Listener Mail IV: The Listening

we receive a lot of feedback from from listeners. We get it on what we get via email, we get through social media, and uh, we don't have time on the episodes themselves really to get into the listener mail as much, and we get so much good content we decided to devote to the occasional episode to it. Yeah, and we really do get so much great correspondence from from all you guys out there that we don't have

time to read it. Also, if you send us something and you you poured your heart out to us and we don't have time to read it today, please don't take that as a slide against you. We just get so much I think of stuff that there's no way for us to read it all. It would be a whole another podcast, not to like two to our own horn.

But I actually probably have like a moment maybe you guys have this to like every day where I opened up the listener mail folder and feel a little guilty because I'm like, oh, I still haven't even like had a chance to go back and read like the last

six of these, just because we're so slammed. Yeah. Indeed, often just being the heat of getting a stuff together for a podcast episode or some other kind of commitment around here, and I just have to make a mental bookmark to come back to this individual in their their comments. And then we've got that whole other folder of stalker mail, which you know, yeah, those that spend time on that, Yeah, that was definitely that is a thick folder and waterproof

by necessity. All right, Well, let's call the robot over here, um, and let's see what what Carney has for us. All right, it looks like the first thing Carney has for us here is from our listener. No. Well, regarding the Chinese zodiac episode that Robert and I did, and we got a lot of great feedback on the Chinese zodiacs, is just one of them. It's Noel rights. Hi, guys, I know why so many dragon children were born in nineteen eighty eight. Eight is a good luck number. And since

the year was eighty eight. It was like a double good year, making a triple good year for having a baby dragon. Chinese culture has impacted Filipino culture with the melting pot of Asians in the Philippines. Even though my parents are Filipino relatives urged them to get married in nineteen eighty eight instead of when they actually got married in nineteen eighty seven. But I guess seven was a lucky enough number for them. In nineteen eight was booked

for marriages. I guess booked no more marriages this year. Yeah, they probably like every every uh justice of the peace slash priest I guess was unavailable. Well, that makes sense. That goes that ties into some of the issues we were talking about with having these boom years for births, because that means more hospital beds are going to be filled for that birth year, and then that child as they grow older, like their their their year in school is always just going to be extra packed when they

all enter the workforce, more competitors. This reminds me of the thing we were talking about in the office recently about the Zeka virus and how because so many people are being told that, you know, they shouldn't be having kids because of the Zeka virus, that there's going to be like a big jump in population, like say, eighteen twenty years from now. Yeah. Well, anyway, Noel continues, my parents also didn't choose to go for a dragon baby after they married. I was born in nineteen as a

gold metal element of goat, gold goat, that's beautiful. That's like, that's the thing that would be condemned in the Bible or something. I don't I don't know what my metal is. I just know my my animal. You mean your element. Sorry, you could be like wood or metal, but gold is

is why is it gold? Well, it gets very complicated, and it's important to to to reiterate that we didn't go into all the depth about the inner working of Chinese zodiac in that episode, but we did hear back in great depth from a out of our listeners on this subject. Anyway, Noel continues about the gold goat. She says, they are supposed to be ambitious and kind hearted, with a strong sense of responsibility and work, but sometimes too stubborn.

Compared to the other goat elements, they seem more like a dragon, or maybe that's just me hoping to be like a dragon. I do not believe in astrology, but it's nice to have a mascot to cheer for your positive traits. Sincerely, Noel Uh and I like the sentiment of the inter here because this is something we talked

about in the episode. It's my theory that you don't have to believe in astrology to be affected by it, Like you don't have to believe it taps into a true magical power or or has real predictive power over personalities for it to have some kind of significance to you, because we just we're always reaching out for meaning and significance in our life, and any kind of framework people come up with, even if there's no real magic to it, it's kind of easy to to feel like there's something

to it. Yeah. Plus, I mean there have been studies we've we've talked about it on the show, and I think so much older episodes about how the research has has proven that just symbols in the world around us affect us subconsciously. So if you know, if the symbol for Coca Cola can do that to us, then certainly something is is culturally ingrained as gold goat. Certainly that can work. It's magic on us as well, especially if it's something that you're told from a very young age

you are this thing. Yeah. Now, our listener, Elizabeth, who did grow up in the Chinese household, also got in

touch with us about the Chinese Zodiac episode. Yes, uh she did, and and really she wrote a tremendous amount to us, really fleshed out her thoughts on it um and it shared some just extensive great thoughts on the zodiac episode, including some areas that we just didn't have time to explore as much, the cultural and mythological significance of the of the Chinese dragon, the intricacies of the Chinese zodiacal system, and extended thoughts on the shape of

the traditional family. So we can't read it all here. Again, thanks Elizabeth for sharing it with us, But we did want to hit just a few key points that I think contribute to the episode. Yeah. One of them was that Elizabeth grew up reading books on the Chinese horoscopes by somebody named Theodora Allow and she recommends Lao's books if you're interested in in an introduction to the Chinese zodiac.

But also she she's got great stories about how She also says she doesn't really ascribe to the Chinese zodiac, like she doesn't believe it has true magic power, but she sort of lives her life according to it anyway, almost as if like there's there's valence available there. Yeah, I get that. Like it's like, uh, I dabbled in fung shue for like a year in her apartment, like when it got a book and everything, and was like, no, Kelly, the table has to go here, you know that kind

of thing. But you know, I didn't actually believe in any kind of like symbolic magic or anything like that going on. It was just sort of a system to help you organize life. Yeah, I shouldn't have overstated. I didn't mean to say that she lives her life according to it, but she makes some decisions according to it, like like how she arranges the furniture in her house. She mentioned it really okay, Yeah, but she also had

some really interesting, just individual points we wanted to highlight. Again. Her email was too long to read all of it, but one of them was about the dragon and the episode. We mentioned that the dragon is the only animal in the Chinese zodiac that's purely mythical. It has no real world equivalent, But according to Elizabeth, that's not exactly the case. Yeah,

