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 on these episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we read back messages from the email address. If you would like to get in touch and you've never done it before, please give it a go. You can reach us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. All types of messages are welcome, especially if you would like to add something interesting related to a topic we've talked about on the show. But also corrections are always appreciated if we make a
mistake random trivia. You think we would be into suggestions for future show topics or suggestions for movies for Weird House Cinema. Any feedback to Stuff to Blow your Mind Core or Weird House Cinema, send it our way contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. So today's mail bag is still heavy with a bunch of older messages we didn't have time to get to in our last round up our October thirty eighth or whatever whenever we did that, And we've got some new stuff, so we'll see what we can make it through today, Rob, do you mind if I kick things off reading this message from Anita on a number of topics.
Yeah, go for it.
Anita says, I am truly sorry for this clumpy compendium of communication. I've wanted to write in for a while, but have been thinking I'd put it off until I had something more to say. And then I had a lot to say. So here goes. You guys are awesome. Listening to you brings back warm memories of grad school and listening to educated folks just shoot the breeze. So many times while listening to the show, I think to myself, Yeah, but what about and then you actually bring it up.
It's almost like you can hear me. You also give so many good conversation starters. Thank you so much. Well, thank you, Anita. That means a lot. But right after this, she's going to bring out the hot iron about pronunciation. So, Anita says, having gone to the University of Colorado, Boulder, I can tell you that it is see you Boulder.
I know, but that's the way we do it. I think this is addressing every time we talk about somebody affiliated with University of Colorado Boulder, I'm sure I call it u CE Boulder, but yeah, U SEE tends to relate to the University of California and not University of Colorado. So I apologize for the hundreds of times I've probably said that.
Wrong, igniting the you know, the fear sports rivalry between whatever these two universities teams are go big horns.
I have no idea. Also, Anita says, having lived in Nevada, it is pronounced Nevada with an a, like an apple. Saying it the other way. I probably always say Nevada. Saying it the other way is like nails on a chalkboard to a Nevada. I know it's originally Spanish, but it's American naw Okay.
Yeah.
I feel like I mostly noticed this pronunciation when there is national news coverage relating to elections where things are happening in Nevada, and I can hear newscasters like pause before they say the name of the state and then say Nevada, as if they're having to remember to pronounce it that way. So I don't know, maybe they're like me. Maybe they said it the way I said it a bunch of times. Anyway, The next thing is Anita says, an article just came around from the Dane County Humane
Society about a squirrel king that was found. I live just north of Madison, Wisconsin, in Lodi. I work in Madison, which is in Dane County. So yeah, this relates to episodes we've done in the past on the rat king phenomenon. We've addressed the extent to which this is a real thing and not just made up. There's clearly a lot of rat king mythology, but there is some bay in
reality as well. So I went to this article and I pulled in some pictures and Rob, I've got at least one of the photos for you to look at in the outline here where we see several squirrels that are you see the distinct squirrel bodies like the you know, the the fan blades on a pinwheel. But then yes, their tails come together in the middle in just a mushy mass of gray brown fur leaves what looks like some kind of plant fiber. It's just a mess in
the middle, and all the tails go in. So Anita attaches a link to a news article from the Dane County Humane Society by I think their director named Jackie Edmonds from October twenty eighth, twenty twenty five. I'll read from the opening to give you an idea of the story. Here quote. On September seventeenth, twenty twenty five, a group of five young Eastern gray squirrels were found with their tails all knotted together in a phenomenon known as a
squirrel king. The finders, who were from Janesville, successful captured the entire scurry, which is a real term for the group scurry of squirrels, placed them in a bucket, and brought them to Dcchs's Wildlife Center for an emergency admission appointment. It was theorized that these babies snuggled together for warmth and comfort inside of their cavity nest or dray a leaf nest, and came into contact with tree sap while
they were growing. As the sap spread, it thickened and hardened, and the squirrels continued to squirm around each other while they got bigger. In doing so, the knot in their
tails worsened over time. So that's the beginning of the story, But then it goes on to describe lots of careful rehabilitation efforts by workers and volunteers at the center, and there are some pictures of that too, of the workers carefully trying to take care of the squirrels to get the the clumped up part removed, and finally at the end they do get all the squirrels separated. And then
there's an update from November thirteenth, so just recently. The article says, great news, the five squirrels that had comprised the squirrel king were successfully rehabilitated and released on Tuesday, November eleventh, so they're all separate now, and Edmunds says quote after speaking with the finder, they were returned to
their property along with a nest box. The finder has agreed to carefully supply food throughout the winter to help the squirrels since they did not have time to collect winter supplies.
That's a nice ending to that little story. Two takeaways here, I think, one especially for our international listeners. Yes, in this country you do get free healthcare if you are a bundle of rodents. Humans not so much. And then on top of that, the idea that this knot of rodents, this knot of squirrels, was successfully untied and the squirrels were saved. If the rat king, or in this case,
the squirrel king, is indeed a dire omen. Successfully solving it in this manner would seem to be a way to prevent disaster and prevent some sort of looming doom from occurring. So I like the metaphysical possibilities of this as well.
It's like knocking on wood or throwing salt over your shoulder. You untangle the squirrel king.
Yeah, it's a lot more complicated. We tend to throw the salt over our shoulder because it requires virtually no work, and all you have to do is turn around and make sure it lands in the sink. Right, Untangling the squirrel king clearly took a lot more skill and expertise.
