Listener Mail: The Final Conflict

and October. And I don't I don't know exactly why that happened, but there's sort of a gap in there. Uh. So I apologize if if your message you were hoping to hear is among that group. But uh, but we've still got a lot of great stuff to get to today. Yeah. Well, we'll have to ask Carnie our mail about about this. But I don't know. I feel like we all have some some missing time from September and October, you know, some some some blank spots in our recollection. Where did

that time go? What happened? It's like the part of your your eyespot that you can't see because of the optic nerve, but you don't even notice that you can't

see it. It's the the invisibility is invisible. Yeah. And now another thing that that we're going to go ahead and mention about this listener Mail is that, in some respects, this is the final listener Mail, or at least this is probably going to be the final full length listener Mail episode that publishes as an episode, a regular episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind on a Tuesday or Thursday. That's right, Because we are gradually, as we can, transitioning

to a more daily publication schedule. We're gonna be putting out some shorter episodes that come through on various days. But one idea we've been kicking around is basically a weekly episode that we've been sort of tentatively calling the Flaming Barrel Chats, and these will quite often be listener mail focused. Yeah. So yeah, just to reassure everyone, you're not going to get six episodes, like six full episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind per week. It's gonna

be in two core episodes. It's gonna be the Vault episode, it's gonna be the Weird House Cinema on Friday, and then a couple of small things, so hopefully that won't overwhelm anybody. But as always, right in and let you let us know what you think as this begins to uh to happen, and yeah, well we'll just see how it goes. All right, I think we should jump right into the bag. All right, let's do it. What do we have first, Joe, Well, we got a lot of great feedback to our episode. I think it was a

couple of episodes about nails, fingernails and toenails. We got into some surprisingly religious territory, including that one really interesting paper that was trying to explain the prevalence of religious rituals about the proper disposal of nails, and the explanation in this paper appealed to people trying to re enact extremely ancient, reconstructed creation myths in which the earth is made out of the body parts of a dead primordial god.

And we we got a number of messages on the theme of of nails and religious traditions, and this first one comes from Alice. Are you ready, Let's do it, Alice says Hi, Joe and Robert, thanks for the two part around fingernails. Love. When you guys take a seemingly mundane topic and find fascinating tidbits about it from so many different angles. I emailed today because when you were discussing fingernails in creation myths, when instantly came to mind

that might not be familiar to American listeners. It's the legend from Maori culture about Maui and his grandmother Mahuika, the goddess of fire. In the story, Maui wonders where fire comes from. He's only ever seen it made from existing fire or lightning. So one night, because he's a bit of a trickster, he extinguishes all the fires in the village. In the morning, when everyone wakes up, he's told to go visit his grandmother to get more fire.

Now here's where we get back to fingernails. His grandmother married aahi Roa, a comet, and their children are fingernails of fire on Mahuika's hand. There are some gorgeous depictions of this and various books, some of which I've included,

and she did attach some pictures. The story continues with Mahuika pulling off one of her fingernails to give to Maui to take back to the village because he's a trickster Maui extinguishes the fire and goes back again and again for more fingernails, until Mahuika is down to her last nail. She's furious at this stage and throws the last nail into a tree. The legend continues, but long story short, this certain tree is known for being an easy tree to start a fire with. Anyway, I hope

that was interesting. It's also referenced in one of the songs in Disney's Mohana, which is cool. Thanks for the work you guys do. It's been great to have something saying to look forward to in this topsy turvy time of lockdowns and craziness that we're going through. Alice, well thanks Alice. I did not know that. Myth I thought was really interesting. Kind of makes me want to watch Moana. Yeah. I love the idea of magical fingernails as a as

a as a limited magical item. So you you know, you can literally count on your your your fingers how many times you can use this ability. It's uh, it makes me wonder why we haven't seen this more in in um science fiction or fantasy in general. You know, because you could have some sort of like robotic fingernails that you launch, you know, and your your hero gets down to the last couple of them or something. What's your I d k F a code for fingernails infinite

fingernails Now. We got a couple of messages from listeners who were who had ideas about fingernails from various athletic perspectives, one about ballet and one about weightlifting, and I thought these were really interesting. Rob you want to read one of these? Sure? This one comes to us from Hannah, Hi, Robert, and Joe. I just finished listening to your pair of fingernail episodes and wanted to write in with not one, but two examples fingers and toes on nail length hindering

ability to perform task. I'lbeit in a kind of niche way. I'll start with toenails, since I whom it is a more unusual example. I'm a professional dancer, and although not a ballerina, a lot of my training up through college was based in ballet, including work on point. For those who don't know uh this this refers to a technique of ballerina is dancing on the tips of their toes.

