Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind listener Mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and hey. It is
Speaker 3: one of our classic end of Halloween season listener mail episodes.
Speaker 3: We always kind of have to do some clean up
Speaker 3: after October.
Speaker 2: Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm going to stop you right there, Joe.
Speaker 2: October still going. Today is October thirty sixth Halloween is
Speaker 2: still going strong. I refuse to hear any differently from
Speaker 2: anyone out there keeping the Halloween train going.
Speaker 3: Our mailbot Carney, of course, was tpeed by some neighborhood
Speaker 3: kids on Halloween night and now and then got rained on.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of a mess in here, but Carney's
Speaker 3: getting cleaned up. And yeah, the Halloween messages keep rolling in,
Speaker 3: so we'll feature some today and probably some more later
Speaker 3: this month.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, So if you're listening to you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I meant to write in about that Halloween episode, but
Speaker 2: now it's too late. It is not too late, keep them.
Speaker 2: We will read Halloween listener mail episodes in December if
Speaker 2: need be, so don't worry about that at all.
Speaker 3: All right, Rob, do you mind if I kick things
Speaker 3: off with this message from Matt about the Hogs of Hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's have it, okay.
Speaker 3: Of course, Hogs of Hell was a series we did
Speaker 3: about monster pigs that we got into some benevolent divine
Speaker 3: pigs as well. But in the first episode of that
Speaker 3: series we talked mostly about demonic pigs and pig monsters
Speaker 3: from mythology and from horror movies. And then in the
Speaker 3: second episode we talked about the Intela Daunts, which have
Speaker 3: been in the popular press referred to as hell pigs.
Speaker 3: These are mammals that first appeared in the Eocene Epic
Speaker 3: and flourished in the subsequent epics, died out in the Miocene.
Speaker 3: They're not actually pigs. We discovered in the end that
Speaker 3: they're more closely related to whales and hippopotamuses, maybe making
Speaker 3: them even more strange. But they have a lot of
Speaker 3: pig like features. And in fact, over the weekend I
Speaker 3: got to go to one of America's great museums. I
Speaker 3: was at the Field Museum in Chicago, and I came
Speaker 3: across an antilidant skull. The skull was massive, amazing, awe inspiring.
Speaker 3: It had cheek flanges going out to you. You can't
Speaker 3: imagine until you see it how far these cheekbones pop out.
Speaker 3: I was thinking of them like outriggers on a canoe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's quite an impressive specimen, and indeed, to your point,
Speaker 2: such an amazing museum, one of the best.
Speaker 3: Anyway. This first message is for Matt and it is
Speaker 3: about hell hogs, subject line the Mucklocks. Good day, Rob
Speaker 3: and Joe. Overjoyed to see you chatting about demon hoggs.
Speaker 3: There's a case I wanted to share with you, which
Speaker 3: I think is right up this particular street. The case
Speaker 3: pertains to the Mucklocks in County Roscommon, Ireland. The Mucklocks
Speaker 3: are earth in formations in an area called Rathkron. Specifically,
Speaker 3: they are linear earthworks said to have been gouged from
Speaker 3: the earth by a magical wild bore from the other
Speaker 3: world muk being Gaelic for pig. The bore is said
Speaker 3: to have leapt from the depths of Owenegat, also called
Speaker 3: the Gate of Hell, and the Cave of the Cats,
Speaker 3: which is fairly close by the Cave is one of
Speaker 3: those wonderfully spooky but inconspicuous entrances to the fairy other world,
Speaker 3: and itself said to be the physical home of the
Speaker 3: Morrigan and one of, if not the most important places
Speaker 3: pertaining to the origins of Sawen. I got to climb
Speaker 3: into the cave with a local archaeologist a couple of
Speaker 3: years back. It was pretty metal. For context, both of
Speaker 3: these landscape features are set within a wider area, featuring
Speaker 3: some two hundred and forty archaeological monuments in a six
Speaker 3: kilometer square area. It is wild. I've attached a drone
Speaker 3: in provided to me by the aforementioned archaeologist, so that
Speaker 3: you can see what I mean. I will also attach
Speaker 3: a photo from inside the cave, although you can't see much. Finally,
Speaker 3: I wrote an article on the place and some of
Speaker 3: the conservation efforts ongoing with local farmers and then folks.
Speaker 3: If you want to look up Matt's article about this,
Speaker 3: it is from April of this year and the article
Speaker 3: is called how to Sustainably Farm on Ancient Monuments and
Speaker 3: so the Matt's article is about the competing concerns of
Speaker 3: the preservation of archaeological sites, many of which are just
Speaker 3: earth and mounds. So it's not like Great Stoneworks, but
Speaker 3: like the mound, the pile up of the earth is
Speaker 3: the site, and then the grazing needs of local cattle
Speaker 3: and sheep farmers.
Speaker 2: Rob.
Speaker 3: I've put the images that Matt attach with the email
Speaker 3: and the outline for you to look at. Here the
Speaker 3: mouth of the cave, well, actually I'm seeing two different things.
Speaker 3: I think One is the mouth of the cave as
Speaker 3: seen from the outside. There's daylight pouring in. It looks
Speaker 3: a little bit spooky. But then there's this other thing
Speaker 3: I believe a little bit are there down the cave
Speaker 3: mouth that is just like the esophagus of a great
Speaker 3: stone beast.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I would say that the outside image with
Speaker 2: the greenery list looks like a still from the game Missed,
Speaker 2: whereas the interior cavern image looks like something from Silent
Speaker 2: Hill too. Totally good.
