Listener Mail: Near-death by Saxon

Let's do it. Okay, this comes from Joseph, He writes, I just recently listened to the episode from June about harvesting gold from the ocean. I wanted to share that I received my master's degree in chemistry from San Francisco State University for studying a class of proteins known as and I think this would be phido key laton's uh if it'd be pronounced kind of like the word key lation, which is about bonding to metals. And that's also what these things do, I believe, so I think it's phyto

keelatons or PCs. PCs are a family of sulfur rich peptides which are induced in plants yeast and fungi exposed to heavy metals and are thought to detoxify metals by forming PC metal complexes. I specifically studied PC cadmium complexes isolated from jimsunweed, native to California. It was the first study to report the size and nature of native PC cadmium complexes from plant tissue samples. Maybe I should start trying to round up investors from my new company to

get more gold out of the soil. It might just work. Check out the paper if you're interested. And then Joseph links to the paper on which he's one of the co authors, published in the Journal of Mass Spectrometry in the R nine and Joseph says, thanks so much for the podcast. I'm now subscribed on Spotify. Joseph excellently well,

thank you, Joseph, apreciate the subscription. But more to the point, we appreciate the the the expert feedback here on on this past episode and always happy to give people ideas for hoaxes, scams and scammers. All right, here we have another one. We keep getting email regarding our episodes on queueing on standing in line, and we love it because we knew this would be something that everybody would have some sort of insight on, personal, cultural, historic, et cetera.

Hi Joe and Robert Joe's comments about the zipper merge when lanes are closed reminds me of a similar phenomenon that I experienced in Boston. It's something that outsiders generally perceived as rude and crazy, but I think it makes perfect sense, and it is to use some new vocabulary, almost a Parado improvement. In Boston, where the roads are narrow,

there are rarely left turn lanes. At traffic lights, is very common for a left turner waiting at a red light to jump the light, making their left turn as soon as the light turns green, essentially cutting off the oncoming driver who is going straight through. In general, the driver in the oncoming lane will at least be prepared for this maneuver, and often will even wave the left turner ahead to make sure all involved parties are on

the same page. This all results in an imperceptible loss of time for all cars in the oncoming direction, but saves all of the cars behind the left turner from having to wait for the entire light cycle in order to drive straight through the intersection. I have never seen this done outside of Boston, but to me, it makes perfect sense. It seems like a win for everyone involved. John,

I think this does take place outside of Boston. I believe this is probably something that's just common in very busy urban streets that are tight with a lot of traffic on them, and is less common and you know, places where traffic is moving at a more leisurely pace or there's more room for every ready to get around. Yeah, I mean here here in Atlanta, we do have some some hellish left turns and some and some strains. I know other cities have these as well, obviously, but reversible

turn lanes. Oh no, that that is the whoever came up with that idea. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I guess it's reversible lanes rather. Oh yeah, not eternally sorry, Yeah, the reverse. So there's like one major road at least here in town that for a long stretch has three lanes in the middle lane changes directions depending on what time of day it is or I don't know if it does that anymore. It usually does, it totally does, it still does.

And the souper, the super infuriating and dangerous. Part of it is that, yes, some people know this, some people are not aware of it or have forgotten about it. And some people will treat that middle lane as a turn lane, regardless of what time of day it is

and who is actually supposed to be in that lane. Um, yeah, it gets it gets insane anyway, John continues, I realized this is a little late, but I've spent the last two weeks on an unplanned visit to my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin to help make arrangements for my mom, who had a stroke two weeks ago. She's doing well in rehab, but I will be up here right until my teaching year starts to get her settled into a new living arrangement. Having you guys in my ear has made the driving, packing,

and even the waiting much easier. So thanks for being there yours. John. Oh well, that's so nice to hear, John, and I hope for the best for your mom. Absolutely Okay. This next message is from Gabe. Gabe says dear Robert and Joe. Hello, there, I've been listening to stuff to blow your mind off and on for a few years now, and always come back to you. Guys for delightful science stuff.

I was listening to the recent episodes on queuing, and I thought of a potentially interesting example of queueing that I've experienced. I live in Washington State, where we rely on ferry boats to get to certain islands or across bodies of water. These ferries are often either the only route or the quickest route. To get on the ferries, you often have to wait in lines of cars, sometimes for hours, and line cutting or attempted line cutting certainly happens.

