Listener Mail: Cyclopean Stairs

natural flames and fire coming out of the earth. All right, all right, Chris says, Hi, Robert and Joe, I loved your episodes about eternal flames and thought you might want to see some images of Mount Chimera. And then Chris includes a description referring to one of the images they sent along, and also, yeah, Artash meaning the rock that lights up and Olympus, the modern town and the ruins

of the Greco Roman city. Oh this is cool because this is a place that you actually brought up in that pair of episodes, Rob, I think you and Artas specifically is the one where it has the fire coming out of the rocks on the real side. Yeah. Um, But Chris goes on both the modern and ancient cities sit on the banks of the Achai River in antiquity, known as Harpasso's Right, where it empties into the Mediterranean

on a beautiful pebble beach surrounded by high cliffs. There are a number of rustic pinsions or pincion as I think this just means like little houses or huts, where most tourists stay between the modern town and the ancient sites. There are ruins all along the river, including a Roman bath and numerous tombs, all covered in vines and moss and surrounded by bright red poppies. The grounds are not yet improved, so there are no trails and tourists are

able to scramble all over the ancient structures. For better or worse. The whole place looks very Indiana Jones. Apparently the area was a pirate sanctuary for thousands of years, and you can feel why if you kayak around the cove among the sea turtles and ruins of the Genoese fortresses on the surrounding cliffs. You can hike directly dan our Touch from the beach, or you can take a tourist bus to the base of Mount Chimiro, which is what we did the hike from the base takes about

thirty minutes. The trail has steps, but I can only describe them as cyclopean, and most people tried to walk around them. The path is littered with carved marble chunks of ancient monuments or temples. When you finally get to the top, it's a little bit of a letdown. At least during the day. Jean Artash is sort of a smallish clearing of ashy looking bare rocks, surrounded by forest and a few bits of what must have been a

temple right at the tree line. As the sun goes down, though, the place takes on an eerie quality that you can imagine might inspire stories about monsters. We saw no lions or snakes, by the way. Oh this is referring I think Rob to uh you talking about those ancient writings about the different animals of the Camira monster being around the area. So Chris has no lions, no snakes. But picking up there are many domestic goats on the surrounding hillsides.

The sound of their bleeding, the call of the goat herds, and the clanking of the bells around their necks instantly evoked the past. It's an amazing trip that I almost don't want to recommend so as not to spoil it. I only found out about it because my wife and I were teaching in Istanbul at the time and looking

for something to do on our fall break. The host of our pincheon was very friendly and spent most nights chatting with guests of all ages from all over the world, drinking beer or tea around a fire pit in the front courtyard. Idyllic barely describes the experience. Thanks for letting me share. Hope you enjoy the photos. I'm the guy standing in the river, and then Chris attaches many photos, some of which are extremely beautiful. One indeed does have

one standing in a river. H Well, awesome. It's great to hear some firsthand experience from from this fascinating location. All right, here's another one when comes to us from Stephen in response to our star Gazer in the well episode, Dear Joe and Rob, I really enjoyed your recent podcast on stargazing in the daytime through wells. I thought i'd point your attention to a way the real life, bona fide modern day astronomers use wells of a sort to

observe the night sky. The super Kamio Kandi is a massive artificial body of water buried deep in an old mine under Japan. This is, in a loose sense, a well, though it doesn't have any shafts leading from the water straight to the air. Instead, the mind acts as a shield against cosmic radiation, allowing only neutrinos to pass through into the water below to be picked up by the

super ai S detectors. Of course, most of the newtrinos come for our son, though there are records of neutrinos coming from supernova things that would normally only be observable in the night sky. Thanks for a great show, much appreciated, Stephen. Yeah, I believe I've seen photographs of of this before the right.

It's quite captivating. It looks very sci fi. Yeah, I don't know how much I already knew about this one, because I realized, um at first I thought I knew what he was talking about, but then I realized I was thinking of the South Pole Neutrino Observatory, the Ice Cube Observatory, which is like a subterranean facility UH in Antarctica, but this one in a mine in Japan also sounds fascinating. So yeah, really good on that connection. I did not

make that. Yeah, I believe I wrote an article about like top ten Amazing telescopes or something like ten years ago for our stuff Works, And uh, I remember looking at a lot of photographs of these various installations, and I believe some of the some of the the images I saw of this one. Uh, it reminded me of of of yeah, just pure science fiction. It's any of these vast spaces with you know, these kind of like

golden looking lights in it. Quite fascinating. Yeah. The detector room looks like a set from two thousand one of Space Odyssey. Dave awakens in it and he speaks to some being inside his head or something. Yeah. Yeah, And so you know, it's, like Steven said, not a direct comparison to be made between this in a well, but some things line up, so it's worth noting. So thanks for writing in about that. All right. This next message comes to us from Lauren. It is about our series

of episodes on document duplication and fact Simile. Lauren says, Hello, Robin Joe. I was just listening to your second episode on the Facts Simile and had some personal life experiences to share about carbon paper and how it is still slinking around in the shadows of everyday life. Though it feels like it should be obsolete in our modern age, carbon copy paper is not quite a curiosity of the past.

It is still frequently used, especially in restaurants settings. As soon as you said this, I knew what you were talking about. I have worked in restaurants myself. Yeah. Um, But Lauren also says occasionally in the form of receipts, but predominantly so that both the kitchen staff and the servers have access to the order information. So Rob, do you know what she's talking about. Here, you have the pad and the carbon paper on it. One one copy

stays in your hand, and one copy goes to the kitchen. Yeah. Yeah, this this springs about I. I don't have the restaurant experience that you have, but but of course I've seen now they've been brought to my attention. I've seen this take place, and basically it comes down to the fact that the kitchen needs to know what the food is going to be, but also the front of the restaurant

needs to know as well. I think another way it works sometimes is that one copy goes to the kitchen so they can see what to make, and the other copy gets like spiked on a stack so they can be counted up at the end of the night, so like,

you know, all the things that got ordered. Funny enough, I also have experience with carbon paper for receipts because in my days working in the tourist industry, where I was a ticket seller for for an attraction in Tennessee, when we don't know if it was in power outages or something, we'd have some kind of utility problem, power internet or something and we couldn't the credit card machines

wouldn't work electronically. We would still sell tickets with credit cards, but we would use these ancient machines that uh that like made an impression of the credit card information, so you'd like swipe something over the card physically and it

would punch the carbon paper. Yeah, I distinctly remember that one from when I would go shopping with my mom when I was a little kid, and you know, should be buying clothing for us or whatnot at the you know, the mall or sears or whatever, and that was how she would pay and they would use that device. And I can still hear that sound that it makes in my head. That is it as they bear down on it and roll it over the paper and then back. It's like the pump action on a shotgun. But this

is getting your tickets to the Imax theater. Yeah, so that the shotgun sound of this. The spike receipts and processing payment used to be so much more violent. Now you just swipe a card. Okay, sorry, we got sidetracked, Lauren continues. Also, I can buy carbon copy paper at the local discount store a block away, sort of like a dollar store, And because I pay my landlord the monthly rent and bills in sketchy, cold hard cash, she gives me a receipt for the transaction using a carbon

paper copy pad, especially formatted for monetary transactions. And it doesn't stop there, Lauren says, on a final note, though my memories are vague, I've also had to sign paperwork and official documents at certain places of business and or in employment situations on carbon paper. But certainly I always felt like I was dealing with an establishment without enough money or foresight to upgrade their technology. Have a wonderful week,

and thank you for the always stimulating podcasts. Lauren, very nice. Well, thanks for writing in. Lauren. Again, we always appreciate these firsthand tidbits about the various places and devices and and other things we discussed on the show. My fingertips feel weirdly dusty after reading this email. What was that feeling? You know, that handling carbon paper feeling? You know what I'm talking about. I guess I don't know. I don't. I don't have a distinct memory of that, no sense

memory of that. Okay, maybe it's a kind of a kind of dusty, kind of waxy strange. Now, before we get into Weird House Cinema, we just want to call attention to a couple of of tidbits from first the Stuff to Bow your Mind discussion module, which you can join on Facebook. Look it up and you have to you know, like apply and then we let you in

that sort of thing. But UM listener by the name of William just shared a post that said toad dug out vegetables the fastest, which when I read that at the end of the day one day, I was I just I was like, what is this craziness? Is there? Should I report? This is somebody in crisis here or something? UM and I think I even asked them. I was like, wait, what, like, what are you talking about? And then they reminded me that we had asked what was Toads special ability in

Super Mario Brothers Too. It's apparently the Toad dugout vegetables the fastest, right, so you pull those radishes out of the ground, Toad does it faster than Mario Luigian Peach because Peach could float. That was peaches thing, right, and Mario was just even distributed. Now the other bit I want to call attention to on the stuff to blow your mind discord page, which if you want the link for that, just email us and we'll send you the link. That seems to be the only way to really make

this work. But Fletch wrote in and says the episode on creatures with transparent bodies reminded me of this novel that I read as a teenager Legacy of the Stars. No idea if it still holds up. But the central concept was that aliens had attempted to colonize Earth in the Ice Age, leaving behind some technology that a group of prehistoric humans discovered and were able to exploit. Living underground in total isolation only to be recontacted in modern times.

Because of millennia subterranean living, they had become almost completely translucent. I don't remember much more about it, since it must be thirty years since I read it, but I remember the idea capturing my imagination at the time. Also, like the humans turned into glow worms or something. I guess, yeah. This, and then the title of this book is The Legacy of the Stars by John Gregory. I'm not familiar with that. I don't think I've read anything by John Gregory, but

that this sounds sounds very very interesting. Uh you know what one of those um one of those sci fi novel concepts that very much speaks at the time, Like you can imagine, uh how cool the the cover art probably looks without even looking it up, you know. All right, well, let's move on into the Weird House Cinema feedback. All right, let's see, Uh, this first one comes from Nan uh the I think both of our Weird House messages today

are about Jason takes Manhattan. But Nan says, Hi, guys just wanted to say that today's Weird House Cinema episode on j t M needs to go in the stuff to blow your mind. Hall of Fame if one exists. This was the funniest and most nostalgia inducing episode ever, with some surprisingly insightful cinematic analysis and uh I think. She mentions rob your comparison between James Bond and Jason

Vorhees the striking number of similarities between these two franchises. Uh. And she also calls out the appeal of Tina's quote telekinetic home alone. Oh yeah, Tina's great. The new podcast format took some getting used to, but I'm really loving the rhythm and variety of episodes. Now keep up the great work. Nan uh Nan says that this is the same Nan who wrote the email about landfill goats. Oh,

I remember that one. And then finally Nan says, ps, my Canadian husband says he's never heard of Danger Bay, but the show name sounds very Canadian. What was that? There were actors in jt M that we're in something called Danger Bay. Oh yeah, a lot of Canadian actors and and so some of at least one of them had a connection to Danger Bay, maybe a couple of them. Uh. And Danger Bay was a show that when I when I was a small child and lived in Canada for

you know, a year or so. Um. I distinctly remember we had one TV channel, and so whatever was on TV we would, you know, sometimes watch, especially it was cold out obvious, and two shows I distinctly remember, We're Danger Bay, which had like seaplanes and uh, you know, sea life in it. And then there was a show called Seeing Things that had a really catchy tune theme song to it, and it starred the guy whose head

blows up at the beginning of Scanners. Yeah, yeah, the the the bald head kind of I think it had a mustache, kind of looks like Frank Oz. But I have no idea how truly memorable either of these shows are two true Canadians. They're just you know, two shows that were on TV that I caught sometimes when I was like in kindergarten. Nice, all right. This next one comes to us from Dan. It is also about Jason

Takes Manhattan. Hello, Robert and Joe. I listened to your Weird House Cinema episode on Jason Takes Manhattan, and I think this might be one of your best weird House episodes. I've never been much of a fan of the Friday the Thirteenth movies. I've only seen the original the Cronenberg scenes of Jason X and the two thousand nine reboot. I really enjoyed Joe's passionate analysis of the series, and

I especially loved your commentary on the trailer. Maybe this is something you could explore in a future of special episode where you do a commentary track on an entire film attack of the Crab Monsters or it conquered the World. Perhaps he learned too late that man is a feeling creature. When Joe said Jason is a nature spirit, I was reminded of something you may have brought up in a stuff Toble your Mind episode from a few years ago.

Unless I'm misremembering, I don't remember who said it, but you were waxing about how Jason is a pagan god who demands human sacrifice of teenagers in order to appease his bloodthirst. I thought that this could make for an interesting spin that could take the series into Cabin in the Woods territory, where the longtime residents of Crystal Lake must every few years provide teenagers to be sacrificed to He who never died lest he turned his sights on them.

Does this sound familiar of all the work you do Dan, Well, yeah, you know, I'm not positive, but I think that older episode you're remembering may have been the one where we talked about the masked killer in It was like a Halloween season episode, and we we talked about how Jason strangely connects back to uh multiple older traditions, Like there have been some scholars who argued that Jason emerges from the traditions of like the public execution or you know,

he's like the hooded axe man. But then the other half is, yeah, that he's like the God who must be sacrificed too, And I think that is in fact being pretty directly lampooned in Kevin in the Woods. Yeah, Kevin in the Woods fun flick. By the way, Dan watched all of Jason X. It's worth seeing from beginning to end, aunds pretty solid. The Cronenberg David Cronenberg's canny alway is also a lot of fun. I think the most brilliant moment in Jason X is whoever came up

with the idea of putting Jason into a hollow deck. So, yeah, you know, it's firmly established at this point that Jason cannot be killed, but I that just awoke. My mind was like, how creative a solution to Jason. You just put him in a hollow deck with infinite fake victims, so then no real person is harmed. He's just entertained forever being in there, and that's a win win. Yeah. Yeah, it's It's a film that totally embraces the silliness of the concept and his orders of magnitude better than any

of the other horror franchises Go to Space Films. Oh and as for commentary tracks, yeah, yeah, we could do a commentary track sometime. I don't know. I don't know if you're if you're putting out one of these classic horror movies with crab monsters in it on Blu Ray or something, and you need somebody to do, uh do a commentary track. I don't know. Let's talk, let's see, le's see what we can work out. That's how you make the big bucks. That's that's what we're angling for.

That's the big bucks. The commentary track Monday. Uh oh oh. Speaking of Weird House, by the way, if you are interested in Weird House merchandise, you can get it along with stuff to Blow your Mind merchandise in our T shirt store. You can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and there's a tab over to your right that says like store or whatnot. You go there and you can look at some of these designs, including

the new design rubbed the Fur. Joe said it, we believe it, and now it is in merch form for you to purchase. Where stick to the side of a bus, you name it all right, right, I gotta get me some of our merch Yeah, yeah, merch hub. I Um, I don't think I currently have one of our merch shirts. My my son has a couple of them though, Like the last few times where we had like a new shirt design, I was like, Okay, I'll get I'll get one for him. I'm gonna I have too many T

shirts right now. I get him for him. Hey, he looks good at him. Yeah, we get some some cool designs in there, so check them out. I don't likewise right in, if you there's like a certain design, you're like, oh, I wouldn't wear any of these, but I would wear this. This would be fun, because ultimately that's what the merch store is about. It is just if something is if you have a fun idea. Right in let's talk, let's

figure it out. All right, We're gonna go and close up the mail bag there, but hey, we'd love to hear from you. Do you have thoughts on anything we discussed here recent episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind or Monster Fact or Artifact or UM. Of course, the core episodes UM, in addition to Weird House Cinema, were right in. We would love to hear from you. As always, you can find all this and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed where and you can get that

wherever you get your podcasts. If it serves you a podcast, it is probably a place where you can find our shows. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.