Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener Mail. My name is Robert Lamb.
And I am Joe McCormick, and it's that old Halloween hangover edition of listener Mail. Today we're going to be featuring messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind a mail bag. We almost always end up doing one of these in the first week of November. I guess it's kind of a sprint through Halloween season, and then we've got to catch up on the mail bag responding to everything that came in over the previous month. Lots of great, cranky messages that feel like they were pounded out from
a terminal at the Dunwich Public Library. And this time we've got a bunch of messages on deck, also going back to September. So we will see what we have time for today. We may have to save some of this stuff for later in the month. If you would like to get in touch, by the way, and you haven't done so before, or haven't done so recently, or even if you have and you just want to write in again, you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Dot Com. Messages of all sorts
are welcome. We especially appreciate if you have something interesting to add to a topic we've talked about recently on the show. But even if you've got something else on your mind, you just want to ask us a question, share something you find interesting, whatever it is, hit us up contact at stuff to blow your mind dot com.
That's right. You can also ask us for the link to the discord server. That's something you can do. Follow us wherever you happen to follow things social media wise these days, and you know, we still have the t public merch store open. I'm just going to say I have no idea how much longer that store will be available. So some of those designs in there that are not just the standard logo design, they may or may not
be around for too much longer. So if you happen to want one of those, I'm just going to go and give you fair warning go pick one of those up, because I'm not sure what the long term future of those designs would happen to be.
Ultra rare.
Yeah, I'm not trying to be cryptic, I am just uncertain. Yeah, but let's get cryptic. What do we have in the mail bag here to read.
Okay, Rob, do you mind if I start off with this message from Garrett about Egyptian curses? Oh?
By all needs.
Following some stage directions here this message. This message begins gentlemen, I've been a listener for quite a while. I have always enjoyed and now look forward to spooky Halloween content each October. Your recent episodes on Egyptian curses were quite interesting. Since I was young, I've heard my dad claim that a distant relative died after being at the opening of King Tut's tomb. Unfortunately, I later found he has no
evidence except a shared last name. But that pseudo fact piqued my interest in Egypt from a young age, and it lasts even to this day. Your discussion about modern hazards to the reader or information threats contained within certain emails was fun. Yeah, so a brief refresher for context. This came up when we were talking about ancient Egyptian texts that threatened the reader with curses. This, of course, was not the majority of ancient Egyptian curses. This was
not the norm. Most curses would be targeted at named enemies or at people who might come into crime, like stealing from a tomb, or disturbing a tomb or sacred space. But we talked about a couple of examples of texts that were like so and so who wronged me will face the vengeance of the God. They will be struck down and destroyed by holy wrath. Also, anybody reading this papyrus, you're going to get it too, which seems extreme. But we talked about some reasons people might have put curses
like that in there. One possibility was as a kind of security measure against tampering with what was believed to be a deadly weapon, because the words of a magic spell in ancient Egypt were thought to have power in themselves, and in some sense, reading them could potentially activate the weapon. And that led us to talk about curses as a kind of information based threat, somewhat analogous to the modern example of an email containing a link to download malware
and things like that. So back to Garrett's message. In addition to phishing and malware attacks, I'm sure you remember receiving seemingly innocuous chain emails whereby reading to the end you would be cursed in various ways for not sending it to fifteen other people.
You remember these, rob Oh yeah, I mean I remember back when you received these in the mail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this was the thing before email, and sometimes like kids would get them or I'd hear about them through you know, through other kids. But yeah, you would receive chain mail
like this through the snail mail. It would be a letter, and you have to get writing more physical letters in order to stave off the curse or make sure that the blessing remains intent, you know, because sometimes these things are not directly talking about curses. They're talking about keeping some sort of blessing instead, which kind of amounts to the same thing.
Yeah, now that you're saying this, I actually do remember. I got one physical piece of an actual snail mail chain letter when I was a kid. It came from a friend of mine who lived in a different town but was a family friend, and I never followed up and sent it to anyone, and I felt guilty about it for years. So it actually did contain a curse. It's just an unintentional one.
Yeah, I remember. I had to think I had a similar situation because I was like, what is this and my parents were like, that's that's bs. You don't have to work.
But yeah, when you would get the email, you know, much later in life, you would get the email ones and I remember they, Yeah, sometimes they would have both a carrot and a stick. So it'd be like, if you send this to fifteen friends, you will your crush will tell you they like you. If you don't send it to anyone, then the next time you look in the bathroom mirror you will see the ghost of a girl.
But either way, you know you're going to get some attention. I guess.
