Listener Mail: Halloween Hangover

turn this into a weekly episode. So these will be shorter than our normal episodes, but we'll be trying to to check in with your your feedback and and reach into the mail bag on a on a more regular basis. Yeah, so let us know if this is good, if this is bad, it's it's new. That's that's that's for sure.

But yeah, we're gonna you know, I guess the idea is that if we do it every week, that the the upside is it's more of a continual exchange of ideas between uh, you the listener and UH and us the host, as opposed to just sort of touching base every month or two. Now, in this first one, I'm gonna say, we're still going to be playing some catch up because there was a bunch of mail that we tried to get into in our last full listener Mail episode. We didn't even come close. So we're still rounding up

some responses to our Halloween season episodes. This is gonna be a sort of Halloween hangover a Listener mail. But I would say in the future, we're gonna try to be getting into mail that is about more recent episodes, so hopefully within the you know, past couple of weeks before each episode airs. All right, well, let's go ahead and uh and see what the mail boat has for us this time. Uh, let's see. Do you want to take this one, Joe or shall I sure I can

read this one here? From James. This is in response to our episode about the Leshy, the creature of Slavic mythology who's kind of a I think I called him a malevolent trickster end. He's a spirit of the woods who's somewhat beast of the forest, somewhat tree himself and uh, and is generally bad and we'll do bad things to you. So this is what James had to say, Hi, Robert and Joe, I love the Lessie episode, and I never heard of the Lessie prior to listening. I'm glad you

made the connection to swamp Thing. Since reading Alan Moore's saga of the swamp Thing on a plane once, it is always stuck with me that swamp Thing is a much deeper character than some of those he had been paired with over the years. For example, I had a Hulk Versus swamp Thing comic as a kid. Uh, Rob, do you know that one? I don't. I'm I'm pretty much only familiar with the Alan Moore run of the comic, as well as some of the other stuff that he

was up to on you know, various TV and film incarnations. Um. But yeah, I always thought that swamp Thing was was pretty deep. I mean, I'm not about to cast out on the depth of the Hulk, because I know that the Hulk has been around a while, so I'm sure there have been some some some deeper treatments of that character. But yes, swamp Thing, especially as presented by Alan Moore

as a is a wonderfully rich character. Okay, James continues, the discussion about getting lost reminded me of something that happened when I was very young. It was certainly not a life threatening moment, but here goes. My cousins and I were at a beach with a coastal woodland behind the dunes. I was the oldest, about twelve years old, and we decided we should explore the woodland, being sure we would only need to turn around and head straight

back to the beach when we needed to. After a few minutes of crawling under logs and pushing through bushes, the adults on the beach called for us to come out. We could hear them and headed in what we thought was their direction. We seemed to be bashing through the bush far longer than we had on the way in. We realized we weren't going the right way and we're lost. Several times we stopped and listened, then changed direction to

move toward the voices on the beach. It felt as though every direction we chose was wrong and we were beginning to freak out. I was sure that if we looked for open sky, it would signify the edge of the woodland. Time after time, this theory was proven wrong. After what might have been about thirty minutes, my cousin caught a glimpse of something and following her lead. Within a few strides, we'd step back onto the dunes. Needless to say, the adults were relieved to see us, and

I was not the favorite nephew that afternoon. I couldn't understand how it repeatedly got it so wrong until listening to Joe's explanation of the science of being lost. Most likely I was leading us in circles just meters from the edge. More recently, my partner and I were walking back from the same beach as a storm was approaching. It's a place I still often go for holidays and is very familiar to me, less so to her. The houses and narrow roads i'll sit amongst a remnant coastal woodland.

I suggested we take a new route back to the house, just to see what it was like. As we headed down the different route, the wind picked up and the tall trees lining the street were swaying dramatically under a dark gray sky. We were startled by a loud screeching sound and looked up to see several yellow tailed black cockatoos just above us. They were clinging to the swaying branches,

screeching while the wind buffeted them to and fro. We hadn't spotted any of these birds at all until that moment. Up close, they're very large, and each of them firmly held one eye on us, even as they were tossed around by the oncoming storm. All we could hear was wind in the trees and their sharp screeches cutting deeply into us. We felt very intimidated by the whole scene, and when my partner asked to turn back, I agreed, even though it meant doubling back and staying out slightly longer.

