Listener Mail: Crab Faces, Anus Myths and More

essentially become an aquatic humanoid, right, an aquatic humanoid robot. Now, Carney has been our mailbot for a long time now, and uh, we noticed that he has apparently some webbed feet now and uh, some gills, and we're not quite sure what that's all about, since he's a robot anyway, but he seems to be trying. He's really trying to get in there, become the aquatic ape that may never have been. I assume that the gills are part of a like a cooling system for for all of his hardware,

you know, Oh right, that's where he chills his CPU. Yeah. I think that's this probably what's going on, because he doesn't really need to breathe. But I'll tell you what does need to breathe. All of these cool listener mails that we've received, well, without any further ado, I say, we jump right in the waters warm all right. This

one comes to us from Maria. Maria says, hi, guys, I am from Columbia and I was just listening to the Aquatic Humanoids podcast and I just couldn't stop thinking about one of the various native cultures in my country that had a sort of aquatic humanoid in its mythology. The Musica culture had the belief that they're shamans were going to become a mix of sacred animals. They became

a humanoid with the tail of a fish. Uh. Some theories say that the penis was the body part that will become a fish tail, the head of a jaguar, and some other changes in some sacred parts of the body making them gods when they pray and make and made rituals. I don't know the complete story, but you may want to take a look at the researchers of this culture and others with a similar myth And if you ever go to Columbia, you can visit the Museo del Oro or Golden Museum, where you can learn about

a lot of cultures and native objects. To sustain the myths with humanoids that were believed to be not inferiors, but superiors to ordinary humans. I mean, it's kind of hard not to imagine an aquatic humanoid as superior to humans, right, I guess they did it with Creature from the Black Lagoon. But I don't know. When you think of the abyss, somehow like being under under all the water seems to

breed a kind of serenity. Yeah. Well, I would say again with with Creature from the Black Lagoon, there seems to be a lot of a lot of effort goes into making the creature look weak when we have at least one or two scenes that depict just how effective the creature is in its natural habitat under the water. I will say, in the Creature movies, the creature is certainly morally superior to the humans come in and start

harassing it. But that's really interesting. I tried to look up some stuff about this, uh this moisca idea of the humanoid with the penis or the fish tail coming from the penis or something. I couldn't find anything about this, but I'm going to keep looking. I want to know more. This sounds very interesting. It looks like Carney has another bit of of Aquatic Humanoid listener mail here that he's brought up from the depth right. This is from our

listener Jared. Jared says, Hello, Robert and Joe. I just listen to the second part of the Aquatic Humanoid episode, which I enjoyed, but it did not address one of my primary curiosities on the matter, which is why has an aquatic creature not evolved that disappear in intelligence to humans. This is more of a question of evolutionary intelligence, but the simple question is, if humans are the dominant land animal, why is there not a hyper smart crab that dominates

the oceans. Coming from the viewpoint of an intelligent land animal, it would seem like intelligence is one of the most valuable adaptations, so I find it surprising that the trait is not more commonly. Especial is not more common, especially in animals like turtles that have existed for hundreds of millions of years. It would also surmise that if an animal was physically well adapted to its environment like a turtle,

then mental adaptations would be the next priority trait. If you have any thoughts on the matter, I would be curious to hear them. Long story, short, how did intelligence evolve? And why are humans seemingly unique along? Yeah, that's that's that's the simple question will tackle me. Uh well, I think one of those obvious answers that comes to mind is like, how much more perfect does say a sea turtle need to be? Right? You know? Is it is

arguably as smart as it needs to be. Evolution is a cheap skate, and brains, big powerful brains are incredibly expensive. They are. They come with so many downsides. Your brain is so energy hungry it's ridiculous. You need eat tons of calories to sustain it. It also requires a lot of development time through which you are You're very vulnerable in your youth because you you require such a long development period to have the powerful adult brain that you

have today. So developing a smart brain is a difficult thing to do, and you've got to really justify it. Another thing I would say is you bring up the idea of physical adaptations. I would say, actually, the more physically adapted a creature is, the less intelligent it needs to be. Exactly. I mean that's what we see with with humans. Do we have great clause? Now? Do we have the natural body armor? No, we're not very strong for our body size. The one thing we have is

that enormous brain. Yeah, everything else is done more efficiently by some other species. I mean, we've talked before about how if you see a hairless great ape like a chimpanzee or gorilla, it is the muscles are hilarious. It is jacked. These things are so much stronger than we are, and that they need to be because they're not as intelligent as we are. We can get around with less

physical strength because we've got these smart workarounds. But to more directly address your question, obviously, neither of us knows exactly what is the cause of advance human intelligence. But I'd point to a couple of things I would suspect, and those things are tool use and social dynamics. I think those are probably two of the main things that shape to the modern human brain. I'm totally welcomed. I would love to hear opposing viewpoints, but I think those

are things that seem pretty practical to me. Now. I think there's tons of evidence that the human brain, the smart human brain, is a social brain that evolved primarily to manage and maintain social relationships, to understand relationships with other members of the group to understand facial expressions and and nuanced social relationships and reciprocity and status and all these kind of things that we think about in highly advanced,

very complicated social animals. Are there other animals underneath the sea that are that have complicated social relationships in that way? Maybe some marine mammals, right, maybe dolphins, Yes, certainly, the marine mammals are the ones that come to mind, and uh memory, serious, there is an example of of of a dolphin engaging in some form of tools. Yeah, yeah, I've read about dolphins, like bottlenose dolphins using marine sponges to assist them in foraging for food. But then again,

the dynamics of tool use. I think we pointed this out actually in part two of the Aquati Humanoids episode. The dynamics of tool use underwater are gonna be a little different than they are above water, right Like, if you think about so many of the most primitive early human tools, they appear to be things that were for

hitting and throwing, right like these hand axes. We don't know exactly what they're for, but these sort of sharpened stones that appear to be able to be held in the hand look like you could use them to hit something or cut it something, maybe for processing animal carcasses. And then of course there are also like, uh, like spear tips and things like that. I don't know, I mean, is throwing as easy underwater maybe, I don't know. It

seems a little bit harder. But I wonder, I wonder if some of just the different physics of resistance and buoyancy and things like that in underwater environments would not allow the same types of tool developing regimes that you

could have above water. Yeah. Yeah, And of course I think we reference this as well, uh in that episode we have the past episodes about the about technology and fire, in which we we wonder, like, to what extent could an underwater intelligence, even if they got to the point where they had tools, could they ever have any kind of technology based on fire with being an aquatic organism.

