Listener Mail: Sacred Squirrels and More

of squirrels, has been for months. Uh, it's an ongoing problem. But I've noticed some of these squirrels infesting Carney. While they used to be more of a of a nuisance, crawling throughout his gears and pulling out wires and stuff, now I think they have taken on a kind of a sacred or holy aura. I'm not sure what's changed about them. Oh well, you know, I feel like our episodes on squirrels kind of had this effect on a lot of people. They transformed the lowly squirrel, the profane

square whirl into something of a sacred squirrel. I feel like that was that was my experience, the sacred cannibal. Yeah, yeah, because I before the King of Rats, the King of the Rats. Yeah, I get it on a shirt at our our T shirt store. But yeah, before I I liked squirrels. Okay, I guess you know. I watched them, but I would also like chase them away from the bird feeder and all. But after our episodes, I like, I really began to respect squirrels so much more I

would I stopped chasing them. I and now feed them every day. I feed them meal worms sort of an offering to them, and I just love watching them scamper around and eat their meal worms and drink from the bird feeder. I'm just I'm all on on squirrels. You say that until they turn on you. Well, as long as I keep the meal worms coming, I think I'm okay.

But before we get into the proper listener mail, I do want to address the squirrels on Carney, and I want to share with everybody, uh a sacred tradition of the squirrel that um I neglected to mention in previous episodes, and it concerns the Indian palm squirrel or three striped palm palm squirrel of South India and Sri Lanka. This is a funambulis pal marum and in Hindu traditions, the palm squirrel is associated with Rama. Now Ramah some of you may already be familiar, is the seventh avatar of

Vishnu and the title character of the epic Ramayana. And in this story of the Ramayana, uh Rama's wife Sita is kidnapped by the demon king Ravana and taken to the island of Lanka. So he what he does. He wants to get to seated back, so he assembles his forces and his allies in order to defeat Ravanna and bring her home, which of course means traveling to Lanka, which is modern day Sri Lanka. So he has to march the Nara Ape army across this this vast body

of water. So they need a bridge, so they build one in the form of the Rama set to. So the cool thing about the Rama said to is that it actually exists in the form of a chain of limestone shoal spread between the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, also known as Adams Bridge. Uh. But it's it's thought to have once been a geological land bridge. So perhaps maybe if sea levels were lower or something it could be revealed, or if the limestone is just higher for

some reason. Yeah, I'd love to come back and do an episode on land bridges because obviously they play an important role in the movements of species, including Homo sapiens. But in this myth, it involves the movement of an ape army. By the way I mentioned, it is also known as Adams Bridge, and I imagine a lot of you might think, well, that's probably coming from Western interpretations, right, but it's actually like Adam from like the first Man

of Genesis, and that is who it's referring to. But according to what I was looking at, it's actually linked to Islamic traditions and more importantly linked to the Sri Lankan mountain Adam's Peak, which is a sacred mountain and Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, and it's said to be the footprint of either Shiva, the Hindu god, or Adam or St. Thomas

in christian in Islamic traditions. Anyway, according to Hindu traditions, though, uh, this land bridge, this bridge was constructed in order to march the Ape army to Lanka, and uh, most of most of the work is being done by the Vanara, the apes. They're they're carrying all these heavy stones, dumping them into the ocean and building this great bridge to march the army across. But then there's one small squirrel

that tries to help as well. And so there are a few different versions I ran across here of you know, regarding how the squirrels trying to help. There's one where the squirrels just rolling around in the sand and then marching out to the you know, the farthest extent of the the bridge under construction, and then shakes off the sand into the water. Another one is that it just kind of fills its mouth with pebbles and then arches out there and drops the pebbles off the edge. This

is a good story. Yeah, So the so the squirrel is is devoted, the squirrel is really trying to help, but the apes are doing most of the work. And uh. In one version, the apes just eventually they're tired of the squirrel being underfoot and they're like, look, we're doing it. We're dropping boulders in here, you're you're dropping pebbles, And so they hurl the squirrel out of the way and then the squirrel lands right in Rama's lap, and Rama

is is impressed by the creature's devotion. You know, it's it's not so much about how much work the squirrel is getting done, but just how how how eager the squirrel is to help, how devoted the squirrel is. And so Rama rewards the squirrel. He takes three fingers and he runs them down the squirrels back. And remember this species is the the three striped palm squirrel. It has three stripes down its back. So this is a classic ideological myth. Right, you've got you've got a a fact

you observe about the world. How did it get that way? And this story explains how exactly the fact of course here is the three stripes. Yeah, so it is the mark of a god on the squirrel's back. And uh. And so the idea is that it is a sacred creature. It's to be protected. You're not supposed to harm the squirrel and uh, you know it's typically fed by families then in devotion to Rama. So I just thought that was a fun little tale to share with everybody. Uh,

and an example of of a sacred squirrel. So the next time you're you're you know, entertaining profane thoughts about the squirrel. Perhaps entertain a sacred interpretation of these skurrying little beasts absolutely blessed by the caress of rama. I will never look at our mail bots infestation the same way. It's it's all good stuff, all right. But then on that note, we should probably start turn into some listener

mail here. Uh. And and it's actually an ideal that we we have already mentioned in this episode a sacred mountain, because we heard from a lot of our listeners about sacred mountains and holy mountains, holy peaks and the entities that might be and might be encountered there. Well, then in that spirit, maybe we should go straight to a few of the emails we got about sacred mountains. Of course, we did a two part episode on sacred mountain traditions

of the world. Uh some links so some some mountaintop psychology, some some high altitude low pressure uh physiology and neuroscience, and just of course many great myths about the mountains of the gods. And we asked for uh, the experiences people out there have had with sacred mountains. Sou do you want to do? This? One from Cody first, Yeah, let's hear from Cody. Okay, so Cody says, perfect timing

of the episode. As I listened to these episodes literally driving down from my climb up and ski down of Mount Shasta, I have spent decades hiking, rock climbing, and skiing in the Sierra Nevada and Klamath Mountains. Yosemite and Shasta to me, are particularly spiritual places, even though I'm not a religious or spiritual person. Both having immense senses of scale and isolation mirrors religion of the mountains as

probably the closest thing to religion for me. Regarding feeling or seeing other beings out in high elevation wilderness, I haven't had any experiences at the level of the ones you talked about on Everest, but in regards to thinking you're seeing things that aren't there or mistaking shapes that can very easily happen. In my recent Shasta climb, multiple times I mistook the silhouette created by the snow and

rock interacting as someone pausing above me. The mixture of physical exertion and lack of oxygen from elevation on the brain is not something to be taken lightly. Then add in the parallax trickery of huge mountainous environments. Even at sea level, physical exertion will wreck cognition, and just about all elite athletes will do training to combat this, such as wind sprints than doing math problems. And that's all before you add in any sort of less than perfect weather.

