Listener Mail: Here Comes Halloween

if you just want to let us know anything. You know, how you found out about the show, what you do when you listen, that sort of thing. Right on in contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com. All right, Rob, let's see do you mind if I kick things off with this message from Cindy offering some some pronunciation guidance in response to our episode on the Urukiara, the Lovable

Wobbly Mascots of Japan. Sure let's have it, okay, Cindy says, Hi, Robert and Joe longtime listener, and I've emailed in the past as well. I still love your podcast, including Weird House. I wasn't sure if I should write in because I didn't want to come across as a pronunciation pedant, but I think it would be of interest to you as well. I recently listened back to the two part episode about

Urukiara and found it fun and informative. However, I did want to let you know that the word kawwaie is not pronounced kowai as most non Japanese speaking English speakers tend to say it. You know, It's funny because years and years ago at this point, we actually did an episode addressing sort of the overlap and convergence of these two terms. I think it was about the sort of cute scary pop culture phenomenon, especially in Japan. Yeah.

both words. The word k ye is pronounced with an a sound, and the e is actually a long e sound co y e. Scary is pronounced k wha and then e. As an email, if you listen to a Japanese speaker saying it online, you will hear the difference. Second of all, this word has worked its way into the mainstream in America, so I thought it was important that you knew the difference, especially if you need to use it for future podcasts. Keep up the great work.

Thank you for the hours of fun and informative content. I'm impressed with your vast knowledge and the creative and thoughtful ways which you make connections. Ps. I currently have a bag of rice in my cupboard with a big image of kumaman in it, kumaman air. I always liked kumaman because my last name is Kumano, which is bear plus field. Cindy, Well, thank you for the guideance, Cindy. Yeah. I, as we said, this has come up on the show before, sort of the these two words in the context of

each other. And I don't know if it's especially because of my Southern American accent, or if this is just going to be a common way of speaking. But when you have the O and the A sound, between the K and the W sound, there is just a natural tendency for them to sound the same. I think that might be especially true for sort of a Tennessee American accent like mine. It's really hard for me to say

it any other way. I have to like slow down and break the word apart into different syllables to say it like a Japanese speaker would.

the a fictional family the Fables. The main careara, Young Spielberg meets legendary film director John Ford, who is portrayed as a salty curmudgeon. Ford asks young Spielberg if he knows art. Ford points to a few paintings hanging in his office. He asks the young lad to comment on them. When young Spielberg balks and responding, Ford barks at him to point out the horizon in the first painting it's low.

In the second painting it's high. Now. I want to add I've not seen the movie in question here, but I had to look it up on IMDb. And it's worth noting that David Lynch plays John Ford in this.

there are three cowboys on horses around it. And he's like no, no, no, no, no, where's the horizon? That's what he's asking him when he does it over and over. Oh. But then after this, the John Ford character played by David Lynch, he caps it by making the lesson explicit.

something like that, you know what I mean. And instead he gives them this incredibly specific practical lesson about framing shots and that's all.

it great work is an understatement. Thank you, Nathan. That's very kind, Nathan says. When I heard the odds and evens topic, my mind went to plating immediately. I spent about two decades working in restaurants and learned that the use of even numbers on a dish was considered an amateurish faux pas. This was true regardless of the shape of the plate. I suppose it's the irregular juxtaposition of food against the symmetry of the dish that makes it

appealing to the eye. Towards the end of that period, I learned desserts from a chef trained in classical French preparation, who insisted that each serving consisted of three colors, three textures, and three flavors. That's three threes naturally plated and or garnished in odds. He also demanded height and diagonal shapes for whatever that's worth. Oh yeah, you want your desserts

to be tall, right, no flat deserts. I don't know how to check the veracity of this claim, but I once heard that traditional play in threes or fives came from Asian cultures. It is true, in part at least, that in both Chinese and Japanese the word for the number four is similar enough to the word for death that the number is considered unlucky and thus avoided. Why that would influence European cuisine seems hard to research. And it's not really about even numbers in this case, just

the number four. Any thoughts, just human aesthetics anyway, gents, keep them coming, Rob, any chance you will reveal the origin of the name Argomandanese. I suspect some M S T three K inspiration your loyal listener, Nathan.

food and numerals and different cultures. I think the examples of threes and fives in Asian cultures like this is just in general, a good example of something we did talk about, and that is that there are so many factors influencing the way that numbers are p and you'll have things like this occur in a culture where yeah, particular number will have a lucky you know, a lucky or an unlucky connotation, and then it ripples out from there, and then that's going to influence the way those numbers

are used, at least in some cases and other times not.

