Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener
Speaker 2: mail My name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and my name is Joe McCormick. And it's Monday,
Speaker 3: the day of each week that we read back some
Speaker 3: messages from the mail bag. By the way, if you
Speaker 3: have never gotten in touch with us before, but maybe
Speaker 3: you've always wanted to, why not give it a try.
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact at stuff to blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com. We accept all kinds of messages, feedback,
Speaker 3: thoughts on recent episodes, anything interesting you want to add
Speaker 3: to a topic we've recently talked about, if you want
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, If you have questions, corrections,
Speaker 3: any of the above, send them on in.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean you might think, well, my name's Jim
Speaker 2: and I don't know if they need any more gems.
Speaker 2: Don't let that stop you. We can always use more gems. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Our army of Jim's grows every mightier. Let's see, Rob,
Speaker 3: do you want to kick things off today by reading
Speaker 3: this message about minimal group paradigm, not from Jim but
Speaker 3: from tim Ah.
Speaker 2: All right, let's do it. Tim Ride's high stuff to
Speaker 2: blow your mind. Team obligatory mention that you guys are
Speaker 2: doing an amazing job, because well you are. Thanks Tim,
Speaker 2: Thank you, Tim. Tim continues The recent episode about the
Speaker 2: minimum requirements for an in group out group bias to
Speaker 2: take form took me back to many years of going
Speaker 2: to and then helping run church youth camps. Oh Boy
Speaker 2: campers would be divided into teams arbitrarily for many games.
Speaker 2: It always resulted in stiff competition and dogged tribalism if
Speaker 2: the groups weren't mixed up every few games. This makes
Speaker 2: me wonder if the in group preference, etc. Is stronger
Speaker 2: at different stages of life. Maybe hormonal teams would show
Speaker 2: the effect more strongly, with a tapering off in midlife,
Speaker 2: then more negative associations coming up again with the traditionally
Speaker 2: stuffy old man yelling at kids to get off their lawn.
Speaker 2: But old Uncle John probably just had a bad temper
Speaker 2: because of arthritis, not an in out group mentality against
Speaker 2: the local scooter gang. Anyway, Thanks for stimulating some thought
Speaker 2: and a touch of nostalgia. Keep up a good work,
Speaker 2: regards Tim.
Speaker 3: Tim. This is a great point. I have no direct
Speaker 3: evidence to this effect, at least not any you know,
Speaker 3: from scientific journals, but based on life experience, I would
Speaker 3: strongly suspect that the in group out group rapid forming
Speaker 3: paradigms would be that effect would be strongest among teenagers.
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly why, but that feels true.
Speaker 2: Highly social creatures. I mean, I know we've in the
Speaker 2: past on the show. It's probably been a long time
Speaker 2: we've touched on some of the research about the teenage
Speaker 2: brain and why the teenage brain is different. You know,
Speaker 2: why things of social value you have different weight in
Speaker 2: the in the in the teenage brain. So, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: the kind of research we might might have to come
Speaker 2: back to at some point. I guess we'll come back
Speaker 2: to it eventually, because when my son becomes a teenager
Speaker 2: and I have to make sense of it all a
Speaker 2: little all over again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, teenage Homo sapiens are they're like socialization machines there.
Speaker 3: You know, that's where you're trying to find your place
Speaker 3: in the world. And your place in the world means
Speaker 3: a number of things, like finding what you're good at
Speaker 3: and so forth, But maybe the most important of all
Speaker 3: those categories of place finding is social place. What group
Speaker 3: do you fit in.
Speaker 2: With yeah, Do I have a star on my belly?
Speaker 2: Do not? Do I have a blue check mark? Do
Speaker 2: I not? We're going to watch some of this play
Speaker 2: out in real time.
Speaker 3: All right, Are you ready for some responses to our
Speaker 3: episodes on childhood Amnesia?
Speaker 2: Let's have it.
Speaker 3: Just to note, we've gotten a lot of feedback to
Speaker 3: the series, so we're trying to read through as many
Speaker 3: of them as we can, but there is a backlog,
Speaker 3: so there are still a bunch we won't get to today,
Speaker 3: but we will try to keep reading them as the
Speaker 3: weeks go on. So this first message comes from Joseph. Hey, guys,
Speaker 3: I'm playing a bit of catch up lately, and just
Speaker 3: listen to your first episode on memory. I found the
Speaker 3: episode fascinating since I have virtually zero memories of my childhood.