Speaker 3: Matt finishes by saying, aside, this whole area is an
Speaker 3: absolute treasure trove of stories both archaeological and folklorical, might
Speaker 3: be worth exploring further. Thanks again for your time and
Speaker 3: the show, Matt. Oh and then Matt also includes a
Speaker 3: ps correcting something he said in an email a while
Speaker 3: back that apparently we didn't catch. He says that he
Speaker 3: wrote a note pertaining to clay and clay infrastructure. I
Speaker 3: wonder if this was in the series we did on
Speaker 3: mud where we ended up talking about mud brick construction.
Speaker 3: That sounds right to me. But anyway, Matt goes on
Speaker 3: to say, quote specifically old drainage tile in crop fields.
Speaker 3: In this email, I mentioned that the old tiles were
Speaker 3: fit together in just such a way that water could
Speaker 3: get through to drain I don't know why I said that,
Speaker 3: because it's wrong. The water enters the tiles through the
Speaker 3: porous surface of the constructed clay material. Okay, so good job,
Speaker 3: good job catching yourself on that mat. But also thank
Speaker 3: you for the email. And yeah, this is really interesting.
Speaker 3: I knew nothing about one got to the Gate to
Speaker 3: Hell or the Cave of Cats, So I'm gonna have
Speaker 3: to look that up, learn more about it, and maybe
Speaker 3: it will come back on the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And this is exactly the sort of local
Speaker 2: detail and personal experience or expertise that we love to
Speaker 2: see in a listener mail. So this is great. Thanks
Speaker 2: for sending all this all right, This next one comes
Speaker 2: to us from Lindsey. The title the email is hell
Speaker 2: Hogs and Avelina's for Halloween.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's right, And this sort of has to do
Speaker 3: with At the end of the series, we were talking
Speaker 3: a bit about the difference between wild pigs and pekearees.
Speaker 3: They're very similar pecrees or different families of mammals, but
Speaker 3: they look very pig like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, and I'm reading this. There's almost a
Speaker 2: cowboy song cadence to this particular email, but I'm not
Speaker 2: going to try and sing it as a cowboy song.
Speaker 2: But okay, at any rate, Robert and Joe. Out here
Speaker 2: in far West Texas, we have havelinas and in wetter
Speaker 2: zones with more coverage, feral hogs. Faral hogs are far
Speaker 2: more destructive and could be a potential threat. Have Alinas
Speaker 2: are about knee high and are far more curious than aggressive,
Speaker 2: while the haveolinas are permanent residents. We tend to see
Speaker 2: them moving up and down our hill in the spring
Speaker 2: and fall. It lacks precision, but we often talk about
Speaker 2: change of seasons when they come through. What they have
Speaker 2: taken to is coming down the hill, walking halfway around
Speaker 2: the house on a wood porch, then jumping down four
Speaker 2: feet off the end, and where they continue down the hill.
Speaker 2: For some reason, they like doing it very early in
Speaker 2: the morning. I refer to it as the devil's hoof
Speaker 2: beats going to see the neighbors. Not that we're so angelic,
Speaker 2: We're just dull, just part of life out here, like
Speaker 2: the midsummer mule deer bucks that sleep under the front
Speaker 2: porch in the middle of the day. Happy bat Week, y'all,
Speaker 2: Lindsey and I had to look this up. Yes, that
Speaker 2: week is indeed October twenty fourth through the thirty first.
Speaker 2: I don't think we've ever celebrated on the show before.
Speaker 2: Maybe we should do that next year. We're ginerally just
Speaker 2: distracted with all the Halloween shenan against. But if you
Speaker 2: want to learn more about bat Week, go to batweek
Speaker 2: dot org.
Speaker 3: Now, I actually did want to bring up something I
Speaker 3: remember about Halina's from when I was in West Texas.
Speaker 3: There was a one time my wife and I went
Speaker 3: to visit some family who were working in Big beIN
Speaker 3: National Park in West Texas and Big Ben by the way,
Speaker 3: if you ever get a chance to go there, it
Speaker 3: is a beautiful area of the Chisos Mountains and the
Speaker 3: desert there. I did not realize that I was a
Speaker 3: fan of the desert until I went to Big Bend,
Speaker 3: and it's a really amazing place. But there are havelinas
Speaker 3: out there. There are these wild pig like animals. And
Speaker 3: if you think that they are not as threatening or
Speaker 3: as metal as wild pigs, maybe they're not, I don't know,
Speaker 3: as aggressive. Maybe they're more curious and cue. But they
Speaker 3: do eat the scariest looking cactuses you have ever seen.
Speaker 3: So like, you'll look at a cactus and not only
Speaker 3: do you not want to touch it, you don't want
Speaker 3: to get within ten feet of it. The spines are
Speaker 3: just unreal and the and as so like prickly pears
Speaker 3: and cactus, these little pig like animals will just walk
Speaker 3: right up to them and just chomp them up. It
Speaker 3: goes straight into the mouth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's quite impressive. And you know, I don't know,
Speaker 2: you look at one and they kind of look like
Speaker 2: they're half cactus anyways, So yeah, I guess it all
Speaker 2: makes sense.
Speaker 3: I don't even know how that works. Maybe we'll have
Speaker 3: to research this one day, but I feel like I
Speaker 3: could no more like eat a box of nails than
Speaker 3: eat one of these things. And they just chew them
Speaker 3: right up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that would be interesting to do. With their
Speaker 2: various robust digestive systems of the natural world that we
Speaker 2: could consider for sure. But anyway, Lindsey, thanks for riding
Speaker 2: in from the desert. This is great all right.
Speaker 3: Still on the subject of hogs from Hell, this message
Speaker 3: is from Jeff. Jeff says, greetings, Rob and Joe. I
Speaker 3: can't think about pigs in film without thinking of Haiau Miyazaki.
