Listener Mail: The Locked Groove

and uh, we're very excited for him. And that Seth, You're you're moving on to something in the comics industry, right, Oh yeah, yeah, I still have my other things going on, but um, yes, specifically that's where I'll be headed next. Um. But if you know, if you miss my voice listener, which I can't imagine, but I'll still be doing my podcast Rusty Needles Record Club, and I hope that I'll still have Robin Joe over there ever once in a while, so you know, I'm not really going away, I just

won't be here. That makes And behind the scenes today we're being joined by Max Williams, who is our audio producer for this episode. So thank you for stepping in. Max. So many changes am I all right, so many changes. Joe has a as a baby, Seth is leaving, Max is coming on board. It's an exciting time. It is as I said, it's it's gonna be bittersweet, Seth. We have we have loved working with you over these years. Uh and and we're definitely we're gonna miss you, buddy.

But I'm glad you get to join us on Mike for for your last hurrah here on stuff to blow your mind. Yeah, I mean, especially since the last couple of episodes were co hosted by Seth and Concerned Records, and so I even put out a call to listeners on on Facebook's The Discussion module. Uh And in discord, I said, look, I didn't say he was going away, but I was like, if you have questions about these record episodes, please right in. And uh, I don't know.

It might just have been too soon because the second episode only came out really hours ago before recording this. That's true, that's true. So yeah, if you have maybe you should, if you have questions or or responses to those episodes, maybe c c um Seth over at Rusty Needle as well, because that way you can be sure that he'll see them. Yeah, I mean I have an email addressed over there which is Rusty Needles record Club

at gmail dot com. So if for some chance there's something you need to tell me that that would be the place you can go listen to that show. And that's my email for that show. But but guys, we did get at least one message about your episodes on Records and back Masking. It's this message from Mike Rob. Do you want to start off reading this one? Sure? Mike Rides loved the first episode on Easter Eggs and back masking. Weird Al has done some funny backmasking Easter

eggs over the years. Uh they include a link. Weird Al Yankovic has included backwards messages in two of his songs. One on the album in three D. A little over halfway through the song Nature Trail to Hell, there is a short non vocal musical score. If you listen very carefully, you can hear Al say in a very evil voice, Satan eats cheese. Whiz backwards there you go. Cheese products being especially funny. ChIL cheese is always funny. Number two on Bad Hair Day, near the end of I Remember Larry,

where our repeatedly sings yes, I remember, remember, remember. If you listen closely, you can catch another backwards message that says, wow, you must really have a lot of time on your hands. And he also did the song Bob, which is entirely composed of palindrome. I wonder palindrome in the text, or like a full audio palindrome like the song is backwards halfway through or both. M M yeah, I'm unfamiliar with

this particular track. However, I did just watch Weird, the new fake biopic about rid Al Yankovic starring Daniel Ratcliffe. Either of you two seen this? I have not seen this. Now we've actually been We've got a friend who we saw Weird Alan concert with when he was here in town, and we've been waiting to watch it with her. So it's gonna happen soon. It's on the Roku channel. This isn't an ad, but it's wonderful. Everyone should watch this.

It's a really wonderful movie. You got Evan rachel Wood playing Madonna, all kinds of other cameos, Rain Wilson playing Dr Demento. Just it's a real treats. People should watch it. Go track down the Roku channel. It's free, it's great, go watch it. Seth. Do you have any weird Al Yankovic on vinyl? Not on vinyl, No, although he has released a beautiful vinyl box set Shapes like an Accordion that had his entire discography in it, like in between

the little like folds of the accordion. But no, no, no, I um. All of my weird Al existed back in the days of cassette and c D I've I've never gone beyond that. I really remember people having CDs of Running with Sissors when I was a kid. That was I think that was the one. I believe. Actually, the first audio cassette I ever purchased was weird Al. It was Allapalooza, the one with the Jurassic Park song on it. Oh,