That's a very good point. Now, I would say that I think the evolutionary record indicates that, or the paleo anthropology record would indicate that human tool use and pretty extreme levels of intelligence were already present before we mastered fire. But but I don't know. I mean, you can definitely say that fire was instrumental in creating human technological society, and you couldn't create something like that underwater where there

is no fire. But I do think that's a really interesting question, Jared and I would like to come back to that in the future. Alright, Arnie is signaling us now and letting us know that it is time to cover some of the listener mail we received following our evolution of the anus episode. We've got a lot of anacy feedback, that's right. Uh, Yeah, that was I felt like a really great episode. Uh, and a lot of people really took it to heart. Uh. They were able to sort of re see the anus or see the

anus for the first time. I think it may have been our most popular episode ever on social media, though. I wonder if that just has to do with it having a picture of an anus next to it. Yeah, well it was. It was abstract picture, but that was a tough one to pick out art for, I tell you, and you started going on on Getty images and start trying to find the perfect anus picture. Like, nobody's taking a photograph of an anus without some sort of an agenda, Right,

you've got alterior motives. Yeah, A lot of like clinical photographs came up having to do the various uh uh, sexually transmitted diseases or not, so it was not a it was or oh in birth effects too, so it was not a pleasant image quest. Sometimes it's a lot of fun, this one was more frustrating and occasionally revolting. Well, Robert, I give you credit for finding the most pleasant stock ardanus out there. Yeah, well, thank you. So we we received a number of listener mails. This one comes to

us from Nis in Copenhagen. Hi, guys, just found your podcast a few days ago, and it's really great. There is one fun fact regarding the evolution of the anus episode I would like to share and which is interesting to both the humorous and the serious spectator's mind. There is an old Chinese curse you'd wish on your most hated antagonists which goes quote, I curse your descendants to

be born without a toll for ten generation. Sounds funny, but in the light of the facts so you laid out in the episode, it seems to be a very nasty thing to wish for. That is a deeply nasty thing. Best and thanks for the good work. Yeah. Indeed, uh to to to have the fate of say, certain species of scorpions that we mentioned that loses its anus if it ends up jettison and its tail because the anus is on one of the the outer tail segments, it

ends up just swelling with the poop until it eventually dies. However, I did do some additional research on that scenario, and it turns out that it kind of it's not as terrible as it sounds, because, on one hand, without its stinger, the scorpion is not able to get larger prey, so it's having to depend on smaller prey anyway, it's not

eating as much, and it can still breed. So so the idea is, once you lose your tail, you can't poop, you can't eat as much, so you're really just kind of a breeding missile, like you're trying to spread some genetic material before you die. Yeah, but that's what it was anyway, basically, So it doesn't it ultimately doesn't interfere with the pure functionality of the adult a scorpion. Aren't

we all just an unpooping breeding missile sometimes? Yeah, when you when you get right down to the heart of the matter, that's all we are. Okay. This one is also about the anus episode from our listener, Jason Jason writes, Hi, as I was listening to this episode, I was reminded of a poster I remember from the late nineteen sixties, to the best of my memory. It reads the parts of the body were arguing about who should be in charge. The legs said they should be in charge because they

moved the body. The eyes said they should be in charge because they see where the body is going. The brain said it thinks that it thinks for the body, and it should be in charge. The anus said it should be in charge. The rest of the body parts just laughed. Then the anus stopped working, The legs grew wobbly, the eyes grew dam and the brain got foggy, and they all agreed to let the anus be in charge. The moral of the story is if you want to be in charge just to be an goal. Well, it

certainly drives home. The fact that we touched on quite a bit in that episode is that, uh, for the most part, if the anus is working, fine, we don't really think about it. But if it's if it's not working fine, it's hard to think about anything else. That, of course, isn't you know, counting any kind of fetishization or or or sexual context, which we we basically just didn't have room to discuss. We We did get one mail we're not going to read here asking us why

we didn't mention sexual pleasure. Uh, not for any particular reason. It just that was in the purview of that episode, right. It was challenging enough just to fit all of the or or as much of the evolution and functionality of the anus as possible into the episode without getting into additional um dimensions on the topic. But I mean, but certainly the dimension of pleasure and uh in the human anus.

There is a lot of content out there. I've run across the research before, so I would not be opposed to exploring that or other dimensions of the anus in the future. But but this, this bit of listener mail continues. Oh right, So yeah, Jason says, I hope that made it us your content filters. It did. On a side note, I have a book recommendation. It is Lord of Light by Rogers A. Lasnie. I've heard of this one. I um, it's actually on my sort of short list because of it. Yeah,

because it's it it has sort of Eastern elements. Oh okay, I had not heard of it, but Jason says it won the nineteen six Hugo Award. It contains subjects you've touched on in the podcast, from palamp cys to various ways of obtaining immortality said in a Hindu esque world, plus there are a few truly grown worthy puns. And then he gives a quote from the book Jacket. Earth

is long since dead on a colony planet. A band of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal, and now rules the world as the gods of the Hindu pantheon. Only one dares oppose them, he who was once said Artha and is now Mahassa Matman, binder of demons, Lord of Light. That sounds great. I'm I'm all in, where how's my future in doing movie trail? It's pretty

I think it's pretty good. Joe, that's pretty good. Um yeah, well this is this is this book made its way into my lengthy to read list because he does end up invoking the Hindu pantheon here and and there's just so much in our in our science fiction and our our fantasy that is that is so based on Western motifs and uh and Western myth cycles that it's it's pleasant to find even uh like, even if it's not perfectly executed, to find an example that that actually utilizes

other mythologies. I've mentioned an author on here before, m A. R. Baker Baker. I'm not sure how this particular author pronounces it that these are interesting books because he creates this kind of far future fantasy scenario that has sci fi elements, but it's but it's based more on on on Eastern models of of of government and mythology. It's really the interesting world. He's well worth looking up if if if this at all interests you. His first book is The

Man of Gold, and you can find it. I think it's some of it may be available that that one I think is available on kindall now. But also it has a fabulous paper bit of paperback art that I think was Michael Wheeling if I'm not mistaken. Oh, I just looked it up. It's fantastic. It's got a guy in the foreground who looks like he's wearing sort of a yellow bathrobe holding your crystal ball, and then there's a guy in the background who looks exactly like the

suit the main character wears in Dead Space. Yeah, it's and if you look closely enough, I think you'll find that the protagonist on the cover looks like Jermin and Clement if you like. Far. This is decades before the Fly of the Concords. But and yet there he is. Oh, you know, I'm on another literary note, and entirely the story about the the anus vying for control of the body.

That of course reminds me of a segment in Williams Burrows Naked Lunch, and if anyone remembers that, I think it made its way into the Cronenberg film as well. It's been a long time since I've seen that where similar scenario the anus is vying for control of the body.

