Listener Mail: Beware the Wheelers

don't notice he's there at all. That's the thing about technology. How about it, Carney, Have you yet decided that human beings are a virus? Much like Agent Smith in the Matrix? Ambiguous answer? Okay, um? I think maybe we should start off with some responses to the episode we did on vacuum Airships. Let's see, Rob, do you want to do

this one from longtime correspondent Jim in New Jersey? Oh yeah, yeah, Jim and New Jersey is great about chiming in, especially on on like physics and stuff, but also old timey sci fi as well. So Jim shares the following Robert, Joe and Seth. I think that null ships, which really should be called null holes, exist on Earth, but just not in the form you presented. I would propose that submarines are a type of null hole design. Their buoyancy and water is determined by the relative ratio of air

to sea water in their buoyancy tanks. In these conditions, air would be like a vacuum relative to the surrounding sea water. Submarines can be subjected to the crushing pressure of the surrounding fluid, as is seen in just about every submarine movie ever produced. If no airships were ever constructed, I'd really be concerned with their integral structure. Any flaw

would make them susceptible to immediate crushing. The MythBusters demonstrated this in their last season when they crushed a railroad tanker car only by using air sure. It's implosion was one of the most impressive things I remember them doing. On the show Jim in New Jersey, Jim attaches a link to a video. I couldn't tell if this was

actually from MythBusters. It didn't really look like it, but uh, it was a clip of somebody pumping out Yeah, one of those like you know sealed tankers you would see being pulled on railroad tracks, and they had it hooked up to a big truck. I guess that truck was operating the vacuum pump. And it just it doesn't do anything for a long time, because of course it's not

a balloon. It's got a rigid outer shell, and it just sits there and sits there and sits there, and then suddenly, bam, it just smashes like somebody, like an invisible foot from the sky stomped on it. Yeah, it just squatches. That's pretty pretty impressive. That is the pressure of the atmosphere, same force holding the Magdeburg hemispheres together. Okay, I'm gonna read a message about vac hume airships from Eric,

who says, Hi, gentlemen, loved the void ships episode. I've long wondered about the feasibility of vacuum airships, and one thing that occurred to me is the possible use of evacuated aero gels. Aero gels are essentially a dried out gel that retains its shape. They're estimated to be about air inside lots of nanoscopic pores. A common example is

silica aero gel, which is basically fluffy glass. I did some math, and if we could evacuate the air from silica aero gel and then somehow seal the surface so air could not get back in, it would be capable of floating at altitudes of up to four kilometers or one point five miles. Its biggest problem would be its

compressive strength. Although aero gels are rigid, they're not all strong, and larger aero gels may not be able to withstand sea level pressure, especially for larger vacuum aero gel balloons. I don't know enough about material sites to try to calcul the performance of an aero gel at different atmospheric pressures, but it's a fun idea, and maybe, like all the other problems in the world, this one will be solved

by graphine or carbon nanotubes all the best. Eric that's right, we can always kick the aero gel can down the road to the graphine and nanotubes, for sure. I feel like I've seen fewer articles about this in recent years. There was a period of time. Oh I don't know, I'm gonna say, like two thousand eleven to two thousand thirteen or fourteen or so. We're essentially every science or engineering article I read ended with well, we can't do

this now, but maybe with graphine or carbon nanotubes. Yeah, yeah, I mean you still see it with with any kind of discussion that involves the limitations of modern day materials or structures. Inevitably that's going to come up, and for good reason. But yeah, I think you're right. There was a time about ten years ago where it seemed like it was everywhere the science headlines were just crazy for nanotubes.

