Listener Mail: Crab Sabbath

one in the previous year. That's true. This is the first recording of nineteen. Okay, I'm sorry. Now I have to I have to say this. We always have assistance from our mail bought Carney. Say, hi Carney, and UH.

Today we're having to just tiptoe around a couple of topics because um looking on robot egg shells exactly, because there's a there's a certain holiday coming up this week which we shall not name, that Carney has become very sensitive about, and it is UH is prone to U two bouts of rage if it is even mentioned now. It may have to do with a certain recent breakup with a certain office machine that say, makes copies of pieces of paper. Yeah, I think I think that's exactly

what happened. Um, so he's a little touchy. Um. We're gonna try and avoid using the the L word and certainly the V word. Um, but I don't, I don't. I don't think it's gonna get in the way, but it let's just be very cautious as we proceed through these various bits of listener mail. All right, Carney's bringing one over right now, let's let's take a look at it. Okay, Now, this first one is I'm not going to read the whole message. It's just part of a genre of listener

responses that Robert and I have gotten to. Uh. Back in the was in in the summer or last fall, we did a couple of episodes about the age of the Earth because listeners were asking about this, like how we actually know that the Earth is about four and a half billion years old, and so we talked about that, and then at one when in the episode we discussed how multiple scientists we were reading had used an expression I think was thousands of millions or something, and we

were like, well, just why not billions? And multiple listeners got in touch with us to give us a very good answer to this question to say, the reason some scientists avoid using the word billion is because billion means different things in different languages. Now, isn't that confusing where different languages have different like words for orders of magnitude that are used to mean a different order of magnitude and another language that's horrible and not confusing at all.

So I think, for example, in like in French and in Dutch, like a billion actually means in English a trillion. So just to avoid confusion, the term they would use sometimes would be they'd either like use scientific notation in the number of years, which is one reason. Scientific notation with like the tend to the power of something is very useful. But then also they could just say thousands of millions. So cleared that all right? Here's another one. This one comes to us from A C. J. C

J Rides. Hi, Guys, I've been listening for years, but I haven't had anything interesting to comment on until I really listen to the episode un Biophilia. I've been working with horses for almost my entire life, about two decades now. It's my job to train grsage horses. Oh boy. One of the things I've noticed is horses are indeed terrified of anything that is shaped like a snake, even remotely.

Here in part of Michigan, we only have very tiny snakes, so the horses really don't spook at real snakes, but objects on the ground like lead ropes, pitch four candles, electrical cords, large branches, pieces of plastic, rustling, leaves, their own shadow, and hoses especially scare them to death. The young horses are the worst with this, but all of them are susceptible to snake meltdowns. Leaping, snorting, bucking, stomping, etcetera. Is common. This earns them an annoyed glare and stern

knock it off from me. It's so common that it really has zero fact on my fight or flight instinct anymore. Usually I can feel it in my hands way before they actually spook. Well, anyway, I thought you might get a kick out of the prominent example of biophilia that horses exhibit. Horses are also scared of puddles they look like black holes to them because they have very little death perception, or dark objects close to the ground, which

I think resemble a crouching predator. I enjoy every episode that comes out, and it makes my long commute, much better keep it up. A firsthand account of biophobia. Now, I know, I can't remember if in that Biophilia episode we talked about the idea of like, uh, like sneaking up behind a cat with a cucumber in your hand. We may, I know we've I know I've brought that up on the show before. But yeah, I loved this.

H this account here in part because my wife what is was a horse person and UH and her aunt UH still has horses and we go out and visit visit them in Arizona every so often. So I'm exposed to a lot of people telling me about horses. And the horses do come up a bit in our research as well. I mean when you when you consider the uh, the history of a humanity, and the horse plays a vital role, I mean, depending on who is doing the analysis,

sometimes an essential role. Absolutely, so, thank you very much, c J. I mean, and then on top of that, there they are animals. We often kind of take that for granted. Those of us who do actually work with horses to realize that this is this is a like a a a sort of a herd based prey animal that we have domesticated for our use, but it is still a large creature. It is still a creature with

a lot of hardwired responses to the natural world. Well, on that note, looks like there is another animal based listener mail coming in here. Oh yeah, So remember in our episode about thought experiments, we were talking about Isaac Newton using the you know, Cannonball Mountain to illustrate the idea of orbital mechanics. Why things an orbit in space? And so Isaac Newton, you'll recall, we discussed had an enemy, the Royal astronomer John Flamsteed, who Newton just mercilessly harassed.