Being involved with the climbing and mountaineering community. Though, I feel like you don't hear as much of out the ie HAP condition you guys coined, and I think what did that stand. I think it was something like isolated high altitude psychosis or international house um uh. He continues. Certainly plenty of spiritual or larger than life feelings, even a few that mimic micro dosing psychoactive drugs. That's interesting. Maybe those do count, But it was a shame a

lot of those studies had pitiful sample sizes. Considering even just the number of people uh professionally guided on Everest eight people, the studies shouldn't have gotten published, in my opinion. While the study we looked at in the episode did a sort of literature review where they looked back at all the pre existing studies they could find about asking mountain climbers whether they'd had any kind of experiences like this. So yeah, some of the studies had small sample sizes,

but they looked at multiple studies. Anyway, back to Cody, So Cody says, uh, glad to hear you mentioned, Marry. I worked for the North Face and have gotten to spend time with Conrad Anchor talking to him about his experiences climbing Mirru and his many, many, many other experiences in the mountains. It's particularly interesting to hear about the intersection of the beliefs and traditions of those who live in the Himalayas and those who go to climb in

those mountains. Meru in particular, was something Conrad and team handled carefully since it was literally the center of the universe for a lot of people on A closer to home example of the spiritual rituals butting up against the climbing is the closing of Devil's Tower every June for Native American ceremonies. Also many other sandstone towers in the Southwest.

I guess he means the American Southwest are permanently closed due to their spiritual significance to Native people's in terms of evil mountains, and this was a question we asked you, or are there any like hell mountains or devil mountains? We couldn't find examples, but surely there are, uh. Cody continues. In terms of evil mountains, I was also hard pressed

to think of one. There are certainly peaks that carry a stigma or curse by how many percent of climbers have perished, such as K two or how many parties have been rebuffed Miru for a while, but I couldn't think of a spiritually evil mountain. Side note, when you guys were talking about that British Everest climber not using oxygen versus today. The use of supplemental O two is certainly widely used in this day, day and age of

high altitude mountaineering. But in this day and age of mountaineering where the style of how you do something can be almost as important as the climb itself, i e. The use of O two does diminish the level of accomplishments since it makes it easier. So the best of the best and high altitude mountaineering still do not use O two. I love the wide variety of topics you guys cover. Well, Thank you, Cody. Yeah, that was really interesting. Yeah, absolutely.

I had a feeling that, you know, given our sort of broad listener base, so that we had to have some mountain climbers out there, and I guess it makes sense that some of them may have just climbed a mountain and we're just ready to to chime in. I'm interested in Cody's thing about there. It's sort of being a badge of honor that you can climb without OH two. Of course, we're not like recommending people do that because obviously that increases the risk of you know, the dangers

of what you're doing. And also I am I am not qualified to make any recommendations about mountain climbs. Well, no, I mean just generally we're not saying like, yeah, don't use O two, you know, but if that is indeed a sort of like it makes the achievement more in held in higher esteem by other mountaineers and uh, mountain

climbing people. I wonder if part of that might be that if you climb without O two, you appear to be more likely to have these mildly altered states of consciousness what Cody compares to being sort of like micro dosing certain psychogenic drugs, or more likely to cause these kind of errors of perception that that make the world

feel a bit unreal. Yeah, yeah, I wonder, I mean, it's I guess it's likely that it's also probably just a little bit of like the uh, you know, sort of the heroics of the thing, right, that's obviously there. I mean, I'm just dring if it's this other thing too, Yeah, I could see that possibly be in the case. All right, here's another one that comes in related to sacred mountains. This comes to us from James. James says, Hello, Robert

and Joe. I have been a long time listener, and believe this my first email in I have recently been reading into the folklore of the Crow Nations and came across the story about the Little People of the Prior Mountains being from Oklahoma. I thought they were referring to the Prior here since they are arguably since they're arguably no true mountains in Oklahoma. I learned that they were referring to one of the many mountain ranges in Montana,

where the Crown Nation is from. The Little People were another race, standing around knee height but contained containing immense strength. They lived in the mountains and attacked those that entered the area. However, some were allowed to pass through if they left an offering of beads or tobacco. Uh. The other way to pass through was to shoot an arrow ahead of you as you passed. The little people also sometimes met with those that went to the mountain to fast.

One tail I found was of Chief Plenty Coups meeting them when he was nine. In the Choctaw Nations creation story, it says that the Chickasaw and Choctawl nations came from a great mound, well, not a sacred mountain. The story seems to fit with this as well. Sorry for the long email. I only read about these stories recently, and when your episode came out, it made me think of the bet or Mineho phenomenon. Yeah, thank you for the

hours uh and hours and hours of informative entertainment. Best regards, James. This is something I think maybe we uh we could have explored more in the episode, but didn't come up as much. Which is the idea of like myths and religious stories that have mountains as the dwelling place. Uh, not just of the gods, but of like other types of people's or other beings, you know, the mountains being a place of trolls, or the mountains being the place

of like the little people. Yeah, this is, this is It would be an interesting avenue to explore more in the future. I mean, I I instantly think two of of goblins and creatures of that nature as well. All right, we have another one here. This one comes to us from him. I'm right Sin and says, hey, guys, I was really surprised to not hear you touch on Mount Sinai in the Sacred Mountains episode. I mean actual or mythical locations that are associated with myths that have wide

cultural relevance and staying power. The first thing I think of is Mount Sinai. I'll admit I'm biased in that respect because I'm a former Orthodox Jew, but I understand that it has similar or equal relevance in Christianity and Islam as well. Maybe you didn't touch on it on purpose because it would be too socially or politically controversial to address Abrahamic religions as mythologies that share so many

similar themes to lots of ancient belief systems. That's actually what I opened up the podcast hoping to hear the main content be regardless. I really enjoyed the episode and your show in general. Uh. Yeah, Mount Sinai is a great one. Of course. That is for example, in the Book of Exodus, that is where it has said that Moses receives the Ten Commandments on top of Mount Sinai from from God. Um, there was no reason we didn't mention it, I think, get I think it just didn't

come up. Yeah, we we just kind of forgot to include it, which is there. There are a whole lot of holy mountains, so yeah, but it is true. This is a this is a huge one of big cultural significance. Yeah.

