Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're bringing you listener mail today. Now,
Speaker 1: of course we've got our trusty mail bought Carney here. Carney,
Speaker 1: of course, used to be Arnie. Then he was subjected
Speaker 1: to Cartesian doubt, became Carney, and then he was subjected
Speaker 1: to an infestation of scugs, and now he's just full
Speaker 1: of squirrels, has been for months. Uh, it's an ongoing problem.
Speaker 1: But I've noticed some of these squirrels infesting Carney. While
Speaker 1: they used to be more of a of a nuisance,
Speaker 1: crawling throughout his gears and pulling out wires and stuff,
Speaker 1: now I think they have taken on a kind of
Speaker 1: a sacred or holy aura. I'm not sure what's changed
Speaker 1: about them. Oh well, you know, I feel like our
Speaker 1: episodes on squirrels kind of had this effect on a
Speaker 1: lot of people. They transformed the lowly squirrel, the profane
Speaker 1: square whirl into something of a sacred squirrel. I feel
Speaker 1: like that was that was my experience, the sacred cannibal. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I before the King of Rats, the King of
Speaker 1: the Rats. Yeah, I get it on a shirt at
Speaker 1: our our T shirt store. But yeah, before I I
Speaker 1: liked squirrels. Okay, I guess you know. I watched them,
Speaker 1: but I would also like chase them away from the
Speaker 1: bird feeder and all. But after our episodes, I like,
Speaker 1: I really began to respect squirrels so much more I
Speaker 1: would I stopped chasing them. I and now feed them
Speaker 1: every day. I feed them meal worms sort of an
Speaker 1: offering to them, and I just love watching them scamper
Speaker 1: around and eat their meal worms and drink from the
Speaker 1: bird feeder. I'm just I'm all on on squirrels. You
Speaker 1: say that until they turn on you. Well, as long
Speaker 1: as I keep the meal worms coming, I think I'm okay.
Speaker 1: But before we get into the proper listener mail, I
Speaker 1: do want to address the squirrels on Carney, and I
Speaker 1: want to share with everybody, uh a sacred tradition of
Speaker 1: the squirrel that um I neglected to mention in previous episodes,
Speaker 1: and it concerns the Indian palm squirrel or three striped
Speaker 1: palm palm squirrel of South India and Sri Lanka. This
Speaker 1: is a funambulis pal marum and in Hindu traditions, the
Speaker 1: palm squirrel is associated with Rama. Now Ramah some of
Speaker 1: you may already be familiar, is the seventh avatar of
Speaker 1: Vishnu and the title character of the epic Ramayana. And
Speaker 1: in this story of the Ramayana, uh Rama's wife Sita
Speaker 1: is kidnapped by the demon king Ravana and taken to
Speaker 1: the island of Lanka. So he what he does. He
Speaker 1: wants to get to seated back, so he assembles his
Speaker 1: forces and his allies in order to defeat Ravanna and
Speaker 1: bring her home, which of course means traveling to Lanka,
Speaker 1: which is modern day Sri Lanka. So he has to
Speaker 1: march the Nara Ape army across this this vast body
Speaker 1: of water. So they need a bridge, so they build
Speaker 1: one in the form of the Rama set to. So
Speaker 1: the cool thing about the Rama said to is that
Speaker 1: it actually exists in the form of a chain of
Speaker 1: limestone shoal spread between the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka,
Speaker 1: also known as Adams Bridge. Uh. But it's it's thought
Speaker 1: to have once been a geological land bridge. So perhaps
Speaker 1: maybe if sea levels were lower or something it could
Speaker 1: be revealed, or if the limestone is just higher for
Speaker 1: some reason. Yeah, I'd love to come back and do
Speaker 1: an episode on land bridges because obviously they play an
Speaker 1: important role in the movements of species, including Homo sapiens.
Speaker 1: But in this myth, it involves the movement of an
Speaker 1: ape army. By the way I mentioned, it is also
Speaker 1: known as Adams Bridge, and I imagine a lot of
Speaker 1: you might think, well, that's probably coming from Western interpretations, right,
Speaker 1: but it's actually like Adam from like the first Man
Speaker 1: of Genesis, and that is who it's referring to. But
Speaker 1: according to what I was looking at, it's actually linked
Speaker 1: to Islamic traditions and more importantly linked to the Sri
Speaker 1: Lankan mountain Adam's Peak, which is a sacred mountain and Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity,
Speaker 1: and Islam, and it's said to be the footprint of
Speaker 1: either Shiva, the Hindu god, or Adam or St. Thomas
Speaker 1: in christian in Islamic traditions. Anyway, according to Hindu traditions, though, uh,
Speaker 1: this land bridge, this bridge was constructed in order to
Speaker 1: march the Ape army to Lanka, and uh, most of
Speaker 1: most of the work is being done by the Vanara,
Speaker 1: the apes. They're they're carrying all these heavy stones, dumping
Speaker 1: them into the ocean and building this great bridge to
Speaker 1: march the army across. But then there's one small squirrel
Speaker 1: that tries to help as well. And so there are
Speaker 1: a few different versions I ran across here of you know,
Speaker 1: regarding how the squirrels trying to help. There's one where
Speaker 1: the squirrels just rolling around in the sand and then
Speaker 1: marching out to the you know, the farthest extent of
Speaker 1: the the bridge under construction, and then shakes off the
Speaker 1: sand into the water. Another one is that it just
Speaker 1: kind of fills its mouth with pebbles and then arches
Speaker 1: out there and drops the pebbles off the edge. This
Speaker 1: is a good story. Yeah, So the so the squirrel
Speaker 1: is is devoted, the squirrel is really trying to help,
Speaker 1: but the apes are doing most of the work. And uh.
Speaker 1: In one version, the apes just eventually they're tired of
Speaker 1: the squirrel being underfoot and they're like, look, we're doing it.
Speaker 1: We're dropping boulders in here, you're you're dropping pebbles, And
Speaker 1: so they hurl the squirrel out of the way and
Speaker 1: then the squirrel lands right in Rama's lap, and Rama
Speaker 1: is is impressed by the creature's devotion. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not so much about how much work the squirrel
Speaker 1: is getting done, but just how how how eager the
Speaker 1: squirrel is to help, how devoted the squirrel is. And
Speaker 1: so Rama rewards the squirrel. He takes three fingers and
Speaker 1: he runs them down the squirrels back. And remember this
Speaker 1: species is the the three striped palm squirrel. It has
Speaker 1: three stripes down its back. So this is a classic
Speaker 1: ideological myth. Right, you've got you've got a a fact
Speaker 1: you observe about the world. How did it get that way?
Speaker 1: And this story explains how exactly the fact of course
Speaker 1: here is the three stripes. Yeah, so it is the
Speaker 1: mark of a god on the squirrel's back. And uh.
Speaker 1: And so the idea is that it is a sacred creature.
Speaker 1: It's to be protected. You're not supposed to harm the
Speaker 1: squirrel and uh, you know it's typically fed by families
Speaker 1: then in devotion to Rama. So I just thought that
Speaker 1: was a fun little tale to share with everybody. Uh,
Speaker 1: and an example of of a sacred squirrel. So the
Speaker 1: next time you're you're you know, entertaining profane thoughts about
Speaker 1: the squirrel. Perhaps entertain a sacred interpretation of these skurrying
Speaker 1: little beasts absolutely blessed by the caress of rama. I
Speaker 1: will never look at our mail bots infestation the same way.
