Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welnot the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: And as we promised last time, we're back with part
Speaker 1: two of our Halloween hangover a listener mail. We're not
Speaker 1: usually going to be doing two part listener mail back
Speaker 1: to back like this, but there was a lot of
Speaker 1: great stuff that came in over the October season related
Speaker 1: to our Monster Science episodes, and we're also just using
Speaker 1: a little help, I think, to get through the Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: week here. Yeah, American Thanksgiving is how, there's no denying it,
Speaker 1: and we have a number of different things cooking here.
Speaker 1: We of course we're continuing to pump out stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind, but we also have the Invention podcast
Speaker 1: launching next month, and we've been researching and uh writing
Speaker 1: and recording these episodes so we can start dishing those up.
Speaker 1: So definitely keep an eye out for that. Speaking of
Speaker 1: strange technology and can traptions, I have noticed that Carney
Speaker 1: is uh not only still haunted. Last time we discussed
Speaker 1: a little bit how he's seen. He's got a ghost
Speaker 1: in the machine thing going on. And his gears are
Speaker 1: moaning in the in the night winds a little bit.
Speaker 1: But have you noticed also a slight elongation of his
Speaker 1: mouth antennae. Oh yes, I'm never was sure why he
Speaker 1: had those installed to begin with, but now they are
Speaker 1: definitely pronounced. Yeah, they're almost becoming fang like in appearance.
Speaker 1: One could wonder if he is undergoing a transformation to
Speaker 1: robot vampoiism. That may be the case. Um oh, before
Speaker 1: we get go in here too, I want to remind everybody, Hey,
Speaker 1: check out our t public store. That's where you can
Speaker 1: find some merchandise for the show. There's a store tab
Speaker 1: at the top of our homepage. Stuffabole your mind dot com.
Speaker 1: It's the best way to get to it. We have
Speaker 1: a number of cool bits of merchandise logo designs, but
Speaker 1: also episode centric designs, including I am told there should
Speaker 1: be some new squirrel based merchandise in there for you,
Speaker 1: some nice dark skug Uh content for you to have
Speaker 1: put on a shirt or a mug or a sticker
Speaker 1: or what have you, as well as a potential holiday
Speaker 1: great basilisk shirt. So get excited about those. Check those
Speaker 1: out because buying merchandise like this it's a cool way
Speaker 1: to support the show. Uh. And of course, if you
Speaker 1: don't want to spend money supporting the show, you can
Speaker 1: also help us out for free by simply reviewing the
Speaker 1: show wherever you have the power to do so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some merch up or give us some stars. Now should
Speaker 1: we jump right into our first bit of listener mail
Speaker 1: from Joshua, let's do it? Okay? This concerned our episode
Speaker 1: about monster slayers the slayer tradition, So Joshua writes in
Speaker 1: to say, Hi, I'm a first time listener and I
Speaker 1: just heard your episode The Slayer. I studied ancient Near
Speaker 1: Eastern myth and the Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago,
Speaker 1: so imagine my surprise when the first episode I heard
Speaker 1: focused on the myths that I love. You did an
Speaker 1: amazing job discussing the stories. And my only correction is
Speaker 1: that the second A in I guess what I pronounced,
Speaker 1: Acadian is pronounced with the long A like hey, so
Speaker 1: that'd be Acadian and I guess this, of course refers
Speaker 1: to the ancient Mesopotamian culture, the Acadians. Uh. So Joshua continues,
Speaker 1: there is one thing particularly interesting about the uma a leash,
Speaker 1: and this is, of course, the ancient Mesopotamian creation epic,
Speaker 1: where you've got the battle between mar Duke and the
Speaker 1: sea dragon Tiamat. Joshua writes, there is one thing particularly
Speaker 1: interesting about the Numa a leash that I wanted to
Speaker 1: tell you about Tiamat. The monster who has slain in
Speaker 1: the story is the sea goddess. The hero who slays
Speaker 1: her is the storm God. When he slays her, he
Speaker 1: summons his winds, you remember the evil wind robert Um.
Speaker 1: She swallows them, and then he shoots an arrow at
Speaker 1: her belly and she pops like a balloon. This causes
Speaker 1: her body to be cut in half, and dry ground
Speaker 1: appears on which we live. In the creation story, in
Speaker 1: the by bowl, before anything existed, there was just a
Speaker 1: chaotic void to who and vo who. God created the
Speaker 1: heavens and the earth by gathering together all the waters
Speaker 1: from that void and then separating them to let dry
Speaker 1: ground appear. When we picture the Biblical creation story within
Speaker 1: the context of our cosmology, we tend to picture a
Speaker 1: puddle of water floating in space. Then a hole appears
Speaker 1: in the middle, and dry ground rises from the hole
Speaker 1: in the puddle. But in the context of ancient near
Speaker 1: Eastern cosmology, it's better to picture outer space as nothing
Speaker 1: but water. Think of an aquarium filled with water. Floating
Speaker 1: dead center. In the middle of the aquarium is an
Speaker 1: upside down glass bowl with a lid. We live in
Speaker 1: the bowl, standing on the underside of the lid. Everything
Speaker 1: outside the bowl is water. This is why the Hebrew
Speaker 1: word rakiya means both sky and a solid hammered surface.
Speaker 1: I think this is where we sort of get the
Speaker 1: idea of the firmament right, that there's like a a
Speaker 1: solid surface up in the sky that you could walk
Speaker 1: around on. Observationally, this works from the perspective of a
Speaker 1: person standing on the bowl's lid. The sky is the
Speaker 1: color of water because there's water up there. The sky
Speaker 1: reaches down to the horizon. If you drill into the earth,
Speaker 1: you find water, and if you go far enough on land,
Speaker 1: you find the terrible chaotic primordial water the ocean. This
Speaker 1: explains why the storm god was often the chief god.
Speaker 1: Storms weren't events when the storm god caused destruction for
Speaker 1: humans and needed to be placated so he wouldn't wipe
Speaker 1: us out. Instead, they were battles when the primordial waters
Speaker 1: above started falling back down, threatening to fill the bowl.
Speaker 1: The storm God used the strength of his winds to
Speaker 1: reinflate the bowl, pushing the primordial waters back up above
Speaker 1: the solid sky, keeping the bowl open for us to
Speaker 1: live in. Perhaps it's counterintuitive for us with our cosmology,
Speaker 1: but in the cosmology of the ancient Near East, humanity
Speaker 1: should thank the storm God for constantly inflating the bowl
Speaker 1: and saving us all from drowning. So, in my mind,
Speaker 1: the point of the Enuma a leash was to tell
Speaker 1: the Acadians, don't be afraid of terrifying storms. Instead, you
Speaker 1: should fear the day when the waters fall and there
Speaker 1: is no storm, because that will be the day when
Speaker 1: it all comes crashing in again. I could go on,
Speaker 1: but this is too long already. Anyway, great job, and
Speaker 1: I'm excited to keep listening. Thanks now, Robert, this raises
Speaker 1: This is a fantastic email, by the way, I love
Speaker 1: all this inside on the ancient Near Eastern cosmology. Uh
Speaker 1: And and this fits pretty well with a lot of
Speaker 1: what I've read about about their kind of view of
Speaker 1: the shape of the cosmos and stuff. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that I hadn't considered before is that given
Speaker 1: all of this should we, in fact picture the events
Speaker 1: of the Enuma a leash somehow happening underwater, like if
Speaker 1: the Earth hadn't been created yet, if there wasn't yet
Speaker 1: an inflated bull. Was this all somehow under the primordial
Speaker 1: total ocean of the void. Maybe this is why the
Speaker 1: deep sea peril movies of the of the nineties resonated
Speaker 1: so is that they're they kind of connect with a
Speaker 1: primordial cosmology, the idea that our existence is essentially a
Speaker 1: deep sea abotant. I like that, or wait, are you
Speaker 1: talking about the nineties or the nineteen like eighty nine
Speaker 1: under it? But the enthusiasm and the VHS enthusiasm of
Speaker 1: course pills over there, right, Okay, you're talking the Abyss, Leviathan,
Speaker 1: Deep Star six, Lords the Deep all that. Oh yeah, yea,
Speaker 1: because I know that's your jam, because essentially all those
Speaker 1: stort tales are encapsulated versions of the surface world beneath
Speaker 1: the deep. Yeah, but they're also the stories about space.