I should say that I am not frightened of wild life at all, and of experienced handling wild animals, including large birds. At no time were we in any danger whatsoever, and these cockatoos are beautiful birds that I love observing when I get the chance. However, there was something profoundly wild about the scene that made us feel very unwelcome.

It felt as though we were being told we had stayed out too late, we shouldn't pass that point in the road, and the storm, speaking through dark winged messengers, was commanding us to return to the house. I got the feeling that all of nature at that time was one conscious force, which is not my usual belief. My rational mind recognizes that this is simply a quirk of

being a human and feeling exposed in unfamiliar surroundings. I can only imagine that if I was actually lost, like I had been years earlier, not far from this encounter, Uh, this would have been really frightening rather than just a bit spooky. Listening to the leshy episode connected these memories for me, and I can really see how a spirit of the forest could manifest in the mind of people losing their way in the wild. It almost did for me.

Thanks for introducing me to a fascinating idea once again, James. Oh, I love that that especially. I especially love that having just returned from a few days with nine with just my immediate family. Uh. Tybee Island here in Georgia, because they have some very desolate kind of coastlines there that always Uh not that I ever thought it felt like I was getting lost, but you can imagine yourself getting lost out there beside the dunes where the ghosts of

the forest and the ghosts of the waters mingle. Yeah, there's a lot of wild country there to consider. Yeah, we're really great email, James, Thanks for sharing. All right, here's another Leshy email. This one comes to us from Adam. Hi, guys, Happy Halloween from Massachusetts. Um. I mean you can look at that either way. Either it's a late happy Halloween or it's a it's a really early one, depending you know, based on when we're reading this anyway, Uh, they continue.

We we take plenty of pride and scares, thrills and traditions of this holiday, and I know you both enjoy it as much as anyone. I'm a massive fan of the podcast and love all of your content, but this is the first time I finally willed myself to write in on a topic. I just listened to your Leshy podcast and found it extremely fascinating and informative on forest myths and legends. However, I would like to politely critique your description of the green Man and how it pertains

to European traditions. The podcast discussion encouraged me to do some research of my own, and it was very difficult to come across a consensus about how related, if it, all, the various green Man figures of Europe were. In particular, you commented that we find this green man carved into Christian churches dating back to at least the sixth century, hinting at a clear inspiration from, or even direct reference to pre Christian folklore. I've included a link to an

article by Emily Tesh below. This was a tour article toward dot com uh that suggests the green men folklore we think of today is actually a product of the twentieth century, due to a poorly researched amalgamation of various European myths by Lady Raglan in a nineteen thirty nine edition of Folklore, a writing that relies more on speculation

than hard facts. While there I was certainly a multitude of similar forest spirits in pre Christian folklore, it seems to be taken as a fact that this is why the Christian architects were carving forest men into the churches, without much evidence to support the theory. It could very well be true, but it should be pointed out when

speculating that this idea is by no means conclusive. The article below does a nice job of showing that in the past few centuries that has become quite common for one folklore author to quickly inspire a quote unquote canonical myth. An idea you touched on in the Minotaur podcast that combines and oversimplifies ancient stories, traditions, and legends to make them easier for mainstream consumption and pop cultural reference. Thought

you would find the read interesting as well. Thank you for all the entertainment, education, and inspiration you constantly provide. All the best. Adam from Boston. Well, Adam, thanks for writing in. I think this is this is a fabulous point and I'm glad you, uh you you made it here. Um. On one hand, I would love to return to The Green Man in the future. I've actually wanted to do a Green Man episode for a long time. Um. I

guess it. It probably goes back to finally remembering catching catching bits of the movie The Green Man starring Albert Finney on on cable back in the day. I think they would show it on any like on the middle, like the dead middle of a Sunday afternoon, and I always found that intriguing, and then of course I would occasionally catch that I figured what it was called. But there was a movie where Sean Connery played the Green

Night uh you know, his head gets cut off and everything. Um. But yeah, it's it's my understanding that when we talk about the green Man, we're really were oversimplifying, and we're bringing together a whole bunch of different ideas um and it would be it would be fun to research that in greater depth in the future. And of course I totally agree with this point about the dangers of forming

a canonical myth. I've been reading a book about Egyptian mythology, and the author of that book makes many of the same points, and one of the well one of the ways that that she puts it in that book is that is that when you consider a myth, you have to consider all versions of the myth. The myth is all versions of the myth, which I think is a wonderful point to make. Like, you can't you can't pick an choose, you can't carve it down, you can't limit it to just one narrative. It is all of it.

It is all of the uh, you know, the the the the weird things that don't line up, the things that don't really work together. It is the you know, it is the version of the story that has been retold recently. It is also the version that was told long ago. It is all these things that you you have to incorporate or not even incorporate. You just have to identify them as the myth and and you should you should be hesitant to incorporate them all and try

and cobble together something that you would call canon. That's a very good point, and it also it introduces difficulties in reconciling how we view a myth as I don't know, like the subject of academic study, versus how we view a myth as a story to be retold, Because if it's a story to be retold, you have to tell it one way, like you have to pick away to tell it, even though that's sort of antithetical to the

best way to really study and understand a mythological tradition. Yeah, yeah, so this is all important stuff to keep in mind, um when because yeah, it's hard to you know, on one level, you know, you want to engage with the myth um you know, accurately, and talk about where it came from and how it changed and how it is still changing. But on the other hand, yeah, these are these are at the heart. You often have stories that stick with us, characters and settings that stick with us,

and we have that narrative impulse. It's hard to resist anyway, if you want to check out that article that I mentioned. It is titled The Green Man When a is a myth not a myth? Uh. This was published in Tour back in twenty nineteen. It is by Emily Tesh. All right, we got a short message from nol in response to our episode about melting. You remember the Melt movie episode,

and Noel says, Hi, first time getting in touch. Listening to your recent podcast on melting, I was reminded of when my daughter Millie was very little and she came running to us in horror that she had discovered that quote the wind does are melting. We then had to explain the while while trying to gather some composure while in fits of laughing, that everything was okay and what she found was condensation on the windows. Love the show, knoll. Uh,

that is great. That's wonderful child logic, you know. Speaking of the Melt episode, I think at one point in that we said are there any songs about melting? And it was subsequently pointed out to us by numerous listeners. Uh that, of course we're forgetting the modern English British New wave song I Melt with You, which is a great track. Um, I don't know why that didn't rattle in either of our heads. But but yeah, there's a melt song for you, and it is a positive melt song.

It's about melting with somebody, you know, losing these destructive boundaries in our life and just becoming this uh, this pure ideal. So it's a great song for some reason. For a long time, I think I thought that one was by The Cure. I don't know why that's I'll stop the world and melt with you. I thought it was, like, yeah, on that same album with love song and pictures of

you and stuff. It has a very similar sound as being someone who's kind of I love The Cure, but I'm very much a The Cure Greatest Hits kind of listener. Uh So, I I kind of had it loosely grouped in there with them. Oh, I kind of like to go deep on the weird Cure songs, so you know, the hanging gardens and all that stuff. Oh cool, All right, here's one that comes to us from Aaron responding to

our anthology of horror episodes. Hi, Robert and Joe. I enjoyed the podcast greatly, and I've been working again through the back catalog of your shows. I'm currently listening to the old episode Anthology of Horror volume three from last year, and I want to comment on the whole sixth finger thing, the idea of having six fingers. On one hand, um uh, polydactually is actually a dominant trait in humans and more animals. Actually, however, it is rarely expressed because the recessive gene for five

digits is the dominant gene in the population. That being said, if one of your parents had the dominant gene and passed it on to you, it would be expressed. So having six digits is not a birth defect as was stated in the podcast. So considering that polydactically is the dominant trait, it could in theory come into dominance in expression if we were to do some selective breeding that would produce more people who have this gene as dominant.

