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 hey folks. I know we don't usually do a preamble on our show before every episode, but I thought it'd be good in case there are some new listeners out there, to kind of remind you who we are if you're new to the show. Stuff to Blow Your Mind has been an audio podcast for like fifteen years or sixteen Rob and when did it actually start?
We've always been here, it's been a while.
Our core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays of every week, and those are about diverse topics that we get interested in. Usually they have something to do with science or culture in some way. Most Wednesdays we publish a short form scripted episode, and then on Fridays we do a sub show called Weird House Cinema where we just talk about a strange film. You can find all of those episodes in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed wherever
you get your podcasts. In today's episode, this is a recurring segment we do called Listener mail where we're going to read and respond to some email from listeners. We do this at variable intervals now, usually maybe once every month or month and a half. And I'll go ahead and give you the email address in case you would like to get in touch and send us a message that could be featured on a show like this in the future. That email address is contact at stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. Also, we just wanted to check in about the fact that just within the past month we started recording a video version of the show that you can find on Netflix. It's the exact same content, it's just with the cameras turned on, and so we're still relatively new at this. I think we're kind of getting used to the merciless unblinking eye. But we have gotten some encouraging emails from listeners saying they're enjoying the video version, So thank you for that. The kind words
really do mean a lot to us. If you happen to be watching us on Netflix now and you want to subscribe, you can click the remind me buttons so future episodes will pop up when they publish. And please listeners, if your game, we encourage you to just leap wantonly from one platform to another and consume the show however you like best. So if you found us on Netflix, please, yes, go subscribe to our audio format wherever you get your podcasts.
And if you're an audio listener, please look us up on Netflix if you're so inclined.
Yeah, if you're listening to us, if you're watching us, whatever you're comfortable with, we're just pleased that you took time out of your day to listen to our content, and we're grateful.
All right, Rob, are you ready to get right into the messages.
Yeah, A lot of these, or at least the ones at the top, are gonna have to do with our recent series on personifications of death. Anthropomorphic personification, so death like the grim Reaper certainly in Western traditions, but other
related figures. We weren't able to cover everything out there because this is a sort of figure that occurs just throughout human cultures, and there's so many different varieties and yet at the same time, there are certain aspects, certain tropes that you'll find again and again, and so we reached out to listeners because we knew that people would have all sorts of personal but also cultural details to fill in for us. Right.
So, Rob, if it's okay with you, I'm going to do this message from Maya. Yeah, Maya, says dear Robin, Joe. What a fascinating discussion about the personification of death and grammatical gender. As a speaker of Mexican Spanish as my first language, I found it especially compelling given my country's fascination with death and its many representations. Curiously enough, every name we give to death, and there are hundreds I looked,
is a feminine noun. La morte death is feminine, but so are Laparca, one of the fates in Greek myth, and Laflaca, the skinny one. Folk images of death seem to be divided. A very well known representation of death is Lakatrina, an image created first created by the engraver Jose Guadalupe Posada, that depicts death as a high class lady. Its name means something like the well dressed one. And Rob, I went and looked up this image. I pulled it
into our outline. So this is Lakatrina by Jose Guadalupe Pasada. It's a figure of a skeleton who seems to be I don't know what these kind of fluffy things around its shoulders are maybe they're bushes or clouds. I guess clouds would make sense. But it's wearing this big, elaborate,
beautiful hat. It's like a gently sloping kind of domed hat with flowers on the top and big, you know, dangling feathers coming off, and then also something seemingly tucked into the skeleton's ear, though of course a skull wouldn't have an ear. But what are those things down there? Are those like tassels or flowers?
Yeah? Yeah, the overall appearances yet death in a festive hat. And this this image was discussed in some of the sources that I was using for those episodes, but I I didn't get to it, but it is quite an important one, I'm to understand.
Maya's email goes on to say the Maschika deities of death were a male and female skeletal figure. Mictlandakoutli was the lord of mik Dlan the underworld, and mik Takasi Watt was his wife. And Maya this you may have written this email before we discussed them on the show, but these figures did come up, I think in part four of our discussion there, where we were talking about a paper about what were the cultural inputs on the creation of Santa Marte, which does come up in this email.
By the way, Maya says, in many other visual traditions, death is a male figure. Rob will be happy to note that there was a Lucha libre character known as La Parca, although he tragically died as a result of injuries sustained in a match. Rob, I think you've got some stuff on Laparca.
Later I do, and we have another listener male that will also fill in some of the blanks for us.
Yeah, okay, Maya says. Punk and heavy metal depictions of death as a male, devilish figure coexist with the controversial La Santa Morte the Holy Death, a folk cult figure that appears as a female skeletal deity who personifies death and is venerated by people from all walks of life, and Argentinian equivalent, in contrast is a male figure San
la Morte. And of course, during Da da Mortos, the Day of the Dead, you can write your name on the forehead of a sugar skull and add it to the altar or afrienda, and in doing so you turn a neutral, genderless confection into your own gendered alter ego.
Ah, that's a nice, nice tidbit to mentioned. Yeah, there's an excellent Day of the Dead celebration here in Atlanta. Every year. They hold it at the historic Cokeland Cemetery, and we generally try to go.
