Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb.
And I am Joe McCormick. And hey, we're coming at you with new stuff after roughly a week or so off. Do we say this was a listener mail episode? I think you did. But if we didn't, here, yeah, here we are with listener mail for you. Hey, if you are a listener of Stuff to Blow your Mind and you have never gotten in touch before, this is a great time to try it. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Messages
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All right, Rob, if you don't mind, I think we should kick things off today with actually a couple of messages from our listener Robin, one about ancient art and another one about festive holiday cocktails. We're sort of we're past the point for one season of holiday cocktails, but just in time for another. All right, I'll start with the one about art. So this is from Robin. Robin says, Hey, Rob, Joe and JJ just a quick email with some cool
stuff I came across, maybe fodder for future topics. Sometimes the almighty cursed algorithm actually digs up something worthwhile, and I got served up an image of an ancient sculpture from early history with a quick line of description. Intrigued, I dug a bit more into the Gwynall line. Gwinnall, if you're trying to look this up, is spelled gue nnol. That's a Welsh word apparently meaning Martin. And just for a bit of description, The Gwynall Lioness is a roughly
five thousand year old limestone statuette. It's a little over eight centimeters tall and it shows a lion human hybrid form. It's posed in a very interesting way. So we see it from the thighs up to the head. The lower parts of the legs I don't know if they ever existed. If they did, they're no longer attached to the rest of the statuette. But we see from the thighs up and so it's a lion human form with sort of the upright torso of a human body, but with a
lion's head. No Maine, just a manless lion. And also, I don't know, the hands to me look like they're supposed to be maybe lion claws, but this could be interpreted. I guess it's just fingers. But it's a very unusual interesting pose. First of all, the figure is extremely muscular, and second of all, it's got its fists or claws like pushed together with its elbows bent up. I don't know what you would call this arm posture, but it's like just raise your arms up and push your fists
together in front of your chest. And it's also sort of rotating at the torso, so it looks like it's doing some kind of exercise. I don't know if this is like a pilates move.
Yeah, this looks a lot like the bodybuilding pose that is called the most muscular, except in the most muscular like the fists are not like touching, they're like crisscrossing. You've all seen this one if you've seen any amount of bodybuilding, just clips you know, you know Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the day, that sort of thing.
So, this statuette was allegedly found near modern day bagh Dad. I don't know if it's known exactly when it was found, but the trading history of it and collections seems to begin in the early nineteen thirties, so it seemed it was found somewhere around Baghdad before that time, in the early nineteen thirties and held for a while in the private collection of a guy who was I guess a major tennis player named Alistair Bradley Martin who was also
an art collector. But it's been on display at some museums, I believe the Brooklyn Museum in New York and so forth. But anyway, I'm going to continue with Robin's message here about this statuette. Robin says, holy mackinaw, what a fascinating and gorgeous piece of art, but even better in the Wikipedia article on this artwork, the first link in the further reading tab is a book called Art of the First Cities the third millennium BC, from the Mediterranean to
the Indus, edited by Joan ruse at All. That book is downloadable as a PDF from the link provided there. And wow, is that ever a treasure of incredible art from the distant past. I love seeing the connections, similarities and the different takes on common subjects of art and expression by different people in the past. Early artwork gives me the shivers in the best way. I find a real connection can be forged with the artist, and to think about who they were and when they were living, well,
it really blows my mind. As they say. Anyway, thanks for the continued excellent content and wishing you all folks down there a happy holiday season. Cheers Robin Well. First of all, thank you so much, Robin. A great message, and I love that you brought this up. So I got interested looking at this artwork. And I have two takes on this one, I guess, one sort of thoughtful
and one kind of internet brained. The more thoughtful take is yes, I totally know what you mean about the way that ancient art can send shivers through your body. Rob I assume you have a similar experience as well, and I agree with you, Robin, that it is something about that sudden connection between minds that are so distant in time and space, like your mind and the artist's
mind across thousands of years. It's easy to feel, by virtue of this encounter with someone's art, that you know them in some intimate way, maybe better than people who have actually met them know them, because art is a window, you know, it's a window in kind of deep parts of people's mind and character. Often people express things through art works that maybe they aren't comfortable sharing in conversation.