Speaker 3: Nothing at all springs to mind from zero to six.
Speaker 3: I guess ages zero to six, and I've spent an
Speaker 3: hour or so trying to think of something. I was
Speaker 3: talking with my wife and she easily rattled off a
Speaker 3: dozen memories of preschool in kindergarten, and that seems like
Speaker 3: the normal experience. I'm often aware of some differences in
Speaker 3: the way I think and the way my brain works.
Speaker 3: But your podcast was really a very striking episode to me,
Speaker 3: as I'd never really considered how unique my experience might be.
Speaker 3: I was six when the first thing that I can
Speaker 3: remember happened. I distinctly remember being in the office of
Speaker 3: my father's business, finding everything to be much too loud,
Speaker 3: and removing my hearing aid to place it on the
Speaker 3: nearby countertop. I contracted bacterial meningitis when I was just
Speaker 3: a few weeks old and was stricken deaf by the disease.
Speaker 3: Not an unusual consequence. What is unusual is that over
Speaker 3: time my hearing completely restored, and now I hear with
Speaker 3: one hundred percent acuity. This is the first moment I
Speaker 3: remember being able to hear, and also the first moment
Speaker 3: I remember at all. I did some research and there
Speaker 3: are some really fascinating angles in the development of autobiographical
Speaker 3: memory in deaf children as well as neurodivergent children. I'm neurodiverse,
Speaker 3: but not on the autism spectrum. Maybe you talked about
Speaker 3: this in your second episode, so apologies if it's redundant,
Speaker 3: but I found it all very interesting, although not particularly satisfying,
Speaker 3: as an explanation of my unique experience of autobiographical Memory.
Speaker 3: And then Joseph here includes a couple of links to
Speaker 3: scientific papers, so I took a look. They were both
Speaker 3: pretty interesting, so I dug up the citations and added summaries.
Speaker 3: So the first one is a paper by Tiffany west
Speaker 3: Weigel and Patricia Bauer published in the journal Memory in
Speaker 3: the year two thousand. The title of the paper is
Speaker 3: Deaf and Hearing Adults Recollections of Childhood and Beyond. So
Speaker 3: this one investigated one of the ideas we discussed in
Speaker 3: the series, the possibility that the horizon of earliest memories
Speaker 3: may be influenced by differences in narrative socialization, sort of
Speaker 3: the culture of autobiographical storytelling that the child grows up within.
Speaker 3: So if early formation of lasting memories is to some
Speaker 3: degree dependent on exposure to adult patterns of storytelling for events,
Speaker 3: then you would expect children who have later acquisition of
Speaker 3: language itself to have later earliest memories. So the author's
Speaker 3: right quote. In the present research, we tested the hypothesis that,
Speaker 3: by virtue of later exposure to language, individuals born deaf
Speaker 3: to hearing parents will have earliest memories from later in
Speaker 3: life relative to hearing individuals, and what did they find. Actually,
Speaker 3: the hypothesis was not supported. The age of earliest memory
Speaker 3: did not vary between deaf children and children with typical hearing. However,
Speaker 3: there were some interesting differences, so the core hypothesis was falsified,
Speaker 3: but there were differences observed they write quote. Nevertheless, adults
Speaker 3: who are deaf were found to have less dense representations
Speaker 3: of early autobiographical memories and to include in their narrative
Speaker 3: reports fewer categories of information, including visual spatial information, relative
Speaker 3: to hearing adults. So I thought that was really really
Speaker 3: interesting in this study. At least children with less early
Speaker 3: exposure to language based narrative by virtue of the fact
Speaker 3: that they were deaf children born to hearing adults don't
Speaker 3: seem to have a different temporally different horizon of earliest memory.
