Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and it's our yearly Halloween Hangover listener
Speaker 1: mail episode. We always get tons of great listener mail.
Speaker 1: We have got an absolutely overflowing mail bag right now,
Speaker 1: so much so that we decided we're gonna do too
Speaker 1: listener mail episodes this week to catch up and frankly,
Speaker 1: to help us get through a part of the year
Speaker 1: that is always very tight and very busy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this and then this is a good time to first
Speaker 1: of all, to have one more heaping scoop of Halloween
Speaker 1: right here in the gray zone between the end of
Speaker 1: October and you know, the beginning of saying Thanksgiving and
Speaker 1: Christmas like the full on holidays. Well, and we have
Speaker 1: we have so much great content to read here. And
Speaker 1: then after that it's gonna be it's gonna be all
Speaker 1: Christmas around here. It's gonna be Holidays like like like
Speaker 1: you've never seen it before. But also we've got some
Speaker 1: weird science lined up for the next few weeks that
Speaker 1: that you probably wouldn't believe, so you should be very excited,
Speaker 1: all right, And I'm excited as well to have Carney
Speaker 1: here with us, our mail bot who's been with us
Speaker 1: the whole time, continually changing over the years, getting new
Speaker 1: new augments, new programming, etcetera. And today is no different, right.
Speaker 1: Carney seems to have been very interested in our episodes
Speaker 1: about photography burned from the Mind's Eye, the idea of
Speaker 1: projecting images onto film that a lot of supposed psychics
Speaker 1: throughout the years have claimed to be able to do.
Speaker 1: We talked about that in a couple of Halloween episodes,
Speaker 1: and and Carney has really caught the bug. So now
Speaker 1: instead of printing out listener mail as he normally does,
Speaker 1: he projects it psychically robotically onto various bread products. So
Speaker 1: we will be reading your listener mails burned from Carney's
Speaker 1: Mind's Eye onto Tortilla's toast. PETA's all the like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not supposed to be paying attention into the Invention
Speaker 1: podcast listener mail, but I think he caught a few
Speaker 1: regarding our episode on toast, and that may have also
Speaker 1: led to this current obsession. Here we go, should we
Speaker 1: jump right in, Robert, let's do it? What alright, This
Speaker 1: first message comes to us from our listener Alex. This
Speaker 1: is about the Burned from the Mind's Eye episode, and
Speaker 1: Alex writes in Hi, Robert and Joe, I just listened
Speaker 1: to the burn from the Mind's Eye podcast. A major
Speaker 1: and in visual studies in college, and remember to study
Speaker 1: about retinal mapping in the mid century. They showed a
Speaker 1: monkey a simple image and placed a radioactive film directly
Speaker 1: on the visual cortex with the monkey's brain exposed. It
Speaker 1: was basically photosensitive paper, but was sensitive to the electrical
Speaker 1: impulses of the brain. The results were a pretty accurate
Speaker 1: neuronal map to the visual stimulus, but slightly distorted. Basically,
Speaker 1: the retina is mapped specially onto the brain. While the
Speaker 1: same process probably couldn't reproduce Garfield or a complex image,
Speaker 1: you can actually get a picture to actually from the brain.
Speaker 1: Since the occipital or visual cortex is involved in mental
Speaker 1: imagery as well as in vision, it follows that with
Speaker 1: technology from the fifties and sixties, you might be able
Speaker 1: to make thoughtography of an imagined simple shape. That's assuming
Speaker 1: the visual cortex response of an imagined image is mapped
Speaker 1: the same as a visually stimulated response. So what's going
Speaker 1: on here is we were discussing in the episode how
Speaker 1: imagery is represented in the brain, and our proposition was
Speaker 1: that there's not a screen inside the brain that the
Speaker 1: brain watches imagery take place on that could be projected
Speaker 1: straight out onto thoughtography. Uh, this sort of complicates it
Speaker 1: somewhat now, I think as Alex is saying, there's no
Speaker 1: way you could like find an image of Garfield somewhere
Speaker 1: in the brain. That doesn't seem to exist even if
Speaker 1: you're picturing Garfield. But there does seem to be some
Speaker 1: correlation between what parts of the visual field are being
Speaker 1: stimulated with various types of light and what parts of
Speaker 1: the occipital cortex in the back of the head show
Speaker 1: the most activity. So you can sort of map places
Speaker 1: on the retina basically parts of the visual field of
Speaker 1: things you're looking at, to certain parts of the brain
Speaker 1: showing increased activity. And I think one consequence of this
Speaker 1: is that if you show somebody like a very simple
Speaker 1: black and white shape, you could almost sort of see
Speaker 1: a version of that shape represented in brain activity in
Speaker 1: the occipital cortex. So, yeah, it all seems to be
Speaker 1: just a matter of you know, fine tuning the technology
Speaker 1: and the data needed to translate this information. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: again this probably doesn't work as well, or almost certainly
Speaker 1: doesn't work as well once the image has more complexity
Speaker 1: to it. Especially, I think it makes a difference, you know,
Speaker 1: once you consider talking talking about like the moving of
Speaker 1: the focus of the eyes and all this. But you know,
Speaker 1: you can represent parts of the retina, parts of the
Speaker 1: visual field within a sort of uh a map of
Speaker 1: the visual processing center of the brain. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: didn't know this before, so thank you so much for sharing, Alex.
Speaker 1: This is really interesting. I still don't think this would
Speaker 1: really make thoughtography anymore plausible, because, I mean, there are
Speaker 1: multiple problems. Uh. Photography tends to project images as you
Speaker 1: would take with a camera. And again this is not
Speaker 1: you're You're not getting maps on the brain projecting complex images.
Speaker 1: It's more sort of like rough correlations of areas of
Speaker 1: the brain to parts of shapes that you would look at.
Speaker 1: But and then also like how would the signal escape
Speaker 1: the skull. The fact that people tended to do it
Speaker 1: at a distance or with the thing in the front
Speaker 1: of the head instead of in the back. I think
Speaker 1: they're there are multiple reasons for saying that this, this
Speaker 1: doesn't really make photography anymore plausible unless you were to say,
Speaker 1: remove the skull and only look at extremely simple shapes
Speaker 1: and accept very distorted versions of them as you're projected image. Well,
Speaker 1: and it reminds me to how we've talked in the
Speaker 1: past about how, you know, a lot of times we're
Speaker 1: reaching for an idea of how psychic transmission of ideas
Speaker 1: could occur, how I can get the contents of my
Speaker 1: skull into your skull. And then we overlooked the fact
Speaker 1: that we have this thing called language that does exactly that. Uh, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: this might be just another bridge between minds, this one
Speaker 1: though technological as opposed to linguistic exactly. Uh, Robert, do
Speaker 1: you mind if I jump onto the next one, because
Speaker 1: it's kind of related. So we were talking about the
Speaker 1: question it was raised in one of the papers we
Speaker 1: looked at of whether mental imagery could be unconsciously perceived.
Speaker 1: Can you picture something without being conscious of perceiving it?
Speaker 1: This is a strange question, And Robert, you said, well, wait,
Speaker 1: could you even see something in with regular vision without
Speaker 1: being conscious of it? And I answered that I thought
Speaker 1: there was some evidence for this, like in the invisible
Speaker 1: guerilla line of research. I seemed to recall there were
Speaker 1: some things where like people wouldn't consciously note seeing a guerrilla,
Speaker 1: but then they might be primed on the subject of
Speaker 1: guerrillas afterwards, so like maybe some part of them had
Speaker 1: seen it, but they weren't conscious of seeing it. But
Speaker 1: after recording the episode, some listeners brought up the condition,
Speaker 1: and I also thought of the condition that that I
Speaker 1: should have mentioned there, which is blind site, which we
Speaker 1: definitely should have thought of because we're both big fans
Speaker 1: of the Peter Wattson novel where he invokes the concept.
Speaker 1: But basically, blind site is a neurological condition in which
Speaker 1: people can respond to visual stimuli behaviorally, and yet they
Speaker 1: believe they are blind or blind in some particular part
Speaker 1: of their visual field. So like you can, I don't know,
Speaker 1: for example, somebody could toss a ball at you and
Speaker 1: you could reach up and catch it, but you are
Speaker 1: but you are not conscious of seeing the ball, like
Speaker 1: you don't believe you can see it or have seen it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean certainly with the ball. I think we've all
Speaker 1: had that, that situation where you're just suddenly catching the
Speaker 1: ball or I've had. I had that situation when my
Speaker 1: son was younger, where he he fell off of some
Speaker 1: playground equipment and suddenly I was like holding him the foot, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know where it's It's just another in another part
Speaker 1: of our mental machinery is kicking in to make that possible. Yes,
Speaker 1: And so what I think this means is that it
Speaker 1: seems to me the brain is perfectly capable of processing
Speaker 1: visual imagery and reacting in some cases in some ways
Speaker 1: without making that imagery available to the conscious part of
Speaker 1: the brain that talks. So Yes, I think there's definitely
Speaker 1: evidence that it's possible to see unconsciously with regular vision.
Speaker 1: But that still leaves the other question unanswered, whether it's
Speaker 1: possible to imagine visual imagery unconsciously? Can you picture Garfield
Speaker 1: without knowing your picturing Garfield? And our next email addresses this.
Speaker 1: So this is from our listener Tanya. Tanya says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the question can mental imagery be unconscious? I
Speaker 1: have some experience concerning this question. Sometimes, when I read
Speaker 1: a novel or play a rather boring game on the computer,
Speaker 1: I suddenly become aware that my mind was busy the
Speaker 1: last hour with understanding what I read and in the
Speaker 1: same time picturing something completely unrelated. Normally it's a landscape
Speaker 1: of some sort, something I know more or less well,
Speaker 1: I move in this area, similar to the movement you
Speaker 1: do when you use Google street View. I had this
Speaker 1: experience long before Google and its maps was invented. Uh.
Speaker 1: The pictures I produce are not put into words, but
Speaker 1: stay completely visual until I become aware. Therefore, I would
Speaker 1: call them unconscious. It happens that I come to places
Speaker 1: I haven't been to physically in years, but as soon
Speaker 1: as I see them again, I remember having been there
Speaker 1: recently in my mind. Oh that's interesting, kind of creepy feeling.
