Listener Mail: Cat Comfort

bean episodes. My family and I grow corn, wheat and soybeans here in Ontario, so I was thrilled to see you focus so much attention on the humble legume. I thought I knew quite a bit about them before, but learned much more. The mythical historical context of beans was something I was largely unaware of and from particularly interesting. Had a couple of thoughts. You mentioned the use of a couple of different beans slash lagoons in the developing

plant protein market. There's a huge push here in Canada to capitalize on this for many different crops, particularly in the West, lentils, chickpeas, soybeans, and a bunch more. Each one has a lot of potential uses beyond what's already current, and not just for food products destined for direct human consumption. On a related note, I think looking into how useful beans, grains, and other field crops are in industrial processing would be

a neat subject. Like animal byproducts, they are in many things we use or depend on every day without realizing it. The number of subsequent uses one particular crop can have is another thing. For example, the use of barley grain in beer production, then the subsequent use of the spent mash as feed for livestock. That's interesting. One last thing. The Listener mail episode contained a letter suggesting you cover animal science. There's a lot of interesting work going on

in this field in the agricultural space. I don't know much about the met ecal side, but that's surely pretty interesting too, so I would similarly suggest the subject. Thanks again for your work, Matt, Well, thanks Matt. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Keep growing those chickpeas, all right. Here's one that comes to us from Spencer. Spencer says Hi, Robert, Joe, and Seth. I've listened to your show NonStop since, and

I adore the work y'all put out. I picked this show up on the Alphabet and the Goddess episodes while working on a sustainable vegetable farm, and I haven't looked back. I recently switched from a career in farming to become a high school science teacher, and I can proudly say that you were pivotal in making that decision. Sharing in the joy of investigating curiosities across the natural world, the expansive universe, in our fascinating inner worlds has made such

an impact on me. I only hope to bring to my students that same level of joy and curiosity. I'm sure your work inspires all sorts of educators across the field. At which field? The bean field? Oh wait, I just realized. I think I think I told Matt to keep growing chickpeas. But Matt didn't say he grew chickpeas. He said he grew corn, wheat and soybeans. Sorry, Matt, keep growing those, whichever one you like best. Grow the soybeans, love them?

Lagoon faux pas there make me tellfu Alright, anyway, this this letter continues, I have two things I'd like to share one. I recently listened to the two parter on beans and found myself putting my farmer hat back on. Specifically, when you spoke about the storage capacity of the lowly being and how crucial that was to the development of settled civilizations, I found myself going back to June afternoons in the North Carolina muck. We would often soak dried

beans before planting them to assist their germination success. This got me thinking about something that's always astounded me. How does an inert, dried object so obstensibly not alive have the capacity to live so vibrantly once it's in the right conditions. I would love to hear an episode about the magic of germ nation. Not just the mythical and metaphorical connotations of seeds giving way to life, but how is it that stale, crusty seeds can suddenly burst into lush,

green platforms. That's a great idea. I feel like that's come up in bits and pieces on subjects in the past. I know, I know. Um. In a pair of episodes we did about about natural fires, about like fires in the forest, we talked about some germination that depends on

the stimulation of of a forest fire to get going. Yeah, yeah, you know, you know, speaking of education and all, I think I thought about this but ended up not mentioning in the Beans articles Beans episodes rather, but it reminded me of those the science experiments that I think a lot of us uh conduct when we're children in school, where you take the being and you have it in the zip block bag with some like a wet paper towel,

and then you watch that germination process take place. Uh you know, it's it's ultimately such a you know, magical feeling and amazing spectacle to watch, and we kind of, I don't know, we kind of forget it over time, We forget how how amazing it is, uh that seeds do what they do. It reminds me of in the office Creed sprouting mung beans on a damp paper towel in his desk. Oh man, we I don't think we

even't got to discussmong beans in those episodes. I had like a few notes on mung beans and had some a source highlighted, but I just don't think we had time to get into it. Yeah, there are like tons of beans we didn't have time to get into. I guess We're coming back for three or four or five, six, seven more episodes on beans. The beans saga continued. The people want it alright, Spencer continues, though he had to two things to bring up. That was just the first

number two. I went back into the vault and rediscovered the excellent episode on teething. In this episode, you made a call out to educators, what is it like to teach children how to tease? I thought i'd chime in with a unique take. Since I've been in a one year teacher preparation program that started in a pandemic, I have only interacted with my students through zoom and email.