It is advertised and treated as a real significant threat. Signs are put up along the queuing route with numbers to call, the with numbers to call to report quote interlopers and local in queue protests to these interjections is often severe, characterized by horn honks and sometimes shouting. This example struck me as interesting because it seems to hybridize the ideas of waiting in traffic as a queue and waiting in lines for a more quantifiable commodity e g.

A bagel sandwich. I was curious what psychology was at play here that, at least anecdotally, people waiting waiting in the car and ferry lines seem more eager to defend the line than queues on foot. Anyway, Thanks very much for your excellent content and I look forward to future episodes. Gabe, Well,

that's interesting. I mean, it instantly makes me think back to research we come in our our episode on vehicular cognition about how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive others when we're in a driving environment, and how some of these uh, some of the constraints that might be there otherwise they're washed away when we're in a vehicle.

There's another distinction I wonder about, which is um I wonder if we tend to naturally behave differently when we're waiting for something like waiting for a product or service, a waiting in line and to drive through at a bank or at a restaurant, versus when we are in a transition period, meaning we're waiting to get somewhere or not to you know, not for the product or service, but we're just trying to in our minds sort of like escape wherever we are now and get you know,

get back home. I think often you know, when people would be really frustrated or try to get somewhere on time, get to work on time. I wonder if we actually have less tolerance for waiting in these sort of trans positioning traveling states because the waiting for a ferry, you're still it's kind of combining the two. It's like waiting in a drive through, but it's also like waiting in traffic. As the escape says, here, m I wonder too if if there's a hint of this to it as well.

So if we're if we're waiting in line with other people to get that bagel sandwich, we know, on some level we all have a shared objective here. We all want that sweet bagel sandwich, you know. We that's that's why we're here. Maybe we feel that some of us deserve it more than others, but but we all have

the same goal. Whereas if it's just people driving somewhere or you know, you can I guess you could lean into an interpretation where, hey, we're just all trying to get home, We're all trying to get to someplace where we need to be, or hey, we're all just trying to get to work in the morning, something of that nature. But it also is ambiguous enough that you could perhaps lean more into this idea of like, well, I'm just trying to get home. I don't know what this guy

is trying to do. He's maybe he's he's just he just wants to go home and watch a football game or something. He's just in a hurry off or something that doesn't matter as much as my thing, which is ultimately a very unfair, um criticism to make. I mean, they maybe they have to go to the bathroom really bad. I don't know. I mean, not that it excuses dangerous driving or anything, but um, you know, everyone conceivably has a reason for what they're doing. Oh, this is totally

how we think. I mean, I think I said this in one of the queuing episodes of the difference between you and everybody else on the road is that you've got somewhere you need to be, yeah, yeah, and everyone else just wants to be somewhere and is impatient about getting there or too patient about getting there, depending on how fast they're driving. All right, here's another one who

comes to us from Alex Hi, Joe, and Robert. I've listened to your podcast for a handful of years, and sometimes I get unreasonably excited at the episode titles before having played them. Recently, regression to the mean and Reconsider the Bean had me cheering with my cats. I'm not on cinema, but still love when cinema spills into your other discussions. The joy you both find in linking ideas with media is infectious, even if I don't get the references.

Thanks for your hard work and love your stuff, Alex. What what's the common thread with regression to the mean and reconsider the Bean? They rhyme, That's what I was thinking. But could that be it? Um? Alex is just looking for the next line in the in that rap song that they've been working on forever. I mean, I get maybe it's just you know, those lined up with with with Alex's particular interests, I guess more than other things.

