Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
My name is Robert Let and I am Joe McCormick. And it's Monday, the day of each week that we read back messages from the Stuff to Blow your Mind email address. If you've never gotten in touch before, why not give it a shot. You can always email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Whatever kind of message you want to send is fine.
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Let's see, Rob, I'm going to start things off by reading this message from Lurch in response to our series on mud. Specifically, I think the second episode in that series where we looked at wallowing behaviors and animals, especially pigs. All right, Lurch says, good morning, gentlemen. I just finished listening to your episodes on mud. Took me by surprise you did. I'd never have thought such a mud day in the subject could be so interesting. Lerch, I don't know about that one. Did that work?
I don't know? It generated a chuckle or a smile on my hand, so yeah, oh yeah, I'm smiling as well. Okay, well, good job, then, Lurch. Bringing pigs into it reminded me of the summers I used to spend on my uncle's farm. Along with the cattle, chickens, crops, and rabbits, he raised, pigs. Tending them was an experience I wish I could forget. It's not that some event or practice. This was the nineteen sixties. Husbandry has changed traumatized me. No, it was
the smell. It's been nearly sixty years since then, and my nostril hairs still haven't uncurled. Regarding wallowing, I'd always been told the reasons for it were twofold cooling and protection from pests, both of which you mentioned. Since I wasn't there in the winter, it never occurred to me that they might wallow in the freezing cold too. I think it's possible this might also be related to temperature regulation.
While in the summer months, as you point out, mud can be used as a cooling jacket, in the winter, it can actually be used to maintain heat. Interesting Blert says this wouldn't work near the freezing point of water, but drop a few more degrees in the surface of the mud would freeze, forming a thermal barrier, trapping the pig's body heat. I have personal experience with the effect though a tadbit cleaner. In high school, I was on
the swim team and would walk home after practice. Being the dead of winter and in Illinois, it was usually a bit nippy outside. After the first block or so of my journey, my wet hair would freeze into a pretty solid head cap of ice. But since the ice trapped warm air next to my scalp. I was comfortable and never had to worry about where the heck had put my hat. As always, thanks for keeping me thinking. Keep the gravy warm, Lurch. That's interesting. I'd never heard
of that kind of effect. Interesting that that might be worth some follow up. All right, Our next one comes to us from Raj Raj Rights and in response to mud Volcanoes and Puddles plus more Pokemon dream Lore, Roj says, Hello, gentlemen, I may be too late in writing in terms of suggesting topics ideas foods for thought for your mud episodes, but once Robert mentioned discussing mud volcanoes at the end
of part three, it stirred a memory in me. I remember coming across a couple of videos from a YouTuber named physics Girl aka Diana Cowarn. One discusses a mud volcano aka mudpot she found in California link for reference, and another discusses a moving mud puddle link for reference.
So Raj, I actually watched both of these and they're great videos. Again, so for you who can look it up right now, the channel is called physics Girl and you can probably just use search terms like moving mud puddle, especially because that's the one to really see. But to summarize the story for you, the one who is listening now, I'm going to refer here to a local news article I dug up from CBSA San Diego. This is by a writer named Shannon Handy from March twe about the story.
