Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas. And this
Speaker 1: is a special listener mail edition, so we better call
Speaker 1: the robot over here added fanfare for the robot night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we've been neglecting him recently. We have been running
Speaker 1: the habit of of just focusing on the episodes, and
Speaker 1: we continue to get all this great listener mail in
Speaker 1: and we we read it. We we really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: We respond where we can during our busy days. But
Speaker 1: eventually we build up enough. We have to get to it.
Speaker 1: We have to let the robot out of his way,
Speaker 1: and and then this is what happens. We devote a
Speaker 1: whole episode, especially your your feedback about names. We received
Speaker 1: so many about nomini determinism, about how the name that
Speaker 1: we were given, how it affects our ultimate outcome in life,
Speaker 1: our opportunities in life, and how we see ourselves, how
Speaker 1: other people see us and treat us. And uh, obviously
Speaker 1: everyone out there has a name. Everyone out there has
Speaker 1: has some sort of an opinion on to what extent
Speaker 1: their name is affecting who they are so we we
Speaker 1: received a lot of cool content. We cannot go through
Speaker 1: all of it. Yeah, at some point I feel like
Speaker 1: we had something like six a day just on nominative determinism.
Speaker 1: So yeah, let him all right? Uh. We heard from
Speaker 1: Polly who wrote in and mentioned that her name was
Speaker 1: supposed to be Apollonia, which, of course uh is the
Speaker 1: god of music, poetry, art oracles, archery, plague, medicine, sun light,
Speaker 1: and knowledge. But she says her parents chickened out and
Speaker 1: named her Pauline instead, but she went back around and
Speaker 1: reclaimed Apollonia, and so she writes to us as Polly okay,
Speaker 1: and also the Muse of Prince you forgot Apollonia? The
Speaker 1: Muse of Princes and Prince Prince singer up. I believe
Speaker 1: like there's a character Apollonia. Oh, I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: I remember there was a character in the movie over
Speaker 1: Drawn at the Memory Bank named Papolonia. But that's that's
Speaker 1: my main uh in for that name, all right. We
Speaker 1: also heard from our listener Jasper. Jasper was actually given
Speaker 1: the birth name Luke. He says he grew up in
Speaker 1: a very strict with a very strict Christian dad, and
Speaker 1: he was getting into the trouble trouble all the time.
Speaker 1: So he associated that name of getting caught and Luke
Speaker 1: of course means light and an enlightened one and has
Speaker 1: the same route as the as the name Lucifer. And
Speaker 1: so he ended up eventually rebelling against his former identity
Speaker 1: and choosing Jasper as his new identity, which which I
Speaker 1: think this is. You know, this is an important aspect
Speaker 1: in a lot of people's history with their names. You're
Speaker 1: either you're given one version of your name and you
Speaker 1: ended up sort of shifting it into into your own
Speaker 1: personal identity, or many people just straight up abandon it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're abandoning the simple name for the stranger name,
Speaker 1: or it seems like just as often it's the it's
Speaker 1: the the opposite of that, they end up taking the
Speaker 1: strange name and exchanging it for the normal one. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like the star Bellied speeches and the star machine, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I took the E off of my name
Speaker 1: at one point, as as a tiny youth a youth, yeah,
Speaker 1: And then another point I think I wanted to put
Speaker 1: some boom lots over the you. But what's the point
Speaker 1: of that? Yeah, pretty Julie that's true. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just shifted around from various boring versions of my boring name.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's basically just varying levels of masculine and feminine.
Speaker 1: You have Robert, you have Rob, you have Robbie, you
Speaker 1: have Bob, Bob, and it seems like Robin was name.
Speaker 1: You know, people would refer to me as all of those,
Speaker 1: depending on where they were in my family. Didn't you
Speaker 1: post something once that it was like the lifespan of
Speaker 1: the name Robert, Like as a young kid, the boys
Speaker 1: called Robbie. Yeah, you know, I can't take credit for
Speaker 1: creating it, but someone on the internet created this kind
Speaker 1: of timeline. Yeah, where it's it's like the cycle of life.
