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 from the
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you've never
Speaker 3: gotten in touch with the show before and you'd like
Speaker 3: to give it a try, this is the week try
Speaker 3: it out. You can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind dot com. We appreciate all kinds
Speaker 3: of messages. Of course, we always like feedback to recent episodes,
Speaker 3: especially if you have something interesting to add to a
Speaker 3: topic we've talked about. Let's see Rob If you don't mind,
Speaker 3: I'm going to kick things off with this message from Jeff.
Speaker 2: Let's do it, Jeff.
Speaker 3: This is a response to last week's listener mail, in
Speaker 3: which we also featured a message by Jeff. Last time,
Speaker 3: Jeff wrote in with a second hand story or maybe
Speaker 3: a third hand story about a scuba diver suffering a
Speaker 3: gro tesk fish bite after harassing some wildlife. And he
Speaker 3: included a note in that message about scuba divers laughing.
Speaker 3: And I was wondering how can you tell if people
Speaker 3: are laughing and they're like in the scuba gear and
Speaker 3: all that. But Jeff has an answer. He says, I
Speaker 3: wanted to answer Joe's question about how you can tell
Speaker 3: someone is laughing when they're scuba diving. A group of
Speaker 3: us went on a night dive, and as we got
Speaker 3: settled on the sandy bottom, waiting for the entire group
Speaker 3: to make their way down the buoy line, we noticed
Speaker 3: a loggerhead turtle sleeping on the ocean floor. Of course,
Speaker 3: everyone did exactly what you are not supposed to do
Speaker 3: and surrounded it, shining our dive lights directly at it.
Speaker 3: Oh no, This quite predictably freaked out the turtle, who
Speaker 3: charged straight ahead and didn't quite clear my father as
Speaker 3: it ascended, bonking him in the forehead with its beak.
Speaker 3: This caused my father's dive buddy to laugh quite audibly
Speaker 3: for some time. Dad was fine. He had a red
Speaker 3: mark on his forehead when he came up, but no
Speaker 3: permanent damage. He later remarked that he was thinking, Wow,
Speaker 3: this is just like one of those three D movies.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 3: I don't know if we've ever had a turtle coming
Speaker 3: at the screen. In one of those, we've had ping
Speaker 3: pong balls or not ping pong balls? What's the wax
Speaker 3: Museum movie? What is Oh, it's the paddleballs the three D.
Speaker 3: You know, people holding out coffee cups at the at
Speaker 3: the screen. But I don't know if I've seen a
Speaker 3: turtle anyway, Jeff says his buddy retold the story for years,
Speaker 3: always making sure to mimic the look on my father's face.
Speaker 3: Sometimes i'd hear other divers ask, is that the guy
Speaker 3: who got attacked by the turtle? Night dives, by the way,
Speaker 3: are much cooler than you might expect. Many creatures who
Speaker 3: were hiding during the day are on the move at night.
Speaker 3: And while it's true that your world becomes limited to
Speaker 3: the dive light beam without significant visibility, you really focus
Speaker 3: on the details of what's in front of you. Since
Speaker 3: you're bringing your own light source, you can actually see
Speaker 3: the true colors of the organisms on the reef when
Speaker 3: you're relying on sunlight during the day. As you go deeper,
Speaker 3: all of the warm colors on the spectrum are filtered
Speaker 3: out by the water above, leaving everything blue and gray.
Speaker 3: If any of your gear has a rainbow design, on it.
Speaker 3: You can watch the roy of ROYGBIV lose his colors
Speaker 3: one at a time as you descend. Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 3: At night, if conditions are right and everyone turns off
Speaker 3: their lights, you can wave your arm and agitate the
Speaker 3: bioluminescent plankton. A trail of light will follow your arm
Speaker 3: like a trippy acid rock video. Anyway, getting back to
Speaker 3: your original point, yes, you very much can hear a
Speaker 3: scuba diver laughing underwater. The sound travels a short distance,
Speaker 3: and there's no issue with the dive apparatus if you
Speaker 3: want to laugh or yell or cough or pretty much
Speaker 3: anything else. In fact, the dive instructor explained to us
Speaker 3: that regulators are so safe that you can vomit into
Speaker 3: them without compromising their effectiveness or endangering your breathing. This
Speaker 3: opened up a lot of questions and wasn't as reassuring
Speaker 3: as it was meant to be. Oh, Jeff, yeah, that
Speaker 3: I mean it sounds reassuring. I would not be tempted
Speaker 3: to try it out. Jeff finishes by saying, thanks again
Speaker 3: for triggering lateral thinking and shaking up our neurons on
Speaker 3: a regular basis.