like more even than even. But you know, these studies are mostly among like English speaking Westerners, and you wonder if the same would be true and say a culture where the number four among many people is considered unlucky because of a homophone association with the concept of death.

noticing this the other day. I was with my family to an art opening and it was next to like a firehouse, I believe, and it was like, I guess it was like firehouse thirteen. But they're like, well, we got to put thirteen up there, but we're going to put it on a four leaf clover, so like a four leaf clover design was added, So we'll do things like that. But then we come back to the idea of the baker's dozen being like thirteen donuts or what

have you. And of course the reasons for that are related to an entirely separate matter that has to do with like I think, like old baking laws, like old baking European baking laws. But you know, they contradict each other on one hand, like oh, you demand your thirteen doughnuts or biscuits or whatever it is, And on the other hand, there would seem to be an impulse to never give the customer thirteen donuts. What are you trying

to do bring death upon their house? So yeah, it's just all over the place, and there are going to be examples like this, I think in any given culture. But then again, who had turned down the thirteenth donut? We talked about about how numbers of how we calculate numbers when it comes to food, Like, is anyone going to say no, please hold the thirteenth donut. I don't want it to be unlucky. You would say, why, certainly, one more donut, the more the mirror.

holler with the cursed pumpkin patch so gorgeous. I watched the film for years before I realized slight spoiler that each time the creature appears, he more closely resembles Lance Henrickson. Fun fact, Pumpkinhead features a pre blossom Miambi Alec, while Pumpkinhead two features a post punky Brewster SOLEI moon Fry parentheses. Don't watch the sequels though, and the dog Gypsy is played by Mushroom, the same pooch who played Barney in Grimlins.

All right, wow, Unfortunately I have seen Pumpkinhead two, and I agree that Pumpkinhead is one of those movies that has a lot going for it. It has some wonderful production design, great creature effects, and yeah that you know, the sets are great, the witches, hovel, the graveyard and all that. Something I feel like is kind of lacking at the core of it in the story, but it does have a lot of great horror elements and some wonderful atmosphere. On the other hand, I unfortunately have seen

at least one of the sequels. It's been a while. I recall it being not good, not good at all.

to see. So you're like wandering around in a gray maze with gray walls and gray ceilings, low gray ceilings, gray floors, and then you will see scary things like ooh, here's a skeleton, and here's like a floating face without a body, and and then there's a bunch of meters and stuff. I guess that's your life and magic and stuff.

I started listing with Talos the Bronze Automaton when I started working a job with a very long commute. I've been hooked since. In your recent Ores and Wine Dark Seas episodes, you made mention that star Trek must have had some ramming incidents, if not several, and it's basically naval battles in space. You'd also mentioned Warhammer forty thousand and it predilection for rammable vessels. You'll be interested to

know that there's almost a crossover between the two. A Star Trek space vessel ramming scene featuring what has to be the most forty k ship ever to grace the Trek franchise, and of course it's a Klingon one. May I present the Klingon Cleave ship from Star Trek Discovery.

The ship features in the first episode of the first season, which incidentally, this means I've actually seen this episode, but I've forgotten it was a ramming vessel, as well as the last episode of the second season, where its role is to slowly crush and do other ships while cloaked, giving its target no chance to dodge, unlike other Trek ships, but like a classical Tryrem, it's built to ram a target with a massive, heavy bladed keel that makes short

work of opposing ships, crushing them slowly like the Tryrem's prowlwood rather than a high speed ramming. It hasn't been seen since, likely because it's such an odd fit and because Discovery Star Trek Discovery changed its style dramatically in succeeding seasons. But it's just so ridiculous and wondrously metal and very warhammer, standing out from typical Star Trek fair Thanks again and best wishes, Dennis.

the way the lore is visually represented. And so like the Klingons look kind of like space orcs. Like everything they're wearing is just like just designed to the nines. It's like just a very very rich ship, interiors very dark gothic and indeed kind of grim dark. Everything feels at once like Star Trek but also like a new Beast, And I did, you know, I'm not sure I love. I ultimately loved what they were going for, but I

appreciated the effort that they we're putting into it. For instance, I remember there was something about I don't know if this was all ships or just like a particular like cling on Sarcophagus ship, but they actually had like tombs on the exterior. The whole of the vessel, so they put a lot of imagination to it. I'm not sure everyone loved it, and I think they kind of backed off from it, certainly in some of the Star Trek shows that came after this, and I guess maybe in later seasons as well.

