Listener Mail: Gremlins Have Pictures

do you want to do? This one from Chelsea Sure. Chelsea says I was just listening to part two of the Waiting in Line episode and wanted to bring up the schoolyard phenomenon of back cutting. This is ours when the line exists and the cutter wants to be in line next to a friend so they can chat during the weight. The cutter asked to cut the friend, but the friend replies no, but you can back cut me, and the cutter joins the line right in back of

the friend, hence back cut. I remember this as being like a situation of like, uh, I will allow you to get in front of me, and then that person obliges by letting you get in front of them, which you know is not an honest way to go about things, of course not, but it it kind of matches up with that sort of childhood level of figuring out how to blatantly cheat and how to blatantly bend the rules in your favor, uh in ways that that you know

aren't gonna fly outside of elementary school anyway. They continue. Thus, the friend gets to hang out with their buddy without changing their spot in the line. The cutter gets to cut, and the person right behind them can't ultimately do anything about it. The person behind may protest about being cut, but the reply from the friend would be that they didn't front cut you, they back cut me, and that

was the end of it. And I will add that this is kind of ingenious and that we one of the things we discussed in queuing is that it's the person that immediately was cut in front of that has

the most like responsibility of outrage. And you're already putting them in a position where they're not going up against one cutter, but a cutter and a co conspirator, So they're already outnumbered in this scenario, right, And I think it's interesting that we internalize that as thinking of uh cutting in line as an offense primarily against the person

right behind you where you cut. In fact, it's affecting everybody else in line, right, everybody else behind that point in line has now been cut in front of UM. But I think because of this social convention where it's the person directly behind the intrusion point who has the obligation, we somehow naturally see it as like purely an offense against them personally. And yet obviously, I mean, like I think from the rest of Chelsea's email, it's clear that

even kids into it that there's something wrong with this. Yeah, like you can easily get at control where if you joined the line and then you just announce that you will now be back cutting everyone. You know, everybody can backcut anyway. Yeah, they continue as the person behind them.

I'll aways felt conflicted because whether the cutter was right before or right after their friend had no impact on my way time, but having the cutter right in front of me felt like my special societal role as the person immediately behind the cutter had been usurped by the friend. I had been cut and it had been sanctioned, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. I think this was more common with the popular kids, but I may well have engaged in it myself despite not having

that many friends. None of us are the angels we think we were. I grew up in California, and I'm curious to know how widespread the term phenomenon is. I remember it being relatively common in elementary school, occasionally in middle school, and non existent in high school. The bit of child lord no cuts, no butts, no coconuts is was also British common, and was extra amusing in elementary school because of the butts homophone. But that is the

obvious best thing to grace an anti cutting poster. Keep up the good work, guys. I appreciate being engaged and amused as you by you both as I walked my dog into housework. I I'm not a fan of horror movies, but the Weird House episodes are grade fine. Jesse ps. Nearly every time Seth's full name is mentioned in the broadcast, I repeat his name in my head is death. Nicholas Johnson, his October alter ego haunts me year round. Oh well,

that warms my heart. So I definitely got this when I was when I was in elementary school, but I don't remember being called back cutting. I remember the phrase front seat back seat. Did you ever encounter that? Um, I don't think I encountered that one. I think that's more what you were talking about. It's like the person cuts in front of their friend, and then their friend cuts right back in front of them, so it's effectively the same thing, somebody just getting behind you in line.

But anyway, the other thing you say, Chelsea, which I think is absolutely true, is yes, the popular kids are more likely to do this. Kids at the elementary school period are much more blatant about operating on the basis of of thinking that they're elevated. Social status just grants them, right, It's that other people don't have people. Adults behave that way too, but they try to sort of hide it

more than make it. They come up with systems of making it look like that's not what's going on, right, And I think a part of this is sort of the childhood awareness of how unfair systems exist, but then they not getting the nuance of it, you know, like the gross injustice has happen every day all day, but

not all of them are out in the open. A lot of the times they are hidden in ways that are not apparent in this example of back cutting, speaking of cutting based on on social status and and hierarchy, I'm I wanna read this next message from Jordan's. So Jordan's says, Dear Rob and Joe, I've been listening to the show for a couple of years, and I love being able to idly learn while I work. I've really enjoyed the recent series on queuing because well, I've never

really given much thought to it. I know that I typically hate doing it. I can't remember if you discussed queuing and animals or I just missed it, but I have seen it performed in horses. I work on a nonprofit wild horse rescue ranch in California, where we have over a hundred in our care. On the hot summer days of the California desert, it's not uncommon to see a half dozen horses at a watering trough at once.

