Listener Mail: Black Hole Dream

All Things Monstrous. But there was a ton of great listener mail that I would say fell in the crack maybe between the coffin and the hard place, got wedged in there, and it's it's too good to pass by. So we're bringing you a second helping Uh. This is gonna be listener mail. A lot of it I think was from September, some from more recently. Uh, So we hope you enjoy. That's right. There's a lot of great stuff in here, and we we wanted to do right.

We wanted to pay off our debts here listener mail related before we move on into some more exciting content that will take us through the holidays and ultimately uh into a new decade. And as always, Carnie, our mail bodies here to help us. I was telling Carney about my own uh philosophy regarding the holidays moving forward, and then I'm going to lean into the holidays and then embrace the holidays. Uh and and so Carney's doing the

same thing. He's cooking NonStop though. He is researching recipes for Thanksgiving dishes, and he is attempting to replicate food that humans can safely eat. He just presented me a dish of delicious braized pop tarts that I can't wait to tuck into. It is technically food. You cannot deny it, all right? Should we look at this first piece of mail. This comes from our listener, Jordan's regarding the interview you did with Mark Mandica about, among many things, copper heads,

snapping turtles and all that. That's right, you were traveling, so I had Mark come into the studio when we chatted, and yeah, this is what Jordan had to say. Quote. I was recently listening to your September interview with Mark Mandinka on a more conservation and vilified reptiles, and thought I would share my personal experience being bitten by a copper head snake. This being said, I've always loved snakes and the experience has not left me with any hatred

of the reptiles or species themselves. It's very big of you Jordan's Five years ago, I was bitten on the foot by a baby copper head snake in North Carolina. As you may know, baby venom of snakes are often considered more dangerous due to their lack of venom output control. I wasn't aware of the snake's presence at the time, and the bite marks were discovered by the e R, but the pain felt similar to that of an insect sting.

Following the bite itself, my vision nearly immediately went yellow as I temporarily lost the ability to see other colors. About ten seconds after, my muscles collapsed to the forest floor and UH and I had to drag myself out of the woods to a nearby park bench as I was too weak to stand. I didn't end up meeting anti venom, but I was connected to three I V machines and kept in the hospital overnight as my foot

was extremely swollen and blue and color. I was confined to a wheelchair and crutches for multiple months after with my swollen foot, so I definitely felt side effects of the copper head venoms, mild or not in comparison to other venoms. I would not wish to relieve the experience, although it is a much better story than any encounter I've had with a scud. I love stuff to blow your mind and invention, and I hope you enjoyed hearing what happened to someone that was actually bitten by a

copper head snake. That's a great story, Jordan. I don't know if i'd ever heard about the vision going yellow before. That's a very interesting effect. Right. Likewise, I either didn't know or had forgotten about the young snakes and venom control. I've been am output control. That's that's interesting as well. And yeah, it's just nice to have a firsthand account of the power of a snake's venom. I I have never been bitten by a snake, so I can't I

can't relate. I've been stung by wasps. But that's that's it all right. Next, we've got a couple of email is, going way back to our episodes about fat bergs. Of course, the the dragons, the soap dragons that grow in our sewers when we flush wet wipes like we shouldn't don't wash oil and grease down. The saying don't flush wet wipes, folks. And this comes from an anonymous listener, one who wished to remain anonymous. Uh. They say, Hi, Robert and Joe and good stuff to blow your mind people. So I

guess that that concerns you too, Seth. First off, you guys are truly of the finest podcasters, communicators, progressive thinkers, bastions of curiosity that I've encountered in podcast land. Thank you sincerely for your podcast and other endeavors. Well, you're far too kind. Uh. Now I present to you a real life Fatburg superhero. We were asking about this in

our Fatberg episodes. I think the idea we came up with though, was Fatberg cop right, But the the listener here says it is the now retired Grease Avenger from the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation. The Grease Avenger was created by someone named Adol hudgikal Deal to promote awareness of the problems resulting in sewers from fo g or fog Fat's Oil and Greece. This at the time, division manager would dress up in his supersuit and appear

at functions to promote the messaging. Now that Mr Hadjikhalil has progressed in his career to manage a different bureau. The grease a Injur has been retired, and almost all links to the story and images have been plucked from the web. A little nugget of fatburg gold remains, however, see the screenshot and link below. This is the only remaining image I could find of Mr Hadjikhalil in his supersuit. The story unfolds below in this obscure University of Houston publication.

You'll see why when you read the story. Although his superhero days are likely entirely behind him, Atol remains a much beloved and an effective visionary leader and is now General manager of the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services. Althose, sewers and subterranean systems rarely hold the attention of the public. Those of us who design and construct, maintain, and operate this infrastructure know that we keep the Pooh

Beast at bay. All. All you need to remember, my friends, is that the sun shall rise tomorrow, thanks in part to people like adle hogical Eel. I'm so glad we've come back to this this this particular email, because I was delighted that there was a real life fat bird cop but can you believe it? There's more. In my early days as a newly minted civil engineer in British Columbia, I needed to install flow gauges in the sewers of

a remote coastal community. Accurately gauging sewer flows is not trivial. It's fraught with all the perils you can imagine, plus complications that can arise from hydraulics and dynamic conditions. Anyway, to install the most accurate type of flow gauge, which is a metal band with a sensor at the bottom of it, one must physically install the band inside the

sewer pipe. You must go down a man hole or maintenance hole to use the more inclusive term, and reach into the sewer pipe by hand, often while it's flowing, and install all We popped a maintenance hole cover to begin installation, only to find that the walls and everything inside were coated in an inch or so thick layer of white, softish greasy goo. The diet of this remote community you see features a delicacy Ulican grease. UH for

the referenced website quote. Beginning around the end of February, they started to fish vast quantities of ulican, a small and very oily member of the smelt family. Ulican was not usually eaten as a fish meat. The vast majority of the catch was rendered for its edible grease, which could be stored for many months. They boiled the ulican uh and that's o O l I c h A n if I'm pronouncing that wrong in large cedar bent boxes until the grease separated in rows to the top.

