Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: Listener mail. This is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today's the day we bring you messages that you've
Speaker 1: sent in over the past couple of weeks. So today
Speaker 1: we've got some messages about the Cool As Show effect,
Speaker 1: about Vault episodes on Mushroom Foraging. But I think first
Speaker 1: we're going to start off with the response to our
Speaker 1: series on Tumbleweeds. Yes, now I have to say, and
Speaker 1: this is something that you pointed out, we have fewer
Speaker 1: messages than we usually have, so I'm going to try
Speaker 1: and speak very slowly and Okay, if I pause enough,
Speaker 1: we'll be able to go thirty minutes or so here.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, that's a brilliant idea. Excuse me, that is
Speaker 1: a brilliant idea. All right, I don't know if we
Speaker 1: can sustain this. I'll probably go back to normal speed here.
Speaker 1: They can easily defeat us by just going to the
Speaker 1: two x speed or whatever on playback. That's right, they're
Speaker 1: just and then but that then we'll cause like some
Speaker 1: sort of whiplash if we go super slow and then
Speaker 1: we start speeding up again, and we don't want to
Speaker 1: We don't want to do that. We don't wanna do
Speaker 1: that to the listeners. Folks. Have we annoyed you enough
Speaker 1: today already? Or all right, let's jump into it. This
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Bill. It's titled Tumbleweeds, Bill Rights.
Speaker 1: Your show has edutained me for years, but I am
Speaker 1: shocked that of all the fascinating topics that you have covered,
Speaker 1: it is the seed spreading of dead flora that has
Speaker 1: brought in the most email. I am in southern Utah,
Speaker 1: which has a huge supply of Russian thistle that rolls
Speaker 1: around the area, gets caught in the dust devils, which
Speaker 1: elevate them hundreds of feet above the terrain, and of
Speaker 1: course clog up drainage, ditches, slat canyons, and even damages
Speaker 1: cars if the central quote unquote trunk of the bush
Speaker 1: is large enough to damage the frail plastic of modern cars.
Speaker 1: Some of these beasts can reach eight to ten feet
Speaker 1: in diameter. My job throwing people off of cliffs keeps
Speaker 1: me surrounded by these mesmerizing rolling nuisances as I hike
Speaker 1: and climb through remote desert areas. Of all the places
Speaker 1: where you don't want to tangle with these are in
Speaker 1: some of the slot canyons of Lake Powell. There are
Speaker 1: places where one has to wade and swim through a
Speaker 1: hundred yards of lake soaked tumbleweeds that could easily be
Speaker 1: five to ten feet thick from the lake bottom to
Speaker 1: just below the surface. They quickly sink, but take quite
Speaker 1: a while to fully break down. This leaves years, if
Speaker 1: not decades, of submerged spiky residue to contend with. Keep
Speaker 1: up your amazing content and delivery, Bill, Wow, what a
Speaker 1: hellish scene you have described, so like slot canyons that
Speaker 1: have water at the bottom, and then that water is
Speaker 1: just full of like years of build up of of
Speaker 1: slowly rotting tumbleweeds. Yeah, I love I love this detail.
Speaker 1: We're learning more and more about the devastation wrought by
Speaker 1: the Russian thistle. I'm assuming the job of throwing people
Speaker 1: off of cliffs here is some sort of like bungee
Speaker 1: cord related venture, bass jumping or something. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I hope this is not a confession from a serial killer.
