Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind Listener Mail. I am Joe McCormick, and my
Speaker 1: regular co host Robert Lamb is off work this week,
Speaker 1: so we've got a bit of a scheduling changeup, So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be recording today's Listener Mail episode solo, and
Speaker 1: then on Tuesday and Thursday of this week we will
Speaker 1: have a couple of core episodes from the Vault, and
Speaker 1: on Friday a Weird House Cinema rewind, and then I
Speaker 1: should be back with a fresh Listener Mail episode next Monday.
Speaker 1: And at some point that week I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: which day yet, Robert will be rejoining me and we'll
Speaker 1: have all new stuff for you then. But for today,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be reading back a few of the
Speaker 1: messages that you've sent in over the past week or so,
Speaker 1: and I think we should kick things off with some
Speaker 1: responses to the series that Rob and I did on Thirst.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to begin with a message from Ahmed.
Speaker 1: Ahmed says, hey, guys, your mention of rabies during the
Speaker 1: Thirst series made me think of a neat application of
Speaker 1: this virus in research. The reason rabies can take a
Speaker 1: long time to cause disease is because the virus jumps
Speaker 1: up the neurons retrograde from the site of infection to
Speaker 1: the brain, and the further away it is, the longer
Speaker 1: it takes to make the trek. Yeah. So if you're
Speaker 1: trying to picture that, imagine you get bitten, say on
Speaker 1: the hand, by a by an infected animal, and then
Speaker 1: the rabies virus transfers from the saliva into the bite
Speaker 1: and then from there I believe it either I think
Speaker 1: gets into the muscle, but somehow it gets into the nerves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it has to climb the nerve pathways back up
Speaker 1: to the central nervous system to get into the brain.
Speaker 1: But anyway, here here, Ahmed goes on describing something I
Speaker 1: thought was really interesting that I don't think I was
Speaker 1: aware of before, uh Ahmed rights. In neuroscience, we can
Speaker 1: use this feature to trace what upstream neurons synapse onto
Speaker 1: an area or population of interest, using a rabies virus
Speaker 1: whose genome has been tweaked so that instead of just
Speaker 1: being instructions that to a host cell say make more
Speaker 1: rabies virus, they say make more rabies virus and a
Speaker 1: fluorescent protein. This labels the neurons with that fluorescent protein
Speaker 1: as the virus goes up. Make the virus deficient in
Speaker 1: a crucial piece of machinery. Added only to the cells
Speaker 1: of interest, and you can get fancier and ensure that
Speaker 1: it will only be able to jump one synapse, thereby
Speaker 1: only labeling the neurons that directly link up to the
Speaker 1: ones you're interested in. More generally, this is a good
Speaker 1: example of a theme and research. So many of the
Speaker 1: tools we use in the lab are adapted from nature.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows about PCR now thanks to COVID, but the
Speaker 1: first polyme race enzyme used in PCR was from hot
Speaker 1: springs bacteria. Oh yeah, that's the thermos aquaticus from Yellowstone right,
Speaker 1: um Ahmed writes. Our own polyme races couldn't stand the
Speaker 1: high temperatures required, but after all, that's what the bacteria
Speaker 1: evolved for. This is also a good case to bring
Speaker 1: up when people complain about money wasted in quotes on
Speaker 1: unapplied science without an immediate payoff. The people first studying
Speaker 1: hot springs microbes had no way of foreseeing that this
Speaker 1: is what they would be applied to anyway, protein engineering
Speaker 1: has made a lot of strides recently, but until we
Speaker 1: can design them better a priori, our best bet remains
Speaker 1: tweaking what we find around us. Keep up the great work. Ahm, ed, Well,
Speaker 1: this is a great email, im it yet And I'm
Speaker 1: I'm fully on board with you. You know, I think
Speaker 1: studying nature, even if you don't see an immediate financial
Speaker 1: payoff to that research is is always a great thing
Speaker 1: to do. Uh, you don't know what other in formation
Speaker 1: it will lead to down the line or other applications.
Speaker 1: And as for this application of the rabies virus, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was not aware of this before, but I looked
Speaker 1: this up and this is really interesting that you can
Speaker 1: use the rabies virus to trace natural pathways between neurons,
Speaker 1: So you can use the virus in a modified form
Speaker 1: to study the nervous system so we understand it better.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's wonderful. A great and benevolent application for
Speaker 1: for the virus that causes one of the worst diseases
Speaker 1: known to humankind. Alright, this next message comes from Brett.
