Listener Mail: Arnie's Revenge

We we were getting to the mail. You don't have to do this, these acts of violence. This is not very how stuff works. This is not very stuff to blow your mind. This is not very car stuff. It was car stuff. Uh well, anyone out there listening um this of stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb. I'm Julie Douglas, and we have neglected our mail bot Arnie for way too long. The time was we would call him out every episode and and and he would bring us wonderful mail from our listeners and

we would read them and we'd interact. But we keep getting busier and busier. There's there's never time so we we haven't called the mail boat over in quite some time, and he's just been setting alone there in his cube. Uh, just getting I guess, progressively crazier. Well, I mean it's a kind of zukosis, right, I mean, this can happen to robots, and I can't believe we weren't sensitive to this before. And I've heard I heard the creeks and the squeaks the last time we roled you out about

six months ago. And I should have known that something like this would have happened. And I'm sorry, I just I never imagined it would play out like this. Well, we have to deal with it, that's the thing. Uh, we can't have this robot rampaging around the studio. Um, do you have any ideas? I mean, we could try using fire extinguishers against him. I don't know, we could

try and trap him somewhere. Well, it's kind of like, you know how when people are trying to stave off like some sort of terrible thing happening to their village and they make it sacrifice sacrifice with you mean, Holly, No, never, Holly. I'm talking about maybe some emails or some you know, like we can offer that we could do an entire episode where we finally share all the awesome listener feedback that we have. Yeah, maybe this will this will chill

the robot out and calm his uh his homicidal rage. Alright, Arnie, I know you have lasers that are they're directed at us right now. We both have one right in the middle of chest, and we just want to let you know, hear me happy about this. We have I don't know, like scads of emails to share, and I think that you'll be very happy about this. Alright, Alright, I'm gonna I'm gonna grab one here. Um, let me see, let me just let me start through here. Maybe there's there's

one here. Uh well, here's here's a good one. Here's he just those are on that one. Okay. This one comes to us from a listener Rob Rob Wrightson and says hello, Robert and Julie. I have become a recent follower of Blow the Mind in listening to all four hundred and eighty seven episodes available to me in the months of August and September of this year, while at my ten hour a day job as a metal fabricator

here in beautiful very Ontario of Canada. I have the greatest respect for all that you do in bringing science to the public. I have made many changes in my life in light of the new learning and preach science to all that hear me my four children, ages nine, eight, six, and four. I'll listen with the light as I spread the knowledge I've acquired that day. Please keep up the excellent work and always remember that each and every time you podcast, you are giving something that can never be

taken away. The greatest power one can possess is knowledge. Thanks again and happy casting. Thank you so much, Rob um Man. I don't even think that Arnie has listened to all four You're gonna make it. Don't say things like that, right He is now putting his laser on this. Next email, which actually was sent to us via Amazon, and this is from Annaka says, thank you so much for inspiring this story that she wrote. It was stacks of fun to write stuff to play your mind is

always interesting and just plain brilliant. You know what she did, She sent us a kindle edition of her story The Vampires of Marie. In parentheses, it's Hannibal de Noir Vampire Hunter Book one, which is so cool. I I love of it when we hear that we are are helping to shape some maybe subcious thoughts that you have. It are knocking around there and creating different works of art.

So thank you so much, Annaka. Indeed, yeah, this one I believe was she was partially inspired by her episode Rise at the Vampire pat about the evolution of the vampire pat, which certainly I found tremendously fascinating. You know, how does something evolve to depend exclusively on blood is a diet? And she even sent us a copy of the book, and uh, I've been reading on it and found it quite enjoyable, so so I can I can definitely recommend everyone check it out. Indeed, all right, well

here's another one. This one comes to us from Kim. Kim says, greetings from Cape Town, South Africa. Once again, well done on a great episode. She's responding to our episode The Dark, which we published in October. She says, as a blind woman, I was interested to hear if you would touch on the dark and blindness. I was blinded in a car accident almost seven years ago. I am totally blind, zero light perception, and I have had