Yeah, So Garrett's message goes on. I thought about your comments on readers of these curses or scrolls possibly knowing at a glance that such text could be cursed and would know not to read it. Yeah, because we were talking about the idea that texts often have context around them that tells you how to read or understand the text within, and a lot of times that context is stripped out by history and the you know, the circumstances
through which a text comes down to us. So if you just read the text of a pyrus, you know, in a compiled in a book translated by by historians, you might not get some of these context clues that would have existed. You know for whatever form this text originally took wherever it would have been, and so forth. Garrett goes on. It made me think of modern high security environments, such as in government computer systems. From my understanding, only scribes and clergy would have had the ability to
read hieroglyphs. Perhaps this is a parallel to encryption in
the digital age. If you go to access any federal websites such as for the IRS, FBI, ATF or any agency where you'd file documents or make a FOIA request, you will encounter a slew of warnings regarding the terms for accessing the information, threats of civil or criminal penalties for misused slash interference, consent to monitoring, etc. To go a step further, access to these systems by workers within government is often only allowed in controlled spaces, potentially analogous
to a sealed or hidden tomb, especially when sensitive and classified materials are handled, and of course those materials are secured, marked,
and may contain dangerous information. Viewing such information without a need to know is prohibited, and of course mishandling it, failing to properly secure it, or worse yet, publishing it can result in severe penalties certain classification levels can keep documents concealed for years or decades, similar to how graves were meant to be undisturbed with severe consequences to defilers.
It was interesting to me how the curses of antiquity seem very relatable when compared to safeguarding information even in our modern times. Thanks for all the great episodes over the years, and have a happy Halloween season with regards, Garrett.
Yeah, this is a great observation, and I think it's worth mentioning against something we brought up in that episode that a lot of times these curses or things like curses or things that sort of fall under that classification. You know, again, they would have also been coexisting alongside
actual legal, real world frameworks. So you would be talking about some sort of a punishment in the afterlife for supernatural punishment, but that was just alongside or as a plan b considering that there would be real world implications if you were to say, rob a toomb and so forth.
Yeah, that's right, So, Garrett, I think this is a really interesting comparison. There definitely are some parallels between the care taken to preserve sanctity and secrecy in some ancient Egyptian magical writings, and the security measure is taken to protect sensitive information in a government or a business context, and you highlight that nicely. Though I was thinking about this and a difference occurred to me. I think it's
an interesting difference. I think in a modern government and business context, information is almost always dangerous, exclusively because it can be acted on. In other words, if somebody unauthorized had access to this information, they could use it. It could give them power or advantage over somebody else and allow them to cause harm. That could certainly be the case for magic as well. You know, somebody gets the hold of it, gets hold of the text of a curse,
they could use it. But ancient Egyptian heca magic had an added layer on top of that use through an actor danger, in that the Egyptians believed that written and spoken words essentially had power to act themselves, making some writing more like a piece of self executing computer code that does something on its own, rather than like only a piece of information that can be used by human actors.
Though it is that too, and one interesting illustration of this Egyptian belief in the power of written words to become self executing magical code. I was thinking about apotropaic defacement of certain dangerous or threatening words in certain contexts. And so, for example, imagine you're making an inscription in a tomb and you need to use the hieroglyphic symbol that includes a depiction of a crocodile or a snake
or a scorpion. In some cases, not all cases, but in some these symbols within the words would be altered in some way, maybe only half represented or inscribed in a physically mutilated way, like with a depicted with a weapon stabbing through them, or depicted with their heads chopped off.
So if you needed to show a snake, you might show it with its head chopped off, essentially to prevent these dangerous symbols in the written words from magically coming alive and causing damage or violence, which I think is a fascinating understanding of the power of writing. I haven't fully thought it out, but it feels like there could be some interesting parallels to modern information threats there as well. But yeah, yeah, I don't know, that does seem like an important difference.
Yeah, I mean, I love this idea that you see you see echoes of this in other cultures where once we have employed a symbol, it becomes a live in a way like just the symbol itself or the representation. Uh. It reminds me of stories of the magic paint brush and so forth, and Chinese tradition, like the idea that you wouldn't finish, say a painting of a dragon, you would leave out an eye, because if it were complete, it would it would come alive in a way that you might not want it to.
Yeah, very similar here, y.
Yeah.
During fall break, my family and I traveled to Vancouver and we visited the excellent Museum of Anthropology at UBC, which if anybody out there, if you're if you live near Vancouver or you're planning to visit Vancouver, great city, and this is an amazing museum, well worth visiting. But and I may come back to them later in this episode.
But one to one tradition that I learned about there was that among some of the Northwest specific people, the indigenous peoples of that region, you would have puppets that depicted certain animals, and after the puppets had been created and or used, when they were stored, you would need to strap their beaks or mouths shut because otherwise they
might chatter in storage. And I love that idea. You know that once something has been created like this, you fill it with the sort of energy and now you're responsible for that energy, or in like the case of the Chinese traditions, like you need to make sure you don't give it the full of energy of creation.