You know, it's commonly thought of that art is in some way an expression of the personality of the artists. So like by seeing the works that people create, you know something very familiar and close and maybe commonly hidden about them. And yet because of the distance in time and the anonymity of the artist in this case, we don't know who made this lion of statue. Not only can you never meet this artist, there's just so much about their life and context you cannot know and will
never know. How different their life was from yours, how differently they saw the world and everything like that. And I think it's that tension between the intimate mental connection established by viewing a piece of art and the objective ignorance we have the total mystery about the life of the artist that makes ancient art so haunting, at least to me.
Absolutely, yeah, I agree with all that. And by the way, the book that was referenced, Art of the First Cities, this was a two thousand and three publication from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Looks like you can still pick up copies of it. Yeah, it looks like a handsome volume.
Oh nice. Yeah, I'm gonna have to go back and check out that link after we record this. But anyway, there are just so many questions that spring to mind. I don't know, It's like you want to know more about the mindset of the artist when you can't. For example, so this is a lion human hybrid. But I always wonder in these cases were of these ancient artworks, is it best thought of as anthropomorphic, meaning a lion taking a human form, or theiomorphic? Is it a human taking
a lion form? And you can't necessarily tell by the picture, but you can make guess is like, what does it mean when it's a lion's head on a human body as opposed to like a human head on a lion's body. Does one imply more anthropomorphism versus theeomorphism than the other?
Yeah? Yeah, I mean you can just look at our own modern dreams of half human half animal hybrids and they can ultimately convey a whole host of different ideas, and certainly that would have been the case in the ancient past as.
Well as For my internet brained take on this, I'm sorry, but a comparison did come to mind. I was looking at this leonine human being that is just so jacked with muscles, and it made me think about those comic book superhero illustrations that get turned into memes because the muscles are comically gigantic. I'm thinking particularly of an image I've seen many times on the internet of like Captain America, where he looks just like a truck.
Yeah, you included that one here, this in our outline, and this is the infamous big chested Rob Leifeld Captain America.
And I'm not trying to hate, by the way, I don't know anything about this artist. I'm just say it's a funny image.
A lot of people have fun with lifel illustrations. I mean, he was and is a very influential figure in comics, particularly Marvel, but some of his designs are maimed a lot because of their anatomical ridiculousness, even within the world of comic book superheroes. Yeah.
On the other hand, I think there are multiple ways you can kind of read the pose of this lion human with the hands clasped together like that, Like is that a muscle flexing pose or kind of a you know, we were thinking of it as like an exercise bodybuilding pose, but you could also read that as the hands clasp of contemplation. You know. I don't know if it had the same association in the ancient Mesopotamian culture that produced this, but we often think of clasped hands as prayer or
meditation or contemplation, thoughtfulness, wisdom. That could be what's going on here.
Yeah, it's hard to say exactly. It's hard. It's hard to read this image. I mean it's easier to read the Captain America. I think he's he's being in all tough. Uh, that's that's just basically the read I'm getting here tough and a little little mean. Ye, but yeah, it's hard to read the lioness.
But anyway, thank you again, Robin. Oh should we do this other message from Robin about festive holiday cocktails?
Yeah? Absolutely, Yeah, this one came in separately, and this one was was sent to us as well as to Tracy and Holly over at stuff you missed in history class, and this is how it goes down. Hi, Holly and Rob and Tracy and Joe. Please forgive the slightly odd co mingling of stuff personnel, But from listening to both of your podcasts, stuff you missed a history class and stuff to blow your mind, I think the two of
you are most relevant to the question I have. If I may calling out Holly in particular because she has a cocktail book out. That book is Killer Cocktails, Dangerous Drinks in Spired by History's most Nefarious Criminals. It's out now. You can get it in all sorts of formats.
Oh wonderful. Shout out to our crossover listeners, by the way.
Yeah, anyway, Robin continues, it seems that both of you are fans of a tasty cocktail. I would love to make some tasty holiday cocktails for family and friends in the next few weeks, and I am looking for fun ideas and inspiration. Do the two of you either A have an outlet where you if use specifically about tasty drinks in your experience. I know about your exciting book, Hollie.