Speaker 1: They're like they Leviathan is just alien underwater in a way, again,
Speaker 1: making the connection between the ocean and the space beyond
Speaker 1: very nice. I love this. No, I'm thinking of some
Speaker 1: obvious reasons that my my guests about the Numa alis
Speaker 1: here doesn't really make sense because obviously there are winds
Speaker 1: and so like there wouldn't be winds underwater, would there be? Well,
Speaker 1: but there are winds underwater. In a sense, we do
Speaker 1: have tides and crewerrents, I guess, And of course we
Speaker 1: also have the movements and migrations of marine species. Not
Speaker 1: that all of that would necessarily be known to ancient peoples,
Speaker 1: but some of it would be, especially if they were seafaring. Well.
Speaker 1: I also think about the deep sea braving nature of
Speaker 1: other ancient Mesopotamian heroes, like if you think of the
Speaker 1: epic of Gilgamesh, one of the feats that Gilgamesh does
Speaker 1: is he walks down to the bottom of the ocean
Speaker 1: to get like some kind of sacred plant he needs.
Speaker 1: I can't remember quite why he needs it, but he
Speaker 1: needs a plant down there, so he just like walks
Speaker 1: down to the bottom of the sea, gets it, and
Speaker 1: he comes back up. Well, of course we've all That
Speaker 1: reminds me of some of our discussions in the Ancient
Speaker 1: Aliens episodes about about the idea that first contact occurs
Speaker 1: with some sort of entity that arises from the d
Speaker 1: oh yeah, so this was something Carl Sagan talked about
Speaker 1: in his work. Now, of course, like us, Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: did not credit the idea of ancient aliens, didn't believe
Speaker 1: in uh you know, the Eric Fondanicken ideas and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But he was asking the question of Okay,
Speaker 1: if earthlings had been contacted in the past by ancient aliens,
Speaker 1: what would the evidence look like. And the closest thing
Speaker 1: he and his co author thought they could come up
Speaker 1: with was this, Uh, I don't remember. Was it Sumerian?
Speaker 1: I think it might have been like a retelling of
Speaker 1: some Sumerian epic or something. It was some ancient Near
Speaker 1: Eastern epic about these beings that came up out of
Speaker 1: the water and brought culture to the people. What was
Speaker 1: the name of that entity again? Uh? Oh, honest, yes,
Speaker 1: and or Adappa I think, yeah, I just love that,
Speaker 1: and then I find the the the mythic image of
Speaker 1: it all all the more haunted. Yeah, that's great stuff. Anyway, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Joshua. That was an awesome piece of listener mail,
Speaker 1: and we really appreciate the clarification of the shape of
Speaker 1: the world. Now, should we explore another response to the
Speaker 1: Slayer of episode from maybe this one from our listener Taylor. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is another great piece of listener mail. Taylor rights, Hello,
Speaker 1: Robert Joe. I absolutely love the Monster Slayer episode. I
Speaker 1: really like how you tied in the fear and courage
Speaker 1: aspects of the episode. I would like to share a
Speaker 1: personal experience of how a fictional tale of heroics can
Speaker 1: really change the way you respond with threat or whatever
Speaker 1: is generating the fear response. I we actually asked that
Speaker 1: question in the episode, like whether there's any evidence that
Speaker 1: thinking about her mythical heroics makes you more courageous, And
Speaker 1: we didn't find any evidence or like research on that,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like Taylor has an anecdote here. Yes,
Speaker 1: Taylor continues, I am a combat veteran and served in
Speaker 1: Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. We were relieving the unit
Speaker 1: that was taking heavy cashually at Casually and they were
Speaker 1: withdrawn in their stead. We took on the task of
Speaker 1: finishing what they had started, and I will spare the
Speaker 1: details of the actual mission. I was a combat engineer
Speaker 1: and I would sometimes spearhead infantry platoon with a handheld
Speaker 1: mind detector, sweeping for explosive hazards. I have to say
Speaker 1: fear was part of an everyday phenomena that I experienced,
Speaker 1: and when I was mind sweeping for improvised explosive devices
Speaker 1: UH and old anti personnel minds, I was especially fearful.
Speaker 1: But I had to somehow overcome this fear in order
Speaker 1: to complete my role in the mission. The whole time,
Speaker 1: I could only think of what I was doing to
Speaker 1: prevent a catastrophe from taking place by detecting these hazards,
Speaker 1: and I actually recalled the heroics of the old Lord
Speaker 1: of the Ring series to give me a boost encourage.
Speaker 1: We had a laptop that we watched movies on and
Speaker 1: had watched all three Lord of the Rings films several times.
Speaker 1: Many acts of bravery took place in those stories, but
Speaker 1: some stuck with me. Boromir sacrifice was one and Ewen
Speaker 1: was another. I personally had always felt a small part
Speaker 1: of guilt for taking part in a war I knew
Speaker 1: little about, albeit I joined the army to pay for school,
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize the act sual reality of deploying.
Speaker 1: For some reason, my morals had always led me to
Speaker 1: believe that war was inherently wrong. The guilt had always
Speaker 1: played a role in my fear to die. For a reason,
Speaker 1: I did not fully understand what was I contributing to
Speaker 1: humanity by being part of all this. I felt a
Speaker 1: little helpless, and I took myself out of the big
Speaker 1: picture and downsized to my immediate circumstances, which were my
Speaker 1: fellow humans. If I were to die, then let it
Speaker 1: be from my fellow humans, the ones I was sharing
Speaker 1: this unfortunate experience with. For some reason, I could clearly
Speaker 1: recount Owen's bravery against Saron. She was no super human
Speaker 1: or legendary warrior, but just a human woman who only
Speaker 1: wanted to protect those she loved. Her love for her
Speaker 1: friends and family gave her the courage to overcome Saron
Speaker 1: and stab him in the face. Saron, to me, was
Speaker 1: acting like a metaphor for these destructive devices, someplaced by
Speaker 1: Taliban soldiers and others left from previous wars. Like saw on,
Speaker 1: these things laid in wait for the right moment, then
Speaker 1: afflicted terrible destruction on those who came across them. These
Speaker 1: things did not discriminate and killed not only soldiers in
Speaker 1: the war, but also helpless locals. I use these fantastical
Speaker 1: stories of bravery to help me through some of my
Speaker 1: ordeal in Afghanistan, and even though I knew they were
Speaker 1: all fictional characters, they have played a vital role in
Speaker 1: inspiring me to face my own fears and overcome them.