So the news story goes Imperial County, California. It's not something you normally see along a freeway, but local Cowtrans crews have been keeping a close watch on a geyser that's impacting both the Union Pacific Railroad and State Route one to eleven near Nyland in Imperial County. Some describe it as a bubbling pool of mud, often referring to it as a mud pot. Sean Rizzuto with Caltrans said
the geyser is releasing CO two. It's been around since nineteen fifty three, but it didn't start moving until twenty sixteen following some seismic activity in the area. So it's been moving about ten feet per month on average, said Rizzuto. He said the challenge is determining where it will go next. Quote right now, it's been static for the past two and a half three months, so it hasn't really moved
very much, but that could change in an instant. Caltrans officials considered several options, including a detour, which was an ideal because it would have taken drivers eighty miles out of the way, and the one to eleven is crucial
for the agriculture business there. So they describe how this may be the only known moving geyser in the world, and there were some efforts by the California Transportation authorities to try to figure out what to do because it's like the giant bubbling mud puddle caused by seismic activity from below CO two is being released from it, and it's like chasing the roads. It's approaching the road and it's going to knock that out, and it's approaching rail
lines it's going to knock those out. So they're like trying to find ways to either stop it from moving or building around it, and all these plans just keep failing. In fact, this is where it's definitely worth looking up the Physics Girl videos, which are very excellent and get into a lot more detail, and it's a very scary and dramatic story, Like there's one part where they try to the authorities try to bury like deep bury a
metal retaining wall to stop the puddle from spreading. But there's one point where it just suddenly spreads beyond the metal retaining wall, just like cracks the giant metal wall in half, and it's going under it and emerging on the other side. And there are these sudden moments of dramatic collapses of the walls of the puddle as it spreads, like you know, I don't remember exactly how far, maybe even somewhere like twenty to sixty feet suddenly. So it's scary.
And it's not just scary because you'd think about like I don't want to fall into that puddle and sink down into the mud and whatever's going on beneath it. But the bubbling, even though I think the puddle is not thought to be hot, the bubbling is from the release of CO two, And of course we know like CO two is heavier than air, it tends to kind of pool in low lying areas, so if you were to fall into this pit, it is of course a
suffocation risk as well. So it's this moving, lethal puddle of bubbling mud that almost seems to be like chasing our transportation infrastructure.
I don't like that at all. I think our bubbling death puddles need to stay in one spot where we can keep an eye on them, not just move around on their own.
So if you want to look up the video, the main one by the Physics Girl channel is called the World's Only Moving Mud Puddle, and yeah, it's definitely worth a look.
Yeah, I was glad to send it this as well. Yeah the footage is pretty incredible.
Oh but Raj has more to say, I think, especially about Pokemon.
Right. Yes, Raj continues switching gears. In the most recent listener mail episode, Gotta Dream Them All, a couple of astute listeners mentioned a few Pokemon related to dreaming. I'd like to add a tiny bit more by mentioning a couple of moves or attacks that relate to dreams. One move is called dream eater, for the description from sarahb dot Net quote, the user your Pokemon eats the dreams
of a sleeping target your opponent's Pokemon. The user's HP is restored by up to half the damage taken by the target. Another move is nightmare quote a sleeping target sees a nightmare that inflicts some one fourth damage every turn. Again from SARAHB. Dot Net. Related to Pokemon moves are something called abilities, which are special powers that Pokemon can have. Dark Ray's ability is called bad dreams, which reduces the HP of sleeping opposing Pokemon. Finally, I'd like to add
another Pokemon to the dreaming pool. While not related to dreaming directly, there is another Pokemon in addition to Snorlax that is known for sleeping. It's called Comala from the Aloa region. Here is one descriptor of this Pokemon quote. It is born asleep and it dies asleep. All its movements are apparently no more than the results of it tossing and turning in its dreams. Thanks for the phenomenal work you produce, and don't forget to be awesome. Cheers raj Ah.
Well, that is a haunting Pokemon description. It's born asleep and dies asleep. All it does is dream, That's its whole life.
I had to look this one up. I don't remember seeing this one on a card or anything, but it looks like a koala clutching like a It looks like it's clutching a log pillow, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't have any evolutions, which makes sense. Because this is all it does.
Is it normal for Pokemon to get that strange and dark or is this kind of a fluke?
No, there are a lot of strange and dark Pokemon. I've come to learn quite a few that have just weird qualities to them, Like some of the episodes of Pokemon that I've been exposed to are just weird. So yeah, there's a lot of a lot of interesting stuff out there.