All right, here's one from Evan. Evan writes in and says, hey, dudes, I always love listening to your show and learning along with them. One of my favorite episodes was the Lesser of two crab Claws series. But as I was listening to your recent episode about vacuum airships, I couldn't help but be reminded of a scene in the original Willy

Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie. I'm not sure if it features in the Tim Burton one, where Charlie and Grandpa Joe sneak a sample of fizzylifting drink and are almost chopped up by the fans in the ceiling. They finally discovered the solution to stop floating, and to get down is to burp slowly expelling gas, and each time they sink a little lower until they are safe on

the ground. As you went through all the different attempts people came up with to create these null ships, I couldn't help but think of this scene and the comparisons it drew. Again, thanks for all you do. Love the show. Evan chopped up by the fans. That's a little more gory than I recall Wonka being. Oh yeah, yeah, they were floating. I mean they didn't get chopped up, but they were floating up towards the obvious chopping peril of fan on the ceiling. I mean, death is real. In

the Walker Verse, it was implied chopping. There was the suggestion that chopping would occur, right, But I mean we we established in in the Wonka verse here that terrible things canon will happen to children. So it's it's for some reason. It's a film where the threat feels very real and Charlie and Grandpa are breaking the rules. Oh are they? I remember Charlie and Grandpa always doing good while it was the other kids who were doing bad.

I mean, the kids did bad too, but you might remember at the end, this is the whole, remember the whole wonka um rant about you get nothing anyway, this was this was part of it. Okay, great weird film. It's certainly one we could We could come back and look at on weird. Howse sent him in the future. You mean the old one. You cannot make me watch the Tim Burton one. I saw it. I don't over much about it, but I mean the original and it's is golden. Yes, okay. How about a couple of messages

about whistling. Uh. This first one comes from Duncan. Duncan says, Hi, I've loved your deep dive into whistling. I had no idea it was such a large subject. In the third episode, you talked about the use of whistling from the audience as a negative display in ancient debates, and mentioned the modern day British theater. Although this is more a cultural memory as audiences in the UK don't really do this anymore.

I thought i'd share that the French rugby team have to contend with quote the bird, a whistled display of disappointment in turgid play from their own fans when not performing well. This is in wide use across France today. Keep up the good work, all the best, Duncan, Duncan. I tried to look this up and find an example, and I could not, But maybe I didn't know what the right search terms were. But I believe you interesting,

all right. This one comes to us from Mark hawdy All in part three of the Whistling series, there was a discussion of the audience in a theater whistling at the at a performance that they didn't like. And if I recall I listened to it a few days ago, you segued into Sailor's superstitions about whistling. I think there may be some overlap between the two. There's a superstition in the theater about whistling backstage. I asked around during

a show. I'm a musician that does a lot of work in theaters here in Atlanta as to where this particular superstition came from. And the only answer that was given with any confidence is the surprisingly practical. And this explanation is purely anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt. Many of the curtains, scrims, and other set pieces are flown in from the loft using cables. Now these cables are steel cables with easy to use locks and counterweights. But before that there were ropes that had

to be weighted and tied to secure them. Sailors were accustomed to running around in high places and working with stout ropes and not unts, so when not at sea, the theater was a good place to find work. How do they communicate it? See whistling, which if it's even

audible to the audience, would not interfere with the dialogue. Thus, if you whistle backstage, you risk telling the stage crew to do something that could be embarrassing in the show, catastrophic or even deadly, like any old cartoon that involves a sand bag dropped on someone's head. My hypothesis is that the audiences of old new this then perhaps an audience whistling is an attempt to spook a superstitious actor, cause some technical mayhem, or even to do harm to

the folks on stage. Just a bit of speculation, but seems plausible. Thanks for the great shows, topics and movies, Mark Well Mark, I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, I am taking this with a grain of salt. I'm not sure, but it's a beautiful story. Yeah, yeah, I I like these possible connections. Um, it certainly changes the um the the flavor of whistling at someone on a stage of what you're ultimately trying to do is get a chandelier dropped on their head. Yeah, or make