trouble sleeping since day one of this blind journey. I am so very thankful that I have the two of you to keep me company during my sleepless night. That could tie into the imaginary Friends episode. Smiley face, thanks for a great show. Keep up the great work, all right. The next miss if we have here, is from Coope. We haven't heard from him for a while that he

had sent this. She said over the weekend, I was going through a bunch of old stuff at my grandparents house, and amongst all the useless, dusty crap heirlooms was this little gem. It's just a great accordion, by the way, spoiler, he says. Of course, meeting me, I snagged it immediately, not that anyone else wanted it, nor do I have the first clue how to play it, but come on, accordions are awesome. I agree. It's a honer, and I'm assuming it's probably from the sixties, but I can't seem

to locate a serial number anything. Apparently these Carmen models dating back as early as the thirties, which would be doubly rat Let the researching begin, anyway, I thought you might appreciate this. PS. You can tell this is a quality Cooper family item by the high tech electrical cord duct tape handle adorning the case. And indeed he shows this picture of this great honer and I love this, of course, because I am an accordion a fictionado. I have not been practicing as much as I should, but

I can still rock out. Thank you for being my friend. The Golden Girls theme, and that's all because of this podcast, which was the whole idea behind that was to try to cultivate a good habit, and so the accordion was my habit. Very good, very good. Alright, Uh, let me let me read another one here. Um, I think this might be working a little bit. He's he's. Arnie is seeming a little less aggressive. Um, the lasers are still pointed at us. All right, This one comes to us

from Rachel. Rachel says Robert and Julie. New listener and loving the podcast. I just listened to the Zen of Pain episode and wanted to add the discussion with a couple of bits of my experience first. Although this was touched on in the discussion of ritualistic piercing suspension b D s M, I would love to hear more about the the burgeoning ritual of body modification in the West, separate and apart from, but in many instances tied to

longer traditions of such throughout the world. As someone with a large number of body piercings and tattoos, I can say that the experience has become almost a personal ritual for me, the anticipation of what the pain will be, the actual experience of it, and the relief of its denouncement, both the endorphins crushing through my body and the awesomeness

of having a new piece of body adornment. It's a little stranded in time, and it's not being tied to a larger context of history, art, and culture, but it's something I've experienced for years and derived great pleasure from.

And Rachel also shared some some other comments on us, But that was the core of it that I wanted to uh to share with everyone because because yeah, I think the whole tattooing experience, and in the history of tattooing, the culture of tattooing into it, and and body modification as well, it's certainly a fascinating topic and one that hopefully we'll will explore in an upcoming episode. Okay, um Arnie just slid me a note Okay, he said, I cannot relate. Move on. Okay, fine, fine, okay. Well do

you do you have anything on happiness? Yeah? Okay, okay. One right here. This is from a Marie. She says, after hearing your podcast on happiness, I wanted to bring up the work of Barbara iron Reich. I didn't think I heard her mention, but if I missed a quick reference. Sorry. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, she was angry, and the attitude of the breast cancer community was that you

should always be happy despite your cancer. She was even told by another cancer patient, quote, you need to run, not walk to get therapy. You can't get better without poisoning your system end quote. For having an expressing negative emotions about her diagnosis and a New York Times articles, she explains that what she was hearing was quote to be cheerful and accepting because you would not recover unless

you were, and to consider your cancer a gift. Additionally, the message was if I don't get better, it's my fault, which she calls a clever blame the victim's sort of thing. She also talks about the frequent self help advice that tells people to get rid of the negative people in their lives, which included major corporations firing people for telling them things they did not want to hear. She believes this was an integral part of why the housing loan

crash happened. And then I'm going to skip over a bit of it. She goes on to say. Overall, she argues not that we should be pessimistic, but that we should be realistic and base our views on the world as it is not what we wish it were. And she I think that's really interesting that she brought this up, because this was the episode called the Happiness Equation, which talked about this sort of set point that we all have in our happiness disposition, which is affected by life events.

