Halloween Hangover Listener Mail, Part 2

two of our Halloween hangover a listener mail. We're not usually going to be doing two part listener mail back to back like this, but there was a lot of great stuff that came in over the October season related to our Monster Science episodes, and we're also just using a little help, I think, to get through the Thanksgiving week here. Yeah, American Thanksgiving is how, there's no denying it, and we have a number of different things cooking here.

We of course we're continuing to pump out stuff to blow your mind, but we also have the Invention podcast launching next month, and we've been researching and uh writing and recording these episodes so we can start dishing those up. So definitely keep an eye out for that. Speaking of strange technology and can traptions, I have noticed that Carney is uh not only still haunted. Last time we discussed a little bit how he's seen. He's got a ghost

in the machine thing going on. And his gears are moaning in the in the night winds a little bit. But have you noticed also a slight elongation of his mouth antennae. Oh yes, I'm never was sure why he had those installed to begin with, but now they are definitely pronounced. Yeah, they're almost becoming fang like in appearance. One could wonder if he is undergoing a transformation to robot vampoiism. That may be the case. Um oh, before we get go in here too, I want to remind everybody, Hey,

check out our t public store. That's where you can find some merchandise for the show. There's a store tab at the top of our homepage. Stuffabole your mind dot com.

It's the best way to get to it. We have a number of cool bits of merchandise logo designs, but also episode centric designs, including I am told there should be some new squirrel based merchandise in there for you, some nice dark skug Uh content for you to have put on a shirt or a mug or a sticker or what have you, as well as a potential holiday great basilisk shirt. So get excited about those. Check those out because buying merchandise like this it's a cool way

to support the show. Uh. And of course, if you don't want to spend money supporting the show, you can also help us out for free by simply reviewing the show wherever you have the power to do so. Yeah, some merch up or give us some stars. Now should we jump right into our first bit of listener mail from Joshua, let's do it? Okay? This concerned our episode about monster slayers the slayer tradition, So Joshua writes in to say, Hi, I'm a first time listener and I

just heard your episode The Slayer. I studied ancient Near Eastern myth and the Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago, so imagine my surprise when the first episode I heard focused on the myths that I love. You did an amazing job discussing the stories. And my only correction is that the second A in I guess what I pronounced, Acadian is pronounced with the long A like hey, so that'd be Acadian and I guess this, of course refers

to the ancient Mesopotamian culture, the Acadians. Uh. So Joshua continues, there is one thing particularly interesting about the uma a leash, and this is, of course, the ancient Mesopotamian creation epic, where you've got the battle between mar Duke and the sea dragon Tiamat. Joshua writes, there is one thing particularly interesting about the Numa a leash that I wanted to tell you about Tiamat. The monster who has slain in the story is the sea goddess. The hero who slays

her is the storm God. When he slays her, he summons his winds, you remember the evil wind robert Um. She swallows them, and then he shoots an arrow at her belly and she pops like a balloon. This causes her body to be cut in half, and dry ground appears on which we live. In the creation story, in the by bowl, before anything existed, there was just a

chaotic void to who and vo who. God created the heavens and the earth by gathering together all the waters from that void and then separating them to let dry ground appear. When we picture the Biblical creation story within the context of our cosmology, we tend to picture a puddle of water floating in space. Then a hole appears in the middle, and dry ground rises from the hole in the puddle. But in the context of ancient near Eastern cosmology, it's better to picture outer space as nothing

but water. Think of an aquarium filled with water. Floating dead center. In the middle of the aquarium is an upside down glass bowl with a lid. We live in the bowl, standing on the underside of the lid. Everything outside the bowl is water. This is why the Hebrew word rakiya means both sky and a solid hammered surface. I think this is where we sort of get the idea of the firmament right, that there's like a a solid surface up in the sky that you could walk

around on. Observationally, this works from the perspective of a person standing on the bowl's lid. The sky is the color of water because there's water up there. The sky reaches down to the horizon. If you drill into the earth, you find water, and if you go far enough on land, you find the terrible chaotic primordial water the ocean. This explains why the storm god was often the chief god.

Storms weren't events when the storm god caused destruction for humans and needed to be placated so he wouldn't wipe us out. Instead, they were battles when the primordial waters above started falling back down, threatening to fill the bowl. The storm God used the strength of his winds to reinflate the bowl, pushing the primordial waters back up above the solid sky, keeping the bowl open for us to

live in. Perhaps it's counterintuitive for us with our cosmology, but in the cosmology of the ancient Near East, humanity should thank the storm God for constantly inflating the bowl and saving us all from drowning. So, in my mind, the point of the Enuma a leash was to tell the Acadians, don't be afraid of terrifying storms. Instead, you should fear the day when the waters fall and there is no storm, because that will be the day when it all comes crashing in again. I could go on,

but this is too long already. Anyway, great job, and I'm excited to keep listening. Thanks now, Robert, this raises This is a fantastic email, by the way, I love all this inside on the ancient Near Eastern cosmology. Uh And and this fits pretty well with a lot of what I've read about about their kind of view of

the shape of the cosmos and stuff. But one of the things that I hadn't considered before is that given all of this should we, in fact picture the events of the Enuma a leash somehow happening underwater, like if the Earth hadn't been created yet, if there wasn't yet an inflated bull. Was this all somehow under the primordial

total ocean of the void. Maybe this is why the deep sea peril movies of the of the nineties resonated so is that they're they kind of connect with a primordial cosmology, the idea that our existence is essentially a deep sea abotant. I like that, or wait, are you talking about the nineties or the nineteen like eighty nine under it? But the enthusiasm and the VHS enthusiasm of course pills over there, right, Okay, you're talking the Abyss, Leviathan,

