Listener Mail: Seraphs Sob at Vermin Fangs

So I'm going to be doing a core episode of the show tomorrow with a special guest, and then later on this week, Rob and I will both be back and ready to chase that fairy fire into the bogs of October. So I guess with that, I'll jump right into some of your messages. This first batch came in response to our series on the Black Death and religious responses to the second Plague pandemic. I think first, I'm going to read this message from Olivia. Olivia writes, Dear

Robert and Joe. Hi, my name is Olivia and I'm a big fan of the show. I was particularly excited to listen to your recent episodes on God and the Black Death, as I did some research on that topic

in college. I was actually in the middle of researching it right as our own plague hit in March of uh And she actually attaches a a part of a short paper that she wrote on the subject, but then explains quote my basic argument is that the poor reaction of religious authorities in Europe to the Black Death caused a widespread loss of faith in the Church, which created an opportunity for new spiritual leaders like mystics to gain followings.

This endo, the hegemony of the church, combined with the rise of new, more individual focused forms of Christian spirituality, ultimately paved the way to the Protestant Reformation. And then she reckoned men's a book that she found helpful in this subject called From the Brink of Apocalypse by an author named John a Birth, and then finishes by saying that aside, thank you both for creating such a great podcast. I actually enjoy doing laundry and dishes because it's an

excuse to listen to you guys. I really look forward to part three of the series. All the best, Olivia, Well, Olivia, as always, thank you for the kind words and thanks for getting in touch. I don't know enough about this subject to have a strong opinion on whether the Black Death weaken the authority of the Catholic Church and whether it was truly a determining factor in the Protestant Reformation.

It does seem plausible, though, then again, it it got the gears turning in my head and made me think about how, though this is not in particular a counter argument against the claim you're making about the Second Plague pandemic in the Catholic Church, it did get me thinking about how things like faith in a religious institution don't

always react to external in puts in predictable ways. Uh. And the main example that came to my mind is a famous book in twentieth century psychology called When Prophecy Fails, A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world. This was a book by three co authors, Leon Festinger, Henry Reichn, and Stanley Shackter.

And this is a somewhat different issue, different than the example of the plague, or at least a different type of undermining of religious authority, but it did make me think about studies of what happens when religious expectations for external events are not fulfilled. So this book was originally published in nineteen fifty six. We talked about Leon Festinger

in some episode that we did recently. He's known for promoting the theory of cognitive dissonance, where a mismatch between um between the beliefs that you hold versus your observation of the external world UH causes a state of discomfort that you will seek to resolve of through, sometimes through rather radical means. And in this specific example, the authors here studied a small UFO cult whose leader claimed to

be receiving messages from another planet. And this cult predicted, on the basis of these messages that there was going to be an apocalyptic flood that would destroy human civilization in the r nineteen fifty four, and of course it

didn't happen. Yet some members of the cult not only continued believing in the messages and and in the cult authority structure, but increased their dedication to the cult with rationalizations about the mismatch between their predictions and observed reality and and their increased dedication was measured through things like even more preaching UH, public preaching and sharing of the cult's message. And I know there's been some later criticism

of the author's methodology in this book. For example, I think how their their documentation of the cult might have actually influenced the behavior of the members. So think this

is a uh not without its critics. But given that we can observe lots of other instances similar to this, I think there's still probably something useful to be learned from the explanation that the authors gave here, which is basically that when the cult members were faced with extremely uncomfortable cognitive dissonance, and this dissonance would be caused by

the mismatch between I predicted X would happen. I predicted there would be an apocalyptic flood versus I observed that in fact, not X happened that or that Y happened, that there was no apocalyptic flood. And because they had already sacrificed so much on the basis of that prediction, so you can think of those in multiple ways, and they may have sacrificed wealth, social capital, and so forth. One natural way to alleviate that excruciating dissonance is to

double down. So you double down on the original belief you believe it even more strongly, you preach it even more fervently, thereby potentially adding new believers and increasing the faith of other believers, and thus increasing social support within

the cult belief structure. As I mentioned earlier, these are clearly two very different ways that a religious authority could be potentially undermined, one by making predictions that don't come true, and the other by simply failing to be able to do anything about the cataclysmic human suffering caused by the

