Listener Mail: Fire Burn and Caldron Bubble

why aren't we getting more vegetable lamb? Uh? Rob? Do you want to do? This? One? From me? In or sex? Dear Robert and Joe, I'm about six weeks behind on episode, so apologies if someone already wrote in about this, but I was listening to your episode on the Lamb of Tartary and it was reminded of a group of plants that does grow itself an animal. The ophrisk genus of orchids are known as b orchids, and each one grows flowers that are little replicas of the female be or

other pollinator. The flowers not only look and feel like the female, but also release the sex hormone of fertile females. This fac similar lures in males to try to mate with the flower, thereby transferring pollen and fertilizing the orchid. Each species of this orchid is adapted to lure in males of only one particular pollinator species, though rarely individuals

of a closely related species will be duped as well. Amusingly, males do eventually learn to distinguish between the flowers and true females of their species, so it tends to be the younger, inexperienced males that are tricked. It actually makes me feel a little bad for it. This is obviously a far cry from the fully functioning mammal on a tether of the lamb of chardary, but is nonetheless a fascinating example of very specific evolutionary pressures causing a plant

to grow a kind of animal. It's stem as always, thanks for your wonderful show, and please keep up the good work. I well, that is ah, that is a great example. Ian and actually, um, I while we were recording those episodes, or maybe shortly before, I went to the Atlanta Botanical Garden and I was walking around like looking particularly at ferns, thinking I might see some sort of wooly mass that resembles a sheep, but also looking at a lot of orchids, and yeah, there's so many

fabulous um forms in the orchids. Uh some that at least to the human imagination may look like like little creatures or a little little humanoids little angels at times. And yeah, this is a great example of of a a targeted uh mimicry that is employed by the flower. Rob do you know about the orchid that looks kind of like a sinister clown? I don't know this one. It looks kind of like like the violator from Spawn or something, So look up uh Ophrius ariadne or the

species name is A r I A d in a E. Oh. Yeah, this is this is interesting looking. I don't know. I don't get as much of a spawn feel from this as more it looks like some sort of uh A fluffy winged Pokemon type of creature. Okay, but I like it. I mean, I guess it depends exactly how the pattern works out and if you squint when you're looking at it and stuff. But I can sometimes see like a like a like a mean looking kind of rotund clown that's telling me I'm going to go to hill. I

don't know. I see like a slightly burly little fella with very fuzzy arms or wings. H it almost looks like I can see two eyes for sure, and almost kind of like a beak going on there. It's kind of making a Muppet face like kind of you know when when Kermit the Frog is a little perturbed like that, kind of like scrunched in face. Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about, the kind of when the when

the puppet bind. Yeah, oh one o. The But the clown orchid is in the same genus, the Ophrius genus, Okay, yeah, yeah, Well it's a it's a remarkable looking specimen. I don't know that I've seen one in person, though, to be clear, I don't think it's officially called the clown orchid. That's just what it looked like to me. All Right, Well, we've we've got the last of the vegetable Lamb listener mail out of the way. What's next on the on

the schedule? Here's so so many listeners got in touch about cauldrons, uh, specifically about our segment on the ceramic cooking cauldrons of the Joeman culture and prehistoric Japan. Now you remember these these were ceramic pots that were used for cooking by these hunter gatherers who lived in Japan.

Uh and these pots had intriguing features. For example, they had decorative textures that were made by pressing ropes into the wet clay um, so you see kind of a fibery texture along the the outside of the finished pots. But also a mysterious fact that we discussed was that the earliest pots in this pottery school appear to be rounded on the bottom rather than flat. So these were cooking vessels that would not stand up by themselves on

a flat surface. So onto the messages addressing that this first one comes from Cat, and she says, just listen to episode one of Cauldrons, and I have some clues to throw your way regarding questions you posited in the episode. First, why were the earliest cauldrons rounded rather than flat bottomed? Speaking as a crafter, I answer for strength. Angles in