Speaker 2: Jeff, Oh, yeah, yeah, thanks for writing in about all that,
Speaker 2: you know, I've done my share of snorkeling, but I've
Speaker 2: never done any night snorkeling, despite being some places where
Speaker 2: there was that opportunity, or been places where there was
Speaker 2: some sort of like an excursion one could go on.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I like doing it in the sunlight.
Speaker 2: I like a nice, strong, strong bit of sunlight coming through,
Speaker 2: and I like doing it in the shallow waters. That's
Speaker 2: just where I am as an ocean going human at
Speaker 2: this point in my life.
Speaker 3: Isn't there a specific phobia that's like not just water,
Speaker 3: but dark water, like water you can't see through.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that's mean. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not a big fan of dark water, but I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I'm necessarily afraid of it a number of reasons. I
Speaker 2: haven't gotten into the scuba thing, I guess, but anytime
Speaker 2: I go snorkeling, there are almost always scuba people around,
Speaker 2: and I hear fantastic accounts of what they're up to.
Speaker 2: It sounds great. I don't know. There's a lot more,
Speaker 2: obviously to scuba diving compared to snorkeling. Snorkeling is a
Speaker 2: lot more casual in many respects, and I respect anybody
Speaker 2: who can, you know, get in there and really master
Speaker 2: the whole scuba diving system. It sounds like they get
Speaker 2: to see some really cool sights, all right. This next
Speaker 2: one comes to us from Jay. Jay writes Sin and says, Hello,
Speaker 2: Robert and Joe. I want to start by saying I've
Speaker 2: been a fan of the show for a long time.
Speaker 2: I love to learn new things, and even if I
Speaker 2: don't think I'll be a fan of a topic, you
Speaker 2: always manage to make each episode enjoyable and interesting. And
Speaker 2: while I very much enjoy the flagship episodes, I absolutely
Speaker 2: love weird House cinema. My recommendation for the show is
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventy three German sci fi film World on
Speaker 2: a Wire, directed by Renier Werner Fassbender, currently available to
Speaker 2: stream on the Criterion Channel. Ah. I am not a
Speaker 2: current subscriber to Criterion Channel, but I have dipped in
Speaker 2: and out of it before for particular pictures, and they
Speaker 2: do have a great selection.
Speaker 3: I watched this movie on disc within the last year.
Speaker 3: A friend of mine loaned it to me and I
Speaker 3: thought it was incredibly interesting. So it's an adaptation of
Speaker 3: a story I get. I don't know where the original
Speaker 3: story is from, but the same idea was made into
Speaker 3: a movie in the nineties called I Think The Thirteenth Floor,
Speaker 3: but it's very supposedly that is a sillier adaptation. But
Speaker 3: World and a Wire is very interesting. It's I don't know,
Speaker 3: something that strikes me as like a very sort of
Speaker 3: German filmmaking sensibility. There's kind of an architectualness about it,
Speaker 3: a lot of featuring of rooms and buildings in a
Speaker 3: prominent way. Like a lot of times the subject of
Speaker 3: a shot, the character will be kind of mediated by
Speaker 3: architectural features like walls and other things, sort of passing
Speaker 3: in between the camera and the character as the character moves.
Speaker 3: Stuff like that. But it's a really interesting film, and yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe we will come back to it one day. I
Speaker 3: guess it's an older movie so there's less concern about
Speaker 3: spoiling it though. Warning this is a spoiler if you
Speaker 3: know you don't know anything about it and you don't
Speaker 3: want to know. But it does cover some similar themes
Speaker 3: as kind of like the Matrix, but with a much
Speaker 3: different tone.
