Listener Mail: Time Passages

of these messages about our episodes on tears. Right. Okay, So this one comes from a listener who did share her name, but I think I'm gonna keep this one anonymous just in case because it gets into some potentially dicey territory. But but this was a good one. So this listener says, Hey, I wanted to share a funny story about crocodile tears. My husband and I had only been dating for a few weeks when he accompanied me to a pawn shop. I needed money and decided to

sell my engagement ring from my ex fiance. While haggling with the pawn shop employee, who was, of course trying to give me as little as possible, I started crying and giving a sob story about how sad I was to part with it, and so on. My husband's jaw hit the floor, and he was quietly fuming. He hated my ex and had thought I did too. He certainly didn't think I cared a spit about this sad little ring.

I managed to get a few more dollars from the pawn shop guy, and when we walked outside, my husband turned to me, probably ready to break things off, and with my cheeks still wet with tears, I just started laughing. He stared at me, dumbfounded. You're not upset, he asked me, God, No, why would I be. I just needed as much as I could possibly get. I told him, have you ever done that to me? He asked, not yet? I told him,

and we both had a good laugh. He still loves to tell that story because he totally fell for it as we stood in the pawn shop. Well, that that's that sounds like a scene from a movie. I feel like I would see that on a like a drama TV show. Yeah, totally, But I have more questions. I feel like I'm one to know, like did you plan to do this or did it just kind of happen spontaneously? Like what what's the approach on that? I I think I can honestly say I have never uh as an

adult at least used tears in an intentionally persuasive manner. Uh. And I don't know if I would be able to do so if I tried. Yeah, I mean, of course, I mean we all do things with our delivery and our our body language at times to try and influence these sorts of encounters. I mean, we've all I think read about, you know, the supposed benefits, and occasionally I think I've seen some criticism of this idea too, of

of taking on the like the humble brontosaurus pose. Uh when say, dealing with uh with a with a person of sort of bureaucratic authority, or even if you've been like, you know, pulled over that sort of thing. What is the humble brontos source pose. It's sort of a I forget the details of, but it's like, imagine you are a Saara pod uh and one that is humble and

not threatening. It's sort of like taking on this sort of uh, this this humble body language approach to not so much too direct conflict, I think, but sort of these these milder forms of interaction where you could potentially be shut down by somebody and you you maybe want like a little bit more help, uh than than they definitely have to give you. But like I said, if if memory serves, I think there's been some back and forth on that, and it's certainly it certainly is not

something that's gonna be applicable to to every scenario. Okay, I just looked it up. I think the phrase you've used for this before is the kindly browntosaurus. Okay, kind of not humble. Yeah yeah, well maybe humble, maybe not, but it's sort of, uh, sort of the the head is bent down a little bit and then the front arms are sort of clasped, the hands are clasped together in front of you. Uh, it looks very it looks

very humble and supplicant. Yeah. Yeah, So I mean, not so much to really back up the pros and cons of that specifically, but just in general, of course, we all do things that are maybe not quite at the level of a summoning, uh you know, the orchestrated tears of some form or another, but doing things to lean into creating a certain emotional ambiance that we want someone else to pick up on. Like what happens Joe if you have to go into a hardware store in a

let's say, a small southern town. Do you find things happen to your voice? Oh that's a good question. Uh, that may indeed be true. I don't know. I've never consciously monitored myself for that, but I suspect I may shift back into my East Tennessee roots a little bit more depending on the context. Yeah. I think I have at times caught myself becoming like a little folks here

in interactions like that. So so basically, what I'm trying to say is, though even though quote unquote fake tears may seem like an extreme manipulation I mean to to some, I don't think it's really that extreme when you take into account all the various other ways that we augment

our emotional ambiance for others. Yeah, yeah, totally. Okay, So if we do this next message from Matthew, I just wanted to preface this by saying this touches on some of the same Dune content mentioned by a previous listener, but kind of expands on the idea. So, rob do you want to do this one? Sure? Uh, they write, Hey, Robert and Joe. One interesting example of cultural meaning of tears can be found in the Dune series I guess at some point during his initial stay at the taveris

speech or seeched. I never know how to say this. There's so many words and phrases and dune that they kind of just ricochet through through my brain and I'm not necessarily using them in everyday conversation anyway. Paul weeps for the man whom he has recently killed than a duel. The Fremen are deeply touched by his tears. In the harsh desert environment of Aracus, wasting vital bodily fluid for someone or somebody can be seen as an honest signal

of commitment and emotional investment. I was surprised that you hadn't mentioned it, since I know both of you are big fans of Doone. Yeah, so this expands. Another listener wrote in about the scene and Done, where where Paul cries after he has has killed one of the firm