Well, thanks raj Okay. This next message is from Tyler. It starts off being about Mud but then ends with weird house cinema. Tyler says, Hey, pals, I was listening to The Mud Part four episode today and Rob made a reference to Solo and mud Troopers. It took me way too long to realize you were referencing Solo, a Star Wars story, and nineteen ninety six is Solo, starring Mario van Peebles as a military android that grows a conscience and protects the village he was meant to destroy
from his creators. Oh man, I remember when this one came out. Tyler says. This is a movie that I saw when I was probably about eight, and it just kind of stuck in my mind for twenty five years. I don't think I know anyone else that has seen it. It would be a great movie for weird house cinema. It checks a lot of boxes, a gumbo of Terminator, Commando, Rambo, seven Samurai, pretty much any eighties action movie with glistening, rippling pecks or man shaped robots, and it's not too
hard to find. Thanks for all you do. Really appreciate you, Tyler.
Ah fascinating. Now. I have not seen the nineteen ninety six solo film, but I was looking it up a little bit and looking at the cast, and it has a pretty great supporting cast that includes the always terrific William Sadler. It has Adrian Brody in it, and it's based on the nineteen eighty nine sci fi novel Web by Robert Mason of Vietnam Veto. I think is I don't know if he's primarily known for this, but he's also known for having penned a memoir or multiple memoirs
about his service in Vietnam. But Mario van Peebles, you know, always fun. He was in what the third Jaws movie, he was in the fourth, the fourth, Okay, he was in the third Highlander movie. Which is actually a prequel to Highlander two. So you know, sort that out in your head as you as you wish.
Was Christolph Lambert still in the third Highlander movie?
Yes, yeah, So the gimmick in Highlander the Final Dimension from nineteen ninety four is it's post Highlander one, pre Highlander two. He thinks he's won the prize and defeated the last Immortal, but you know, it just something doesn't feel right. Turns out there's one more immortal or maybe like a handful of immortals that were part of like this evil like nomadic band of immortals, and they fell
into a glacier something that got frozen. They've been out of commission, and then they wake up and he's like, oh, I've got one last guy to take out, and so they have to battle and so forth. Mario van Peeples is the villain. All right, I guess I'm gonna have to see that sometime, all right. We also heard from Ted ted Is responding to our episode of The Machine Speaks.
Ted says, Hi, Robert and Joe, longtime listener, first time writer, just finished listening to your episode The Machine Speaks, and feel embarrassingly enough compelled to ride in with the title and your episode preface of Heads That Talk. I thought for sure I knew about one talking head that you would reference. Boy was I wrong. However, the examples explained
were fascinating, and yes, my mind was blown. I suppose my mind was drifting towards a mix of weird house cinema in a core episode where I thought fictional characters would be in play. I was hoping to hear your take on Max Headroom. As a child of the eighties, he was our futuristic talking head. I don't really remember much of the original series, but I did love his cameo in Back to the Future too, when Martin McFly stumbles into the Cafe Eighties to order a pepsi from
Max the waiter. Love the show, look forward to more of your great work. Thanks Ted.
This is a funny coincidence because I happened to have just watched the first episode of Max Headroom just a few nights ago. This week, I was hanging out with a friend of mine. He had listened to our episode on the Super Mario Brothers movie, which of course was made by the same pair of directors as the original Max Headroom series. I guess Max Headroom probably kind of got them the job on Mario and he was like, well, you should see the show. So we watched the first
episode and it was a hoot. So it is, Oh, I don't have the right words yet in mind to describe the vibe of it. I will say in the opening credits, I saw somebody and I was like, is that Michael Ironside? But it was Jeffrey tamboor not a common mistake people make.
Yeah, they generally have different energies those two.
Yeah, but somehow, I you know, it was close enough. But so the premise is there's a cyberpunk dystopia TV rules over everything, so the world, you know, like the real authorities are basically the boards of directors of television media corporations. And there is this boardroom full of evil corporate directors who are designing a new form of TV advertisement called blip verts, which implants subliminal messages and viewers forcing them to buy and consume, but also it occasionally
causes people's heads to explode. And there is a fearless journalist named Edison Carter played by Matt Frewer, who's always running around in a baggy leather jacket carrying a full sized television camera in his own hand. So he's the journalist, but he's also the cameraman. Oh and then he's also got sort of a control roller who is like his live producer, except the role of a producer in this world is mostly like hacking security systems to get you through doors and stuff.