You can imagine that impedes natural social relationships with anyone, but I think this is especially important for young people regarding teasing. I don't think you can tease others so easily when you've only met online. Not to mention that most students keep their cameras off. Yeah, it's also difficult to gauge someone's off the record cues for a teasing moment. As a result, my classes have mostly taken a no

teasing policy. Sometimes a student will chime in a response in the zoom chat to other students comments and it just seems like bullying. There ain't much of a nuanced way to delineate playful from harmful teasing when you're just working with a chat lock. Oh yeah, I can absolutely see that. Um. Obviously, good natured teasing can be a lot of fun in person, and it's I think it's an important thing for the development of kids to like, you know, learn learn to tell the difference, to read

those subtle cues. But that's gonna be a lot harder over the internet. Yeah, I mean it's harder for adults too. Yeah, I mean I think a lot of us have probably encountered that with using zoom for you know, special for for social scenarios, catching up with friends and all like. It's not the same in so many ways. Anyway, Spencer continues, I wonder what the virtual year of education will do to our young people, still in their most formative periods

of social and emotional development. Well, this got rather long winded. Hope y'all are well. Please keep sharing your curiosity, joy and humor with us. It is so necessary. Cheers Spencer, ps weirdhouses dope. Well, thank you, Spencer, thanks for for writing in with all those thoughts. Yeah, I mean especially, I mean, yeah, open question on what the the the the Tela era of of education and work and socialization, like what how will we look back on this a

year from now, two years from now, etcetera. UM, it's uh, it's gonna it's gonna be interesting to to discuss it in in here here folks analyzing it. But congrats on your move into teaching. That's awesome. Helps sprout those young minds. Like mung beans on a damp paper towel, Yes here we got one that's sort of beans, but maybe edges into weird house cinema. I don't know. This is from

someone who calls themselves the Golden Sardine. Fair enough, call yourself what you want to call yourself, Okay, doky, golden Sardine says, how do you again? I guess I don't remember the last time they say. Today, I was listening to your two parter about beans when you mentioned the lack of bean themed horror in cinema. That's right, Yeah, I can only think of one horror movie related to beans, and that would be My Name is Bruce, starring Bruce Campbell.

I like to think of it as the unofficial Evil Dead for The gist of the plot is that a bean curd demon is released in a small town. The town folks then decided to kidnap Bruce Campbell due to his extensive demon fighting experience hijinksin sue. It might not be weird house material, but it's at least worth a watch. Anyways. I enjoy the show and look forward to future episodes.

The Golden Sardine. Um, I haven't seen that movie. I do enjoy Bruce Campbell and he's a He's a delightful ham But that sounds like that's played for comedy, and that's not what I had in mind when I was saying there should be more being horror. I mean, like straight scary being horror. Well, this was not an example I was familiar with, but I think it's a solid one. But it reminds me of another example. And this is not a straight horror film. It's more of a like

a fantasy film for all ages, but it is. But it is by Takashi Mickay, who is kind of a notable Japanese filmmaker because of some of the more I guess extreme and troubling material that he's created over the years.

But this one The Great Yokai War from two thousand five is as I remember it, and it's been a little bit more of a family fantasy affair with a bunch of Japanese spirits and there's like an evil guy that kind of looks like m Bison that they're opposing, and I think they if I remember correctly, they end up using a zuki beans to defeat the enemy, like a zuki beans are the are the are the final weapon they turned to and it successfully rids them of

the demon horror. Well, that sounds interesting, but you're saying that that's probably sort of played for for comedy two. Mika is all over the map in terms of genre and tone, right, Like he does extremely dark, serious, violent, nasty horror and like family movies and musicals and comedies and stuff. It's it's like everything right, Yeah, Like this is a pretty pretty far away from like Audition or something like that. This one I think is for the

for the family. Um, it was played for laughs, but it also I think was clearly getting into some of those traditions we were talking about earlier about the idea that beings have this innate power to dispel demons. If you're listening. Whoever you are, film Gearmo del Toro or whatever. Yeah, give give us the straight dark bean horror. All right, here's one. This one comes to us from Wonco. Uh. This one is titled Cats and Humans in Boxes. Hello again,