As somebody who didn't grow up with Day of the Dead celebrations. I for a long time, I think I had the wrong idea that it was only it was like Mardi Gras, that it was only like this big public festival kind of thing. But I realized more recently, Yeah, that you know, you can have private celebrations. And I actually went to one that was hosted by some family of ours this past fall. It was beautiful and the afriendo was I don't know, I found it very touching.
Oh nice, coming back to Maya's email. As for grammatical gender, its influence on our perception of external objects is still up for debate. Some studies have found that we tend to think of feminine inanimate objects such as table mesa, as having more feminine attributes than masculine objects, but other research has found these effects to be more subtle or even non existent. Yeah, we talked about that in the episodes too. There's kind of a mixed research picture on
to what extent this is really happening. But Maya says, in the case of death, nothing seems to prevent us from thinking about it as both the mascular and feminine figure. Despite the grammatical gender of the noun, we used to refer to it a wonderful series. Keep up the great work and know that you have many non native English speakers as fans all over the world. Maya. Well, thank you, Maya,
very nice, wonderful. It warms my heart. And then also Maya had a follow up email just to share a picture with us, She says, Dear Joe and rob By the way, here you have a picture of the Santa Morte van that makes the rounds in my brother's neighborhood, so her devotees can worship her from the comfort of their own homes. All the best, Maya, And this is wonderful.
It's a Santa Morte figure enthroned on a big chair, draped in looks like gold satin or something kind of a gold leaf texture, sitting in the bed of a trailer or the back of a pickup truck, or it might be like one of those small three wheel pickup trucks, and so she's a very dry skeleton. As we talked about she usually, you know, she's very parched. But she's wearing a pink floral gown and a mantle like a hood over the top of her head. In her right hand,
she's holding a scythe. In her left hand a golden ball which I think could be the earth. It's like a globe. And then she has an owl perched over either shoulder. Do you see the two owls.
Rob Oh, yeah, I didn't see them at first, but now I see.
Them hiding in the ruffles of the gold on the chair.
That's great.
And then also in the same hand as the scythe, she's got some kind of foliage. I don't know exactly what that is. I was wondering, could that be a palm leaf?
It does kind of look like a palm leaf.
Yeah, yeah, I can't say for sure what that is, but this is great. Thank you so much for sending Maya.
Yes, indeed, all right, I said, we're going to have more about La Parca the Lucha Door, and indeed we're going to read this next one from Angelo Angela, says Hi, Robert and Joe. While listening to your podcast series about the Personifications of death, mention of the Mexican Laparca immediately got me thinking about professional wrestling, the WCW promotion. This some of you may not be aware that this promotion used to exist heyday during the nineties.
Wait, what's it called now? It's not that anymore.
It doesn't exist. It was, yeah, it went away. It was purchased by WWE, and it is now part of that conglonerate anyway, Angelo writes the WCW promotion showcased luchadors in the mid to late nineties, including one named Laparca. He wore a skeletal mask and costume to look like a reaper, but instead of a scythe he always carried a steel chair to the ring. He would, of course use it on his opponents during matches, but he would also play guitar air guitar on it during his entrances
and post match celebrations. He used the chair so much that announcers gave him the nickname the Chairman of WCW. He did well. He did use the Mexican grim reaper costume. The gimmick never really went with the subject of death in the same way that another wrestler, the Undertaker, did in his earlier days. Other wrestlers would take on the Laparca mantle, with the character making an appearance in this year's WWE Royal Rumble. Anyway, the series was great and
I really learned a lot from it. Please keep up the great work. Thanks Angela. So yes Laparka. Believe me. When Laparca came up in our death episodes, I did have to fight the urge to bring him up, but I was like, we can save this for later. Somebody will write in about this and we can follow up.
I don't think anybody would have minded if you'd, oh, we.
Had a lot of ground to cover. It was hard to argue that we needed a side trip to louchal Libra at that point, and I knew we'd come back to it. Yes, Angelo did a I think a great job here summarizing the Laparca that wrestling fans of the nineties in the US likely remember. Tied to the Triple A promotion in Mexico at the time, and then I think he was full time with WCW for a spell there too, and he was played by a wrestler named
Adolfo Ibarra born nineteen sixty five. And yeah, I believe his real name, this character, this luchador, has never been unmasked, but I believe his name and age are of public records, so we're not spoiling anything there. But when he left that promotion Triple A, Triple A retained the rights to the costume and the gimmick, and so they handed the gimmick over to Jesus Escoboza, who lived nineteen sixty six through twenty twenty. This is the Laparca that was mentioned
earlier that died in twenty twenty. So but this handoff was occurring in the late nineties, and I believe there was a lot of like legal back and forth about the gimmick. But certainly by around two thousand and three, Abarra, the first Laparka, ended up altering his costume to look like a combination of Darth Maul and the Laparca skeleton costume that he had been wearing in order to perform
in televise matches for CMLL. That's Mexico's biggest lush promotion and arch rival of Triple A. At this point, he changed his name to what as an English speaker, I always read as La park but I'm to understand in Spanish it is pronounced la Parka, so it still sounds like Laparca, but is spelled differently for legal regas. I see. Yeah, so he did some great work for CML during that timeframe.