Speaker 1: But in the moment of picturing them, I was completely unaware.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm astounded how inaccurate my inner maps are, Like
Speaker 1: all memories are, I guess. Fascinated listener from Germany Tanya. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this this whole idea, and I think this is
Speaker 1: why it was so perplexing when we talked about it
Speaker 1: the first time. Is we really have to figure out
Speaker 1: what we mean by being conscious of seeing something or
Speaker 1: conscious of having a visual image of it. Does that
Speaker 1: mean that I are we just talking about? Uh? It
Speaker 1: occurring at all, are we talking about me having uh,
Speaker 1: like a focused awareness of it, you know, uh, And
Speaker 1: I feel like there's there's sort of room on a
Speaker 1: scale between the two. Yeah, I mean it's kind of hazy.
Speaker 1: I understand what Tanya is talking about here, like having
Speaker 1: the idea that you retrospectively remember that you were thinking
Speaker 1: about something, but you don't have the impression that you
Speaker 1: were conscious of thinking about it when you were thinking
Speaker 1: about it. Well, like, like, here's a question when you're
Speaker 1: in the shower and you're having like shower thoughts, like,
Speaker 1: are you conscious of those thoughts? Is this there's it's
Speaker 1: not directed cognition perhaps, you know, but it's I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say that I am unconscious when I'm having you know,
Speaker 1: various images and ideas rolling through my head, or if
Speaker 1: I'm you know, staring off into space and daydreaming. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's weird. We almost think of consciousness is
Speaker 1: is like the definitive property of directed cognition, right, But like,
Speaker 1: if you are thinking about something, it's almost implied that
Speaker 1: necessarily it's conscious, but maybe not. I don't know. Consciousness
Speaker 1: is so weird again, It's well, let's move on to
Speaker 1: the next listener mail that Karney has for us, because
Speaker 1: this will add even more fuel to the fire. All right,
Speaker 1: this one comes to us from Windy. Windy rides in
Speaker 1: and says, hi, guys, First, the democ Oregan episode was tremendous. Second,
Speaker 1: you can definitely unconsciously envisioned things I always thought I
Speaker 1: thought in words, mostly until I started meditating. I was
Speaker 1: surprised to realize that there was a background of images
Speaker 1: accompanying the monologue. They impacted and augmented what I thought,
Speaker 1: and I had no idea they were there. Meditation is neat,
Speaker 1: So I love it that they brought up meditation because
Speaker 1: that's also one of the things that I thought about,
Speaker 1: the idea that, yes, when I engaging in a meditative state,
Speaker 1: I will sometimes have well, very often, I think, have
Speaker 1: engaged with visual imagery that arises, you know, um unsummoned,
Speaker 1: you know. But when I really get down and start
Speaker 1: thinking about it again, I'm asking myself, well, does that
Speaker 1: mean that that I am unconscious of this image? Like
Speaker 1: I am, I am aware of the imagery taking place.
Speaker 1: It is, it is perceived by me, even if it
Speaker 1: feels like I am less in control of it. But
Speaker 1: does that mean that it's somehow always back there. It
Speaker 1: gets gets really tricky. I feel like we end up
Speaker 1: in a situation where we can't really see the forest
Speaker 1: for the trees, you know, we get into that blind
Speaker 1: brain effect. And to come back to meditation, I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, when you're meditation is all about awareness and
Speaker 1: about consciousness and changing the way that your awareness is focused,
Speaker 1: taking it, you know, away from these things that you
Speaker 1: would normally miss and focusing on something that is there
Speaker 1: here in the present. Yeah, alright, here's another one. This
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Skylar. Hey, guys, Skyler from Kansas.
Speaker 1: Just finished listening to Burned from the Mind's Eye Part
Speaker 1: two and the end. What you talked about a neural
Speaker 1: network being able to draw mental images was really great.
Speaker 1: It reminded me of a YouTube channel called data Bots.
Speaker 1: It's d A d A dotta bots. I guess not
Speaker 1: like data where a neural network is creating live death
Speaker 1: metal and jazz music. Seven. I've actually heard this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like AI generated death metal that's just streamed constantly.
Speaker 1: Is it death metal jazz? Is that? I think these
Speaker 1: are two different things, maybe two different channels. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: the one I heard it sounded kind of like like
Speaker 1: MS sugar, you know, sort of more a tonal, but
Speaker 1: they're definitely funk elements in sugar though, But I don't
Speaker 1: know about I don't know about jazz. Um Okay, well
Speaker 1: this is the sounds interesting anyway, Scotler continues. The longer
Speaker 1: I listened to it, the crazier and more real the
Speaker 1: music sounds. Just thought you would like that, love the show,
Speaker 1: keep it up. This is interesting because it touches on
Speaker 1: I think this this really intriguing idea of the future
Speaker 1: of creative AI, and that is that not that you
Speaker 1: would have a machine that makes all your death metal
Speaker 1: or a machine that makes all your jazz, it writes
Speaker 1: all your books, etcetera. Um, I you know, maybe we'll
Speaker 1: get to that point. But I think the more exciting
Speaker 1: idea is that, of course you have humans using AI
Speaker 1: to augment their existing talents and creative ideas. So someone
Speaker 1: saying I want to make a jazzy death metal album, Um,
Speaker 1: but I want to I want to break free from
Speaker 1: sort of the you know, the boxes that are enclosing
Speaker 1: me here, and then you might turn to creative AI
Speaker 1: as a way to sort of discover where you could
Speaker 1: break free and also then be able to rein it
Speaker 1: in and say, well, I don't really want to go
Speaker 1: in this direction or this action, but here's a direction
Speaker 1: I never even thought off before. You could almost use
Speaker 1: AI kind of like a creative each ing or something,
Speaker 1: you know, like introducing elements of of random input for
Speaker 1: you to sort through and make your own sense of. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course there have been creative methodologies like that
Speaker 1: performer reminded of the cut Up Machine exactly approach to
Speaker 1: fiction totally. All right. So this next message comes in
Speaker 1: response to our episode I Drink Your Blood Type, which
Speaker 1: which had one of our favorite skits in a while,
Speaker 1: I think about the Blood Club. Yeah, and then it
Speaker 1: was about blood types and also about the idea of
Speaker 1: people believing in blood type personality correlations like some of
Speaker 1: the blood type horoscopes and things blood blood type diets
Speaker 1: and so forth. This was a really great piece of
Speaker 1: feedback from our listener Annie. She says, Hey, guys, I
Speaker 1: love the show, and I just listened to the episode
Speaker 1: on blood. Being a geneticist and neuroscientist, I thought I
Speaker 1: would add my two cents worth in relation to your
Speaker 1: comments about blood type being linked to certain personality traits.
Speaker 1: While blood type is simply inherited by a single gene, locusts.
Speaker 1: Personality is complex and is an interaction of many genes
Speaker 1: and environment. Certain learned behaviors can be passed down through
Speaker 1: families and in fact by different populations or ethnic groups
Speaker 1: at the same time as blood groups are inherited, so
Speaker 1: by pure coincidence due to specific personality traits of population groups,
Speaker 1: both blood type and these traits may track together. In
Speaker 1: this case, the two would be correlated with each other,
Speaker 1: but there's no evidence that one will cause the other.
Speaker 1: The other way blood groups could possibly follow inherited personality
Speaker 1: traits is if the genes are inherited together on the chromosome,
Speaker 1: and this is more likely to happen if the genes
Speaker 1: are closer in proximity on the chromosome, thus having less
Speaker 1: chance of being separated during the stages of crossing over.
Speaker 1: During myosis, the blood group gene is on the long
Speaker 1: arm of chromosome nine. Interestingly, a genetic mutation making one
Speaker 1: more susceptible to a certain type of dementia. C nine
Speaker 1: O r F seventy two is also on chromosome nine,
Speaker 1: albeit on the other end of the chromosome, thus requiring
Speaker 1: an even number of crossings over to allow them to
Speaker 1: be inherited together. This form of dementia can cause behavioral
Speaker 1: variations which may cause personality changes decades before the dementia
Speaker 1: sets in. Finally, in regards to the comment about personality
Speaker 1: being related to the gut microbiome, uh, and this was
Speaker 1: when we were talking about the plausibility of the thing.
Speaker 1: We didn't think that that the blood type predictor of
Speaker 1: personality was very plausible, but we did say there's a
Speaker 1: surface level kind of plausibility because you know, things about
Speaker 1: the gut microbiome can predict personality, at least potentially. Uh So, so, Uh,
Speaker 1: it might seem to people why couldn't the blood predicted
Speaker 1: as well? Uh? But any continues about the gut microbiome.
Speaker 1: This is much more feasible since the biota in the
Speaker 1: gut produced neurotransmitters which can affect mood and personality, and
Speaker 1: the stems from in reology, when the gut and spinal
Speaker 1: cord were in fact one organ called the neural crest.
Speaker 1: The neural crest separates early during development, but the resulting
Speaker 1: gut and central nervous system are still closely linked during life,
Speaker 1: as can be seen when we get gut reactions to
Speaker 1: certain brain stimuli. And we are now starting to see
Speaker 1: evidence of how the types of foods we eat affect
Speaker 1: the gut microbiome, which in turn can affect our mood
Speaker 1: and general state of mind. Looking forward to continuing to
Speaker 1: having my mind blown by you all the best, Annie, Well,
Speaker 1: it was great to have a geneticist and neuroscientists chime
Speaker 1: in on that. Oh yeah, I always love when when
Speaker 1: you'll let their share your expertise with us. All right,
Speaker 1: On that note, I think we should probably take our
Speaker 1: first break, but when we come back, we will turn
Speaker 1: flesh into salt. Thank thank Alright, we're back all right now.
Speaker 1: This next message concerned some episodes that came before Halloween,
Speaker 1: but since it also touches on some Halloween e stuff,
Speaker 1: I think we're throwing it in with Halloween. Lat Yeah,
Speaker 1: but plus the non Halloween episodes that they touched on
Speaker 1: are also at least a little bit HALLOWEENI I mean,
Speaker 1: you know how it goes. But this listener has written
Speaker 1: in before and always sends great messages. This is from Jesser.
