Listener Mail: Princes of the Universe

is sent. It does not emerge spontaneously. I mean I guess it could, but that would we would get so much just completely nonsensical listener mail. It would only be on rare occasions that that coherent sentences would form if we were just pulling them out of the abyss. Rob, do you want to do this? First one from David? Sure? This one comes to us from David, and this is what David has to say. Hello there, Robert, Joe, and Seth.

I am a sixth grade English teacher in North Texas and wanted to thank you guys for providing such great content. Our curriculum in my school district includes a section about science fiction, and we read the terrific short story Key Item by Isaac Asimov. Not to give anything away, but the story is about an all powerful computer the humans are dependent on, refusing to complete any work until a

very humanlike key item is added to its programming. Prior to reading the story allowed to my students, I listened to your episode Punished the Machine, and I found that to be a terrific segue to have a discussion with

my students about the future and legality of robots. I spoke about the interesting and thought provoking questions you guys discussed in these episodes and managed to tie it in with the unfortunate incident that involved a tesla and two people who sadly passed away after it drove into a tree. My students were really engaged in the conversation, and they themselves brought up some interesting questions and ideas about how

the future involving robots may seem. Anyways, I just once again wanted to thank you all for the great content you have put out and hopefully I've turned some of my students onto your podcast. Keep up the great work, Sincerely, David Oh. Thanks David, Well, I'm curious now what questions your students brought up. I want to know, like where where the mind of a younger person goes with this? Yeah, and you know, I don't remember key item. I don't

know if I've read that one. I did recently pick up I Robot, and I was just gonna read some of it to my son. And we started just on the first one in there, and it starts with like a little girl playing with a robot, and uh, we read that part, but then it switched to like a like a stereotypical like nineteen fifties um dad reading the newspaper. It got kind of boring, quick saying. And then also I realized, oh, I don't know the story. Maybe I skipped read skipped this story when I read or I

Robot back when I was a kid. So maybe I'll just come back and make sure I pick out a really good one to introduce him to as him off with. I think if that's the first one, I think that the little girl is the young Susan Calvin who grows up to become the Robot psychologist. That's right, That's right, yes, And yeah, I guess I'm just more familiar with the later Susan Calvin stories. Um uh so yeah, I I want to make sure that I read a really good

one to him. Um, so I may skip around a bit, and I know super dark things don't usually happen in Isaac guys in that short stories. But I also I wasn't sure. It's like I'm just flying into this story with blinders on. I don't remember. H Yeah. I mean I read those the I Robots stories when I was pretty young, and I remember getting into them, even though thinking back on them now, I mean they are all very interesting. Uh they're very I recall, uh, free of

extraneous sort of literary detail. They're more they're sort of tight thought experiments, and they're kind of dry in that sense, like you're not going to get lots of descriptions of the feast and and things like that. But he he like the idea of the little girl playing with the robots. So yeah, all right, should do this next message about Dissolver of Worlds. This is from Brett, who's written in

a bunch of times now, but chemistry related topics. Brett says, Hello, gentlemen, I hope this note finds you are well and enjoying life. Wanted to comment that that that almost sounds like a threat. I know you didn't mean it that way. Anyway, I wanted to comment briefly on your recent episode for Dissolver of Worlds, which was great. By the way, As a chemist, we use the phrase to dissolve as a way of using a solvent to break up a solid into its

molecular entity. For instance, when you add sugar to coffee, yes I'm writing this in the morning, the sugar dissolves into the hot aqueous solution. So what does dissolving mean. It refers to the ability of the solvent to break the bonds that form a crystal. So each sugar molecule

now is surrounded by the aqueous constituents. Now, when you mentioned acids like HF for hydrofluoric acid, this is a different form of dissolving because something like hydrofluoric acid actually reacts with glass because of the strength of the silicon fluorine bond, one of the strongest in chemistry. In essence, one is performing a chemical reaction or a chemical transformation, because comes out is different than what was put in.