Speaker 1: In our He's just a crazed desert dweller that throws
Speaker 1: people off of cliffs whenever he finds them, but he
Speaker 1: does not clarify, so we'll just have to assume the
Speaker 1: best quantum state. All right, are you ready for this
Speaker 1: message from Lauren on our Vault episodes about mushroom foraging. Oh? Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: Lauren says, Hello, Robert and Joe. Uh, And then she
Speaker 1: starts off by saying some some very nice things about
Speaker 1: the show and talks about how she started listening to
Speaker 1: us this past December and has been exploring a bunch
Speaker 1: of our episodes ever since then. So Lauren begins after
Speaker 1: listening to the second Vault episode about mushroom foraging. The
Speaker 1: information about the two types of fruit flies made me
Speaker 1: think about the times in my youth when I very
Speaker 1: occasionally played Super Mario on the Nintendo sixty four, the
Speaker 1: one where you jump through paintings to enter worlds with
Speaker 1: goals to complete um. Now, for people who haven't revisited
Speaker 1: the Mushroom episodes recently, we should probably do a quick
Speaker 1: refresher on what the deal with the different foraging styles was. Basically,
Speaker 1: the idea here is that research has identified a gene
Speaker 1: found in a variety of animals called p r KG
Speaker 1: one and found that in UH some very different animals,
Speaker 1: though a lot of the researches in fruit flies, which
Speaker 1: variant of this gene you have, which p r KG
Speaker 1: one allele you have seems to correlate with preferences in
Speaker 1: foraging behavior, and in fruit flies at least they identify
Speaker 1: two distinct types of foragers that are called sitters and rovers,
Speaker 1: and these two styles have various implications, but the simplified
Speaker 1: version is that sitters tend to be more conservative in
Speaker 1: their foraging patterns, so they will stick close to the
Speaker 1: boundaries of established foraging areas and they have shorter paths
Speaker 1: of exploration, whereas rovers tend to be more adventurous. They
Speaker 1: tend to explore foraging environments with long search paths and
Speaker 1: a greater tendency to dive right into the exposed center
Speaker 1: of open foraging areas. So there are probably a lot
Speaker 1: of implications to this, but it seems at least possible
Speaker 1: that this may have something to do with risk. Aversion
Speaker 1: right that sitters, by sticking to more established foraging regions
Speaker 1: and sticking close to sheltered boundary areas of of foraging
Speaker 1: zones UH, they take fewer risks, but of course they
Speaker 1: also suffer opportunity costs compared to the rovers, which may
Speaker 1: be you know, taking more risks by just sort of
Speaker 1: venturing right out into open space. But they're also more
Speaker 1: likely to discover new food sources by doing that. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is some research to indicate that possessing different variants
Speaker 1: of a foraging associated gene might also be correlated with
Speaker 1: similar behavior preferences and humans. Though that that's the kind
Speaker 1: of assumption that I'm always a little bit cautious about,
Speaker 1: So I'd want really good research basis before before going
Speaker 1: whole hog on that on that foraging gene type idea
Speaker 1: in humans. But anyway, Uh, to come back to Laura,
Speaker 1: and I remember she was talking about Super Mario sixty four,
Speaker 1: which I I remember that game fondly. I love jumping
Speaker 1: into the paintings too. You know, I don't think I
Speaker 1: ever played this one, but I had to look it
Speaker 1: up to see which one it was. I'm vaguely familiar
Speaker 1: with Mario super Mario sixty four, but I was surprised
Speaker 1: to see that it's apparently popped up in different peer
Speaker 1: reviewed medical studies. Uh. Yeah, yeah, where they'll have they'll
Speaker 1: be testing something or another studying some something or another
Speaker 1: end they will have test subjects play super Mario sixty four. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if there's something special about Mario sixty
Speaker 1: four uh that that makes it the ideal thing to
Speaker 1: make your test subjects do, but fascinating. Nonetheless, well, it's
Speaker 1: a rather magical game. And you know, I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: surprised if if somebody out there at some point found
Speaker 1: that that a little bit of Super Mario sixty four
Speaker 1: was was good for what ails you, at least to
Speaker 1: maybe in dispelling certain types of dysphoria or something. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but yeah, So it's it's a game where
Speaker 1: you jump through paintings to go into different like sub worlds,
Speaker 1: and so so Lauren picks back up in her original email.