Speaker 1: Sorry for the long response, but it felt good to
Speaker 1: share these considering I don't get to talk about it much.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the wonderful episode, and I look forward to
Speaker 1: the rest of October's podcast. Cheers from Alaska. Well, Taylor,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for getting in touch. These were
Speaker 1: really some, uh, some fascinating insights. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I've ever heard that directly. It seems like a kind
Speaker 1: of common thing to be inspired by heroics from stories
Speaker 1: to to do something actually, you know, requiring of courage
Speaker 1: in real life. But I can't think of examples other
Speaker 1: than what Taylor has just given us here. Well, what
Speaker 1: I love about this examples of course that it's it's
Speaker 1: from a combat scenario, so it's a thing that you know,
Speaker 1: I don't have any personal experience with, but it. But
Speaker 1: of course it's always great to hear from our listeners
Speaker 1: who do, because they can put new twists on topics
Speaker 1: such as this, and uh, it's actual physical courage. By
Speaker 1: the way, I mean a lot of the kind of
Speaker 1: courage I was thinking about people needing in that episode
Speaker 1: was more mundane day to day courage, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you have a fear of public speaking, you've got
Speaker 1: to somehow get up the guts to do it for
Speaker 1: a work scenario or something like that, or you know,
Speaker 1: those kind of mundane things. But here you're actually talking
Speaker 1: about putting your life on the line. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: also like the idea of associating Saron with just sort
Speaker 1: of the the nature of war, you know, like he's
Speaker 1: it's ultimately what the great enemy is all about. Now,
Speaker 1: at the risk of being doubly wrong, I think some
Speaker 1: of our more nitpicky listeners might say, I think the
Speaker 1: character Taylor is thinking about there is the witch king
Speaker 1: of Angmar who gets stabbed in the face by a
Speaker 1: o N. Is that not the case? I believe that
Speaker 1: is the case, Yeah, because that looks exactly what I mean.
Speaker 1: Is one of Sauron's generals or whatever. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: in a sense, it's stabbing the witch king in the face.
Speaker 1: It is like stabbing saw On in the face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? Climb that tower and stab
Speaker 1: the eye? That makes sense? Yeah, there's no face for stabbing.
Speaker 1: So uh but we knew we knew what what Taylor
Speaker 1: was talking about. Yes, sorry, I did not mean to nitpick.
Speaker 1: This is a great story. Yeah, and it ties in
Speaker 1: because we are going to have other listener mails in
Speaker 1: this episode that involved the Lord of the Rings. Oh
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, man, we have got so many excellent
Speaker 1: pedantic Tolkien nerds out there. Uh. I just had to
Speaker 1: say that or I knew that we would get a
Speaker 1: flood of listener mail like that wasn't so on. We
Speaker 1: love you, We love you anyway. Thank you so much, Taylor.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh yeah, I feel free to get in
Speaker 1: touch again. Okay. Our next piece of listener mail comes
Speaker 1: from Zolts result says hello, Robert and Joe. And this
Speaker 1: is also about the Slayer. By the way, I was
Speaker 1: writing to you about one part of the recent Monster
Speaker 1: Slayer episode and the episode you mentioned that babies have
Speaker 1: been shown to be afraid of spiders and snakes, and
Speaker 1: that's the type of fear that sticks around, unlike the
Speaker 1: fear from bears or other predators. I don't really have
Speaker 1: any proof of my idea. It just makes sense to
Speaker 1: me intuitively, if a baby or a youngster is left
Speaker 1: alone in nature for a while or just not looked
Speaker 1: after that closely by the parents, and it is afraid
Speaker 1: of snakes and spiders, it has a survival advantage. If
Speaker 1: a venomous snake comes along and the baby picks it
Speaker 1: up and tries to chew on it, it will most
Speaker 1: likely get bitten, highly reducing its chance of survival. So
Speaker 1: fear of snakes or spiders being hardwired, even in infancy,
Speaker 1: can increase the survival rates of young humans and animals.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, if a bear, wolf, or lion,
Speaker 1: or any other large predator comes along, the baby has
Speaker 1: no advantage if it is afraid of them. Obviously, if
Speaker 1: the baby doesn't make any noise, it has a higher
Speaker 1: chance of not being noticed, but that would require a higher,
Speaker 1: more specific type of recognition to differentiate between large predators
Speaker 1: or members of its own species or even its parents
Speaker 1: based on limited information, and babies are not really known
Speaker 1: for being quiet when it would be ideal, So being
Speaker 1: inherently afraid of bears doesn't give infants much survival advantage.
Speaker 1: So it wouldn't develop evolutionarily, and it wouldn't get hardwired
Speaker 1: into our brains anyways. Just an idea, keep up the
Speaker 1: good work and greetings from Hungary. Uh, I can maybe
Speaker 1: see what you're talking. That's possibility to consider like that. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the question is like why snakes and spiders specifically,
Speaker 1: especially when they're not the most threatening animals out there.
Speaker 1: And the idea could be that if this is a
Speaker 1: hardwired instinct kind of fear instead of a learned cultural
Speaker 1: fear taught by the parents, then that could be advantageous
Speaker 1: to very young children because well, I mean, for one thing,
Speaker 1: because those animals are not predatory, so they would not
Speaker 1: be usually seeking to like attack a baby. It would
Speaker 1: be more like if the baby stumbles across them that
Speaker 1: they would be dangerous. They would need to know to
Speaker 1: leave it alone. Yeah yeah, whereas like I leave it
Speaker 1: alone instinct just wouldn't really matter in the case of
Speaker 1: a large predator that wants to eat you, because you're
Speaker 1: not going to get away from it and get in.
Speaker 1: If they were to get away from it, it would
Speaker 1: be it would be the domain of the parents. They
Speaker 1: would be the ones who would have to have to
Speaker 1: stick him into a cave or a tree or however
Speaker 1: it happened in clan of the cave Bear Um, I
Speaker 1: want to say it was what stuck her into some
Speaker 1: sort of enclosure or the bear you could only scratch
Speaker 1: at her. Yeah, a while since i've seen it, I've
Speaker 1: never seen that one. Basically the same idea that's explored.
Speaker 1: I think in um one of the Ewok movies. Oh,
Speaker 1: which one, the one with Wilford Brimley. Maybe that's the
Speaker 1: one I've seen the most. I think maybe that's the
Speaker 1: one because that's the one where she loses her parents,
Speaker 1: her entire family. They just kill off the entire family
Speaker 1: and bring in Wilford Brimley. I think they shove her
Speaker 1: into a tree trunk or something to save her from
Speaker 1: some wild beast. Well at least she got a consolation Brimley. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's an interesting ideas old. Yeah, I'd have to
Speaker 1: think about that. See see what's some evidence for against
Speaker 1: that would be. But yeah, we're we're thinking about Thanks.
