Listener Mail: The Constant Flow of Invention

add to your Bone Palace episodes. I remember, I think there was a string of things we talked about in those episodes about creatures other than humans making dwellings out of the remains of other animals. Megan writes, Another cool creature that make camouflage itself with the body parts of other invertebrates is the green lacewing larva. You can see them trundling about on tree trunks under tiny lichen festooned huts.

They voraciously consume other insects, and they may incorporate the body parts of their prey, such as a fids, within their camouflage. This is especially useful as a disguise to fool ants which tend and defend sap sucking afids for their honeydew. Also carrier snails from the family's xenophority, meaning foreigner carrying, attach bits of coral rocks, sponges, and other smaller shells into the delicate white whirls of their own

growing shells. They can be very elegant, with the long spires of other shells protruding at regular intervals like a sunburst, or look like crazy marine garbage heaps, depending on the species and it's preferred masonry. The added bits provide some camouflage and protection from predators, stability on the seafloor, and also save them on the energy and material cost of having to grow their entire shells. Thanks guys, you supply me with moments in critical thinking in time when I'm

otherwise short on it, driving, kid tending, etcetera. Best Megan, excellent, Well, these are both great specimens. Thanks for sharing these with us, Megan. At least one of these seems kind of familiar, So I'm wondering if we maybe researched it but didn't mention it in the episode or mentioned it. It's possible. Sometimes stuff falls through the cracks like that. Yeah, uh now, We've got a number of responses to our pair of episodes about furry fish, and these were great fun. Yeah.

The first one comes to us from Kelly. She says, Hi, both. I was delighted to hear you mentioned in your second episode on furry fish the gloriously fluffy hoax fish at the National Museum of Scotland. As a child, I remember for the first time seeing this fish on show. Since then, I've always made a point of trying to find it whenever I go in. It is Scotland's own abominable snow trout.

Your discussion of fish people and otters uh got to me thinking about the Celtic Norse myths of the silky a mer person that takes on the form of a seal, which was a widespread folk tale in the North and in the Islands. The story I remember reading when was when I was very young was that of the Silky Wife.

I think there are plenty of variations on the theme, but the basic premise is that a fisherman falls in love with a silky woman in human form, but he steals her silky slash seal skin, preventing her from taking seal form, and locks the skin in a kiss or chest, keeping her imprisoned on the land. Eventually she manages to take back the skin, escapes to the sea, transforms back

into a seal and escapes. A more recent sculptural interpretation at the Helix Park in Falkirk, called the Selkies presents them in the form of the giant rearing heads of Shire horses. I think this is part of a reference to the foam tipped breaking waves of the sea being referred to as white horses, as well as a link to the horses which would have pulled barges along the canals along which the park was built. They are quite spectacular and worth a quick image search if you have

a few minutes. Thanks for the many hours of fun and a lightning discussion. I come away from every episode with some new interesting facts or ideas to think about. All the best, Kelly. Now, I tried to google the Selkies Helix Park and the only thing I think I came across what I think you're talking about. But this says they're called the Kelpies instead of the Selkies, which I know are both things, so you may have just had a typo in your email there. Either way, the

selkies are certainly fascinating. Uh selkies and and kelpies. I've been reading about them for for ages, you know, because they pop up in dungeons and dragons and mythology textbooks, uh monster uh compendiums of all sorts. I I also have to point out there's a wonderful two thousand fourteen Irish animated film called Song of the Sea which deals with this territory. Highly recommend that a beautiful film. M all right. This next message about the furry fish comes

from Alex. Alex says, Hello, I love your show, but I've never had a good reason to send you mail until today. In your The Fish had for episode, you mentioned the singing bass fish Billy bass, the singing bass fish. I had one of these growing up, so I started looking for it in my basement, hoping I still had it. I didn't, but I experienced a bit of serendipity while scrolling TikTok. After I gave up the hunt, I stumbled

across an artist by the name of Kevin Heckert. They are an interactive artist that has created a billy bass that somehow interacts with Amazon Alexa. It is amazing. It sings any song you ask it to. Please look it up. It will make your day watching billy singing all of the hits. That's it. Thanks for making such an entertaining podcast. Uh ps, I really missed the constant flow of Invention. That's how I found you guys. Thanks for reading, Alex.