Speaker 3: For some reason, Miyazaki often draws himself as a pig,
Speaker 3: and the inclusion of pigs in so many of his
Speaker 3: movies seems to be his version of Hitchcock's cameos. Of course,
Speaker 3: there is Porco Rosso and Rob. I haven't actually seen
Speaker 3: that one, have you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Porko Rosso. I remember it as being good.
Speaker 2: It's not one of my favorite Miyazaki films, but like,
Speaker 2: it's not like any of them are bad or anything.
Speaker 2: It's got a lot of you know, old timey fighter
Speaker 2: planes in it and all, and have memory serves. Michael
Speaker 2: Keaton voices pork Rosso in the dubbed version.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's like an anthropomorphic pig who is a
Speaker 3: pilot of a sort of World War One style fighter biplane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: Okay, So there is pork Rosso, But then Jeff goes
Speaker 3: on to say, but on the Halloween frequency, there is Nago,
Speaker 3: the infected bore god from Princess Mononoke, and the trauma
Speaker 3: inducing scene from Spirited Away in which Chihiro's parents turn
Speaker 3: into hogs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, keep that one on your mind, because we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking about Spirited Away this Friday on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema. So today October the thirty sixth, if you
Speaker 2: need something a little light but also a little scary
Speaker 2: in places to distract you from whatever's going on in
Speaker 2: your life of the world, fire up a copy of
Speaker 2: Spirited Away. So it's a tremendous film.
Speaker 3: Jeff goes on to say. Another image that jumps to
Speaker 3: mind is the insanely creepy pig meme gif sampled from
Speaker 3: the nineteen oherent In film like Cochon danser Rob. I
Speaker 3: had to pull this up because I wasn't sure exactly
Speaker 3: what it was referring to. But when I found it,
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, yeah, this thing. I've seen this
Speaker 3: on the internet. So it is a common gift used
Speaker 3: to I don't know, just triggered like intense revulsion and fear.
Speaker 3: It is of a man in a very well animated
Speaker 3: pig mask in a black and white film with scary teeth,
Speaker 3: you know, the long pig nose, snout, and it's so
Speaker 3: it's like a person in a costume, but it's also
Speaker 3: a very articulated piece of puppetry on the skull of
Speaker 3: the costume. The mouth opens and closes, the tongue wags
Speaker 3: and lashes out, and I was like, what is this from? Well,
Speaker 3: I looked up like coshan danceer. So it is a
Speaker 3: nineteen oh seven film that's like four or five minutes
Speaker 3: long that is capturing something that was a popular stage performance.
Speaker 3: I think a vaudeville performance in which a person in
Speaker 3: a large pig costume with this puppet head pesters a
Speaker 3: woman who first is trying to she's trying to have
Speaker 3: a picnic. I think, like she's eating some food and
Speaker 3: the pig guy in a suit is he's in a tuxedo.
Speaker 3: He's like, hey, give me some of that food, and
Speaker 3: he keeps trying to get the food from her, and
Speaker 3: she's like, no, leave me alone. And then eventually she
Speaker 3: rips the the pig man's clothes off and then the
Speaker 3: pig looks humiliated and embarrassed, and then the pig man
Speaker 3: and the woman suddenly all is well, and then they
Speaker 3: just do a dance number that goes on for most
Speaker 3: of the runtime of the film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is this is one that I've seen
Speaker 2: clips off before. It's quite it's it's it's amazing from
Speaker 2: a you know, a technical standpoint. I remember showing this
Speaker 2: to a friend of mine who is a puppeteer and
Speaker 2: a fabricator, and yeah, he was really impressed with it.
Speaker 2: He was like, yeah, they really did this upright. There's
Speaker 2: also a colorized version of it out there that somehow
Speaker 2: is even creepier because I think one of the things
Speaker 2: about it is that, you know, it's this old footage
Speaker 2: of a very you know, very convincing and you know, technically,
Speaker 2: you know, well crafted and performed puppet slash suit effect.
Speaker 2: And there's something about it being an old picture that
Speaker 2: makes it feel like you're not watching a costume, but
Speaker 2: you're watching some sort of actual beast, you know. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of fun. If you haven't seen it.
Speaker 3: There's an idea in my head that's not fully formed.
Speaker 3: This may not come out right, but I'm thinking about
Speaker 3: what are the qualities where an image from say one
Speaker 3: hundred years ago, codes as creepy in terms of modern
Speaker 3: sensibilities in a way that most creepy images from the
Speaker 3: time do not. I'm thinking of this pig. I'm also
Speaker 3: thinking of the famous image from the early film The
Speaker 3: Man Who Laughs, which looks very much like a you know,
Speaker 3: twenty first century joker. Like, what is it about. Occasionally
Speaker 3: you get these little things or it doesn't look one
Speaker 3: hundred years old, it looks like something that was supposed
Speaker 3: to be creepy from last year.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, We've touched on this a little bit on
Speaker 2: weird House Cinema, talking at times about like pre code
Speaker 2: horror films. You know how you know, there's often stuff
Speaker 2: in those those pictures, sites and sounds or themes that
Speaker 2: it hit a lot harder than you might expect when
Speaker 2: you go back into say the nineteen thirties and look
Speaker 2: at films, and you know, part of that is just like,
Speaker 2: even if you know better, even if you know about,
Speaker 2: like you know, the pre code cinema and some of
Speaker 2: the things that they some of the elements that they
Speaker 2: had him play there, there's something in your mind that
Speaker 2: kind of just assumes that going backward through cinematic history.
Speaker 2: From now, things are going to get tamer and more
Speaker 2: innocent or something. I don't know, Like none of it
Speaker 2: makes logical sense, but I still will sometimes surprise myself
Speaker 2: when I pull something up from an old picture and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, wow, that does hit really hard. I
Speaker 2: guess it's probably some sort of modernity bias or I
Speaker 2: don't know, but maybe there's kind of like a you know,
Speaker 2: a line graph that peaks in the in the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties or something. In terms of my mind, you know,
Speaker 2: where if anything is actually you know, effective before or
Speaker 2: after that period by a significant number of decades, then
Speaker 2: I'm amazed by it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if I think of it as effective.