Anita has a little more in her message, she says, And lastly, we have a certain metal filing cabinet here at work that sounds like Godzilla. I think of you two every time I need to get shipping labels. Sound file attached. I guess we can play it here, But warning listeners, it is squeally, so take note that it's coming.
I agree, it's quite kaijusque. There is a kind of squeal, a radioactive squeal, echoing up into the stratosphere, so I hear exactly what you're saying, and I may have actually had that thought about squealing metal on metal sounds before. It really does sound kind of like a giant monster.
Yeah, you just need to drop the Godzilla theme song on top of that.
Dun dun dun, dun dun.
Duh.
Yeah, and Anita finally says, glad, I got that out of my system. Thanks for giving my brain things to chew on. Joe's gentle snickering sounds, along with Rob's mums, especially when he doesn't quite agree.
I need. I'd never really until I read this one when it came in. I'd never really thought too much about what my momms might be giving away.
But yeah, I don't know either. I guess I say some moms too. I have to think on that.
Yeah, sometimes they just might have no particular opinion. I might be very neutral. I don't know.
I'd say that's the most common time I would say, MM is when I don't feel like I have an opinion on.
Something unless it's a downward and then I might Yeah, it might be Yeah, I don't know. I have to listen back and see if I can figure out this. Since I generally know where my mind probably was when I uttered a given all right, what do we have next in the bag? A number of these the listener mails seem to be a little bit sticky.
That's right. So we're gonna do another episode on the licking theme from before our break last week. We're going to do another one later this week, and one listener mail message on that subject actually inspired a segment for that. So we'll talk about some listener mail in the Licking Part three episode. But we got quite a few responses, especially to the research on how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tutsi pop. This really set people off.
That's right. All right. This first one comes to us from Scott subject Tutsi Pop memories, gentlemen, I was transported back to the days of my youth during the Licking Part one episode the discussion of the Tutsi pop. I distinctly remember sitting cross legged on the living room floor, staring rapidly at the black and white television set as the Tutsi Pop commercial came on, and the feeling of amusement mixed with betrayal on behalf of the kid when
that smart ass owl stole, yes, stole his candy, wise old owl, I think not Charlotte's, and I say thief swindler in the guise of an authority figure ahem. Sorry about that. Perhaps I have some unresolved childhood issues. To continue. Your observation that the phrase how many licks to get to the center of a tutsi pop may be paradoxical? May be a paradoxical riddle to prove provoke enlightenment? Is I believe accurate. There is no answer, partially because it
is a trick question. You see, nobody actually licks a tutsi pop. One eats a tutsi pop by sticking the entire thing in the mouth, where it is bathed in saliva, causing it to dissolve. The act of licking involves sticking the tongue out of the mouth to make contact with the object. I've never heard of anyone doing that, aside from the comically large novelty lollipops the size of a child's head you get at circuses and county fairs.
This is a really good point. I don't think I ever licked a lollipop when I was a kid. You put I put it in my mouth and just passively dissolved it. I feel like licking a lollipop is something only oodor does.
Yeah. I think the only time I might have done it, or I've seen other kids doing you're probably consciously re enacting something you saw in a cartoon. Yeah, but yes, very good point. Yeah, you're generally you're putting it in your mouth and it's just swirling it around and so forth, in the same way that you don't lick any other hard candy that's not on a stick. It just goes in the mouth. Yeah. Anyway, they continue. You don't lick
at Tutsi pop, you suck on it. Indeed, where I grew up in southwest Michigan, the common nay only name used for Tutsi pops and their generic brethren was sucker.
Yep, I remember that too. When I was a kid, they were suckers more than they were lollipop.
Yeah, we didn't really say lollies because it's suckers. I think I like the term lollies more if I was to refer to them, but that's not what we call them. Scott continues as far as the actual question of whether one should or shouldn't crunch through the candy shell to get to the center. I may be an outlier in the population of Tutsi pop eaters. As long as I
can remember, I strove to avoid the crunch. My goal was always to suck on the thing until the flavor of the chocolate ciner mixed with the Erstot's fruit flavor of the shell. Only then did I give myself permission to finish it off in a few bites. Ah childhood. Thanks for dredging up the memory from the vaults, Scott, Yes,
some great points here. I may have gone into this, but I think I tended to avoid the crunch as well, in part because I wasn't as crazy about the Tutsi center and would rather the orange exterior last as long as possible.
Yeah, there also seemed I don't know, when I was a kid, I don't think I liked trying to crunch hard candy, like hard sugar candy. That seemed dangerous. Maybe I was a nerdy overly cautious child, but that just seemed like that could do something to your teeth.
Yeah, and I do want to stress though, there are plenty of people out here who loved the combination of the flavors. I just offhand. I ended up chatting with some friends reminiscing about their experiences with Tutsi pops, and more than one of them were like, oh, yeah, I love the way that the two flavors came together. So on one hand, I may be an outlier and that I didn't really like the Tutsi Pop Center as much, And or I could be misremembering it a bit. You know.
It could be that I really actually loved it as a kid, and I've just kind of paved over that particular memory detail.
Yeah, it's funny how you think you can remember things like this, but then sometimes the more you think about them, the more you doubt at les.
Yeah, or you allow your adults views on things to then the shape of your childhood memories, thinking like, oh, I don't like Tutsi roles now, surely my childhood self didn't like them either, But it's entirely possible that I did, all right.
