Listener Mail: Hand of Dog

Your Mind Listener Mail. I am Joe McCormick, and my regular co host Robert Lamb is off work this week, so we've got a bit of a scheduling changeup, So I'm gonna be recording today's Listener Mail episode solo, and then on Tuesday and Thursday of this week we will have a couple of core episodes from the Vault, and on Friday a Weird House Cinema rewind, and then I should be back with a fresh Listener Mail episode next Monday.

And at some point that week I'm not sure exactly which day yet, Robert will be rejoining me and we'll have all new stuff for you then. But for today, I'm going to be reading back a few of the messages that you've sent in over the past week or so, and I think we should kick things off with some responses to the series that Rob and I did on Thirst. So I'm going to begin with a message from Ahmed.

Ahmed says, hey, guys, your mention of rabies during the Thirst series made me think of a neat application of this virus in research. The reason rabies can take a long time to cause disease is because the virus jumps up the neurons retrograde from the site of infection to the brain, and the further away it is, the longer

it takes to make the trek. Yeah. So if you're trying to picture that, imagine you get bitten, say on the hand, by a by an infected animal, and then the rabies virus transfers from the saliva into the bite and then from there I believe it either I think gets into the muscle, but somehow it gets into the nerves. Yeah, and it has to climb the nerve pathways back up to the central nervous system to get into the brain.

But anyway, here here, Ahmed goes on describing something I thought was really interesting that I don't think I was aware of before, uh Ahmed rights. In neuroscience, we can use this feature to trace what upstream neurons synapse onto an area or population of interest, using a rabies virus whose genome has been tweaked so that instead of just being instructions that to a host cell say make more rabies virus, they say make more rabies virus and a

fluorescent protein. This labels the neurons with that fluorescent protein as the virus goes up. Make the virus deficient in a crucial piece of machinery. Added only to the cells of interest, and you can get fancier and ensure that it will only be able to jump one synapse, thereby only labeling the neurons that directly link up to the ones you're interested in. More generally, this is a good example of a theme and research. So many of the tools we use in the lab are adapted from nature.

Everybody knows about PCR now thanks to COVID, but the first polyme race enzyme used in PCR was from hot springs bacteria. Oh yeah, that's the thermos aquaticus from Yellowstone right, um Ahmed writes. Our own polyme races couldn't stand the high temperatures required, but after all, that's what the bacteria evolved for. This is also a good case to bring up when people complain about money wasted in quotes on

unapplied science without an immediate payoff. The people first studying hot springs microbes had no way of foreseeing that this is what they would be applied to anyway, protein engineering has made a lot of strides recently, but until we can design them better a priori, our best bet remains tweaking what we find around us. Keep up the great work. Ahm, ed, Well, this is a great email, im it yet And I'm

I'm fully on board with you. You know, I think studying nature, even if you don't see an immediate financial payoff to that research is is always a great thing to do. Uh, you don't know what other in formation it will lead to down the line or other applications.

And as for this application of the rabies virus, yeah, I was not aware of this before, but I looked this up and this is really interesting that you can use the rabies virus to trace natural pathways between neurons, So you can use the virus in a modified form to study the nervous system so we understand it better. And yeah, that's wonderful. A great and benevolent application for for the virus that causes one of the worst diseases known to humankind. Alright, this next message comes from Brett.

Brett says, Hello, gentlemen, I hope you've all been doing well. Quick comment on the thirst episodes. Excellent way you guys have described what's going on in the biological responses we have when we're thirsty, and how to stop that thirst. One comment regarding de ionized water, I believe in water is distilled through a column and condensed, some minerals can be carried over in low amounts due to a phenomenon

called a zeotrope. This occurs when water coordinates with another chemicals like say tallween, and lowers the boiling point of the tollween. I believe some minerals might also perform the same way. If water is treated by reverse osmosis, this is more of a true way to remove all minerals to obtain a more pure form of water. The issue with water that has been treated this way is it can be harmful to ingest due to the water stability

to remove salts and minerals from our body. Drinking de ionized water or water by reverse osmosis is not recommended. Keep it for your humidifier. As for the taste of water, it seems every municipality has its own unique flavor profile, and we all seem to get numb to it. Then we visit somewhere and we notice those low concentrations of minerals that are different. I've heard of breweries adding minerals to try to mimic a certain flavor profile they're trying

to achieve. I guess Brett means from from a different city where the beer was originally made. We can definitely tell the difference looking forward to the third episode. I guess this came after the second cheers Brett, Well Brett,

along the lines of what you say about breweries. Uh. I don't know if if there was ever a definitive answer to this controversy, but I remember reading years ago some arguments about the the cause of the the the reasoning behind the fact that pizza and bagels are inarguably better in New York City than anywhere else in the world. And the argument was that that maybe it's because of the New York City tap water. The city tap water that's used to hydrate the dough for the bagels has

