleasures. He turns all this down,
Speaker 3: though he does accept some food they offer him, writing quote,
Speaker 3: least in the mean, while I should starve, they did
Speaker 3: so readily enough, and brought me very good flesh and
Speaker 3: fish of diverse sorts, well dressed, but that it was
Speaker 3: exceeding fresh, and without any manner of relish of salt. Wine.
Speaker 3: Also I tasted there of diverse sorts, as good as
Speaker 3: any in Spain, and beer no better in all Antwerp.
Speaker 3: But when it comes time to eat, things go south,
Speaker 3: he says he quote, in great haste fell to searching
Speaker 3: of my pockets for the victuals I had reserved, as aforesaid,
Speaker 3: But to my great amazement and discomfort, I found instead
Speaker 3: of partridge and capon, which I thought to have put there,
Speaker 3: a mingle mangle of dry leaves of goat's hair, sheep
Speaker 3: or goat's dung moss and such like trash. As for
Speaker 3: my canary wine, it was turned to a stinking and
Speaker 3: filthy kind of liquor, like the urine of some beast.
Speaker 3: So space demons are always trying to feed you goat
Speaker 3: hair and beast urine.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that is all marvelous. I've so many thoughts
Speaker 2: on that. On one hand, kind of shades of Warhammer
Speaker 2: forty thousand to come there with this idea of traveling
Speaker 2: through space putting you in a demonic peril or potential
Speaker 2: demonic peril, and then kind of shades of the Gate
Speaker 2: duology Gate the Gate and the Gate Too or Gate Too,
Speaker 2: a couple of wonderful kind of Gromlin movies that I
Speaker 2: discussed in Weird House Cinema with guest co host David Streepy,
Speaker 2: because in the second one, the demons will grant your wishes,
Speaker 2: but your wishes turned to the literal poop the next day,
Speaker 2: So you wished for you know, a sports car, Well,
Speaker 2: guess what is now parked out in front of your house.
Speaker 2: It's an elephant sized chunk of just just fecal matter.
Speaker 3: But I like that here he specifies what animal it
Speaker 3: comes from. Does the gate say what animal it comes from?
Speaker 2: No, they don't really get into it. But it makes
Speaker 2: sense that it would be goat. You don't give him
Speaker 2: demonic connotations.
Speaker 3: There have a label on it, like the you know
Speaker 3: the ones at the grocery store that tell you where
Speaker 3: the fish came from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is from goat. I don't know why. I
Speaker 2: don't know how goat dung would be worse. I've certainly
Speaker 2: been around goat dung before, and it's not the worst
Speaker 2: dung at all. Give me goat dung over dog dung
Speaker 2: or any kind of carnivore dung any day of the week.
Speaker 3: It's funny. He does specify goats for the dung, but
Speaker 3: he does not and for the hair, by the way,
Speaker 3: goat hair and goat dung, but does not specify which
Speaker 3: beast the urine is from.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, you can poke around in the fecal
Speaker 2: matter and you can sort of it can make a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, there is a lot of identification
Speaker 2: via feces. Urine, however, is more complicated. Matter that may
Speaker 2: require a bit of science or alchemy. And I guess, actually,
Speaker 2: goat dung, you know, is round, So I guess he
Speaker 2: could tell it's like, this is clearly goat dung. Look
Speaker 2: how round it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, thank you so much, Hannah. It was very
Speaker 3: interesting looking into this book.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, since we're talking about literature and demons,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna skip to this one from Jim, responding to
Speaker 2: mention of the short story The Hounds of Tendlos. This
Speaker 2: is a story, a weird story from the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: actually nineteen twenty nine according to the State I just
Speaker 2: looked up by Frank bucking up Long, so was originally
Speaker 2: published in Weird Tales. And anyway, we heard some feedback
Speaker 2: here from Jim. Jim says, I'm thinking Robert may know this,
Speaker 2: but this tale was the inspiration for Metallica's thrasher All
Speaker 2: Nightmare Long, which was on there in my opinion underrated
Speaker 2: ninth studio album Death Magnetic. I found an audio version
Speaker 2: of the story on horror Babbel, a podcast with a
Speaker 2: great narrator who does a lot of the old thirties
Speaker 2: sci fi and horror fiction, including Lovecraft Robert E. Howard Clark,
Speaker 2: Ashton Smith and the like.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, Jim. I did not know the connection
Speaker 3: with that song. In fact, I did not know the
Speaker 3: song at all because so I grew up loving Metallica,
Speaker 3: but I have never really gotten into their twenty first
Speaker 3: century stuff, and so I checked out the track and
Speaker 3: I did not expect to like it. As an adult,
Speaker 3: my Metallica preferences have shifted toward the earliest of their catalog.