They then skimmed the grease and poured it into other boxes to store for trade with other tribes or eating throughout the year. The grease is prominent in all aspects of life in the local indigenous culture, so it was not surprising to see it represented with such gusto in

the sewers, which quite literally linked the entire community. We couldn't safely climb inside with all that grease, so we got fire hoses and nozzles and other various implementia to clean out the manholes and pipes sufficiently to let us do our work. Not wanting to ruin our boots and clothing, and generally stay as poo free as possible, we donned rain gear, heavy gloves, and bags that we duck tape

liberally to you. Guessed it a supersuit. The only record that remains is a coffee mug that my workmates at the time had made for me from a project photo that my colleague took see attached. I never thought this photo might one day be relevant or sharable in any way. I present my elevated persona sewerman. Remember flush not thine wipes of wetness for nothing good. Therefrom shall come. Wow that that was. That was a great listening email. It

just got better and better. Yeah, it had everything. It had a real it had a Fatburg cop from the real world. It had a battle with a unique type of sewer grease. I mean this is great. Learned a little bit about other cultures. Yeah, it's pretty great all in all. And it's not the only bit of fat Berg listener mail that we have to read for you. This next one comes to us from Maurice, titled fat

Bergs from outer Space. They write, I'm a longtime fan of stuff to blow your mind and listen to the show not just to learn about weird and noteworthy things, but also to gain inspiration for my own creative efforts. I write horror, science fiction, and fantasy stories, but I also write my own modules for the RPG games I run. After listening to the recent Fatberg episode, I became disgustingly fascinated and knew I had to design a gross stout module for my star Finder game, a science fantasy game

by Pazzo. I believe it is so this is the company that makes Pathfinder. It's my understanding that star Finders like the sci Fi UM, the sc the sci Fi B sub brand or or you know, parallel brand to cat Finder. I don't know a thing about it. Pathfinder more traditional like dn D style UM, and there's more complicated history there as well. But anyway, that's what they're talking about here anyway, talking about setting this up as

a side mission quote. The setup is on a space station which uses magic to run much of its life support in conjunction with more science based methods. A fat Berg has been generated on board in the water system bordering too close to the magical subsystems and has gained a kind of sentience, and the players have to find a way to defeat it and its minions before it threatens the station. On the whole, our quest against the fat burg starts tonight. I really can't thank you enough

for this thoroughly nauseating but immensely interesting topic. As a thank you, I've included a few staff blocks for this module, which I have custom created and included here, complete with ecology and tactical notes. Sorry for the formatting. I use several platforms to create content, and sometimes I have to

use lower quality JPEGs for output. Keep the great content coming, Maurice. Now, I don't know anything about stat sheets or designing monsters about Robert if if you have any thoughts, Oh, no, it look pretty good, you know me. I can't resist looking at a stats for monsters and yeah, this this looks like a really fun, uh fun encounter. I also like the idea of the magic and the science being mingled together on the spaceship. I don't think I've encountered

that before, but it makes sense. Right, if you're gonna power starship, you don't want to depend exclusively on magic. You need to have at least a science back up in place, right. I would guess that magic is more fickle and fleeting and finnicky, and and you've got to have something a reliable generator running in the background. Right, and then you know, science can only do so much. Something's got to make the artificial gravity work, so might

as well turned to pure magic for that. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more than thank Alright, we're back, alright. So we did an episode a while back about school dreams, the dreams where people are returned to high school or college. Uh. And we we addressed why these dreams are so common, why they so often invoke anxiety, why they're so common in people who have been out of school for many years. And quite a few listeners got in touch about these.

I would say this is this is one of the most email generating episodes we've done in a while. Yeah, and and certainly we're not going to read them all on the show, but I will say that just the sheer volume of emails did speak to the near universal aspects of this sort of dream. Though. A couple of people let us know that they didn't have school dreams, uh. They usually had some kind of equivalent that was based

on some other part of their lives. A lot of people got in touch answering Robert's question about whether people who were in the military had military dreams uh, and and quite a few people did you know they would have dreams of uh, you know, uh not being able to like get their uniform right, or not being able to figure out where they're supposed to go, and things like that. So to read a couple of the ones we got in response to the school dreams episode. This

first one comes from Brendon. Brendan says, Hey, guys, I'm an avid listener of the show and often feel compelled to write in, but by the time I'm around my computer, the desire has been absorbed by the day to day duties of my life. However, this time I happened to be in front of my computer as I finished one of your recent episodes on school dreams. I cannot recall ever having dreams of either high school or college, though

I attended both. However, I went to community college later in my twenties and placed little personal value on my high school experience. I went directly into the workforce from high school, waiting tables and later tending bar I do somewhat regularly have dreams of showing up late for shifts and not wearing clothes in the restaurant, etcetera. In spite of having transitioned out of this type of work some years ago, I'm now an arborist. I have a hard

time imagining two more divergent careers. I think it was Joe who questioned why school would be the metaphor brain might select for dealing with present personal problems. Remember this is following up from a number of people coming enting on this phenomenon who said that they thought that school dreams were really about whatever present challenges people were facing, and that maybe the brain just selected school as a kind of template or metaphor for working out those problems

in the dream. Brendan continues, I think that the reminiscence bump provides a possible answer, couched in one of the other statements you made that the period of life in which your so called teenage brain is making vivid memories that help one to identify with self, you're also creating an extremely personalized metaphor that could be adaptable in motivating action when one is faced with a problem that has no clear solution by providing a feeling of reconnection to

the basic self loss to time, similar to how people have used tarot astrology and other randomly accessed organized stimuli to give their life direction. School just happens to be a near universal experience for people of that age in modern culture, and often referred to as where we quote figure out who we are. I think I would be most interested in hearing data and accounts of hunter gatherer, early pastoral, or other non industrial cultures and their school

dream equivalence. Anyways, I hope this wasn't too long winded and helps shed some light on the experience of those who didn't attend college at that formative period of life. Thank you also for indulging my armchair philosophical hypothesis. I love the show and the sounds of your voices. Have a great day, and I look forward to hearing your next topic. Well thanks a lot, Brendan. Yeah, that was There was some interesting inside into the topic, for sure,