Speaker 1: Brett says, Hello, gentlemen, I hope you've all been doing well.
Speaker 1: Quick comment on the thirst episodes. Excellent way you guys
Speaker 1: have described what's going on in the biological responses we
Speaker 1: have when we're thirsty, and how to stop that thirst.
Speaker 1: One comment regarding de ionized water, I believe in water
Speaker 1: is distilled through a column and condensed, some minerals can
Speaker 1: be carried over in low amounts due to a phenomenon
Speaker 1: called a zeotrope. This occurs when water coordinates with another
Speaker 1: chemicals like say tallween, and lowers the boiling point of
Speaker 1: the tollween. I believe some minerals might also perform the
Speaker 1: same way. If water is treated by reverse osmosis, this
Speaker 1: is more of a true way to remove all minerals
Speaker 1: to obtain a more pure form of water. The issue
Speaker 1: with water that has been treated this way is it
Speaker 1: can be harmful to ingest due to the water stability
Speaker 1: to remove salts and minerals from our body. Drinking de
Speaker 1: ionized water or water by reverse osmosis is not recommended.
Speaker 1: Keep it for your humidifier. As for the taste of water,
Speaker 1: it seems every municipality has its own unique flavor profile,
Speaker 1: and we all seem to get numb to it. Then
Speaker 1: we visit somewhere and we notice those low concentrations of
Speaker 1: minerals that are different. I've heard of breweries adding minerals
Speaker 1: to try to mimic a certain flavor profile they're trying
Speaker 1: to achieve. I guess Brett means from from a different
Speaker 1: city where the beer was originally made. We can definitely
Speaker 1: tell the difference looking forward to the third episode. I
Speaker 1: guess this came after the second cheers Brett, Well Brett,
Speaker 1: along the lines of what you say about breweries. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know if if there was ever a definitive
Speaker 1: answer to this controversy, but I remember reading years ago
Speaker 1: some arguments about the the cause of the the the
Speaker 1: reasoning behind the fact that pizza and bagels are inarguably
Speaker 1: better in New York City than anywhere else in the world.
Speaker 1: And the argument was that that maybe it's because of
Speaker 1: the New York City tap water. The city tap water
Speaker 1: that's used to hydrate the dough for the bagels has
Speaker 1: some special New York e goodness to it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I think the reasoning under that was that New York
Speaker 1: has unusually soft water, meaning that it is low in
Speaker 1: certain minerals like calcium, and that low mineral content has
Speaker 1: some mitigating effect on gluten formation, which I think would
Speaker 1: basically make the bread products softer and more fluffy to
Speaker 1: the tooth. So I don't know. It. Intuitively seems kind
Speaker 1: of unlikely to me that it would make that big
Speaker 1: of a difference city by city by itself, but I
Speaker 1: am not an expert in does so maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: New York listeners, do you have opinions on this? Right?
Speaker 1: Right in? Tell me? Tell me what's going on with
Speaker 1: your bagel, is your pizza crust? What makes them special?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it just different technique or or is
Speaker 1: that water really magic? All right? This next message comes
Speaker 1: from Eric. Eric says, Hi, Rob and Joe great episodes
Speaker 1: on Thirst. You talked about tea at the beginning of
Speaker 1: part two and mentioned that you can make tea. Uh,
Speaker 1: I guess that's sort of tea and quotes out of
Speaker 1: a lot of things. I drink lots of tea, including
Speaker 1: actual black tea, herbal tea, and mint. In Robert Jordan's
Speaker 1: Wheel of Time series, one group of people who had
Speaker 1: never seen tea before referred to it as leaf soup,
Speaker 1: which made me laugh, and then it made me wonder,
Speaker 1: where exactly is the boundary between tea and soup? You
Speaker 1: could in theory have made have a soup made only
Speaker 1: of vegetable broth? Could that be considered a tea? I
Speaker 1: assume that if it has chunks of vegetable in it,
Speaker 1: that would make it definitely a soup. My infuser has
Speaker 1: leaked bits of tea leaves and it turned my tea
Speaker 1: into soup several times. I think you can go even farther, Eric,
Speaker 1: and there there is certainly a I think this is
Speaker 1: a British expression to say, like beef tea or meat tea.
Speaker 1: It's basically just beef broth. Yeah, I know we've gotten
Speaker 1: at least one message from a listener about that before.