Speaker 1: Jesse writes, Hey, guys, I wanted to write in to
Speaker 1: share some thoughts on some recent episodes, along with a
Speaker 1: little bit of monster history since it's getting close to October.
Speaker 1: In the Flesh into Salt episodes, you talked about how
Speaker 1: Lot's wife might have been inspired by natural formations, But
Speaker 1: what could have been the inspiration for the story of
Speaker 1: Sodom and go Mora as a whole. While I'm not
Speaker 1: a scholar of the Hebrew Bible, I have a theory
Speaker 1: it's a bit of Bronze Age sci fi, going off
Speaker 1: of Isaac Asimov's definition of sci fi as stories which
Speaker 1: deal with human response to new technology. Maybe Sodom and
Speaker 1: Gomorrah is a pastoral culture's idea of city has gone
Speaker 1: too far, where urbanization has destroyed the custom of hospitality.
Speaker 1: If you start looking at Hebrew Bible stories through this lens,
Speaker 1: the Tower of Babble Become is a cautionary tale about
Speaker 1: monumental buildings, Shadrack Mishak and a Ben to Go a
Speaker 1: story about smelting furnaces taken too far, and Joseph interpreting
Speaker 1: the Pharaoh's dreams at parable about the importance of storing
Speaker 1: surplus grain. These stories would have entered the oral tradition
Speaker 1: when these ideas were still new then preserved when written
Speaker 1: down as religious text. This is all speculation, but ancient
Speaker 1: people's could have expressed their anxieties about new technologies through
Speaker 1: stories the same way we do today. I love this idea.
Speaker 1: I mean again, this is it's speculative. You can't like
Speaker 1: know this is the case, really, but you could look
Speaker 1: for clues in this and the stories. Maybe. I I
Speaker 1: like the idea that a lot of Bible stories and
Speaker 1: traditional myths might in fact be like three thousand year
Speaker 1: old episodes of Black Mirror. Yeah. I mean, what do
Speaker 1: we know about about the way we think about the
Speaker 1: passage of time. We know that, yes, we are always
Speaker 1: anxious about new technologies as they have presented. Uh, the
Speaker 1: older generation is always suspicious of the younger generation and
Speaker 1: or fearful of them. We know that technology has profound
Speaker 1: effects on culture, that changes culture constantly. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: mean this, You know, on on the surface, this sounds
Speaker 1: very plausible. And now I don't know to what extend.
Speaker 1: Anyone has ever explored the concept of certainly of of
Speaker 1: mythology and folklore as as sort of primitive science fiction
Speaker 1: or prescience fiction sci fi. But I would be interested
Speaker 1: to learn more about about how this might work. This
Speaker 1: sounds like this could be a fascinating book, and if
Speaker 1: it hasn't already been written, alright, so um Jesser continues quote,
Speaker 1: I also have a thought about a part of what
Speaker 1: makes the vantage Mind manuscripts so alluring. It's the fact
Speaker 1: that it's so mundane. You expect a hoax or an
Speaker 1: invention to be more flamboyant, to call more attention to itself.
Speaker 1: But as strange as the manuscript is, it doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: In fact, it seems to get less interesting towards the end,
Speaker 1: where you'd expect some sort of punchline or absurd conclusion.
Speaker 1: This is This is a great point. I think this
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons that um House of Leaves
Speaker 1: is so so convincing at times, because I had that
Speaker 1: experience where I felt that it towards the end it
Speaker 1: gets more just reference referential, you know, and and perhaps
Speaker 1: less engaging, but in a way that makes it more
Speaker 1: it feels more authentic in that regard. Yeah, totally, they continue.
Speaker 1: The Codex Serafinitus makes a good comparison because it's much
Speaker 1: more obviously playful and fantastic you don't have to decipher
Speaker 1: its text to understand the point. But because the Vontage
Speaker 1: Manuscript appears to be so straightforward and serious about its subject,
Speaker 1: people assume there must be some meaning behind it. The
Speaker 1: idea that it might mean nothing is existentially unsatisfying. I
Speaker 1: can totally see this. Yeah. The and the Codex Serafinitus
Speaker 1: is a good point in comparison. We brought it up
Speaker 1: in the Bondage Manuscript episode because it is something that
Speaker 1: we know was intentionally created as like an art project.
Speaker 1: It doesn't actually have a meaning, is just there to
Speaker 1: be interesting and be you know, fun. Yeah. And in
Speaker 1: case in point, there are multiple pages of in it
Speaker 1: that you would potentially like frame on the wall, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks like a work of art, whereas
Speaker 1: the Vonish manuscript and not every page is really like
Speaker 1: that interesting without knowing what it is or in fact
Speaker 1: what it is not. Yeah, And a lot of the
Speaker 1: more interesting pages come like, I don't know, two fifths
Speaker 1: of the way through, Like it's in the like balneological sections,
Speaker 1: the stuff with the weird baths and the like tentacle
Speaker 1: pipes and stuff that that's where things get really weird.
Speaker 1: And then after that it descends more into like I think,
Speaker 1: after that it's like astrology, and then you get the
Speaker 1: recipes towards the end, which is by far the least
Speaker 1: interesting part. Yeah, whenever you're reading a story, especially if
Speaker 1: you're watching a movie that that has a like a
Speaker 1: dark book that shows up a strange book, generally it
Speaker 1: looks like they can just turn to any page and
Speaker 1: it's instantly monstrous or weird or you know, Eldric and
Speaker 1: so forth. Though, but uh, you know, I like the
Speaker 1: idea that a true mystery book would only its mysteries,
Speaker 1: would only present themselves if you you knew what you're
Speaker 1: looking for, you know. So yeah, I would take this
Speaker 1: as at least a little bit of evidence more to
Speaker 1: the side that it does have a real meaning, because
Speaker 1: it gets less interesting as it goes on. You'd expect
Speaker 1: if it were a hoax, that would be structured to
Speaker 1: have more of a climax of weirdness. Absolutely so, Jesser continues, Uh,
Speaker 1: they make a future episode suggestion regarding uh created languages
Speaker 1: and so forth, which I think could be interesting. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then there's this quote. Lastly, I wanted to toss
Speaker 1: in some Halloween history about which is we all know
Speaker 1: the stereotype of which is as older women wearing pointy
Speaker 1: hats during bubbling cauldrons, flying on brooms, and hanging out
Speaker 1: with cats. Where did this come from? It all goes
Speaker 1: back to beer beer all right, let's hear hear all
Speaker 1: about it. In fourteenth and fifteenth century Europe, brewing beer
Speaker 1: was considered a woman's job, part of keeping the house.
Speaker 1: Being a beer beer brewer was one of the few
Speaker 1: professions acceptable for older married women to have, and when
Speaker 1: the witch craze began, these women were the most targeted demographic,
Speaker 1: both for social reasons seen as being jealous of women
Speaker 1: who were married and had children, and and economic reasons
Speaker 1: lacking the resources of a father's or husband's family to
Speaker 1: protect them. The traditional brewers hat was tall and pointed
Speaker 1: with a wide brim, like an anvil for a blacksmith.
Speaker 1: The traditional symbol of a brewer was the broom. Brewers
Speaker 1: kept cats as mousers to protect their stores of grain,
Speaker 1: and brewing beer does involve some stirring of bubbling cauldrons.
Speaker 1: Illustrations of typical witches had all of these traits, and
Speaker 1: people at the time would understand as signifying beer brewers.
Speaker 1: Over time, the cultural context was lost, but the signifiers remained,
Speaker 1: leaving us with the modern image of the witch. Thanks
Speaker 1: for all the work you do in making my favorite
Speaker 1: poly math podcast I have. I've done some reading about
Speaker 1: which is before I haven't even run across this beer
Speaker 1: brewer argument. Yeah, I don't know what I think. Like,
Speaker 1: I like the case you make here. I feel like
Speaker 1: I'd have to do the research and check all this
Speaker 1: for myself. But I'm definitely intrigued, Yes, sir, I mean it.
Speaker 1: It does sound concise in a way that tends to
Speaker 1: make me suspicious of of anything that's explaining a cultural
Speaker 1: motif for a mythical monster. But I mean, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: open to the idea that perhaps this is at least
Speaker 1: part of the story. I mean, I definitely have read
Speaker 1: about beer brewing in the medieval or Renaissance period being
Speaker 1: primarily the work of women. Um, I think that is
Speaker 1: true about these specific things like the symbol of the
Speaker 1: broom and the hat and all that. I'd have to
Speaker 1: check that out, but yeah, I'm intrigued. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: the broom was already going to be a domestic symbol
Speaker 1: um anyway, and the hat, I don't know. You know,
Speaker 1: the hat is maybe an area of the witch motif
Speaker 1: that I haven't looked at a lot. Uh. It seems
Speaker 1: like things that i've I've read have dealt more with
Speaker 1: the broom. But thanks as always, jes He. This next
Speaker 1: one comes from Billy. This is just general Halloween male
Speaker 1: and concerns cryptids. Billy writes, Hi, this never really took off,
Speaker 1: but earlier in the year, I made a Twitter bot
Speaker 1: that generates random descriptions of cryptids every few hours. You're
Speaker 1: speaking our language, Billy. It draws on banks of existing animals,
Speaker 1: bits of anatomy, adjectives, and a few other variables to
Speaker 1: produce unique and entertaining descriptions. You can find it at
Speaker 1: twitter dot com slash Cryptid Factory. Here's one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: Lord Alfress of Sweden has a tortoise and a glipto.
Speaker 1: Don's delightful inverted front portion, no rear, and the body
Speaker 1: of a marlin the size of an eraser. I'd love
Speaker 1: to know if this brings you any joy. Thanks Billy. Uh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I like this idea. I think this is what
Speaker 1: Twitter is good for, is making bots like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm always for any you know, listing of
Speaker 1: mythical creatures and descriptions of their you know, their physical characteristics.