I am waiting until after Christmas in case someone already wrapped it up for me or B have favorite or a favorites that you go to websites, blogs, social media, et cetera for cocktail inspiration. Thank you ever so much for any info in this area. Much appreciated. Happy mixing. Well, Yes, Rob and I do enjoy a cocktail, be it one that is infused with a spirit or one that is alcohol free. I love a great many zero proof cocktails
these days as well. Big fanatropical drinks, so often turned to the pages of Jeff Beach Bumberry as well as his Total Tiki app on top of his published books. You know, so it's a great These are great places to find cool, historic tiki drinks to try out. I also love to look through the pages of Imbibe Magazine and their website imbibemagazine dot com for ideas. In fact, one of the holiday drinks I've been making regularly each year for a few years now is one called nutty
like a fruitcake. That's a lot of fun. So you can find that at Imbibe magazine. I will, however, stress that this is one of those drinks that every year I make it, it feels a little stronger and a little sweeter. And I know that I'm not changing the way I make it, but I think the makeup of myself is changing each year. It just feels sweeter and
stronger to my sensibilities. So if you do make this drink and it's a great Christmas, you know, holiday Day, New Year's drink, and so forth, I would say, don't be a hero. Consider cutting it with soda water. It's still a great drink if you do it that way. Yeah, I support that. Certainly, over time the body craves less alcohol and sugar, I would say, but yeah, yeah, you know, on the subject of cutting drinks or not being a hero, I think this came up recently on a Weird House Cinema episode.
I don't remember if we may have cut it. I don't know if we left it in or not, But anyway, I want to stand up for the non dry martini. You know, whenever people order a martini in a movie, if they specify anything about it, they always say dry one very dry martini, meaning you know, higher content of your whatever, your your hard spirit is in your gin or your vodka. So I recommend if you're making yourself a martini for New Year's try try a wetter, gentler martini.
I think it's a nice experience. I think a gin based martini is better. And go less on the gin, heavier on the vermouth, and try it with some olive brine. It's it's nice.
Yeah, And I do want to stress too for folks out there who don't drink alcohol or considering stopping or you know, considering doing a dry january, as a lot of folks do these days. I mean, there's never been a better time in my opinion, to go that route. Like we have so many wonderful zero proof spirits, zero proof ingredients, cocktail recipes to go off of. Yeah, you can still have a grand time and get you know, so much out of the cocktail experience these days.
Totally agree. There there are even some like canned, pre made non alcoholic cocktails you can buy now that we've tried recently that are really good.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So if any of you out there have particular favorites you'd like to share, write in. We'd love to hear from you.
All right. This next message is from Elliott and it concerns our episodes on Sacred Trees, specifically the second episode we did on that where I talked about sacred trees struck by lightning and Rob you talked about the meaning of the Rowan Tree. Elliott says. Greetings, longtime listener, first time writer here. Primarily thank you for your service with the podcast. It's an educational joy and a wonderful wellspring
of inspiration. Thank you so much, Elliott. Elliott says, as a small token of appreciation for the Rowan Tree episode, I wanted to share some seeds. Specifically, I know the Rowan tree is used by Ursula k Legwin in her Earthsea series. The first chapter of book three, The Farthest Shore, is called the Rowan Tree. The specific Rowan tree in question is one which stands adjacent to a fountain in the courtyard in the Magical School of Roke, the inspiration
for Hogwarts. This scene is actually a callback to book one titled A Wizard of Earth see when the young protagonist first arrives at the school and meets the arch Mage an inspiration for Dumbledore. Since Ursula le Gwin's father was an anthropologist working with Indigenous Americans, documented by her mother in the book Ishi in Two Worlds, Young Ursula grew up surrounded by inherently anthropological questions such as what
does this tree mean to this culture? The magic system in the Earth Sea universe is also fascinating to view through this lens. An episode on the on magic systems in general could be fun. Thanks again for your great work, Elliott, Well, thank you Elliott. A couple of thoughts. First of all, yes, I love Ursula Legwin. I haven't read the Earthsea series yet. This email has made me think maybe that should be
my next fiction read. Been meaning to for years. I think there is a cool sensibility about cultures in her work, that the way she depicts invented alien cultures and her sci fi novels. I haven't read any of her fantasy work, but excited about Earthsea. It feels very sensitive and lived in, with a kind of heterogeneity visible within the general trends as opposed to the stories that depict alien cultures or invented culture is in a very flat or symbolic way
where it's just like everyone does this, you know. And also, if you would like to learn more about the story of the man known as Ishi mentioned in this email, the person who's in the title of the Theodor Krober book Eshi in Two Worlds. We discussed him in our series on Brain Theft from twenty twenty one, so you can go back and listen to that if you want to hear about Hi.