in a in a duel um. But Yeah, I like the idea that the stakes of the water content of someone's body being so high in the environment of Done makes the tear signal especially important, and you could view it as consequently honest, like an honest signal to a much greater extent because water is so precious in this environment. Uh. And and this does kind of relate to the idea I I pondered in one of the Tier episodes. Again, this is not something that I know of any direct

evidence for. Is just something I was kind of wondering out loud about, which was, what if adult tears could in part be an adaptation, uh to the complexity of the human capacity for deceit. So because humans can lie not only about external matters of fact, but about internal subjective states. So for example, you can claim to care

about someone when in fact you don't. Tears being difficult to fake could help serve as an honest signal of an internal emotional states that could help bonding and trust between humans. And I remember when I was researching tears.

One one way this occurred to me, I think, was I was reading several stories of someone who said they had been planning to break up with a romantic partner and you know, thinking that that partner didn't really care about them until that partner began to cry during the breakup conversation they were having, and then they changed their mind. They changed their mind and decided they wanted to stay

with that person. Uh and you know, you could all argue that there could be all kinds of reasons for that, But one could be that something about the crying makes it look like their emotional commitment to you is more real,

you can trust it more m hmm. Interesting, they continue. Also, one could argue in favor of the view of the function of emotional tears as making us seem more childlike on the basis that we are already a highly neotenic species compared to our closest relatives like chimpanzees or even more archaic subspecies of the genus Homo. We retain many

juvenile characteristics into adulthood. Shedding emotional tears could be just one more such factor, maybe even making a case for humans being uniquely high on on the otany in the entire animal kingdom. And then they close up by saying also, the expression crocodile tears is also very common in Polish, but I had no idea what it meant until I listened to your episode. Best regards, Matthew. All right, well,

thank you, matt f you. Um let's see, I'm gonna move on to a message about nail biting from a listener another Matthew. This one's named Matt uh. And this is funny because this is Matt responding to a third listener, also named Matt. So the Matt we have, Mats have plenty of cornucopia of Matt's here in the in the Stuff to Blow your Mind verse. But Matt says Robert and Joe, Hello, my name is Matt, and I'm writing

in response to another person named Matt. He had written to tell you how he randomly quit biting his nails. I also was a nail biter for the first twenty five years of my life, but I quit. I can point to naval boot camp as the catalyst of my quitting. In boot camp, the drill instructors are always yelling at people for touching their faces. This makes a lot of sense because of the large numbers of people living in close proximity to one another. They don't want to spreading disease.

So anyway, we were issued nail clippers, and I was motivated to use them to keep my nails too short for me to bite them. I love you guys in the show. You've got me into watching old horror movies and enjoying them much more than I ever thought I would. Science is awesome, and so are you. It was very, very very sweet, Matt. Thank you. All right, let's jump ahead of some weird house cinema feedback here. This one comes to us from Susan. Hey, guys, I just wanted

to write in about Time after Time. I almost didn't listen to this episode because I remember seeing the movie at the cinema with my parents when I was about eight years old. I had nightmares for months. The scene that got me was when Wells goes into an apartment and it's a complete blood bath. Now, more than forty years later, I can picture that severed arm and it still gives me chills. Of course, after that introduction to horror, I spent the nineteen eighties watching all the now classic

flasher films. Thanks for a fun travel through time to the early days of scary movies. Funny, I don't remember the love part of that movie, just the blood. No love, only blood. Yeah. I mean, it is kind of a shocking scene when you get that, because there hasn't really been much blood in the film at that point, I mean a little here and there, but but then suddenly, yes, severed arm. Uh. I could see where that would definitely

be a lot of you were eight years old. Yeah, yeah, well I think we mentioned this in the Time Aftertime episode, But it's kind of amazing what could get a PG in nineteen nine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a it's a it's a it's in late seventies PG. So it's certainly anybody looking to pick that up to think about it.