But then we also talked about this idea of being realistic and being a little bit pessimic pessimistic, and so I think it's interesting that she brought up Barbara I writ experience with something that would have greatly affected her level of happiness and how that sort of happiness pill of being positive was shoved down her throat. Alright, good, well, hopefully that one that one that I think you like that one. Yeah, I think this one comes to us

from Kieran. Kieran writes, and it says, Hello, Robert and Julie, I very much enjoyed your podcast on LSD flashbacks. It's refreshing to hear media discourse on the matter that doesn't evolve into hysterical knee jerking. While physically very benign. Trip of means like LSD take us far from our everyday conscious experience, and therefore should not be taken lightly. Something that may be of interest to you is the effect

of hallucinogens on people with color blindness. The condition is caused by a physical defect within the eye, but the brain of a color blind person is capable of experiencing novel colors given the right stimuli. One thing I would take exception to is the assertion that the effects of LAST are mainly visual In nature. Visual hallucinations are the most obvious and talked about faucet, but in my opinion, the cognitive effects of LAST are what makes it so valuable.

We all know intellectually that we are a bunch of apes whizzing through space on a giant rock, but there's something about tripped and fiends that allow an individual to really feel the truth of that proposition. And similar abstract ideas in a way that makes a lasting and forceful impact, not unlike the lucky astronauts who see the Earth from space and return home with a new found appreciation for

the fragility of life. Thank you for the numerous hours of informative content you have helped to combat the UNWI. I feel w navigating London's public transportation system best wishes here in Um. Yes, well that's you know what she's of course talking about the LSD Flashbacks episode. And I certainly feel we did uh discuss the visual aspects of lucinogens more in that episode. Um. But but she doesn't

make a good point. I mean, the whole cognitive side of the experience experiences is very important, and certainly we go into it more in our Scientists in the Shaman episodes where we discuss UH not only LST but also psilocybin and UH and then some other substances. And I love that Karen brought up the overview effect, well, this perspective changing experience. All right, we're gonna take a quick break, Okay,

Is that all right, Arnie? Okay, yes it is. And when we get back, we're getting to look a little h bit at some Origami feedback and some earwax. Alright, we're back. We're podcasting from the house stuff Works office. Part of the office space has been demolished by the mail bot. But um, I think I think this is working. I think we're calming him down. The lasers aren't jerking around so frantically anymore. He's sounding a little calmer. So maybe we should just continue to roll out some more

a listener mail and and see what happens. So that that was a definitive yes, right there. Okay, okay, all right,

here's one from April. It says, just listening to the Oregami podcast, you did, and when the section unfolding robots came up, I thought of paper as a weapon and recollected an action anime series I had watched several years that called Read or Die, in which the main character is a secret agent, bookworm, introvert type of woman who has the ability to influence the behavior of any paper she comes into contact with. Her code name, aptly, the paper.

Are you at all familiar with it? I thought, U it would be an interesting and refreshing departure from the typical cookie cutter anime story arc in style. Keep up the great work, April. This is great because we actually have a video coming out on Origami, and you guys should definitely look out for that. But I love this idea of being able to just mentally transform a piece of paper, yes, and and sort of create your own physics, I guess telekinetically. Yeah, yeah, I mean I like it.

It kind of taps into just the power of orgaming anyway, the idea that you can take this paper and make I mean there's almost no limit. You're just using the mathematical properties, the physical properties of the paper, and you can make everything from a tiny frog to a complex abstract h you know, piece of paper architecture. Yeah. And uh, just when we were going through some of the research and the writing for the video, it reminded me how

great that documentary Between the Folds is. And we know we've talked about it before, but it bears mentioning again in Yeah, that that's really a mind blowing documentary about something that would it would be so easy to just pass over and say, oh, Orgami, I don't care about that, I don't care about folder swans, but there's so much to it. Yeah, that's definitely one of those paradigm shifters. Right, yeah, alright,

this one comes to us from Ivan. Ivan Wright sent and says, I'm an avid listener to most of the House suf Works podcast as Serendipity would have episodes three and four of The New Cinema's original series than Nick has graphic depictions of the ravages of syphilis A woman of means a parent has lost her nose episode three. The grafting of flesh from the arm is portrayed in