All right, let's see. Oh, we do have a number of messages related to the Hearth. I believe that's a there's a Hearth related title for today's listener mail episode. So let's get into some of these. This first one comes to us from Mike, subject line x Men ninety seven Fireplace. We were talking about various fireplace for your home DVDs, streaming options and so forth. So Mike says, to add to the collection, Marvel has posted an X Men animated series Fireplace on YouTube.
You know, Mike included a link and I tried to go check this out, but by the time I checked it, it was after Christmas and the video was gone, so it may have been just a before Christmas thing and then taken down. I don't know, or maybe it's still out there somewhere. But I did find a screenshot and I pulled that in and put it in our outline, so here you can see rob what the X Men fireplace looked like. I appreciate that this is more like a hand drawn animation style.
Yes, yeah, very much in the style of X Men ninety seven, which is an amazing series. By the way, it hits really hard. I think it's must viewing for anyone who grew up with the nineties X Men cartoon. But I think I haven't tested this out yet, but I think you could also watch X Men ninety seven without having watched the original X Men series. I watched it with my kid and it was a lot of fun, and we've been talking about, well should we get mom in on the action as well? And I think there's
I think you can get into it. That's my theory. I think you can watch X Men ninety seven with only just like a casual understanding of Marvel's X Men.
Trying to see who's got stockings. The stockings have names on them here. Oh yeah, we have a stocking for Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Gene Jeene Gray.
And then who this says morph in Morph? Yeah, morph is a shape shifting mutants. Yes, I don't know if I knew morph Morph was in the in the original series. Okay, and has a I think a more prominent role in this one. Cool.
Well, as I've said before on the show, I'm underfamiliar with the X Men cartoons, both old and new. I haven't seen this new one, and I didn't ever watch much of the old one, so I don't know as much as I would like to, But I don't know. It looks fun, I like the visual style. I'd like to check it out.
Yeah, yeah, it's solid. Let's see what else? Oh? And then this is the This is also from Mike, Right, Mike sent something that sent over something that aw wrestler dead. It's a video of one hangman Adam Page sipping whiskey in front of a burning house that's serving as a yule log. I didn't I personally don't follow wrestling as much these days, so I don't know what the context is for this. But still, anything within in the virtual Christmas Hearth domain, I'm all for it. Oh, and this
just springs to mind as well. I didn't think to mention this earlier, but when we were talking about like spinoffs of virtual hearts, digital hearths and fireplaces and indeed yule Logs Adult Swims yule Log from twenty twenty two, it's like a horror movie that begins as a yule Log video feed and then it evolves into a horror movie. Oh yeah, my pal nick A Katanawat did the original score for it. This is the same bunch that also did Too Many Cooks a few years I think a couple of years before that.
So similar vein so like fireplace for your home in the style of Too Many Cooks. Exactly, Yes, perfect, that's what I want.
In speaking of what we want, I was also thinking. We talked a little bit about this when we discussed the movie Blue Sunshine and Weird House Cinema, which has a very notable horrific hearth sequence in it. These are some of my ideas. These are movies that we need digital hearth feeds. For Blue Sunshine, of course, The wicker Man obviously not quite a hearth, but fire Fellowship of
the Ring seems just a no brainer. We need one of the Roaring Hop a hearth with the one ring in there, you know, staying nice and cool and shining, and maybe we can glimpse the script in the interior of the ring. I think that would be a good one. And then finally, Citizen Kane. It's been a while since I've seen Citizen Kane, but I'm reminded that Citizen Kane had a phenomenal fireplace. It seems like that would be a great inclusion as well.
I gotta say my entry is the Vincent Price House of Wax, whereas our burning House of Wax. Though, that would be kind of hard to loop, I think because as the wax figmurines melt, maybe they could melt and then it could go in reverse and they reconstitute and it just.
Got coving forth forever. It sounds fun. Who Likewise, this would be hard to loop. But melting Nazis from the end of Raiders of the Last Star. Ah, Yes, that could also potentially work.