I've mentioned in the past that we use deuterated solvents in order to take an n m R that's nuclear magnetic resonance of compounds that we make in order to characterize them, and if the solvent reacted with our compound, then we have a problem. As for a metaphor, dissolver of worlds would be more of how one substance is transformed into another, be it by an idea or physical manipulation. But to simply dissolve would not change the substance at

all at the atomic level. As a side note, if you take table salt and dissolve it in water and then let the water evaporate, sometimes you end up with these flat, square crystals that are really cool looking. Yes I've seen this before, bread as sometimes it can make um almost unsettling little pyramids that are you know, like what the Tartar grades have built as a monument to the soul of their dead king or something. But anyway, Brett finishes saying thank you again for such great fodder

for the mind. Looking forward to hearing your voices again next week. Cheers Brett. All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Amelia Hi, Robert Joan Seth. I've always really enjoyed the diversity of topics you cover in your show, and I really love, hitting play and being surprised by the topics I hear throughout the day. I've learned so much. This is a huge throwback, but it was so surprised to find out that not everyone

feels pain in their dreams. I have vivid memories of being sick, hurt, and even unbelievably tired in my dreams, though I rarely feel that way when I wake up. I'm really enjoying weird how cinema. I love cheesy horror movies, and these have all been right up my alley. I've been a sporadic listener for about three years now. I started listening when I took a job in an animal research facility to keep my mind busy during the surprisingly

monotonous process of animal husbandry in a research setting. I've been meaning to write, you know, to suggest you cover laboratory animal science as a topic on the show. You guys frequently reference papers which you use research animals. I'm sure you would find it really interesting to delve into the history of animal res church how much of our

daily lives has been improved due to their sacrifice. For example, the primates and ferrets who sacrifice made the COVID vaccine available as fast as it was, and the alternative methods being research to replace animals in medical research. I also think you guys would find a very elegant way to discuss the controversy and ethics behind animal research. While I'm on the topic, I'm absolutely sure that you would be

able to make a great episode about compassion fatigue. While I experience it as an animal technician, vets, nurses and various other professionals who care for people and animals which are sick and dying experience it as well. COVID has brought a little more attention to it, and I think you guys would really be able to make a good episode on the topic. I'm still trying to convince my fiance that he would absolutely love your show, and just saw that you did a two parter on Star Wars

Alien Netcropsy. I think I may succeed tonight when I show him that. Thanks for all the info and laughs, Amelia sounds like a good bet, though, I think you've got to do more than show it to him. Look uh well, I mean, I as sump she needs play it for but but you know, uh, that's that's why we we try to do a variety of topics on the show. Is like, we know that not not every topic is gonna be for every listener, but you know they're gonna be someth They're gonna call to to two

new listeners and and then know the listeners alike. All right, Well, we got a few more dealing with the Star Wars episodes. I wonder if you should read these, rob because these referenced species from things that I have no idea about. Okay, okay, all right, well here's the first one. List one comes to us from Jeff Hi, guys love. The two part are on Star Wars alien biology. I have a couple of suggestions for alien species from the Star Trek universe

whose biology might make a good discussion topic. Horta original series episode Devil in the Dark, a silicon based life form that secretes acid to dissolve solid rock, which it moves through every fifty thousand years, all here to die off except for a single mother Horta who watches over the next generation of x. Uh. Some obvious biological parallels there. Yeah, and I haven't seen a lot of Original truck I'm not really an Original Truck Um fan, but I did

watch this episode when I was a kid. I think I was staying with my aunt and I got to I got to to like or maybe not, I don't know. This is one of the rare there. There are only a couple of episodes I've seen, and this is one of them. Um, But I probably watched it when I was too young. It was maybe a little too high minded for like a little little kid, but I do remember the creature being interesting. Luckily, the next specimen that Jeff brings up is from Next Generation, which I am

very familiar with. Um, Jeff writes. Trill introduced on the Next Generation. This species was further fleshed out through the Deep Space nine character Jadzia Dacks. Trill are a joint species consisting of a long lived slug like symbian living inside of a humanoid host body. A symbion is transferred to a new host whenever the current one dies, preserving the memories of previous lifetimes which the host can draw upon. Hope you find this interesting. Keep up the great work, Jeff. Okay,

so yeah, you did watch Next Generation? What's the deal with Trill? You you into these? Yeah? Yeah, this is like I said this and like Jeff said that these were there. There was certainly more of them on Deep Space nine because because you had dacks um and so it's like a humanoid um and this sluglike organism and they form this symbiotic relationship and become one being and uh and so there. I don't remember all the details, but their whole episodes where they get into sort of

the nature of this in their culture. The idea that that the you will eventually fuse with this slug like creature and become one sounds fun. Yeah, alright. This one deals with let's see Star Wars, Alien Netcropsy, and Weird House Cinema. It's from Tontry. Tontry says, hey, guys, I've been catching up on the Weird House Cinema episodes and just watched Lash listen to the Silent Films double feature.

