Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener Mail. This is Robert Lamb.
And this is Joe McCormick again. Listener mail, of course, is what it sounds like. This is the type of episode we do where we get into the stuff that comes into our email address. If you are a listener to the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast, or your fan of even any of our subshows. If you like Weird House Cinema, you can write in any time and you may get your message featured on a listener mail episode like this one. Contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. We love all kinds of messages. If you just want to share something random that you think we would find interesting, of course, that's always welcome. We love feedback to recent episodes. If you have something to add to a topic we've talked about, if you need to provide a correction, if you have questions about you just want our opinion on anything, If you want to recommend a topic for us to cover in the future, if you want to say how you found out about
the show. All of that is fair game. Contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind. Dot com.
All right, let's dig into the old mail bag here.
All right, This first message is in response to our series on Manta rays. Rob, would you like to take this or should.
I sure I can do it? This one comes to us from Graham. Graham says, Hi, Joe, Rob and the team. After listening to your Manta ray episode, I had a couple of very quick thoughts for you both. Joe, you tried to recall a film with a glowing manta ray tighte being. Could you have been thinking of the creature in The Abyss? I seem to remember that being ray shaped.
Well, Graham, absolutely, that is exactly what I was thinking of. I was thinking of the I think it's sometimes called the NTI, the non terrestrial intelligence in James Cameron's The Abyss. This is, of course the sort of the top shelf of was it nineteen eighty nine, the year of the Underwater movies, where that we also got Leviathan and Deep Star six and like all came out at the same time. But this was like the biggest budget of them and
probably the most the most serious minded of them. This was a James Cameron film that I don't know, I think is remembered less than like the Terminator movies and Aliens and some of his other stuff, but it has a lot of virtues. There's good stuff about the Abyss.
Yeah, I've been meaning to check it out. Last time I really got into nineteen ninety nine underwater films. I don't think it had been released on Blu ray, or if it had, it was just like standard blue ray. And I think it's received a little bit better treatment since then anyway.
But yes, Graham, I looked up this image and there is one of the glowing underwater entities is absolutely manta ray shaped. Rob. I put a picture of it here in the outline for you to look at that. That is one hundred percent what I had in mind and couldn't remember.
Yeah, yeah, it's very mantilike. Obviously they're jellyfish shades to it as well. It's illuminated. It's great. I do not really remember it that much though. Anyway. Graham continues and says, Rob, have you tried bog Snorkeling? Could be a fun day
out for the family. Images attached all the best Graham from the South Dorset coast in the UK and the images here, And I believe these are now that I look at the tag on and these are Getty Images shots, and they are of people snorkeling in an English bog, so very brown water, not unlike the brown water sho'll encounter in non bog environments such as many lakes and
so forth. So I've you know, I've definitely gone swimming in waters this murky looking before, but I did not even know that bog snorkeling was a thing.
We talked about this in another episode, and I think we were a little confused at first, like is this a joke. It sounds contradictory, because I rob, you're the snorkeler here. I don't know what I'm talking about, really, but I assumed snorkeling was primarily a sight seeing activity that like, while you're snorkeling, you are, you know, you have the mask on and the snorkel on so that you can keep your eyes fixed underwater and look around and take in the sights of what's happening down there.
Is that the basically your experience.
That's my experience, that's the way we do it. And I I like a lot of sunlight. I like being able to see all the colors and if it gets a little flolly, you know, I'm kind of like, well, maybe it's time to get out of the water. But I also have to realize there's a lot of different types of snorkeling evidently, and a lot of different types
of diving. Like I hear when I go do these these excursions, will end up chatting with divers, and I hear about some of the crazy places some of these divers go diving, and and so I'm surprised but not but also not surprised that there is bog snorkeling.
But so yeah, so if you look up bug snorkeling, you will see people with snorkel and mask on, face down, swimming in a trench cut in a peat bog and rob if I can correct you, I think this is not in England. I think this is in Wales. But yeah, so it's in like there's one main place where I've seen like the multiple videos of this happening. I don't
know how more widespread it is. It might be in other places too, but in this like Welsh competition, they've got this trench dug and it's just this gross looking muddy water in the trench and people are snorkeling. They're essentially racing, so that's the answer to like, why would you snorkel in this bog. They're not actually seeing the sites. They're not trying to like glimpse the life at the bottom of the trench, because that would be impossible. The
water is totally opaque. It's a racing activity that seems to be done with some lightheartedness, like it looks like a cheese rolling kind of kind of spirit thing. The people are dressing up in costumes doing interviews beforehand. We watched a video of people who were doing I think it was like the twenty twenty four Bog Snorkeling Chainchampionships, and so there were people dressed up as shrimps and people dressed up as Kermit the Frog, and one guy
who was like towing a big banana float. It seemed only like half serious as an athletic competition and mostly like a chance to get out and have fun and do a kind of yurukyara spirit type activity.