And I do think like the story of Moses is a sent into Mount Sinai or he you know, he receives the Ten Commandments, and like there is something interesting going on there with like he disappears into the mountain and then what happens to the people while he's gone while they turned to idol worship immediately while while he has disappeared because they're waiting for him to come down.

Something's interesting is going on there. I haven't quite thought about how to phrase it, but yeah, absolutely, and and I do want to also just remind everybody, like when we talk about myth and religion on the show. Um, I do hope everyone understands that we you know, we try to discuss mytho, mythology and myth as being is having more weight than simply saying like this is a story made up by people, you know, like, oh, yeah, we're not using myth as a pejorative or the way

some people sometimes do. Like some will use the word myth to mean like a thing that is a lie, right, something like that. It's not like MythBusters, right, no, no no, no, we're using it in the sense of like a traditional or foundational story, often involving supernatural elements. Right. But what a different show MythBusters would have been if that was the cell Like we're gonna go after another myth this this this a week, it's Prometheus the stories bs and

then they bust it somehow, I don't know. We get some internet commenters that are like that, Like every time we put something up about some interesting mythological topic, somebody chimes in the comments is like fake bs made up. Well yeah, like I think you're missing the point a

little bit. Yeah, well that that tends to happen on like, you know, some of our social media accounts where you maybe have people come in that don't really know the show and then you see something where where like a myth is referenced in the title or the description, and then they kind of react, Yeah, you know, if you are that person and your your yours sending no hard feelings, but but maybe maybe think about don't do that. I mean, certainly we always invite everyone to actually listen to the

episodes and respond to the content of the episodes. And along those lines, I mean we we do, uh, we do make mistakes here and there, and that's why we'd love to hear from everybody. We we skip over things by accident, like Mount SINAI. Uh. So you know, we're we're we're on a continuous journey of discovery and self improvement here and and we hope everybody else is engaging with the world, uh with that kind of growth mindset

as well. Well. One last thing I'll say is someone who creates nonfiction content, I will say not all omissions are intentional omissions. So like, there's literally no way we can talk about all the sacred mountains in the world in our episode that was you know, a total of however many minutes, so Uh so, I don't know. Always keep that in mind. It's just like sometimes you just picked the things that you pick to talk about because

they were interesting and and they're what came up. It's not because you thought everything else should be left out right, and then that's what listener mail episodes are ultimately four to you know, we we hoped and expected to hear from folks with examples of really cool traditions that we uh you know, forgot to cover or just we're not aware of. Like to go back to Adam's peak that I mentioned at the top of this episode, I was not familiar with that Sri lankin Um Holy Mountain until

looking at Following the Trail of the Squirrel. So yeah, like I said, we're continually learning new things and trying to share them with everybody in that spirit of open mindedness. May we now bludge in you with an advertisement. Let's do it, but we will be right back. Thank all right, We're back, and uh, you know, I believe we have some listener mail related to another recent episode, our episode

about the imp of the perverse. Right, this is the impulse to do wrong simply for the reason that it's wrong, and no other reason at all. Uh So this comes to us from our listener, Miriam. Miriam says, Hi, Joe and Robert, thank for the great episode The imp of the Perverse. It was very interesting to consider all the

various ways this phenomenon can affect our lives. When you talked about intrusive thoughts and the techniques that have been shown to help some people overcome them, I was struck by how closely it mirrored my own experience with a form of O c D called pure Oh it differs from traditional O c D, and of course that's an

obsessive compulsive disorder. It differs from traditional O c D in that the compulsion triggered by the intrusive thought is not a physical behavior such as handwashing, but the mental checking of the thought and of the body's visceral responses to it. When you talked about checking on intrusive thoughts and how it leads to a positive feedback loop, I was surprised by how closely you described this disorder without

naming it. I believe that the pure O variant of O c D is lesser known and highly insidious, as people can suffer tremendously for a long time without having any visible symptoms that might more easily prompt them or

their loved ones to consider seeking professional help. I think better awareness of this disorder could help people understand that the techniques you described, which were exactly what I did in therapy alongside CBT, can really can provide hugely from intrusive thoughts if they begin to take over your life. It's been more than a year since I've been bothered

by intrusive thoughts. I believe it's because I was able to forge an entirely different, healthier relationship to my thoughts thanks to practicing CBT and other techniques with my therapist. So I just wanted to emphasize how important these concepts are for everybody and to say thanks again for talking about them. Cheers, Miriam. Next, Wellent, Well, thanks for sharing that with this, Miriam. Uh. By the way, that's cognitive behavioral therapy for anybody. Yeah yeah, yes, um yeah yeah.

And so I actually hadn't really heard of this pure oh form of o c D before, but this is kind of interesting. So, you know, the traditional idea of O c D is that you know, you have repetitive compulsive behaviors uh that are triggered by sort of loops in your mind. You might lock the door a bunch of times, or you might wash your hands a lot, or click you're the clicker on your car exactly fifteen times. Yeah.