Um and and anyway, as well as far as cinema goes, hopefully our word how cinema episodes allow us to allow room for our more obscure cinema references to to grow without you know, taking up too much space in some of our core episodes. I don't know. We'll see how it goes, all right. This next message is about the episode on the Speaking Sword. This one comes from Nada and the subject line is the animate sound Lineman. I

had to look that word up. Actually, lineman L I M E N, and alignment means the the boundary of perceptibility or the threshold of perceptibility for something. So aligneman is like the point at which something goes from imperceptible to perceptible. You know, it's the lowest possible volume sound you can hear, or or amount of light you can

perceive with your eyes or something. So anyway, Renata says, hi, Rob and Joe, oh, and I'm gonna skip a bit here, but she begins with the paragraph talking about saying she enjoys listening to the podcast, but also, like another listener who wrote in recently, enjoys listening to our episodes is a sleep aide, especially weird house cinema. No judgment, They're

glad you're enjoying it. Um. But but then she goes on to say, anyway, I got the sleepy vibe from the whispers of the Speaking Sword until about thirty five minutes into the episode when you started to talk about agency, and then I could not fall asleep. I studied cognitive science in college, and this subject has always fascinated me. It reminded me of a thought experiment. I sometimes do when I'm bored and I've been looking for an excuse

to write to you two about this. I think of the perceptual boundary between non agency and agency as a type of lineman or perceptual threshold, though I might be stretching the term too much. In the episode, you talked about movement as being key to the human perception giving agency to an object. So here's my thought experiment. What is the lineman of ascribing sentience or agency to a sound? And then, to take that a step further, what is

the lineman to hear a sound as music. I can no longer remember where I was when I first thought about this, but probably outside and heard a sound that I couldn't immediately tell if it was coming from a human being or if it was just an ambient nature noise. I don't know if you experience this, but I often find myself hearing a weird sound than waiting until I hear it a few more times to decide if it's from a human, animal, electronic device, or just a noise.

I don't have the answer to this question, and I'd love it if you could look into whether it has been studied. I since that rhythm has something to do with it. Either a sound is too regular and it is probably a faucet dripping, for example, or the sound is too irregular, like a branch hitting the side of the house in the wind, which brings me to music. I listened to ambient music sometimes again as a sleep aid, and you might be surprised how sparse and amorphous an

ambient track can get. Before you say to yourself, this is just noise. I know. There have been studies on the extent to which animals have musical rhythm. Birds seem to get the closest to dancing and making music like sounds our music and rhythm on the same sentience continuum. Is there alignment for being able to detect that a sound was definitely intended as music by a human being versus an animal sound? And where does AI fit in?

Thanks for inspiring me to ask these questions. Sorry, last time, I I think this is referring to a previous email. Uh, last time I said that your show doesn't give me chills. I was just being cheeky. I have I have a blast listening to you guys, even when it's putting me to sleep. Cheers, Renata. I think that other email was in response to the episode that Seth and I did about free so on. Yeah, but these are really interesting questions, I think, like, what are the limits of what we

perceive as music? To some degree? I think that's going to be partially uh, you know, subjective, like some people just have you know, or you might say, more open minded about what they're willing to listen to and say, yeah, okay, this is music. But I guess to ask the question a little bit differently on average, like how much can you deviate from, say, the rhythmic norms of music before most people don't recognize a sound as even something intended

to be music, you know. Yeah, I mean, on one hand, I think it's definitely gonna it's gonna vary from person to person. Um. I got to interview Stephen hill Uh, the creator of the Hearts of Space radio program years and years ago, and he spoke of people having an ambient DNA, of having sort of an innate inclination to um to love the more ambient styles of music out there, be it something you know, modern and synth based, or something that is more versed in classical music, or some

sort of you know, cultural tradition. But that some people maybe are more inclined to uh, to to lean into those kind of sounds um. And I don't know if that actually is something that matches up with with anything scientific at all, or it's just kind of a fun way to think about these things. But but I do

think it does vary from person to person. As someone who does listen to a fair amount of of ambient music and also some things that are categorized as noise music, I know that I I have a different thresh old compared to say my wife, Like there's stuff that that I will enjoy that that she might barely tolerate, and and we're continually working out those borders as we play

music in the house. One example of variation on this that I wonder about, I can't remember if I mentioned this a minute ago, but I wonder about, like, what are the natural limits on tempo? So if if you have something that is occurring at regular intervals, uh, people will you know, can eventually start to pick that out as a kind of rhythm and maybe if there are certain tonalities associated with it, most people would say, Okay, I think this is the sound is intended to be

a kind of music. But like how slow can the repetition of of whatever that sound is get or how fast can it get before you have foreclosed the possibility that anybody listening to it will think that it's supposed to be musical sound. If you imagine a song has has one beat per minute, would most people who hear that sound likely to perceive that as rhythm or perceive it as music spontaneously unless they were primed to in some way? I would guess probably not, But like what's

the limit there? Like how slow can a tempo get? And consequently also how fast can it get before you reach the point where people are not hearing music, They're just hearing kind of a buzz or a whir As I say, this thunder is rumbling right outside my window.

