Listener Mail: Green Stamps

kim chi combo suggestion. While I agree it sounds awesome, I was not the person who suggested it. It may have been another listener named Jim. Jim, what can I say? I mean, huge apology to you over that. I don't recall who attributed this to you. It may have been you, Rob, I don't remember, but if that was me, then I definitely apologized to this Jim and all other gems that

may be listening. But let's see to get into the more substantive messages, Rob, do you want to read this one from Frederick in response to various episodes, Sure, here we go. Frederick says, hello, fellows, I am sickly for a few days, which has allowed me ample time to catch up on stuff to blow your mind. Episodes Present and Vault Good Times, Smiley Face. Your episodes on the

seven day week were truly fascinating. Several years ago, I was unemployed for some time, and I found myself longing for Mondays so the work week would start and some opportunities might come my way on catchup. You know the scene in Home Alone where Kevin has prepared his mac and cheese. Watching it as a child made me wonder why doesn't he put ketchup on it? Several years later, I had the revelation that Americans don't put ketchup on

their Macaroni's shocking if true. If Home Alone were to play out in Sweden, where I am from, that plate would have a glorious cover of thick ketchup and a side of meatballs. Of course. Well, now that is interesting. I uh yeah, I mean it's not crazy to think of catchup going on on macaroni noodles, I guess. I mean red sauce, of course is fabulous with with noodles and famously so. Uh, but it's not a combination I would have. I would have thought. Off here in Belgium

do they put mayonnaise on macaroni and cheese? Well? Why not? Why not? Alright, Uh, here we go, Frederick continues, and a special shout out to Robert quote, you put the aliens in the middle of this stuff and you got all the answers is a classic sample in the early nineties track Abnormal Interference by eat Static around the five minute mark. Hearing that reference in the dissolver of World's episode took me way back. Ah. That's um, that's that's

cool to know. I'm not sure I knew the exact title of this, uh this track, it's one I think I've heard on Soma FM space station, Soma channel. If anyone out there is not familiar with some FM, definitely look it up. It's uh internet radio at its finest. They have so many channels. Uh no advertisements. I absolutely love it anyway, Frederick continues. I'm an electronic music producer and in my daytime job, I developed music production software. I would love to hear a stuff to blow your

myn episode on synthesizers and or electronic music. Your take on the subject would complement the many YouTube channels I binge in marvelous ways. All the best from a Swede living in Berlin, Frederick M m oh, thanks Frederick. I should also say Frederick identifies uh in a in a PostScript of the particular digital audio workstation software that he works on, and I'm inspired to check it out. Actually, I'm sort of a I'm always on the lookout for for what I feel like will be my one true

love DAW, which I haven't fully discovered yet. I've tooled around with several of the big ones, and I you know, I can enjoy them all, and I feel like I always enjoy learning a new one, but I've never found the one that's like my destiny. M Yeah, you know, I wonder what you just said if this will be the way that we think about creative artificial intelligence in

the future. You know it will. It won't be a situation where, at least as far as creative endeavors go, where you know, we'll be replaced by this AI or this AI, but we'll be seeking out these collaborations with different AI and and trying to find the right one, trying to find our soulless soul match out there. All right. This next message is in response to our episodes on the Seven Day week and it comes from Joe spelled Jo just j o. Jo says Hello, Robert and Joe.

I live in Malaysia, a Muslim majority country. While most of the country follows the Saturday Sunday weekend convention, four states have Friday Saturday weekends to allow Muslims more time

to observe Friday prayers. The part you mentioned about risk taking behaviors going from high on Monday to low on Thursday, than back up on Friday got me thinking would people who have a Friday Saturday weekend show a similar trend, but from Sunday high to Wednesday low than back to high on Thursday, since Friday would be the start of their weekend. I also wonder if risk averse attitudes have

anything to do with online shopping and impulse purchases. I helped to run an online shop, and I've noticed there's a tendency for people to purchase more items on the weekends, while are slow days are Wednesdays and Thursdays. However, I'm not entirely sure if that's because people have more time to browse on the weekends or because of an increase in risk taking behavior which leads to impulse purchases, or

because the shopping platforms provide Friday A coupons and vouchers. Anyway, it was a great series and I enjoyed it a lot. Keep up the good work, Live long and prosper Joe in Malaysia. Oh thanks, Joe. That's interesting. Oh yeah, and it is interesting to hear that you're you're your shopping data somewhat conformed to the results of that study. If indeed, risk risk taking has anything to do with it, I would suspect probably risk aversion or risk tolerance plays some