But but this is the idea that you could have the same kind of mental impulses, uh, that that caused you to have sort of like repetitive anxieties and and and revisit these thoughts over and over without having external behaviors that follow from them, and that this could allow the behavior to to just kind of like go on and fester without people noticing that you're having a problem. Right, Well, I'm also really glad to hear that that that CBT

and and therapy has worked out for you. Miriam. Absolutely all right, here's another one. This one is coming to us from Eric. Eric writes in and says, dear mind blowing folk, thanks for the great show. I started listening last year and went back to the archives, all the way back to science stuff with Allison and Robert, and now I'm up to mid h. I mean, everybody listens to the show differently. I tend to advise against starting

at the beginning and working your way up. I don't know, I just I often feel like a lot of the topics we we cover, um, the older episodes, you'd run into potential problems of the science not being like completely up to date. Uh. And then also, you know, we're always, we're perpetually hopefully growing and becoming better at this whole podcasting thing. So I also worrying, worry about like how, um, how I come off and past episodes, you know, um, because I feel like some of those early ones were

kind of rough. It was like a fifteen minute show back then. I'm sure you're great, But anyway, I appreciate anybody who enjoys the show enough that they're going back into the back catalog anyway, um, Eric continues. In the episode Jupiter's Children, you asked off handedly whether Ganymedes icy surface would be slippery. The answer, in short, is probably not.

Ice on Earth is slippery because when we set foot or skate on it, the pressure, friction and high temperature of our shoes or eates melts a tiny amount of ice, forming a thin layer of water that acts as a lubricant between you and the ice. On Ganny Meat or Europa, however, the ice would be so cold and your space suits boots would necessarily have to be so heavily insulated that it would not melt and would be about equivalent to

walking on low density rock or sand. Also, the gravity is solo that you wouldn't create very much friction or pressure. You mentioned John Scalzes The Forever War. Uh, he actually got the science wrong on this in his novel The recruits are training on Pluto, and he incorrectly describes the surface as covered in frozen hydrogen. In the book, the outsides of their suits were warm enough above roughly twenty degrees kelvin to cause the frozen hydrogen to boil, which

made it very slippery. In reality, the surface of Pluto is minimum thirty three degrees kelvin, which is far too warm for either frozen or liquid hydrogen, although still ridiculously cold enough to seasonally have nitrogen snow regin snow. Nice. I hope this answer is not redundant, as I'm writing about three years after the episode in question aired. All the best wishes and keep up the good work, Eric, No, this is great feedback. I'm glad to know that I

wouldn't fall on my butt on Ganna made. I do remember that being a real fun part of the Forever War. It was. It was a fun novel to read. Um. It kind of makes me want to revisit some of these old like Space Soldier, uh, you know, Power Armor novels that I was really into for a while. I was speaking of those, you know, I was just the other day thinking about thinking about Starship Troopers because I've never read the Heinland novel, but I recently rewatched the

movie Paul Verehoven's Starship Troopers. You know, I saw some of our fans talking about it on the discussion module and they were like, yeah, it's kind of bad, kind of good. Disagree. I think it is a masterpiece. It is one of the best satires in American film history. It would I would be interested to to to review it and to discuss it, because I saw it when

it first came out, and I remember disliking it. But I have a feeling that a lot of my dislike was me kind of uh, you know, basically buying into this story, to my like, expecting it to be a humans Are good, Bugs Are Bad kind of story, and something felt kind of icky about it. It did. It felt it felt icky, and so it was sort of working but it was working. But at the time, I thought, well, this this movie is broken. I feel icky after watching this film. But no, I think it's it's like a

genius satire. It's essentially I think it is a propaganda film made by a future fascist society. Yeah. Absolutely, Um, I would need to reread the book because I'm I'm a little hazy on all the details. Like the main thing I'm remembering is the Bazukas. So there's the power arm. Oh. I mentioned it because I thought there was power in the novels, but not in the movies. In the movie, as I as I remember, there's no power armor in

the movie. Right. No, that's right. They cut that part out because it's it's straight up space marines, uh in the in the novel right, straight up Casper van Dean, it's all body with him. Okay, let's take a look at the next one. How about this one from our recurring correspondent Jesser, who's into Egyptian mythology. Oh yes, let's hear Okay, So Jesser says, Hi, I wanted to write in to share a couple of things related to your

recent episodes on narratives. That was the one against narratives about the possible, you know, negative consequences of our addiction to stories, and also about sacred mountains. So Jesser writes in the episode You Happen to use a definition of story based on conflict. It reminded me of an essay I had read called The Significance of Plot Without Conflict. It argues that the idea that story needs conflict is a limited view of story structure prevalent in Western culture.

To demonstrate its point, it discusses the Japanese story structure called kisho tin ketsu uh. This structure is made up of four acts introduction, development, twist, and resolution, where the twist acts like a non sequitur, and the resolution brings the introduction and the twist into harmony with each other. The example they use is a four panel comic a girl standing at a vending machine she buys a soda. A boy is sitting on a bench. The girl appears

and gives him a soda. The essay goes on to suggest that the focus on stories as conflict in the Western perspective leads people to frame things as conflicts even when there is none. On my initial read, I was skeptical since you could argue in Kisho tin katsu uh that it still uses conflict, just in the form of conflicting images instead of a literal conflict. But if the narratives we make affects the way we see the world, maybe by thinking that conflict is necessary to narrative, we

make ourselves more prone to see ourselves in conflict with others. Interesting. You know, this makes me think of the Miyazaki film My Neighbor Totoro um. I don't know to what extent this lines up with that, but like Totoro is a film that when I watched it before becoming a parent, I found it kind of kind of boring and and and long, you know, beautiful, but also just kind of drawn out and devoid of of much in the way of conflict. But I've kind of seen it through my

son's eyes and now I love it, you know. I put it right up there with with NAUSICAA is my favorite Miyazaki film. Nasca, of course, is a film that has lots of conflict. But Totoro, I mean there's there is the plot element about the younger the younger child running away and there being some concern over if she's okay and having to find her, and then there's concerns over the mother's uh illness and her recovering from it.