pottery are weak points and frequent points of failure. Speaking as a cook, I answer for evenness of heating throughout the same reason why Chinese and Japanese cooking still makes use of the walk, you can get a lot more control of temperature in a rounded vest. All speaking as someone who has to wash her own dishes for ease of maintenance, food scraps don't have corners to cling in after the cooking is done, and so the pot can last longer before the accumulated residue of previous meals begins

to be evident in the background flavor. And speaking as someone who backpacks portability and travel security, you can stick a rounded pot upside down on a backpacks protrusion and be reliably sure it will stay there without needing to be tied down or risking the weak point of some

kind of handle. That last point is really interesting, Cat, because as we talked about it, you might have expected that pottery was invented by people who had already settled down into a stable like uh fixed existence in geography and started practicing agriculture. But no, the evidence is that the Joman culture was making pottery for cooking in while

they were still hunter gatherers. Cat continues, Also, I would like to know if the upper rims of these really ancient pots have been found or not, because it could well be that they were hung or suspended over fires, as later metal cauldrons came to be, in which case the rounded bottom definitely allows for even heating throughout the contents, as opposed to the scorching that a flat bottom pan gives when hung over fire. This is me speaking as a camp cook, by the way. Next, I want to

deposit a scenario. A tribe of gatherers makes their seasonal camp on a river bed in a fertile valley. In the months since they were last there, the river has flooded somewhat, and they discover that the hollow pit where they had made the communal fire they kept going for months to ago last year was sort of washed out

by the current. But here's the thing. The clay bottom of the pit where the coals had sat that earth is still solid, hollowed out on one side, but like a rounded rock when someone knocks on it with their knuckles. Now imagine that this happens every year when they come back, a new fire pit in the bottom land clay, a new hollowed out rock where no such rock existed before.

Maybe eventually a flood that's a little tamer than the others and only washes out half of the hard baked clay, and suddenly some woman for it's reliably the women spending all of their days that these fires after all, works out what happened and maybe how to do it on purpose too. In short, my theory is that the first pottery came about, as most all human innovations did, just to see if a natural effect could be done deliberately

the uses to which they would put it. I figured that happened later once the new hardened hollow rock that the first lady crafted came out of the fire intact. Anyway, thanks for your time, for your fascinating research, and for your podcast. Cat, very good points. Cat, Yeah, yeah, I love all the personal experience with with camp cooking and stuff as well. I can't remember did we talk about the idea that these pots may have been suspended over fires by by ropes or fibers or leather straps or

I don't. I don't know if we got into that as much, but certainly when you when you look back at the early history of this style of cooking, yeah, you're you're dealing with like even even if even in the period before h pottery, Yeah, you're talking about either cooking in the ground or cooking suspended above the fire, etcetera.

So very much something to take into account. Yeah, that that does seem like a possibility to me, and that that would explain why it could be rounded on the bottom, or it could be that it sat in some kind of holder. All right, This next to when it comes to us from Sean. Sean writes, Hi, Joe and Rob just finished The Cauldron Part one episode and had three thoughts. Number One, you mused about the transition from open flame

cooking to wet cooking. Perhaps there was a noticeable decrease in sickness and death among those whose liquid was solely or mostly from soup or broth, since boiling would kill microbes in the water, So perhaps it was adopted partially because it seemed to be safer. That's an interesting idea, and so my brain immediately went to, like, well, wait a minute, if you're eating soup, does that necessarily mean

you need to drink less water? But then I guess I'm probably thinking about like a soup that is salty to a modern canned soup extent. If if you're eating like suit you know, largely liquid based food, soups and broths that are not heavily salted. Yeah, that's probably replacing a huge amount of the need for water you would need to drink otherwise. So yeah, you could be essentially turning your water needs into into mostly or entirely cooked water,

which would lower the risk of water boarn illness. Yeah. Plus, I think we touched on like you go into the history of tea, for example, and you know, you go back far enough and the line, the dividing line between drink and soup and broth becomes a little less clear. Alright, Seawan's point number two. Have you heard of the iron and fish? You can read about it on Wikipedia, But

essentially impoverished Cambodian women are anemic. Studies were conducted that found adding an iron ingot to the soup increased iron, but it wasn't until the fish shape, supposed to be lucky was widely adopted. Not exactly rock cooking, but that's where my thoughts went. So I guess the the idea here is a piece of iron shaped like a fish that goes into your pot. Yeah, I looked this up.

