Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind listener mail. My name is Robert.
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day of each week that we read back messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you have never gotten in touch with the show before, why not give it a try. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. We accept messages of all types, especially if you have feedback to a recent episode, maybe something interesting to add on a topic we've talked about, or especially this week, if
you got something about Dune. Hit us up.
Yeah all right, well let's jump into it. This first one comes to us from Matt and this one is titled Cave Biology. Hey, Rob, Joe and JJ. I was just a listening to your first episode about cave dwelling life and was very pleased when you started talking about subjects related to genetics. I thought i'd share some of my thoughts on the subject. First, you asked for comment about the sonic the hedgehog pathway. One of you I can't remember who wondered aloud, which was discovered first hedgehog
or sonic hedgehog. It was hedgehog, and it was so name because fruitflies without this gene would develop many spiky protrusions all over their body, giving them a very hedgehog like appearance. Sonic Hedgehog was simply named after the game character, as it is in the hedgehog family of genes, and after seeing the character on the cover of a magazine. Yeah, I read some of the background about this as well. This is a hedgehog first, and then I think some
other varieties, including sonic ketchhog. Anyways, another thing you brought up is the idea of a single genetic trait that affects multiple characteristics of an organism. I think you used eyes and long arms as an example, but the one my mind immediately went to is a gene that results in both red hair and freckles. MC one R just thought i'd share that this example exists. The last thing is related to the fish that develop eyes but lose
them when in the dark environment of a cave. I seem to remember from a developmental biology course that neural cells often have this use it or lose its system already in place during development, even in humans. Many more neurons are formed early in development than are needed, but only those able to create strong, useful connections will remain while the others are destroyed or broken down. The difference comes down to their ability to communicate across the connections
they make. It doesn't seem like a stretch for this to extend to the eyes, as they are formed from specialized neural tissue, and when the eyes aren't sending signals to indicate they are useful, they get the acts with the excessive neurons. Anyway, love the show. You guys are masters of science communication.
Matt ah, thank you, Matt Yeah, thank you, especially for bringing so the idea of a single genetic trait that affects multiple characteristics and the phenotype in the body or behavior of the organism. I did use the idea of like smaller eyes but longer arms, just as hypothetical, but I appreciate you adding a real life known example the idea that a single genetic trait could affect having both
red hair and freckles. I think the real one we talked about in those cavefish was the idea of a pliotropy that would cause at the same time both regressed eyes, but also more taste buds around the mouth.
Yes, all right.
This next message is in response to our series on the illusion of control. It comes from Christopher. Christopher says, hello, Joe and Robert. On the subject of the illusion of control, and further to other listener's comments, a student of Stoicism would say that we truly have no control over anything besides our minds. We can only control our perception and reactions to events and influences. Perhaps an episode on stoicism
Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, question mark kind regards Christopher. Oh, yeah, Christopher, that's an interesting idea. I guess I did think a bit about Stoic philosophers. I don't know a ton about Stoicism, but I did think a bit about that when we were recording the episodes, but it never came up in conversation.
So I know I've read before that some of the Stoics, I think especially it was Epictetus placed a kind of fundamental importance on discerning between that which is within our power to change and that which is not within our power to change, on being able to tell the difference there in fact as well articulated in a famous prayer I think used by people who are in recovery programs often, but they're you know, and obviously like once the idea is once you tell the difference between things you can
influence and things you can't. There are a number of other spools that followed from that initial judgment.
Yeah yeah. As to the possibility doing an episode on say stoicism or something, yeah, yeah, I don't think we've done a real philosophical episode of late in terms of like getting into particular philosophers and schools of philosophy. We have more in the past, but maybe we're due for another.
Yeah, I think we could definitely come back and talk about stoicism at some point. I think more recently, we actually ended up talking about cynicism because we were talking about Diogenes the cynic because we were talking about beans and he I think, was famous for eating beans that were you know, not that we're kind of looked down upon as food by the elite of Athens.
All right, well, let's go ahead and transition into a little weird house cinema. We have some weird house cinema left over from last week. Some new stuff has come in. This one comes to it from Louisa. Lisa says, Hi, Robin Joe Dune. What can one say that hasn't been said about it before? It was my first experience with sci fi, although thirty years later I don't really know if it fits in that particular genre. This new adaptation is wonderful and it inspired me to make a quirky
mug I wanted to show you. And then we get some images of this mug. They will, I guess describe in a second. We'll give the author here a second to continue the Litany against fear, a sandworm on the side and the mouth of a chah alude on the inside. I'm tempted to watch the Lynch version now. Thanks to you, Thank you for your wonderful podcast. You're my weekly portal into scientific considerations. Best wishes, Louisa from Guatemala.
