Listener Mail: Holiday Hangover

one comes to us from Lucy. I loved your Holiday inventions episode and wanted to write in that My parents still do many of the old and or dangerous traditions. We put bubble lights in the tree every year when I was a kid. They still have some of those strings from the nineties, but they've also gotten replacement bulbs for burnt out ones over the years. These new ones are hopefully less toxic than the originals. The best, though,

is live candles on the Christmas tree. My family is aginally from Germany, and when my grandparents were first married, they studied in Germany for a year or two on my grandmother's Fulbright scholarship. They picked up their tradition of candles there and kept it up every year until they moved into a retirement home that would not allow it. Since then, my parents have taken over the tradition. The key is to get a fresh tree instead of buying

it from a Christmas tree lot. We go out to a Christmas tree farm a day or two before Christmas Eve and cut down a fresh one. This means that when you light the candles a few days later, there is still so much moisture in the needles and branches that have a flame touches it, it just fizzles out. We always like the tree from top to bottom, so that as we sit around seeing Christmas carols and talking, the top candles burn out first and we can watch

the shadows from the lower candles on the ceiling. Sometimes my dad will even get the ornaments hung so that the rising heat from a candle beneath it will make the ornament spin. Whoa. Obviously we still have a pitcher of water nearby, but we've never had to use it. I've grown up with these traditions, so I sometimes for get that not everyone does them. Great to hear about the history behind them. I always love listening to you guys, Lucy. Oh well, that does sound very nice, Lucy, but I

still I don't think i'd risk it. Yeah, there's a there's a story in my family, and I've asked around to see if I could find out who it was. But so this one's gonna be one of those kind of like horrible third hand stories. But there's somebody I was connected to where the wife brought with her German

traditions and insisted on doing the candles. But then the husband was very suspicious of of actual candles on a Christmas tree and would stand by with a with a fire extinguisher aimed at the tree the whole time, just ready for it to go up. I mean, you're gonna do candles on the tree, why not just like hang butane torches from the branches. They make their own ornaments and candles. All right, Well, it looks like Carney is still in the Christmas spirit and has another one of

these list males for you too. Okay, this one comes from Rose. Rose says, Hi, Robert and Joe loved your latest episode on the history of Christmas decorations. To talk about whether gingerbread houses are meant for eating brought back some early childhood memories. When I was a little kid in the nineties, my family decorated gingerbread houses every year, except we didn't use any actual gingerbread. My grandma would construct houses out of cardboard, which we would code in

frosting and decorate with candy and pretzels. I think some might say that gingerbread and cardboard have negligible differences. Uh, but that would be a true grunch of a person who said, oh, I mean real gingerbread. If you're using real ginger, you get that kind of like it's almost spicy, So it can it can really work. What are are you supposed to use fresh ginger and gingerbread? I thought you're supposed to use ginger powder in baking. Maybe I

don't know anything about this, Well I don't. I've never actually made it myself, so I'm I have no idea ultimately, but I know that generally you can taste the difference between real ginger and um in powder ginger, and then of course I feel like I have had gingerbread. When a gingerbread is good, it tastes a little spicy, like okay, when it kind of like bites you back a little bit. Okay, I think that would probably be fresh ginger. Wait, you were saying real ginger though, do you do you mean

fresh ginger? Or is ginger powder not from a not from real ginger? Surely it is? Well yeah, well when I say real ginger, you know I'm I'm meaning fresh ginger. Okay, okay, okay, that's what I thought. Yeah, I mean as I don't I don't know that there's actual imitation ginger out there. There's imitation vanilla there, there's there's imitation stuff. Yeah, okay, sorry to continue with roses message. So we got these houses made out of cardboard, decorated with candy and pretzels

picking up. They definitely weren't meant to be eaten, if I'm remembering right. They would sit out as a decoration for a while, maybe people would steal a few pieces of candy off, and then we just threw them out after Christmas. Unfortunately, we stopped this tradition while I was still fairly young, but I have fond memories of it. That was pretty weird in hindsight. Happy Holidays, Rose. Uh yeah, I don't know if it's that much weirder than anything else.