And there's this diary entry that we discussed in the episode where Flamsteed was complaining that Newton was coming at him with quote Navish talk and calling him quote puppy, etcetera. And we wondered what that meant. Well, our listener Dolly, got in touch to let us know, and Dolly wrote,

I got to haul out my old friends. Slang and its analogs by Farmer and Henley, published in eighteen ninety And here's the entry for puppy and this is puppy pup or puppy dog colloquial a vain or unmannerly fool pop a coxcomb hence puppy ish, conceit or affection, puppy ish or puppie impertinent, puppy headed stupid. I love I

love it. When we can we can find a bit of derogatory slaying that has gone extinct and kind of pull up the fossil and look at it again and try to imagine daily interactions in which this was the vile thing to say that somebody would like they like write in their diary about it, like this is really he called me puppy. I can't believe it. Yeah, or some yeah, someone drops puppy during a conversation. Everyone's like, whoa, WHOA, cool down there, buddy, don't need to get mean about

all of this. All right, Well, we have a couple of listener mails here regarding demon Eaters and Possessed Tools or Lunar New Year episode. Yeah, I just came out the other week. This is probably one of the most recent episodes will be UH dealing with in this listener mail. The first one comes from Brandon. Brandon writes in and says, hey, Robert and Joe just finished listening to demon Eaters and Possessed Tools episode great topic. I loved it For whatever reason.

The possessed tool portion or one of your thoughts about why they developed a personality or traits reminded me of a great short story by Arthur C. Clark called dial f for Frankenstone. In summary, the story is set in so pre interwebs. At O one thirty, all of the phones in the world start to ring. People pick up to hear strange inhuman noises. The following day, all the crazy happens. Everything is shutting down, planes crashing, electrical grid

is erratic, missiles are launched. Then the protagonists figure out the world's phone system has become so large and complex it is now sentient. This is the plot determinator. But like more than ten years before Terminator, around ten years before he continues. It makes me think that over a lifetime of handling duty and maybe different owners or at least users would change the personality of these possessed tools, like if you used a knife strictly for cutting bread

versus strictly for cutting meat. Uh ANYWOOSEL love the show? B Well, yeah, thank you Brandon. Yeah, I've never read that story. That is Terminator, right, like that you you connect enough machines together and they become too smart and become sentient. Essentially. Yeah, I think that's the basic concept.

I will say, I do. I do love it. Anytime someone either writes in via listener mail or shares with this on the Stuff to Blow your mind to Facebook group the discussion module, uh, some bit of of old sci fi or recent sci fi that ties into a topic we've covered. It's always a joy because it's usually something I've I've never heard of, or I've heard of, but I don't really know about the you know, the

details of the plot. You know, I can certainly see how obviously it sounds like this story is meant to be a little bit funny, but I can certainly see how in the seventies, before people had really tried this level of networking, you could wonder like, well, what would prevent, you know, just massive networking of machines from somehow getting some kind of emergent intelligent property that we couldn't predict

from the beginning. Basically, all you need to start with is the idea that no individual neuron is sentient or conscious, but you network enough of them together in the right configuration and somehow the mind emerges. But then again we don't know, and that no individual neuron is conscious. Maybe it is. Maybe consciousness is additive, you just like concatinate enough of it inside the same skull. All right. This

next one comes to us from Clarissa. Clarissa says, I really enjoyed the latest podcast on demon hunts and other lunar New Year themes. One of my favorite things about all the podcasts from How Stuff Works is is that while it's clearly a US based network, you cover topics from around the world. I love learning about other cultures.

I've heard a few podcasts can't remember exactly which ones, but they were definitely from HSW that have reminded me of a favorite y A book, The Demon Hunter Story brought it to mind again, and I thought you two might really enjoy the book. It's a very quick read in plays with a lot of fun concepts about reality. It's called The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynn Jones. She writes a lot of really good to early y A stories,

the most well known being Howel's Moving Castle. Oh yes, this is this would be the book that Miyazaki based his movie house Moving Castle hun Yeah, yeah, I like that movie. Yeah, I've never I've never read the original material, but I absolutely adore that film. I didn't know there was original material. I guess I thought it was just a movie anyway. Uh, Clarissa continues, but I would recommend

Homeward Bounders and the game. Homeward Bounders is about a kid whose entire world is being secretly run by people playing intricate RPG table games. The game is about Roman gods as kids in modern time and plays with themes that run through myth worldwide. Both are really clever illustrations of unique ways to imagine the world. I know Robert has a son who may be old enough to enjoy the books. I'd guess they're about the same level as the first couple of Harry Potter novels. Thank you for

the show. Oh well, thanks for the recommendation. Yeah, indeed, my son is. My wife is currently reading my son um the Harry Potter novels. Indeed, they're on. I think they're about ready to start the fourth one. I read him The Hobbit. We started on The Lord of the Rings and we kind of petered out for the time being because there's a lot of there's a lot of not much happening at the beginning of that book. What

was the story? He asked about the Hobbit, like, you've been reading it, awhile, and he said, like, when does the story started? The Hobbit was all gold, it was it was Lord of the Rings reading and you know, there is a lot of material at the beginning about the life of Hobbits and you know, their various meals and whatnot. And he was he asked me, he said, is it the Lord of the Rings yet? And so

it will come back to that one. But I would love to have, you know, some some sort of good chapter book that I could read to him that I have some attachment to, or can you know something I can discover for the first time. So I've been I'm currently reading, uh like a kid's adaptation of the Ramin Yana to In and after that maybe yeah, maybe this maybe maybe the last Unicorn. I can't decide. That sounds

like a good problem to have. Oh yeah, alright, On that note, we're going to take a quick right and when we come back, more listener mail than Alright, we're back.