So I don't know if it's completely devoid of conflict, depending on how you want to Oh no, I I say that's definitely not without conflict, because I mean, when you think about the role that conflict plays in narrative, at least the way I would see it, this is what I think I said in the previous episode is that you know, what it is is that a character that you come to identify with emotionally faces some kind of obstacle or problem that they have to overcome, and

so this is some kind of conflict. It could be an actual fight, you know, a conflict, like a violent conflict, but it doesn't need to be. It could just be that there's something they want to know and they don't know it yet, so they need to find out where it could be that they maybe, you know, they're all these relationship stories. They are in love with somebody or they want to be friends with somebody or something like that,

and it's not working out at first. So conflict doesn't to me imply necessarily like violence or anything like that. But it's but it does kind of feel like they're they're sort of conflict with a capital C, especially in Western traditions, where it's got to be like that Disney movie conflict where somebody dies or is or it's you know, it's it's it's mythic in the sense that somebody's kidnapped

by say a tin headed demon king. But if the if, the if the conflict is is more of you know, subtle it's like you know, maze feelings about her mother and totoro, uh, that sort of thing, like it's it

seems like a slightly different animal. I mean, likewise, to go back to this example of of the girl standing by a vending machine buying a soda, a boy setting on a bench, and then a girl appears to give him a soda, like arguably to their point, you know, this could be seen as conflict like she she perhaps it says, oh, there's somebody without a soda I should share, and that that in and of itself, there's a problem to resolve, problem that needs to be resolved, some sort

of growth that needs to take place within that character. Yeah, I'm I'm totally open to the idea that there are are other forms of narratives. I mean, I still do. When I look at stuff like this, it does seem to me like there is there is like empathy with characters and a desire to resolve some kind end of obstacle. I mean, even when I think about this, this four

panel comic, I start imagining things like that. So maybe that's just me projecting on it, but I start to imagine, um a subtextual conflict where the boy sitting alone on the bench was lonely, and now this girl appears and gives him a soda, and now there's a friendship, which is a kind of resolution of a psychic conflict. Right, Or if you just really you get the thing about narrative that you can just really go hog wild with it, right, and you can say she's a vampire. She never intended

to drink that soda. She bought that soda in order to gain the boys trust so that she might drain his vital essence. But I'm obviously reading way too much into it. Well yeah, I mean, obviously we want to read conflicts into it. But this is a really good point. Maybe thinking of narrative in terms of conflict is somehow limiting or or I don't know. You've definitely given me something to think about, so thank you, Jesser. But the

email is not over. As usual, Jesser has something to say about Egyptian mythology, so uh, the listener continues here. You also made passing reference to cyclical and linear time, and I can't pass up an opportunity to share a fact about ancient Egypt. Robert, I know you love cyclical and linear time, so strap in here. The Egyptian language has two terms for eternity, depending on whether you were talking about eternity in cyclical nine or linear diet time.

In the Search for God in Ancient Egypt, Jan Osman described the dual eternity ees quote, it is often said of nine time that it comes. It is time as an incessantly pulsating stream of days, months, seasons, and years. Yet time, however, remains, lasts and endures. And then Yesser says, for bonus points, nene could be an idiophone for repetition.

An interesting yeah. In your episode about Sacred Mountains, you mentioned the myth of king like Haon feeding human flesh to Zeus and the evidence that sugg Us there was once human sacrifice to Zeus on Mountain, like ka On. Maybe the myth was a bit of pr work on the part of the priests of Zeus like Chaos, explaining why Zeus used to take human sacrifices, but reassuring us that it was a mistake, not a bad theory. Yeah.

In fact, I've read about theories like this before, and not things that are known for sure, but like the idea that religions that have animal sacrifices often they be over time. They came in as a sort of substitute for a previous practice of human sacrifice, and there's often a myth saying like why the god does not accept human sacrifices anymore. It's like the priests are like working over time to say like, that's not the deal anymore.

I mean, it's almost perfectly there. Again, not knowing that this is the correct explanation, but it's a very interesting way of interpreting, like the binding of Isaac. Yeah again it is. We've We've discussed in the show before. It's important to realize that that religions and mythologiculture to sans evolved there. They are not set in stone. Okay, one

last thing from Jesser here, Jesser says. Also, the book Banner in the Sky, written in the nineteen fifties by the mountaineer James Ramsey Ullman, features third man syndrome as a plot point. While climbing the mountain alone, the young protagonist Rudy feels as though he's being followed by some sort of demon or spirit, but as he overcomes his initial fear, he comes to think of it as if

it's his father's ghost guiding him. I always thought it was just symbolic, but maybe it was inspired by actual experience. Thanks for all the work you put into making the podcast so consistently interesting and insightful, your pseudonymous Egyptologist Jesser, Well, thank you so much. As usual, great email. Awesome. Yeah, I got to touch on several different episodes that we've

covered recently in that one. Alright, Well, on that note, we're gonna take one more break, but when we come back, we have even more listener mail to share with you. Thank thank Alright, we're back. This one comes to us about our Sender Raven episode or send an Owl's into pigeon uh into this from our listener, Anna, Anna says, Hi, Robert and Joe I love your podcast, and I'm listening to your other podcast, Invention and enjoying that too. See

Anna's enjoying it. If you're not listening yet, you should get on that. Go over there subscribe to Invention. Absolutely. Uh so, Anna says, I've gotten a little behind on my podcast. I just listen to your episode about the use of birds as messengers. You're not that behind. That was just like last week. Yeah. Um, I do not know about other birds used as a messenger, but I

do remember a fact about other uses for ravens. Perhaps other fans have emailed you about this already, they had not, Anna, Anna says ravens are part of Vikings slash Norse mythology, but apparently Vikings also had a real world use for ravens too. In this case, they're short flying range that you spoke of in the episode came to the advantage of the Vikings. When the Vikings were out on a long sea voyage, they would send out a raven, and if the raven came back, they knew they were far

from land. If the raven did not come back, they knew the raven must have landed and they would soon find land. Maybe there is a link with the biblical story of the arc. Perhaps Noah sent out a raven to see if the flood was over. Remember in the in the story of Noah's Ark, before he sends out the doves, he sends out a raven. Then it just never says what happened with the ravend And I just wanted to add, yeah, this is actually a part of