This next message is also about Tutsi pops. This is from ian Ian, says dear Robin Joe, you asked for personal Tutsi pop stories, I shall oblige as far as eating them normally, I didn't lick them, per se, I would suck on the whole thing in my mouth like a sucker, and only once I tasted chocolate would I bite through the very last thin layer of hard candy coating to the core. The crunch was very satisfying. I also did the licking experiment ones as I'm sure many
other children did. I sat down with a Tutsi pop and a legal pad and made a tally mark every time I licked it. I can't remember my technique other than that I counted exposing any part of the chocolate core as reached out the center. When all was said and done, it took me six hundred and sixty six licks to reach the center. Really, at the time, I was unfamiliar with the satanic connotations of that number, and now I wonder what the significance of my result is.
Perhaps Tootsi Pops are the candy of the devil. Thanks for the show, Keep up the good work, ian Ian. I'm going to trust you on that that you're not just making that up because it's a good story.
Made up or not, I am going to assume it is the correct answer. Now, six hundred and sixty six licks seems appropriate and actually not that far off. From I mean, we talked about the wide variety of numbers that some of these actual studies resulted in, so it seems possible that you could get six hundred and sixty six totally.
In fact, I think the next message from Matt addresses the question of the wide variety of results.
Yeah, Matt says, Hey, guys, just wanted to jump in with my own experience that might shed some light on why that one study found a number of licks uch higher than the others. For context, I was a weird kid who had entertained himself with tedious projects like counting to a thousand. I've also tried to count to one million, but when I got to a few hundred, I realized how long it was taking to even be one two thousandth of the way to the goal, and gave up
on that one. In any case, I did undertake finding the answer to how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tutsi pop? And I got a similar number to the three thousand plus sided in the one study. I think they, like myself, defined to get to the center to me not only to drill a hole that reached the center, but to completely liberate the Tutsi roll from its hard candy prison. In my mind, we were getting to the center in the
same way you were getting to a buried treasure. That is, you haven't gotten it until you have got it all the way out of the substance it's buried in.
Mmmm, that makes sense.
I also wondered, WHI while doing this, what kind of lick should I be doing? A dainty lick with the top of your tongue must take more licks than an aggressive lick that envelops the entire pop after all. Anyways, thought i'd share, man.
I think this really emphasizes how much exercise is actually involved, Like how much work it would be to again lick the entire Tutsi pop down instead of just yeah, passively dissolving it inside your mouth. Like that's a lot of work in the tongue muscle. Yeah, okay. This next message is also a response to the licking episodes, but not about the Tutsi pop. It's about when we were talking about the licking of wounds and also about the idea
of licking one's own eye. Oh, Robin, I think this was in the context of talking about lizards that can lick their own eyes.
To clean, yes, particularly geckos, but.
We were discussing how you know, some animals might have special adaptations for this, but in other cases, licking or spitting in the eye obviously can transfer bacteria from one place to the other, and the eye can be very sensitive to certain kinds of infections, so you know, it's
something to be avoided if possible. Rachel says, Hi, guys, I just listened to the episode about licking, and it reminded me of the time one of my rabbits had an eye infection and after finishing the course of medications, the problem still persisted until I realized it was because my other rabbit wouldn't stop licking his eye. As soon as I separated them, the infection was resolved. Ugh, I feel bad because my rabbit was just trying to help
the other one, but it was actually making it worse. Anyway, love the podcast. I've been a long time listener.
Great detail, great story. I like it.
That is interesting. But one thing that I don't think I read about rabbits in any of the research I was looking at in communal wound looking. I'm not saying they don't do it, but I don't know of any evidence other than this email that they do. So I wonder if rabbits regularly engage in group communal wound looking to help each other decontain emanate wound areas, or otherwise help each other heal, or if maybe there was just you know, this one rabbit had a kind of idiosyncratic taste for eyeball.
I remember it factoring into Watership Down a lot, oh when they were treating wounds. Not enough to say that that's that it should be the primary source in order to answer this question, but that does bring back to my mind a number of scenes in which the rabbits in that story that that work of fiction are tending to each other's wounds.
Oh okay, well, then I would bet that's probably based on something in reality. So yeah, I guess they probably do it all right.
This next one, I don't even precisely remember the call out for this, but I still greatly appreciate the answer. Skyler sent us a message with the subject line giant pilgrim skeleton in neighbor's yard from mid November. And indeed it is one of these giant skeletons like we've seen pop up in yards in recent years. And this one has been decorated to look like a Pilgrim for Thanksgiving,
for American Thanksgiving apparently, which I think is wonderful. Hey, I think these I love that these skeletons are staying up year round and are getting different seasonal costumes. And also, I mean, if you're gonna go with Pilgrim decorations nowadays, I feel like scary Pilgrim is the way to go. Scary skeletal, undead Pilgrim a plus in my book.
Now there's also an update that Skylar sent us after the first message that came on November twentieth, so so this, I guess was several days later they like completed the look. So it started just giant skeleton with a Pilgrim upper body costume. They added a skeleton dog, the kind with ears and dogs don't have the bones in their ear, but you know, so that you know it's a dog. So there's skeleton dog right next to it. Okay, it's
got a puppy. And then also Pilgrim hat. And also, Rob, did you notice this little detail eyeballs in the skull. I didn't see them in the first picture. Maybe they're hiding back there sort of. But doesn't look like it to me. It looks like somebody went in there and updated the skull with freaky eyeballs.
Yeah, yeah, I think this is. This also nicely illustrates the realization that one steadily gets leaving Halloween and realizing that Thanksgiving is about to occur. The Pilgrim costume, the the insane eyes of the dog specter. Yeah, it all tracks.