Speaker 1: When I'd enter a painting world for the first time
Speaker 1: or for the first time in a while, I would
Speaker 1: always walk or swim the perimeter of the world to
Speaker 1: get a sense of the boundaries of the terrain. I
Speaker 1: wanted to know which directions were worth traveling in, and also,
Speaker 1: if I was going to search the entire terrain, I
Speaker 1: thought it best to cover the small pockets in full
Speaker 1: before expanding my search, so that I didn't have to
Speaker 1: return later or repeatedly unnecessarily. I did this with Zelda
Speaker 1: as well. After listening to this episode, I got to
Speaker 1: wondering about the expectations of video game developers. If they
Speaker 1: anticipate their players to have a quote, run into the
Speaker 1: center and aim for the biggest attraction or enemy sort
Speaker 1: of mindset, or if they expect players to behave in
Speaker 1: other ways. I wondered if for certain games, I was
Speaker 1: being set up for success or failure not based on
Speaker 1: my intelligence, but on the preferences and possible genetics of
Speaker 1: the video game creator who established these rules to the
Speaker 1: game without considering the possibility that people hunt and gather
Speaker 1: in different ways. Thanks again, Lauren, Yeah, I think this
Speaker 1: is really interesting, Lauren, because you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what I think about a how strongly determined a single
Speaker 1: foraging gene could be on the behaviors of humans. But uh,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, I think I am very much a
Speaker 1: sitter fly when it comes to virtual environments and video games.
Speaker 1: I you know, when I'm playing a video game, I
Speaker 1: hate having to run into the middle of previously unexplored territory.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm a cautious explorer. I like to understand
Speaker 1: the landscape before I enter. I survey it from from
Speaker 1: the sheltered periphery, look at it from high ground, and
Speaker 1: so forth. I mean, I guess different games, Um, they
Speaker 1: reward different types of behavior, or they can. Some games
Speaker 1: are certainly gonna maybe be broader in their approach and
Speaker 1: play tested in different ways to where you can you
Speaker 1: can take multiple strategies. Um. But this is a great
Speaker 1: question I'd love to hear from anyone out there with
Speaker 1: more familiarity with the game design world. It does remind
Speaker 1: me a little bit of of the situation with if
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, with Fallout seventy six when it came out.
Speaker 1: I think the idea with that was they were like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna get all these people into this
Speaker 1: virtual shared all out world and they're just gonna fight
Speaker 1: each other, and they're gonna have a great time fighting
Speaker 1: each other. And it turns out like most people playing
Speaker 1: it didn't actually want to fight each other. They wanted
Speaker 1: to do other things. And so there was a period
Speaker 1: of time during which I was I was playing the
Speaker 1: game where uh, even even though the game wanted you
Speaker 1: to kill each other, people were tending to do the opposite,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to do something more communal. And
Speaker 1: then eventually the game uh developers, the game masters kind
Speaker 1: of catch up with with that, uh and and kind
Speaker 1: of shift the shape of the virtual environment to meet
Speaker 1: the way people wanted to actually play the game. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I never played that game. The only thing I know
Speaker 1: You've mentioned it a couple of times, but I think
Speaker 1: the only other thing I've seen about it was that
Speaker 1: for some reason people were mad about it, like was
Speaker 1: it buggy or something? Um oh, I'm trying to even remember.