Yeah, yeah, I mean that certainly to me resembles some of the thinking that you see in ancient Egyptian linguistics, with the idea of hecka magic itself, you know, hekka being this concept that does mean magic, but also has a broader significance as the power to create the creative energy.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Anyway, thanks for the message, Garrett. Let's see, rob do you want to do one of these messages about our series on creatures that lurk in the mine shaft?
Sure? Sure, let's see. Here's one that comes to us from Jamie. Jamie says, Dear Robert and Joe, I hope you both are well. Your recent episode on the Cornish Tommy Knockers and their evolution on the other side of the Atlantic, as an example of the phenomenon of cultural practices through migration, made me think of the festival of
Halloween itself. Halloween, as I'm sure you both know, is the Christianized Scots term for the old Celtic New Year festival of Saloon, practiced in both Scotland and Ireland, or rather in the shared Gaelic culture from which these two different nations would eventually emerge. Of course, the festival must have changed in many ways over the century, but as a child of the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, I remember Halloween being celebrated very differently to the way it
is today. There were no greeting cards or decorations. This was not a version of Christmas that came earlier in the year, but a festival in its own right, one designed to keep away the fair folk, the city and their unquiet dead who might cross over the thinning veil between our world and theirs. This is the purpose of dressing up and frightening costumes and walking the streets guysing rather than trick or treating. As children, we would go from house to house, knocking on doors and asking are
you taking any geysers? If invited in, you would perform a party piece, some kind of joke or song or other small performance, and the host would give you some sweets if you were lucky, money if you were very lucky, or fruit if you weren't. I don't know, I'm probably an old fogy, but I'm like, where's the where's the fruit?
I was quizing kids after Halloween here, some of friends of my own kid and they were like, oh, yeah, yeah, this one house was giving out like fruit roll ups or something, and I was like, what's all wrong with that? Like that's not even straight up fruit. That's still essentially candy, basically candy. Yeah yeah, or they were fruit gund I don't know. It was something that was still candy enough,
I thought. But anyway, the message continues in line with the process you described in your episode, guysing had a communal rather than an individual focus. Rather than the individual transaction of trick or treating, the whole community is supposed to benefit from having the denizens of the other world kept at bay. We would also duke I E. Bob for apples, and if a young woman peeled an apple and threw the peel over her shoulder on Halloween, supposedly
she would learn the name of her future betrothed. I'm not sure how that was supposed to work, but I wasn't the target audience. Perhaps the most striking difference is that, rather than pumpkins, which are not indigenous to Scotland and have a hard time growing, the original jack o lantern, or rather boggle, was a face cut in a turn up rootabaga. My dad did that once, and given how long it took him, I'm not surprised that the pumpkins
took over. I have seen some of the I've seen photos of this before, though, and some of these more traditional jack o' lanterns are rather frightening, even more grotesque, or it seemed to me than a pumpkin jack o lantern can be.
One of these years, I'm going to split the difference and do a celariac.
All right, just a little bit more here in this Jamie message. Still, although I enjoy Halloween every year, it makes me quite sad that the original festival has all but died in the country of its birth, and that the earthy tang of the old ways has been replaced with the prepackaged, globalized American version. I realized that mine was the last generation ever to go guysing. You don't think when you're young that you'll be the last of anything. But I suppose everyone is one day wishing you an
untroubled son. Jane.
Dang, dude, you sound like Dana Hurley at the end of Halloween three.
Yeah, yeah, it got it got very contemplative. I mean it was a great, great listener mail all the way through.
For sure.
You know, I don't know, I you know, I guess with Halloween, I'm I find I often find myself in a weird place because I absolutely love Americanized Halloween. It's one of the one of the only American, fully Americanized things that I'm like all in on. But on the other hand, you know, I respect these these uh, these older traditions and uh, you know, and I of course I have various friends who are pagan and and uh and and often highlight the importance of solowin h uh.
But you know, there's always room, I think, for us to to take these older traditions and re embrace them and uh enjoy them alongside of and sometimes in place of these more globalized traditions. So you know, I'm in favor.
I'm not going to be like super protective my Americanized Halloween, which you know, even still I think you know, my American Eyed Halloween, like everyone else, is going to be highly individualized, and you know, you can sort of there's so much of it out there, you can sort of select what you're going to embrace. But yeah, I'm all for us, you know, reawakening these these older traditions as well. Let's carve some rout of beaks, That's what I'm saying.
Yeah.
Oh, in quick note here, I use the I believe older pronunciation of sith here. This is more I think more recently pronounced as she, and we have used that as well. And this is you know, this is the referring to the fairy folk and like Irish tradition and so forth.