So it sounds kind of nice. Yeah, and then you're not wasting the gingerbread this way, So as they go for it. All right, we have another one here. This one comes to us from Victoria. Victoria Rights. I'm an environmental scientist and I allow this in my home. Is it dumb? Absolutely? Why do we do it? Tradition? Que fiddler theme? And of course it is a picture of the Christmas tree with live candles, with burning candles on it. They look pretty cool because the candles are twisty. I've

never seen this before. They're like cork screw shaped a little bit, I mean very, very slightly cork screw shaped. And in in the photo, a gentleman that I believe is Victoria's husband is lighting it. Because she continues, my German has been grew up placing real candles on a real conifer, lighting them with real fire, and watching them burn to their bases without a trace of anxiety. He clings to this tradition harder than any other, and I

don't mind living a little dangerously. We have some firm rules around this practice. Number one, the tree must never go thirsty. I pay more attention to this dead plant's hydration than that of my own body. The conifer will be less of a powder keg if the leaves don't dry out. We feel the tips before every lighting if they're getting crunchy. The candles are not lit. Number two. Everyone knows where the fire extinguisher is and how to

use it. I acknowledge that this wouldn't be enough to put out a fully engulf tree, but it is better than nothing. Number three. When lit, the candles are supervised at all times. This part can get a little boring. However, there's little else to do on Christmas Eve besides sipping scotch and staring at your potential doom. Number four. After the holidays, take the discarded tree to the bonfire beach and burn it. Watching that thing shoot flames high into

the air puts whole celebratory practices in perspective. Knowing the risk makes us more vigilant. Thank you both for the stimulating content, and may your holidays be far less perilous than mine. Warm regards, Victoria. The regards sound very warm. Thank you for sharing this, Victoria. This is great and I love the picture that this was a This was a great bit of listener mail. I really love this one. Okay, how about this response? Going back to our episodes about spinning, Yeah,

let's spin. Okay, this uh this comes from Joe, a different Joe. Joe says, Dear Robert and Joe, I've been enjoying your recent episodes and listener mail on the size of spinning as it affects the human body. It's a fascinating topic. It was delightful to hear the perspective of a ballet dancer, ice skater and pole dancer. But I'm surprised no one mentioned aerialists. I gotta say that did

not even enter my mind. In fact, I don't know if I would have known what that word meant before this mail, so so thanks for bringing it up, Joe. I should have done. I've seen aerialists performed before. I mean i've I've certainly been to circus away, so I should have thought about the spinning that yeah, the circus lay, yeah yeah, yeah, Okay, So Joe goes on aerialists, as you probably know, as I didn't know, are the section of performance artists of the circus realm that perform aerial

stunts on aerial apparati. Many common apparatis, such as the hoop lyra and aerial straps, also test the brain and body. One extra weird apparatus is the Spanish web. The Spanish web is essentially a human lasso. One performer hangs from a thick rope some distance from the ground, while another performer assists in spinning the dangling performer in a giant circle. The aerialist in the air then performs stunts and tricks

and so on. The spinning action is unique because the body isn't just turning on a single axis, but is also often moving in a slight orbit around the center, sometimes at high speed and with changing orientations. The head games are very interesting and takes some practice. As you've said, one trick that many spinning aerialists use is to focus on something that isn't spinning in relation to the performers, such as the apparatus itself or their own hands or feet.