she says, quote. It's also not entirely true that the dragon has no real world equivalent the dragons real world animal is a sea horse, because seahorses were believed to be baby dragons because you know, they look like dragons and they lived in the law before. Yeah, I would have assumed that it was like a Komodo dragon like that. That seems like what would be the real world equivalent, but it probably the I have no idea what the

actual natural habitat of a komodo is. Well, I can see where this would this would make sense because we just us a little bit about how the celestial dragon is kind of a composite of all these other animals, Like there's a little horse in there, there's a little potentially a little a clam in there as well, Chimera. Yeah, very much. So. I can imagine the sea horse making sense because you look at a sea horse, and a sea horse is really weird and itself looks kind of

like a co laubrate. You know. The thing I'd say about the Komodo dragon is I think that may sort of conflate the ideas of the Western dragon with the Eastern dragon. Yes, I think the Eastern dragon or the Chinese dragon is less like a lizard than the dragon we get from from maybe Middle Eastern or European folklore. Yeah, yeah, that's true. As while you're right having grown up in Singapore, which is something we're gonna talking about with another listener. Now,

that's definitely true. So Elizabeth also shares a quote for me. My chart is four year snake, our monkey month, and I think day of the sheet, but like I said, that doesn't matter for names. But I'm also born in the US, which was founded in seventeen seventy six, the year of the Fire Monkey, which we were in again. So the result of my chart was that I had a crap town of fire and water. So I just wanted to share this bit just because I think it gives you an idea of what sort of deeper read

of one zodiac would be. Yeah, this is preceding this. Elizabeth goes into a lot of detail about how it's not just the year, but as we mentioned in the episode, it's other elements of time that affect the things that are supposed to be true about you according to the you know, your horoscope, so it would be our of the day you're born, day, day of the week I think that you're born, and so forth. Hey, so I've

got a question about that episode. Maybe now is a good time, because I don't I'm assuming you didn't cover it in in the episode itself. The photo that you guys used for one of the thumbnails on that of that like giant sculpture of like a robot fire monkey. Oh what's that all about? Okay? So that was that was a photograph of a sculpture, and that was actually on the now House Stuff Works Now article that I did.

That tied in with ten yeah, talking about how they how some experts think that the year of the fire Monkey, which we're in now will impact the birth rate. And that's just a really cool Transformers statue of the fire Monkey. Yeah, it was amazing. I was really impressed by the whole thing. So I was curious if they had like some I don't know, like other than like making a cool giant

Transformer monkey, if there was some symbolism too. I did not read an artist's statement on it, but but yeah, you can really go nuts just looking at all the crazy cool artistic interpretations of the of the zodiac animals. Yeah, there were a lot of great sculptures I've never seen before, but only I saw because you turned them up for for that episode. I do think this is also really cool that Elizabeth points out about seventeen seventy six being

the year of the fire Monkey. Now she she tells us again that she grew up in a Chinese household, but in the United States, so she's a resident of the US. And this is another thing we talked about in the episode, is sort of the cross cultural uh

impact of the Chinese zodiac. For example, we found that though this probably was not impacted by people choosing this on purpose, the Forbes list of Richest Americans also is overrepresents dragons, which is kind of strange because you wouldn't expect the Chinese zodiac to have any influence on American birthrates. Maybe it's just a coincidence. Who knows it could be.

And I'm going to read one more quote from her, and this I think just expands nicely on some of the issues that we touched on in trying to you know, uh to in discussing why the dragon year birthrate spike is a modern phenomenon, Okay, she says being able to choose when you have kids as a luxury. Uh, it's a luxury of those who can afford it and are able. In modern times and with more modern medical care, there

is more access to health resources and such. They give you in ability to care and make sure your offspring live, aside from things like the one child policy or the cultural revolution getting in the way. So there's just now engine all more ability to choose, whereas before you flat out and needed kids to live. China was also very confusion.

So in that belief system, there is a responsibility to carry on the family name and line, so you try to have as many kids as possible so that one of them would survive into adulthood to take care of you an old age. And also since a lot of its rural, you had more help to work the field. Surviving is a bit more important than giving a damn when your kids are born or even sometimes what gender they are. Yeah, so thanks Elizabeth. This whole email was

really great. Again, I regret that we couldn't read the whole thing, but but it was really awesome, So thanks for getting in touch. Okay, So this next one that's coming out of old Carney over here. It looks like it's directed to you guys about an episode you did, but I actually pulled it because it's connected with me personally, and I wrote this guy back. His name is Gary.

Gary says, gentlemen, longtime listener, first time emailer. Where a Canadian family that moved to Singapore a couple of years ago. I recently listened to your podcast on moral ethical decisi Asians and heard you mentioned the type posen festival. Now we should quickly say what the context of that was in the episode. Yes, this was the New Year's episode and the particular study, which I think has actually come

up in a couple of different podcast episodes. Um. Now over the years, I had to do with just how participating or even witnessing ritual pain uh can can have an impact on your on how much money you give to the poor, on how how kindly you treat your follow humans. So if you want to be a better person, do some ritual pain, Yeah, go for it. So this is what the festival is about. I'm assuming it has a connection to that. It has, Yes, that's I think

that's one element one element of it. Yes, well, Gary says that festival is celebrated here in Singapore, and we attended last year. Uh, it was definitely something that blew our minds. My kids, they're eighteen has an eighteen year old daughter and a fourteen year old son, refused to attend this year. They were so freaked out by it. Additionally, and interestingly, they also felt that as observers we were some how intruding on a sacred pilgrimage and it didn't

feel right for them to gawk. Perhaps a generational gap, But the view of my wife and I is that as they closed down the streets and advertise it, so they obviously want people to come out and attend and watch it and buy drinks and food, et cetera. So why not And he includes a link to the festival. He says, I can't speak for elsewhere, but here they parade several kilometers from one temple to another. This year they allowed live music here for the first time in

for over forty years, and the participants increased. Not sure on the overall attendants, but it's interesting the number of people trying to get absolved of sins rose by having live music. For your information, live music was banned by Singapore forty two years ago, after the bands became competitive and started to fist fight each other. Singapore has a long memory. Below are some photos I took of the two of the festival I thought you might find interesting.