I watched some of his CML matches back in the day, and since then, the Laparca legacy has continued, with a third Laparka. In Triple A there was and then at different times there were various family members of Agvarres that ended up taking on some sort of Laparca gimmick. So there was a super Parka, various sons of Laparca. There was also a lark There were some La Parkitas, more than one, like many Laparca's, and for a short while
there was a female Laparka as well. So it just goes to show, you know, once you've established a great gimmick, you just can't keep it down. People are gonna wear the hood no matter what.
Wait, do you know how did Darth Maul get wrapped in? Was that just zeitgeist?
I think it was just yeah, in the zeitgeist at the time, and I don't know for certain, but I'm assuming he just realized he needed to mix up the look a little bit, and so it made sense for
him to do this. He might have actually done it a little bit before he became La Park, if you will, just because it was fun, you know, like sometimes costume wrestlers in Mexico, the Lucitos, will do this where they'll they'll take their existing costume and they'll tweak it a little bit, maybe a'le align it with something in pop
culture beyond what they have going on. But yeah, I'm mostly familiar with the guy who would become La Park, and I generally describe him as a brawling, wild man luchador that could still bust out some really sweet maneuvers here and there. But yeah, one does not get much of a traditional mainstream grim reprovibe from him though, you know, especially the WCW days he was dancing, he was playing at your guitar. He wasn't coming for people's souls or
anything like that. He was doing spin kicks. Yeah. Well, Angela, thanks for writing in about all that. It was nice to dive in on a little Laparka history. And then there's so many other lugadors that have skull motifs incorporated into their look, you know, the whole army of them.
Yeah, thank you Angelo. Okay, are you ready if I do this message from Luisa? Yeah, Luisa says, Hi, guys, I hope this twenty twenty six is a great year for you and yours. I've been fascinated by your Death series. You always give such an interesting, deep analysis of obscure information. Thank you, Louisa, is what we hope for. We try. However, I had hoped you would mention Las Intermittensias de la Morte by Sarah Mago and that title is usually translated
Death with Interruptions. Luisa says, if you haven't read it yet, I can't recommend it enough. It is elegantly written, with a mysterious plot and a beautiful ending. Please consider it in your reading list for this year. And if you do happen to talk about it further on the series. My apologies as always, thank you so much for your wonderful podcast, Luisa. Oh, and then Luisa says, ps, every time you go over the weekly schedule, when you say and on Fridays, we're going to say we do weird
house cinema. But she says, when you say and on Fridays, I expect you to say, I'm in love pop culture and printing.
I guess that's the cure, right, Yeah, yeah, that's the cure. That's a great song.
So this novel is by the Portuguese author Jose Saramago. I have not read it, but Luisa, I looked it up on your suggestion and I they genuinely ended up ordering a copy of the English translation. This is the translation by Margaret Joel Costa. And just to give you a taste, the opening sentence of the book is the following day no one died. So it's a pretty cool premise.
I don't want to spoil too much about the book, though I did kind of read ahead about what the plot is, and that got me hooked on wanting to actually read the book, but just to sort of sketch it out. The premise is that one day, in one country, death just stops. People become unexpectedly and suddenly immortal. And while this seems like a great blessing, actually it is horrible. It turns into a crisis because it doesn't mean that people are now eternally well, it just means they don't die.
So people with fatal injuries and terminal illnesses do not get better. They just don't die, which is actually a nightmare, and so that happens. I was reading about some interesting plots in the middle of the book where the government is trying to figure out like workarounds, like what can we do with the people who are like basically.
Dead but not dying.
And then there is another part in the book where apparently the character of Death decides to resume allowing people to die, but she gives them a warning a week ahead of time so they can prepare and like prepare and use their final day as well, and this also
seems to go disastrously. It increases dread and obsession. So it seems like the story is going to be about paradoxes in how we think about death, Like a lot of things that we want with respect to death, like knowing when it will happen or avoiding it entirely, would be absolute curses if they were to really happen. And finally, the story does seem to involve death falling in love with immortal, which we were just talking about stories like that, weren't we.
Yeah, yeah, Well, actually several aspects of this story match up with some much older tellings, you know, being taken out of commission to what extent death is going to give you a heads up on his or her arrival. So yeah, this sounds very interesting, like taking all these ideas and these literary motifs that we've been ruminating on and sort of updating it for a twenty first century literary treatment.
Yeah, so anyway, thank you for the recommendation, Luisa, and I am gonna my copies on the way and I'm going to be trying to read it this year.
All right, This next one comes to us from Albert. Albert is the name of the human who assists death in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. But I think this is a different Albert.
This is not a pseudonym Albert has written to us before.
Okay, or it could be a different Albert, or could be the fictional character from the Discworld. Now we're about to find out. We're about to find out Albert. Right, sin and says dear Robin Joe. I have been thoroughly enjoying your exploration of the anthropomorphic p sionifications of death. I'm writing this after listening to part three. There have been many depictions of death in various media over the years.
Some of my favorites are from the films, and we get a short list here, The Seventh Seal, you know, classic Monty Python in the Meaning of Life. Yes, that's another great one. And meet Joe Black. I haven't seen meet cho Blake who plays death in that?
Is that?
Is that Brad Pitt?
Is Is he death in that? Is he Joe Black?
I think so?
Or?
Or is he he ages backwards in this one? Towards Death? I can't remember. I can't keep it.
This is one from the nineties. In my brain, I merged. I used to merge Meet Joe Black and City of Angels the American remake of Wings of Desire into one movie. But they're different movies.