Deep Star six, Lords the Deep all that. Oh yeah, yea, because I know that's your jam, because essentially all those stort tales are encapsulated versions of the surface world beneath the deep. Yeah, but they're also the stories about space. They're like they Leviathan is just alien underwater in a way, again, making the connection between the ocean and the space beyond

very nice. I love this. No, I'm thinking of some obvious reasons that my my guests about the Numa alis here doesn't really make sense because obviously there are winds and so like there wouldn't be winds underwater, would there be? Well, but there are winds underwater. In a sense, we do have tides and crewerrents, I guess, And of course we also have the movements and migrations of marine species. Not that all of that would necessarily be known to ancient peoples,

but some of it would be, especially if they were seafaring. Well. I also think about the deep sea braving nature of other ancient Mesopotamian heroes, like if you think of the epic of Gilgamesh, one of the feats that Gilgamesh does is he walks down to the bottom of the ocean to get like some kind of sacred plant he needs. I can't remember quite why he needs it, but he needs a plant down there, so he just like walks down to the bottom of the sea, gets it, and

he comes back up. Well, of course we've all That reminds me of some of our discussions in the Ancient Aliens episodes about about the idea that first contact occurs with some sort of entity that arises from the d oh yeah, so this was something Carl Sagan talked about in his work. Now, of course, like us, Carl Sagan did not credit the idea of ancient aliens, didn't believe in uh you know, the Eric Fondanicken ideas and stuff

like that. But he was asking the question of Okay, if earthlings had been contacted in the past by ancient aliens, what would the evidence look like. And the closest thing he and his co author thought they could come up with was this, Uh, I don't remember. Was it Sumerian? I think it might have been like a retelling of some Sumerian epic or something. It was some ancient Near Eastern epic about these beings that came up out of the water and brought culture to the people. What was

the name of that entity again? Uh? Oh, honest, yes, and or Adappa I think, yeah, I just love that, and then I find the the the mythic image of it all all the more haunted. Yeah, that's great stuff. Anyway, Well, thank you, Joshua. That was an awesome piece of listener mail, and we really appreciate the clarification of the shape of the world. Now, should we explore another response to the Slayer of episode from maybe this one from our listener Taylor. Yes,

this is another great piece of listener mail. Taylor rights, Hello, Robert Joe. I absolutely love the Monster Slayer episode. I really like how you tied in the fear and courage aspects of the episode. I would like to share a personal experience of how a fictional tale of heroics can really change the way you respond with threat or whatever

is generating the fear response. I we actually asked that question in the episode, like whether there's any evidence that thinking about her mythical heroics makes you more courageous, And we didn't find any evidence or like research on that, but it sounds like Taylor has an anecdote here. Yes, Taylor continues, I am a combat veteran and served in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. We were relieving the unit that was taking heavy cashually at Casually and they were

withdrawn in their stead. We took on the task of finishing what they had started, and I will spare the details of the actual mission. I was a combat engineer and I would sometimes spearhead infantry platoon with a handheld mind detector, sweeping for explosive hazards. I have to say fear was part of an everyday phenomena that I experienced, and when I was mind sweeping for improvised explosive devices UH and old anti personnel minds, I was especially fearful.

But I had to somehow overcome this fear in order to complete my role in the mission. The whole time, I could only think of what I was doing to prevent a catastrophe from taking place by detecting these hazards, and I actually recalled the heroics of the old Lord of the Ring series to give me a boost encourage. We had a laptop that we watched movies on and had watched all three Lord of the Rings films several times. Many acts of bravery took place in those stories, but

some stuck with me. Boromir sacrifice was one and Ewen was another. I personally had always felt a small part of guilt for taking part in a war I knew little about, albeit I joined the army to pay for school, and I didn't realize the act sual reality of deploying. For some reason, my morals had always led me to believe that war was inherently wrong. The guilt had always played a role in my fear to die. For a reason, I did not fully understand what was I contributing to

humanity by being part of all this. I felt a little helpless, and I took myself out of the big picture and downsized to my immediate circumstances, which were my fellow humans. If I were to die, then let it be from my fellow humans, the ones I was sharing this unfortunate experience with. For some reason, I could clearly recount Owen's bravery against Saron. She was no super human or legendary warrior, but just a human woman who only

wanted to protect those she loved. Her love for her friends and family gave her the courage to overcome Saron and stab him in the face. Saron, to me, was acting like a metaphor for these destructive devices, someplaced by Taliban soldiers and others left from previous wars. Like saw on, these things laid in wait for the right moment, then afflicted terrible destruction on those who came across them. These things did not discriminate and killed not only soldiers in

the war, but also helpless locals. I use these fantastical stories of bravery to help me through some of my ordeal in Afghanistan, and even though I knew they were all fictional characters, they have played a vital role in inspiring me to face my own fears and overcome them. Sorry for the long response, but it felt good to share these considering I don't get to talk about it much. Thanks for the wonderful episode, and I look forward to