Speaker 3: But their very earliest memories do seem to have less
Speaker 3: elaborative detail in the words of some of the stuff
Speaker 3: we were looking at in the series, and that includes
Speaker 3: details that would not be affected by deafness itself. So,
Speaker 3: at least on the surface, this is interesting but frustrating
Speaker 3: right like it would appear to provide some evidence both
Speaker 3: for and against the role of language and narrative culture
Speaker 3: in establishing capabilities for early memory. There's some relationship between
Speaker 3: these variables in the study apparent in those differences in
Speaker 3: like the detailed density, but the average age of the
Speaker 3: earliest memories were not significantly different. Now, the second study
Speaker 3: that Joseph linked was about the earliest memories of people
Speaker 3: on the autism spectrum. This was by zemashik at All
Speaker 3: Vera zamashik at All, published in the journal Frontiers in
Speaker 3: Psychiatry in twenty sixteen, called Earliest Memories of Individuals on
Speaker 3: the Autism Spectrum assessed using online self reports. And I
Speaker 3: was going to just read from the abstract here, but
Speaker 3: I found that it relies on a specialized concept that
Speaker 3: the authors call quote no events know no events versus
Speaker 3: remember events. So I'm pulling a section from later in
Speaker 3: the paper to define that difference. First, the authors write
Speaker 3: quote when participants knew that an event occurred meaning in
Speaker 3: their lives, but could not relive any details relating to it,
Speaker 3: these events are referred to as no events. These events
Speaker 3: are based on external sources, such as photographs or stories
Speaker 3: told by friends and family. In their description of the
Speaker 3: no events, participants had to indicate the source of their memory,
Speaker 3: remember events our memories that are pure personal recollections specific
Speaker 3: to time and place. These events could be relived by
Speaker 3: the participant and relied on no other sources. So with
Speaker 3: that in mind, the paper begins by observing conflicting accounts
Speaker 3: in the literature. They say, on the one hand, quote,
Speaker 3: autobiographical accounts by people with autism reveal vivid memories of
Speaker 3: early childhood, and yet at the same time they say
Speaker 3: that a lot of previous experiments have found that people
Speaker 3: with autism quote have deficits in personal autobiographic memory compared
Speaker 3: to people without autism. So to read from the abstract
Speaker 3: here quote. To assess this contradiction empirically, we implemented an
Speaker 3: online questionnaire on early childhood events to compare people on
Speaker 3: the autism spectrum and non autistic people with respect to
Speaker 3: their earliest autobiographical episodic memories and the earliest semantic no
Speaker 3: event as told by another person. Results indicate that people
Speaker 3: on the autism spectrum do not differ from non autistic
Speaker 3: people in the age of their earliest no events, but
Speaker 3: they remember events from an earlier age in childhood and
Speaker 3: with more sensory details contradicting the assumption of an overall
Speaker 3: deficit in personal episodic memory in autism. Furthermore, our results
Speaker 3: emphasize the supporting influence of language for memory formation and
Speaker 3: give evidence for an important role of sensory features in
Speaker 3: memories of people on the autism spectrum. So I don't
Speaker 3: know quite what to make of that, but I find
Speaker 3: it interesting that you have these studies that have come
Speaker 3: to completely opposite conclusions and results on that whether people
Speaker 3: on the autism spectrum compared to people not on the spectrum,
Speaker 3: tend to have deficits in early childhood autobiographical memory or
Speaker 3: have richer, more detailed memories, as this study seems to
Speaker 3: find fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, this is the angle I didn't even think about.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah again huge thanks to Joseph for a fast email.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: We also asked people about their own earliest childhood memories,
Speaker 3: and especially if anybody had memories that they believed were
Speaker 3: genuine from before the normal threshold of earliest memories that
Speaker 3: is typically found of around you know, with some variations
Speaker 3: three years old or three and a half years old.
Speaker 3: Some people wrote having apparently much older memories, or at
Speaker 3: least so they believed, and one of them was Matt.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Matt writes in and says, hey, guys, I was
Speaker 2: just listening to the first couple of your before you
Speaker 2: could remember episodes and decided I would relay my earliest memories, which,
Speaker 2: should it be true, maybe the earliest you are likely
Speaker 2: to come across before I do. I just want to
Speaker 2: be clear that I will not be offended if you
Speaker 2: should question any part of this memory and relate it
Speaker 2: to anything from modified memories or even wholly false memories. Anyways,
Speaker 2: onto my memory, I remember visiting the doctor in my
Speaker 2: early life, and during that visit, the doctor took out
Speaker 2: a glass's case and took out a ballpoint pin, places
Speaker 2: it against my heel and clicked it to draw blood,
Speaker 2: and then pressed an index card against my bloody heel
Speaker 2: to leave an imprint on several points along the card.