Speaker 2: Hmm. Interesting, Yeah, I mean a Fastpender is a well
Speaker 2: known German director and looking around here. I let's got
Speaker 2: some other people I'm familiar with from other things, like
Speaker 2: Kurt rob Is in it. So yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I should probably dive in. I don't think I've checked
Speaker 2: out any of the Fastbender's films before anyway, Jay continues.
Speaker 2: The main subject of my message today, though, is to
Speaker 2: draw your attention to a table top role playing game
Speaker 2: called Cloud Impress. It bills itself as an ecological science
Speaker 2: fantasy RPG heavily inspired by the film NAUSICAA of the
Speaker 2: Valley of the Wind. It is a post apocalyptic RPG
Speaker 2: which takes place in a dangerous world and drops players
Speaker 2: in an even more dangerous time. The emergence of a
Speaker 2: century brewed a once in a hundred years cycle of
Speaker 2: you Guessed It, giant psychics cicadas. One of the things
Speaker 2: players can do in the game is harvest dead cicadas
Speaker 2: for a substance called chalk, which can be used to
Speaker 2: power weapons, and wizards can use it to power their magic.
Speaker 2: It's a rules light system and is quick to pick
Speaker 2: up in a blast to play, which I highly recommend.
Speaker 2: You can get free rules and other resources at their
Speaker 2: website and link is included here, but I think everyone
Speaker 2: else can just look for it. Cloud Impress, ecological science, fantasy,
Speaker 2: role playing. What's the uh, we're the publishers of this.
Speaker 2: I should mentioned that.
Speaker 3: I guess I think it was a kickstarter. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: looks like it was. I don't know if that means
Speaker 3: it's an independent publisher.
Speaker 2: I guess it's independent, but it looks like it's. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it looks like cloud empress dot com. But you know,
Speaker 2: do your own Google serties. It'll come up for you.
Speaker 2: And anyway, Jay concludes by saying thank you for the
Speaker 2: hours of entertainment and information. Jay, Well, this does look
Speaker 2: very interesting, and even just in the cover art, I
Speaker 2: can see the Nasca inspiration there. Very very interesting looking. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've I've only waited a little bit into the you know,
Speaker 2: so called rules light games, but I'm very intrigued by them.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like it seems like there was a
Speaker 2: trend for a while with a lot of role playing
Speaker 2: systems just getting more and more advanced and becoming maybe
Speaker 2: just a little bit too much work. And I like
Speaker 2: the idea that some of them are stripping things down
Speaker 2: a bit and maybe leaning a little bit more into imagination,
Speaker 2: you know, letting the imagine not only just role playing,
Speaker 2: but also letting imagination fill in the gaps that are
Speaker 2: left by the game mechanics and so forth, less erro
Speaker 2: counting perhaps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though the only tabletop RPG I ever have extensively
Speaker 3: played is Dungeons and Dragons. I like that there's all
Speaker 3: this other stuff out there these days. I'm tempted by it.
Speaker 3: I would like to get into some of the more
Speaker 3: I don't know, sci fi focused ones, or any of
Speaker 3: the ones that are not just kind of classic wizards
Speaker 3: and elves and fantasy.
Speaker 2: Looking at the website a little bit closer, I think
Speaker 2: World's by Watt. Watt is the is the publisher's name,
Speaker 2: though it is. I believe you're in an independent operation here,
Speaker 2: so yeah, I have to check it out. All right?
Speaker 2: What else do we have in the bag here, Joe?
Speaker 3: All right? This next message is a recommendation for Weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema, and it comes from Dean. Dean says, hey, guys,
Speaker 3: just watched Horror Express again. We never knew you watched
Speaker 3: it the first time. Dean just watched it again and
Speaker 3: it was great. Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Telly Savalas, Zombies, Aliens,
Speaker 3: Mind control, skull removal and what more could you want?