the rest of October's podcast. Cheers from Alaska. Well, Taylor, thank you so much for getting in touch. These were really some, uh, some fascinating insights. I don't know if I've ever heard that directly. It seems like a kind of common thing to be inspired by heroics from stories to to do something actually, you know, requiring of courage in real life. But I can't think of examples other

than what Taylor has just given us here. Well, what I love about this examples of course that it's it's from a combat scenario, so it's a thing that you know, I don't have any personal experience with, but it. But of course it's always great to hear from our listeners who do, because they can put new twists on topics

such as this, and uh, it's actual physical courage. By the way, I mean a lot of the kind of courage I was thinking about people needing in that episode was more mundane day to day courage, Like, you know, if you have a fear of public speaking, you've got to somehow get up the guts to do it for a work scenario or something like that, or you know, those kind of mundane things. But here you're actually talking

about putting your life on the line. Yeah. And I also like the idea of associating Saron with just sort of the the nature of war, you know, like he's it's ultimately what the great enemy is all about. Now, at the risk of being doubly wrong, I think some of our more nitpicky listeners might say, I think the character Taylor is thinking about there is the witch king of Angmar who gets stabbed in the face by a

o N. Is that not the case? I believe that is the case, Yeah, because that looks exactly what I mean. Is one of Sauron's generals or whatever. Yeah, I mean, in a sense, it's stabbing the witch king in the face. It is like stabbing saw On in the face. Yeah, what are you gonna do? Climb that tower and stab the eye? That makes sense? Yeah, there's no face for stabbing. So uh but we knew we knew what what Taylor was talking about. Yes, sorry, I did not mean to nitpick.

This is a great story. Yeah, and it ties in because we are going to have other listener mails in this episode that involved the Lord of the Rings. Oh that's right. Yeah, man, we have got so many excellent pedantic Tolkien nerds out there. Uh. I just had to say that or I knew that we would get a flood of listener mail like that wasn't so on. We love you, We love you anyway. Thank you so much, Taylor. Uh and uh yeah, I feel free to get in touch again. Okay. Our next piece of listener mail comes

from Zolts result says hello, Robert and Joe. And this is also about the Slayer. By the way, I was writing to you about one part of the recent Monster Slayer episode and the episode you mentioned that babies have been shown to be afraid of spiders and snakes, and that's the type of fear that sticks around, unlike the fear from bears or other predators. I don't really have

any proof of my idea. It just makes sense to me intuitively, if a baby or a youngster is left alone in nature for a while or just not looked after that closely by the parents, and it is afraid of snakes and spiders, it has a survival advantage. If a venomous snake comes along and the baby picks it up and tries to chew on it, it will most

likely get bitten, highly reducing its chance of survival. So fear of snakes or spiders being hardwired, even in infancy, can increase the survival rates of young humans and animals. On the other hand, if a bear, wolf, or lion, or any other large predator comes along, the baby has

no advantage if it is afraid of them. Obviously, if the baby doesn't make any noise, it has a higher chance of not being noticed, but that would require a higher, more specific type of recognition to differentiate between large predators or members of its own species or even its parents based on limited information, and babies are not really known for being quiet when it would be ideal, So being inherently afraid of bears doesn't give infants much survival advantage.

So it wouldn't develop evolutionarily, and it wouldn't get hardwired into our brains anyways. Just an idea, keep up the good work and greetings from Hungary. Uh, I can maybe see what you're talking. That's possibility to consider like that. Um, you know, the question is like why snakes and spiders specifically, especially when they're not the most threatening animals out there.

And the idea could be that if this is a hardwired instinct kind of fear instead of a learned cultural fear taught by the parents, then that could be advantageous to very young children because well, I mean, for one thing, because those animals are not predatory, so they would not be usually seeking to like attack a baby. It would be more like if the baby stumbles across them that they would be dangerous. They would need to know to

leave it alone. Yeah yeah, whereas like I leave it alone instinct just wouldn't really matter in the case of a large predator that wants to eat you, because you're not going to get away from it and get in. If they were to get away from it, it would

be it would be the domain of the parents. They would be the ones who would have to have to stick him into a cave or a tree or however it happened in clan of the cave Bear Um, I want to say it was what stuck her into some sort of enclosure or the bear you could only scratch at her. Yeah, a while since i've seen it, I've never seen that one. Basically the same idea that's explored. I think in um one of the Ewok movies. Oh, which one, the one with Wilford Brimley. Maybe that's the

one I've seen the most. I think maybe that's the one because that's the one where she loses her parents, her entire family. They just kill off the entire family and bring in Wilford Brimley. I think they shove her into a tree trunk or something to save her from some wild beast. Well at least she got a consolation Brimley. Uh. Yeah, so that's an interesting ideas old. Yeah, I'd have to think about that. See see what's some evidence for against

that would be. But yeah, we're we're thinking about Thanks. All right, on that note, we're gonna take a quick break and we come back more listener mail. Thank you. Alright, we're back. Okay, we got a big email covering several topics from our listener, Dan Robert, do you want to read part of that one? Sure? I'm going to read. I'm just gonna read parts of it and I'll explain why. But Dan writes in and says, hello, Robert and Joe,