Speaker 1: It may have been buggy at first, I mean, not
Speaker 1: not catastrophically. So I enjoyed playing I must have played
Speaker 1: it pretty steadily for for over a year. It was
Speaker 1: kind of a kind of a comfort food for me
Speaker 1: for a little bit there. Um, I gotta say, I'd
Speaker 1: rather enjoy a buggy game sometimes, like a lot of
Speaker 1: pleasure out of that. Yeah. I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: these bugs become memes, right, yeah. Yeah. But I would
Speaker 1: love to hear more more about this because I guess
Speaker 1: nowadays you tend to have games that are created by
Speaker 1: by large groups, and hopefully those groups will be linked
Speaker 1: diverse enough in their mindset to where somebody at some
Speaker 1: point will be like, well, hey, what if you don't
Speaker 1: want to run into the middle of this room. What
Speaker 1: if you want to you know, play more like a
Speaker 1: rogue or something. Uh, should we make space for that
Speaker 1: to happen? But then I wonder if that it was
Speaker 1: was less likely during the era of you know, more
Speaker 1: like a soul developer on a video game. M Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder. Then again, I guess there might also be
Speaker 1: just different types of games, uh, that that appeal more
Speaker 1: to the sitter type personality versus the rover type personality.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, there are certain types of games that
Speaker 1: there are a ton of in our generation that I
Speaker 1: just don't ever enjoy at all, like the like the
Speaker 1: military shooter type games that hold like no appealed for me.
Speaker 1: But it seems like maybe they'd be more appealing to
Speaker 1: somebody with kind of more of a rover personality who
Speaker 1: likes to just run in and start shooting at anything
Speaker 1: that moves. Yeah. Yeah, though though even in those games
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, back in the days of of Doom,
Speaker 1: like the original Doom and the original Quake and those games, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you'd have people who wanted to to to
Speaker 1: to camp out to just hang out in one spot
Speaker 1: on the map and then just snipe people when they
Speaker 1: moved in. Um, and I think some of these games,
Speaker 1: like like Half Life. Eventually caught up with that and said, okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's make sure they're different roles for these different
Speaker 1: types of players within a given like death match situation.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I guess, I guess they're usually you probably
Speaker 1: can tell I don't play multiplayer games very much, but
Speaker 1: they're usually like different player classes in those games. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, should we move on to the next one here? Sure,
Speaker 1: let's go. Uh. This one comes from Brenda and this
Speaker 1: has to do with their episode on the Clushov Effect. Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe. I'm a long time listener and love
Speaker 1: your show. I'm currently recovering from COVID and as such
Speaker 1: have had an unusual amount of free time as I
Speaker 1: cannot go to work. I've been using this time to
Speaker 1: catch up on my favorite podcasts, and yours always takes
Speaker 1: the top spot. I just finished listening to the Kulashov
Speaker 1: Effect episodes, and the thing that came to mind for
Speaker 1: me was memes. We have a whole culture of intentionally
Speaker 1: taking expressions and clips out of context and matching them
Speaker 1: with whatever images or blurbs fit what we would like
Speaker 1: to express the popular woman screaming and a cat name
Speaker 1: comes to mind. Perhaps it is not a perfect connection,
Speaker 1: but it seems to me that in the age of
Speaker 1: social media, the edit is more important than the actor.
Speaker 1: Thanks Brenda, Yeah, this is a good point. Uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know. So there's one big difference I think with
Speaker 1: the the the alleged Coolershov effect in the in the
Speaker 1: origin as you can experiment, which was supposedly that it
Speaker 1: was like an expressionless face on that the actor was using,
Speaker 1: and then that was paired with whatever. Most I think
Speaker 1: meme faces are not usually expressionless. They're they're like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, they've got some kind of directed content. But
Speaker 1: then you fill in a blank in the IMPLI in
Speaker 1: the sentence that's implied by the meme with whatever the
Speaker 1: subject of the meme is, you know, the thing it's
Speaker 1: reacting to or the text you put on it, and
Speaker 1: so forth. Yeah, I'm thinking I'm instantly thinking of a
Speaker 1: lot of these meme faces where where yeah, it's pretty
Speaker 1: obvious what the emotional impact is supposed to be. A
Speaker 1: lot of times it's this versus that I guess the
Speaker 1: woman making the the disgusted face and then the you know,
Speaker 1: considering it face, or it's Drake saying no, he doesn't
Speaker 1: want this and then saying yes, he does want this.