Speaker 1: In the in the morning, in the dawn of your years,
Speaker 1: I guess you're a Robbie, you Robert, and then in
Speaker 1: the sunset years your Bob. Yeah. All right, Now here's
Speaker 1: an interesting, uh a bit of feedback on the same topic,
Speaker 1: and this comes to us from page page right soon
Speaker 1: and says, I'm surprised you didn't discuss or at least
Speaker 1: mentioned changing one's name and adulthead, or or for that matter,
Speaker 1: in infancy. A friend of mine had to rename her
Speaker 1: child because no one could pronounce the original name. I
Speaker 1: was born with a name which stereotypically did not match
Speaker 1: my gender. There were several boys all through primary school
Speaker 1: with the same name, and perhaps that influence my departure
Speaker 1: from the feminine. Apparently, at as young as five or six,
Speaker 1: I was introducing myself by different names, and at fifteen
Speaker 1: started going by a nickname completely disconnected from my birth name.
Speaker 1: Nicknames changed, and eventually, when I was eighteen, I worked
Speaker 1: out what would be a good new name for myself,
Speaker 1: then went down to the Office of Births, Deaths, and
Speaker 1: Marriages and changed it. I've been Paige ever since, and
Speaker 1: just hearing my birth name makes me I'm comfortable. Did
Speaker 1: I've perhaps change my destiny by changing my name? How
Speaker 1: does hating one's name and refusing to use it whenever
Speaker 1: possible affect things? How are babies or children affected when
Speaker 1: their name is changed? And how do children who cannot
Speaker 1: pronounce their names fair? My daughter has a speech impediment
Speaker 1: and cannot pronounce her shortened name uh Meiwi versus neely
Speaker 1: let alone her first long name. Thanks for the podcast.
Speaker 1: I've been listening for over a year now. Uh And
Speaker 1: when I found you. I devoured them all as quickly
Speaker 1: as I could. Page I read this entire email because
Speaker 1: here on the episode, because I think she did raise
Speaker 1: a lot of cool points. It's gonna be, you know,
Speaker 1: chewing over the uh, the issues involved in naming and
Speaker 1: reclaiming a name or abandoning a name. I kind of
Speaker 1: feel like altering your name is a sort of rite
Speaker 1: of passage anyway, and it does seem to happen in
Speaker 1: those teenage years when you're trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: your personality is, who you want to be in the world. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: and uh And as far as the speech issue goes, um,
Speaker 1: my son has some catching up on his speech because
Speaker 1: he had a cliff flip cleft ballot and his name
Speaker 1: is is Sebastian, but he we just call him Bastion
Speaker 1: and the home because you know, you can, you can
Speaker 1: say that easier. And I also think I, like a
Speaker 1: little toddler, seemed to really go for more of the
Speaker 1: one or two syllables anyway, Like that third syllable that's
Speaker 1: just something to trip over, so you might as well
Speaker 1: cut it down. Um. But we also made sure that
Speaker 1: we named the new cat a name that he could
Speaker 1: stay easily because they're like, we want him to be
Speaker 1: able to say the cat's name. We're not gonna give
Speaker 1: it some crazy name like Zartagnan or something. So we
Speaker 1: called the new cat Mochi, and that he can say. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of my daughter's earliest little snugly toys was named
Speaker 1: as Morelda, and people would get so annoyed with us.
Speaker 1: They like, what she can't pronounce as Morelda? What would
Speaker 1: she she call it? Um? She never really cottoned to it,
Speaker 1: so we never had to worry about it. But shoot high,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying, because they seem to come up
Speaker 1: with like if they if they can't or don't want
Speaker 1: to say all the syllables and something. They they're really
Speaker 1: weird about how they choose, pick and choose. For instance,
Speaker 1: my son, for whatever reason, is still calling water ewa,
Speaker 1: Like why, Like, clearly you can say waw and you
Speaker 1: I mean you could, you could, You could hit it
Speaker 1: more on the head, I think, But instead he's calling
Speaker 1: it ewa to the point where I have to stop
Speaker 1: myself from thinking of it as ewa because it does
Speaker 1: it does sound give him that it sounds good. You
Speaker 1: did ask me to give you give you your class
Speaker 1: of EA the other day and I was like, what, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, here's another but listener mail. This comes to
Speaker 1: us from Nathan in Australia. Nathan says, my grandfather's name
Speaker 1: was Victor. He was a champion rugby league player, lawn
Speaker 1: bowler and golfer. So there's another example of of a
Speaker 1: name that may or may not have have pushed uh
Speaker 1: the individual onto Victory. Uh. And on a similar note,
Speaker 1: here's one from Victoria, also in Australia. We have a
Speaker 1: lot of listeners in Australia. She writes it and says,
Speaker 1: I thought you might be interesting in a story about
Speaker 1: my name. As you can see from my email, it's
Speaker 1: Victoria's strike But here's more to it because, as you see,
Speaker 1: I'm adopted. Five years ago. I found my biological family
Speaker 1: and their surname is Force, so technically i'm Victoria's Strike Force.