I loved Cinderella, particularly. My dad is a Balinese shadow puppeteer, so I've definitely seen Prince Ahmed, but I was unaware of Cinderella. One note. I think the magic tree she keeps talking to is supposed to be a willow tree growing on the grave of her dead mother in the Grimm's version, which is why it's growing in a graveyard, and the birds are kind of extensions of the tree and the soul of the dead mother. There are other grim stories with trees serving as vehicles of communication for

the murdered people buried beneath, like the Juniper Tree. For more a lot of Reineger style animation, check out some of the Decembrists videos, like their video for The Tane and the Bachelor and the Bride. I've actually seen the December of syn concerts, so sometimes they do very theatrical stuff, and I have not watched these videos yet, but I think I've seen bits of them before, and I think

they used this similar style like silhouette animation like she did. Anyway, Tontry goes on to say, as for Star Wars, you may already have this book, but if not, Rob you and the Boy will love it particularly. It is called The Wildlife of Star Wars, a Field Guide, and it is purely illustrations and creature factoids by Terry Whitlock, a creature designer for Star Wars slash Lucasfilm. I think the book is out of print, but you can still find

often expensive copies online. It's worth it to get the hardcover purely because it's embossed like lizard skin, and I'm not sure if they did that with the paperback. And then she attaches a link. Yeah, so I immediately went out in order to copy of this I I got. I didn't get the hard back. I went a little cheap and went got a used copy of the soft back. But I'm excited to get it in. I'm like, as I always game for a good Monster manual type book,

Monster biology, and certainly anymore Star Wars Alien content. So may and maybe it'll aid us in a future return to this topic. All right, here is another Weird House Cinema response that that largely deals with something that we've been I don't even know if we started talking about this on Weird House Cinema or it is a just a conversation that keeps uh, we keep going on listener mail.

But Jamie Ritson and says, Dear Robert and Joe, a quick piece of listener meta mail from Edinburgh here weighing in on the question of why Sean Connery's Egyptian comes Spanish character in Highlander speaks English with a Scottish accent. I think the answer is neither he Nor Connor McLeod

are speaking English. As a sixteenth century inhabitant of the Scottish Highlands, McLeod would almost certainly have been a speaker of Gaelic and probably a monoglot one at that clan chiefs might have sent their sons south to learn English. But Connor, although a warrior, doesn't seem to be that far up the McLeod hierarchy, and in any case would not have spoke in English and normal conversation. I think this is just one of those actually in another language,

but everyone speaks English moments in films. Perhaps Ramirez has been around so long that he has become proficient in many languages, including Scottish Gaelic. It is odd that the Scottish actor is not playing a Scottish character and the French actor with undisguised accent is, but there you go. In any case, the accent of Scottish Gaelic native speakers speaking English is quite distinctive and probably wouldn't be recognized as a Scottish accent by people outside of Scotland. Just

a wee note on something that pricked my interest. Keep up the good work. It's a great podcast. Jamie and yes, Jamie brings up a fabulous point and one that I should have thought of. Why on earth did I watch all those seasons of Outlander if I wasn't gonna, you know, realize that that these characters would have been speaking Gailic. Now, what if Highlander went in a more Outlander direction? Um, it could, It could easily. I'm surprised, honestly, I'm surprised

they had given the success of Outlander. Uh, they haven't done that. That's probably one of the the energy is fueling these efforts to bring it back. And you know, to some degree it's like romance it up a bit, you know, make it a little more you know, Scottish centric. Uh, yeah, it could work. I'm for it. All right, let's see, maybe we should do together these next couple of messages about um, about the humanoid, the Star Wars rop off film that we covered. I guess it'll be a couple

of weeks ago. Now, um. So the first one is from a listener calling themselves Trebec. I doubt that's the real name, but Trebec says, hello guys. Oh, and this is in response to us saying that that Richard Keel and the Humanoid never did the like heads bonking together move.