Speaker 1: So it's there's not a lot of ambiguity. Maybe i'm i'm, i'm, i'm.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just not thinking of a good example.
Speaker 1: But I off the top of my head, I'm not
Speaker 1: thinking of any um any any meme faces that leave
Speaker 1: a lot of room to imagine what that individual thinks
Speaker 1: of the thing that they're supposedly looking at or considering.
Speaker 1: But I do think, nevertheless, there's really something going here
Speaker 1: because the meme culture, I think connects more to the
Speaker 1: coolest Shavian vision of filmmaking, where you would just have
Speaker 1: these sort of like endlessly rearrangeable building blocks that are
Speaker 1: then the the editor uses them to make meaning and
Speaker 1: endless combinations. So I mean, and memes are kind of
Speaker 1: that way. It's not so much that you know, you're
Speaker 1: seeing neutral faces that you're reading expressions onto because of
Speaker 1: the context, but you are seeing things that are just
Speaker 1: treated as building blocks that can be repurposed to any situation. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: this next message is also about the Coolest jav Effect.
Speaker 1: This is from somebody. I'm sorry, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to pronounce your aim. It's spelled d I O N.
Speaker 1: That might be dion or dion. I'm not sure. I'll try,
Speaker 1: uh Dion Dion says Dear Rob and Joe and stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind crew, massive fan of the show.
Speaker 1: I just had to make this contribution to your discussion
Speaker 1: of the Coolest Shov Effect. I hope you find it
Speaker 1: useful or interesting. It's worth considering the role of another
Speaker 1: editing element of the modern film, and that is sound.
Speaker 1: Cooleshov's work was done before fully synchronized sound, Although it
Speaker 1: is worth noting that music almost always played a role
Speaker 1: in cinema in the West, it's commonly cited that music
Speaker 1: was used to cover up the sound of the noisy
Speaker 1: film projectors of the day. Oh yeah, I can only
Speaker 1: imagine what kind of clattering racket those things would have made.
Speaker 1: But the email goes on. But beyond that, there are
Speaker 1: many examples of sound being used in the same way
Speaker 1: we use modern score, that is, to influence or manipulate
Speaker 1: an audiences perceptions or emotions and ultimately drive the film narrative.
Speaker 1: Michelle Chillon and this is the name of a French
Speaker 1: filmmaker and composer, UH talks about a concept called added value.
Speaker 1: Added value is where images on screen and sound combined
Speaker 1: to create new meaning. This meaning is greater, different, or
Speaker 1: more complex than the original meaning of each part. In
Speaker 1: Isolation and then Deon gives the example of how you
Speaker 1: can use like atmospheric sound paired with a shot of
Speaker 1: an apartment interior to set very different kinds of scenes.
