Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb.
And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day of each week that we read back messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind mail bag. A little note at the top of today's episode Tomorrow. This week we are going to be running a vault episode because it is a holiday here in the United States. But we will be back with all new episodes later this week.
But for today, we are going to feature some new messages. Rober, you okay if I kick this thing off with the message from Nathan about the Lesser of Two Crab Claws.
Oh yeah, crab content, Let's do it right.
At the top, Nathan says, Hey, Robert and Joe, I'm a bit behind on Stuff to Blow Your Mind at the moment, but just finished the Lesser of Two Crab Claws from about a year ago, which dealt with body asymmetry. It was great as usual. At the end of the last episode in the series, you talked a bit about differences between left and right handedness, which sparked an old memory.
I'm a big hockey fan and remembered a couple of older articles mentioning that Canadian hockey players are more likely to shoot left compared to the rest of the world. About sixty to seventy percent of Canadian hockey players shoot left compared to the rest of the world, which is about sixty percent righty. The difference also carries over to golf, and there are smaller oddities as well, like Quebec born players being even more likely to shoot left, but British
Columbia skewing more to the right. There are a lot of theories as to why, but no one's ever really figured it out. Here as a couple of articles if you're interested. Thanks for all your great work. My wife Olivia and I have been big fans for years. All the best, Nathan, Oh, thank you, Nathan. Yeah, this is kind of interesting. I'd never heard of this before, so there are Yeah, I was reading a bit about this. It seems like there are various hypotheses, but none of
them really seems to make sense. One of them is I was reading about this in the NPR article that Nathan linked. I'll just read from it. They say, quote one theory says it's because Canadians play hockey like a bunch of three year olds when they're three years old in a country devoted to the sport. That's about the age Canadians first take up the stick, a much younger
start than Americans. Tats that young are more likely to use their stronger hand to control the shot, which puts the right hand at the top of the stick and makes right handed kids into lefty shooters. Does that make sense, Like, when you're small, you might use the opposite handedness for shooting than you would if you're learning to shoot when you're a bit larger compared to the stick itself.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean sports are different when your body's smaller.
Yeah, But I think there are reasons people question that explanation, So ultimately, I think I think it is not known. I was thinking there was going to be some cheeky explanation like, I don't know, you know, Canadian players while they're learning that they've got a hold of beer in the right hand, so they're using the left. But I don't know.
No, But that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of great stuff about left hand right handedness in humans out there.
I know we've covered in the show long ago, but it would be interesting to dive back into some of the There's a lot of theories regarding like hand to hand combat and so forth, and you see that reflected and various combat sports as well, like the idea that you know, if you're a boxer and you're you're a righty, you're mostly training to fight righty's right, and then here comes
a lefty. Meanwhile, you're a lefty. You're mostly training to fight rightys, but you've got the advantage of being the lefty, etc. That right, It gets a little more complicated than that, though.
That raises a question that I recall coming up for about evolutionary theories having to do with throwing punches, and that question was is throwing punches really very common in nature? Is that like a natural fighting form that humans use outside of the context of like an organized sport. I'm not sure it is.
M We've discussed some of that in some of the dealing with some of these hypotheses regarding the closed fist and the evolution of the human hand.
I think this came up in the Crabclaw episode because we were talking about that other hypothesis where the guy suggested that maybe handedness evolved because of the positioning of holding infants while trying to do something with one's free hand, and that it was advantageous to hold the infant on the left side of the chest, so the right handedness would evolt. But I don't know. I haven't heard a single theory that has been super convincing to me.
I'll say, all right, This next one comes to us from Jeremy. Jeremy says, Hello, Robert and Joe. I know you are fellow nerds and lovers of sci fi, but I can't remember which of you is the bigger N. M. Banks fan. You also regularly reference compendiums and encyclopedias of sci fi lore, etc.
Rob is the big en M. Banks fan. I'm not opposed. I just haven't gotten into him.
Banks' work is. It's harder to figure out a starting point, necessarily because you have the culture books, which are you know, this wonderful though at times humorous and absurd, but also very hard sci fi at times. And the books don't necessarily don't really need to be read in any order, but they are all in a shared universe and occurring at different times. Some books are better entries than others
some are better entries for certain readers than others. And then he has a whole bunch of other fiction that is either sci fi that is not connected to the culture. And then he has a bunch of books that are set in the real world, and at least one early horror novel as well, The Loss Factory.