Speaker 1: It's it's all good stuff, all right. But then on
Speaker 1: that note, we should probably start turn into some listener
Speaker 1: mail here. Uh. And and it's actually an ideal that
Speaker 1: we we have already mentioned in this episode a sacred mountain,
Speaker 1: because we heard from a lot of our listeners about
Speaker 1: sacred mountains and holy mountains, holy peaks and the entities
Speaker 1: that might be and might be encountered there. Well, then
Speaker 1: in that spirit, maybe we should go straight to a
Speaker 1: few of the emails we got about sacred mountains. Of course,
Speaker 1: we did a two part episode on sacred mountain traditions
Speaker 1: of the world. Uh some links so some some mountaintop psychology,
Speaker 1: some some high altitude low pressure uh physiology and neuroscience,
Speaker 1: and just of course many great myths about the mountains
Speaker 1: of the gods. And we asked for uh, the experiences
Speaker 1: people out there have had with sacred mountains. Sou do
Speaker 1: you want to do? This? One from Cody first, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's hear from Cody. Okay, so Cody says, perfect timing
Speaker 1: of the episode. As I listened to these episodes literally
Speaker 1: driving down from my climb up and ski down of
Speaker 1: Mount Shasta, I have spent decades hiking, rock climbing, and
Speaker 1: skiing in the Sierra Nevada and Klamath Mountains. Yosemite and
Speaker 1: Shasta to me, are particularly spiritual places, even though I'm
Speaker 1: not a religious or spiritual person. Both having immense senses
Speaker 1: of scale and isolation mirrors religion of the mountains as
Speaker 1: probably the closest thing to religion for me. Regarding feeling
Speaker 1: or seeing other beings out in high elevation wilderness, I
Speaker 1: haven't had any experiences at the level of the ones
Speaker 1: you talked about on Everest, but in regards to thinking
Speaker 1: you're seeing things that aren't there or mistaking shapes that
Speaker 1: can very easily happen. In my recent Shasta climb, multiple
Speaker 1: times I mistook the silhouette created by the snow and
Speaker 1: rock interacting as someone pausing above me. The mixture of
Speaker 1: physical exertion and lack of oxygen from elevation on the
Speaker 1: brain is not something to be taken lightly. Then add
Speaker 1: in the parallax trickery of huge mountainous environments. Even at
Speaker 1: sea level, physical exertion will wreck cognition, and just about
Speaker 1: all elite athletes will do training to combat this, such
Speaker 1: as wind sprints than doing math problems. And that's all
Speaker 1: before you add in any sort of less than perfect weather.
Speaker 1: Being involved with the climbing and mountaineering community. Though, I
Speaker 1: feel like you don't hear as much of out the
Speaker 1: ie HAP condition you guys coined, and I think what
Speaker 1: did that stand. I think it was something like isolated
Speaker 1: high altitude psychosis or international house um uh. He continues.
Speaker 1: Certainly plenty of spiritual or larger than life feelings, even
Speaker 1: a few that mimic micro dosing psychoactive drugs. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Maybe those do count, But it was a shame a
Speaker 1: lot of those studies had pitiful sample sizes. Considering even
Speaker 1: just the number of people uh professionally guided on Everest
Speaker 1: eight people, the studies shouldn't have gotten published, in my opinion.
Speaker 1: While the study we looked at in the episode did
Speaker 1: a sort of literature review where they looked back at
Speaker 1: all the pre existing studies they could find about asking
Speaker 1: mountain climbers whether they'd had any kind of experiences like this.
Speaker 1: So yeah, some of the studies had small sample sizes,
Speaker 1: but they looked at multiple studies. Anyway, back to Cody,
Speaker 1: So Cody says, uh, glad to hear you mentioned, Marry.
Speaker 1: I worked for the North Face and have gotten to
Speaker 1: spend time with Conrad Anchor talking to him about his
Speaker 1: experiences climbing Mirru and his many, many, many other experiences
Speaker 1: in the mountains. It's particularly interesting to hear about the
Speaker 1: intersection of the beliefs and traditions of those who live
Speaker 1: in the Himalayas and those who go to climb in
Speaker 1: those mountains. Meru in particular, was something Conrad and team
Speaker 1: handled carefully since it was literally the center of the
Speaker 1: universe for a lot of people on A closer to
Speaker 1: home example of the spiritual rituals butting up against the
Speaker 1: climbing is the closing of Devil's Tower every June for
Speaker 1: Native American ceremonies. Also many other sandstone towers in the Southwest.
Speaker 1: I guess he means the American Southwest are permanently closed
Speaker 1: due to their spiritual significance to Native people's in terms
Speaker 1: of evil mountains, and this was a question we asked you,
Speaker 1: or are there any like hell mountains or devil mountains?
Speaker 1: We couldn't find examples, but surely there are, uh. Cody continues.
Speaker 1: In terms of evil mountains, I was also hard pressed
Speaker 1: to think of one. There are certainly peaks that carry
Speaker 1: a stigma or curse by how many percent of climbers
Speaker 1: have perished, such as K two or how many parties
Speaker 1: have been rebuffed Miru for a while, but I couldn't
Speaker 1: think of a spiritually evil mountain. Side note, when you
Speaker 1: guys were talking about that British Everest climber not using
Speaker 1: oxygen versus today. The use of supplemental O two is
Speaker 1: certainly widely used in this day, day and age of
Speaker 1: high altitude mountaineering. But in this day and age of
Speaker 1: mountaineering where the style of how you do something can
Speaker 1: be almost as important as the climb itself, i e.
Speaker 1: The use of O two does diminish the level of
Speaker 1: accomplishments since it makes it easier. So the best of
Speaker 1: the best and high altitude mountaineering still do not use
Speaker 1: O two. I love the wide variety of topics you
Speaker 1: guys cover. Well, Thank you, Cody. Yeah, that was really interesting. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I had a feeling that, you know, given our sort
Speaker 1: of broad listener base, so that we had to have
Speaker 1: some mountain climbers out there, and I guess it makes
Speaker 1: sense that some of them may have just climbed a
Speaker 1: mountain and we're just ready to to chime in. I'm
Speaker 1: interested in Cody's thing about there. It's sort of being
Speaker 1: a badge of honor that you can climb without OH two.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're not like recommending people do that because
Speaker 1: obviously that increases the risk of you know, the dangers
Speaker 1: of what you're doing. And also I am I am
Speaker 1: not qualified to make any recommendations about mountain climbs. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I mean just generally we're not saying like, yeah, don't
Speaker 1: use O two, you know, but if that is indeed
Speaker 1: a sort of like it makes the achievement more in
Speaker 1: held in higher esteem by other mountaineers and uh, mountain
Speaker 1: climbing people. I wonder if part of that might be
Speaker 1: that if you climb without O two, you appear to
Speaker 1: be more likely to have these mildly altered states of
Speaker 1: consciousness what Cody compares to being sort of like micro
Speaker 1: dosing certain psychogenic drugs, or more likely to cause these
Speaker 1: kind of errors of perception that that make the world
Speaker 1: feel a bit unreal. Yeah, yeah, I wonder, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's I guess it's likely that it's also probably just
Speaker 1: a little bit of like the uh, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of the heroics of the thing, right, that's obviously there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just dring if it's this other thing too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that possibly be in the case. All right,
Speaker 1: here's another one that comes in related to sacred mountains.
Speaker 1: This comes to us from James. James says, Hello, Robert
Speaker 1: and Joe. I have been a long time listener, and
Speaker 1: believe this my first email in I have recently been
Speaker 1: reading into the folklore of the Crow Nations and came
Speaker 1: across the story about the Little People of the Prior
Speaker 1: Mountains being from Oklahoma. I thought they were referring to
Speaker 1: the Prior here since they are arguably since they're arguably
Speaker 1: no true mountains in Oklahoma. I learned that they were
Speaker 1: referring to one of the many mountain ranges in Montana,
Speaker 1: where the Crown Nation is from. The Little People were
Speaker 1: another race, standing around knee height but contained containing immense strength.
Speaker 1: They lived in the mountains and attacked those that entered
Speaker 1: the area. However, some were allowed to pass through if
Speaker 1: they left an offering of beads or tobacco. Uh. The
Speaker 1: other way to pass through was to shoot an arrow
Speaker 1: ahead of you as you passed. The little people also
Speaker 1: sometimes met with those that went to the mountain to fast.
Speaker 1: One tail I found was of Chief Plenty Coups meeting
Speaker 1: them when he was nine. In the Choctaw Nations creation story,
Speaker 1: it says that the Chickasaw and Choctawl nations came from
Speaker 1: a great mound, well, not a sacred mountain. The story
Speaker 1: seems to fit with this as well. Sorry for the
Speaker 1: long email. I only read about these stories recently, and
Speaker 1: when your episode came out, it made me think of
Speaker 1: the bet or Mineho phenomenon. Yeah, thank you for the
Speaker 1: hours uh and hours and hours of informative entertainment. Best regards, James.