some special New York e goodness to it. Uh. And I think the reasoning under that was that New York has unusually soft water, meaning that it is low in certain minerals like calcium, and that low mineral content has some mitigating effect on gluten formation, which I think would basically make the bread products softer and more fluffy to

the tooth. So I don't know. It. Intuitively seems kind of unlikely to me that it would make that big of a difference city by city by itself, but I am not an expert in does so maybe I don't know. New York listeners, do you have opinions on this? Right? Right in? Tell me? Tell me what's going on with your bagel, is your pizza crust? What makes them special? Is it? Is it just different technique or or is that water really magic? All right? This next message comes

from Eric. Eric says, Hi, Rob and Joe great episodes on Thirst. You talked about tea at the beginning of part two and mentioned that you can make tea. Uh, I guess that's sort of tea and quotes out of a lot of things. I drink lots of tea, including actual black tea, herbal tea, and mint. In Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, one group of people who had never seen tea before referred to it as leaf soup, which made me laugh, and then it made me wonder,

where exactly is the boundary between tea and soup? You could in theory have made have a soup made only of vegetable broth? Could that be considered a tea? I assume that if it has chunks of vegetable in it, that would make it definitely a soup. My infuser has leaked bits of tea leaves and it turned my tea into soup several times. I think you can go even farther, Eric, and there there is certainly a I think this is a British expression to say, like beef tea or meat tea.

It's basically just beef broth. Yeah, I know we've gotten at least one message from a listener about that before. There's some kind of beef tea and biscuits thing. Anyway, Eric goes on, I've lived in several places, each with its own flavor of water. Central California gets most of its water from mountain streams that flow into reservoirs, and

it typically has a nice, mineral rich flavor. But if you get your water from a well, it's often heavy with nitrogen, which and Eric says this gives it a more bitter taste that I've got a note about that after after email, Eric says, Los Angeles water basically tastes like pool water. I've also spent a lot of time in Imperial County. I guess that's probably California, incidentally, a land rich in tumbleweeds, and the water here is incredibly

alkaline and very bitter. While the tap water is completely potable. Everyone recoils at the idea of drinking it. Everyone I know uses a filter or drinks bottled water. Oh. But then Eric says that the same water, the bitter water, is used to grow a large number of vegetables that are eaten throughout the United States. Uh. And then finally Eric says, speaking of water and crops. Not sure if I mentioned it in a previous message, but I think you could do a full episode, if not too on dirt.

There's such a wide range of dirt, from all the types of soils, sands, extraterrestrial regulith and dust in our houses to the grime on our clothes. All the best, keep up the good work, Eric, Well, thanks Eric the great email. The one thing I might wanna differ with you on here is whether the nitre gen content of well water would be the thing that makes it bitter. Wellwater can indeed have a lot of nitrogen compounds in it,

in the forms of nitrite and nitrate. I think especially like as a result of nearby use of fertilizers and manure in the in the soil, but I think there can be other causes as well, like sewer, inseptic leakage, and grows stuff like that. But you can end up

with nitrogen compounds in your well water. But all the sources that I was reading about this made clear to stress that these compounds typically have no taste or smell, So I don't know if that's always the case, but it's at least commonly reported that they have no taste or smell, And I think that would be an important fact because it means they can be present in unsafe quantities in well water and go totally unnoticed when you're

actually drinking it. So don't you shouldn't just assume that if if it was there, you'd be able to taste it. Uh And and this can actually be dangerous because if you consume too much nitrate or nitrite it and cause a condition called I'm not sure how to pronounce this,

but I think it's like methemoglobinemia. Methemoglobinemia, which is basically where your red blood cells have difficulty transporting oxygen because of the presence of too much nitrite, and that that nitrite causes oxidation of the hemoglobin uh and it it makes your blood not work. Basically. You can read case reports about this that sometimes have very weird features describing people's skin turning blue and things like that. So you

definitely don't want that to happen. And uh and and the bottom line is if you get your water from a well, you should get it tested on a regular basis to to make sure that there is not significant nitrogen compound contamination. And I guess probably for other things too, but yeah, if you if you have well water, get it tested. Okay. And this next message also comes from

an Eric, a completely different one. So the second Rick says, one thing I thought of during your podcast about thirst was how at one point in college, I had the thought that drinking really cold water would be a decent way to burn some extra calories in a day, since my body has to raise that cold water up to body temperature, and one kilo calorie of food value is the energy used to raise one kilogram or leader of