All right, let's do another message about the creatures of the minds. A lot lot of the mining spirits we talked about in those episodes would get offerings in exchange for the protection of miners. Sometimes there would be little effigies of the creature, maybe positioned at the mine opening. People would leave little donuts for them, things so that they would work their magic and beneficial rather than harmful ways.
And much to my happy surprise, we got a message about that type of tradition from somebody involved in mining. So this comes from Andrew. Subject line current mining protections. Hi, Robert and Joe, loved your Mining Superstitions podcast. Just wanted to let you know of current practices in Australia. At our tunneling projects, it is traditioned to have Saint Barbara, the patron Saint of tunnelers and miners, at the entrance to the shaft to offer protection. Below is a bit
of information. I'll come back to this in a second. Andrew says, I have attached a photo of our Saint Barbara in the Brisbane Metro Tunnel, and we also have the sacred ranches used in the indigenous smoking blessing ceremony held at the start of each project. Thanks love your work, Andrew. And then yes, Andrew includes did I say earlier Andrew was involved in mining. It sounds like maybe he's Maybe Andrew's involved in tunneling for infrastructure rather than mining. I'm
not sure tunneling whatever the location. But yeah, anyway, Andrew included this picture. So we see here what looks like a station that's got a bunch of controls, you know, like electrical doubing and controls for power and machinery and there is. I think it's either a security camera. Oh no, that can't be. That's got to be a photo, a mounted photo of a bunch of miners in safety vests
and stuff like that lined up for a photo. And then above it, yeah, there's a little it almost looks like a bird house on the side of a tunnel wall. And inside the house there is a little statue of a saint. She's holding a sword and a cup, she's wearing a crown, and she's surrounded by some minty blue lights.
And then also in another little house of the same shape mounted against the wall, Yeah, there is, there's a bouquet of some kind of herb, dried herb held together, and I guess that's for the smoking ceremony.
I love these images because in both cases you clearly see, you know, the shrine very much alongside the modern technology, or at least symbols of that modern technology, you know,
which really, you know, goes to show that. Yeah, even even today with you know, enhanced safety measures, enhanced technology on our side, enhanced lighting, which of course is a major aspect of all of this, as we discussed in those episodes, there is still more than enough space for the supernatural for religious belief and so forth, you know, to reach out to that extra level of protection in uncertain and or dangerous or extreme environments.
Andrew also links to an article about the import of Saint Barbara on the website of something called Blui, which I think has nothing to do with the Australian cartoon dog.
This is a tunneling company of some kind, but they've got an article on their website about Saint Barbara, the protector of tunnelers and engineers that talks about how there's a tradition going back to the sixteenth century of placing an image or an image of Saint Barbara or shrine to Saint Barbara at the portal of a tunnel, and
the article explains why it says quote. According to legend tracing as far back as the third century AD, Barbara lived in present day Istanbul, Turkey, and was the only daughter of a wealthy man who sought to protect her by confining her to an isolated tower. She eventually escaped and converted to Christianity. However, in doing so, she was denounced by her father to the authorities. Barbara took refuge with miners in a small town in Greece, but was
later uncovered by the other authorities. Upon leaving the mind she was decapitated by her father. God then struck down her father with a blast of lightning as punishment, and hence the association with explosives in underground darkness became associated with Saint Barbara. This is also the reason some people say Saint Barbara whenever there's a lightning strike nearby.
Oh wow, I need to start saying that.
Okay, never heard that before, and maybe that's a regionalism.
Yeah, I was not familiar with this saint at all.
Weird associative history. So because she hid it a mine and because her murderer father got blasted by lightning, she's the patron saint of blowing up of dynamiting tunnels.
Yeah, of course it also brings to mind we briefly mentioned the threat that lightning strikes can pose to mining operations. Oh yeah, so there may be some relation there as well.
Well. Thanks again, Andrew.
Yeah, this is exactly the sort of field report we love to get regarding our episodes.
Yeah. Absolutely love to hear from people who have firsthand experience, who you know, work day to day with the kinds of things we talk about and can add their own experience. All right, Rob, do you want to do another one of the messages about the mind shaft?
Sure? This one comes to us from Jeff Jeff Wright. Sentence says, Hey, guys, mercifully short note here. If you've still got room in your episodes on Cave Gromlin's, you might want to check out Jules Verne's The Child of the Cavern. Or maybe not because spoiler alert. While the characters do discuss possible supernatural explanations for unexplained happenings, it's ultimately a Scooby Doo reveal where the villain is essentially
a captain Nemo of the coal Mine. Verne creates another one of his fragile utopias, this one of Paradise Underground, just waiting to be ruined by meddling outsiders. Fun read with lots of imagery that is stuck in my head for years, but maybe not his most compelling work. Yeah.