Speaker 1: All right, on that note, we're gonna take a quick
Speaker 1: break and we come back more listener mail. Thank you. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. Okay, we got a big email covering several
Speaker 1: topics from our listener, Dan Robert, do you want to
Speaker 1: read part of that one? Sure? I'm going to read.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna read parts of it and I'll explain why.
Speaker 1: But Dan writes in and says, hello, Robert and Joe,
Speaker 1: a Newish fan here. I found about your podcast back
Speaker 1: in March of this year and have been listening to
Speaker 1: you since then, gorging myself on your mercifully vast back
Speaker 1: catalog heedless of date. Like Baker's Gods are Scott Baker's Gods,
Speaker 1: I scan your timeline as a single moment before I
Speaker 1: get along, I just wanted to say I find you
Speaker 1: guys and prior host too, can't forget them to be phenomenal,
Speaker 1: and wanted to thank you for being consistently insightful, well researched, informative,
Speaker 1: and at times hilarious. Oh thank you, Dan. Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind is, without a doubt, one of my
Speaker 1: top tier podcasts. You guys bring science to the average
Speaker 1: person in a way if you do and will not
Speaker 1: no doubt be classed as one of the better methods
Speaker 1: of science communication, an application to everyday life thought and
Speaker 1: fiction of this generation of podcasters. Now at this point
Speaker 1: in the email, um Dan goes on to ask and
Speaker 1: bring up a couple of of issues that have a
Speaker 1: lot to do with the specifics of our Scott Baker's
Speaker 1: um Second Apocalypse saga, the you know, the way the
Speaker 1: God's work in it, the way one might potentially take
Speaker 1: Julian James bichmeral mind Um hypothesis and sort of fold
Speaker 1: it into at least one aspect of Baker's work. I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed chatting with him about this and it it
Speaker 1: makes me want to go back and maybe check out
Speaker 1: a few of these things again um in in Baker's work.
Speaker 1: But I do want to pick up on his third
Speaker 1: point that he brought up in the list of mail.
Speaker 1: He says, moving on, I don't want to take up
Speaker 1: too much time, so I'll keep it simple. Way back
Speaker 1: in one of your episodes on space not helpful, I know.
Speaker 1: I think it's the Moons of Jupiter or Saturn. Sorry,
Speaker 1: you mentioned how you don't see slow acting, slow thinking
Speaker 1: monsters or aliens and fiction that often. Oh, I think
Speaker 1: this was the Moons of Saturn episode because we were
Speaker 1: talking about aliens that might live on the extremely cold
Speaker 1: moon of Titan. That was, if they're in a cold environment,
Speaker 1: they might have a very slow metabolism and slow slow everything. Well,
Speaker 1: Dan goes on, He says, I was reminded of the
Speaker 1: Watchers in William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land. To summarize briefly,
Speaker 1: in the Night Land, the sun is dead, the stars
Speaker 1: are gone, and humanity survives within a gigantic miles tall
Speaker 1: pyramid and is beset by monsters, both from billions of
Speaker 1: years of evolution in the endless dark and of a
Speaker 1: supernatural variety. The Five Watchers are only quickly described and
Speaker 1: not well at the start of the novel. What is
Speaker 1: clear is that they are vast, seemingly mountainous beings that
Speaker 1: move on a timescale charitably described as geologic, slowly advancing
Speaker 1: upon the aforementioned great Pyramid. They are also referred to
Speaker 1: as some of the most dire beings known to man,
Speaker 1: hinted it beinging the coordinating powers behind behind the otherworldly
Speaker 1: monsters within the Land. They've been known about for millions
Speaker 1: of years, advancing slowly over the epics all that time.
Speaker 1: Later fan works extrapolate the Watchers, and given various contextual
Speaker 1: clues within the book, have cobbled together an interesting handful
Speaker 1: of takes on these Titans of the Dark. The interpretations
Speaker 1: range a fair bit, but my favorite was that they
Speaker 1: were gigantic colony creatures, the night Land itself possibly being
Speaker 1: a long dried ocean floor whose life force has been
Speaker 1: summoned by demonic agencies. In essence, the Watchers are slowly
Speaker 1: growing mountains of demonically possessed coral, incrementally inching toward humanity,
Speaker 1: presumably by growing towards the light of their souls gathered
Speaker 1: in a single location. I figured that's a lot slower
Speaker 1: than the Inns, and certainly a monster to be afraid of,
Speaker 1: albeit in a more abstract fashion. Anyway, you guys rock.
Speaker 1: Love the recent episodes on the Basilisk and classics like
Speaker 1: being do to repeat history and especially the science of
Speaker 1: it from last year. You guys do great work, and
Speaker 1: I look forward to many more years of having you
Speaker 1: dwell in my ears, secreting knowledge and interesting connections. Take
Speaker 1: care and all the best. Well. I have never read this, Robert,
Speaker 1: have you the Night Lands? I have. It's been a
Speaker 1: it's been a while since I read it, uh, and
Speaker 1: I forgot about the Watchers. But The Night Lands is
Speaker 1: a is an inspiring early work like of of post
Speaker 1: apocalyptic science fiction, and it is it is a challenging
Speaker 1: book to read because it is is written in a
Speaker 1: very antiquated style. Um, it's easy to to grow frustrated
Speaker 1: with it. I know I grew frustrated with it when
Speaker 1: I read it initially. I need to give it another rereading, though,
Speaker 1: because buried within the at times challenging pros, there are
Speaker 1: some just fabulous dark fantasy and sci fi ideas, a
Speaker 1: lot of it. Regarding again, as he described the Last Redoubt,
Speaker 1: this enormous pyramid in which the last of humanity is
Speaker 1: is living out it's dying days against the horrors of
Speaker 1: a dark, cold earth. It's a great concept, and I
Speaker 1: especially love the idea of like a menacing coral. That's
Speaker 1: just that's wonderful. Yeah. Well, I wasn't familiar with any
Speaker 1: I've never read any fiction that kind of springboards off
Speaker 1: of the night Lands. Wait was that? Was that from
Speaker 1: the fan fiction or the fan Yeah, I believe, I
Speaker 1: believe so, or not necessarily fan fiction, but just you know,
Speaker 1: short stories that continue the tradition in the same way
Speaker 1: a lot of writers write in the within the mythos
Speaker 1: of HP Lovecraft. But I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: that's one of the values of the night Land is
Speaker 1: that there are these elements in there, they're not necessarily
Speaker 1: given a lot of time, and you're like, wow, what
Speaker 1: is that about? Wait, don't tell me about this character's
Speaker 1: love story and is pining for this lost love? Tell
Speaker 1: me more about the Watchers in the Night. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I always love when somebody can come up with what
Speaker 1: feels like a truly original kind of monster mythos, something
Speaker 1: that isn't just like basically a variation on the vampire
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, but again, the Night Land William Hopes
Speaker 1: Hope Hodgson. It's out there. You can buy copies of it.
Speaker 1: It's it's on kindle um. But it is. It is
Speaker 1: a pretty it is an original work there there there
Speaker 1: are things about it that haven't been retrod uh in
Speaker 1: fiction in the in the decades, says since it came out,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of original wonder there to be had. Okay,
Speaker 1: This next piece of mail comes from our listener, Me
Speaker 1: Call or Michelle m I C H A L. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how you pronounced that, but this is following
Speaker 1: up from the Vampire Clinic episodes. So I think I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say me call, So Me Call writes, thanks for
Speaker 1: the great and creepy content. This October, I was listening
Speaker 1: to your vampire podcast and I have remembered a story
Speaker 1: that a guy was working with a few years ago
Speaker 1: told me, I love a third hand story from a
Speaker 1: guy you used to work with. All right, we call right.