Speaker 3: Also forgot to mention another movie from Weird House for
Speaker 3: Weird House, Latitude Zero with Joseph Cotton, Caesar Romero, brains
Speaker 3: into animals, Batmanions, Submarine Warfare, Shangri La. All courtesy of
Speaker 3: Ishiro Honda, Keep Them Coming, Dean, Well, Dean, I looked
Speaker 3: up some stuff about both of these movies. I've never
Speaker 3: seen either one. So Latitude Zero is a sci fi
Speaker 3: movie about a group of Bathisphere explorers who by chance
Speaker 3: get transported to a secret underwater utopia called Latitude Zero,
Speaker 3: which I understand is located right at the intersection of
Speaker 3: the Equator and the International date Line. And in this
Speaker 3: underwater kingdom, all the people who have ever been lost
Speaker 3: at sea around the world are gathered to live in
Speaker 3: peace and harmony and explore scientific frontiers hidden from the
Speaker 3: world above. But there is also an evil guy who
Speaker 3: wants to destroy them for some reason, and he creates
Speaker 3: giant mutant rats, and he loves cross species cross species
Speaker 3: brain transplants like Doctor Doom type stuff. So it's a
Speaker 3: plot that sounds in some ways similar to Atragon, but
Speaker 3: with these Doctor Doom elements. So I'm or Doctor of
Speaker 3: Doom maybe was that what it was?
Speaker 2: The Doctor Doom?
Speaker 3: Doctor of Doom? Yeah, sorry, Doctor of Doom, the wrestling
Speaker 3: movie that involves brain transplants, and so yeah, we covered
Speaker 3: Atragon in the past. We did Doctor of Doom in
Speaker 3: the past. This seems like a nice, nice mashup.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I haven't seen this one either, but yeah, another
Speaker 2: Japanese directed super submarine movie.
Speaker 3: I guess that is a genre, isn't it. I guess
Speaker 3: they sort of trace back to twenty thousand Leagues under
Speaker 3: the Sea.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then the other one Dean mentions in this
Speaker 3: email is Horror Express. I've also never seen this one,
Speaker 3: though I would like to. From a distance. It seems
Speaker 3: like if if Hammer Horror did a movie that was
Speaker 3: a cross between The Thing from Another World and Murder
Speaker 3: on the Orient Express. Though I think it's not actually Hammer.
Speaker 3: It just looks like a Hammer movie and has a
Speaker 3: very Hammer cast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one is if Memory serves either a Spanish
Speaker 2: production or a Spanish co production. Number of Spanish filmmakers
Speaker 2: are involved in it. I have seen this one before
Speaker 2: and it is a lot of fun. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: got a great cast. You got Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing,
Speaker 2: and Telly Savala is playing I Believe a Cossack. And
Speaker 2: you also have some familiar faces from Spanish genre cinema
Speaker 2: of the day. Helgaalini is in it, or Helga Line,
Speaker 2: who we've talked about in various films such as Horror,
Speaker 2: Rises from the Tomb and so forth. Some places you'll
Speaker 2: see it erroneously stated that Paul Nashy is in this,
Speaker 2: but he is not. There's just there's a character in
Speaker 2: it with a big beard in some shots kind of
Speaker 2: looks like Paul Nashy. But anyway, this one is okay.
Speaker 2: This has been on a list for a while and
Speaker 2: we actually talked about this film a little bit with
Speaker 2: Christian Back in the day. We did an episode dealing
Speaker 2: with this pseudoscientific concept of the late eighteen hundreds called
Speaker 2: retinal optography, which was this idea that you could see
Speaker 2: the last image that a dead man saw by looking
Speaker 2: at their retina, and it is utilized to fantastic sci
Speaker 2: fi degree in this picture. There are a number of
Speaker 2: just wonky sci fi concepts that they run wild with
Speaker 2: in this film, so it's a whole lot of fun.
Speaker 3: What is the last image a dead man saw well.
Speaker 2: The idea was you could potentially use it to see
Speaker 2: like a murder victim's killer like that that image would
Speaker 2: somehow be retrievable from the retina, that you could get
Speaker 2: in there with the magnifying glass and you could see
Speaker 2: the image and then capture the image and even use
Speaker 2: that image in a court of law. In the context
Speaker 2: of this film, if memory serves, it has to do
Speaker 2: with a like a frozen prehistoric man and then being
Speaker 2: able to look in his eyes and see like a
Speaker 2: dinosaur or something. So it's got like I said, it's
Speaker 2: it's wacky and fun and definitely has that gothic horror feel.
