Listener Mail: Smaragdus Eyes

We're not having another seth rights in the listener mail type situation. Okay, this is from some other Rob. Rob says, in the second pupil episode, you mentioned the interesting fact that the Chinese word for pupil, and then Rob says that this contains the word child, making a connection between a small child and the tiny reflected image seen in somebody else's eye. I might have missed it, but I don't think you mentioned that our own word pupil comes

from the same idea. It comes from the Latin pupila, meaning little girl or doll. Comparing a pupil to a child is actually very common cross linguistically The Greek core a can mean either girl or pupil. The Irish mac im risk literally means child of the iris. The hebrew ishn literally means little man. The Turkish goes bebegie literally means I baby. It's kind of creepy. Um. These are not merely translations of a phrase original to one language.

They seem to have been coined independently in many unrelated languages. Apparently, in ancient times, the little reflection of yourself that you saw in somebody somebody else's pupil was considered the most remarkable thing about this body part. Thanks for making such a great show, rob Ah, Yeah, that's that's a that's wonderful. I didn't know about the the I babies of Turkish there. Um, that's that's wonderful. Uh. One of the weird the weird

coincidence here. I happened to watch the old animated version of The Last Unicorn this week, and it's been a long time since I've seen it, and I'd only ever read half of the book with my son. I think it was a library book. We ended up returning it. I will say I think, as far as the movie goes,

first half much better than the later latter half. First half has all the good stuff with the Mommy Fortuna and the Harpie, and also has the best America songs, uh the America songs in the In the second half of the film, um My Son even noticed that they were not up up to snuff. He was like, why is this song so bad? And I'm like, well, which half is his horse with There's no Horse with No Name in this. This is post Horse with No Name America. This is when they weren't. They don't sound that much

like Neil Young in this. This is a you have you had some real some world good ones. You got the last Unicorn theme song It's self. You have Man's Road. Those are both really good. But anyway, my point about eyes is there's a there's a whole thing in it about, you know, the evil unicorn hoarding King Haggard, who is

voiced by Marvelous Lee by by Christopher Lee. He has this whole thing where we have this unicorn that's the script that is a disguised as a human woman in the shape of a human woman, and he suspects something is up when he cannot see his own reflection in her eyes and later on is she becomes more human, She's losing her unicorn nous and becoming more human. He

can see his reflection in her eyes. Interesting detail. Yeah, and there's probably, Like I said, I haven't read the second half of the book, but I imagine, uh, the

author here is Umu of course, Peter Spiegel. I wonder if he's getting into something about the idea of possession, because of course this is a greedy, miserable individual who uh nothing makes him happy and life except occasionally the fact that he's collected all the unicorns but one in the world and hitting hitting them away in the surf.

You know, there's something about the idea of something that he cannot possess fully, that that he does not see himself in perhaps anyway unicorn fans right in let us know, all right, This next one comes to us from It's is. I'm not sure I guess Baron is writing in. I think someone is calling themselves Baron all the Baron rites. Good evening, this is Baron Eaton and I had to take a moment to at least address the multiple pupils

for the Irish legends and the link to beauty. The first example that popped into my head is the classic Dungeons and Dragons magical item the eyes of and it's items plural, and you would insert the power of the deity here, The baron says. Typically they would be glasses of some sort, monocle, bifocals, or other lenses. Since the lenses would not be purely flat, they could have multiple facets that would allow the wearer to see into the future,

see through illusions, and spot hidden treasures. Robb, you have experienced with these things. I don't think I've ever gotten to the point where I had eyes of a d I have never made these available as a d M, and no d M has made them available to me. But they sound pretty fun. They also sound like maybe they're maybe they're a little difficult to we eve into

a campaign. I don't know, uh I d M s and players right in and correct us on that if if I'm wrong anyway, the baron continues, the person viewing the sears would see multiple irises through the gym, and it could be clear enough to do so. Since the type of gym would be associated with mystical powers and wealth, it could be easily tied into the idea of a multi pupil human, especially since most things in the early

Before times were rife with symbolism. It would be a quick way to describe a monocle if you if you didn't have the words to describe a monocle. Love the episodes. You all keep giving me great ideas for games, characters

and monsters. Much appreciated. Well many thanks to the baron. Okay, So if I understand what you're saying in the second half, it's that maybe there would have been a case in the ancient world where somebody was looking through some kind of complex transparent object like a maybe a gym with multiple facets or something that had some refractive properties that caused the eye to appear in multiple surfaces on the gym or lens to the person looking at them, so

it might look like they had multiple pupils or multiple irises. I love this idea as it relates to D and D. As far as relating to to something from actual Irish history,