episode four. It would have been a bit difficult to visualize what we were talking about when listening to the podcast, but having seen the show prior, I knew exactly what you were describing. Uh. Indeed, as in our our syphilis episode we mentioned, uh, not only the ravage of the disease, but you know, the cultural impact in the way that the people dealt with it before pendicillin and uh. And much of this is explored in The Nick, which which

is really a fabulous series. Steven Soderberg Clive Owen stars in it. Uh. John Hodgment later on has a cameo as well. That will that will not delight you, um as much as you might think it would. But yeah, I found this to be a really great show. They also get into another podcast topic of ours later on, where you get to see an individual trepand so it's like every episode you're diving into some some cool history from from from turn of the twentieth century medicine. Yeah,

and care's a little something I learned about this. If you're about to watch this show, do not sit down and with a big steaming plate of spaghetti and watch the first episode with spaghetti because just and I don't want to spoil anything here, but something gets rolled into the surgery theater and all this sort of you know, you know what happens the stuff, there's a lots of blood. Yeah, it's it's a show about surgeons. It's this. It's the show that has quite a bit of of blood in it,

but but really really fascinating. So don't don't watch it while you're eating dinner. But it's ysage. I mentioned that my spaghetti had chystage in it, so I had that Meadia component. Yeah, so handle with care. But but I do highly recommend It's one of the best shows that I watched this year, and has a fabulous soundtrack as well, Like even though it's a period piece, It has an electronic soundtrack, a minimalist kind of electronic soundtrack by Cliff Martinez.

So if you're if you're into just the music of the thing, I highly recommended. All right, um, This next one is from Ben and he is referencing our Ignorance is Bliss episode and he says, first, as a guy with a degree in philosophy, I'd like to thank you for what you do. Your podcast has become a regular part of my morning ritual and always thoroughly enjoyed, usually within the first hour of my time at works. So thank you very much, Ben, He says, second year episode

about Ignorance hits close to home. When he was eighteen, my brother in law's twin sister died of a heart condition due to genetics. As her twin, he has a fifty chance of having the same condition, and a simple radiological study would reveal its presence, but he adamantly refuses to get tested because he doesn't want to live in fear. And then he goes on to say, go to skip

a little bit. Here. He goes on to say, personally, I understand this decision completely and respect it, but at the same time, I have to wonder if things change when children enter the picture, I eat, is your desire to not live in fear trumped by an obligation to your children to find out these things for their own well being. I tend to lean a little more strongly towards yes in this scenario, but I'm not my brother

in law. He might be just as likely to argue that the quality of their upbringing would be adversely affected if, in fact a test came back positive. Interesting stuff to think about, as always thinks Ben, I think that is what so I think this is the whole thing that ignorance is bliss is hinging on this idea that you don't want to walk around for the rest of your life thinking about the their shoe falling, right, because we're already kind of doing that with the various paper tigers

of our mind. Anyway, So he puts forth a really interesting in real life scenario right there. All right, very good. This one comes to us from Himmali Himali from New Zealand right soon, and says, hey, Robert and Julie, I hope you're having a lovely year so far, and wish you both a happy to wally uh and Indian New Year. I realized this is a little bit late, considering that you were on Thursday and Friday last week, and I

am sorry about that. I accidentally used the old email address and hen had to send to the new email address. And what's that new email address? It is blow the mind at how stuff works dot com. Alright, he says, keep out the great work. I love your podcast. But then he adds a ps that ties into some of our recent talk on how our sort of Halloween topics that we've gotten into, such as the dark and witchcraft.

He says, it's awesome when you talk about different Indian traditions and know so much about the gods and goddesses. I thought you might also like to know that the day before d Wally is Indian Halloween. You can't go outside after dark, especially midnight, because it is thought there would be witches, ghost, etcetera. Mom says that there is a there's a saying that means something along the lines of witches swing from vines in the water wells cackling

on that day. Also on that day you have to get rid of rubbish including dustin cobwebs and berry or

just put them at a four way crossroads. I've noticed that the cross shaped crossroads come up as a bad evil UH symbol and other cultures too, So that's interesting, always interesting to to hear about the cultures and traditions that are various listeners are part of and how they tie into some of the topics we discussed, especially concerning this idea at this time of year about the veil being very thin between this ghost world or death and life,