My family and I recently traveled to Wales. Nobody mentioned this to us, and we did not, of course think to ask about snorkeling in Wales. But when you do a search for Welsh snorkeling, this is the main thing that comes up.
Yeah, I guess the Welsh coast is not known for like its blue water coral reefs.
I believe.
So.
Now if I look a little deeper, I do see some other things popping up that are not bog related. So I think there is some scuba diving and snorkeling in Wales that is not in a bog. But this is a new area for me, so I'm gonna have to learn more.
So to answer the question, is this a joke? No, but it's jokey like it is a real thing that people do. But it seems there's a lot of humor involved in the in the doing of it.
Yeah, it seems gleeful.
All right, you ready for the next message?
Yeah, let's see what we are.
This one comes from Michelle. This is a response to a long ago Invention episode on Spoons. I barely remember that. Michelle says, Hi, Robert and Joe, I wanted to say thank you for a probably unanticipated parenting tip from a very old episode many years ago, I think during the Invention days. During an episode on Spoons, Robert mentioned that he has a competition between various items in his dishwasher.
I have been listening since the five minute episode days and had and have no idea why this particular tidbit stuck in my mind, but it has proved extremely helpful. My recently turned four year old seems to have moved out of the phase of wanting to quote hell, but it's gotten more interested in counting. I remembered the dishwasher competition and have implemented it with my daughter, who will now happily empty the silverware caddy to count forks, knives,
and spoons to see who will win. I'm starting to introduce some simple math with it, like how many more spoons than forks. It's not as much of a competition now that it's hot an ice cream season has it, but she still enjoys it. Thank you again for the unintended parenting hack, Michelle rob I barely remember what this is responding to. What's this competition thing?
Ah, this is the thing that I used to do it, and I guess I still do it every now and then, where in order to sort of get through the boredom or tedium of emptying the dishwasher in the morning, I will think of it as a competition which are there more spoons or more forks or more knives in the dishwasher. Whichever team has the most representation in the dishwasher has won. So it's just the way of sort of keeping tabs as I loove the dishwasher and mildly amuse myself with
who's winning. And then if you think deeper about it, it's like you then you ask yourself, well, why did the spoons win? What did we have to eat yesterday? What did we have for dinner? Did we have a dessert that required spoons? And so forth. We do use a lot of spoons in our households. So on average, team spoon was the winner, but occasionally you know that the team knives would come out ahead, or even team forks. Yeah, you never know exactly what's going to happen in this sport.
I feel like it would be boring at our house because it would always be spoons. We just always have more spoons in there.
It's just I prefer the spoon. I used the spoon when I should use the fork. But I'm glad that not only was someone else able to find some amusement in this practice, but they were able to employ it in their daily life.
In fact, I would say I probably used chopsticks more than forks. I think my ranking would go spoon, chopsticks fork.
Yeah. Yeah, we do use a lot of chopsticks, and I'm sometimes inclined to use chopsticks when some might think I shouldn't. But it I don't know if Team Chopstick ever won because that, you know, you have to have to build up a lot of chopsticks. Really, I don't know if we have enough chopsticks to beat Team Spoon. Also, there's a I don't know, you can get really casual and even cavalier whether you use of spoons. At least
I find myself doing that. You know, you get a spoon out, single use and then he goes to the dishwasher. You're cooking, you need to taste what you've been cooking, while you just whip out a spoon, use it for tasting, and now you know, I'm not going to double dip, I'm going to put it in the dishwasher, and so by the time I'm done, it's like that's five spoons just from cooking.
Yeah, Rachel and I were talking about exactly this just the other day, about how like we'll be cooking and find ourselves in need of a spoon and realize we just dropped a spoon in the in the dish pile like four seconds earlier. I don't know, there's this habit to instinct to get rid of it when you're gonna need it again almost immediately.
You know. And I like putting peanut butter on things, but sometimes there's nothing to spread it on. I am not too proud to take a spoon, put it in the peanut butter and then just have the peanut butter plane. But again, I'm not going to double dip. I'm going to get a fresh spoon, even if it means that I'm going to go through five spoons just in the course of a snack. And I'm not going to use a knife. And what lick the knife? Gary oldman? Vampire style bloody peanut butter.
All right, let's see. You want to get into some of the responses about ice skates.
Yeah, let's do take your pick. All right, let's see, we'd just start at the top here. This one comes to us from Quinn on the subject of ice skating on frozen lakes. In your ice skate episode, you pondered about skating at a slower speed on frozen water bodies because of a fear of going through the ice.
Yeah, we were wondering about that because we didn't know, like if there is more of like a variable thickness in the ice on a lake, and like, would there be a danger that would make you kind of have to tread more carefully, like slow down because you don't know what's ahead of you. We didn't know because we don't have experience ice skating on natural bodies of water.