role in in impulse purchases made online. I would have to think so, especially given the idea about like say, alcohol lowering people's risk aversion, and you know the many stories people have about Oh I had a little too much wine and then I ordered a bunch of things on the internet. Yeah, yeah, you do hear it? That a lot? All right? This next one comes to us

from Cindy. Cindy says, Hi, Robert and Joe, I am one of those lurker listeners, but your Days of the Week series inspired me to write in Days of the week, and Chinese are very simple. Monday is known as the first day of the week, whose day the second, etcetera. Until Saturday Sunday is just Sunday. When I tried to decipher the shop schedules when traveling in Japan, it got complicated for me very quickly. The Japanese language names the

days after celestial bodies, similar to many Romance languages. This is not the case for Portuguese, as I've heard from a listener mail I thought it might be from the Catholic missionaries, though a cursory Google search could not confirm that. The five planets are known as water, metal, earth, as in soil, not our earth, fire, and wood stars, each

a fundamental element in Daoism. I can read the kanji characters in Chinese and mentally translate the planets into English, then map those into days of the week in French. My husband does not find this circuitous translation as interesting as I do. While I am here, I also want to talk about musical frission, which didn't seem enough to warrant its own email when the episode was aired. If frision is built up in anticipation to pique emotions, I'd

say nobody does anticipation better than Bach. His use of chord progressions is always a long build up where I try to anticipate the next key change, even for pieces I've heard many times before, until he hits that tonic and brings the release of tension. I cannot quote unquote outsmart Bach, but consciously or unconsciously, I feel the compulsion too.

By the way, your podcasts are always so interesting and thought provoking that I can only listen to them while having my morning coffee or during more menial tasks like cleaning, and then I will pause and tell my husband about the tidbits I just learned. I save Lauren and Annie's Saver for cooking, and I won't name what I listened to while doing data analysis during my work day. All

the best sending the pod that shall not be named. Yeah, well, but pre shade shout out for our friends Lauren and Annie. Uh that's Lauren Vogelbaum and Annie Reese who hosts the podcast Saver, which is in our network and it is all about food, that's right. I think we we did a guest spot on there a while back, doing some uh some goblin market readings. Yeah, I think we've done some some guest things back and forth or we've at

least been been on their show. I think we've talked about having them come on our show before, but maybe it's never happened. Annie did some just done some dramatic readings for us before when we have you know, every now and then there's a cinobide or a or an Ottoman princess or a ruler that needs to be voiced and uh in a quote and we'll we'll call on

Annie's talent for that. Oh but yeah, anyway, if you're if you're interested in food, food history, food science, and you haven't checked out the Saver podcast, you should look it up. Yeah, alright, this next t one, uh that that I think you're going to read force here, Joe. This one was shared on the Stuff to Blow Your Mind discussion module, which is our Facebook group. We don't really do anything with our with our Facebook. I think somebody in Theory is supposed to be updating that for us,

but I don't know the main Facebook page. You can you can skip it, but we do have this discussion module where a number of listeners share links, share their own thoughts on different episodes, and occasionally, like you know, share something like this that will feature on listener mail. So you can find that in request entry to it via the Book of Faces. All right, so this comes from Adam again, this was shared on our Facebook group. And this is uh in response to the seven day

Week episodes. And oh, Adam says, just some commentary from a rabbi on the seven day Week part one. And Adam specifies that this was only a response to the

first part and the other ones hadn't come out yet. Um. But Adam says, as for the Judaic adoption of the seven day week, some scholars believe that Israel did not have Shabbat or the Sabbath in the seven day week until we were sent into exile in Babylon circle five eighty six b c. Then, as the seven day market rhythms spread in the ancient Near East, it became a

major part of ancient Jewish practice. There is the ancient ritual of reading publicly from the Torah or the pentituke in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, which is mentioned in Ezra slash nee Maya, and I believe in the Christian Bible as well. Those readings were to take place when the most people were present. Since Mondays and Thursdays were the common market days in Jerusalem. Those were the days the Torah was read from publicly. Today,

this is still the practice by Jews. Torah has read publicly on the Sabbath, on Mondays and on Thursdays, dating back to those ancient market days. Additionally, my rabbinical thesis asked the question about how Jews can live within Jewish time if they live off planet. Specifically, the question I addressed is when one would observe the Sabbath if you were no longer connected to a twenty four hour day and seven day week. Oh fascinating. I would love to

read that at them. Yeah, I love I love discussions like this. I remember reading a fair amount about about how Islamic practices might function in space or on other planets. Uh. And it's it's fascinating to to imagine how how this would relate to Jewish traditions as well. I mean, because for the most part, it's really going to be only your more recently developed religions that have h you know, even a real concept of of other worlds and so forth.