Speaker 3: But there are certain things that again to hit this list,
Speaker 3: So that the scary pig face from Lacushon dan Sewer,
Speaker 3: the image we see of the like the full costume
Speaker 3: with the dark glasses from Mad Love, the laughing face
Speaker 3: from the film The Man Who Laughs. You know, they
Speaker 3: just don't look like images from the nineteen aughts to
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirties. To me, they look like something conceived
Speaker 3: more recently. And I don't know why that is, but
Speaker 3: the yeah, the interesting thing to look into. Yeah, Jeff says, finally,
Speaker 3: as a result of the closing song on the Pixies
Speaker 3: album Bossa Nova, I always associate Havelina's with a mellow
Speaker 3: sunset over the warm red rocks of Arizona, with Kim
Speaker 3: Deal's angelic voice echoing in the breeze. And then Jeff
Speaker 3: includes a link to the song have Alena by the Pixies,
Speaker 3: which most of the lyrics are just saying the word
Speaker 3: Havelena a million times, but it does say walking in
Speaker 3: the breeze on the planes of Old Sagona, Arizona, among
Speaker 3: the trees, so maybe it was inspired by watching Havelena's
Speaker 3: root around. But then, finally, Jeff says, I have a
Speaker 3: hard time thinking of them as savage, demonic beasts, but
Speaker 3: then again, I've never had a family of them tear
Speaker 3: up my garden. Hope this message wasn't too a booring Jeff, No, Jeff,
Speaker 3: not boring at all. Thank you.
Speaker 2: All right, This next one comes to us from Lee
Speaker 2: Lee Wright. Sentence says, greetings, Rob, Joe, and JJ. Just
Speaker 2: a quick hit today after listening to the latest episode
Speaker 2: The idea of the fictional pigs or hogs of hell
Speaker 2: discussion had me checking into the Shreder minions be By
Speaker 2: and rock Steady, partially in order to check which was which,
Speaker 2: but also to see if either showed up in the
Speaker 2: TMNT live action films. That's teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by
Speaker 2: the way, for those of you not familiar with the abbreviation.
Speaker 2: But yes, Bebop and rock Steady, I too always have
Speaker 2: to look up to to remind myself which one is which.
Speaker 2: And Bebop is the pig or boor Man, the Boorman mutant.
Speaker 2: Rock Steady is the Rhino mutant.
Speaker 3: And they make them punks. We've talked about this on
Speaker 3: the show before. They're punks. Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 3: Why are they punks? Like they are? They fans of
Speaker 3: punk music and and they're off time from working for Shredder.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, you got to have a hobby. I mean,
Speaker 2: so the email continues. Bbop is the anthropomorphic poresign character.
Speaker 2: Except for the inherent ineptitude of the character, he's kind
Speaker 2: of horrific. I agreed, like these two are just total stooges.
Speaker 2: They're never really much of a threat and anything Ninja
Speaker 2: Turtle related that I've ever seen, but they're a lot
Speaker 2: of fun, like they're are like you may I can't
Speaker 2: even remember in the Arcade game, you may fight these
Speaker 2: guys on the first level. I don't recall pretty early on.
Speaker 3: Though, Yeah, in the Arcade game, I think you fight
Speaker 3: rock Steady first, the Rhino. When you're fighting in that
Speaker 3: burning apartment building, you get to the end of it
Speaker 3: and like a I don't know, some kind of pod
Speaker 3: comes down and he pops out of it and you have.
Speaker 2: To fight him.
Speaker 3: I don't remember when.
Speaker 2: You fight Bebop.
Speaker 3: I guess the next level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean there in reality, these would be
Speaker 2: pretty horrific organisms to do battle with, so it seems
Speaker 2: like they should rank higher than what Baxter Stockman though.
Speaker 2: The fly dude, you know, like a human fly hybrid,
Speaker 2: while you know, obviously horrific and grotesque, we wouldn't be
Speaker 2: able to pack as much punch punch as a rhino
Speaker 2: human hybrid. But we see similar things in like Spider Man,
Speaker 2: Like Rhino is always like seems to be considered a
Speaker 2: lower tier villain in the Spider Man universe, but like
Speaker 2: in reality, like dude, that was, I don't think he's
Speaker 2: part rhino, but he has like some sort of a
Speaker 2: suit that makes him part rhino. Like, that's pretty, that's
Speaker 2: pretty intimidating. That would be quite a fight.
Speaker 3: Maybe I misunderstand. I'm not super up on Spider Man Lord,
Speaker 3: but I understand Rhino to be a brute force kind of.
Speaker 3: He's like pure muscle and strength and usually thus being
Speaker 3: exploited by one of the smarter villains.
Speaker 2: True. True. You know another pig related creature that comes
Speaker 2: to mind. There's one of the minions in Guardians of
Speaker 2: the Galaxy three, which is quite great. There is a
Speaker 2: pig based mutant character or mutant robot cyborg underling that
Speaker 2: they battle briefly. All right, so anyway, that's basically Lee's
Speaker 2: entire email email. It ends with just a couple of
Speaker 2: pictures of the creatures in question.
Speaker 3: You know, I think I liked them more in the
Speaker 3: cartoon I watched as a kid. Seeing them in the
Speaker 3: in the realistic textured CGIs is really gross. I'm imagining
Speaker 3: like feeling the hair on Bebop's belly. It's upsetting me.
Speaker 2: Anyway, lady, thanks for writing in. Yeah, good stroll down
Speaker 2: memory lane with the various pig newtons here.