Well, Quinn chimes in here and says, most of the time this is not a factor at all. Ice s gets deep in cold places fairly quickly after freezing over, and you can clearly see how deep it is, similar to the way ice cubes crack when dropped into water, but do not come apart. Lake ice cracks. If you see the cracks go three inches deep, you're good to go. Most of the time, it's more like ten plus inches plus. Pickup trucks dragging ice fishing houses on the lake are
very reassuring. Pressure ridges can make local danger zones, But I have skated for miles without such obstacles. I'm fairly comfortable on skates, but lack sharp turning and fast stopping skills displayed by hockey and figure skaters. So the wide open spaces of a whole lake means I am not impeded by slower ice skaters and constant turns that are normal at indoor rinks, so I can skate faster. Lake skating is not, however, easier. It is quite rare that
the ice forms without any wind. The result is little ripples that you do glide over, but with a little chatter that is not as efficient as smooth ice. Also, it is common to have thin collections of snow that you can usually skate through, but with more drag, and occasionally those snow spots are deep enough to bring you to a quick but manageable stop. Of course, there can be exceptions to the normal. Once the lake had frozen deep, then there were a few warm days with rain before
going cold again. The rain mostly smoothed out the lake, but here and there were puddles that had not quite frozen through to the base layer of ice. Hit one of those and your skate breaks through The ice blade then has to either rip through the top ice sheet or come to a sudden stop. The ice would generally not give way. If you were on one skate, you could stumble through to solid ice, but if both stopped at once, there was nothing you could do to prevent
going down. On a totally different note back on the cotton candy episode, you commented that cotton candy is not that great tasting, as it is always the same sickening sweet flavor. There is a local vendor who shows up at my kids after school events who has a full menu of flavors. Not liking standard cotton candy that much, I have tried both chaiki and earl gray flavors. Sweet, yes, but quite enjoyable.
Oh thanks, Quinn. I'm honestly having a hard time imagining a tea flavored cotton candy.
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it does make sense that it would still be sweet. I mean, I don't think you can have anything but sweet cotton candy.
As it made of the sugar.
Yeah, having savory cotton candy, but but yeah, I hadn't really thought about there being any additional flavor profile to it, So I don't. No, I don't know if it's enough for me to actually try cotton candy again. But I don't know if there was somebody doing upscale bespoke cotton candy, I guess I would perhaps give into the temptation cotton candy.
Earl Gray hot.
Oh.
But also thank you Quinn for the feedback on what it's like to skate on lake ice. Yeah. Yeah, we have no experience here, so that's interesting. And we have another message on this subject from Taylor, who says a subject line here the freedom of lake ice. Hello, Robert and Joe. I enjoyed your recent episode on the Invention of ice skating, just as I've enjoyed all your episodes
for the past six years or so. In the episode, Joe speculated that a skater might feel more confident on a rink than on lake ice because the danger of thin ice is controlled. I have found just the opposite to be true. I grew up in Utah, where I only had access to a handful of ice rinks, and these were always thoroughly congested with skaters. My experience with ice skating was stalled permanently in that always remembering how it's done zone, and consisted mostly of trying to stay
vertical and not run into anybody on the densely packed rink. Frankly, I found ice skating miserable and never understood the appeal. Then last year, my wife and I moved to Minnesota. In Utah, I was a big downhill skier, but have traded my mountains for lakes. I have had to find a new way to stay active and enjoy the outdoors
in the long winter months. My wife and friends suggested ice skating, and at first I was hesitant, having only had my packed like sardines Utah rinks to inform my experience. But eventually I relented and tried my first skate on lake ice. It was a completely different experience. Without being crowded by bodies on every side, I felt free to explore my movement on the ice in a way I
had never been able to on a public rink. I progressed rapidly past the plateau skill I'd always been stuck at before, and experienced the euphoria of gliding fast and frictionless over frozen water. Now granted, these experiences were on well tested, thoroughly frozen lakes with little danger of falling through the ice. Many lakes in Minnesota also have sections conditioned by small hand pushed to Zamboni's to smooth out
the skating surface. But if you have never experienced skating on an open lake and you have the opportunity to do so safely, I would highly recommend it. I am thoroughly snobbish about rinks now and will shamelessly say that the experience doesn't even compare as always. Thank you for filling so many hours of my life with your thought provoking ruminations. I get a little spike of joy every time I see a new Mainline or Weird House episode
in the feed, Thanks tailor ps. I think the big factor here is the alleviation of social pressures created by a rink. If you take a spill on a rink, at best you embarrass yourself and inconvenience others, and worst you injure someone else. But on a lake you have enough space that messing up only means hurting yourself. That freedom to fail allowed me to enjoy the sport in a way I never could before.
Hmmm, Oh that's a good point.
Yeah, thanks Taylor, great perspective. I can totally see that.