Speaker 2: For further context, I first related this memory of my
Speaker 2: mother when I was a teen, and she pointed out
Speaker 2: the similarities to how the newborn blood spot test is performed, which,
Speaker 2: should this be a true memory, would have happened when
Speaker 2: I was approximately one week old. But anyway, for a
Speaker 2: bit more insight and possible discussion, the specific details that
Speaker 2: are most vivid in this memory are and then we
Speaker 2: have a list here. First the ballpoint pen being one
Speaker 2: of those generic white pins you might find at a
Speaker 2: bank or insurance office with the company name printed on
Speaker 2: the side. Secondly the characteristic lines of the standard three
Speaker 2: y five index card, then the light pink color of
Speaker 2: the walls in the room, and then finally a plant
Speaker 2: in the corner of the room with fern like leaves
Speaker 2: and matt notes. Not all of these are relevant to
Speaker 2: the retelling of the story, but that's how they sit
Speaker 2: in my memory banks. You can probably already see how
Speaker 2: some of these details don't quite fit with what would
Speaker 2: have been the literal reality of the situation believed to
Speaker 2: be the source of this memory, but hopefully you can
Speaker 2: also see how they might be connected via more common
Speaker 2: substitutes with similar looking objects. Also, to be clear, I
Speaker 2: did not concisely know of this test before relating the memory,
Speaker 2: nor was I led into it in any way that
Speaker 2: I recall beyond talking about our earliest memories in general. Anyways,
Speaker 2: did you know that the first official high five only
Speaker 2: occurred in nineteen seventy seven during a Dodgers game. Love
Speaker 2: what you are doing? And thanks for the stimulating audio
Speaker 2: to help me with my long commute to work every day. Matt.
Speaker 3: Very interesting, Matt. I bet you're going to have people
Speaker 3: who challenge you on the nineteen seventy seven Dodgers thing
Speaker 3: your own personal first autobiographical memory.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's harder to fight people on. As we raise in
Speaker 3: each of the issue episodes where we cover these emails,
Speaker 3: there are some reasons to be skeptical or critical about
Speaker 3: what we believe to be our earliest memories, not because
Speaker 3: people would be intentionally misrepresenting or anything, but just because
Speaker 3: of the many ways that we know information that we
Speaker 3: get from external sources can come to feel like genuine
Speaker 3: firsthand memories to us, and we can't actually tell the difference.
Speaker 3: But this is very interesting because here you're at least
Speaker 3: sort of like relaying a sense memory that you wouldn't
Speaker 3: have had, at least you believe informational context to make
Speaker 3: sense of, Like you wouldn't have known why you would
Speaker 3: have a memory of a ballpoint pin and a card,
Speaker 3: but there actually was a medical test that would resemble
Speaker 3: these types of objects.
Speaker 2: It actually reminds me of a very early childhood memory
Speaker 2: that I have and I've never even inquired with my
Speaker 2: mom like when this would be from. But I know
Speaker 2: that it has some falsification in it or some combinations
Speaker 2: going on here, because in it I in this memory,
Speaker 2: I was taken to the doctor. I think it's just
Speaker 2: like a check up or something as a as a
Speaker 2: small child, and my doctor was clearly Gene Shallett, the
Speaker 2: movie critic. Now, I I'm Gene Shallette was was in
Speaker 2: no way my actual doctor. But what I suspect, Are
Speaker 2: you sure? I'm I'm pretty sure, But I suspect that
Speaker 2: my doctor maybe looked faintly like Geene Shallette, and I
Speaker 2: would have seen Gene Shalatt on the television at some
Speaker 2: point and it just became Gene Shalat in my memory
Speaker 2: in this, you know, this very faint childhood memory.
Speaker 3: I see. So Gene Shallett to your actual doctor is
Speaker 3: similar to the relationship between Matt's idea of a ballpoint
Speaker 3: pin versus the like sticker object that would be used
Speaker 3: to pierce the skin for a blood test exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, I find these these exercises interruction. So
Speaker 2: I really really appreciated this Matt, you know, providing us
Speaker 2: these details to sort of like pick apart a little
Speaker 2: bit as best you know, as best we can do,
Speaker 2: knowing what we do about about memory and how it works.
