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 Rob, you're back. It's good to have you back.
Man. Yeah. Yeah, it was out out for a week there, traveling with family, resetting the brain a little bit. So yeah, happy to jump back in with a softball of an episode. Here jumping in with a listener mail.
Oh boy, Well, if you don't have any issues, I guess we should dive right in.
I mean I have issues like all of this, but none that really pertain to listener mail. So let's do it.
Okay, Wait, I almost forgot. At the beginning of these episodes, I give out our listener mail address, so every Monday we read back listener mail. If you've never gotten in touch before, you should give it a shot. Email us at contact at to Blow your Mind dot com. Whatever you want to send us, fair game. But we especially appreciate if you have something interesting to add to a topic we've recently talked about on the show. So this first message we're gonna mention today is actually a follow
up to a previous listener mail. Remember we got the message from Jeremy after our episode on Strange Ice where Jeremy sent us some pictures from a tunnel in Switzerland that was frozen over. It was either a tunnel or a cave that was showing what appeared to be ice stalagmites, and we were asking, wait a minute, are these the kind of spike ice formations that we talked about in
the Strange Ice episode. Where As a pool of water freezes because of the expansion of water as it makes the phase transition to a solid, sometimes it will squeeze up out of a hole in the surface of that pool and form like a spike that goes up into the air. Or we were wondering is that the case or was it a gin and stalagmite like the kind that would form in a cave through gradual accretion through dripping,
and Jeremy has the answer to the question. Jeremy says, Hello, Robert and Joe, thank you once again for reading one of my emails. The ice formations are definitely stalagmites in this case, as there are matching stalactites on the roof of the tunnel. Please see attached. These are three to ten feet or one to three meters long, and Jeremy does indeed include photos for us that are photos of
the stalactites dripping from above. These are normal looking icicles, very sharp spikes of ice coming down from the ceiling and then directly below them on the floor are a matching pattern of these ice stalagmites, though interestingly, the ones on the ceiling are very sharp and the ones on the floor are very rounded and bulbous. Jeremy mentions quote the floor lower ice formations remind me of the water probes in nineteen eighty nine's The Abyss, one of our
beloved nineteen eighty nine underwater movies. And Jeremy, that comparison is spot on. That is exactly what they look like.
Yeah. These are beautiful, very very clear, very crystal clear, not like the some of the formations you find ice or otherwise and like you know, sort of industrial settings and subway tunnels and whatnot. Very clear, very glass like.
Some of them are shaped like the alien water probes from the ABYSS. A few of them are shaped more like Matrioshka dolls.
You see that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Now, speaking of the ABYSS, Joe. Have you seen The Abyss in recent years? I don't know. I've seen it since it came out initially.
It's been quite a while. I recall liking it when I saw it many years ago, but thinking that maybe it was a bit too long and that some of its themes didn't fully cohere, but that it was like an admirable, ambitious movie that had some very enjoyable performances in it.
Yeah, I guess that's That's sort of the way I hold it up. But again, I haven't watched it in so long. I remember the last time I was looking into seeing it, it had not yet been released on Blu Ray, I want to say, or it hadn't been hadn't been re released and given the additional care it deserved, And I think it has subsequently. I think they even re released it in theaters for like a very limited run in the last year or so.
I would be very interested to see it again. I've actually more recently seen the trashier eighty nine underwater movies. I've seen Leviathan, who knows how many times? You know, Deep Star six, the the Roger Corman one that's just unwatchable.
Oh oh, I'm blanking on that one Warlords of the Deep. Maybe maybe not, but the Yeah, you named the two really good ones that are in the wake of the abyss, and there are more.
All right, let's see, Rob. Do you want to do one of these messages? In response to our series on the illusion of control?
Yeah, this one comes to us from Brett Brett Wright. Senen says, Hello, stuff to blow your mind. Team. I really like your research on the illusion of control and the comparison of chance versus skill. Control is a topic I have thought deeply about and wanted to share a little with you to take your topic in a slightly
different direction. Have you ever wondered how you reached a certain point in your life, your life choices, what has happened along the way, and realized that a lot of what has gotten us to a certain point we really did not have much control over. Control to me is a liability that attaches us to certain outcomes that can lead to disappointment as well as satisfaction. Personally, I've learned to just let life happen, and I have seen it
lower my anxiety and improve my mental health. By not having so many expectations, I find life more enjoyable and less stressful podcast called Inner Cosmos, where the host, Professor Eagleman, discussed a similar topic on control and how the brain runs simulations about outcomes that are possible. I found it interesting because of how the brain likes to make predictions similar to the examples you guys used in chance situations,
and how we like to control outcomes. Always a pleasure, have a good day, Brett.
Oh, Brett, Well, we have had, as you say, Professor Eagleman on this podcast before. David Eagleman was a guest. Well when was that sometime last year?