While typically there is plenty of room for multiple horses to access the water at once, I have witnessed a line forming to get a drink. The difference is that horses adhere to a very strict quote pecking order, and the one at the top gets to drink first, regardless of when they join the queue, they go to the front.

In the case of line integrity you mentioned, if an individual lower in the pecking order tries to line jump, the one behind will almost always run them out of the line, while the horses ahead seem to pay no mind to what is going on behind them. It's very interesting to see this play out with non human animals and makes me think that perhaps queuing is more instinctual

than one may have originally thought. I have attached photo of a line forming among our older residents for you to check out, and then Jordan's does indeed attach a photo here of what looks like four horses lining up to get to a big container of water. Oh yeah, yeah, that's exactly what's going on here. This is yeah, great point. I would say. The big thing that's different between what you highlight here and and our queuing conventions is the

the principle that orders access. Obviously, in all kinds of animal system in like the Animal Kingdom, there will be lots of ways of ordering access, but as you highlight uh here, it tends to be a very just directly and purely unfair pecking order based on some kind of hierarchy that's understood by the horses, some kind of dominance thing, whereas a lot of what we were talking about was

the social convention of first in, first out ordering. And it doesn't matter if you get to the line and you think you're better than everybody else in line, that you know that they're not going to just say, oh, yeah, that's right, you're better than us. You can go to the front. Oh. And then finally the end, Jordan's says, love the show, and I have to say, I really missed regular Invention episodes. Keep up the great work, guys,

and much love from Cali. Um that I think that's California, not a person named Kelly c a l I. Uh, yeah, I'm glad to hear it. Thank you, glad to hear you liked the Invention episode. So we still do them from time to time, just not every week because I guess you note, Yeah, we can't offer regular Invention episodes, but we can offer the next best thing, irregular Invention episodes.

Um and uh. And we actually have I believe we have an Invention episode coming up really soon, or at least we've been talking about doing one on a particular invention topic, so they'll they'll keep We enjoy doing invention based episodes, so they're they're definitely not going away. They just they're in the rotation at this point, right, all right. This one comes to us from Nan Nan Rights. Hi, Joe and Robert. I've been a fan of the show for a few years now and have especially enjoyed your

recent series on queuing. When you discussed the ambiguity involved in most cases of line cutting, particularly taking another person's parking space, it made me reconsider a time when I confronted another driver who took my spot. I was waiting to turn left into a parking space at Costco while a pedestrian cross my path and another driver turned into my intended spot as his passenger looked at me and

grin sheepishly. After I finally parked, I saw the family from the other car and waddled my seven months pregnant body over to them and chewed them out about their automotive. Since the driver claimed he didn't see me, Your podcast made me reconsider whether the other driver really hadn't seen me, and whether I should have tried to be more genteel

in my approach despite my raging prenatal hormones. I didn't run into the family again while inside the warehouse, which leads me to believe I terrified them so much that they left without finishing their shopping trip. After listening to your discussion, I'll definitely try to slow my role moving forward and acknowledge the ambiguity and line cutting situations. Thanks for, as always, for providing such interesting food for thought and

expanding my perspective on everyday situations. Always your fan. Now well, Nan, glad to hear about your your broadening consciousness on this. But also, you know, don't feel bad. We've all we've all had moments obviously when when somebody does cut in the parking lot. Even though you're you're like broader mind from a distance, you know, the the astral level consciousness would look down on you and say, don't overreact in

the moment, it's hard not to. Yeah, alright. This next message concerns both Fat Am Morgana which is a slightly older episode, and Weird House Cinema. This is this is a great email. So this is from John, and John says, Hi, Robert and Joe Uh. This email is about an older episode, but I was reminded of it the other day in

a funny way. Right now, I'm doing ecology work in a remote field camp in the Alaskan Arctic, right by the coast of the Beaufort Sea, where two miles from the coast, But the tundra is flat enough that for most of the summer we've been able to see the sea ice on the Arctic Ocean as it stacks up

against the small barrier islands to the north. Anyway, as a coworker and I were walking across the tundra to a study area, we started talking about the ice and I had to recommend your Fati morgana episode to her. Even though the sea ice only builds up to piles about ten to twenty feet high against the barrier islands, for much of the summer, I've been able to step out of my tent, look north and see a Game

of Thrones style ice wall stretching across the coast. It looks like a long, tall, white barrier separating the land from the ocean, like the supposed polar ice walls in some flat Earther theories I've attached a picture of the illusion for reference in front of one of our study areas. Yeah, this is really impressive this image. It does, in fact look like a yeah, like a Game of Throne style

ice wall. Yeah, the others are coming the optical illusions, don't in there we also get islands stretched and floating above the ground, a similar cloud wall to the west, sun dogs, and even a vertical stretching of the Brooks Range mountains to the south, resulting in what looks like an Arctic version of Monument Valley. And another picture is attached, and this one is even more interesting because it has I don't know, I can't even describe what this looks like.