Okay, all right, Meet chob Blake. Maybe I should give it, give it a go on the small screen. The Hitchhiker episode from the Twilight Zone was quite memorable, and in the various comics and graphic novels. Death of the Endless in the Sandman series is my favorite. And we can't forget about death the Pale Rider in the Book of Revelations. Although side note apparently the original word describing death is not pale, but a light green, indicating that it's actually
the color of rotting flesh. Anyway, in both Meet Joe Black and in Sad Sandman, death is shown to be a comforting presence, fulfilling the role of psychopomp that you mentioned.
That's right, So the distinction there is that the psychopomp is the figure, like the way Hermes is sometimes depicted in Greek mythology, the guide of the soul to the afterlife takes you from one place to the next.
Yeah, Albert continues, I also looked into Japanese culture's depiction of death. When I do a search on Shinigami, which literally means death god, the search shows either the soul reapers from the anime Bleach or Western depictions of the grim Reaper. As far as I know, there is a judge of the dead in the Dio who is derived from Yama of the Hindu pantheon. This judge of the dead is present in many Buddhist cultures, but a death god,
a reaper, a harvester of souls seems to be absent. Anyway, looking forward to part four, impossibly part five, thanks Albert, Oh.
That is interesting, So that would be if you're correct here, Albert, this would be the case of a culture that doesn't really have anything quite like a grim reaper figure like in Japanese culture. There's maybe just not a native equivalent of the figure that appears at your death.
Hmm. Yeah, I haven't researched this for myself yet. One of the main sources, as I mentioned in our series, definitely focused on more on Western models, but you know, I love looking into Eastern cultures as well, so maybe in the future we'll come back and look at some of these models from Buddhism and Hinduism as well.
Ready for me to do this one for Matt?
Yeah, what does Matt have to say?
Matt says, good day, Fellas, Happy New Year. Very much enjoyed the series on personifications of death. It's a subject I've often thought about and had a couple of thoughts based on my own cultural interest. Being a Knuk with Scott's Irish Scotch Irish ancestry, and a general fascination with Gaelic culture. I've long been interested in the myth and stories of those cultures and how they can bleed into the modern day. Halloween and various other holiday traditions being
easy examples. One I was attracted to from an early age was the Banshee and the Morgan. I've written to you previously on some explorations I've done into Morigan lore, and then parenthetically a place called rath Krogan and the cave of Oafnagot, for example, I vaguely recall that, don't recall what we said about them. Is there something about a cat at that cave that sounds.
Failing that sounded maybe a rabbit?
Matt says, What what I find interesting about the Morgan is that she, while not exclusively a death figure, is a death figure which seems to both mock and take delight in trickery, while one who also acts on savage impulses less in the tradition of the reaper, who gets closer over time, and more in the chaotic neutral vein where anything can propel her can propel you to her
cold embraces if you're not careful. So sort of like the deceiver figure we were talking about, it's a common image of death, the one who embodies a fatal irony. So Matt says, I've only listened to part one of the series at this point. So perhaps you mentioned this in part two, but I find the Morgan to be a wonderful embodiment of both the malevolence and randomness of
physical danger in our lives. To me, it's a quote, nothing personal, but you are going to die now because you screwed up, and the universe has little sympathy mentality. Then there's the banshee, the ghostly version of a keening woman at a funeral, which many a person is said to see or at least here before someone they know or they themselves die. I learned of the banshee when I was about fourteen years old and had just started
getting interested in my family's history, culture, and stories. We didn't have much, if anything from the old Country, but a few funny sayings about not being out in bad weather and shutting ears to strange voices. I always found that strange. Then I came to know about the banshee. And if you saw a piece of clothing, shoe, etc. In the road at night, you may want to walk elsewhere. Not sure if that's a real thing or not, but
that is what I thought at the time. I remember being out hunting one night near the family farm and coming across a child's dress caught on a bush from the wind. Ugh Was it a sign? Of course it wasn't, and was likely just caught on some foliage after some critter ripped open a garbage bag during the previous pickup day, it being blown by strong winds common to my homemade home area. Regardless, it freaked me right out and I
went home immediately. I'm not a religious or superstitious person generally, but must admit I still get a chill thinking about that particular evening. Anyway, I suppose the lesson, as you both put it so well, is that the personification of death is in a way a very individual process defining what we each fear, expect, and want to a degree personally. If I have to go with the Morgan cackling at me telling me how stupid a decision I had made, was,
that's all right with me. As always, love the show and do keep it up. All the best from Ontario, Matt.
Well, thanks, Matt. I'm gonna have to say no thank you to the Morgan with the whole death blaming thing. I mean, come on, have a little bedside matter. Send in Joe Black instead. I guess, yeah, all right, This next one comes to us from Stephanie titled Death Listens. Hi, Robert and Joe, thanks for the episodes entitled Oh Death. This has been among my favorite series from the show. I've had a lot of fun reflecting on what I
think death looks like. When you mentioned the Death Listens artwork, I looked it up since I found it interesting that one of you thought the figure looked a bit awkward or similar just hanging out. I noticed that Death was holding flowers and almost contemplating the figure playing the violin. To me, this figure is one of the comforting deaths. She knows this is hard for the humans, so she takes time to enjoy the song of the young Man
before she goes about her duties. This thought was confirmed for me when I realized Seinberg also painted the Garden of Death, which features three figures tending a garden with care. One is particularly enraptured with the flowers, which is impressive to convey on a skull. Thanks again for such a fun and interesting series on this subject. It's so neat to learn about the cultural and historical differences of how death is personified. Thank you, Stephanie.