ram looks really impressive in real life. Attached is my photo inside the museum of how the ram is displayed, taken back in twenty seventeen. They also have an estimated model of the trirem near the ram, and it contributes to the impression and yes, when you see it you immediately understand that these things are built to smash, not pierce. And then Dimitri attaches the picture. It says, thanks for the great content, Dmitri. And when you do see the

ram up close. Yeah, so this is one of those bronze fittings that would go over the wooden part of the boat that extends out the front. And remember that it's not a sharp point because the boat doesn't want to get stuck in the boat it's ramming. Instead, it has three horizontal bronze fins that are sort of boxy and square shaped at the edge. Clearly the idea is to hit the wood of the opposing boat and try to separate the planks to make them start coming apart and taking on water.

Mediterranean identity. Toward the end, Odysseus, after his long travels, is told by an oracle to take an ore from his ship and walk inland until somebody mistakes it for a winnowing fan, i e. A tool for blowing away the chaff when separating grain from husks. The oracle says this is the point when Odysseus's journey will be over for good. I thought it was so cool how in this way knowledge of what an ore even is is considered the marker of greekness and of belonging to our

favorite wine dark seas. I think the pre industrial process of grains harvesting, threshing, winning, etc. Would make a good topic for episodes. It's given us lots of metaphors in everyday life, and there are lots of cultural historical tie ins given how important these staple crops were, that I feel would be great stuffed to blow your mind material.

and then make you think. So this first email references one of the studies we talked about in part one of our Ignobel series this year, an older experiment from the nineteen forties in which a group of ag scientists were trying to figure out the impact of fear and stress on the milk yield from dairy cows. And what was funny was that an early version of this experiment involved putting a cat on a cow's back and then exploding an inflated paper bag at the cat and the cow.

I think they eventually decided the cat, the cat stacking part was unnecessary. Is that right, Rob?

new human to look after. Maybe you're all stitched up from a c section, and then you have to figure out how to get this little thing to latch onto your breast. What if you don't have milk, What if it doesn't work, What if you can't give the baby that ever important milk. We may not have a cat on our back and a bag exploding, but we are super stressed. The difference in stress and worry and breastfeeding between my first and second kids was night and day.

I was less stressed and less worried and calm the second time, and it was much more successful. I wonder if any scientists have turned their gaze from animals to human women and the stress around breastfeeding and birth and that ever pesky let down. Thanks love you, guys, and then Meg gets in touch with the second email a PS. Another thought that occurred to me is that us. Human ladies also get hooked up to pump milk, often for various reasons, and a calm and RESTful, safe place to

do that also affects the milk we produce. I recall a time I had to pump in an airport because there were no lactation rooms and there was no plug in the bathroom. I had to plug my breast pump into a cell phone charging station and pump next to people charging their phones. So that was a pretty stressful pumping environment. Again, links between cows pumping and human pumping and stress, and that's the end. Well, thank you, Meg. Fantastic couple of emails, touching on a really interesting and

important topic. I'm sure that lots of parents can relate to this. I was talking to my wife Rachel about this before we recorded, and we were talking about how like it might be kind of hard to understand, like to make the comparison there with the influence of stress, just because having a newborn is almost always very stressful, you know. But it's true that even if the near universal baseline is stressed out, you can have gradations beyond that.

I guess stressed out versus extremely stressed out and with those day to day variations. I guess a lot of people probably will notice what seems to be a relationship

between breastfeeding outcomes and stress. So, Meg, you asked if there was empirical research on this, I checked, and yes, there is one fairly recent paper with a lot of citations that I came across is by Emily Nagel at All published in the journal Clinical Therapeutics in twenty twenty two called Maternal Psychological Distress and Lactation and Breastfeeding Outcomes,

a narrative review. This is a review of the existing scientific literature on links between psychological distress, so not just stress, but this would include things like stress, anxiety, and depression, so various forms of psychological distress and people having difficulty achieving their breastfeeding goals. You can go look this paper up if you want. You can read it in depth. The full text is available on PubMed so you can

read the whole thing. The results they reviewed, they say, are kind of difficult to combine because different methods and

measurements have been used across different experiments. But the short summary of their findings is that yes, absolutely, there is pretty good evidence that maternal psychological distress can impair multiple breastfeeding outcomes, and this might be in part because stress or psychological distress can hold back internal production of a very important hormone called oxytocin, and oxytocin in turn plays

an important role in the milk ejection reflex. So they propose that's a very likely candidate for a major explanation why stress would impair breastfeeding outcomes. But they also propose some other physiological mechanisms, and they also talk about how the effect. I think this is probably also relatable to a lot of people. The effect may be bi directional, so stress or other psychological distress gets in the way of lactation and feeding goals, which itself leads to more stress, etc.

