Listener Mail: Another Morning

get in touch for any reason at all. If you have feedback on an episode that has aired in the past, if you have h corrections, things to add to a topic, suggestions for future topics, or if you just want to share something interesting, email anytime. That's right. And if you want to join the Stuff to Blow your Mind discord, well email us and I'll send to the link. All right, We've got no other preliminary business as far as I know, So rob do you mind if I jump right in

with this first message? In response to our episodes about animals throwing things, yeah, good for it. Oh and humans throwing things. By the way, we we focused entirely on humans in the fourth episode. Yeah. By by the fourth episode it had completely evolved. So this first message was

from Maya, subject line the Throwing Madonna. And this email was interesting because we had just finished recording an episode covering exactly the subject Maya raises here when the email came in, so it was certainly a bull's eye of a suggestion, but she had some additional detail and color about this idea from from William Calvin, so I thought I would read this here on listener mail anyway, So Maya rites, Hello Robin Joe, congratulations on the new baby

girl Joe. I'm sure she will contribute with a ton of new ideas for the show. Children are so weird and interesting. I will skip over this opportunity to go on a baby looked at Me tangent. Maya goes on your recent series on animals. Throwing things brought to mind. The Throwing Madonna, a nine three book by William Calvin in which he explores many ideas about the evolution of

the brain. The essay that lends the book its title is, in Calvin's words, quote a parody involving maternal heartbeat sounds on the typically male theories of handedness. In this essay, he speculates that mother's would favor carrying their infant children with the left arm, so the kids would purportedly be soothed by her heartbeats. This would leave the right arm free for throwing stones in order to hunt small game

and procure her sustenance. And the rest is evolution. On a more serious, although equally stimulating note, Calvin also discusses in a chapter devoted to the relationship between the act of throwing and our huge brains, that the left hemisphere quote seems to have a specialization for muscle sequencing, not only for hand movement, but for oral facial movements as well. Thus,

those hominins that perfected pitching stones. And then a little parenthetical here quote action at a distance one of the better inventions of biological evolution, since sex, says Calvin, close parenthetical via their left hemispheres would also be inadvertently selecting for the evolution of language. Uh. And then she concludes, go for it, OCTOPI all the best, Mayo. For some reason, we keep coming back to this like, Okay, what's it

gonna take. What's it gonna take for the octopus to uh to get on the path to technological intelligence, and I feel like the big barrier for me is always their relatively antisocial nature when compared to primates. So you know, I uh, language, I think is a big part of that process. And I don't know what kind of biological impetus there is for developing language when you just don't really want to be around or deal with other octopuses. Yeah, what can they say to another octopus that they cannot

already say by throwing dirt or rocks at them? Yeah, but no reason not to be optimistic. Yeah, a little octo optimism for the day. Thank you for the email. Maya. Alright, this next one comes to us from Carrie Carry rides in and says Rob and Joe, I was surprised that in your animal throwing stuff part two episodes you didn't mention elephants throwing sand, dirt, and mud onto their backs

with their trunks. This is a well documented behavior and it's definitely the purposeful throwing of stuff that has been explained as them trying to ward off insects and provide a protection from the sun. The action is not unlike an octopus throwing sand at other octopuses, at least as far as the material being thrown is concerned. Keep up a good work carry yes, thankscry Yeah, I think I think I kind of glossed over this detail and discussing the evolution of the la elephant tool use as a

parasite control and a way of uh thermoregulation. But yes, this is of course one of the major ways that they use tools in the in in this case often just dirt and sand as a way of covering up that thick elephant skin that again looks so tough to us, but it's actually quite sensitive and need to be protected from parasites and the sun. You know, this email makes me wonder in what ways we're limited by thinking about tools often as like solid, fixed form objects like a

tool is maybe a stick or a rock. But why isn't a tool equally constituted by you know, an amorphous mass of substance like a clump of dirt or a you know, uh massive water. Yeah. So, or as we discussed in one of these episodes of primate poop, tool or not a tool? Um, yeah, And I think in this case I was clearly I was distracted by the prospect of elephants throwing arrows, or at least stones and and and tree limbs, uh and and maybe a horse thrown in there as well that I just kind of

glossed over dirt and sand. It's hard to get into and excited about dirt as as a as a tool used, but it really is. Now speaking of elephant tool use, throwing, and poop, all of these come together in the next email. This is from Mike. Mike says, Hi, Joe and Rob. About twenty five years ago, my future wife and I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The elephants there had an outdoor environment that was a half circle with a five foot railing and a waterless moat between

them and us. There were three elephants in this area. We noticed that about twenty five people were intently watching and wondered why. Then we saw the dung everywhere at our feet. It was spread across the sidewall area where everyone was standing. One large elephant was standing in front, near the edge of the enclosure. Suddenly he whipped his trunk from between his legs and nailed one of the three pea hens that were walking near us. This was amazing.