Yeah. Like when I have I skated recently here in Atlanta, it is not only the fear of falling down, but falling into people or in front of people. And the only kind of ringks, to my knowledge that we have around here that we get during the colder months are going to be just your basic going around in a circle. And yeah, there are going to be a bunch of kids. Many of them are going to be using those little
trainer props you know, which can is good. It helps kids from falling down, but it also creates this kind of like additional obstacle that you might crash into.
In my experience, and I've gone in circles before.
I mean it's going in circles is great once you get it going though. Oddly enough, now coming back to Wales, when we were when we visited Wales, we did see some ice outdoor ice rinks there that were a lot more elaborate, like almost they kind of reminded me of some of the race tracks for hot wheels or whatever, the motocross, Yeah, that sort of thing, and I was really impressed. We did not really have time to check it out, but I was like, man, I kind of
wish we had ice skating like this back home. All right. This next one comes to us from l and this again is in response to our episode on roller skates. The listener here begins by mentioning that they were listening to our show. Then they listened to a different show, and then they came back to ours, and they were delighted to see that we had an episode on roller skates.
And they have the following to share. Personally, I remember going to roller skating rinks as a summer camp excursion in the very early nineties and always feeling a sort of dread whilst attempting to skate upon tiny va. The stopping mechanisms were always completely beyond my comprehension. Later, I remember roller skating rink birthday parties being a mild fad in late elementary school. I actually really enjoyed them because I was then wearing far more intuitive roller blades, as
they seem to function more like ice skates. Anyways, the main reason for my male is to bring to light a weird Shakespearean reference. Towards the end of the episode, you read a passage from Ja Harwood's Rinks and Rollers in which he states these violent beginnings have violent ends fifty eight to twenty. I include the time stampley the detail this.
Are you a librarian well.
Or perhaps a podcaster? Yeah themselves. This is a reference, perhaps unintentional, to Romeo and Juliet, when the character Friar Lawrence says these violent delights have violent ends, commenting on how Romeo and Juliet's intense passion slash love will ultimately lead to a tragedy of equal intensity spoiler for Romeo and Juliet, they continued. When I heard you read his lines, I thought, Jesus, surely roller skating will not result in
such genre defining tragedy. Best of luck in your continuous pursuit of knowledge. This is a great point, because yes, that quote was ludicrous. I mean there was that whole article was got kind of ludicrous, and that's why that's why I had to read it, because, Yeah, this idea that like this frenzy, this this lust for roller skating was just like unhealthy for the general public.
Because it would exhaust the body. Wasn't that one of the reasons they gave, like people shouldn't be getting this much exercise.
Well, yeah, and the argument too is I think the roller skating rinks are not open long enough for the rinkers, and so they're just getting in there and they're working way too hard. If you just remain open longer. Then they won't tire themselves out, so they won't just throw themselves at it so hard.
That is odd logic to say the least.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, so this. I don't think this came up when we were talking about our own experiences with roller skating rinks, But I just had a random memory now that the main roller skating rink that you know, where all the birthday parties in my elementary school were. So
I was going to this thing all the time. Uh it It had a roller skating section, but it also had an arcade with like, you know, cabinet arcade games like it had I think Mortal Kombat two or something, and I remember being in there and playing those arcade games with skates on, which was funny because you'd be standing there at the machine like trying to you know, press the buttons but losing your balance.
Also, yeah, it's still like that. I've been to a number of local Atlanta roller rinks and yeah, there's there's still going to be a line of arcade machines over on one side of the roller rank.
The kids can't be bothered to take the skates off to play them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there some du some, don't you know.
Yeah, But anyway, I thought of that because the violent delights have violent ends. I mean, there was some real violence at my roller skating rinks, but it was of the sort of cartoon video game variety.
All Right, what else do we have here, Joe in the old mail bag?
Okay, let's see, I'm going to do this message from Bow about phishing emails. And this has been a recurring subject on listener Mail since our episodes earlier this year on cynicism. The context was we talked in those episodes about how I think digital scams like these text message and email scams are more damaging than is often realized because they don't only hurt the people who get scammed
and lose the money. I think the kind of constant hum of ongoing scam threats in the background of our lives undermines general social trust, which is terrible for us in so many ways. So that's what we were talking about. And then Bo comes in here about these fishing emails. Hi, guys, after listening to your recent listener Mail episode where you touched on the subject of phishing fishing with a pH, I have to write you about a couple of experiences.
A few weeks ago, I received an email from FedEx stating that I was receiving a reimbursement payment click on the link for details. Obviously a phishing attempt, I thought and deleted the mail. However, a couple of weeks later I received a payment from FedEx of about two hundred and fifty dollars on my credit card. What but the amount did ring a bell. Several months earlier, I had helped some colleagues in Greenland with a shipment of some tires bought in the US for their flying club SESNA.