Thank you Alex. Yeah, thanks. I hope we keep I don't know, we will still continue doing Invention episodes from time to time. Sorry, we can't do them every week now. I mean maybe at some point we'll just lose it and start doing Invention episodes like back to back for at least for a little bit. You never know. Yeah,

but anyway, so I looked this up. I'm not familiar with this uh this person, but I looked up the TikTok you were talking about, and yeah, it looks like someone has uh sort of hacked a billy bass to

to be the interface for Amazon Alexa. So at least if what is being alleged by this video is correct and there's no trickery involved, you can say to the big mouth billy bass, hey, Alexa, play whatever, and you know, uh, play four Horsemen by Metallica, and then the bed the bass will turn and say okay and it will sing along with the song, It'll do the mouth. All right.

Here's another one. This one comes to us from Calvin subject big mouth, Billy Bass, Hello, the one in the town I grew up in play Don't Worry Be Happy. As kids, we were absolutely obsessed with this thing. The poor shop owner must have heard that fish hundreds of times. Thanks for the show, Calvin. I gotta be honest. When I first read this email, I laughed out loud thinking

about the town, billy bass town. Well, it reminded me of New York movies, older New York movies, where they'll be TVs and shop windows, and they'll be people gathered around to watch the TVs. Except in this case, it's the billy bass singing don't Worry Be Happy. Bobby McPherrin, Yeah, great too, all right. We also heard back from our listener Shay in regards to the tomay O Vault episodes.

He writes, Dear Robin Joe, I'm lovingly teased by my friends and my wife for my podcast problem as I spend every available moment driving housework, walking the beast listening, uh, and your work is my favorite. I was listening to the second Vault episode about tomatoes this morning, as I made my wife send my favorite vegan beverage, an oat milk latte. If you haven't tried toatally yet, Rob, you've got to give it a go. I I do. I

do love oat milk. It's it's quite good. When Joe suggested that the fruit from the Garden of Eden may have been a tomato, quickly you both accept the improbability of this, since tomatoes are native to the America's and the authors of the Bible would not have been familiar with them. However, considering the importance of the ld S Church and in this U shase referring, of of course, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints,

um Uh. Considering the importance of the ld S Church to the later acceptance of tomatoes in the US, I want to offer a sliver of hope to your theory. Uh, they can, he continues. In ELDS lore, it is said that the Garden of Eden was in fact in the Americas, specifically in Jackson County, Missouri. Now that's more than a hot skip and jump away from South and Central America. But Mormon beliefs are central to stories of ancient American

people's traveling across these continents. While there is of course no scientific evidence that I'm aware of supporting any of this, it is interesting to look at the pattern of tomato development and apply it to a story. Here. Imagine a cultivated tomato of knowledge being taken and or naturally adapting and spreading to be the current like tomatoes of South America, where they are again selected, cultivated, and spread north, then grow wild and small again before finally being rediscovered and

becoming the tomatoes of today. I'm certain plot holes abound, but what fun shay from the Rocky Mountains? And they add a p s. In a recent listener mail, you mentioned and how delicious a tomato mayo sandwich can be, and I can't resist suggesting you try a pickle and mayo sandwich one of my guilty pleasures. Hmm. Interesting, Oh, I'm I'm up to try. I wonder what kind of pickle would be best? Do you want to go? Do

you go bread and better pickle on that? Do you go with a more sour variety, you go with a spicy pickle? So many possibilities. I'm very partial to half sour pickles myself. That fresh cucumber reef flavor. Yea. Now, I wanted to look this up to make sure that this is actually a belief among the Latter day Saints,

and I think what I discovered. I didn't have a lot of time to look into this, but what it looked like to me, um is that the belief that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri, or

it was definitely in Missouri. Uh, is not something that is written in the Book of Mormon, but I believe it is something that is alleged to have been said by Brigham Young, and and that Brigham Young said Joseph Smith told him this, so i'd know how exactly that relates to to its doctrinal status among the beliefs of the church. But but yeah, interesting nonetheless. Okay, anyway, are you ready to move on to some emails about Weird