You know, I should mention briefly that one other listener got in touch with us about a ho Chunk legend that is about why the anus is wrinkly, and it goes back to this story involving the trickster figure in the in the ho Chunk legends, uh, and he basically he gets a burned anus and somehow this leads him to create the wrinkles that are now in everybody's anus. Well, every every great great work of literature has to have a burned anus in it at some point. Uh, like

the Miller's tale. Ye, yeah, in the Cannabury Tales. Yeah, that that store spoiler for the tales, but that ends in a burned anus as well. Okay, one more we should look at real quick about about anuses and especially machines that poop. I guess we don't have to read this whole one, but we got an email from our listener Steve who mentioned an art slash science exhibit at the Mona or Museum of Old and New Art. I was assuming that meant Museum of Nasty Art in Tasmania, Australia.

And uh. He says that there is this exhibit called Cloaca by a Belgian artist named whim or Vim Delvoy. And he says quote it was originally unveiled at a museum in Antwerp, but it was later commissioned for specific installation at Mona. The machine is fed twice a day and over the course of a number of hours you can witness the food progressing through a series of seven glass containers that contain the appropriate enzymes and chemicals to

simulate the human digestive process. And if you time your visit to the room at about two PM, you can witness the smelly climax as the machine defecates through an artificial anus. He sent a video. It's gross. Yes, So you know, Cloaca is actually an old favorite of the show if you go back and listen to some of the older episodes. Uh, we definitely, uh, we definitely referenced it,

and it is if memory serves uh. He created several different versions of the cloaca, So there was I don't know if he had a numbered or lettered or what have you, but I do seem to remember there were different incarnations of this this art installation and uh. And you know he wasn't the first to tackle this this type of scenario, because there was the the fabulous case of the digesting duck, created in the eighteenth century by Jaques Deva Kansin. Uh. There was labeled at the time

as a philosophical toy. It was it was a duck, mechanical duck that you fed and then it would poop. But in this case, however, it didn't actually process the food. Essentially, you put grain in one end and then the other end would push out excrement that he had been pre placed. But still there was the dream of Cloaco was present even back then. If it eats like a duck, if it defecates like a duck, it's got to be a

philosophical toy. Yeah. I also seem to recall there's a theory that the creator to get back to where nobody thinks about the anus unless a you're you know, um obsessed with it or be if it's if it's failing you in some way. There is a theory that the artist here or the the the machine maker here, uh, that he experienced some sort of digestive discomfort and that might have made him fixate on the creation of this device,

the digesting duck. Look it up. In the meantime, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, more listener mail. Alright, we're back. So it looks like our mail body is bringing us another listener mail. This one is seems to be drenched in honey and surrounded by swarming bees. Oh boy, this is from our listener Amy. Amy says, Dear Robert and Joe, I usually skip the Vault episodes because I tend to keep up with the

podcast as it comes out. But I'm so glad I didn't skip this one, so obviously it's about the Tears of Ray episode. I'm an active Ray worshiper, with my major annual holiday being the Egyptian New Year or web Rumpet, the first day of the new year when the sun rises before the star serious usually somewhere between July and August, depending on your location. There is a whole beautiful mythology surrounding web Rumpet, which I encourage you both to look

into because it's a wild ride. But I like to take the day and throw a pot luck and share the story of the new year with my friends. As you can imagine, one of the foods we keep on the table is honey, honey, lemon cakes, sliced apples with honey and cinnamon, fresh bread with butter, and honey, spiced tea with honey, anything we can think of, along with everything you mentioned in the podcast. Part of the importance

is in the color kmetics. Modern day practitioners of the ancient Egyptian religion focus a lot on the symbolism surrounding color and for Ray, the color and element gold is highly prized and extremely important since most of us cannot afford to offer gold, honey, incense, and fire become offerings we can call infinitely present to Ray, thank you for always being respectful to people of different beliefs while also discussing facts and science. It's very refreshing and I appreciate

you both for it. Best Amy Oh. She also thanks us for pronouncing Ray's name correctly, says it was wonderful to hear. Well. I can't promise will pronounce everything else in this email correctly. I hope I said web rom pet right. But this is a fascinating listener email. I really wasn't wasn't expecting to hear from modern Ray Worshiper, never heard. I don't think we've ever heard from a commeticist before. Maybe, but I don't recall I don't recall it coming up before now so but anyway, I looked

up what she said the web rom pet ceremony. I have no idea if this practice is traditional or established in NACI in Egypt, but I just want to share what I found on a blog post by a modern commeticist describing what at least that person does for web ron pet, which involves the practice of writing all your frustrations and things you want to get rid of on a clay pot. Then you paint the pot red I guess for the color, some bullism that aim you mentioned. And then you spit on the pot and you defile

it and smash it to pieces. So this is like a fictional version of the subduing I believe of apophis. I'm sorry if I'm getting that wrong, but I think you you subdue this evil deity and sort of get it out. You defile it, you punish it and destroy it. Wow, you know you think, and maybe this is the case. This would be a holiday that these paint your own pottery places would embrace market. You know, hey, it's it's

time come in. Paint the paint the paint these these bits of pottery with your with with sort of your your emotional antagonists. And then you can spit on that. Well I don't know, at least defile them there in the shop or take them home and to file them. I don't know. I'm not gonna tell anybody how to run their pottery business, but it sounds like a great idea to me. Well, again, I don't know how widespread this practices. It might just be this, you know, this

one blog post author and their friends. But that's where it begins. Right a year from now, I want to see it popping in pottery establishments. And hey, if anybody out there runs the pottery establishment, paint your own pottery, etcetera, or just a pottery studio, I would I would love to hear your thoughts on this sacred right. And speaking of honey, here comes a rare piece of physical mail, right, not even from Carney. Carney is sitting here crying because

we got this through the snail mail. Right. And and by the way, if you're wondering how can I send them snail mail, well, if you go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, there's an about section and that will include a physical address to send a mail to. But yeah, we we received a physical piece of mail along with some artwork. Yeah, so I'm gonna read it to you now. This comes to us from Gin love the show. I listened to all the stuffs. Thank you for helping my mind not turn too much during my

years of raising small children. Keep it up, please, you're a recent from the Vault. Episode of Tears of Ray was so fascinating. I love gardening and bees. One if you pointed out that honey is in fact, be barf. That's I think this was you. It is It's true, which which made me stop in my tracks and crack up. It is be Barf. I painted a watercolor last year with a honey jar with more honest and funny labeling.