So this would be a situation where when you're making a soup, you put the iron fish into the pot and it leaches iron into the food, increasing your iron intake. And I haven't looked into this deeply, but just at a glance, it looked like this was useful in helping people whose anemia was related to dietary iron deficiency, but it was not useful in helping people who's anemia had

other causes. It would be interesting to see if there any studies out there about making like non food items or sort of marginally food items animal shaped and effect that has on our psychology. Like I think about the Swedish fish, for example, the red candy that has shaped like a fish does not contain fish. Uh if memory service, it's actually vegan um, But there's something about it being

shaped like the fish makes it more okay. If it were just shaped like a coin, I would be less inclined to eat it somehow, and I can't explain why. That is. You are right, I thought, surely the Swedish fish contains gelatin, which would not be vegan, but I looked it up. That is, you are right, it is vegan. Yes, I've known vegans to swear by it. I'll still eat the occasional Swedish fish, all right. And then point number

three from Sean. Lastly, Disney's The Black Cauldron does not do justice to the books, but the art is wonderful and the backstory is amazing. You can find lots on YouTube. I went down the rabbit hole over a week or so. Anyway,

thanks for the fascinating topics and wide ranging discussions. Yeah, I've never actually watched The Black Cauldron all the way through, and I can't get the boy interested in it, and I haven't pressed him hard on it because I've always heard this that it's kind of a lackluster Disney film, even though it does have some cauldron imagery in it, and you have that with the Horned King that plays an important role in it, that is a very cool

looking villain. Yeah, I've never seen it either. Okay, Ethan says, hello, Robin Joe. I'm Ethan from Indiana. Longtime fan of the show and listen to it almost every day. I was listening to this this week's episode on the Cauldron and the topic of stone boiling, and it immediately brought to mind a video I had seen of about traditional nomadic

Mongolian food. In this dish called bodog, they cut the head off of a goat gut the organs they don't want, and then fill the inside of the goat with broth, vegetables, and various other soup ingreedy. It's through the severed neck of the goat. The final edition is a handful of searing hot stones from a fire that are dropped into the neck, which is then tied off to create a seal. Once tied, they will shave slash skin the body, opening up the neck every now and again to release pressure

or to stir the inside. In the episode discussion, stone boiling seemed like such an ancient and bygone day method of cooking, so I found it fascinating that it's still being practiced in some regions and that this archaic method has stood the test of time. Uh. And then Ethan provides a link to the video says, thanks for the fun discussions you've shared and I look forward to many more. Cheers, Ethan. So Ethan, I checked out this video and this is

really interesting. Yeah. So it appears to be a traditional practice where you would take an animal like a goat, and I think you would remove some of the some or a lot of the meat and sort of trim it up, and then you would place the meat back inside the hide to stew, along with the vegetables and the broth and the seasonings and stuff, and you'd seal it up and then yeah, you you sort of singe off the outside of the skin and then you serve

it up as a communal meal. You sort of cut it open at a big table if everybody's standing around.

And I don't know how universal this practices, but in the video that Ethan shared, there was an interesting thing where the when the stew sack is cut open before eating, all the people fish out the hot stones and they distribute them to the guests and everybody holds them in their hands, and they must still be pretty hot, because they sort of keep tossing the hot stones, uh, tossing them or passing them back and forth from palm to palm.