But I guess it follows a trend that you know, has been widely observed for a long time that for some reason, the people who issue ratings classifications for movies tend to be far more motivated to kick up ratings in response to, say, harsh language or sexuality than they do in response to violence. So you can get away with a big, bloody dismemberment as long as people aren't

saying the bad words. Yeah. I'm always I'm always fascinated when people share their stories about what was like the first or one of the first scary movies to really kind of you know, get to them when they were kids, Because for me, it was it was almost certainly Toby Hooper's poulter Geist. I remember seeing part of that when I was a kid, and uh bathroom mirror scene who uh I don't know if it was that's and I don't even know how I was watching it per se um,

but there was I don't know, just stuff. Some of it was probably not even like the really grizzly stuff, but just like scenes of children being afraid in dark rooms. You know, like some of that can really get to you at a at a young age. I mean, it's it's surprising, how you know, how scary certain concepts and ideas can be to young children. I was trying to tell my son about the duck that said that there were recordings of the duck speaking and saying you bloody fool,

and he was like, that's too much. He I got upset that I was telling him this before bed, and I was like, wow, I didn't think about the speaking ducks saying you bloody fool would be nightmare material. But I don't know. Maybe so, I mean, who am I to argue with this reaction here? What about Billy Bass? He'd probably be amused by Billy bass um, but I have not introduced him to that technology either. Billy Bass will haunt your dreams. It's funny what you're talking about.

It makes me remember one movie that I got very freaked out by as a kid. I remember was the movie Cat's I in which there it's a sort of horror anthology film or I don't know if it's all horror. At least one of the segments is horror and features this little weird, creepy gremlin running around in a bedroom that does battle with a cat. Uh. And I remember that gremlin really creeped me out. Yeah they had it was a great design on that critter. Okay, This next

weird house cinema response comes from Simon. This is a very long email, so I'm doing some regiments in editing. So Simon says, hey, fellas, welcome from the royal town of Sutton Coalfield, West Midland's UK birthplace of ken Gt, forty miles uh from I guess this is somebody from Ford versus Ferrati, which which I haven't seen. Um. But Simon says it's also mentioned in Shakespeare when fall Staff says, Bardolf get thee before to Coventry, fill me a bottle

of sack. Our soldiers shall march through wheel to Sutton coal Field tonight. And then finally Simon says it is the location of a shower of Frogs in nineteen fifty four. I think to look that one up, but Simon says, apologies in advance for the long email. I guess an epic podcast deserves epic feedback. I love stuff to blow your mind and the content that you provide. I store up episodes to play while I undertake my artwork at home. Weird how cinema is especially my favorite as a long

term cinephile myself. Beloved movies that I have collected include ref Madness from nineteen thirty six, The Outlaw from nineteen forty three, the movie for which Howard Hughes designed the cantilever bra and Carry On Up the Kaiber from sixty eight, the ninety nine greatest British movie of all time and

one of the funniest. I think. Actually the only one of those I've seen is read for Madness, But Simon says, I'm mainly writing a response to your reference to the TV movie The Day After in your Weird House Cinema episode on Time after Time. Remember that was the another film that was made by Nicholas Meyer, the writer and director of Time after Time, which was a television film about what would happen in the aftermath of a nuclear

war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Simon goes on, you reference the cultural impact of the Day After, but I guess that you're already aware of the UK film that it is constantly compared to Threads from nineteen eighty four, the UK BBC DOCU drama about the horrific of effects of and after a nuclear war. Scariest movie ever made by a country mile directed by the man who would later direct The Bodyguard. Um massively well researched,

with input by Carl Sagan. Interesting in its comparison to the U S movie The Day After, which, although had a higher budget, has nowhere near the nightmare depicted by Threads. Plus the latter does tend to eschew drama for information. Not an easy watch, perhaps undermined a little by use of stock footage and televisual feel, but utterly essential viewing. I own both movies, but only Threads keeps me awake at night, uh per and then uh Simon includes a

quote from The New York Times. The film is not a balanced discussion about the pros and cons of nuclear armaments. It is a candidly biased warning, and it is as calculated, unsettlingly powerful. I like the New York Times warning you that it that it does not reveal the prose of nuclear war um. The director of this, Mike I'm sorry, Mick Jackson, not a guy I'm that familiar with. But he also directed Volcano in and uh The Temple Grand and Bio that came out in two thousand ten starring

Claire Danes. Oh. Okay, well, anyway, Simon goes on to say, obviously, the input of Carl Sagan and the almost documentary feel of the film make this irrelevant subject for consideration by you chaps. Science the Cold War psychology of fear, paranoia, and mutually sure destruction. The final scene of the birth of a child born of rape and fallout is beyond terrifying and is reminiscent of the effects of depleted uranium

ordinance on unborn children in recent wars. On a personal note, my grandfather was part of the Allied occupation of Japan in nineteen forty five and experienced firsthand what was left of Hiroshima. It happened to be the forty anniversary five that he began to describe it to me The same year. I leave that Threads was shown on TV. It took me from age fourteen to forty five to summon the courage to watch it, and that thirty one years of preparation was essential, as I was by now a father's stuff.