Speaker 3: This next email from Selena was really valuable because this
Speaker 3: brings with it some professional expertise. All right, Note there
Speaker 3: are just a few edits for lengthen here, but Selena
Speaker 3: writes with regards to infantile amnesia. Similar to the hippocampal
Speaker 3: learning theory, developing a language seems to be at least
Speaker 3: one factor for when a person develops the skill of
Speaker 3: recalling and describing past events. Doctor Francesca daily Espinoza has
Speaker 3: given several presentations that relate to this. She has mentioned
Speaker 3: that in her work with deaf children, if she taught
Speaker 3: them sign language, it improved their ability to recall information
Speaker 3: or phrasing and hopefully not totally off base in my summary,
Speaker 3: she hypothesizes that pre language children have not yet developed
Speaker 3: a self echoic verbal skill i e. Our inside voice
Speaker 3: or self talk, which is why they recall much less
Speaker 3: and less accurately than children who have learned a language.
Speaker 3: In various experiments, she's found that disrupting the self echoic
Speaker 3: in children who have developed a language affects recall accuracy, eg.
Speaker 3: Trying to learn or remember a phone number while someone
Speaker 3: is saying random numbers out loud, because it prevents you
Speaker 3: from quote hearing your self echoic repetition of the phone
Speaker 3: number you're trying to remember. When working on recalling events,
Speaker 3: she has used a phrase to describe how to teach
Speaker 3: children to recall or to improve their recall by ensuring
Speaker 3: that they are quote verbally present at the time the
Speaker 3: event is occurring. The adult describes what is happening in
Speaker 3: the present moment and prompts the child to describe what
Speaker 3: is happening and or answer what, when, where type questions
Speaker 3: about what is happening in the present moment to ensure
Speaker 3: they are verbally present. This helps increase the salience of
Speaker 3: what is happening and improves delayed recall. Oh that's very interesting.
Speaker 3: I'd almost want to try that out. So, like, under
Speaker 3: this idea, recall of information learned in a setting would
Speaker 3: be better if during that setting you ask children like,
Speaker 3: where are you right now? What are we doing, so
Speaker 3: that they have a kind of yeah, have that like
Speaker 3: verbal awareness of their immediate situation. Anyway, Selena goes on
Speaker 3: to say, anecdotally, in my work with children as a
Speaker 3: behavior analyst. The point at which autistic children who are
Speaker 3: language delayed can recall events is strongly correlated with the
Speaker 3: development of the verbal prerequisites mentioned by doctor Espinosa. The
Speaker 3: information she presented was in the context of a presentation
Speaker 3: at Penn State Conferences for Applied Behavior Analysis, which is
Speaker 3: the acronym's ABA slash verbal behavior. Selena gives some caveats
Speaker 3: about how she can't dig up specific references at the
Speaker 3: moment totally understands Selena. She goes on to say language
Speaker 3: development can happen at different times for kids slash. People
Speaker 3: with different learning histories. If the hippocampal theory supposes recall
Speaker 3: occurs after the hippocampus developed sufficiently, then in theory, adults
Speaker 3: should be able to recall events regardless of having learned
Speaker 3: a language. However, in a book called A Journey into
Speaker 3: the Deaf World by Laine Hoffmeister in Bhan I believe
Speaker 3: there are examples provided of deaf people who had no
Speaker 3: functional form of communication until someone taught them sign language
Speaker 3: at an adult age. Following the hippocampal theory, the adults
Speaker 3: should be able to recall events from their pre language
Speaker 3: adult lives, however, and sadly, their recall of life before
Speaker 3: learning a language is largely unremembered, like having infantile amnesia
Speaker 3: for most of their life until they learned to sign language.