And it can't be certain, but it looks like this is this is implied to be a regular part of the experience of eating bodug, like it's part of the meal. You'd feel the stone as a type of culinary experience. Yeah, very interesting. Well, thanks for writing in, Nathan. All right, here's another called rim message. This one comes to us

from Tyler Hi Robert and Joe. After listening to your most recent episode on Caldrons, I was wondering if in any of the research you have done on Chinese mythology, you have run across the sculpture garden at Hopper Villa in Singapore. Along with many scriptural dioramas depicting events in Chinese mythology, there is an exhibit depicting many different circles of hell Um. I had the opportunity to visit happar when I was living in Singapore, and the whole place

is very strange and a lot of fun. Here is a link to the site, but you may have better luck getting a feel for the place through an image search. Uh. And they do, in fact include this link, which is h A W P A r v I l l A dot s G and um. It is a very nice website that yeah, it doesn't it kind of seems to sort of gloss over the grizzlier details of the of the of the of the hell exhibit, or at

least some of the photos you'll find it an image search. Uh. Tyler writes, I have included a couple of photos I took while there. I love the podcast and you guys always do a great job, all the best, Tyler. One of these photos captures an awesome turtle man. It's like a turtle shell, like surfing on a wave, but instead of a turtle's head coming out of the neck hole is the upper body of a man. Nice. It looks

like there's some giant crabs in here as well. And then there is looks looks like there is a large demon with a man on a meat hook or skewer of some sort, possibly dunking him into some sort of a foul river or v This turtle man, though, does not look like hell imagery. This looks like a blast. Yeah. I mean, obviously I've never been to this. Uh, this this exhibit, so I don't know what part of the exhibit this is a photo from. This may be from part of it that is not connected to the various

hells and is tied with some other mythology. But it looks like there's some other sort of aquatic hybrid people in the background as well. Yeah, this looks great. So thanks to Tyler for writing in and sharing these images with us. Yeah, this is a fascinating place. I think I'd maybe heard of it in the past. Uh, But like I said, I certainly haven't been there, but it looks looks amazing. All right, let's see, maybe we do

one more about cauldrons, This one from Lee. Lee says, Hello, Rob and Joe just finished listening to the Cauldron episode. The episode reminded me of a trick we learned when in The Scouts boiling water in a paper cup a regular paper cup. It can be waxed, but not plastic or styrofoam, filled with water and placed in a fire and will maintain its integrity while the water boils. We took it one step further and placed an egg in the cup of water before placing it in the fire.

The result was one hard boiled egg. The coup will burn, but only down to the water level. This memory got me thinking about early cooking vessels as you were talking about them. I have no real support for this, but please allow along. If early buckets for hauling water were made from animal hide, they likely were bowl shaped, since stitching a flat bottom would result in leaks. Handles to facilitate carrying would likely result in draw string closure of

sorts to the top. Think a marble bag. If these wet water bags were suspended over a fire, the water could be boiled since the wet bag wouldn't burn. The longish carry handles could hold the bag from the tripod or other device and be long enough to keep the handles from the fire. If this design carried over to a vessel made of river bank clay, it could explain the round bottom of early clay cooking vessels. Again, no proof, just food for thought. Love the show, look forward to

every episode. Lee. Uh, that's interestingly, I had no idea that you could boil water in a wet cup. I've never tried it, and I don't know if the same would apply to a piece of hide, but that it seems to make sense that it might, at least because I mean, obviously, one you introduce water into a heating equation, um, you know that's going to water just absorbs so much heat. I can see how it would potentially prevent the burning through of a material that might otherwise be burned through

pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating. Now I have to say, as a as a former Scout and uh, the parent of a current Scout, I don't think I have ever conducted this, uh this this wax paper cup egg experiment, but I trust the listener's experience here. I'll have to try it myself. I just looked it up. Can you boil water in a paper cup? But the the Internet

seems to be pretty unanimous. Yes, you can, basically because the ignition temperature of the of the paper is going to be higher than the boiling point of the water, so that the heat that's going into the the wet bottom of the paper cup is just continually heating up the water. I think it would have to evaporate the water before the cup would be able to get hot

enough to catch on fire. All right, Well, we appreciate everyone everyone who wrote in about our Cauldron episodes, and I'm assuming we'll get some more listener mail related to those episodes plus the subsequent Cauldron episodes. Uh so, right in, let us know what you think, what you've experienced, what you've heard. We'd love to hear from you. As a reminder, listener Mail episodes run most Mondays, and then on most Wednesdays we do a short form um episode that is

an artifact or a monster fact. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we do our core episodes of stuff to Blow your mind, and on Friday's we do weird how cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. You'll find it all in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed 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 production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.