It they they're kind of stacked up and distorted vertically with these ripples that look like, I don't know, big tubes or waves coming out of the land. John goes on, it's super cool to see how the high latitude optical effects can dramatically distort how things look, and, as you've mentioned before, makes it easier to understand why sailors claim to see fantastic things like castles floating above the horizon.

My coworker really enjoyed the episode because she also works at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, where they sometimes see icebergs and utility trucks flipped and molded like putty by tricks of the light. And then there are pictures attached to Fatim Moorgana acting on the ice field and on utility vehicles around McMurdo in Antarctica. Again looks very cool. And then, finally, on a separate note, one of the minor challenges of working up here is the constant sunlight interfering with sleep.

But You're weird House cinema episodes, while interesting, have helped me drift off even when it's one am and still light out. In particular, your Devil's Express episode has been an excellent sleep aid on several brightly lit nights. Also, my whole field crew watched Troll two together and absolutely loved it. For several weeks this summer, a remote monitoring device with the six digit code Nilbog kept watch over the Arctic tundra, thanks in no small part to your

tireless b movie advocacy. Thanks for all the fun and thought provoking conversations. Sincerely, John, look at that troll to keeping people alive? Is this a life support device? Or is it this maybe a piece of scientific keeping people on on track on the job. I don't know. Um, it's been a while since we've heard from someone who

goes to sleep with the episode. These is our episodes as sleep aid, and I'm always I'm always interested to hear that and glad that we, uh, we can help you you know, achieve you know, proper level of sleep. Oh yeah, totally. We would never take it personally. People are always very nice. They're always like, I use your episodes to sleep, but not because they're boring. All right, Well, I'm want to close out with part of a listener

mail here from James. James rode in basically to share with us UH an Atlantic article by Ed Young uh and this one was about monitor lizards in Australia digging incredible corkscrewed nests. I haven't read this one yet, but I'm gonna put it on the to read list. I mainly wanted to read James's email, though, because he weighs in on a on a popular intellectual pastime of hours and and uh pastime of our listeners trying to figure out why Sean Conner Race character has a Scottish accent

Ian Highlander solved the mystery? James, Well, James, James does have an interesting hypothesis. Year he says, uh quote also Sean Connery Scottish accent in Highlander is from beheading a Scottish immortal and acquiring his English language through the quickening accent and all, thank you for your fantastic podcast, James, it's pretty good. Pretty good. I don't know. Yeah, well, what is the quickening for if it is not for acquiring things like like language? I don't know that This

also leads into what is the quickening for? Well, it's about power and uh, you know, amassing that power? And I don't it's explained to the film. But but this does bring up something I was thinking about just uh in the background the other day, and it's something I've thought about before. The immortals in the Highlander movies. To what extent are they capable of change? Are they capable? Did they have neuroplasticity? You know? Can they truly acquire

new language? Is or do they? Or is James right? Do they only acquire these things through the quickening? Is it only by absorbing the power and maybe to some extent the intellect of others? That they are able to adapt. Otherwise are they just always gonna because like the Kurgan, the Kurgan is always the Kurgan. You don't get a sense that he's really changed much. He's just updated his look a little bit and learned how to drive a vehicle, but otherwise he's he's still Kurgan to the core. See

that's a lesson to all of us. If you're not willing to learn, grow and change as an adult, you become the Kurgan. Yeah, but that meanwhile, I mean Connor McCloud, I mean, he since he's still the sweet lad he always was. But I guess there is a sense that he's grown and he's learned, you know, he's had to wrestle with loss and move through it. Uh, certainly in ways that the Kurgan never has had to. So uh maybe that's ultimately what what what what the film is

trying to say to us here? We are all right, we're gonna go ahead and close the mailbag for today, but we'd love to hear from you about any of the topics we discussed here about recent episodes, upcoming episodes, along past episodes. I mean, I don't know, fat A MORGANA. I didn't even feel like that one was that old. I feel like we just recorded that one. So I was a little shocked to hear that one referred to as an older episode. But I guess that's just how

time works now. Yeah, I guess it's a few months of this time. Yeah, I don't know. It depends on Eily. It's all relative anyway, So right in let us know we'd love to hear from you, huch, 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, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot

com Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's 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.