House Cinema? Let's do it. Okay, This first one comes from Eric uh and I want to include this email because it has some great stuff in it. But Eric, I think you made a few typos that I couldn't quite figure out. I don't know if there was like some accidental formatting changes or something. So I'm gonna sort

of skip or summarize a few paragraphs here. But Eric says, good morning, gentlemen, I just listened to this week's listener mail, in which you spend a few moments pondering who should potentially portray Tom Bomba Dill in the future Lord of the Rings movie. And then uh, Eric says his first thought was Charles Darning. Interesting idea. Okay, so he says it's it's difficult to imagine Mr Darning is embodying a threat.

I don't know. I think about the sting at least. Yeah, yeah, he can be quite threatening and a brother where art thou at least when he wants to be. But he can also turn on the chime. That's true. Um, And Eric says he can sing, and he gives his evidence the movie The Best Little Horhouse in Texas, which that's a Dolly Pardon movie, isn't it? Yeah? I believe. So he also sings in Brother where art Thou oh yeah, and dances is that it is a talented dancer. A

lot of people don't realize that. And then after this, Eric says, I think he's suggesting that his dog recommended someone to him. Jokingly. I assume and anyway, that person is Vin Diesel. Vin Diesel is Tom Bomba Dill. What do you think? Okay, so so, Eric says, you know, Tom Bomba Dill, some people might think of him as kind of a a nature loving, quintessential hippie. But Eric writes, quote Bomba Dill is clearly at least a demigod, and

he's a very powerful being. Well, he's by preference good natured. He could be quite capable of violence. Even that some remove and one would assume anger or at least implacability, if that's a word. And Eric says, might have to dub in the singing. Though to the contrary, Eric, I don't know if you're aware of this. Vin Diesel has albums. He he is in a professional singer in addition to

being an actor. So uh so, you know he he may be living life a quarter mile at a time, but at least one of those quarter miles has involved going into the studio and laying down some sensitive emotional pop tracks. Yeah. You sent me a link to this and I listened to it, and I have to say it's it's not terrible, it's not necessarily my thing, but it's it's it's nothing that would offend me if I

heard it in a commercial or in a waiting room somewhere. Um, I wouldn't say that it just screams Tom Bomba deal to me. But um, I I accepted its proof of Vin Diesel's musical chops. I would say it's not my style of music. But I'm impressed by Vin Diesel's potential as a singer. I almost I was immediately thinking, like, oh, does he do cameo? Could we? How much would it cost to send him like the robb inglist songs and see if he can just you know, perform them. See

what it sounds like. Yeah, it's not gonna happen, sadly, at least not now. Maybe later, maybe later in his career, but for now, Vin doesn't need the cameo bucks. But also Eric floats the idea of of Wayne the Stone John's man as as the rock. Um. Yeah, the rock certainly is charismatic, and I think he can sort of sing at least um. But again, I don't know. I don't know if this is a direction from my vision

of Tom Bomba till I don't know. It's such a difficult part to potentially cast, so There was some fun discussions about this in the Facebook group for Stuff to Boil Your Mind, the Stuff to Boil your Mind discussion module. I think we even did a little pole. Uh. There was some some fun and some absurd suggestions on there. I also, I think at the same time that was going on, I was watching Hamilton's for the first time, so I was also thinking of the areous actors in Hamilton.

I was thinking, Oh, they could be a Tom bombadel Oh he could be up Tom Bombadil as well. A lot of Tom Bomba is strange. Yeah, okay, especially if you know. No, you have to remember in in in the book The Lord of the Rings and Fellowship of the Rings. Um, it's not said that these are necessary. I mean that we don't have music, we just have the lyrics. They could be wrapped. Oh that's true. Okay, maybe they even need to be rapped. I don't know. Well, I just don't know if any of those actors are