Speaker 1: So I'm all in this, springs me joy. I just
Speaker 1: looked up some of the most recent tweets, says of
Speaker 1: the moment we're recording this. Here's one picture the widened
Speaker 1: head of a camel spider, but also an ammonite's bosom,
Speaker 1: commonly seen dragging herself past the undersides of leaves. Not bad.
Speaker 1: One more, she has a shrimps select flavor, the head
Speaker 1: of an evil mouse, a polar bear's waist, and the
Speaker 1: back sections of just a couple of lynx is once
Speaker 1: seen slithering toward carpets. The fluff of a gerbil will
Speaker 1: sporadically also feature. You know that this reminds me of
Speaker 1: are these these children's books? There was one that I
Speaker 1: had when I was a kid, and there's a a
Speaker 1: newer book that has the same concept that I also love,
Speaker 1: as I think far superior art. But each page is
Speaker 1: a different creature, and each page has also been cut
Speaker 1: into three sections so that you can flip and match
Speaker 1: and mismatch the different parts of a creature's body. And
Speaker 1: then at least some versions of this design also include
Speaker 1: text that does the same thing, so you can you
Speaker 1: can just go straight through the book and get this monster,
Speaker 1: than this monster, than this monster, or you can mix
Speaker 1: and match and create, you know, a wider variety of
Speaker 1: strange hybrids. I love this. I've had this book as
Speaker 1: a kid, and I wish I could remember the name
Speaker 1: of the at least the newer because there's a really
Speaker 1: beautiful new book that has the same concept the one
Speaker 1: I had as a kid, which I also I haven't
Speaker 1: I literally have not seen since my childhood, had more
Speaker 1: cartoonish art. But still I remember being really captivated by
Speaker 1: it because there were all these different possibilities within it,
Speaker 1: And really that gets to the heart of so much
Speaker 1: monster creation. It is the hybridity of the of the thing.
Speaker 1: It is the bringing together these different forms. All right,
Speaker 1: here's another bit of a listener mail, and this one
Speaker 1: comes to us from Adam, related to our anthology of
Speaker 1: horror episodes, especially the most recent installments. So last year
Speaker 1: we did volume one. This year we did volume two
Speaker 1: and three. So Adam says, Dear Robert and Joe, I
Speaker 1: find myself writing to you a lot lately. I think
Speaker 1: it means that you've been hit ting on some especially
Speaker 1: engaging topics for me. I wanted to write this email
Speaker 1: in response to the recent anthology of horror episode in
Speaker 1: which you discussed shadow play. This was an episode of
Speaker 1: The Twilight Zone, right. This was the one about the
Speaker 1: guy who claimed he was dreaming everyone around him and
Speaker 1: if they sent him to the electric chair as he
Speaker 1: had been sentenced to, they would all disappear because he
Speaker 1: had stopped dreaming. So Adam continues. Uh discussed shadow play,
Speaker 1: metaphysical solop sism, and the idea that separate consciousnesses may
Speaker 1: exist in the form of other characters within our dreams.
Speaker 1: I have something resembling firsthand experience in this matter, and
Speaker 1: it was terrifying. Some of the details are hazy, as
Speaker 1: it happened in a dream about three years ago. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: I wrote an account soon after that that I was
Speaker 1: able to refer to. I have not engaged in lucid
Speaker 1: dreaming in some time, but I used to practice it,
Speaker 1: and I've experienced it to varying degrees of success. One night,
Speaker 1: I became lucid in a dream where I was in
Speaker 1: a crowded room with a close friend who I will
Speaker 1: call Ben. I was very excited and decided to tell Ben,
Speaker 1: this is all a dream and you're a character in
Speaker 1: my dream. At first, Ben was dismissive, saying that there
Speaker 1: was no way he was a dream, and so forth,
Speaker 1: very similar to many of the characters in shadow play.
Speaker 1: This is the point where I wish that I had
Speaker 1: decided to use my lucidity for something else, but unfortunately
Speaker 1: I decided to try to convince Ben that it was
Speaker 1: a dream. He did not take kindly to it. In
Speaker 1: an instant, all the other people in the room with
Speaker 1: us turned in unison to face me and stared with
Speaker 1: expressionless faces. I somehow knew they had all become some
Speaker 1: kind of hive mind with Ben as their leader. Ben's
Speaker 1: demeanor then shifted from neutral and carefree to sinister and hostile.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just his physical demeanor, but I felt as
Speaker 1: if his negative energy was filling the room. Although I
Speaker 1: was lucid, I got the impression that it was he
Speaker 1: who was in control of the dream. He then began
Speaker 1: to attack me verbally. He talked about a painful rejection
Speaker 1: that I had recently experienced, played on some insecurities that
Speaker 1: I had been experiencing, and told me secrets that I
Speaker 1: have never told anyone. Then he stopped, gave me a
Speaker 1: menacing grin, and said, that's right, I know everything about you.
Speaker 1: At that moment, the crowd moved in unison towards me
Speaker 1: with angry faces, and I awoke with a fright. I
Speaker 1: took a while to get back to sleep, and thankfully,
Speaker 1: when I did it, Ben was not waiting for me.
Speaker 1: A few days later, I posted this story to the
Speaker 1: subreddit Lucid Dreaming, and someone in the comments suggested that
Speaker 1: that this may have been the non dominant hemisphere of
Speaker 1: my brain trying to communicate with the dominant hemisphere. I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is the case, but I fully
Speaker 1: believe that during the interaction there were two separate consciousnesses
Speaker 1: existing in my dreaming mind, and one of them, Ben
Speaker 1: was hostile toward the other me. Regardless of the explanation,
Speaker 1: I would not recommend trying to confront sollop si um
Speaker 1: by telling people they don't exist, even if it's true.
Speaker 1: Uh uh. It would have been far better to keep
Speaker 1: that knowledge to myself far away out of a lucid adventure.
Speaker 1: Best regards Adam Well, I don't know, uh, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can back up that explanation of it
Speaker 1: being the non dominant hemisphere. But that is one of
Speaker 1: the most horrifying dreams I've ever heard of, because it's
Speaker 1: sort of it has implications that go beyond the dream, right,
Speaker 1: It's like one of the few cases where you could
Speaker 1: imagine a dream actually representing some threat that persists after
Speaker 1: the dream is over. Yeah. And then interesting too that
Speaker 1: like that basically lucidity has been introduced to a certain
Speaker 1: extent within the dream, but then there's still you know
Speaker 1: that the dream characters still have weight, and still have
Speaker 1: have power, and seem to have even uh, you know,
Speaker 1: some state of a mind of their own, which is
Speaker 1: uh yeah, which is interesting and potentially terrifying. Here's the
Speaker 1: question I wonder, Adam, why you thought that Ben was
Speaker 1: conscious and not just like a hostile agent that you
Speaker 1: were imagining in your dream as you would often imagine
Speaker 1: the hostile agent. I mean, we imagine hostile agents in
Speaker 1: our dreams all the times, things chasing us and and
Speaker 1: all this. I introduced the possibility in that episode that
Speaker 1: these other agents we imagine could in some sense be conscious,
Speaker 1: because our minds are possible of anxiousness. You know, we're
Speaker 1: imagining them. So maybe the brain is using some sort
Speaker 1: of its consciousness potential in these separate simulated agents that
Speaker 1: it creates, but there's no way there's like, while I
Speaker 1: can't rule out that possibility, I don't know of strong
Speaker 1: evidence that that's the case. But then it comes back
Speaker 1: to what we were discussing too. You could say, well,
Speaker 1: this is this doesn't mean be was conscious. This just
Speaker 1: means that you, you're sleeping self was engaging in some
Speaker 1: level of theory of mind. But as we discussed what
Speaker 1: a theory of mind is creating some you know, semi
Speaker 1: like low resolution conscious model of what we think another
Speaker 1: person is thinking. Yeah, again, it's like, it's hard to
Speaker 1: rule that out as far as we know. But but
Speaker 1: I don't know of any strong evidence that indicates it.
Speaker 1: But you seem to think that's the case. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: just because if a if another agent that we imagine
Speaker 1: in a dream or something is frightening and lucid and
Speaker 1: real enough, and especially in this case, because it knows it,
Speaker 1: it proclaims to know everything about you. Uh, maybe that
Speaker 1: just naturally leads us to think it's conscious, kind of
Speaker 1: the same way that we start to think robots are conscious.
Speaker 1: If they're sufficiently humanoid. Does that make sense? Yes? But Adam,
Speaker 1: if you if you have other reasons for thinking that
Speaker 1: this been in your mind was actually a separate, truly
Speaker 1: conscious entity, I would be interested in hearing what your
Speaker 1: reasons are for thinking that. All right, here's another quick one.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from d D says love
Speaker 1: the episode one bit of Barry Nelson trivia. Barry Barry Nelson,
Speaker 1: to remind everybody, was the the actor who played the
Speaker 1: character Ulman in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. When did Barry
Speaker 1: Nelson come up in the anthology episode? He was in
Speaker 1: the episode of Monsters Far Below, So he played the
Speaker 1: lead in that that episode. This is the and this
Speaker 1: is the one where he's you know, fighting the Googles
Speaker 1: and so forth. But he was a longstanding TV and
Speaker 1: film actor who is probably most famous for being in
Speaker 1: The Shining in that scene where he's a Jack Nicholson's
Speaker 1: characters there for a job interviet And in the moment
Speaker 1: I accidentally confused him with Barry Sullivan, who was in
Speaker 1: Planet of the Vampire. Yes, yeah, So anyway, h D
Speaker 1: shares this one bit of Barry Nelson trivia. He was
Speaker 1: the first actor to play James Bond and an adaptation
Speaker 1: of Casino Royal, which was an episode of that of
Speaker 1: a nineteen fifties TV show called Climax, which was also
Speaker 1: an anthology. I've never seen that, so this apparently even
Speaker 1: pre dates the Was it Peter Sellers who played James
Speaker 1: Bond and like a farcical adaptation of Casino Royal before
Speaker 1: they made dr No, Yeah he did. I went ahead
Speaker 1: and look this up just to make sure, and sure enough,
Speaker 1: Barry Nelson played James Bond and guess who played the villain?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Peter Lorii, Peter Nice. Yes, So I
Speaker 1: kind of want to come back and check this out.