a Newish fan here. I found about your podcast back in March of this year and have been listening to you since then, gorging myself on your mercifully vast back catalog heedless of date. Like Baker's Gods are Scott Baker's Gods, I scan your timeline as a single moment before I get along, I just wanted to say I find you guys and prior host too, can't forget them to be phenomenal, and wanted to thank you for being consistently insightful, well researched, informative,

and at times hilarious. Oh thank you, Dan. Stuff to Blow your Mind is, without a doubt, one of my top tier podcasts. You guys bring science to the average person in a way if you do and will not no doubt be classed as one of the better methods of science communication, an application to everyday life thought and

fiction of this generation of podcasters. Now at this point in the email, um Dan goes on to ask and bring up a couple of of issues that have a lot to do with the specifics of our Scott Baker's um Second Apocalypse saga, the you know, the way the God's work in it, the way one might potentially take Julian James bichmeral mind Um hypothesis and sort of fold

it into at least one aspect of Baker's work. I really enjoyed chatting with him about this and it it makes me want to go back and maybe check out a few of these things again um in in Baker's work. But I do want to pick up on his third point that he brought up in the list of mail. He says, moving on, I don't want to take up too much time, so I'll keep it simple. Way back in one of your episodes on space not helpful, I know.

I think it's the Moons of Jupiter or Saturn. Sorry, you mentioned how you don't see slow acting, slow thinking monsters or aliens and fiction that often. Oh, I think this was the Moons of Saturn episode because we were talking about aliens that might live on the extremely cold moon of Titan. That was, if they're in a cold environment, they might have a very slow metabolism and slow slow everything. Well, Dan goes on, He says, I was reminded of the

Watchers in William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land. To summarize briefly, in the Night Land, the sun is dead, the stars are gone, and humanity survives within a gigantic miles tall pyramid and is beset by monsters, both from billions of years of evolution in the endless dark and of a supernatural variety. The Five Watchers are only quickly described and

not well at the start of the novel. What is clear is that they are vast, seemingly mountainous beings that move on a timescale charitably described as geologic, slowly advancing upon the aforementioned great Pyramid. They are also referred to as some of the most dire beings known to man, hinted it beinging the coordinating powers behind behind the otherworldly monsters within the Land. They've been known about for millions of years, advancing slowly over the epics all that time.

Later fan works extrapolate the Watchers, and given various contextual clues within the book, have cobbled together an interesting handful of takes on these Titans of the Dark. The interpretations range a fair bit, but my favorite was that they were gigantic colony creatures, the night Land itself possibly being a long dried ocean floor whose life force has been

summoned by demonic agencies. In essence, the Watchers are slowly growing mountains of demonically possessed coral, incrementally inching toward humanity, presumably by growing towards the light of their souls gathered in a single location. I figured that's a lot slower than the Inns, and certainly a monster to be afraid of, albeit in a more abstract fashion. Anyway, you guys rock. Love the recent episodes on the Basilisk and classics like being do to repeat history and especially the science of

it from last year. You guys do great work, and I look forward to many more years of having you dwell in my ears, secreting knowledge and interesting connections. Take care and all the best. Well. I have never read this, Robert, have you the Night Lands? I have. It's been a it's been a while since I read it, uh, and

I forgot about the Watchers. But The Night Lands is a is an inspiring early work like of of post apocalyptic science fiction, and it is it is a challenging book to read because it is is written in a very antiquated style. Um, it's easy to to grow frustrated with it. I know I grew frustrated with it when I read it initially. I need to give it another rereading, though, because buried within the at times challenging pros, there are some just fabulous dark fantasy and sci fi ideas, a

lot of it. Regarding again, as he described the Last Redoubt, this enormous pyramid in which the last of humanity is is living out it's dying days against the horrors of a dark, cold earth. It's a great concept, and I especially love the idea of like a menacing coral. That's just that's wonderful. Yeah. Well, I wasn't familiar with any I've never read any fiction that kind of springboards off

of the night Lands. Wait was that? Was that from the fan fiction or the fan Yeah, I believe, I believe so, or not necessarily fan fiction, but just you know, short stories that continue the tradition in the same way a lot of writers write in the within the mythos of HP Lovecraft. But I think that's one of the that's one of the values of the night Land is that there are these elements in there, they're not necessarily given a lot of time, and you're like, wow, what

is that about? Wait, don't tell me about this character's love story and is pining for this lost love? Tell me more about the Watchers in the Night. Well, yeah, I always love when somebody can come up with what feels like a truly original kind of monster mythos, something that isn't just like basically a variation on the vampire or something. Yeah, but again, the Night Land William Hopes Hope Hodgson. It's out there. You can buy copies of it.