Of course, that would be horrific as you would essentially have to perform eugenics to do this. Since the recessive gene is is the dominant expressed gene and to increase the number faster, you would want your breeding stock to have two copies of the dominant gene. So I feel that you you kind of missed out on the horrific implications of the evolved form of the character having six fingers. A whole lot of bad crap had to happen to

get there. Uh. There was also another episode where you talked about somebody who damaged their hearing by something happening in their mouth. I'm sorry, but I don't remember the name of the episode. I immediately under if the damage occurred from a pressure wave passing from the mouth up the eustacean tube into the inner ear. Lots of people forget about this design in our anatomy and that the issues that can be caused from this connection to the inner ear. I think this was in reference to our

episode on the eggs. Remember exploding eggs where if you that's right, cases where somebody microyve the hard boiled egg and then bit into it and it exploded like a bomb in their mouth. Finally, and one of the Anthology of Horror episodes who referred to the Simpsons episode with Kane and Kodos wanting to cook humans. That was one of one of the early of not the first tree

House of Horror episodes. Kang and Kodos subduct the Simpsons when they are in the backyard barbecuing, Lisa becomes suspicious of the aliens and ultimately finds the alien cook's cookbook that implies that they are fattening up the Simpsons to eat. Much hilarity and sues as each side continues to blow space dust off the title until they reveal that they had no intention attention of eating the Simpsons. It's still one of the best King and Kotos stories in my

honest opinion. Anyway, keep up the great work and stay safe. Aeron um. Yeah, I recently rewatched the very first tree House episode and this is one of them. This is back when it's it's Kane and Kodos, but also a third alien whose name I don't remember, but it's the chef, and it's voiced by James Earl Jones. Oh wow, I've completely forgotten that that's not in my memory at all. Yeah,

I think James Earl Jones. Like they started off having a tradition of James Earl Jones being a voice actor in their tree House episodes, but it only lasted like the first couple of episodes, maybe three episodes, I'm not sure. Because of course he's the voice of of of of the Baby of Maggie and Time and in the Time of Punishment episode. Yeah, alright, this next message comes to us from Robin. I believe it's a paleontologist. Robin says, Hi, Joe and Rob and Seth listening to your Saturday Vault

episode Anthology of Horror volume two. Joe expressed that he very much like the Twilight Zone episode that was discussed shadow play. Remember that was the one about the the guy who is being sent to the execution and he tells everybody around him, you can't execute me because you're in my dream right now. If you kill me, you will all cease to exist. Um. And Robin goes on to say, you went on to discuss some really interesting

thoughts about theory of mind and the nature of consciousness. Uh, and I remember we talked about the possibility of like, what if you could have a conscious mind inside your conscious mind that's separate from your mind. You know, the brain is capable of generating consciousness. We that that seems to be observable. What if it can generate more than

one consciousness? It's hard to rule something like that out. Um, So Robin continues, I believe I've written in to recommend this book before, but I will happily recommend it again. I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofsteader. It goes into quite a bit of exploration into just what you were discussing in that segment. Joe mentions the idea of simulating another consciousness within your own while practicing theory of mind, and Rob talks about simulating those in our lives that

we know best. Well, the person that we know best is ourselves. Yes, we can simulate other consciousnesses in our mind to greater or lesser degrees, but the highest fidelity, best simulation is your own eye. You are the eponymous strange Loop. We are nothing more than the pattern of

our thoughts and actions. And when idiosyncratic characteristics like speech, mannerisms, philosophical positions, taste in music, et cetera, are picked up by other surrounding consciousnesses and continue after the original person has died, it is very much the case that a small, pixelated version of that consciousness continues to live on in

the remaining person or people. Anyway, I very much think you folks would enjoy the book, and I would recommend picking up a copy over the holiday season to read. Not too dense, very read bull fairly quick. Cheers Robin. Well, thanks Robin. Yeah, this is really interesting and yeah, I think we've talked about that idea before that in some strange sense, your your personality does actually live on in

