Boxing Day Listener Mail

things back up. Maybe you're not supposed to have all these gifts. Um uh. My understanding though, is that it's tied in with the idea of this being a day when you would traditionally give a box. You would give a gift to um uh, you know, to to various UM delivery people and whatnot. So it's another day about giving. But you could also be inclined to make the mistake that our mail bought Carney has made. Uh. He knows

that it is boxing day. He um. He knows that boxing is a physical combat sport in which humans punch each other, generally in the head region with with large gloves on. And then of course he has the rockham stock'em robot example to go by, and so so he's become incredibly aggressive, Yes, incredibly so, I mean lucky. He's wearing the gluckily, he's learning the gloves because otherwise Carnie's hands are metal. But that's what we're having to put

up with today. Still, he has his primary programming is to deliver listener mail to us, and he is still doing it, granted with a little more punch than usual. Right, we'll just have to dodge the fists of fury every time we retrieve one. Right. Well, you know, since it's so close to Christmas, since Christmas is still in the air, uh, dissipating in the air around us, we should probably kick off with some Christmas holiday related listener mail before we

get into more general listener mail. Okay, let's get ready to rumble. Here's the first message. This comes from Corbin. It's about our episode is Santa of God? Corbin said, is Hey, Robin Joe. Your discussion about minimally counterintuitive narratives brought to mind one of my all time favorite sci fi series, Dune. I haven't listened to all your podcasts. My sincerest apologies, but somehow, I feel like you're familiar

with the books. How little you know Corbett? Yes? Um. I found it interesting that Frank Herbert, when depicting Leto the Second as a god emperor, began his transformation remaining primarily humanoid and gradually over time became more worm. So this is the transformation of a person into a giant sandworm. Right. If you only know Doune from the films, you haven't really seen this yet. I think the TV mini series is about as far into the books as as as

anyone has visually dared go huh uh. Corbin continues, however, even till his last day r I P. He maintained his human face despite the fact that his brain was a distributed, collective nervous system. It's an interesting thought that Frank Herbert this as an illustration not only to the readers, but also to the characters in the universe that Letter the Second was at one point a human and therefore

more easy to anthropomorphize. Leto's goal was, after all, who rapidly spread his religion across an entire universe, albeit through more nefarious means. I feel it's also easier to say, yeah, we worship a giant worm, but he used to be a human. He still has a human face. Then, yeah, we worship a giant worm with a gullet filled with rows upon rows of teeth. We won't get into the Fremen and how their worship of Shihlu differs fundamentally. Really

enjoy listening and typing. This email really felt like a good way to create some discussion, even just with myself, about something I thought was a very interesting concept applied to someone fundamentally more badass than a fat man in Red Pj's regards. Corbin, Well, I mean you could combine them right and you have Santa Santa Leto arriving. But no. I yeah, obviously I love this email because it ties in with the episode but also drags Dune into the

whole picture. I like how Corbyn is not sure whether we've read Dune or not. Things maybe we have, so we definitely we have, of course, uh, and we're we're fans. We did a couple of episodes years back about the science of done the technology of Dune. We didn't talk about everything in the first book or certainly the the series. We talked about a few things we talked about still suit we talked about sandworm biology. We even got into consideration of the the face dancers and how that might

work based on some folks interpretations. Yeah, somebody was recently asking us to do an episode on Goala's Wait Wait is that the same as face dancers are different? Different difference I've made by the same people. Um, so yeah, maybe we could come back and do Dune Part three

sometime in the future. I think so. I think basically we would want to We need to couch the first part of it in something familiar, something we would tie into the first movie, especially the first book in movie, especially since we're getting a new film adaptation coming up in So yeah, we definitely definitely need to do it, and there's plenty to talk about. Uh, do you want to do one more quick one about whether or not Santa counts as a god before we move on. This

comes from Clarence. Clarence says, Hey, guys, my name is Clarence. Is my first time writing, although I've been listening for a few years now. Um, honestly hoping to get this read in the next Listener Mail episode. Well here you go, Clarence. Uh, Clara says, anyway, just listened to the episode entitled is Santa God? Part One? Interesting? And I oh and Clarence appreciated the warning we put in at the beginning of

the episode. Maybe Clarence listens with some kids. Um, But as I was listening, I thought about something few people knew about, and even fewer still remember. Santa is actually one of the most powerful entities in the Marvel Comics universe. It has been alluded to in a few issues I've read over the years. Most recently I can remember in Spiderman Deadpool issue number twelve Food for thought. I'd like to know what you guys think of Santa as a

Marvel character clearance. Well, obviously I'm in favor of this, and I think he absolutely needs to be incorporated into the Marvel Cinematic universe. It's a shame that he did. He wasn't in there in that big, you know, battle against Thanos. I think he'd be fighting on the side of Thanos. Right, is Thanos the one that wants everybody to be good boys and girls? He will? I think I haven't seen them. He's all about overpopulation. Really, really,

I don't know the whole Thanos thing. Yeah, I think that's basically it in the films, it's it's a little different in the comics. As I recall the comics is more about love, like he's in love with Death daughter or something, or Death herself. I'm a little he's trying to impress her by like killing everybody. Yeah, sort of thing. But no, I would love for SANTAA to pop up because there's so many. Every every matchup, every team up is great. Like you could have Santa team up with