It's it's on kindle um. But it is. It is a pretty it is an original work there there there are things about it that haven't been retrod uh in fiction in the in the decades, says since it came out, there's there's a lot of original wonder there to be had. Okay, This next piece of mail comes from our listener, Me Call or Michelle m I C H A L. I'm not sure how you pronounced that, but this is following

up from the Vampire Clinic episodes. So I think I'm gonna say me call, So Me Call writes, thanks for the great and creepy content. This October, I was listening to your vampire podcast and I have remembered a story that a guy was working with a few years ago told me, I love a third hand story from a guy you used to work with. All right, we call right. So I am Polish and I've been living in a

small Polish town almost my entire life. Growing up surrounded by woods, bogs and misty river banks and having a family which enjoys spooky folk tales worked out really good for me. I mean, I like a decent scary story, but I'm getting a bit off topic. The guy I have mentioned used to help out local archaeologists with their

dig sites as a voluntary passion project. They have found a medieval graveyard once which is located on a church land, but has been forgotten and discovered again by these archaeologists. My colleague told me that there were about twenty bodies buried in that cemetery, all ordinary skeletons, but one which belonged to a person people who buried him believed to be a vampire. That skeleton had his head chopped off and placed face down between the person's legs. Hands and

ankles were tied behind his back and bound together. And here comes the creepy part of that wasn't creepy before here comes the creepy part. The skull had a huge stone jammed into the mouth, jaws broken, most of the front, teeth bent backwards from the impact. Those were the kind of precautions Polish people used to take to make sure no vampires will haunt and hunt them at night. I wish you all the best and hope you enjoyed my

little vampire story. Me call well, Nicole. We've read about other stories, like I think even in one of the episodes we mentioned brick in the mouth vampire burials. Yeah, but I'm delighted to hear another take on it though. Yeah, there was I think around the same week that our episodes came out, there was another story in the news about a new brick in the mouth vampire grave. To say,

I almost say, grahampire vampire grave discovered somewhere. What didn't we see that on our Facebook discussion module or something, Robert I believe. So Yeah, anyway, yes, that is super creepy. So thanks for sharing, Nicole. I love this legacy of graveyard desecration and vampire prevention. Here's another free idea I'm throwing out there to the cinema world. Everyone loves to remake the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and of course, the family in the Texas Chansal mascre Is is heavily into the

desecration of graves and corpses. Some lady should do one where it's essentially the chainsaw family versus vampires. And the whole reason they're raiding all of these surrounding textsan uh graveyards is not because they just love messing around with corpses that though, of course they do. It's that they're fighting the vampire menace. Okay, that would be wonderful. Get like that. That sounds like if Joe Lansdale hasn't written it already, that would be a terrific story right there.

That is great. Yeah, leatherface chainsawing off vampire heads. Yeah, turned into the hero. Here it is here it is Bill Moseley. Chop Top has metal plates in his neck under the skin, which prevents him from being bitten and vamped himself. So they try to bite him and they just scrape their teeth on metal. I love it. And then you you kind of you also rewrite it to wear. Grandpa is not only the greatest killer that ever lived, He's the greatest vampire killer. Van Helsing. Grandpa is is

Abraham van Helsing. Soult to pull it off to the United States, and oh my god, this is so good. It rights itself. Okay, we we take back all the it's free now this is ours alongst Us or I should be fair, Robert, it's yours. It's yours. No, no, no no, we can we can do it. I think we can do this. Joe, we just gotta get We gotta get whoever owns the Texas Chainsaw Masca rights to see things

our way. I'm sure they'll just give them right up. Alright, we have another bit of vampire lore here from a listener. This comes to us from Joey in Kentucky. Joey Rights. Hey guys, I just finished listening to the first Vampire Clinic episode, and during the episode you mentioned fun scientific explanations for vamporism in fiction, and I wanted to recommend

Peeps by Scott Westerfield. In it, vampiresm is a mind altering parasite and the story is told from the point of view of a typhoid marry type Carrier of the Parasite. It's a fun little story with some interesting parasitology facts thrown in. I'd also like to thank you for all the great book recommendations on the show. Basically every time one of mentions a book, I write it down. I love blind Side, that's the Peter Watts book. And I'm halfway through the Culture series. That of course is the

the en In Banks series. And I've got about a dozen more on my reading list. Keep up the good work, Joey. I have not read that, but thanks for the recommendation, Joey. Yeah, I'm gonna have to look that up to all right. Now, technically I think this was not Halloween monster content, but really it is. We've got quite a few good messages about monstrous squirrels this this Halloween season, and so I think we should plow right into those. They fit right

that that's basically monster content. Oh yeah, and I imagine we're going to keep hearing about squirrels for some time. This really has that those episodes really struck a chord. Like most recently on Twitter, somebody brought to my attention that the new Fallout game follow out. Oh I didn't know about that. It has radioactive squirrels in it. Nice Okay, Yeah, people like our our social media feeds have turned at least half into people just adding us with squirrel stuff.

On the subject of squirrels, I don't recall which episode it was in which I did this. Maybe it was our listener Male episode, but I asked about squirrels in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. I remember exactly why this came up. It came up because we mentioned that squirrels had been introduced outside of their native ranges, and there were squirrels pretty much everywhere except Antarctica. Uh, and several listeners from New Zealand got in touch with

us to say, uh, no squirrels in New Zealand. And so, of course, because the Lord of the Rings films were shot in New Zealand, you were asking, well, are there squirrels in Middle Earth? And oh boy, we got some Tolkien pedantry coming on the topic of of the squirrels of Middle Earth. So we're gonna run through some of

these uh and try to acknowledge everyone who who chimed in. Patrick, for instance, rights rights in and says there are squirrels in the Hobbit when speaking of the vileness of Mirkwood. Gandalf talks about black squirrels and other unclean beasts. But black squirrels are not even mythical animals. That's just like

there there are black squirrels. Yeah, but I guess the whole thing is like you go into mirake Wood, the first thing you notice is the squirrels are different than the same way that you know, the squirrels are a little bit different in like the movie, it follows just northern forest varieties, not southern' it's a different variety. Okay. This next message comes from Daniel. Daniel says, Hello, I

have an interesting perspective to follow up on your squirrel questions. Daniel, I think we'll be the judge of that um about New Zealand and squirrels. I'm a US citizen and I've been living in New Zealand for the past year, so I have huge exposure to squirrels in my past life. And my wife is actually a conservationist here, so she lets me know about all the difference in species. Not only that, but we recently watched The Lord of the