the letter. I don't know if this is historically factual or if it's just part of the legend, but either way, the story of the discovery of Iceland or maybe not the discovery, like the first deliberate journey to Iceland by a Viking sea voyager, it was that ravens were used to locate Iceland from out in the sea. And it seems to me like that might probably work because the idea is, you know, like you have a crow's nest in a boat to get up there and see farther

to see if you can find land. If you allow a bird to fly up, it can go way up in the sky and and look around for land, and if it sees something, then you're in luck. Sort of like extending your crow's nest like hundreds of feet Uh. Anyway, Anna continues. Another random fact I learned recently is that recent research shows that all birds originally evolved from Australia. Now I think, and I think this is actually a typo here. I think she meant to say all songbirds

originated from Australia. Because I looked this up, I couldn't find evidence about all birds, but all songbirds did evolve from a common ancestor in Australia. And songbirds, of course are a huge subset of all birds, comprising the clade Passeri. In their line did originally come from Australia about twenty four million years ago. So I think that's what she meant, She continues. I learned this on a podcast by Dr Carl Cruisel Nikki cruizal Nikki. Here in Australia, we just

call him Dr Carl. Sounds kind of sketchy, but I looked him up and he looks legit. I like Dr Carl. She says. He has a few podcasts, he's written something like fifty books, and he's been declared a National Treasure of Australia. He's even won an ig Nobel Prize. There, I enjoy your scientific approach, an open minded skepticism. And I think Dr Carl has some of the same approach keep up the good work and uh uh so I wasn't familiar with Dr Carl, but I read a bit

on him. He sounds interesting and apparently he's affected by prosopagnosia, which we've talked about, yeah, on the show before, and he's got like strategies for how to identify people interesting. I should mention, as long as we're talking about that

Sender Raven episode. Somebody on the the Stuffable in your Mind discussion module, which of course is our our Facebook discussion group, which is really the the the only place if you want to um, you know, interact with us on social media or of course interact with plenty of

other listeners. But somebody brought up that Frank Herbert's Dune features a plot element in which the Freeman, the the the the sort of nomadic people of Iracus use bats to send messages, and i'd completely yeah, I've read Dune like multiple times and and it is if you listen to the show. You know, I am usually not shy about thrown in a Dune reference, but I completely spaced on the bats. Totally makes sense on a Racus, they can cross distances without the threat of worms, right if

they can fly? Yeah, but maybe we should come back and do an add on to that episode and look at the bats, yeah you know it or any inats that come up, messenger bats, could you know, could it be done? What? What? We just we should approach them as well and sort of you know, a tack on a segment to that episode. Speaking of things that fly. We also got an email from a listener named Christian. Not our former co host Christian, but a listener Christian

about Cupid's Lead arrows. That was a fun episode, Yeah, yeah, where we talked about Cupid and this like the mythological use of lead, and then also we just got into lead itself. But Christian writs in and says, hey, guys, I'm listening to Cupid's Lead an arrow and heard one of you say that you wouldn't want a lead hammer. In fact, I have one. What I think that was me that said it, But I mean it makes us

lead as kind of soft. If you're beating something with lead for a long time, would probably deformed the hammer head. When we were talking about you have the limits of using lead in in in weaponry, yeah, uh, anyway, Christian continues quote. British cars from the sixties frequently had wheels attached using a spinner basically a large single lug nut at the center of the hub. A lead faced hammer is used to remove the spinner by whacking the blades

that protrude out from the center of the cab. Because the lead is soft, this doesn't damage the chrome finish of the spinner. Okay, as always keep up the good work, Christian, I stand corrected. Lead hammer is totally a thing there you go, not so much for whacking skulls, but when you need, but when you need a subtle approach as as clearly as the case with the with these spinners. You know, I do want to say that I'm sure you could probably hurt somebody really bad with the lead hammer.

It's not that like it wouldn't I mean would be heavy. You could still hurt somebody. It just probably wouldn't hold up over time, right, And of course the weaponry and the history of military technology, it's about usually about inflicting the most harm and then also having uh you know, some sort of durability to the weapons you've created, right, Okay.

Quick email from our listener Emily In response to the bugs under the Skin episode, Emily says, Hey, I'm sure you've been sent this already, but just in case you haven't, regarding bugs under the skin, check this out. She sends a link. It's a link to the story that you may have seen already about the woman who had four bees living under her eyelid eating her tears. Did you come across this everywhere? Right after our episode came out? Everywhere? I found her right up in the Atlantic by Hailey

weiss Uh. Just to read a quick quote from it, beastings hurt like hell, but there's a reason to consider yourself lucky if a venomous prick is the worst you've suffered from bees. Last week, Taiwan CTS News Channel reported the twenty nine year old woman had gone out for a walk in the mountains and returned home with I pain that wouldn't go away. The next day, an optimologist hold four bees, all still alive, from under her right eyelid. So the stories they were living under her right eyelid

and they've been feeding on her tears. A little later in the article, quote as Hung Cheating, who treated the woman at Fuyan University Hospital in Taiwan explained at a press conference, these dark colored bees were ant size members of the family known as how lick. Today, colloquially they're called sweat bees, named after one of their favorite foods.

And apparently these insects are attracted to our protein and sodium rich body fluids like sweat, but they like tears even more than sweat because tears are more nutrient rich. There's something almost mythological about this, right, just the idea of like the bees feasting on her tears and living in her eyes. Um Like, I think the first time I saw it, after our episode came out, I kind of dismissed it. I'm like, nope, that that can't be right.