Speaker 1: There's some kind of beef tea and biscuits thing. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Eric goes on, I've lived in several places, each with
Speaker 1: its own flavor of water. Central California gets most of
Speaker 1: its water from mountain streams that flow into reservoirs, and
Speaker 1: it typically has a nice, mineral rich flavor. But if
Speaker 1: you get your water from a well, it's often heavy
Speaker 1: with nitrogen, which and Eric says this gives it a
Speaker 1: more bitter taste that I've got a note about that
Speaker 1: after after email, Eric says, Los Angeles water basically tastes
Speaker 1: like pool water. I've also spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: in Imperial County. I guess that's probably California, incidentally, a
Speaker 1: land rich in tumbleweeds, and the water here is incredibly
Speaker 1: alkaline and very bitter. While the tap water is completely potable.
Speaker 1: Everyone recoils at the idea of drinking it. Everyone I
Speaker 1: know uses a filter or drinks bottled water. Oh. But
Speaker 1: then Eric says that the same water, the bitter water,
Speaker 1: is used to grow a large number of vegetables that
Speaker 1: are eaten throughout the United States. Uh. And then finally
Speaker 1: Eric says, speaking of water and crops. Not sure if
Speaker 1: I mentioned it in a previous message, but I think
Speaker 1: you could do a full episode, if not too on dirt.
Speaker 1: There's such a wide range of dirt, from all the
Speaker 1: types of soils, sands, extraterrestrial regulith and dust in our
Speaker 1: houses to the grime on our clothes. All the best,
Speaker 1: keep up the good work, Eric, Well, thanks Eric the
Speaker 1: great email. The one thing I might wanna differ with
Speaker 1: you on here is whether the nitre gen content of
Speaker 1: well water would be the thing that makes it bitter.
Speaker 1: Wellwater can indeed have a lot of nitrogen compounds in it,
Speaker 1: in the forms of nitrite and nitrate. I think especially
Speaker 1: like as a result of nearby use of fertilizers and
Speaker 1: manure in the in the soil, but I think there
Speaker 1: can be other causes as well, like sewer, inseptic leakage,
Speaker 1: and grows stuff like that. But you can end up
Speaker 1: with nitrogen compounds in your well water. But all the
Speaker 1: sources that I was reading about this made clear to
Speaker 1: stress that these compounds typically have no taste or smell,
Speaker 1: So I don't know if that's always the case, but
Speaker 1: it's at least commonly reported that they have no taste
Speaker 1: or smell, And I think that would be an important
Speaker 1: fact because it means they can be present in unsafe
Speaker 1: quantities in well water and go totally unnoticed when you're
Speaker 1: actually drinking it. So don't you shouldn't just assume that
Speaker 1: if if it was there, you'd be able to taste it.
Speaker 1: Uh And and this can actually be dangerous because if
Speaker 1: you consume too much nitrate or nitrite it and cause
Speaker 1: a condition called I'm not sure how to pronounce this,
Speaker 1: but I think it's like methemoglobinemia. Methemoglobinemia, which is basically
Speaker 1: where your red blood cells have difficulty transporting oxygen because
Speaker 1: of the presence of too much nitrite, and that that
Speaker 1: nitrite causes oxidation of the hemoglobin uh and it it
Speaker 1: makes your blood not work. Basically. You can read case
Speaker 1: reports about this that sometimes have very weird features describing
Speaker 1: people's skin turning blue and things like that. So you
Speaker 1: definitely don't want that to happen. And uh and and
Speaker 1: the bottom line is if you get your water from
Speaker 1: a well, you should get it tested on a regular
Speaker 1: basis to to make sure that there is not significant
Speaker 1: nitrogen compound contamination. And I guess probably for other things too,
Speaker 1: but yeah, if you if you have well water, get
Speaker 1: it tested. Okay. And this next message also comes from
Speaker 1: an Eric, a completely different one. So the second Rick says,
Speaker 1: one thing I thought of during your podcast about thirst
Speaker 1: was how at one point in college, I had the
Speaker 1: thought that drinking really cold water would be a decent
Speaker 1: way to burn some extra calories in a day, since
Speaker 1: my body has to raise that cold water up to
Speaker 1: body temperature, and one kilo calorie of food value is
Speaker 1: the energy used to raise one kilogram or leader of
Speaker 1: water one degree celsius. Drinking cold water let's say two
Speaker 1: degrees c and bringing that up to body temperature about
Speaker 1: thirty seven degrees c. That's thirty five calories per leader
Speaker 1: of water. If I crank through six liters of ice
Speaker 1: water in a day, then boom, that's two hundred calories
Speaker 1: burned right there. I imagine there are some flaws in
Speaker 1: my math, or that it's a bit more complicated than
Speaker 1: that doing the full energy balance of my body, maintaining
Speaker 1: its core temperature and so forth, But I still think
Speaker 1: it would be at least close to that number of calories.