I'm intrigued, but I would have some doubts. Uh. The last time I read about this, I think the historical consensus was that spectacles didn't really exist before the Late Middle Ages, though there are some individual objects that have been used as uh sort of uh more more specific case magnification aids and and other visual aids in the ancient world. So a few examples came to mind while

I was thinking about this before we recorded. One is these these lenses from around the ancient Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. Though I think in most cases it's actually debated whether these were really used for magnification purposes, such as for reading text or as a craft workers aid, or whether they were simply decorative items. Uh. Isn't that what we talked about in our sort of history of lenses episodes on? Yeah? We did? Uh? I think more than one episode didn't

we were we talked about lenses. I know we did one on sunglasses, and by virtue of getting into sunglasses, got into the idea of spectacles. Maybe we did an episode on spectacles too. I don't know, it all blurs together. Well, I think we've done the telescope and we did sunglasses, so we addressed lenses in multiple ways. But uh, yeah, So I think there's debate over to what extent some of these lens artifacts were actually used for magnification or not.

I don't know if this still holds up but I also remember reading claims at some point about ancient Romans using glass spheres to magnify small text in manuscripts. And of course there's that great story Plenty of the Elder tells about how the Emperor Nero, of course he would enjoy watching people kill each other in the arena, but he liked to do he liked to watch it reflected in a green gym that Plenty calls a smur agdus.

So to read from the Natural History quote, even when the vision has been fatigued with intently viewing other objects, it is refreshed by being turned upon the stone. And lapidaries know of nothing that is more gratefully soothing to the eyes. It's soft green tents being wonderfully adapted for a suaging lassitude when felt in those organs. And then later he says, when the surface of the samur agnus is flat, it reflects the image of objects in the

same manner as a looking glass. The Emperor Nero used to view the combats of the gladiators upon a sami agnus. So I guess one imagines he's like holding up this green gym like a mirror and then looking back behind him at the at the gladiators whacking each other with swords and throwing the nets and stuff. So I don't know.

I mean a few interesting examples of possible magnification devices, lenses, gems and stuff like that that would have been used in the ancient world, though I don't know if any of this stuff would have ever shown up, would have been known in ancient land. I have to say I was immediately reminded of the scene in Disney snow White

where Dope the dwarf. Uh, it's kind of it's kind of frightening to look at actually now where he takes two giant gemstones and he like lodges them in his eye sockets, and then it makes it look like he has um, you know, multiple irises and pupils per eye, like a big, big dope fly. I believe that is what the exactly what the baron is suggesting here. All right, anyway, I am going to read this next message from Taylor.

Taylor says, Hey, Rob and Joe, I just finished listening to part two of the Three Pupil Die and unless I'm forgetting something from part one, you missed an opportunity to discuss a wonderfully weird example of multiple pupils in nature. The genus Annableps, also known as four eyed fish, are a genus of fish native to brackish waters in Central

America and northern South America. The four eyed fish does not in fact have four eyes, but it does have four pupils sort of species in the genus Annibleps spend their life at the surface of brackish estuaries, where they peak above the water to watch for insect prey. When the opportunity presents itself, the four eyed fish leaps from the water to consume inattentive arthropods. However, annibleps are not

particularly large like our beloved house cats. These species are both predator and prey and must watch the waters below for approaching picene predators. What's a fish to do if it needs to keep its eyes in the sky and the water at once. Evolution has produced an incredible answer. Two pupils per eye, or rather one hour glass shaped pupil per eye. The constricts in the middle in such a fashion that the fish appears to have for pupils.

When Antibleps rests near the top of the water, the upper halves of its pupils are held above the water to watch for prey, and the lower halves remain below the water to watch for predators. The neatest feature of this adaptation to me, is that the lenses of the fish's eyes are bifocal to account for the different diffraction of light in air and water. This strange fish has split the function of its eyes in half to adapt to its liminal place at the surface of the water.