If you are interested in posting them on your site, you have my permission. Thanks for shutting some light the moral decisions of the participants. And that's from Gary. So I wanted to read that one when it came in

because I grew up in Singapore. Um, I I spent most of my high school years there, and it was just fascinating to me to kind of like, it's been over twenty years since I've been back to Singapore, but to read the experience of another expatriate over there right now kind of going through the same culture shock situation. I told Gary that I sympathized with this children. It was kind of the same way. I felt like it was uh like rude in some some circumstances to watch

certain festivals that I didn't quite understand, you know. But um, the live music thing, I don't know that may be true on the legal books, but when I was there, which was not forty two years ago, I went to a lot of live music in fact, that's when I first got involved in the punk scene. Well maybe he just means live music associated with the festival. Yeah, maybe that's it. Yeah. So like quick short story, Uh, when I lived there, Rawlins band came and played there, and

uh they played the festival. Uh no, no, but apparently there was some moh ing at the Ralins band show and some chairs got broken in the venue. And uh right after that mosh ing was was banned, or at least that's what we were told. So uh, then maybe like two or three months later, Fugazi played in Singapore and I went to that show and the wall of the show was lined with armed guards. They were all carrying rifles and they were supposed to be there to

make sure that people didn't slam dance. Um. So it is a little strange. I definitely remember some of the odd governmental restrictions there what from from living there. And I also lived there when the whole mic faith thing happened as well too, so there was a lot of that. This was the caning incident. It was Yeah, I went to school with Mike Fae Um. So but why don't you guys respond and since it was the episode that

you guys recorded. I guess my main response is, I mean, having never actually witnessed the procession, only having seen some you know, really cool photos from it and read about it. Uh, you know, basically I can just apply my own experience encountering other cultures and especially like temples and the like. You know, it does between that weird space where you you certainly don't want to be a gawker, You don't want to be an ugly American in these these situations.

You want to but you want to experience that. You want to see these things. And at the same time, you you know that you're an outsider and you can't possibly experience and and and understand it in the in the same way. So it is an odd place to find yourself. Yeah. Um, so I should say. Gary included a bunch of photos of this email of their experience at the festival, and now we may want to share

some of them. Yeah, we could throw them on a post for sure, because they were They were stunning, Like the hooks embedded in these guys backs that were in the parade and everything. I never saw anything like that when I lived there. But it might I told Gary this, It might just have been because my parents probably you know, didn't want me to go down to something like that by myself, for the same obvious reasons of kind of

being a cultural gawker. Yeah. I mean, one thing is important to keep in mind too about rituals of pain is that will they exist around the world and in various cultures, various religions. You find them in in Christianity, do you find them in Islam? You find them in Hinduism, etcetera. Uh So, Um, I actually did a gallery list on stuff to bull your mind dot come a while back, um, compiling some of these, so I'll make sure that we linked to that as well on the landing page for

this episode. Yeah that sounds fun alright, Listener David writes in David says, so, just a note about solar sales from your Space Mirrors episode. You couldn't use a laser to push a solar sale. That would violate Newton's third law of motion and would be the same concept as saying you could pull yourself to the ceiling by tugging on your belt loops or blowing a sale with a fan. So anything the laser mounted on the ship shot out would get the same force back that would result and

zero motion. And you responded to this, right, So I don't think the idea was that the laser was mounted on the ship, right, Yeah, So that the idea here is the laser would not be mounted on the ship, but rather would be mounted somewhere else, providing a new wind, a new solar wind, a laser wind for that vessel to sail on. UM And if anyone wants some more information about this concept, actually did an article on the subject years ago after interviewing Dr Gregory L. Matt Love.

You can find this at Discovery dot com. The title of the article is our Solar Sales the Future of Space Travel. Matt laff is UM an expert in the field, and just it was just really nice guy to talk to on the topic. But yeah, I U exchanged a few different emails with David about this, uh and and I just wanted to make sure that anyone else listening UH didn't get that idea, Like maybe we didn't state it or I didn't state it as well as I could have. Also, David is a long haul trucker and

listens to our show on the road. Yeah, so we definitely want to give a shout out to Dave and any other truckers out there listening to us right now. We've heard from a few of you over the years, and we're always glad to hear that we're able to help make those lengthy jaunts a little easier. My brother in laws a trucker, I wonder if he listens to the show. Cool. Oh, Carney is handing me another email here and it seems to be a covered in a blue luminescence. You know what that means. It's time for

another Will of the Whisp story. Now. Way back last October, we did an episode about Will of the Wisp and about how it has It seems to have partially disappeared from the world. People don't seem to be reporting Will of the Whisp phenomenon as often as they used to, but we asked our listeners, have you seen a Will of the Whisp? Let us know and maybe maybe we can help collect enough stories that will give us more

information about what it really is. We've heard from at least two or three people on this Yeah, we've heard several people to all those stories. And here's one more from our listener, Glenn. So Glenn says, I just listened to your Will of the Whisp podcast, and I wanted to share an experience I recently had with you. It's mid October, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I'm on a date with a girl I was seeing for the first time. I decided to take her to this spot just southeast of

Milwaukee and St. Francis. There's a condominium apartment along the lake shore that as a footpath running along the backside of the condos, following the lake shore. At the northernmost end of the path, there's a man made pond that's on a hill which is surrounded by breakwater that's been rocked off and diverted, so out to end it goes lake rocks, lakewater, then the hill, and then the pond, so it's fairly marshy as far as man made landscapes go.