Big old buckle on the hat. What's that buckle for? I guess it holds the hat together.
It's like it keeps the brain chaste, right, because that's the reason.
It's a chastity belt for the crown of the skull.
Yeah, yeah, for the mind. Yeah, your thoughts only.
Okay, Rob, let's see what do you think about digging into some of the messages left over from the previous episode's mailbag. Some of these older ones from September. We have a bunch of responses to our episodes from Star Trek week.
Yeah, engage all right.
This message comes from Ian. It is about our episode on transporters in Star Trek and teleportation paradoxes. Ian says, just finished your episode on Star Trek Transporters and wanted to write in with a few thoughts that you might find interesting. Your discussion about transporter accidents had me thinking about ian Embank's Culture civilization and how its approach differs
drastically from the Federation. Where the Federation is roughly a Kardashev level one point five civilization, the culture is more around a two point five, and though they do have transporter technology in the ultra safe culture civilization, the one in several billion chants of a teleportation accident is considered far too dangerous to use unconscious being, so it is restricted purely for cargo transport outside of extreme situations such
as emergencies or military operations. I found this to be an interesting and subtle extension of the way our own society's perception of acceptable risks changes as we're able to mitigate more and more dangers that in the past would have been considered just an everyday part of life.
This is a great point and something I've either I forgot about it from the culture books that I've read, or maybe it wasn't stressed as much in the particular culture novels that I have read in the past. But a great point and very much on, very much in
keeping with the culture. The culture. If anyone out there isn't aware, or you haven't read Ian in Banks, or you haven't heard me talk about it on the show in a while, Scottish Authory and in Banks, the late great In Banks envisioned this far future vision of humanity and various alien species in which the culture is a post scarcity anarchist utopia, and so it's it's such an interesting, thought provoking and I think ultimately, you know, optimistic vision
of the future in the same way that Star Trek is, but with its own distinctive flavors. You know, certainly getting into some difficult problems, you know, philosophically, politically and so forth, but at the root, you know, having this vision of a far future society in which human beings enjoy a
great deal of freedom and equality. So if you find yourself needing a vision like that in the year twenty twenty five, or certainly in twenty twenty six, yeah, there's never a better time to pick up one of Ian M. Banks culture novels.
In my opinion, I have not read these books, but from what I remember, they have a very positive vision of the ultimate sort of integration of artificial intelligence into into human biological life.
Yeah. But at the same time there, I mean, there's there's one novel in particular that gets into like the dangers of artificial intelligence and self replicating machines and so forth, So you know, it's it's not one hundred percent you know, techno optimist in that regard. Again, very very thought provoking works that take these various problems and potential problems seriously, from from self replicating machines to you know, theologies of hell and virtual realms and so forth.
One of these days I'll have to get around to reading them. And You've been talking about them for years and I've been meaning to. I know, Ian and Banks is greatly revered by many people whose taste I share. I think.
So.
But getting back to Ian, I guess coincidence the name here different spilm yes Ian's email. Ian says when discussing the episode Star Trek episode Second Chances, in which Reiker is duplicated, you briefly discuss the idea of meeting another version of yourself who has had different experiences, and how you may or may not even like that person. That idea is explored quite in depth in a recent video game,
The Altars though not involving teleportation. The Altars involves a loan technician stranded on a hostile alien planet who uses a quantum scanning device to create alternate versions of himself to help man the ship and escape the planet. The device allows him to see all of the different critical moments in his life that send him down different paths and generate a version of himself who made the other choice. So the ship's reactors broken, quantum duplicate the version of
yourself who became an engineer. Someone have an injury, simply summon the version of yourself who went to medical school. Each version has a different personality, outlook on life, etc. Many don't like each other, and managing the interactions between them is critical to surviving. It's a really interesting game that does sound interesting.
Yeah, I wasn't this one flu under my radar. I had to look it up and it sounds fascinating from the developers, I believe of frost Punk, which I was familiar with by reputation.
Yeah, I never played it. Ian says, finally, my last thought is actually related to Star Trek. At the end of the episode, Joe was musing about different ways the transporter could be used for medical treatment since it can filter out problematic infectious agents and the like. Uh yeah, The question was like, if it turns you into information and then decodes you back into matter, could you basically
turn medical problems into information debugging problems? You know, you just like edit the code basically and then spit out
the healthy version. Ian says, as I recall, there are several episodes of the various Trek series where the crew does things like that, but the one that immediately sprang to mind was an episode of Voyager, which begins with the doctor assisting a woman in labor when things begin to go wrong, and then he says, we're going to have to perform an emergency C section, then walks purposefully across the room to a computer console, where he proceeds to beam the baby out of the mother's body and
directly into an incubator a few feet away, saving the day. It's an amusingly anti climactic ending to a scene that up to that point had been presented as if part of a tense medical drama. Anyway, I know I've run long, so I promise I won't be offended if you edit any of this out. Well, we did not, I guess apart from a few line edits. Please keep up the good work, look forward to each episode. Ian, Thank you.
Ian. Yeah, yeah, great point. I have not really seen any Voyager and this episode did not come up in my research for that episode. So that's a great one to share, all right. This next one comes to us from Scott. Scott says, Hi, Joe and Rob. I am a philosopher who also loves Star Trek and hence have much familiarity with the philosophical debates around personal identity and transporters.
They actually led me to wonder if the history of these debates would have been different if Gene Roddenberry had explained the transporter differently as simply moving bodies intact through some kind of temporary wormhole or tunnel. Actually, the idea of scrambling and reassembling doesn't make much sense, as it requires extra work on top of the assumption that we can transmit some matter or energy instantaneously, and it seems especially strange that this can be done without any mechanism
at the remote end. I compare this to the mantra often given by cognitive scientists that quote, the best model of the world is the world itself, explaining why we don't have perfect memories of everything in the world, but often rely on imperfect ones, which then allow continual updating from the world itself so we can navigate it. Likewise, the best model of the complex arrangements of the atoms in our body is the body itself. Why not just
transmit this as a piece. Perhaps the idea was that, given current physics, could we can transmit energy faster than matter. But since the whole premise of Star Trek assumes a warp drive which can move matter faster than light, going well beyond current physics, I don't see why an instantaneous conduit for matter over shorter distances couldn't have seemed just
as plausible. Indeed, the idea of reassembling atoms is so implausible that I wonder if it would have ever occurred to someone as a philosophical problem about whether the reassembled person was identical to the dismantled one, if it hadn't already been introduced as a possibly unnecessary science fiction plot device.
Scott, that's a good question. Would you even have people in philosophy departments proposing, you know, questions about the swamp man type scenario if there had never been a science fiction idea of teleportation by these sorts of means.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting if you think of it as a potential flaw. Maybe not a plot hole, but maybe some sort of a flaw. It's been such a thought provoking flaw, you know. Sometimes it is the it's the wrinkles, it's the imperfections in a work that fascinate us the most. Not that I'm saying that I think this model of teleportation is a flaw in the Star Trek franchise. Again, I think it's something that keeps my mind tumbling over and over.
Okay. This next message comes from Eric. It has the subject line Transporters and Consciousness. Hi, Robin Joe, thank you for your fun and lighthearted exploration of teleportation from Star Trek. As a moderate Trek fan, I enjoyed your coverage of the topic. You mentioned the Next Generation episode Rascals from season six. I don't remember what we said about that, rob Wait, is that the one where they're like the transporter turns them into children?
Yes? Okay, And if I remember, we kind of just mention it in passing and I made I think I made a comment where I didn't necessarily recognize who all the characters were that had been transformed into children.
Okay, okay, so Eric says. A minor clarification is that the fourth character who was childified was Kiko O'Brien. Am I saying that right? I think so Okay played by Rosalind Chow, the wife of Chief Miles O'Brien played by Cole Meanie. They are frequent guest characters in the Next Generation, and Miles in particular is a regular character on Deep
Space nine. Miles, as a working class petty officer, often acts as a good foil for the more staid and intellectual officers of the Enterprise, and this episode is a good example. He has a very difficult time processing the fact that this little girl is actually his wife and keeps trying to take care of her like a child. He's well intentioned, but emotionally clumsy. The O'Brien's aren't really thinking about the philosophical implications or even the long term
ramifications the other crew members are. They're just trying to get through the day as a family. While I wouldn't hold the episode up as a Next Generation must see, I think this subplot is very endearing and relatable. Thanks again for a great episode and for a fun week in tribute to Trek. Eric. Thanks Eric. Yeah, that's a whole other philosophical question, like how do you deal with an adult who suddenly transformed into a child.
I don't know.
I wouldn't want to imagine what would be needed to take care of me if I were suddenly five again.
Yeah, yeah, this is a yeah. I appreciate getting more info on this episode, which is probably one that I only watched once back in the day in syndication. You know, of course, watching these shows in syndication, you didn't really have the liberty of picking out the best episodes or or knowing what are the strong episodes and overarching episodes that I need to watch. In my Star Trek the Next Generation Journey, now, it was just whatever was on
at like nine pm. That was the Star Trek you were watching.
I'm actually sitting here getting like ashamed and mortified, thinking like if I were suddenly transformed into my daughter's age, would I play nicely with her? Or would I not be sharing my toys? What if I was a really rotten little toddler and I was like not sharing and being mean, it's horrifying me.
Yeah, I mean it's a thought provoking question too, because we've seen shows like this where the adult brain, the adult is transformed into a child, but they retain the mind of an adult. But would that be the case? Like how much of childhood? I mean, how do you separate the tube? You know, would you? And then what would it be like to then be a child with a child's brain, but with perhaps the memories of an adult, Like, I don't know, it's very complicate. It's kind of the
Tutsi pop scenario. Yeah, Like there's a simple version of imagining it, but the more questions you ask about it, the more complicated it becomes.
Fortunately, transporter incidents of this kind are very rare, so we don't have to worry about this for the most part.
Though it is again it's just the things I love about the transporters in Star Trek is like this. The list of potential side effects are just wild. You might be turned into a child, you might end up with an evil doppelganger. There's just so much that can happen. It probably won't, but there's a non zero chance.
Do you remember the transporter incident from spaceballs where Melbrook's top half gets put on backwards so his butt is in the front.
Yeah. Oh yeah, that's a good one. I'd forgot we should have mentioned that in the episode.
Yeah, that's a good one, actually, one of I mean, not great, but one of the less horrifying outcomes.
I can't remember. Did they fix it or was it just stuck that way? Yeah?
I think they've beam him back and fix it. Okay, but briefly he's looking down at his own butt and that would be a strange experience.