So this next group of emails came in about our episodes on the split brain experiments where the there were experiments in like the nineteen sixties on patients who had undergone a corpus callisotomy where their two brain hemispheres were severed in order to cure epilepsy, and that that involved the severing of the corpus closum and it produced these

very strange effects. So this first message comes from our listener, Chris nij She says, Hey, Rob and Joe, I listen to your two party on the split brain and was amused with the parts regarding the nuances of language coming from the left brain versus a very rudimentary grasp of it from the right brain, and that is something we discussed. In most cases, most people's left hemisphere is very dominant

in language. Uh, she continues, I have temporal lobe epilepsy, and one of the symptoms of that is aphasia, which is trouble with speech or understanding or generating speech, whether as part of an absence seizure or after a tonic chronic seizure. When others are around me after the seizure, including paramedics, I can understand them perfectly, but have a very hard time coming up with words. To communicate since

the epilepsy affects the left side of my brain. Three things I usually can say though, are um and sorry, Yes I'm Canadian. Uh. I think it reassures people to hear me swear because they know it's me. Now, I'm glad I can explain to these people that these words are probably so ingrained in me that my right brain can handle them while my left brain no pork too good. Those were very fascinating episodes. I look forward to hearing more podcasts about the other topics touched on in these ones.

All the best, Chris Nash, Well, thanks so much for sharing your experience. Uh yeah, this, uh, this seems to line up with a lot of what we were reading that like, in some cases it seems to very from person to person, and in some cases, the right brain can understand much more language than it can generate, like it can sometimes respond to speech but not really create much speech. It looks like you've got three words here, and I wish you great power in using them. All right,

here's another one from Shannon. Shannon writes in and says, Dear Robert and Joe, thanks for the fascinating two parter unsplit brains. I've been interested in the topic ever since my sixth grade science fair, where I attempted to determine if left handed people are more typically right brain creat

a visual, intuitive, etcetera, and vice versa. Only later did I learn the left brain versus right brain people concept is largely a myth, which explains why I found little to no correlation on the question you, Hey, I want to say a null result is a good result. It's worthwhile to do that. Yeah, it's It's still a good

science experiment. On the question you raise of how it's possible that corpus calacotomy patients display such little behavioral change after the surgery, specifically when it comes to moral reasoning and theory of mind, I have two thoughts you brought up. How odd it is that these patients apparently not noticeably change in everyday moral decision making, where they are presumably

using a system one reasoning. This made me wonder if perhaps the area in the right parietal lobe has been linked to this type of moral reasoning is in fact part of a system to mechanism, and maybe there is a separate system one process that is harder to replicate in a lab In other words, when calasotomy patients are making quick, everyday judgments, maybe they are using a different, quicker neurological process that is not affected by splitting the brain, and it is only when they are made to sit

down and rationalize slowly through choices in an experimental hypothetical that this right brain process occurs or fails too. On the other hand, I also like the idea of various compensation mechanisms that work in real world situations but not in the lab. One of these might be experiential memory, as you touched on while discussing the band or snatch. We do make theory of mind related moral judgments every day,

but perhaps not too many of our novel situations. For example, maybe you have a friend who sometimes makes inappropriate jokes, but you know not to take him seriously because you understand he doesn't mean to be insulting. Then one day your corpus colossum gets cut. The next time he makes

an inappropriate comment. You might not be able to imagine his intentions in the same way, but you can still remember dismissing him as harmless in the past, and maybe you can even remember imagining his attention is his intentions in some way the neural pathway is already there, so maybe you don't have to rely on the same cut off right brain area to make that judgment. Just some wild speculations of mine. Hope they make some kind of sense.

Thank you again for consistently delivering entertaining and thought provoking shows. And I'm loving Invention too, sincerely, Shannon. Oh, thanks Shannon. Yeah, those are some really interesting ideas. So one of the things when you talk about the idea of system one versus system too, that's sort of along the lines of what the authors speculate in their conclusion, though they might have had it inverted from what you say. Um, but yeah,

I really like this idea of using memory. Like one reason, even if you can't access certain parts of the brain you would commonly use for moral reasoning, you might just rely on your memory of how you normally interact with certain people. And and the fact is probably most of the people you're making important moral judgments about throughout the day, or probably people you already know, unless you're like a

judge or in a jury or something. Now, I love that she also mentioned that she's listening to Invention because we we have had some exciting episodes of Invention come out come out recently, including one on the Wheel, while we have two part are on the wheel actually, um, where we discuss, of course just key archaeological cultural evidence for the emergence of wheel technology, but also with you know, throw in some discussion of everything from Gary Larson's Far

Side cartoons to you know, Tibetan Buddhism. Well, I'm gonna high five you across the table mime wise for remembering to plug invention. If you haven't checked out Invention yet, go check it out, check it out and subscribe. It'll do you good, It'll do us good. But anyway, let's get to the next message. This is from our listener Adam. So Adam writes and says, Hi, Robert and Joe, I was just listening to the episode Split Brain, Part two

and wanted to share a thought no pun intended. I'm not sure if that's a pun, Adam, but okay, um, your final point was to encourage people to think for themselves rather than base their beliefs on someone else's, such as those of a public figure. I found myself pausing and thinking about this for a minute. On one hand, I agree that being able to think for yourself is very important, and that that skill is undertaught. On the other hand, there's been a very clear increase in a

distorted faux critical thinking recently. I think I know where you're going with this, Adam, and I think I agree. This is manifested in Michael Gove's sick of Experts vision of the world, where people feel their feelings hold the same objective value as an expert's actual knowledge. In years of experience, we've seen the downsides of this in public discourse already. Worse we see in the failure to solve

major problems such as climate change. I'm quite confident this isn't what you meant, but I thought it was worth bringing up, since to a degree, we must rely on others as a source of information. Since none of us can be an expert in everything or experience everything, the outside world acts almost as a third hemisphere to our brains. Unfortunately,

it feeds in both necessary and incorrect information. Even the post talk rationalizations that you talked about being used to explain what the brain did unconsciously sounds a lot like the political and non political tribalism we're seeing so much of. Somehow, I feel this may tie together as one side of the brain responds to a message that the other side would not, but still needs to defend anyway. Apologies if I ranted too long. I just wanted to comment also

and say thank you for the work you do. I started listening to podcasts to keep me occupied during my daily train commute, but now have so many that I'm rarely not listening to something. Stuff to Blow your Mind is a lot of fun and a good bit different than most of my economics, politics, news and side shows.

Keep up the great work, best Adam. Oh thanks, Yeah, thanks Adam, and Adam, I think you make a really excellent point part of what I what I think I was trying to say in this episode has been a while now, but I remember talking about the idea that,

you know, the the left brain. If Michael Gazzaniga's left brain interpreter theory is correct, it just sort of like immediately incorporates the deliverances of the right hemisphere into the idea of self and says, this is just me thinking, and that is kind of normal because like that's your brain, right.

But the idea was that we were discussing Peter Watts and uh, and his idea that well, if you can, like if you could insert thoughts into the brain, like via a direct brain to computer interface or brain to brain interface, what would prevent the brain from taking those inserted thoughts just as if they were coming from the right hemisphere and saying like, Okay, this is just me thinking, this is actually just me like not even detecting that

the thoughts are alien. But then I think that this other thing came up because Robert you pointed out that we often do this with with external actors anyway. I mean, the idea is that often to find out what we think about an issue, we just go and consult somebody who we listen to, and whatever their view is, that just gets incorporated directly as self. Yeah, that's just what I think now, And I guess that's what I was trying to discourage, the direct and automatic incorporation of the

views of others as your own view. Instead, you should consider do I have a good reason to listen to this person's opinion on this subject? Yeah? I know, I don't know a lot about the uh this Michael Gove's UH six Sick of Experts vision that that is mentioned in this listener mail. But I do wonder sometimes that you do encounter people who, you know, they do have that idea like I, you know, I this is my

gut feeling on this particular topic. And you know, granted they're probably influenced by voices here and there, you know, as we all are. But but still they have this idea that Nope, I'm I'm making up my own mind on this, and in my opinion on this has has as value and is you know, screw it, the correct

vision of reality. And I wonder if sometimes this is an attractive way of thinking about say, scientific concepts, uh, because we erroneously turn to examples in artistic creation or music or you know, you name it outsider art where we say, well, you know that the story of like the self taught individual who never went to to art school, uh, you know, can't read cheap music, but can play you know, you know that creates all these beautiful songs and so

and some of these models. And you can sort of certainly you can get into a big argument within any artistic medium about uh, you know, the you know, outsider artists versus you know, the highly trained artists and traditions, etcetera. But there's certainly not. It's it's apples and oranges. I think when you're comparing um the artist to the scientist, Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, arts or a field in which we highly prize intuition and sort of

inherent skillfulness over over training a lot of times. And also the purpose of art is to create a response in the audience, and if it creates that response, then in a way it's successful. There's not like I mean, people could have arguments about this, but I don't think that there's a way to be right or wrong in

art or music or whatever. Well the artist is, you know, whatever the medium they're they're they're trying to create a shape based on something inside themselves that maybe inside another person as well. They're creating something, you know, based on an intimate knowledge, inner knowledge, but say something like someone like a like a climate scientist, they are or or um um, you know, various other scientific field You're you're trying to take something that we do not have innate

knowledge of. You know, it's a complex system that is beyond the human experience. There is a shape out there, it's like buried in the sand, and you're trying to un cover it and get a good model of what it looks like. And you can't use that that intuition it works so so well in many cases on the

inner exploration, you can't use that on the outer exploration. Yes, I think that's a really good way of thinking about it, and I really appreciate Adam getting in touch her because this is I think one of the big tensions of modern intellectual life is the tension between thinking for yourself and listening to people who know what they're talking about.

And these two things, like, they're both very important and an important part of like practicing good critical thinking and being a well informed person who's more likely to come to the you know, to know what's true about things, is finding the correct balance of wind exercise these two thoughts. I mean, I think one thing is it's it's good to think for yourself. But as Adam points out, you don't have time to think for yourself on every issue.

It's impossible. So you have to know what a real expert looks like and sounds like versus somebody who's just claiming to be an expert and be able to like know when to listen to them on subjects that you don't have the time to become fully educated on yourself. Yeah, there's so many topics I do not want to be an expert in. I don't want to be an expert in. Uh uh, you know auto mechanics. That that's somebody else's domain,

and I'll gladly refer to their expertise. All right. I think Carney has one more dripping bit of brain listener mail for us here. This one comes also from an atom, but a totally different atom. Hello, Robert and Joe. I'm a longtime listener of the show for him North Carolina, but I've never felt like I had something worth writing in about until now. I have a condition known as confusional arousal, also called sleep drunkenness. While I have not

been formally diagnosed, I have had several textbook episodes. Uh. This is just an expression, as I don't believe there is much literature on the condition. After doing a little research, I have found that it is not even mentioned in the D S M five, but there are several articles about it online. My experiences with the condition have all been told to me by others, as I have virtually no memory of the events, but several people, including my

mother and former girlfriend have shared similar reports. It goes something like this. I fall asleep while trying to stay awake. Someone wakes me up. I am seemingly alert, but extremely confused, unable to recognize people or where I am, and sometimes mumbling or talking nonsensely. Then I go back to sleep and wake up with no memory of the event, although sometimes I have sort of a feeling that something happened.

One particular episode was quite frightening. I was watching TV with my then girlfriend and fell asleep on her couch. The next thing I remember, she was driving and we were nearly to my house, about a fifteen minute drive from hers. She was very upset, and I eventually got her to tell me that I had an episode, and along the way I said I hate you. I remember

saying something like that. Wasn't me in response, but I believe still that because I have no memory of it, and my conscious self would never have thought, much less said something like that. Still, it raised the question to her and myself of whether part of my unconscious mind felt that way. Even before I listened to your split brain episode, I had the intuition that this episode was due to parts of my brain, perhaps one whole hemisphere

remaining asleep on the rest was awake. I recognize that this assumption could be false, as this phenomenon is barely recognized in psychology, must let much less explained, but I don't know how else this could be explained. Any insight you could give would be appreciated, and I believe this would fit in well with any future paras omnia episodes you would record. Anyway, Thank you for this seemingly endless,

insightful and fascinating content you have me. Uh. You have brought me hours of entertainment and blown my mind many times. I especially enjoy your episodes related to space travel and science fiction, but all of them are great. Best regards, Adam, Well,

thanks Adam. Uh yeah, I mean, I think the realm of sleep is one of the easiest places people can go to to understand what it's like to not know your own brain, you know, because they're everybody's had the experience I bet of doing something in a dream that you would you would think you would never do in normal life, and you would never want to do. You feel horrible about right, and then you wake up and you think, oh my god, you know, I just had

a dream. Where I slapped my grandmother or something that that would just be horrible, Um, why did I do that? Is that part of what my brain really wants to do? It You're you're confronted with the idea that you have things going on in your brain that are not part of your volition, you know, not not part of your normal will or your normal understanding of yourself that you know, I can't say that I ever really have dreams where I do things that I wouldn't do in reality. Really yeah,

like and not now. I certainly have dreams where the protagonist of the dream is not me, you know, where it's more of a narrative dream, it's a dream about somebody else or some other people. But dreams in which I am myself. I am often like really inconveniently tied to my own um uh, you know, moral behavior, like

they would be. It would be a lot more fun if in some of these cases if I was just essentially lucid dreaming and could you know, play the bad guy internal grand theft autoing essentially, But it never goes that way. It's more like it's just me being like, I know I really can't do that, I shouldn't do that. No, I'm gonna say no to that as well. And then later I wake up and I told that was a dream? Why did I say say no? I should have just I should have just you know, flown through the ceiling

and been got in my own universe. And I really need to make this lucid dreaming thing happen at some point. No, it sounds like you're saving yourself a lot of guilt. I mean, I think it is normal for people to have dreams where they do things they don't feel good about when they wake up, even though they didn't actually do them. You can just be worried that, like, why did my brain produce that? I'll see, I I don't know. I would. I don't think I've ever had that experience.

I almost would would would like to try something different differently, because yeah, I've just had I just have way too many dreams, especially now, like there's like nothing even interesting happens in the dream. It's just, uh, in large part because I end up playing by the rules so much in them. You know, I bet somewhere out there there's somebody who's got a book it's like the five step

process for becoming bad in dreams. I mean, certainly their their their process is to help you with lucy dreaming. And if i've I've known people who have had get some success with it. But it's just it's a lot of work and and there's so many other things I'm trying to do as as as I'm you know, ramping up to bedtime. Well, maybe your brain is just saving all your creativity for your waking hours. That would be a thing to be thankful for. Maybe that's what's happening.

That's the positive spin. Alright, Well, on that note, we're going to take one more break and when we come back a little more listener mail. Alright, we're back. So this next message comes from our listener Emmett and it's on the subject of Omamua and im it rights Hi again. In the recent listener Mail episode, you mentioned that Omumu

gained momentum by traveling past our son. This is not likely to be the case in the sense I think you meant as a traveling object inners a gravity well, it does gain momentum, but it would then lose all that momentum as leaves the well. I think that's correct, and it says there are two maneuvers that you can

gain momentum from a gravity well. The one we usually hear about is a slingshot maneuver, which can't be used by objects from our Solar system when it comes to the Sun because the Sun's momentum is zero from our reference frame. Mumua is not from our solar system, true, but it's momentum is similar to the Sun's, so I'm not sure it could effectively steal momentum from the Sun this way. Even if it could, it would depend on

what side of the Sun it passed by on. If it passed in front of the Sun's motion, it would actually lose speed. There's another way for an object to get a speed boost from the Sun's gravity well, through the oh Birth effect. Drive systems in spacecraft are more efficient at higher speeds up to a point, and you can use the fall into the Sun's gravity well to build up some velocity and then activate your drive. This will give your drive a small but very real efficiency boost.

The last way that applies to Mumua is that near the Sun, radiation pressure is going to be high, so the boost Omumua felt was probably just because it was getting blasted with more intense solar wind and radiation um And yeah, I think im it's correct about that, And what we were talking about in the episode was probably that the radiation pressure led to the net gain in

momentum that omum experience. But I think immats responding to somebody asking us um if omumu would gain speed by traveling near the Sun, and I think we said it would, which of course it would. But immage is entirely correct that as it leaves it also loses that speed as well, so it would be at the fastest point near its parahelion, when it's closest to the Sun in that parabola. So you're saying it might be aliens. No, well, what does it might mean? I don't know. You know, how small

of a chance does that encompass. I'm still clinging to the the out of control alien derelict ship possibility. Okay, yeah, I put a higher chance on it being aliens than I do on it being humans from the future. All right, I want to read a quick listener mail here that came to us. So is related to an older episode one that I did with Christian about Chinese ghost marriage.

Oh yeah, this one comes to us from Nicole. She says, hey, guys, I was just listening to your episode on Chinese ghost marriage, and I know I'm late to the party, but I have a story for you. A couple of years ago, my dad attended his father's funeral in Northeast China. A man dressed in white, which is typically warned by family members of the deceased, approached my dad and greeted him as a brother. Neither my dad nor any of his

sisters had met this man before. As it turns out, my grandfather had an older sister who passed away before she was married. Around the same time, a boy from the same village died, also unmarried. The two were married posthumously. The boy's family then went the extra mile and adopted a son on behalf of their dead son and daughter in law, without the knowledge of my family. That son was my dad's cousin. He had come to pay his

respects to his uncle. Just thought you might like an example of how this seemingly archaic rite exists in living memory. Keep up the good work, Nicole from Australia. Well, thank you, Nicole. That was a wonderful tidday. Yeah that this this was

an older episode. Uh that that that looked at Chinese ghost marriage and uh and you know, tried to get to the heart like, you know what why it exists and existed as as a practice and what it says about um these you know, these traditional Chinese models of a family and ideas about uh, you know what, what what happens when we die? Now we deal with the passing of individuals who have h you know, haven't to

quite fit into the ideal family form. Uh. So it was great to get great to hear from somebody that has you know, personal family experience of of this. Yeah, totally thank you for getting in touch, Nicole. All Right, this next one, we got at least a couple of messages in response to the episode Robert and I did back in October about curses. It was an episode called The Curse, and I was kind of surprised given the

norm all approach to the show. But we heard from a couple of listeners who were unhappy with the episode because they thought we were too dismissive or closed minded about the idea that magic spells literally work. Um. And and of course we did discuss plenty of the potential psychological power and meaning of of spell work and witchcraft and all that. But uh, they seem to think we were too dismissive of spells literally having an effect. Well, well, let's let's hear what she had to say. Okay, so

this is from Michelle. I found your episode on curses very interesting, and I have a link to information about book curses that you may find interesting as well. However, in the podcast, you mentioned more than once that course curses were invoked by common folk that the end that they had no scientific understanding, and you even stated with certainty that magic isn't real. This is surprising because you normally keep such open minds. I think you make these

statements based on the belief that magic is supernatural. But what if magic is as naturally possible as gravy or quantum physics. I'm no expert on many scientific things, but I accept them to be true without clear evidence presented to my eyes. I'd encourage you to do some reading on magic and modern paganism. You may find it interesting. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft is a

good place to start. It was highly recommended to me by the proprietor of a local witchcraft store, and I did find it to be informative as promised. Blessed be Michelle. Well, thanks for getting in touch, Michelle, and Um, I while I'm going to disagree with you partially, I take your

point seriously. Um. The first thought I have is that, as we talked about in the episode, I think it's really important to distinguish between like literal magical causation, like the power of spells to levitate objects or strike a cloak thief dead at a distance, um, and like the personal psychological power of sacred rights like spells. Yeah. I mean I've had people cast spells, you know, pagan spells, say in my house as a protective you know, sort

of housewarming kind of uh an effect. I've had spells cast on me that have kind of like a healing objective. And certainly neither of these am I going to expect you know, them to work. To these two it's for the home protection spell to be like a security system or the or the the healing spell to be as good as uh, you know, going to see a doctor about my knee or you know, something to that effect.

But they certainly have social value. They certainly have There is a value in somebody saying I care about you or your circumstance, and here is here is a ritual that proves it out. I mean, that's that's just how I look at it. Yeah, exactly. I mean I feel very much the same way about religious rights and rituals that you don't have to believe that there's literal supernatural power at work in order to see them as valuable, because they are psychological dramas. They have meaning and significance

between people that they establish feelings and relationships. Like when I listened to the Song of the Tiger Um. I know that it doesn't actually have a magical effect on me, but it but it certainly gets me pumped up. It makes me feel like like I'm a little bit uh invincible. Yeah yeah, And in many ways, I think magic and spells and rites and all that can be a lot

like music. It's not like music is invoking the you know, the literal might of some god that exists somewhere, But it does something to the people who listen to it and the people who play it, and it can be. It can be it can be a driving force in your life. It can be a reason to live the same with with with magic, with religion, with various supernatural ideas if we choose to layer them over the objective

reality that we deal with now. But more directly to Michelle's point, so when it does come to like the literal magical causation she's talking about, I mean she she is correct that I don't like believe in it, and we don't tend to consider it on the show as like a serious possibility and explaining why things happened, and I don't think. Essentially my point is, I don't think that it is closed minded to not attribute things to literal magical causation, because I think being open minded means

being opened evidence. And if there's good evidence that there's literal magical causation in the world, I think, of course we would be open to it. I think we demonstrate that all the time. But I just say, personally, since like I'm really interested in this sort of thing, and I read about this sort of thing a lot, and I've never come across anything that seems like good evidence of literal magic, I couldn't honestly claim on the show to think that maybe magic is actually a good explanation

for something. So I would feel disingenuous if I was on here saying like, maybe magical curses are real. I just don't think that's likely to be true. And I wouldn't feel honest if I was saying that. But ultimately, our show it's not about it's not about say, dismissing the idea of curses, is about like saying, well, but but look, but look at what Look at all these these rituals and all these beliefs that have existed that

do involve curses, Like why do we have curses? It's finding what's important and powerful about curses even if there is no literal magic. Yeah, Like none of these things are meaningless, like anytime we talk about uh, you know, religious concept, mythological concept, like these are not just meaningless doodles in the corners of of the the Earth's scientific narrative, like these are these are important things. That's say, important things about us, about our world and how we interact

with it. And uh and yeah, I I feel like that we always try and keep that part of the mission here on stuff to blow your mind. I totally agree. I'm finding what's interesting and meaningful about things, no matter

what those things are. I mean, like, and I would also say that I feel like this way of looking at the world goes way beyond just like magic and spell work, paganism and witchcraft, for example, I know of Christians who pray for their loved ones without believing the prayer will literally bring supernatural benefits to the people they pray for. Instead, it's more like performing an inner drama,

like reinforces value of selflessness and love and goodwill. It's sort of a self conditioning Yeah, I mean, I I we employee prayer in my house. It's uh, you know, if nothing else, it is a reason to stop and think about someone other than yourself, you know. And uh, and that alone I think has value in one's life.

That again, this is just my take on the topic totally man, So, I mean, I guess my final thought here is that even when it comes to non practitioners, a person doesn't have to believe in literal magical causation to see what's fascinating and wonderful about things like paganism and witchcraft and religious rituals in general. It's is fascinating phenomena. It's something I want to understand and learn more about. And if we didn't think these were worthy subjects, we

wouldn't talk about them so much on the show. Now, on that note, I am glad that we still have not uttered the V word or the L word, and thus enraged are our our male body here? That would be like invoking the wrath of an angry god. However, we do have one last spit of listener mail here that does relate to certain red little packages showing up on your doorstep. Uh during certain parts of the year, We're gonna we have a little bit of regarding Christmas

Island crabs. Boy. This two comes to us from Dan. Dan says, I recently finished listening to the second part of your Christmas Island Crab episode, and also, on your recommendation, watched Roger Corman's Attack of the Crab Monster. Yeah, I'm spreading the love. After watching the movie, I had an idea for a possible remake that is also partially based on your episode. The basic plot would stay the same.