Blade to go after Christmas Ferrato's. That would be good. That would be good. Um, well, this fits into our discussion of is Santa more Superman or is he more Batman? Yeah? This this is a good question. I guess in the Marvel cinematic, in the Marvel universe, he is more Superman. It sounds like I wonder if it's different in d C. Does d C also have an incarnation of Santa, And if so, is it more Batman esque? I would love to know. All right, here is another holiday related bit,

a bit of listener mail. This one comes to us from Martin Martin Wrightson and says, Dear Robert and Joe, thank you for the very interesting show on Crampus. Although I am from Austria. I've never given this tradition any second thought. Crampus was just a natural part of the folklore I was brought up with, same as Christmas. In the Easter Bunny. On St. Nicholas's Eve, our parents filled our stockings with sweets and my father rattled some iron

chains pretending to chase away Crampus. It was exciting for us kids picturing my father Finn ending off some goat demon. Anyway, as I grew older, I realized that Crampus was not real and kept him as a childhood memory, again, same as the Easter penny. One thing that came to my mind while listening to your podcast is the role that the Crampus actors take on. You focused on the effects Crampus has on children, but I think it also has

some effect on the Crampus impersonator. Not having any studies to back this up, I believe that Crampus also serves as some kind of outlet, a controlled and socially acceptable way for grown men to act out violent acts and let go of themselves in a cathartic way. I was wondering if you came across such an explanation while researching Thanks again for your wonderful show. Kind regards Martin, and he has a ps but let's talk about what he

just said before you get to the PSU. Well, that didn't come up with respect to anything specifically about crampus, but we absolutely have looked at studies before that, at least in some cases show that people have UM reduced inhibitions when their identity is hidden. So there have been like studies, for example, finding that UM people are more willing to march around in public with a sign that says something embarrassing if their identity is hidden. That's obviously,

you know, that's not very surprising. But I guess one thing that's interesting is they're more willing to do that even probably if they're around people that you know, might not recognize them personally. There's something about having your identity hidden, putting on the mask, putting on the costume that allows you to shed some of the normal barriers to behavior

that that would be inhibiting you. Yeah, and I think there's also a link to animism because you see various examples of practices around the world in which someone wears the fur or the horn, or the skull of or even just the the painted or tattoo likeness of the beast, and then as a part of a ritual, becomes the beast to some extent, and it sort of enables a more you know, a wilder acting out. So I think there's there's definite connection to that as well in the

crampus tradition. Yeah, oh yeah, that that putting on the costume.

It removes, but it also adds, you know, it takes away some of your natural personality and inhibitions and it adds to you know, you get to take on the qualities of this character, right, And it's uh and certainly in terms of it being you know, this outlet and being a um me, this release valve and to a certain extent, well, I mean we also see examples from I think even this year there are a couple of news stories about some perhaps overly rowdy or even um

offensive crampas impersonators in a few uh uh cities, and I mean that kind of goes, I think to the nature of what this is doing. It's it's like having an exhaust valve on say, you know, a boiler, right, if it's working properly, it's letting just enough steam out to keep the tank from exploding, right, But for some it could also be like an excuse to be bad, right, So it's uh, it's one of those those aspects of of culture that I guess you want the balance to

be just right. You don't want your crampus is rampaging through the city actually terrorizing people. But on the other hand, if you have a culture without the cramps, if the cramp is cannot actually be unleashed at this part of the year, then what does that mean You get like a little more crampas in every day. That doesn't sound good either. Keep crampas and Christmas. There's your bumper sticker. Okay, I think maybe we're going to get away from Christmas. No,

we have one more bit. We have the psorry. So Martin also shares this ps if you like weird traditions, I bet you're into shopping. That's s h A P P e N. It's a custom prevalent in the southern parts of Austria where small children go from door to door on the December and whip the grown ups buttocks

with a rod. Good, very good, And he includes a link to a Wikipedia page about this, but it is a German only page, so it leads me to suspect that shopping is not proper really appreciated or known outside of uh, you know, German speaking cultures. Oh, this is like making the fool of the pope and like the boy king stuff, you know. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it. These kind of reversals are good. They should

definitely involve children inflicting corporal punishment on adults. All right, Okay, so now we are going to get away from Christmas for a bit, but we'll come back to some holiday theme stuff I think later in the episode. So this one is in response to the episode we did uh I Drink Your Blood Type, where Robert and I were talking about uh, vampires and blood types, the real science of blood types and pseudoscience about blood types and personality

and all that. And this comes from Maya. Maya says, hey, guys, I love your podcast. I've been listening to it for a while now. In October, I listened to your episode on vampires and blood types, and I remember you questioning why a vampire might ask about recent dental work. This came up on some TV show. Oh, this was an episode of Tales from the Cryptos. The start believe Malcolm McDowell or was it Roddy McDowell, one of the two McDowell's.

For sure. Um, I thought i'd let you know that recent dental work is a risk factor for infective indocarditis, where the heart valves become infected. When this happens, little flex of bacteria flick off the valves and through the blood circulation, which would probably make the blood taste pretty gross, even to a vampire. I'm a medical student and it's something we've been told in medical school a bunch of times. Thanks so much and love the podcast, Maya. That is interesting.