It's similar in concept the spotting technique that ballerina is used, but without having to turn the head. Since the apparatus itself keeps the performer from tipping, the aerialists can divert their focus, unlike a ballerina that needs a reference point to stay balanced. Focusing the vision intently on the apparatus as opposed to the spinning world behind it is a massive game changer and as it slightly tricks the brain

from being disoriented with the spinning room. Also, if one can't see their own body or apparatus, such such as in many aerials strap spins, the trick is to not focus on anything at all. Don't try to follow the spinning world in front of you, but fall into soft focus. Easier said than done, it takes practice. Other fun tricks to help with dizziness before spinning include eating lots of ginger or drinking ginger tea to prevent nausea a ginger

yet again. Also, if one does get dizzy and finds themselves with the spins, they can sometimes jump up and down to help with the motion. It won't do much if your spins are bad, but it seems to help some performers who overdo it momentarily For some reason. I just thought your listeners might also find this obscure life knowledge important as they happen to find themselves trapped inside a washer or never ending till to whirl. Thanks for all you guys do. Keep up the great work, Joe.

And then Joe also sent a follow up saying it was him again, and he sent some links to videos of artists performing Spanish web and aerial straps fast spins in regards to human spinning very cool. And uh I like the ginger tidbit as well. Um yeah, ginger can be can be very nice for you know, slight feelings of nausea and and stomach illness. We we keep some some ginger candies on hand in the car and in the backpack whenever we're out in the bout just in case.

Oh yeah, oh it maybe helps with car sickness too, yeah yeah, or and if nothing else that you know, it's a sweet and has a little ginger e buzz to it. So all right. We have some some additional um listener mail here coming to us, and these bits concerned Weird How Cinema are Friday episodes that are sort of a late night celebration of weird films as opposed to the general science and culture content that we put out. This comes to us from Chris, Hi, Robert and Joe.

First off, I love Weird How Cinema. I was elapsed stuff to bow your mind fan too many podcasts to listen to, who checked in for the Halloween episodes this year and was delighted to find Weird How cinema in the feed. It perfectly scratches this itch for strange and or bad movie discussion with the science and philosophy angle. Please keep doing it. I just finished the Ghost in

the Machine episode. I'd forgotten all about this movie until I saw the title in my feet and immediately was reminded of the only scene I ever watched, the microwave scene. I was born in and was very young when I was flipping through channels and landed on HBO just in time to see a man getting his face cooked by an open microwave. I was sufficiently freaked out and changed the channel immediately. Ever since then, I've always had this tiny fear in the back of my mind when opening

a microwave door. What if it didn't shut off? Is it going to cook my face? This even cropped up recently as my fiancee was has a habit of opening the microwave door to grab something while it's still running, trusting that the auto off will work as intended. Turns out, our microwave door latch is a little hinky and there recently and it recently seemed to keep running as that she opened it up and reached in to grab whatever she was heating up. I had flashbacks to Ghost in

the machine. It was pretty freaked out, even though nothing had happened to her. We looked into it later and it's most likely that the magnatron had shut off off but the fan in light kept running still. I asked that she just hit the off button before opening the door, just in case. Anyway, keep up the great work and thanks for discussing this movie that gave me a lifelong phobia.

I can't wait to tune in again next Friday. Chris, I've actually seen a malfunction a microwave that worked exactly like that, except in this case it was every time you would you would open the door, the light inside would come on and the rotating plate would start rotating. But I think it wasn't cooking well. I appreciate the kind comments there. Uh, it's certainly feel you on how there being this too many podcasts to listen to at times, so you know, hopefully we're not loading anybody up with

too much. Hopefully with the ideas we just give you some some choices, you know. Um and uh, you know, if you want to just listen to the Weird House, just listen to Weird house. You just want to come in and listen to the stuff to blow your mind episodes, Go for it. I mean, I think I'm supposed to advise everyone to subscribe, but I don't know. Maybe subscription doesn't work for everybody. I don't know. Do do what

you want, do what feels good for you. As long as you're listening to some of our show, UM, I guess I'm happy. Okay. I mentioned a few episodes back that I thought we had lost some emails that came in during September and October. I think somehow they just like disappeared from our inbox. UM, and our our longtime correspondent Jim in New Jersey actually recent several emails from that period, so we wanted to catch up with them now.