I don't think I was even aware of this one.
Yeah, this was not on my radar either, but looking it up, I mean it does sound fascinating, involves what goblins and fire maidens, but I.
Think things falsely attributed to such.
I believe yes, because again has just noted it ends up being a Scooby Doo reveal. But still, you know, just the idea sometimes is more frightening than the reveal or the reality. So depending on how it's presented in the text, it might be rather compelling.
The wiki makes it look like one of the characters has an attack owl. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, maybe I'll have to take a look someday. All right, I'm going to do one more message on the mining creatures. This one comes from Rebecca. Rebecca says Hello. In twenty twenty four, I visited the Rigna Mining experience in roscomm And, Ireland. The Rigna mine was in the side of a hill, so you didn't need to descend to just walk into
the old mine. The mind closed in nineteen ninety, but there are still a few miners working as tour guides. Listening to our guide relate his experiences was very interesting. He mentioned that once a coal seam was exhausted, they would pack it in with rock. Of course, they couldn't ever pack it as tightly as it had been, so you would hear the ground settling. It must have been quite disconcerting. I would recommend visiting it if you're ever
in that part of the world. Thanks for the podcast, Rebecca,
Thank you, Rebecca. Yeah, this is a great thing to point out, Like in addition to minds, of course, you know, the underground tunnel version of minds being dark and having strange sonic characteristics and all that, the changes that you are physically making to the earth have to bring about their own challenges to the psyche, both in terms of just conceptually being aware of you know, that you're cutting through the rock and how much rock is above you
and all that, but also yeah, when you're you know, packing a bunch of rock into an emptied out seam or something. Yeah, surely that makes some noises. I'm sure that doesn't sound very good in the dark.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, this is a great point.
Okay, we got a few more Halloween related things. You want to take your pick, Rob.
Yeah, let's see. We heard from Scott here in response to our Bone Collector's episodes subject line hyenas and lions and bears. Oh my, Scott says, greetings all, I'm listening to this to the discussion about cave hyenas in part one of the bone collector's episode and remembered something I read years ago, probably in a National Geographic article. Modern day lions and the spotted hyena are natural enemies, so much so that if a group of either animal encounters
the other, they will attack them on site. This behavior is outside of attempting to steal food, defend their territory, or protect their young. If the pack of hyenas come across the solitary lion, they will immediately attack and kill the lion, and vice versa. An interesting finding of the article was that the outcome of the fight could be accurately predicted by comparing the total weight of the groups,
rather than by the number of fighters. A single large, powerful lion could defeat a number of quick, agile hyenas until the number of hyaenas increased to where their total weight exceeded that of the lion. I was reminded of this when you talked about how the cave versions of hyenas, lions, and bears all used the same caves. It occurred to me that the same arithmetic might have been in play back then. If a sufficient weight of lions arrived at a cave occupied by a smaller total weight of hyaenas
the lions might say, nice cave, we'll take it. If the lion pride didn't have the weight, though, they'd possibly just move along. One of the things I like about your podcast is how I get connections between new things that I've learned in things that I'd learned previously. Thank you, Scott.
Interesting, Thank you Scott. To the extent that this is true, I haven't verified this myself, but I mean, if the weight balance and sing thing is true, how does that work in the animal's brain, Like, how does the lion or the hyena judge accurately? Okay, we've got enough mass on our side to take down the other side, you know.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean I could see where some version of this would would certainly be be true because we've talked about, you know, plenty of times before about one of the defensive characteristics of various organisms is of course, to make yourself appear bigger. And if you accurately or if you say accurately communicate, if you effectively communicate this even as a deception, you may convince the
other animal like the math is wrong. I can't take this animal, or the attempt to take it is just too risky and therefore I should move along.
Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm going to do this one from Joe. Joe says, Hey, Rob and Joe, Oh enjoyed the spooky content this month. Watched Black Sunday with my wife and loved the Bone Midden episodes as well. Nice hope you both enjoyed Black Sunday. So, Joe says, I just heard about another creature suitable for entry into your catalog of abattoir keepers. The spectral bat. Now, that really does sound like a creature from the D and D manual because it sounds like it like phases in and out. It's
like a phase spider or something. But no, this is a real animal, Joe says. Unlike your typical bat, which is either a docile vegetarian or helpful insectivore, these bats are true predators, with large bodies, ferocious faces, wolfish jaws, and massive fangs that they used to kill their avian bat and rodent prey and then carry them back to their layers to eat at their leisure, discarding the inedible parts.
Below and Rabbi pulled in a collage of images of this bat for you to look at in the outline shocking looking jaws. I did not know there were bats that had mouths that looked like this. It does have werewolf face.
Yeah.