the memory of of other people. It's like a you know, a sort of vhs uh second generation copy of your personality, but it can be simulated by other people's brains. Yeah, very cool. All right, here's another one. This is another Anthology of of Horror listener mail from Matt. Good Day, Robert and Joe very much enjoyed your fourth Horror Anthology

episode and all October episodes. Of course, I've written you a couple of times about farming food production, and this time I just wanted to briefly expand on one of the things you mentioned regarding pathogen transmission from plants to humans. Specifically, you mentioned fungal infestations in crops, vomit, toxin, and consequential

health concerns associated with elevated levels. You were absolutely correct that we farmers scalt and apply controls fungicides if we see fungal pressures in our fields, not all the time. The infection has to be serious and widespread enough to warrant a control, but it can be a solution. How much disease pressure uh one has in their fields is usually determined by every farmer's favorite gambling buddy, the weather. Generally speaking, corn is the crop in question when discussing

vomitoxin grain. Elevators and processors also a monitor for volomitoxin levels by taking samples when corn shipments are delivered. This was actually a front page issue in the farm community when higher than usual toxin levels were detected across the province. There were many cases of elevators turning grain shipments away.

There ended up being a lot of false positives due to flaws and how grain is tested on site, and it brought in some wider business strategy issues on behalf of buyers, but certainly prompted by higher than expected vomitoxin. One other thing most of the corn in these kinds of discussions is seed corn, as opposed to sweet corn destined for human consumption. Seed corn gener only goes for

industrial processing of various sorts, animal feeds, etcetera. This makes the risk of vomitoxin related sickness and even and even fainter possibility. Research on resistant hybrid varieties is ongoing as well. People not aware of how these systems work and sometimes get very nervous about farming and food production, often unnecessarily so thus I thought this might be of interest. Also,

there's a lot of cool science associated with it. Thanks again, Matt, so as Matt says, we've heard from him before about stuff like this, and and this is great because a lot of this agricultural industrial stuff, it totally underlies our our entire society, like, you know, everything that we do, all of the products that we consume, you know, you know, this is the basis for the modern world. And and it's so invisible to us most of the time unless

you actually work in agriculture. So yeah, I love getting stuff like this. All right, let's move on to the next LISTR mail looks like you have one. They're concerning the Minotaur, Joe. That's right. Uh so this is from Scott. Scott says, Hello, Robert and Joe. I've looked forward to this year's Monster Extravaganza since last October and you haven't disappointed. I was delighted to see the first episode dedicated to

the Minotaur pop up in my podcast feed last night. Coincidentally, I've recently read a fair amount of Minotaur and Labyrinth related content UH in recent months. Madeline Miller's teen novel Cercy features a fantastic depiction of the Minotaur's origins, and Susannah Clark's just released pure NeSSI is a wonderful novel set in a vast, otherworldly labyrinth. To say anything more would spoil the book's mystery, although I think it would make great fodder for a future Stuff to Blow Your

Mind episode. I also learned the exact method used by theseus to navigate the labyrinth is used by scuba divers exploring shipwrecks today. They carefully unspool a wreck reel they tie off every five feet as they pass us along a wreck. When it's time to turn the dive, the divers simply follow their line back, spooling it up as they go. It's not a very easy feat. When I attempted to do it myself on a training dive this past weekend, I didn't get far before my tightly wound

wreck reel bloomed into a rat's nest. All this leads me to the crux of this email. What are Stuff to Blow Your Mind's favorite Halloween novels. I'm referring to any kind of horror, supernatural, or weird fiction that's fitting for October reading. Thank you for all the great episodes you deliver weekend and week out. Happy Halloween, Scott. Oh,

I feel like we're late getting to this one. And this is the kind of question I am so bad at, because you know, I have lots of things I love, and I'm really bad at like listing my favorite So I'm sorry, I'm probably gonna stall out horribly here. Oh,