I think that is the one that proudly cites a pull quote that says something like trash absolutely depraved. Yeah.
I mean it's a different beast than his later books, for sure, But I remember enjoying that when at one point, But I don't know if I would reread that. There are still other Banks books I haven't read that I need to get to anyway, Jeremy continues. He says, with that in mind, are you aware that there will soon be an inn M. Bank's book which celebrates his world building.
I am undecided as to whether to purchase this book, as if you, or anything like me, you will have formed your own ideas and concepts as to the appearance of the habitats, aliens, spacecrafts, and planets that you don't want disrupted your thoughts. Best regards, Jeremy, Well, thanks, Jeremy. I looked this up. I had no idea that this book was coming out, and I had not really looked into the matter and read anywhere that Banks had illustrations
in his notes concerning the Culture setting. For those of you not aware, Banks passed away several years ago, so he's no longer with this, and there are no new proper Banks novels, no more Culture novels. The last Culture novel published before his death, So I didn't know this
was coming out. I'll say, for my own part, while there are some books out there, fiction books that I have a very clear vision of things in my head off and I may even resist artistic interpretations of those things, I would say that the way I imagine things in the culture book books tends to be a little less defined. It's hard to really put a finger on why, but
I guess for that reason, I'm all for it. Like a bunch of cool illustrations or just insightful illustrations isn't going to break anything for me, and it might make me realize, oh, well, that's what he was getting at with that, because there are a lot of There are a lot of strange things in the Culture, things that the Culture series, that things that are existing like on a scale that you know, modern humans wouldn't be able
to fully comprehend that sort of thing. Advanced technology and so forth.
I have nothing to add to that other than I do love and illustrate did Encyclopedia always a lot of fun.
Yeah, I'd say for the most part these days, the images and things don't really mess me up. I don't know. There was a time when I was very touchy about like Lord of the Rings stuff and which visual interpretations I cared for the trums I didn't. But the strange thing is with Dune, I've never really been that way. I kind of like pick and choose. You know. It's like when I reread Dune after the recent movie adaptation.
There were things that, you know, from that film that found their way into the mental imagery of reading the book, but other things that I just kind of like carried over from previous readings, the ways that I'd pictured characters in the past, or lined up with other adaptations and so forth. So anyway, Jeremy, thanks for putting that on our radar.
All right, This next message is from Spencer. Spencer says, Hi, Robert and Joe, I was listening to your five point twenty two edition of Listener Mail, and you put the call out for anyone with not of a time traveling Dracula. I don't even remember that. Okay, wait, were we talking about Santo in the Treasure of Dracula? Was that it?
Yeah, Santa and the Treasure of Dracula came up because somebody called us out for non including that in a like an offhand list of time travel movies we've covered on Weirdouse Cinema, and we were like, oh, yeah, our bad Dracula, that is a time travel movie. And then one of us uh asked the question, why don't we see more time travel Dracula movies? And then I said, well, I know Marvel Comics has their own Dracula. Marvel's Dracula.
I don't know for sure, but I bet he's time travel, just because you have so many crazy things going on in the Marvel universe.
All right, all right, Spencer says, I've been on a multi year quest to read all the Marvel comics in the order they were published, and I recently read Marvel's Tomb of Dracula number five from nineteen seventy two, in which Dracula has been revived in the then present day.
In issue number five, Dracula passes through the Demon Mirror in nineteen seventy two and is transported to a nether world filled with demons, only to re emerge back in Transylvania a century or more earlier amid horse drawn carriages and top hats. By the end of the issue, Dracula and his pursuers passed back through the mirror and return to the present day. Anyway, thank you for this delightful opportunity to make use of this very obscure reference, and
thank you for churning fascinating content week after week. Best Spencer, Well, that's awesome.
I knew that Marvel's Dracula would probably not fail us on this count. I knew he had to have gotten near some sort of a magical or sci fi time machine.
Do all comic book protagonists eventually time travel?
I think if they're around long enough, they've got If they're around long enough, they're popular enough, they've got to keep doing things, and the time machine is just there waiting for them, you know, And you can never go too far, say in like marvel comics, like everything crazy has been done before, and if you do something too crazy.
It's like, no big deal, You've just you know, you can kind of start again, either like officially in a parallel universe or you know, through just by saying, hey, here's a new starting point.
Didn't we already reach the point where they were like, okay, here, I'm gonna blow your mind with my new idea for for for the Green Lantern or whatever. He has no powers? What if he has no superpowers?