I totally echo. I mean, if you're like a dream researcher out there, I would like to see if people who don't really have anything equivalent to like the standard, you know, United States kind of school experience, if people in in hunter gatherer societies or something report different patterns of dreams that are in any way analogous to school dreams. Yeah, that would that would be something interesting to cover. All right,

here's another dream email. This one comes to us from Sammy. Hey, guys, just started listening to the episode called school Dreams, and wow, did I relate to this. One of my only nightmares is forgetting I had a class and realizing it at the end of the semester. I know this isn't school related, but my most common nightmare is actually being a waitress and forgetting one of my tables. I was a waitress

about seven years ago for two years. Those have to be related, right, I'd be curious to know if you guys have these kinds of dreams about your jobs. All the best, Sammy PS from follow up email. Sorry, I kept listening and realized I should give you some, uh some contexts on my education. I went straight from high school to university for an engineering degree, where during my second and third year I was a waitress. All of

my school nightmares were forgetting university classes, but not high school. Honestly, I think this is probably because up until university I had no difficulty in school, but engineering was quite hard. Thanks. Well, let's see. Um. Well, that first question about dreams about

jobs and job stress. I I used to so I worked in newspapers for a while before I ended up working for How Stuff Works and getting into podcasting and so forth, and I would do uh, I would increasingly just do pagination, so like laying out pages of the newspaper in a program like end Design, the Curning Master. Yeah, yeah, all that fun stuff I mean, And it was it was,

it was fun. I enjoyed it, but it was also it was also stressful because you had to get everything to a to a fine point or as fine a point as possible, having to edit the content, edit the headlines, and then it goes to the press, and then that's it, you know, and and you just hope that you got everything. And so I would for years after I had left that that job and that profession, I would still have dreams in which I was concerned about the layout of

the front page of the newspaper. And then somehow the bed that I was sleeping in was the front page of the newspaper, and the pillows were different modules on the front page, like you know, a headline or a text box or an image box or a caption or an illustration piece. And I had to be careful not to move because I physically moved my body, I might disrupt the various elements of the front page of the

newspaper that's really interesting, Uh finally went away, thankfully. I also, I have school dreams a lot, but I also have job dreams all the time. Uh, and they I've had job dreams about like when I was where you know, I've worked in restaurants and grocery stores and stuff. I had server dreams, like lots of stuff about, like forgetting about tables and stuff. It's actually somewhat equivalent to the school dreams, like a big table that I forgot I had and I had been neglecting them all night and

now they're mad, and that kind of thing. I'd have dreams about, uh, you know, like losing track of of dairy products. When I worked in a grocery store, I was, Uh, one of the main things I had to do is like keep stock of the dairy aisle and move stuff up from the cooler in the back out to the shelves and stuff like that, and so it involved a

lot of management of inventory by date. And so I'd have dreams where like I couldn't read the dates and couldn't understand Uh, you know what needed to be out there, and then I'd lose things, and you know, everything always had to be kept cold. So anyway, that's probably very boring. Sorry, but this is interesting too because this touches on something that we i think discussed recently on the show, and

that's the reading in dreams. Yeah. So, and you were having the experience where you're just having a lot of trouble reading these numbers, but not to the point where you're like, oh, I must be in a dream because I can't read. I don't think the problem was that I couldn't read. It's more like there's a lot of the dream had to remember not being able to keep

track of information. Okay, well, that that also lines up with it right there, Like the analytical brain is not fully engaged enough to to to really keep track of things or to question the authenticity. Yeah, I think a working memory and critical reasoning or somewhat limited in the dream world. But also I have tons of of anxiety dreams about like the kind of job I have now. Again, not very hard to figure out what they might be.

It's like I dream that I released a podcast on a subject, only to find out after we already published it that everything I said was grossly inaccurate and uh, and people are like, how could you get all this stuff wrong? And I'm like, oh no, And yeah, it's weird because I have those same as some of those same waking anxieties, you know, and I have some of the same job stresses that you do, because we pretty pretty much have the same job. Yet I never have

dreams about them. I never do. I instead, I have the school dream. That's funny. Well, I I will say I have the school dream way more than I have job dreams, like, way more than I have dreams about the current job I have. I think. The way I put it is, I have had job dreams like that. I still have the school dream on a regular basis. I see, yeah, yeah, that that that lines up with with me. Like I had the job dreams for a while. Uh. They they outlasted the job and then they went away. Right.

So I want to read one, maybe two of the emails concerning you know, the school dreams about the military or from people who served in the military. Uh. This one comes to us from Dan Dan Rights. I joined the army one week after graduating high school. I didn't take school seriously and did not recall any school related dreams today. However, after serving in the Persian Gulf War, my dreams were consumed with a persistent vision. In this dream I repeatedly had, I was disposing of an anonymous

human being wrapped in a rug tossed into a dumpster. Horrible. The dream was so real I began to question its authenticity. Was it part of my reality? I reeled for months about it. As time passed, so did the dream. I used my g I bill to attend college in Upstate New York. Along the way, my dreams began to stress and fret about cool and classes I'd forgotten to attend. This dream also became so visceral that I began to check my schedule to ensure my reality was not what

my dreams would have me believe. I love the episode.

Love what you guys do. Keep up the great work, Dan. Okay, so this is multiple interesting permutations are saying no dreams about school when he was in school, and then was in the military and and served in combat and had persistent dreams, but maybe not necessarily directly about the military, but so much like a I don't know, some kind of related persistent nightmare yeah, yeah, I mean definitely, you know, not to serve his dream interpreter here, but it definitely

seems tied to the like the stress of dealing, uh, you know, with life in a in a combat zone. Um. Now, of course, the thing about not having dreams about high school that lines up with a lot of I think a lot of what people have said, you know, where it's definitely that post high school period of life, that

that that dictates the dream content. Well, yeah, that that seems like one of the main variants, like either it's mostly college or mostly high school or whatever else you were doing at that time, or some other some other thing the other part of the life that people view. Especially, we did hear from a lot of people saying it was like these self defining years that really seemed to uh to form their persistent like frustration and anxiety or