Shipping from the US to Greenland is expensive, so the plan was to send the tires to Canada, where I was attending an air Greenland aircraft in for heavy maintenance, and then put them on that aircraft when returning Greenland. Good plan, except there was a hefty customs fee charged by FedEx. I did the paperwork and payment not thinking much more about it. But as the tires were re exported, the fee was reimbursed, although it took a long time
and I had forgotten all about it. The moral of the story is that what looks like a duck and quacks like a duck may actually not always be a duck. In this case, what clearly looked like a phishing attempt was actually legit, but doing nothing did not hurt the situation. In any case, do not click on links, log into the company page separately, or call you know, Bo. It's funny. This kind of illustrates exactly what I was talking about with the undermining of general trust because of our awareness
of scams. Like, you see something that kind of looks like it could be a scam, so you just delete it and don't think a second thing about it. In the case, in some cases it actually turns out to be a real communication. Though you're right that you know, there's not a whole lot that seems to be gained from like actually clicking links and following through and you know, especially not going through a line to enter any information,
even if it is a real point of contact. You know, you can go the outside in way that Bo mentions, like you go to the company's website and you you know, contact them. But Bo goes on to say, the second thing is about active training to spot phishing or other malware distributed by email. There are plug in apps that companies can put on their mail server that allow any user to report suspected malware by one click on an icon. The brilliant thing is that the app sends out simulated
malware mails once in a while. If you spot it and report it, you get points and eventually quote batches and a ranking within your company. If you click it, you get a short instruction on how to spot it next time. It actually becomes a challenge like a game, where you are incentivized to constantly be on the out, on the lookout for suspect mails. Hawks Hunt is the
one I'm familiar with, but there are certainly others out there. Sorry, this mail became too long, but a shout out to encourage the use of mail training programs would be nice. Phishing slash malware is an increasing problem that can be devastating for companies, and such apps can help preventing it. Also, if your company does it, everyone becomes more alert, even on their private channels of communication. Best regards, BO from Copenhagen, Denmark,
sometimes Greenland and Canada. Well, BO, I assume many listeners are having the same thoughts Rob and I are here, which is like, oh, yeah, my company does this all the time. I don't know if we use a software
tool like the one you're talking about. But you know, people in all kinds of corporate environments are probably constantly getting from their local information security officer, getting little tricky emails that look like one of these various scam attempts, and you know, if you click the link, you'll get a little gentle like, hey, that's why you know you shouldn't do this. But they try to train you to be suspicious of them, and you know what, that's a
good thing to do. It certainly is. But at the same time, it does make me ignore legitimate emails. This has happened to me before.
I mean, basically the whole situation makes me assume all email is is a scam of some sort. Unfortunately, as we've been discussing, it just sort of like breaks down your trust. But but yeah, I do agree that these training programs are good. I you know, sometimes it might make me roll my eyes a little bit, but at the end of the day, it's like I it makes me a little sharper that oftentimes will break down the the email that they sent afterwards and say like, these
were the fishy parts. How many of these these these these suspect aspects of the email that you pick up on, and I think I find that pretty helpful.
But then it's also hilarious when, like the company actually does send you an email from an external address that has typos in it and wants you to click a link.
Yeah, and that's kind of what BO is referring to here, right, Like, eventually an official email email is going to come to you that has that is going to light up your suspicions one way or another. There'll be something weird about it, and it may be legit, but you know, it's kind of on them for making it look fishy to begin with. All right, let's move on to a little bit of weird house cinema, shall we.
Sounds great?
This one comes to us from Ariel Ariel Wrights and and says, I'm Ariel he from Argentina, writing to you for the second time. The first time you read my email on the show, it completely made my year. Stuff to Blow Your Mind remains my favorite podcast, especially because of your in depth explorations from multiple viewpoints and your eloquent ways of expressing complex ideas. I recently finished reading HG. Wells classic eighteen ninety five book The Time machine, and
I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd love to hear your perspectives, especially regarding a particular aspect that caught my attention, the method of time travel itself.
We've talked about this novel multiple times on the show. I'm sorry, I don't remember exactly all the episodes that's come up, but we've done fairly deep dives on it in the past. I think we certainly talked about it a bit in our Weird House Cinema episode on Time after Time, which is a fictionalized version of HG. Well's chasing Jack the Ripper through time in a time machine. But we've also talked about it in core episodes going
back many years now. But yeah, this is a book I've I read when I was in high school, and I remember being very interested in at the time, and I come back to it every few years and think about it in some new ways.
Yeah, it's a very readable book. It's quite short as well. Sometimes we might be a little suspicious of older books and we think they're going to be a little too crunchy for easy consumption, but this one goes down rather easily and has a lot of thought provoking ideas. And
some wonderful world building in it. Yeah, anyway, Aeriel continues and says, this is the earliest story I've encountered where the time traveler literally travels through time, experiencing it like a sort of accelerated fast forward, rather than instantly teleporting into another era. Often wondered why in teleportation style time travel, the traveler doesn't reappear floating in space, given that the Earth itself has moved. Wells's method neatly addresses the issue.