Ballet terminology is a lot of French anyway, Dancing on point is achieved by a combination of strengthening the muscles of the feet and legs to be able to support the full body's weight on a fully extended foot, with additional support from specialized stiff shoes, usually layers of fabric with hardened glue with flattened tips to help give a wider surface to balance on, distribute weight more evenly across the foot, and provide more stability in that extended shape.

Although apparently a lot of people mistakenly think they are balancing on the toe knuckle with the toes curled under, it is actually the very tip of the toe that is the point of contact. And I know from my point I you know, I recognize this because I've I've seen Suspiria, so I know what this looks like. Man, this is one of those things that I cannot fathom. The athleticism of this, the standing on the toes, it just seems in superhuman to me. That in the spinning uh.

I recently did a video yoga thing and from a teacher that I hadn't used before, and the teacher asked me to ask the hoovers watching the video to spin around like five times, and I did, and then I had to lay down because I felt like it had it had wounded my soul to spin around just five times. And of course you see uh, these various spinning athletics and in say ballet or in figure skating, and I

know there are certain tricks to it. Perhaps this is something we could come back and discuss in the future, actually, because you get into a lot of of interesting biology and also cultural practices. Yes, now that I think about it, we should do an episode on spinning around in circles the centrifugal. Yeah, let's do it. Let's let's let's bookmark it.

But let let's get back to Hannah here. Oh yes, yes, I was reading an email, wasn't I. Let's say, um, when wearing these shoes, you are acutely aware of the length of your toe nails, and it is extremely important to keep them trims short for a number of reasons. First, if the toenail extends past the end of the toe, it is the body's first point of contact with the floor, which is extremely painful and can possibly break, crack, or

bruise the nail or nail bed. If the nail is definitely not strong, enough to support the full weight of the body. Also, because the toes are packed tightly together in the end of the shoe, you could possibly cut a neighboring toe with the offending long toenail. I am, I'm shivering. Less directly related, the pain and discomfort of a too long toenail pressing into the floor causes the dancer to shift their weight back ever so slightly to

relieve the pressure, throwing them out of proper alignment. The technique requires all of the joints toe, ankle, knee, hip to be stacked vertically if viewed from the side, all though partly an aesthetic preference. Aligning the joints like so makes balancing much easier and takes unnecessary uneven pressure off of said joints. Shift out of alignment and you add

pressure and lose balance. The strain on your joints puts you at risk for chronic issues like tendonitis and brucitis, while the lack of stability increases the chances of an acute injury like a sprained ankle. In a field where such injuries can be career ending, every bit of prevention counts this. This part of this email has been a horror movie for me. Yeah, you don't even need the rest the Suspiria, right. My second example is a little

shorter in Quarantine. My partner has been teaching me to play guitar, and I noticed I was having trouble playing certain chords. I keep my fingernails on the longer side. Though nothing extreme, and though they had never hindered me before, I found I had trouble pressing the strings down hard enough to play the chords without my nail bumping into

the fret board. He told me I would have to wear them shorter to progress, but I didn't want to give up my long nails and looked for a different solution. Then I thought of Dolly Parton. She has much longer, flashier acrylic nails and gets by all right, what does she do? After some googling, I found that she seems to rely on open tuning. And what does this bar chords?

You hear the guitar person. Yeah, bar chords are a way of So there are open chords that usually play with your fingertips near the top of the neck of the guitar, and then there are bar chords where you use usually one finger, usually your index finger to sort of like cap all of the strings and then press down some other strings on top of that. Uh So bar chords um allow you to sort of like play the same chord forms anywhere on the neck of the guitar,

She continues. The guitar is tuned so that it plays a major chord with no strings pressed, and you lay one finger across to bar different major chords. This works in some situations, but still limits what you can and can't play. We'll see how it works for me. Sorry, this email ended up ended up a lot little longer than I intended. I get super excited to spout off about our freaky alien bodies. Side note, would love some sort of an episode someday about body specialization in humans,

especially with athletes. Ever seen a picture of different athletes standing next to each other, like gymnasts and a basketball player. It's crazy that performance optimization can look so different. I love the show so much and hope you're doing well. Thank you for what you do. Oh thanks, Hannah, and I totally get you at the end here. I'm not really into sports. I don't really follow sports at all, but there's one thing that always amazes me, which is

when uh, when the which Olympics it is. It's summer winter, but one of the Olympics has gymnastics, and whenever Rachel watches that, I'm always kind of entranced, like I can't believe gymnasts are real people. What they're doing looks impossible. Yeah it is. It is just amazing to be hold. All Right, we got another message from our listener Era about athletics and fingernails. Aaron says, hey 'all, I've been

listening to your show through multiple hosts for years. I'm super thankful that you've done your best to go deeper and deeper as the years go on. You've educated me and sent me down some of the oddest corners of the Internet in the best way possible. You asked in Fingernails Part two if there are any odd uses for fingernails. Well, I have one for you. I am a former Olympic weightlifter and have had the pleasure to represent the United