That gives me a new respect for that episode. Yeah, I've I've heard of this before. Yeah, that like dental work. I think some stuff from the mouth, I think maybe you can get into the blood and then affects the heart. So definitely if you're looking for blood to drink, keep an eye out for the dental surgery. Alright. This next one comes to us from MICHAELA and it is in reference to our episode on prototax It t s Hello,

just listen to your Prototaxid episode. And since you were talking about soil structure as well as fun Guy Algae Live rewards and liking. I was a little surprised not to hear the mention of biocruss. Biocruss being living soil aggregates of soil which host communities of mosses, fun guy like in ciano bacteria and other organisms, mainly in desert systems.

They're their own amazing little ecosystems and keep ground from blowing away and by creating mats of filamentous ciano bacteria, so possibly the ancient world might have been a bit crusty. Biocross are super underappreciated except by the people who passionately study them, including my master's advisor, who is uh. And then there's a Twitter address here. It is at dry Land Algae. That's d r y l A n d

A l g A on Twitter. I thought you guys might be interested anyway as a future astrobiologist and lover of all things strange. I adore the show Keep It Weird. Michael, Oh, that's great, that's in interesting. I didn't know much about that, so maybe we'll come back to that. Yeah, absolutely, all right. We got one message from Brett. It actually wasn't much of a message. It was it seemed to be in response to the Monstrosity Cuteness rerun we did and the

Uncanny Valley rerun we did. Um, it was a link to stuff about the new Sonic movie Sonic the Hedgehog, where they had to redo the animation on Sonic the Hedgehog because when they first released the trailer, people were just horrified by the way Sonic looked. And I gotta admit, his eyes were small, and he had human teeth, and there's something wrong with human teeth on a non human animal. It's like that fish that's got teeth that look too human, you know, Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I, for one,

I did I didn't really have a dog in this hunt. Um, I can't say it was particularly excited about a Sonic movie. I wasn't. I wasn't really turned off by this image. And even I will admit that the new version does look a lot more like Sonic character that I did enjoy playing the Guys Big Guys looks more like the character, and I enjoyed the character in the games back then. But um, you know, by and large, I feel like this is this was the Internet blowing things out of proportion.

And uh, the Internet is of course the domain of dr robotnick. Uh. That is, it's exactly the kind of system he would inflict on the world. So, uh, you know, I have suspicions about the the ultimate motivations behind the outrage. Here. Wait a minute, I'm not sure I understand like you think people were not actually horrified by the appearance of the original Sonic. I just I don't know. I mean, he it doesn't look that weird. I mean, it looks like oh man, but the improvement just looks more like

a cartoon. Uh. Well, I will say the original looks more unique. The new one just looks more like every other cartoon character. But I guess there's a reason cartoon characters look like that. You know, they're they're tailored to look kind of like cute and approachable instead of like strange and uh and unsettling. Why does it look like Sonic is holding the one ring in this photo here? Well, I think because Sonic the Hedgehog collects golden rings. Well,

that's not the one ring. That's only going to get him into trouble if he winds up in Middle Earth. Okay, let's let's move on to the next thing. We got a couple of messages about our ship of theseus uh, of all episode. This comes from Brett. I don't think it's the same Brett as the other message. Somehow, this is Brett who's a chemist. Yeah, this is Brett who's a chemist. Brett says, Hello, gentlemen, great episode. Glad you looked at the premise from multiple directions. My two cents.

Being a chemist, I work with very sensitive instrumentation like an hp LC. I'm sure you'll look it up if you've not heard of it before. Uh. Yeah, it's a high performance liquid chromatography machine. It's a method that's used to analyze the chemical constituents of a sample. So you put in a sample of something, it'll separate out the chemicals and tell you how much of each one there is and stuff. Uh So, Brett says, Uh. I also do maintenance on the instruments I use, being a GMP facility,

and I think that's good manufacturing practice. Is just like having high standards. Uh. Any changes to the instrument must be documented and also validated. Well, what do I mean by this? We expect the instrument to reproduce the exact same results every time we use it. Therefore, any changes to the instrument must not affect the instruments performance. Now, over the life of an HPLC, capillaries, frits, pumps, etcetera

do get changed. It is the same instrument, but if it does not produce the same results, we have to figure out why and make the proper adjustments in order to get it back to where it used to be. In this sense, the instrument is not the same anymore because of its sensitivity, which leads me to ask if a ship has been refurbished, So, if you know, you go with the original thought experiment and replace all the pieces of ship. Is it the idea of what the

ship has accomplished that we humans hold onto. The ship still performs the same task as before, but what it has been through is in the mind of those who have used it. We could look at a replica of the ship, but it would not conjure up the same and thoughts and emotions as someone who used it at sea, for example. It seems a physical object can change, but the perception we cast upon an object can change, leading

to how stories are told about it. Wondering what you think about this and how the human mind likes to cast its perceptions into this world to make us feel reality. Keep up the good work. Love thinking about new topics. Your show introduces Brett Chemist. Oh wow, well, I mean Brett really touches that a number of issues related to that. I mean, because yeah, the story changes what the thing is, and then the thing itself changes if you're refurbishing it.

I mean, I guess a lot of it kind of swirls around the idea that is, humans were often stuck on this idea of there being some level of permanency about anything like that there is a me that is me, and it's consistent. There's a the ship is a ship, and it's a constant that this story is constant. This belief for an idea that even the truth is a is a is a constant thing that does not change

over time. Well, this is an interesting idea that's being introduced here about like the idea of whether something is the same instrument actually having like epistemic relevance, Like it matters whether or not it was the same instrument for whether or not you can count on it to be scientifically reliable. Yeah, And in this example, I mean, it's easy to make the case because there's a specific thing that needs to be done with this device and it's measurable.