Speaker 3: Like the Metallica I like now is the stuff that
Speaker 3: is the most immature and anti social, with the driest production,
Speaker 3: the stuff that tends to have like really fast, raw,
Speaker 3: a little bit sloppy but still awesome instrumental performances and
Speaker 3: lyrics that always vaguely imply the existence of some near
Speaker 3: future conflict called the metal War, which I understand will
Speaker 3: be fought with metal over access to metal. I think
Speaker 3: that sound, however, Jim, despite the fact that I have
Speaker 3: largely stayed away from recent Metallica, I dug it up
Speaker 3: and I thought this track was pretty good. I give
Speaker 3: it to him. Maybe it's that classic cosmic horror that
Speaker 3: puts the gang back into original form.
Speaker 2: Yeah awesome, Yeah, I was not familiar with this nection either,
Speaker 2: and I haven't really listened to any of the more
Speaker 2: recent Metallica albums, though I have to say I love
Speaker 2: I love the old stuff, but I also really loved
Speaker 2: like some of the at the time latter day tracks
Speaker 2: like the Memory Remains a lot of people hate that song,
Speaker 2: but I could never understand how this sounds pretty good.
Speaker 2: Maryanne Faithful's on this, I don't know. I like it
Speaker 2: had a cool video, but at any rate, that's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Though I know that at least one or some of
Speaker 2: the members of Metallica do have a lot of love
Speaker 2: for some of the old weird fiction. You know, there
Speaker 2: are some lovecraft in references on some of their older material,
Speaker 2: so it's not all that surprising that they would continue
Speaker 2: to find inspiration and work from this time period. When
Speaker 2: we recorded this episode, I mentioned that I had started
Speaker 2: reading The Hounds of Tendalos, but I had not finished it.
Speaker 2: I finished it in the days following that initial episode,
Speaker 2: and I have to say it's it's a real banger.
Speaker 2: I highly recommend this particular short story. Again, you can
Speaker 2: find like an ebook of this gentleman's work for like
Speaker 2: ninety nine cents and also you can find it in
Speaker 2: you know, text form, online and all. But basically skip
Speaker 2: now if you don't want any spoilers. But basically, again,
Speaker 2: a gentleman takes some time traveling space, drugs and experiences
Speaker 2: like all of human history and before human history all
Speaker 2: at once, and has all sorts of revelations and it
Speaker 2: just just overpowers him. And then these strange creatures, the
Speaker 2: hounds of tendalos, begin to come after him through the
Speaker 2: corners of things, the unnatural corners of reality. So he
Speaker 2: has a very balanced response to this. He gets some
Speaker 2: plaster and he removes all of the corners from his
Speaker 2: from his home so he can live safely, so the
Speaker 2: hounds cannot get him. But then there is an earthquake
Speaker 2: and it disrupts the perfection of these curves and income
Speaker 2: the hounds, and of course the hounds destroy him. And
Speaker 2: then later his friend comes in and finds him. I
Speaker 2: want to read just a quick quote here, just to
Speaker 2: give you a grizzly taste of it. Quote. Chalmers lay
Speaker 2: stretched upon his back in the center of the room.
Speaker 2: He was starkly nude, and his chest and arms were
Speaker 2: covered with a peculiar bluish puss or eye cores. His
Speaker 2: head lay grotesquely upon his chest. It had been completely
Speaker 2: severed from his body, and the features were twisted and
Speaker 2: torn and horribly mangled. Nowhere was there a trace of blood.
Speaker 2: Nineteen twenty nine. It hits pretty hard.
Speaker 3: The horror of this period. Does love an unearthly jelly,
Speaker 3: doesn't it. There's got to be an icre on there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, a very fun tale. I haven't read
Speaker 2: anything else by this author, but I have a whole
Speaker 2: book of his stuff now, so I'm gonna have to
Speaker 2: get in there and find some other other tales worth discussing.
Speaker 3: All right. Next, we got this message from Daniel on
Speaker 3: Facebook on our Facebook discussion module. This was in response
Speaker 3: to our conversation about different names for what we call
Speaker 3: dust bunnies. Daniel says in Swedish a dust bunny is
Speaker 3: dam rata, meaning dust rat, which seems even more fitting.
Speaker 3: A bunny is a cute, often domesticated animal. A rat
Speaker 3: is a bringer of decay and pestilence. I interpret Daniel
Speaker 3: to be saying, in the popular imagination, you know, not
Speaker 3: slandering rats as an animal, though of course they do
Speaker 3: in fact in some cases bring disease.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm not cutting rats any slack here there.