Melting Nazis for your home Yeah yes.
Oh. A couple of quick messages from the Discord server in regards to hearth videos and so forth, One Gorpi writes in with the following back in two thousand and eight, Stephen Colbert made a holiday special and one of the extras on the DVD was a yule log that but a random book would occasionally be thrown into it. I remember Fahrenheit four fifty one was one of the first books thrown into the yule log. Nice and then oh and then we also heard from Matt on Discord. Matt
writes loving the hearth episode so far. If I growing up in the Burbs, we had a functional woodstove fireplace in the living room, so between that and being a boy scout as a kid, I have a strong nostalgia for fireplaces and campfires. The apartment I lived in had a faux fireplace mantle with a rotating fire effect and
a built in space heater. Something I noticed over the years was that even if the heater part wasn't on, my face would flush after sitting in front of the fire effect for a while, as though it was a real fire and not just a rotating stencil and red light. And Netflix certainly wasn't the first. I've got this gym from two thousand and five, and I'm sure there were plenty before it. Matt includes a photograph of a DVD here holiday fire a virtual fireplace.
Oh man, I bet like Kmart could not keep these on the shelves in two thousand and six.
Yeah, I have to admit there many times where I'll go up to I will be at a friend's house who has a faux fireplace of some kind, and I will still warm my hands by it. I just can't. Just like you see it, you do it, and even when you feel no heat coming off of it, the ritual of the of the situation is still feels potent. Yeah.
Interesting that the thing Matt saying about the physiological reaction, the flushing without the heat.
You know, it kind of comes back to what we were talking about earlier about zero proof cocktails. I've had sit situations before where I've had a zero proof cocktail and you know, you kind I kind of feel like a little flushed, a little, a little like psychosomatic imbibing of like purely mental alcohol. In those situations.
Like just the the belief that you're having a cocktail provides some amount of social disinhibition, even if there's no actual alcohol in it.
Yeah, because there's so much, of course, with with any of these things where there's the actual stimuli there's the actual you know, chemical and biological processes that are involved. But then there's some there's ritual, there's there's additional sensory data it's not tied to the heat or to the alcohol and so forth, and all of that has an effect on the mind as well. There have probably been studies, maybe there even been studies about people warming themselves by
a fake firelight. I don't know all right.
This next message comes from Joe, a subject line on illumination. Dear Rob and Joe, thank you for your illuminating had to swing at that slow pitch over the plate sorry podcast on hearths. I wanted to write in with some cultural commentary on your observations on the nature of firelight and how we take pervasive electric illumination for granted. I connected this conversation with an upcoming ritual in which I
partake annually, Honkkah. My favorite thing about Honkkah is the sacred practice of turning off all the other lights while the candles burn. The light of the honakiah or manora, both words are correct is intended to be the only light in the area for the time when the candles burn. It can be an extraordinary gift of peace in a time of year which is usually filled with joy, that brings with it a sizable share of chaos, noise, and
of course bright electric light. I am a secular jew, so for me, this holiday isn't about a divine connection. But I find the ten or fifteen minutes of darkness, but for the flickering, fading, waning light as the candles in my manora dwindle, strengthen my relationship to my ancestors whose nights were lit by this ephemeral source. It's not a portal to another world, but for me, firelight does open a passageway of sorts through time and creates a
connection to a history I choose to treasure. Joe, Well, thank you, Joe. Yeah, that's very interesting, and it does expand on some themes we talked about in the second of our Hearth episodes when we were talking about the study of how time lit by firelight is used differently
than time lit by daylight or by electric light. And in one particular case of people studied living in Southern Africa, time that was lit exclusively by firelight was used overwhelmingly for storytelling, as opposed to other types of conversation which dominated during daylight hours. And that's kind of an interesting observation.