And so it's kind of a feedback loop. But ultimately the authors here say quote evidence to date suggests that maternal psychological distress may impair lactation and breastfeeding outcomes, but stronger study designs and rigorous assessment methods are needed. A better understanding of the physiological mechanisms leading to impaired lactation may assist in the development of early interventions for mothers experiencing distress. In addition, stress reducing programs and policies should

be investigated for their potential to improve breastfeeding outcomes. So obviously that could be a lot of things to just generally improve people's conditions, increase comfort, increase support levels, decrease stressful stimuli while people are trying to take care of a newborn. Meg mentions one great way to help, and that would be if you're designing public places where people are going to have to spend a lot of time, like an airport or whatever, having private quiet spaces that

could be used for lactation. That's a big help. That cell phone charging station story is is ish.

But yeah, in the in the original text, there is this sense that they just don't know what pleasure and pain are anymore, Like the lines have been blurred so much that they're like, you know, they think they're doing you a solid by removing all of your skin. Why would you spare yourself any of these these extreme sensations. We don't know what's what's a good extreme sensation anymore,

or what is a bad extreme sensation. They're all the same to you, and we want to share those experiences with you with no malice.

for eighty six computer. In no time, I began spending every day on it, learning to master MS DAWs six point two, Windows three point one, and CE Basic. At some point, one of my friends in middle school showed me a pov ray and I was absolutely blown away. I'd seen the oversized and overpriced magazines lining the shelves of my local Barnes and Noble that focused exclusively on the nascent world of computer generated imagery, but I never thought I would be able to experiment with it myself.

It seemed to exist exclusively in the world of the Amiga, a computer I'd never even laid eyes on. After my friend explained to me the basics, I spent hours working on my first visualization, and after a very long weekend, I'd done it. I'd created a fl plane with three or four very reflective spheres. Some were solid, some were checkerboard. I was a new God. I remember being so proud of the image that I actually printed it out in full color. Imagine the cost to show to my parents

and friends. People weren't quite as blown away as I expected them to be, but I was transfixed. As you mentioned in the episode, the language to discuss the appearance of CGI didn't even exist yet. I remember trying to explain to people what I was about to show them and finding it difficult to put into words. I would describe it as follows quote. You know when you see those images and they're like realer than real. They look real, but they're almost too real, Like it can't be the

real thing because it's too perfect. That's what I'm about to show you. Five minutes later, I'd pull up my latest artscape created with an assemblage of cylinders, spheres, and planes. Speaking of planes, I think I have an answer to Joe's question about why the images were often described as trippy or psychedelic.

the limitations of the platform. If one created a room with six orthogonal planes and put a camera in the center of said room with a specula or ambient light, the result was not very impressive. It looked like not very much. The creator had two options. One option was to apply a pattern to the shape. My aforementioned checkerboard sphere was a good example. This would create an interesting, yet otherworldly room whose walls were for some reason patterned

like a checkerboard. The other option was to do away with five of the planes and make the base plane extend into virtual infinity. Once this was done, the user had a wide open space in which to insert floating spheres, pyramids, cylinders, and, if you were very good, something resembling a teapot. Slap a camera in the middle of a gold desert populated with floating pattern spheres, and the result is inevitably psychedelic.

Thanks for the memories. I don't have any of those old print outs anymore, but I can still remember them quite well. Learning pov ray as a twelve year old was one of the greatest things I ever did on the computer.

it was. I remember it being kind of mesmerizing and feeling like really interesting, like, Wow, where's this Mayze taking us?

Then I see your episode pop up for it kismet, I say, Anywaho, great episode, as always, but I felt I needed to also mention the various scenes where you can find hidden images of Bowie's face embedded in the sets. It is as though Jarif is always watching her. My favorite example is where the camera pans by some boulders, and as it does at one point, they all line up perfectly to make the silhouette of his face for a moment. It is awesome. Example below, and they include

a screen grab of this. Thanks as always. PS, I'm keeping hope alive. You may one day cover Johnny Mnumonic in a weird house. It is beyond fantastic, and I promise worth your time to cover smiley face. Thanks Mike.

it would take this kind of form. But you could also interpret it as sort of signifying his own sort of imprisonment here. You know, like he here, he is trapped in stone, and he is in a sense like trapped here at the top of the Goblin world and desperately wants maybe not escape. I don't not think escape. Escape is possible for him or conceivable for him, but he wants something different, and you know that is kind of like his struggle in Labyrinth.