Luisa, this mug is great. So yeah, it has the Litany against fear on the opposed sides of the mug on you know, one half on one side, the other half on the other. As she says, the inside is just a big, old, bristly spiky worm mouth. I prefer this mug to the popcorn buckets.
Well, you know, the popcorn buckets have their own charm, but this, this is something I would be more inclined to put on my shelf. Yeah, I love the handle. The handle of the mug is in fact a sandworm. Beautiful job.
I love it totally. Five out of five kulwahds. Okay, this next message is from Jeff. Jeff says, greeting science humans, really enjoying the recent nostalgic weird house picks. Your episode on Flash Gordon reminded me of being a kid and encountering movies on cable television with no preconceived notions. I distinctly remember the ex of seeing Flash Gordon on the on screen channel guide. I'd never heard of the character and thought it was going to be a movie about
the DC superhero, the Flash. I don't know my DC heroes. Is that the one that runs really fast?
He runs really fast, really really fast? Yeah?
All right, so Jeff says. Instead, I got something much more fun and imaginative. Although I was pretty far into the movie before I finally stopped wondering when he was going to get super speed.
Yeah, I mean, if he wasn't going to get it during the football scene, Yes, it probably wasn't gonna happen, Jeff.
Was it before or after the football combat that you realized what you were actually watching? So, Jeff says, Obviously, I loved the movie and the soundtrack, and would later watch it, or at least parts of it, many times as I encountered it channel surfing. The first time I saw it, I immediately recognized the Hawkman Assault theme as the song that played when you pick up the temporary invincibility power up in the arcade game Vanguard.
Oh, Vanguard, I don't think I knew this one. I'm looking it up now and seeing the like, I guess what the cabinet art or poster art for it? Yeah?
Interesting, Yeah, I looked up some gameplay. Vanguard is a horizontal scrolling shoot him up. So the shoot him up games are the ones where you're like some kind of little spaceship and you're blasting a bunch of other space ships that are scrolling either down the screen. They're like vertical shoot them ups and horizontal ones. This is one where you go from left to right across the screen instead of bottom to top. And I don't think I've
ever played this one, but others in this genre. If you want to picture it were games like R Type or Defender. I was thinking maybe the Super Nintendo game that had the guy with the banjo on the cover, but I think that was actually a vertical scroller.
Vanguard Centuri's first talking game. I guess I had a voice.
Wait, I just remembered, yes, I did check this out. At the start screen when you like press start to play, it has a robotic computer voice that says bon voyage.
Ah oh man. Now I have to say I looked it up on Moby Games that has a lot of information on these old ones, and I was immediately captivated by the art for the Atari twenty six hundred cartridge. Really cool image that is, of course almost damning because you look at that new No, no, there's no way that this game backs up this awesome image in any way, shape or form. And then I scrolled down who did
the cover art, Matt. It's Ralph McQuary, famous for his concepts and sketches and his conceptual design for Star Wars so and also I believe he did Boggy Creek too, Am I remembering that correctly? Yeah, there's some sort of weird connection between his concepts that would have become the Wookies, and his concepts for the Bigfoot creature in the Body Creek movie. So I think he did the poster art for those as well. Okay, legendary Man.
Well, so I'm just comparing now the Atari twenty six hundred graphics versus the Arcade graphics look markedly different. The Arcade one looks a lot better. H Maybe I'm looking at two different things. I can't tell anyway, And thus
concludes the extended sidebar on Vanguard. So going back to Jeff's message about the oh, remember it was about the power up music that was the exact same as the Hawkman theme from Flash Gordon, Jeff says, I assumed it was some old classical piece or other historical melody that seemed to be hanging around in the culture forever, like
the music in Looney Tunes. It was much later that I realized it was all the brilliance of queen and video game designers simply didn't know enough to be afraid of music licensing lawyers in those early days of the industry. Of course, I knew of some blockbusters through pervasive advertising, but a friend of mine experienced movies with an even
purer lack of expectation. He grew up in the Middle East and would receive stacks of pirated VHS tapes, sometimes with multiple movies on each, with nothing but the titles scribbled on them. No Rotten Tomatoes, no Siskel or Ebert, just the pure joy of discovery. It could be a masterpiece like Ghostbusters or some Chuck Norris kickfest. There was no indication of genre or quality. Wow, that does sound fun.