Robert and Joe. I'm writing in today with an interesting counterpoint to the cats love boxes argument. The wife and I live in the employee of three cats. Two of them will climb into a box as expected, but the third, who is blind, actually has a borderline fear response. My theory is that the box is a sudden change to her accustomed environment. If we leave it for a while, she will begin to investigate. But I have never seen her climb into one, nor will she use an enclosed

litter box. Thanks again, keep up the great work. Welcome. That's interesting. I've never heard of that before. I mean, sometimes I feel like, you know, the cats are just they're going to break the rules. They're going to break your expectations of them. If there's something that is considered like a general rule of cats, well a cat will

come along and violate that rule. Cats love boxes. No, you someone out there, you will have the cap that of whrrors boxes And there's nothing you can do about it, because cats ultimately have the final say. Okay, another one about the two parter we did about cats and boxes and humans in boxes. This one is from Simon. Simon says, Hi, guys, love the podcast. Just wanted to give you a heads

up on pronunciation from a recent show. The A text about how to become an anchor s came up and I called it the on cream we's the a n c r E n E and then w I S s E. But Simon says, the oncream wee popped up and you pronounced both words with a silent final e. The consensus pronunciation would have those final volves voiced, rather like a German speaker might pronounce porsche. I think so. I believe it would be on crena wesa I guess

if if Simon is correct. A great and entertaining resource for old English pronunciation is the History of English podcast, where this book appears in episode one oh three. Again, love the work. Thanks Simon. All right, we had an email here from Josh and uh, it's a good email. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I do to just to highlight a couple of things they bring up that are pretty solid about cats in their boxes.

Because Josh brings up the idea of opening a drawer and then taking things out of the drawer, you turn around cats in the drawer. I have also observed this as well, if the drawer is open and it is not like completely stuffed, if the cat is around, the cat will just appear. It will summon the cat out of out of midair, and then she will climb into

the drawer. The The other thing that Josh brings up is that they think that their own cat when it comes to sitting on papers, you know, be at mortgage documents, medical bills, etcetera. They say, um, quote, I think this is because she can kill two birds with one stone, she gets to sit on paper and she gets to demand my attention. Uh. And the Josh also included pictures

of the cat doing just this. Yeah, I hypothesized something like this when we were talking about cats on squares and stuff that I wonder if a significant amount of this is just that the cat notices you paying attention to a square of paper or even a square you've laid down with tape or something like that, and the cat is trying to be in your center of attention. Yeah, I don't know. It seems to be the case at times. I know that there are times where the cat want

I have. I can relate to a cat wanting my attention like it wants to be fed. She wants to be fed, so she is going to be conspicuous by where she is, you know, generally underfoot or crawling on me, that sort of thing. Okay, I got one more though about the when you say cats sitting in drawers. I just remembered a friend of mine had a cat who loved to sit in the bathroom sink. And so if you're at his house, every time you go to the bathroom you go to wash your hands, the cats there

in the sink and will not move. Uh So the question is do you turn on the water or not? It seems like it would be cruel to do so, But how else are you gonna wash your hands. I have a friend who used to have a cat like this that you would go to the sink and the cat would be at the sink, and this cat wanted you to turn the water on because it also wanted to drink the water from the sink. Sure not soapy water, no, No, no, the fresh water from this pickett nice, but they didn't

know how to do it themselves. So you know, it's like, clearly go in there. When a human is in there, they're going to turn it on. And maybe from the cat's point of view, that's why the humans here, Like at last, a human has come to give me water from the faucet. Alright. Actually, a number of listeners got in touch about their about their cats. I'm gonna mentioned parts of another email here. This one we got from

longtime listener shel Dean. Sheldean mentions having four cats in her house, and she says they all love boxes to some extent. But our oldest cat, Lily, she's fourteen, basically lives in a box in the kitchen. We've always thought it was a warmth thing, only it's in a corner under the radiator. But your episode has made me reconsider this.

It might also be a social thing. Uh. The Sheldean says that apparently she's the dominant cat, though that's based on some slew things she did based on a cat behavior article she read on the internet, So maybe we should take that with a grain of salt um. But she says, regardless, the other three cats are male, and two of them fight with Lily, So I think her

behavior might also have a social component. In her box, she's out of the way and safe, so that that might connect to the thing we talked about in the episode where a possible reason cats might see boxes among the many others is just a way of mediating social conflict, you know, in the box. Getting in the box could essentially just be an avoidance behavior to to avoid conflicts.