Speaker 1: Like you might hear you might hear kind of birds
Speaker 1: twittering and breeze blowing, in which case you assume this
Speaker 1: apartment is is somewhere in kind of like a peaceful
Speaker 1: countryside setting. Or you might hear like loud traffic and
Speaker 1: horns honking and and the bustle of people and voices,
Speaker 1: in which case you assume that the Uh, the apartment
Speaker 1: is somewhere in the city and it's urban and things
Speaker 1: are happening and busy. Dion writes, each scenario sets the
Speaker 1: scene for a completely different narrative while the picture remains
Speaker 1: the same. Actually, sound does this in a very economical way,
Speaker 1: very quickly, without even drawing our awareness to it. I
Speaker 1: recommend Shann's book Audio Vision, Sound on Screen, since you're
Speaker 1: interested in this nerdier side of film. This was published
Speaker 1: in English in n s Owen's work corresponds with the
Speaker 1: availability of videotape, which simplified the repetitive study of filming
Speaker 1: material in a classroom setting. Oh that's a funny detail.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever put that together before,
Speaker 1: but I wonder if I wonder how the the advent
Speaker 1: of home video changed trends in film criticism and film theory,
Speaker 1: just because it suddenly would become so much easier to
Speaker 1: rewatch films and seen from films. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I certainly remember as a kid the films that I loved,
Speaker 1: and of course I feel like oftentimes when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: you do watch things over and over again. But I
Speaker 1: would just I would put things on like slow motional
Speaker 1: loops when possible. You know, it would be like the
Speaker 1: melting scenes and raiders of the Lost Art. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't enough to just watch it once. You know, you
Speaker 1: had to slow it down. You you had to freeze
Speaker 1: frame and all of this. So it's you know, thank goodness,
Speaker 1: those effects who really saw it watching that Nazi turned
Speaker 1: to soup. It made you the man you are today.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I know, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: But if I had had, you know, if I wanted to,
Speaker 1: and I had more of an appreciation for for the
Speaker 1: you know, the actual you know, art and craft of
Speaker 1: sentiment at the time, that's the kind of thing I
Speaker 1: could have looked to. I could have I could have
Speaker 1: slowed it down instead of then and asked myself, well,
Speaker 1: what is um you know, what is spiel we're actually
Speaker 1: doing here? How is he how is he pulling me
Speaker 1: in with this particular sequence, how is it cut? And
Speaker 1: then how might I recreate the same thing? Absolutely? But
Speaker 1: but to come back to the email, Dion rights to
Speaker 1: bring this back to Kolashov's idea of the manipulation of
Speaker 1: an image. I used to teach a subject about film
Speaker 1: sound and we would do an exercise that was always
Speaker 1: really effective. It went like this. You would choose a
Speaker 1: short section of film, you choose music from a variety
Speaker 1: of genres like horror, romantic, comedy, drama, et cetera, and
Speaker 1: then you'd play back the scene with the new music
Speaker 1: and discuss the results. Simple but effective. We would do
Speaker 1: this in groups and I found over the years that
Speaker 1: the driving to the Bates Motel scene in Hitchcock's Psycho
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty was very effective for this exercise. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then Dion provides a link to the scene which
Speaker 1: I did a little experiment with. I paired up the
Speaker 1: Psycho scene with with Janet Lee with the silver shamrock
Speaker 1: music from Season of the Witch, and it did indeed
Speaker 1: produce a different effect, though I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was uh. I mean, I guess the effect it produced
Speaker 1: was was well within the wheelhouse of the movie Psycho already,
Speaker 1: would you say that she appeared more irritated than yes, yes,
Speaker 1: or maybe I would say that honestly, the idea that
Speaker 1: came to my head was she was afraid that she
Speaker 1: found herself hating her own children because they were singing
Speaker 1: this song so much. Yeah, yeah, I can. I not
Speaker 1: try this myself, but just looking at it, I'm imagining
Speaker 1: like some of the stuff you could drop in, uh.
Speaker 1: You know, you could certainly drop in some some other
Speaker 1: forms of tense music. You could also drop in something
Speaker 1: that's maybe a little more emotional, you know, like I'm
Speaker 1: thinking some some sort of modern I don't know, Lanta
Speaker 1: del rey sort of music, you know, and it would
Speaker 1: take on I think a different vibe. Well, I like
Speaker 1: what Dion says, which is quote. I was always surprised
Speaker 1: by the new possibilities without going into them all. I
Speaker 1: recall watching the scene to a disco track, and this
Speaker 1: had the scene taking on the sense of a cheesy
Speaker 1: romantic comedy. All of a sudden, Janet Lee's nuanced performance
Speaker 1: is turned into simply before date jitters. I can totally
Speaker 1: see that, and I love it that that. I think
Speaker 1: it works. Dion says, of course, the face remains the same,
Speaker 1: but we attribute different meaning to it, as per the
Speaker 1: Coolishev effect. I found the temporal nature of the results
Speaker 1: interesting to some music choices would give the sense of
Speaker 1: leaving something behind, while some would create tension about the future,
Speaker 1: like the original score. And then Dion encourages us to
Speaker 1: take a few moments to try it for ourselves, like
Speaker 1: the kind Diarity described this part. I thought was really
Speaker 1: interesting that certain certain pairings would cause you to see
Speaker 1: the emotion on her face as reactive to something that
Speaker 1: already happened, and others would cause you to see it
Speaker 1: as anticipatory. Yeah, I mean, I didn't actually play it.