water one degree celsius. Drinking cold water let's say two degrees c and bringing that up to body temperature about thirty seven degrees c. That's thirty five calories per leader of water. If I crank through six liters of ice water in a day, then boom, that's two hundred calories

burned right there. I imagine there are some flaws in my math, or that it's a bit more complicated than that doing the full energy balance of my body, maintaining its core temperature and so forth, But I still think it would be at least close to that number of calories. Big fan of the show, Eric Well, Eric, I went digging around to try to find a good answer to this question, see if there was anything authoritative about how

many calories you burn by drinking very cold water. And I think my conclusion after everything I've read, is that yes, drinking ice water as opposed to room temperature water will put demands on your metabolism. You will burn a few extra calories, but probably not enough to be a really significant source of of a deficit for weight loss. Uh, if you're just drinking a normal amount of water. Now, obviously that raises questions of like, what is a normal

amount of water to drink? In a day. That's actually

kind of hard to pin down. Some of the most commonly cited figures are from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Table on Dietary Reference Intakes, and that table I think this was compiled in the early two thousands, so I don't know how current it is, but it's still referenced a lot, and that recommends a daily water intake of three point seven leaders per day for adult men and two point seven leaders per day for adult women.

But obviously that that's not something you need to measure out and be strict about. And these are just averages, so there's gonna be a lot of individual variation, and of course variation based on what you're doing, if you're sweating exercise, if you're on the hot sun and things

like that. Now, obviously you can drink more water than the than the average daily recommended intake, but you do need to be careful there, since it is actually quite possible to hurt or kill yourself by drinking too much water too fast. One of the big risks of drinking too much water too fast is hypetremia, where the salt concentration in your blood gets too low, and your kidneys can't purge the extra water fast enough to keep your salt osmolality at the right level, So there's a build

up of fluid inside cells. It makes your cells swell, I think, including the brain cells, and that's just that's really bad. So this is something that's also difficult to put a universally applicable number on. Uh. Several sources I was looking at side of study from warning that you you don't want to drink more than something like zero point eight leaders to one leader of water per hour,

since this exceeds what the kidneys can safely eliminate. But again, I think that's something that's it's hard to put a very solid number on it. But generally I think you just want to stay away from chugging ridiculous amounts of water. Also, big caveat. As always, you know, I'm not a doctor, we're not doctors. This is not a medical advice show, so you should not be uh making any medical decisions

based on anything you heard here. But yeah, as far as I can tell, there's basically you know, there's no harm in drinking a normal amount of cold water, and that will help you create a calorie deficit but maybe not as much as you would buy. For example, refraining from eating a couple of fun sized candy bars. Uh. And whatever you do, just please don't give yourself water intoxication, trying to lose weight? Okay, onto some responses to Weird

How Cinema. Both of these were about the episode we did on The Beast with Five Fingers, the Peter Laurie movie about a severed hand that goes up, strikes out on its own, and goes on a choking spree. When we did that episode about the Beast with Five Fingers, we were talking about other killer hand movies and we got to a nine stone or horror comedy called Idle Hands starring Devin Sawa and Jessica Alba. And Rob had a very strong memory that Jake Busey was in this movie.

I argued that Jake Busey was not in this movie. Now here comes our listener Thomas, to solve the mystery. Thomas says, I'm yelling into my headphones here you think you remember Jake Busey because there's an amazing cameo The Offspring. The band The Offspring are playing the high school Halloween dance and Dexter Holland gets scalped by the possessed hand on stage. Dexter and Jake are extremely similar looking, Thomas Thomas,

I think you're exactly right. That must be it. So in this movie, somehow they got the offspring the very very popular sort of pop punk band to to play this high school dance on a basketball court they're doing. I remember they're doing a cover of I Want to Be Sedated by the Ramons, And yeah, the lead singer does have significant Jake bauc overlap. I think they both have the same platinum blonde hair, spiky with alarming vertical dimension.

This next message is from a listener who wanted to stay anonymous, but she had some really great insights in response to that same Weird House Cinema episode on the Beast with five Fingers. She starts off by saying that she's been listening for several years and introduces her credentials as a trained pianist who works in a musical academic setting, and then moves on to our comments about the movie. The writer seems well informed about certain oddly specific aspects

of piano playing. With one hand, it's much easier to play something which sounds reasonably impressive with one's left hand than with the right, no matter which hand is dominant in everyday life. This is generally supposed to be because the thumb is quote heavier, essentially louder than the other fingers, and therefore carries a melodic line better, and the left hand thumb plays higher notes where the melodic line generally lies, whereas the right hand thumb plays the base. The relative

independence of the melodic thumb is also helpful. And yes, this did correspond to the movie, because the one handed pianist in in the beast Um he played with his left hand. That was where all of his power and skill was concentrated, as if by magic. But the listener goes on. There are quite a few historical precedents of left hand pieces, and some but fewer for the right