Oh yeah, I can imagine multiple questions in Islam, say, for like daily prayers if you have a different length of days, or like, what direction would you face if if you're supposed to uh face Mecca or something during prayers, but you're on another planet. Yeah, yeah, people have thought

about these things. This might be something we could even back to in the future episode we get get a hold of the right resources, uh talk about in a different faiths and uh what sort of thought has been put into the continuation of of that faith off world? All right? This next one comes to us from poodle Bat. Poodle Bot writes in and says, hello, Robert, Joe, and Seth. I've been listening to your episodes on the days of the week, and I decided to write in about my

favorite calendar, that of the Shire. In an appendix to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien explains that the Hobbits found it inconvenient that the days of the year don't always fall in the same day of the week. To remedy this, they have to holiday periods, one in winter and one in summer that consists of several days with no weekday value. So for example, you might have Monday, holiday, Holiday, Holiday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etcetera.

With this modification, the remaining number of days is divisible by seven, and thus each calendar date falls on the same day of the week every year. If you're born on a Saturday, your birthday will always be on a Saturday. I thought this was a genius device, and I just thought i'd share thank you for all your entertaining and

insightful topics. On one hand, that seems great, but on the other hand, it's like, oh, well, but if your birthday is on like a Monday or Tuesday, and and you don't get the rotation where it changes what day of the week it is every year, then then that's kind of a bummer, isn't it. Yeah, yeah, but it also sounds like a fitting thing for a Hobbit to be grumpy about. Oh yeah, well, I mean I say this personally as as not a big birthday celebrator. Alright.

This next email is in response to our Days of the Week series, and it it touches a bit on the Weird House Cinema episode on Billy the Kid in the Green Bay is Vampire. Remember that question we had about the song Green Stamps We've talked about multiple times on the show. We don't understand what the song is about. We thought it was about money, but that became less and less clear the more we examined it. So I think we made some headway. Last listener mail, We'll see

where we get to today. Okay, well this is from Lee. Li says, hello, Rob, Joe, and Seth love the podcast. In regards to the seven Day Week and college students slash Classes. Uh So this came up in several different ways because in those episodes, we found, for example that uh, college students disliked mondays more than older people did. And uh, I think maybe there were a few other findings along

those lines. But anyways, Oh, and maybe they had different levels of of consciousness of what day of the week it was than people in other age, age groups or

demographic groups did. But anyway, Li says, uh, in regards to the seven day week and college students slash classes, going to date myself here, But while a student I volunteered with on campus e m s. Often while assessing the mental status of patients, especially those with head injury, the what day is it question would be met with a blank stare, sometimes bordering on panic while not necessarily indicating a concussion. If the context was explored, such as

what classes did you have today? Do you have those two or three times per week, etcetera. Digging deeper helped them realize they did know what was going on. Later, volunteering with the town e m S this was equally helpful. This was prior to the ubiquity of cell phones and even widespread PCs, so pen and paper calendars were the norm. I was out of school almost ten years before we

had a PC. So now that I've sufficiently dated myself, there was a time when many US grocery stores gave away S and H green stamps with your purchase spend more received more. These would be meticulously pasted into booklets to be redeemed for products at the green Stamp store, either locally or through a mail order catalog. I think the company was Sperry and Hutchinson. Hope this is informative.

Keep up the great work with the podcast. Lee excellent. Yeah, this, uh, this ties in with some of what I was looking at that apparently the green Stamp uh cup on program in the UK. There was some version of it or some spinoff of it in the US for a while as well, and this was would also, um, you know, explain why Jethro Toll can be can be such a hit on both sides of the pond. Right, yeah, all right, well thanks for that that additional information. That that was great.