I had that on cassette for sure. Yes. Nice. Okay, Well, if you guys are ready to move on, I can do this message from Jeremy about multiple subjects, including goats. We've got a lot of goat thoughts this week, Jeremy says Robert and Joe. I have been a fan of the show for years and a pastime between new episode releases, I've been spending the last few months coming through the Stuff to Blow your Mind back catalog, starting all the

way back in two thousand ten. I just finished listening to an episode about the science of coincidences back from May, and an amazing coincidence just occurred. First of all, this was an episode from before Joe was even on the show, but he had just happened to be featured on this episode as a guest feeling in for Julie rob Yeah, this was This was my first guest on on the show. I remember having a lot of fun. But anyway, Jeremy

goes on. In this episode, you both mentioned a novel by Edgar Allan Poe about a group of sailors who were stranded at sea, eventually resorting to sacrificing and eating a crew member named Richard Parker. You then went on to explain that coincidentally, this same event happened in real life forty six years later, when a crew of stranded sailors actually resorted to eating a They're Dead crew member

who was also named Richard Parker. The reason I'm writing in is that as soon as I got done listening to this episode, I scrolled across a post on a social media platform by Weird History that was talking all about this story concerning the eating of Richard Parker. What

a coincidence. Additionally, and perhaps only loosely related, the episode following this one was all about spider Silk, where you spent a lot of time talking about genetically modified goats that were created in hopes producing more silk through their milk. This is yet another coincidence, as you have just recently released four different episodes talking all about goats over the past few weeks. Sorry for the long message, just wanted to share. Keep up the awesome work, Jeremy. Uh yeah,

I would say proof of the Supernatural confirmed. Well, no, this is actually this is all a coordinated effort across multiple podcasts and multiple errors of podcasts to to produce an image. So so keep keep following the threads. Here go goat synchronicity. Al Right, here's another one. This one is a vault up from as to do the vault episode on Tumbleweeds. This would have been an episode that

came out roughly a year ago, originally from Miguel. Miguel writes in and says hello, Robert and Joe, I'm writing in as a follow up to an email I sent several months ago about how this podcast inspires so much of my D and D camp pains, and how many of the monsters you cover are statted out and ready to play in fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons through books by a third party publisher, Cobalt Press. They recently held a contest for a new book they were working on,

and we're taking submissions for monsters. Well. I designed a creature inspired by your episodes on Tumbleweeds and submitted it and ended up actually winning. Tome of Beasts three released about a week ago, and I was very excited to show you to the final product product in all of its glory see image attached, and thank you guys again for the many, many hours of entertaining, thought provoking and

inspiring content. Oh and to make clear from the image, the creature is called the Wind, which which was again one of the nicknames for Tumbleweeds, and it appears to be a tumble a giant sentient tumbleweed monster that will

hunt you down in the desolate wastes. Yeah, challenge rating three anyway, Miguel continues here, I had a lot of fun designing this creature and coming up with interest and game mechanics for it, like its ability to regenerate after being defeated, only to come back and arrass the party over and over again until its body is finally destroyed, or its flammability, which will ensure the wind which is defeated for good, but at the risk of taking some

extra fire damage from it. I think it would be really cool to create a small bestie area of creatures inspired by your podcast, and was wondering if you had any thoughts on what episodes you would like to see brought to life for D and D. I would love to try to create it and maybe eventually release it somewhere for free. The working title is stuff to Blow your players, but I think that needs a bit of work shopping anyway. Wishing you both the best and a

happy holiday season. Michael, Well, Miguel, this is just magical. This fills my heart with joy, and I love that this creature is determined as chaotic evil, because of course it would be. It would be unpredictable, It would just kind of thrash about as the wind sends it, and like they mentioned, fire can defeat it, but oh at what cost? Gonna be spreading that fire? Perhaps you know,

very smart. I like it. Yeah, yeah. It reminds me of those stories of people trying to burn burn tumbleweeds to get rid of them, but then them rolling away, and not only rolling away, but like jumping over ditches to get um. The other thing I think about a tumbleweed that you could really capture as a dangerous creature mechanic is their stickiness, right, so that you you know, if you try to whack one in order to to

cause damage to it. Technically, I think what should happen is when you like pull your sword or weapon back, it will have pieces of tumbleweeds stuck all over it, which will lessen the effectiveness of the weapon going forward, at least for a time, maybe for like two turns while all the little like bristles fall off or something. Yeah, that's that's fun. Yeah yeah. As for other creatures we've discussed that should be started out for D n D,

I don't know. We mentioned a lot of cool creatures, many of which evidently have been uh featured in Dungeons and Dragons, either a fish really or through a third party publications like those referenced here. I'm not sure if like zombies to go to church has been properly explored. Like that's a good one from last year. The pious stead Yeah, yeah, like maybe they're mostly peaceful until you disturb their worship service and then they burn you on

the altar. Yeah, a lot of religion checks involved to get that right. What about Rob you might know this is there's something like the leshy already in D and D, kind of a spirit of the forest that calls out, lures you off the path, that sort of thing. I feel like there probably is, um I'm just blanking on it at the moment. I haven't done as much uh d N D D m NG inside of a woodland setting, so I'm just not as familiar with those creatures. But

I'm sure there's something one more for you guys. Uh. This was quite a while ago. It was a kind of fungus that um it rolled up into these big tubes and got really really tall. Remember you guys are for this. Yes, Uh. This was something about really tall fungus from a prehistoric era, like exactly Devonian period or something.

I don't remember all the details, but I remember picturing these giant trees of like petrified fung gui and and being really fascinated by that, and also just think the concept of giant fun guy like like there were in that episode a long time ago. We were also discussing the world's largest mushroom, which I believe like existed beneath the soil in Oregon. It was like larger than an

entire town or something. I'd have to look at the details, but fascinating fungus stuff could definitely be in the D D and D for stuff to blow your mind. I think I was d m NG a game set in the under dark at that point, and I think I did do something. I did do something with it with that in it. Nothing that like needed statting out, but I probably got carried away describing fungal trees to the players and they're you know, that's what it's It's ultimately,

that's what it's like. If you're thinking, if you may think, oh, I bet it would be exciting if if Robert Lamb was was my dungeon master, because he follows all these weird tangents. Now, it just it just means there would be weird tangents in that game itself where you're wondering, why is he going on and on about what these

trees look like. Now the other I remember, now, the other cool thing about these trees was that the so called trees, like the giant tall pieces of fungus was I'm pretty sure they existed before there were forests plant forests like really plant trees. But it's been a while, so I could be wrong about that, but I think that's right. But good luck with this D and D book. And uh yeah, yeah, there there's a lot of content that could become something, perhaps something from Weird House Cinema

as well. There could definitely be some Weird Cinema elements that are are prominently featured that that could make an appearance as well. Oh god, well, yeah, you're just standing out tobo alone that I can't even imagine what a task that would be. Okay, This next message comes from Will, subject line goat Eyes generative technologies associating audio with places a whole grab bag. Here, Will says high Team on

goat eyes too. Observations One. I got an illuminated bathroom mirror that had an LED strip all the way around the outside. This had the unsettling effect of reflecting the rectangular strip of light into the observer's eyes, giving one's reflection rectangular goat pupils, which was somewhat unsettling in the morning. This was not mentioned in the features of the mirror of the Mirror, although it did have built in bluetooth speaker. The singing mirror that does sound like a D and

D artifact. Two. You recently mentioned generative neural networks for the purpose of writing fiction. Oh yeah, this is what we keep coming back to U. Funny things created by

the story machines generator. I don't know if we ever shared it on the on the podcast itself, but one of the ones I can't stop thinking about that we were just chatting back and forth about one day was a story I created, I think based on the title Garfield Beyond Thunderdome, and it had Garfield and then another warrior trading some some trash talk before they were about to fight in the Thunderdome, and the line it came up with was the opponent says, so you're the famous cat,

And then it said and Garfield replied, I'm not the cat. Anyway, will goes on. Generative technologies are fascinating and we'll continue to develop quickly. One of the first prompts I gave to Dolly Mini. This is a one that you've probably seen on on the Internet by this point. But it's one that generates images based on text input and it's pretty good. But the one that will sites it was the text input goats I on a cabbage result attached to guys, we can scroll down and take a look

at this right now. It's uh, it's rather unpleasant. But yeah that the the eyeball is the center of the cabbage, and like the the outer leaves are the lids. I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty creepy. I don't know, I've been I've been playing around with mid Journey recently, and I don't know, I'm just really astounded by how far things have come, even beyond what we're looking at here. So I'm I almost don't want to put goat eye cabbage is in

there for fear of what what I'll see. I don't even want to put but Garfield beyond Thunderdome in their fear of how spot on and maybe okay, next thing Will says on associating audio maybe music with places. I think you recently mentioned the idea that certain audio is strongly associated with certain activities. Or places for you, or maybe it was on another podcast. Guys, do we have a verdict on this? Was this something you talked about while I was out? I think so we talked about

a lot of music stuff while you were gone. I I'm positively touched on something along those lines. Will says, I have this in the extreme. Although it's not every episode of every podcast. Usually it's particularly memorable ones. Your weird House episode on the film Frogs I heard while feverishly attempting to clean a rented apartment before leaving Norway. Moving house is always stressful, and moving country is perhaps even more so. So thank you for keeping me company.

The Stuff You Should Know episode about liquefaction I heard in Afghanistan. Likewise, the Magic Mushrooms episode I heard at Davao Airport Devout Airport in the Philippines. The nine Volte Nirvana episode of Radio Lab I heard on my way to the gym in the UK. The long distance episode of Reply All was heard while driving down Regent Street

in Nottingham, etcetera, etcetera. It's possible that either strong episodes encode the place that I heard them in, or novel situations allow me to associate a particular podcast with that situation. If I listen on pocket casts at three X speed with the delete blank space feature turned on, okay, well, um, I can get through a twenty two hours of podcasts in one day, so obviously I won't remember where I was with all of them, especially as a lot of the time I'll be in a familiar place. This one,

this message took a turn. Um Will says not all podcasts can be listened to at three X, but yours can because of your clear addiction and good recording quality. Oh thank you. Will. One must slow down to two X for unfamiliar accents, languages, or lower quality recordings. I've gone on a bit, sorry, but I thought you might be interested to know that you're weird. House Cinema Episodes are one of my very favorite podcasts out of the

hundred plus to which I subscribe. The only film you've covered that I've seen is Plan nine from Outer Space. I'm almost entirely an audio consumer, so your descriptions of the films are more than enough for me. Regrettably, I have difficulty discerning one actor from another, and I'm amazed at your ability to rate different actors, performances and the things they've been in. Most people look pretty much the

same to me, except for the really big stars. There is one sception to my apparent inability to recognize good performances. I once saw an episode of Criminal Minds where the bad guys acting was so incredible that I had to look look up who it was in the credits. Turned

out to be Tim Curry. He stole the show. His talent eclipsed everyone on the screen to the extent that it seemed like everyone else were a local amateur dramatics troope kind regards Will well, Will, that was a journey, But yes, we we must always remember to praise Tim Curry. And will you get a gold medal for listening to podcasts? I've never heard of anyone consuming three x delete blank space and getting through twenty two hours of podcasts and

one day. That's that's that's really a herculean feats. Congratulations. Yeah, I hope you're doing this just for enjoyment like that. They don't, Yeah, they don't literally give you a medal for the number of podcasts you listen to. I'm gonna say I don't think he's doing enough. I think he could. He could be listening to two podcasts at once. I think that's the next step. That's right, Yes, stereo one in each year. There you go. Well, you know, coming

back to Weird House. We also heard from Pat and Pat has a response to a Weird House episode that Seth and I did together concerning the Flight of Dragons. Pat rides Robert Seth. Thanks for the episode on the Flight of Dragons. Wow. I rank in Bass movie. I hadn't heard about, though I was a big fan. Great cast and the art is as described. You mentioned Paul Freeze. May I add how wonderful he was, so many great voices, dubbing Bogart in his last film, The Harder They Fall.

I remember seeing this film before hearing the story of how Freeze had to dub Bogy's lines because Bogie was so sick I couldn't hear hear the difference. Recommend welcome Foolish Immortals, The Life and Times of Paul Freeze. Thanks again, please go on with the great shows. Pat. That is a good biograph. Off the title, I have to really underline that I also love Paul Freeze. Um folks probably know who he is, even if they don't know him

by name. If you look up his IMDb page. He's like the Fred Welker of like the fifties, sixties, and seventies. He was the guy that was in literally everything. Um personally, I love Jay Ward stuff. He's the guy that created Rocky and Bullwinkle and Um, George at the Jungle and Dudley Do Right and all that kind of stuff, And Paul Freeze was all throughout those. Most famously, he was the voice of Boris baden Off. That was Paul Freeze. Um.