Yeah?
Yeah?
What if he has superpowers all the time? What if he's It's like any any variation has been explored. I think at some point or another, there's very little we could speculate on, even concerning Dracula that probably hasn't been done. And I'll get to an example of that in a minute. There's something I didn't even think that I wanted to see, but it's been done.
Yeah.
So this is a great response, Spencer. Thank you for taking it up on you to to read all these comic books. I'm sure there are some spectacular highs and some some really dismal lows in that. But yeah, I've actually been poking around a little bit offhand for trying to find an affordable omnibus of the Tomb of Dracula comics, because you know, I'm just kind of interested in that whole scene, like Dracula as a Marvel villain, and then some of the various characters that kind of emerge from
those comics. Like I think that's where, if I'm not mistaken, Blade emerges from that Moonnight emerges this from from that world, and so yeah, I'm kind of interested in what all he's been up to now Marvel's Dracula is still around.
I'm sorry you included a cover of the Marvel Tomb of Dracula. And is this Blade saying I Am going to stab you with this wooden knife?
Yeah, you know, I think the older comics, you know, they're often a little more overt with the action, and this is this is a very early Blade. This may be I'm not I'm not certain. This may the one I copy and pasted here. Might have been blades origin addition, But yeah, he was as we've talked about on the show before, he was different back in the seventies. He was more in line with sort of some of the
action cinema of the day. M h. I believe he also has teak wooden weapons in his origin, so hmmm, which is kind of neat. I mean, you need wood to stab a vampire in some versions of the tale.
Or you could be like the Blade in the movie and just have silver everything. I guess that gets expensive.
Yeah, but it works, it really, it really worked for him. But I don't know it. Be interested to see if they ever actually make this, this New Blade movie. I wonder if they're going to lean into the teak a little bit in addition to the silver, Like if they're gonna they seem to be, you know, going going into some of the older stuff, some of the stuff that got kind of changed when the original movies came out.
So we'll see, Okay, new idea. New Blade has a side business where he makes money by selling colloidal silver to to like suckers on the internet and conspiracy theorists who think it's a panacea.
Well, you know, it is a it is a cure all from Blade perspective, because it's slaves vampires, and that's like that's the problem.
You know.
He's very laser focused on this one issue that would.
Be a great scam going so like he can say he like Facebook targets vampires with ads about how it will cure them of I don't know their sunlight allergy or something, and then they just take the colloidal silver and die.
Yeah, it's effortless. Now, obviously Blade's still around, and yep, Marvel's Dracula is still around as well, though I've seen different looks for him. I included two of these for you to look at here, Joe. In some variations, he definitely seems to have more in common with sort of
a like a dark fantasy idea of a vampire. It looks a little bit more like the historic setting the origin story is setting in Bromstoker's Dracula, or rather Francis Ford Coppolo's Bromstoker's Dracula, and then in other depictions he still has kind of that classic hammer horror look. And the thing I love about both of these images I pulled up is that in both of them, drac You is like towering over a pile of superhero bodies. So it really drives home that Dracula in the Marvel Comics universe,
he's not a bit player. He is a powerful entity, which I like.
Yeah, in one of these, do I see like Storm, Wolverine and Cyclops, Like he's got all the dead X Men under him.
Yeah. Yeah again. You know, you can do whatever. There's nothing too crazy in comic books because you can always say, well, this was you know, this was a dream, this is an alternate universe. I don't know. There's so many different ways to spin it.
Yeah, okay, but in one of them he looks like the Witcher, and then the other one he looks like Christopher Lee in Horror of Dracula.
Yeah, yeah, I think it push comes to shove. I like the Christopher Lee look better here? Now, one more, one more thing, I guess. On Marvel's Dracula, I was again, I haven't read any of these Tomb of Dracula comic books, but I went to the Marvel wiki on Dracula, and just one sentence just completely amazed me and set me off in new directions. Quote Dracula remained low for several years following that, he turned up later and met with Victor von Doom on Earth's moon.
That that's really good. What does remained low mean? Like he likes he was in hiding, or like he was low like I don't know, in a bad place.
I mean, any Stracos there's always in a bad place, I guess, but I guess maybe he was regaining his powers, you know, laying low, getting off the radar of the various superheroes and vampire slayers for a bit. And then yeah, I look this up, and I don't know which comic this was in or what the over arching story happens to be. But here's the moon. Here's a part of a lunar lander in the foreground. There's Earth in the background.