Speaker 2: It's also a train movie, so it's actually been on
Speaker 2: my list of potential weird House selections for a while.
Speaker 2: But I think one of the things that's always helped
Speaker 2: me back is we've also talked about doing a train
Speaker 2: related stuff to Blow your Mind episode in October, and
Speaker 2: I've always kind of thought, well, these two would pair
Speaker 2: up nicely, but that just means they're like two levers
Speaker 2: to pull to see it come to fruition.
Speaker 3: Horror movies on trains, that seems like it's a very
Speaker 3: narrow genre, but it goes deep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the plot's a bit on the rails,
Speaker 2: you know, but it's it's a lot of fun. Who
Speaker 2: doesn't love a good good train mystery. And this one
Speaker 2: has a very cool monster and again great cast, so
Speaker 2: that alone is worth checking in on. All right, looks
Speaker 2: like we have one left, and this one is from Joe,
Speaker 2: a different Joe. Joe says fellas huge fan. It's always
Speaker 2: a kick to see a seemingly boring show subject only
Speaker 2: for y'all to find a way to make it amazingly interesting.
Speaker 2: Dust and it was great. Ha ha ha. I'm blind,
Speaker 2: lost auction in to my optic nerves about six years ago,
Speaker 2: and now I can't see squad. I loved weird and
Speaker 2: quirky movies even when they were bad. You could find
Speaker 2: the good in them. A lot of movies before say,
Speaker 2: twenty tenish, and absolutely none of those types of films
Speaker 2: include descriptive audio for the blind or visually impaired. More
Speaker 2: films now come with them, but you'd have to get really,
Speaker 2: really lucky to find something from the seventies or eighties
Speaker 2: with a descriptive audio track. So y'all going through some
Speaker 2: I was able to watch before the lights went out,
Speaker 2: and others I won't get to physically see any longer.
Speaker 2: It's nice to have the podcast as a companion piece.
Speaker 2: If I can't watch or rewatch and really follow, then
Speaker 2: your summaries, reviews and anecdotes about the movies are a
Speaker 2: reasonable bronze or silver metal. I absolutely enjoy anyway you asked,
Speaker 2: so email sent all the best. Thanks for the edutainment, Joe.
Speaker 3: I deny the charge of edutainment, but I'm really glad
Speaker 3: you get enjoyment out of the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's you know, I hadn't really you know,
Speaker 2: I had thought this much about the descriptive audio tracks,
Speaker 2: but yeah, you see on them more and more nowadays,
Speaker 2: and it you know, it's a great addition to these
Speaker 2: releases and you know, digital or otherwise. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess you go back further and you're gonna find less
Speaker 2: and less of that, unless I guess it's like a
Speaker 2: pivotal piece of cinema that is getting like a really
Speaker 2: nice re release and or is held to a large
Speaker 2: degree to be culturally important or at least commercially important.
Speaker 2: And obviously a lot of your weirder films are going
Speaker 2: to fall through the cracks in that area. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: we're going to go ahead and close the mail bag
Speaker 2: right there, but we'll be back next week, hopefully with
Speaker 2: more listener mail. But we have to admit the mail
Speaker 2: bags starting to get a little bit thin at this point.
Speaker 2: We need to hear from more folks. So if you
Speaker 2: have thoughts about, say, our recent series on cicadas, you
Speaker 2: have other summertime thoughts, summertime episode requests, write in. We
Speaker 2: would love to hear from you. Summertime movies for Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema so forth. What kind of movies do you
Speaker 2: get into watching when the weather gets hot? Are you
Speaker 2: a blockbuster person? Or do your interest go in a
Speaker 2: different direction. Anything of this nature is perfectly fair game,
Speaker 2: so let us know the listener mails. Publish on Mondays
Speaker 2: and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're
Speaker 2: primarily a science podcast, science and culture podcast with core
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays, we tend to
Speaker 2: do a short form episode and throughout the month of
Speaker 2: July we're going to be putting out a bunch of
Speaker 2: alien themed monster facts. So I'm looking forward to putting
Speaker 2: those together and let's see. Yeah, on Fridays, we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film 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 hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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