I don't know if he likes picking that up. It also reminds me of the the fictional drug in the Dune novels, Simuda, which that that which, of course you In the books, we're told that individuals will take Simuda in in order to enjoy Simuda music, which is a special kind of music that is just going to sound like just straight garbage unless you are currently using this mysterious narcotic was it like a chopped in screwed kind

of thing. I don't know, but it also I think there was something similar in uh in a Brass Eyes Get, the British satire series from Chris Morris Um in which there were people who would take this fictional drug called cake and they would listen to some sort of music and of course it likes Samuda music. It sounds like garbage unless you are on this fictional drug. Have you seen the Cake episode, Joe, No, I haven't pressed. Oh

it's it's so good. They are actually trolld um, actual British politicians into comment to commenting on the cake epidemic. Oh nice, nice, well like condemning this, this epidemic of degenerate culture. Yes, yes, calling out the cake in particular. Nice. Al right, Well, why don't we do a little bit of weird house cinema listener mail while we're at it. Uh, this is a really fun one. And this is where we got the title for this particular episode of listener mail.

We heard from the home dad abroad, who I've I believe it was written in before because I remember that that moniker um. So they say, hey, Robert and Joe, just a silly little personal connection to John Sackson, the star of your Weird House Celebration Cannibal Apocalypse that I thought you might enjoy. And at this point the home Dad Abroad points out that they were employed as a key grip on a small budget film many years ago.

It was like a medieval themed film that starred Mark Singer, Claudia Christian, and John Saxon, who, he says, it was a quote a quiet, contemplative and kind man if there ever was one. So wait, so Mark Singer was that beast Master. That's beast Master himself. Yes, and we confirmed before we started recording this. Claudia Christian was in another movie that we did for Weird House Cinema, which was Arena, the alien boxing movie. Yes, yes, she was the love

interest in Arena. Yeah, as she's also I think we didn't realize this when we recorded that episode, but I just recently found out that she was also in one of the movies that many years ago was one of my favorite terrible, terrible movies, which was the Steven Seagal film Half Past Dead starring Seagal and jaw Rule and Morris Chestnut. And uh, it's it is a truly awful film, but I remember it got one of the best Roger

Ebert descriptors of any movie I've ever seen. In his review, he said that half Past Dead is is like an alarm that is going off in an unoccupied room. It does its job, it stops, and no one cares. All right, well,

the home dat abroad continues here quote. During the shooting of the climactic sword fight betwixt Singer's Lancelot and Saxon's I want to say Voldemort, but definitely predated Harry Potter, I was moving along with the actors, holding a four by four soft bounce board for reflecting sunlight as phil onto the actor's face is to soften the harsh shadows

on mostly overtight handheld close ups. I don't think the camera could even see the swords a good thing at that as Saxon lost his grip on the unnecessarily heavy and sharp punk of metal that the art department provided that took the kinetic energy from singer swords impact to carry it hurtling through the air, finding a point first purchase in the upper left center of the bounce board, I held an inch away from my chest, knocking me

backwards and stumbling to the ground. The sword plunged through the inch thick layer of styrofoam, through the quarter inch foam core board, jutting out half an inch from my flesh, almost perfectly poised above my heart woe. After the director murmured cut and a couple of people asked if I was okay. I looked up to the smiling silhouette of John Saxon extending a hand to help me up. Next time. I won't miss he said, I have that bounced board to this very day, signed by him in character. Oh

what a story. Uh? And then and then they had uh. And my son, who was twelve at the time, was unimpressed by the controversy surrounding the unexceptional Cannibal Holocaust. After he watched it, cheers the home dat Abroad. Okay, well you heard it here, every all twelve year old holocaust. No. No, I would say, absolutely, absolutely not. Um. Maybe, and I'm not sure if the Home Dad Abroad meant cannibal Apocalypse of cannibal Holocaust. But I I don't think either film

is necessarily for twelve year olds. But that's just me. But I don't know twelve year olds are different. I don't know, twelve year olds are different these days. Everything is different. When you've had a brush with a sword through the heart from the hand of John Saxon, I think that's got to change you in in in every

conceivable sense. Anyway, that's a great story. Yeah, okay. One last message, this comes from our WA area, says, Hello, guys, I'm emailing you about your recent weird house cinema episode on Deep Blue Sea. My friend and I recently watched this movie together and I can't seem to get over this scene in the shot where L L cool J is hiding in the oven and it is suddenly turned on. Did the shark do that on purpose because it is a super intelligent shark or was it just a lucky coincidence? Uh?