Please check out some pictures of this bizarre fish, and thank you for continuing to create weird, wonderful and uh edutaining content to fill the slower hours of my days. All the best, tailor, are you not edutained people? I have to say I was not familiar with this fish, but I just looked up some wonderful images of it

and yeah that these eyes are remarkable. It is very much kind of an hour glass said looking situation in many of these shots, where it's as if the an oval shaped pupil has been pinched in the middle, allowing a portion above and a portion below the water. Yeah, yeah, that's really cool. All right. Here's one from cat in response to our seven day work or seven day week episodes.

Cat rights high there did I miss the part where the mythology Science, my Science boys that's Us by Sam talk about the English names for the days of the week. I am surprised I didn't hear you at least mention it. I recall how you mentioned the planetary names a few times Saturday, Saturday, Sunday, Sun, Monday, Moon, but I didn't hear any mention of the other half as the Norse god days Tuesday, Tears, Wednesday, woden or Odin, Thursday, Thor's

and Friday freya. Some people might be thinking, what planet is Thursday? Ha ha. Also I'm curious why use Norse gods doesn't seem market related or anything unless it is days of worship. Also why half Roman and half Norse gods love the show? You guys are the best cat, Thank you cat. Uh. I think the answer here is just the modern English language inherits both Roman and Germanic or Norse cultural influences. So uh, the names of the days of the week trace back to Old English or

Anglo Saxon the language of the Anglo Saxons. Uh. You know this is the language that Beowulf is written in, and this language was also influenced by Roman religion because Britain was occupied by Rome for hundreds of years from like the first century until I think sometimes in the fifth century a d. So, Saturday still has the name of the Roman god Saturn. You've got you've got that Roman influence. I think the Sunday and Monday probably also

come from the Roman influence. But then yeah, other days of the week come from the names of these gods that have Norse or Germanic pagan origins. Al Right, if we're moving on to the next email, uh, let's see. But before we get into this one, I just want

to say part of the background for it is. Remember in the Seven Days of the Week, we talked about how there was the scholar who wrote a book on the history of the week, and in one of the interviews we read, he speculated that life in which a life in which the seven day week is an important organizing principle might seem subjectively to go by faster than other schemes such as monthly organization or maybe longer market

weeks or something. I think he mainly sided just like letters from the past, in times when the week was in ascendancy and becoming more front of people's minds. He said that people seem to be talking more and more often about how the time seems to be flying by. Uh though, you know that could be a coincidence or

just his mistaken impression. And Jacob, in this next message, has some great perspective to provide as someone in the rather unique position of having lived under multiple radically different regimes of time. So I love this email. Rob. Did you want to read this one? Sure? Yeah? All right, here we go. This one is from Jacob. Jacob says the following, Hey, everyone, love the show so far. I hope not to disappoint you. I was introduced to your podcast by an old friend who worked with me and

endured the first of the schedules i'll describe below. I just listened to the three part series on the seven day week, and towards the end of part three, there was some musings on whether or not life seems faster when you break it down by week, and I do not believe so. So long as there is a cycle, I think it seems just as long when averaged over time.

The short version is I've lived on a three week cycle with eighteen hour days instead of twenty four, and now I work a schedule that repeats every thirty five days. In the case of the former, I think there was some time dilation due to the circadian rhythm wrecking schedule. In the case of the latter schedule, any given week will very significantly, but over time I think it averages out. In Between working these two schedules, I worked a regular

Monday through Friday, as most Americans do. In the case of the former schedule, the three week cycle with eighteen hour days. That was what U S Submarines did on deployment. When I was in we didn't even care about the twenty four hour day, instead organizing our lives around three sections of six hour watches, yielding an eighteen hour day. When I was junior and didn't need to know the

date I drove the boat uh. If we were deep, I could mark the time by day of day by chow, and the weeks by a cleaning ritual known as field day. As I got more senior, I had to be cognizant of time and date, but rest assured I'd forget when

I got off watch. If I had no obligations, every twenty one days, you'd stand watch at the same time and day as you did before, so the cycle was effectively a three week One weeks seemed long because of the eighteen hour day and the various things that could cut into your sleep, But over time I think twenty one day periods would start to blur together the same

way weeks do. In the case of the latter schedule, the thirty five day cycle, that is the modified DuPont that is very common across the power system operations world. In thirty five days, I'll have worked seven day shifts of twelve hours, seven night shifts of twelve hours, and four training days of ten hours. Power Plant operators tend to work a similar schedule of twenty eight days without

the training week. Any given week in that rotation will be different from a work perspective, and that will make a different schedule for someone's personal life. The average Americans work week is closest to my training week of forty hours in four days with three days off. I also have a week where I worked three day shifts and three night shifts with twenty four hours in between, which is very different uh compared to the built in weeks

off I have within that schedule. By the end of my thirty five days cycle, I think time will have felt similar to five weeks. Yeah, if we were to look at fifteen weeks or a hundred and five days, I don't think the few day walkers on a submarine who don't organize their lives around standing watch will feel they spent more or less time on deployment than those who have gone through the five of the twenty one

day cycles most of us lived on. I don't think three of my thirty five day cycles would feel any longer or shorter than fifteen of your seven day cycles. Anyways, I hope this was or is a useful perspective on a show that aired three weeks ago or during the week off in my thirty five day cycle. Wow, Jacob, Uh, well, this is a great email. I I love the reference

to the day walkers on the submarine. So if I'm understanding you right, you're saying that, like on a submarine, there will be people who are living according to a regular twenty four hour day schedule, and then there are other people walking amongst them who are living this this eighteen hour day cycle. Uh. That sounds chaotic and and I almost imagine a kind of like Eloi and Morlock situation imaging Uh, it's great to hear from somebody who

has experience on a submarine like this. I'm reminded of an older episode that we did call Troubled Sleep in the Arcs of Doom. Uh. That was looking at sleep studies pertaining to individuals who served on submarines. Uh. And I remember it being rather fascinating, because, yeah, you're essentially dealing with this this artificial world set off from the from night and day and the rest of reality, never exposed to sunlight, probably working weird cycles that don't line

up with our four programming. Yeah. Yeah, I remember a lot of discussions in the paper about it, about it being a job that could be both exceedingly boring but also still very stressful due to various factors from the environment to sort of the nature of the mission, etcetera. So anyway, yeah, Jacob, thanks for writing in. All right, Rob, you ready for a little bit of weird house cinema. Okay,

this first one is from Jane. Jane says hi, Rob and Joe, just a quick note to thank you for choosing the abominable Doctor Fibes as the subject for your latest weird house cinema. Growing up in seventies Britain. This was a late night staple on TV and it came to be one of my favorite, one of my absolute favorites.

If you hadn't beaten me to it, I was all set to request that you do a Weird House Vincent Price trilogy, consisting of fivees one fives too, plus Theater of Blood, which I was also thrilled to hear you mentioned. In fact, I watched Theater of Blood again, not two weeks ago, for the umpteenth time, and uh, and it was sad to think that now even Diana Rigg is no longer with us. It looked like she was having a blast in the role of Vincent Price's daughter. Time

flies by too quickly. These movies are filled with so many staples of British cinema, so many familiar faces now long gone. And I was also thrilled that you singled out Terry Thomas. There was no one better at portraying a cat or a bounder. I always look forward to Weird House Cinema to find out what you've selected, and I'm also trying to catch up with your voluminous back catalog, the anthology editions. I think that's starring about the episodes.

We do some octobers of like anthology of horror series and talk about science related to those uh those episodes. But James says the anthology editions are particular favorites, as those take me back to childhood viewing in the seventies. A story from one of these, involving hundreds of razor blades embedded in the walls of a nero corridor still gives me nightmares today. So anything with a hammer, horror psychomania, man who haunted himself, quatermass in the pit vibes vibe

is good with me. And if any of your listeners can point me in the direction of a short film that was shown at a film festival in Leeds in the early nineties that involved a car driving ever downwards in an underground parking garage that seemed to lead to hell, I will be eternally grateful. Thanks again for a great podcast, all the best, Jane, Oh absolutely, uh well, I know that we have at least we will definitely come back

to more Vincent Price films, and I do. I did just purchase a Vincent Price film for us to discuss at some point, but I'm not sure when will will continue the the Vincent Price cycle. I have an idea, actually robbed, we could do an entire weird house cinema episode just on Vincent Price TV commercials. We easily could. There's so many good ones. I figure, at the very least, anytime we do a Vincent Price movie, you know, we can't just you know, rehash the biography of Vincent Price

each time. Each time, it makes sense to instead dwell on different commercials that he did, because they're also fabulous. Um of the other movies that that are mentioned in this listener male, Um, yeah, Quatermass in the Pit or let's see what was the US name for that? I want to say, it's like, um, how for many million years to Earth? Um? Yeah, five million years to Earth? Uh?

This is this one is one I remember as being a great film as well with with with kind of by modern standards, perhaps unconvincing special effects, but within the context of the film they work really well, just very well done. It was very influential on a lot of filmmakers, including John Carpenter. Oh, that one's got Julian Glover and

nice to mention excellent British character actors. You know, he's Uh, he's Viers and the Empire strikes Back, and he's the bad guy in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and of course he's and Masters. Yeah. So anyway, thank thanks for writing in Jane. Um. I should also mention that our listener Susan was very enthusiastic for uh the Abominable Dr Fibes and did like a running commentary about the episode on our in our Facebook discussion group. That's the

stuff to blew your mind discussion module. Uh. If you want access to that, uh, go look it up. But yeah, yeah, she she was very enthusiastic about this film as well. Oh yeah, shout out to that. I don't often peek in at the Facebook group, but I did see that and Susan, Yeah, I really appreciate your your live blogging

of the episode. And speaking of the back catalog of Weird House cinema selections, I will mention again that that really the best place to see a list of those would be at a blog I maintain, Simuta music dot com. It's a very simple blog. There's nothing exciting about this blog other than I have done a post for each episode that we've done of Weird House and Uh, it's a pretty good las to see what we've done, all right.

This one comes to us from Aaron. Erin writes in and says, Hey, Robin Joe, I meant to message you about this a few months ago, but I'm on a workship now listening to old episodes, so it seemed appropriate now that I have time. I was watching an episode of Mythic Quest, a series on Apple TV. In it, there's a scene that has a frantic story writer stuck in a closet drinking What is he drinking? The character calls it a rutger Howard port wine, coffee, lots of sugar,

and I seem to remember other ingredients. I couldn't help but think that this has to be a connection to a new favorite movie of mine, Split Second. I was wondering if you guys have ever had a deep cut reference pop out at you in some form of entertainment, like an article or a movie. Thanks for all of the great content. I really appreciate what you do for

all of us. Eron, this would be referencing the facts that in Split Second, starring your how our Howar's character, Uh, he has a real sweet tooth, like he's constantly chugging coffee with huge amounts of sugar in it. Though I don't recall him drinking port wine. Um No, but I guess he might have. I just don't remember. No, I think that was the thing. He doesn't drink alcohol, right, he gave it up. Maybe he had, Maybe he was sober now, like he had quit drinking and replaced it

with copious amounts of sugar and coffee. Or maybe it's a maybe this is the thing. Maybe it's so deep a cut that it's referring to his character and Split Second and some other Rugger Howard role that I'm not familiar with or I've forgotten about, in which he drinks a lot of port wine. Either way, that's that's a

good choice. Do you remember how later in Split Second like his you know, it's it's sort of a future monster buddy cop movie, and the nerd buddy cop they pair him with, he like gets turned into a copy of rugger Hower by some traumatic experience, and he also starts to drinking the sugar. He becomes converted, and he's like, this is the way now we we we drink sugary coffee, We eat candy bars, and we carry around big guns. What's the character's name. He's like, he's like Rex Power

or something. I believe you're thinking of Detective Dick Durkin. Dick Durkin. That's not exactly that I was thinking. It was something more like, uh, I don't know, Johnny Magnum or something. Now, Dick Durkin. And of course Ruggar Howard's character is Harley Stone. There's some good names. No, that's what I was thinking. That's what I was Harley Stone, Harley. Yeah, it's got motorcycle plus plus Stone, yeah, plus rock. Dick Durkin. That didn't sound right at all, Harley Stone of course.

Oh and he's got the motorcycle in his apartment. Remember it's in there, and like the guy just sits on it. That was a good one. Okay, does that do it for you? I guess that does it. We're gonna go ahead and close up the mail bag, but hey, we'd love to hear from everyone out there. What are your thoughts on current episodes, past episodes, future episode zodes of stuff to blow your mind, weird house cinema, and so forth. You have any responses to just listener mails that you've

heard here. Uh, right in with correction suggestions. Everything's fair game. We don't have time to to feature all the listener mail that comes in on the podcast, but we we do look at everything that comes in, so keep it coming. Huge. Thanks as always to our regular audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson, and also to our guest audio producer this week, Paul

decand really appreciate you stepping in, Paul Uh. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, 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 my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.