Listener Mail: Phobos Rising

do you mind if I do this? First message from Eric, go for it, Eric says, Hi, Joe and Robert and producer Seth loved the episodes on Phobos and Demos. I had a couple of things I wanted to mention. I might have missed it, but I didn't hear you mentioned that Phobos orbits so close to Mars that it appears to travel backwards, meaning that it rises in mars western

sky and sets in the east. This is because it is lower than area synchronous orbit, or an orbital altitude at which a satellite would complete one orbit per one rotation of the planet. Demos is above ario stationary orbit, so it rises in the east like the Sun, but its orbit is low enough that if it rose at sunset, it would set at about midnight rather than close to dawn. Earth's moon has a similar motion, but it only moves

about thirteen degrees per day relative to the stars. You mentioned that Phobos has gravity, so you would still fall down if you jumped. While this is true, it's incomplete. A typical jump speed is about three meters per second or about five ft per second, which means that an equivalent jump on Phobos would get you to a height of about nine hundred meters or three thousand feet. The escape velocity of Phobos is eleven meters per second, which is quite a bit more than your typical jump speed

of between two and four meters per second. That said, a high jumper could get above two kilometers, and a pole alter could almost certainly reach escape velocity. Wow. That's interesting, though, I wonder if that's calculating pull vaulter speed, UH vertical speed or or horizontal speed. I'm not sure, but anyway, Eric goes on Demos is another story. It's escape velocity is two point five meters per second, which is definitely

possible for anyone in reasonably good physical shape. So if you landed there on demos, you would probably want to either wait yourself down or tether yourself if you go

out on a space walk. Note that my numbers don't take into account the fact that the force of gravity decreases as you get further away from the surface, or the dramatic changes in gravity due to the extreme variation in terrain height, which on Phobos varies from zero point four percent to zero point nine percent of Earth gravity at the highest and lowest points, respectively. Anyways, just some things I find fascinating about the Martian moons. Thanks for

the great episode and keep up the good work. Eric. Oh that's excellent. Thank you Eric for writing in with that. I I know the backwards uh nature of Phobos. I know that came up in the research, and for some reason or another I ended up not putting it in. I think I just maybe got too distracted by the other weird things about it. But but yes, this is very much the case. Yeah, awesome email, Eric. Thank you love stuff like this. All right, what do we have next?

What does the mail bot Carney have for us? Okay, well, this next one is very short, so maybe I'll do this one too and then let you take over after that.

So this one is from Brian, and this is responding to the part in our Phobos and Demos part one where we talked about the conspiracy theory guy Alex Jones claiming in an interview that Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut the Apollo Love an astronaut who's been to the Moon, that Aldrin had admitted to him that the Phobos monolith, this big boulder on the surface of Phobos, was the work of Aliens and that it had something to do with Egypt and all this stuff. Uh. And I was like, what,

I don't believe buzz Aldrin said that. So I looked it up and in the interview that he was referring to the claim he attributed to Aldrin was actually something older and said to make fun of, like he said it as a joke and then explicitly disavowed it. He

was like laughing and said, obviously I don't believe that. Uh. So Brian is responding to that, and Brian says, I couldn't help but be reminded of how poorly text captures conversation, either by accident or by ill intent, depending on the interpreter. The best popular example is my cousin Vinny and Ralph Maccio's character being interviewed by the police. Rather than repeat the issue, here is the video and Brian attaches a link to this scene from My Cousin Vinny, Rob, Do

you do you know this movie? You know the scene? I do not. I've I've never seen My Cousin Vinny and did vaguely aware of it because of you know, though it's supposed to be good, has a good performance as good actors in it. Yeah, this is a classic like legal comedy, I guess it's also it's like a

weird like it's a fish out of water movie. So it's got Joe Pesci playing this tough guy from Brooklyn who happens to be the cousin of a kid played by Ralph Maccio who gets uh who gets falsely accused of murder in a small town in Alabama while he's

on the way to the beach. And so there's a scene in the movie where Ralph Maccio and his friend have just been driving along on the highway and they get pulled over by police and they end up being interrogated by police for a murder, but they don't realize that that's why they're they've been captured. They think that they've been captured because one of them accidentally shoplifted a can of tuna, and so because they think they're they're on account of the tuna, they're all they're all just