He threw the dung about thirty five to forty feet and it literally knocked the bird to the ground. It hit with a thud, perfect shot. Next, he counterclockwise curled the end of his trunk, grabbed some more dung, and hit the woman who is nearest him in the face. She got her arms up and blocked it, but it was accurate. A girl was yelling to her mother on the right side of us to come see the elephant, and he appeared to turn away from her and point toward a couple of pea hens who had returned to

the area at that moment. He whipped his trunk to the left and beamed the girl in the waste area. She was startled and took off running. The elephant quickly grabbed more dung and nailed her in the head as she ran toward her mother again. Mike says, it was amazing. I guess that is amazing, though I'm sure not what people had in mind for the trip to the zoo that day. Yeah, I hope everyone was okay anyway, Mike says, given this, I suspect you're going to hear a lot

about such stories. When you were talking about elephants throwing spears, I thought, with practice and help with technique, absolutely. You didn't talk about what I believe would be the most frightening situation, an elephant throwing something heavy. They are incredibly strong, combined that with speed and accuracy. Wow. What impressed me most was the accuracy. I got the sense he was

having fun, perhaps testing himself. He passed. Thanks, good show, Mike. Well, Mike, as you're describing this story, I don't know that this sounds to me like more consistent throwing accuracy than I had been led to believe elephants were usually going to be capable of as certainly without training. I don't know. I mean, I don't think it's too surprising based on well,

I mean we did. We discussed accounts where where they had been trained to throw arts at balloons, which clearly they have been encouraged to do, but also that is clearly taking advantage of of some sort of natural ability. Uh. And then we do have those, uh, those clips from the wild of an elephant throwing, for instance, a rock at a rhino, elephant throwing a limb at a lady in a truck on safari or something like that. So um, yeah, I mean they seem to be good shots when they

are in the mood to do it. I guess a lot of the examples I'd seen of elephants throwing stuff in the wild, it looked more to me like a not like a you know, super accurate pitch, but just kind of a toss in the general direction of something. Yeah, I guess that. You know, a lot of it comes down to like what is being emoated by the throwing? Is it kind of just a general throwing stuff around? Are they, you know, peppering their back with dirt or do they have an infra some pe hens uh that

sort of thing. Are they a little disturbed that there's a vehicle in their vicinity or a rhino near the water gung hole or something? Think of that effect as for throwing larger objects, And I think we did mention them potentially throwing human beings and war horses and tree limbs, and that's plenty big. I would not want anything bigger than that thrown at me by an elephant, And I mean I would assume nothing smaller was thrown at me

by an elephant either. But anyway, very illuminating. Thank you for the email, Mike. All right, here's another one that's one comes to us from Jerome Jerome rites and says, listening to the first part of the animals Throwing Things episode, I'm sure it would seem reasonable that certainly highly intelligent animals would throw objects. However, it makes me think of my ball python when she eats her large rat frozen

and reheated. After constricting the rat, she will then poke her face around the rat in her grasp to try to find the head, since she must swallow the rat snout first in order for it to go down. Sometimes it appears she will get frustrated and throw the rat to the other side of her feeding bin to try to reorient the feeder and try again finding the snout. This is obviously purposeful throwing, and only observed in this

particular instance. I hope you all might find this interesting. Yeah, so it sounds like the snake is using throwing as a kind of physical reset button on a behavior. Yeah, the way I'm picturing it, it makes sense like it's not a situation where merely dropping the animal is the most energy efficient thing to do, because then the snake potentially has to then reorient its entire body. But if it can just sort of like throw the rodent to the side, then it perhaps has to use less energy

than to get in position to feed. Again. Yeah, I also I don't think I realized that bull python had to swallow the rats. Now first, I mean, it makes sense now that it's it's said to me. I believe this, not that it's mentioned, because I'm just kind of imagining how that depends us, that snake would need to eat the road. Yeah. And it's more, Um, I want to say aerodynamic, that's not the word. More dynamic. More throw too, dynamic, digesto dynamic. There you go. Yeah, okay, next message also