You can you can tell if it's out of whack, right, But with the ship, the experience of the ship, the thing that the ship does is kind of it's all over the place. Yeah. Is it how it makes me? It's about how it makes us think about the ship. Is it about the stories told about the ship, about thinking back about what the ship once did? Um, you

can't reduce that to a numerical value. I will say that one idea that comes to mind here, and this is because you and I were talking about Star Wars before we came in here is the idea of the original Star Wars trilogy and the you know, of course, George Lucas famously came back and refurbished parts of it,

the parts of the furbish. Yeah, as if they were you know, there's the ship of theseus and of the boards were a little, by some people's estimates, a little out of date and needed to be replaced, and thus we had c g I elements added in or other slight changes. And from their point of view at the time, you know, we're just we're making the ship seaworthy, we're keeping it from sinking. But for the most of the rest office. We're like, no, that is not that's not

the ship we fell in love with. You're changing the ship. The problem is people have been enjoying this perfectly well the way it is. We've got to go in there and add a bunch of stuff for the new era. Yeah, So in that I think that example would be hold up to a certain extent with what he's talking about here. If you changed the ship in a way, you change the film in a way that it altered the effect

of experiencing it, You altered the thing that it does. Yeah. Now, this, of course, when it comes to works of art like film, this becomes more difficult when you start thinking about like, uh, preservation type efforts, Like you know, say, if you've got like old or damaged pieces of film and that's the only copy you have, like, uh, you know, they're they're obviously big questions about that, like should you know, should you leave it as the damaged version, or like to

what extents, to what lengths should you go in trying to quote restore it? I mean, what what is the film at this point? Is that the are you trying to get it too? As close to what the people at the premiere of the film saw as possible or something like that, or do you have another goal in mind? Yeah, I mean in many cases when you're when you're dealing with with folks who grew up in the age of VHS, that's where we saw the film for the first time.

You know, maybe you saw it on the big screen, but in many cases you saw it on VHS format, on a on a TV that was maybe not all that great. And and I mean that's why so many people are nostalgic for the VHS era and for VHS effects, and why you still have hardcore VHS enthusiasts who still utilize VHS technology to watch their films. Why some releases will put it out on VHS as well to uh,

you know, to to to meet that fan base. Oh yeah, I'm also thinking about special effects that don't stand up super well to high definition, but they look great on you know, the crappy old version of the movie. Alright, on that note, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back. Thank thank you, thank you. All Right,

we're back. So this next one comes to us from Landon responding to our Cars, Bodies and Minds episode an Automotive episode that we put out in October, which we did try and tie in a little bit to Halloween. But but it was a really fun episode to do because we're talking about what is it what changes about the human experience when we're inside of a car, What

is the psychological effect of driving? Um et cetera. So landon Riotson and says hello, I really enjoyed this episode as I have had a similar theory about riding lawnmowers. I worked at a landscaping and lawn maintenance company for many years. We use both walk behind lawnmowers as well as the ride on type. A couple of the ride on mowers are rather large. I started to notice that my fellow employees would drive them off of curbs and over trash, even run over rocks. They would not do

this if they were pushing a mower. It made me think that when they are on the bigger machines, they feel bigger or maybe more powerful or entitled, as if it does not matter what is in the path of this giant mower because it's so powerful. I definitely think there is something to that. The bigger the vehicle, the bigger the bravado. If you can imagine us lowly lawn maintenance workers with bravado. Thanks as always, Landing. There's nothing

lowly about lawn maintenance. I mean that's real work, that's essential. But I know what you mean about like like the size of the mower and all that, Like, um, I feel like the most attuned I've ever been to what's in front of my mower is when I was using a non motorized push mower. Do you ever use one of those? Are already just um my grandfather's at some point, Yeah, but I think that was the extent of it. I

used one for a few years. It is not the easiest. Yeah, I want to say I wrote a house stuff Works article about the push lawn mower, But maybe I'm mistaking their neat gadgets, like there's something attractive about them. But I feel like it's a step up there to the push motorized one, where you're more indestructible, and then yeah, once you get on the seated one, you're just you know,

you're you are a tank. I felt entirely destructible every time I used to push lawnmower, because generally all I could imagine is slipping on wet, freshly cut grass and going under it. Yeah, yeah, Like I was sure, like that's how I'm gonna go. I'm gonna That's how I'm gonna die out in the middle of of my parents yard. I know that feel like under a lawn Moore. But then yeah, I I only ever did the one type of of seated lawnmower, and you know, that did feel

kind of powerful to a certain extent. You're roaring through the lawn, the grass is disappearing underneath you and being sliced away. You're leaving this nice slick path of clean grass behind you. It makes me wonder how different it is to use even like the next level up, like you're driving a big combine harvester, you know. Yeah, And this this also makes me wonder about even larger vehicle. Obviously, we have listeners out there who drive large trucks for

a living. We've heard from some of you like like, what's that, Like, what's that experience? Do you feel like you're you have an enormous on unbeatable body. Has anyone out there ever uh driven a tank? Uh? Now, I want to know how the scales at every level. Likewise, maybe you're you're a shriner and you drive the little uh what is it the little tricycle thing in the parade or some of those like microcars or something. What's that like? A go kard enthusiasts, Let me know, I

maybe you know. It's a different experience at every possible level up until the ultimate vehicle transcendence, which is driving the doofwagon of course. Alright, so we got a couple of messages related to our Devour of Memories podcasts that we did about a planaria and the research of James McConnell, the idea of memories existing outside the brain, whether or not there's anything to that, the recent research on that.