saying like, yeah, we'll just admit to it. It's fine, We're sorry, we did it. Sorry. I guess it's taking too long to explain anyway. The the sheriff eventually asks them, so when did you shoot the clerk, and Ralph Machio responds, I shot the clerk. I shot the clerk. Uh with incredulity. But then the transcript of that interview is read back and ward with him just repeatedly admitting that he shot the clerk. And I think that's what Brian is getting

at here. Okay, I guess. Well, like I said, I've never seen it, but but I am familiar with it because of course Fred Gwynn is in it. Hermann Judge, I think. But yeah, he was of course Herman Munster and he played Jed Crandell in the Pet Cemetery that Road. Yeah, yeah, he was. Arguably I think he was. He was maybe the best part about that movie, Like he gave a really solid performance. Yes, and in my cousin Vinny, he plays a very very uh stiff Alabama judge who does

not take kindly to any any Brooklyn nonsense. But anyway, Brian, I mean, so, if you were to look at a transcript of what buzz Aldrin said, I mean, even in the transcript, it would be clear because he would say, I don't He says, I don't believe that. But if you listen to it, it's even clearer because he's like laughing when he's saying the thing that is attributed to him. I mean, no, nobody genuinely listening to this could think that he literally meant, yes, that the Aliens were practicing

building a pyramid on the moon Phobos. That's obviously not what he meant to be, and it's clear through what he says later, but it's also clear in the tone. All Right, here's a short message from Olydia. Olydia writes, uh, more moons. Love the podcast and definitely interested in more space exploration. Thanks for the introduction to the Expanse. I mean, okay, we we we we must have sent more moons. Yeah, yeah, And indeed the Expanse continues to be a fun series.

I think they have, like the TV adaptation. I think they have maybe one more season coming out, maybe two. I don't know. It's and then it's one of those that I think it could potentially be picked up by somebody else. Uh. And of course they're There are a number of books out there, and the books are good too. I read the first one, and um, and my wife's been reading on him this summer. All right. This next

message is about owns in Wyoming. I think this is a response to an episode where we asked whether we had any listeners in the very sparsely populated U S state of Wyoming, and we heard from Brandon. Brandon is not the only Wyoming eight what what do you call him? Wyominger's not the only one to respond, but Brandon says, I exist. During your episode about bones, you mentioned Wyoming, and surely I am not the only avid listener to

your podcast, but I most certainly do exist. In the interest of full transparency, there are much better places for you to come in Wyoming than Uh. Brandon says that structure. I think we were talking about a house made out of bones that's somewhere in Wyoming, or it's made with rocks that contained fossils to that extent. Yes, Brandon says, I have seen it myself talking about this house, and you're gonna have a hard time setting up. Wait, this is referring. I think we said we might do a

live show there. Anyway, Brandon says, the Medicine Bow area itself though it's worth a visit a lot of Native American his story there and you can actually see very close and actual medicine wheel. Brandon, Well, I'm still that he did. You know, Brandon still did not talk me out of it, because this still sounds like a great place to record. We'll go there. It'll be difficult to set up. We won't tell anybody about it, so it'll just be us, uh and and then we're done, and

you'll never know if we were actually there, if we're lying. Yeah, yeah, no, no, we would actually go there, okay, but we just we wouldn't tell anybody, or maybe you know, we'd we'd let we let Brandon know. Then Brandon could could watch like through the window, I can't remember it has windows, or not sign it. So we let Carney press his hands into the wet cement and signed his name. All right, here is a bit of a listener mail. This is

from mars uh, someone who identifies as Mars. I guess so Mars is their name, Where Mars is the name of of a god, people can be called Mars. To go for it, they write, Hello, Robert and Joe. I have happily added stuff to blow your mind to my listening list since the beginning of COVID and check off most episode except I'm sad to confess I avoid Weird House Cinema for the sole reason that my current viewing list is longer than my life expectancy and I don't

want to add anymore. Must seas fair enough, um, they continue. I make my living in the aviation industry and have been watching the evolution of drones closely, not often with excitement. However, this one really got me interested. The smell o coopter. I'm completely in awe of this type of development. See and then they included a link. Although does this bring us closer to the singularity anyway? I love the show and love the rabbit holes I can get sent down.

Keep up the great work, Mars, so I followed through

to this link. So this is a link to an article on the web page for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers the a s m E. And the the article is called an Autonomous Drone Searches with Smell from April by Michael Abrams, and so yeah, it describes this tiny autonomous aerial vehicle that is guided by smells that was designed by researchers who were like, hey, you know, are our cars are starting to sort of see based on light and our phones are listening, right, so so

why not add more senses to robots? And so they tried to make this um old factorial lee sensitive if that's the word robot, that is based on the olfactory anatomy of moths. I'll just quote from Abraham's article here. Moths are some of the most sensitive chemical sensors of the insects. Thanks to some two odd million years of refinement, they can find flowers or mates miles away. They're also easy to breed and handle. The men Duca sex to hawk moths used by the researchers are palm sized with

antennae that are roughly toothpick in diameter. The months were anesthetized in a refrigerator before researchers detached the antennae, which stays biologically and chemically active for four hours. Researchers connected the antennae to a circuit board with tiny wires placed at either end. They attached the antennae sensor to an inexpensive off the shelf quad copter to create the device.

When the antenna picks up a scent, it sends an electrical signal to the circuit board that directs the drone according to a simple algorithm. This is this is this is dark, this is weird. It goes to places I didn't expect. The smellicopter. Yeah, it has a cute name, though I did not think we were going to get

like a bio borg thing here. Uh now I'm wondering. Okay, so there's gonna be like the drug dogs of the future, Like you just release these over a city and they like sniff out everybody, every house that has cannabis in it. But but the author here claims they cite at least one idea of how this could be used, which is to locate disaster survivors in a disaster zone. So if it's actually used for that, that sounds cool. Yeah yeah, but yeah, certainly nefarious uses for it. Less ethical uses

for it come to mind. Uh. The The author here also says that it could be used to pinpoint chemical leaks or to find the source of greenhouse gases. So okay, but anyway, Mars, Yeah, this this is very strange, so so thanks for sending this our way. All right. Our next bit of listener mail is one we meant to record. I actually did record for last week's listener mail, but then we held it back. Yeah. This was from one of the many Dans that wrote to us last week.

We originally recorded a response to it, but this message mentions the Digital Underground, the hip hop group which we discussed in our response. And then right after we recorded the episode, but before it was released, we saw news on the Internet about the death of Gregory Jacobs, also known as shock G of the Digital Underground. We thought it'd be kind of weird to release our talking about that without addressing the fact that he had passed away,

so we wanted to rerecord it for today. All right. This one comes to us from Dan and says Hello, Robert, Joe and Seth as an Avid. Stuff to blow your mind list nerve for years, there is one film you have sometimes mentioned that I am surprised you have not covered yet on Weird House Cinema. No, not Highlander or even Highlander to the quickening, the film I'm speaking of is nothing but Trouble. This was a film I saw

midway through back in the nineties on HBO. I had no idea what it was about, really, but immediately felt like I needed to take a shower afterwards due to the high amount of ikeyness, gore, and nauseous prosthetic makeup on Dan Ackroyd and those weird mutant twins. However, this was also the first time I heard Digital Underground without knowing who they were, so it wasn't all bad. I really enjoyed your episode on Weird Music from a couple of weeks back, as well as the companion episode on

Record Store Society. I would like to recommend one music video, although it may not be weird enough for your taste. This is the video for George Clinton's electro funk classic Atomic Dog. I've included a link below. Also, can you please explain the phrase throwing cabbages into the audience? Rob mentioned when you were discussing post bly in Michigan, and I have no idea what this means. Dan Okay, so a number of things to address in this message. Uh,

nothing but Trouble. I am pretty sure that came up when we were talking about the Ridley Scott movie Prometheus, and I was deriding, um, what's his name, Guy Pierce's makeup in that movie by saying that it was so awful he looks like dan Ackroyd and Nothing but Trouble, which is kind of true. I've never seen all of Nothing but Trouble. It's one of those movies I've seen like parts of multiple times. They used to show it on TV a lot, or at least I don't know.

It is a movie that is so ugly it literally hurts. It's literally painful on the eyes and like in parts of the head as you're watching it. It is a unique film, though it is uniquely weird. It is. It is a thing that emerged from dan Ackroyd's strange mind, and I do love it for that's I guess it's it's nobody's favorite movie, but I do find it perversely interesting.

And indeed that scene, uh where well, there are two scenes I think we're digital underground performed, but the main scene kind of coming back to Fred Gwinn there's this uh this country courthouse scene and Digital Underground is on tour and they've been brought in and uh a charge with speeding or something. I don't remember, but they basically perform as part of their defense or something to that effect.

So there's this huge musical number with Digital Underground performing You Got Shocked Gene there he he he he takes on the Humpty Hump persona you Got Tupac in there as well, and then Dan Ackroyd's grotesque old man character is uh is playing the organ. So it's it's tremendous and I do I imagine for some people it was there their introduction to Digital Underground, which was just a you know, fabulous act, and Shock g was, you know, undeniably a huge talent, so it was it was sad

to hear about his passing. Yeah, I was listening to the Humpty Dance earlier today. It's fantastic. Yeah. The song they do, uh, same old song is the same old song that they perform ended in um nothing but Trouble. I don't know, I think so anyway, great track as well, a number of hits and well beyond you know, just the you know, the Humpty Dance, which because the most famous uh digital underground track. They had so many great, great tracks that came out, so uh, if you if

you've never heard them, go look them up. And if you haven't heard him in a while, uh, now is a good time. But wait, what was this thing? Also? Yeah you said that, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh. By the way, I'm glad to hear you mentioned Record Store Society, which, of course, uh, if you haven't heard our crossovers with Seth, our producer Seth has a podcast called The Record Store

Society where they talk about music. We did a couple of crossover episodes, so you can check those out, or you can look up The Record Store Society wherever you get your podcasts. But also, yeah, in that crossover episode we did with seth, um, we talked about a music video called Possibly in Michigan, and you said that it was not quite at the throwing cabbages into the audience level of comedy. So I think that's what Dan is

asking about. What does that mean? That was just my sort of on the spur of the moment attempt to try and explain how I felt about the varying levels

at which creators and performers and composers, etcetera. Are aware of the audience, perhaps acknowledging the audience, toying with the audience, and in the most extreme cases like straight up trolling the audience, you know, or even provoking the audience, which would be uh yeah, And I think I divided into two categories there, But if I had to rethink it, I would say, you've got you got four different levels. Roughly, there's their performers that are throwing cabbages at each other

on the stage. They are performers that are doing that and then occasionally allowing cabbage to fly into the audience. Then there are the the performers who are throwing cabbages into the audience, uh, you know, with intention, and then there cases where they're throwing them at audience members. And uh, I don't I'm still not sure this actually clarifies any thing, but that's what I was talking about. Okay, So for you, possibly in Michigan was throwing cabbages into the audience, but

not at the audience, I guess. So yeah, wait, maybe

I'm misremembering it. I don't think I'm going to explore this topic too much further and go into like a full thesis, but it's just sort of like the loose way I sometimes think of Like sometimes I feel like um, for instance, in electronic music and I D I d M, sometimes there'll be a track and the track is really great, but it will have some like atrocious title that sometimes I feel like it's just like the creator is having having a laugh at the perhaps at the audience's expense.

But sometimes it doesn't matter because the track is so good, you know. But then also sometimes the track is just really weird and weird to the point where I'm like, come on, are you just testing me to see what I'll put up with as a listener. I don't know, you know. I feel like that's where there's some significant

overlap between electronic musicians and fast food menus. For sometimes you ever get the feeling you're being trolled by a fast food menu because they're trying to get you to say the name of a fast food menu item that is just absolutely uh just fatal to your personal dignity to say out loud. Yeah and yeah. I mean it can also take place in um, you know, independent restaurants

that have kind of cute sie titles for things. Yeah, and it's like will I say that out loud, or will I just say I would like this sandwich or something to that effect. Is it time for weird House Cinema Listener Mail? I guess it is. We already sort of got in there in the last message. Okay, so

this is from James. James says, Hi, guys, I've been listening for several months and have been loving the podcast, and I'm overdue in reaching out to give you props regarding the Turbo Graphics sixteen segment of a recent listener Mail episode. I think this all got started when we were talking about Gunhead having some kind of adaptation for the Turbo Graphics sixteen. Um. But anyway, in a previous Listener mails, somebody brought up a game for the turbographics

that was like the most bizarre concept. It was like a racing RPG, so you know where you'd have to go around to different places on a map and like meet and talk to people and convince them to race with you. Uh, fantastic concept. But James here has an answer of what this is. James says, it is a

racing game. It is called Final Lap twin. It's actually a hybrid RPG racer with an overworld map complete with random encounters, in which defeating opponents in races earns you character money that can be spent on various car upgrades in towns. There's an interesting boss battle mechanic too. It's a terrific game. I mean, that sounds so weird. I kind of have to look it up. I'm wondering what other types of like niche games could also add an

RPG element. Could you have like an RPG pinball game where you have to like go around to different pinball cabinets and talk to people about them. I don't know, maybe, I mean it sounds kind of good put the right spin on it, and maybe some I don't make it.

I mean, in a way, it reminds me of the various mini games that you have in sandbox games, you know, like Big Grand, Theft Auto or cyberpunk style um things where you're doing a lot of role playing and whatnot, and then you're talking to people about playing pool with them, or playing poker with them, or engaging in races with them. Right, playing cards in Red did redemption and stuff, Yeah, which was fun. That was my favorite part of that game. I think, yeah, yeah, they should just made a full

on poker. Sim My funniest experience ever playing that game was I spent a long time playing cards in a room where like night and day came and went and uh and you know, in the game, not in real life, but I want a bunch of money. I was like victorious, and I walked out of the cards room. And then just immediately the moment I walked out the door, witnessed my horse getting hit by a train. Yeah. You win some, you lose some. Yeah, okay, James's message goes on, Uh,

let's see here. James says, the rest of the games mentioned in that segment had me smiling, nodding, and reminiscing fondly to other honorable mentions. Alien Crush, a grotesque HR Geeger inspired pinball game. Hey there you go. I didn't even know this was coming. A pinball game. Uh. Dragon Spirit, an overhead shooter where the player controls a fire breathing dragon and silent debuggers, a sci fi horror game competently capturing the tension and terror of the original Alien movie. Huh,

terrible title, but you know that that sounds good. I did look up stills of um that Geeger pinball machine and Yeah, it does kind of look it's geeger Ask, but more purply and pink. Yeah, it's like what if you were playing pinball, but the pinball was the insides of an alien you were dissecting. I just looked it up. Alien Crush has a really good picture of an alien on like its box sort. It's got this thing with many eyes, kind of a big pink v with you know,

I don't know, at least at least ten eyes. Anyway, James goes on, I've been loving the Weird House Cinema episodes as well. I was intrigued enough by your discussion of frogs that I bought myself a used copy on eBay while listening to the pod. I trust it will be four dollars well spent. James. Yeah, let us know

the verdict once you watch it. This goes back a ways, but the Battle for Indoor episode brought back enough nostalgia for me to dig out the old VHS copy that my dad helped me record back when it aired during one of their rare free preview weeks back in the eighties. Oh this is when they give you like the Disney Channel for free for a week. I remember this. People will take a lot off of it. Yep, they have.

You'd bust out the VCR, you need you programmed the VCR, or you'd be there to to manually remove commercials if it was a channel that had commercials. Yeah, yeah, uh. And then James says, and wow, that one may have been best left to my childhood memories as it does not have the same charm for me as an adult. You guys are brave, smiling bass again, kudos for an entertaining and educational podcast. It's proven itself to be an

integral part of my remote work. Sanity cheers James. All Right, Yeah, I don't know the battle for Indoor held up for me, but maybe I would say maybe I'm more foolish than brave, But but I like that one. And again I should mention that the those that e wak movies are on Disney Plus now they they finally they listen to us. I guess they were like Rob and Joe said that we need to put we need to put the ewak movies back up, or we need to put them up

where people can can can watch them. And now you can't. All right, We're gonna go ahead and close the mail bag. Here but I'm excited to pick up where we left off next time, because we didn't even get two discussions of more discussions of Sean Connery's accent and Highlander and so forth. There's some good stuff, yeah, already in the chamber for next week. So join us again next Monday

for more listener mail. And and hey, send us listener mail, impress us, send us something really interesting that we won't be able to resist reading on air. That's right. And in the meantime you can check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weird how Cinema in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed, which you'll find wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens

to be. We asked that you rate, review, and subscribe, and you know, tell people about us, you know, so say, hey, we heard this cool episode on frogs a fabulous motion picture, so um yeah, just share us with your friends and family. 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, or just to say hello, say something friendly, 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.