States at multiple junior and senior world championships. Early in my career, I met a fellow weightlifter from Greece. I noticed how long his thumbnail was, and only his thumbnail. I was super curious, so I asked him about it as best I could. We hit a standstill, so we found a translator. After she translated my question, he laughed. It's for weightlifting, he said, and I inquired how well. Little known to me at the time, there is a rule that you can tape your thumbs as long as

the tip of the finger can be seen. This might not seem like a big deal, but in weightlifting we use something called a hook grip, in which the four fingers wrap around your thumb, pretty much the opposite of how any human grabs an object. This gives you an advantage by being able to hold more weight in your hand while performing the lift. Now the tape and the

thumbnail length come in here. My friend explained to me that if you let your thumbnail grow out longer, you can tape further down your thumb, thus making your thumb longer. Looking for any advantage possible, I grew my thumbnail out to about an inch past what I normally would. I then taped it, and wow, did it help a ton. The interesting part for me was I always bite my nails. I still do, actually, but I have never bit my

thumbnail for risk of damaging my advantage. I've stopped lifting competitively for about eight years now, and I cannot cut my thumbnail still it still feels too foreign and uncomfortable. Anyway, Sorry for the long story, but I thought it was interesting enough to write in. Thank you again for all you do to educate us in the populace. Hope you all are staying strong and hopefully plenty of front yard

lightsaber battles. Well, Aaron, yeah, that is referring to a tidbit I shared about having lightsaber battles with my son in my front yard and then he would sometimes run to the side yard and leave me exposed, um battling no one in the front yard when people drive by. But this, yeah, this is the anecdote about the weightlifting and the growing out of the thumbnails. This is this is fabulous. I just had no idea this. This really blew me away. Yeah, totally really interesting. Thanks for getting

in touch. Okay, we got another one about nails and mythology. So this comes from Carolina. Carolina says the episode on fingernails reminded me of a creation myth from the Mayan sacred book The Pope Voo, in which four hundred boys attempt to murder the Demi god Zipakna by asking him to dig a post hole for them and then burying him in it. He overheard their plans and dug a side hole to save himself. The four hundred boy as conclude Zipacna is really dead when they see ants crawl

up out of the ground carrying his fingernails. Here is an excerpt from a literal translation by Alan J. Christensen from Mezo Webb Publications. And so in this translation, I just want to say some of the phrasing sounds strange. But I looked this up and this is Christensen's translation.

I think the odd grammar of it comes from the fact that it's kind of a transliteration that looks like it's attempting to preserve word order of the original more than it's trying to make it sound fluid in English. So it goes like this. Then assembled ants, they walk about, they swarm. Then they gathered beneath tree everywhere they carry with their teeth. Hair they carry with their teeth as well as his nails Zipakna. Then they saw, therefore the

boys he was finished. The demon look at Shirley. Ants they gathered hither they assembled hither everywhere, hair they carry with their teeth. There are his nails that can be seen. Surely we did it at last, they said to each other. He therefore the Zeppachna merely alive. He cut off its hair, his head merely as well. He gnaws off his nails. He gives them away to them, the ants. Thus he died. They thought, five eighties boys, and the five eighties that's

four hundred, not five boys from the nineteen eighties. Uh uh, So Carolina continues. Zeebakna kills the four hundred boys by collapsing their house on them. They then rose into the sky, becoming stars. I read a very similar legend from Micronesia and thought it was strange to have such similar myths from such far flung places, until one day when I was clipping my fingernails outside and saw ants carrying away the clippings. I have no idea what ants use fingernails for.

Maybe they think that they're dead bugs. I can see how such a disconcerting image could crop up in creation. It surround the world. For most of my life, I grew my fingernails long and tapered them to points. I liked looking like I had claws and having such a visible signifier of nonconformity. I didn't play sports, throw clay, or participate in other activities where long nails would be a hindrance. I was so used to having them long

that when I decided to cut them short. After deciding long nails no longer reflected my identity, I found some things more difficult, such as doing needlework or otherwise grasping its small objects. I used to pick up very small objects by scooping them up with a nail right after cutting my nails. The increased sensation made my fingertips tingle. Thanks for such a consistently thought provoking podcast. Best regards, Carolina. I'd say, Carolina, this is a very thought provoking email.