Speaker 3: Okay, more pig beings from Science Fiction. The next message
Speaker 3: is from Jim, who says, hey, guys, loved your series
Speaker 3: on hogs. I wanted to throw this in. On Star Trek,
Speaker 3: there was the species known as the telewrites. Their facial
Speaker 3: features were very pig like. They were one of the
Speaker 3: founding species of the Federation. I guess, right up there
Speaker 3: with the Vulcan. Huh. They tended to be argumentative and stubborn,
Speaker 3: traits we ascribed to pigs. They appeared in episodes from
Speaker 3: the original series Journey to Babbel and Whom the Gods
Speaker 3: Destroy Love October for all the Halloween content. Jim, well,
Speaker 3: thank you. Jim so so based on this, I didn't
Speaker 3: know this, and I looked up some images rob first
Speaker 3: in our outline for you to look at. Here I
Speaker 3: found images of the Tellertes from some later series. I
Speaker 3: think the main source of the images you're looking at
Speaker 3: now is from Enterprise, in which these guys remind me
Speaker 3: of like Peter Jackson's version of Tolkien's Dwarves. They look
Speaker 3: kind of rough and grumpy, but also like loyal friends,
Speaker 3: you know, good guys, and they are they look like
Speaker 3: they're all voiced by John Reyes Davies Now, on the
Speaker 3: other hand, I found an image of the Tellerites from
Speaker 3: the original series. Horrifying. Looks like a mask that is
Speaker 3: meant to be understood as a mask, not as skin
Speaker 3: like it would be worn by the killer in a
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty two slasher movie called Slaughterhouse. But I guess
Speaker 3: it is not supposed to be a mask. It looks
Speaker 3: like this is the face. So there's shaggy hair, shaggy beard,
Speaker 3: pink skin, upturned pig like nose, and then empty dark
Speaker 3: eye sockets without eyeballs in them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at least in this still you included here, the
Speaker 2: Tellwright look is one of horror. I'm not really fair.
Speaker 2: I never watched a lot of the original Star Trek series,
Speaker 2: so I don't think I ever experienced them there, and
Speaker 2: I didn't watch any of these more recent live action
Speaker 2: Star Trek series where they also show up. But my
Speaker 2: family and I we watched the first season of Star
Speaker 2: Trek Prodigy, which is an animated Star Trek adventure show
Speaker 2: of you know, the for the whole family that does
Speaker 2: include a Tellwright main character as well as some supporting
Speaker 2: Tellwrite characters. So I think that was the main place
Speaker 2: where I was like oh, Tellwrights, this is a this
Speaker 2: is a whole thing. This is like part of classic
Speaker 2: track that they've brought back here.
Speaker 3: Well, I knew nothing about this. Thank you Jim for
Speaker 3: bringing it to our attention. Thank you to one of
Speaker 3: the multiple gyms who likes to write in about Star Trek.
Speaker 2: Not to.
Speaker 3: Not to downplay your contributions, but I find that is interesting.
Speaker 3: We have multiple Star Trek fans named Jim who get
Speaker 3: in touch.
Speaker 2: All right, here's one more pig message. This one comes
Speaker 2: to us via Discord. If you would like to be
Speaker 2: a part of the stuff to Blow your mind official discord,
Speaker 2: just to email us and we'll send you the link
Speaker 2: for the Discord server that email. If you don't have
Speaker 2: it already, we'll mention that at the end of the podcast.
Speaker 2: Here anyway, this one comes to us from Steve. Steve
Speaker 2: Wright's for sure, even farm pigs are opportunistic omnivores. I
Speaker 2: learned that the hard way. I was three or four
Speaker 2: years old visiting a friend of my father's who lived
Speaker 2: on a farm. My dad and his friend were talking
Speaker 2: and lost track of me because I wanted to touch
Speaker 2: the piggy. I figure out how to unlatch a small
Speaker 2: gate walked into the pen and close the fence door
Speaker 2: fully behind me. It was then I realized just how
Speaker 2: big the pig was and how small I was. It
Speaker 2: loudly snorted and charged toward me in unbridled terror. I
Speaker 2: ran parallel to the perimeter of the fence as fast
Speaker 2: as I could and began screaming in horror help while
Speaker 2: crying uncontrollably. Just as I felt the breath of the
Speaker 2: beast on the back of my neck and certain I
Speaker 2: was done for, the son in law of my dad's
Speaker 2: friend hurtled the fence and landed what must have been
Speaker 2: a remarkable flying dropkick on the pig's ribcage. He shouted
Speaker 2: at the pig, and it ran off, snorting angrily. That
Speaker 2: dude was awesome, and he got me out of the
Speaker 2: pen fast and uninjured. I proceeded to be balled out
Speaker 2: by my father, but I did not care, as my
Speaker 2: gratitude for not having been eaten alive was much more
Speaker 2: powerful than anything he could say at that point.
Speaker 3: Well, I can see why that would be a very
Speaker 3: bold memory does remind me of I think we talked
Speaker 3: about the scene at the beginning of The Wizard of
Speaker 3: Oz where Dorothy goes into the pig pen and is
Speaker 3: threatened by the pigs. Yeah, it seems quite scary. One
Speaker 3: more brief thing from Discord regarding the hogs of Hell.
Speaker 3: We were talking in the second episode about paleontology and
Speaker 3: about antelodonts. We got into a section about paleo art
Speaker 3: where we started talking about the you know, the difficulty
Speaker 3: for a paleo artist in figuring out what the soft
Speaker 3: tissue is of an animal looked like if the animal
Speaker 3: is only preserved by you know, fossils of the bones,
Speaker 3: how can you have an idea like how much soft
Speaker 3: tissue they had on them, how bulky to depict them?
Speaker 3: And we talked about the the the idea of shrink
Speaker 3: wrapping animals, just sort of looking at the bones and
Speaker 3: then imagining skin stretch tight over those bones. The point
Speaker 3: being that if you're a paleo artist, it does involve
Speaker 3: usually involves some kind of guesswork or making assumptions about
Speaker 3: the soft tissue surrounding the bones, but also there are
Speaker 3: ways of using science and things we know to inform
Speaker 3: how you depict that soft tissue in the assumption you
Speaker 3: make about it, so it's not all guesses there is
Speaker 3: some science that goes into it. But anyway, on the
Speaker 3: subject of that shrink wrapping, Robin on Discord said, just
Speaker 3: listening to Hogs of Hell Part two, I believe the
Speaker 3: shrink wrap animals you may have been thinking of was
Speaker 3: the book All Yesterdays by Conway, Kosman and Nash. They
Speaker 3: also did a fan submitted sequel, All Your Yesterdays. Blog
Speaker 3: about it here. Pretty easy to search up for more
Speaker 3: if you want so, folks, if you want to look
Speaker 3: that book up, it is again called All Yesterdays.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is definitely it. I remember some of
Speaker 2: these stills.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's see next we should go to the messages
Speaker 3: about high gravity. We got a number of responses from
Speaker 3: brewers and people who are connected to brewers on the
Speaker 3: subject of high gravity beer. So the context was this.
Speaker 3: It was the previous October listener mail and we got
Speaker 3: a message about an urban legend from Texas of a
Speaker 3: haunted railroad track, including the detail that you could supposedly
Speaker 3: have a ghost encounter by parking your car on the tracks,
Speaker 3: putting it in neutral, and the ghosts would push your
Speaker 3: car away from the tracks. So, first of all, acknowledging
Speaker 3: that this is an ill advised thing to do on
Speaker 3: any active railroad tracks don't do stuff like that. But
Speaker 3: we talked about reasons for the illusion of the ghost push,
Speaker 3: the most likely being that the railroad crossing is subject
Speaker 3: to some kind of illusory slope. Maybe it appears flat
Speaker 3: or appeers sloped in one direction, but in reality is
Speaker 3: sloped in the other direction. And this is the case
Speaker 3: with a lot of places around the world, many of
Speaker 3: which are turned into tourist attractions called things like gravity hills,
Speaker 3: where you can watch a ball appear to roll up hill. Now,
Speaker 3: in reality, they sometimes start to explain these places by saying, oh,
Speaker 3: there's some kind of gravity anomaly, there's like something buried
Speaker 3: in the hill that makes like gravity go upwards or something.
Speaker 3: In reality, in no case is there ever anything anomalous
Speaker 3: about the gravity. Gravity is working normally. Instead, this is
Speaker 3: caused by a visual illusion where the horizon is obscured.
Speaker 3: You can't see the horizon for reference, and surrounding visual
Speaker 3: cues create a false idea of what the flat plane
Speaker 3: relative to the Earth's gravity would be. And so this
Speaker 3: led Rob to suggest that somebody start a brewery for
Speaker 3: high gravity beers at one of these gravity Hills, but
Speaker 3: we actually did not know where the phrase high gravity
Speaker 3: with respect to beer came from, so multiple people with
Speaker 3: brewing knowledge wrote in to inform us. Let's see what Rob, Maybe,
Speaker 3: do you want to read this message from Chris?
Speaker 2: Certainly? Chris says on the topic of gravity and beer
Speaker 2: slash the brewing process. I can provide a bit of
Speaker 2: insight as I have a master brewer certification. The gravity
Speaker 2: that may be noted in descriptions of beer is not
Speaker 2: the gravity in the traditional sense, but a shortening of
Speaker 2: the term specific gravity, which is used in the brewing
Speaker 2: industry depending on region and testing method. There are other
Speaker 2: terms such as degree, plato and bricks. He can be
Speaker 2: making all this up, and I would, but anyway to
Speaker 2: determine the amount of dissolved sugars in the warked name
Speaker 2: for beer before it has been fermented, and then checked
Speaker 2: again during and after fermentation, and it includes a link
Speaker 2: to a source of the longer explanation you can get
Speaker 2: pretty deep into fermentation science. Of course, anyway continues. This
Speaker 2: is of particular importance because during the process of brewing
Speaker 2: it does end up determining the potential for the end
Speaker 2: alcohol by volume. So if you start with a high gravity,
Speaker 2: meaning lots of potential sugars for the yeast to convert.
Speaker 2: You can end with a higher ABV percentage, and this
Speaker 2: can be calculated by the change in specific gravity. As
Speaker 2: the yeast convert sugars to alcohol and carbon dioxide. During fermentation,
Speaker 2: the specific gravity begins to drop closer to the reference
Speaker 2: of one point zero zero zero, which would be the
Speaker 2: specific gravity of water. There is so much more to
Speaker 2: say on this topic, but I hope this short explanation
Speaker 2: helped clear things up. I am not familiar with any
Speaker 2: of these types of attractions that Joe had mentioned, but
Speaker 2: if any local breweries have them near, I agree with Robert,
Speaker 2: a collaboration beer slash naming must be in order.
Speaker 3: Cheers, all right, a master brewer's stamp of approval for
Speaker 3: your business idea. Rob So, are you gonna Are you
Speaker 3: gonna watch this thing or you're just handing it off.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna hand this off.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, okay, So thank you, Chris. This does make sense.
Speaker 3: So we were talking in the episode about how the
Speaker 3: idea of the gravity of a beer. High gravity beer
Speaker 3: refers to beer with more alcohol in it, but we
Speaker 3: didn't know if that was just a cute name, or
Speaker 3: if maybe it referred to something in the brewing process.
Speaker 3: So it does refer to something in the brewing process.
Speaker 3: It's not a direct measure of the alcohol content, but
Speaker 3: it is an indirect measure of the alcohol content the
Speaker 3: specific gravity of the wart and the brew later after fermentation.
Speaker 3: That specific gravity gives you an idea of how much
Speaker 3: alcohol will be in the final product. Now I mentioned
Speaker 3: we got other messages on the topic of high gravity beer.
Speaker 3: We got another one from Jeremy, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: add a few details from this. Jeremy's message cites twenty
Speaker 3: years of hobby brewing experience, so we got a real
Speaker 3: what do you call it, an expert amateur here. One
Speaker 3: thing Jeremy points out is that quote in the past,
Speaker 3: high gravity brewing meant brewing a potent beer and diluting
Speaker 3: it with water before packaging, bottling, etc. Less water in
Speaker 3: the fermentation means you can make more beer with less
Speaker 3: fermenttor space. Generally, it was a frowned upon practice for
Speaker 3: adulterating beer. Ah, so that's a practical thing I hadn't considered.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. So you brew a you make a
Speaker 3: stronger brew Initially and then dilute it with water to
Speaker 3: end up with your final beer. But I guess if
Speaker 3: you want to, you know, really serve up one of
Speaker 3: these strong doubles or triples or whatever, these days, you
Speaker 3: just don't really dilute it. But it could go back
Speaker 3: to an older practice of making more efficient use of
Speaker 3: brewing space. Jeremy also gives some more details about the
Speaker 3: relationship between the different gravity measurements through the brewing process.
Speaker 3: So Jeremy says there are three key terms. There's original gravity,
Speaker 3: which is quote a measurement of the fermentable and unfermentable
Speaker 3: substances in the wart before fermentation. Original gravity is a
Speaker 3: measure of the potential alcohol content of the beer. Specific
Speaker 3: gravity is quote a measurement of the relative density of
Speaker 3: the wart or must compared to water. And then final
Speaker 3: gravity is quote a measurement of the wart after fermentation.
Speaker 3: Comparing original gravity to final gravity can determine the exact
Speaker 3: alcohol content of the beer. Alcohol content is limited by
Speaker 3: the ability of the yeast to survive its own waste,
Speaker 3: which are alcohol and carbon dioxide. The remainder is sugar
Speaker 3: and thus and thus the sweetness of the final product
Speaker 3: also called maltiness best, Jeremy, So thank you Jeremy, and
Speaker 3: again thank you to everyone who wrote in about high
Speaker 3: gravity beer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like I know so much more now.
Speaker 2: When I hear my Dungeons and Dragons friends talking about
Speaker 2: high gravity beers, I have some idea of what they
Speaker 2: mean by that.
Speaker 3: If I recall, Rob me, correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 3: You're not really a beer guy, are you.
Speaker 2: No? No, No, not at all. So I just don't
Speaker 2: know much about it. I admire the often creative labels
Speaker 2: and names for all these various beers folks are drinking,
Speaker 2: but I just don't know stuf I've ever gotten into.
Speaker 2: Is you know, a cold corona once once in a
Speaker 2: blue moon, but not a blue moon, which is also
Speaker 2: a beer that's also some people favorites. I think all
Speaker 2: the names for beers have been taken at this point.
Speaker 3: I would be shocked if there were an Antiladont themed beer.
Speaker 3: But prove me wrong, Internet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's get into a little weird house
Speaker 2: cinema listener mail as we make our final journey through
Speaker 2: this particular episode. This one comes to us from Daniel,
Speaker 2: and it is a response to our recent episode on
Speaker 2: prints of Darkness. Dear Robert and Joe, thank you again
Speaker 2: for taking us on a cultural journey through a film
Speaker 2: I will never watch for myself, Although I find it
Speaker 2: enlightening to think about why the genre scares me, I
Speaker 2: simply do not have the stomach for movie gore. Thankfully,
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema offers great insight into horror cinema without
Speaker 2: upsetting my sleep. As for Joe's recent question of whether
Speaker 2: or not an ancient language expert is able to translate
Speaker 2: original text directly into English, the answer is yes. Several
Speaker 2: years ago, I had the good fortune of attending a
Speaker 2: tour of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures
Speaker 2: at the University of Chicago. The tour was led by
Speaker 2: doctor Christopher Woods, professor of Sumerian and former director of
Speaker 2: the Institute. In the Egyptian Gallery, doctor Woods stopped before
Speaker 2: a replica cast from the original Rosetta Stone and began
Speaker 2: reading the text to us. I was surprised and asked
Speaker 2: if he memorized portions, and he said no. I learned
Speaker 2: to read the languages for my work. It is not
Speaker 2: often you get to hang out with people who read
Speaker 2: dead languages on the fly. I was impressed be well.
Speaker 2: Daniel ps. Yes, the ISAC was formerly known as the
Speaker 2: Oriental Institute the Founders, which inspired Indiana Jones, according to
Speaker 2: local legend.
Speaker 3: Nice to be clear, this was referring to a scene
Speaker 3: in Prince of Darkness where they bring in an expert
Speaker 3: on ancient languages. I think, a theology student to translate
Speaker 3: from a host of different an ancient languages Latin and
Speaker 3: Coptic and Greek and stuff, because they're all jumbled up
Speaker 3: in this ancient book. And she just like looks at
Speaker 3: the book and then just starts typing an English translation
Speaker 3: directly from the book onto a computer. And that struck
Speaker 3: me as funny because I imagined that even an expert,
Speaker 3: even the person with the most knowledge of these languages,
Speaker 3: would probably need to use some reference materials and look
Speaker 3: some stuff up. But it was just going straight from
Speaker 3: one to the other, like total fluency. And so maybe
Speaker 3: I was wrong. Maybe the experts in these languages really
Speaker 3: can go that straight off the page.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when they watch Prints of Darkness they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's how you do it.