the sets start lifting off the ground or something. Yeah. Yeah, I mean nobody wants to hear you know, your favorite musician do any new material, but you don't want stuff to fall on them. Oh, I was just taken to a to a moment I lived through. I remember when Art Garfunkel was doing an outdoor festival show in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and uh and he announced to a crowd of many thousands that he was going to do a song off his new album, and everyone at once got up to

get a beer. There exceptions to this rule, but but it does seem to see a common occurrence with especially older performers. Okay, I think it's time for some weird house cinema messages. And we got so many emails about return to OZ we are not going to be able to do them all today. Maybe we'll feature more OZ in the in the next episode, but let's do a selection at least. First message I've got lined up here

is from Brian. Brian says, when I saw Return to Oz in my podcast feed, I had a visceral reaction and a chill ran down my spine. I was transported back to nineteen eighty six, when as a five year old boy, I was subjected to a home viewing with my older sister. I'm not sure if I watched it more than once over my childhood years, but I could clearly picture each segment you discussed, and I recalled those scenes as I had originally experienced them through a haze

of confused horror. I suspect if I watched it today, I, like you would appreciate the weirdness, the beautiful production design, and the creativity involved. However, I was not prepared for any of it as a child. The Wheeler specifically gave me nightmares for months, if not years. Mom b and her hallway of severed heads were also a bit much.

In summary, it thoroughly messed me up. I remember late are in my preteen and teenage years having memories of these scenes, but as they were during pre internet times, I wasn't sure what movie, if any, they had come from. I remember that feeling Brian, I believe I finally stumbled back upon it during college in the late nineties and was gladdened and relieved to learn I hadn't simply dreamed the whole thing up a surreal, trippy experience. Thanks for

the memories, Brian, Ah, that's good. Yeah. I enjoyed hearing from everybody out there who had memories of having seen the film and also specific childhood memories that could attest to the the dark tones and the sense of fear and the picture. Now one of my favorites came from a listener, Shana. Shana writes then and says, Okay, weird emailing you guys two weeks in a row, but ah, you covered one of my favorite movies of all time. I have such a deep relationship with Return to Oz

from many different stages in my life. I was a baby and my mother took me to see this film when I was a wee little child. It is actually one of my earliest foundational memories because as soon as momby pulled off her head, I ran screaming from the movie theater. I became a well established scaredy cat and also ran out of my friend's house crying during the

Dark Crystal and ampted this day traumatized by Grimlin's older brothers. Yes, say no more on both those fronts, but especially on Gremlins, which is among all of these films, I think especially potentially traumatic because it is so uh miscalibrated as a film. It really doesn't know of it if it's trying to be cute or um or grotesque or frightening. Is it a kid's movie that also doesn't mind using a grizzly scenario to spoil Santa for viewers. So it's it's it's

it's a weird film to to take in. It is. But you know what this makes me think, Rob, I think on weird house cinema, we should do ones too, which is just up bonanza. Yeah, g two baby, um, well for Christmas we should do that with it. It's

definitely in the movie, all right. Shana continues. I rediscovered Returned to Oz in high school after falling in love with Rouza Balk from the Craft The Return to Oz DVD from My local Video store Rental Store Silver Screen Video r I p. Twenty nineteen Auto started with an interview with Bog talking about her experiences on set watching the film again with Surreal It was like having deja vu.

I wouldn't have been able to tell you what was going to happen, but as soon as I saw it, I remembered cut to college where I'm studying TV film editing. In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Merch was required. Reading IMDb dot com was kind of new and discovering this world famous editor directed that childhood trauma turned beloved movie blew my Mind. I got married in twenty eleven

in a steampunk themed wedding. We had the privilege and honor to have a robotic ring bear created by one of the best humans who has ever lived, Grant Immahara. When creating the head, Grant took inspiration from TikTok TikTok, being the the cool automaton ian returned to Oz. I've included two photos of Heisenborg as he was named, and indeed here are the photos. Jip so his head is a copper sphere with the with the big walrus mustache