I mean favorite Halloween novels. I don't know. Um, I find that some of my favorite Halloween stuff is probably short story based, you know, so I would I would tend to to think of books of short stories, you know, pick up some some Clark Ashton Smith or I've always been a fan of Brian McNaughton's Throne of Bones, which is a collection of dark fantasy short stories. You can't go wrong with Jack Vance's The Dying Earth that sort of thing, uh, Stephen King's uh Skeleton Crew, and um,

what's the other the other big short story collection he did? Um? Um night Shift, night Shift? Yes, those are great collections. So yeah, night Shift, because when it's the story and that concerns uh like rats and exterminators, and they made a fun, a fun movie out of it, as I recall that had Brad Dora fin it, So um, yeah, I would. I would tend to go towards some of those short story books. I don't know when it comes

to hard novels, like full blown novels. Yeah, you know, King had some some great ones, for sure, but um, it's the short stories that really really get me. Also, I'd say that since October, it seems like it's always such a chaotic month. There's always a lot going on, and certainly October was was no exception to that. So I find that short stories fit a little uh you know,

they fit into your schedule a little easier. You know, it's one thing to to devote yourself to that novel, but if it's just a short story, you can you can kind of sneak it in a little better. I'm just trying to think actual novels that that come to mind. Oh well, one obvious one is Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, which is just a fabulous, excellent, scary e ghost novel. Uh, that's gonna be one of the

best scary novels I've ever read. Um. Another one that would come to mind is actually, uh, William Peter Bladdie's the original The Exorcist novel on which the movie is based. That's a great read. Huh. I've never read. I don't know that I've read anything by him. I should pick it up and I type that back. I may have read a short story or two, but as far as books of short stories go, UM, I was a big fan of a book of short stories I read by

a horror writer named Laird Baron. Especially there's one sort of long short story or almost like novelette in there, called Mysterium Tremendum that is just really really scary and good. And of course I always really love the horror short stories of Stephen Graham Jones. His book After the People

Lights Have Gone Off is really good, you know. I also want to pick up on something else that, uh, that they mentioned in this email, and that is Madeline Miller's two thousand eighteen novel Searcy, which I have not read, but as of this recording, my wife is reading it right now and and she thinks it's it's it's fabulous, it's it's sounds really good, you know, retelling of of the character Searcy from um from from Greek myth and her various interactions with the with the gods and other

figures from Greek mythology. Um so uh so, so it's it sounds like it's a recommended read. I have to say. I was. She has another book that concerns Achilles, which I was. I looked into and almost picked up a few years back when I when I had read The Rage of Achilles by Terrence Hawkins, and it is kind of an Achilles bend over there for a little bit,

um so that one's probably worth picking up as well. Um. And as long as I'm mentioning Terence Terence Hawkins, um, I believe he's coming out with a revised edition of The Age the Rage of Achilles in the near future. This is the the Iliad meets the Bicameral Mind novel that he did. I know he put out a revised episode edition of of of the the Caveman book he did American Neolithic, and he has also that he has a short story book out as well titled Turings Graveyard.

So if you're interested in in any of those, go check them out. Some more things are coming to mind. There are obviously some some really uh scary short stories by Peter Watts, one of our favorite science fiction authors. Um and uh, And I just wanted to say, if you want to check out Stephen Graham Jones horror short stories, there's one I think you can read online that's really good called brush Dogs. That's a good place to start

if you've never read a story by him. Yeah, Peter watts short story collection Beyond the Riff is quite nice and has just a couple of real gems in there. All right, we're gonna go ahead and close it off there. That's right. Then, new listener mail episodes are going to be shorter. Uh. That way, we'll we'll you know, be able to cover listener mail more often and perhaps you know, not add as much to your listening load for the week.

So let's see. Certainly we want to hear from everybody if you have, if you have some additional comments based on these listener mails, let us know. And of course we want to hear more and more from everyone regarding current episodes, so we can sort of keep this conversation going in the meantime. If you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts UM and wherever that is. We just hope that you rate, review, and subscribe.

Core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind will continue to come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then we've of course filled in UM five of the other days with some additional content, or make that four of the other days. I think Sunday is still still open, still free, huge things, as always to 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 topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact AT's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a 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.