Yeah, I mean those old VHS types. If you didn't care about quality, you could fit three movies on there. And I distinctly remember having the VHS tapes with the three different movie titles scribbled on there. You know, often like taped off of HBO by my aunt, and it would be a weird mix. It would be like a kid's movie and then poulter Geist and it would like just cut abruptly to poulter Geist in a way that may do a raid as you reach the end of the kids movie. That sort of thing.
I would tape things off of TV, especially when I saw like a commercial or promo for some TV movie coming up soon that looked like it was really going to be good and an example of what would be upcoming. That I thought was really going to be good was Forest Warriors starring Chuck Norris.
Yeah. I mean it's it's a winning concept. It's him in the forest fighting I don't know, big feet or something, you know, the sasquatch battles, I don't.
Know, fighting poachers or something.
Well that sounds more likely.
Actually, No, I think it's like mean laggers. It's like bad laggers who want to cut down the forest, and he's like a martial arts ghost that must defend the forest. All right, So that's your kickfest. Coming back to Jeff's message, Jeff says, finally, I have a viewing recommendation called Delicious in Dungeon on Netflix. Rob have you seen this?
I have not.
Okay, Jeff's gonna describe it, he says. It seems like a perfect combination of subject matter for the two of you. The premise is that a party of Dungeon adventurers have no rations and must consume the monsters they kill to survive. It works as a combination classic fantasy adventure plus cooking show.
They have such respect for both tabletop and video game D and D themes that it feels as though you're playing a game where someone invited two friends from culinary school who are only slightly interested in the module, but fascinated with the Monster Manual and what recipes they could imagine on every page. It's light and funny, and so far seems appropriate for viewing with kids. It's currently the show I look most forward to every week. Thanks for keeping the Heart of the Eighties Alive, Jeff.
All right, Yeah, I mean I'm especially interested if I can watch it with my son. Yeah, I'll have to check it out. It was not on my radar.
Oh, I just took a peek. This is animated. You may have said that, but I didn't realize that I was picturing something live action.
As for keeping the Heart of the Eighties Alive, yeah, I mean, just considering Weird House cinema. I just did a check up on this. We have, as of this recording covered fifty three films from the nineteen eighties.
Wow. I would not have thought it was that much.
Yeah, yeah, fifty three. I haven't done a full breakdown on it. But for a while there it was like eighties was in the lead, and then came like nineties or seventies, I don't know, And then for a while we got super into doing Films from the fifties and the sixties are always up there, so you know, there's a little bit of a push and pull there. And this is all out of the total one hundred and fifty three films that we've covered on the show.
Wow, it sounds like a solid third of them or from the eighties though, right.
Yeah, okay, well we are you know, we are both to differing degrees children of the eighties, so it makes sense.
Remember Highlander your Home.
All right, here's another one. This one comes to is from Carrie. Carrie writes in and says, Rob and Joe, I'm writing to suggest a pretty weird movie for weird House. It's The five Thousand Fingers of Doctor t a nineteen fifty three quote musical about a young boy who hates his piano lessons and dreams of an evil piano teacher who has built a piano so large that he has imprisoned five hundred children in his dungeon to force them
to play it. I first saw this on TV in the nineteen fifties and had vague recollections of it when I saw it again in the student union while I was in college in the nineteen seventies. I wouldn't say it's good, but as I said before, it's weird. If you aren't already familiar with it, check it out and see what you think. Karen.
You know, somehow I think this movie has come up before. I've never seen it, but I've looked up screenshots from the film. Apparently it was written by doctor Seuss, and somehow the movie looks as if it were illustrated like a Doctor Seuss book.
Yeah, yeah, I believe listeners have written in about this one before. Yeah, I've never seen it, but I probably need to lean in for a closer look. Yeah. It the stills, and you included some stills in our shared dock here. They look absurd. It does look very true too, like like the production design is by Doctor SEUs in the best way possible, not in not in like a bad way, Yeah, which which can be possible.
Yeah, this looks like a noothbrush on my toothbrush that I do indeed wish.
To keep from the director of the nineteen fifty three three D western, The Moonlighter.
Three D Western.
Yeah. Yeah, you know we've talked before about this. Different phases of the ups and downs and resurgences, of three D cinema, and yeah, occasionally they'll put out a western.
I'm just picturing a lot of three D like mule kicking you in the face shots.
Anyway, the five thousand Fingers of Doctor t Yeah, we'll put it. Make sure it's on the considerational list for the future. All right, Well, on that note, I guess we'll go ahead and close the mail bag for today. But let's see normal housekeeping stuff here. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays, listener
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