about throwing animals. This comes from Jasper. This involves the pronunciation of the names of Swedish places. I apologize for how I'm probably gonna get that wrong, but um, Jessper says, listening to your two part series about throwing, I was reminded of a myth I heard as a kid related to the topic. In my home country, Sweden, you will find tons of lakes. The two largest ones are easily visible on a map, situated in the mid south of

the country and named Vaughnern and Vatern respectively. If you take a look at the southern Baltic Sea east of Sweden, you will find the country's largest islands, oh and Gotland. Fun fact. Ohlan literally means island land. Okay, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that the two lakes and islands have a striking resemblance in shape and size. The version of the myth I heard was about two

giants having a throwing contest. One of them picked up a huge part of the earth and threw it into the Baltic Sea, creating Gotland, and when the whole eventually filled up with water Vonnern the other giant didn't manage to pick up as much material or throw it as far, but it resulted in Vatern and oh Land. M H. I couldn't find much information about the myth on Google, but I did run into another myth about a Swedish

giant throwing things. The giant Vista had been visiting the region between the two largest lakes to attend a party and was on his way home. He picked up a piece of the land and threw it in Vatern to have a patch of land to step on before he continued his journey. This created the Lake Lens Young or the land Lake, and the island of Visingso, situated in Sodern Thanks for making my day several days a week. Keep it up. Still looking forward to those episodes about

the moons of the Solar Systems outer planets. Oh yeah, we did say we would do this. I think I always fear that maybe there's less to say about them, but surely that's not true. M Yeah. Or and if we have to cobble them together, cover more than one's one plan. I mean, the way we do approach them in the past two is we we discussed a lot of the mythology, the Greek and Roman mythology that it might be tied up in the naming. Uh So, yeah, there's plenty to discuss. We just need to getting a

spacey mood, all right. This next one comes to us from Joe the Listener. Uh. Joe the Listener says, hey, guys, thanks for the funds. He is I'm throwing animals. When you talked about the mere cats throwing centipedes, I was instantly reminded of my family's backyard at chickens. Our chickens surprized the tender morsel that is a common garden snail. When they acquire one, a tremendous flurry of activity ensues

as they wrestle one another for the delicious treat. One critical aspect of this excitement is extracting the snail from its shell. Typically, the chickens will do this by grabbing the unfortunate mollusk by its head and whacking it against the ground until the shell breaks. They can and do

throw the snails. The jury is still out on whether this is intentional or not, but the throws seem to be preferentially targeted at tree trunks in large rocks, leading credence to my hypothesis that they are being thoughtful about it. I did a bit of research and this behavior is not uncommonly observed in birds. Song thrushes in particular, are known for smashing snails on rocks. The literary reference to the thrush knocking at Smog's door is unmis stakable and

no doubt of special interest to you both. Yeah, oh, okay, this is interesting. This is kind of like what I used to observe my dog doing, throwing the puzzle, you know, treat containing toy up against the wall, or just kind of tossing it in general to see if you can get the thing out from the middle. Ah, you should have brought that up. We were talking about air bud. I did we talked about it? You do we talked about this? Yeah? No, no, I don't, okay blank that

we recorded this just the other day. I know, you know sometimes that you know, I'm I'm I'm looking ahead in the notes. I must have blanked on that. That's okay, I know how that it feels. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't a ball, it wasn't quite basketball, but that's still okay. Um that now the and that you know, I also am blanking on this particular part of the hobbit. I don't remember the thrush knocking at smocks door. I don't either, Actually,

what what? Okay? So I'm just gonna google it. Okay, I'd totally forgotten about this plot detail, but a quick Google search suggests that the thrush is significant in the Hobbit in helping the party, like Bilbo and the and the dwarves, find the entrance or find out how to open the entrance to the What's it? The Misty mountain Ers are lonely mountain a small cavern because the thrush is throwing a snail against the door of the cavern to try to break it. I guess and get the

snail out. But this gives them some kind of indication of how the door works. Okay, al right, that does sound faintly familiar. Now, sorry to disappoint you, listener, Joe, I'm sure you expected us to get that reference right away. Let's see. Should we finish off with a couple of messages about weird house cinema? Well, I'll do this one