problem solving dreams. We asked specifically at one point about homeschooling. I think, yeah, we heard from several people who were homeschooled who did have related dreams. Right, But here's one from Heather who also served in the military, So we getted like a double in this one. Heather rights, I have had dreams about elementary school mostly, and I am usually late or still in pj's and everyone is mocking me. I was homeschooled in middle school, and I never dream

about that. I never dream of public high school or college either. I was also in the military, and while I was in I did have dreams about bad things happening to me in the military, like showing up for a formation naked and somehow not noticing until I got there, and getting in trouble from make mistakes. While I was in I RACK, I dreamed so convincingly that I was in Germany that I still thought I was in Germany

when I woke up. It took me and my best friend a couple of minutes to get back to reality and realized that we were in fact in a crappy metal box trailer in the desert for another twelve months talk about a freight train of disappointment. I don't really dream about any of that stuff in my thirties, though, Heather, So extinction of the dream obsession now and elementary school

stress streams instead. Weird. Sorry, I didn't mean to call you weird, Heather, I just mean the variety is interesting now. On the pajamas an elementary school. I do. I have an elementary like age memory. This wasn't going to school, but I instead of putting my taking my pajama pants off and putting pants on over them, I just put my blue jeans over my pajama pants and went on with my day. And then later discovered when I went to the restroom that I still had my pajamas one

under my clothes. And that was That was a real life occurrence. That kind of nice slee mimics like the fears we have regarding um, you know, the kind of stress dreams that we have where we're like, you know, wearing our pajamas to school, wearing them out in the day. Uh wait, were there any bad consequences to that? Well? And then luckily not. But it's kind of, you know, it's like the adult version of realizing that you just drove for four hours uh there in back home and

didn't have your driver's license. You're like, oh my goodness, like that nothing went wrong, But what if it did? What if someone had noticed that I was wearing my pajamas all day underneath my pants, as if this was just what I did. That's a good comparison, all right, I think we're gonna call the school dreams. They're sorry to the many many of you who also got in touch with us with your great emails, we really appreciate them. But we gotta go on to to get some feedback

about other episodes. That's right. We can't just talk about dreams. We also have to talk about black holes, that's right. So regarding our episodes about Sagittarius a Star, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, first of all, several listeners got in touch to ask us about the source the opening monologue in that episode. I guess we didn't make it clear. They were asking if it was coming from a book or something. Uh, No,

that was just us. It was just original to the show. Yeah. If if we were not sourcing it or citing it, then it's probably just something we made at well, yes, that is generally the rule. We may have forgotten, forgotten, unintentional if Yeah, but yeah, since you asked, Uh yeah, that's just us. Oh so uh. This first email comes from Chase Chase Rights. Hey, guys, I love your show.

After listening to your series about Sagittarius a Star, I thought of a way for me to conceptualize the astronomically large masses stated for black holes, and I wanted to share it with you. I thought this was pretty interesting. Chase says, the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A star weighs in at two point six million solar masses. That's big, too big really for us humans to fully comprehend. I agree, So I

did some math. If you think of the Sun's mass as one second, Earth's mass is three micro seconds, and Sagittarius A stars would be thirty days and two hours, that that that does really hammered. But as we talked about in the episode, as huge as Sagittarius A stories from our perspective, the supermassive black holes at the center

of other galaxies get much much bigger. The quays are Ton six eighteen is one of the brightest objects in the known universe, so bright that the galaxy spinning around it is not visible from Earth because the quasar itself outshines it. The ultramassive black hole at the center of Ton six eighteen is the largest currently known. It is estimated awagh sixty six billion solar masses, and then by the same reckoning as earlier. Where the Sun's mass was

one second, Earth's masses three micro seconds. This would be two thousand, ninety seven years one hundred and seventy five days if our sun is one second. That's really good. I was hesitant when started reading this email because I'm like, I'm not sure they're gonna pull this off. They're actually gonna take these big numbers and put them in a you know, use some sort of metaphor or or transference that would that would really work. And this did. This

totally did time within historical records. I think is a pretty good way for people to try to conceptualize big number analogies. All right, here's another one concerning black holes. This one comes to us from Mike. Mike says, hi, guys, just finished episode two on the supermassive black Holes. Good stuff. In episode one, you briefly mentioned musical references to black holes,

but you missed one. I believe I've heard you mentioned the Canadian band Rush on past episodes, so I was surprised you missed mentioning their song dedicated to the first black hole to be experimentally discovered, Sickness x one. Smiley face. Smiley face is not part of the black Hole's name, though that would be amusing if it were. No, it's just sickness x one. Looking forward to hearing more about

black holes on a future episode. Now, Mike, I can't wait to find about the first astronomical bodies that have emoji incorporated into their official names. Yeah, that would be interesting. It's like we discover um like orpheus B three eggplant. I mean, I guess it's only a matter of time. Earthl means it's demise with the impact of the Great Comet poop emoji. But Mike, thank you for bringing up Rush. Yes,

I don't. I don't know about you, Robert. I'm a pretty big fan of Rush, especially I'm I'm not like one of those deep Rush maniacs who like knows all their catalog and all that, but Rush is one of my favorite things to come on classic rock radio. I always turn it up. Wait, what what? What is the Rush song? I should know? Tom Sawyer, what's the other one? I should know? Let's not get night cheese. But what's

the other one? Though? There's uh, there's limelight, there's closer to the heart, there's uh, oh man, what am I forgetting. I just don't know Rush that well. I mean, I know I've heard them before, I've heard Tom Sawyer before, but I feel like there there must be the one Rush song that resonates with me. I'm not sure I'm recognizing it offhand. His mind is not for rent to any god or government. You don't know this? Oh that one? I know that one. Oh that's Tom Sawyer. Yeah, yeah,

it's that's that's fine. Oh wait, there's also a Spirit of the Radio. That's the one that one. I think they reference that sometimes on Mystery Science Theater three thousands. I think, yeah, I don't think that's a that's a riff I ever got. But I laughed at it, you know. Alright, So any Rush fans out there, I guess I need some Rush education. So right in and educate. Tell me what I need to listen to. Send me a playlist. I will, I will give it a listen. Bring him

Closer to the Heart. Speaking of coming Closer to the Heart and following up Black Holes, we have some listener mail concerning our episode on the One Ring, right, So this first one is a sort of correction that I take from our listener Emmett. Now This is because we were discussing the melting point of several different materials that were potential candidates to make a ring of power. You want to make a ring of power? What should you

make it out of? Uh? And of course mentioning the melting points is important because the one ring in the Lord of the Rings can't be melted by normal heat. It has to be I think could maybe be melted by dragon breath I don't remember, but had to be thrown into the fires of Mountain doom. Anyway, I mentioned graphine, the material along with its melting point, as a possible candidate, and Emmett got in touch to say, hey, guys and your Wondering episode, you discuss graphing as a potential material.