Joe attaches a link to a study of their diet and behavior done by looking at the middens of bones that they create, or bones and other hard parts that they create. Joe says, I thought you'd like to hear about these guys because they really feel like they flapped out of the monster manual. This is a bat with a challenge rating. These are the bats that other bats tell scary stories about when the nights grow long and dark. Thanks again and happy Halloween, Joe. And then I want
to note the study that Joe linked to. It was a paper published in the Journal of Mammalogy in nineteen seventy seven called Observations on the Foraging Behavior and avan Prey of the Neotropical carnivorous Bat Vimpyrum spectrum. This is by Sandra verencamp F, Gary Styles, and Jack W. Bradbury.
And so the authors of this paper were trying to study the foraging behavior of vectral bat by looking by using some radio tracking, by watching their roosts in the evening, and then finally by a quote a systematic collection of the prey parts found in the bottom of a roost containing five bats. Quote. Of the eighteen species, about eighty six individuals identified most. And this is talking about the prey species. The remains they found most were common residents
of the tropical dry deciduous forest. Non passerines were significantly preferred over passerines. Vampireum appeared to select birds which way between twenty and one hundred and fifty grams, sleep in foliage rather than in holes or burrows, and either roost communally or have a strong body odor. It appears that the bats locate their avian prey by scent rather than
by vision or echolocation. So these are going to be wolfjaw bats out there hunting for birds to eat in the foliage at night, birds that might sleep among the leaves rather than in a tight, little protected roost. And yeah, especially smelly birds are going to be the ones that are easiest for them to find.
Excellent, Yes, quite a specimen here, you know. I had bats on the brain a little bit over the weekend, which being Halloween weekend, that's not completely out of the ordinary, but I was driving my kid and one of their friends somewhere in the car, and so we put on an episode of Ali Ward's Homologies, and in it she was interviewing the world famous bat researcher Merlin Tuttle, and it was just a really fun chat about bats. So I recommend that one passed that on to our listeners as well.
Great, all right, now we have some more responses to Halloween episodes, but there were a few other messages we wanted to fit in today, so we're going to save the rest of the Halloween stuff for next time. We'll probably do another listener within the next couple of weeks, but yeah, for now, we're going to skip back to some responses to our Giant Clam episode.
Right, that's right, we heard from Chris. Chris wrote in and said, good day, Robert, Joe and JJA. Listening to the most recent episode, Jaws of the Giant Clam, I couldn't help but notice the overlap between the story you mentioned about the giant clam and the canoe from the Tahitian and includes a question mark herett legend, and the storyline in Mwana II when the traveling party encounters a giant clam the size of an island, they end up inside the clam, and the events that ensue are vital
to the rest of the story. Here's a quick link to a page about it, but i'd suggest just taking a quick watch of that section of the film and see how it's portrayed. Thanks as always for your fantastic episodes.
Yeah, so I was the one who brought up the folklore about the giant clam that sometimes appears in the tales of the Polynesian folk hero Rata. The specific version of the story that I was talking about was a to Amoto On telling, but yeah, this kind of encounter pops up in multiple versions throughout these Polynesian folk tales,
so that's what I was talking about. But this is a great connection because I have not seen Moana or Moana Too, but I clicked through here and yeah, it looks like there is there's a giant like almost like skyscraper sized.
Yeah. Yeah, and it does have the correct it's it's position vertically as opposed to horizontally, which is more accurate.
Right. Yeah. Nice.
Yeah, I haven't seen Moana too, I've only seen the first one. But yeah, the images of this look really really fascinating, So maybe I should give it a fewing.
I'm just taking a look at it. I see. I love how you can see the little the little eyes. Yes, flesh there, Yeah, that's nice.
Absolutely and certainly the yeah then interior, that mantle of flesh is very vibrant, as it should be. So they definitely did their own work a bit and paid attention, and then you know, also applyed a fair amount of creativity in creating this. Now, I want to use this as a springboard to mention something that I learned about recently after our Giant clam episode came out. I mentioned earlier in this episode that my family and I visited Vancouver and we went to the Museum of Anthropology at
UBC and there was so much to learn there. Again, fabulous museum, but specifically I learned about a belief among the Hata people about the raven and the first Men. And basically the story goes that the first people are found in a giant clamshell by the great Raven after a tremendous flood, you know, some sort of a great flood, and so the little people are in there naked, cowering for shelter and cover from this great bird that's inspecting them.
But the bird, the Great Raven, is also a little bit of a trickster, but also not a cannibal bird or anything, you know, not a man eater. So what he does is he coaxes them out with his tongue and it convinces them you can get out of there. You can't cower in that shell forever. And so they climb out of the shell and they become the first people. So it's a tremendous little story. And there's an amazing sculpture in the museum that I believe was unveiled in
nineteen eighty by hay To artist Bill Reid. I included a photograph of this sculpture here for you, Joe, though in this image you don't really get a sense of the scale of the piece because it's the central piece in this special room and you kind of like look up at it and you walk around it. I was very impressed.