Speaker 1: So I am Polish and I've been living in a
Speaker 1: small Polish town almost my entire life. Growing up surrounded
Speaker 1: by woods, bogs and misty river banks and having a
Speaker 1: family which enjoys spooky folk tales worked out really good
Speaker 1: for me. I mean, I like a decent scary story,
Speaker 1: but I'm getting a bit off topic. The guy I
Speaker 1: have mentioned used to help out local archaeologists with their
Speaker 1: dig sites as a voluntary passion project. They have found
Speaker 1: a medieval graveyard once which is located on a church land,
Speaker 1: but has been forgotten and discovered again by these archaeologists.
Speaker 1: My colleague told me that there were about twenty bodies
Speaker 1: buried in that cemetery, all ordinary skeletons, but one which
Speaker 1: belonged to a person people who buried him believed to
Speaker 1: be a vampire. That skeleton had his head chopped off
Speaker 1: and placed face down between the person's legs. Hands and
Speaker 1: ankles were tied behind his back and bound together. And
Speaker 1: here comes the creepy part of that wasn't creepy before
Speaker 1: here comes the creepy part. The skull had a huge
Speaker 1: stone jammed into the mouth, jaws broken, most of the front,
Speaker 1: teeth bent backwards from the impact. Those were the kind
Speaker 1: of precautions Polish people used to take to make sure
Speaker 1: no vampires will haunt and hunt them at night. I
Speaker 1: wish you all the best and hope you enjoyed my
Speaker 1: little vampire story. Me call well, Nicole. We've read about
Speaker 1: other stories, like I think even in one of the
Speaker 1: episodes we mentioned brick in the mouth vampire burials. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm delighted to hear another take on it though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was I think around the same week that our
Speaker 1: episodes came out, there was another story in the news
Speaker 1: about a new brick in the mouth vampire grave. To say,
Speaker 1: I almost say, grahampire vampire grave discovered somewhere. What didn't
Speaker 1: we see that on our Facebook discussion module or something,
Speaker 1: Robert I believe. So Yeah, anyway, yes, that is super creepy.
Speaker 1: So thanks for sharing, Nicole. I love this legacy of
Speaker 1: graveyard desecration and vampire prevention. Here's another free idea I'm
Speaker 1: throwing out there to the cinema world. Everyone loves to
Speaker 1: remake the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and of course, the family
Speaker 1: in the Texas Chansal mascre Is is heavily into the
Speaker 1: desecration of graves and corpses. Some lady should do one
Speaker 1: where it's essentially the chainsaw family versus vampires. And the
Speaker 1: whole reason they're raiding all of these surrounding textsan uh
Speaker 1: graveyards is not because they just love messing around with
Speaker 1: corpses that though, of course they do. It's that they're
Speaker 1: fighting the vampire menace. Okay, that would be wonderful. Get
Speaker 1: like that. That sounds like if Joe Lansdale hasn't written
Speaker 1: it already, that would be a terrific story right there.
Speaker 1: That is great. Yeah, leatherface chainsawing off vampire heads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: turned into the hero. Here it is here it is
Speaker 1: Bill Moseley. Chop Top has metal plates in his neck
Speaker 1: under the skin, which prevents him from being bitten and
Speaker 1: vamped himself. So they try to bite him and they
Speaker 1: just scrape their teeth on metal. I love it. And
Speaker 1: then you you kind of you also rewrite it to wear.
Speaker 1: Grandpa is not only the greatest killer that ever lived,
Speaker 1: He's the greatest vampire killer. Van Helsing. Grandpa is is
Speaker 1: Abraham van Helsing. Soult to pull it off to the
Speaker 1: United States, and oh my god, this is so good.
Speaker 1: It rights itself. Okay, we we take back all the
Speaker 1: it's free now this is ours alongst Us or I
Speaker 1: should be fair, Robert, it's yours. It's yours. No, no, no no,
Speaker 1: we can we can do it. I think we can
Speaker 1: do this. Joe, we just gotta get We gotta get
Speaker 1: whoever owns the Texas Chainsaw Masca rights to see things
Speaker 1: our way. I'm sure they'll just give them right up. Alright,
Speaker 1: we have another bit of vampire lore here from a listener.
Speaker 1: This comes to us from Joey in Kentucky. Joey Rights.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I just finished listening to the first Vampire
Speaker 1: Clinic episode, and during the episode you mentioned fun scientific
Speaker 1: explanations for vamporism in fiction, and I wanted to recommend
Speaker 1: Peeps by Scott Westerfield. In it, vampiresm is a mind
Speaker 1: altering parasite and the story is told from the point
Speaker 1: of view of a typhoid marry type Carrier of the Parasite.
Speaker 1: It's a fun little story with some interesting parasitology facts
Speaker 1: thrown in. I'd also like to thank you for all
Speaker 1: the great book recommendations on the show. Basically every time
Speaker 1: one of mentions a book, I write it down. I
Speaker 1: love blind Side, that's the Peter Watts book. And I'm
Speaker 1: halfway through the Culture series. That of course is the
Speaker 1: the en In Banks series. And I've got about a
Speaker 1: dozen more on my reading list. Keep up the good work, Joey.
Speaker 1: I have not read that, but thanks for the recommendation, Joey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to look that up to all right. Now,
Speaker 1: technically I think this was not Halloween monster content, but
Speaker 1: really it is. We've got quite a few good messages
Speaker 1: about monstrous squirrels this this Halloween season, and so I
Speaker 1: think we should plow right into those. They fit right
Speaker 1: that that's basically monster content. Oh yeah, and I imagine
Speaker 1: we're going to keep hearing about squirrels for some time.
Speaker 1: This really has that those episodes really struck a chord.
Speaker 1: Like most recently on Twitter, somebody brought to my attention
Speaker 1: that the new Fallout game follow out. Oh I didn't
Speaker 1: know about that. It has radioactive squirrels in it. Nice Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: people like our our social media feeds have turned at
Speaker 1: least half into people just adding us with squirrel stuff.
Speaker 1: On the subject of squirrels, I don't recall which episode
Speaker 1: it was in which I did this. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: our listener Male episode, but I asked about squirrels in
Speaker 1: the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. I remember exactly
Speaker 1: why this came up. It came up because we mentioned
Speaker 1: that squirrels had been introduced outside of their native ranges,
Speaker 1: and there were squirrels pretty much everywhere except Antarctica. Uh,
Speaker 1: and several listeners from New Zealand got in touch with
Speaker 1: us to say, uh, no squirrels in New Zealand. And so,
Speaker 1: of course, because the Lord of the Rings films were
Speaker 1: shot in New Zealand, you were asking, well, are there
Speaker 1: squirrels in Middle Earth? And oh boy, we got some
Speaker 1: Tolkien pedantry coming on the topic of of the squirrels
Speaker 1: of Middle Earth. So we're gonna run through some of
Speaker 1: these uh and try to acknowledge everyone who who chimed in. Patrick,
Speaker 1: for instance, rights rights in and says there are squirrels
Speaker 1: in the Hobbit when speaking of the vileness of Mirkwood.