Second Plague pandemic. But I can't see some parallels, and so so I wonder I think you could well be correct in your characterization that uh, that the Second Plague pandemic led to a series of social outcomes that undermined faith in the Catholic Church, led to these alternative forms of spirituality, maybe more individually focused, and eventually paved the way to the Protestant Reformation. That does seem quite plausible,

though I don't know. I also do find it very interesting how uh, things like religious faith and and faith in the authority of religious institutions doesn't always react to external events in a way that's strictly predictable from the outside. Alright,

this next message comes to us from Ed. Ed is also reacting to the Plague series and he says, Hi, guys, while listening to your series on the plague images in a montage in the nineteen thirty six film Things to Come kept coming to mind, as you may recall, after civilization is destroyed in Never Ending Wars. I think he means in the movie plagues ravage the world. What do you think of the film? Thanks? Ed? And this one definitely caught my interest because I've never seen this movie before.

I don't think I was even aware of it if it If I was, I'd forgotten about it. But I looked it up and it does indeed look fascinating. So this is a British science fiction movie from nineteen thirty six written by H. G. Wells, who we talked about in the Weird House Cinema episode on Time after Time. But it was based on a book that he wrote called The Shape of Things to Come, which I have not read, but which seems to operate as a kind

of speculative future history. So it's a book that spans multiple generations of time beyond the horizon of of Wells or the filmmakers, and so the broad outline is that Wells predicted a global war would break out in nineteen forty and rage for decades after that, so partially prescient there, uh, And that the war would be so brutal and devastating that it would cause the world to descend into a new dark Age, especially because towards the end of the

conflict the belligerents turned from conventional weapons to biological weapons, unleashing new forms of disease and plague that kills something like half the people on Earth. And after this all government falls away in the world descends into anarchy and barbarism, and everybody lives in this warlord hell of plague vikings. Eventually, though, the Earth is saved by some sort of international coalition

of strangely pilots and engineers. They're called Wings over the World, and they're they're based out of a of a hub in Iraq, and they fly around re establishing order the outlaw war. They rebuild lost scientific and technological capability so that its benefits can be spread to all of the people of the planet. And I thought it was interesting here that Wells identified airplanes as one of the technologies

primarily associated with future progress. So there there's also a thing in the movie where there's a final section set far in the future and the inhabitants of Earth are planning a mission to the Moon, which I guess is another extension of the air travel principle taken to the

next level. And uh and I don't know. I thought it was curious that we do in science fiction today still associates space travel with UH with sort of the cutting edge of future technology, one of the things that is emblematic of technological progress overall, but not so much for air travel. If a similar future history were written today, I wonder if it be instead of pilots, who would be the people who come in to try to re establish order. I don't know if it would be uh,

I T professionals or something. But anyway, so poking around a bit in the movie. I have not watched the

whole thing, but it does look really interesting. Uh. And at some point, I guess things are supposed to be taking place in the far future, and everybody's addressed and they're they're living in the technological utopia, but everybody is also dressed in medieval tunics, and so they look kind of like Bunny Breckenridge in Plan nine from Outer Space, which which I found funny but definitely looks like it is worth a watch. Alright. One more message in response

to the Black Death episodes. This one came in from our listeners, a big Nif, and this was a really good clarification that that's worth pointing out. So the Big Nief got in touch to say that to to comment on when we were talking in the third Plague episode about anti submitted conspiracy theories that arose in Christian Europe during the Black Death, so there would be these mass delusions that Jews had somehow caused the plague epidemics by poisoning wells, and uh this led to massacres of Jewish

people in communities throughout Europe. And we mentioned something about how there have been recent echoes, more recent echos at least, of this type of thinking in which people falsely accused minority groups, sometimes specifically Jews, of causing infectious disease, and Rob mentioned I think what he said was a Polish poster from World War Two blaming Jews for typhus, and Zbignia wrote in to emphasize that though this poster was written in Polish, it was a German Nazi poster that

was hung up in Nazi occupied Poland, and this is why it was written in Polish. And yeah, that's very good to point out if that was unclear to anyone, the poster was Polish and since that it was in the Polish language, not a poster of Polish origin. So thank you very much for that clarification. It's a big NIF all right now, I think I'm going to be moving on from the from responses to the Black Death series, and I'm going to read a message from our listener, Raj.

Raj says, Hello, gentlemen. I know you've received many emails regarding mirrors, but here is one more to add to the wall. I was working out recently and was on a stationary bike that happened to be facing a window. Since it was early in the morning and the lights in the studio were not too bright, I could easily see my reflection in the window, thus acting as a pseudo mirror. Noticing this observation, my mind immediately went to your episodes regarding the mirror, and I then remembered a

listener mail episode where Joe explained how mirrors work. I apologize for not remembering the specifics, but it had something to do with the notion that mirrors reverse the image along the Z axis and not the X or Y axes. Yeah, I guess I'll interject here if this helps to give

a quick refresher. I was answering a question about why a mirror appears to flip our image horizontally, so your left hand becomes your reflections right hand, even though it's still the image of your left hand, but at the same time does not flip your image vertically. You don't seem to notice any equivalent phenomenon going on with the

reversal of your head and your feet. And my conclusion was actually that this impression we have about it reversing the horizontal axis but not the vertical is an illusion that's predicated on the fact that human bodies are horizontally symmetrical. Uh. And you can test this out a bit just by imagining that human bodies looked exactly the same except they floated sideways in the air. So imagine a human body floating sideways. If it raises its left arm to its side,

it's going to be pointing toward the ground. If it raises its right arm to the side, as if you know, to the side, as of doing a jumping jack, it's gonna be pointing towards the sky. In this case, it would be exactly the opposite. If humans floated sideways like this, a mirror would appear to flip you vertically, but not horizontally. And so I think the most accurate way to describe what a mirror does to your image is neither horizontal

nor vertical flipping. It's actually turning your image inside out. The mirror reverses your image along the axis of depth a distance from the mirror, not height or width. And human bodies just happened to be constructed in such a way that an inside out image of our front facing side is confusing like this. So you raise your left hand, and your reflection raises the hand that would be the right hand if it was another person looking at you from your mirror images position, but it is the image

still of your left hand. Uh. And so that this, uh, this is just not something we encounter in everyday life anywhere except looking into a mirror. So it kind of short circuits the brain. Anyways, Raj continues, I was recalling this memory while I happened to be looking at my reflected feet, and all of a sudden, my feet looked as if they were peddling backwards. Not only that, I then began to feel as if I were physically peddling backwards.

I tried to make sense of this, but trying to reconcile my confused perception with trying to understand how mirrors work, all while keeping up with my workout was too mentally taxing, and I ultimately had to look away from my reflection to reorient myself. Looking back to this moment, I'm still not sure what happened, and trying to make sense of it just invokes more confusion. But in the end, it's still a comical memory to think about, and so I thought i'd share it with you, Laurage. I I don't

know exactly what to make of that. That that's very interesting, and I'd be interested if if other listeners have insights on what's going on here. It almost seems like a combination of the way mirrors mess with our heads. But then also, um, I don't actually know what the name for it is, but the the optical illusion where there is the twirling ballerina and you can see it twirling

either direction. It appears to twirl either clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on just sort of Nothing changes about the The animation is just the way your brain sees it. You can look that up and find the name of it if you're trying to figure out what I'm talking about, but ultimately I don't know. Yeah, that's very curious, so

Rage goes on moving on. I was thinking about addle audels one day, as one does, and I thought to myself, that would be a pretty cool weapon to wield in D and D. I don't recall D and D being brought up in the addle addle episode, but it made me wonder if it was an actual item. It turns out it exists in both D and D and Pathfinders, some of which are cannon and some are homebrew extensions.

I'm not sure where or how I'd be able to fit the audle addle in any of my current D and D or Pathfinder campaigns, but I'm excited at the prospect of being able to use it. I wonder if either of you have considered using it in any of your campaigns. Well, Rage, this would be fun to ask Rob about once he gets back. We may have to revisit this in the next listener mail episode if we were called to bring it up. But I have not

used it. I don't know that that seems like a It seems like a weapon for a for a brawnier and more courageous character than mine, who is who is

mostly a liar and a coward. Um. So so yeah, I have not gotten around to the autolatal use yet, but maybe in the future anyway, uh find Moving on to Roger's last point about whispering weapons, Roger says, another great episode and once again another tie into D and D. In one of the campaigns I'm playing in, one of the players got his sword as part of a loot. Since that player's character doesn't use swords, my character eventually

got his hands on it. Shortly afterward, my character started to hear a voice in his head, and it was the sword. My mind immediately went to your episode on the whispering sword, so I asked it what its name was. It replied that no one had ever thought to ask it that question, so it didn't have a name. So, like with any great weapon, I'll have to give it a name, though admittedly that's still a work in progress.

More excitement of bounds as I might have to go back and re listen to that episode and get some inspiration on how to role play with this new item. Thanks as always for the wonderful content and keep up the great work. Cheers Raj. Well, yeah, Raj, thanks as always for writing in and very intriguing about the sword. You'll have to keep us updated on on how it turns out, though I would be slow to trust a

sword that speaks. I'm I'm not quite sure why. Okay, maybe one last message here about Weird How Cinema and warning. The following email contains some Gaelic that I am I'm sure I'm going to fail at pronouncing um. This is from Aaron. Aaron says, Hi Robert and Joe Dia Dewet from Ireland. I have to say that I think Weird How Cinema is probably my favorite offering from your good selves. If I haven't seen the film being discussed, I normally listen to the first part of the podcast to see

if it's something i'd be interested in watching. It usually is, much to the dismay of my wife, uh the not less into the rest of the podcast after watching the film, or more often just start the whole thing over from the beginning. My favorite part of the podcast is usually the plot breakdown section. It can be interesting to see what strange moments you pick out to talk about, and I sometimes find myself laughing out loud if we noticed the same things, such as the young fella's nail collection

in the Russian space movie. Oh Yeah, teens in the Universe, that was a good one, Aaron says. I found this section. I guess the plot breakdown conspicuous in its absence from your cast about time after time. I really enjoyed the film and was looking forward to the plot summary, but this didn't occur, and instead you were careful to avoid any spoilers. Is this a new direction you're heading in? I hope not, because your take on the proceedings and

some seriously crazy films can be hilariously entertaining. I hope this doesn't come across as being overly critical. I really enjoy listening to YouTube rambling on about stuff I would I would genuinely never consider in a million years, especially like the October monster stuff and the prom us of

a new anthology of horror episode. Anyway, all the best, uh Slow August banoched Aaron oh and then finally, Aaron says, ps, one of the bits I hoped you'd mentioned in Time after Time was the bit where Malcolm McDowell hailed the cab by imitating the woman doing it before him. I must have rewound that part about twelve times. Malcolm mcdwell could be seriously funny when he wanted to be. Uh well, Aaron, No,

this is not a general direction. I think we'll just go case by case, and some movies seem like it would be more fun to break down the plot in detail. I know we've got one coming up this week where we go into great detail. I think it may have been maybe our longest weird house yet because we got so wrapped up talking about it. But yeah, with others, it just feels more appropriate to talk about the movie from a higher altitude, so or sometimes somewhere in between.

It just depends on the movie. Oh well, one one last short message before we go, Um, this will be This will be from Tom subject line Tom bomba Dill. These of course keep pouring in, and Tom suggests a so far unique one that we've not heard this one yet. The pick is Elton John very interesting. You know that

these casting choices never ceased to amaze me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, I'm a big fan of the tumble Weed Connection, in which Elton John it was one of his earlier albums and which he sort of, uh he sort of performs as a cowboy. I don't know if that's too far off from from becoming a sort of uh jolly god of the woods. So yeah, I can see it anyway. I guess that's going to close things out for this episode, but hey, stay tuned for the rest of the week.

There is going to be so I'm going to do a core episode with special guests tomorrow and then later in the week after that or Rob's going to be back. We'll rejoin me for some uh some great October content that we've been excited about all years. So so stick around and uh and uh and and keep listening. You can, of course, if you're not subscribed to this podcast, you can find it probably anywhere you get podcast. It is

the stuff to blow your mind podcast. Uh what. We do a number of different episodes in our in our daily offerings today, So on Monday's we do listener mail episodes like this one, though usually Rob is here with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays we do Core episodes, which are our classic style episodes. They tend to be usually focused around UH science and science intersecting with other cultural topics.

On Wednesdays we tend to do an episode called The Artifact, which is a short form series usually UH sub ten minutes and focused on a particular object, idea, or a moment in time. And then on Friday as we do Weird House Cinema. Rob and I both love strange movies and that's our time to talk about them. And then on Saturday, as you will get a vault episode, an older episode of the show that we've selected to rerun. So if you're not subscribed to the podcast, please do subscribe.

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