This is where you're generally a giant character or a largest character, a strong man character will come up behind two stormtroopers or red shirt guards, grabbed them by their heads and call them together like coconuts and knock them out right. Uh, And we said, uh. It says disappointing that that never happened in the movie. Well, Trebec says, we're wrong. Trebec says there is a blanc the heads

together moment in the Humanoid. It is quick. It happens during the second attack of the Humanoid while the troopers are climbing out of the speeder. I'm sorry that that doesn't narrow down for me. So I don't know where in the movie this is um But there is a line you can queue up if you can find it. Trebek says. It's immediately after the He's rather irritated, isn't he line? Thank you for being awesome? Trebec? Oh, no, thank thank you for being awesome and pointing pointing this out. Yeah,

I I must have missed it. I must have been looking down or making a note or you know, checking something on IMDb related to the film. But I'm glad it's in there. I feel like the universe makes sense again. What is wrong with our brains that we you and I are both watched the humanoid making notes. Yeah, it's it's a select a select few people have done that. I imagine, at least making notes on the humanoid studying this work. Yes, we're we're operating in a very niche field.

I would say, Okay, But from there, I'm gonna jump straight down to this message from Kenneth, which is also about the humanoid. So Kenneth says, Hi, Rob and Joe. As always, I'm a sucker for a Star Wars clone, and I always loved Jaws as a Bond character. So on your recommendation, I thought I would give the humanoid to go. You commented that the opening text crawl made the universe feel small, and I would say that was

pretty accurate. I found it interesting that this followed through into all aspects of the movie, and then we get examples. When the budget Star Destroyer passes slowly over the camera, they were trying to convey the same epic scale as Lucas. But later when Grawls ship is landing on Planet Nixon, you can see that it's only meant to be about

fifty meters long. Uh. The name of the movie made me pause for thought, as well as obviously Lady Agatha's incredible hair, and I remember that's uh, that's Barbara Box strange helmet slash hood slash hair do in the movie. Um, it's kind of hard to tell which of the three it was. Now, regarding the name the humanoid, Kenneth says, it occurred to me that the term humanoid normally describes a creature that shares our general body form. It's normally

used to find what's most familiar about an alien. However, if Golab was originally human, then his transformation left him as human inform only to become the humanoid, was actually to diminish him. I think that's right. My second thought was about that hair do. I think Barbara Box character was meant to look like a snake. If you imagine a hooded viper or cobra with its head down ready to strike, it looks very much like her coiffure. This perhaps tracks with the quote fangs in the life good

draining plastic Maiden device. Remember she was like a space bathory. She was like sucking the life force out of the local space peasants. Yeah, and she needs to fix every day otherwise she'll age minutes or or you know, centuries at a time. Right. But Kenneth also points out that the lower half of her costume has a scale like pattern on the fabric. So I think you're onto something here, Kenneth. I think that went right over my head. Yeah, yeah,

it totally makes sense. Now. Now after this, Kenneth attaches a recommendation that has already been suggested for Weird House Cinema and we've already talked about, so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but Kenneth is like, hey, do Layer of the White Worm. And I'm and I'm saying, Kenneth, we've already talked about We're going to do Layer of the White Worm. We love Layer of the White Worm. Yes, yeah, it's it's on the list. A lot of films on

the list. And hey, we here heard from another listener who has a film to put on the list, and I don't think this one was currently on said from com Hey guys, greetings from Dublin, Ireland. First time contacting you after many years of listening to your excellent podcast. Just came across a film while browsing the web that you might consider for weird house cinema. It's called Slugs

and was released in night according to IMDb. I've not seen it myself, but if you take one look at the poster attached, and I hope you will agree, it looks like a great candidate. On a separate note, I would love if you did an episode on lighthouses. I've always loved them, and I know it is a topic you both could easily do a few episodes on, as there would be so much to talk about. Anyway, keep up the great work. All the best from comb a k A. Synthetic Flesh. Synthetic flesh. Wait, we've had a

listener adopted the moniker Synthetic flesh. Is Colm masking his friends and family to call him synthetic flesh. Now, I don't know. I would go for it, and go for it anything that that that injects it into popular usage. Um So, Slugs. This is a film that I have seen parts of and you have perhaps seen the whole thing.

I think so so. First major note, this is actually directed by Juan Picquer Simone or Simon with an accent over the second Oh, I guess the b Simone Um, the director of none other than Pod People, the immortal classic, the film that gave us here the Engines roll Now or flying over Idiot Control Now. All I want to feel is the wind in my eyes. Yeah, yeah, that's great,

great movie. Yeah, but class I think I actually watched this movie way back when we used to do a thing where we would do we would we did some live video streaming when the company was trying to experiment with that that that didn't really go much of anywhere, but we tried to have fun with it by talking about trailers for It was sort of a precursor of weird House cinema, but not as fully formed, because we were trying to just sort of like live stream talk

about trailers for movies that were related to episodes we had recently done. And so I think you and Christian had done an episode about gastropods. So we ended up talking about like slug and snail movies. And I watched Slugs, or at least watch part of Slugs. It's uh, it doesn't take much to imagine what it's about. It is about people getting attacked by slugs. One of the weirdest things about this is okay, that sounds like a standard creature B horror movie. This is actually based on the

novel that's uh, I don't know. You wouldn't imagine a novel uh needed as a foundation for this kind of film. I used to be somewhat grossed out by slugs, and I think this was the reason that I definitely didn't watch it in full for For that also, we weren't in the habit of everyone watching every film because we were trying to like shoehorn three or four movie discussions into a single like twenty minute a video or something. It was, uh, you know, it was a bit much,

but uh yeah. I remember seeing a trailer for this went on VHS when I was a kid, and yet frightened me because there's a scene where they're climbing on the toilet, and so I think, for for years, even even today, there's like a part of me that that insists that I checked for slugs on the toilet um before I make use of the toilet, because I feel like that movie taught me that there was always going to be a chance what would happen if the slugs got you? I mean, the slugs wouldn't get you the

thing they I don't think they're really interested in you. Um. But and that's why it's so ludicrous, right, Like it's something that some of us are repulsed by. We can find slugs repulsive, which isn't completely fair. Slugs do good work, their decomposers, you know, they we need them. Um, But we take this idea of their kind of yucky and then we we we put that through the horror machine and comes out with they want to eat our flesh

now in this poster for slugs by one PC Simone. Uh, I gotta point out one little problem, which is it looks like the slugs are coming out of the screaming man instead of going into him. And I don't recall the movie involving internal implantation of slugs that burst forth from the body. Though I could be I could be forgetting Yeah, well you know they you often see see that right either either they even if they didn't have it in the film, Like you gotta juice it up

for the poster. But hey, you know it's uh, it's one. I have so many real things to be afraid of. Now I'm totally game to to return to slugs if we want to maybe I'll become afraid of slugs again. I actually I kind of like that sometimes. I I fantasize about becoming about about my anxieties. Uh, moving back to things that don't exist, like slugs and alien abductions and whatnot, I'm like, oh, man, what a time that

way way that don't exist. Oh you mean they're not actually threatening, like right, I mean, yeah, well, slugs trying to eat your fleshly exists. Now. Granted, alien abduction phenomena. Alien abduction experiences hand be real, as I want to stress before they can be really they can be experiences that people have. I don't do not believe in the reality of of of alien abduction, So I don't think it's something that I should fear as part of my

daily life. But I did go through a period of time when I was much younger, I guess when I was a kid where I've seen too many episodes of Unsolved Mysteries and became rather afraid of that happening to me because they really played up. They make it scary on Unsolved Mysteries. Yeah, they really play it up. And you know, I think back to the the Unsolved Mysteries era where they were really hitting you with I think they had some Sasquatch style stuff, but they also had

the alien abduction. Between that and reruns of In Search of That. It it really, I feel like, kind of put out a harmful vibe because there wasn't I wasn't watching like skeptical counterpoints to any of this, you know, um, I didn't see and they played it alongside true crime stories yea, so it was like, this has really happened,

this is something you should really be afraid of. And and I'm I mean, I guess there were programs like May I don't remember if contact went into this at all, and you had Sakean bringing his um, you know, sensible approach to the topic. But I do not remember anything on TV uh coming out and saying, actually, there's no evidence for this, there's some other explanations that can uh that that can explain it. There was none of that. It was just unsolved mysteries and creepy music making you

fear the sky at night. I think I've said this on the show before, but whoever composed that unsolved mysteries theme should like get a get a Lifetime Achievement award for making ice water run through people's veins. Uh, let's get a little sting of that. Yeah, that's creepy too, creepy? Okay, you mind if I do this? One last message from Jane h oh. This is a result of we've had several back and forth with James. Now after having read his messages on previous episodes, James was the one with

stuff about the turbographics, sixteen games and about geckos. Uh So, James says, good afternoon, gentlemen. You just made my day again. Thank you. That's a great eye and equally great knowledge of the video games of yester year. That is indeed a poster of the very Pucci Gex adorning the back of my real geckos habitat. Oh so, you're right, Rob, that was not a fake gecko. That was a real gecko. But Gex is absolutely the Pucci of the reptile world.

Uh so, James continues. The game featured the voice of comedian Dana Gould, who delivered pop culture one liners roughly on par with the one you add lib during the podcast about the funds jumping the shark. Uh. The quips did not become any more amusing after hearing them repeated hundreds of times over the course of the game, but I somehow still have rather fond memories of playing it. Man. That's the thing I think a lot of game designers

did not get early on that. Like games that have dialogue that that occurs like once are you know, those can be fun, that adds a lot of texture to the game. But where I don't know, the bub Z style thing where the character just sort of like repeats a a cycle of of one liners over and over and it sounds like Gext did the same thing. God, that's got to really get under your skin after a

certain period of time. Yeah, even on even on really well crafted games with fun quips, like the video game Control had some fun quips from the character you control, but if you hear it enough, it's you kind of get over it. It's It's one of the reasons I often find myself playing video games um on you with music playing over them. It's just after a while, I just, uh, I just do need my own sonic realm Oh. Finally,

James asks if we have any podcast merch available. He says, I'd love to kick you guys a few bucks for a sticker or something to show my appreciation for all the content you've provided, uh and to be lovely addition to my Geckos terrarium. Thanks again and take care James. We we do have some merch. Yeah, I guess we haven't talked about it much recently. Yeah, if you go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, that will send you to the I heart listing for this page

and there's a store button there. We have a t public store. You can also go to I think it's t public dot com slash stores slash stuff to Blow your Mind And Yeah, we have a number of things we have. You know, you can get our our show logo on various bits of merge, including shirts and pillows and pins and stickers. We also have some sort of fun designs here. There's a really cool Pandora's box uh T shirt design that Red Buffalo Illustration did for us.

There's a Medusa one that my son drew. Uh, there's uh. We we also have some that I think are legitimately nifty T shirts and hopefully in the very near future we're gonna be able to add some weird house cinema merch in there as well. Oh cool. Yeah, I actually wear our Sphere Catastrophe shirt a good bit. Oh cool. My my son has the skug King of the Rat shirt as well as the squirrels are not what they seem shirt, so he wears those a lot. Um. Uh, those are a lot of fun. Oh. The scug the

Skull shirt is a good one too. That's like a squirrel death metal Yeah, death metal occult skull, death metal occult squirrel. Yeah. So yeah, check that out. If you're interested in picking up a little merch, you know, mostly do it really the merchant is mostly for fun. Uh, So we should mention it more often so that people who want to to do that can can do it. All right, We're gonna go ahead and have Carney the mail bot close it off there, but we have more

listener mail to get to in the future. More listener mail is going to come in and certainly send it in if you have responses to anything we just we discussed here. Do you have further thoughts on Sean Connery's accent in Highlander? We would of course love to hear it.

Uh new new episodes. You want to hear topic suggestions, corrections added, insight from your life, your research, your world, Send it on in uh and in the meantime, if you want to listen to other episodes of well, Stuff to Blow Your Mind listener mail that comes out on Monday's core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. On Tuesdays and Thursdays. Wednesdays we throw in the artifact, a nice little short form bit of information, and on Friday's That's Weird How Cinema, that's our time to just talk

about a weird movie at length. 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 a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact that's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I

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