Rings in its entirety. Just before listening to the episode that I can remember the only reference of woodland creatures is tree Beard the end mentioning to Marry and Pippen. How about how rats not shown climb his legs and cause terrible tickles? But there aren't mentioned of squirrels unless he doesn't understand the difference between rodents, which is very possible as he doesn't seem to understand the difference between

hobbits and orcs. You remember that Mary and Pippen the Little Hijinks, Hobbits climb up him that like the Stoner Buddy comedy Hobbits. They climb up him and he's like, are you works? That's what I remember from that in the movie. Okay, Yeah, my son and I had to pause on our our reading of The Lord of the Rings, so I don't recall from previous readings how that actually went down. Daniel continues quote, most of the rodents here are ferrets and hedgehogs, though I don't actually know if

either of those qualified in New Zealand. I don't think they do. They are not secure a day. That said, there is a quote from the books where l Ron mentions time was once when a squirrel could carry a nut from tree to tree. From Rivendell to the Great Sea. I guess talking about when how far the forests used to Uh so, Daniel says, squirrels, they are canonical. If you want to follow up on the ramifications this has for the species on the islands of New Zealand, feel

free to email back for more details. Well, thank you so much, Daniel. You know what I'll grant you. That was interesting, I thought, so. I like the idea that so far we're learning that yes, you have the black squirrels of Mirkwood, but then also Aroun's bringing up squirrels in a very like nostalgic way, like the old forest way. So perhaps the squirrels are just another thing that have been u you know, darkened and made perverse by the influence of Saron. Alright, this next one comes to us

from Kevin. Kevin says, I just finished the listener Male episode of the podcast and wanted to assure you that Middle Earth definitely has squirrels. I don't recall if there is any mention in the Lord of the Rings, but I do recall their mentioned in the Hobbit. I did a quick search on my kindle and the word squirrels has used five times. Of note are two quotes bearing three of these instances. In chapter eight Flies and Spiders quote,

there were black squirrels in the wood. As Bilbo sharp inquisitive has got used to seeing things, he could catch glimpses of them whisking off in the path and scuttling behind tree trunks. A few pages later, they tried shooting at the squirrels, and they wasted many arrows before they managed to bring one down on the path. But when they roasted it, it proved horrible to taste, and they shot no more squirrels. And then Kevin continues, it seems

Token's black squirrels are the darkest of skugs. Now, wait a minute, I know why the squirrels of Mirkwood have black fur. This has got to be a case of of like camouflage melanism, like like the moths, the peppered moths of of like the Uk. You know, when there was a lot of soot on the tree trunks, the moths darkened, so it would be harder to see them standing out against in contrast, the tree trunks and the

surfaces they sat on, right as the trunks darkened. Of course, in Mirkwood the trees are very dark, so the squirrels want to blend in so as not to be plucked off of the branches by spiders and eaten. All right, So what about the taste? Why don't they taste so bad? Oh? Just because all squirrels taste bad, I don't know. He has nothing to do with them being from Mirkwood. I assumed two squirrels could probably taste good. Didn't we hear

from some peoplehood eating squirrels? And I think we did? Yeah, I mean in the right stew right, I mean, that's kind of the one assumes. One assumes maybe this was just their mood affecting their perception of the taste of the squirrels. And we have one more here from Fred that writes in and says, great show question. Are our

squirrels mentioned in the Lord of the Rings? Yes? And then he u he includes a quote here whether because of Strider's skill or for some other reason, they saw no sign and heard no sound of any other living thing all that day, neither two footed except birds, nor foot four footed except one fox, and a few squirrels. And Fred says the response ten thousand. I would imagine we're not quite ten thousand. But uh, he you did add to our our new collective understanding of score of

the squirrels of Middle Earth. I'm still grooving on my camouflage hypothesis that the gears are grinding in my head. Proved me wrong out there, proved me wrong. Well. On that note, we're gonna leave the squirrels of Mirkwood behind and we're gonna take one more break. But when we come back. More listener mail from October, Thank you, Thank alright, we're back now. This piece of male concerns our Vault episode about carnivorous plants we talked about. This was an

episode we recorded a couple of years ago. I think about the like legends of human eating trees and stuff like that, and how that connects to actual carnivorous plants, and so our listener Sean got in touch to say Hi, Robert and Joe. My name is Sean and I'm a researcher studying and geosperm flowering, plant evolution and comparative genomics at the Leban's Mac Institute at the University of Georgia.