Speaker 3: What they could recall was extremely vague and more sensory
Speaker 3: than specific details or events. And then she notes that
Speaker 3: it's been over two decades since she read the book,
Speaker 3: so recall is fuzzy about whether this was a single
Speaker 3: case of a deaf person acquiring a sign language as
Speaker 3: an adult or multiple cases. But anyway, Selena goes on
Speaker 3: to say, the flip side of this might be what
Speaker 3: if learning a language is one of the processes that
Speaker 3: develops the hippocampus chicken or egg. Regarding the early memories
Speaker 3: that are forgotten in adolescents, synaptic pruning probably plays a
Speaker 3: major role. Use it or lose it. With regards to
Speaker 3: what I can personally recalls my earliest memories, it's mostly
Speaker 3: from kindergarten, although I have some memories from preschool. For example,
Speaker 3: in preschool I used to make wishes on dandelions in
Speaker 3: the grass during outside play periods. I can still remember
Speaker 3: three of my wishes. They didn't come true. Oh well,
Speaker 3: there are other events from my childhood that my parents
Speaker 3: have described to me and I don't recall them. For example,
Speaker 3: I was present when my sister uttered her first words,
Speaker 3: but I have no personal memory of this event. Appreciate
Speaker 3: the multi episode deep dives on topics. Thanks Selena, Oh, Selena,
Speaker 3: what a fantastic email. Thank you so much. I love
Speaker 3: it when people with direct expertise on something we talk
Speaker 3: about get in touch to fill in things like this.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, this is a good one.
Speaker 3: Okay. We've got a bunch more messages about our series
Speaker 3: on childhood amnesia to get to, but we're gonna have
Speaker 3: to wrap it up there for today and finish off
Speaker 3: with a couple of Weird House messages. We will try
Speaker 3: to get to more of the memory responses in future episodes. Now,
Speaker 3: to kick things off about Weird House Cinema, we got
Speaker 3: a pronunciation note from our listener Carrie, in response to
Speaker 3: the episode on the Never End Story where we make
Speaker 3: reference to the other Wolfgang Peterson movie, the nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: one film about a German submarine, and we pronounced the
Speaker 3: title dos boot. Carrie informs us that while the German
Speaker 3: word is spelled boot, it is pronounced the same as
Speaker 3: the English word boat, so it's actually dos boat meaning
Speaker 3: the boat. Carrie hate to break it to you, but
Speaker 3: I think literally every English speaker I've ever heard make
Speaker 3: reference to this film said boot. I don't know what
Speaker 3: explains that. Maybe this is just something we do in
Speaker 3: the anglophone world. We kind of like take an incorrect
Speaker 3: pronunciation and just cement it. So I accept the correction
Speaker 3: and appreciate it. But on the other hand, I would
Speaker 3: say it's almost just the case that in the English
Speaker 3: speaking world the movie is called dos Boot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like that great Japanese horror movie
Speaker 2: ring it right, and with dust boat or doss boot,
Speaker 2: you know. Cisco and Ebert said boot. And I guess that,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of gets stuck in your head. Now,
Speaker 2: in the Simpsons it was dos Butt. I don't think
Speaker 2: there was supposed to be that was supposed to be
Speaker 2: maybe a knockoff film. I had to look that one up.
Speaker 2: That was in the episode New Kid on the Block.
Speaker 2: That was a Conan O'Brien scripted episode.
Speaker 3: Brilliant, but it's still appreciate the message, Kerry, thank you.
Speaker 2: Now. We received some other listener mail regarding the Never
Speaker 2: Ending Story episode of weird House Cinema, and yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't think we're gonna be able to get to all
Speaker 2: of those today either, but I wanted to read at
Speaker 2: least one of them. This one comes to us from Maya.
Speaker 2: Maya writes Sin and says, dear Joe and rot the
Speaker 2: never Ending Story. I was that child that, from time
Speaker 2: to time would lock herself up in her room for
Speaker 2: a whole Sunday and read it cover to cover, almost
Speaker 2: like an enactment of Bastion's Night in the School. I
Speaker 2: was eleven when the motion picture was released, and by
Speaker 2: that time I must have read it thirty times and
Speaker 2: knew it by heart. I'm afraid to report that I
Speaker 2: found the movie adaptation loathsome for me, both the characters
Speaker 2: and Fantasia as was translated into Spanish were more somber,
Speaker 2: stern and beautiful and German than anything that was betrayed
Speaker 2: in the movie. Leaving the ending aside, my favorite chapters
Speaker 2: were Lacking Zia Day and the Seeing Hand Castle Perilyn,
Speaker 2: the Night Jungle, Miss and I don't remember how oh see,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how this was pronounced, and and I'm
Speaker 2: a little foggy on this chapter of Miss Aula and
Speaker 2: her ever changing home. Come on anyhow, thank you for
Speaker 2: featuring it as one of your Weird House Cinema episodes.