You know.
I'm just looking at the cast list for this episode and I noticed that Amanda Pays is in it. She of course was the female lead.
And Leviathan, Oh yes, in fact, she is his hacker producer. She's always like, you know, we're in But anyway, he's investigating a case where somebody's head blew up, and I think he's trying to get to the bottom of it, and he's fleeing corporate security agents and then is injured in the process in a motorcycle accident crashing against a gate arm in a parking garage that says max headroom, meaning like max height of the clearance for the gate arm.
And then the villain from Dumb and Dumber and a hacker who is a child, scan his brain and create a CGI version of him. It's like a simulation of his brain and of his appearance, which is not actually CG. Max Headroom is achieved with like prosthetics and makeup and camera effects.
The villain would be that's what Charles Rocket, That's right?
Yeah now, yeah, yeah, he's the villain from Dumb and Dummer and in this he's like a you know, corporate skis. But anyway, so they create this version of him. They meanwhile, they like send him off to like a morgue, but it turns out he survives. I think Amanda Pays revives him, uh and so, so like he's still alive, but there's this simulated version of his brain that is now a TV character, and the you know, the bosses that the
media corporation love him. The villains like him because he's like really entertaining TV content, So they, you know, they like him broadcasting because people watch. But Max Headroom is very sly, and he seems to make a lot of glitchy satirical comments about his owners that fly under the radar. I don't know how exactly it develops as the show goes on, but yeah, he seems to be both a product of an evil media corporation and constantly making little jokes at their expense.
So you're gonna keep going with the series? Did you get a taste for it and you need both? What two seasons and etc.
Oh man, I can't stop with the late eighties dystopian sci fi. I will say either a good thing about it or a bad thing about it, depending on your appetite for ironically appealing aesthetics. Is that it's very MTV. You know that feeling it has MTV cinematography.
Yeah, yeah, I know exactly exactly what you mean there, and you see that you see ripples of that continue to move through cinema for gosh decades, I think, And which makes sense too, because I mean, just in general, without thinking too hard about it, like MTV as a whole back in the day in compass not only like the sort of like local MTV flare, but also the various music videos that were featured, which often featured the work of filmmakers who would in many cases go on
to make feature length films. Not always, but often you see that, and so it makes sense that some of the same stylistic trends would continue to carry over, but not everybody, like, for instance, you know Chris Cunningham, a great British video artist and music video director. I think for a while he was attached to direct. I think everybody at one point has been attached to do a film adaptation of Neuromancer William Gibson, and it's never come
to pass. I think maybe it's just one of those books. It's like it's too big, its shadow is too great, and also it's been all the ideas of Neuromancer just about have been used, so like it seems like a very difficult adaptation task to take on.
Yeah, we already have the matrix that's like fifty percent of Neuromancer, isn't it.
Yeah. But speaking of Neuromancer, we also heard from listener Fletch on Discord related to Neuromancer, which comes up briefly in The Machine Speak. It's kind of an offense comment from me. Fletch says, Rob mentioned Neuromancer briefly in the Machine Speaks in relation to making Faustian deals with AI. But there's actually a mechanical talking head inspired by Favors Euphonia that is featured in the novel too. The head is stolen from the reclusive Tessier Ashpool family's orbital habitat
and they send their cloned ninja to recover it. It's described like this quote. Jimmy was a burglar and other things as well, and just back from a year in high orbit, having carried certain things back down the gravity. Well. The most unusual thing Jimmy had managed to score on his swing through the archipelago was a head, an intrigantly worked bust cloison at over platinum, studded with seed pearls and lapis. Smith's sign had put down his pocket microscope and advised
Jimmy to melt the thing down. It was contemporary, not an antique, and had no value to the collector. Jimmy laughed. The thing was a computer terminal, he said. It could talk, and not a synth voice, but with a beautiful arrangement of gears and miniature organ pipes. It was a baroque thing for anyone to have constructed, a perverse thing, because synth voice chips cost next to nothing. It was a curiosity.
Smith jacked the head into his computer and listened as the melodious inhuman voice piped the figures of last year's tax return. Oh that's beautiful. I had forgotten all about this. It's been a long time since I read Neuromancer. But yeah, William Gibson is exactly the sort of author that would that would would fit this historical nugget in there.
You think this is a direct reference to Joseph Fobber and the Euphonia, not just like a coincidence.
I bet it's a direct reference. Yeah, I mean that, you know, having read plenty of other books by Gibson like this, this is the exact kind of like tech degree and history that he would fold into the making of the work.
M all right, We're gonna wrap things up here with one short message about weird House cinema. This is from Paul. Paul says, in line with your shake hands with danger comment in a recent Listener mail and your affinity for Gore? Do we have an affinity for Gore? I guess in some context.
It depends depends on exactly for me anyway, speaking for myself, it depends how the Gore is presented it what is the intent and what is the execution.
Like I never had a subscription to Fangoria. I love horror, but I don't consider myself a gore hound. But with the right inflection of absurdity, I can get into it, like I do love Texas Chainsaw Masker too and things like that.
Yeah, for me, it's kind of got to be the trifecta. Is it is it over the top? Is it not quite believable? And is it not done in a nasty way? Is it not meant to make me feel bad? But is like this kind of like splattery, you know, kind
of fangoria level of like just enthusiasm for the fake blood. Like, for instance, I think I recently mentioned the Paul Nashy movie The Hunchback of the Morgue that has some wonderful gore in it, like it's a real gore fest, but like none of it feels you're never in suspense about oh did they really cut somebody's head off so easily? And that's actual blood? Like no, no, there's no question about it, and you're just able to enjoy it.
I also like, like verhoven gore that, yeah.
That's certainly over the top enough that yeah, there's a whole his gore has its own quality to it, and I guess kind of varies film to film as well.
Yeah. Oh but anyway, sorry, we stopped in the middle of a sentence, so picking up from Paul Paul's to start over, Paul says, in line with your Shake Hands with Danger comment in a recent listener Mail and your Affinity for Gore, I thought you would appreciate forklift Driver Klaus. It may be a bit more campy, but seems like the type of thing you would enjoy. I remember seeing a sequel at some point, but wasn't able to find
that with a quick search. Hope you enjoy, Paul, So, Forklift Driver Klaus appears to be a It is like a short comedy horror satirical film that is a parody of workplace safety training videos like Shake Hands with Danger, in which a German forklift driver it's his first day
on the job. He's learning how to do everything, but he ends up maiming and mutilating everybody he works with, and it ends with like driving a forklift covered in mangled co workers off into the sunset being chased by a chainsaw.
Yeah, this is a so, this is a film that's it's a parody of actual workplace industrial safety videos. But it yeah, it feels very much in line with Shake Hands with Danger and so forth, and it has that sort of energy. But yeah, then things begin to spiral out of control, and by the end it is just this ridiculous gore fest that is that. Yeah, it is.
I found rather delightful and hilarious to watch, just very unbelievable in the later stages, though earlier on like you do kind of get that cringiness that the actual workplace safety videos tend to have because they want to show you, they want to make you feel bad about what is happening. But then this movie keeps going. I mean, this short film keeps going and pushes that over the line and just goes whole hog into this kind of like early Peter Jackson esque blood splurting madness.
I don't know if this is true, but at least the wiki says that some workplaces do use this film as a training video despite the fact it's a parody.
Yeah. I could see somebody like you know, busting it out to sort of to end on a on a fun note for everyone. I don't know.
Okay, does that do it for today?
I believe it shall. We will go ahead and close out today's listener mail, but we'll be back next Monday, so keep them rolling in. If you have thoughts about our episodes of stuff to Blow Your Mind the core episodes from Tuesdays and Thursdays. You have any responses to our monster fact or artifact episodes. If you have you have monster suggestions for future monster facts, let us know.
And also Weird House Cinema. You have thoughts about these various movies, thoughts about movies we should be considering and watching or rewatching. All of that's fair game, so keep it coming.
Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 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.
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