All right. This next one comes to us from a listen Joe. Joe says, huge fan of Wookie, so I love Star Trek week. Kidding, kidding. There is a wearable headset designed to help folks with limited vision called the Jordie. You can probably guess what it looks like before you google it. As a geek and fan of your show, I enjoyed the myriad episode topics on the various episodes this week. I don't know why, but it compelled me
to suggest a potential topic for the future. The Jordi wearables were inspired by fiction, but now they are clearly or could clearly become brigenitor tech to an actual visor that works like Jordie's visor in Star Trek. For those of you who aren't aware, this is Jeordie LaForge played
by the great LeVar Burton. He was visually impaired and had to wear this visor device that I think had some sort of a neural link system as well that enabled him to see any right, Joe continues, have y'all covered this topic before or do you see any meat on the bone for an episode that inspires science, which inspires fiction into this perpetual cycle of innovation and then is a complete Aside myself and a fellow blind buddy, we're straining our brains the other day trying to make
a list of seminal Jordy centric episodes. Do any come to mind? Do you happen to have a Jordy episode or moment you particularly are fond of? Anyway, as ever, thanks for the work y'all put in each episode and the fun informative content it creates all the best.
Well, thank you, Joe. Now, I don't have a lot of memory because the only Next Generation I watched, and it's been a while on this was like the first season or so, so I have less exposure than Rob, does Rob, do you have a Jordy moment?
Oh? Well, man, I wish I had better answer here, And I think I would if I'd watched all these episodes more recently, and I could tell you. Okay, I think this is the episode where Jordie's character is presented in the strongest fashion and developed, and it has a lot to do plot wise. But I guess the main one that comes to mind is an episode titled The Next Phase that I think we even referenced in our
teleportation episodes. This is one where Jordie and in Sign Row are lost in a teleporter accident and become like transporter ghosts on the ship. So my memory of this episode, which could be highly flawed, is that is that these two characters are front and center, and you know, therefore have a lot of agency and are directly involved in the threat and the problem of the episode, and therefore
that one stands out. And then I have a lot of vague memories of different episodes where, of course Jordi is an instrumental member of the team in solving a particular crisis.
Yeah, I wish I could remember more about the show other than I remember somebody getting eaten by mud puddle.
Yeah, that was the key early episode. Yeah, that was pretty terrifying. But getting back to this idea of this sort of cyclical loop of science fiction and science yeah, I think there might be something there, maybe some sort of an invention catch all episode or series. It looks for possible inventions that line up with this. I feel like there's I'd have to think about it, but I think we've covered one or two things like this in the past. But yeah, I'll I'll have to give it some thought.
All right. This next message is still about Star Trek, comes from Ken. Ken says, I'm way behind on episodes, but wanted to comment on your Star Trek transporter episode. I've heard this debate on if you die every time you're transported, but in Star Trek, it's clearly established that your consciousness stays with you the entire process. The idea that you are in one place then suddenly another as your atoms are put back together isn't canon in the show.
There are multiple episodes where you see how the place you're at slowly fades to gray in the new place slowly materializes. That would not be possible if you weren't conscious. Until being realigned. There's an episode of the Next Generation titled Realm of Fear where Lieutenant Barkley sees something in the transporter stream in between one place and the destination and later grabs one of the creatures to pull it
out of the stream. Clearly Barkley's consciousness travels unbroken the entire transport just some food for thought, Ken, Well, thank you, Ken. So on one hand, I don't want to argue with stuff that's just axiomatically part of the show. So if it's axiomatically part of the Star Trek universe that your consciousness is the same and survives the whole process, I
can't really argue with that. But even though what you say intuitively makes sense that you know, being conscious through a kind of fading in and out process would eliminate the worries about, you know, the person going in dying, I don't think that actually does solve that problem, because how could you ever verify that the experience was continuous for the person that went in this This is a
sort of restating the original problem again. But if the person that comes out has the memories of the person that went in, it will seem always to have been continuous for them. But is there any way the output Spock could tell the difference between existing continuously the entire time is one person versus being a newly created Spock with all of input Spock's memories and input Spock is
now dead. I think technically there's just no way to verify that, And in fact, there's no way to verify that this doesn't happen every single second of our lives. That you know, there's some you that died and is gone now and you're just a new you with the memories of that old you. But I think the reason we don't assume that about every single second of our lives is that we don't have any reason to believe that's the case. Molecular disassembly and then reassembly of the
brain especially does give you a reason to wonder that. So, in my opinion, that would hold true whether the experience was an instantaneous copy paste into a new place or kind of gradual fading in and out. At some point during the fade, you would have to wonder did the old Spock cease to exist? And the new Spok wouldn't have any way to figure that out. It would feel continuous to the newspak either way.
Yeah, and especially since that an individual in this scenario would still be narratively defining and understanding the human experience and telling stories about who we were in r and how these two are connected or more than two, how every little person in this chain of being are connected, and not seeing them as distinct others that have like a tiny death standing between each one. Yeah, but why
not you could easily put that forward. I don't know how compelling that would be, you know, if you were to try and force that on a civilization or I don't know, you know, to get into sort of like world building and sci fi, like what kind of a civilization would have that kind of worldview for themselves and what it would accomplish. But it's interesting to think.
About would it have any effect on reality other you know, like would that actually change anything?
I mean, I mean one way that comes to mind is like criminal justice, right, I mean, if you have a world in which there's more of an intrinsic understanding that we are not the person we used to be, that that person is like many deaths removed from who we are now and just shares certain memories and so forth, maybe there's a stronger inclination to believe than change in an individual, and the ability to move on from past transgression. I don't know.