Don't know how universally true that holds, but it seems that other sources have documented that it is common for people who have environments lit entirely by firelight to dwell in a kind of storytelling space, or in a space that puts everyday experiences in the context of a kind of bigger picture and a history and a world and a realm of meaning, as opposed to just the day to day tactics of getting by that consume most of
our energy. And so I thought that that was really interesting, and I wonder to what extent there was a kind of economic explanation in the paper we talked about, which is that firelight is enough light to stay awake and interact with other people, to like talk and sing and dance and have social time. But the quality of the light produced by a fire is typically not good enough to see what you're doing, well enough to get most
kinds of work done, you know. So it's like it produces a time you can be awake and do things, but you can't really be very economically productive. And that could be viewed in some ways as a kind of blessing because it allows you to engage in these other
types of activities. And so we were thinking, is it only that kind of mechanical explanation where it's like, well, you can't really see good enough to do most types of economic work with the firelight, or is it also that there are things about the esthetic qualities of firelight that just put you in a different frame of mind that also lend themselves to these sort of storytelling meaning orientations and thinking more about the big picture and thinking
more about other worlds and dreams. I guess I'm not fully prepared to have this conversation day, but maybe it's something to come back to in the future. Like, if it is the case that firelight puts you in a particularly imaginative or expansive state of mind compared to daylight or bright electric light, why is that? What is it about the firelight environment that that makes you think differently? Is it something about the color of the light, or
the relative amount of darkness surrounding you or what. I don't know exactly, but I think they'll be interesting to consider.
Yeah, fluctuations shadows. I wonder if lava lamps get into a similar area, like, you know, yeah, we'll probably you know, you're not doing a lot of like serious study by by Lava Lamp. You're you're you're doing other things. Yeah, you're you're you're dreaming, you know. All right, This next one comes to us from Anna. Anna writes, and it says, Hi, Robin Joe, you talk about the TV show of a Fireplace. Reminds me of something that came out a few years
ago here in Australia. It was just one long train journey and it ran all day long. There's a famous train in Australia called the Gone that runs through the center of Australia. I had to look this up and yeah, it goes right through the middle from the northern coast to the southern coast. It looks pretty incredible. The show, Anna continues, was mostly shots from the front of the train moving along the track, interspersed with other external shots
of the train moving along. Because the train goes through the center of Australia, the landscape is mostly desert. There was no soundtrack, just the soothing clackety clack of the train. It was quite popular at the time. The fact that there wasn't much going on was what made it appealing because people found it soothing. I live in Sydney now, so I don't encounter fireplaces a lot, but I grew up in Tasmania, where they were a part of life
in winter. Obviously, here in Australia, winter is at the opposite time of the year, so I don't associate them with Christmas, but I do associate them with family gatherings. Anyway, thanks for the great podcast.
Yeah, well thanks Anna. Well, yeah, I agree that that's an interesting comparison. So when we were talking about Slow TV and the Hearth episodes, we talked about obviously, you know, the mule log fireplace for your home, all of these fire burning movies, but we also talked about Andy Warhol's Empire, which is just a shot of the Empire State Building filmed over the course of one night as as the sky grows dark and the floodlights come on at the
top of the building, and not much happens. You just look at the building for I don't know, six hours or eight hours. How I think it's like eight hours the full length of the movie when played at the frame rate that's intended. And so that's one way of doing it. The train thing is on a similar theme, though it does seem kind of different because there you
are going from one place to another. Though I still think it'd be hard to call that much of a plot by conventional standards, but there's something more literally of a journey about it.
I should go ahead and to add a real time self correction here. I think I said gone. I think GAN would be more accurate because this was formerly the Afghan Express and it was abbreviated to GAN. But yeah, this does sound like a very interesting program in its own right. I'm reminded now of I believe this was
a twenty sixteen project from the band Cigaroes. They did some sort of project where they had like a camera mounted on the top of a vehicle and they were just driving around Iceland and then of course with their signature sound on top of that. But I remember when
that came out. I remember a lot of us were very intrigued by it, and I think you can still pull it up on their website, and maybe that just linked to some other places you can watch it, but anyway, it's still out there if you want to ride around Iceland with cigarettes.
Well, thanks again, Anna, Okay, let's see Rob do you mind if I do this message about our vault episodes on the shadow, please do. This comes from ls. LS says, hey, I thought your episodes on shadows were quite intriguing. I was particularly curious about the role shadows play in characters or religious figures, such as Chaia and that, by the way, is a Hindu deity that is a personification of the
shadow or of shade. LS continues. The stories you featured in these episodes had characters with their shadows being stolen or in some cases a separate entity. This got me thinking about characters that have shadows as an integral part of their being, especially in ways that reflect some sort of inner evil or buried personality. An example that comes to mind is Vex from League of Legends parentheses. I know, well, LS,
maybe you know, but I don't know. I don't know what I've heard of League of Legends, but I don't know anything about it. This implies to me that there must be I don't know something notorious about it.