Sheldean also says, uh, I think this is picking up on the story I had from my childhood where when we used to take our cat to the vetch, we would take her in a in a cardboard cat carrier that had like air holes and everything. But it wasn't

like the plastic and metal crates of today. It was made a cardboard and Sheldean says Joe regarding the cat carriers, I can tell you that before immigrating, my cats regarded the cat carriers with dismay when they came out, but they would still enter them to explore, which was when I would trap them. Since they're very long flight to another country. They now regard the carriers with utter terror. It's a bit sad that it was so obviously a

terrifying experience for them. Fortunately, we now have a vet who comes to us, so we only need to haul out the carriers in an emergency. And touching on the need for warmth, we have hammock beds hanging off radiators in our home, and I think if I could fit

in one, I'd find them extremely warm. But the cats love the radiators, and she attaches a picture for us to look at, and so that goes along with what we've been talking about about how often cats will will seek out, you know, a hot computer or radiator or anything, because in general, if your house is comfortable for humans

to be in, it's probably too cold for cats. They're their therm neutral temperature is much higher than the average humans is, you know, on the difference between cats, it is interesting to to hear from someone who owns a cat, first of all, earlier that the cat wants to drink water from a tap. Part of me is just like, what was what is that like to have a cat that will drink water? That is that not part of

some meat already? Because it's it's uh, it's always a struggle to make sure that our cat has enough water, uh in its body, because it doesn't seem interested in any water that is not part of meat already. And then this idea that like the cap being drawn to the radiator, like we we got this heating pad for the pet. You know, it's kept it like a low temperature to provide some heat, and at best she'll lay next to it sometimes like like you know, maybe just

picking up on some of the ambient heat. But other times she seems to be actively avoiding it, as if to say, I do not like this. This is this is unnatural, and I refuse to set on it. I don't know, maybe we're doing something wrong. I'm sorry having cat problems, man, No no, no, no, I mean she's she's all right at the moment. I mean she is in general a problem. But um but you know if

she's great too, so what can you do? One last thing Sheldean mentions is the idea that you raised in the Cats and Squares episode, uh Rob about the possibility And I still think this is a very very good idea that that should be explored more, the possibility that maybe a lot of cats that live in houses like squares and sheets of paper and things like that on

the ground. Uh, not as an instinctual thing about being a cat, but as a conditioned behavior where they've become accustomed to sitting on a square of sunlight that pours through the window onto the floor to get warm, and so now they always think, oh, a square on the floor, that that that that will be warm. I do think that that that seems very plausible to me. And Sheldean says that indeed her cats do follow the squares of

sun all around the house. That would this would be an interesting one to see some some sort of experimentation take place, ye figuring out exactly to what extent uh they're drawn to the you know, the geometric aspects of the light as opposed to just the presence of light and warmth. Anyway, Sheldean says, hopefully you guys already know that I love the show and appreciate all the effort

you put in. Best wishes, Sheldan, Uh, Sheldon, Oh, And Sheldon has a ps about the the collective noun for cats, which she claims, I don't know if she's she's teasing us here. She says, the collective noun for cats is a clouder c l O W D E er that sounds made up, and that for kittens it is a kindle also sounds made up. I don't know. I'll take your word for it, all right. This one comes to

us from Carlton. Hello, Robin Joe. I wanted to share a connection to your artifact episode titled the Toad Vomit Miracle. I'm a middle school reading specialist and I use a program with my students to help improve their comprehension which features short, high interest passages. One of them, which happens to be a student favorite, is called frog Vomit. I have included the text below. The program is grounded in dual coding theory to help facilitate improvements in reading comprehension

through the use of mental imagery. In order to accomplish this, the students spend lots of time reading, visualized and talking about passages written to stimulate visual imagery. The striking imagery of a frog or toad vomiting up its own stomach and using its quote unquote hands to scrape out the

contents is usually very effective. The way I check for understanding is by asking my students to show me a hand motion of the hands scraping the stomach if their hands are in the right place where a stomach would dangle from their mouths making a scraping down and out motion, and they are giggling that I know they have created a strong mental image of the concept, or a castalt as the program describes. I was so excited to listen to an episode about a topic that I have had

the joy of helping students cover through reading. On that note, have you considered an episode about the science of reading. It's an extremely broad reaching topic with plenty of controversy, and there have been time periods described as the Reading Wars where proponents of science and popular practices clashed. The raise science of reading is a hot topic and education right now as well. I would love to hear you

guys discuss the multiple topics it could bring up. Recently, I have been super interested in how the dyslexic brain works. The amount of cognitive processes that happened before we construct meaning from print is not only amazing, but also something our brains aren't actually designed to do. I often wonder what life would be like for my students with dyslexia if they lived in a time or alternate reality where the printed word was not such a ubiquitous and important