I also made a modified honey label version for my friends and family who don't like to be reminded of the truth. Ha ha. There are two types of people in the world. Here are copies for you both. I pegged you as be bar if people too, God bless and thanks for all you do. So she sent us a copy of this watercolor she did, and it is a jar of honey with one of those little what do you call the thing that's a wooden thing with the honey comb shape on the end that you drizzle

the honey off of. I don't know if that even has a name. Oh yeah, it's a honey dipper, which I have to say, I love the appearance of a honey dipper, but I just find it super messy when I try and use one. Maybe I'm using it incorrectly, but I just find the squeezy bear to be the best method. I thought that the honey dipper only existed in honey nut cheerios commercials. I thought it was a magical wand used by cartoon B's just the cartoon B

that was the only person who had access. But anyway, it's leaning against a jar of honey with like a wooden stopper cork and a bee buzzing around it, and the jar of honey is labeled. I'm interested on the history of the honey dipper because it is it is a highly specialized device. It is a unitask and it's not good for anything else, unlike to say a spoon. A spoon can be used for anything, including your honey.

So where did this particular gadget come from. It's also not you know, it's it's if you're looking at it from like a manufacturing standpoint or a wood maker, a woodcraftsman's standpoint, Like it's not a I mean, it's a simple device. I don't have any moving parts, but it's it's also fairly ornate. You have to you know, it has these grooves that collect the honey, kind of like stripes on a bee, well, stripes on a cartoon B. I don't know if real b is look exactly like that. No,

not exactly. Their eyes are a little bit different. Well, anyway, thank you so much, Jen for sharing your art with us. It's very nice. I actually I took mine home as in a little frame. Very nice. All right, we have another listener email. Lise comes to us from Jeru quote. I'm an ordained priest in training in the Soto tradition of Zen Buddhism, and I wanted to comment on the recent episode Meditation Lab, Empathy and Energy in regards to

your comments about Walmart Buddhism. I can't speak for all my Dharma brothers and sisters, but my personal opinion is that pop culture forms of meditation like iPhone apps and secular meditation practices in general are fine if all you're after is a kind of surface level self help practice.

But it is essential to know that, at least in Buddhism, meditation is only one part of an integrated system, a whole life practice known as the eight fold Noble Path, which is designed to eliminate suffering and lead to spiritual awakening. When you remove the engine from an automobile, the engine still were, but without the rest of the car, you will not be going anywhere. And so I wonder if

those who dabble in pop culture. Meditative practice will eventually grow bored when they find that when there is no context for their experience and either move on to serious practice or ultimately stop practicing. I love your show. It never fails to entertain and sometimes even educate me. Keep up the good work. I really appreciate this email. That's I think like there's a valid point about the UH.

I like the analogy of removing the the engine from the auto automobile and the engine still works, but it's not moving the vehicle. Yeah, I definitely appreciate you. Are you putting it in the context of the the experience of pursuing the entire ratefold noble path, I would say, On the other hand, I don't know. He might be under selling a little bit the way that experiences and practices can be ultimately fulfilling, even decoupled from their original

spiritual or cultural context. I mean, I think about what if a person and was trying to achieve some kind of spiritual significance from fasting, and it was inspired by the fasting during Ramadan or something, and then you might be able to say, well, if you're not going through the entire spiritual practice of Islam, you're not really getting the full experience of the Ramadan fasting, and that's probably true.

You you're not getting the full spiritual experience that a Muslim would experience while they're doing that, But at the same time you might be getting some other truly worthwhile experience. I agree. And then, of course, on the topic of one is dabbling in and sort of pop culture meditative practices, about how they'll they might eventually grow bored or that

they'll keep going and explore something deeper. I mean, I feel like that's that's going to be the case, right, I mean, it's I think there's a value in something being uh, sort of the introductory level of of a practice, you know. I mean, then they can keep moving if they want, or if they if they grow bored with it. I mean, who's to say that a more are spiritual and more even authentic version of the practice would have resonated with them if this shard of it does not.

But maybe that's just me. Like I said, everyone's minleage may may differ on this, but but I think that's that's ultimately one of the cool things about meditative practices, yoga practices is that you will find uh, various versions of it. You will find incredibly secular versions of it,

incredibly stripped down. You will find um spiritual versions that are either you know, fairly authentic or are sort of spiritual in a new way that have gone in a new direction that or maybe not as authentic, but present a sort of spiritual model for practitioners to involve themselves in. Yeah, that's totally worth pointing out. Is that things that are essentially meditation practices exist in multiple religions and outside religion. Yeah,

even in hyper real religions. Right, Yeah, totally Okay. We've got a couple of messages coming in about our Don't Drink the Salt Water episode. One was a really great email from our listener Jess, and she says, Hey, guys, I've been listening to Stuffed Bill your Mind for only a couple of months now, but I really dig it so far. I have an m f A and creative writing and write poetry in my spare time. The topics

of your show are rife with inspiration for me. First off, I wanted to share with you a bit of synchronicity. Just a couple of days ago, I was rereading Good Old Sammy T. Coleridge's rhyme of the ancient Mariner, I would say cole Ridge. I think it's more sort of Coleridge, But Sammy T. Colly Ridge is rhyme of the ancient Mariner. So imagine my delight when I listened to this morning's episode.

Just wanted to give you my take on why the poem, though very very dark, is still considered a romantic poem. Besides the fact of the time period and movement in which it was written, which of course is the Romantic period in English poetry, one of the main themes the poem conveys is finding love of the self and humanity by way of nature. The capital in nature, with its glory and beauty near superseding or even standing in as the concept of God is a very romantic notion, so

if you care to get into it. Although the Mariner and his crew go through some very grim ordeals, and yes, everyone except the Graybeard Loon dies, the Mariner grows as a character through an act of deep affection for the remaining natural life around him that he had previously scorned. Right after the entire crew dies, the mariner moans alone alone, all all alone, alone, on a wide wide sea, and never a saint took pity on my soul in agony.

The many men so beautiful, and they all dead did lie, and a thousand thousand slimy things lived on, and so did I. He is very disturbed that the only remaining living things are himself and all the gross little sea creatures. He reviles these slimy things and himself for bringing this misfortune on the ship, feeling utterly alone with no kinship for the slimy other living things nearby, However, several stands is. Later,

something really great happens. He starts watching these water snakes swimming on the surface of the water in the moonlight. He observes that they are in fact beautiful. He declares, Oh, happy living things, no tongue. Their beauty might declare A spring of love gushed from my heart, and I blessed them unaware. Sure my kind state took pity on me, and I blessed them unaware the self same moment I could pray, and from my neck so free, the albatross fell off and sank like lead into the sea, and

Jen writes, ah ha. He blesses these shining, previously slimy creatures unaware in a bursting moment of kinship and love. And of course this is the moment the albatross, the symbol of guilt, sin and self loathing, finally falls from his neck and he is free. If that isn't romantic, I don't know what is. Of course, there's quite a bit more to the poem, but he is freed from his spiritual burden from that point on, Jess, I think

that's a great insight. And it is true that there there is no love greater than the love for sea snakes. You know, I just returned from Kauai, uh and I got to see a sea snake. Yeah. This is the second time I've gotten to see a sea snake while while snorkeling, and uh, it's always kind of a magical experience to watch them move amongst the rocks or the coral. Did you feel love and kinship? I did? Yeah, the

like the season, it was cool. I got to see this one with my son and so he was we were in fairly shallow water, so I was able to like hold him and we're looking down this time without our snorkels and watching the sea snake move around. It's kind of it's kind of magical. Wow. Now. Jess also later in the email shares a story about a sodium deficiency and her family, kind of mirroring the story we talked about in the episode with my friend about sodium deficiency.

But yeah, I really appreciate the insights on the poem, Jess. I I feel that too. The love of the slimy things, it matters, and yes it is romantic. I agree, this is Slimy things are great. That's why we cover them all the time time on this podcast. Totally all right. We have another bit of listener male related to the Saltwater episode. This comes from Omere. Omere writes, Hi, Robert and Joe, I'm a longtime listener to the show, and I'm writing to you about your newest episode, Don't Drink

the Saltwater. I really enjoyed the episode, as I usually do, and it made me think about different animals that have developed mechanisms to excrete salt from their bodies. I live in Israel, and in the Israeli desert, you can find two species of rodents that can excrete urine with high concentrations of salt, the fat sand rat or fat jeered uh eats mostly the leaves of salty plants, like plants from the Atriplex genus. Plants from that genus contain a

lot of salt in them. They have a strong salty taste uh and the Hebrew name for the atroplex can only be translated as salty plant or just salty. The sand rats have two mechanisms to survive such diet. The first is to rub their paws and of teeth against the salty leaves to excrete some salt crystals from them. The second mechanism is the rats ability to excrete urine with nine salt. The sand rats never drink water in

the wild. Less information is available to me about the spiny golden mouse, but from what I know, it eats mostly the same plants as the sand rat. But the golden mouse adds on that diet with stylo metaphora snails, which are mostly made out of fresh water. Thanks for

the great podcast, Looking forward for the next episodes. Well thanks Omer, Yeah, yeah, I you know, I didn't even think about the possibility of there being a particular species uh in the area of Israel, but it but it makes sense, uh, you know, get when we're talking about um high salt concentrated diets. So that's cool. And I just love the idea of of of a fat sand rat. It's just such a great name for an organism. Yeah. Oh, the scientific name of the fat sand ride is Samamas Obesus.

I like that, you know, speaking of the desert. It looks like we have another bit of listener mail, and this one is related to another Vault episode that's come out recently about the science of done. Yeah. This one comes to us from Lisa, Hi, Joe, and Robert. Thank you for your recent from the Vault episodes on the technology and biology of Frank Herbert's Dune. Uh. Recent from the Vault sounds contradictory, but you know what I mean. I enjoyed them so much. I read the Dune series

a long time ago. I think I was around fourteen or fifteen years old, and it truly did blow my mind. It'll do that. Yeah, the thrill and wonder of discovering the complex world of Dune and all those fabulous concepts that Frank Herbert stuffed into it. It's still a vivid memory, and your excellent exposition and expansion of those concepts really

brought it all back. I'm fifty one now, although sometimes I think I'm still fourteen inside and I'm inspired to go read them again, well, at least the first few. I was known to be a bit of a bookworm when at school and always had a book on the go, always a good idea. I advised that even today, reading it every opportunity. I recall reading God Emperor of Doom while waiting for a year ten geography class to start.

The teacher noticed and asked me how I found it, to which I replied quite tersely tedious, which made everyone around me laugh. I don't know why I wasn't joking, but maybe I need to try it again. Thanks for the hard work you guys put into your podcast. I love them and we'll keep listening. Well, thanks so much, Lisa. Yeah. God Emperor of Doom can be a bit tedious. Tedious, Yeah, but but it was rewarded like I. When I think back on my reading of it, uh I I look

back on it fondly. I don't. I don't think, oh, that was a tedious book. I I tend to think I finally read that book with the cool sand worm human illustration on the front that that I remembered seeing on the bookshelves as a child. Uh, and it has a it's it's an entertaining sort of philosophical sci fi work. I would a lot of being preached at by by the God Emperor himself. Less of an adventure though, I

mean nothing like a five hundred page space sermon. Right, Hey, if you're in the mood for it, and nothing else will suit, Okay, I think we should look at a couple of emails from our Miasma Theory Episode one is just a quick correction that I really appreciate. Michael writes in saying, in the opening minutes of the Miasma Theory and the Evil Era episode, one of the host said that the first outbreak of the Black Death occurred in

Europe in the thirteen forties. That is factually incorrect. The Justinian plagues of the five hundreds were the first strain of bacteria your sine epestis that caused the Black Death nearly a century later. I think meant maybe a millennium later. But yeah, Michael is correct about that. If that is indeed how we put it, that their forties outbreak was the first you're sending epestis outbreak in Europe, that is

not actually true. Michael is right. The plague of Justinian is definitely believed to have been caused by your sending pestus, and that is backed up by solid DNA evidence from contemporaneous early medieval grave sites. So Michael's right, there was a plague in Europe before the forties. A second email about the miasma theory episode, Rick writes in with an interesting idea. Rick writes, Hey, guys, longtime listener of the show,

and I really enjoy it. I recently listened to the miasma theory episode and kept waiting for radon gas to be discussed. It's interesting how the obsolete bad air theory actually has some sense of validity when radon gas is considered as it literally is bad air that emanates from the ground. This poisonous area is actually naturally occurring radioactive gas that seeps up from the ground from the decay of uranium that is hazardous to one's health, i e.

Bad air from within the earth. Of course, people in the Middle Ages had no concept of rate on gas, but if you take the simple into our modern sense is laughable. Notion of bad air that comes in the night to make you sick and put it against rate on gas. Well, it's actually accurate in the plain meaning of this antiquated theory. It is fascinating when people create superstitious, spooky causes for real world effects and end up accidentally

kind of sort of getting close to real scientific explanations. Thanks, Rick, and I think that's sort of what that episode was all about. I mean, they were very wrong about the causes, but sort of onto something. All right. Here's one that comes to us from Sarah regarding the tomb of the first Chinese Emperor. Hey, Rob, Hey Joe. I've been listening to the podcast for a couple of years now, and I love hearing what new and exciting things you talk

about each week. This past week's episode on the mausoleum for she Huong d how I've always been told to write to write his name, reminded me of a conversation I had with the history teacher I had back in high school. Now, he generally taught U S History, but our class was the only World history class. Yeah, he had that year. He was one of those spectacular teachers who could just lecture and students actually paid attention and learned. He was actually the first person to point me in