Yeah, looks amazing, though, I would love to see this in person. So you can see all the people inside the shells, they're you know, peeking out, and you can see several different bodies in there, and then the bird with like sort of huddled over with its wings forming shroud.
Yeah. Yeah, you also see a butt or two poking out because the people are cowering in there.
Yeah, jumbled always inside, all right. One more message about giant clams. This comes from Lawrence a subject line Batman versus Giant Clam. Hey, guys, just finish listening to your Giant Clam episode. And I thought you might like to know that Superman isn't the only DC hero to have a run in with a giant clam. Seems the Joker tried to finish off the Dynamic duo with one in the Cliffhanger episode or the Cliffhang Cliffhanger ending of an
episode of the Adam West Batman series. Here's a link to a clip of the escape, and then Lawrence provides a clip. I went and looked at it. I see Batman and some lady are in this wet room and I think Robin has already been swallowed by a giant clam and Batman has to pry the jaws open, and it's just like the Superman thing. It's like, Wow, you know, only a superhero could could get these these things apart.
Yeah, how rop and get in there? To begin with a lot of.
Questions lost and Nickel when in there looking for it. Yeah, all right, let's see Rob. Do you want to finish off by doing a couple of responses about weird house cinema?
Sure, sure, let's do some weird house cinema.
Take your pick.
All right, this one comes to us. Oh, this one's from Rob, but not from me. This is a different Rob. There are a lot of us.
And also I'm not the Joe who wrote the Joe messages today.
Yeah, there are there Joe's and Robs out there, and sometimes they know each other too. Anyway, this one says, Hello, Robin, Joe, your call out for suggestions. This would be suggestions for things we could watch during October, including potential weird house cinema selections. Your call out for suggestions included a thematic preference that likely precludes my suggestion, But I expect that you both enjoy it, even if it doesn't fit on
a weird House episode. If you have not had the pleasure of watching Over the Guard Wall, I cannot recommend it strongly enough. It's an animated ten episode mini series featuring some big name voice actors. Despite the talent, it has flown under the radar for virtually everyone I've spoken to about this wonderful series. It's an annual watch in my household, and my daughter in university comes home for
a weekend so we can all watch it. It's a family friendly, wholesome, slightly creepy, fully weird viewing adventure that is now a part of my family's cultural DNA. I wish you the best. Thank you for your passion and dedication to blowing the minds off your listeners. Cheers Rob. Oh well, Rob, I'm glad you mentioned Over the Garden Wall. Here in my household, we are also big fans of Over the Garden Wall. We just finished a complete rewatch
of the full ten episode series. In the past, we've just rewatched a few choice episodes here and there, but we finally returned and took in the whole storyline. A tremendous show. We love everything about it, and in fact, my wife and I went as the two characters weret and Greg for Halloween this year, so I was Wort and she was Greg, and not everybody knew who we were. Some people thought I was a gnome, but the people who got it really got it and were excited for it.
So you sent me some pictures of your family Halloween costumes, and it was adorable. I also actually am not familiar with Over the Garden Wall. I think somebody has written in about this before, so I think it's come up in a past listener mail some time ago. But yeah, I've never seen it, so I didn't recognize what these costumes were. So I was like googling the characteristics of the photos you sent me trying to figure out what it was. Once I did, I was like, oh, okay,
but yeah, y'all looked great. It looked like a really fun family Halloween.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a tremendous show. And as Rob mentioned here, it has flown under the radar for a lot of people, but it has in the process taken on this cult like following. You know, it's something new for people to discover every year. Oh and while I'm at it, I'll go ahead and mention it just happens to be the case that already made this decision. But this week's Monster Fact, we'll cover something from Over the Garden Wall. So Over the Garden Wall fans tune in.
Oh, here's a funny one from Jonas addressing something that I don't remember. If we if we did. But Jonas says, dear Joe and Robert, I am writing to you about two times recently when you called a couple of our beloved Swedish national heroes Swiss. So Jonas mentions britt Ekland of the Wicker Man and says, britt Ekland is Swedish, not Swiss. The same is true of old Carl Linnaeus. Jonas, I truly cannot remember when we called britt Ekland or Carl Lineus Swiss. But if that passed through my lips,
I'm sorry. I did not mean to say that. That was not the impression I had about either one.
It might have been me. And because I did go back and and applied some corrections to a couple of episodes, I believe, so, just a slip of the tongue there.
Okay, Well, so thank you for the correction, Jonas. And yeah, of course corrections always welcome, folks, if we have a slip up of that kind.