Speaker 1: Big fan of the show, Eric Well, Eric, I went
Speaker 1: digging around to try to find a good answer to
Speaker 1: this question, see if there was anything authoritative about how
Speaker 1: many calories you burn by drinking very cold water. And
Speaker 1: I think my conclusion after everything I've read, is that yes,
Speaker 1: drinking ice water as opposed to room temperature water will
Speaker 1: put demands on your metabolism. You will burn a few
Speaker 1: extra calories, but probably not enough to be a really
Speaker 1: significant source of of a deficit for weight loss. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you're just drinking a normal amount of water. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously that raises questions of like, what is a normal
Speaker 1: amount of water to drink? In a day. That's actually
Speaker 1: kind of hard to pin down. Some of the most
Speaker 1: commonly cited figures are from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
Speaker 1: and Medicine Table on Dietary Reference Intakes, and that table
Speaker 1: I think this was compiled in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: so I don't know how current it is, but it's
Speaker 1: still referenced a lot, and that recommends a daily water
Speaker 1: intake of three point seven leaders per day for adult
Speaker 1: men and two point seven leaders per day for adult women.
Speaker 1: But obviously that that's not something you need to measure
Speaker 1: out and be strict about. And these are just averages,
Speaker 1: so there's gonna be a lot of individual variation, and
Speaker 1: of course variation based on what you're doing, if you're
Speaker 1: sweating exercise, if you're on the hot sun and things
Speaker 1: like that. Now, obviously you can drink more water than
Speaker 1: the than the average daily recommended intake, but you do
Speaker 1: need to be careful there, since it is actually quite
Speaker 1: possible to hurt or kill yourself by drinking too much
Speaker 1: water too fast. One of the big risks of drinking
Speaker 1: too much water too fast is hypetremia, where the salt
Speaker 1: concentration in your blood gets too low, and your kidneys
Speaker 1: can't purge the extra water fast enough to keep your
Speaker 1: salt osmolality at the right level, So there's a build
Speaker 1: up of fluid inside cells. It makes your cells swell,
Speaker 1: I think, including the brain cells, and that's just that's
Speaker 1: really bad. So this is something that's also difficult to
Speaker 1: put a universally applicable number on. Uh. Several sources I
Speaker 1: was looking at side of study from warning that you
Speaker 1: you don't want to drink more than something like zero
Speaker 1: point eight leaders to one leader of water per hour,
Speaker 1: since this exceeds what the kidneys can safely eliminate. But again,
Speaker 1: I think that's something that's it's hard to put a
Speaker 1: very solid number on it. But generally I think you
Speaker 1: just want to stay away from chugging ridiculous amounts of water. Also,
Speaker 1: big caveat. As always, you know, I'm not a doctor,
Speaker 1: we're not doctors. This is not a medical advice show,
Speaker 1: so you should not be uh making any medical decisions
Speaker 1: based on anything you heard here. But yeah, as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, there's basically you know, there's no
Speaker 1: harm in drinking a normal amount of cold water, and
Speaker 1: that will help you create a calorie deficit but maybe
Speaker 1: not as much as you would buy. For example, refraining
Speaker 1: from eating a couple of fun sized candy bars. Uh.
Speaker 1: And whatever you do, just please don't give yourself water intoxication,
Speaker 1: trying to lose weight? Okay, onto some responses to Weird
Speaker 1: How Cinema. Both of these were about the episode we
Speaker 1: did on The Beast with Five Fingers, the Peter Laurie
Speaker 1: movie about a severed hand that goes up, strikes out
Speaker 1: on its own, and goes on a choking spree. When
Speaker 1: we did that episode about the Beast with Five Fingers,
Speaker 1: we were talking about other killer hand movies and we
Speaker 1: got to a nine stone or horror comedy called Idle
Speaker 1: Hands starring Devin Sawa and Jessica Alba. And Rob had
Speaker 1: a very strong memory that Jake Busey was in this movie.
Speaker 1: I argued that Jake Busey was not in this movie.
Speaker 1: Now here comes our listener Thomas, to solve the mystery.