The character remains physically anchored as he moves forward in time, akin to tossing a ball straight up into the air and catching it on a rapidly moving plane. After finishing the book, I began looking into adaptations and learned that at least three films have been made based on this story. And he's about to list these movies. These are all films that we could potentially cover on Weird House Cinema. Obviously, the nineteen sixty film, directed by George Powell, celebrated for
its visual effects and closeness to the original novel. I should also add this film is responsible for giving us what we might think of as the iconic cinematic morlocks and then there's the nineteen seventy eight television film adaptation by Sun Classic Pictures. Not sure I've seen this one myself. I haven't either, And then we just referenced this one
on a recent episode of Weird House. The two thousand and two film, directed by Simon Wells, h G. Wells's own great grandson, which notably introduces major narrative changes, such as a romantic storyline and a different cause of civilization's collapse.
I think I've only seen the nineteen sixty film, and that was a long long time ago, so I basically have not seen any of these as an adult.
I saw the two thousand and two and when it came out, and I remember enjoying it. It's it's wild, but you get to see Jeremy Irons as an uber Morlock. So that's that's worth worth the ticket right there. Hey Yeah, So anyway, he continues and says, I decided to watch the nineteen sixty adaptation, but upon viewing the trailer, I realized there's only one way for me to truly enjoy it as part of a Weird House Cinema episode. Once I saw how the Morlocks the monstrous subterranean creatures of
the future were portrayed. It seemed perfect for a Weird House discussion. Thank you once again for your brilliant content. I hope you consider covering this fascinating story in It's a Aaptation sometime warm regards Ariel Argentina.
Thank you, Ariel. Yeah, great suggestion. I would be shocked if we don't come back to at least one of these time machine adaptations at some point.
Yeah. Yeah, we need to, so stay tuned, all right.
This next message comes from Maya. Maya says, Dear Robin Joe, since I listened to your episode on La Caabina. The original email here said I think Lacaeseta, but I'm positive Miamin's Lacabina, the telephone box movie that we covered on Weird House, the Spanish film and Lia says, since I listened to your episode on Lacabina a few months back, I've been meaning to write about El Angel Exterminador The Exterminating Angel, a classic by Luis Bouniel filmed in Mexico.
It explores many of the same themes and has the same aura of incomprehensible oppression as Lacabina that I guess many Spaniards felt after the Civil War and Franco's regime. It has many levels of weirdness that you might enjoy also, and just for your eyes, since I don't think it was ever dubbed, I recommend the short La Puerta The Door, also by Bouniell. It has a transcript that I guess can be translated, but in the end it can be
understood even without it. Perhaps you find it entertaining. Many other bouniel films have the same weird texture to them, for instance, Unpero and de Luz an Andalusian Dog. I'm sure that's come up on the show before. He and other Spanish refugees represent another side of Mexico's golden age of cinema, more serious perhaps, but not totally devoid of alien Fem's fatale best maya.
Oh yeah, this is this is interesting that that this listener should bring up The Exterminating Angel. I've never seen it, but it's it's been, always been. It's been on my radar for a while because in a supporting role. It does feature Claudio Brook, who continues to be I think one of my favorite Mexican actors.
Yeah, this has been on my list to check out for a while. I I haven't seen it yet either, though I had the classic experience of my freshman year of college was when I saw I learned it as in chin Andalou, the French name I guess the Andalusian dog. The film Bouniel I think, made with Salvador Dali, is that right where they There are many famous shots in it. The most famous is the cutting open of the eyeball where they substitute in. I think it was actually like
a sheep's eyeball that they slice open. You see the jelly come out, so it's like one of the original Gore films. But also has I remember just being very interesting in a lot of ways.
It is often that clip is often featured in any content that's talking about sort of like the power of cinema. So I've seen that clip multiple times without ever having actually watched the original production.
But yeah, absolutely. Once again, thank you for the recommendation, Maya, and thanks for writing in.
All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from a listener by the name of Chuck. Chuck says, Hello, Robin Joe. I have written in before, but again I wanted to say that the amount of care and attention to detail to the subject matter you bring to each
episode or series of episodes is impressive. You have trained me quite well to reserve my judgment on topics where I initially think I will have little interest, because you always managed to bring up interesting facets or divergent conversation threads that end up making excellent party conversation starters. So thanks for what you do. It is appreciated. However, I am writing today about several Weird House Cinema episodes and
I was curious to know your thoughts. Most importantly, though it is quite late to say at this point, and I add it's never too late write in any episodes. One, but thank you for covering a John Carpenter directed film, Prince of Darkness. I am old enough to remember the newspaper movie ads for it, and despite the poster really having so little to do with the actual content of the film, it definitely hyped my interest. My friends and I all went to see the movie on opening weekend.
We were not yet seventeen, but my friend's mother, who thought the movie was a Christian film about avoiding the temptations of the devil and that the R rating was due to a graphic depiction of the Crucifixion, bought our tickets and dropped us off at the theater.