Yes it is. But from here the message gets lighter. Simon goes onto list and suggest a bunch of movies that he thinks we would be interested in. For weird House, I'm not going to go through the whole list here, but I'll read one of them that's on the lighter side of the nuclear cinema uh catalog, he says. On a connected theme, can I suggest the fantastic Protect and Survive UK information films? They are terrifying and hilarious in

their naivety. Don't forget to brush the fallout from your jacket. It's pure public service nostalgia for Cold War addicts, and he includes some some links for us to view. I've watched at least one of these clips and and the one of the parts that stuck out to me is this very dry British radio voice saying, uh, if someone has died, move their body to another room. Cover it in poly eurythene I, I seem to recall that there was a parody of this on The Young Ones back

in the day. Oh yeah, I think in fact, even um, I think Simon may mention that later in his email. Okay, sorry, Simon, that is still in your thunder here. But I think I think that's all we're doing from Okay, alright, so well I'm not stealing your thunder then well I'm completely stealing it, I guess, because then we're not even reading where you mentioned that. But um, telepathically you're robbing him

at any rate. Yes, it is my understanding, uh, and my faint memory that it is lampooned on The Young Ones. All right, the fantasy Bomba Deal casting continues. We heard from Casey. Casey right right, wrote in and says hello, I've been listening to you guys since around the time of the Bicameral Mind episodes that have been a regular listener ever since. I often think about writing in, but

usually dissuade myself from it. However, in light of the ongoing Bomba Deal debate, I decided I had better speak up. In general, I think adaptations are a bad idea. The particular impact of a story is often bound up with the specific medium it's told in and something always gets lost in translation, no matter how well executed. Because bomba Deal is one of my favorite parts of the books, I'm glad he hasn't been realized on the screen. All the same, if I had to pick a human bomba Deal,

one could do worse than the wayfaring stranger himself. Burl Ives. He's jovial, plump and sings in a friendly, folksy style. Anyway, thanks for continuing to deliver interesting, engaging, and eclectic content, Casey burl Ives, Okay, interesting option, Yeah, yeah, I mean when he's he's in that uh the Rudolph Um animated Um show, as I recall, he's the narrator in that and plays the what the Snowman, So he's already we already know that he can play a musical elemental force.

This sort of stands outside of the story, so it makes sense. I would say, you want to make sure that he's not in cat on a hot tin roof mode, because although bomba Deal maybe a sort of god or elemental, he is no big Daddy. We'll tell me this, Joe, I know you're a big Jim Steinman fan. If Jim Steinman had adapted The Fellowship of the Ring. Uh do you think you could have seen meat Loaf as bomba Deal without a word? Oh that's the sweet spot. Yeah, I could see that kind of a rock Obomba Deal.

Hey don Mary do? Oh? Yeah? R I p Jim Steinman. He passed away just earlier this year. The world is a less melodramatic place without him. All right, how about I read this one from Hannah also about Bomba Dill's subject, and keep it coming right Bomba dil opinions. I like how this is the new subgenre of listener mail, Hi, Robert and Joe. If I could pluck any actor from any point in their career to play Bomba Deal, I'd pick top All exactly as he was in Fiddle around

the Roof ninety one. I've always pictured Tom Bomba Dill with a similar playfulness and warmth to his character. Uh. That's a great idea, Hannah, But then she goes on along that train of thought. But considering the annoying limitations of the passage of time or whatever, I went looking for some actors who are still currently working and have tavy on their resumes and came up with two interesting but very different possibilities. Alfred Molina and Harvey Firestein thoughts

all the best, Hannah. Uh yeah, both great, both great choices, great actors in their own regard. You know, Harvey Fierstein, uh did a voice of one of the Skexis on the The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance and I loved it. That's right, Yes, he was great in that. Yeah, yeah, I've yeah, I like both of those actors. Uh so, yeah,

I could see them now. I'm not sure if if Harvey Fierstein is maybe getting a bit of I don't know, he's I mean, how old we're Christopher Lee and Ian McKellan when they made uh, you know, the Fellowship of the Ring. So I don't know. He seems fine. Let him do it. We're just talking here anyway. Let him do it. I'm not going to stand in the way of this fantasy casting. Let them bomba dil Alright, Well,

it looks like we're already out of time here. I really don't know where the time went on this episode of feel like we we just started it, but here we are. We'll have to get to the other bits of listener mail next time around. In the meantime, if you would like to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Listener mail what airs every Monday. We got our core episodes on Tuesdays, and Thursday's Artifact

on Wednesday, Weird How Cinema on Friday. That's our time to set aside most of the science and deeper concerns and discuss a weird movie. And then over the weekend we have a vault episode, which is just a fancy way of saying we do a rerun. You just thinks. As always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is 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.