Speaker 1: Thomas says, I'm yelling into my headphones here you think
Speaker 1: you remember Jake Busey because there's an amazing cameo The Offspring.
Speaker 1: The band The Offspring are playing the high school Halloween
Speaker 1: dance and Dexter Holland gets scalped by the possessed hand
Speaker 1: on stage. Dexter and Jake are extremely similar looking, Thomas Thomas,
Speaker 1: I think you're exactly right. That must be it. So
Speaker 1: in this movie, somehow they got the offspring the very
Speaker 1: very popular sort of pop punk band to to play
Speaker 1: this high school dance on a basketball court they're doing.
Speaker 1: I remember they're doing a cover of I Want to
Speaker 1: Be Sedated by the Ramons, And yeah, the lead singer
Speaker 1: does have significant Jake bauc overlap. I think they both
Speaker 1: have the same platinum blonde hair, spiky with alarming vertical dimension.
Speaker 1: This next message is from a listener who wanted to
Speaker 1: stay anonymous, but she had some really great insights in
Speaker 1: response to that same Weird House Cinema episode on the
Speaker 1: Beast with five Fingers. She starts off by saying that
Speaker 1: she's been listening for several years and introduces her credentials
Speaker 1: as a trained pianist who works in a musical academic setting,
Speaker 1: and then moves on to our comments about the movie.
Speaker 1: The writer seems well informed about certain oddly specific aspects
Speaker 1: of piano playing. With one hand, it's much easier to
Speaker 1: play something which sounds reasonably impressive with one's left hand
Speaker 1: than with the right, no matter which hand is dominant
Speaker 1: in everyday life. This is generally supposed to be because
Speaker 1: the thumb is quote heavier, essentially louder than the other fingers,
Speaker 1: and therefore carries a melodic line better, and the left
Speaker 1: hand thumb plays higher notes where the melodic line generally lies,
Speaker 1: whereas the right hand thumb plays the base. The relative
Speaker 1: independence of the melodic thumb is also helpful. And yes,
Speaker 1: this did correspond to the movie, because the one handed
Speaker 1: pianist in in the beast Um he played with his
Speaker 1: left hand. That was where all of his power and
Speaker 1: skill was concentrated, as if by magic. But the listener
Speaker 1: goes on. There are quite a few historical precedents of
Speaker 1: left hand pieces, and some but fewer for the right
Speaker 1: hand alone. The most well known are probably Johannes Brahms
Speaker 1: transcription of the box Shikan for solo violin for the
Speaker 1: left hand, Revels Piano Concerto for the left hand, and
Speaker 1: the Scriabin Prelude and nocturn Opus number nine for the
Speaker 1: left hand scrib and a Russian composer and really interesting
Speaker 1: biographical details that I want to get to after this
Speaker 1: emails over, but the listener continues. Scriabin, like so many
Speaker 1: of us, hurt his right hand practicing and didn't want
Speaker 1: to stop playing, even temporarily. Unfortunately, most people can't compose
Speaker 1: such wonderful music for themselves. A lot of these pieces
Speaker 1: are not immediately audible as being played by a single hand,
Speaker 1: especially for non pianists. The revel and an impressive list
Speaker 1: of other pieces was written for Paul Wittgenstein, brother of
Speaker 1: the philosopher, who lost his right arm in the First
Speaker 1: World War and continued to perform as a concert pianist afterwards.
Speaker 1: More recently, both Gary Graffman and Leon Fleischer lost some
Speaker 1: or all of the use of their right hands due
Speaker 1: to probably in Graftman's case and certainly in Fleischer's focal dystonia,
Speaker 1: and they have both performed the left handed repertoire for
Speaker 1: many years. Sorry for the long email. It was very
Speaker 1: exciting for me to hear about a horrific and independent
Speaker 1: left hand, as I sometimes feel like mine is also
Speaker 1: possessed by a demon. Finally, it's very unusual to make
Speaker 1: past one's early thirties as a musician without at least
Speaker 1: one significant period of injury. My first came during my
Speaker 1: bachelor's degree, when a burnt finger on my right hand
Speaker 1: became severely infected because I was too stupid to stop
Speaker 1: practicing for a few days, and pianos shared by a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty people are in obvious hindsight hotbeds of
Speaker 1: all kinds of bacteria and so forth. I recovered quickly,
Speaker 1: but spent five weeks variously having fits of hysterics and
Speaker 1: becoming acquainted with the repertoire for the left hand. Thank
Speaker 1: you again for the fascinating podcast. I so much enjoy
Speaker 1: learning more about all kinds of things which are very
Speaker 1: far away from my daily life, and it was a
Speaker 1: pleasant surprise to hear about something a bit more familiar.