The first one, UH concerned our episodes on mushroom foraging, and we were talking about how, UH, sometimes human foraging techniques are strangely kind of similar to AI, to computer search algorithms, and so Jim often writes in on like computer science related topics in and he's got some comments here. So Jim says, Robert and Joe, you mentioned AI searching algorithms at the end of your mushroom series. I can

provide one. It's considered an AI algorithm, but it's really just an algorithm that I think I can describe sufficiently. It's called a star search, and that's spelled like in typography with the letter A and then an asterisk. It's a type of foraging algorithm through a network. Cities and

the roadways connecting them are networks. There are many other types of networks too, for example, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etcetera, communication networks such as the Bell telephone system network and the Internet and so forth. The mathematical notion of these networks are called graphs. The concepts, properties, and algorithms that work for graphs in general can be applied to real networks too. There are two traditional network searching or foraging algorithms,

breadth first and depth first search. Let's say that it's Saturday morning and you and your spouse want to look for garage sales. You could start in your local neighborhood, then proceed to the next ones out and continue spreading out in concentric circles. This is breadth first, but let's change strategy. This is a special Saturday. There's a group garage sale at a church, a few neighborhoods away, or

in the town center. You would go straight to these locations and then visit additional garage sales on the way back. This is depth first. A star search is a little between the two. Let's look at the strategy. You start in your local neighborhood and visit the first garage sale. While you're there, you ask other buyers where they've been and what looks good out there. You evaluate their best suggestions.

You would keep track of all the best garage sale tips and add new ones as you move from garage sale to garage sale. Once you're ready to move to another garage sale, you you go to the one that shows the best promise on your tips list, even if it means driving across town. This is the essence of a star search. Though I don't know for sure how algorithms in navigation apps such as driving directions work, I

would consider using a star search. Let's say that you want to drive from location A to location B. The algorithm starts at A and explores the local roads, almost like ten drills of mold you've described before. The heuristic it uses to find the best path will BE how close you are to BE. Direct paths will get first priority, but it won't ignore paths that move further away from

BE either. That's because an initial direction that moves away from B might eventually reach a highway ramp or provide a much faster trip to BE, even if driving in the wrong direction. Ants foraging kind of do this too. As the ants come back from food sources, they drop pheromone trails. As the ants confirm the food source, they make the pheromone trail stronger, so more ants will exploit it. However, there are still foraging ants that don't follow the strong scent.

They're looking for new sources since the good source might eventually fade. Ant foraging can be thought of as a type of distributed a star search. The a star search Wikipedia page has too many videos that illustrate the algorithm well, especially like the example will of finding the most efficient train route across the USA. This very much resembles mold tendrils. I first encountered a star search when I took an online algorithm course taught at Princeton. A star search was

an assignment in UH solving a tile slider puzzle. I'm proud to say that the search tree illustration in the assignment was originally created by me as I was working with the professor as an online ti A and they have included it in the assignment now uh. And he signs off Jim in New Jersey but not really near Princeton. Uh. And then Jim also has a follow up that ties into the same email that came out after an episode

about Orcs. Remember, in the episode on Orcs, we talked about the Orcs and Hobbits problem, which was about problem solving theory. UH. This question about how people psychologically tend to adapt when they encounter problems in this this puzzle where you need to get Orcs and Hobbits across the river. And one of the things that was discovered about this was the perils of what's known as the hill climbing algorithm.

It's a common algorithm that is used in some computer programs, but we also just use it in our brains, which is UH. You basically, you have a goal state that you want to get to, and it's something like, you know, get to the highest possible altitude and then you take a step and you see if you're closer, and if so, you keep going in that direction, and if not, you turn back and you keep doing that until you get

to the top of the hill. But the problem with the hill climbing algorithm is that if you're in a landscape with multiple hills and valleys, you will tend to just get stuck at the top of the nearest hill, and you will not explore hills that could go even higher if you were willing to go down first to get to them. And so this is an illustration of that when we're trying to solve problems or be creative, sometimes we need to apparently backtrack in the short term

to reach a better outcome in the long term. And Jim follows up by saying, Robert and Joe Joe's description of the hill climbing algorithm is exactly what occurs with a star search. As I had written about previously with mushroom searching. The hill climbing technique is very near sighted. It can only look at the next potential step and not take in the entire landscape. This is not a bad technique. Hill climbing exploits what appears to be the