I've been listening to the podcast for the past year during my commune and have enjoyed every second and I wish I had found it earlier. I just listened to the episode from the Vault Carnivorous Plants. Was intrigued because one of the grad students in the lab studies speciation, hybridization, and evolution of Saracenia picture plants. I hope I said

that right. I find carnivorous plants fascinating due to the fact that carnivorian plants has evolved independently several times through convergent evolution, which I think is really cool and interesting. One thing that I was surprised that you guys didn't mention is the fact that many carnivorous plants lure insects by reflecting U V light. Insects, like ants and flies, are sensitive to blue and violet light. We'll see these plants emitting a blue fluorescence and are lured toward them.

The reason why is yet to be understood, but it is cool predation strategy that's invisible to us humans. Sean also offers that if we're ever interested in doing something on the evolution of flowering plants, so we could get in touch. But also Sean writes, furthermore, there's a lot

of cool plant research. I e. Evolutionary biology, transgenics, plant pathogen interactions, and much more happening here in the plant biology department at you g A and I'm willing to help you guys get in contact with the professors who would share their research. Finally, i'd like to say thank you again for making my commute more enjoyable and keep up the great work. Well, thank you, Sean. Uh Yeah,

maybe we should look into flowering plants sometime. Yeah, and I and I love the idea of dipping into more local talent. We've been trying to do more of that, bringing bringing experts on the show, not via telephone, but actually get them in the studio, and they're just there's so many great minds in the Atlanta area. We should do more of it. All right. At this point, we're gonna move on to some listener mail that is related to our episode the Curse. How about this one from Taylor?

What do you think? Let's go for it? All right, So Taylor writes in your episode about curses, you pondered whether or not there could be legal ramifications for uttering a curse on someone In Canada. We actually have a law which would impact cursing someone in limited situations. Section three sixty five of the Criminal Code of Canada is

entitled pretending to pry to switchcraft. It states, uh, everyone who fraudulently a pretends to exercise or use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration be undertakes for this consideration to tell fortunes or see pretends from this skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where, or in what manner anything that is supposed to have been stolen or lost maybe found, is guilty

of an offense punishable on summary conviction. I already have so many questions about this um regarding like what the difference is between practicing a religion and pretending to practice a religion, But we'll wait to the end of the email to bring it all up. Okay, Quote, this law only applies if you are fraudulently doing an activity and therefore goes to the men's rea of the act e g. If you act as a psychic and you believe you

are a psychic, then there is no crime. Whereas if you act as a psychic solely to take money from a believer, then you have committed a crime. How would you determine that that would be so difficult. Um anyway, how would this apply to curses? I can think of two scenarios where this law may come up. Scenario number one, you not believing in curses, know someone who has a strong,

irrational belief in curses. You do not like this person and want to cause ill will on them, and despite not believing in curses, you cast one on this believer. It causes a severe negative downturn in this person's mental well being, physical well being, or their financial well being, because of course they must find someone to dispel this curse. You will be guilty under section three sixty five of

the Criminal Code of Canada. Maybe if you like, write out a manifesto is stating all your plans, I don't know, Yeah, you would have to. They would have to catch your your villainous admission of guilt on tape or yeah, you have a bond villain monologue. Of course it would make it not efficacious, right if you if you actually monol

to the bond, you recursing. Scenario number two, you not believing in curses, once again accept funds from someone to dispel a curse which which this person believes has fallen on them. This person may be working in conjunction with the you in scenario one to extort money from this person. In this scenario, once again there is clear fraud on your part and you will be guilty under section three

sixty five of the Criminal Code of Canada. Of course, this requires very specific circumstances, and if in either of the above scenarios you in fact believe in curses, then no crime has been committed. Seems like this law would never be used for curses, right Well, someone was charged under section three sixty twelve in Toronto for charging thousands of dollars to remove a family curse, and Taylor links

to a source slightly different. But man in ten was charged under this section for charging six figures to remove an evil spirit from a family member. And then Taylor links to another source and finally, in the Edmonton Police Force had to release a statement warning people not to fall for paranormal frauds, which includes curse removal. I thought you would find this interesting and I do not know

if there would be any comparables in the US. Uh. Well, there, I mean there are certainly in the US fraudulent predatory practitioners of occult and crafty sciences. Yeah you can. You can turn on the TV and see them every day. Yeah. The mediums who will like charge you a premium to talk to your dead family members and stuff that I try, I mean, I try not to harp too much. Would be like hateing non people who believe in things that

I don't think there's any good evidence for. But that is one that really just makes me mad, Like the you know, selling access to dead family members and stuff like that that I get kind of furious when I read about that. Oh yeah, I mean that's the kind

of thing that Harry Youdini to get you with. Yeah, because really we're talking about the difference between practicing religion or practicing some sort of supernatural belief system and simply praying upon those who do um, you know, going after them, trying to milk them for for money um. And clearly

one of those two scenarios is definitely bad. I think, you know, anybody out there who is just going out there to uh, to manipulate people and prey upon whatever kind of superstitious ideas they might already have, uh, you know, that's that's deplorable and that that should be punishable under

criminal codes. But where it's great for me is the idea of like, well, I can certainly partake in religion and partake in in rituals of that that faith or belief system without completely believing in it, even want struggling to believe in it. You know that every day? Yeah yeah, A lot of the people go into church sitting in the pew next to you, might not really believe everything, but they're seeing some kind of value in what they're doing. Right.