If I'm not wrong, I'm pretty sure graphing will burn long before it melts, kind of like wood. I look this up, yes, and it is exactly correct. I think it was rather silly of me to try to consider the melting point of graphing. I think that'd be sort of like considering the melting point of plywood. Um. From what I can tell you know, it even burns a relatively low temperature in the presence of oxygen. So yeah, there is like there's fire, there's combustion there. So very

good point, Emmett, thank you for clarifying that. All Right, we're scratching graphing off the list of the official one ring list, I guess, so alright, here's another one ring email, and this one comes to us from Sandy Sandy Rights, and it says, Dear Robert and Joe. First, I might have squealed a tiny bed when I saw the title of the episode. I love Tolkien and was so happy for this episode. And while I have a few corrections and notes, I mean, you hit nerd um, you know

it's it's going to happen. I want to say I love the episode, even when people looked at me funny on the tram when I spoke out loud in response several times. Sorry not sorry. First, regarding whether smog could have destroyed the one Ring, you actually answered it earlier in the show. To quote Gandolf, it has been said that dragon fire could melt and consume the rings of power.

But there is not in now any dragon left on Earth in which the old fire is hot enough, nor was there ever any dragon, not even uh and Callaghan, the Black who could have harmed the One Ring, the ruling ring, for that was made by Sarin himself. She continues, Smag could have potentially destroyed the rings of Power, the Three, the seven, or the Nine, but he could not have destroyed the One Ring even and Callaghan the Black could

not have destroyed the one. Oh and also, uh, Sandy throws in that it's very possible that Christopher Tolkien could have covered this particular item as well in his various publications. Anyway, uh, they continue. Second, you almost failed to mention, but did circle back to it the issue of the ring size, But then you aired no shame. Part of the will of the ring, or rather part of it mirroring the will of its master, is its ability to change shape.

This allows it to change bearers when it chooses. This is also why one of the names that the ring is known by is is Sildor's Bane. Uh seek for the sore that was broken in in lad risks it dwells. There shall be Council's taken stronger than mortal spells. There shall be shown a token that doom is near at hand. For is Celdor's Bain shall awaken, and the Halfling fourth shall stand the poem from Paramir's recurring dream that bore Amir then has once and which leads him to the

Council of l Run in Rivendale. This all makes sense to me, because I don't know if you mentioned after we did the episode, I was like, Okay, I gotta go back and just wait. Yeah, I've been reading it. I'm in the middle of two towers right now, Sandy continues. It's called that because the ring had come into Sildor's possession after he cut it off Sorin's finger in the War of the Last Alliance. He ignored Counsel to destroy it, which suggests perhaps he could have in the immediate defeat

and weakening of Soron. Maybe probably not, especially if it's the ring that led to the Orc ambush that resulted in his death. When he and the company he was with were ambushed by Orcs after a fierce battle, with the works winning, he put it on his finger to escape to keep the ring from falling in the wrong hands, and did so until the ring slipped off his finger. Most think that it did so intentionally, enlarging itself enough to slip off his finger, and he escaped, and and

he escaped and was then killed by the orcs. This intentional slipping off of the finger may also be how it moved from Gallum to Bilbo. If Gallum had worn the ring, it had slipped off, and he had forgotten that he had worn it, he would expect it to be in its hiding place. Thus, when he returned to get it to ambush Bilbo after being bested in the contest of Riddles, it was not there, as Bilbo had

found it and slipped it into his pocket. Right, So they're saying that the ring maybe sort of like getting bigger and smaller when it wants to stick on somebody's finger or fall off somebody's finger in order to make it to a new host. It's almost like a parasite of some kind that that has like attaching and detaching kind of properties, or like the way some paradise parasites that are intestinal parasites will intentionally get themselves pooped out at some point in order to pass on to the

next point in their life cycle. The ring kind of works that way. But you know, Sandy is also touching on something which I could think could be a potential benefit of the ring, that we are a power of the ring. So if you're like me and you have a ring that is kind of loose fitting, you'll find that on cold days it is more likely just to slide off, and on hot days it is more it can be more difficult to remove. Though. It also has to do with things like have you been walking around

with your hands at your sides? Have you been drinking beer? Yeah, there's all these factors that can affect the fit of a ring. But if you have the one ring, I'm guessing as long as it wants you, you're gonna have a perfect fit at all times. And I think that's amazing excellent craftsmanships are on one of a kind. All right, Sandy continues Almost done here. An interesting part of the ring that you did not mention was those that seem

immune to its poll or able to resist it. We see both Galadriol and Gandalf refuse it, but they both also bear one of the three, and that is not to say that they were not tempted. However, we have two mortals, neither Elf nor Maya, and not protected by the three. The Nine, of course, bearing no such protection for their wares as the bears of the Nine or

the Ring raths Farremir and Sam. Sam even bears the Ring with seemingly no temptation to do more than to carry the burden for Frodo, And one must wonder how would things have been different if if the brother, not tempted by the Ring had gone to Rivendale. Of course, Bomba Dill could literally play with the ring and see through its invisibility. But Bomba Dill is probably not exactly mortal. And yeah, I think Bomba Dill, by by most interpretations,

is far from mortal. Kind of primal beings, a primal deity that is no no longer really connected to the the affairs of I mean, he's connected in nature, I suppose, but not to the affairs of all these mortals and immortals battling for control of things. Dude, we're really tunneled deep into Nerd Mountain here. But did we tunnel too deep? I don't know. We'll find out anyway. Sandy finishes up anyway,

I doubt this is the only way. Too long email about the wonder Wonderful despite its errors episode, Thank you very much for doing it, peace, Sandy. Wait, I'm still not sure what exactly were the errors. I a lot lost track in there. I think maybe we did not. We didn't get the thing about the dragon's breath. No, well, I mean, I don't know. I don't think these were necessarily errors. Uh, but they might be literally of them. Here.