like old and rotund enough. I I picture somebody who's got to be like over fifty and kind of round. Yeah. Well, we're playing the long game here, so give it time. We just have some potential, uh, Tom Bomba dial so we just have to keep an eye on and see how they develop, how they mature. Of course, I realized this would also exclude Vin Diesel and and Uh and Rock the Dwayne obviously. Yeah, in their current forms. You

never know, You never know, all right. We also heard from listeners regarding our Weird House Cinema episodes on psychomania. This one comes to us from Dawn. Guys, so glad you picked this film. I saw this as a young kid in the seventies, and the image of the undead biker's turning to stone at the end was both frightening and super sad. I don't remember much else about the rest of the film, but that final scene has stuck with me for decades. Thanks for bringing the rest of

the movie back to me. We'll try to track it down. All the best, Dawn, I'm curious why it's sad. It seems like these horrible people, these horrible trolls, are finally turned to stone. Well, I mean they especially if you watched it as a young person. It's you know, these young people are you know, they're gonna live forever, They're gonna do things their way, and then they're shut down by old people. Magic at the end, it's kind of sad,

it's I can I can definitely dig that interpretation. The end of the movie, once again to reiterate, is Mom comes in and stops the rough house using yes basically via occult paperwork. Yes. Yeah uh. This next message is from Maggie, also about psychomania or the subject actually uses. The alternate title is just death Wheelers, Maggie says, great

weird house cinema episode. Guys, I remember seeing this movie about ten years ago at an all night secret horror movie marathon in Philadelphia, and this movie was a huge hit for that audience. I'm talking popcorn in the air, cheering and hollering, particularly every time one of the bikers rocketed from the grave upright on their motorcycle. A perfect

trash movie. Indeed, my friend and I thought the lead biker Tom had more than a passing resemblance to Noel Fielding from the Mighty Bush, and that lent the movie a whole other absurd dimension in which to enjoy it. Love the pod, and appreciate all the work you guys put into it. Maggie, that's a good point. I think when I was watching it too, I was getting some some mild hints of no fielding character. Yeah, the hair, kind of the you know, the long face. Uh yeah.

What what would have been like had the Mighty Boush done some sort of like a proper psychomania inspired tail. I think there there would have been room for them to explore some absurd ideas there. Oh my god, yes, they could have done a really good undead biker along

along the hitchhiker lines. I guess. Yeah. All right. This last pair of messages comes from Lorenzo, and then this is in response to us talking about the weird thing that's in a lot of Italian horror movies from the seventies and eighties, where there are scenes of heightened suspense and then the soundtrack gets it starts playing music that feels incongruous with the mounting suspense. It's playing like funky,

you know, funky jazzy, like cool music, not scary music. Anyway, So we were talking about that, and Lorenzo says, Hi, Joe, Rob, big fan of your show. Keep them coming, Joe. Twice you commented on Weird House Cinema asking why the upbeat synths and violence sequences, and Rob you rationalize that it's a culturally based counterpoint to the tension, right, So you were talking about maybe it's just some kind of difference between how like Italian audiences versus American audiences would regard

the connotations of disco music. Maybe Yeah, And so Lorenzo says, while the synth work of Goblin and Co Is awesome for the action sequences, those guys just stepped aside. Similar samples were pasted over all sorts of genre films in Italy when I was a kid, including overdubs of westerns and manga. So generally it's a shortfall on soundtracking in those sequences. I'd rather have John Carpenter do my truculent ambient. To be honest, it's a fail for our movies anyway

you look at it. Okay, So Lorenzo is just dissing some of the soundtrack choices of of of these Italian horror films. Uh, if I'm understanding, I hope I'm not misunderstanding. But I think Lorenzo is saying, like you know, sometimes they just didn't know what to put in there, didn't have much of a budget, and just subbed in some kind of track they had in a library or had the rights to or something. Well, yeah, I mean I

could imagine that potentially be in the case. But on the other hand, a lot of wonderful things come out of accidents and shortcuts in filmmaking, and so you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't discount it just because maybe the process was questionable. If it was questionable, well here, let's see, let's hear Lorenzo. Second email. Lorenzo also says, as you know, Italian film is all about dubbing. Italians to this day see all cinema dubbed with a handful of voice actors