At the edge of the pond, there's some benches that look over the entire cityscape. Great view. So I take her there and as we were relaxing taking in the site, we can see a blue pulsating light down the hill, hovering just along the water line of the lake. It's a fairly intense light, almost comparable to a small flashing

blue led. At first glance, I thought it may have been a person's cell phone, but the theory was quickly disproved when the light began to rise up maybe five or six feet off the ground and started to float its way up the hill toward us. It was very small, a little bigger than say, your standard issue firefly, which I love the idea of a standard issue firefly and

check out of the armory anyway, Glenn goes on. But the light was much more dense and moved in a much different way than fireflies do, and it didn't share the yellow glow that a firefly has. It was very true blue. It gets to the top of the hill and then begins to float an undulating motion on a straight course from the west towards the lake to the east, about two yards away at eye level before it gets

out over the lake and out of vision. And then he says, the person he was with got a little scared, so they decided to leave. Uh, And Glenn says, and as we're leaving, another one rises out of some brush off the side of the path. I've been searching for an explanation to this scene since that day, and after hearing your podcast and fairly certain it, I saw what these accounts claim to have also witnessed. I've returned to the location several times, but have never been lucky enough

to see them again. Sorry for the length the email, not at all. I have a renewed excitement now, and it would seem that there has been some substance to what I saw that night. I will add that it did indeed rain a couple of days previous to my story, so maybe there is a correlation. Thanks for getting in touch, Glynn. I love these Will of the Whisp stories and I still have no idea what it is, and I love that it also gives us hope that whatever it is,

it's still out there, it's still going on. We haven't squashed it by depleting our our wet lands. Yeah, that's true. So I think the final idea we arrived on in the episode is that one of the most likely explanations seemed to be possible chemo lumin essence just glowing chemical reactions from gases escaping from the ground under certain conditions.

Though the way he's talking about the light being very concentrated, that doesn't seem to match exactly what he's saying here, because he makes it sound like it's like a floating dot rather than kind of a blue cloud. It sounds like to me, what or gone right? I mean Reich said it was blue right. I think for their particles of orgon there were I think you could probably find if Reich row alive today, he would easily find a direct connection between Will of the West and organ energy.

You know, it wouldn't be unfounded because why not. Anyway, thank you very much for getting in touch, Glenn. That was really interesting. Hey, so it looks like we need to take a quick break, but we will be right back after hearing from the sponsor of this episode. Hey, everybody, you know as well as we do that it's all about your website these days. If you want to represent yourself professionally, personally, etcetera, you gotta have a professional looking

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website done. And you know why. It's especially good because you can start your free trial today for square Space. If you use our offer code mind blown, you get ten percent off after the free trial, So head on over to squares space dot com and make sure to use our promo code mind blown for that special discount. And we're back. It looks like Carney has another message for us. Yeah, Kate writes in with the following quote. I recently started listening to your podcast and have really

enjoyed it so far. I had a thought about your most recent episode Tooth, Mind and Soul. At the end of the podcast, you mentioned the study where they found a connection between more tweet teeth and better memory, and you discussed several potential reasons for that correlation. I was surprised that no one mentioned the possible socio economic reasons

for this finding. For example, is it possible that people who have had access to good dental hygiene may have lived in better conditions overall that would promote better mental

ability and thus have a memory boost as well. Uh. You know, well, I feel like we may have touched on this a little bit because because that is certainly a huge thing that we have to keep in mind anytime we're looking at at dental health issues and dental hygiene, and especially any connection between we're all health, mental health,

et cetera. Yeah, I would certainly guess that good dental hygiene has something to do with good nutrition, right, And I think that we had that in our notes and we may have spoken about it, uh like tangentially, but we never directly address the socio economic reasons tooth modification. Yeah. This is certainly like the solar sale issue that we already touched on like this scenaria, where I think we we did justice to the idea, but in you know,

just in case. Yeah, it's good to just camera that home. Yeah. Okay, here's another short one. This is from Joyce. This is in reference to our Chinese Zodiac episode. So Joyce writes in says, just finish your Chinese Zodiac episode. Good show. Just something to add. The different zodiac signs have different compatibility. My family has a sheep mom and a dragon dad. They got married in nineteen eighty five and waited on purpose to have me nineteen eight seven rabbit because dragons

and tigers nineteen eighty six don't get along. My parents are in no way firm believers, but it's so ingrained in the culture that they waited just in case. Yet again we're hearing this theme. We've heard this from several people. Now, like we hypothesized in the episode, you don't really have to believe it to to let it guide your actions somehow. Yeah, we all live in the in the shadow of these various cultural constructs and symbols. Just one quick note on that.

I remember when I when I was first learning about the Chinese zodiac from the place Mats, I found out that whatever I am, I think a tiger is not supposed to get along with whatever my dad was. I remember reading I remember reading into that and thinking, should I be having more family strife than I do? Uh? So it looks like that. This next one it's like covered and covered in blood. But I'll pull it out anyways. I mean, there's no DNA here that's really gonna implicate

us in anything, right. Uh it says, hello, I've been listening to your show and stuff they don't want you to know, and notice the psychopath trend among both. I don't know if if if this person is speaking to our personality is or the topics we're covering, but yes,

there there is that trend between all of us. This is a fascinating subject and I think I can give you a very nice fact if you read The Psychopath Inside Me by James Fallon, which is a fascinating book where half of it is references to research papers and the rest is a good mix of views of a psychopath about psychopathy and the biology. But there is a

small section about female psychopaths. If there is a singular psychopath gene or if it is a cluster of them, most researchers leaned toward the ladder, but either way they are centered in the X chromosome, meaning that women have two while men have an X and a much shorter Y chromosome. If there is a defect in the X chromosome and women the other chromosomes take over, while men don't have this luxury. So for a woman to become a quote proper genetic lea flawed psychopath, both chromosomes have

to be broken. Of course, not everybody has the same predictable brain structure, so there might be other reasons, but this isn't a noticeable trend. As a side note, it would be fun if you did a podcast about the men without most of their brains that can live normally. And he shares a link with us about that, uh and says otherwise, good job and interesting podcast. And his name is Johnson. I believe he's from Norway. I do want to throw in that James Fallon, who he mentions here.