Thank you so much. Yeah, there's a there's a lot to comment on here. First of all, I love the the story here uh from papal Vu and uh you know, of course that instantly makes me think of the German music collective pop Vu. Who did um who did the soundtrack for a number of Vernon Herzog films, including a gear Ay The Wrath of God? Has that the wonderful um uh you know South American pipe sound in it? Um so certainly somebody have listened to a fair amount

in the last couple of years. Oh, when you first came across them, did you not realize they were named after the Mayan story? I made that connection pretty pretty quickly, but that they were there. They're probably the first thing I think of though when I think of pop them, like, oh, yeah, I like them. They're good. They put out some good soundtracks.

Um uh. The The other thing this is interesting about the ants because when it was first brought up, the idea of ants carrying off fingernail clippings, that that well, clearly that's somebody saw a leaf cutter ants in action, and you kind of think, well, what you have? They were carrying fingernail clippings instead of vegetation, and that was what I was expecting to be like the basic connection there.

But then the idea that that they have been observed to carry off fingernails, that turns that on its head totally. That's really interesting. I've never seen that before, but I feel like I got to look that up now. Yeah, Okay, do we want to finish up nails with one last message from Bethany? Sure? This one comes to us from Bethany. Hi. Robert and Joe, I've been thinking a lot about your episodes on fingernails and have a handful unintended of antidotes

to share. I started playing violin about a year ago after a decade long break, and have noticed that my nails are growing much more quickly than they used to. I'm left handed, so that, combined with the extra use of my left hand fingertips, means that my nails are growing at warp speed, which is really a bummer when I realized they're too long and I need to trim

them again. Violin playing requires my nails on the hand to be very short, and they can damage the wood of the neck of the instrument, or they can get caught on the strings and can cause that awful teeth twining nails on a chalkboard feeling. My My husband teases me every time time I only trim my left hand nails and leave the right ones, but honestly, the right side doesn't grow that quickly. Now for a couple of gross stories. My husband and I moved into a beautiful

home about two years ago. It had stood empty for about three years and was fully ready to move in. We had to do some of the standard painting and cleaning, but nothing too terrible. I remember the first time I went through the drawers of the master bedroom. I cleaned out all of the drawers and cabinets with pretty standard bathroom debris, some stray hairs, toothpaste, etcetera. Nothing to labor intensive, but a tiny bit gross. The last drawer was full

of the previous owner's fingernail clippings. It was so so gross I couldn't touch them. I made my husband take care of them. What a great horror movie. This could become a beautiful home, except all the drawers are full of the previous owner's fingernail clippings. You know, I have to say, Joe, this reminds me this is not fingernails. But have you ever encountered an old um bathroom mirror medicine cabinet that has the slot in the back of it where you deposit razor blades? Oh yeah, yeah, I

know exactly what you're talking about. I thought you were gonna say, have you ever opened like an old bathroom cabinet that had somebody else's hair in it? Which? Yes, but no, I know what you're talking about with the razor blades. Never anywhere I've lived, but I've seen that before. I've only encountered it like once, but I mean clearly

it was a mass manufactured thing. And like there was an idea at one point where it's like, yeah, as you use up your razor blades instead of throwing them away, what if they went through a hole in your wall and then fell down into either the crawl space or just sort of in between the walls of your house

and accumulated there. Like that is just so strange and and weirdly mysterious, and it reminds me of some of these traditions I've read about before about depositing hair and fingernails within the walls of the house because that would be a safer place for them to be, so that, you know, evil things cannot acquire them. Yeah, it's kind of like the ossuary churches, the buildings that are built

with the bones in the wall les. Yeah. So if anyone out there, if you've ever you're involved in like demo or reconstruction, remodeling at all, I'd love to know what happens when you you open up that wall behind that one of these these these medicine cabinets, Like what is it, Like, what's back there. Is it just full of razor blades, rusty old razor blades, haunted razor blades?

I I have to know anyway, Bethany continues. Finally, there's something about other people's nails and teeth that just grosses me out so much. My husband and I have been hosting a foster kiddo for about a month and he's lost three teeth. They're all in an envelope and will be shipped to his forever home. Similarly, I've been dealing with my nine year old stepsons teeth and nails for

years now. Dealing with disembodied teeth in an invisible pixie that steals them from the under a pillow while he's sleeping is bad enough, but walking into my child chewing on his toe nails and he's watching TV definitely makes me question where I've gone wrong as a parent. Queue some horrified laughter. I've seen a lot of fingernail biting. I've never seen toenail biting, but that seems much more doable for a kid who's more flexible. I guess, oh yeah,

these kids are crazy flexible. Um, the the the loose teeth thing is certainly can be a little wiggy because they have. They'll come up to you and there's like a tooth flapping. They're like, they're like, help me rip this out, you know, because there's this they want the

teeth gone. They they there's something about like they want you know, there's the tooth fairy idea on one hand that you know they'll they'll be able to trade this for money with some sort of other worldly spirit, but also just the idea of of like other kids are losing their teeth, I want to lose some of my teeth too. And you tell them, like, we don't mess with it. It It will come out on its own. It's it's leaving your head. You don't need to accentuate it