the direction of anthropology rather than teaching. We were actually discussing World War two at the time, the massacre of Nan King. Actually after class, I was asking him about other tragedies in China for a research paper for English and he kind of joked about how no one had gone down into the tomb of she Wong D. Now I didn't know what he was talking about at the time, but he reminded me of the Terracotta warriors. Ultimately renewed my interest in why the warriors were there. I remember

that I couldn't find much at the time. It was two thousand seven and I didn't know about Google scholar, but I did present a rather interesting theory. My general idea was that she hongd was someone to not give up on trying to live forever, even after death. Yeah, that's that's accurate. Uh. He might have had some shamans or wizards or necromancers bring him back, and he would need a deathless army. Hence the terra Cotta warriors. Terracotta is surprisingly more durable than a lot of people tend

to think. It made sense to my seventeen year old mind, and it makes sense to my twenty seven year old mine, and I hope it makes sense to other people too. I was very excited to see this episode pop into my cue, and it gave me a reason to finally write to you guys. This subject has always interested me, and I always love to babble about it whenever it's brought up, not very often, if you were curious, Well, it won't be my area of study when I finally

go back to college. I will always love hearing more about it. Thank you for doing another awesome episode. I can't wait to hear what you guys present to us next week from a possible future anthropologist. Sarah. Well, that's great to hear, Sarah. I love that. I don't know. I don't know about your theory. That's interesting and so he definitely did want to live forever if he could,

and he definitely was envisioning some kind of afterlife. I don't know about the idea of whether he thought maybe he could be brought back from the dead and would need a deathless army to accompany him. But that's fascinating. Yeah,

I mean it. I certainly encourage anyone who listened to that episode and had similar thoughts to listen to The Jade Immortal, the episode that I did with Christian, because we talk about a Chinese funeral custom that existed for a while where the dead kings and various other important royal figures would be entombed in armor of jade essentially stone armor um and it gets into we get into the various religious and superstistious ideas about the protective powers

of the stone. I don't I don't know of any qualities like that that would have been associated with terra cotta offhand. I guess I tend to I tend to buy more of that idea that this was presented as an alternative to human sacrifice, because it makes sense that, Okay, if I'm dying and going somewhere else or becoming some other form after death, and warriors, yeah, and I need I need warriors. These warriors are great. I want to

take them with me. And then it would fall to perhaps a very clever adviser to say, well, your lordship, this is a fine plan, but I know of a way that we can do this without totally destabilizing the empire after you have passed over, right, yeah, all right, well I think it's time to take one more quick break and when we come back we will read a few more listener mails. Thank thank alright, we're back. What have we got? What have we got? Now? What is

Carney bringing forth? Well, Carney is handing out a mail that is waving claws about wildly with scuttling legs up in the air. Crab mail. Crab male strikes again. So we've got several messages all expressing a similar idea about Carl Sagan and the Samurai crabs. This is something that there was convergence of thoughts from many of our listeners.

For example, just one of these expressing this idea, Michelle writes, Hello, Mr McCormick and Mr lab No need to be so formal, Michelle, But yes, uh glad to hear from you, she says, I just listen to your podcast Carl Sagan in the Samurai Crabs. Being of an artistic mind more so than scientific, I kept thinking of a completely backward sort of theory as an explanation for the stunning appearance of the samurai warrior's face on the back of the crab. It's probably

ridiculously stupid, but I'm sharing it anyway. It's not ridiculously stupid. Don't feel bad, I'm glad you sent it. So here's her idea. The samurai mask is an extremely stylized depiction of the human face. Is it possible that the artisans designing the mask were familiar with these crabs and based the masks on the patterns of the crabs rather than the other way around. Artists do this all the time,

taking designs and inspiration from nature. People see faces anywhere there is symmetry, and these crabs look like very stylized faces. As an artist, it makes more sense to me that some ancient Japanese dude saw one of these crabs and thought that would make a dope mask for a samurai totally fierce. Well there you have. It makes sense to me, but I am fairly dim. Thanks for listening. Love your podcast. Hey,

no need to neg yourself on that. Lots of people got in contact with this idea that what if it went the other way around, what if people saw Of course, it wouldn't just be the masks. The mask were just one realization of this type of depiction of the samurai face. So there's the samurai face as depicted in medieval Japanese artwork and painting and also on the samurai armor masks and wherever you'd see a samurai's face, And quite a

few people echoed that same kind of idea. What if somebody saw the crab and that's what created the faces that looked like that in the various artworks and craftworks. Um, I mean, I think that's possible. But then again, we're we're sort of seeing a similar thing, which is that both of them are stylized depictions of what essentially cues

from this very easy to signal face structure. Right, You've got these lobes at the top, two of them side by side, which looked like eyes, and then that comes down into some kind of central structure below which looks like a nose and a mouth. Uh uh. And so maybe it really does look like Samurai warriors. But if it didn't look like the mask, and if it didn't look like the art, it would still look a lot

like a face of some kind. I also tend to think, and I'm I'm certainly no expert on Japanese armor or or Japanese medieval art, but I would tend to think, if one we're going to adopt the crab motif for decorative purposes. You would you would you would invoke the full crab. You wouldn't invoke just the the the what may look like a face on the back, but there would be uh, you know, fancy uh you know there there would be there would be claws and legs as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

I see what you're saying. They're also the fact that these crabs are not particularly fearsome creatures, right, They're tiny.

So I wouldn't necessarily think that somebody would look at a crab like this and think, oh, that's what I've got to make all the samurai and my art and my in my armor and everything look like I would think more that there is an artistic tradition established that has certain types of ways of exaggerating the facial features of a human being, and that this artistic tradition, by coincidence,

resembles what's on the backs of the crabs. And I would write that is more likely, given the stuff we talked about in the episode, than the there being a causative factor going either way, that either the crabs established the faces as depicted in these traditions, or the faces shaped the crabs through artificial selection. But that's my take now. I'm I'm, I'm I am reminded, however, that there there was a Japanese pro wrestler who wrestled under the name

Grand Naniwa, and he had a mask. It was kind of a comedic gimmick that he had, but he hit his his lucha libre style mask looked like a crab, and he would perform moves with the mannerisms of a crab. So he had this move where he would stand would be inside the ring and he'd stand on the middle rope and then he'd hold his his arms up and he did like a crab walk back and forth from the road, and then he would jump with like a

diving elbow. Oh that's good, but definitely invoked the full crab. Robert, I've got a problem because I cannot finish doing this episode. I just want to go watch videos of that. It's pretty great. You you could you could do far worse than than spending a few minutes looking at at a comedic Japanese pro wrestling. Yeah, but to clarify, I don't think that's a stupid idea. I mean, I think it's good to think in that direction. So all the people

who contacted us with that idea. I think maybe that something like that could be just as likely as the idea of the artificial selection happening the other way. It's just that I think it's a coincidence and that's more likely than either one. Yeah, either way, it's it's very scientific thinking to say, well, why that way or not this way? Then to explore that. That's always a really

good exercise to try out. When you're seeing a correlation between things and you're assuming the cause and goes one way, entertain the opposite. What if it's going the other way. Yeah, for instance, Grand naniwa, Uh, did he do the crab walk because he had the crab mask? Or did he have the crab mask because he did the crab walk? That's a great question. Yeah, we may never know the full answer on that one though, So Michelle and all the others who contacted us with that idea good thinking.