I mean, I don't know much of Legal Legends, but the TV series Arcane, the animated series, is quite good and I'm not very far into it, but people really love it and I've been impressed by it so far. So yeah, I mean it seems like a rich world, but I don't know anything about the original video.
Kain Arkane is a show based on legal legends.
Correct.
Oh okay, yeah, so Ls continues about this character Vex. This character features abilities revolving around her sentient shadow, one that is a source of power, a thing that she can separate from and manipulate. Another, maybe more prominent exhibit is the departed shadow of the Marvel character Centry. This thing is called the Void and is somewhat its own character.
In the Doctor Strange trade paperback The God of Magic parentheses Kate slash Walta, the Void is imprisoned in the Wizard's Sanctum, a being that mirrors the strength of Century, but returns the century's good deeds into equal of darkness. These characters come to mind because they have different behaviors
than the shadows featured in the episodes. I thought that the idea of the shadow being the reflection of someone's inner evil, like a personification of intrusive thoughts or source of power, was a topic that wasn't reached due to time constraints, but felt that this kind of interpretation of shadow was something that you might find curious. There are certainly many more instances of this, but I may have
spent too much time on this anyways, LS well, thank you. Ells. Yeah, I guess we didn't get into it in the episode. For example, I know the shadow. I don't know a ton about this, but I know the shadow in I almost called it Jungian psychology. I try not to say Jungian psychology these days because I feel like that gives Jungianism too much of the implication that it's based on
like direct scientific research in Jungian thought. Uh, there's this idea of the shadow that is basically the the subconscious, repressed version of the ego or of the self. And so it's like the version of you that is maybe the version that that you don't want people to see, that would maybe do bad things that you know you shouldn't do, or in some other way would would violate
your your externally validated ethos. You know, it's the the version of you that could be let loose if you just cut off all of your inhibitions.
The the mister hide to your doctor Jekyl exactly, yes, and so yeah, you can have kind of interesting thoughts about the ways that your conscious self interacts with the you know, with your your repressed desires and the things that you know you shouldn't do, and so forth.
Those kind of interactions between the conscious self and the and the shadow self, I don't know, maybe kind of blend in interesting ways that that come out in our behaviors. But then again, I don't want to I don't want to overstate or give the impression that that I think Youngian thought is like a sign scientifically validated way of understanding humanity. It's more just kind of like an interesting philosophical framework on the human mind.
All right, Well, on that note, should should we turn to a little weird house cinema limail to round out the episode? Absolutely the Void to Our Century?
If you will, Let's see you want to do this one from Nathan and Olivia or this one from Joan?
Oh? I mean, whether they're both great? Your choice.
Let's see, I'll take Nathan and Olivia, then you take Joan. How about that sounds good? Okay? So this is from an account called Nathan and Olivia, though the email uses the first person singular pronoun, so it seems like this is from either Nathan or Olivia in superposition for the time being. Subject line Dead Mountaineers Hotel Hi Robert, Joe and JJ just finished the Weird House episode on the
Dead Mountaineers Hotel. I was especially excited for this one as the Strugatsky's have been cited by the developers of the video game disco Elysium as a core inspiration to the game, and then they add if you search Arcadi, Arcadi and Boris Strugatsky disco Elysium Steam, you should find a list of inspirations the developers made on a Steam page for the game. Disco Elysium is my favorite game of all time. You play as an amnesiac detective trying to solve a murder and get his life together or
not in the fictional city of Revashl. It is a callback to classic CRPGs like Planescape Torment and regarded as one of the best written video games of all time. The lead writer for the game was Robert Kurwitz, who is Estonian. Oh yeah, was Dead Mountaineer's Hotel Estonian? I know it was one of the Baltic states where it was made. Yes, Rob just confirmed it was Estonian. Anyway, The email goes on. I really enjoyed the episode on the Dead Mountaineers Hotel. The influence on Disco Elysia is
easy to see. If you were ever to decide to do a weird house episode on a video game, Disco would be a great candidate. It's relatively short, and the choices are endless and isn't traditionally difficult as there is no combat. It sounds great to me.