Speaker 1: This would be in nicing to say I've never seen this,
Speaker 1: but I'm obviously I'm a fan of the two leads there.
Speaker 1: I love that I can get a Peter Laurie and
Speaker 1: Christopher Lambert out of the same impression. It's basically the
Speaker 1: same voice that only just the face is more handsome
Speaker 1: in the French model. When I also wanted to share
Speaker 1: something that didn't come in as an email but was
Speaker 1: shared on the Stuff to Blow your Mind Facebook discussion
Speaker 1: module by a listener who I don't since this discussion module,
Speaker 1: I don't know if she'd want to be named or not,
Speaker 1: so I'll just leave her name off for now, um,
Speaker 1: since we didn't discuss that ahead of time, But but
Speaker 1: I wanted to share because she had some interesting feedback.
Speaker 1: She said, just listen to the Anthology of Horror, Part two,
Speaker 1: episode and I have some comments on the discussion you
Speaker 1: had at the end about multiple consciousness is in one
Speaker 1: mind as someone with dissociative identity disorder, This is exactly
Speaker 1: what is going on for me, or at least the
Speaker 1: only way I can describe it. It isn't a far
Speaker 1: out speculation. It's my lived experience and I don't have
Speaker 1: any communication with the other parts, but other people do.
Speaker 1: And my parts leave clues like notes or cuts or
Speaker 1: leftovers of food I never would have wanted to eat.
Speaker 1: Each of these parts is in a way, a separate consciousness,
Speaker 1: with its own reaction to events, own memories, and even
Speaker 1: own favorite pizza topping. And your mini Carl Sagan simulation
Speaker 1: would be what is known as an introject an alter
Speaker 1: a part that exists in you and has its own experiences,
Speaker 1: but is based on something in the outside world that
Speaker 1: seemed to possess enough of the traits needed for survival
Speaker 1: that the mind created it. Wow. I obviously may not
Speaker 1: have everything right here, and I'm not speaking for anyone
Speaker 1: except me, and I'm in no way speaking of the
Speaker 1: experiences of other people with d I D or similar.
Speaker 1: It just seemed odd you didn't bring this up in
Speaker 1: your discussion. This was a really great point, and UH,
Speaker 1: I actually had a back and forth with UH with
Speaker 1: this listener on the subject. The main difference, UH, the
Speaker 1: dissociative identity disorder didn't come up when I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this is we were considering if it's possible for
Speaker 1: the mind to simultaneously have more than one consciousness existing,
Speaker 1: like in your dream. Could it be possible that both
Speaker 1: you with your regular mind, your you know, your primary
Speaker 1: mind are conscio us in the dream, And then also
Speaker 1: the brain is generating some separate conscious entity, maybe a
Speaker 1: kind of like less conscious or lower resolution conscious entity,
Speaker 1: at the same time, and then so there could be
Speaker 1: like two minds generated by the same brain simultaneously. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, for starters, I think that if we were
Speaker 1: we would want to give a like a full proper
Speaker 1: deep dive into into this UH topic. If we were
Speaker 1: to to to discuss h discussed in the future. But
Speaker 1: this also reminds me once again. Blindside, the novel by
Speaker 1: Peter Watts, has a character in it that has multiple
Speaker 1: personalities as I recall where they've through some level of
Speaker 1: I can't remember that had been partially engineered or not.
Speaker 1: But are you remembering this? Yeah, I seem to recall
Speaker 1: that it was a person who had been uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in this sci fi scenario, had been had had this
Speaker 1: done intentionally for some kind of reason, like like maybe
Speaker 1: having different kinds of expertise in the rain. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: sounds right. Yeah, uh And and I just wanted to
Speaker 1: say also in the responses that the same listener says,
Speaker 1: uh that I know there's such thing as d I
Speaker 1: D with altars being co conscious, but but they haven't
Speaker 1: personally experienced it. And so I think this is worth
Speaker 1: revisiting in a future show. Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 1: By the way, Tiny Carl Sagan. In my brain, I've
Speaker 1: tried to imagine what it's favorite pizza would be, and
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely Hawaiian pizza. It's definitely ham and pineapple.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I have nothing to back that up.
Speaker 1: With but for some reason that seems right. And as
Speaker 1: for the tiny Terence McKenna, can you guess what his
Speaker 1: favorite topping is. Oh, it's gotta be a root pesto.
Speaker 1: I know, I know what you're gonna be mushrooms. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's obviously mushrooms. But I don't know. That's a That's
Speaker 1: an interesting that like that in of itself is an
Speaker 1: interesting question though, because, especially with the Carl Sagan one,
Speaker 1: it's like, to a certain extent, I do have this
Speaker 1: kind of like tiny, you know, conception of who the
Speaker 1: character is and what they like, even if I've never
Speaker 1: stopped for a second to wonder what kind of pizza
Speaker 1: the real life Carl Sagan preferred, or if he ever
Speaker 1: spoke about it. What do you want to read this
Speaker 1: message from Jim in New Jersey? Yes, absolutely all right.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Jim and they write,
Speaker 1: I have another TV show about dreams and reality. It
Speaker 1: was the two thousand twelve limited series NBC show Awake.
Speaker 1: Jason Isaacs. Jason Isaacs Always Traffic portrays the police detective
Speaker 1: Michael Britton. The show begins with Brittain and his teenage
Speaker 1: son grieving the death of their wife mother in a
Speaker 1: car accident that involved the entire family. The next morning,
Speaker 1: Britain awakens and finds his wife repainting the house to
Speaker 1: occupy her to help with her grief and the death
Speaker 1: of their son in the same accident. Brittain is living
Speaker 1: two contradictory realities. Each morning, when he awakes, his day
Speaker 1: flips to the other reality. One is where his son
Speaker 1: survived the accident, and one is where his wife does.
Speaker 1: He has a police department psychologist assigned in each reality.
Speaker 1: He tells each of his duality, and both assure him
Speaker 1: that his other reality is the dream, but they can't
Speaker 1: really prove it. Each assumes his vivid dream is some
Speaker 1: form of denial. Beatie Wong does a fantastic job as
Speaker 1: one of the psychologists, But then again, Wong does a
Speaker 1: fantastic job in every performance. To me, he'll always be
Speaker 1: Henry Wu Yeah, alright, anyway, Jim continues. It was an
Speaker 1: entertaining series, but not super sophisticated. Each reality had a
Speaker 1: different color palette, making it easier to keep track of
Speaker 1: where Britain was. The show does reveal which reality is
Speaker 1: which by the end, sort of as for the Twilight series,
Speaker 1: episode wouldn't the people in a dream disappear when the
Speaker 1: dreamer wakes up, whether electrocuted or just awakening. Normally, I
Speaker 1: think that, of course would be the case, But I
Speaker 1: don't know that. It's like Twilight Zone logic, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got to emphasize the most dramatic elements. As for
Speaker 1: our Descartes argument that we can't try star senses and
Speaker 1: the only thing we can depend upon is their own reasoning.
Speaker 1: I'm even starting to doubt that you've discussed consciousness before.
Speaker 1: Where does it exist? The brain is made up of neurons,
Speaker 1: which don't do much individually. When the number of firing
Speaker 1: input synapses crosses the threshold, the neuron triggers its outmost synaps,
Speaker 1: triggering other synapses. The brain is not much more than
Speaker 1: a massively complex adding machine. Maybe the Carts would have
Speaker 1: been more correct and stating I think therefore I some
Speaker 1: or in Latin uh coquito orgo am. Even though I
Speaker 1: can definitely perceive my consciousness, I sometimes wonder if it's
Speaker 1: just a behavior that emerges from all of these neurons
Speaker 1: firing uh ps. I wish I could take credit for
Speaker 1: the some am flip in the Decards quote it's from
Speaker 1: godal escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Okay, going back to
Speaker 1: the to the dream thing, how he's saying, you know,
Speaker 1: whether whenever he wakes up, the people will disappear, whether
Speaker 1: he's electrocuted or not. Uh, maybe it's just grant that
Speaker 1: the main guy in the episode being selfish and saying
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to be electrocuted, and that's the reason
Speaker 1: he's telling people. He wouldn't bother telling them. Also, if
Speaker 1: you just let me hang out here for a while,
Speaker 1: eventually I'll wake up and you'll all disappear. As for
Speaker 1: consciousness being an emergent phenomenon of enough neurons firing, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I think that's one of the standard models
Speaker 1: that people propose. So yeah, I think that's that's entirely plausible.
Speaker 1: I'm very interested by this NBC show That Awake. I
Speaker 1: may have to go revisiting it. I haven't seen it
Speaker 1: came one. Maybe it came out a little before it's time.
Speaker 1: It's sounding like, yeah, alright, on that note, we're going
Speaker 1: to take one more break and then we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Alright, We're back, all right. This
Speaker 1: next email being burned onto a tortilla for us. Here
Speaker 1: comes from our listener Rowan, and just a warning if
Speaker 1: if you've got kids listening or something. This one mentions
Speaker 1: the use of psychedelics. Dear Robert and Joe. I've been
Speaker 1: meaning to sit down and write to you for a
Speaker 1: while now, but after your recent episode on driving and
Speaker 1: your Brain, I felt like I had to get on it.
Speaker 1: This was one of the ones we did in October.
Speaker 1: We sort of talked about Christine, we talked about the
Speaker 1: psychological effects of driving. Rowan rights, I drive for nine
Speaker 1: to ten hours a day, and your show was the
Speaker 1: first one I found when I was introduced to podcasts
Speaker 1: about three years ago, and you've been on my drive
Speaker 1: playlist ever since. Oh well, very happy to be there.
Speaker 1: First off, I want to thank you for the work
Speaker 1: you do. You guys are incredibly educational and inspiring. Your
Speaker 1: episode on urban evolution, probably two years ago at this point,
Speaker 1: is the reason I decided to pick my degree back
Speaker 1: up and graduate, and is the reason I plan on
Speaker 1: declaring a major in forestry and a minor in urban planning.