because you will see that in every single culture UM at this time of year. And I know it's a seasonal change thing. You know, you've got leaves falling off the trees that you know, there's a feeling that death is creeping in and things are going into hibernation and turning inward. But it is fascinating to see it UM played out in various stories in each culture, you know. I was thinking about this the other the other day, UM in our episode on the it was the Problem

with Hell. I think it was one of our Hell episodes, But we talked a little bit about the the idea that when we were hunter gatherers, we that we you know, we life was kind of chaotic. We couldn't we we had a limited ability to plan ahead. We had to depend on what we could find, what we could hunt, and what we could kill or trap. And a lot of those older gods were horned gods, were gods with antlers because they know very much tied in with the

hunt and the availability of prey. And then as we move into an agrarian society, we we tend do largely abandon those primordical gods and go towards uh more agricultural deities that are that are more reliable, that deal in cycles, cycles of you know, of growing and harvest, but in the in the late fall and in the winter. You know, maybe part of that the veil growing thin, comes into the fact that it kind of seems, at least for a little while, like those those newer gods, those agricultural

gods kind of abandoned us for a little bit. And then what are we left to do but to remember those those older gods or those older fears and the you know, the idea that that the continuation of life

is dependent upon forces outside of our control. I mean, when we did uh the Dark episode, we talked about Signo bacteria, which is this ancient bacteria which may be responsible for the fact that we have um you know night and day cycles that were you know, diurnal creatures, and that there are some creatures that are nocturnal, and it makes me think like wow, that is there was a sort of body knowledge, in a sort of evolutionary knowledge of how important this, this concept of night and

day is. But not only that, the change changes that enact the amount of light we're getting or the lack of light we're getting, and so it really is pretty entrenched in us. You know. That ties into an email we received from a listener, Jonathan. Jonathan wrote in and said, Hi, Robert and Julie, I've been listening to your new seasonal podcast and I thought i'd share something with you as well.

Happy Halloween. Forty minutes of unreleased undwin Andy included a SoundCloud duck link and if you want to look it up for yourself, that's a SoundCloud dot com forward slash and to win that's a N D U I N and then another slash, the veil grows thin. That's for words with a little hyphens in there, says listen, Share, enjoy, dream indeed, and it's perfect contemplative music for this season. So you guys should definitely check it out and thank you so much for sending that. Um, all right, a

little bit of a lighter fair here. This is from b k B who said that when I was six years old, my first grade teacher noticed that I wasn't responding to simple instructions as quick as I used to. B KB goes on to say that there was exploratory surgery, and sure enough there was a load of ear wax. Now we had a whole episode on ear wax and how it's hereditary, like the smell in the amount, and uh, b KB says, it should be noted here that all male members of my family seemed to have inherited my

father's talent for prodigious ear wax production. However, when the wax was removed, they found further lodged in the canal, of all things, a popcorn colonel. And he goes on to say that the next ear was checked and there was another colonel. At least he was balanced out right. Yeah, he says, some children throw objects down the toilet at me in my ear holes, apparently, and he said that that was probably there for two years. He says, I'm happy to report the surgery was a success. My hearing

was fully restored. And there has been no lasting damage at all. It's a family joke that if I was hot headed, uh, instead of a calm demeanor child, the Colonel's pack and all that oily substance might have popped if I ever got really mad. Anyway, that's my little ear wax been yet for all to enjoy there at the office. Have a great day since the KP well, and it's it's another excuse just to remind everyone do not stick things in your ear, even the Q tip. Just just don't do it. All right, this is I

think this is working. He seems so much calmer now. And is he really beginning to look like the old Arnie? Yeah, it's almost like this has been a lullaby of listener feedback to him. Look at that. Yeah, I mean he's even put the lasers away, which kind of begs the question we're gonna have to ask Izzie about this. Why does Arnie have lasers? Why did we get a mail about with lasers? Is he on military robot has been repurposed?

That's the best I can figure. Is he is Israel ponts or guy and he's wonderful, and um, maybe we should talk to him about dismantling. Just okay, all right, we do that. I'm not listening. All right. Here's one more than one more bit of listener mail to catch up. This to us from David, and it's responding to our Trip to Phobia podcast episode. Our Trip to Phobia episode

and the video and the gallery that went with it. Um. These broke a lot of thoughts from from listeners and viewers, um a fair amount of paranoia and fear as well, and just sort of re exploration of how we feel about the things in our environment. It broke some people today. I think it did. Um. So David writes in and says, Hey, Robert and Julie a big fan of stuff to Blow your mind and the whole family of How Stuff Works podcast. Your show on Trip to Phobia was very very enlightening

to me. While listening to the podcast, I begin to relate to what you were describing. I'm not sure I would qualify as a trip to phobic, though, because when I think of a whole in general, it is not at all disturbing. What caught my attention was when you spoke of many holes closely arranged. This is something I have always found quite disturbing. And I've never been able to describe is it as anything more than a bunch of small things close together wears me out, like a

bunch of mold spores or something. Even while sening to the podcast, I was chopping bell peppers and I can hardly bring myself to touch the inside of them where all the seeds formed together. Anyways, when you mentioned the lotus seed pod and explained that it is most often pointed to is one of the most disturbing images by those who suffered this condition, I checked it out and couldn't even pick my phone back up. I showed it to my girlfriend and she thought nothing of it and

decided to chase me around with the phone. Not funny. I ended up pushing her maybe a little too hard, kind of involuntarily, which got my point across. Don't worry, no damage done, and the silent treatment ended after a few minutes. But it was clear at that moment I really must have some kind of phobia to this. So maybe some sort of sub phobia. I know just what we need. Sub phobias, like we didn't have enough as

it is. That includes the proximity of the holes or something is a thing too, ha ha, thanks again for teaching me something about myself. Forever listening, David. One of the things that that episode on Holes brought up is this idea that there's sort of mathematical instancy or correlation between animals that are very dangerous and plants as well, and they're they're spectral patterns and then these clusters. So it's kind of interesting to see how how people are

reacting to it. Maybe they are tapping into this spectral mathematical pattern. Maybe not. Yeah, I mean on some level, it was like because a girlfriend chased him around the apartment with like a poisonous snake. So good for you, girlfriend, I think that's great. Um, now, I won't go into this because this is just this is a mathematical thing. Speaking of methemodics. And we hear from Jim in New

Jersey every once in a while. He has this beautiful, lovely email about the Infinity Hotel, which we talked about in one of our episodes on Infinity, and he talks about rational numbers and real numbers and negative numbers and I'm not going to read it one because it's long, but two I wanted to bring up that, um, there's something called the Infinite Hotel Paradox. It's a video made by Jeff Dakowsky and it's on ted ed the Lessons from Ted, so if you're familiar with ted dot com,

you can go there. You can also get these sort of mini lessons. And so I just wanted to point Jim and others to the source material that we use because it's fascinating. And Jim brings up this idea about negative numbers perhaps being able to fit into this hotel because we talked about how you'd have negative rooms going down forever and ever and ever. Um So, anyway, he brings up this fascinating question, which I thought the perfect form for this is really that ted ed link, and

everybody should check it out if they're interested. All right, well, there you have it. Um I'm feeling pretty good. Are you feeling pretty good? I mean we are alive, so I'm feeling good. Arnie, how how do you feel? Sounds given me? All right, I feel like we've done good work here. Then we were able to catch up a little bit on listener mail, and thanks to Scott and Ben from car Stuff for helping us out there with the intro. You can check out their podcast all their

content at car Stuff Show dot com. Um, if you want to see more of what we're doing, you can check us out at stuff to play your mind dot com. That's right, you'll find all the podcast episodes we've ever done,

the videos, the blog post, etcetera. Uh So, if if we mentioned a podcast in this episode and you're like, well, I need to re listen to that one or somehow I missed that one, I need to go seek it out, well, that is the place to do it, and especially on the more recent episode and making a point of including some sort of cool visual as well as links to related content and links to outside sources that are either we either used in the creation of that episode or

are of interest and related. Yeah, and Arnie would encourage you to do this, and so what we Please send us your thoughts via email at blow to the mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com. Bluer