hand alone. The most well known are probably Johannes Brahms transcription of the box Shikan for solo violin for the left hand, Revels Piano Concerto for the left hand, and the Scriabin Prelude and nocturn Opus number nine for the left hand scrib and a Russian composer and really interesting biographical details that I want to get to after this emails over, but the listener continues. Scriabin, like so many of us, hurt his right hand practicing and didn't want

to stop playing, even temporarily. Unfortunately, most people can't compose such wonderful music for themselves. A lot of these pieces are not immediately audible as being played by a single hand, especially for non pianists. The revel and an impressive list of other pieces was written for Paul Wittgenstein, brother of the philosopher, who lost his right arm in the First World War and continued to perform as a concert pianist afterwards.

More recently, both Gary Graffman and Leon Fleischer lost some or all of the use of their right hands due to probably in Graftman's case and certainly in Fleischer's focal dystonia, and they have both performed the left handed repertoire for many years. Sorry for the long email. It was very exciting for me to hear about a horrific and independent left hand, as I sometimes feel like mine is also

possessed by a demon. Finally, it's very unusual to make past one's early thirties as a musician without at least one significant period of injury. My first came during my bachelor's degree, when a burnt finger on my right hand became severely infected because I was too stupid to stop practicing for a few days, and pianos shared by a hundred and twenty people are in obvious hindsight hotbeds of

all kinds of bacteria and so forth. I recovered quickly, but spent five weeks variously having fits of hysterics and becoming acquainted with the repertoire for the left hand. Thank you again for the fascinating podcast. I so much enjoy learning more about all kinds of things which are very far away from my daily life, and it was a pleasant surprise to hear about something a bit more familiar. All the best, Well, thank you so much for the email.

To follow up with another interesting tidbit, since you raised the subject of Alexander Scriabin. If anybody out there is not familiar with this Russian pianist and composer, uh Scriabin is not only interesting for having written piano music for the left hand alone, but he is also the only person I know of who ever tried to compose a literal eschatological event. If you want to learn more about this, look up Scriabin's work called The Mysterium. It was unfinished

at the time of his death. I think heavily influenced by Scriabin's fascination with occultism, mysticism, UH and the new religion at the time of Theosophy. But essentially the Mysterium, as far as I understand, it was supposed to be like the artwork to end all artworks, and in fact, to end the world. It was going to be a musical and visual performance staged in the foothills of the Himalayas that would be so awesome that it would summon the end of the eon and transform all matter into spirit.

I found a description of what Scriabin intended for the at least the first part of this event, in a book called Scriabin, a Biography by Faubian Bowers, published in nineteen So he's describing here a portion of the Mysterium that the composer left behind when he died, and this part was called the Prefatory Action. In the Prefatory Action would still be a stage work of immense proportion and conception. Bells suspended from the clouds in the sky would summon

the spectators from all over the world. The performance was to take place in a half temple to be built in India. A reflecting pool of water would complete the divinity of the half circle stage. Spectators would sit in tears across the water. Those in the balconies would be the least spiritually advanced. The seating was strictly graded, ranking radially from the center of the stage, where Scriabin would sit at the piano, surrounded by hosts of instruments, singers, dancers.

The entire group was to be permeated continually with movement and costumed speakers reciting the text in processions and parades would form parts of the action. The choreography would include glances, looks, eye emotions, touches of the hands, odors of both pleasant perfumes and acrid smokes, frankinsense and myrrh pillars of incense would form part of the scenery. Lights, fires, and constantly changing lighting effects would pervade the cast an audience, each

to number in the thousands. This prefaces the final mysterium and prepares people for their ultimate dissolution in ecstasy. Now, like I said, the mysterium was unfinished when Scriabin died, but he left behind a bunch of sections and notes on on parts that he had composed. And I think that there there was at least one case, maybe multiple where other composers came along and tried to make something out of the the notes and unfinished parts that he

left behind. So so you can look up the mysterium and hear parts of it as interpreted by by other composers. But but yeah, it was never put together in its entirety and obviously never staged because we're all still here. M m m m m okay, So that's gonna wrap things up for this episode, but we will be back to talk to you again soon. In the meantime, if

you're new to the show, why don't you subscribe? Just look up the Stuff to Blow your Mind feed wherever you get your podcast will be on there somewhere, or you can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

We usually feature listener mail on Monday's, core science and culture episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we do something we call weird House Cinema, a more casual show where Rob and I usually talk about a movie with a giant crab or a star mummy or something of that ilk Remember this week we're gonna have some vault episodes for you because Robert's out, but we'll be back with you with all new content

sometime next week. And big 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 a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.