or not walrus. What do you call that can handlebar mustache? Ah? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, it's a tiktoki kind of mustache with a monocle a top hat. I think it's got a bow tie. Uh, TikTok didn't have a bow tie as far as I recall, but so this one is more finely dressed. But maybe this is what TikTok would look like if he was going to a wedding. Yeah, and as we can see in the second photo it it seems to be a fully functioning automaton. We see the tracks, we see the remote control that was used

to operate it. So yeah, kudos. I mean this, this looks like a steampunk wedding that really went for it. They finish up here listening to you guys fall in love with this film made me so happy. Avon reviewing, y'all will find more details and surprises. As always, thank you so much for the content. If you end up looking for more weird, dark Disney children's films, I recommend Escape to Which Mountain Vour. The music is fantastic and it's just a super weird movie. Also available on Disney Plus.

I've heard very good things about Escape to Which Mountain, but I've never seen it. I saw it as a kid, and I don't remember the particulars of it other than it was one of there were I think a couple of Disney films from this era that we're a little creepy and felt like they weren't quite meant for kids, even though I mean, clearly it was okay for kids to see them, but they felt a little dangerous seeing

the trailers for them as a as a child. On other Disney VHS tapes, this one had Donald Pleasants in it all that. Oh yes, wait, they just they did a remake this movie with with Wayne the Stone, didn't they. Oh yeah, I think yeah. I don't know if the Rock plays Donald Pleasants's role or or not. I don't know. I assume he plays maybe the Eddie Albert role. But um, but yeah, I did not see the Rock remake. Yeah, I mean neither. Well, maybe I will check out the original.

I feel like there was some other Disney film of this era that was frightening looking in the trailers, something with ghosts in it. Perhaps it had it had Hayley Mills in it, but I don't, I mean, it wouldn't Pollyanna, right, Pollyanna is not a ghost story. It's not the parent Trap. I've never seen it. I don't know. Well, let's look up the Hailey Mills Philip Filmography. See, it might not

have been Haley Mills. It might have been just another child actor that reminded me of her, But there was some other Disney film from this era that gave me the creeps. And or maybe I'm just it's just like a splinter memory of Escape from which Mountain? I don't know. Waiter, are you thinking of Watcher in the World? I am thinking of Watcher in the Woods? Yes, eight film. Yes, that's the one. I should have known immediately. I was

wondering that one is one. Yeah, I just distinctly remember being troubled by the trailers for that on other Disney VHS tapes. And uh, yeah, I don't think I've ever sat down and watched it as an adult, but I have read about some of the like the stuff that got cut. There was something to do with like the entity in the film, and they had a more frightening vision of that entity that they were going to use.

But then they had to they had to pull back a little bit, and they had to remind everybody, no, this is Disney, we can't we can't do do something this dark and uh and ethereal Robert, stop right now and google Watcher in the woods. Monster. You need to see it. Oh god, yeah, this is this is terrifying. It's like a like a a fallen slime angel. And this is not the way that it appears in the movie, right,

this is that I don't remember. I remember there being something scary in the movie, but this maybe this isn't it was this the cut one. I don't know. I can't sort it out right now. Well, the trailer was creepy that much. I remember you and you have like the weird girl with the blindfold on. Yeah, alright, let's do at least one more return to OZ message. Let's see how about this one from Athena, who said subject

line returned to return to Oz Hi Robin Joe. When I was in middle school, I remember a friend giving me a play by play of everything that happened in the movie returned to OZ with these wild, wide eyes, as if they had to tell me everything just to get it out of their head. I didn't watch it for years. I read all the books when I was a teenager much later, and I could see how it would be very disturbing. I would absolutely one recommended that you read at least the first three Wizard of Oz books.