Al right, Rob, you want to read this message about weird how Cinema from Jeff and Mimi whoa one listener male from two different people at the sense what it says? All right, from Jeff and Mimi, they say the following, Hello, fellow good bad movie lovers, Robin Joe of all the b movie review podcast, Weird House Cinema has a special place in our weekend podcast lineup. Oh that is that is delightful to hear. I know we are certainly not alone in putting out podcast content about about weird or

bad movies. They continued. The pedigree of your choice is regularly delights us as lovers of unloved and forgotten movies from the late twentieth century. A recent deep dive of the career of esteemed actor Michael Ironside unearthed several gyms for us, though none so beloved as Destiny to Order, Dark Toronto Knights, eighties glam A hack writer sham by his own creations, and one of the most surprising bad guys of the era, Michael Ironside's diabolical, philosophical biker king Kinrick.

It's a journey punctuated by pulpy performances, god machines, miles or kilometers of scenery chewing, and one of the most unexpected and creative deaths of an antagonist. The R ratings seems to be mostly for language. The movie is light on gore. It's a hoot. Someone was watching too many

Laura Brannigan videos. We couldn't recommend it more. Jeff and Mimi ps as old school MST three K fans were always delighted when your episode choice overlaps the production credits of an MST three K episode Charles Band FTW, which I'm to understand means for the win and not uh something cruder, not fight the Wizard. I always as I always thought it stood for m F the world. UM. But but you saying the F word instead of just saying f uh. And it was confused when I started

seeing what. I had a friend who was like super into Harry Potter, and I remember she was posting something and she was like, Harry Potter f t W and I was like, WHOA, I mean, Harry Potter is great and all but that's that seems kind of extreme. But then I found Oh, it's for the Wind, that's what they mean. Uh huh, Well no, for me, it's fight the Wizard. It is known. That's what it is from now on for everybody listening to this as well. Well,

Harry Potter fight the Wizard. That sounds good, that makes sense. Well yeah, anyway, I looked up this movie Destiny to order it. It does indeed look like a hoot. I haven't seen it, just based on the user generated plot descriptions I was reading on IMDb and and so forth, it looks like it's one of these um uh kind of lathe of heaven uh from in the mouth of madness.

Like a writer starts writing things that come true, okay uh And of course, so one of them is like he he like writes about his dream woman and then she comes true and they fall in love or something. But then he also writes about an evil bad guy, and then that's Michael Ironside, and the bad guy wants to uh take over this writing project and write his own story. But the real, the real morsel of of delight here was. I looked up the cast and who would you guess is in this but George Bouza oh

Man Booza Boo is a lot of fun. This is a Canadian mainstay. We talked about him a good bit in Our Weird House in my episode on the Brain, a movie about a giant brain. Yes, yeah, yeah, he's a lot of fun. Also done a lot of voice actor acting. I remember he was the voice of the

original Beast on x ME in the animated series. The movie also has somebody named Dennis or maybe Deny Forest who is playing uh well, I don't know who he is in this movie because I haven't seen it, but I think he was like a Hinchman in the Mask. He was one of the you know, the bad guys dudes and in Cliffhanger, I believe, but that I mentioned him because in his IMDb photo he's like he's got a bird perching on his hand and he's just gazing at it lovingly. It's very Beastmaster. Yeah. He also had

in the in his head shot there. He also has U has a certain style going on that reminds me of a villain from the movie Mandy Um Jeremiah sand Oh Yeah, played by the guy who is Bruce Wayne's dad and Batman begins, Yeah, Linus Roach, Yeah, he was great, great villain rolled at in this head shot. This guy he he somehow also kind of gives me tom Noonan vibes. I'm not sure why he doesn't call that much like him,

but that's that's what I'm getting. Yeah, definitely some some new indvibes, like you don't know what he's gonna do with that bird? Is he? Is he gonna bite it? I don't know. That would be the obvious implication if it was noon In. Yeah, good hinch he has his good, good, good look for a Hinchman. He's like a sensitive hinge. Yeah, okay, I think that probably does it for this episode, right,

I believe. So we're going to go ahead and cap it off here, but we'd love to hear from him out there if you have additional thoughts on anything we've discussed in this episode, if you have thoughts on recent future episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind right in, we would love here from you. In the meantime, Yes, Listener Mail comes out every Monday. Core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind come comes out on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Wednesday's artifact or Monster Fact short form episodes. On Friday, we put most of our serious concerns aside and just talk about a weird film and then, oh yeah, the weekend, that's time for a rerun. Uh you know how that works. 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.