A group of scientists and soldiers land on a remote island to discover what happened to the previous group of scientists and beyonder a giant, super intelligent crab monster bent on world domination. But here's where the remake would differ

from the nine seven original. It would be set during Christmas on Christmas Island and involve enormous, super intelligent coconut crabs who have used their psychic powers to turn the coal human population into slave labor, who worshiped the giant decapods as God's continuously clear roads and build homes for them, before ending up as a food source when their usefulness runs out. Now, if you had a giant like god sized coconut crab, can you imagine the amount of limpid oil?

What's more frightening a God sized crab or a crab sized God. I'm not sure. Okay, Dan continues, and in case you're wondering, Yes, it would involve radiation. Some ideas are just too good to change. It has to be atomic radiation. It's up to a rag tag group of scientists and soldiers led by Brian Cox and Peter Stormare to put an end to the crabs tyranny and liberate the human slaves. Maybe we could use Robert's Wonderful Christmas song during the end credits, coming soon into a theater

near you. Keep up the great work. I look forward to more mind blowing episodes in the new year. Somebody get Dan in touch with twenty century Fox their paramount. I don't know. I don't know what studios do, what whoever would make this movie get them going. Yeah, I think we're overdue for a Giant Crab movie. Somebody's gonna do it. It's gonna come back. There's going to be another Giant Crab movie. Might as well be this one. This one sounds pretty fun, And we have one. More

about Christmas Islands comes from Chris. Chris writes, Hi, Robert, and Joe. I couldn't believe my ears when my wife Michelle told me that you guys did not one, but two pods about Christmas Island, a place I called home for ten years between nine and two thousand six. Wow. We we were like, hey, have you lived on Christmas Island? If so? Right in we heard from multiple people who had been to Christmas Island. I couldn't believe this. Yeah,

it was it was multiple people. But I knew there would there would be at least one person out there. I knew. I knew, So I guess it's not too surprising. But Chris and Michelle actually lived there. They lived on Christmas Island. So Chris continues, we thoroughly enjoyed both episodes, and so I thought i'd dig up a few old family photos from my childhood featuring days spent amongst the red crabs. Every year we look forward to the onset of the rainy season, which, as you described so wonderfully,

initiated the annual crab migration. We'd spend hours running around the quiet streets, studying the crabs and watching the hordes go by. Thanks for the great podcast and spreading the word about my beautiful former home. Hope you like the photos. And Chris attached some photos that are so good. One

is children playing in the street surrounded by crabs. Another one is a cat sitting on like a looks like a front lawn walkway, just lying there in that wonderful, perfect lazy cat repose, surrounded by crabs on all sides. The cat does not seem worried. Yeah, this looks like a cat that was maybe in really into messing with these crabs are checking him out a while ago, and now it's just like so over it and it's just

just napping in the sun. But it looks like the cat just is just gonna let the crabs crawl right over him. Well, you got a nap somewhere. That's our new motto. All right, Well, we're gonna close it off there for today, but certainly we we had so much more listener mail we didn't have time to get to. Hopefully we'll come back to some of it in the next installment in about a month or so. But but again we thank everybody for writing in because we we we really try and read it all. We don't have

time to respond to it all. We don't have time on the show to feature it all, but we just we do always appreciate hearing from all of our listeners. Yeah, as always, we we really love all the mail we get. We're sorry we can't read it all on the show, and and please keep it coming. Thank you so much. All right, So, hey, you all have listened to the show enough to know the basics here. Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com that's the mother ship. That's what

we find all the episodes. That's why you'll find links out to social media accounts that were on, including the discussion module Stuff to Blow your Mind's Facebook group, the Discussion model. That's the official place if you want to chat with other other listeners. And also Joe and I hang out there a little bit as well. Post you know, you know, anything you like related to episodes we've done, our episodes, you'd like us to do in the future,

or just just fun science, etcetera. That's a good place to go. Also, the website has a link out to our public store, which has a number of cool designs in there. You can get t shirts, stickers, laptop cases, the pillows with our logos for invention or stuff to blow your mind, as well as some cool designs based on past episodes. Pillows, pillows, that's the best thing. You can get. A pillow that says the squirrels are not what they seem with that fabulous bone nawing squirrel design

that we have. What I want to see is listeners out there buying pillows from our store and then getting their pets to sit on those pillows and getting covered in pet hair. Send us photos well, not of just the pet hair, like the pet needs to be on the yea, the pet on the throne of the stuff to blow your mind pillow, Yeah, because I if I want to see just pet hair on a pillow. Yeah, yeah, all right. And as always, if you want to support the show in a way that doesn't cost you a dime.

The absolute best thing you can do is subscribe to Invention and Stuff to blow your mind and to rate and review those shows wherever you have the power to do so. Wherever you get this podcast huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison.

If you would like to get in touch with us directly to let us know uh feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, let us know where you listen from, how you found out about the show, all that kind of stuff. You can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com b has a farm back by A. P.