best path forward toward a solution. But as the example captured so well, you might be hiking up the wrong hill. Joe introduced randomness, but there's another algorithmic technique which I mentioned in my last email as well. That technique is to introduce a handicap to the solution path. The more you exploit a given solution path based on hill climbing or any other heuristic, the more expensive it becomes. As

that solution path gets longer. You may run into a situation where the solution path gets so long and the handicap is so crippling that you abandon the exploited path and venture off to explore another part of the solution space. While this isn't officially adding randomness, it does introduce the concept of hopping around uh in the solution space and not becoming fixated upon one possible solution. It's a trade off slash balance of exploiting a promising path versus exploring

new ones. Jim in New Jersey, And you know, I gotta say, I really like this, and I think it could be applied outside of just pure computer algorithms as well. If you think about um, you know, whenever you've found a solution that works to do something, or at least work so far, maybe try out the idea that every time you repeat a working solution again, you do it

again the same way you've done it before. Maybe it gets a little bit more expensive, like you're you're having to pay an increasing some every time you do that, which will eventually encourage you just to, you know, make sure you're not missing out on better solutions that are available to you just because you you've got one solution that you know sort of works. Interesting. Interesting, all right, here's another one from Jim in New Jersey. Uh. This is a an in response to episode on the Bed

The Invention of the Bed, Robert and Joe. You didn't mention how astronauts sleep in space in your bed episode. Since there is no gravity, they can sleep almost anywhere, but they tether themselves so as not to float around in the environment. Private crew quarters on the International Space Station are only slightly bigger than a phone booth. Part of that includes a sleeping bag that tethers to the wall. But I think they can sleep anywhere on the station

without gravity. Their arms tend to float in front of them. Uh. And he included an illustration of one of these setups consists of and yeah, this is interesting. I'd read that about having to strap your arms down before. That's that's interesting, Like you could if you don't strap them down, your arms are just kind of floating free in front of you. And uh and I think I've read before they can be kind of like this kind of ghostly effect of

like whose hands are these? Uh poke you in the eye. Yeah. Oh. And then Jim follows up and says, I didn't state the obvious in my original email. There are no beds to speak up in space. You don't need them when there's no gravity. That their beds are close to hammocks, as are my subject line about snoring in space, which I include as a joke, is more interesting than a joke. Astronauts don't snore in space either. The lack of gravity doesn't block airways as much. Oh interesting, now that's yeah.

I had not heard that, So that's that's pretty interesting. Um. But also interesting that they're basically strung up in hammocks, because I do think we could come back and do an entire episode based on the invention of the hammock. There's some really interesting stuff there. Okay. This next message

comes from Heather. Heather says, hey, y'all, I frequently Binge on your podcast episode, says, you happen to be some of the only people with whom I can delve deeply into obscure and common topics to the point of sheer exhaustion and for me intellectual bliss. Well I'm I'm I'm glad. It's fun. Um, Heather says, I just heard your December ninth episode of The Artifact the Poison Tooth. I love it today. It was for me a great tizer before

a full length stuff to blow your mind episode. I imagine on a busy day this kind of informative quickie will make a satisfying mental snack. Thank you for keeping me well fed with an ever increasing variety of mind blowing content. Without you, my intellect would certainly stunt atrophy and shrivel up into a pathetic shadow of its former potential. That's extreme. I guess she's kidding, she says no, But seriously, life is better with you, and it so keep going.

Thank you for your hard work and all the best to you in the coming year. Heather. Well, thank you, Heather, thank you so much for the kind words. And we're we're we're glad we could be there for you. Yeah, and I'm glad to hear hear of some positive feedback on the Artifact episodes. They are kind of just sort of short form audio blog blog posts, and we're just switching back and forth for the most part on doing these.