Speaker 3: But thank you, Daniel. Enlightning story. Okay, one more message
Speaker 3: about weird House cinema. This one recommending a movie that
Speaker 3: has been recommended to us before. We get a lot
Speaker 3: of notes on this title. So Kathy writes in to say,
Speaker 3: first of all, subject line of Kathy's email is is
Speaker 3: it atomic? Email begins, yes, sir, very atomic. One of
Speaker 3: the greatest lines ever delivered by Edward Everett Horton from
Speaker 3: Fractured Fairy Tales fame. It is in nineteen fifty threes
Speaker 3: the five Thousand Fingers of Doctor t Think low budget
Speaker 3: Wizard of Oz combined with Alice in Wonderland, but with
Speaker 3: LSD and minions. A crazy wizard kidnaps five hundred children
Speaker 3: and forces them to play his giant piano. No metaphor there.
Speaker 3: I am well into retirement, Yet a week doesn't go
Speaker 3: by that this line doesn't run through my brain. At
Speaker 3: some point said line is delivered about halfway through this clip,
Speaker 3: and then she attaches a clip for us to watch.
Speaker 3: I did watch it, and I love the colors. This
Speaker 3: is a great looking film from the fifties. It's in color,
Speaker 3: of course, and it looks like an absolute hoot. But
Speaker 3: I will say in this one clip, the constant kind
Speaker 3: of like boing boying honk sound effects are proving difficult
Speaker 3: to get through, and so I'm wondering how much of
Speaker 3: that is in the movie or or if it's just
Speaker 3: this scene. If it's just the scene, I think I
Speaker 3: could survive it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I've never seen it, but it is one
Speaker 2: that has been recommended a few different times, and I'll
Speaker 2: see it pop up on lists of weird films. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, folks seem to really get a lot out
Speaker 2: of it. So it's it's on the list of Weird
Speaker 2: House cinema candidates, so, you know, and every time somebody
Speaker 2: mentions it again, we you know, we flag it once more.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, maybe we'll have to get into
Speaker 2: it in the not too distant future here, all right. Finally,
Speaker 2: to end things on a Halloween note, I guess we're
Speaker 2: gonna read one last one from our discord server. This
Speaker 2: is from Adam. Adam says, listen to a bunch of
Speaker 2: rocky ericson today for the first time. Incredible. That's the
Speaker 2: second musician I've gotten into from y'all's recommendations on Weird House,
Speaker 2: the first being Nursed with Wound. I don't know in
Speaker 2: what context I reckon to Nurse with Wound. We were
Speaker 2: probably talking about music for a film that was very
Speaker 2: like Noisy in Cacophonus or something. But anyway, Adam says,
Speaker 2: in return, I'd like to recommend the album songs from
Speaker 2: the recently deceased by the Frankenstein Drag Queens from Planet
Speaker 2: thirteen horror punk with three different tracks inspired by films
Speaker 2: featured on Weird House. Uh.
Speaker 3: I know nothing about this band.
Speaker 2: I also know nothing about them, so I'm not familiar
Speaker 2: with this act, but I'll have to check them out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: pulling up this album and it's like, let's see, Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a creature from the Black Lagoon track, Black Yellow track. Okay,
Speaker 2: what else is on here? Plan nine from outer Space
Speaker 2: related track? So yeah, if nothing else, the horror references
Speaker 2: are there. You gotta love an old horror punk song
Speaker 2: that is just straight up the name of a movie,
Speaker 2: very much in the Misfits style of things. So yeah,
Speaker 2: thanks for the recommendation. I'll check them out.
Speaker 3: Did you say Bride of Frankenstein or did I miss that?
Speaker 2: I didn't mention it, but yes, to your point, yeah,
Speaker 2: there is a Bride of Frankenstein. So it's probably like
Speaker 2: at least four different tracks that reference movies that we've
Speaker 2: talked about on the show before. I always enjoy this
Speaker 2: sort of recommendation. There was a listener who wrote in
Speaker 2: previously about the band Messer Chups, which is a surf
Speaker 2: rock band from Saint Petersburg, Russia, that a lot of
Speaker 2: their songs have to do with old horror movies and
Speaker 2: they're at the light. I've been listening to a lot
Speaker 2: of Messer Chops, if I'm saying that correctly, during this
Speaker 2: Halloween season. It was a lot of fun to play
Speaker 2: in the car, play in the house, and so forth.
Speaker 2: So I will reiterate that recommendation for anyone out there
Speaker 2: who wants a little spooky surf music in their life.
Speaker 2: All right, So that's going to be it for this
Speaker 2: episode of Stuff to blow your mind. Listener, mail, but
Speaker 2: keep it coming. We'd love to hear from y'all. If
Speaker 2: you have additional thoughts on Halloween episodes, pre Halloween episodes
Speaker 2: or post Halloween episodes, it's all good. Just right in.
Speaker 2: We'll have that email addressed for you here in just
Speaker 2: a second. What else can we drive home here? Let's see.
Speaker 2: If you're on Instagram, we are STBYM podcast. You can
Speaker 2: follow us there if you want to join the discord.
Speaker 2: We'll shoot you that link if you send us an
Speaker 2: email asking for it. Let's see. Oh, we haven't done
Speaker 2: this call out in a bit, but hey, if you
Speaker 2: like the show, If you like what we do and
Speaker 2: you haven't reviewed us, say on Apple on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: give us a nice little review that helps helps things out.
Speaker 2: Keeps our star rating nice and fresh and shiny. Otherwise, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we hope you're enjoying the show and spread the spread
Speaker 2: the love. Tell other people about the show if you
Speaker 2: think they might dig it as well.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.