Wow, that is a switcheroo.
I mean, I do have questions about the train of thought that led to that specific interpretation or the misinformation that led her towards that. But at the same time, I mean, when you have promotionary promotional material for films, especially without access to IMDb in the old days, you know, you ended up building these narratives out about what this film was, what its values were, and what kind of experience it would be. So, I mean I did that all the time.
But the mom bought them all tickets, thinking she was sending them in to see like an R rated left Behind.
Yes, I mean I know plenty of I've heard I think I mentioned this in our RoboCop episode. You know, I know plenty of people whose moms were like, oh, yeah, RoboCop. This sounds like it's the kid's movie. Here, you go, rented it four years you kids, just watch it tonight, you know, without even without looking deeper and just thinking like, it's a film about it's called RoboCop. How could that not be appropriate for children? All Right? I'll continue with
Chuck se okay okay. Chuck says, anyway, we love the film with all its weird mix of sci fi and horror. The science concepts went over our heads, but we loved the cast and sprinkled humor throughout. The final shot of the protagonist reaching out to touch the mirror and maybe about to really be able to reach through it, before the scene cutting to black sent a loud gas through the theater. As we walked home from the theater back to our subdivision, we passed by a small man made pond.
The night was windless, so the surface was you guessed it, like a mirror. We wondered how big the anti god of the film really was. Did the entity need a mirror surface this large to actually come through or was the entity going to come through the wall mirror like toothpaste from a tube. After all, the initial attempt with the makeup mirror was unsuccessful for being too small a portal, and did the entity need a mirror or just a
mirror surface? But we were all wigged out by that pond and by bathroom mirrors for a long while after we saw Prince of Darkness, and for many years afterwards, and many subsequent viewings. One of our in jokes is to refer to people we've met by saying that was Susan who radiologists classes. I totally, I totally get all
of these these thoughts about the mirrors. I love mirror based speculative fiction, horror, sci fi, and I I guess most of its horror and supernatural because, as I think we've discussed in the show before, it like digs into some basic human inabilities to understand mirrors at times, and when I watched something like Prince of Darkness or Oculus, or I read say Stephen King's The Reaper's Image or something like that, it does kind of mess with my
perceptions of mirrors for a while. And I may even think things like these mirrors we have today are irresponsibly large. Who knows what could crawl through? Borges being another, and he has some wonderful works about mirrors.
The mirrors are somewhat potent for me as a horror image for all of those reasons. Certainly, I mean, yeah, like the counterintuitive aspects of a mirror that you look in them all the time so you think you fully understand them. But as we've talked about on the show, like people actually intuitively incorrectly predict how mirrors work and kind of unfamiliar scenarios, like they misunderstand how the light reflects on them and how the angles work and everything.
So there is definitely all that. But also when I was a kid, when I was like in elementary school, I went through a mirror phobia phase. I think this was started by a kid at like a summer camp telling me about the Bloody Mary Party game, and I got freaked out, Like I was scared of that for a while. I don't still have any of that fear, but I think the mirror retains some horror potent, see, because I can kind of remember that.
Yeah, well, I'm not going to ask you to say your name two more times, so don't bring all right, Chuck continues and says, I also wanted to add a short comment and a brief board game suggestion based on your coverage and discussion of Akira Krissawa's Dreams. Specifically, you said that one of the film's main themes is respect for and attunement to nature through contemplation, meditation, and joy.
This theme seems to be all throughout Nyazaki's work as well, so I am curious how much influence came from that or if that was the general vibe in Japan at the time of production.
I don't know if you'd say it was the general vibe in Japan, but I would say that environmentalism and ecological consciousness is a popular theme with many artists in filmmakers in twentieth century Japan.
Yeah, and I have seen interviews with Nyazaki where he does refer fondly to Kurasawa's work and praises Kurisawa's work, so there's some connection there as well. Yeah, Chuck continues. Also because the game is amazing and follows the theme of respect for and attunement to nature as well, I heartily recommend earth Born Rangers by Earthborn Games, now in its second printing. Earthborn Rangers is an open world adventure card set I guess a card games set in a
post post apocalyptic Earth of the far future. Players take on the role of rangers who patrol a valley and encounter strange plants, animals, and eclectic people, artifacts and settlements. The game's environment interacts with itself in very interesting ways as the players explore. Additionally, all the art is highly reminiscent of Studio Ghibli films. Now, I have no stake in Earthborn Rangers. I'm just a player, but I can't
say enough good things about it. Between the art, the sci fi theme, and the way the game sticks with you after you play, It's like being in your own Miazaki film. My eleven year old loves it as much as I do. As a bonus, the entire game is sustainably produced. Thanks again for your time and your work since early Chuck, Well.
Thank you, Chuck. I never heard of this game, but it sounds interesting.
All right. I'm just good. I had never heard of this game either. I'm pulling it up here. I'm just scanning some of the art in Yeah, I'm getting getting a kind of relaxed Miyazaki inspired vibe, you know, from all of this, So I'm gonna have to check it out. We're always looking for good games in this household.
Yeah, I'll keep this in mind as well. On the subject of Miyazaki Robot, I don't know if I told you this yet, but just the past couple of weeks, we showed my daughter Kiki's delivery service and it was a big hit, and so she's she's riding her broom around the house right now, she's a witch.
Oh that's awesome. You know, my kiddo was really into two Kiki, maybe around the same age. Now refresh my memory. Your kids watched Totoro already, right?
Yes, basically the only two full movies she's seen are My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service. And she's watched part of Rock and Roll Wolf.
Yeah. Well, just speaking for me as Acui films, I think, in my opinion, those are definitely the two to start with and from there, I don't know. We switched on to nausicaa pretty early, just because I love it so much, and I felt like every kid's different obviously, but I felt like mine could handle it.
But I can't wait to show Nausica to her though I know it's that one's got some scary stuff in it. I think I need to wait till she's a bit older.
Pontio was another one that we watched pretty early, but like with all of these, they touched on some serious elements, and you know, every kid's different. Again. When we showed Ponio to our kid, initially they were not into Ponto's father at all. Who's voiced by Liam Neeson in the Dutch version. They were like, he's way too serious, He's way too serious.
Yeah, I never get tired of the Small Child as movie critic routine. I mean, I'm interested in their opinions.
Yeah, but back to Keiki, Yeah it's terrific. I love the dub and just love the film.
Yeah, just beautiful.
So good. All right, let's see what do we else do we have? Looks like we have just a couple of quick emails where people are pleading with us to cover certain pictures. Do you want to take one of these and then I'll take the other? Oh? Sure?
Yeah. So the first short one is from Louisa. Luisa says, Hi, guys, as always, you are my favorite company for my chore doing time, both your Core episodes and Weird House. I recently came across this movie and immediately thought of you two Colossus the Forbin Project. I didn't write the year, but I think this was from nineteen seventy if I remember correctly, Luisa says, let me know if you've watched it already. Lots of love. Well, Louisa, thank you for
the recommendation. This is already on my list, and I do hope to get around to it sometime. Though it is about a I think a giant killer artificial intelligence or supercomputer, which is a subject that I don't know. Just a few years ago I thought was a lot more fun and feel good, And now that's the subject to that genuinely kind of freaks me out.
Yeah yeah, yeah, So maybe that means it's it's the wrong time or it's the absolutely the right time to discuss Colusus the Foreman Project. It's not one that I've seen, but I've long been familiar with it. I would I could be misremembering here, but what I want to say that Joel Hodgson of m ST three K was a fan of this film, though you know, I don't think it was ever rifted or anything like that.
Well, either way, it is on the list and I hope to check it out sometime in the near future.
All right, And then Aaron writes it and says, this may be a type of and I'm going to read it as written. Hell Robin, Joe Poulder, guys, please pretty please do Poulter, guys. Thanks warm regards, Aaron.
The regards have got to be warm. They're coming from Hell.
Yeah, we we've referenced Polder Guys before. I have a lot of thoughts about Poulder Guy. I don't know. I don't know. I have a lot of thoughts about Polar Guys. But it was perhaps the film that scared me the most as a child. Somehow I was able to watch part of polter Geist as a child, like on a VHS tape, and it just really wigged me out, and I've gone. I was resistant to returning to it for a long time. Then I rewatched it and I found
a lot to love about it. Some of the effects didn't hold quite as well, but some of the effects are amazing. There's we could easily do a Poltergeist episode for sure. Yeah, even if we did, like there's Polder Geist is. I feel like it's a film that is sometimes overshadowed by various stories about its production and speculation of like, oh, did Toby Hooper direct it? Or did Steven Spielberg secretly directed and so forth? And I don't know.
I feel like if we would have to acknowledge that discussion, but I think we would probably focus more on the picture itself and all the amazing, weird and sometimes stupid things that happen in that movie.
I think we've briefly talked about the kind of roller coaster tone that some elements of it or are more like a have more of that Spielberghia kind of the family focused, a little bit more family friendly of a story, even if it gets a little scary. And then you've got these little stabbing moments like the face melting in the mirror scene that I just feel like they're from something else.
Yeah, yeah, and then oh like just like the weird white dragon from the other side, and then the little girl getting stuck into television. There's so many, so many things in that that that really did creep me out as a kid. And you know, when you're a kid, you're I don't know, you're you're more susceptible to some of these things and gets in your gets in your mind, it embeds itself. And yeah, so Poultry Guys has has a special place in my heart for being weirdly traumatized.
All Right, We're gonna go and close up the mail bag for now, but keep it coming right in about anything we discussed in this episode, anything we've covered in recent episodes of stuff to blow your Mind, short form episodes, and certainly Weird howse Cinema right in We would love to hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes
on Wednesdays 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 at 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.