Speaker 1: Great to hear. I love hearing stuff like that. Warms
Speaker 1: my heart. Rowan continues in your Driving episode, you talk
Speaker 1: about tool use and how it can alter our perception
Speaker 1: of distance and size. Anecdotally, I've definitely noticed this in
Speaker 1: an odd way. I drive a large cargo van at
Speaker 1: work and have a rather small personal car that I
Speaker 1: rarely drive, as I walk most everywhere. On the times
Speaker 1: that I do drive, my brain assumes that I'm in
Speaker 1: my van, as in I see my car as being
Speaker 1: much larger. The roadways feel smaller than, say, after a
Speaker 1: vacation where I am away from the van for long periods.
Speaker 1: Imagine if you will watching someone parallel park a Corolla
Speaker 1: as if it were a box truck. That that also
Speaker 1: sounds like a great rod Sterling rod Sterling introduction to
Speaker 1: Twilight zentner Ni Gallery. Imagine if you will watching someone
Speaker 1: parallel park a Corolla as if it were a box truck.
Speaker 1: It couldn't happen, but it could the Twilight Zone. Okay,
Speaker 1: on with the Mail. Another of your episodes that I
Speaker 1: feel I should write in about is your show on
Speaker 1: the split Brain. I have damage to the left hemisphere
Speaker 1: of my brain from what my doctor described as a
Speaker 1: stroke in the third trimester of pregnancy, which interrupted the
Speaker 1: development of the right side of my body and caused
Speaker 1: he like patches of no activity on my m R eyes.
Speaker 1: For a long time, I really only considered how this
Speaker 1: damage had affected me in a physical way. Listening to
Speaker 1: your episodes along with one other shout out to you
Speaker 1: are not so smart if for some reason you need
Speaker 1: a new podcast, really got me thinking about how it
Speaker 1: would have affected my cognitive function. There is a feeling
Speaker 1: I have at times when I am struggling to find
Speaker 1: a word, listen to an explanation someone is giving, or
Speaker 1: think through a problem to try to explain it. It
Speaker 1: feels like the thought is hitting a blockage, similar to
Speaker 1: the feeling of having something on the tip of your tongue,
Speaker 1: but slightly different. It's not that I'm trying to remember something,
Speaker 1: more that I've already remembered it, but I can't say it.
Speaker 1: I suffer from fairly persistent depression and anxiety. However, I
Speaker 1: often feel the physical effects of them and am unable
Speaker 1: to identify the source or even the emotion itself. At times,
Speaker 1: it feels as if my brain gets stuck when trying
Speaker 1: to figure out the reaction my body is having, an
Speaker 1: doesn't quite get to communicating it with my conscious self.
Speaker 1: If that makes sense. Okay, interesting. I mean I think
Speaker 1: some of that just matches up with just normal cognition,
Speaker 1: or at least what my brain assumes his normal cognition.
Speaker 1: But other aspects of that might be you know, singular
Speaker 1: to this condition. Yeah, we did an episode on the
Speaker 1: tip of the tongue phenomenon not too long ago, and
Speaker 1: if you've been listening for three years you probably heard
Speaker 1: that one. Then really knows And I guess this next
Speaker 1: comment comes in response to the fact that we did
Speaker 1: that psychedelic series. The last thing I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: in this long winded email is that, well, I did
Speaker 1: LSD a while back, and it was a hoot. Some
Speaker 1: friends and I spent the day in the yard with
Speaker 1: our dog and had a wonderful time. The one major
Speaker 1: thing I remember was feeling a connectedness to people I
Speaker 1: was with. If you can imagine the feeling of the
Speaker 1: way trees in a forest are connected through microrizal networks
Speaker 1: as or my corpisal. I'm not sure how you pronounced that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we've touched we I can't remember if we've
Speaker 1: touched on. Sorry, just keep meaning to touch on this more.
Speaker 1: I think it came up a little bit in the mushrooms. Uh,
Speaker 1: in the Psychedelics episodes, the uh, you know, the the
Speaker 1: fungal networks to connect these trees and the and some
Speaker 1: of the some really interesting work going into too, looking
Speaker 1: at this sort of communication that occurs, and we can
Speaker 1: come back and go deep on that sometime. But finally,
Speaker 1: Rowan rights, As I'm writing this, I'm also starting to
Speaker 1: get curious as to how hemispheric brain damage would alter
Speaker 1: a psychedelic experience. Huh, yeah, I don't know anything about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think that I've seen that question
Speaker 1: asked before. I would be surprised if there's not some
Speaker 1: kind of ongoing research about that. Yeah, because as we
Speaker 1: discussed like split brains were you know, or anytime you
Speaker 1: have a brain that has, you know, suffered damage of
Speaker 1: some sort asymmetrically affected. Yeah, like that's going to be
Speaker 1: very useful to looking at some sort of a neurological questions.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it stands to reason somebody has at least
Speaker 1: considered that. But uh, yeah, well it was great to
Speaker 1: hear from rolling on all of this. Now, this first
Speaker 1: time I've heard someone say Alice d was a hoot.
Speaker 1: Um I feel like most people would would maybe describe
Speaker 1: it a little differently, but but fair enough. It's all
Speaker 1: very subjective, all right. So let's move on to feedback
Speaker 1: on another episode, our episode on the Garrison Swine. Uh
Speaker 1: this was this is a really fun episode because it
Speaker 1: had it had demons in it, it had pigs in it.
Speaker 1: We got to donibal tool, use animal tool, use pig cognition,
Speaker 1: Bible stories, the whole nine yards. Uh. So, first, here's
Speaker 1: a short bit of listener mail. This one comes to
Speaker 1: us from Chris, Robert and Joe. I listened to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blew Your Mind pretty much every week, probably my
Speaker 1: favorite podcast. While listening to this episode, I was thinking
Speaker 1: a couple of things. Firstly, I don't remember you ever
Speaker 1: mentioning sea otters as animals that use tools. They're the
Speaker 1: only marine animals to use stone tools. Add in that
Speaker 1: their treacherous necrophiliac I don't know anything about that. Well,
Speaker 1: did you and Christian talk about that in your necrophilia episode?
Speaker 1: Might well have? Yeah. If if you want to hear
Speaker 1: more about necrophilia, check out that episode that Christian and
Speaker 1: I did a few years back. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: good one. It ultimately demystifies necrophilia deals. I think we
Speaker 1: get into human necrophilia a little bit, but we spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking about animal necrophilia, which, of
Speaker 1: course it is like the primary place you go to
Speaker 1: understand what this thing is before you get into human complications.
Speaker 1: But then Chris continues to talk about the pigs we
Speaker 1: discussed in that episode. Yeah, they write then during your
Speaker 1: discussion on vision wardy pigs using tools and then not
Speaker 1: being very effective. Perhaps the use of tools is a
Speaker 1: signal that they're building a nest versus rooting around for food.
Speaker 1: Thanks for all the great shows, Chris. I think this
Speaker 1: is an interesting possibility. So one of the questions we
Speaker 1: had was this research into the pigs found that the
Speaker 1: pigs using the like bark and sticks to dig in
Speaker 1: the ground to make nests did seem to fit the
Speaker 1: formal criteria for tool use, but it didn't seem like
Speaker 1: they were much more efficient or at least in all
Speaker 1: cases more efficient at nest building when using the tools
Speaker 1: than they were when they were just digging with their
Speaker 1: hoofs or snouts. So the question is, why are they
Speaker 1: using the tools then if it doesn't necessarily give them
Speaker 1: an advantage, like help them build a nest faster. One
Speaker 1: thing that I offered is, well, what if the parts
Speaker 1: of their bodies they normally dig with just get sore
Speaker 1: from doing it or something That's that's possibility. One of
Speaker 1: the things the authors brought up is that it could
Speaker 1: just be a a social convention, almost sort of like
Speaker 1: pig culture. Uh. And then that would, I think line
Speaker 1: up kind of with what Chris is talking about here. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think the idea here is that, if
Speaker 1: I'm understanding Chris correctly, the ideas that picking up a
Speaker 1: tool to start digging shows the other pigs that it's
Speaker 1: time to build a nest instead of just the other
Speaker 1: pigs rooting around like you normally would when you're looking
Speaker 1: for food, right, I mean, you could almost be interpreted.
Speaker 1: I guess it's kind of like a like a fitness display.
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of these documentaries in which you see birds
Speaker 1: male birds building you know, some sort of mating structure
Speaker 1: you know, uh, that is just about attracting the females. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously this would not be exactly the same thing. But
Speaker 1: perhaps the the idea I think that Chris is getting
Speaker 1: at is that the use of the tool could be
Speaker 1: part of of the city. The overall signaling saying that
Speaker 1: I I am building the nest. Now, yeah, and and
Speaker 1: but but tends to I think start with the females
Speaker 1: and the pigs, and that they share the behaviors with
Speaker 1: like they sort of teach the males how to do it.
Speaker 1: It suggests to me that if that is in fact
Speaker 1: what's going on, it could be that it's it's almost
Speaker 1: like ringing the whistle. It's it's time to start work.
Speaker 1: Because the nest building was a social thing. It was
Speaker 1: like more than one pig participated in the digging of
Speaker 1: the nest interest. So it's like maybe maybe picking up
Speaker 1: the bark and doing that gets the other pigs on task. Possibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, well, now we're going to jump into another
Speaker 1: longer email about the Garascene demoniac. Uh. This one's long
Speaker 1: enough in fact, that I'm going to tag out to
Speaker 1: you during the reading of this email. All right, this
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Sean, Hi, Joe, and Robert.