You had me at it's relatively short.
Yeah, good writing and short. That's my kind of game these days. Take care and thanks for a great show, Nathan and Olivia. So yeah, thank you for getting in touch, either Nathan or Olivia or both of you whoever wrote this. That I've heard great things about the game, I actually well, actually I'm understanding. I did downloaded it and I started playing it one day, but I didn't actually like get into the you know as one of those threshold I
played like five minutes. So I just need to like start over someday.
Yeah, yeah, I've I've been tempted to pick it up as well because I've always heard great things, and as of this recording, there's like a massive sale on it on the on the console that I use in their web store, so I like, I have it bookmarked, and I've been trying to decide It's like, is seventy percent off? Is this the threshold at which I buy this game? And then what will it take for me to actually
play it? I just play fewer games these days, but yeah, I've only heard great things and a Planescape Torment that was one that I loved so much back in the day. That is an amazing game Dungeons and Dragons game set in the Planescape setting, which is also one of my favorites. Yeah, loads of fun. So if it's anything like that, that's that's a great sign. All right, One more weird house message. Yes, this one comes to us from Joan Jones, says, I
just enjoyed listening to your discussion of Return to Oz. Yes, so we recently re ran this as a Weird House Cinema rewind episode, and I think I managed to more or less hit the debut of the new Wicked movie without really intending too. It's like ended up being like, oh, that was a great I patted myself on the back for it, but it was kind of by accident. I wasn't even thinking about it. But obviously Wicked has been a huge hit. Everyone I know who has seen it
loved it. The rest of my family really loved it, but I haven't seen it just yet. Anyway, Jones says, Oh, boys, your grandma's minds were being blown by those characters before you were a twinkle in your daddy's eyes. What you view as mind blowing is all from the original Oz books by bomb You owe it to yourself to read them. Bomb Can the original illustrator, and the new illustrations are wonderful. They have a fantastic art deco vibe. Ozma of Oz
is Dorothy's best friend, not her alter ego. She's the rightful ruler of Oz, but was hidden for most of her life when momby transformed her into the least likely creature imaginable, a little boy named Tip. When Tip gets transformed into a beautiful fairy princess, he's initially not too happy about it. Totally can talk, but he just doesn't feel like it. Auntie m and Uncle Henry eventually joined Dorothy and Oz. Oh lots of twists and turns there. Yeah.
As a little girl, my personal favorite was a magic turnstyle that would dress you in a new outfit. Every time you went through it. I just realized turnstyle may have been a pun for turn style. My friends and I hated Glinda's hairstyle and loved polychrome The Fairy of the Rainbow. Wow. Somebody once pointed out that Oz is a distinctly American fairy tale. In Alice in Wonderland, for example, all the characters are self centered creeps who work against Alice.
In Oz, Dorothy succeeds by making friends. Check out the books sometime, Joan, Oh.
Yeah, I didn't really. I guess I didn't really think about that. But in both of the Oz stories I know from the movies, not from the books, Dorothy is is a friend maker, even in a very strange lend. She picks up friendships wherever she goes.
Yeah, that's a great point.
Ye.
Every time the Wizard of Oz has come up, we often hear from folks who have read the books who point out just how deep and weird it all is. I have to I've never I have never read any of it, but I enjoy these little little tidbits about the deep weirdness.
Of OZ totally. All Right, Does that do it for today?
I believe it does. We'll go ahead and close out this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind listener Mail, but we'll be back with more in the future, so keep the listener mails coming. We read everything that comes in. It doesn't necessarily make it to a listener mail episode, but a lot of it does. Likewise, you can leave your thoughts and the discord server. You can write into us via email and we'll send you the link for that.
We're also there are some some other places. There's a there's a Stuff to Blow your Mind Facebook group called the Discussion Module. You can look that up and ask to join that if if you prefer to use the Facebook. Speaking of social if you're on Instagram where STBYM podcast, follow us there. It's one way to keep up with what we're putting out these days. On letter We're Weird House and you can follow the Weird House cinema selections there. And yeah, those are the main plugs I can think of.
What do you got, Joe?
Just our email once again. Oh but first, huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you want to get in touch by email and you missed the address earlier in the episode, once again, it is contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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