And then ultimately, like we discussed, like how different is a curse than a prayer? You know, it depends how you're you're framing it. I guess I've heard some some prayers before. That sounds a bit like curses. Yes, um, you know, and uh and you know where would that fall under such a ruling? I don't know. It's just all interesting food for thought. This is a really interesting

listener mail that we received. Yeah um yeah. Again with the like selling access to dead family members through you know, a spirit medium or something like this, You never it's hard to prove fraud in those cases like the like Taylor mentioned in the email. You need specific kinds of evidence and stuff that probably aren't going to be there

most of the time. So then again, I think about the fact that if you're going to be like a spirit medium, you're probably going to be better at it if you know you were a fraud, because then you can consciously practice cold reading techniques and trickery and all that. Whereas you act if you actually believe you have power, it seems like you'd be less likely to produce really

impressive results, you know what I mean. Yeah, Now, something worth exploring in a future episode would be to what extent we have that space between though, where someone is utilizing these various tricks but doing so from a place of belief, you know, like you're essentially going out out

there and doing a cold reading. But but what if you're doing it and you're believing that these are like the tools of reaching out into the ether and you know, um and connecting with the spirit realm, Like it seems like it's possible. But I haven't read anything yet to really answer that for me. Well, yeah, people's powers of

self justification are incredibly powerful at any rate. I hope Taylor is considering a future in Canadian curse law, because can you specialize in this It sounds like a great um CBC show. I would watch, you know, the Canadian Curse Law Attorney show, Abraham van Helsing interning at law now speaking that that wouldn't be it? What who who who gets rid of curses? Is? I'm not sure off hand, um Daniel Webster. Maybe I don't know UM any right.

Speaking of Van Helsing, though, we did have someone right in Rolf who wrote in and said, hey, guys love the show. Might Minola, the creator of hell Boy, did some of the character designs on the Dracula movie. The armor is classic Magnola, and if you're looking for some really cool aquatic stuff, check out the comic low by Rick Reminder and Greg go Toccini all the best role. I'm not familiar in my Magnolia Magnolia, Magnola, Magnola, Magnolia Manola.

I think Mike Manola, I believe is how I'd read that. But I do love that armor. I think he's referring to the armor we talked about in uh, Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula movie. Ford Coppola's Brown Stoker's Dracula. Yes, the Coppola one where he wears this like muscle looks like exposed raw muscle in the armor and it's so good. Yeah. I love Mike's work. Um. I used to read hell Boy. I read the first several volumes of that, the Conqueror

Worm being my favorite of those. But then his work also shows up in a number of different film projects he worked, of course, most notably he worked with Giamo de Toro on the hell Boy movies, but his work also shows up. I think it's some other adult Toro films as well. Uh, you know, set in monster design, that kind of thing. I only saw the first Hellboy movie, but I remember thinking it had some great design in it. Yeah. The second one has some tremendous design in it as well.

You've got you know, evil fairy kings and queens, that sort of things. There's some some wonderful elements in it. Okay, Well does that wrap it up for today? I think so. Let's see. I have one last little bit of email here that's just a general, um fun email that I just want to read real quick. This comes to us from Chris. I've listened to almost every podcast of YouTube

Christian and Julie as well. Needless to say, I like the ideas your podcast turns out at a truly staggering rate, despite the colossal amount of time researching must be put into it. A mighty a commendable thing it is. Indeed, my favorite episodes are definitely the ones regarding potentially upsetting or highly stirring philosophical subject matter. The Boltzman Brain episode,

the Mind Flavor episode, the bicameral mind. Anything with borheyes are Scott Baker all ought to be put on the Greatest hit c D. Okay, when I'm not feeling well, I put on my headphones, turn on some stuff to buy your mind and start relaxing. He goes on to say, I've been listening for a very long time, and I've never written in but just wanted to tell you, folks,

your work and consideration is appreciated. Right now, I'm reading The Three Body Problem by c. Chin Lou, Preacher by Gareth Innis and Steve Dillon, and Altruism by Matthew Richard. I'm not familiar with that one. That sounds familiar. I think that's a book I've seen referenced around excellent. Well, I'll have to I'll have to check that one out as well. I did read Preacher back in the day, but it's been a very long time. Glad you're reading

three Body Problem, Chris, I hope you enjoy it all. Right, Well, there we go, hope fully we've gotten a lot of the the the the supernatural bugs out of out of our mail body here. Well, now that we've read Taylor's email, I'm wondering if we actually should have paid that Canadian machine exorcist. That may have been a bad call. Do you think we got scammed? We might have been scammed. I'm not sure, but uh, I think he's doing better. I think he's doing better. So I think we're in

a in a place where we can continue. Now we can actually we actually have the the courage to press on through the holidays and continue to bring some great episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and some great episodes of invention as well. In the meantime, check out Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you'll

find all the podcast episodes. Links out to our various social media accounts, including Facebook, where we have that discussion module, a great place to interact with other listeners as and and also with the hosts. Here. Again, this is Stuff to Blow your Mind discussion module on Facebook. Also Stuff to blow your Mind dot com has a link to our merchandise store. You'll find all those cool designs we've been talking about. Big thanks as all is to our

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