Speaker 3: Gris Daniel goes on. I had always assumed it would
Speaker 3: be the same in the other Scandinavian languages, but apparently not.
Speaker 3: Norwegian goes with hohosa stove house dust, straightforward but not
Speaker 3: very imaginative. Danish, on the other hand, seems to go
Speaker 3: the other way with nullermand, which translates to the ominous,
Speaker 3: the outright ominous nothing men.
Speaker 2: Oo, the nothing men are under your sweetie, we have
Speaker 2: to clean tomorrow. Yeah, that's definitely ominous. This is great.
Speaker 2: This is exactly what we wanted to hear from everybody.
Speaker 2: Be it because again I found, like, at least the
Speaker 2: resources I was discovering online, it didn't have a lot
Speaker 2: about the various international terms for dust bunnies. So keep
Speaker 2: them coming. And thank you Daniel for writing in with this.
Speaker 3: Yes, please, yeah, and thank you Daniel.
Speaker 2: All Right, this one comes to us from Harry. It says, hey, Robin, Joe,
Speaker 2: Harry from Stockholm. Here, listening to your third dust episode
Speaker 2: on my way to endo work. I was struck by
Speaker 2: a scenario you mentioned just before diving in the Sobriety's Paradox.
Speaker 2: This was the parable of the movie set designer who
Speaker 2: has no dust machine and must wait for the scenes
Speaker 2: requisite dust to accumulate. It struck me that this scenario
Speaker 2: is a good example of an observer's behavior changing the
Speaker 2: outcome of the observation. Like photons bouncing off electrons and
Speaker 2: quantum theory, the set designer's breath, their movement to and
Speaker 2: from the point of anxious observation would inhibit the accumulation
Speaker 2: of dust by changing the air occurrence of the room.
Speaker 2: It tugs on the heartstrings to imagine the poor set
Speaker 2: designer as Tantalus, expectantly watching one spot for dust as
Speaker 2: other neglected surfaces of the set become dusty. Thanks and
Speaker 2: keep up the good work, Harry.
Speaker 3: Oh that's great, Harry. What a sad scene you've painted here.
Speaker 2: And I kind of want to see it as like
Speaker 2: a short film. Now this is it could be quite interesting,
Speaker 2: the dust Wrangler.
Speaker 3: All right, we can finish up with a couple of
Speaker 3: messages about weird house cinema. This is from Liza. Liza
Speaker 3: says Hi, Rob, Joe and jj E. Liza here, longtime listener,
Speaker 3: first time writer. I just finished your Dead Mountaineers Hotel
Speaker 3: episode and I have to say, growing up in Russia,
Speaker 3: I have never heard of this film. Perhaps it was
Speaker 3: too controversial or too dark in nature for its time.
Speaker 3: I ended up watching it as soon as I finished
Speaker 3: the episode, and boy was I not disappointed. In answer
Speaker 3: to your question, the pool game they are playing is
Speaker 3: called Russian billiard or Russian pyramid. It's essentially the same
Speaker 3: as pool, but the balls are bigger, which makes it
Speaker 3: quite a bit harder to score. Fascinating, Liza says, I'm
Speaker 3: very excited to recommend you another Soviet sci fi film
Speaker 3: called Ivan Vasilievich back to the Future. Unlike Dead in
Speaker 3: Mountaineer's Hotel, it is very much a comedy and an
Speaker 3: all time classic. Our version of Monty Python, one might say,
Speaker 3: might not be the best fit for Weird House, as
Speaker 3: it's not horror by any means, but definitely a must watch. Nonetheless,
Speaker 3: Best of luck and keep up the great work, Liza
Speaker 3: from Russia. Oh and it just occurred to me that
Speaker 3: maybe Lisa. I don't know Lisa or Liza. Thank you
Speaker 3: for writing in Yeah, and thank you for the recommendation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this film is completely off my radar. I'm not
Speaker 2: familiar with it. All Right, here's another weird house response.