Speaker 2: Through your eyes, I came to appreciate many features that
Speaker 2: as a child felt like treason. Guess Michael Into himself
Speaker 2: must have felt the same way, since he hated the movie.
Speaker 2: By the way, you mentioned that Inda's father was a
Speaker 2: surrealist painter, and it came to mind one of my
Speaker 2: favorite Indo's books, The Mirror in the Mirror, a surrealist book,
Speaker 2: if ever there was one. I strongly recommend it all
Speaker 2: the best. Maya.
Speaker 3: Oh thanks Maya. I don't even know what these references
Speaker 3: Zayaday and the Seeing Handcastle not a clue.
Speaker 2: Yes, I do remember, I remember Zaida for sure. And
Speaker 2: the Night Jungle. Yeah, there are a bunch of additional
Speaker 2: little adventures, and there's some other paradoxes they encounter and
Speaker 2: so forth. It's it's a great read. Again, I highly
Speaker 2: recommend Michael Linda's The Never A Next Story.
Speaker 3: In a strange way, this feels like a parallel universe
Speaker 3: version of the nerd complaining about how they didn't put
Speaker 3: Tom Bombadill in the movies.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I mean the reading of a book
Speaker 2: can can be very personal, and I do like that
Speaker 2: this is This email also centers in on childhood reading
Speaker 2: of books, which I've observed this with my own son,
Speaker 2: whose name is also Bestia. When he reads the book
Speaker 2: that he likes, he's very likely to want to read
Speaker 2: it over and over again in ways that adults may not.
Speaker 2: You know, there are books that I reread, but I
Speaker 2: give them a little time and let my adult brain
Speaker 2: forget most of them so that he can come back
Speaker 2: and re experience it again. But there's there's kind of
Speaker 2: this ritual to it sometimes with young readers. I think,
Speaker 2: where yet you just have to read it again and
Speaker 2: again to experience it again and again. It has maybe
Speaker 2: a different way to reality to the reader totally.
Speaker 3: I have exactly the same pattern. When I was a kid,
Speaker 3: I used to reread books over and over. I sort
Speaker 3: of stopped doing that as an adult. There have been
Speaker 3: a few, but not nearly as many when I was
Speaker 3: a kid. If I liked it, I'd read it five times.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the gifts of adulthood is that you
Speaker 2: get to You end up forgetting half the stuff happens,
Speaker 2: even in a book you love, and then you're like,
Speaker 2: oh man, this book is great, But I mean it's
Speaker 2: always the case that, you know, kidding aside. You know,
Speaker 2: a really great book speaks to you differently depending on
Speaker 2: when you're reading it, and you're going to find things
Speaker 2: that you didn't find the previous time. And you know that,
Speaker 2: I think in my own experience there, you know, there
Speaker 2: there are a few books that I definitely see this
Speaker 2: end definitely Doomed by Frank Herbert. Every time I've read it,
Speaker 2: it's spoken to me a little differently, and I suspect
Speaker 2: it's that way with never ending story. I never read
Speaker 2: it as a child, but it has that level of
Speaker 2: depth to it that I feel like anytime you read it,
Speaker 2: you're likely to get a different experience. You're can to
Speaker 2: pick up on different things. There's stuff in there that's
Speaker 2: very much for the child reader, there's stuff in there
Speaker 2: for the adult, and there's probably stuff that you know
Speaker 2: is intended to speak into in different ways to those
Speaker 2: different audiences.
Speaker 3: All right, well, thank you so much to everybody who
Speaker 3: got in touch this week. As I said, we've got
Speaker 3: a lot more to to read, so we will try
Speaker 3: to tackle more of that next Monday, but for now,
Speaker 3: I think we'll cap it there.
Speaker 2: That's right. If you want to listen to more, listener mail,
Speaker 2: though it's every Monday, and the Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind podcast feed core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a
Speaker 2: short form monster fact or artifact on Wednesdays, and on Friday,
Speaker 2: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
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