Yeah, because we can always go back in and generally correct it, which is of course essential if we're going to rerun an episode later in the future.
Yeah. Also I should add on here Jonas asks us to do an episode on the subject of religion, answering the big questions such as what is it, where did it come from? Things like that. This is a subject so large and fundamental. I don't think we're ever going to do that as an episode in itself, but of course this will come up tangentially and discussing all kinds of other topics. So it's definitely always on our mind. If you listen to us, you probably know we both
are big. We are very interesting religion.
Yeah. Yeah, we tend to be a bit more I guess granular in our approach these days and these sorts of topics. So I would say in general, just anytime you see a topic that is related to religion or could potentially be related to religion, will probably go there to some degree.
Yeah.
All right, here's one last one to close out the episode. This one comes to us from Luisa, subject spiritual successor to Wickerman. She says, Hi, guys, I hope Halloween season was as weird and rewarding as you like it to be. The following idea has been going around in my head
ever since the Wickerman episode on Weird House. Maybe the true spiritual child of that classic movie is not the horrible remake, but what I find to be a nice recipient of the spookiness of the original Midsummer think about it, a whole town in on the rituals, however, Macague people from outside trying to make sense of it all, gorgeous cinematography, vivid colors, and at the end, acceptance of what should not feel as right as it actually does. Please tell
me if I'm way off base. As always, thank you for your podcast. I must confess I will not be reading. I have no mouth and I'm a scream however much it sounds fascinating.
Best regards, please, thank you, Luisa. Yeah, great recommendation. You know, we usually do older films. I mean, we don't have a rule against doing more recent films. We tend to do older movies. But yeah, that one, I'm absolutely on the same page with you about it being in many
ways a spiritual grandchild of the Wickerman. Yeah, it feels absolutely like that, And I see exactly what you're talking about about the ending, the acceptance of what should not feel right as it actually does feel as right as it actually does. I was thinking about both of the big ari astor horror movies that I've seen have this great feeling of like an ending that is terrible and horrible bowl but feels great or I don't know, I don't know if it feels great but has an exultant quality about it.
Hmm. Yeah, I haven't seen it, so I can't speak to it, and I don't think I've seen either of his films. Actually, with Midsommer, we've received recommendations regarding it numerous times. For a weird house. I'm always just turned off because, like, the lady on this is so silly, I'm sure, But the lady on the posters crying and she seems very unhappy, and I'm like, I don't know if I want to watch this. She seems very unhappy about it. Am I going to be unhappy about it? I don't know.
You're going to have a mix of extreme emotions. There are some very very unhappy things in the movie.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I want extreme emotions.
But it's also really interesting.
Yeah, again, I've been hearing great things about it. I'm catching up a little bit. Over Halloween, my wife and I watched a pair of move movies that that we'd heard good things about. We watched Weapons, which everyone loves and I haven't seen it. Oh, you haven't seen Weapons? Weapons is great?
Bye? Is it by the people who made Barbarian? Yes?
Yeah, same same creator, h same writer, director, And I haven't seen Barbarian yet because I was I was kind of like, I was concerned that it would be too real world. People said it was great and that I should see it, and I just haven't gotten to it yet. But then I was like, Okay, we'll give Weapons a go. Too many people are saying it's tremendous, uh, and I really enjoyed it. Don't let anybody tell you anything about it. Luckily, the promotion of the film I think has largely avoided spoilers.
But it's a lot of fun. And then because one of my kids friends was dressed as the title character from it, we watched Megan the three again. Yeah, we watched him three again and in a in a different way. That was a lot of fun as well.
Dude, I love him three agin. It was I think Reagan's awesome.
I heard it described as it's Chucky meets Terminator with a you know, like with a dash of like not too deep modern AI robotics consideration, and it makes for a fun film.
I like that style of just a hog wild, care free sci fi horror movie with a sense of humor.
Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed it, and I'm I'm interested in watching the sequel.
I don't know.
My wife is on board for it. But the trailer for the sequel looks looks pretty wild.
Oh, we're gonna watch it. Yeah. Rachel loved the original in threegan two. Yeah, we've seen it more than once. The sequel looks like maybe it goes into like it maybe goes a little Kaishu or maybe even a little Grimlins too. I can't tell, but it does look like one of those sequels where at least the filmmakers were asking the right questions, like what can we do that's different?
Where do we go from here? Not just another scoopa iyce tream? But you know, I'm more on top and maybe it falls, but I don't know, but the trailer looks intriguing.
Maybe next year for Halloween I'll bem three again. I would like that.
All right? Well, listeners, you write in, you tell us what your thoughts are. We're always happy to hear from you. Just a reminder, this stuff to blow your mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Huge thanks as always 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.