Speaker 1: Gandalf talks about black squirrels and other unclean beasts. But
Speaker 1: black squirrels are not even mythical animals. That's just like
Speaker 1: there there are black squirrels. Yeah, but I guess the
Speaker 1: whole thing is like you go into mirake Wood, the
Speaker 1: first thing you notice is the squirrels are different than
Speaker 1: the same way that you know, the squirrels are a
Speaker 1: little bit different in like the movie, it follows just
Speaker 1: northern forest varieties, not southern' it's a different variety. Okay.
Speaker 1: This next message comes from Daniel. Daniel says, Hello, I
Speaker 1: have an interesting perspective to follow up on your squirrel questions. Daniel,
Speaker 1: I think we'll be the judge of that um about
Speaker 1: New Zealand and squirrels. I'm a US citizen and I've
Speaker 1: been living in New Zealand for the past year, so
Speaker 1: I have huge exposure to squirrels in my past life.
Speaker 1: And my wife is actually a conservationist here, so she
Speaker 1: lets me know about all the difference in species. Not
Speaker 1: only that, but we recently watched The Lord of the
Speaker 1: Rings in its entirety. Just before listening to the episode
Speaker 1: that I can remember the only reference of woodland creatures
Speaker 1: is tree Beard the end mentioning to Marry and Pippen.
Speaker 1: How about how rats not shown climb his legs and
Speaker 1: cause terrible tickles? But there aren't mentioned of squirrels unless
Speaker 1: he doesn't understand the difference between rodents, which is very
Speaker 1: possible as he doesn't seem to understand the difference between
Speaker 1: hobbits and orcs. You remember that Mary and Pippen the
Speaker 1: Little Hijinks, Hobbits climb up him that like the Stoner
Speaker 1: Buddy comedy Hobbits. They climb up him and he's like,
Speaker 1: are you works? That's what I remember from that in
Speaker 1: the movie. Okay, Yeah, my son and I had to
Speaker 1: pause on our our reading of The Lord of the Rings,
Speaker 1: so I don't recall from previous readings how that actually
Speaker 1: went down. Daniel continues quote, most of the rodents here
Speaker 1: are ferrets and hedgehogs, though I don't actually know if
Speaker 1: either of those qualified in New Zealand. I don't think
Speaker 1: they do. They are not secure a day. That said,
Speaker 1: there is a quote from the books where l Ron
Speaker 1: mentions time was once when a squirrel could carry a
Speaker 1: nut from tree to tree. From Rivendell to the Great Sea.
Speaker 1: I guess talking about when how far the forests used
Speaker 1: to Uh so, Daniel says, squirrels, they are canonical. If
Speaker 1: you want to follow up on the ramifications this has
Speaker 1: for the species on the islands of New Zealand, feel
Speaker 1: free to email back for more details. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Daniel. You know what I'll grant you. That
Speaker 1: was interesting, I thought, so. I like the idea that
Speaker 1: so far we're learning that yes, you have the black
Speaker 1: squirrels of Mirkwood, but then also Aroun's bringing up squirrels
Speaker 1: in a very like nostalgic way, like the old forest way.
Speaker 1: So perhaps the squirrels are just another thing that have
Speaker 1: been u you know, darkened and made perverse by the
Speaker 1: influence of Saron. Alright, this next one comes to us
Speaker 1: from Kevin. Kevin says, I just finished the listener Male
Speaker 1: episode of the podcast and wanted to assure you that
Speaker 1: Middle Earth definitely has squirrels. I don't recall if there
Speaker 1: is any mention in the Lord of the Rings, but
Speaker 1: I do recall their mentioned in the Hobbit. I did
Speaker 1: a quick search on my kindle and the word squirrels
Speaker 1: has used five times. Of note are two quotes bearing
Speaker 1: three of these instances. In chapter eight Flies and Spiders quote,
Speaker 1: there were black squirrels in the wood. As Bilbo sharp
Speaker 1: inquisitive has got used to seeing things, he could catch
Speaker 1: glimpses of them whisking off in the path and scuttling
Speaker 1: behind tree trunks. A few pages later, they tried shooting
Speaker 1: at the squirrels, and they wasted many arrows before they
Speaker 1: managed to bring one down on the path. But when
Speaker 1: they roasted it, it proved horrible to taste, and they
Speaker 1: shot no more squirrels. And then Kevin continues, it seems
Speaker 1: Token's black squirrels are the darkest of skugs. Now, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, I know why the squirrels of Mirkwood have
Speaker 1: black fur. This has got to be a case of
Speaker 1: of like camouflage melanism, like like the moths, the peppered
Speaker 1: moths of of like the Uk. You know, when there
Speaker 1: was a lot of soot on the tree trunks, the
Speaker 1: moths darkened, so it would be harder to see them
Speaker 1: standing out against in contrast, the tree trunks and the
Speaker 1: surfaces they sat on, right as the trunks darkened. Of course,
Speaker 1: in Mirkwood the trees are very dark, so the squirrels
Speaker 1: want to blend in so as not to be plucked
Speaker 1: off of the branches by spiders and eaten. All right,
Speaker 1: So what about the taste? Why don't they taste so bad? Oh?
Speaker 1: Just because all squirrels taste bad, I don't know. He
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with them being from Mirkwood. I
Speaker 1: assumed two squirrels could probably taste good. Didn't we hear
Speaker 1: from some peoplehood eating squirrels? And I think we did? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in the right stew right, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: kind of the one assumes. One assumes maybe this was
Speaker 1: just their mood affecting their perception of the taste of
Speaker 1: the squirrels. And we have one more here from Fred
Speaker 1: that writes in and says, great show question. Are our
Speaker 1: squirrels mentioned in the Lord of the Rings? Yes? And
Speaker 1: then he u he includes a quote here whether because
Speaker 1: of Strider's skill or for some other reason, they saw
Speaker 1: no sign and heard no sound of any other living
Speaker 1: thing all that day, neither two footed except birds, nor
Speaker 1: foot four footed except one fox, and a few squirrels.
Speaker 1: And Fred says the response ten thousand. I would imagine
Speaker 1: we're not quite ten thousand. But uh, he you did
Speaker 1: add to our our new collective understanding of score of
Speaker 1: the squirrels of Middle Earth. I'm still grooving on my
Speaker 1: camouflage hypothesis that the gears are grinding in my head.
Speaker 1: Proved me wrong out there, proved me wrong. Well. On
Speaker 1: that note, we're gonna leave the squirrels of Mirkwood behind
Speaker 1: and we're gonna take one more break. But when we
Speaker 1: come back. More listener mail from October, Thank you, Thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back now. This piece of male concerns our Vault
Speaker 1: episode about carnivorous plants we talked about. This was an
Speaker 1: episode we recorded a couple of years ago. I think
Speaker 1: about the like legends of human eating trees and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and how that connects to actual carnivorous plants,
Speaker 1: and so our listener Sean got in touch to say Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe. My name is Sean and I'm a
Speaker 1: researcher studying and geosperm flowering, plant evolution and comparative genomics
Speaker 1: at the Leban's Mac Institute at the University of Georgia.
Speaker 1: I've been listening to the podcast for the past year
Speaker 1: during my commune and have enjoyed every second and I
Speaker 1: wish I had found it earlier. I just listened to
Speaker 1: the episode from the Vault Carnivorous Plants. Was intrigued because
Speaker 1: one of the grad students in the lab studies speciation, hybridization,
Speaker 1: and evolution of Saracenia picture plants. I hope I said
Speaker 1: that right. I find carnivorous plants fascinating due to the
Speaker 1: fact that carnivorian plants has evolved independently several times through
Speaker 1: convergent evolution, which I think is really cool and interesting.
Speaker 1: One thing that I was surprised that you guys didn't
Speaker 1: mention is the fact that many carnivorous plants lure insects
Speaker 1: by reflecting U V light. Insects, like ants and flies,
Speaker 1: are sensitive to blue and violet light. We'll see these
Speaker 1: plants emitting a blue fluorescence and are lured toward them.
Speaker 1: The reason why is yet to be understood, but it
Speaker 1: is cool predation strategy that's invisible to us humans. Sean
Speaker 1: also offers that if we're ever interested in doing something
Speaker 1: on the evolution of flowering plants, so we could get
Speaker 1: in touch. But also Sean writes, furthermore, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of cool plant research. I e. Evolutionary biology, transgenics, plant
Speaker 1: pathogen interactions, and much more happening here in the plant
Speaker 1: biology department at you g A and I'm willing to
Speaker 1: help you guys get in contact with the professors who
Speaker 1: would share their research. Finally, i'd like to say thank
Speaker 1: you again for making my commute more enjoyable and keep
Speaker 1: up the great work. Well, thank you, Sean. Uh Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we should look into flowering plants sometime. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I and I love the idea of dipping into more
Speaker 1: local talent. We've been trying to do more of that,
Speaker 1: bringing bringing experts on the show, not via telephone, but
Speaker 1: actually get them in the studio, and they're just there's
Speaker 1: so many great minds in the Atlanta area. We should
Speaker 1: do more of it. All right. At this point, we're
Speaker 1: gonna move on to some listener mail that is related
Speaker 1: to our episode the Curse. How about this one from Taylor?
Speaker 1: What do you think? Let's go for it? All right,
Speaker 1: So Taylor writes in your episode about curses, you pondered
Speaker 1: whether or not there could be legal ramifications for uttering
Speaker 1: a curse on someone In Canada. We actually have a
Speaker 1: law which would impact cursing someone in limited situations. Section
Speaker 1: three sixty five of the Criminal Code of Canada is
Speaker 1: entitled pretending to pry to switchcraft. It states, uh, everyone
Speaker 1: who fraudulently a pretends to exercise or use any kind
Speaker 1: of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration be undertakes for this
Speaker 1: consideration to tell fortunes or see pretends from this skill
Speaker 1: in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to
Speaker 1: discover where, or in what manner anything that is supposed
Speaker 1: to have been stolen or lost maybe found, is guilty
Speaker 1: of an offense punishable on summary conviction. I already have
Speaker 1: so many questions about this um regarding like what the
Speaker 1: difference is between practicing a religion and pretending to practice
Speaker 1: a religion, But we'll wait to the end of the
Speaker 1: email to bring it all up. Okay, Quote, this law
Speaker 1: only applies if you are fraudulently doing an activity and
Speaker 1: therefore goes to the men's rea of the act e g.
Speaker 1: If you act as a psychic and you believe you
Speaker 1: are a psychic, then there is no crime. Whereas if
Speaker 1: you act as a psychic solely to take money from
Speaker 1: a believer, then you have committed a crime. How would
Speaker 1: you determine that that would be so difficult. Um anyway,
Speaker 1: how would this apply to curses? I can think of
Speaker 1: two scenarios where this law may come up. Scenario number one,
Speaker 1: you not believing in curses, know someone who has a strong,
Speaker 1: irrational belief in curses. You do not like this person
Speaker 1: and want to cause ill will on them, and despite
Speaker 1: not believing in curses, you cast one on this believer.
Speaker 1: It causes a severe negative downturn in this person's mental
Speaker 1: well being, physical well being, or their financial well being,
Speaker 1: because of course they must find someone to dispel this curse.
Speaker 1: You will be guilty under section three sixty five of
Speaker 1: the Criminal Code of Canada. Maybe if you like, write
Speaker 1: out a manifesto is stating all your plans, I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would have to. They would have to catch your
Speaker 1: your villainous admission of guilt on tape or yeah, you
Speaker 1: have a bond villain monologue. Of course it would make
Speaker 1: it not efficacious, right if you if you actually monol
Speaker 1: to the bond, you recursing. Scenario number two, you not
Speaker 1: believing in curses, once again accept funds from someone to
Speaker 1: dispel a curse which which this person believes has fallen
Speaker 1: on them. This person may be working in conjunction with
Speaker 1: the you in scenario one to extort money from this person.
Speaker 1: In this scenario, once again there is clear fraud on
Speaker 1: your part and you will be guilty under section three
Speaker 1: sixty five of the Criminal Code of Canada. Of course,
Speaker 1: this requires very specific circumstances, and if in either of
Speaker 1: the above scenarios you in fact believe in curses, then
Speaker 1: no crime has been committed. Seems like this law would
Speaker 1: never be used for curses, right Well, someone was charged
Speaker 1: under section three sixty twelve in Toronto for charging thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars to remove a family curse, and Taylor links
Speaker 1: to a source slightly different. But man in ten was
Speaker 1: charged under this section for charging six figures to remove
Speaker 1: an evil spirit from a family member. And then Taylor
Speaker 1: links to another source and finally, in the Edmonton Police
Speaker 1: Force had to release a statement warning people not to
Speaker 1: fall for paranormal frauds, which includes curse removal. I thought
Speaker 1: you would find this interesting and I do not know
Speaker 1: if there would be any comparables in the US. Uh. Well, there,
Speaker 1: I mean there are certainly in the US fraudulent predatory
Speaker 1: practitioners of occult and crafty sciences. Yeah you can. You
Speaker 1: can turn on the TV and see them every day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The mediums who will like charge you a premium to
Speaker 1: talk to your dead family members and stuff that I try,
Speaker 1: I mean, I try not to harp too much. Would
Speaker 1: be like hateing non people who believe in things that
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any good evidence for. But that
Speaker 1: is one that really just makes me mad, Like the
Speaker 1: you know, selling access to dead family members and stuff
Speaker 1: like that that I get kind of furious when I
Speaker 1: read about that. Oh yeah, I mean that's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that Harry Youdini to get you with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because really we're talking about the difference between practicing religion
Speaker 1: or practicing some sort of supernatural belief system and simply
Speaker 1: praying upon those who do um, you know, going after them,
Speaker 1: trying to milk them for for money um. And clearly
Speaker 1: one of those two scenarios is definitely bad. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, anybody out there who is just going out
Speaker 1: there to uh, to manipulate people and prey upon whatever
Speaker 1: kind of superstitious ideas they might already have, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's deplorable and that that should be punishable under
Speaker 1: criminal codes. But where it's great for me is the
Speaker 1: idea of like, well, I can certainly partake in religion
Speaker 1: and partake in in rituals of that that faith or
Speaker 1: belief system without completely believing in it, even want struggling
Speaker 1: to believe in it. You know that every day? Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: A lot of the people go into church sitting in
Speaker 1: the pew next to you, might not really believe everything,
Speaker 1: but they're seeing some kind of value in what they're doing. Right.