Speaker 1: I'm a longtime listener and occasionally right in my last
Speaker 1: email that you read out in a listener Maile episode
Speaker 1: was also from Halloween last year, something about Halloween that
Speaker 1: makes me want to write in I feel you. I
Speaker 1: just finished listening to your episode on the Garascene Demoniac,
Speaker 1: which was a fascinating Bible story that I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: of before. You also covered lots of points that I'd
Speaker 1: like to reply to, especially adding input from the other
Speaker 1: side of the world. I live in Indonesia. The very
Speaker 1: first thing I thought of while listening was a story
Speaker 1: from Bali from a few years ago. This story is
Speaker 1: a massive w t F from the start and gets
Speaker 1: so much wilder by the end. A teenage boy was
Speaker 1: caught having sex with a cow and a village in
Speaker 1: the west of Bali. As this act spiritually defiled the
Speaker 1: village and the boy. A wedding ceremony was then held
Speaker 1: between the boy and the cow. Both were dressed up
Speaker 1: in customary wedding attire. To complete the spiritual cleansing of
Speaker 1: the village, the cow was drowned in the sea. The
Speaker 1: here is the earliest report in English I could find
Speaker 1: after a quick Google, and he points to a Metro
Speaker 1: dot Co dot UK story. Man forced to marry cal
Speaker 1: faints at wedding, which, uh, you know, it sounds like
Speaker 1: a you know, a goofier headline than like the true story.
Speaker 1: I feel like we're we're absorbing from this telling. Uh.
Speaker 1: They continue, while a different animal and involving bsality, the
Speaker 1: stories are somewhat similar. They both involve possession of demons
Speaker 1: or bad spirits, they both involve ceremony including animals, and
Speaker 1: they are both concluded with animals dying before the case
Speaker 1: being declared closed. The Balanese religion, while called Hindu, is
Speaker 1: not very similar to the Indian Hinduism, where cows are revered,
Speaker 1: and incorporates a lot more animous beliefs and the ever
Speaker 1: presence of good and bad spirits. While there might not
Speaker 1: be a take home message from this story, it certainly
Speaker 1: is fascinating and quite a unique insight into a unique culture.
Speaker 1: Another part of this episode appealing to me. As you
Speaker 1: talked about religious taboos, particularly the eating of pork, I
Speaker 1: should start by saying, I am a Muslim. I wasn't
Speaker 1: born into Islam, but I converted three years ago, so
Speaker 1: I have experienced growing up in an English culture and
Speaker 1: living a pork free lifestyle. It seems to me that
Speaker 1: while once you pointed out, there may have been initially
Speaker 1: very good reasons to ban the eating of pork, such
Speaker 1: as the reasons you mentioned the fact that the fact
Speaker 1: that pork flesh is a host for parasitic worms and
Speaker 1: more modern farming and food preparation would deem these reasons unimportant.
Speaker 1: Your reason that pigs are indiscriminate eaters and omnivorous makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense, as it is also forbidden to
Speaker 1: eat animals with things I eat carnivores. Another, however, the
Speaker 1: reason given by the Koran, to my knowledge, but please
Speaker 1: don't take my word of love own, is that the
Speaker 1: flesh is dirty. I believe you were right in saying
Speaker 1: that it is mostly taken nowadays to be a signal
Speaker 1: it is not necessary a sacrifice for any Muslims who
Speaker 1: have never even tried pork, but is definitely seen as
Speaker 1: a we don't do this, the people who aren't in
Speaker 1: our group do situation. I would like to add here
Speaker 1: that that pork is not forbidden if there is no
Speaker 1: other food source available. I should also mention that even
Speaker 1: among the Balinese who are known lovers of pork, there
Speaker 1: was really there's recently been some suspicion as there have
Speaker 1: been a few cases of people becoming infected by bacteria
Speaker 1: and undercooked meat that reportedly lead to meningitis. Personally, I
Speaker 1: think the idea that we follow this rule because nonbelievers
Speaker 1: do the opposite is not a particularly strong argument. It
Speaker 1: affects me personally, as I have two dogs at home
Speaker 1: and in Islam this is not the done thing. But
Speaker 1: the more I try to find out why, it seems
Speaker 1: like the reason is because nonbelievers have dogs and we
Speaker 1: are not nonbelievers. This brings me to my response to
Speaker 1: Gustine's view of animal rights based on his reading of
Speaker 1: the scripture. All Right, I'm gonna tag out now, Joe.
Speaker 1: All Right, Sean goes on. Like I said, many Muslims
Speaker 1: would not have a dog. In some cases, there's a
Speaker 1: strong dislike, hatred, or even abuse of dogs as a result.
Speaker 1: I am, however, adamant that this is not stemming from
Speaker 1: a reading of the Quran or other religious laws, but
Speaker 1: from cultural upbringing. In the Koran, one of three mentions
Speaker 1: of dogs is that you may eat food hunted by
Speaker 1: your dog. Another mention is of a dog who accompanied
Speaker 1: a group of pious believers and protected them as they
Speaker 1: slept in a cave while fleeing persecution. I used to
Speaker 1: work for an animal welfare organization here in Bali, for
Speaker 1: part of which I tried to develop a curriculum that
Speaker 1: incorporated animal welfare. So I look for religious stories or
Speaker 1: texts that would promote animal welfare to children. While Islam
Speaker 1: promotes eating meat and the general idea of humanity is
Speaker 1: above animals, I feel there's nothing in the text that
Speaker 1: would call for the abuse of animals. In fact, the
Speaker 1: opposite is true. It is forbidden to spend money on dogs,
Speaker 1: gamble on animals. It is encouraged to give water and
Speaker 1: food to thirsty and hungry dogs. It's forbidden to slaughter
Speaker 1: a younger animal. There is one story in which Mohammad
Speaker 1: said angels do not visit a house which has a dog,
Speaker 1: and this seems to be the only negative there is.
Speaker 1: Of course, the doctrine of a dog's saliva is impure
Speaker 1: and must be cleaned, but this is alleviated by the
Speaker 1: simple process of cleaning. However, I feel that cultural leanings
Speaker 1: have gone the way of Augustine, taking one story that
Speaker 1: dogs hinder angels from entering a house and one idea
Speaker 1: of impurity about dogs saliva, and using this as an
Speaker 1: excuse to neglect or abuse animals. I know you focus
Speaker 1: mainly on Christianity and animal rights, but I feel this
Speaker 1: reflects the same ideas to summarize cleansing. Ceremonies involving bad
Speaker 1: spirits and animals forced to their deaths are still a thing.
Speaker 1: Pork is probably okay to eat if sourced well and
Speaker 1: cooked right, but nowadays is a cultural signal. And like Augustine,
Speaker 1: many people nowadays take one passage from scripture and use
Speaker 1: it to allow themselves to treat others poorly, ignoring the
Speaker 1: wealth of s pure pointing in the other direction. I'm
Speaker 1: very sorry for the long message. I'm quite surprised I
Speaker 1: had so much to say about a demonic pig exorcism.
Speaker 1: But I hope there are some parts you can take
Speaker 1: away from my email to entertain you or bring to
Speaker 1: lights some views from different cultures. And as always, I
Speaker 1: love the show and look forward to whatever adventure you
Speaker 1: take me on next. All the best, Sean, No, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I I I've really appreciated Sean's inside on this um
Speaker 1: and and you know, I think it also shows that
Speaker 1: you know how interesting this topic was, that you know what,
Speaker 1: on the surface is just kind of a wtf uh
Speaker 1: you know story from the New testament ultimately touches on
Speaker 1: so many different aspects of human culture and human behavior. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things Sean brings up, which
Speaker 1: I think is true, is that the element of the
Speaker 1: pigs running in the into the sea to die afterwards.
Speaker 1: That could reflect, I don't know, not something about the
Speaker 1: peculiarities of that story itself, but could be a deeper
Speaker 1: sort of motif of like the scapegoat tradition, right, you know,
Speaker 1: putting sends her uncleanness into an animal that is then
Speaker 1: sent out into the wilderness to its death or is
Speaker 1: put to death or something as a way of uh,
Speaker 1: sort of like transferring the bad stuff out. So so
Speaker 1: I can totally see it fitting with that tradition that,
Speaker 1: like as Sean says, is still used in many ways today. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we didn't even talk about scapegoats in that episode. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So clearly we could come back and do more in
Speaker 1: the future. All Right, we're getting towards the end here,
Speaker 1: but we have two more bits of Halloween listener mail
Speaker 1: that Carney is insisting that we read because if we don't,
Speaker 1: it might have to go back into the pit until
Speaker 1: next year. So this one comes to us from Um,
Speaker 1: this is Carrie, I believe, and Carrie rides high. Thanks
Speaker 1: for a great show. I just listened to your show
Speaker 1: about Jenny green Teeth. This was an episode from the
Speaker 1: previous year, but when we ran it vault episode about
Speaker 1: Jenny Green Teeth which ended with a recommendation about the
Speaker 1: Hitcher and his scary song about eels Um. The Hitcher
Speaker 1: is of course a character from the British comedy series
Speaker 1: The Mighty Bush, which I think at this point has
Speaker 1: been off the air for like an amazingly long period
Speaker 1: of time, and in age where Netflix and other streaming
Speaker 1: shows are bringing back everything, I'm a little surprised nobody
Speaker 1: has has has given us a Boush revival. But for
Speaker 1: fans of the Great British Bake Off, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've seen it. Null Fielding is a yeah, he's
Speaker 1: the host, right, yeah, one of them, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: both both the Julian as well. They've both continued to
Speaker 1: work a lot and you can certainly find them out there.
Speaker 1: They just aside from some live stuff, they haven't they
Speaker 1: haven't fully come back to the Bush. Rachel and I
Speaker 1: make a lot of baking show jokes about just baking
Speaker 1: a little foxy Mariam. Alright, anyway, so Carrie continues. It
Speaker 1: made me think about a book I just finished called
Speaker 1: The Gospel of the Eels by Patrick Vincent. There is
Speaker 1: a chapter in the book about the eel as a
Speaker 1: creepy and scary being which has haunted us in numerous way.
Speaker 1: It has almost crept into our subconscious and could be
Speaker 1: claimed to have made Sigmund Freud come up with his psychoanalysis,
Speaker 1: since he, as a young scientist, could not find its
Speaker 1: genitals hidden and not possible to directly observe with scientific methods.
Speaker 1: Well later it was naturally found. The way this was
Speaker 1: done also makes up a very intriguing story, and Freud
Speaker 1: had just been studying the wrong metamorphos stage of the
Speaker 1: eel like that. I've never heard that before. I thought
Speaker 1: this could be an interesting October episode, or if you
Speaker 1: do not have the time for the for the moment,
Speaker 1: something inspiring for a later occasion. Below is a link
Speaker 1: to review of the book. Thank you for a great show,
Speaker 1: Keep up the good work. Uh you know I would
Speaker 1: I would be up for an episode on eels and
Speaker 1: our humans relationship with eels. I've I've always found them fascinating.
Speaker 1: Um I got to see one while snorkeling recently and
Speaker 1: that was a lot of fun. Freud in the elusive
Speaker 1: genital sell me on it. So yeah, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: if if Royd has something to say about them, than
Speaker 1: than clearly there's some meat on the bone there. All right,
Speaker 1: we have one last listener mail, would you do the honors?
Speaker 1: Joe Sure? This is in response to another Vault episode
Speaker 1: we released in October, or the one about monstrosity and cuteness.
Speaker 1: Why so many monsters, especially like Japanese Yokai, I believe,
Speaker 1: end up with these very popular cute versions of them
Speaker 1: that exist all throughout culture. So uh land in rites
Speaker 1: in Hello guys. I wanted to respond to this episode
Speaker 1: in a few ways. First, I've never seen a cute
Speaker 1: or adorable version of Suron Saruman, the nas Gul, or
Speaker 1: the Uricai. Maybe they exist, but I've never seen them anywhere. Well,
Speaker 1: hold on, there the whole there's the pop what is it?
Speaker 1: The pop? Funky pop, funk? What is it? I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. Funk pop. Seth has just
Speaker 1: chimed in the funk pop. Yeah, the little little little
Speaker 1: uh you know, dolls, little uh sculptures of different pop
Speaker 1: culture with the little pill heads. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a kind of cute looking Soron. I think I've
Speaker 1: seen that somewhere. Okay, Uh, I mean it's weird because
Speaker 1: I feel like they would have to make its head
Speaker 1: very wide, and the whole point of Saron's head is
Speaker 1: that his head has verticality. It's a cathedral with the helmet, right,
Speaker 1: But I mean basically just a big head, small body,
Speaker 1: squat little cute form. It's granted, you can only make
Speaker 1: Soron so cute, and obviously there's nothing really you can
Speaker 1: do with the great all Seeing Eye incarnation, but I
Speaker 1: think I think it's been done. I think he's too
Speaker 1: popular to not do up like that. I was a
Speaker 1: little appalled recently when I was at a bookstore with
Speaker 1: my son and we're looking at the Harry Potter stuff
Speaker 1: because it's Harry Potter obsessed and lo and behold, here
Speaker 1: are cute Voldemort's. There should not be cute Voldemort's Voldermore
Speaker 1: Voldemore is not cute in in any way, shape or
Speaker 1: form um. And yet we've we've made them, and I
Speaker 1: presumably people buy them. Oh, I don't know. I can
Speaker 1: go for a cute Sorromon. It almost writes itself. I'm
Speaker 1: Sorromon of many colors, you know, all Landon continues. Second,
Speaker 1: it could the idea to make all these villains and
Speaker 1: monsters cute be related to making the hero more adorable,
Speaker 1: to think the Flintstone Kids, Muppet babies, and even the
Speaker 1: more recent travesty of Marvel Heroes babies. I don't know
Speaker 1: what that refers to. There's a whole lineup of these
Speaker 1: young children, young versions of characters. Maybe someone eventually said
Speaker 1: why not the monster slash villain too? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Does does Muppet babies pre date the cute Yokai? I
Speaker 1: have no idea. Um m, I mean Muppet babies are
Speaker 1: an interesting point. I don't know. There's this. It's like
Speaker 1: as if the adult Muppets were not already cute and
Speaker 1: cuddly enough, right. I mean, I watched way too too
Speaker 1: much of the Muppet Babies. Um, but I can't say
Speaker 1: I loved it at the same time. Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel like there is something going on there where.
Speaker 1: If you take something and you essentially turn it into
Speaker 1: a Teddy Bear, there is something going on there. Where
Speaker 1: we're perhaps saying this means so much to me as
Speaker 1: an adult or as a you know, or at least
Speaker 1: a non child, that I can, I can and want
Speaker 1: to transform it into like a larval form, into a
Speaker 1: teddy bear form that I will been cling to now,
Speaker 1: and in doing so, I kind of like retroactively attach
Speaker 1: my childhood to it. Yeah, I see that. Or I
Speaker 1: mean maybe you did read Lord of the Rings when
Speaker 1: you're a kid. I mean I I did, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's not that big of a stretch to like transform
Speaker 1: it into a teddy bear or a doll and then
Speaker 1: love it as an adult, to reconnect with the child
Speaker 1: that you were when you first explored this world. I mean,
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings already has elements that are insufferably cute,
Speaker 1: Like the Hobbits are, like they're almost too cute to
Speaker 1: read about, you know. Yeah, that's true, But I guess
Speaker 1: that's part of what the contrast there that makes the
Speaker 1: story work. So you've got the doomy darkness of the
Speaker 1: Great War and more Door and all that, and then
Speaker 1: you've got the Hobbits, which are so quaint as too,
Speaker 1: I don't know, make all that stuff the more powerful? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean and ultimately, I guess the idea is like
Speaker 1: the shire is what you're fighting for, right, Like the
Speaker 1: shire is that the thing that should be protected, all right,
Speaker 1: Landing goes on. The other idea is based on the
Speaker 1: scripture in the Bible that speaks of Satan as transforming
Speaker 1: himself into an angel of light and Second Corinthians, chapter eleven,
Speaker 1: verse fourteen. That is to say, he makes bad things
Speaker 1: look good, which accounts for much in the world. If
Speaker 1: you ask me to think of the Japanese demons you
Speaker 1: spoke of, for example, people lived in fear of and
Speaker 1: acted and reacted for hundreds of years based on the
Speaker 1: belief that these demons could harm them. Now that the
Speaker 1: world is more quote enlightened, people do not believe in
Speaker 1: demons as much. However, the demons still influence the lives
Speaker 1: of people. Even if this is a new concept. Satan
Speaker 1: has made danger seem safe. What do you guys think.
Speaker 1: I don't know if Landing means this literally or just
Speaker 1: sort of like as a way of I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of a cultural pattern here. Well. In
Speaker 1: my experience growing up in um like a Baptist church,
Speaker 1: that whole line about Satan transforming himself in an angel
Speaker 1: of light was generally used to explain why you shouldn't
Speaker 1: like something that you like, or you shouldn't want something
Speaker 1: that you want. And of course there are things, yes,
Speaker 1: that any human may feel some desire for that it
Speaker 1: is advisable to be reminded that there may be some
Speaker 1: pitfalls there to wanting that, you know. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, there are plenty of things that are uh,
Speaker 1: just part of like normal human behavior or just part
Speaker 1: of of life. And it's easy for somebody to come
Speaker 1: along and say, Nope, don't go after that. It's just
Speaker 1: Satan in a disguise right there. Yeah. In my early
Speaker 1: conservative Christian environments, I remember that being deployed much along
Speaker 1: the same lines as uh, the idea that the Antichrist
Speaker 1: will come in the name of peace. This was often
Speaker 1: cited basically against any politician or public figure who who
Speaker 1: was against war or who advocated peace in any kind
Speaker 1: of way. The idea was like, ah, that's a sign
Speaker 1: that they're bad. Yeah, so in wanting peace bad, glowing
Speaker 1: glowing with light also potentially bad. Finally, Lyndon says, thanks
Speaker 1: for all the good work. I love the episodes where
Speaker 1: you read some ancient text or story at the beginning.
Speaker 1: You both have a perfect cadence. Ah, we'll think. I'm
Speaker 1: glad to hear that, because generally we just do it
Speaker 1: because it's fun. But it's always nice when people connect
Speaker 1: with the cold opens. All right, I think that does
Speaker 1: it for this year's Halloween stuff. Yes, that wasn't I'm
Speaker 1: sorry to say that wasn't all the mail we got.
Speaker 1: As we said, our mail bag is overflowing, our our
Speaker 1: cup runneth over, and we really appreciate all of the
Speaker 1: great messages you send us. Sorry if your message didn't
Speaker 1: make it onto this episode, but uh, feel free to
Speaker 1: write us again in the future. Absolutely again. We're going
Speaker 1: to follow this up with another listener mail. That's going
Speaker 1: to be additional non Halloween listener mail. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, well you know where to find them.
Speaker 1: There's the website Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find Stuff to Blow your Mind wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, and just make sure you have
Speaker 1: subscribed and that you give us a nice rating if
Speaker 1: you If you like the show, that really helps us out.
Speaker 1: As for other projects, there's Invention, our Journey through human
Speaker 1: techno History. Do check that out. If you haven't given
Speaker 1: it a shot, you'll find that at invention pod dot com.
Speaker 1: You'll find it wherever you get your podcasts. That comes
Speaker 1: out once a week and it is a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of fun. We recently recorded an episode about the Uh
Speaker 1: the spit Dog, which is phenomenal. I think it's maybe
Speaker 1: one of the best episodes we we've recorded for Invention,
Speaker 1: and I really want to encourage everyone to check that out.
Speaker 1: And if you're in the mind for a little sci fi,
Speaker 1: some fiction, a little bit of horror this this season,
Speaker 1: you might want to check out the Second oil Age.
Speaker 1: That's the fiction series that I was involved with, and
Speaker 1: it is I think at this point, as as of
Speaker 1: this recording, like six episodes out of ten or out.
Speaker 1: And if you if you were to wait till go
Speaker 1: ahead and subscribe, but you can wait till the end
Speaker 1: of the month, and then you'll have all ten ready
Speaker 1: to go, ready to binge. Seriously, folks, check out the
Speaker 1: Second oil Age. Delicious dark sci fi. I think you'll
Speaker 1: love it. If you like us, you'll love it all right.
Speaker 1: And that's all I got. How Can they email us?
Speaker 1: Joe Oh, of course you can contact us as always.
Speaker 1: Wait first, I gotta give a shout out to our
Speaker 1: wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johns. Of course, but you
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