Speaker 1: But I've been watching it the whole time, and I
Speaker 1: was just a running APAs dancing Queen through my head
Speaker 1: while I'm looking at it, and I can I can
Speaker 1: sort of get, you know the point here about like
Speaker 1: the sort of the disco vibes. How that would potentially
Speaker 1: steer interpretation, Like it turns the the paranoia that she
Speaker 1: has about the fact that she stole all this money
Speaker 1: in the movie and is wondering, is worried about what's
Speaker 1: going to happen, It turns that into that is what
Speaker 1: happened in the scene, right, didn't she take a bunch
Speaker 1: of money and run away? Yes? Yeah, but anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns that into like being worried about what people
Speaker 1: are going to think about her at the party or something. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the email goes on. Perhaps it odds to all of this.
Speaker 1: There are quite a number of studies that displayed the
Speaker 1: primacy of vision over sound. White noise is regarded as
Speaker 1: more pleasant when associated with the picture of a waterfall,
Speaker 1: for example, and red trains are louder. And then there
Speaker 1: there are links to a couple of citations for this
Speaker 1: abe at All nineteen uh in the study called the
Speaker 1: Effects of Visual information on the impression of environmental sounds
Speaker 1: and then fostil at all in two thousand four audio
Speaker 1: visual interactions in loudness evaluation. But then finally Dion sites
Speaker 1: something called the McGurk effect. The McGurk effect is an
Speaker 1: example of this idea of visual dominance. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: an interesting and persistent allusion, credited to cognitive psychologists McGurk
Speaker 1: and McDonald In nineteen seventy six, robbers a visual example
Speaker 1: I'd link to that you can check out for yourself,
Speaker 1: but I'll try to explain it. So, if you watch
Speaker 1: video of somebody making a sound repeatedly, the the example
Speaker 1: I found was a man just saying bob bob bah
Speaker 1: like a sheep bh, over and over and uh. And
Speaker 1: something very strange happens if you continue playing the same
Speaker 1: audio but substitute in video of the guy looking like
Speaker 1: he's making an f sound with his mouth, so it
Speaker 1: would be fa fa fa, even though the audio doesn't change.
Speaker 1: At least on me, I absolutely hear fa fa fa,
Speaker 1: even though technically the audio is the same bob bah
Speaker 1: bah as it was before. Interesting and and the at
Speaker 1: least subjectively, the effect is profound on me, Like I
Speaker 1: I absolutely hear faughfafa, It's as if that's what he
Speaker 1: was actually saying. Anyway, Dion finishes up by saying that
Speaker 1: they're working towards their their PhD doing research in sound
Speaker 1: design of film dialogue and ends up saying some very
Speaker 1: nice things about the show and uh in saying I
Speaker 1: love the stuff and could talk about it all, but
Speaker 1: I'll stop now. Warm regards Dion, Well, thanks, this was
Speaker 1: a really great email. Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm gonna just
Speaker 1: busy myself now with playing different different works of music
Speaker 1: over that psycho scene. I think Janet Lee's face and
Speaker 1: the Psycho scene is yet another good example of a
Speaker 1: face that is ambiguous but not neutral. You could you
Speaker 1: could read multiple things into it, though I guess it
Speaker 1: would be hard to imagine that she looks happy, but
Speaker 1: you could read multiple different kinds of negative emotion into
Speaker 1: her face. All right, let's do Let's do one more here.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Morgan. Morgan rights, Hey, fellas,
Speaker 1: love the show and I hope you're doing well. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to address your comments regarding the Witcher drawing
Speaker 1: his sword. While they don't appear this way in the games,
Speaker 1: and it's not explicitly addressed in the books. In the
Speaker 1: show the TV show um the scabbard is not continuous,
Speaker 1: and that it essentially just hold the tip of the
Speaker 1: sword in place and a strap secures it towards the hilt.