playing the parts. They do a good job. We have a better Homer than Dan Castelneda, I promise you, but you will never know this. That's great. Um. Why do I bring up dubbing in the context of those action sequences with the upbeats? Sense? Do you ask? Because in many films they were working on whatever budget they had, and they sacrifice these production elements to an aesthetic, so funky jazz in a slasher sequence or bad overdubs. I

guess we're secondary to the aesthetic. But I agree with you, Joe, it's probably not an excuse. Lorenzo. Oh, Lorenzo I don't. I didn't mean to to impugne movies that have soundtrack choices that seem strange to me. I love a strange

soundtrack choice. Oh yeah, the stranger the better, the better, the the it's the soundtracks that are not strange, those are the ones that that can sometimes just piss me off, to be honest, but I think I see exactly what you're talking about, Lorenzo with um certain with there being a sort of strain of creative preference in Italian cinema

for maybe sometimes visual aesthetics over everything else. That like the the the director might have a certain kind of image in their mind, almost kind of a painting of the way they want the film to look, and that's really top priority. Maybe a lot of other creative choices might kind of just take a back seat to that, and I think that's true about a lot of Italian

horror movies especially. Well, this will be this will be a conversation to keep in mind and to keep having as we inevitably come back to the cinema of Italy on our Weirdout Cinema episodes. Oh yeah, I do like him taunting us with the fact that his Simpsons is better than ours. This This is fun because I had recently um, I recently played a video game titled Blasphemous, which is which is excellent and it is um It's a Spanish production and it had you can choose to

have the audio in English or in Spanish. And I was reading about it online with some people talking about there being an apparent at times kind of a good natured rivalry between uh Mexican dubblers and Spanish dubbers, like who's doing who does the best job of providing voiceovers

for for projects? And uh so, so that was interesting. Well, I never really thought about that, how you might have some sort of like good natured competition between the dubblers in Spain and the dubbers in Mexico for for different projects. Blasphemous Is this the the two D side scroller game that looks inspired by the paintings of Goya? It is? Yes, Oh I've been. I saw a preview of that, I think a few years back, and I was like, man, I want to play that. That looks like some some

real classic witchcraft. Yeah. I put it off for a long time and then I finally bet. I was like, all right, I'm gonna give this game a shot. And I'm not really huge into the sort of Castlevania Metroid type type games. A lot of times they kind of frustrate me. So I expected it to be a game that would visually amuse me for a little bit and then I would get sick of it because it would be too hard for me as a gamer. But I

ended up I stuck with it it. It was just enthralling, just some wonderful world building and uh, and I think it's challenging, but it never feels cheap. So I highly recommend that one and the voice talent. I listen to parts of it in Spanish and parts of it in English, and in both cases excellent. There's some wonderful dialogue in there, and uh and in some very creepy voices. Nice. I just love the idea that somebody essentially made a Goya game.

I don't know if that's what they were doing on purpose, but as soon as I looked at it, that's like, oh, that's what it is. I believe the creators have pointed that out. They pointed specific Goya paintings that were key, uh to this vision, to this world they've created. And and but it also goes beyond that. There's all this just rich stuff that's very you know, based in inquisition and and Catholic guilt, and it just has a very rich and mysterious world that they've built up around this game.

I'm gonna play that, and then I'm gonna hang on for whoever makes the El Greco game. Yeah, yeah, that could be good too. All right, we're gonna go ahead and close the mail bag here, but we'd love to hear from you all regarding current episodes, future episodes, past episodes, episodes, Stuff to Blow your Mind, episodes of Weird how Cinema. It's all fair game. We'll try and do a listener mail every Monday. That's where you can hear it. You'll find it and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed,

and you'll find that wherever you get your podcasts. Uh. If you just need to get to us quickly, you can always go to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com that will shoot you over to the I heart listing for this show. There's going to be a place in there where you can click to go to our store and just in case you want to check out a T shirt or a sticker or a tope bag or a phone case or whatever you're looking for, and you can get that with our logo on it or

some other kind of cool design. Just a little extra in case you're interested. Huge things. As always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I heart Radio.

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