from Pamela. Pamela says, Hi, Joe and Robert. Even though it was over forty years ago, I absolutely remember the advanced promos for Scanners because they told nothing about the movie. It was a commercial that mostly showed an audience viewing the movie with tiny clips and the ten seconds and you feel the pain voice over. The audience reaction was

dramatic and profound, to say the least. And Pamela says, A group of my teen friends and I had to see this, uh the second it hit down, and we did Holly, a bunch of let's see dollar signs, ampersand even I think a euro sign in there. So this is this is European swearing, Uh, money's worth and bragging rights and spoiler rights. Hey, we were teenagers. The theater shouldn't have even led us in. Technically, I have attached a link to the TV spot that worked so well

on us. Maybe we can play a little bit of the audio of this TV spot here. Yeah, let's play a little bit at least from the beginning where you where they established the audience. You are watching the live filming of the theater audience reaction to scenes from the

motion picture scanners. Ten seconds the pain begins its gree seconds you can't twenty seconds you explode, experience the terrifying power of anyway, Pamela says, love everything you guys do looking forward to Weird House number one d Pamela, this is a great spot because it's kind of like William Castle, except without tazing the audience. It's just letting the movie actually do what William Castle was always suggesting it would do, you know, have people like screaming in the aisles and

nearly vomiting in the in their seats. This trailer does a great job of, first of all, implying that this is a spectacle that you need to behold, and you need to view it communally. You need to be a part of the movie going uh public in order to fully appreciate this, which is sound. That's as a sound argument I think for going to the movies in general.

But then it's kind of implies that your head might blow up on watching the film too, Like they don't tell you that's not going to happen, and they kind of imply that it will, and that we don't get enough of today and trail looks like nobody's saying if you set and watch all of Avatar too, your skin will turn blue. Like the Voice of God isn't telling us that, and they're not. They're not daring us to

enter the theater anymore. Yeah, it's really a shame. I I do like the brand of movie marketing that explicitly says this film will harm you. And certainly movies today still have vast potential to harm. So there's a lot to warn about. All right, here's one more that SI comes to us from Eric via our discord. Eric says, so I recently watched The Werewolf versus the Vampire Woman. It was enjoyable enough, but the standout was the lead.

He was absolutely great. I looked him up and found out it was Paul Nashi, who I had never heard of anyway, It's fast forward to today and continuing my catchup of the cast by the podcast by listening to the Weird House Cinema episode of Horror Rises from the Tomb. I was delighted to hear this man has a dozen other werewolf movies under his belt. Definitely looking to add more of his films to my watch list, not to

mention Horror Rizes and also Assignment Terror. Still need to listen to this episode, Eric, I gotta say I was surprised by this message because I did not expect we would get pre existing Paul Nashy fans coming in on our episodes. Yeah. I mean, we're trying to spread the gospel of Paul Nashy. Uh, but I mean he does, he does have, he already has a following. But it was nice to hear from someone who had encountered him, uh,

you know, in the wild as it were. And I also agree with Eric, it is inherently comforting to know that the strategic reserves of Paul Nashy films is well stocked. Um, you know, there's there's so much out there to explore. It's nice on one level, you know, you want to watch all the movies you want to watch, especially though you know older films. Having a blog of films that

you won't have time to watch all of them. I mean that can be that can get you down, I guess, but also it's nice to know that you have all that untapped potential. So um, as far as Weird House goes, it's it's too soon to start thinking about the next Paul Nashy movie, but I will say one. I'm very interested in his nine Hunchback of the Morgue, in which you guessed at Paul Nashi plays a hunchback who works in a morgue. Is he also a werewolf? No? I

don't think he's a werewolf from this one. He's just a hunchback who falls in love with a dying woman. Look at my range. All right, We're gonna go ahead and close the mail bag then for another day, but we'll be back next week. We have messages we didn't even get to in this one, and I'm sure more

will come in so so keep it coming. If you have thoughts on past episodes, current episodes, potential future episodes of stuff to blow your mind of Weird House Cinema of other listener male episodes of Artifact or Monster Fact episodes right in We would love to hear from you. In the meantime, we'll just remind you, yeah, it was your mail comes out every Monday. Core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Tuesday and Thursday, Monster Factor

Artifact on Wednesday, and on Friday. We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Huge thanks to our audio producer J J. Pauseway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, to share something interesting, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow

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