Yeah, well, I guess that if that were the if you were to apply it in that way, that would sort of apply to every single thing in life. You would sort of not ever believe any person had any connection to anything they had already done.
Yeah, you could just write on your coattails because those aren't your coatails or someone else's. But that's always the case too, right, So yeah, there's a there's a lot of interesting room for thought here. If listeners, if you know of a work of fiction, science fiction, speculative work out there that has entertained any of these ideas right in,
we'd love to hear from you. All right, we'll skip ahead to some weird house send them a listener mail here as we begin to close out this episode, Let's see what we have in the old mail bag here. Let's see this is an older one. This one was I think pre Halloween, so it was responding to a call out for Halloween episode suggestions. But it's always there's always another Halloween on the way, and we will presumably be around for that Halloween. So I would say, yeah,
keep him coming. This one comes to us from Carry. Carrie says, Dear Robin Joe. Here are my three Vincent Price movies that you haven't covered on Weird House that might fit in. Only one has horror vibes, but they all have Price in different roles. Okay, let's hear it first. Up His Kind of Woman nineteen fifty one. Other stars are Robert Mitcham, Jane Russell, and Raymond Burr, who portrays a menacing mob boss. Price is a rich dilettante who steps up when the situation requires it. It's set on
a tourist island in the Caribbean. I have not seen this, never seen this one. Like the cast list, love Robert Mitcham. Yeah, and I do probably need to see more Vincent Price films where he's not where he's not just a horror figure and you know some sort of a either haunted or haunting individual because you know he's a great actor. Let's see the next one. Dan Juris Mission nineteen fifty four.
Other star stars are Piper Laurie, who plays a woman fleeing from assassination after witnessing a mob killing, and Victor Mature who plays an undercover an undercover cop trying to prevent the mob from getting Laurie Price plays the assassin sent to kill her. It's set in Glacier National Park.
Oh beautiful. Victor Mature came up on Weird House several years back when I did an episode with with Seth Nicholas Johnson about the Monkey's movie head. There's a recurring joke in that movie where they they're like, now we're going to address the darkest thing in the universe, Victor Mature's hair.
Yeah. I mean it's pretty. It's a pretty dark head of hair, as I can see see from some of these photos.
Luxurious, tremendous hair.
Yes, all right. And then the third film recommended by Carrie Here is The Comedy of Terrors nineteen sixty three. Other stars are Boris Karloff, Peter Lourie, and Basil Rathbone. Prize plays an evil man with a scheme involving an inheritance and his sister or niece, I don't remember which. The whole thing is played for laughs. If you're not already familiar with the three movies, I think you would enjoy them, And if they make the cut for Weird house all the better. Keep up the good work. Care
Thanks for the suggestions. Yeah, I would watch all three. Yeah, of the three, the only one I was really familiar with this comedy of terrors. I mean, how can you not be given the stars involved here? All right? Uh?
You cool? If I do this message from Lawrence, Yeah, let's do it. Lawrence says, Hey, guys, shooting you a note to comment on your rewind of Deep Blue Sea. I missed it the first time around. Let me start by saying I've only listened to the first half hour or so. I stopped at the spoiler warning. I've requested the DVD through an inter library loan extept to pick it up at my local branch in five days or so. After I've seen it. I'll listen to the rest and
maybe I'll have more to say then. But there are a couple of things I'd like to comment on from what I've heard. Beautiful, oh man, getting Deep Blue Sea at the library from between libraries. This is interlibrary commerce.
Yeah, take advantage of it. You know, we've We've heard from other listeners out there, and I have family members who do this as have done this as well. You know, getting movies through their local library. Yeah, the resources there. Take advantage of it, oh man, though I do have
to confess something. Just reading or hearing the phrase interlibrary loan triggers like cringing of guilt in me because of a time in grad school when I was working on a research project and I was getting a lot of old, rare books interlibrary loan, and there was one that I had out way too long.
It took me. I was late getting it back, like severely late, and I've felt guilty ever since.
Did are you sure you returned it?
I did finally, it was like months late, and I felt horrible.
Yeah, well, I think we all have we a lot similar memories. Right, there's a little bit of nervousness. Will we return it on time? But again, definitely take advantage of these. This is I'm comfortable with my tax dollars being used to move copies of Deep Flucy around the Tri County area.
Presumably this is not like a rare book that you will be severely missed, but still you should return it on time of course. Anyway, Lawrence goes on, probably others have pointed this out from the first podcasting, but I balked at your assertion that there have been eighteen point six billion shark movies made in the US. I don't remember saying that, but this sounds about right, Lawrence says. I had to pause, rewind, and listen again to make
sure I heard you right. I'm pretty sure there haven't been that many movies made in the history of cinema worldwide, never mind shark movies. Now. I didn't do real research, but I did a little quick googling. When I asked Google how many shark movies had been made, the number it gave me was one hundred and eighty psh. Definitely
more than that. When I googled how many movies have been made in the history of cinema, it's at estimates range from hundreds of thousands to perhaps more than a million. Google isn't the be all and end all, but those numbers sound reasonable. For there to be eighteen point six billion shark movies made in the US, there would need to be about fifty four for each person living there who made all these shark movies. I didn't make my
fifty four shark movies. On a more serious note, I can't agree with your gushing praise of Jaws to be fair, it may fall into the category of films I might have liked had I not read the book first. The film isn't as good as the novel, and the novel isn't exactly a masterpiece. It's been a long time since I've read it, But as memory serves, the novel offered credible characters behaving in ways I found consistent with each character, and a good balance between subplots and the main storyline.
The film discards most of the subplot, probably to save on length, and focuses on the main plot, which I find less engaging. And in the film, I don't find the shark hunt credible at all. Richard Dreyfus knows a good deal about sharks, but he can't tie a knot, let alone sail a boat. Roy Scheider is terrified of the water, never mind a shark, and Robert Shaw is constantly drunk. These guys don't need a shark to kill them.
They're bound to capsize the boat and drown. I'm hoping I'll like Deep Lucy better find out in five days or so. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Lawrence, Well, Lawrence, I don't know what I think. I could not possibly disagree with you more about Jaws the novel and Jaws the movie, but I respect your opinion, you know, respectfully disagree. I think I've read the novel and seen the movie. I think the movie is marvelous, and I almost hated the novel.
Yeah, I never read the original novel. I did read his giant squid novel Beast, Yeah, which had a big squid arm on the front and it was textured so you could you could rub your fingers over it and kind of like read the suckers on it.
Oh man, I want to feel that right now.
Yeah. Yeah, I think they actually made a film version of that, But I haven't seen the film adaptation, so, but I have seen Jaws. I do love Jaws. But Jaws is one of those films that was is such an important film in the history of American cinema, especially blockbuster American cinema. You can't discount it's it's importance and
its impact. But on the other hand, you know, we don't know all have to like every movie, so I can understand people maybe not digging it as much, or maybe finding certain aspects of it a little bit dated in light of everything that has come in its wake, you know, playing off of and in some cases, I'm sure improving on some of the concepts and ideas. As for Deep Blue c I don't know. I hope by the time you listen to this, you've you've man, You've gone into the film, and you've gotten to watch it
for yourself. It's a it's a it's it's a fun time and it has it has a couple of great twists in it. Is it better than Jaws? Well, intelligent intelligent folks can disagree. I think the book of Deep Blue cy was better. There may be and there may have been a no I had no idea.
I just assumed there wasn't Maybe there was a novelization.
A quick search would indicate that there was not a novelization of Deep Blue Sea. Though you know, I'm very mention in favor of film novelizations, so I wish that it was not the case. All Right, We're going to do one last weird House Cinema listener mail. This one's from David and it contains major spoilers for Dark City. This is a response to our episode, our two part
look at the movie Dark City. So if you haven't seen Dark City and you would like to avoid those spoilers, and maybe this is a good time to go ahead and end your listening of this episode, But for those of you who are on boards or spoilers will continue. David says, hey, guys, it was great to hear you discuss Dark City on the two part Weird House Cinema. I remember first seeing this back in the nineties and
have rewatched it earlier this year. There is definitely a post matrix and other CGI movie lens that make some of the effects seem a little pedestrian. One thing that I never thought of until listening to the part two episode was the food situation. Your discussion of the automat and not being touched by human hands really sparked this. In the end, John defeats the aliens and gives everyone a beach, but is he now responsible for feeding all
of them? How did the aliens create the food? There are no farms, crops, or even livestock unless they are elsewhere housed on the ship. I presume that the aliens had to prepare all the food for the human's survival, or did they maybe use another methods such as injected nutrition. Either way, it's now John's responsibility to ensure this population does not starve. It's all well and good to give them hope of the beach, but I just don't know
how he can manage the nutritional infrastructure. There are also other things that go into functioning city that the aliens were taking care of. I can just imagine the massive amount of work that John just gave himself and wonder if he would have been better off the other way. The sequel to Dark City should be subtitled Getting Tired of This anyway. Thanks for the episode and the podcast. David, very good question.
Yeah, it's almost like you you go into a zoo and set all the animals free, and it's like you're great, now go live. But it's like, how are they gonna get food?
Yeah, Like we see those those great scenes where the strangers are meticulously like an assembly line preparing the pocket contents for everyone in the city. I can easily imagine they're also making sandwiches for the automad and so forth, you know, engaging in all of this work. And who's going to do that work? Now?
Yeah? No, I guess it's it's actually worse than the zoo example, because then you could imagine at least animals can forage, there'd be some chance, like this is a thing floating in space. Where does any of the food come from?
Yeah, unless unless on the other side, where presumably the sun or the sunlike energy so has been hanging out the whole time. Maybe they're vast crops and gardens and farms there. But yeah, we just don't know.
I guess one question is do we ever see what is the full extent of the tuning power that the aliens and John Murdock possess. Is it like the Star Trek Replicator. Can they just imagine objects into full existence out of bear atoms or do they do they? Is it more just kind of a telekinesis kind of shaping and moving power.
Yeah, we never see him tune a sandwich into existence. That would have answered a lot of questions.
Or the green jello from the automatic Yeah, make me green yellow.
Now it's the greenest food they know of in Dark City.
No one in Dark City has ever had a salad.
It's gonna blow their mind. Yeah, it's a.
City of just fried eggs and green jello. All right, does that do it for this episode?
I think that does it for this episode? But hey, we still had a list of males that we didn't get to for this episode, and you should certainly keep sending them in because we read everything that comes in. We don't get to read everything on the show, but if you send it, we will read it, at least to ourselves. And as we continue our journey through the holidays,
we're going to do more listener mails. We try to do one every month or so anyway, but there may be an opportunity to fit in an extra one as we proceed. In the meantime, we'll just remind everyone out there that's Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a science and culture podcast with core episodes on two season Thursdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
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 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.