That just sounds too too perfect. Somehow, it's just too there's too much um structural integrity to the idea. It couldn't have actually have happened, but it seems like it happened. That it's been covered enough. Yeah, it's one of those times where reality feels like a story. Yeah, all right. We have a couple of bits of listener mail that came in about our our episodes and f a of the fundamental attribution error. Uh, those were some I think

some very thought provoking episodes and fun. I think we really put the fun in fundamental attribution here. I think so too, Now, quick refresher, that's just are sort of bias or tendency to um over ascribe things to people's fundamental internal qualities and under ascribed behaviors to people's unique situations and moment to moment, right, Like a rough version would be like those those people who ate those other

people in the mountains. Uh, they turned to cannibalism because they are cannibals, as opposed to saying they turned to cannibalism because they were in like a really harsh environmental condition and we're in a high stress survival situation. Yeah, and that's an extreme version. But well, and of course all behaviors are explained by both, you know, internal qualities and external factors, but we just tend to over emphasize internal qualities when we assess why things happen, right, certainly

in the West. Yeah, So our listener Justin wrote in, and first of all, Justin recommended that we do an episode on the name of the Rose. I think that's an interesting idea. Oh yeah, it's one of my favorite books you've recently read. It and uh and I also really dig the movie, and there's a new adaptation coming out with John Taturo as a brother Williams. I can't wait to see that. But yeah, I loved this book also.

I will say it's one of the few mystery stories I've read where the ending solution to the mystery is actually truly satisfying. Usually I feel like the end of a mystery is a letdown. Uh. Not so with the name of the Rose. But anyway, so yeah, I think that's a great idea. We may come back to that in the future. But then Justin wrote with it, Oh, you know what, I put this in the wrong place in our outline. So we do have some emails about fundamental attribution error. Will get to in a minute. This

one actually is in response to our narrative episode. Uh, so fa the explanation we just gave. Put that on hold for the fun is on the way, But first a little more narrative. Okay, So Justin Wrights, thank you so much for your cast on storytelling. As a guy developing new drugs to treat bacterial infections, the notion of storytelling is heavily marketed for scientists and also for venture capitalists.

Story is important, but selectively as a tactic. Unfortunately, what we've seen in the industry is that fundraising dollars are flowing from venture capitalists to companies that have spent many years and tremendous effort on developing good stories, rather than dedicate that heavily time intensive effort on the science and understanding of disease biology of the drug they are trying

to develop. The result of this behavior is that these quote unquote over storied biotech companies are largely, with few exceptions, creating drugs that are marginal improvements on existing treatments, and because they soak up so much of the venture capital funding, they indirectly harm more innovative company is with novel solutions

to significant and long standing, unaddressed problems in medicine. Tactically, I've made a time for my company to delay creating and marketing the story of our technology until the final animal study comes in to confirm as UH as such without reasonable doubt. Thank you so much. I hope this was thought provoking. Best justin, Well, that's interesting justin to

hear from you in the industry. I think you're exactly right that like of course, stories are huge in marketing, and something I often recognize as you know, it's not just going to be in biotechnology and uh and and you know, developing new pharmaceuticals and all that. It's in all kinds of industries. That I noticed that the free market often tends to invite people to focus as much or more on marketing a product as they do on

coming up with a good product to begin with. And the huge part of that marketing is trying to tell a story. Well, yeah, I mean, certainly this is the case in advertising. I caught an ad just the other day for a medic cation I think it was for It was something to do with digestion and bowels and and it was like a couple and they were trying to decide whether to go this way or that way, but thanks to the medication, they were able to go across a giant rope bridge. And I mean, it's I

have to admire. It's like there's some subtle storytelling there that makes the whole advertisement more memorable and makes you place the problem and the solution that they're marketing within the context of story. Well, ultimately, what a lot of these advertisers are trying to do is not advertise the inherent superiority of the product they're selling. They're trying to get you to associate their brand name with a good

feeling that you got from watching a story. Yeah, and also I can't this is kind of slightly unrelated, but you know, it reminds me of another great or awful

use of storytelling is is in you know, scare tactics. Um, you know, generally in the case of you know, propaganda about uh you know, um you know, given uh, you know, perceived threat or something that they that that people want you to perceive as a threat, you place it within the confines of son probably unbelievable awful story uh you know, be it, you know, somebody taking you know, too many drugs and trying to force their way through a keyhole

or something to that extent, you know, uh, um, you know, or worse examples that we don't even want to get into on the show. But uh, they're trying to use the you know, the the dark art of narrative to influence people's thoughts and opinions. Well. As we discussed in the episode, Yeah, constantly, narrative is used to short circuit people, people's better judgment or rational evaluation of evidence. I mean, if if you don't have the evidence on your side,

just tell a good story, you might convince people. Anyway. I'm not advising people to do that. I'm saying that is how it often works. All right, let's get to the fund though, let's get to the fundamental attribution error. Well, this one combines the last two topics. So this is uh an email about fundamental attribution error and end our episode about narratives. So it is from Amelia. Amelia says, yes, it's Amelia again. I think Amelia wrote us a lot

of emails about Highlander, maybe if I remember so. She says, sorry for all the emails these last few months. I vowed after I wrote about how Yep Okay, I vowed after I wrote in about Highlander that i'd cut back. It's okay, you can email UM. I don't want my emails to get in the way of new writers or other great ideas. However, your recent podcasts on questioning of narrative and the phenomenon of fundamental attribution error coincide with my specific area of study. I'll try to keep it short.

And you're against narrative podcasts, You brought up very good points about how the role of story making can promote faulty perceptions, for example, the notion of the isolated self and the bias for pattern interpretation. Narrative structures can be blamed for perpetuating concepts like these, concepts which often on

closer inspection, don't necessarily map onto our scientific knowledge. Having said that, I want to muddy the waters by arguing that narrative, especially fiction, builds cognitive fortitude against the FAE fallacy. Subverting fae I argue is one of the primary reasons

we not only need narratives but continually construct them. FAE as an evolutionary development is inhospitable if contemplating its isolating qualities as a human being or beings incapable of escaping FA to promote a cohesive community would, by Darwin's estimation, fail to thrive. Narrative structures, to that end, provide an evolutionary benefit by encouraging the unification of human minds through the projection of self into alternative forms of perception and circumstance.