His work is indeed quite interesting. I got to see him at World Science Festival a few years back and he was actually doing a moth talk about about how in researching psychopaths he ended up identifying the same traits within himself. And I think you mentioned this to me. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it has been like one of those like moments of stuff to blow your mind, serendipity that

it like. I don't think we purposely chose it that way, but psychopaths have been coming up as like a tangent about specific topics we've been tackling, like M D M A. And I'm not quite sure what the conspiracy guys probably every topic. It's your influence, Christian. You keep bringing about psychopath I don't know what you're talking. I think, yes, I am probably the most the biggest psychopath. It definitely was my idea for us to do an episodes specifically

about psychopathic children. But the M D M A thing was a coincidence. Yeah, I mean, it's just always an interesting topic and it's one where our understanding how it continues to evolve. I know I've I've covered it a number of times just on the blog posts. Yeah, there's new studies identify, you know, the inner workings of the psychopathic brain. I think it's one of those things that like research seems to be like getting into a lot

almost accidentally. Right, People aren't intentionally looking to go discover what makes the psychopathic brain work. There may be studying other things, but it keeps popping up and it's um, it's something that I think we're gonna have a very different like definition and understanding of maybe ten fifteen years from now. Yeah, yeah, all right, what's this one? Uh?

This one comes to us from William. William Wrights is his high guys, longtime listener to stuff you should know, and I just moved over to stuff to blow your mind loving it. I have a little but I think important correction within your the Halloween costume costume made me do it episode. You take a moment to talk about racism, black face and our costumes can bring slight even inadvertent

racist tendencies to the surface. My correction focuses on a digital undergrounds frontman Shock G. While trying very hard to consider racial issues. You both refer multiple times to the MC Humpty Hump as if that was his name, while in keeping with the respectful tone of the episode, and just in case he is a listener, uh, maybe an acknowledgment that his real em C name at the time was Shocked G and I believe still is today, uh and that the famous song was the Humpty Hump. Keep

up the great work, man. I hope Shock G as a list that would be awesome. Um oh yeah, he's He's no Matthew Modine, but he's still pretty great. Yeah he's great. Uh oh yeah. So two things. First of all, Humpty Hump is an alter ego of Shock G and therefore I maintain that any reference to Shoot to Humpty Hump as an individual, um he is accurate, I believe

within the narrative of that song as a character. Yeah, I mean, Humpty Hump has his own origin story um about how he lost his nose and its thus replaced it with the with the signature, you know, Gratcho Mark's

glasses and nose. However, I do I do agree that yes, we should have mentioned shock Gu specifically as the man behind the nose, and I think William is right to to write in about something like this just even though we were I guess technically wrong, but two white dudes sitting around talking about the issues of race and gender that we're being extrapolated out of Halloween costumes, there's always

a potential for error. So I'm glad that he corrected us in this sense, because otherwise I think it would have just come off as kind of like white dude man splaining and I'd also like to mention I hope that shock g not humpty hump, got busy in a burger king bathroom. All right, Carney's handing us another message here and if I can, hope, if I can take it from him, he's running waving it around in circles. Ah,

there it is. Okay. Oh, this is from our listener, Martin, and Martin is writing in with reference to one of the X Files episodes that Christian and I did. So. Yeah, and he's not the only one who wrote about the specific thing, right, I think we received a couple of tweets about this too. Yeah, and so in the X Files episode, Christian and I were talking about Leonard Betts, the classic X Files character who gets his head cut off, survives,

and then regrows his head because he's made of cancer. Yes, but but not before walking to the iodine store and saying give me all your the way he regress his head as by climbing into a bathtub full of iodine. Anyway, Mark, our listener Martin writes in about this and says, hey, eyes, I'm sure someone has already pointed this out. But a day or so before the X Files podcast, I watched an episode of Monumental Mysteries or Mysteries at the Monument something like that, which is a branch of the show

Mysteries at the Museum Anyway. One of the monuments they visited in the episode was of a chicken without a head in the center of a town. The chickens name was Mike Miracle Mike Bond, James Bold. The story is that a farmer gathered up a couple of chickens to kill for dinner. After cutting off Mike's head, he let

him run around while tending to the next victim. After doing his thing with chicken number two, he noticed that Mike was still going about as if nothing happened, so he spared him and went about making dinner or whatever. The next day, Mike was still alive, so he began feeding him with an eye dropper and kind of just letting the headless chicken do what headless chickens do. Oddly, even without a head, he would scratch and peck at the ground, walk around, and could bring and evidently functioned

just fine. Most of this is because his brain stem was left mostly intact. But people were amazed by the headless little fella, and he went on tour, living headless for eighteen months. Unfortunately, one night at a hotel while on tour, Mike began to choke, which is evidently pretty common for a chicken without a head, and his owner couldn't locate his eye dropper in time to clear his airway, so he perished after eighteen months of headless life. The

second how do you choke? I don't know. I guess he is an esophagus still, yeah, I mean, yeah, you still have the neck and everything. So we we did think about this, actually, I think I thought about mentioning this in the episode, but didn't because you had notes about it, for sure. Because the so we were talking about animals that can get their heads cut off and survive. For example, cockroaches can survive without a head for a

long time. But the thing with this chicken was that it it sort of wasn't really without a head, and the relevant sense, it was without part of a head. So if the brain stem was left intact, that's a different kind of thing. This would be sort of like a person getting like the front of their head cut off or something, which would also be impressive. Yeah, it would. I mean, not that this is not interesting I really appreciate all of you who got in touch with us

about Miracle Mike. I love that his name is Miracle Mike because it makes me think of magic Mike. And therefore I can't help but imagine a dream scenario and which you have a movie about a headless mail stripper. But I'm imagining Miracle Mike double XL. No, what I'm imagining is that song Pony, you know, with the Miracle Mike running around without a head back in at the ground.

Jump on it my brain stem anyway. But Martin continues for referencing another episode, saying, the second odd thing was right before I listened to the Mirrors podcast thing that's talking about the one YouTube did on space mirrors. There's also an older stuff to Blowing my Hand episode just on mirrors. Oh well, I wonder it could be the one he talks about a sun gun. I think it was this so so, Martin says, I watched the new

episode of Scorpion and go figure. They were chasing down some warlord who had acquired panels the Germans had planned to use on the sun gun. I won't go through the whole timeline of the episode, but both are really great shows and definitely worth watching. Anyway, I just thought there were some weird synchronicities worth sharing. Keep the awesome podcast coming. Thanks so much, Mike, even I thought not Mike, Thanks so much, Miracle Mike, Thanks so much, Martin, Miracle, Martin,

I've never heard of Scorpion before. It sounds I don't know what it is. Yeah, I'm not familiar with it. I thought he was talking about the nineteen eighties glam band that would be the Scorpions. Is that right? They were just Yeah, that was a that was an interesting period of time in the history of music. Speaking of music, uh Ann Lee writes in with the following Robert, I am late to the podcasting scene and have been trying

to work my way through the backlog of episodes. Almost every other episode I find myself thinking, has Robert played Silent Hill? How has he not played Silent Hill? Is he ever going to mention Silent Hill? Do you ever mentioned Silent Hill? Did I just not make it far enough? And yet I was certain you'd say something on the

Uncanny Music episode, et cetera. If by some strange turn of fate, a man who loves monsters, grotesque and poigning imagery and the psychology of horror hasn't explored the Silent Hill series. I thought you'd be interested play Look up Silent Hill one through three, with the pinnacle being Silent Hill to perhaps considered an episode on horror gaming active participation versus passive watching, as in film and books as well.

So I will say, yes, I have played the first three Silent Hills, and I can't remember the room was Silent Hill three or the one that came after Silent Hill three, but uh, yeah, I've seen I've played those, and I have seen the Silent Hill movie. And uh, I actually own the soundtrack to Silent Hill to. All the music for the entire franchise games and films I was composed by a Kira yama Oka. Uh and it's indeed,

it's great stuff. A mixture of uncanny music, uh, some just wonderful sort of industrial noise and occasional J pop sensibility. Sound Hill was one of those things we get asked about a lot, like on periscope. People have asked about it multiple times, specifically about you know that Soulent Hill game that Gamma del Toro was working on. Is it pt is that way? Oh? Yeah, that's apparently, but then

it's not. Yeah, I don't think it's happening, um, but they wanted to know what our thoughts were about it. I've watched like a game play, like somebody playing through it, but I don't have I think it's It was only available on PC or maybe PlayStation, so I wasn't able to play it. I've always been told I should play Silent Hill. I've never played any of the Yeah, I mean, they love horror, but I I was not playing that

console generation when those games came out. Well, they've done HD remakes of at least one in two, so I would say just skip right to two because we have busy lives. When I have time for sling Hill Wind, they're fun. Salent Hill too, Salent Hill too is Yeah, it's fun, and I loved that it. It never really fleshed. My memory of it anyway, is that it never really

fleshed out exactly what was happening. It left him and just content continual confusion and mystery about this place in the setting and the events that have transpired, and there's all sorts of just of just weird stuff in the background. I'm not steeped enough from the Laura. I don't know if they ever explained it fully. I think there was a second movie too, wasn't there There was? I know Lauren has seen it, Lauren Vocabam. We'll have to ask her about it. I know Kit Harrington I think was

in it. Um really yeah, I think he was. I might be mixing mixing him up. Maybe somebody out there is going no, it wasn't. John Snow you know nothing. Christian's acre. Okay, we got another one here that's coming out and it is covered in tiny little pink pills. It says, I just listened to your series on m d m A. One thing not mentioned that has been researched is m d M A for Tonight's treatment. People have recorded that their TONIGHTUS goes away while using m

d m A. Thank you for the podcast. I really enjoy the subject matter. I actually think TONIGHTUS would be a great standalone episode topic. I have TONIGHTUS myself. With all the research being done on causes and treatments, it's amazing how much is still unknown about the condition. Thank you, Stephanie. Yeah, that would be fun. I actually wrote a brain stuff episode about Tonight's UM. You know, brain stuff is our

general science kind of video series. So it's a real quick, like two or three minute explanation of how Ringing Year works is how we refer to it in that. But that's interesting. I have TONIGHTUS, so I'm curious. I mean, I don't know that. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's from being in punk bands, um and not wearing proper protection.

I have I Ringing Year pretty much all the time. Um, but it's one of those things where like I've lived with it for so long now that I can kind of tune it out, but in certain situations it comes on really strong. Yeah, like wow, M D M A. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if i'd want to be a guinea pig for that. I wouldn't want to pull a John C. Lily and start testing on myself.

But that's interesting, and TONIGHTUS would be one that's interesting because she's right, they haven't really nailed it down yet. I think that though there's several different theories as to why it happens, but they haven't. They don't have anything definitive. Now you know what you're doing this weekend? Yeah, dropping some M D M A and listening very delicately. Okay, we've got another This is just a real short one

from our listener Eric in England. But this is in reference to, uh, to our X Files episode where Christian and I were talking about how it seems like they can never get the alien cloning invasion plan straight in the X Files. It's like they let let's just go, Like they still can't. Yeah, we were one episode away from the new series finishing and it's no better. Well, they keep giving different explanations of what's going on that

seemed like they just couldn't possibly all fit together somehow. Uh. And so what Christian and I talked about was, well, maybe the deal is just that the Aliens haven't made up their mind. This is actually the plot of the show is that the Aliens are incredibly disorganized and cannot get it together and agree on a plan. Well, it comes back to Invader Zim, which I believe we talked about right recently, talk about that. This is exactly what Eric's comment is. So Eric writes in to say, hey, guys,

great shows usual. Just check out Invader Zim for a great example of a disorganized invasion plan plus just a fun watch. Cheers Eric. So I've never seen Invader Zim and I don't know what he's talking about, but now I feel like I've got to check it out. Obama has also recommended this to me. She told me to watch it and it's I believe it's on Amazon Prime. So I had maybe it was a Nickelodeon show and

it's just the whole, the whole run of it. As this tremendous friend of mine works on the Invaders Zim comic book too. Yeah, so I I should give it, give it a chance. It's got kind of like a Johann Vasquez vibe. It is. Yeah, Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, cool, Yeah, it was his his deal, all right. Here's one more that touches on our recent coverage of psychedelics uh from Kristen.

She says, big fan of the podcast and particularly enjoying the coverage of the use of psychedelics for therapeutic purposes. It touches on a subject I'm very passionate about. Ayahuasca was my first psychedelic a little over a year ago. After my first time using it, I quit my job in the corporate oil industry immediately upon trying ayahuasca. My life has taken a completely different path, and I've spent the last year working with different teachers psychedelics to explore

myself in my connection to others in the world. Not to mention I had a lot of fun doing so. In the process, I started going to private meetings in Los Angeles in researchers homes to discuss tripped reports, share experiences, and collect data. I wish more people understood how psychedelics could impact our lives without it sounding like hippie nonsense. My mom is still convinced M D m A puts

holes in your brain and that LSD is addictive. That's funny because right before we did the M D m A episode, Joe said to me, are you going to talk about the holes in the brain? Myth? And I had never even heard of that even with doing the research, but I was taught this in school when I was growing up. Your brain, Yeah, I am pretty sure from all the research we did for that double party, that's not true. That is true, uh, and that LSD is addictive.

Thank you for taking up airtime exploring these substances and the benefits they can provide people with. I hope my mom gives it a listen, uh, and then she says, I went to a MAPS conference a while ago. We talked about MAPS in that episode. There are a group that works on the therapeutic applications of it uh and when she was there, she said, they discussed a really interesting study they're doing. They're using m d m A

on people with autism. It was fascinating. I recalled Dr Alicia dan Forth telling a story about a patient that had issues making eye contact with people after his m d m A therapy. He was standing in line at Walmart. The cashier asked him how he was doing, and he said, for the first time ever in his life, he was able to make eye contact with and respond with good, how are you. I can't recall all the t details, but I'm pretty sure it was an older man who

had been living with autism for a long time. Awesome work, Kristen, Well, yeah, and I'm glad that Kristen liked this, and a lot of people seem to respond positively to those two episodes so much so that we're definitely talking about doing more on UM, not just psychedelics, but other kind of drugs and therapeutic applications. Yes, definitely, we definitely are going to hit some some more drug topics in the months ahead. Ayahuasca is on the top of my list personally not

to take, but to go out for the show. I uh my first introduction to ayahuasca, I mean outside of reading Williams Burrows talking about it as the age was on Pete Holmes You Made It Weird podcast, he talked with a guest about her whole experience doing the sort of thing where you go, uh and you you pay money to like a tribe, I believe in order to

be able to take it quote unquote legally. Yeah, and my understanding is that it's it's it's been slightly commercialized in recent years, so you can actually book travel to a resort type of place to engage in these uh these experiences. And we're living in william S Burrow's world now. Not only that he just came up in the In the Right orgon episode he built himself an organ accumulator

to write in huh um. I will mission mentioned as well there were a pair of older episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind that I did with the Julie Douglas uh title of the Scientist and the Shaman, and that goes that those episodes go into some of these issues as well, particularly the use of psilocybin and diahuasca. Cool. Well, while in the meantime, while we're putting those together, maybe Kristen and others who are interested in this canna go back and listen to those. Yeah, you just go to

stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and type in drugs. Yeah, I mean seriously, I think there are all those episodes and in blog poster our tag at the drugs. Yeah, we try, We try to tag him pretty well with our metadata. All right. Uh, this next one comes in from linked In, of all places linked Yeah, you're kidding. Yeah, I mean, it's about a headless chicken. No, but I had to share it because it's a nice, nice little bit of listener mail. But it also came to me

personally through LinkedIn. Was like one of two times that LinkedIn has been helpful. Yeah, LinkedIn is the one social media network that makes me feel like an old man, Like I feel like I just totally don't understand what's going on here. It makes you feel like an old man. It makes me feel like a little kid. Really makes me feel like I'm on there with all these adults doing their adult things, and I'm like, hey, I've been

endorsing you for stuff all. I think we all, I think all three of us are on there right Yeah yeah, look yeah, so hey adds to your network? Do you want to hire us? But but Melanie wrote in on LinkedIn and said, thanks for accepting, even though we actually haven't done business together. Devouring your podcasts since Joe Rogan commented on it, looking forward to listening and reading more. Thanks for the warning about polar bear livers that was

from our Danger Foods episodes. Could have had that for lunch yesterday. And she also thought it was on email and recommended that we we potentially do an episode on color and color blindness. Oh yeah, we've gotten some good feedback about the Dangerous Foods episode. I've been emailing back and forth with one listener named Mary, who has been

contacting us about her experiences in Iceland. First, she got in touch with us about the Pink Snow, Blue Snow episode, the episode we did about All the Weird Snow where she was talking about the colors of glaciers that she had seen in Iceland and what was exactly the cause of them. And we found out that we had been to one of the same glacier lagoons like she and her fiance at the time had been there when she was in Iceland, and I had been there with my

wife Rachel when we were there. And if you ever get a chance to see a glacier in real life, it's worth it because it is a very strange, uh, different kind of thing to see if you're not used to it. I still can't get over that you went to Iceland and you guys didn't go to the Blue Lagoon. Of all the lagoons and glaciers, you didn't go to the weird uh Silica sex pond. Another thing Mary mentioned is that she actually ate the shark from the Dangerous

Foods episode. Yes, she she ate it while she was there, chased it with some kind of unknown clear liquor, and that that's it. And so I gotta I gotta respect her power and honor. Well. To her point about us doing something about color blindness, again, I think i'm brain stuff. I didn't write it. Maybe you did. Um, there's a color blindness episode. In fact, we did it because our colleague Ben Boland has a certain kind of color blindness, uh.

And so that's why we covered it, so maybe if we did an episode on that topic, we could bring Ben and he could be our guinea pig. Yeah, we could give him M D M A in ayahuasca and see how it affects color blindness. All right, it looks like we have one last email here from Carney. All right, Carney, what if we got here? Ah? This is from our listener Catherine, and it's in reference to our episode that Robert and I did for New Year's about science and

moral behavior. And Catherine writes, hey, guys, I started listening to your podcast, asked after getting all caught on your brother and sister podcasts and now slowly chipping away at yours. Yesterday I was listening to your episode Moral Behavior, and I got so excited. For my psychology undergraduate, I conducted a study on this exact topic. My thesis was titled Shame, Guilt and Religiousness in Adolescent sexual Offenders. And I can't resist an opportunity to talk about it, which is basically

never because people think it's super boring. I was looking for a link between religion and adolescent offenders and their feelings of shame and guilt, which are commonly closely tied to moral behavior. Because I was dealing with children and I was a lowly undergrad student, it was difficult to conduct my study and ended up with a total sample size of seven, which doesn't make my results very reliable. Uh. We we admire your work. Anyway, That sounds like a

larger sample size than Mahomewich worked with. Yeah, it was possible anyway, Catherine continues, However, I did find that at at least among that sample size of seven, and she says how I did find that there was no connection between religion and the moral feelings of the participants, but was more connected to their own intrinsic feelings about themselves and their offenses. Anyway, if you ever can't sleep, I'll be more than happy to assist with a copy of

the paper. Keep up the great work. Love listening to your podcast. It makes my monotonous day so much more enjoyable. Well, that is too kind, Catherine, and thank you for sharing this with us, you know, on the subject of content that puts one to sleep. Um, we're talking about this earlier. I don't know if we've actually mentioned it on the podcast, but we had one listener write in at least one

at least one. Yeah, well, I've heard from other How Stuff Works podcasts they've heard similar things to that people listen to the podcasts while falling asleep. But the one individual in particular thought that the music should be tweaked. Our excellent music by our producer Noel should be tweeked so as to allow them to gently move into into slumber at the end of the episode. Yeah, I'd love to hear from more of you if you fall asleep

to to our episodes. I never really thought that the k of our voices would be something that would knock people out. Now, I think that from now on, all of our episodes should each be an MP three file that's about three hours long, where we talk for the normal amount of time, and then the rest of the file is just waves coming, just seegulls every now and

the rain patterns. Yeah. Well, you know one thing that I took away from this last one that you read, and it seems like a common theme with what our letters throughout the entire episode. Today, there's been a lot of cross pollination between the shows here at How Stuff Works. Lately, it seems like a lot of people are listening to us and jumping to other shows are listening to other shows and jumping over to us. I hear that all

the time. I hear from people who started with stuff you should know and then moved on to stuff you missed in history class and to us. Yeah. Well, and and if so, I guess if there are people out there that are listening and they're unfamiliar, I guess with the larger world of what we operate, and you know, there's there's a lot more here at how stuff works. Uh. And the best way to kind of find out what all those other shows are is if you go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Just scroll to

the bottom of any page. They're all lists it. They're including Joe's other show, Forward Thinking. Yeah, I mean, they're all great shows and there's no stuff to blow your mind. But no, I mean, but they're great. I can't imagine that on car Stuff that they're gonna talk about ayahuasca

anytime soon. You know, I do want to mention Car Stuff has been putting some great stuff on Facebook recently, like they've been at least a couple of different things that have had to share to the Stuff to Blow your Mind Facebook page because uh, Scott Benjamin is great about bringing out these like really weird things from automotive history that even appeal to me, like the least automotively

inclined person in the office. Probably, I'd say you and I could compete for being for being the lowest on the car guys scale. Yeah, and so it appears that stuff appeals to us. Then if you're at all interested in I guess done that show before. I'm not a car person really at all, but those guys are a lot of fun to talk what they have you on

to talk about. We talked about, um, pony cars, you know, like that style of car that's somewhere between like a muscle car and like a sedan, So like a Ford Mustang or a Dodge Challenger, stuff like that cars in death Proof. Yes, actually, um, and it has a pony in it. Well, they're called pony cars because they're named after the Mustang. So it's like not a Mustang, ak

not a full grown horse that is a pony. Right. Well, so that's a good segue for us to just remind people in general to visit stuff to blow your mind dot com, which is where you're gonna find everything by the three of us. That's where we write things, we blog, there's videos by us or that we host, and they're all the podcasts are there as well. Yeah, and there's even there even links out to all the other House of Work shows as well, so that can be your

first stop on a continuing health Stuff Works journey. And I just wanted to remind you out there again. If you've gotten in touch with us and we didn't have time to read your email today, I'm sorry that we couldn't get to it today, but please right in in the future. We we love getting all of the feedback that we get from you all and and the wonderful things you contribute, and hopefully we'll be able to read

it in a future listener mail. So yeah, we're open to emails about new episodes, old episodes, whatever you have to share with us. Uh. So, there are some other ways that you can get in touch with us too, right, I mentioned them at the top. We do the social media's were on Facebook, we're on Twitter, We're on Tumbler. You can write to us there or you can follow us there and see all the weird science stories that we post throughout the week. It's not just our own stuff.

We also do periscope every Friday at noon Eastern Standard time. So if you want like a more intimate setting to sit down and talk to us and ask us some questions, were usually around for about twenty or thirty minutes on those those slots. And if you want to get in touch with us the old fashioned way, simply shoot us an email at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. We're more on this than thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Blavet joined the foot pro