Speaker 1: A scabbard design this way would allow the blade to
Speaker 1: move independently of the linked scabbard until it clears the
Speaker 1: strap at the top. Also, the books usually point out
Speaker 1: that Garrel loosens the strap on his scabbard when he
Speaker 1: may need to draw, allowing for further mobility. Additionally, and
Speaker 1: semi related, only in the games does the Witcher carry
Speaker 1: two swords at once. Typically, if he's carrying a sword
Speaker 1: on his back, it's just the one he needs to
Speaker 1: use for the current foe. His other remains in the
Speaker 1: carrying case on the saddle. I've attached an image below
Speaker 1: which shows the scabbard and yes, there it is all
Speaker 1: right now if you're totally confused by this, I think
Speaker 1: this person is responding to me in a previous listener
Speaker 1: male saying that the witcher sword would not work. But
Speaker 1: I was talking about in the video games, because in
Speaker 1: the video games he wears his sword in a full scabbard.
Speaker 1: It's like a solid scabbard encasing the blade, but on
Speaker 1: his back. And I was just pointing out, you can't
Speaker 1: draw a sword like that because your arm is not
Speaker 1: long enough to get it out of the scabbard if
Speaker 1: it's on your back. But so on the show it
Speaker 1: sounds like they've got to work around for that by saying, well,
Speaker 1: the scabbard isn't actually solid. It's just like the tip
Speaker 1: point is solid, and then there's a strap, so he'd
Speaker 1: have to loosen the strap and then pull it out
Speaker 1: a little bit and then he can just like he
Speaker 1: doesn't have to pull it out the full length because
Speaker 1: it's not actually solid all the way around. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: makes me want to do something on swords again. I
Speaker 1: know we've covered swords and blades and weapons to a
Speaker 1: certain degree in the past. I know you love swords man, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you know a movie with a good sword scene,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, good sword fight. A good sword fight's hard
Speaker 1: to find an emotional sword fight. It tells a story. Um,
Speaker 1: I do vaguely remember you. You you get into like
Speaker 1: the history of various um styles of sword play, and
Speaker 1: it's it gets pretty fascinating, like they are all these
Speaker 1: sort of distinct martial art forms that in some cases
Speaker 1: are you know, partially forgotten but also easy to you know,
Speaker 1: to to to not recognize when you just see an
Speaker 1: illustration of the image. Especially, I'm thinking some of these,
Speaker 1: you know, very large swords, you just sort of think, well,
Speaker 1: you just go up there and you start swinging it around, right,
Speaker 1: But but no, there's a particular a particular form, there's
Speaker 1: a particular way that you would use this weapon effectively
Speaker 1: in combat. Maybe that's an episode we do one on
Speaker 1: great swords, you know, okay, really big swords and what
Speaker 1: what circumstances do they make sense? And then how often
Speaker 1: do we see that same logic applied to to video
Speaker 1: games or scenes and fantasy movies. All right, man, I'm there,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, We're gonna go ahead and call
Speaker 1: it there. But obviously we'd love to hear from everybody.
Speaker 1: If you have thoughts on anything we've discussed here today,
Speaker 1: we can talk about it in a future Listener mail episode.
Speaker 1: We do these every Monday. Our core episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 1: On Wednesday we do a short form artifact episode and
Speaker 1: on Friday, that's when we do weird out cinema. That's
Speaker 1: our time to set aside those serious matters and just
Speaker 1: discuss a weird film. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
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