This projection is possible with nonfiction, but the array of situational circumstances fiction permits is limited. Only by mankind's imagination. Following that line of thought, fiction arguably encapsulates as much of the situational human experience as can be imagined or projected. In this sense, the more a person reads from a fictional perspective of the stronger their capacity to cognitively navigate

past the impulse of fa intuition. It's interesting to contemplate the evolution of myth and narrative is a cognitive defense against f a E. Though I haven't found any hard evidence of this anyway. Just wanted to share this idea and happy podcasting, best Amelia. Uh, that is an interesting idea. I mean, I'm not sure how you'd prove something like that, but it is a sort of interpretive framework that that

that piques my interest. Yeah, what if? Uh? Fiction? Because we should remember one thing that does appear to be sort of true at least. There's some evidence of this in social psychology, that that manipulating perspectives can help people overcome fundamental attribution error, Like if you put put somebody in somebody else's shoes, you know, almost literally, like you give them their perspective on a situation or a room.

That's actually my new um box subscription service that I'm offering is that you you get a copy of Moby Dick and they come with a paradish males shoes, So you get to read the book well literally being in ishmail shoes. Well you all, but you do get to be in Ishmail's shoes a little bit because you're you're hearing his first person perspective in the story. Uh. That is sort of what I think fiction does. I mean, one one good quality of fiction is that it puts

you in somebody else's mind. It's an imagine to mind, but I mean it works pretty much the same way you inhabit this other character. You see the world from their perspective, and then you see the way that their reactions to things are changed and charged by circumstance. Yeah, and you're privy to sort of a lot of things.

I mean, well, it's it's often such an interesting experience to read a first person account that encapsulately two inside of a you know, a very flawed character, or or you know a character that is um uh that is perhaps that even you know an antagonist. Uh there. I mean another thing that I think is kind of interesting is that what the one of the things that the best fiction does is that it balances dispositional versus situational factors in the characters. Like you can have sort of

one dimensional characters that are overly dispositional. They're just like a pure quality and they always do that thing and there's no complexity to them. And then you, on the other hand, you've got characters that are might often be called like ciphers, that don't really have any qualities. They're just sort of reacting to the world in a way

that's entirely situational and they have no personality. And like, good characters are in between these, right, Like they've got fundamental characteristics, but they they're complex, they're nuanced, they change according to circumstance. Yeah, you know, all this reminds me.

It's been a while since I thought about this, but there was this was like a blog I think that I was following years and years ago, and the individual that that was maintaining the blog had kind of I think that they had a very like physical career prior and then they were blogging, you know, kind of after that had come to a close, and then they it they were also blogging about their reading, like they basically it sounded like maybe the individual had not read a

lot previously and they're kind of like a late bloomer in a literary sense. And I remember when they talked about having read a first person narrative for the first time, like they had not read the first person uh novel uh and uh. At the time, I was, you know, maybe a little I was like, what, really, had you

never you know, read that before? But but you know, it's making me think, like what would that be, Like I don't remember what it was like to read a first person uh, you know, narrative for the first time. It was just kind of like always there. But it would be kind of magical, I guess, And I imagine picking it up and having never read that before. We're used to it. But it is a strange way of

inducing kind of an altered state of consciousness. It's like you, you know, you get to transport your mind into a certain degree. This happens with any good fiction, is that there's sort of there's this identification process where you come to empathize with the fictional character. Their goals sort of become your goals, their wishes become your wishes. You feel what they feel. But even more so in the first person perspective than in even like a close third. Yeah,

it reminds me. I'm currently reading um Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna, and there's a bit where he's was talking about just how I was talking about language and about how we're it is just invisible to us, you know, and he's talking about other things that are in our lives that influence our behavior, that they are invisible to us. That with you know, we just don't we don't think about them, we don't notice them, but

they are defining the nature of our reality. Culture is mostly invisible and as you stop to think about it, Uh yeah, language, language constantly amazes me. It's one of those things that I wish every day I could remind myself to stop and appreciate how bizarre and magical language is. Yeah, but but it it's so easy to to just keep going and just breathe it and breathe it out without thinking about the breath that you're taking. All right, Well,

we're gonna go and close it out right there. That's that's your allotment of listener mail for the month or so. But we'll be back. And as as always, we do not we don't have time to respond to everybody that writes in. We we don't have the space to uh to feature every bit of listener mail that comes in. But we we really do appreciate it all, but we do read it all. So so don't you know, never feel like you're you're just throwing your missive into the

void here. Uh. And like I say, it's part of part of our way of you know, it's it's a communication between us and uh and our listeners. It's a way for us to continue to grow, uh, for us to uh, you know, correct anything that needs to be corrected. Uh. But but generally it's more it's it's more additive in nature. It's like we get to bring in your experiences, your specialized knowledge and experiences uh to uh to to better understand these topics that we're discussing on the show. Yeah,

we love all the stuff we hear from you. Also, please keep it coming. Oh hey, and I have just one little insert I want to throw row in here doing this post recording, but I want to remind everybody that the World Science Festival is coming up. Ah, yes, yeah, the World Science Festival. This is the annual celebration of science and the Arts, which takes place May two through

June two in New York City. So Yeah join in for this year's festival to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the confirmation of Einstein's theory of relativity with over sixty events that take science out of the lab and into the streets, parks, museums, and premier performing arts venues of

New York City. The festival kicks off with light falls and original work for the stage on Mayo, which will portray Einstein's general theory of relativity, followed by eye opening discussions, vibrant debates, mind expanding explorations, powerful theatrical works, works, insightful films, hands on experiments, and major outdoor experiences. Again May through June two, festivalgoers of all ages will join the world's leading thinkers for an unforgettable celebration of science that's sure

to inspire and excite. I am going to be there in attendance myself. In the meantime, you can check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we'll find all the episodes. Links out to uh such as two places like our our discussion module group on Facebook. There's also that T shirt store where you can uh you can check out our our our various squirrel shirts that

are currently for sale. Oh and I also want to mention at the top of this episode, I I talked about the the sacred squirrel and Hindu traditions. I read about that in a wonderful little book titled Sacred Animals of India by Nandatha Krishna. Uh. It's available. Um, you can get it online. It's available as an e book or it's a physical book. UH, it's a it's a fun, little little read. I highly recommend it. Awesome, huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and

Tari Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us to uh let us know feedback on this episode, to suggest a topic for us to cover in the future, just to say hello, let us know you know, how you found out about the show, all that kind of stuff. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

a production of iHeart Radios. How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows