Listener Mail: Let the Lamp Affix its Beam

Joe and Robert. Longtime listener, first time emailer. I'm currently listening to your podcast on the chainsaw and just thought i'd let you know a place where these appear unchained or with the bar removed completely. In sporting culture, if you watch pretty much any downhill mountain bike race, there will be numerous crowd members wielding chainsaws as a way to cheer on the riders. I believe are a couple

of different reasons behind this. The first and most obvious is that a lot of mountain biking facilities are built in forest plantations that are periodically harvested, so it's quite common to hear chainsaws in the background. To riding. The second is perhaps a slight stretch. A traditional way to cheer on a road cyclist is to ring a cow bell. Similar reasoning, bicycle races take place on rural roads where the only unnatural sound maybe that of cattle as they

go about the business of being cattle. I believe the chainsaw represents the newer, more extreme sport of downhill racing. I thought this was an interesting little side note to the use of chainsaws. Thanks for the quirky and interesting topics that you cover. Regards Chris Well, then sounds completely made up. I don't know I believe any of that that, but it's so weird. I guess it has to be true. Yeah, I wonder Well, now I'm wondering if I should have

checked this beforehand. You know what, Chris, if you were lying to us, and I determined afterwards, I'm gonna cut this whole message out of the episode. But I was wondering if, okay, could chainsaws be so that the the downhill mountain biking person can hear you through a through a helmet they've got on that would like cover up their ears and muffle normal applause and cheers. I guess so I could see that being the case. You know, they're muffled, they're going fast. Uh, you can't just yell hey,

way to go race that downhill? You know, you need to maybe something louder. And it's either this or air horns. And I guess the air horn could be more startling, whereas the chainsaw could be startling too. I guess if you're just suddenly wrapping it up, but more of it, I guess it is just constantly going. Then maybe it's like a nice ambient roar when they rush by. Yeah, I guess so, I mean something about it seems vaguely threatening. Yeah. Well, anyway, Chris,

thanks for getting in touch. All right, so that was a bit of a Halloween listener mail, and it's okay if those continue to roll, Lynn will continue to read him. But we also begin to hear from folks in regard to our Doune episodes. Uh so basically we put out, you know, two new Science of Dune episodes, and this was this bit of listener mail comes to us from see, hey, guys, not normally one to write into podcasts first time, actually, but I just finished your new episode on the BENI

Jesra like yourselves. I'm a pretty big fan of Doone. It is my default favorite book in any sort of favorite book discussions, I give both Done and Done Messiah a read through every couple of years. Anyway, to the point, I was really thinking deeply about the box while watching some late night peanut butter brownies finished baking in the oven, and a curious thing struck me. I am one that leans towards the box not being a secret technology but

some parlor trick of the Reverend Mother. As I was listening to you guys discussed the box and Paul's later anecdote about not falling for tricks again, it made me wonder if he would have felt anything at all if he hadn't asked what was in the box. After all, the benegestor to have command of the voice, and so I wonder if the Reverend Mother telling Paul what to

expect in the box, maybe that was enough. I think maybe the Reverend Mother planted that in his mind, maybe with the voice, and then Paul's mind created that very pain that tortured him. So maybe the box is just simply that a box. Anyway, Thank you guys for the years of podcasting excellence. And I look forward to any

more cheers. See. Yeah, you know, I pretty much suspect this is what Herbert had in mind, that actually the box itself doesn't do anything, and it is the Reverend mother who is the who is the active principle, who is causing the the sensations of pain that Paul is feeling. Yeah, I too think that's probably more in line with with the way he seems to operate. And it's certainly the

way that the Reverend Mothers seemed to operate. It's a it's kind of it's like a distraction to a certain extent, and it's a method of of of tweaking our perception of things. Um, but I wonder what would happen if she had said something other than pain, Like what if she had said, it's filled with like what's in the paint? What's in the box? And and she says, well, it's eyeballs, it's a witch's hair from a witch who once lived in this house. Now it's the intestines of a murderer. Yeah,

it would have that. It would have been interesting. Have you ever done one of those Halloween parties the field, the Field, the Ikey's I remember it is a child. I remember going to some sort of uh, you know, I don't know, it's like an Elks Club Halloween or something, I don't know, and uh, and somebody had that set up and I remember thinking it was pretty neat because you had the other spaghetti for guts I think, and

then skinned grapes, particularly skinned grapes for for eyeballs. And yeah, I can't remember what those are, the two big ones. I was like, Yeah, these aggress I guess another way of framing it is you could say that if if the Reverend Mother is just doing something, you know, psychologically manipulated of de Paul with her own voice and stuff, that the box could be considered misdirection. You know, the classic uh, one of the most common tricks used by

stage magicians is misdirection. And that like they will draw your attention to an object or to what they're doing with one of their hands or something. You know, the whole point is to get you to look at this thing while the real trick is happening somewhere else in their other hand or something. Now, there's nothing really presented as far as I know, to doubt the the the idea that the needle that the gone jibar itself has

has poisoned at the tip of it. But I mean, if if the box doesn't really have pain in it, if the box is just a box, is it possible if the gonjibar is just a needle and that if she has to poke you with it, you're just gonna get poked with the needle. You're not actually gonna die. Or is it a similar situation where if you draw your hand out, you're gonna believe you're gonna die when you're when you're spiked with that gone jibar needle poison

or no poison, Like, you don't need the meticyanide. It's like the matrix your mind makes it real. Yeah, whoa dude, Yeah, that that's Dune. That's how the Dune works on you. All right? What else we have? Joe? Alright? This next message is also in response to the Dune episodes. This comes from e k ek Ses, Robert, and Joe. I've enjoyed your podcast for quite a while. As a psychiatrist, artist, and D and D enthusiasts. There are a number of topics you cover that cross over with my professional and

personal interests. Your latest episode and the discussion on pain and the psychological inputs certainly touched on a topic that I frequently discussed with my patients. You mentioned hypnosis briefly, and although I do not practice it myself, during my training, I've seen video documentation of patients undergoing surgery under hypnosis

instead of anesthetics, including a Sissyrian section. This is a profound reduction in pain rather than a moderate effect size, although of course hypnosis this is really only an option for a select population. This is what we're talking about in the episode that while it does seem like hypnosis is pretty efficacious for people who are susceptible to it,

not everybody is susceptible to it. But e K goes on that said, I think we all have experience of not noticing an injury and feeling pain only when we notice the scrape or blister later. In my work with individuals with anxiety and depression, I've found that people in a negative state of mind often experience worse pain. In the same way, the brain gives more value to negative thoughts and words of discouragement when depressed, the brain also

pays more attention to negative physical inputs like pain. Thus, I find that treating depression and anxiety often improves physical pain as well, even if it does not take away the physical ailment that causes it. I believe there was also a World War two physician who found that service members wounded in the battlefield often needed less morphine than

civilian who had similar gunshot wounds. The theory is that the soldier's injury meant going home and returning as a hero, and thus had a different meaning than, for example, a shopkeeper who was wounded in a robbery and had only lost as a result. In psychiatry, of course, we deal with how the meaning of things affects perceptions and experiences, and this is definitely true when it comes to pain.

Keep up the good work. Enjoy the podcast. E K Yeah, I feel like we've discussed the the scenario with the World War two physician. UM believe this is coming. I think so, either in some of our past episodes on perceptions of pain or perhaps placebo. Okay, I guess that didn't stick in my brain for some reason. Maybe I'll mean or it could be possible that I assembled it

wholesale in my own brain. I could be misremembering, but it rings a bell or chainsaw well, e K. Thank you very much for sharing your insight from clinical experience. Always great to hear from from people working in a professional capacity in the subjects we cover all right, Here is one from zach Uh. This is in response to our episode on the leshy Uh. This was put out as a vault episode, but it was one of our favorite Halloween episodes from the previous year. Zach rides high.

In the recent fault episode, Joe was listing the subtle ways in which a lesh she might have a subtle detail wrong with it, enabling the hero of the folk tale to realize that they're encountering Aleshi. I think this has come up before in your episodes about Incubi and succuby. I think you guys mentioned how Christian authors interpreted this feature of monsters as being imposed by God to provide righteous Christians with the opportunity to realize they were being

tempted by an evil monster. This reminds me of how scam emails or texts will always have crazy misspellings or bad grammar. If you're a scammer sending issuing emails to people, it's as if no matter how well written the email is, God will alter the text of the email in transit to insertain misspellings and give the recipients an opportunity to realize they are being scammed. Thank you God for protecting me from modern day lescies, Zach. It's it's strange how often,

uh this is true. Yeah, yeah, So you know the thing that we've discussed in that I think it's come up a few times before, is yeah, this this medieval um, I don't know, it's late medieval and kind of post medieval concept as well, that these demons could take human form um in order to deceive people and uh and

make them give into their sins. But God being just would not allow the devil and his minions uh to have a complete advantage over the righteous, and so there would always be that telltale sign such as uh, duck feet on an otherwise, you know, attractive female form, that sort of thing. And so as long as you looked for the duck feet, acknowledge the duck feet, and then corrected your course, you know appropriately, you'd be all right. Uh.

So I do like this comparison. I mean, it's certainly you can't rely on this absolutely, but it's one of those things they frequently teach you. I know, we're always getting warnings at work about how to look out for phishing emails, and that's one of the things. They're like, look for the airs, look for the duck feet. But I do want to reemphasize what you said, Rob. You know, it shouldn't be your only fail safe, because hey, some scammers must have really good grammar. It's just the law

of large numbers. All right. Maybe we should finish up with uh with the message or too About Weird how Cinema. This one comes from Greg Gregg, says, Hi, gentlemen, you mentioned during this week's Weird howse Cinema episode, which was Highway to Hell, that you couldn't recall a sofa slash easy chair horror film. I think the context was I was saying, you know, there's like, there's a horror movie

for every type of media technology. Uh. There's like The Ring where you watch a videotape and then it kills you. There's h there's fear dot com where you go to a website and it kills you. There is Uh. Those came out I think right around the same time, and we're extremely similar movies. By the way, there was another one called nine seven six Evil we were talking about, which I've never seen, but it allegedly is about a

phone number you call and it kills you. But I was like, well, surely nobody ever made a movie where there's a reclining chair and you sit in it and it kills you. But apparently I was wrong. Greg says, look no further than Killer Sofa nineteen from the Fine Folks at High Octane Pictures. This New Zealand horror comedy was most recently available on Amazon Prime, alongside sure to be classics like Veloci Pastor, in which a priest transforms

into a velociraptor. At least, give the Killer Sofa trailer a look. The image of a recliner evil e peering out of a second floor window says it all. Thanks Greg. You know, Greg, I gotta be honest. I did not have high hopes for this, and I went and looked at because I mean, movies like this A lot of times they when you're trying this hard to make a silly or bad movie on purpose. You know this level of irony from the conceptual origins. It just doesn't usually

work in its final form. I don't know why, but most of the time, it's it's not as fun as the concept would seem. But I gotta say, I watched the trailer for this and it it looks dope. I'm sold. Uh. It's got these great shots of like menacing springs poking out into the into the frame, and there's something quite infectious about the way the characters in the trailer just keeps saying the word recliner over and over and not

switching out for synonyms like chair. Yeah, this is I think in that episode, Um, I said that I thought that I had seen some sort of a killer or couch or or whatever movie not seen. That's the poster for it, and I believe this is the one. This must have come up for me in Amazon or something. Um.

You have my sincere apology for for not heeding you. Um. Now, as as far as I understand, this is not a part of like the full Moon universe, so I don't think we can currently have killer Sofa Battle um, like Killer Ball or anything like that, which is which is a shame. It seems like this creation would fit well in that universe. Oh within band camp. Yeah, I'm not seeing Killer Ball either, but that to me, Again, I

don't want to pre judge. I haven't seen it, but that sounds like the kind of movie I was talking about that usually doesn't doesn't really do it for me. Yeah, all right, and here's one more. This one comes to us from Mike. Mike says, Hey, Joe, he's got beef with me, apparently to start, I've been enjoying this podcast for the last five years and playing older episodes in between your new ones, catching up constantly. I'm a fan

of horror slasher films of the seventies and eighties. On multiple occasions, I've heard you state that Jason Vorhees essentially becomes a revenant after the seventh God Awful film. Here's my gripe, though, isn't Jason a behemoth revenant from the beginning first film? He drowned at Crystal Lake and died. He is the uncaring, unfeeling, unstoppable, monolithic beast from the start. Any thoughts, Mike, Well, Mike, I I appreciate all the aggression.

Uh uh No, I think you're wrong. Uh So. I will admit that the early films are not quite consistent on this point. Uh so. Yeah. In the first Friday Thirteenth movie, the premise is that Jason died and uh, and of course it is revealed that it's his mother who is doing the killings that are that are being blamed on him. But uh my, my basic understanding was that this is just sort of ignored in rhet cond

in the second film where Jason does show up. I think just because the first one was successful, they wanted to make another one. They thought it would make money. They're like, okay, well, Mrs Voor, he's got her head cut off at the end of the first film, so we can't really use her again. Well what if we just say that, like, Jason wasn't actually dead, he was alive. Uh So that's what we got Jason, and it turns

out is alive. He is a psychotic killer adult man in the second movie, and uh, then again in the third movie, then again in the fourth movie. In the fourth movie, Corey Feldman waxed him in the head with the machette and he is no more. The fifth movie features a copycat. And yes, it is the sixth film. I think you got the order a little off because you were saying the seventh it's the sixth film. Where finally they're just like, ahh to hell with it. Okay,

he's he's undead. It's magic now, I you know what, I think it's it was a smart move on their part, good choice. Yeah, like I said, there's a progression there. I haven't. Like I said, for me, most of them are kind of a blur, and they kind of blur together because I was probably watching them on you know, USA or TNT back in back in the day, and I would catch like parts of one late at night, and Uh, in isolation like that, they can seem much the same. Um, So I trust your your judgment on this.

They are much the same. Uh. They have extremely similar structures across most of them. Now here's the question. Has he remained a revenant since then or have the newer films kind of gone back and made him human again. Uh? There was a remake film in about two thousand nine or so, which I have not seen since I saw it in the theater then. But my my memory is

that he is a regular human in that one. I guess we could alway, if there's any there any films that come out subsequently, uh that we're not fond of, we can always say that they were just a holidack simulation aboard the Starship Grendel from Jason Jason X. Yes, I gotta say that, actually, Jason X is. It has one of the most inspired moments of the entire series, which is which is when the characters distract Jason by putting him in the hollow deck and supplying him with

fake holographic victims. It's kind of a perfect solution, right because then like he's not actually hurting anybody, and of course you know you can't stop him because he's unkillable, but you just like let him busy himself playing video games for the rest of eternity. I should I need to go back and watch it at some point, because there's raises the question like how they get him? How did he ever escape from the Holio deck. Couldn't they have just programmed in infinite victims and then he'd be

happy in this simulated world. I think the problem was that the Holidack broke or ran out of power or something, okay, because because otherwise it seems like it could be a good fit. Though on the other hand, the other side of looking at it is or don't ethical concerns arise if we are creating this endless simulation where their endless victims for Jason to dispatch. Um, I think we get into murky territory pretty quickly with that. What, like your word, is it not fair to do this to Jason? Well,

I'm not not really concerned about Jason. I'm thinking about the simulation, like what are they? What are these simulars or these conscious holographic victims? Yeah, um, I'm gonna yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about that. Would he eventually get it out of his system? Maybe he reached the point where he's like, killing brings me no jewel anymore. Now Jason becomes a creator, Yeah, he becomes yeah, okay, now he's a peaceful artist because he saw the error

of his ways. Oh man, that that would actually, I think that would work as a sequel. Would be kind of like the Creature Walks among Us, where Jason has changed. He goes out into the world and he's this artist or something, but of course he makes pottery. But eventually he's going to backslide, and there's your movie. He backslides because of rude gawkers at the craft's fair who come

by the tent but never buy anything. Well, you should have had some postcards everything most people will buy a postcard. All right, now that we have that settled, let's I guess we'll go ahead and close it out for today. But we appreciate everyone who wrote in UM. As we we often stressed we don't we don't have time to respond to everybody via email. We we do try and read everything that comes in and and we do get to feature a lot of listener mail UM on the

listener mail segments. But yeah, keep it coming. If you have response to past episodes, UM, hopes and desires for future episodes, let us know we would love to hear from you. In the meantime, If you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll find them in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed Core episodes on Tuesday and Thursdays, more listener mails every Monday, Artifact episodes on Wednesday, and on Friday's

we do a little Weird how Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a strange film. Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to

Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.