Yeah, and right as he was launching the Inner Cosmos podcast, we had him on to talk about that, and I believe he was on a year or two prior to that as well, during the height of the pandemic, podcasting from the Closet days and so forth.
But yeah, so his podcast is called Inner Cosmos if you want to go check that out. But I agree that there is a lot of overlap between the idea of prediction and what we mean when we say control. Control is one of those it's one of those very
tricky words. In fact, like another word that'll come up, I think in the next email we're about to discuss where it's like we think we know what we mean when we say it, but actually the closer we examine it, the more difficult it becomes, and the more it seems like, I don't know if we're really agreeing on what we mean when we use this word. But yeah, at least part of the idea of control is an action having some kind of not just physical causation connection with an outcome,
but a predictable physical causation connection with an outcome. That there's like a way that you could have seen in advance that this action would result in a certain outcome, and that that seems to have a big overlap with what we think of as control.
Yeah, yeah, I mean the bigger question here. Yeah, you really get into the quagmire of human consciousness when you start picking this apart, you know, and asking well, how much control did I ever have in reaching this point in my life? And what control was in place, what choices were made? Were those made by me or they made by some other person that I used to be And you can really get lost in all of that,
and in ways that maybe doesn't reduce anxiety. Though in the end, I would say that like the idea of sort of letting go of a lot of that and living in the moment, as they say, is perhaps the better direction to go in. There's actually a great quote from Cormack McCarthy and Cities of the Plane that goes as follows. Quote, he said, a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen, And he wondered, for all his will and all his intent, how much of it was
his doing. That one has always resonated with me. So yeah, when I think about these these quagmires of consciousness, I'll often envision some sort of stoic cowboy from one of Cormick McCarthy's novels, staring off into the middle distance, trying to figure out who he is and how he got where he is, and indeed where he is going in life.
Well, on a similar topic, the next message comes from Chris. Chris says Robert and Joe in response to the illusion of control. Episodes mostly focused on psychology studies of people's feeling they had control of various circumstances. Listener John's comment prompted Joe to expand the idea of quote, where's the clear evidence that my conscious will is in the driver's seat.
I had been wondering if the series was headed in that direction, but it might really deserve one of your signature dives into the deep subject of free will versus determinism. Maybe you can get interviews with, or get into the writings of Daniel Dinnett, philosopher and cognitive scientist, and Sean Carroll,
theoretical physicist and philosopher. Meanwhile, since your latest Weird House Cinema episode with Flash Gordon has fueled yet more of my descent into nostalgia, even though it came out only forty four years ago, I'll continue to compile a list of suggestions, including a comment or two, for future episodes. Due to my keen editing skills and overwhelming modesty, I should be able to keep it under novel length. Chris Well,
thank you for the message. Chris, So, the issue of free will has come up on the show in recent years, and we have also talked about both Daniel Dinnett and Sean Carroll. That we haven't talked about Sean in the context of free will, just stuff in his main field of astrophysics and cosmology. I don't think I was aware he had extensive thoughts about free will, but I'd be
interested in his thoughts. I guess I know. Daniel Dinnett has long been considered what is called a compatible list, meaning someone who believes that our behavior is wholly determined by antecedent physical causes, so that is what is sometimes called determinist position, but also believes this is fully compatible with the existence of something called free will. So it's just the belief that determinism and free will are actually
not in conflict. It's been a while since I've refreshed my mind deeply on this topic, but what I've said on the show in the past is that when somebody claims that humans have free will, it's not that I think they're wrong. It's that I think the concept is poorly defined, and thus it's not even necessarily clear what
they're talking about. If you want to hear a deeper discussion of this, I remember we did a big segment on free will in our episode about the Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch, actually, so you can go back and find that one. We got into a lot more detail about what philosophers have said about this, and some cognitive science and neuroscience research that might inform our opinions on it
and then what our own thoughts were. But in short, I'm in to say that I have a partially kind of early Wittgenstein take on free will, which is that probably not all, but most of the debates about free will are just confusions that arise from unclear use of language. And if you could like sit everybody down and force them to be like really excruciatingly specific about exactly what they're saying, I'm not sure which disagreements would still remain
after that process. I think it's one of those cases where like language and imprecise use of language is causing a ton of confusion, like what do people mean when they say free what do people mean when they talk about control? And so forth? I think people are equivocating on these terms, using them and to mean different things even though it's the same word.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good point. And yeah, we've talked about this a number of times in the show in the past, and I'm sure we'll come back to it. Of course, from my that we talked about this with author R. Scott Baker at one point as well. Who I don't want to sum him up by saying that he's a determinist, but I will say that in his maybe and I just maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but I do know that in his fiction work there
is certainly a determinist trend with his characters. Like most of his characters are sort of trapped and they are, you know, shackled to the darkness that comes before. And you have only certain characters who, through you know, fictional fantasy means and in one of his other books sci fi means, have sort of unshackled themselves from the past and become true free spirits in a way in their world. And then you know, what does that mean for a world?