Speaker 1: This is something I think maybe we uh we could
Speaker 1: have explored more in the episode, but didn't come up
Speaker 1: as much. Which is the idea of like myths and
Speaker 1: religious stories that have mountains as the dwelling place. Uh,
Speaker 1: not just of the gods, but of like other types
Speaker 1: of people's or other beings, you know, the mountains being
Speaker 1: a place of trolls, or the mountains being the place
Speaker 1: of like the little people. Yeah, this is, this is
Speaker 1: It would be an interesting avenue to explore more in
Speaker 1: the future. I mean, I I instantly think two of
Speaker 1: of goblins and creatures of that nature as well. All right,
Speaker 1: we have another one here. This one comes to us
Speaker 1: from him. I'm right Sin and says, hey, guys, I
Speaker 1: was really surprised to not hear you touch on Mount
Speaker 1: Sinai in the Sacred Mountains episode. I mean actual or
Speaker 1: mythical locations that are associated with myths that have wide
Speaker 1: cultural relevance and staying power. The first thing I think
Speaker 1: of is Mount Sinai. I'll admit I'm biased in that
Speaker 1: respect because I'm a former Orthodox Jew, but I understand
Speaker 1: that it has similar or equal relevance in Christianity and
Speaker 1: Islam as well. Maybe you didn't touch on it on
Speaker 1: purpose because it would be too socially or politically controversial
Speaker 1: to address Abrahamic religions as mythologies that share so many
Speaker 1: similar themes to lots of ancient belief systems. That's actually
Speaker 1: what I opened up the podcast hoping to hear the
Speaker 1: main content be regardless. I really enjoyed the episode and
Speaker 1: your show in general. Uh. Yeah, Mount Sinai is a
Speaker 1: great one. Of course. That is for example, in the
Speaker 1: Book of Exodus, that is where it has said that
Speaker 1: Moses receives the Ten Commandments on top of Mount Sinai
Speaker 1: from from God. Um, there was no reason we didn't
Speaker 1: mention it, I think, get I think it just didn't
Speaker 1: come up. Yeah, we we just kind of forgot to
Speaker 1: include it, which is there. There are a whole lot
Speaker 1: of holy mountains, so yeah, but it is true. This
Speaker 1: is a this is a huge one of big cultural significance. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I do think like the story of Moses is
Speaker 1: a sent into Mount Sinai or he you know, he
Speaker 1: receives the Ten Commandments, and like there is something interesting
Speaker 1: going on there with like he disappears into the mountain
Speaker 1: and then what happens to the people while he's gone
Speaker 1: while they turned to idol worship immediately while while he
Speaker 1: has disappeared because they're waiting for him to come down.
Speaker 1: Something's interesting is going on there. I haven't quite thought
Speaker 1: about how to phrase it, but yeah, absolutely, and and
Speaker 1: I do want to also just remind everybody, like when
Speaker 1: we talk about myth and religion on the show. Um,
Speaker 1: I do hope everyone understands that we you know, we
Speaker 1: try to discuss mytho, mythology and myth as being is
Speaker 1: having more weight than simply saying like this is a
Speaker 1: story made up by people, you know, like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not using myth as a pejorative or the way
Speaker 1: some people sometimes do. Like some will use the word
Speaker 1: myth to mean like a thing that is a lie, right,
Speaker 1: something like that. It's not like MythBusters, right, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: we're using it in the sense of like a traditional
Speaker 1: or foundational story, often involving supernatural elements. Right. But what
Speaker 1: a different show MythBusters would have been if that was
Speaker 1: the cell Like we're gonna go after another myth this
Speaker 1: this this a week, it's Prometheus the stories bs and
Speaker 1: then they bust it somehow, I don't know. We get
Speaker 1: some internet commenters that are like that, Like every time
Speaker 1: we put something up about some interesting mythological topic, somebody
Speaker 1: chimes in the comments is like fake bs made up.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, like I think you're missing the point a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, well that that tends to happen on like,
Speaker 1: you know, some of our social media accounts where you
Speaker 1: maybe have people come in that don't really know the
Speaker 1: show and then you see something where where like a
Speaker 1: myth is referenced in the title or the description, and
Speaker 1: then they kind of react, Yeah, you know, if you
Speaker 1: are that person and your your yours sending no hard feelings,
Speaker 1: but but maybe maybe think about don't do that. I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly we always invite everyone to actually listen to the
Speaker 1: episodes and respond to the content of the episodes. And
Speaker 1: along those lines, I mean we we do, uh, we
Speaker 1: do make mistakes here and there, and that's why we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everybody. We we skip over things
Speaker 1: by accident, like Mount SINAI. Uh. So you know, we're
Speaker 1: we're we're on a continuous journey of discovery and self
Speaker 1: improvement here and and we hope everybody else is engaging
Speaker 1: with the world, uh with that kind of growth mindset
Speaker 1: as well. Well. One last thing I'll say is someone
Speaker 1: who creates nonfiction content, I will say not all omissions
Speaker 1: are intentional omissions. So like, there's literally no way we
Speaker 1: can talk about all the sacred mountains in the world
Speaker 1: in our episode that was you know, a total of
Speaker 1: however many minutes, so Uh so, I don't know. Always
Speaker 1: keep that in mind. It's just like sometimes you just
Speaker 1: picked the things that you pick to talk about because
Speaker 1: they were interesting and and they're what came up. It's
Speaker 1: not because you thought everything else should be left out right,
Speaker 1: and then that's what listener mail episodes are ultimately four
Speaker 1: to you know, we we hoped and expected to hear
Speaker 1: from folks with examples of really cool traditions that we
Speaker 1: uh you know, forgot to cover or just we're not
Speaker 1: aware of. Like to go back to Adam's peak that
Speaker 1: I mentioned at the top of this episode, I was
Speaker 1: not familiar with that Sri lankin Um Holy Mountain until
Speaker 1: looking at Following the Trail of the Squirrel. So yeah,
Speaker 1: like I said, we're continually learning new things and trying
Speaker 1: to share them with everybody in that spirit of open mindedness.
Speaker 1: May we now bludge in you with an advertisement. Let's
Speaker 1: do it, but we will be right back. Thank all right,
Speaker 1: We're back, and uh, you know, I believe we have
Speaker 1: some listener mail related to another recent episode, our episode
Speaker 1: about the imp of the perverse. Right, this is the
Speaker 1: impulse to do wrong simply for the reason that it's wrong,
Speaker 1: and no other reason at all. Uh So this comes
Speaker 1: to us from our listener, Miriam. Miriam says, Hi, Joe
Speaker 1: and Robert, thank for the great episode The imp of
Speaker 1: the Perverse. It was very interesting to consider all the
Speaker 1: various ways this phenomenon can affect our lives. When you
Speaker 1: talked about intrusive thoughts and the techniques that have been
Speaker 1: shown to help some people overcome them, I was struck
Speaker 1: by how closely it mirrored my own experience with a
Speaker 1: form of O c D called pure Oh it differs
Speaker 1: from traditional O c D, and of course that's an
Speaker 1: obsessive compulsive disorder. It differs from traditional O c D
Speaker 1: in that the compulsion triggered by the intrusive thought is
Speaker 1: not a physical behavior such as handwashing, but the mental
Speaker 1: checking of the thought and of the body's visceral responses
Speaker 1: to it. When you talked about checking on intrusive thoughts
Speaker 1: and how it leads to a positive feedback loop, I
Speaker 1: was surprised by how closely you described this disorder without
Speaker 1: naming it. I believe that the pure O variant of
Speaker 1: O c D is lesser known and highly insidious, as
Speaker 1: people can suffer tremendously for a long time without having
Speaker 1: any visible symptoms that might more easily prompt them or
Speaker 1: their loved ones to consider seeking professional help. I think
Speaker 1: better awareness of this disorder could help people understand that
Speaker 1: the techniques you described, which were exactly what I did
Speaker 1: in therapy alongside CBT, can really can provide hugely from
Speaker 1: intrusive thoughts if they begin to take over your life.
Speaker 1: It's been more than a year since I've been bothered
Speaker 1: by intrusive thoughts. I believe it's because I was able
Speaker 1: to forge an entirely different, healthier relationship to my thoughts
Speaker 1: thanks to practicing CBT and other techniques with my therapist.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to emphasize how important these concepts
Speaker 1: are for everybody and to say thanks again for talking
Speaker 1: about them. Cheers, Miriam. Next, Wellent, Well, thanks for sharing
Speaker 1: that with this, Miriam. Uh. By the way, that's cognitive
Speaker 1: behavioral therapy for anybody. Yeah yeah, yes, um yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And so I actually hadn't really heard of this pure
Speaker 1: oh form of o c D before, but this is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. So, you know, the traditional idea of
Speaker 1: O c D is that you know, you have repetitive
Speaker 1: compulsive behaviors uh that are triggered by sort of loops
Speaker 1: in your mind. You might lock the door a bunch
Speaker 1: of times, or you might wash your hands a lot,
Speaker 1: or click you're the clicker on your car exactly fifteen times. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but this is the idea that you could have
Speaker 1: the same kind of mental impulses, uh, that that caused
Speaker 1: you to have sort of like repetitive anxieties and and
Speaker 1: and revisit these thoughts over and over without having external
Speaker 1: behaviors that follow from them, and that this could allow
Speaker 1: the behavior to to just kind of like go on
Speaker 1: and fester without people noticing that you're having a problem. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm also really glad to hear that that that CBT
Speaker 1: and and therapy has worked out for you. Miriam. Absolutely
Speaker 1: all right, here's another one. This one is coming to
Speaker 1: us from Eric. Eric writes in and says, dear mind
Speaker 1: blowing folk, thanks for the great show. I started listening
Speaker 1: last year and went back to the archives, all the
Speaker 1: way back to science stuff with Allison and Robert, and
Speaker 1: now I'm up to mid h. I mean, everybody listens
Speaker 1: to the show differently. I tend to advise against starting
Speaker 1: at the beginning and working your way up. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I just I often feel like a lot of the
Speaker 1: topics we we cover, um, the older episodes, you'd run
Speaker 1: into potential problems of the science not being like completely
Speaker 1: up to date. Uh. And then also, you know, we're always,
Speaker 1: we're perpetually hopefully growing and becoming better at this whole
Speaker 1: podcasting thing. So I also worrying, worry about like how, um,
Speaker 1: how I come off and past episodes, you know, um,
Speaker 1: because I feel like some of those early ones were
Speaker 1: kind of rough. It was like a fifteen minute show
Speaker 1: back then. I'm sure you're great, But anyway, I appreciate
Speaker 1: anybody who enjoys the show enough that they're going back
Speaker 1: into the back catalog anyway, um, Eric continues. In the
Speaker 1: episode Jupiter's Children, you asked off handedly whether Ganymedes icy
Speaker 1: surface would be slippery. The answer, in short, is probably not.
Speaker 1: Ice on Earth is slippery because when we set foot
Speaker 1: or skate on it, the pressure, friction and high temperature
Speaker 1: of our shoes or eates melts a tiny amount of ice,
Speaker 1: forming a thin layer of water that acts as a
Speaker 1: lubricant between you and the ice. On Ganny Meat or Europa, however,
Speaker 1: the ice would be so cold and your space suits
Speaker 1: boots would necessarily have to be so heavily insulated that
Speaker 1: it would not melt and would be about equivalent to
Speaker 1: walking on low density rock or sand. Also, the gravity
Speaker 1: is solo that you wouldn't create very much friction or pressure.
Speaker 1: You mentioned John Scalzes The Forever War. Uh, he actually
Speaker 1: got the science wrong on this in his novel The
Speaker 1: recruits are training on Pluto, and he incorrectly describes the
Speaker 1: surface as covered in frozen hydrogen. In the book, the
Speaker 1: outsides of their suits were warm enough above roughly twenty
Speaker 1: degrees kelvin to cause the frozen hydrogen to boil, which
Speaker 1: made it very slippery. In reality, the surface of Pluto
Speaker 1: is minimum thirty three degrees kelvin, which is far too
Speaker 1: warm for either frozen or liquid hydrogen, although still ridiculously
Speaker 1: cold enough to seasonally have nitrogen snow regin snow. Nice.
Speaker 1: I hope this answer is not redundant, as I'm writing
Speaker 1: about three years after the episode in question aired. All
Speaker 1: the best wishes and keep up the good work, Eric, No,
Speaker 1: this is great feedback. I'm glad to know that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't fall on my butt on Ganna made. I do
Speaker 1: remember that being a real fun part of the Forever War.
Speaker 1: It was. It was a fun novel to read. Um.
Speaker 1: It kind of makes me want to revisit some of
Speaker 1: these old like Space Soldier, uh, you know, Power Armor
Speaker 1: novels that I was really into for a while. I
Speaker 1: was speaking of those, you know, I was just the
Speaker 1: other day thinking about thinking about Starship Troopers because I've
Speaker 1: never read the Heinland novel, but I recently rewatched the
Speaker 1: movie Paul Verehoven's Starship Troopers. You know, I saw some
Speaker 1: of our fans talking about it on the discussion module
Speaker 1: and they were like, yeah, it's kind of bad, kind
Speaker 1: of good. Disagree. I think it is a masterpiece. It
Speaker 1: is one of the best satires in American film history.
Speaker 1: It would I would be interested to to to review
Speaker 1: it and to discuss it, because I saw it when
Speaker 1: it first came out, and I remember disliking it. But
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that a lot of my dislike
Speaker 1: was me kind of uh, you know, basically buying into
Speaker 1: this story, to my like, expecting it to be a
Speaker 1: humans Are good, Bugs Are Bad kind of story, and
Speaker 1: something felt kind of icky about it. It did. It
Speaker 1: felt it felt icky, and so it was sort of
Speaker 1: working but it was working. But at the time, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this this movie is broken. I feel icky after watching
Speaker 1: this film. But no, I think it's it's like a
Speaker 1: genius satire. It's essentially I think it is a propaganda
Speaker 1: film made by a future fascist society. Yeah. Absolutely, Um,
Speaker 1: I would need to reread the book because I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a little hazy on all the details. Like the main
Speaker 1: thing I'm remembering is the Bazukas. So there's the power arm. Oh.
Speaker 1: I mentioned it because I thought there was power in
Speaker 1: the novels, but not in the movies. In the movie,
Speaker 1: as I as I remember, there's no power armor in
Speaker 1: the movie. Right. No, that's right. They cut that part
Speaker 1: out because it's it's straight up space marines, uh in
Speaker 1: the in the novel right, straight up Casper van Dean,
Speaker 1: it's all body with him. Okay, let's take a look
Speaker 1: at the next one. How about this one from our
Speaker 1: recurring correspondent Jesser, who's into Egyptian mythology. Oh yes, let's
Speaker 1: hear Okay, So Jesser says, Hi, I wanted to write
Speaker 1: in to share a couple of things related to your
Speaker 1: recent episodes on narratives. That was the one against narratives
Speaker 1: about the possible, you know, negative consequences of our addiction
Speaker 1: to stories, and also about sacred mountains. So Jesser writes
Speaker 1: in the episode You Happen to use a definition of
Speaker 1: story based on conflict. It reminded me of an essay
Speaker 1: I had read called The Significance of Plot Without Conflict.
Speaker 1: It argues that the idea that story needs conflict is
Speaker 1: a limited view of story structure prevalent in Western culture.
Speaker 1: To demonstrate its point, it discusses the Japanese story structure
Speaker 1: called kisho tin ketsu uh. This structure is made up
Speaker 1: of four acts introduction, development, twist, and resolution, where the
Speaker 1: twist acts like a non sequitur, and the resolution brings
Speaker 1: the introduction and the twist into harmony with each other.
Speaker 1: The example they use is a four panel comic a
Speaker 1: girl standing at a vending machine she buys a soda.
Speaker 1: A boy is sitting on a bench. The girl appears
Speaker 1: and gives him a soda. The essay goes on to
Speaker 1: suggest that the focus on stories as conflict in the
Speaker 1: Western perspective leads people to frame things as conflicts even
Speaker 1: when there is none. On my initial read, I was
Speaker 1: skeptical since you could argue in Kisho tin katsu uh
Speaker 1: that it still uses conflict, just in the form of
Speaker 1: conflicting images instead of a literal conflict. But if the
Speaker 1: narratives we make affects the way we see the world,
Speaker 1: maybe by thinking that conflict is necessary to narrative, we
Speaker 1: make ourselves more prone to see ourselves in conflict with others. Interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, this makes me think of the Miyazaki film
Speaker 1: My Neighbor Totoro um. I don't know to what extent
Speaker 1: this lines up with that, but like Totoro is a
Speaker 1: film that when I watched it before becoming a parent,
Speaker 1: I found it kind of kind of boring and and
Speaker 1: and long, you know, beautiful, but also just kind of
Speaker 1: drawn out and devoid of of much in the way
Speaker 1: of conflict. But I've kind of seen it through my
Speaker 1: son's eyes and now I love it, you know. I
Speaker 1: put it right up there with with NAUSICAA is my
Speaker 1: favorite Miyazaki film. Nasca, of course, is a film that
Speaker 1: has lots of conflict. But Totoro, I mean there's there
Speaker 1: is the plot element about the younger the younger child
Speaker 1: running away and there being some concern over if she's
Speaker 1: okay and having to find her, and then there's concerns
Speaker 1: over the mother's uh illness and her recovering from it.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if it's completely devoid of conflict,
Speaker 1: depending on how you want to Oh no, I I
Speaker 1: say that's definitely not without conflict, because I mean, when
Speaker 1: you think about the role that conflict plays in narrative,
Speaker 1: at least the way I would see it, this is
Speaker 1: what I think I said in the previous episode is
Speaker 1: that you know, what it is is that a character
Speaker 1: that you come to identify with emotionally faces some kind
Speaker 1: of obstacle or problem that they have to overcome, and
Speaker 1: so this is some kind of conflict. It could be
Speaker 1: an actual fight, you know, a conflict, like a violent conflict,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't need to be. It could just be
Speaker 1: that there's something they want to know and they don't
Speaker 1: know it yet, so they need to find out where
Speaker 1: it could be that they maybe, you know, they're all
Speaker 1: these relationship stories. They are in love with somebody or
Speaker 1: they want to be friends with somebody or something like that,
Speaker 1: and it's not working out at first. So conflict doesn't
Speaker 1: to me imply necessarily like violence or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But it's but it does kind of feel like they're
Speaker 1: they're sort of conflict with a capital C, especially in
Speaker 1: Western traditions, where it's got to be like that Disney
Speaker 1: movie conflict where somebody dies or is or it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's mythic in the sense that somebody's kidnapped
Speaker 1: by say a tin headed demon king. But if the if,
Speaker 1: the if the conflict is is more of you know,
Speaker 1: subtle it's like you know, maze feelings about her mother
Speaker 1: and totoro, uh, that sort of thing, like it's it
Speaker 1: seems like a slightly different animal. I mean, likewise, to
Speaker 1: go back to this example of of the girl standing
Speaker 1: by a vending machine buying a soda, a boy setting
Speaker 1: on a bench, and then a girl appears to give
Speaker 1: him a soda, like arguably to their point, you know,
Speaker 1: this could be seen as conflict like she she perhaps
Speaker 1: it says, oh, there's somebody without a soda I should share,
Speaker 1: and that that in and of itself, there's a problem
Speaker 1: to resolve, problem that needs to be resolved, some sort
Speaker 1: of growth that needs to take place within that character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm totally open to the idea that there are
Speaker 1: are other forms of narratives. I mean, I still do.
Speaker 1: When I look at stuff like this, it does seem
Speaker 1: to me like there is there is like empathy with
Speaker 1: characters and a desire to resolve some kind end of obstacle.
Speaker 1: I mean, even when I think about this, this four
Speaker 1: panel comic, I start imagining things like that. So maybe
Speaker 1: that's just me projecting on it, but I start to imagine,
Speaker 1: um a subtextual conflict where the boy sitting alone on
Speaker 1: the bench was lonely, and now this girl appears and
Speaker 1: gives him a soda, and now there's a friendship, which
Speaker 1: is a kind of resolution of a psychic conflict. Right,
Speaker 1: Or if you just really you get the thing about
Speaker 1: narrative that you can just really go hog wild with it, right,
Speaker 1: and you can say she's a vampire. She never intended
Speaker 1: to drink that soda. She bought that soda in order
Speaker 1: to gain the boys trust so that she might drain
Speaker 1: his vital essence. But I'm obviously reading way too much
Speaker 1: into it. Well yeah, I mean, obviously we want to
Speaker 1: read conflicts into it. But this is a really good point.
Speaker 1: Maybe thinking of narrative in terms of conflict is somehow
Speaker 1: limiting or or I don't know. You've definitely given me
Speaker 1: something to think about, so thank you, Jesser. But the
Speaker 1: email is not over. As usual, Jesser has something to
Speaker 1: say about Egyptian mythology, so uh, the listener continues here.
Speaker 1: You also made passing reference to cyclical and linear time,
Speaker 1: and I can't pass up an opportunity to share a
Speaker 1: fact about ancient Egypt. Robert, I know you love cyclical
Speaker 1: and linear time, so strap in here. The Egyptian language
Speaker 1: has two terms for eternity, depending on whether you were
Speaker 1: talking about eternity in cyclical nine or linear diet time.
Speaker 1: In the Search for God in Ancient Egypt, Jan Osman
Speaker 1: described the dual eternity ees quote, it is often said
Speaker 1: of nine time that it comes. It is time as
Speaker 1: an incessantly pulsating stream of days, months, seasons, and years.
Speaker 1: Yet time, however, remains, lasts and endures. And then Yesser says,
Speaker 1: for bonus points, nene could be an idiophone for repetition.
Speaker 1: An interesting yeah. In your episode about Sacred Mountains, you
Speaker 1: mentioned the myth of king like Haon feeding human flesh
Speaker 1: to Zeus and the evidence that sugg Us there was
Speaker 1: once human sacrifice to Zeus on Mountain, like ka On.
Speaker 1: Maybe the myth was a bit of pr work on
Speaker 1: the part of the priests of Zeus like Chaos, explaining
Speaker 1: why Zeus used to take human sacrifices, but reassuring us
Speaker 1: that it was a mistake, not a bad theory. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, I've read about theories like this before, and
Speaker 1: not things that are known for sure, but like the
Speaker 1: idea that religions that have animal sacrifices often they be
Speaker 1: over time. They came in as a sort of substitute
Speaker 1: for a previous practice of human sacrifice, and there's often
Speaker 1: a myth saying like why the god does not accept
Speaker 1: human sacrifices anymore. It's like the priests are like working
Speaker 1: over time to say like, that's not the deal anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's almost perfectly there. Again, not knowing that
Speaker 1: this is the correct explanation, but it's a very interesting
Speaker 1: way of interpreting, like the binding of Isaac. Yeah again
Speaker 1: it is. We've We've discussed in the show before. It's
Speaker 1: important to realize that that religions and mythologiculture to sans
Speaker 1: evolved there. They are not set in stone. Okay, one
Speaker 1: last thing from Jesser here, Jesser says. Also, the book
Speaker 1: Banner in the Sky, written in the nineteen fifties by
Speaker 1: the mountaineer James Ramsey Ullman, features third man syndrome as
Speaker 1: a plot point. While climbing the mountain alone, the young
Speaker 1: protagonist Rudy feels as though he's being followed by some
Speaker 1: sort of demon or spirit, but as he overcomes his
Speaker 1: initial fear, he comes to think of it as if
Speaker 1: it's his father's ghost guiding him. I always thought it
Speaker 1: was just symbolic, but maybe it was inspired by actual experience.
Speaker 1: Thanks for all the work you put into making the
Speaker 1: podcast so consistently interesting and insightful, your pseudonymous Egyptologist Jesser, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. As usual, great email. Awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got to touch on several different episodes that we've
Speaker 1: covered recently in that one. Alright, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take one more break, but when we come back,
Speaker 1: we have even more listener mail to share with you.
Speaker 1: Thank thank Alright, we're back. This one comes to us
Speaker 1: about our Sender Raven episode or send an Owl's into
Speaker 1: pigeon uh into this from our listener, Anna, Anna says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe I love your podcast, and I'm listening
Speaker 1: to your other podcast, Invention and enjoying that too. See
Speaker 1: Anna's enjoying it. If you're not listening yet, you should
Speaker 1: get on that. Go over there subscribe to Invention. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Uh so, Anna says, I've gotten a little behind on
Speaker 1: my podcast. I just listen to your episode about the
Speaker 1: use of birds as messengers. You're not that behind. That
Speaker 1: was just like last week. Yeah. Um, I do not
Speaker 1: know about other birds used as a messenger, but I
Speaker 1: do remember a fact about other uses for ravens. Perhaps
Speaker 1: other fans have emailed you about this already, they had not, Anna,
Speaker 1: Anna says ravens are part of Vikings slash Norse mythology,
Speaker 1: but apparently Vikings also had a real world use for
Speaker 1: ravens too. In this case, they're short flying range that
Speaker 1: you spoke of in the episode came to the advantage
Speaker 1: of the Vikings. When the Vikings were out on a
Speaker 1: long sea voyage, they would send out a raven, and
Speaker 1: if the raven came back, they knew they were far
Speaker 1: from land. If the raven did not come back, they
Speaker 1: knew the raven must have landed and they would soon
Speaker 1: find land. Maybe there is a link with the biblical
Speaker 1: story of the arc. Perhaps Noah sent out a raven
Speaker 1: to see if the flood was over. Remember in the
Speaker 1: in the story of Noah's Ark, before he sends out
Speaker 1: the doves, he sends out a raven. Then it just
Speaker 1: never says what happened with the ravend And I just
Speaker 1: wanted to add, yeah, this is actually a part of
Speaker 1: the letter. I don't know if this is historically factual
Speaker 1: or if it's just part of the legend, but either way,
Speaker 1: the story of the discovery of Iceland or maybe not
Speaker 1: the discovery, like the first deliberate journey to Iceland by
Speaker 1: a Viking sea voyager, it was that ravens were used
Speaker 1: to locate Iceland from out in the sea. And it
Speaker 1: seems to me like that might probably work because the
Speaker 1: idea is, you know, like you have a crow's nest
Speaker 1: in a boat to get up there and see farther
Speaker 1: to see if you can find land. If you allow
Speaker 1: a bird to fly up, it can go way up
Speaker 1: in the sky and and look around for land, and
Speaker 1: if it sees something, then you're in luck. Sort of
Speaker 1: like extending your crow's nest like hundreds of feet Uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Anna continues. Another random fact I learned recently is that
Speaker 1: recent research shows that all birds originally evolved from Australia.
Speaker 1: Now I think, and I think this is actually a
Speaker 1: typo here. I think she meant to say all songbirds
Speaker 1: originated from Australia. Because I looked this up, I couldn't
Speaker 1: find evidence about all birds, but all songbirds did evolve
Speaker 1: from a common ancestor in Australia. And songbirds, of course
Speaker 1: are a huge subset of all birds, comprising the clade Passeri.
Speaker 1: In their line did originally come from Australia about twenty
Speaker 1: four million years ago. So I think that's what she meant,
Speaker 1: She continues. I learned this on a podcast by Dr
Speaker 1: Carl Cruisel Nikki cruizal Nikki. Here in Australia, we just
Speaker 1: call him Dr Carl. Sounds kind of sketchy, but I
Speaker 1: looked him up and he looks legit. I like Dr Carl.
Speaker 1: She says. He has a few podcasts, he's written something
Speaker 1: like fifty books, and he's been declared a National Treasure
Speaker 1: of Australia. He's even won an ig Nobel Prize. There,
Speaker 1: I enjoy your scientific approach, an open minded skepticism. And
Speaker 1: I think Dr Carl has some of the same approach
Speaker 1: keep up the good work and uh uh so I
Speaker 1: wasn't familiar with Dr Carl, but I read a bit
Speaker 1: on him. He sounds interesting and apparently he's affected by prosopagnosia,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about, yeah, on the show before, and
Speaker 1: he's got like strategies for how to identify people interesting.
Speaker 1: I should mention, as long as we're talking about that
Speaker 1: Sender Raven episode. Somebody on the the Stuffable in your
Speaker 1: Mind discussion module, which of course is our our Facebook
Speaker 1: discussion group, which is really the the the only place
Speaker 1: if you want to um, you know, interact with us
Speaker 1: on social media or of course interact with plenty of
Speaker 1: other listeners. But somebody brought up that Frank Herbert's Dune
Speaker 1: features a plot element in which the Freeman, the the
Speaker 1: the the sort of nomadic people of Iracus use bats
Speaker 1: to send messages, and i'd completely yeah, I've read Dune
Speaker 1: like multiple times and and it is if you listen
Speaker 1: to the show. You know, I am usually not shy
Speaker 1: about thrown in a Dune reference, but I completely spaced
Speaker 1: on the bats. Totally makes sense on a Racus, they
Speaker 1: can cross distances without the threat of worms, right if
Speaker 1: they can fly? Yeah, but maybe we should come back
Speaker 1: and do an add on to that episode and look
Speaker 1: at the bats, yeah you know it or any inats
Speaker 1: that come up, messenger bats, could you know, could it
Speaker 1: be done? What? What? We just we should approach them
Speaker 1: as well and sort of you know, a tack on
Speaker 1: a segment to that episode. Speaking of things that fly.
Speaker 1: We also got an email from a listener named Christian.
Speaker 1: Not our former co host Christian, but a listener Christian
Speaker 1: about Cupid's Lead arrows. That was a fun episode, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: where we talked about Cupid and this like the mythological
Speaker 1: use of lead, and then also we just got into
Speaker 1: lead itself. But Christian writs in and says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm listening to Cupid's Lead an arrow and heard one
Speaker 1: of you say that you wouldn't want a lead hammer.
Speaker 1: In fact, I have one. What I think that was
Speaker 1: me that said it, But I mean it makes us
Speaker 1: lead as kind of soft. If you're beating something with
Speaker 1: lead for a long time, would probably deformed the hammer head.
Speaker 1: When we were talking about you have the limits of
Speaker 1: using lead in in in weaponry, yeah, uh, anyway, Christian
Speaker 1: continues quote. British cars from the sixties frequently had wheels
Speaker 1: attached using a spinner basically a large single lug nut
Speaker 1: at the center of the hub. A lead faced hammer
Speaker 1: is used to remove the spinner by whacking the blades
Speaker 1: that protrude out from the center of the cab. Because
Speaker 1: the lead is soft, this doesn't damage the chrome finish
Speaker 1: of the spinner. Okay, as always keep up the good work, Christian,
Speaker 1: I stand corrected. Lead hammer is totally a thing there
Speaker 1: you go, not so much for whacking skulls, but when
Speaker 1: you need, but when you need a subtle approach as
Speaker 1: as clearly as the case with the with these spinners.
Speaker 1: You know, I do want to say that I'm sure
Speaker 1: you could probably hurt somebody really bad with the lead hammer.
Speaker 1: It's not that like it wouldn't I mean would be heavy.
Speaker 1: You could still hurt somebody. It just probably wouldn't hold
Speaker 1: up over time, right, And of course the weaponry and
Speaker 1: the history of military technology, it's about usually about inflicting
Speaker 1: the most harm and then also having uh you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of durability to the weapons you've created, right, Okay.
Speaker 1: Quick email from our listener Emily In response to the
Speaker 1: bugs under the Skin episode, Emily says, Hey, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've been sent this already, but just in case you haven't,
Speaker 1: regarding bugs under the skin, check this out. She sends
Speaker 1: a link. It's a link to the story that you
Speaker 1: may have seen already about the woman who had four
Speaker 1: bees living under her eyelid eating her tears. Did you
Speaker 1: come across this everywhere? Right after our episode came out? Everywhere?
Speaker 1: I found her right up in the Atlantic by Hailey
Speaker 1: weiss Uh. Just to read a quick quote from it,
Speaker 1: beastings hurt like hell, but there's a reason to consider
Speaker 1: yourself lucky if a venomous prick is the worst you've
Speaker 1: suffered from bees. Last week, Taiwan CTS News Channel reported
Speaker 1: the twenty nine year old woman had gone out for
Speaker 1: a walk in the mountains and returned home with I
Speaker 1: pain that wouldn't go away. The next day, an optimologist
Speaker 1: hold four bees, all still alive, from under her right eyelid.
Speaker 1: So the stories they were living under her right eyelid
Speaker 1: and they've been feeding on her tears. A little later
Speaker 1: in the article, quote as Hung Cheating, who treated the
Speaker 1: woman at Fuyan University Hospital in Taiwan explained at a
Speaker 1: press conference, these dark colored bees were ant size members
Speaker 1: of the family known as how lick. Today, colloquially they're
Speaker 1: called sweat bees, named after one of their favorite foods.
Speaker 1: And apparently these insects are attracted to our protein and
Speaker 1: sodium rich body fluids like sweat, but they like tears
Speaker 1: even more than sweat because tears are more nutrient rich.
Speaker 1: There's something almost mythological about this, right, just the idea
Speaker 1: of like the bees feasting on her tears and living
Speaker 1: in her eyes. Um Like, I think the first time
Speaker 1: I saw it, after our episode came out, I kind
Speaker 1: of dismissed it. I'm like, nope, that that can't be right.
Speaker 1: That just sounds too too perfect. Somehow, it's just too
Speaker 1: there's too much um structural integrity to the idea. It
Speaker 1: couldn't have actually have happened, but it seems like it happened.
Speaker 1: That it's been covered enough. Yeah, it's one of those
Speaker 1: times where reality feels like a story. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: We have a couple of bits of listener mail that
Speaker 1: came in about our our episodes and f a of
Speaker 1: the fundamental attribution error. Uh, those were some I think
Speaker 1: some very thought provoking episodes and fun. I think we
Speaker 1: really put the fun in fundamental attribution here. I think
Speaker 1: so too, Now, quick refresher, that's just are sort of
Speaker 1: bias or tendency to um over ascribe things to people's
Speaker 1: fundamental internal qualities and under ascribed behaviors to people's unique
Speaker 1: situations and moment to moment, right, Like a rough version
Speaker 1: would be like those those people who ate those other
Speaker 1: people in the mountains. Uh, they turned to cannibalism because
Speaker 1: they are cannibals, as opposed to saying they turned to
Speaker 1: cannibalism because they were in like a really harsh environmental
Speaker 1: condition and we're in a high stress survival situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's an extreme version. But well, and of course
Speaker 1: all behaviors are explained by both, you know, internal qualities
Speaker 1: and external factors, but we just tend to over emphasize
Speaker 1: internal qualities when we assess why things happen, right, certainly
Speaker 1: in the West. Yeah, So our listener Justin wrote in,
Speaker 1: and first of all, Justin recommended that we do an
Speaker 1: episode on the name of the Rose. I think that's
Speaker 1: an interesting idea. Oh yeah, it's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: books you've recently read. It and uh and I also
Speaker 1: really dig the movie, and there's a new adaptation coming
Speaker 1: out with John Taturo as a brother Williams. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to see that. But yeah, I loved this book also.
Speaker 1: I will say it's one of the few mystery stories
Speaker 1: I've read where the ending solution to the mystery is
Speaker 1: actually truly satisfying. Usually I feel like the end of
Speaker 1: a mystery is a letdown. Uh. Not so with the
Speaker 1: name of the Rose. But anyway, so yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's a great idea. We may come back to that
Speaker 1: in the future. But then Justin wrote with it, Oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, I put this in the wrong place
Speaker 1: in our outline. So we do have some emails about
Speaker 1: fundamental attribution error. Will get to in a minute. This
Speaker 1: one actually is in response to our narrative episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: so fa the explanation we just gave. Put that on
Speaker 1: hold for the fun is on the way, But first
Speaker 1: a little more narrative. Okay, So Justin Wrights, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your cast on storytelling. As a guy
Speaker 1: developing new drugs to treat bacterial infections, the notion of
Speaker 1: storytelling is heavily marketed for scientists and also for venture capitalists.
Speaker 1: Story is important, but selectively as a tactic. Unfortunately, what
Speaker 1: we've seen in the industry is that fundraising dollars are
Speaker 1: flowing from venture capitalists to companies that have spent many
Speaker 1: years and tremendous effort on developing good stories, rather than
Speaker 1: dedicate that heavily time intensive effort on the science and
Speaker 1: understanding of disease biology of the drug they are trying
Speaker 1: to develop. The result of this behavior is that these
Speaker 1: quote unquote over storied biotech companies are largely, with few exceptions,
Speaker 1: creating drugs that are marginal improvements on existing treatments, and
Speaker 1: because they soak up so much of the venture capital funding,
Speaker 1: they indirectly harm more innovative company is with novel solutions
Speaker 1: to significant and long standing, unaddressed problems in medicine. Tactically,
Speaker 1: I've made a time for my company to delay creating
Speaker 1: and marketing the story of our technology until the final
Speaker 1: animal study comes in to confirm as UH as such
Speaker 1: without reasonable doubt. Thank you so much. I hope this
Speaker 1: was thought provoking. Best justin, Well, that's interesting justin to
Speaker 1: hear from you in the industry. I think you're exactly
Speaker 1: right that like of course, stories are huge in marketing,
Speaker 1: and something I often recognize as you know, it's not
Speaker 1: just going to be in biotechnology and uh and and
Speaker 1: you know, developing new pharmaceuticals and all that. It's in
Speaker 1: all kinds of industries. That I noticed that the free
Speaker 1: market often tends to invite people to focus as much
Speaker 1: or more on marketing a product as they do on
Speaker 1: coming up with a good product to begin with. And
Speaker 1: the huge part of that marketing is trying to tell
Speaker 1: a story. Well, yeah, I mean, certainly this is the
Speaker 1: case in advertising. I caught an ad just the other
Speaker 1: day for a medic cation I think it was for
Speaker 1: It was something to do with digestion and bowels and
Speaker 1: and it was like a couple and they were trying
Speaker 1: to decide whether to go this way or that way,
Speaker 1: but thanks to the medication, they were able to go
Speaker 1: across a giant rope bridge. And I mean, it's I
Speaker 1: have to admire. It's like there's some subtle storytelling there
Speaker 1: that makes the whole advertisement more memorable and makes you
Speaker 1: place the problem and the solution that they're marketing within
Speaker 1: the context of story. Well, ultimately, what a lot of
Speaker 1: these advertisers are trying to do is not advertise the
Speaker 1: inherent superiority of the product they're selling. They're trying to
Speaker 1: get you to associate their brand name with a good
Speaker 1: feeling that you got from watching a story. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: also I can't this is kind of slightly unrelated, but
Speaker 1: you know, it reminds me of another great or awful
Speaker 1: use of storytelling is is in you know, scare tactics. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, generally in the case of you know, propaganda
Speaker 1: about uh you know, um you know, given uh, you know,
Speaker 1: perceived threat or something that they that that people want
Speaker 1: you to perceive as a threat, you place it within
Speaker 1: the confines of son probably unbelievable awful story uh you know,
Speaker 1: be it, you know, somebody taking you know, too many
Speaker 1: drugs and trying to force their way through a keyhole
Speaker 1: or something to that extent, you know, uh, um, you know,
Speaker 1: or worse examples that we don't even want to get
Speaker 1: into on the show. But uh, they're trying to use
Speaker 1: the you know, the the dark art of narrative to
Speaker 1: influence people's thoughts and opinions. Well. As we discussed in
Speaker 1: the episode, Yeah, constantly, narrative is used to short circuit people,
Speaker 1: people's better judgment or rational evaluation of evidence. I mean,
Speaker 1: if if you don't have the evidence on your side,
Speaker 1: just tell a good story, you might convince people. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I'm not advising people to do that. I'm saying that
Speaker 1: is how it often works. All right, let's get to
Speaker 1: the fund though, let's get to the fundamental attribution error. Well,
Speaker 1: this one combines the last two topics. So this is
Speaker 1: uh an email about fundamental attribution error and end our
Speaker 1: episode about narratives. So it is from Amelia. Amelia says, yes,
Speaker 1: it's Amelia again. I think Amelia wrote us a lot
Speaker 1: of emails about Highlander, maybe if I remember so. She says,
Speaker 1: sorry for all the emails these last few months. I
Speaker 1: vowed after I wrote about how Yep Okay, I vowed
Speaker 1: after I wrote in about Highlander that i'd cut back.
Speaker 1: It's okay, you can email UM. I don't want my
Speaker 1: emails to get in the way of new writers or
Speaker 1: other great ideas. However, your recent podcasts on questioning of
Speaker 1: narrative and the phenomenon of fundamental attribution error coincide with
Speaker 1: my specific area of study. I'll try to keep it short.
Speaker 1: And you're against narrative podcasts, You brought up very good
Speaker 1: points about how the role of story making can promote
Speaker 1: faulty perceptions, for example, the notion of the isolated self
Speaker 1: and the bias for pattern interpretation. Narrative structures can be
Speaker 1: blamed for perpetuating concepts like these, concepts which often on
Speaker 1: closer inspection, don't necessarily map onto our scientific knowledge. Having
Speaker 1: said that, I want to muddy the waters by arguing
Speaker 1: that narrative, especially fiction, builds cognitive fortitude against the FAE fallacy.
Speaker 1: Subverting fae I argue is one of the primary reasons
Speaker 1: we not only need narratives but continually construct them. FAE
Speaker 1: as an evolutionary development is inhospitable if contemplating its isolating
Speaker 1: qualities as a human being or beings incapable of escaping
Speaker 1: FA to promote a cohesive community would, by Darwin's estimation,
Speaker 1: fail to thrive. Narrative structures, to that end, provide an
Speaker 1: evolutionary benefit by encouraging the unification of human minds through
Speaker 1: the projection of self into alternative forms of perception and circumstance.
Speaker 1: This projection is possible with nonfiction, but the array of
Speaker 1: situational circumstances fiction permits is limited. Only by mankind's imagination.
Speaker 1: Following that line of thought, fiction arguably encapsulates as much
Speaker 1: of the situational human experience as can be imagined or projected.
Speaker 1: In this sense, the more a person reads from a
Speaker 1: fictional perspective of the stronger their capacity to cognitively navigate
Speaker 1: past the impulse of fa intuition. It's interesting to contemplate
Speaker 1: the evolution of myth and narrative is a cognitive defense
Speaker 1: against f a E. Though I haven't found any hard
Speaker 1: evidence of this anyway. Just wanted to share this idea
Speaker 1: and happy podcasting, best Amelia. Uh, that is an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not sure how you'd prove something like that,
Speaker 1: but it is a sort of interpretive framework that that
Speaker 1: that piques my interest. Yeah, what if? Uh? Fiction? Because
Speaker 1: we should remember one thing that does appear to be
Speaker 1: sort of true at least. There's some evidence of this
Speaker 1: in social psychology, that that manipulating perspectives can help people
Speaker 1: overcome fundamental attribution error, Like if you put put somebody
Speaker 1: in somebody else's shoes, you know, almost literally, like you
Speaker 1: give them their perspective on a situation or a room.
Speaker 1: That's actually my new um box subscription service that I'm
Speaker 1: offering is that you you get a copy of Moby
Speaker 1: Dick and they come with a paradish males shoes, So
Speaker 1: you get to read the book well literally being in
Speaker 1: ishmail shoes. Well you all, but you do get to
Speaker 1: be in Ishmail's shoes a little bit because you're you're
Speaker 1: hearing his first person perspective in the story. Uh. That
Speaker 1: is sort of what I think fiction does. I mean,
Speaker 1: one one good quality of fiction is that it puts
Speaker 1: you in somebody else's mind. It's an imagine to mind,
Speaker 1: but I mean it works pretty much the same way
Speaker 1: you inhabit this other character. You see the world from
Speaker 1: their perspective, and then you see the way that their
Speaker 1: reactions to things are changed and charged by circumstance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're privy to sort of a lot of things.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, it's it's often such an interesting experience
Speaker 1: to read a first person account that encapsulately two inside
Speaker 1: of a you know, a very flawed character, or or
Speaker 1: you know a character that is um uh that is
Speaker 1: perhaps that even you know an antagonist. Uh there. I
Speaker 1: mean another thing that I think is kind of interesting
Speaker 1: is that what the one of the things that the
Speaker 1: best fiction does is that it balances dispositional versus situational
Speaker 1: factors in the characters. Like you can have sort of
Speaker 1: one dimensional characters that are overly dispositional. They're just like
Speaker 1: a pure quality and they always do that thing and
Speaker 1: there's no complexity to them. And then you, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you've got characters that are might often be
Speaker 1: called like ciphers, that don't really have any qualities. They're
Speaker 1: just sort of reacting to the world in a way
Speaker 1: that's entirely situational and they have no personality. And like,
Speaker 1: good characters are in between these, right, Like they've got
Speaker 1: fundamental characteristics, but they they're complex, they're nuanced, they change
Speaker 1: according to circumstance. Yeah, you know, all this reminds me.
Speaker 1: It's been a while since I thought about this, but
Speaker 1: there was this was like a blog I think that
Speaker 1: I was following years and years ago, and the individual
Speaker 1: that that was maintaining the blog had kind of I
Speaker 1: think that they had a very like physical career prior
Speaker 1: and then they were blogging, you know, kind of after
Speaker 1: that had come to a close, and then they it
Speaker 1: they were also blogging about their reading, like they basically
Speaker 1: it sounded like maybe the individual had not read a
Speaker 1: lot previously and they're kind of like a late bloomer
Speaker 1: in a literary sense. And I remember when they talked
Speaker 1: about having read a first person narrative for the first time,
Speaker 1: like they had not read the first person uh novel
Speaker 1: uh and uh. At the time, I was, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a little I was like, what, really, had you
Speaker 1: never you know, read that before? But but you know,
Speaker 1: it's making me think, like what would that be, Like
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it was like to read a
Speaker 1: first person uh, you know, narrative for the first time.
Speaker 1: It was just kind of like always there. But it
Speaker 1: would be kind of magical, I guess, And I imagine
Speaker 1: picking it up and having never read that before. We're
Speaker 1: used to it. But it is a strange way of
Speaker 1: inducing kind of an altered state of consciousness. It's like you,
Speaker 1: you know, you get to transport your mind into a
Speaker 1: certain degree. This happens with any good fiction, is that
Speaker 1: there's sort of there's this identification process where you come
Speaker 1: to empathize with the fictional character. Their goals sort of
Speaker 1: become your goals, their wishes become your wishes. You feel
Speaker 1: what they feel. But even more so in the first
Speaker 1: person perspective than in even like a close third. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it reminds me. I'm currently reading um Food of the
Speaker 1: Gods by Terence McKenna, and there's a bit where he's
Speaker 1: was talking about just how I was talking about language
Speaker 1: and about how we're it is just invisible to us,
Speaker 1: you know, and he's talking about other things that are
Speaker 1: in our lives that influence our behavior, that they are
Speaker 1: invisible to us. That with you know, we just don't
Speaker 1: we don't think about them, we don't notice them, but
Speaker 1: they are defining the nature of our reality. Culture is
Speaker 1: mostly invisible and as you stop to think about it,
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, language, language constantly amazes me. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things that I wish every day I could remind
Speaker 1: myself to stop and appreciate how bizarre and magical language is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it it's so easy to to just keep
Speaker 1: going and just breathe it and breathe it out without
Speaker 1: thinking about the breath that you're taking. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go and close it out right there. That's
Speaker 1: that's your allotment of listener mail for the month or so.
Speaker 1: But we'll be back. And as as always, we do
Speaker 1: not we don't have time to respond to everybody that
Speaker 1: writes in. We we don't have the space to uh
Speaker 1: to feature every bit of listener mail that comes in.
Speaker 1: But we we really do appreciate it all, but we
Speaker 1: do read it all. So so don't you know, never
Speaker 1: feel like you're you're just throwing your missive into the
Speaker 1: void here. Uh. And like I say, it's part of
Speaker 1: part of our way of you know, it's it's a
Speaker 1: communication between us and uh and our listeners. It's a
Speaker 1: way for us to continue to grow, uh, for us
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, correct anything that needs to be corrected. Uh.
Speaker 1: But but generally it's more it's it's more additive in nature.
Speaker 1: It's like we get to bring in your experiences, your
Speaker 1: specialized knowledge and experiences uh to uh to to better
Speaker 1: understand these topics that we're discussing on the show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we love all the stuff we hear from you. Also,
Speaker 1: please keep it coming. Oh hey, and I have just
Speaker 1: one little insert I want to throw row in here
Speaker 1: doing this post recording, but I want to remind everybody
Speaker 1: that the World Science Festival is coming up. Ah, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: the World Science Festival. This is the annual celebration of
Speaker 1: science and the Arts, which takes place May two through
Speaker 1: June two in New York City. So Yeah join in
Speaker 1: for this year's festival to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of
Speaker 1: the confirmation of Einstein's theory of relativity with over sixty
Speaker 1: events that take science out of the lab and into
Speaker 1: the streets, parks, museums, and premier performing arts venues of
Speaker 1: New York City. The festival kicks off with light falls
Speaker 1: and original work for the stage on Mayo, which will
Speaker 1: portray Einstein's general theory of relativity, followed by eye opening discussions,
Speaker 1: vibrant debates, mind expanding explorations, powerful theatrical works, works, insightful films,
Speaker 1: hands on experiments, and major outdoor experiences. Again May through
Speaker 1: June two, festivalgoers of all ages will join the world's
Speaker 1: leading thinkers for an unforgettable celebration of science that's sure
Speaker 1: to inspire and excite. I am going to be there
Speaker 1: in attendance myself. In the meantime, you can check out
Speaker 1: more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind at stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we'll find
Speaker 1: all the episodes. Links out to uh such as two
Speaker 1: places like our our discussion module group on Facebook. There's
Speaker 1: also that T shirt store where you can uh you
Speaker 1: can check out our our our various squirrel shirts that
Speaker 1: are currently for sale. Oh and I also want to
Speaker 1: mention at the top of this episode, I I talked
Speaker 1: about the the sacred squirrel and Hindu traditions. I read
Speaker 1: about that in a wonderful little book titled Sacred Animals
Speaker 1: of India by Nandatha Krishna. Uh. It's available. Um, you
Speaker 1: can get it online. It's available as an e book
Speaker 1: or it's a physical book. UH, it's a it's a fun,
Speaker 1: little little read. I highly recommend it. Awesome, huge thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and
Speaker 1: Tari Harrison. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us to uh let us know feedback on this episode,
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