First of all, so in that episode we talked about James McConnell, who was born in a town in Oklahoma, and then we heard from Jill, who lives in the same town where James McConnell was born. Uh, and she gently corrects our pronunciation of the town name. I think I said oak Mulji. It's apparently oak mule Gie with a hard g she said, she cringed. But a lot

of other very nice things about the podcast. But we also heard from Jim who says, hi, guys, since discovering your podcast about a year ago, I've not only become a devout listener, but I've devoured your whole back catalog, mostly in the gym, the shower, and sometimes pretending to work.

I typically try and then give up on several new podcasts per month, and I've found no other podcasts like Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Invention that combined scientific and philosophical inquiry with history and pop culture with an entertaining and comedic vibe. I especially love the science fiction

tie ins. Based on his references, I suspect Robert and I were probably watching reruns of The Twilight Zone late night on uh FF and later cable with a bowl of Sereal simultaneously in different cities throughout the seventies and early eighties. Oh yeah, that would that would be. He was maybe a little bit ahead of me, but but very much on the same path. Anyway, I wanted to write here with some additional information regarding your recent Devour

of Memories episode. As you discussed James McConnell and the unfortunate attack on him by the UNI bomber ted Kazinski, I was literally on the edge of my seat expecting you to mention another of the UNI bombers serendipitous brushes with history, one that may have originally led him down his path of violent rebellion against academia, psychology, and technology, as has been documented, and then he links to an

article in the Atlantic. While a student at Harvard, Ted Kazinski was himself a victim of a series of brutal, cruel, and unethical psychological experiments conducted by Henry A. Murray on a group of twenty two undergraduates without their consent or knowledge. Murray's experiments used, in his own words, quote, vehemence, sweeping, and personally abusive attacks to study how people react under stress.

In one particularly vile experiment, Murray asked students to write about their biggest fear or secret, assuring the students that their essays would be confidential, only to read them out in front of the entire class. Kazinski was one of the students thus humiliated. Well, no one can defend Kazinski's

use of violence. It seems plausible that this experience at Harvard, in addition to the issues you highlighted in your podcast, contributed to his selection of a prominent behaviorist like James McConnell. Is a victim Anyway, that's it for now. Love the show and keep dropping those Twilight Zone references. Oh excellent. Yeah, well, hopefully we'll we'll be back with more Twilight Zone related episodes when October comes around totally. Maybe we'll do only

political Twilight Zone episodes. Oh no, what oh no over October. Wow, that's going to be a rough time. But anyway, back to Jim's main point here, Yeah, I I uh, I was not familiar with it, with that aspect of Kazenski's Kazinski's background. Um, but but that's that's worth thinking about. Yeah. Yeah,

and again just to echo what Jim saying here. Obviously, stuff like that, you know, doesn't excuse resorting to murder or everything like that, but yeah, it doesn't make you wonder about, you know, what kinds of stuff contributed to his mind state. Yeah, all right. We heard from some folks on our episode Psychology of Architecture, and this one comes to us from Jonas. Greetings, I really enjoyed your

episode on architecture. I work in the trades and come in contact with a lot of different buildings and architecture styles. One thing I have noticed is the underlying feeling towards placement of various parts of buildings. For example, doors and windows are never placed close together nor close to the corner of a room or building, and doing so somehow

feels looks wrong. This goes for many other things, light fixtures off center, and a ceiling a desk play strangely in an office, a certain amount of wall between the door and ceiling, etcetera. It is as though humans have a very strong subconscious preference for certain symmetries and ratios in their environment. This site coology seems to play out at both the micro and macro level, and things that do not abide this can result in cursed architecture. Many

thanks for the excellent podcast, Jonas. Ps. After listening to the squirrel episodes, I have decided to include them in my next D and D campaign. Oh nice, Yeah, so I certainly love that. I mean so many directions you could go with that. You could basically take cranial rats

and do cranial squirrels instead. What are cranial rats? Cranial rats are rats used by the elithid mind flairs, and so like one of these rats has the intellect and psychic ability of a normal rat, which of course is you know, rat like intelligence and no psychic ability, but too they have the combined intellect of the rats, and so you get a big pile of them, a big horde of them, and they have, you know, considerable intellect and considerable psionic power. So they they're pretty fun, pretty

fun monster. How many cranial rats equal a demagargon in intelligence? Oh? I would I would have to do the math on that, but it would take a lot. All right. This next saidge, also about a psychology of architecture, comes from Bruce Breese says, Hello, mates, I'm a massive fan first of all, listening to the episode on psychology of architecture. Just a thought of a personal example. My wife and I first lived in a black and white ultra modern home, a home where a

speck of dirt on the ground was almost blinder. We found ourselves vacuuming and mopping daily. For our second home, we moved into an older house, mostly timber. I immediately noticed we stopped cleaning as often, mostly because the house simply didn't look as dirty. This gave us more time to relax and spend with the family. Bruce, Wow, Uh, yeah, Well, I mean that's like they you know, they say don't get a black couch, right, because you'll see all of

the stuff collecting on it. Yeah yeah, likewise a white couch, I guess right. Oh yeah, maybe I think you want you want like a textured gray or something and makes it nice for all the dirt to just hide in there and you don't need to worry about it. Or my own experience from a house I lived in growing up. Don't have wall to wall white carpeting in a bathroom? Oh did we talk about carpeted bathroom? I think this probably has come up anytime bad carpeting choices come up.