I think that more Sandy was bringing up aspects of the mythology and extended mythology that we didn't really dwell on in the episode. Sandy, I I accept your wisdom. You are the master. You are clearly the lower master. You're the one who should have gone to Rivendell. We're we're the fool hardy bore A mirrors who barged ahead

without having the wisdom and restraint. No, but, but no. This is what I love about this topic is that there's so much room for ultimately for interpretation when you start trying to apply science to the scenario or really you know, reach for the definitive answer on questions regarding you know, the nature of the One Ring. But okay, we've made it over the bridge of Kasa Doom. We're now out of the nerd minds of Maria and into the daylight on the other side. And yet we have

more listener mail related to the One Ring. And this one comes to us from Tim. Oh wait, okay, yeah, so this one refers to another similar thing. So Tim Rights, Uh, hey, stuff to blow your mind. I listen to your One Ring episode first, I want to say, bold move. I bet you've got an insane amount of listener mail for that one. Not as much male as we got about School Dreams, but we got some, right though. I should also say we have an older email address that I

don't think works anymore. So if you're still using the house Stuff works addressed to reach out for us, that's probably not going anywhere. I don't know. We might still be getting man or might not. I don't. I don't know what's arriving, just as we're not entirely sure about how the One Ring functions were. Also not entirely sure how company email works. Uh, Tim Rights. At one point you'all mentioned a sci fi version of Lord of the Rings.

I thought you'd be interested in C. S. Lewis's space trilogy. Is it particularly good sci fi? No? Is it a page turner on par with Lord of the Rings? No surrey, But does it specifically mention locations from Lord of the Rings? And was it made partially on a bet with Tolkien? About trying to write sci fi. Yes, allegedly, both Tolkien and Lewis wanted to write science fiction because their contemporaries

were writing atheistic science fiction. Both authors produced something. Lewis wrote the Space Space Trilogy and included themes from Tolkien. Tolkien wrote a strange unfinished story that is marginally about l Ron time traveler. You can read this oddity in one of the History of Middle Earth books I forget which. I don't suggest any of these works as good reads, but they're really neat when viewed in the context of both Tolkien and Lewis, and especially the theoretical combined Tolkien

slush Lewis Legendarium. Anyways, great content. I couldn't ask for a better podcast to play in the background while I work. Thank you, sincerely, Tim. Yeah, I I read the Space Trilogy years and years back, like maybe it was even high school when I read, Yeah, I was. I think it was maybe high school when I read it initially, and then I reread I think Paralandra the second one in college. Paralandro was my favorite of the three by by far, and I think if I were to reread

one today, it would definitely be Paralandra. Which if you're not familiar with it, it it recreates. I believe it's on it's on Venus um. Yes, because the first one is out of the Silent planet, which is Mars, and Paralandra is Venus. And what's created is kind of an Eden world. It's a it's a water planet. It's an Eden. And we have our character Ransom human show up and he's uh and he's also arriving on the planet. Is this other character that is a human, but a human

that is possessed by by a demon? I believe the it is, you know, it's basically Satan. So you have this whole like uh, you know, sort of treatment of sin and evil in the world and uh you know, retelling of you know, the fall of Eden On in this this strange, you know, mythic kind of uh sci fi setting. But it is, like you said, only marginally sci fi. It's it's it's it ain't hard sci fi at all, it's you know, maybe soft sci fi. If we're going to get into the you know, the exact

new Gutty um you know, aspect of it here. But I remember digging it back in the day. I don't I don't know how I feel about it today. But that's one reason to reread it. Uh. Yeah, I guess that goes to the question we dealt with. I think maybe in the last listener Maile episode about what is science fiction? Is it about human humanity's challenges presented by new technology? Or is it just like any stories that take place in the future or stories that take place

with space travel. Yeah, and I don't I don't think that episode. I mean that I don't think that installment was at all concerned with technology. I think it was inspired by sort of planet sci fi, of the you know, of of the olden days. And then was about you know, Lewis exploring topics that Lewis was interested in, sword and planet stuff. Yeah, sword and planet exactly. Now. The third one was is is weird what that hideous strength? I haven't.

I haven't read any of it. I remembered having some There was some like gender stuff in there that I probably would not really appreciate today, But I also remember there being some like real horror based stuff like that. As far as like horror and A C. S. Lewis book goes, there are some moments and that hideous strength that that that feel kind of creepy things with you know, disembodied heads being made to speak and so forth. It's been a long time, but I remember when I read

the Narnia books. I remember there was a passage and voyage of the Dawn Treader that I found really horrifying as a kid. At least it was like when they go through this fog of fear or something. I don't know. Maybe i'll go back revisit it, and it seems rather tamed today. All right, we need to take a break, but we'll be right back with more than all right, we're back, and this time we truly leave the worlds of Tolkien and Lewis behind and we move on into

more firmly scientific territory. Oh okay, this is just a short message, uh from Rasmus about our Electric micro Bland episode. Hello, stuff to pull your mind. Just listen to the episode Electric MicroB Bland, and I wanted to let you know how great it was. It was one of my favorite episodes ever. I think it brought up some very interesting concepts about electron transportation and respiration that I had never heard of before, and I hope you will do more

episodes on this topic. Best regards Rasmus. Uh, yeah, I'm not sure what the next thing on this subject area would be, but I'm I'm game from or if you are Robert, I guess. Yeah. We just have to see what kind of studies and papers come out in the months ahead. Yeah, all right, we have another listener mail. This one concerns euphemisms, and this one this was a vault episode. I believe, yes, it was so, Thomas writes. The euphemism episode brought to mind a homework assignment I

once had in primary school. We had to write a number of euphemisms. So, being the smart alec that I was, I thought i'd be hilarious to put making love is a euphemism for sexual intercourse. I think I was nine. I don't remember the reaction I got from my teeth. Joe mentioned that he loves idioms from around the world, so down here in New Zealand and maybe Australia too, we say we're not here to spiders, which basically translates as we're not here to waste time. I love this expression.