And here on the surface of the Moon we have Dracula and we have Doctor Doom and they're in just engaging in a casual villain conversation.
Behind them, you can see the US flag from the moon landing. Just yeah.
So again, it's like I didn't even think to ask that question. I wonder if Dracula has been to the Moon in the Marvel cinematic I mean the Marvel comic universe, And sure enough, he has.
But Doctor Doom's just mortal in me.
Oh, I can't you know, I can't remember. I know. He's a mix of it's like a mix of science and magic, so there's no telling what he's accomplished. Oh okay, and then he has all those doom bots, so you know, sometimes you think you've killed him but you haven't because it's a doom bot.
Oh okay, I didn't realize that.
But there's a lot about doctor Doom I don't know, so uh. You know, Spencer will have to straighten us out on that as well. All right, This next one here comes to us from Heather. Heather says Robert Joe. I have listened to the podcasts core episodes for a long long time, and I really appreciate all that you do. You have helped me stay connected to that lifelong learner
that I dreamed of being in my college years. In your recent listener mail, you mentioned the idea of doing some weird house cinema episodes based on commercial films, theme part films, or maybe others. This excites me. I'm usually not into movies that are too weird because they get nightmares easily. Also a bit of a callback to recent episode topics. When you mentioned that special topic episode, I was instantly reminded of the old science lab safety training
videos we watched in school. Kids in the video would make comically bad mistakes, akin to the woman hit with avalanche of tupperware container's bit that as seen on TV ads use. I remember there being an infamously funny but valid catat safety video that was played in Shop Class two, which even made reference to egos and hangovers being safety concerns. What makes these training videos notable to me is not how corny they were, though that was the highlight in school.
It's notable because they worked. I can't tell you the number of times I've been in my garage or yard and thought to myself, waft to whif because of that dumb video. Safety glasses, fire extinguishers, and even gloves are readily available in my maker spaces because of the hold those corny films half in my mind, they were pretty weird, but that could have been what made them good. Thanks again for everything you do, Heather.
Oh Thanks Heather oh Man. So this got me thinking about a number of things. But when it comes to like lab safety videos, I guess this is somewhat different. But my mind immediately went to the ultimate lab educational video parody, which is the British comedy series look Around You, which, by the way, if you have never seen you should immediately go and watch because it's one of my favorite pieces of television. Ever.
Oh Yes, look Around You both seasons season one and season two or each have a different feel to them, different eras of educational films for the British populace in particular. But you know, you don't have to have a background in British television to enjoy them. They're they're excellent. I I highly recommend all of them.
If you just watched the first episode on Calcium, you'll finally understand why people are so dedicated to avoiding the helvetica scenario.
Yeah, the helvetica scenario. Yeah, so much good stuff. Now, another thing that comes to mind on all of this, I don't remember a lot of watching a lot or any of these as part of my education or part of school or workplace safety so much. But through I think rift tracks, I remember, of course watching shake Hands with Danger, which is the kind of the industrial safety
video part excellence. You know, it's it's cheesy, it's got a great guitar riff in it that don't know, it's got a song, and then just exceedingly gory shots of people making momentary mistakes and being a little bit careless on the job and suffering for it in horrendous ways. And yeah, it's watching it, especially via rift tracks, you can't help laugh and snicker, but you're also you know, cringing and caught crying out loud when the violence happens,
and yet some of it creeps through. They're still like every now and then, when I'm doing something, I'll think, shake hands with danger and sort of, you know, step back a little bit from something that I was about to maybe be a little bit careless with.
I actually back to Heather's message, was not familiar with the lab safety mantra waft to whiff, But I guess that means you it's what I've seen people do before you. You sort of waft the top of a beaker towards you so that you can sniff it rather than placing your nose over it, because maybe if you place your nose over it, you might get too much of the smell if it's noxious.
Yeah, yeah, that's good.
I don't know, that's my guess.
Yeah, it's little things like that, you know that I can see sticking in your mind and helping you out a little bit throughout the rest of your life.
All right.
One that note, we're going to go ahead and close the mail bag for today, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there regarding Dracula in the Moon, safety videos, past episodes, future episodes, left and right hand in this crab clause, everything's on the table, so right in. We'd love to hear from you. A reminder that listener mail
episodes publish every Monday. In the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form artifactor Monster Fact on Wednesdays and on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 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 production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.