because you're just gonna get blood everywhere. And of course they end up wiggling and until it comes out and there's blood and it's a whole scene anyway. But Bettany continues, I would be interested to know if there's some connection between nails and teeth. I know that when my nails get snagged or scraped or something like a violin string or rigged rigid hard surface like concrete, or would my teeth almost hurt compounded with my reaction to the kid's

teeth and nails. Just something else to think about. Anyway, I'm sure that's enough fingernail talk for you. Thanks for your podcast that keeps me occupied, whether I'm sitting at my desk at work at a public library that's currently open, or doing laundry at home. I've been inspired to start a Lord of the Rings reread rewatch this fall, and to rekindle my love of Queen by listening to I'm in Love with My Car on repeat after your Vault episode.

Our cars, our bodies, our minds, keep up the great conversations. I'm in Love with My Car is one of my favorite just absolutely stupid rock anthems. It is one of the dumbest songs ever written, and it's really good. Gotta feel from my automobile. All right, Uh, I guess we're done with nails for now. So this next message came to us in response to our episode on Lins and this is from Sophia. So Fia says, Hi, Robert and Joe. I believe this is my third time writing to you.

I'm an evolutionary biologist and I'd just like to point out an inspiring thought related to the kinds of symbiosis that we observe in Likens. Everything on Earth that photosynthesizes, except for cyanobacteria, is a product of symbiosis. There is always a photosynthetic component and a non photosynthetic component. This appears to be such a go to strategy for many organisms that I don't think we can even estimate how many times this happened. All plants are a product of

ancient indosymbiosis. Um. That's mean intern like a symbiosis in which one organism sort of swallows another or takes another inside. Picking up between a prokaryotic photosynthetic organism now chloroplasts and other plastids, and a proto you carry out. Moreover, some kinds of algae have chloroplasts with one or two additional membranes surrounding the existing two brains of primary plastids. These

extra membranes likely formed to due to secondary endosymbiosis. Roughly speaking, a cell engulfed another cell, after which at some point it was itself engulfed by another cell, et cetera, and in some cases probably even tertiary endosymbioses. Likens seem to be a more recent example of an In some ways similar evolutionary strategy, but the components still maintain a high level of independence. Now, if we look at the animal kingdom,

we also find something similar. In corals, there's a primary animal component which strongly depends on its photosynthetic algal symbions. If they're lost for an extended period of time due to increased water temperatures coral bleaching, the corals die. So in this case, at least, the animal already went far enough down the evolutionary path in the direction of obligate symbiosis being tied to this algal organism necessary to survive.

I find it fascinating imagining what some photosynthetic life on Earth might look like in millions of years. There might very well be many different kinds of obligate symbiotic organisms that would in many ways look and behave like modern plants, but having very different life histories. Some of them may have animal and algal origins, others fungal and bacterial or algal, etcetera. As always, thanks for the great show. Can't wait for

more inspiring episodes, Sophia. Yeah, that is all really interesting, so thank you for getting in touch, Sophia and I I do love thinking about how the the I don't know, the tree of life that we often imagine is not just sort of like branches split off and then all go their own way. There's there's actually a fair bit of sort of re growing together of branches. And that's inspiring. Alright, here's another one. This comes to us from John. This also has to do with lin and and this this

is I really love this one. This is a great little bit of listener mail. Hi, Robert and Joe. I've been listening to stuff to Believe your Mind for years, but have never felt I had a good reason to write in until your most recent episode about LINS when you mentioned the Lins of the Arctic article by James Walton UM and this, by the way, this was published UM on the National Park Service website. Lins of the Arctic by James Walton, National Park Service. Anyway, John continues here,

I did a double take at the time. I've been fortunate enough to do vegetation monitoring work with James at the boreal forest of Lake Clark National Park in southwestern Alaska and can tell you that he really knows his flora. When he walked along thirty transsects of moss undergrowth and spruce trees. James would instantly an accurately idea the organisms that we passed, including the numerous mosses and lins. Anyway, it was fun to hear you mentioned him in the podcast.