So Rob four reference, I put both of the artworks that Stephanie mentions in our outline here, so first you can look at that. This is the one we were actually talking about in the series, the painting Death Listens by Hugo. I was saying, Simberg, did you say Seinberg?
I might have said Seinberg here, but at the top of my head, I'm not sure which one is correct.
I don't know either, Okay, So Hugo, Simberg or Seinberg. This was painted in eighteen ninety seven. This is the one we talked about where there is an old woman lying in a bed in the background, looking very frail. And then the weird thing is that death is not oriented toward the dying woman. She is standing there draped in black. It's a skeletal figure draped in black holding
flowers across from a young man playing a violin. So it's like she's listening to the violin, just kind of ignoring the dying woman, and we were wondering what to make of that. It is very curious. But then yeah, so Robi also pulled in the Garden of Death, which Stephanie brought up, and I see what you're saying, Stephanie. It's hard to convey expressions on skeletons because it's expressions
are movements of the soft tissue of the face. But yeah, this one skeleton in the middle here, So the main layout is three skeletons are tending two plants in a garden with raised beds, and then also pots that are down on the ground. And there they're just one of them is watering plants. One of them is bent over looking away from us, probably looking at plants, and then one of them is just clutching a flower, almost as in like the way a child clutches their stuffy Just
I love it. I'm, you know, a happy little embrace of an inanimate object clutching this flower, and it does have a big grin on its face. I think the way Simberg did this is by like curling the the mouth into like a U shape so that it looks like a smile, even though I think you would actually to convey that, you would have to move the lips, which the scale the skull does not have. So it's a bit of trickery here.
Yeah, I don't think I get a real sense of sadness off of that. That middle skeleton here, they fill a closeness to human That's what I get from this and that there's a there's there's sorrow in their work, and they have mixed feelings about it, but it's part of the process, you know, it's part of the garden. Yeah.
In both of these paintings, there is a mix of imagery because of course, a comforting death figure is not all that unusual. In fact, in the American psychology studies we looked at, it was the most common type of death figure. People imagine some sort of a soothing comforter, but that the comforter was usually depicted as more human, you know, fully fleshed and maybe like an old man or a woman or you know, somebody somebody coming to
you with the flesh still on. Here, we're combining like the imagery of the monstrous, rotten, decayed death figure who's skeletal in nature, with the posture and the emotional tone of the comforter.
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's quite a feat to pull off visually here, but you know they managed to. I'll go ahead and ad you know, we're always referencing paintings and works of art and visual media in these episodes, and we generally cannot show it to you. So if there's ever an opportunity to look something up that we've talked about, and you know, and analyze it for yourself right in and give us your feedback. You know, that's always fair game,
always fun to talk about these images more. All right, we're gonna go ahead and skip out of the Death Zone here and we're gonna talk about the Twilight Zone a little bit. This one comes to us from Paul. Paul says, hey, guys, you were talking about high end aluminum wears during the episode on the Twilight Zone episode. This is the Rip Van Winkle Caper.
I guess we should re establish the context. The story of the Rip Van Winkle Caper is about some guys who steal a bunch of goal and then they go into cryo sleep for one hundred years so they can get away with the crime. And then they come out and then there's a bunch of drama in the middle where they're betraying each other, stabbing each other in the
back and stuff. But the twist at the end of the episode is that in the future where they have emerged to finally take advantage of their ill gotten gains, the gold they still has become worthless because now we have the technology to just manufacture gold, so it's you know, it has lost all value. In the episode, we talked about how it's unlikely that in any real time frame we would be able to manufacture gold in enough quantities
that something like this could happen. You know, it might be a byproduct of fusion technology or something, but it probably would not be manufactured in mass quantities. However, we did come up with a historical analogy, which was aluminum, which over the course of a few decades in the eighteen hundreds, in the late eighteen hundreds, went from extremely precious and rare because of how difficult it was to extract from the ore form in which it occurs on Earth,
to much much cheaper. I mean, like, if you had stolen a bunch of aluminum in eighteen sixty and then waited one hundred years, you would be severely disappointed and your returns.
Yeah. Absolutely, And so that's what Paul's following up on here. Paul says, I have a very old aluminium bread basket sort of piece that is a sheet with cutouts to mimic lace, then scrunched to form a ten inch scalloped bowl shape with textured A fourth of an inch wire coiled into disks and attached as handles. Okay, kind of hard for me to picture all that, but I'm just gonna imagine it's ornate, it's scrunchy, and it's made out
of aluminum. He continues, based on the workmanship, it is probably from shortly after aluminum became more available, but before it became cheap, because the handles are clearly just cut wire bolted on. I got it at least third hand, so no origins. Now this is where Paul gets into fantasy territory, and I love it. Paul says, aluminum is mythriel, or at least that is my head canon. Mythriel is a whitish silver metal that is light, extremely hard, magically scarce,
and doesn't corrode. Aluminum is a whitish silver metal that is light, extra hard at the surface, magically scarce as metal, and doesn't visibly corrode. Therefore, Mithriel is aluminum. I like a sacred metal from Lord of the Rings.