So yeah, we're gonna keep at it. And uh yeah, it should be a great place to to discuss very specific ideas, you know, you know, particular items, particular points in time. That's sort of thing. Uh and and just discussed them briefly instead of devoting an entire episode to them.

Oh yeah, I feel like they're a great outloo because we used to come across things like this all the time, where we'd find something that we found really interesting, but just like wasn't it wasn't a whole episode worth of anything. You know, It's something that might make five or ten minutes worth of content, and uh and here you go. I mean, this is a good outlet for it. I feel like back in the day, you used to turn

things like that into blog posts. I only ever wrote a few posts for the blog, but you you had great blog post back on the old website when that was alive. But now I feel like this is a really good alternative to the blog of of old Yeah. I'm gonna have to resurrect some of those blog posts of old yeah, you know, pull their bodies out of the muck and see if I can resurrect the flesh

and make it march off into the podcast feed. For me, our our old blog and the website have turned into bog bodies now, but if one knows the appropriate magic, they can be revived. All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Jeremy. Hey, guys and or staff member reading this, Well, that's Seth. Basically, it's just us and Seth. But we don't. I think maybe he's wondering if we have like a dedicated like employees or

something to go through our listener mail for us. Unfortunately, no, no, now we do have. We we we never give him a shout out, but Sam uh is in charge of our social media stuff and he does all that's true. We don't have to, so uh, massive kudos to to Sam. Sam. You do an amazing job. You you you really make my life better by allowing me to not really look

at Twitter or Facebook. Right alright, So anyway, Jeremy continues, I've never actually emailed any of the podcast I've listened to over the years, so this is a little strange for me, but I felt I had to let you guys know just how great the New Side Show is. I've been listening to stuff to Blow your mind since back in the Alice in Louder Milk Days from Stuff from the Science Lab and have never missed an episode.

The way you guys can discuss the real or possible science of anything, from the mundane to them to mythological creatures to world changing technologies never fails to catch my interest and keep me engaged in the world around us. Being a huge movie buff, especially for terrible B movies. I can't tell you how the weekly edition of Weird How Cinema is UM. I think they meant to. I mean, how great I'm gonna put in great, How how spectacular?

How life altering? Um? Anyway, they continue. Even my podcast free wife is happy because I can listen to you guys discuss the movies as an alternative to boring her with the behind the scenes details of troll Too. She made it about fifteen minutes in before quote, remembering she had errands to run. Now, wait a minute, is that fifteen minutes into the movie troll to fifteen minutes into you talking about it, or fifteen minutes into our episode.

I took it to mean maybe the movie, like she made a fifteen minutes into the movie, because yeah, troll Too is not for everybody. Um, they continue anyway. I just wanted to thank you guys for the great work and I hope weird how Cinema will turn into a permanent addition to the podcast. I wish you guys the best and hope you keep staying safe. Thanks for reading. That's the plan for now. Yeah, I mean it's as permanent as anything. So uh yeah, we're gonna keep doing it.

All right. We're gonna go ahead and um and turn off Carney. We're gonna we're gonna seal the listener mail mail bag for the week. But yeah, we're gonna continue to do these, uh what every Monday. We're gonna or at least as long as we have a listener mail to read. We're gonna keep doing listener mail episodes and try and keep this a regular thing where we're having more of a dialogue with the listeners. So keep it coming. Keep writing in with your feedback to recent episodes of

the show. To older episodes. You know you hear a vault episode and you like an idea in there, have some feedback, don't be shy about writing in even if it's an older piece. Um, you know, right in about Weird how Cinema, right in about the shorties we do in anything right in about episodes you'd like to hear

all of that is fair game. In the meantime, if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you'll find the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts wherever that is. We just ask you rate, review, and subscribe. You can also go to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and that will shoot you over to the I heart

listing for our page. Once you were there, you'll find a little tab there you can click on the store and that'll take you over to a place where you can buy some T shirts and stickers and whatnot that have our logo on it or a cool monster design. So check that out if you want as well. Huge thanks as always, we are excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback about this episode or any other to suggest

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 is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart rate adio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.