feature of our society. On another note, and to connect to a previous episode, and I am thinking of this as I write this. I wonder how a corpus colostodomy this to remind everybody, this is the when the corpus colossum between the two hemispheres of the brain is severed um as a medical intervention. Um they ask how this affects reading and if it would affect a dyslexic brain's ability to read in a different way. Anyways, thank you for the awesome show, and hope you get a chance

to read this, Carlton. And then they include that bit of text. This is the text that again Carlton is using in these uh these exercises to to stimulate mental imagery and the red in the young reader's brain. It goes as follows. When a frog has eaten something that makes him feel sick, he vomits up his entire stomach. He heaves until his stomach flops out and dangles from his mouth like a sack. Then he reaches up with his four legs and scrapes out the stomach sickening contents.

Once the stomach is clean and empty, he swallows it down again. Dude, you did that like the narrator of Beast of Yucca Flats. That's really good, caught in the wheels of vomit. I have to say, though, reading that, the frog I'm pick picturing doing it is like the like a Mr. Toad's wild Ride, kind of a frog with a hat and suit and an old timey car

automobile behind him on the road. I don't know why I thought you were going to say the frog your pick ring was Tour Johnson, so you know he's maybe he's kind of he had kind of a frog like appearance, didn't he. But no, I think maybe it's the mention to the hands. Actually you mentioned frogs. You mentioned hands. That makes me think Mr. Toad's wild Ride and related media. And then therefore, when we get into this description here,

that's what I'm picturing. I'm not picturing an actual frog doing it, though of course actual frogs do this all the time. I'm picturing a cartoon frog doing it with his cartoon human hands. My much less cultured brain, I think pictures the frog character from Chrono Trigger. I don't know this frog, you know, played Chrono Trigger for the s and e s No, no I had I had to say of Genesis, So I missed out on some of this. You know, Rob, I was playing Altered Beast.

Oh altered. Well that's a good one too, when you go into beast mode. But uh, but but but and not to be like that. Oh, you gotta play this RPG guy. Butchrono Trigger really is magical. It's worth going back to revisit if you finally getting later of it or something. It's it's great. Okay, one last one here. This is about weird house cinema and it's from Ryan. Ryan says, Hi, Joe and Rob. Not sure if this

movie is B enough, but have you seen Wavelength? I believe it was from either eighty one or a D two. Actually I think I looked it up and it's eighty three, but Ryan says, and features one of the Carrateen brothers and Sherry Curie from Joan Jet and the Black Hearts. It also features a soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. I know you know the key to Rob's hard here, Uh, Ryan says, I drive for Lift and always have you guys delivering excellent content through my earbud. Thanks for the awesome shows

and I'm looking forward to many more. Ryan, Well, I have not seen Wavelength, but I looked it up and the first thing I saw was the poster, which is fabulous, as like these pods with extraterrestrials like stuck in them are preserved in them. I'm not sure which so great poster throwing a Tangerine Dream score in a less or Karendy brother and my curiosity is certainly raised, though, I'm

gonna have to put it on the potential list. This is one of those that has two different taglines on the same poster that always to me seems it signals marketing insecurity. So one of them is up near the top and it goes two weeks ago they landed on Earth today beneath an American city. The experiments begin dot dot dot, but then down at the bottom right it says the alien terror is here on Earth exclamation point. I'm not neither one is very good, but they kind

of don't complement. Yeah, at any rate, it looks interesting, and I'm sure it sounds very interesting what with the Tangerine Dream. I'd give it a go. All right, Well that's the end of this mail bag. We thank everybody for writing in one note, I believe we're Usually we record our listener mails a lot closer to the publication date, but I think we're recording this one like a couple of weeks out or maybe one week out, I'm not sure, more time than usual. Uh, so there's gonna be more

listener mail that accumulates for next time. And if none of these listener mails uh touched on very recent episodes, well that is why, because you are in the future and we are here in the past. Hello. If you would like to write in, then hey, do so. We'd love to hear from you regarding some of these listener mails or past episodes, possible future episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind or Weird House Cinema. Uh, just let

let us have it. Uh. In the meantime, if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind or Weird House Cinema, you can find them in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday's Weird How Cinema on Fridays, more listener mail on Mondays, and on Wednesdays, we tend to bust out an episode of the Artifact Huge Things 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 topic for the future, just to say hi, you can email us at contact that Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.