I have to share this because it was wall to wall and like wall to toilet white carpet in a bathroom. It was. It was awful. It was also a rental alright. So we mentioned Twilight Zone earlier than had to do with our anthology of horror episodes. We've done three of them now, one the previous year and then two uh parts of two and three in so this one here's one in particular though this comes to us from Kelsey.

Kelsey writes, I'm late to this party, but I just now listen to the horror anthology episodes of stuff to boil your mind. I foolishly had skipped them, Uh, skipped over them earlier in the month, in favor of topics more familiar to me. Very foolish. And I had a thought about your questions of the elf years on the large headed evolved human. Oh yeah, we were asking what

could what could actually drive the evolution of elf shaped ears? Right, because in this it's the sixth finger is the title of the Outer Limits episode in question, And the individual has had his evolution advanced by some sci fi machinery, so he develops a sixth finger on each hand. Uh, you know, I guess for improved typing, gets an enormous swollen brain, which is supposed to be there because he

has enhanced brain power and like psychic abilities. But then he also has eleven ears, which we kind of dismissed as being, you know, purely aesthetic, essentially to create an Elvin maybe vulcan look right anyway. Kelsey has thoughts on this quote. Typically in animals, large ears are used for cooling the body and hot environments. Environment doesn't seem to be a factor here unless this evolved human also pressage global warming in its predetermined path of refinement. But Perhaps

the issue is the oversized brain. Pumping so much blood upwards would be quite taxing and thus cause an elevated heart rate, which in urn would elevate body temperature, no good for optimal brain function. Also, the enlarged cranium would suffer from the issues associated with mass and surface area not increasing at the same rate, causing heat to be more and more difficult to disperse from the body. Thus, the elephant ears provide the extra surface area needed for

optimal cooling in the human of the future. Yes, I'm aware that all of this is nonsense, but it was amusing to pseudoscience my way through that. On a more general note, just wanted to say that I'm a new listener to Stuff to Blow your mind by way of invention, and I really enjoy both podcasts. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the thoughtful and sensitive way you approach all of your subjects. Kind regards Kelsey, uh No,

I love that this. I mean this, uh. This exercise is the same exercise we employ a lot of times when thinking about uh. Generally, you know of fantastic and mythical and science fiction creatures from cinema and books, and so forth so, um so, yeah, I love that interpretation. Um and it does also make me want to do We've never really done an episode on ears before. That could be quite interesting, just talk about like how hearing works,

how you know, biological hearing, you know works itself. But then also get into the various forms of ear and even the human ear. Why does it look like that? Why why do we have this strange shape? What's the lobe for? What does that accomplish? And then why does ear why why do we have ear hair? Like? All of these are questions, many of them have answers. It would be exactly the kind of thing that would make

sense to discuss here on the show. We have ear hair because it's awesome, and it all depends to what which which ear hair A you're talking about the inner ear hair or the hair growing on like the lobes itself like pokes out of the ears. Yeah. Yeah, it's got to be sexual signaling to attract mates. Right, That's that's one theory. All Right, we need to take a

quick break. We'll be right back with more. All right, we're back and uh and and Joe, is it is it just because we're just we're recording this the week before Christmas. But do I hear holiday music? Oh? You do? We got so much email about our Christmas music episode. People just want to talk about it. I guess the bells are ringing, the children are singing, and people are sending email. So this first one comes to us from Cecile. Cecil says good day, Robert and Joe. This is Cecil

from Manila, the Philippines. Here in our country, the Christmas songs start playing and Christmas decorations start appearing as soon as the first dash b e er month arrives, which is September. No one knows when and how this tradition started, though Searching online brought up this article with some good insight, and she links to an NPR article called Love the Holidays. The Philippines celebrates four months of Christmas. Uh. We have our own Christmas earworm in the song Christmas in Our

Hearts by local artist jose Marie Chan. Imagine hearing a song played incessantly, if not in your own house, from a neighbor's house, in malls, restaurants, and even public transportation for around four months, as well as being a karaoke UH staple at Christmas parties. Here's the singer serenading mall goers last year, and then another link here. Luckily, I was able to convince my father to put up Christmas lights and play Christmas songs in our house only at

the start of December. Wishing you a I apologize. I'm gonna try to say this Mala guyang pasco at Manigong Bagong Tawun or town, Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Cecile. Well, that is interesting. It does make me wonder does that mean there's no Halloween in the Philippines. I don't know. I need a I mean, Hallow Halloween is obviously not worldwide. Yeah, it's true, and I know it's you know, obviously it's celebrated to different extents in different parts of the world.

And I seem to recall that um in Japanese culture, Halloween has been embraced to some extent, but I've never thought about to what extend it's uh practiced in the Philippines. I need it. I I have friends of Philippine descent. I need to ask them. Still, I would on the surface, I would agree that four months of Christmas does sound like a little much like I say, I'm trying to. I'm trying to lean into the holidays this year, but that's I don't know if I can lean in that far.