Aluminum is that what Bilbo's male is made out of?
Yeah? Yeah, I believe so, Okay, all right, I applaud all of that, Paul. But then Paul switches over to another past episode and he says, I'm sure you've gotten this a bunch already. But in the licking episodes, you left out the movie trope of licking a blade, sometimes bloody, or licking the hostage or victim's face as a threat. Hmm, this is true. You do see the licking of the blade, I guess. I instantly think of Bromstoker's Dracula, Francisca Coppola's.
Same here, Gary Oldman, it's the the shaving razor there where he's shaving, he's giving him a shave, and then he's.
Yeah, I think of that. Every time I lick peanut butter off of a butter knife, I think of I think of Dracula.
Even a butter knife. That creeps me out.
If you know what you're doing like I do, it's never an issue.
Don't tell the people that we're gonna get sued. Don't look a knife.
Yeah, be careful out there, everyone. You're not a vampire. You can't regrow your tongue. You don't know how many tongues Gary Oldman's Dracula lost over the years perfecting that little trick. So yes, the good point that is a common trope, especially the blade licking. Sometimes the face lick. I don't know, the face licking sometimes is a bit much.
Paul continues, I sent you a suggestion for content a while back on the theme of you Are what You Eat, citing several animals that concentrate poisons from their food, and wanted to expand on that idea microplastics, mercurial tuna see fourteen dating land reclamation using heavy metal, sequestering plants, flamingo, feathers, Sam and fletch. I forget a couple, lol. Keep up the good work, Paul.
Thank you, Paul.
Now that's that's a good that's a good topic idea. Yeah, yeah, you are what you eat?
Yeah, okay. Another response to that episode comes from Brian. This is subject line death from gold Happy New Year, Robert, Joe and JJ loved your Twilight Zone question can you die from being painted gold We didn't actually answer that question in the episode. It just came up because we were talking about Goldfinger and m is that is that? What is from Goldfinger?
Yes? I think I mentioned that. Growing up everything I knew about gold I learned from Goldfinger that you could paint somebody to death with it and that if you radiated a large supply of gold, then your supply of gold would be worth more.
Gold Finger science. Well, so we talked in the episode about whether that's actually true, that you can be painted gold or not, but we didn't research it for the episode. It just kind of came up in passing, so we didn't know the answer. Brian says, believe it or not, someone did it, as in, killed someone by painting them gold. His example is Pope Leo the tenth, a Medici and arguably the worst pope of all time, had a boy fully painted gold to celebrate the Pope's return to Florence.
The boy died mere days later. I'm sure paint in the sixteenth century was highly questionable in and of itself, so presumably any of the substances in the paint could have been the cause. But yes, we do have death by gold paint, and maybe also Ian Fleming's inspiration for the Goldfinger Woman. All the best, Brian, Well, Brian, I looked this up. So obviously with stories like this you
never know how much faith to put in. But I did look this up, and this is a real historical anecdote that part of this big festival in whatever year this was, this was the sixteenth or seventeenth century that whatever year this was, there was a big parade, a big festival, and yeah it was. A baker's son was painted gold as one of the dancers at this festival, and it is said that he died later and it gives the measly sum of money that was paid to
his family. As I was saying, you never know for sure how much accuracy stories like that have from that far back in history, but I guess it does seem plausible. The commonly given interpretation is the one they talk about in Goldfinger, where you have to breathe through your skin and painting your skin gold prevents you from breathing. That,
from what I can tell, is not true. I mean, as we talked about a bit in the Twilight Zone episode, you breathe with your lungs, not significantly through your skin, but painting your skin could still be dangerous for other reasons not related to preventing you from getting oxygen. You can breathe through you lungs, but you need to say sweat and you know, exchange heat with the environment through
your skin. So painting the whole body, not just gold, but painting the whole body any color could quite possibly prevent you from getting heat out of your body and could lead to overheating and heat stroke, which, if this story is true, could be the more likely cause. Or what Brian is saying, since we don't know what was in the paint, could also be the paint was fairly toxic.
Yeah, well, it's harder to do this on MythBusters. I guess right, all right, we'll probably hear from them. Maybe they did. They'll be like, yeah, they did it on MythBusters. Multiple people died.
I don't know they painted Jamie Gold, so I would say questions remain there, but yes, thank you, Brian.
All right, here's a quick one. This one comes to us from Zach. This is a response to a Vault episode about the Rowan Tree. Zach says, greetings, Robert and Joe. During the episode on lightning struck trees in the Rowan Tree, you mentioned using Rowan sticks to protect milk. This reminded me of a practice continuing until as late as the early twentieth century, of putting frogs in fresh milk to keep it fresh. Researchers recently have found that anti microbials
on the frog's skin probably helped in this. It also harkens back to the protective properties of frogs in magic mentioned in the Heart episodes. Thanks for the wonderful content, Zach.
Interesting.
Huh, yeah, let's try this out too. Let's get some frogs in our milk. Does it work with oat milk? Do I have to use a different frog? Maybe I'm slift. He's a toad in that case, or a newt I'm not sure.
Okay, next message, David got in touch with an email that does not seem to be related to a particular episode. I think he just wanted to share something that he thought would appeal to us. He attached a photo he took from Visalia, California. It's a bit of graffiti on the side of a building that just says one word, and the word is Cthulhu. Scene. So the word play here seems to be on the names of geological epics
like the Pleistocene or the Holocene. And I originally interpreted this to just be a joke, meaning that we live in a particularly wretched and monstrous time. It is the cursed era. At the time of Cthulhu. We are being We're living under the reign of a wretched, hateful, monstrous being, and maybe that is it. But I decided to look up this word to see if it's actually from something,
and it is. So I found references to this term used by an American scholar and critical theorist named Donna Harroway, who is a professor emeritus at University of California, Santa Cruz. She wrote a famous essay from the nineteen eighties called the Cyborg Manifesto. Did you ever talk about this on the show, Rob?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This has been discussed in the show in the past and much older episodes, so certainly something we could come back to. Yeah.
So I was trying to understand what she means by the term Cuthulhu scene I looked at Obviously, I haven't read the book that is mainly about this idea, and I was trying to understand it by reading some summaries. I think I apologize if I'm misunderstanding this in any way, but I think she is proposing it as an alternative to the term. Some people have used the term entroposcene to describe our current age. The entroposcene is the idea that the age we live in now is the geological
age that will be defined by human influence. So it's our influence on the climate, on geology, on the environment, and ecology. Again, this is my best attempt to understand what her work means.
Here.
It's that anthroposcene is too human centric a term, and so she uses Cuthulhu scene as the name for an age in which the illusion that humankind is separate from and dominant over nature will no longer be sustainable, and it will become obvious that we are not discrete individuals, that we are not separate from the natural world, that everything has its tentacles in everything else, us in nature, nature in us, because we're not actually separate, we're just
fully entangled. Again, apologies to Hairway if I've mischaracterized this in any way, but that is my understanding of this word, and so I feel like I understand it less as a as a graffito with that meaning, though I don't know, maybe it's just trying to bring awareness of this concept. I can't rule out that it's just a coincidence and somebody independently came up with this word to mean like we live in the age of monsters.
M yeah, yeah, I don't have to read more about this Cuthus scene idea. It does kind of feel like a shoehorning of Cthulhu into something that didn't require Cthulhu. But yeah, or know, the general idea sounds really fascinating. Maybe we'll come back to it. All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Lawrence subject line flower to Disappear.
And I guess we should establish the context in which this came up. I was looking back and trying to figure it out. I think it was we were talking about Star Trek and the question was does the Flower to Disappear from the Mexican Santa Claus movie have the same philosophical problem as the Star Trek Transporter, where we can't know that it doesn't just kill you every time.
I think this was I think this connection specific connection was brought up by a listener. I think maybe this is this is a listener mail response to another listener mail, which is totally fine, Oh okay for folks to do. I thought we brought that up, but maybe I'm totally wrong. We ended up talking about it.
Lawrence gets in touch with an email that kind of obviates that debate.
Yes, he says, hey, guys, just a quick correction of what I think is a mistaken conclusion from your last mailback episode. You consider that Santa in the nineteen fifty nine Santa Claus dies when he uses the flower to disappear and is recreated when he reappears. I just rewatched the film this past Christmas. If you're not familiar with this film, look it up. We also did a past Weird House Cinema episode about it. It's one of our favorites, and MSD three K fans are well aware of it
as well. But Lawrence says it's pretty clear. The Flower to Disappear is not teleportation. Is not a teleportation device. It's an invisibility device. Santa sniffs it once and once when visible to become invisible, and sniffs it again while invisible to reappear. He doesn't demateialize. He can see here, think and act while invisible. This is made pretty clear in his dialogue with Merlin. Yes, if you're nothing here with this movie, Merlin is also in the picture. Thanks guys, Lawrence.
Thank you Lawrence. Now that you say this, I think you're exactly right. I remember scenes like this in the movie. But is it not actually both ways I thought I remembered teleportation as well. Doesn't Santa sniff the flower to disappear and then like appear on the roof above or something.
I'm gonna have to watch it again now I'm blanking as well. What is the sense of it?
Okay?
Rob?
Should we skip ahead to some messages for about Weird House Cinema?
Yeah, let's do it.
Okay, I'm gonna read this one from Hannah. Hannah says, subject line, Happy New Year, Justice for Kiefer.
I thought this was going to be about the drink, but it's about the actor.
Oh, Kiefer Sutherland. Yes, yeah, Hannah says, Hi to your hosts, I had a sort of potpourrie of remarks to share this time, but I wanted to start with heartfelt gratitude again for the companionship and brain candy your show provides.
Spotify tells me I'm in the top zero point five percent of listeners this year, which was delightful but unsurprising since in addition to keeping up with new episodes, I frequently re listen to old ones when there's an idea I want to return to and nibble upon, like a squirrel knowing on an unsuspecting tourist.
I like it. I support it that, thank you, Hannah.
Hannah says, Plus, there were a couple of weird house selections this year that made me audibly squeal with delight when I saw their titles in my feed. On that topic, Dark City controversial opinion, perhaps, but I don't totally hate Key for Sutherland's performance. I speculate the intention might have been to imply that he was a polio survivor with the breathless speech plus the limp. Just a thought interesting. I wouldn't have even had the background knowledge to understand that reference.
Yeah, that that that could make sense. Yeah, I mean, obviously it's It's often the case where actors will will make their specific choices based on things that are maybe no longer in the actual of shooting script or it's just outside research something that they need to do to stitch together their approach to the performance internally.
Hannah goes on next topic, Crabs. Last year, or maybe the year before, you read my letter about Crabs in a Werner Herzog voice, which has indelibly associated Herzog with crabs. In my mind, imagine the end scene of his nose Ferratu with the rider galloping into the mist, but instead it's a crab. Okay Anyway, I was driving to work in the breaking dawn the other day after an ice storm took down the last of the leaves, and I thought it's I thought, it's getting pretty bleak out here.
Makes me think about crabs. I am not demanding a crab episode by any means, because it's much more fun to hear about whatever y'all are y'all feel inspired to cover. But I did ponder the idea that, just like the process of carsonization, all podcasts may eventually become about crabs. Finally, a weird House cinema recommendation Delicatessen, the nineteen ninety one French dystopian romantic comedy about cannibalism, warmly Hannah. Well, thank you, Hannah.
By total coincidence, it was not because of your message. Just last night I was looking into, like, is there any really good crab stuff we haven't covered yet? I just feel an itching to come back to crabs. I was coming across a few things. I was having to get deeper into the more obscure corners of crab science and crab history. But I was getting some good stuff, so Rob, we may go there in the future.
Yeah, I mean, I think tomorrow's weird hat. I'm sorry, tomorrow's Monster Fact episode is going to deal with a fictional crab. Just happens to be the case. And I'm not one dred percent certain, but i think there's like a thirty forty percent chance of crabs in the next Core episode that'll publish this Thursday. Don't hold me to that, you know, just just a thirty to forty percent chance. So there may be no crabs. Don't blame don't blame the forecast if that is the case. But yeah, thanks
for this this email. I I appreciate the insight on on Keefer's performance in Dark City. Always always open to discussion on that sort of thing. And as far as Delicatessen goes, Yeah, I've thought about doing a Geneau film at some point. Maybe this or City of Lost Children would be appropriate. Amilae even that one's that one's still plenty weird and very very visual. Used to be one of my favorite films. I haven't seen it in a long time though, And of course there's Alien Resurrection.
Wait. Sorry, I just had to look this up because I was thinking, Wait, Jean Pierre Jine did I I was sure that we're mixing up two people here, but you're right. All of those are City of Lost Children, Amile Delicatessen.
Alien Resurrection, Yeah, I mean Alien re Resurrection is definitely one of his films. I mean it's the visual fingerprints are all over it. Say what you will about it. It has a distinctive visual style. All right, here's another one. This when it comes to us from Scott. Scott says, I look forward to each Friday when the latest Weird House episode drops. It is always interesting to hear your take on those with which I'm already familiar and have added several to my to watch list based on your
reviews and dissection. It recently occurred to me that Ralph Bakshi's Wizards would fit nicely as a Weird House candidate. I was rather surprised on checking the past episode lift on Letterbox to see that you haven't covered any of Boxshi's work. While his films can be somewhat uneven in terms of quality, they almost universally tick the weird checkbox.
I'd love for you to cover any of his work. Granted, several of them aren't exactly conducive to being covered in a family friendly podcast, But there are several very good ones, including my favorite Wizards.
Oh, I mean, we shure we one day do Lord of the Ring, but then it's like, oh no, it's this one.
Yeah, I mean, that has greatness in it. But it is a very very uneven film. But there are some great stretches. There's some weird choices, and you know, it feels rather unfinished for a number of reasons. But we very well could.
Isn't it the one that after the Battle of Helm's Deep, it's like and thus concludes the tail.
Of the Ring?
Yeah?
Yeah, and well you also have the Wizard. They call him Araman in that instead of Sorrowmon because they didn't want the son Sorrowmon confusion to take it.
It looks like Santa Claus.
Yeah, well you know they do. Look he does look like a wizard.
Oh I thought maybe I'm misremembering. I thought he was wearing a red robe on the white is wearing a red robe.
Yeah, But like I say, I still have a lot of love for that picture, but it is very uneven. Scott continues the classic good versus evil theme mixes well talking about wizards here with a magical natural lifestyle struggling against corrupting technology conflict premise. The movie is mostly classical predigital animation, mixed with rotoscope snippets from classic war movies such as Zulu, The Battle of the Bulge, and Alexander Nevsky.
Some of the animation is stunningly beautiful. The movie combines a generous amount of humor with an examination of some disturbing aspects of human nature and history. There are lots of nods to underground comic legends Robert Crumb and Von Bode. I'm not familiar with this latter figure anyway, Scott concludes here, if you haven't seen Wizards, I highly recommend it. As always, thanks for all the content you provide. Great stuff.
Yeah, I've never seen it. I've seen images from it and it always looks interesting, but never seen it.
Yeah, we'll put it on the list, all right.
Do we need to call it there for today?
Let's go ahead and call it. This will be an end to this episode of Stuff to Blidmind listener mail, but there will be another one in the future, so continue to write in. Write in about new episodes, episodes episodes from the Vault, episodes you would like to hear in the future, weird house cinema selections you would like to gleefully discover that are coming to fruition. All of
it is fair game. Just right into say hi if you want just a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays. I'm in love.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 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 hi, you can email us at contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
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