If you're looking for episode ideas, how about one on the salmon runs of the North Pacific. The early salmon run is an important event for bears, commercial fisheries, and um and anglers alike. It has unique economic, cultural, and ecological significance for communities across the North Pacific, and is threatened by climate change, poor fisheries management, and damn building. Worth a look best, John, Oh, that is a great idea for an episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're I mean

it's it's certainly come up in research before. I don't know if we've really mentioned it much on the show before, but yeah, it's like a fact. There's a fascinating biological story there. There's a story of humans interfering with it, and then also some innovations that have been at least proposed, if not implemented, to uh to help them out. Like I think there has been a salmon canon cannon, salmon cannon that has been suggested at times to sort of

like launch them upward over dams and whatnot? Did first say camon salmon, like out there camon salmon, salmon jam and salmon cannon. Yes, um, so that that would make for an interesting episode. And and and again I just love the idea that you know, we this is just a source I came across, and it's neat to hear some of the human story behind the individual responsible for it. Yeah, wonderful. So thanks for getting in touch. Okay, we got a

lot of responses to our episodes about mushroom foraging. Again, sorry, we can't get to them all. We're picking out a

few here. One I just wanted to mention briefly was Thomas got in touch because in the mushroom foraging episodes we ended up talking about whether it was safe to drink milk produced by a goat who had who had eaten a bunch of poison ivy, and Tom got in touch to share an article by a North Carolina State professor of Crop and Soil sciences named J. M. Lugan Boule, and he writes this article that research shows that toxic compounds from poison oak ivy and sumac are not passed

onto the milk of goats, so it should be safe. I guess that's potentially good news, but I'd still say, I guess, please nobody go drink, you know, poison oak goat milk because you heard it here. Do your own research first, check it out. Yeah, And so this was me that said that that threw that end really quickly, just cut of an offhand, because I think I had heard that at some point. I I researched it after

we received this email. And yeah, it does seem that that it does right across a couple of studies, or at least two studies referring to the same thing here, that that you don't have to worry about poison um ivy or poison oak, et cetera passing through to the milk. But I also ran across an article that I can't completely vouch for yet that I need to return to about the idea of psychedelic goat milk, about psychedelic compounds

surviving and becoming part of goat milk. And perhaps I think the author was arguing it could have played into various traditions in the past. I don't know. Uh, don't take my word on that one either. Uh, that one requires more research. But I love the idea of magical goats passing on their magical milk to early humans. It's an insight from dairy farmer Farmer McKenna. He had some great things to share on the subject. No, we should

come back to that. I want to learn more. Yeah, thank so, let's see we We definitely have some more mushroom um mail here. Like you said, we got a lot of it. We had to sort through it because the thing about mushroom emails is that you know, some of them look fine until you start reading them, and then you know suddenly you can have a really dire reaction to them. So you've gotta be choosy. Uh. Sometimes the good emails and the bad emails look remarkably alike.

So here's one of the good ones from Joseph. A few thoughts on mushrooms. I couldn't believe you didn't bring up Hobbits and the Hobbit metabolism episode, since they are particularly fond of mushrooms. It is true Hobbits love mushrooms. Microphilick shy are yeah more doors microphobic? I would say, do you think so? Yeah? I think so. Yeah. I

guess it's hard to imagine mushrooms really thriving there. Yeah, all right, Joseph continues, I have not been foraging, but I have been attempting to grow mushrooms in a closet at home for the last few months. No luck yet, but I will keep trying. As to toxicity, when I was in high school, I played in a band. Some people assume since I was a guitar player, I must have been into illicit drugs. I was approached by some

fellow students and invited to go shroom hunting. I made up an excuse not to go and forgot about it. A few days later I found out they were in the ICU because they had picked the wrong type. Lastly, mushrooms might be the first food eaten just because they taste good and not because of calaric or nutritional value. The nutritional value is really low compared to other foods. There are over seven times the calories in venison as in mushrooms. Salmon has nearly ten times as many calories

for an equivalent weight of mushrooms. Sure, there's some vitamins and mineral, some fiber, and some species have a little protein, but not nearly as much as plants. And animals. I believe hunter gathers ate them when they were there was nothing else, but also continued to eat them when denser nutrition options were available, simply because they were tasty. Um. And then uh yeah, so that's the fully meo. Interesting. Yeah, this got me thinking about other foods that we eat

that have a pretty low caloric density. I mean, for example, low starch vegetables, vegetables like celery or like leafy greens. You would kind of have to eat a disgusting amount of these foods in order to get a day's worth of calories. So it seems like we do eat them, but we eat them for a reason other than, you know, filling up and getting energy from them. I don't know if there's a disgusting amount of spinach, though, I can. I can eat spinach all day, No, I I love spinach,

and sometimes I do eat it all day. You know, you have it in your smoothie in the morning, then you have it in like a case of d or something at lunch, and then it factors into whatever you having for dinner as well. Actually, one pasta dish I really like to make has uh it has roasted mushrooms, and I used to make it with roasted mushrooms and

spinach and like like a peccorino cheese. But I've recently discovered that actually, I think kale holds up better than spinach in the dish because the spinach wilts just a little too easily. The kale is a little bit heartier. You've ever been to a pizza place where they don't have spinach? Is a topping? Oh? I don't usually look for it, but I'd be into it. It should be there, it should be offered, at least my opinion. Well, speaking of pizza, let's go to our next email about mushroom foraging.