You know, every culture has their own It's like, you know, some cultures are into into my Fiji and other people other cultures are not. You just gotta get used to it. Yeah, yeah, uh well I'm either way. I'm excited to hear more about, you know, the varieties of of holiday experience around the world. All right, here's another Christmas music bit of listener mail Listen comes to us from Sarah, Dear, Robert, and Joe. First of all, this is one of my favorite podcasts,

so thanks for making it. I just finished listening to your latest episode, and I thought there was an important perspective which was missing in the discussion. As a practicing Jew, being inundated with Christmas music serves to make me really feel my other us at this time of year, I and many of my friends find going to such places to be both unpleasant and depressing, and a few stores which throw in a token Hanukah song or two earn

both my undying loyalty and my dollars. Not everyone celebrates Christmas, and I have often wondered at the blinders of marketers who think that all shoppers can be wooed this way, especially places like grocery stores, which are patronized by folks who are looking for normal fare rather than presents. Thanks again for your great show regards, Sarah. Yeah, I think this is this is an excellent point to make, um one that at least I did try to touch on

this a little bit. Uh. I thought it came up a little bit because we talked about the idea of like again not comparing like annoying Christmas music to actual torture in a significant way, but like, one of the things we talked about was like when detainees are blasted with music to kind of like break them for interrogation,

it often intentionally is like culturally unfamiliar music. And so what could be geographically culturally unfamiliar could also just be like in terms of subculture or religious culture unfamiliar, you know, the the music of the other culture. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

But I also I will admit that in discussing that particular episode especially, I did get an autobiographical a lot, and I guess I was considering sort of my own stare down with Christmas to a certain extent, which you know, for me, it's like Christmas is kind of like this, Um, it's like this. Uh it's what is the big tractor trailer rig from maximum Overdrive with the with the green

goblin on the front. I don't know if I had a name, but it was it was a goblin like that's Christmas, just Christmas hat on it and it's coming at you and then you have to react and figure

out how you're going to take it. Uh So yeah, I was probably I probably did lean a bit into just thinking about my own relationship with the holiday, with the various you know, biases they are going to be present to that, but it is it is essential to to realize, Yeah, not everybody has the same uh you know, cultural experience of the holidays, certainly of Christmas and uh and yeah, when you think of of the marketing techniques used by something like something like a grocery store, it

does get get kind of weird, right. I Mean it's like people where they're just they want to buy bread, they want to buy rice, they want to buy vegetables, and they have to listen to jingle bells the whole time. I will say, ever, since we did this episode, I have actually noticed even more than usual when when in which stores are playing Christmas music. And yeah, I'm kind of surprised that it happens in grocery stores and stuff.

I would expect it to be more common in stores where you might reasonably be expected to be buying something like Christmas gifts. It's strange to go into Kroger or Publix or whatever and hear the Christmas music playing. But yeah, I guess that's where we're at. But anyway, Yeah, very important perspective, Sarah, and thank you so much for sharing. All right, This message comes from Michelle. Michelle says, do Robert and Joe. I really enjoyed the recent episode on

of hate relationship with Christmas music. I am an amateur classical bassist, and I've been playing in school or community orchestras for over thirty years. This means, subjectively, I believe I've played at least parts of The Nutcracker approximately eighteen million times. I'm sure the actual number is only in the hundreds, but it feels like much much more, and the hundreds is a lot. I find that my tolerance for this music depends largely on the context. I enjoy

playing it. I love sitting in in a ballet with a live orchestra hearing it, but listening to it on commercials around the radio makes me in vision swatting the sugar plum ferry with a rolled up newspaper. To me, the greatest Christmas music offense on commercials is not playing the whole song, or at least whole versus so that I can mentally finish it and get it out of my head. There's currently a car commercial that plays the same two measures of a song over and over without

finishing the phrase. He causes physical discomfort and anxiety, and I have to turn the channel or mute the TV. I also wanted to thank you fortifying my squirrel phobia. There used to be a squirrel near you. No, we're not trying to justify phobia. I hope we can do. Okay. We we seek to justify a healthy respect and and maybe to a certain extent, fear of close contact with the squirrel. Fear that is more like awe, yeah, yeah, the consideration of the squirrel as indeed a wild creature,

the way you would react to a sandworm from dune. Uh. Michelle goes on there used to be a squirrel near my house that would come up to the window and torment my indoor cat, or would chase me when I walked to my car, and would dive bomb neighbors from trees. Wow, I'm glad I wasn't the only one seeing their true evil nature. Now again, they're not evil, They're just animals.

But they don't you know, don't underestimate them. That squirrel sound, that sounds excessive though, even what we're looking at, like, perhaps that's a squirrel that somebody was feeding, and you know that, because this is one of the dangers of feeding any wild animal is that it changes it's it's like natural inborn association of human beings and human habitats and so forth. It begins to associate them with food, and then it might be inclined to to violate the

sort of predetermined safe space between you and itself. Uh So, I my, you know, just shooting from the hip here, But I wonder if that was a squirrel that had been essentially mistreated through feeding. That's a good point. Uh yeah, So just a good reminder for everyone out there, do not feed wild animals like that. I mean, I mean, you might not be able to stop them from getting into your meal worms or whatever. Right, Yeah, I mean well feeding, it's one thing of the squirrel is eating

from your bird feeder. If the squirrel is eating from your hand, then things have gone too far. Michelle goes on going back even further. I wanted to let you know how perfectly the timing of your January episode on creating the World's Most Unpleasant Room fit into my life. It was exactly the episode I needed at a very stressful time. I was listening to that episode along with

several others. It was a long few days while trying to make my house as completely perfect as possible for my first social worker visit for my adoption home study. I know from experience that that can be very stressful. Yeah. Yeah, it made me realize how ridiculous I was being in my cleaning frenzy. Your show has been a saving grace when I get too much in my own head with all the ups and downs that go along with the adoption process as I wait for a match. Thank you

so much. Keep the great episodes coming, Michelle. Yeah, well, thanks for writing in and best of luck with your adoption journey. Absolutely. Oh wait, no, I forgot. Michelle also has a ps oh, let's have it. I have had simply having a wonderful Christmas time stuck in my head all evening just that one line. Don't actually know the rest of the song. I'm off to listen to any other song to try to get that particular worm out of my ear. Well, best of luck with that too,

I hope it worked out. Yeah, that's your favorite, right, That is the worst of all time. In addition to the cultural chauvinism of Christmas music, sometimes there is some geograph cold Christmas chauvinism as well. UH. That was mentioned by several listeners, Like we had several uh people from like Australia and New Zealand get in touch with us about Christmas music. About the fact that lots of Christmas music mentioned snow. It's all about winter time and stuff.

But if you're in Australia, Christmas is in the middle of the summer because the seasons are inverted the southern hemisphere. That's right. We heard from an about this, She writes, High, Robert and Joe recently listened to your episode about Christmas music. You asked for emails from people from other countries and people who are subjected to Christmas music. I fit into both of these categories. I live in Australia and I work in a supermarket. The thing about in Australian Christmas

is it is very hot right now. We're in the middle of a terrible drought and there are catastrophic fire conditions. Brush fires have devastated different parts of the country over the past few weeks. The annoying thing is retail stores will still play songs like Winter Wonderland or let It Snow. These seem highly inappropriate, but it is just all part of the tradition. In response to this, there there are

some Awese Christmas songs. Most of them are really annoying Awese versions of Christmas carols, but there are a few exceptions. One of my favorite is how to Make Gravy by Paul Kelly. Okay, this is a song written as a man who is in jail at Christmas time. He is the one who usually makes the gravy. He is calling his brother to get advice on how to make it. What he is really calling about is to say how

much he will miss his family and that he is sorry. Well, that makes me think of one of my favorite Christmas songs actually Christmas in Prison by John Priyan. It's beautiful. Oh, I remember phil Oaks had one called they Don't Have Christmas in Kentucky. It was about, you know, impoverished conditions and whatnot. Um. You know a good like a good sad Christmas song? That's a long way, doesn't it? Um? Anyway? Anna continues. Another Christmas song I like is by an

artist called Darren Handlin. He has a song called The Loaf. This is about a family preparing for a Christmas. The eldest boy has just been dumped. He spends time crying and his family makes fun of him, saying tears will never bring her back. It's cold. Yeah. A loaf of bread has been put in the oven. During the night, the boy creeps in and throws all his love letters into the oven so they will all burn up in

the morning. The loaf is huge, but when they pierce it with a knife, all his words explode out and the family is killed by exploding bread. What now? That is a song that you will never hear in any retail setting. It is really about the power of words. Thanks and Mary Xmas. Anna. I've never heard the Loaf, but I got to look that up right now? That is so good? Yeah? How long before that becomes a standard? Hopefully soon? In googling it, all I'm getting is meat

Loaf singing Christmas Thilms songs. Oh, not quite the same thing, So, I though it depends. Um, did Jim work on those those songs? Stan, No, they're not. I mean they're Christmas songs? You mean, like where they Jim Steinman original that I into? You had that kind of like, uh, you know, the sort of gothic uh, sleazy biker vampire feel that a proper a song from that collaboration should have. Sorry, I'm trying to think of a good Jim Steinman type song title.

It would be something like baby, it's not Christmas yet parentheses, but it's the New Year. Yeah, it makes you think, Yeah, I like it. I would be I would be into that. All right. When we're gonna go ahead and close up the bag there, we're gonna send Carney back on his his his his boxing way and we will uh yeah, we'll close out the episode here. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, well, you can go to Stuff to

Blow Your Mind dot com. That'll get you where you you need to go. But you can find the podcast anywhere you get your podcast wherever that happens to be. Just make sure that you subscribe, make sure that you rate and review. These are great ways to help out the show. Let's see other things. There is a merch store. Well, we've got some new designs coming up. There's the recent uh monster map uh T shirt design and I believe we have a psychedelic mushroom inspired logo design coming out soon.

Maybe by the time you hear this, it will be out. It's like the stuff to blow your mind glyph but in prehistoric fungus. Yeah, they sent us a preliminary illustration. I said, it looks good, but could we make it look more like a black light poster? And uh and and I think that that really brought it in the right direction. Uh. So you know, check that out and see what I'm talking about. I can only describe the

visuals so well. Other shows you can check out. There is the second oil Age, a little sci fi horror thing that a work done. That one is out in its entirety now, so you can just binge the whole thing. Invention. Our other podcasts that Joe and I do together. Uh. We finished the first year of Invention episodes and you can find them all at invention pod dot com or where every you get your podcasts rate review subscribe to that as well, because if you like what we're doing here,

but we think you'll enjoy Invention as well. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hi, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a

production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Bid