He was also Inspector Fenwick on Dudley Do Right. He was the narrator in Hoppity Hooper And that's just Jay Ward stuff. If you if you look in all of his other things Disney rankin bass, everywhere, Paul Freeze is. Yeah. He was the guy. He was the guy that you called in if you needed just the man of a million voices. That was him back in the day. Do you reckon nice? The phrase welcome foolish mortals? Is that from something in particular? Um, you know what that this

I'm jumping to a conclusion here. I may be wrong. He may have been one of the primary voices inside Disney's The Haunted Mansion, and that being the case, that might be one of the phrases that he used. I'm going just off top of my head right there. That may not be true. He also did the ending voice over in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, So another Beneath the Planet of the Apes connection there beneath is

that the one? Is that the second one, the one where they worship the atomic bomb and then uh, Charlton Heston wrestles somebody and then they blow it all up. That's the one, and I've just looked it up. It is correct. He was the original ghost host for the Haunted Mansion, so that title is referencing him being the narrator while you walk through the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Okay, so he's like the the elevator operator in the David S. Pumpkins sketch in some ways. Yeah, yeah, speaking of of

of of Haunted Mansion. Uh, there's a there's a wonderful series you can get on Disney Plus called Behind the Attraction, and each one looks at a different like classic Disney ride in the history behind It. Have been slowly making

my way through it and it's it's really fascinating. I don't remember if they mentioned Paul Freeze or not, but there's a whole episode on the Haunted Mansion that gets into the you know, where the idea came from, how it was developed, the imagineers involved, and the engineering constraints

and so forth. It's a really good show. Co sign Well, I think we've reached the end of today's mail bag, but yeah, before we go, we should mention once again that that if you want to keep following Seth, you can check out Rusty Needles Record Club, which is sets music podcast. It's like a book club, but for albums. I was actually on an episode. I don't know if you guys mentioned this while I was out, but I was on an episode a while back that came out while I was on parental leave, and it was one

we did on Black Sabbath's first album. That was a huge amount of fun. I hope you enjoyed it as well, Seth. Oh, absolutely, it was a great episode. And uh, Rob and I are already talking about that the episode Rob's going to do on there. We we've already got a nice list of potential albums to cover. It's gonna be good times. So yeah, come check that out if you like music. You're looking for some recommendations, or you know, you just like hearing people talk. That's that's the other part of it.

And if if you're not sick to death of us at this point, we will and and if the invitation stands, we will show up on there again. So Stuff to Blow your Mind fans check it out. The invitation is always there and um yeah, so so go check out Rusty Needles Record Club if you want to keep following me after I am sadly departing from Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Or if you're in the Seattle area, you can stop by a bookstore that my wife and I own called salmon Berry Books salmon Berry Dashbooks dot com.

Come check that out too. That's that's where you might be able to find me. I might be there behind the counter, who knows. All right, Betty, well you're gonna be missed. Thanks again for all the work you've done over the years with us here and and a big thank you to both of you. I mean, it's it's been tons of fun. I've learned a lot. I can't begin to tell you how many of my friends and family are tired of me just throwing in little anecdotes about you know, why a wombat poops in a cube?

It's very important and I can tell them that because of this show. Oh boy, we love to make people more annoying. That's our man goal. But yeah, seriously, huge heartfelt thanks, and and we're gonna miss you buddy, Vice of versa. I'll miss you both too, and I'm sure we'll we'll all still be in touch and we'll all still be around all right when we're gonna go ahead and close up the mail bag here reminder to everybody that's Stuff to Blow Your Mind Listener mail publishes every Monday.

On Wednesdays, we do a short form art fact We're Monster Fact. On Friday's we do Weird How Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and talk about a strange age film. And then our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind are on Tuesday and Thursday. Huge thanks to our audio producer today, who is Max Williams. Yeah,

big thanks Max stepping in for us here. Uh. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.