Speaker 1: My boyfriend, on the other hand, has been terribly unlucky.
Speaker 1: His name is Ben Ben Laden been Lodden, perhaps eat
Speaker 1: way close enough to conceivably caused some problems. I want
Speaker 1: to think through the podcast it rocks and makes my
Speaker 1: daily train ride to work a joy. Victoria, we had
Speaker 1: Gillian right into us uh and give us some some
Speaker 1: very cool feedback on the episode and on some other
Speaker 1: topics as well. But pointed out that they worked in
Speaker 1: a hospital where there was a doctor doctor the last
Speaker 1: name d O C K T O R so and
Speaker 1: people refer to the doctor as doctor, doctor, doctor doctor. Yes,
Speaker 1: and here's an interesting question. Finally, this has brought up
Speaker 1: to us by our listeners. Zerik Zerrec of course has
Speaker 1: a very cool first name of him, may say so,
Speaker 1: a very creative first name. So he mentioned that he
Speaker 1: even though his parents were very on of the name
Speaker 1: and uh and and and stead, that they made it
Speaker 1: up for him especially, he felt he felt limited, but
Speaker 1: he felt like it wasn't his name. It felt alien
Speaker 1: to him anyway. He asked, do you think you quote
Speaker 1: normals unquote could explain to a person with a weird, foreign,
Speaker 1: meaningless name, what it feels like to have a common name.
Speaker 1: Does it just feel like nothing? Because that's more or
Speaker 1: less how I feel about my name most of the time.
Speaker 1: And that's an interesting question because, like I say, I've
Speaker 1: always felt like my name is boring, and I've always
Speaker 1: felt like my normal name is just it's almost like
Speaker 1: a number I'm given like, I don't feel a particular
Speaker 1: attachment or identity to it. I am just sort of
Speaker 1: I am who I am in spite of having the
Speaker 1: name Robert Lamb. Well, I mean, the thing is is
Speaker 1: that when you have a normal name and you're introducing yourself,
Speaker 1: people often misremember it as another normal name, like Surely
Speaker 1: or Judy, Julie, you know, and so Zak. I would
Speaker 1: say that people probably pay a little bit more attention
Speaker 1: to your name, maybe even more attention to you as
Speaker 1: a person, because they don't automatically have these sort of
Speaker 1: common associations with your name. I think it's kind of awesome,
Speaker 1: although I understand like if you don't, maybe there's a
Speaker 1: sense of otherness with that name that you might feel
Speaker 1: more than the average Joe. Yeah, it's it does seem
Speaker 1: like a situation where you can't really win. You give
Speaker 1: a kid a weird name, they're gonna want a normal one.
Speaker 1: You give them get a normal name, they're gonna a
Speaker 1: weird one. Maybe that solution is you have to give
Speaker 1: them both and then they can sort of pick and
Speaker 1: choose which one they want to go with. Well, isn't
Speaker 1: there already that that idea that this generation um will
Speaker 1: need to change their name by age eighteen anyway because
Speaker 1: of security issues and oversharing on the internet. It is
Speaker 1: just true. So and I wonder to what extent the
Speaker 1: the normal abnormal name shift will feature into that. Do
Speaker 1: you tend to have a crazier name during this rebellious
Speaker 1: wild stage? Or is that when you have a normal
Speaker 1: name and you're rebelling against it. And if we're going
Speaker 1: to live to be five undred years old, as Albredy
Speaker 1: de Gray that bio gerontologists says, maybe just keep changing
Speaker 1: your name like every century. Right, Yeah, just keep reinventing
Speaker 1: yourself because you're going to forget most of it, everything
Speaker 1: that's happened to you anyway, right, yeah, alright. We got
Speaker 1: a couple of emails about pro pri exception, this idea
Speaker 1: of figuring out where your body is and space and time,
Speaker 1: and uh, here is one from Brenna. She says, I
Speaker 1: enjoyed your recent podcast. I am a therapist who works
Speaker 1: with infants and toddlers with special needs ages zero at five.
Speaker 1: Many of my kids have challenges with appropriate exception, and
Speaker 1: children delays ippropriate exception often present its difficulty interacting with
Speaker 1: objects in themselves. For example, the children's song Wheels on
Speaker 1: the Bus encourages children to rotate their arms in a
Speaker 1: circular pattern around each other. Robert narrating this right now,
Speaker 1: It is a good song. Children need motor planning appropriate
Speaker 1: exception to carry out this action. However, because they don't
Speaker 1: yet understand where their body is in space and time
Speaker 1: in relation to itself, they often have greater difficulty with
Speaker 1: this complex action. And she goes on to say that, um,
Speaker 1: if they have delays appropriate reception, it's not uncommon that
Speaker 1: their vestibular sense is affected as well, and when that's affected,
Speaker 1: it can be really difficult to manage properceptive needs. So
Speaker 1: you're talking about balance and coordination, and she says that
Speaker 1: in adults you can kind of adapt, but in kids,
Speaker 1: it's really hard on paraphrasing, by the way, she says,
Speaker 1: because they never learn the skill to begin with. And
Speaker 1: so she says, if there are any listeners with kids
Speaker 1: who have difficulty with propriate reception or vestibular development, she
Speaker 1: wanted to share a couple of at home activities that
Speaker 1: parents can do with her kids. Um. She says that
Speaker 1: activities that involve heavy pushing and pulling, which in turn
Speaker 1: provide greater sensory feedback. You can fill a wagon with
Speaker 1: toys to pull, pushing a toy grocery cart or rolling
Speaker 1: weighted balls. She said. That's a great start, but no
Speaker 1: more than temperation or their body weight for the pushing
Speaker 1: and pulling. You can buy a pop up tennel or
Speaker 1: a tent to give them practice traveling through different spaces. Again,
Speaker 1: we take all of this for granted, right, um, she said,
Speaker 1: A good old fashioned pillow forward is great too, and
Speaker 1: songs like head, shoulders, knees and toes if you know
Speaker 1: that one, if you're happy and you know it, ladybug.
Speaker 1: These are all good for coordination with body parts. And finally,
Speaker 1: she says that you could kind of create a swing
Speaker 1: with a blanket or a towel. Says she used as
Speaker 1: a toy parachute, and she twists the ends together with
Speaker 1: the child inside. She gently lifts the child a couple
Speaker 1: inches off the floor and let some swing from side
Speaker 1: to side, and that the kids love this and they
Speaker 1: pop their head out to see what's going on. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: things that we take for granted, this idea that you're
Speaker 1: moving through space and time, and always I've always wondered
Speaker 1: about this because I've noticed that as my daughter develops.
Speaker 1: She's five years old now, um, but she seems to
Speaker 1: be going through a growth spurt. She seems to be
Speaker 1: falling a lot more. And I wonder if it's because
Speaker 1: the borders of your body are rapidly changing and you
Speaker 1: don't You're not as um as familiar with how your
Speaker 1: body he is moving through space and time. It's like
Speaker 1: having iTunes or Adobe on your machine. It constantly needs
Speaker 1: the updates. And yes, there you can't keep up with
Speaker 1: a number of updates that are required to properly orient
Speaker 1: yourself in time and space. Perhaps, Yeah, And I also
Speaker 1: remember too that when I was pregnant, particularly in the
Speaker 1: third trimester, I really did not know where I was.
Speaker 1: I mean like I would go through I would bump
Speaker 1: into things all the time because I didn't really have
Speaker 1: a sense of the borders of my body. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if any other women experienced that. So proprioception continues
Speaker 1: to be this really fascinating topic. Yeah, I had we
Speaker 1: receiving another email on the topic from Michael. Michael wrote
Speaker 1: in with an email titled propri exception Glitches. He says,
Speaker 1: several years ago, I had a table saw accident. The
Speaker 1: resulted in my left index finger spending a couple of
Speaker 1: months wrapped in bandages. When the bandages came out, my
Speaker 1: doctor told me to touch as many different textures as
Speaker 1: possible and to look at my finger as I did it,
Speaker 1: so that my brain would know how to interpret the
Speaker 1: signals it was receiving. The damage to my finger, followed
Speaker 1: by a long swaddling, essentially rebooted my brain's relationship with
Speaker 1: my finger, and I had to retrain it. During this
Speaker 1: reboot process, I developed a habit of rubbing my index
Speaker 1: finger and thumb together. Several years later, I injured my
Speaker 1: thumb and was surprised to find that my index finger
Speaker 1: was also feeling the pain of the injury. Apparently a
Speaker 1: few wires end up getting crossed thanks to my little
Speaker 1: nervous tick. Huh okay um. Here's another one about appropriate exception.