Speaker 2: This one is from Pat and this is a response
Speaker 2: to our discussion of Dragon Slayer, which also gets into
Speaker 2: a brief discussion of just eclipse movies solar eclipse movies
Speaker 2: in general, of which we said there are very few
Speaker 2: to choose from. Pat rides in and says, guys, another
Speaker 2: fun show. Best solar eclipse movie A Connecticut Yankee and
Speaker 2: King Arthur's Court a very silly Bing Crosby musical. Thanks
Speaker 2: Pat from Larida.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't consider this because I actually have not
Speaker 3: seen this movie, but it's weird to me that there
Speaker 3: would be a goofy bing Crosby musical based on a
Speaker 3: Connecticut Yankee, because I mean, I guess the novel is funny,
Speaker 3: but so. It's a satirical novel by Mark Twain, which
Speaker 3: is about a late nineteenth century engineer who gets knocked
Speaker 3: on the head and then wakes up in early medieval England,
Speaker 3: figures out the date, and uses his knowledge of a
Speaker 3: coming solar eclipse to amaze the superstitious locals and eventually
Speaker 3: gain a position of power in King Arthur's Court, where
Speaker 3: he tries to go on to turn medieval England into
Speaker 3: a democratic republic. And give them industrial age, technology and
Speaker 3: so forth. But the church and the aristocracy resist his
Speaker 3: reforms and revolt against him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I read this story when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: and I remember, I don't know, being at least mildly
Speaker 2: amused by it. I don't remember loving it. But of
Speaker 2: course it's been the basis for several films. Of course
Speaker 2: the nineteen forty nine adaptation. Also there is a nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine film that is sometimes referred to as a
Speaker 2: Spaceman in King Arthur's Court. There is a nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: five film, A Kid in King Arthur's Court, and then
Speaker 2: of course there is the two thousand and one film
Speaker 2: Black Knight, starring Martin Lawrence as a time traveler.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting that it has all of these
Speaker 3: adaptations where the tone is quite silly. I guess maybe
Speaker 3: the tone of the novel is quite silly, But from
Speaker 3: what I understand, the point of the satire is pretty sharp,
Speaker 3: like it was a humorous attack on people who unlike Medievalism,
Speaker 3: on people who had a romantic, idealized view of medieval
Speaker 3: European life of monarchy and chivalry or nightly virtues like
Speaker 3: what you would get in Ivanhoe by Walter Scott, and
Speaker 3: in the political context where Twain was writing, this romantic
Speaker 3: medievalist view was especially common among people who also romanticized
Speaker 3: the US Antebellum South and the Confederacy in the Civil War.
Speaker 3: So Twain, I think, with that association, is reacting against
Speaker 3: that and painting a picture of knights and kings not
Speaker 3: as noble and angelic beings but as violent and ignorant
Speaker 3: hoarders of power. And I've not seen this movie from
Speaker 3: nineteen forty nine, but it is fun to think about
Speaker 3: it that way and then think they turned it into
Speaker 3: a funny musical starring Bing Crosby. But anyway, Bing Crosby
Speaker 3: musicals are not something I know a whole lot about,
Speaker 3: you know. It's I think the extent of my knowledge
Speaker 3: is having seen the Christmas One, whatever it is, the
Speaker 3: what's the one where they're in the army and they're
Speaker 3: saying the White Christmas. Yeah, that's on in the background
Speaker 3: and around Christmas time. But that's about all I know.
Speaker 3: But I'm curious enough that I would give this a
Speaker 3: watch now. But to come back to the topic of
Speaker 3: the eclipse, like how it figures into the story, it
Speaker 3: seems like it fits with the themes because the knowledge
Speaker 3: of the eclipse that the main character possesses in the
Speaker 3: story sort of symbolizes the novel's view that, like, whatever
Speaker 3: the faults of the modern world, democracy and science and
Speaker 3: technology are better than kings and knights and superstition and
Speaker 3: get I am curious how sharply these themes come through
Speaker 3: in the musical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I have these same questions about two thousand
Speaker 2: and ones Black Knight, starring Martin Lawrence but co starring
Speaker 2: Tom Wilkinson and also Kevin Conway. Kevin Conway is the
Speaker 2: narrator on the nineteen nineties Outer Limit series, so he's
Speaker 2: the voice that comes in at the beginning and at
Speaker 2: the end of every episode and kind of like tries
Speaker 2: to wrap things up in this kind of nice philosophical packaging.
Speaker 3: M okay.
Speaker 2: So, I don't know if any of you have thoughts
Speaker 2: on the movie Black Night, write in maybe it's worth
Speaker 2: looking at. Like I say, anytime I see the interest
Speaker 2: in cast members, I'm kind of intrigued. And I guess
Speaker 2: the real core idea here is like just the basic
Speaker 2: concept of a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's court. It's
Speaker 2: a great fish out of time story. So yes, it's
Speaker 2: easy to apply it to various times, various actors, various
Speaker 2: comedic sensibilities, and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, change the characteristics of the protagonist. And in any case,
Speaker 3: you could say something by like taking any particular person
Speaker 3: from the present and sending them to the past and
Speaker 3: saying how would the past react.
Speaker 2: All right, we're gonna go ahead and close up the
Speaker 2: mail bag for this episode of Listener Mail, but keep
Speaker 2: it coming. We'd love to hear from you. We'll throw
Speaker 2: out that email address here in a minute. If you
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
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