That is so good. I live in Canada now and once said this and got a resounding look of confusion. I love both your shows and think it would could be interesting to hear invention shows on plastic and knives. Recently been watching Bob Kramer knife making videos. Keep up the good work. Knife making videos can be very hypnotic. Now, I don't want to I don't want to speak too much about invention on a listener mail for stuff to blow your mind, because we do our own invention listener

mails as well. But knives could be interesting. Not so much in terms of of pinpointing like where knives were invented and that sort of thing, but maybe looking at the sort of innovations that have taken place over time, like how knives have changed and what different purposes we use knives for. Yeah, it would be a huge, very complex story, probably a multi parter, right, because what would

you have to start with the hand axe? Going back to our dietrich Stout interview, Yeah, I mean you probably have to start with pre knife stone tools, but then you can get into some really fun stuff like the switch blade. Off the top of my head, I had no idea exactly how the switch plade comes into being, but it is such an iconic knife. It's the bad guy knife, you know, Robert, we're not here to Spider Uh, to say nothing of the Swiss Army knife. Now I'm

even more convinced. I'm I'm very interested in chasing these various weird knives through history. Alright. This next email about euphemisms was very short, but I wanted to read it because I thought it was funny. Uh. This is just part of an email we got from our listener Anna. Anna says she just listened to our Vault episode about euphemisms uh, and writes A bad example of a euphemism is when I worked full time for a software company. The company was not doing very well, so they had

to decrease everyone to four days a week. They described this as quote increasing your work life balt God. That is some. That is some some of the worst corporate BS speech speak that I encountered. Really good, alright, this one next one comes to us from Roger, and Roger says, hey, guys, I've been a fan of stuffabull in your Mind for a long time and really enjoy your new show invention.

As well. Having to drive one hour to get to work each day gives me plenty of time to listen to your podcasts to make the drive more enjoyable and I try to catch every episode. Being a Norwegian myself, it was interesting to hear that the Norwegian phrase uh ugler i mosen owls in the moss had reached you.

As you found the phrase somewhat amusing, I thought i'd shed some more light on it, especially since the phrase falls in line with how languages change, as you mentioned regarding the euphemism treadmill example in your euphemism's episode, the phrase, as you mentioned, means something is afoot or something is not how it should be. Another way of putting it is to be wary or be careful. The term actually originates from Denmark. However, in Danish the term was a

day air air ruler mussin. Now this term has a different meaning in Danish and actually means there are wolves in the swamp or marsh. That makes a lot more sense for something being afoot. The difference here, of course, is that the Danes used uhler wolves rather than ugler owls, and in Danish the word mossen means swamps or marshes wetlands,

while the same word mosen in Norwegian means moss. The Danish term was primarily used with regards to the cattle trade to imply a shady trade up until the end of the eighteen hundreds, and after the wolves were eradicated from Denmark, the term gradually changed from uhler wolves to ugler owls and has since kept that meaning. Another fun thing to remark about this is also that the term

has yet again changed a little. When something is shady or there is something afoot, and we have a single word in Norwegian which encapsulates the whole meaning, and that is muffins smuffins. So it's like instead of saying something shad is going on, you can just say muffins. Yeah, you would say uh um he or that no muffins. That would mean they say there was something shady going on here. These days, you will sometimes hear people say here that muffins imsen, meaning there is something shady in

the moss. And this has yet again, sometimes deliberately to be funny and other times simply as a misquote, been changed to hair heard muffins imosin, which means that there are muffins in the moss. You could argue that muffins in the moss also implies that something is not right or that there is something afoot. So while the phrase

has been changed around. It still retains its original meaning, at least to some extent, though it has moved quite a bit from its original and foreboding message there are wolves in the marshes to the more benign there are muffins in the moss. I thought this might be a fun little exploration into how the language, how language changes over time, using a foreign phrase you brought up in

your podcast. Also, big thanks to both of your podcasts, which keep me entertained always allows me to pick up and learn new things, as well as how you frequently come at various topics from unexpected angles and often uh makes me go hm. I never thought of it that way while on my way to or from work. Keep up the great work and looking forward to the next episodes of both Invention and Stuff to bowl your mind. Well. Thank you so much, Roger. That was fantastically interesting and funny.

We we had heard from several other listeners about the owls in the moss expression. You're not the only one to get in touch about that, but this is the only place I think I heard about muffins. Yeah, I really like this muffins in the moss talk. I want to start incorporating that into my uh, you know, into my daily discourse. But Robert, we're not here to muffins in the moss. You're really getting a lot out of out of Carney's new um profanity bleeping software. Joe, you're

really putting it to the test here. We keep it clean around here. O. Alright, finally, I think we're gonna read something about the Voyage Manuscript episodes we did so. This comes from Matt. Matt says, Hey, guys, longtime listener, first time correspondent, absolutely love the show, along with invention, stuff you should know and stuff they don't want you to know. I've had a high res PDF of the Voyage Manuscript for a while and I've used it in my own artwork as well as in D and D

campaigns as inspiration. Man, we are just hearing from so many D and D people. Yeah, and I love it. And the more dungeon masters and game masters we have listening to the show, the better. Matt goes on. The drawings are somewhat sloppy, but very endearing. The text is immaculate and fascinating, at least esthetically. My theory is simple, It's an art book, not intended to deceive or prank anyone, just a cool project of someone similar to me, to

be honest. A few things I noticed is that it looks like the drawings were done first and the text added after. Pretty obvious. I also think it was written from right to left and not left right. Could be the creator or creators was left handed. I am left handed, and I find writing that way is quite easy, especially if I'm a hundred percent making it up as I go. It also drastically reduces smudging. I took bookmaking and book restoring classes in art school, and I made a few

occult tons for fun or as class projects. Never sold them, still have them some twenty plus years later. One is even on antique paper I found, which brings me to another theory I read. Not sure if you covered it. Maybe the text, art, and paper itself are all of different ages or even by different people. Anyway, keep up the fascinating work, and I have a long back catalog of you guys to eventually listen to, which I love. It would be sad if there were only fifty or

so podcasts so far. Thank you for reading, Matt, and then Matt attached a page for us to look at from one of his voyage esque art books. It looks like a combination of some strange architectural plans with some kind of like tool album cover body art kind of a Leonaro da Vinci UH aspect to it as well. Yeah, I like this, you know, speaking of I would love to come back and do something on Leonardo da Vinci

proper because I was listening to Ideas on CBC Radio Kennedy. Well, Paul has has moved on now he's retired, uh, and there's a new host, but it's still a great show. And they did one recently on Leonardo da Vinci's use of monsters and UH and his his his like lifelong obsession with monsters, and it was It was quite fascinating, obviously because it touches on several different things that that