I think that's an interesting possibility to consider. Before we leave the topic of Karl Sagan and the Samurai crabs, I have to mention that our listener, Kevin wants us to make giant mutant crabs. Oh, this is a solution to the green crab scenario was talking about the invasive green crabs and how we have to go to all of these various kind of technological extremes, or at least we have to contemplate advanced technology to properly process them

for culinary purposes. Yeah, so, Kevin writes, still in the middle of your podcast about the green crab, considering much of the discussion had to do with possible selective breeding of the samurai crab, I was positive you would suggest that one solution to the invasive green crab problem would be to selectively breed them to be much larger and therefore becoming a better food source. Then continue to release

these larger crab into the ocean. Over time, as they breed with the smaller green crab, the entire population will grow in size as a more practical source of food. Well, there, I can see various complications arising with that plan, and also it would be a very it would be a very long form scheme generally would take a while. Yeah, well, I mean, changing wild populations for foods for food reasons is not always a great idea, and also is so that's gonna be something somebody would be paying to do.

But then everybody who fishes these crabs would benefit from them instead of just the person who did the investment initially. And then also it seems like it might not work because you're dealing with wild conditions and can you keep these populations contained and control them properly? And I don't know. I can see a lot of reasons that people probably aren't going to do that, right, Uh yeah, yeah, but I anytime you want to write in to or just

to create giant mutant crabs, you can do that. That's okay to use our email address that way. Yeah, Joe is definitely going to notice your email if it includes some discussion of mutant crabs, be they telepathic or not. So thanks, Kevin. Al Right, here's here's one of our emails that received regarding the Proteus Effect episode. Sky writes in, Hey,

Robert and Joe, kudos for another great episode. This one felt like it had mini strings connecting to other topics that I've looked into, including your episode on the Tetris effect. I can't seem to find a source at the moment, but I've also read an interesting point that notes the

difference in perspective while playing role playing games. There's a subtle difference between I attacked the goblin or I tried to jump over the gumba and Rodner attacks the goblin or I tried to make Mario jump over the gumba. You know, this reminds me of playing video games as like a young rude child. Uh. And some of you may say, say, is there any other kind of child that plays the video game but a rude one? But I remember like being interrupted and charging people with you.

You made you made me die? You killed me, you killed me? And I do wonder like why did I put it that? Why Why didn't I say you made my guy die? Like you know, what, is it one more syllable to to go that far? And and or is I just so connected to the character that I thought of Mario as myself. It's weird. It is very weird. Anyway, Sky continues to your open question about the proteus effect and Werewolf. Oh yeah, and just to revisit, I think what we said was, does playing a game like Werewolf

also change you? Like if you are trying to pretend you're not a werewolf and lying in the game, does that make you more deceptive after the game's over? So Sky says, I have a recent anecdote that fits right in some friends and I. We're playing Insider recently, which plays similar to Mafia Werewolf, but with a focus on

figuring out a secret word all our twenty questions. If you were assigned the Insider role, you know the word the whole time and have to guide the comments towards the right answer without making it obvious you know the word already by some bizarre string of chance, I ended up playing the Insider for seven out of the nine rounds we played out of eight players. By the end of the sounds like you were cheating. The odds on

that are not good. I mean, it happens, though, and where will if you see like the person who ends up being a werewolf all night, and it it ends up you know, it ends up working to their favor, because what are the odds? Right After a while, by the end of the night, it became a running joke to just assume I was the Insider if no one had any good ideas for anyone else, which ended up

working for the rest of the night. After the game, however, I felt hyper aware of everything I said and double checked my words before I said anything to think about how they might be interpret did. I couldn't help but analyze the complexity of my and others communications even when we had returned to normal conversation after the game, and this didn't really fade until I went to sleep a few hours later. It was truly exhausting. Thanks again for

all you do. Looking forward to the next episode. Well, Sky, that is really interesting. So that's one more example of the way that gameplay mechanics and the type of character you have to be inside a game doesn't just affect you in the moment, but really does follow you home. Uh, it's a question of how long it always lasts and how intense it is. But now that you mentioned it, I think I have noticed that after playing as a werewolf, I mainly retain a feeling of mischievousness that follows me

around after the game's over. That's if I've been one of the werewolves, not so much if I've been a townsperson. But in my experience, this feeling is retained. Robert, what

do you think about this? You retain the feeling of mischievousness if you were a werewolf, and if the were wolves one like the winning and determines the extent to which that feeling carries over after the game, And I wonder how proteus like effects are modulated by win lost dynamics, Like, for example, I know personality manifestation can be controlled by hormones, and hormone levels can apparently be affected by winning and losing, Like I remember, I've read studies about how like winning

tennis players have elevated testosterone levels compared to losing players. You know, it's it's interesting the idea of retaining the sense of mischievousness after you've played, because it I wondered to what extent the framing mechanism works, because obviously we're humans playing the world wolf games, so we tend to frame it as a struggle between humanity and bloodthirsty monsters, right,

but what if you played it the other way? You like, open your eyes where wolves, you were the last two members of your species just trying to survive, fighting against these bloodthirsty human And look how bloodthirsty they are. They're murdering each other just on the suspicion that one of their their their their fellow villagers might be awarewold they deserve to be eaten? Yeah, So, like if you frame

it like that. I wonder how that would frame the way people feel at the end, would you Maybe you'd still feel mischievous, but you might feel more like I don't know if like truly victorious that you've it's not that you've You've you've overcome the odds against a righteous opponent. You've overcome the odds against the monsters. You are. You are the winning uh noble player here and not not

the others. Now, I probably sound like a werewolf sympathizer. Now, so anyone playing werewolf of the uh will likely suspect me right off the bat. Okay, I think we got time for two more short ones, all right, uh. First one this comes from Tricia on our Animal Lies episode. Tricia Rights, Hey, guys, loved your most recent episode on animal lies. I work in dog training and behavior, and this episode reminded me of a study on dog deception

published in the journal called Animal Cognition. It proves that dogs are definitely capable of deception for personal gain, sneaky little things. Uh. Here's an article she shares, and she says, for the record, I definitely think you should make animal lies a regular feature like Dangerous Food. All the best Trish, I just wanted to share this because I looked up the study to see what it was. So yeah, it was published an Animal Cognition in March. The lead author