And what does that mean for a character if you actually have something like one hundred percent control over what your choices and decisions are.
Yeah, that's interesting playing with like variable levels of whatever your understanding of free will is in characters in fiction, and like how that would affect how we perceive them as characters.
Yeah, Yeah, And and ultimately he ends up landing on this model by which a character with true free will is ultimately going to be someone that is more or less than human, depending on how you look at it like they are no longer creatures that we can fully relate to. But I but Baker also is one who easily, you know, drives home that there is a lot of
like illusion and self illusion going on in consciousness. And yeah, you know, even if even if we don't even if you were to say we don't have any free will, if we have the illusion of free will, well that's part of the illusion that makes life livable. That that's part of the illusion that makes up our entire world that we build around ourselves.
I guess another way to articulate my position is like I it's not that I do or don't think we have free will. Uh. I guess this technically would make me some sort of compatibileist. But I don't necessarily see how it would make me any freer if there were some way in which my behavior were not influenced by preceding causes, you know, like if if I wasn't physically if my behavior were not physically determined, why would that be more free?
Yeah? Like I said, you can chase your tails and circles over this one. You know what, what other choice would you make being what you are? And vice versa. It's at the end of the day. You can sort of have those moments. In my opinion, you can have those moments stand it, staring off into the end of the middle distance, having those deep cowboy thoughts. But then you got to poke the fire a little bit, right, You've got to You got to get down to some cowboy business and move on.
All right. You want to do some weird house cinema messages.
Yeah, let's do it. Okay. This first one comes to us from Paul on the subject of Blacula. Paul says, it was nice to have a movie that is available on a streaming service that is easily accessible. Yes, side note, we always try and drive home to what extent a film is available for viewing. And yeah, sometimes they're a little hard to get your hands on. Sometimes it's more of a physical media search, but sometimes, as with Blacula,
it's widely available in digital format anyway. Paul continues, I watched it on the one named after a rainforest in South America. That does narrow the possibilities. Many movies you recommend are difficult to find. Yes, I am reading the book Crook Manifesto by Coulson Whitehead, and a character Zippo summarizes Blacula and is inspired by it to produce direct a bl exploitation movie of his own. Thank you for merging so many areas of science culture and science fiction. I appreciate the podcast.
Oh, thank you, Paul. That's a cool connection. Coulson Whitehead a lot of people probably know from his twenty sixteen novel The Underground Railroad. Ah yes, okay, yeah, so thank you Paul.
All right.
Another short message. This is from Luisa, who says, Hi, Robin Joe, I recently finished The Brother's Son series and some of the characters were watching this movie, which I thought would be would interest you for weird house Jim Katta, It's completely absurd, as she links to the wiki entry if maybe a little too violent anyway, let me know if it makes the list best regards, Luisa, I only have the vaguest awareness of this movie, but it does pique my interest.
Yeah. Yeah, My interest was also recently picked on this because my wife and I also watched The Brother's Son, which is a mini series on Netflix, which is in and of itself very fun if you want to slightly
comedic in places martial arts action adventure story. But yeah, there's an episode where you have some hinchmen that are setting around watching Jim Kotta getting excited about Jim Kotta, then having to explain Jim Kotta to another character, and then one of the henchmen is like, yes, it's my dream to pull off this one Jim Kotta move in an actual battle. I will not spoil it whether he does or not.
So what the premise is, It's something like it's like a gymnast slash martial artist, Like his martial arts kicks and stuff are gymnast moves, like working the pommel horse and everything.
Yeah, there's definite pommel horse action in there. And the star is Kurt Thomas, who was an American Olympic gymnast, and so you know, it has a lot of things going for I've never watched it in full, but yeah, you have a non actor gymnast extraordinaire jumping in to a an action flick that is very gymnastics centric in its execution. And you have some other names there, like Conan Lee is in there. We've I think he was in The Eliminators, a film that we watched on Weird
House in the past. It has just a wild following so it may be one we'll have to visit in the future.
I think I've mentioned this before, but my wife Rachel is really into the Olympics. Whenever they're on, and I don't remem remember if it's summer or winter the one that has gymnastics, but whichever it is, so we sometimes end up watching some gymnastics. And I got to say, as a non sports fan, gymnastics are the most impressive
sport to me. Seeing what people gymnastics is like, it's the closest thing I've ever seen to people appearing to actually have superpowers, Like you just cannot fathom how they're doing what they're doing.