Speaker 1: And then ultimately, like we discussed, like how different is
Speaker 1: a curse than a prayer? You know, it depends how
Speaker 1: you're you're framing it. I guess I've heard some some
Speaker 1: prayers before. That sounds a bit like curses. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh and you know where would that
Speaker 1: fall under such a ruling? I don't know. It's just
Speaker 1: all interesting food for thought. This is a really interesting
Speaker 1: listener mail that we received. Yeah um yeah. Again with
Speaker 1: the like selling access to dead family members through you know,
Speaker 1: a spirit medium or something like this, You never it's
Speaker 1: hard to prove fraud in those cases like the like
Speaker 1: Taylor mentioned in the email. You need specific kinds of
Speaker 1: evidence and stuff that probably aren't going to be there
Speaker 1: most of the time. So then again, I think about
Speaker 1: the fact that if you're going to be like a
Speaker 1: spirit medium, you're probably going to be better at it
Speaker 1: if you know you were a fraud, because then you
Speaker 1: can consciously practice cold reading techniques and trickery and all that.
Speaker 1: Whereas you act if you actually believe you have power,
Speaker 1: it seems like you'd be less likely to produce really
Speaker 1: impressive results, you know what I mean. Yeah, Now, something
Speaker 1: worth exploring in a future episode would be to what
Speaker 1: extent we have that space between though, where someone is
Speaker 1: utilizing these various tricks but doing so from a place
Speaker 1: of belief, you know, like you're essentially going out out
Speaker 1: there and doing a cold reading. But but what if
Speaker 1: you're doing it and you're believing that these are like
Speaker 1: the tools of reaching out into the ether and you know,
Speaker 1: um and connecting with the spirit realm, Like it seems
Speaker 1: like it's possible. But I haven't read anything yet to
Speaker 1: really answer that for me. Well, yeah, people's powers of
Speaker 1: self justification are incredibly powerful at any rate. I hope
Speaker 1: Taylor is considering a future in Canadian curse law, because
Speaker 1: can you specialize in this It sounds like a great
Speaker 1: um CBC show. I would watch, you know, the Canadian
Speaker 1: Curse Law Attorney show, Abraham van Helsing interning at law
Speaker 1: now speaking that that wouldn't be it? What who who
Speaker 1: who gets rid of curses? Is? I'm not sure off hand,
Speaker 1: um Daniel Webster. Maybe I don't know UM any right.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Van Helsing, though, we did have someone right
Speaker 1: in Rolf who wrote in and said, hey, guys love
Speaker 1: the show. Might Minola, the creator of hell Boy, did
Speaker 1: some of the character designs on the Dracula movie. The
Speaker 1: armor is classic Magnola, and if you're looking for some
Speaker 1: really cool aquatic stuff, check out the comic low by
Speaker 1: Rick Reminder and Greg go Toccini all the best role.
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar in my Magnolia Magnolia, Magnola, Magnola, Magnolia Manola.
Speaker 1: I think Mike Manola, I believe is how I'd read that.
Speaker 1: But I do love that armor. I think he's referring
Speaker 1: to the armor we talked about in uh, Francis Ford
Speaker 1: Coppola's Dracula movie. Ford Coppola's Brown Stoker's Dracula. Yes, the
Speaker 1: Coppola one where he wears this like muscle looks like
Speaker 1: exposed raw muscle in the armor and it's so good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love Mike's work. Um. I used to read hell Boy.
Speaker 1: I read the first several volumes of that, the Conqueror
Speaker 1: Worm being my favorite of those. But then his work
Speaker 1: also shows up in a number of different film projects
Speaker 1: he worked, of course, most notably he worked with Giamo
Speaker 1: de Toro on the hell Boy movies, but his work
Speaker 1: also shows up. I think it's some other adult Toro
Speaker 1: films as well. Uh, you know, set in monster design,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. I only saw the first Hellboy movie,
Speaker 1: but I remember thinking it had some great design in it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The second one has some tremendous design in it as well.
Speaker 1: You've got you know, evil fairy kings and queens, that
Speaker 1: sort of things. There's some some wonderful elements in it. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well does that wrap it up for today? I think so.
Speaker 1: Let's see. I have one last little bit of email
Speaker 1: here that's just a general, um fun email that I
Speaker 1: just want to read real quick. This comes to us
Speaker 1: from Chris. I've listened to almost every podcast of YouTube
Speaker 1: Christian and Julie as well. Needless to say, I like
Speaker 1: the ideas your podcast turns out at a truly staggering rate,
Speaker 1: despite the colossal amount of time researching must be put
Speaker 1: into it. A mighty a commendable thing it is. Indeed,
Speaker 1: my favorite episodes are definitely the ones regarding potentially upsetting
Speaker 1: or highly stirring philosophical subject matter. The Boltzman Brain episode,
Speaker 1: the Mind Flavor episode, the bicameral mind. Anything with borheyes
Speaker 1: are Scott Baker all ought to be put on the
Speaker 1: Greatest hit c D. Okay, when I'm not feeling well,
Speaker 1: I put on my headphones, turn on some stuff to
Speaker 1: buy your mind and start relaxing. He goes on to say,
Speaker 1: I've been listening for a very long time, and I've
Speaker 1: never written in but just wanted to tell you, folks,
Speaker 1: your work and consideration is appreciated. Right now, I'm reading
Speaker 1: The Three Body Problem by c. Chin Lou, Preacher by
Speaker 1: Gareth Innis and Steve Dillon, and Altruism by Matthew Richard.
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with that one. That sounds familiar. I
Speaker 1: think that's a book I've seen referenced around excellent. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll have to I'll have to check that one out
Speaker 1: as well. I did read Preacher back in the day,
Speaker 1: but it's been a very long time. Glad you're reading
Speaker 1: three Body Problem, Chris, I hope you enjoy it all. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: there we go, hope fully we've gotten a lot of
Speaker 1: the the the the supernatural bugs out of out of
Speaker 1: our mail body here. Well, now that we've read Taylor's email,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if we actually should have paid that Canadian
Speaker 1: machine exorcist. That may have been a bad call. Do
Speaker 1: you think we got scammed? We might have been scammed.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but uh, I think he's doing better.
Speaker 1: I think he's doing better. So I think we're in
Speaker 1: a in a place where we can continue. Now we
Speaker 1: can actually we actually have the the courage to press
Speaker 1: on through the holidays and continue to bring some great
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and some great
Speaker 1: episodes of invention as well. In the meantime, check out
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you'll
Speaker 1: find all the podcast episodes. Links out to our various
Speaker 1: social media accounts, including Facebook, where we have that discussion module,
Speaker 1: a great place to interact with other listeners as and
Speaker 1: and also with the hosts. Here. Again, this is Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind discussion module on Facebook. Also Stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your Mind dot com has a link to
Speaker 1: our merchandise store. You'll find all those cool designs we've
Speaker 1: been talking about. Big thanks as all is to our
Speaker 1: wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Torry Harrison. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us to let
Speaker 1: us know feedback on this episode or any other, to
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