was Marian Haberline of the University of Zurich. And here's the short version. So you've got a bunch of dogs and you train the dogs to lead human partners to a container of food on command. So you say take me to food, and the dog takes you there. There were multiple containers. There'd be one container that's empty, no food, another one has a dry biscuit, and another one has

an awesome sausage. And some human partners of the dogs were the dogs learned were cooperative, meaning when the dog takes them to food, the human partner would get the food and then give it to the dog, and other human partners were competitive, meaning when the dogs showed them where the food was, the human partner would keep the food for themselves. And after the task was done, the dogs learned that they would get a chance to eat

whatever treats were left over in the unopened containers. So eventually, can you guess what happened When the humans would give the command to lead them to food, The dogs would act differently depending on whether you were cooperative or competitive, And if you were one of these competitive humans who did not share the food with the dogs, the dog would answer the take me to food command by leading you to an empty container that had no food in it.

I don't know where the food went. So basically the dogs began to behave like, Hey, if you're not gonna share, I'm not gonna show you where the sausage is. Interesting, huh. I wonder if if there any I wonder how this impacts any use of of of the you know, the various uses of dogs for say, detection of illicit substances or explosives or even some of these areas we're figuring

out how to use dogs to just detect illnesses. Like, it does kind of change things to know that if you don't have the the parameters uh laid out correctly, that you're gonna have to deal with dog deception right as part of the the ordeal. Yeah, if the dog, if the dog figures out this isn't working out in its favor, it's gonna lie to you. Interesting, all right. We have one last bit of listener mail. This comes to us from Kennedy Kennedy says, first off, I'd like

to say that I love the podcast. I've learned a lot from listening to it, and I really appreciate what you guys are doing. It helps me get through long, boring nights at work. A lot of the time. It makes me uncomfortable though. That sounds like a bad thing, but it's not. There's been a lot of things I've learned on the show that directly contradict the things I was taught when I was younger. Growing up in religious household, my parents put a lot more stock into religion than

they did science. I'm not religious, and I know that a lot of the stuff they told me was wrong, not because they intentionally misled me, but because as they themselves, believed what they said. But even when you know things are wrong, it's hard to hear that something you've believed for a large part of your life was wrong. Thank you for bringing all of this information out, and thank

you for making me uncomfortable. I hope that as time goes by, I can learn to have a better grasp on how the world really is and outgrow what I was taught when I was younger. Love the show, Thanks for all the fantastic episodes. Kennedy, Well, Kennedy, thanks so much for getting touched on. I'm glad we could play

that role for you. I mean, it's one of the hardest things to seek out things that make us uncomfortable, but it's something we should all try to do more, right, Yeah, Yeah, I mean, we we cover topics on the show that make me uncomfortable. Sometimes you know it, and it is part of kind of putting yourself in that uncomfortable state where you're willing to have your preconceived notions, your preconceived

beliefs challenged or or even toppled. I mean, and it's really easy for us to say that, it's a harder thing to actually make yourself do it. You know, like everybody acknowledges it's good to think critically about your ideas. Everybody acknowledges it's good to try to seek out disconfirmation of your biases. But you you sit there and you say that, and then what do you really do? I mean, most of the time you seek confirmation of what you already thought. Uh, And it's just really hard to make

yourself do that in the moment. But it's also a very rewarding thing to do that pays off in the long run when you can make yourself do it. I also have to say in this email, Kennedy talks about things that they were taught that they now see as as wrong. I have to say that, like, certainly they're gonna be things where you reach your point in life and you look back on something you used to believe and you think, well, that that was incorrect or that was maybe wrong and more of a like a moral

or ethical way. But I think also in my experience, there are times when I can look back on something that I used to believe and maybe I can still value it, but now I see it from an additional per inspective, or maybe like two additional perspectives, and sometimes it can actually make that that thing more valuable. Yeah,

you know, totally. I mean, well, is so the example that Kennedy uses in this email is religious beliefs, and I think, obviously this being a science podcast, they're going to be a lot of religious like literal interpretations of a lot of religious beliefs that are just gonna kind of come into conflict with science. Right if you believe in like a literal six day creation, like sorry, science isn't gonna help you there, that's going to come into conflict.

But also I don't think inherently that the nature of our show is necessarily hostile to religion, or certainly not hostile to it in all of its interpreted forms. Right. Uh, it's if if you believe in like literal historical facts through your religion, a lot of times, yeah, the scientific approach is gonna come into collision with that. But there are also just a lot of ways of being a religious person, of having religious beliefs that tend to not

really overlap with the territory of science. Yeah. I always come back to the idea of the tele teleological and the causative why you know, one answering like a very like fact based why am I here? And one dealing with the more like the reason for being, you know, a more existential idea of of of who I am and why I am here? And in science can answer a lot of those questions, but but not necessarily all of them, not in a way that maybe as satisfying

to an individual. And uh, I think it's it can be valuable to have a religion and or spirituality or or even mythology too to fall back on that. That's one thing I always try and stress too with discussions of mythology and legend and folklore is that these are stories that did not happen, but they are still stories that have importance, uh certainly to the to the cultures from which they emerged, and to other cultures as well

that have adopted them. Different did not literally happen is sort of a different question than is it true or not right? I mean, it's one way of interpreting the word true. Yeah, But I mean my bottom line is just to say again, I hope that you don't ever walk away from our show with the idea that you know, adopting scientific skepticism and all that means that you need to to throw out all of your beliefs and meaning structures and everything like that. I mean, that's not a

message I want to promote at all. It is, uh, the idea that you should critically examine it, and when the facts are in obvious contradiction with beliefs, well then yeah, you should pay attention to the facts. But I hope we never create the false impression that we're trying to create an environment where beliefs mythology that gives meaning and structure and all that that, all that, all that needs to get chucked down the drain. That's not what I feel. Yeah,

I mean neither. But that being said, if something doesn't bring you peace and happiness, then junk it out. What's it there for? Yeah, that's my take alright. Well, on that note, we've reached the end of our listener mail episode. If you would lie to send us listener mail, well, we have a few suggestions of how to go about it. First of all, we're on social media pretty much all the social media's I think we're on the Facebook, the Twitter,

the Instagram, we're still on the tumbler. And you can get in touch with this via all of those websites, as well as our home page, the mothership stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. You'll find links out to all of those different websites, as well as all of the podcast episodes and various blog posts. Thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison.

And if you'd like to get in touch with us and send us some listener mail that might get read on the show in the future, you can email us at Blow the Mind at how stuff Works dot Com for more on this and bathands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot Com, The two four four four