Yeah, it is always exciting how some of like the really amazing moments, and of course high level gymnastics is full of NonStop amazing moments. But those those really amazing moments are also so short in length that they inevitably make it out, you know, in social media, late night television, and so forth. So even if you're not an Olympics watcher an Olympics fan, you inevitably end up seeing some
of those amazing feats. And I guess sometimes film producers see them as well, and they're like We've got to get this individual in our movie, and I think we should see more of that, just in general with Olympic competitors, more b movies starring Olympians.
Please, what other Olympic events could you turn into a type of martial arts? Could there be like diving martial arts? Could there be what that what's it called the beach volleyball martial arts?
Yeah? Absolutely all of these are fair game, especially if the individual in question is maybe is not an experienced actor. It's completely green because there's something great about like that, you know, like the the excellence in one area crossing over into the lack of experience in the other area, which is just.
You know, a prime prime zone for b sim curling katta. Yeah, anyway, thank you for the suggestion, Luisa. This this will go on the list at least for us to check out. May pop up in the future.
All right, This next one comes to us from Tim. Tim says, Hey, Fellows, I was listening to the rewind episode of Weird House about scanners. You two were making some pretty understandably snarky comments about a dumb plot line around hacking through a payphone. It is an absurd thought, but I want to bring your attention to Kevin Mitnick, who is one of the country's most notorious hackers and freakers. That's with a pH if you're not familiar with the term.
After finally being caught, he was left in solitary confinement for eight months because the federal prosecutor convinced the judge that Mittnick could hack into Norad by whistling into the phone. If you've not read up about Kevin Mitnick, he has some really fascinating stories and some really scary stories about social engineering his way past some pretty secure doors. He died recently, but one of his last books, called Ghost
in the Wires, was my favorite. The Statute of Limitations ran out on a bunch of his Shenanigans, and so that book was a good deal less guarded. So did the Scanners influence the federal prosecutors on Mittnick's case? Was Scanners the reason they thought Kevin could do this. This movie was fourteen years old when he was sentenced. So did this movie hit the prosecutors in the formidable years of their childhood. It's a scary thought of life imitating art. Always love your stuff, Tim.
Wow, I would not have made that connection but that is really good tim.
Yeah, you know, I had totally forgotten about phone freakers when we were rewatching scanners for Weird House Cinema. But yeah, now that it's been brought up, this had to have been a connection one way or another, Like that plot choice makes more sense if this is in sort of the Zeitgei story, at least, you know, in the heads of the screenwriters at the time.
Yeah, I absolutely got whistling into the phone to hack into Nora Ad. Yeah. They thought he could, like he could like mimic the sounds of a touchtone telephone to launch nuclear weapons.
Yeah, I mean, and if that is at all on the table, then yeah it can. How about psyching individuals merging with computers? Why not? Why not?
Yeah? I guess the question is did they really think he could do that or were they just claiming it? But one could imagine being legitimately afraid even if such a thing were not in fact possible.
Yeah, you know, I have one last note here. This is in the Weird House realm. In my travels over the last week, I had a long flight out and back with my family, and so I was trying to like download some stuff to watch and see if stuff is appropriate for weird House if it's a good fit. This is one that was not a good fit, but I watched nineteen eighty six. Is the Wind. This is a Nico Masdaurakas film. This is a Greek car thriller
starring Meg Foss in the lead. So you get a lot of Meg Foster and those you know, hypnotic eyes of hers, and then you have David McCallum is in it, and then you have wings Hauser playing the villain. This is from the director of that Island of Death Greek car movie that we talked about in the past, which I didn't realize until I was a good way into watching the film. The film is not worth seeking out, I will say it is unless you really are interested.
It's very watchable. There's nothing really objectionable about it. If you're a big wings Hauser fan, definitely view it, you know, because there's a lot of wings Hauser being and being a crazy American in this movie. But ultimately in the end, I was like, I don't think there's enough interesting stuff going on here for weird house consideration.
Is it kind of more in the Land of the Minotaur direction?
Yeah, Like there are lots of beautiful scenes of old Greek ruins and so forth. There's a lot of like low plotting stuff with Meg Foster's character in one of these buildings, and then uh, oh, what's wings Houser up to? Is he going to turn out to be a maniac or not? Of course he's going to turn up to be a maniac. Hired wings Hauser for the role. But it's still fun. But it's just I would say it's it's slower than I would like for a weird house cinema a selection.
Well, wouldn't be our first low ride, but but yeah, I appreciate the pre screening. Yeah, all right, does that do it for today?
I believe that's it. I believe we'll go ahead and close up the mail bag for today, but certainly keep them coming. Joe shared that email address at the top of the episode. He'll share it again in just a second. Other ways you can connect with us and certainly with other listeners. We are on Facebook in general, but there's also the Facebook group the Stuff that Blow Your Mind discussion module. You can seek that out, join it and
engage with other listeners. There. There's also a discord and if you just email us, we'll send you the link that discord. This is another way in which you can interact with other listeners.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Jjposway. 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 stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.