I really enjoy. So if I would recommend anyone out there, if you want to check out Ideas, you've heard me talk about it for for years, if you're interested in monsters and or Leonardo da Vinci, go find that episode. I am tremendously intrigued. Their spikes shooting out of my brain about this, all right, I have another voltage manuscript bit of listener mail to lead here. This one comes

to us from David. David right, So, I was just finishing your episodes on the Vantage manuscript, and I wanted to see if what I started to suspect had already been offered as a theory. One of you mentioned that signals and proto cryptograms, uh, you would create as a child. I had already begun to suspect almost as quickly as I started listening to the episodes, the possibility that it is the work of a child. Uh. This could explain

a few things. The nonsensical language but close enoughness of the language, the unrecognizable drawings, even the drawings of naked women of prime curiosity for male children. If you think about the nature of manuscripts of the time, access to the material was reserved for either the clergy or the very wealthy. The idea of a child more or less

rules out the clergy. But it wouldn't be an extreme stretch of the imagination that a wealthy lord or baron could allocate resources for the pet project of their preferred son. I say son because it's the most logical choice for the time and place, and privileged people believing that their children are somehow. Uh. But you know, preternaturally intelligent is nothing new and also never going to go out of style.

The product of the kinds of pressure the children like these experience do often exhibit a sophistication beyond their years, which could explain the nature of the drawing and the writing. This is just an idea, and it wouldn't surprise me if somebody else had already come up with it. I'm

not claiming to have cracked it. I've never even looked at it, because if it is the work of a child's mind and there's there's nothing to crack, it's just adults trying to decipher meanings from the musings of a child, which would be equally frustrating and hilarious to think about, all the wasted time and conspiracy. And at the end of the day, the answers to many riddles are hiding in plain sight. It's only when we try to read into them and over and analyze them that they become misconstrued.

Thanks for your time, both for reading and the work you put into your shows. Cheers, David. Now, this is really interesting. I like I really like this. This idea of looking at it potentially is the work of a child, you know, in part because that could potentially it seems

like it could maybe be one of the impossibilities. But more importantly, I like the idea of them learned adults coming to it and over analyzing it and finding it so intriguing, adults who you know no longer have the that pure childhood curiosity, that that that pure plasticity of a young child. Uh And but in in doing so, it's it's kind of like, you know, the whole idea

of children say the darndest things or whatever. You know, like children will say weirdly crazy and often the logical things that just fill us with laughter and and sometimes awe. You know, sometimes they cut to like a truth of the universe that that we would never you know, we would never quite say it that way, but a child has. We would never draw it that way, but a child did. So, you know, I like this idea As the father of a child who loves to illustrate strange books about dinosaurs.

You know, I'll look at them and I'll be like, that is that is crazy? I love it? And uh, yeah, I can imagine something like that take in place with the Vonage manuscript, whether or not it's actually a valid theory or not totally. One last thing I will say about the Voyage manuscript is that several listeners got in touch to ask us about a particular theory explaining it that has has been in a couple of videos online.

I believe it's with some scholars saying they believe it's in some archaic form of Turkish or has something to do with like, uh, a Turkish culture that that created the manuscript. I basically like I've looked at it, I looked at the videos. I have no way of evaluating it because I don't have you know, expertise in cryptography or Turkish or medieval manuscripts or and I guess not medival,

medieval or Renaissance manuscripts. So I don't know. But I also haven't found anything by experts evaluating this theory, so that that already makes me a little uh cautious about saying, yes, they cracked it, as you know, we tended to be with all kinds of things, but as possible, Yeah, I'd be curious to hear what the scholars and relevant expert say. Well, the folks at Yale would be the ones to ask. They would be at the how do you the by

Nicky Library or Harvard said what? I think we said it wrong and one of the ones and one of us is right or we're both wrong. But I feel like we have pretty good adds there. Uh. Well, I don't know about you, Joe, but I feel like I'm I'm out of steam for this week's listener mail. Yes, I would say there are owls in the moss because they've lost the will to fly and fully collapsed into the underbrush. All right, So yeah, we're gonna go ahead

and close the mailbox for now. Again. We we read everything, we don't get to read everything on the show, and we don't get right back, but we do continue to continue to enjoy hearing from everyone. Uh. You know, you end up adding so much additional insight into the topics we discuss, and we just love to know as well, you know what what is really resonating with you, what kind of topics that you dig, and what kind of

topics you want us to do in the future. In the meantime, if you want to listen to more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you'll find a bit Stuff to bo your Mind dot Com and you'll find the podcast wherever you get your podcast. The best thing, the best thing you can do to support the show is to tell other people about it and to rate and review wherever you have the power to do so. Now the same goes for Invention, our show that goes

through human techno history, one invention at a time. Invention pot dot com is the website, but you'll find it all over the place. And if you want a little slice of sci fi fiction Harror this holiday season as you're you're driving around or flying around, or just stay and put check out the second oil Age. That's the show that I worked on. And as of this publication, I think most of the episodes are up, maybe have

like two more. It's gonna all the episodes will be up by the end of November, and then you can ditch it. If you haven't listened to the second oil Age yet, really do check it out. I think you will love it. If you're a fan of this show, it should be right up your alley all right. Well, thanks to Carney for helping us out once more. Of course, thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

If you'd like to get in touch with us, with feedback on this episode or any other, to just send some general listener mail that could be featured on a future episode like this one. You can as always email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.