Speaker 1: This is from J in Tilsonburg, Ontario, Canada, and he
Speaker 1: says that when I was younger, I raised a bit
Speaker 1: of motocross and rode for fun since I was eight
Speaker 1: years old. On a few rare occasions, when racing as
Speaker 1: hard as I could, I would get into an almost
Speaker 1: meditative mind state where I would swear the bike felt
Speaker 1: like a part of me. I could almost feel the
Speaker 1: ground under my front tire as if an extension of
Speaker 1: my arms, uh, and the field attraction left in the
Speaker 1: soil through the soles of my feet while either in
Speaker 1: the air on the throttle where I end it and
Speaker 1: the bike began felt blurred. This was also when I
Speaker 1: felt the fastest and most confident on the bike. Now,
Speaker 1: I was no superstar racers, so I wonder whether the
Speaker 1: pros or other bikers have had the sensation. Thanks again, Jay,
Speaker 1: our boss are sort of not boss anymore. Um connell
Speaker 1: actually uses a motorcycle, and he had said, he had
Speaker 1: mentioned before uses that as his main form of transportation,
Speaker 1: that when he's in traffic and he's on the highway,
Speaker 1: that he gets into this meditative state with the bike
Speaker 1: because it's uh such a trepidacious ride that he really
Speaker 1: has to focus all of his energy into what he's
Speaker 1: doing on that bike. And I thought, well, that's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. That sort of lines up with what Jay
Speaker 1: is saying. All right. We also recently did a rerun
Speaker 1: of our episode on the Science of Beards, which is
Speaker 1: a popular episode, and to no one's surprise, it was
Speaker 1: popular again the second time. Uh So we received this
Speaker 1: one from Renee. Renee writes, and I'm sending this on
Speaker 1: account of the Signs of Beards episode, which I listened
Speaker 1: to today while running. The topic of facial hair has
Speaker 1: always interested me. Why certain people prefer certain styles, different reasons,
Speaker 1: why people have it, etcetera. I enjoyed your episode and
Speaker 1: thought you would like to hear some things. I know,
Speaker 1: when you talked about Abraham Lincoln liking to wrestle and
Speaker 1: having a beard, I was surprised you did not mention
Speaker 1: the story of why he grew his beard. You might
Speaker 1: already know it, but here is some of the letter
Speaker 1: written to Lincoln while he was running for office. I'm
Speaker 1: going to summon my Laura Ingles Wilder here. Okay, dear sir,
Speaker 1: my father has just come home from the fair and
Speaker 1: brought home your picture and Mr Hamlin's. I am a
Speaker 1: little girl, only eleven years old, but want you to
Speaker 1: be President of the United States very much, so I
Speaker 1: hope you won't think me very bold to write to
Speaker 1: such a great man as you are. I have got
Speaker 1: four brothers and part of them will vote for you anyway,
Speaker 1: And if you let your whiskers grow. I will try
Speaker 1: and get the rest of them to vote for you.
Speaker 1: You would look a great deal better, for your face
Speaker 1: is so thin. All the eies like whiskers, and they
Speaker 1: would tease their husbands to vote for you, and then
Speaker 1: you would be president. My father is going to vote
Speaker 1: for you, and if I was a man, I would
Speaker 1: vote for you too. But I will try to get
Speaker 1: everyone to vote for you that I can. Well, there
Speaker 1: you go from the from the mouths of babes right
Speaker 1: talking about whiskers, how adorable, making his face looked thicker
Speaker 1: and more more capable of taking a punch. I think
Speaker 1: she was like the first focus group. Yeah, accidentally, I
Speaker 1: think she was. All right, here's another one about beards.
Speaker 1: Is it from Martin Howdy from Texas? Y'all, I just
Speaker 1: heard your podcast on beers. As a bearded fellow, I
Speaker 1: thought i'd cheer some of my experience with the general public.
Speaker 1: I have it quite the mixed reaction to my beard.
Speaker 1: But the one thing that really struck me was that
Speaker 1: the larger portion of the younger generation has a positive
Speaker 1: reaction to my beard and is usually impressed, but the
Speaker 1: older thirties and up seemed to have a more negative reaction.
Speaker 1: One seventy is fellow even went so far as to
Speaker 1: tell me that society would fix me and that if
Speaker 1: I didn't shave that bleep off, I'd wind up in
Speaker 1: a loony it. Uh. The older people get, the more
Speaker 1: negative their statements. Besides that, my girlfriend likes my beard
Speaker 1: and most of my friends are in agreement that I
Speaker 1: look better with it than without it. That might be
Speaker 1: because I have a hatchet face. Oh we doubt that.
Speaker 1: The podcast was the first podcast and made me go
Speaker 1: to y'all's website, and speaking of faces, I was surprised
Speaker 1: at how y'all looked. Y'all should do a podcast about
Speaker 1: voices and faces and how we associate them. I thoroughly
Speaker 1: enjoy the show. Keep up the good work, Martin. All right,
Speaker 1: thanks Martin. Yeah. We uh we hear from listeners from
Speaker 1: time to time they're like, oh my god, I saw
Speaker 1: photos of you guys and not at all what I imagined,
Speaker 1: and I'm deeply upset because I imagine something else for you. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, he mentioned you know, uh, Martin here is
Speaker 1: from Texas, and I instantly thought, uh, two MPR there
Speaker 1: is there's one MPR reporter from Texas. This often featured
Speaker 1: you've probably heard him as a real, real Texan voice,
Speaker 1: but a soothing voice almost like there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of Wilford Brimley in there, and a little bit of
Speaker 1: h and Marie Stouffer from the old you know, a
Speaker 1: wildlife show. Very soothing and and so I form in
Speaker 1: my mind this kind of picture of this bearded Wilfred
Speaker 1: Brimley s guy, maybe a little a little bit of
Speaker 1: that character from Parks and rec with a big mustache,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, some of that going on. And then
Speaker 1: I look him up online and he's just a guy,
Speaker 1: like does not look like my mental helt. I thought
Speaker 1: you're gonna say, like he had a faux hawk. No, no,
Speaker 1: he had, he doesn't. You know, he's not on the
Speaker 1: on the other end of the spectrum, but he's very
Speaker 1: much at the middle end of the middle portion of
Speaker 1: the spectrum where I just would not pick him out
Speaker 1: of a lineup. Is that voice any day of the week.
Speaker 1: I know it is interesting psychologically what we do, and
Speaker 1: we make up these ideas of what people should look like.
Speaker 1: And I do that a lot in fiction, you know,
Speaker 1: so I can see how people when they're listening to
Speaker 1: us might be a little bit like what's what you know?
Speaker 1: Like I think I said before, nothing works me more
Speaker 1: than being uh, you know, many pages into a book,
Speaker 1: maybe even halfway through, and then the narrator decides to
Speaker 1: tell me some it as a mustache. Noache, tell me
Speaker 1: like the first sentence. Alright, we have an email from
Speaker 1: Will and he is talking about our episode Heartbeat in
Speaker 1: the Brain. He says, Hey, guys, first time writing in
Speaker 1: long time listener. While listening to Heartbeat in the Brain,
Speaker 1: Hole in the Skull podcast on my way into work
Speaker 1: this morning, I found it very interesting, as I do
Speaker 1: most of the topics. As I was listening, I couldn't
Speaker 1: help but think about a different kind of hole in
Speaker 1: the school for quote unquote medical purposes, allabotomy. I first
Speaker 1: heard of a lot body of procedure while at college.
Speaker 1: I went to college down the road from Weston, West Virginia,
Speaker 1: at West Virginia Wesleyan College, which is home to the
Speaker 1: second largest handstone building in the world, now known as
Speaker 1: trans Alleghanty Lunatic Asylum. When it was first built, though
Speaker 1: it was known as Western State Hospital. As the new
Speaker 1: name implies, the Western State Hospital with Mental Hospital and
Speaker 1: operated from eighteen sixty four to nine and has a
Speaker 1: very dark history over the one in thirty years of
Speaker 1: it being open. I believe that either the history of
Speaker 1: West Instant Hospital or lobotomies would be an awesome follow
Speaker 1: up after the treped Nation podcast always Listening, will Um
Speaker 1: thanks well, and that just reminded me that in one
Speaker 1: of the World Science Festival panels had to do with genetics.
Speaker 1: Eugenics was brought up because eugenics sort of as they
Speaker 1: discussed it, UM proliferated during a time period in which
Speaker 1: a lot of people were being put in mental institutions,
Speaker 1: and they should not have been put into mental institutions.
Speaker 1: A number of these people they might have been UM
Speaker 1: drug or alcohol addicts, or they may have just had
Speaker 1: anxiety problems. In society's um idea here in the late
Speaker 1: eight hundreds was just lock them up. At the same time,
Speaker 1: you've got eugenics happening, and they're saying maybe we could
Speaker 1: root out these sort of unsavory characters and UM along
Speaker 1: those lines, people began to be sterilized in these institutions. Well,
Speaker 1: we also have a number of other things happening, like lobotomies,
Speaker 1: and so I agree. I think this is a really
Speaker 1: ripe area for exploration, so it's not quite on the
Speaker 1: same level. It's the procedure that came up there in
Speaker 1: our Digestion series about the individual who was treating constipation
Speaker 1: chronic constipation by removing the uh, the large intestines and
Speaker 1: just rerouting it. Right. For a second, I thought you
Speaker 1: were talking about that moment in Mary Rich's Gulp in
Speaker 1: which they were talking about which president is it? Um.
Speaker 1: He had got shot in the liver and so he
Speaker 1: couldn't be I think so he had to be fed
Speaker 1: through the anus. Yeah, that read the rectal feeding. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't really have anything. I was not talking about
Speaker 1: rectal feeding, but the thank you. That's why I just
Speaker 1: had that moment where I was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to get out of this. Robert help, Well, let's
Speaker 1: get out of by grabbing another listener mail from the
Speaker 1: robot here. This one comes to us from You'll You'll
Speaker 1: write to us and says one of my favorite facts
Speaker 1: about the moon, which we recently did an episode on,
Speaker 1: is that it moves away from the Earth at a
Speaker 1: rate of about one point five inches per year over
Speaker 1: an average person's lifetime eighty years or so the moon
Speaker 1: would have moved around ten feet away from the Earth.
Speaker 1: There's something comforting and strangely intimate about being able to
Speaker 1: visualize something that's happening on a celestial scale and relate
Speaker 1: it to one's time on this planet. Well, certainly we
Speaker 1: can relate our time on this planet constantly to celestial movements,
Speaker 1: which is kind of which is kind of beautiful in
Speaker 1: a way. Yeah, and I thought that was a beautiful
Speaker 1: email and kind of in the sort of like Nil
Speaker 1: de grass Cosmos column of looking at the universe in
Speaker 1: a in a very big and poetic way. So thank you, you'll. Um,
Speaker 1: we have an email from Alliston on super Stimuli and
Speaker 1: she attached a picture of Conan the Barbarian. By the way, yes, Swartzenegger,
Speaker 1: great film. Actually I think this one is a different
Speaker 1: a different Conan the Barbarian is the one played by
Speaker 1: the guy from Game of Thrones then or the TV
Speaker 1: show maybe even I think so he's got giant pecks. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll just put it that way. That could be an Okay,
Speaker 1: she says, When I think of super Stimuli, my mind
Speaker 1: goes straight to those big, tall and muscular guys and
Speaker 1: action movies who don't really exist outside of bodybuilding and
Speaker 1: pro pro wrestling. It's such an unreal and unrealistic body type.
Speaker 1: But there's something so compelling about the image. I'm sure
Speaker 1: this is my version version of the super feminized women
Speaker 1: in pornography. I can't imagine actually having a dude like
Speaker 1: that over for a pot. Look, I don't think he'd
Speaker 1: fit in the chairs at my table, So why do
Speaker 1: I go all gooey for them in movies? It's pure
Speaker 1: super stimula. Great episode. I love your podcast and I
Speaker 1: hope that you do them for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Allison. And that just reminded me too of
Speaker 1: Joe Mangelo. I believe that's his name. He was in
Speaker 1: True Blood. You play the giant wolf. Dude. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: that is super normal stimuli. So I think it's really
Speaker 1: interesting to look at it from the male perspective. We
Speaker 1: always think about the male gaze, thinking about females and corn.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, he's a handsome man. I'll give it
Speaker 1: to him. I mean, I give I will admit that
Speaker 1: he's a handsome man. That's what I'm trying to her point.
Speaker 1: You know, how how practical is that when you want
Speaker 1: to have someone over for Pollock, you can't have someone
Speaker 1: crushing your chairs. Yeah, and then you don't want them
Speaker 1: to come over to and there and all they eat
Speaker 1: or you know, they have some sort of diet where
Speaker 1: they have to eat two whole chicken breasts and then
Speaker 1: some sort of protein shake every meal because their whole,
Speaker 1: their whole life is about building and maintaining this body. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's what I always remind myself if I'm watching
Speaker 1: a movie and someone is particularly ripped, Um, I remind myself, well,
Speaker 1: what does that person have to do in life but
Speaker 1: remain ridiculously ripped. That's kind of their job roasted chickens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And actually I find that it tends to get in
Speaker 1: the way of the film narrative if the actor is
Speaker 1: unrealistically in shape. I didn't actually I haven't watched the
Speaker 1: show yet, but my wife watched this The Mr. Self
Speaker 1: Ridge Show, which is the PBS show about self Ridge.
Speaker 1: The uh, the the American and went to Britain and
Speaker 1: revolutionized the shopping mall experience over there. But Jeremy Piven
Speaker 1: plays the character. And there's a scene where you know,
Speaker 1: this dude early twentieth century is has a shirt off
Speaker 1: and he's like super ripped in a way that you
Speaker 1: just wouldn't and you just wouldn't expect that kind of
Speaker 1: body on someone, uh, in that position, in that time frame. No,
Speaker 1: that was very unusual, it wasn't it. It's like when
Speaker 1: you see super white teeth on an actor in a
Speaker 1: in a period piece. You know, it's like super white,
Speaker 1: straight teeth, Like, what are you doing that doesn't look
Speaker 1: you're you're just by smiling, You're taking me out of
Speaker 1: the historical immersion of the picture. I know, But there's
Speaker 1: that whole willing suspension of disbelief. You got to meet
Speaker 1: him halfway, Robert, and I will. I'll meet them halfway
Speaker 1: on the fact that all Romans speak with a British accent,
Speaker 1: but all Romans shouldn't have teeth that looked that perfect.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, all right, We've got one more super normal
Speaker 1: stimuli email from Mike, who says, while listening to the episode,
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think of about decisions I make
Speaker 1: every day to either indulge or deny an instinct we're
Speaker 1: talking about here. The supernormal stimuli is that sort of
Speaker 1: thing where like you need a little bit of sugar, right,
Speaker 1: you need a little bit of energy. But you don't
Speaker 1: need a slice of cheesecake, he says, I would be
Speaker 1: interested in learning how the decision to deny instinct works
Speaker 1: to result in a dose of dopamine. Let's say I
Speaker 1: decline a piece of cheesecake and instead eat a stock
Speaker 1: of celery. Do I feel great because I use my
Speaker 1: imagination to calculate a supernormal positive outcome. Do people who
Speaker 1: make virtuous choices actually do so in order to indulge
Speaker 1: their dopamine habit? Mm? I don't. I mean, I understand
Speaker 1: where you're going here. Um, because we talked about this
Speaker 1: in the last episode where we were talking about the
Speaker 1: future of addiction, is that if you want to replace
Speaker 1: a bad habit, you need to do it with another
Speaker 1: habit because the neural pathway has been established. So if
Speaker 1: you want to avoid drinking glasses of wine, go and
Speaker 1: exercise because you're gonna get a high from a but
Speaker 1: the celery stick. What if you did ants on a
Speaker 1: log instead? Get a little peanut better in there? Yeah? Reasons? Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it brings up the power of psychology, Like
Speaker 1: to what degree can you trick yourself into making it
Speaker 1: a reward? Yeah? I don't know. The salary. I can't
Speaker 1: help but think of the recent skit on Portlandia where
Speaker 1: a Stevie Simmy is on there trying to rebrand Celery
Speaker 1: and make it exciting and sexy again, and all they
Speaker 1: keep they can, they just keep coming back around to
Speaker 1: ants on a log is the only real option to
Speaker 1: to make Selery exciting? Because other than than that and
Speaker 1: sup preparation, you know, what do you do with Celery?
Speaker 1: I would agree you gotta tart that up yea into
Speaker 1: a super normal stimuli. All right, So there you have it.
Speaker 1: We've we've cleared out the listener mail a bit. Again.
Speaker 1: We don't have time to to read or respond to
Speaker 1: everything that that you guys and gals send us, but
Speaker 1: we greatly appreciate it. Your feedback helps us know what's working,
Speaker 1: what's maybe not working. You know what, what topics we
Speaker 1: need to revisit, what topics we need to explore. For
Speaker 1: the first time, we received lots of cool ideas and
Speaker 1: we would love to continue to get those. So hey,
Speaker 1: you want to find us, you want to reach out
Speaker 1: to us, You can find us at stuff to Blow
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Speaker 1: and you can do that at blow the Mind at
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Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it how staff works dot com.
Speaker 1: H