all make puppets afterwards. That sounds awesome to me. He was an odd but seemingly harmless middle aged man with a dark and dangly, villainous mustache. He used to tweeze his nosehair as during class, propping up a little mirror in front of him on his desk. I tried to search him up on the Internet, but I have no

idea how to spell his Eastern European sounding last name. Anyways, even as an elementary schooler, I remember thinking it was odd that the school let him show this film to a bunch of little kids every year, partially on account of the mild horrors woven throughout the fantasy, but primarily on account of the scandalousness of David Bowie's very tight fitting pants. There were many hushed giggles about it. Anyways, the yearly experience formed an interesting multi generational link between

all of the kids in town. During college. Once I was camping with my older brother and his friends, I was adjusting the rocks around the campfire and absent mindedly said Ludo friends. One of my brother's friends from high school heard me and perked up in the most enthusiastic and childlike manner of all the shared experiences for people to bond over. A side note, my older brother was not part of this elementary school experience. My final comment

is about the riddle of the Four Nights. I always got the sense that Sarah Jennifer Connelly's character was correct in her puzzling out of the paradox, but it didn't matter because she didn't consider the possibility that neither of them actually knew, which door led to certain doom, that they were just creatures of chaos and absurdity, like the majority of the other critters in the labyrinth. Thanks as always for the awesome content, Lauren.

to the soundtrack. Anyway, you were confused about Johnny Cage's photo in the movie. The photo is a nod to the hardcore Mortal Kombat gamers out there when the movie came out, Mortal Kombat two had been out for a while. In that game, for Johnny Cage's friendship move, friendships were an alternative to hitting your fatality, where something happy happens, like I think, like Sheng Sung makes a rainbow appear between his poems.

handwriting and Transformers. The movie had you going back and forth in the menu trying to find the special features.

DVDs and an affinity for Dungeons and Dragons. The Collector's Edition for the Dungeons and Dragons animated show was great. Not only was it loaded with special features, but it came with a mini adventure supplement, four point five edition character sheets for all the characters, and it all came in a nice first edition red box. Before I go, I want you to do a weird house cartoon series, or at least deep dive on the series. The cartoon

series is called Liberty's Kids. It's by Diic Productions, which should say a lot, but also adds to the mystery of getting the voice actors the show is set during the Revolutionary War and follows two kids as they help out Ben Franklin with missions and his paper. Now. Ben Franklin's voice is done by Walter Cronkite, Jefferson is voiced by Dustin Hoffman, and one of the generals is supplied by Arnold himself. I want to know WTF anyway, I've written a lot have fun cep what.

The wiki says that I know in the email, CB says that Dustin Hoffman was Jefferson, but the wikie says Hoffman is Benedict Arnold, not Jefferson, and Ben Stiller is Jefferson. Billy Crystal as John Adams by the way, obnoxious and unliked, as they say, and At Benning as Abigail Adams, Michael Douglas as Patrick Henry, and then Arnold Schwarzenegger as Baron von Steuben, who was a Prussian officer who was crucial in bringing like training an organization to the what he

thought was poorly organized and and untrained Continental Army. Also, it had Whoopy Goldberg as Deborah Sampson, who famously disguised herself as a man so she could fight in the Continental Army. Had Liam Neeson bringing a particular set of skills to the portrayal of John Paul Jones. And it had Michael Yorke as Admiral Howe stacked cast. Can't believe I've never heard of this.

it's a cartoon kids show about the Revolutionary War. Yeah, okay. One last message this comes. It's also about Weird House. Comes from our listener Milan. Subject line Weird House, free Jack ending. Milan says, Hi, guys, longtime listener, first time emailer. If this has been addressed in listener mail, just take this as a fan who is desperate to have something to message you about. I just had a small note

on your coverage of free Jack, specifically the ending. This one is a real guilty pleasure since childhood, and I think the ending made more sense than you gave it. Credit for Mick Jagger's character let's furlong get away with not knowing the identification number, perhaps part out of respect, but mostly because if the transfer did not complete, he would not get paid. Not to mention the black mark

and his reputation. Most of the movie is pretty ridiculous, but it makes sense why Mick Jagger doesn't really care who's in that body. Love what you guys do, So thanks again for doing it, Milan. Now, Milan, I wanted to feature this email for a couple of reasons. Number one, I wanted to honor your effort in explaining this ending that apparently went over our heads. But also I thought it was funny because this episode was so long ago, I have no idea what you're talking about.