Speaker 1: All the best, Well, thank you so much for the email.
Speaker 1: To follow up with another interesting tidbit, since you raised
Speaker 1: the subject of Alexander Scriabin. If anybody out there is
Speaker 1: not familiar with this Russian pianist and composer, uh Scriabin
Speaker 1: is not only interesting for having written piano music for
Speaker 1: the left hand alone, but he is also the only
Speaker 1: person I know of who ever tried to compose a
Speaker 1: literal eschatological event. If you want to learn more about this,
Speaker 1: look up Scriabin's work called The Mysterium. It was unfinished
Speaker 1: at the time of his death. I think heavily influenced
Speaker 1: by Scriabin's fascination with occultism, mysticism, UH and the new
Speaker 1: religion at the time of Theosophy. But essentially the Mysterium,
Speaker 1: as far as I understand, it was supposed to be
Speaker 1: like the artwork to end all artworks, and in fact,
Speaker 1: to end the world. It was going to be a
Speaker 1: musical and visual performance staged in the foothills of the
Speaker 1: Himalayas that would be so awesome that it would summon
Speaker 1: the end of the eon and transform all matter into spirit.
Speaker 1: I found a description of what Scriabin intended for the
Speaker 1: at least the first part of this event, in a
Speaker 1: book called Scriabin, a Biography by Faubian Bowers, published in
Speaker 1: nineteen So he's describing here a portion of the Mysterium
Speaker 1: that the composer left behind when he died, and this
Speaker 1: part was called the Prefatory Action. In the Prefatory Action
Speaker 1: would still be a stage work of immense proportion and conception.
Speaker 1: Bells suspended from the clouds in the sky would summon
Speaker 1: the spectators from all over the world. The performance was
Speaker 1: to take place in a half temple to be built
Speaker 1: in India. A reflecting pool of water would complete the
Speaker 1: divinity of the half circle stage. Spectators would sit in
Speaker 1: tears across the water. Those in the balconies would be
Speaker 1: the least spiritually advanced. The seating was strictly graded, ranking
Speaker 1: radially from the center of the stage, where Scriabin would
Speaker 1: sit at the piano, surrounded by hosts of instruments, singers, dancers.
Speaker 1: The entire group was to be permeated continually with movement
Speaker 1: and costumed speakers reciting the text in processions and parades
Speaker 1: would form parts of the action. The choreography would include glances, looks,
Speaker 1: eye emotions, touches of the hands, odors of both pleasant
Speaker 1: perfumes and acrid smokes, frankinsense and myrrh pillars of incense
Speaker 1: would form part of the scenery. Lights, fires, and constantly
Speaker 1: changing lighting effects would pervade the cast an audience, each
Speaker 1: to number in the thousands. This prefaces the final mysterium
Speaker 1: and prepares people for their ultimate dissolution in ecstasy. Now,
Speaker 1: like I said, the mysterium was unfinished when Scriabin died,
Speaker 1: but he left behind a bunch of sections and notes
Speaker 1: on on parts that he had composed. And I think
Speaker 1: that there there was at least one case, maybe multiple
Speaker 1: where other composers came along and tried to make something
Speaker 1: out of the the notes and unfinished parts that he
Speaker 1: left behind. So so you can look up the mysterium
Speaker 1: and hear parts of it as interpreted by by other composers.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, it was never put together in its
Speaker 1: entirety and obviously never staged because we're all still here.
Speaker 1: M m m m m okay, So that's gonna wrap
Speaker 1: things up for this episode, but we will be back
Speaker 1: to talk to you again soon. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you're new to the show, why don't you subscribe? Just
Speaker 1: look up the Stuff to Blow your Mind feed wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast will be on there somewhere, or
Speaker 1: you can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: We usually feature listener mail on Monday's, core science and
Speaker 1: culture episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays, we do something we call weird House Cinema,
Speaker 1: a more casual show where Rob and I usually talk
Speaker 1: about a movie with a giant crab or a star
Speaker 1: mummy or something of that ilk Remember this week we're
Speaker 1: gonna have some vault episodes for you because Robert's out,
Speaker 1: but we'll be back with you with all new content
Speaker 1: sometime next week. And big thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.