They're very short. It won't take long. Uh. There was so much more to the Wonderful Wizard of Oz than what happened in the thirty nine movie. There was a whole town of breakable porcelain people. There were people with heads that shoot from their necks, etcetera. I'm not sure if I even understand what that means, shoot like a bullet from their necks, like their heads are little rockets that take off. In the successive books, every time Dorothy goes back to Oz, years have passed when only a

short amount of time has passed by in our world. Rob. This may explain one of your son's questions about the movie, which is that if if that's true, maybe there's even a reverse time lineup, which is why Dorothy is younger in the sequel than she is in the original movie. Nade Anyway, Athena says, I would say that Returned to Oz is very true to the spirit of the books. They are evocative of an early American idea of what foreign lands are like, and they are really quite scary

in the best way possible. Thank you so much for the great show, Athena. Yeah, I'm tempted to to pick one up now. I was talking to a friend the other day who'd read a bunch of them when when they were a kid. I also think that there I agree, even not having read the books and just seeing the movies, that there is some thing distinctly American about the kind of fantasy in them, because like the Wizard, it turns out, essentially is a patent medicine salesman, like a huckster and

Carnival Barker. It seems like a very American kind of choice. Yeah. Yeah, And you know one thing that I thought was interesting really in in both the thirty nine Ods and in Return to Oz, there's also this sense of of the Emerald City that, uh that kind of reminds me of some of the futuristic optimism concerning the nature of the American city. Uh. That that I think is as president of the fiction here. All right, let's do one more

here from the oz bag. This is from Nathaniel. Nathaniel says, Hello, Robert and Joe. I was excited when Joe solicited calls for the best forest sets because I also love a good forest at peace, and my all time favorite, without any competition, is the queue for the Et Adventure ride at Universal Studios, Florida. The ride itself is fine, and against all odds, still appears to be open. However, the indoor queue for the ride was wonderful, winding through an

air conditioned indoor forest. It was relatively quiet and dark, and there were sound effects throughout, possibly also an ominous soundtrack, but I can't say if that's part of my memory that I generated or not. I never cared for the movie, but when I think of Et, this forest still comes

to mind and brings back delightful memories. Thanks for the show, Nathaniel, oh, and I do want to to stress too that we are even though this episode is airing after our Weird Out Cinema episode on Crawl, which features tremendous indoor forest environments as well. Were um, we're recording this before we record the Crawl episode. Strangely, I have not been to Universal Studios, Florida since episode A kid Um sometime in elementary school my family went, but I remember this line.

I remember it very clearly, much like I remember the line for the Jaws ride where they they're playing like interview clips, I think, and at least of the time I was there. One of them was Quint claiming that the after the shark ate him, it barfed him back up and they just played the movie where he gets the scene where he gets eaten in reverse. Yeah, that

was weird. But but at the e T Ride, Yeah, I remember this kind of peaceful, dark indoor forest where the line curl curls around and I think it's sort of recreating the environment of the beginning of the movie, right, because it doesn't the movie start with like the ship landing in a this like mountain forest in California. Oh yeah, I guess it does. I haven't seen et in forever. Um attempted to introduce the boy to it, but we haven't sat down and watched it. I remember Reese's candy.

It was Reese's right, Reese's pieces. I remember the shock of the where they you think that E. T Is dead in a gutter and you see his crumpled, um old body down there. That that's stuck in my head from watching the film as a kid. The scenes where the the the humans and the bio containment outfits have shown up. That was pretty frightening. Yeah, And I guess his finger glows yeah, And the flying bicycle and that's it.

That's what I remember. I've seen Mac and Me more recently than I've seen the same same and I've seen pod People more than any of these films. Definite et vibes, the excellent Spanish film What was the Was it? Alien Invaders? This the original title of that one. This Potato has big ears? All right? You want to wrap it up there? Yes, let's go ahead and uh cap this one off. But

we'll be back with more listen mail next Monday. And in between, yeah, we'll have core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Tuesdays, and Thursday's Short Form Artifact or Monster Fact on Wednesdays, and on Friday's Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film like Return to Oz Huge. Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hi, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.