Very good question. Are I do not know how the shark turned on the oven? I mean, you know how oven knobs are there. You can occasionally turn them on just with your body if you're like squeezing past somebody in the kitchen or something. So I imagine a giant

shark might do that as well. I want to hear from people out there, how many have had this perilous problem of doing things in the kitchen while listening to earbuds or headphones and having that dastardly chord grab and snag and hook over things like knobs and drawer handles, and oh that's dangerous. You know, even a you got a knife handle kind of off the edge of the counter. It can be it can be perilous. That's a good reason why if you listen to headphones in the kitchen,

invest in some wireless ones. Oh wow, I never even thought about that. I mean, it's frustrating enough when your head like earbuds, cord or whatever gets caught on something, but if there's their knives and fire and boiling water involved, all the worse live lobsters getting caught up in your headphone cord lying across the room. My cooking and kitchen experiences in general became became filled with a lot less screaming and and and swearing once I got some some

bluetooth headphones. But anyway, I'm going with the shark did turn on the oven on purpose, because that's a smart shark. You know, they can use their they've got their surprisingly uh dexterous with the tip of their nose. Yeah and true, I mean that's what that's what's up in Deep bluecy and the shirt. The sharks are super intelligent, they have an agenda, so we have every reason to lean into

that explanation. We didn't even touch on this, did we, in the our deeply seated discussion, But that's ultimately the reveal that the sharks are not just harassing the humans for revenge. They're escaping from their prison and they're using the humans to achieve this. Right, Yeah, they want to get out. Yeah, they want freedom, which again is weird

that we're supposed to be anti shark in this. Well, you know, if it's just the sharks versus still in Scars Guard and Saffron Burrows, you might be more sympathetic to the shark's side. But hey, what did ll cool j Ever do to them? He's just he's just a great cook. And they go in there and they start messing up his kitchen. They try to burn him in an oven. That you can't do that to LLL I know, all he wants to do is create the perfect omelet. That's for any of this, Okay, so are what goes on?

Another scene that made us burst out laughing was the one where they are explaining the background of the research and why they decided to use quote big brain sharks to the Samuel L. Jackson character, and he replies by saying, using sharks to harvest more protein, like it was a logical expected course of action. This is especially funny to us because we are both researchers in the biology field

and often have to produce proteins for lab experiments. However, the commonly used practice involves using programmed bacteria or yeast to produce the proteins, as they can produce very large amounts of the desired protein fast and at very low costs, especially compared to a research facility in the middle of the sea that houses only three sharks. Very astute. I agree that the movie that it would have been harder to make this movie if they had gone with bacteria

or yeast instead of sharks. But I don't know, maybe you could have done it smart yeast. I mean, I guess if you wanted to make a blob film, that's one way to go about it, you know. Oh yeah, yeah. Anyway, R says, thank you so much for the great podcast. It has really helped me stay in enlightened during those long, tedious lab experiments. Best area. Well, thank you so much. All right, Well, that's that's what we have for you here today. That is the mail bag for this installment

of Stuff to Blow Your Mind Listener Mail. But we'll be back because there's more stuff we didn't read. There's more stuff we're still reading and processing, and of course we asked that you keep it coming. If you have thoughts on episodes that are coming out now, thoughts on past episodes, rerun to of Vault episodes, Weird How Cinema episodes, or thoughts about what future episodes of the show could be, let us know we would love to hear from you.

In the meantime, you can check out Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener Mail on Monday's core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Tuesday and Thursday. On Wednesday we do the Artifact and on Friday's we do Weird How Cinema. That's our time to just look at a weird or interesting film. Huge thanks as always to our

excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.