I think there's some translation issues on this one, but I'll do my best. This is from Jacob. Jacob says welcome. It starts with a quote welcome beings from an afterlife, and then Akaba explains that this is the Polish greeting and voyager one. It seems like someone confused cosmology with

ghosts when they were doing the translation there. Um, but Jacob says, being Polish, it was really great to hear someone to hear that anyone in the Western world quotes pantadas that I had to read in high school as a mandatory book in a context other than PhD study on Slavic poetry. I cannot imagine the process that led you to quote this poem, you know. I think that happens a lot. On our show. We often hear from people who say, I have no idea how you ended

up reading X Y or z well. I research is often like the idea of someone following a trail through the woods, and then you see something off to the side, maybe a fairy ring or some mushrooms, and you go out to look at it. And sometimes we get a little bit lost in the woods, but we but in doing so we find sometimes some of them very remarkable things. Totally. I mean, I loved our segment on pantadays I I

don't regret it at all. But but Yaka continues, says, if you like such stories, I recommend a more modern book, The Wedding by Stanislav Vespianski. Mushroom foraging is indeed part of our culture, and visiting other countries and continents, it was hard for me to understand why people there do not like to wander the woods to do it. Being raised at the end of communism in Poland, it seemed mushroom foraging was part of every holiday anywhere close to

the woods. Referring to poisoning with mushrooms, I honestly do not know how much vodka you need to drink to confuse macro lepiota pro sera with Amanita virosa or Amanita ploides. These mushrooms do not look, smell, or feel the same, but unfortunately some people die every year because of that. If you like consuming mushrooms, I have a good hint. Try our Malaria malia. Unfortunately, you will have a hard time to find it in North America. As a pizza topping.

I send you a picture when I make one. It go is very well with a glass of primativo. As I do not eat animal products, I tried most widely available mushrooms as pizza toppings and this one wins the contest for me. However, our Millaria melia does it as well, quite good. By the way, I remember the episode about biophilia, but do not remember one about aquaphilia. By that, I mean a phenomenon that people like to spend time by

the water. Longtime listener, first time emailing Jacob, Oh Wow, there's a lot of good stuff in that at that email. For sure. Surely you love mushrooms on pizza, right on me, of course? Yeah, I mean I love mushrooms and pretty much anything. Well not the smoothie. I guess we're not putting. We don't put them in the morning smoothie. I'll have them. I'll have them on an omelet or something in the morning. Yeah, that sounds great. All right. Here's another one. This one

comes to us from Nancy regarding eggs. They're right. My neighbor turned me onto podcast and I'm hooked. I chanced upon your show and have enjoyed each episode and look forward to listening to more. I've also told about five people I know about podcasts and recommend your show. I have to react to your podcast about the exploding egg. I taught commercial food service to high school students aged students at a career center in Cadillac, Michigan, a small town.

In the scheme of things, we had a large commercial kitchen and a dining room that could see a hundred We serve lunch four days a week for about two thirds of the year. One day, during lunch, a student waited on a gentleman who wanted two hard boiled eggs with toast, which wasn't on our menu, but she took the order and brought it to the kitchen. Because hard cooked eggs take a relatively long time to cook for

a restaurant order, the student cook decided to improvise. She grabbed two hard cooked eggs out of a large bucket of hard cooked eggs which are available through commercial food providers. These eggs are processed and sit in a liquid bath. I'm not sure the composition of the solution, but it must contain some ingredients to keep the eggs usable for at least two weeks. She microwaved these eggs and prepare

aired the plate for takeout. I was in the dining room when the students served the eggs, not aware of what had happened in the kitchen. There were about six tables with customers in the dining room at the time. I happened to be facing the gentleman when he pierced the egg with his fork. Boom, the egg exploded and sprayed a ten foot circle of tiny pieces of cooked egg on the guy and around the table and floor. Of course, everyone's eyes turned to see what had happened.

It was a mess, and the guy had egg all over him. Luckily, he was very nice about it. The egg brushed off his clothing easily and we were able to move him and prepare something else. These commercial eggs are available to prep hard cooked eggs for salad, stuffed eggs, et cetera, but not to microwave. Buckets of eggs come in various sizes that depending on the restaurant's needs. It was a real learning experience and the students loved the

teachable moment. Looking back, it was hilarious and it worked out well for all of us. I said this because I did not hear this particular reason for the exploding edge, which was which was not a freshly cooked egg at least that's what I'm assuming, like the ones used in your experiments. Is there a searchable list of topics? Although I enjoy all that, I have heard friends ask about particular subjects, such as animals, and it would be nice to start them there to pique their interests. I also

would like to look up particular topics. I'm truly impressed by the depth of research and documentation you do for your podcasts. I look forward to listening to more of your work. Thank you, Nancy Well Nancy, I would say to start with the least fun part of your email. I would say, Unfortunately, our podcast has become less searchable

in recent times. That's not due to decisions on our part. Yeah, I would say, whatever, however you're getting the podcast, or however you're your friends might be getting the podcast, the best bet is to try and search within that framework.

So if you're listening to a show at at on iHeart radio, um you know is, then you can search there, Or if you're in iTunes, try searching there, like doing the search for stuff to blow your mind, plus animals, because we've certainly recorded a number of episodes about animals over the years. If our website is ever brought back from the Internet dead by digital necromancy, we will immediately let everyone know and that that will be the best way to search for things once again. Yeah, but yeah, oh,

I love this story. So of course, in the Eggs episode, we talked about the phenomenon of exploding hard boiled eggs. This is something that apparently happens pretty frequently when you microwave a previously hard boiled egg and it we don't know for sure why it happens, but it seems like

a good candidate. Explanation is that there are little pockets of water in the yolk that get trapped by the matrix of proteins there and get superheated, and then when they get exposed to lower pressure by cutting open the egg, they suddenly rapidly expand and just pop and blow all over the place. I'm sure it would be terrifying to have this happened to you if you didn't know it was possibility. All right, Well, thanks thanks for writing in.

We appreciate that, and it's always great to hear from from new listeners who discover, you know, what we've what we're putting out, what we've put out in the past, and what we're going to continue to put out here in the future. Totally. Uh Now, we a lot of listeners got in touch about episodes that we did this October, our standard October episodes like Anthology of Horror, The Leshy,

the Minotaur. I think we're probably gonna come back and read some of those messages in our first Flaming Barrel Chat or whatever we end up calling it our weekly listener mail related offering. But just to wrap up today, I did want to say that a bunch of listeners got in touch to say nice things about Weird House Cinema, So we we really appreciate all of the love and

feedback about that. Are our new episodes that are about are you probably know by now that we have a passion for strange b movies, uh, you know, odd films that aren't going to make it onto any mainstream lists, and so we've been looking at those in these recent Weird House episodes. Those have been a lot of fun. It seems like you've mostly been enjoying them. I think

we heard from one person who wasn't really complaining. We just said, yeah, not really for me, but otherwise all the feedback has been wonderful and it's it's been really encouraging. But Robert, do you want to read this message from Scott? Oh? Yes, Scott writes, dear stuff to blow your mind. Weird How Cinema is an absolute delight. Thank you for sharing the joy of flock movies with the masses. I've noticed Robert Lamb introduces himself as Rob in both episodes of Weird

How Cinema released so far. Is this a signal that he's really letting his hair down to discuss the likes of without warning con troll to best Scott. Uh yeah, I I would, I guess. So you know it's this is like the like the part in Mr. Rogers Neighborhood where he changes sweaters. You know, it comes in from the outside, uh and uh and is going to share you know some some stories go to the neighborhood and make believe that's that's kind of what weird how cinema

is to me. Well, I'm sorry, I've been sort of cross contaminating because I realized I've been calling you Rob on regular stuff to blow your mind episode, So I I apologizeified. I mean trying to jam the sweater onto you while you're not. It's not that uh that fiercely thought out a concept. So I'm I'm I'm Robert. Robert in most situations put the sweater on. But has anyone ever called you Bert? I don't know if I've been

a bird before. I've been just about everything else, uh, Robbie as a kid, I think my my great grandmother called me Robin. So yeah, I mean every there's so many variations on it, and I think I've been all of them before. Do you know are some Bert's Roberts or all Berts like Burton's or whatever. I don't know. We'll have to ask some birds birds of the world. Bert listeners, let us know. We'd love to hear from you.

We're gonna go ahead and close out the listener mail mail bag for today, but obviously a again, we we didn't have time to get into everything here. Uh B. We're gonna come back and we're gonna do listener mail on a more regular basis, So stay tuned and then see yeah right in, let us know. Is your name Bert? Have you ever watched an egg explode? Ever seen a bad movie that all these things are on the table? Tell us about the Bert life? Yeah, tell the Birt life.

How do you? How do you of it? What's it like? In the meantime, if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can find us wherever you get your podcast and wherever that happens to be. We just ask you rate, review, and subscribe. You can also find us about going to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com that will shoot you over to the I heart listing for our show. And on

that page there's a button. It's called shop or store I don't remember you click on that, it'll take you to a place where you can buy a T shirt or a sticker or a toebag or what have you that has our logo on it or a monster design. There's some cool new ones. There's one with Pandora on it. Go check it out. Uh see them for yourself. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, to tell us about the bird experience, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact that Stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart radios, the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows,