0:02

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production

0:05

of My Heart Radio. Hey,

0:09

welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener

0:11

Mail. My name is Robert Lamb and

0:13

I'm Joe McCormack. In today we're bringing

0:16

you some of the messages you have sent us are

0:18

loyal mail bot. Carney is right here

0:20

with us. It seems he has developed quite

0:22

quite a card shark habit over

0:24

the last week or so. He's wearing one of those green

0:27

visors or wait, is that what poker

0:29

players wear? Or is that like accountants

0:32

may have gotten that next time. I think

0:34

I've seen some card sharks wearing those things. Yeah,

0:36

well they're trying to hide their expressions, right, so

0:38

they wear like a hat and sunglasses and who

0:40

knows what else at the table? Did any poker

0:42

players just full on wear ski mask? I

0:45

think it's frowned upon. I think

0:47

it's frowned upon. But I'm sure that this,

0:49

this new poker habit for Carney has been inspired

0:52

by the card playing robots of Silent

0:54

Running, one of our favorite films. Oh

0:56

yeah, that's right, there's some there's some great card card

0:59

playing robots in that one Hue we do and Louis

1:01

Um those are some wonderful

1:03

scenes and in large part because they're like a little

1:06

bit they're a little bit clunky, you know,

1:08

they're not They're not smooth.

1:10

Those robots are the way that they interact with

1:13

humans in their environment, but in a way

1:15

that felt very real, very

1:17

endearing. I loved it. Well,

1:19

that'll come back up later on Robbert.

1:26

You ready to jump right in? Should I read

1:28

this message from Cody? Go for it?

1:30

Okay, here is a sort

1:33

of correction slash clarification on

1:35

the Jupiter episode. At least from Cody's

1:37

perspective, this starts high Joe

1:39

plus Robert. I'm currently listening

1:41

to part one of the Jupiter episodes, and

1:43

as a recovering astronomer, I had to dash

1:46

off this message when talking about whether

1:48

our solar system is unusual

1:50

or abnormal is compared to other planetary

1:53

systems. It is crucial to keep in mind

1:55

that the detection techniques that astronomers

1:58

used to find extra solar planets

2:00

preferentially biases their

2:02

detections toward large planets

2:05

close to their parents star. In other

2:07

words, planets that tug a lot on their star

2:10

or include its light on short

2:12

periods. And to expand

2:14

on that a little bit. So some of the main ways

2:16

we've had in the past of checking

2:19

whether another star has an

2:21

exoplanet orbiting it is by

2:23

things like the radial velocity test,

2:25

which checks to see if the host star

2:27

is wobbling basically by the

2:30

gravitational pull of a large planet orbiting

2:32

it, or by the yeah, as

2:34

Cody alludes to hear, the occlusion of its light.

2:36

So like, if there is a transit where a planet

2:38

passes in front of a star from

2:41

our perspective, we will proceed that as

2:43

a brief dimming of the star as the planet

2:45

passes between the star and our observation

2:48

technology. Uh and and there's some other

2:50

methods as well, but those are some of the main

2:52

ones. And you can see why it would be easier to detect

2:55

planets that are larger and

2:57

have certain types of certain types

2:59

of orbital orientations based on

3:01

those sorts of methods. But Cody

3:04

continues, in fact, the upper

3:06

limit on the orbital periods for the current

3:08

detection regime is roughly half the

3:10

period of a typical postdoctoral

3:12

fellowship go figure. So

3:14

it just isn't accurate to say that our Solar

3:16

system is unusual, since we simply don't

3:19

know. It may in fact be the most

3:21

common kind of planetary system,

3:23

but we are as yet completely incapable

3:25

of detecting another one like it, Cody.

3:28

So thanks for that, Cody. So I would say, unless

3:31

it got left out by accidents somehow, I'm

3:33

pretty sure in the episode we did talk about

3:35

the idea that our current detection

3:37

methods for exoplanets could

3:39

very well be biasing our surveys of

3:41

what types of planets are out there. Though

3:43

I believe, if I understand correctly, Cody is

3:46

putting it more strongly here, saying

3:48

not just as we did that they could be biasing

3:51

our picture of how common different planetary

3:53

structures are, but that they almost

3:55

certainly are biasing it. Fair

3:57

enough, all

4:03

right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Joshua

4:07

Joshua rides Hi, Robert and Joe, longtime

4:09

listener, first time writing. Really love the

4:11

show and the symbiosis you create between

4:14

all the best subjects. I

4:16

was listening to the Jupiter episodes and heard

4:18

you both questioning how big the stone Chronus

4:21

uranus swallowed in place of the

4:23

baby Zeus. Well, I knew

4:25

I heard about it before, and sure enough, there is

4:28

a historical sculpture held

4:30

as being the same stone see attached

4:32

picture. Apparently apparently

4:35

this is it also known as the umphal

4:37

of stone. It's an example of

4:39

a beatless or sacred stone. The

4:42

mythological record says the stone was

4:44

also used by Zeus to decide where

4:46

the center of the world was no surprise,

4:49

he picked Delphi and that's where he placed

4:51

this stone to market and

4:53

yeah, indeed you can look up images of this. There's

4:55

a Wikipedia article on this that has some

4:58

yeah, decent music, the photographs

5:00

of them. Um Anyway, they

5:03

continue. It's certainly bigger than I ever imagined

5:05

a baby god would be. But I guess when

5:07

you're dealing with deities it's probably going to be

5:09

a bit subjective. Thanks guys, keep

5:11

doing what do you do your friend, Josh?

5:14

Oh, thanks Josh. It looks kind of like a beautifully

5:17

decorated giant stone bullet.

5:20

Here's the question. Was it decorated before it

5:22

was ingested by a god or

5:24

did it? Was it inscribed like this

5:27

by virtue of being ingested by a god?

5:29

Also, you're saying not carved by a human

5:32

in recognition of having been vomited up

5:34

by Chronus. But it was actually carved by

5:36

Cronus's guts, like when he swallows

5:38

a stone it starts making little

5:40

lacy patterns on the things inside.

5:43

Yeah, why not? I mean the physiology

5:45

of the gods has to be something spectacular.

5:48

Three cheers for god guts. Yeah. Okay,

5:56

you're ready for Dad Jokes, as

5:59

as ready as anyone ever is. Okay.

6:01

This first message comes from Eden.

6:04

Eden says, Dear Robert and Joe, in your

6:06

recent Dad Jokes episode, you' all brought up the

6:08

lack of a signifier or punctuation

6:10

mark in written text that conveyed sarcasm.

6:14

I wanted to shout through my phone that there already

6:16

is an existing signifier of sarcasm

6:18

in written text, and it does not ruin

6:20

the joke to use it. Rules for writing

6:23

sarcasm have evolved naturally on

6:25

the Internet, and we see them every day.

6:27

In fact, often it is not punctuation

6:30

so much as a lack of punctuation.

6:32

It's use as a form of rhetorical speech

6:34

is described here, and Eden

6:37

includes a link to a Tumbler post arguing

6:39

in short that within Tumbler

6:42

there has evolved a linguistic convention

6:44

that sentences presented

6:46

without punctuation can

6:48

be understood in an ironic

6:51

or rhetorical manner. So an example

6:53

kind of like what's used in this post would be a

6:55

sentence like why did Taco Bell

6:57

give me seventeen sauce packets for

6:59

one taco? The sentence would feel

7:01

very different depending on whether or not you actually

7:04

include a question mark at the end of it. If

7:06

there's a question mark at the end of it, people might

7:09

be tempted to answer the question

7:11

to say like, oh, maybe it's because of

7:13

this, or you know that they could interpret it in different

7:15

ways. If you don't punctuate it at all,

7:17

it's somehow kind of understood that

7:20

this is just like a joking or rhetorical

7:22

question, and you're probably exaggerating

7:24

with the number. I'm

7:27

I'm, I don't know. Yeah, I'm

7:30

just kind of a stickler for including

7:32

your punctuation. I don't know, I I'm.

7:35

We take a lot of convincing to

7:37

to get me behind the idea of just not using

7:39

punctuation on a sentence, or to just

7:42

in order to use no capitalization, etcetera.

7:45

You mean you're you're not really familiar with

7:47

this convention on the internet, or just that you don't approve

7:49

of it. Oh well, both mean. I

7:51

mean if I was more, if I was more accustomed

7:54

to it and their apps, I'd be more into it. But like

7:56

my gut reaction is, if we have to choose between

7:58

sarcasm and proper functuation,

8:01

we choose punctuation, and we we

8:04

erase sarcasm from our our culture.

8:06

Okay um. Eden goes

8:08

on a lack of punctuation or

8:11

a period where there should be a question mark,

8:13

or even all caps are an immediate

8:15

signifier of sarcasm. Uh,

8:17

this linguist on the toast can explain

8:20

it better than I can. And then again Eden links

8:22

to a to an article. This is an

8:24

article by a linguist named Gretchen McCulloch

8:27

who explains several ways that sarcasm

8:29

or irony is often conveyed in written language

8:32

today on the Internet, often by

8:34

intentionally incorrect spelling, by

8:36

lack of punctuation and capitalization.

8:39

All these things can sometimes be used to convey

8:42

sarcasm or irony. And yeah, I recognize

8:44

these conventions. I've seen them on

8:46

Twitter in places where like a where

8:49

a statement in a post is denoted

8:51

as ironic or sarcastic by

8:53

being presented say, like in all lower

8:55

case with no punctuation. I

8:59

mean, I can some of these tools. I guess I

9:01

can get more behind the all caps thing. I

9:03

can understand that, and I guess I've probably used

9:05

that before, um

9:08

and any. I guess even intentional

9:10

misspellings have a place, especially

9:13

if you're trying to sort of present

9:16

a a specific dialect,

9:19

you know, or impersonating specific

9:21

individual um

9:24

or um you know, like say there's a particular celebrity

9:26

you're trying to uh to

9:29

summon, you know, an image job or to invoke

9:32

in the writing. I think that would make sense.

9:34

I think I've realized one thing I do is

9:37

that often if I'm talking to somebody

9:39

I work with and I want

9:41

to deny I don't think I would ever put this together

9:43

before, but I've realized I often

9:45

denote sarcasm or irony by

9:48

including somewhere in the sentence

9:50

a business buzzword that I would

9:52

never actually use in a genuine

9:54

manner. That that. Yeah, that

9:56

that could work for sure as

9:58

a as a signify or something like that. Yeah, But

10:01

I guess part of it. I guess a lot of this does

10:03

come down to, you know, what we talked about before, about

10:05

how do we know someone is being sarcastic?

10:09

You know, there's there's tone, and there's context.

10:11

And if you're if

10:14

if you're using the buzzwords, are you perhaps

10:16

leaning more into context a bit? I don't know, Um

10:19

yeah, I mean that would rely on the person sort

10:21

of knowing me well enough to know that these

10:23

are not terms that I genuinely use,

10:26

So that probably wouldn't work for like an

10:28

audience that didn't know who I was, But

10:31

so, yeah, I guess that that would be a context thing.

10:33

I think the like denoting sarcasm

10:35

or irony or rhetorical speech by doing

10:38

say, all lowercase with no punctuation,

10:40

that does seem to be an attempt to

10:42

use a written version of tone. It's

10:44

kind of like when you use the silly voice to say

10:47

something. Yeah, well, I mean I applied

10:49

people out out there in the field trying

10:51

to to figure this out. Even if even

10:54

though there's some of these tools or maybe not

10:56

for me, uh you know, perhaps

10:59

they work and if they may communication better in these

11:01

uh these formats, then you know, I guess

11:03

it's a win win anyway. Eden concludes,

11:06

My point is that we will never have something as

11:08

straightforward as a single mark to convey

11:10

sarcasm, because, as you pointed out

11:12

in the episode, that such an obvious pronouncement

11:15

might spoil the joke. But we do have

11:17

unofficial linguistic rules about how

11:19

we expressed sarcasm through text. Love

11:22

the show Eaten. Well, that's all good. Thanks

11:24

for writing in and sharing this. Yeah, this a little much

11:26

of this is a world I'm not familiar

11:29

with. All

11:34

right, here's one from Carlos. Hey there.

11:36

Just wanted to add to your dad joke stories.

11:39

My dad is from Argentina, and often

11:41

when I was a kid, he would try to translate

11:43

jokes from Spanish. Almost every time,

11:45

my dad would arrive at the punchline only to

11:48

realize that the joke didn't translate. Also,

11:50

I don't know if this is just me, but I

11:52

have noticed that curse words and other languages

11:54

never have the same kick that they do in one's

11:57

native language. Slang from Argentina,

11:59

bay In, how my dad has explained

12:02

it to me, can be pretty foul. As

12:04

such, my dad often told dirty jokes or jokes

12:06

that hinged on bad words, impolite company

12:09

teachers, pastors, etcetera. Uh

12:11

So, not only did they usually fall flat,

12:13

they often were on the vulgar side, embarrassing

12:16

back then hilarious. Now thanks

12:18

for everything, Carlos. Nothing

12:20

better than telling dirty jokes to the pastor alright.

12:29

This next message comes to us from Jim and New Jersey

12:32

about part one of our episodes

12:35

on post biological intelligence. Jim

12:37

says Robert and Joe in your

12:39

Machine Lords of Barnard six, Part

12:41

one, Joe was reading from Susan Schneider's

12:44

AI comments comparing silicon

12:46

versus organic processing, and

12:49

she mentioned seven manageable chunks

12:51

being the limitation of a human brain.

12:54

You mentioned Miller, but didn't seem to

12:56

know the reference yet. She referred to Miller

12:58

as the citation for that seven chunk's claim,

13:00

but we talked about how we didn't follow up on that. Well,

13:03

Jim has the explanation here. Jim

13:05

rights, she's referring to George Miller's

13:07

cognitive psychological paper the Magic

13:09

number seven plus or minus two. It's

13:12

referring to short term memory. Humans

13:15

can manage about seven things in their

13:17

short term memory, but it varies per

13:19

individual by plus or minus two.

13:22

The things we can manage are not just numbers,

13:24

letters, or words. Each slot

13:27

can manage a single chunk, That is

13:29

it can be a composite idea with several

13:31

parts, but we still consider it a whole.

13:34

I've heard that one of the original tests

13:36

involved showing chess peace configurations

13:39

to chess novices and masters. They

13:41

had a fixed amount of time, let's say sixty

13:44

seconds to examine the board, and

13:46

they were tasked with reconstructing it.

13:48

The chess masters did much better than the

13:50

novices, but then instead

13:52

of actual chess game configurations,

13:55

both sets of volunteers were shown random

13:57

chess peace configurations, and the

13:59

novice says and master has got about the same

14:01

number of pieces correct. In the chess

14:04

game portion of the test, a cluster

14:06

of pieces in the corner would appear as

14:08

six or seven pieces and require

14:11

almost all of the short term memory slots

14:13

for the novice. However, the chess master

14:15

would recognize them as a castling

14:18

position, and this castling chunk

14:20

would would only require one short

14:22

term memory slot. Likewise,

14:25

other familiar chess piece configurations

14:27

would chunk for the chess master. The

14:29

chess master doesn't have more memory.

14:32

The chess master has additional information

14:34

about the game to chunk it

14:37

more efficiently than the novice. Random

14:39

configurations contained no chunks,

14:42

so the master could only remember seven

14:44

pieces, which was the same as the novice.

14:47

And this makes sense to me because if you have something

14:49

that's sort of already understood

14:51

as a whole and and stored in your memory

14:53

in a way, you could store it much

14:56

more efficiently. Like you could probably

14:58

remember seven whole lines

15:01

from movies that you've watched a million times

15:03

and you've got the lines already memorized,

15:06

but you couldn't remember as easily nearly

15:08

as much of the dialogue of a film that you

15:10

were unfamiliar with and being exposed to

15:12

for the first time. You could remember, Oh, it was this

15:15

line from that film, and that's one piece

15:17

of information in your brain. Yeah.

15:20

Anyway, Jim goes on, chunking exists

15:22

in most skills and hobbies. If a concept

15:24

has its own name, it's probably a

15:26

chunk. Referring back to Susan

15:29

Schneider, a human short term memory

15:31

has seven slots. A computer does

15:33

not have this limitation Jim in New

15:35

Jersey, Well, thanks Jim, that that fills in

15:37

something very relevant. Yeah, and it also

15:39

kind of makes spell slots in dungeons and dragons

15:42

uh less um

15:44

yeah, less of an abstract concept, right,

15:46

I mean, it's just like, yeah, you only have so many slots.

15:48

You can only have so many spells prepared. But

15:51

each spell is one chunk if you know it well

15:53

enough. Yeah,

15:59

all right, And then we one message about spoon.

16:01

It's not very long. It is just from a listener who

16:03

signed their email quote. Just a signature

16:06

here, so I hope that works. Uh.

16:09

And the messages saw this

16:11

and it reminded me of your discussion about the sport.

16:13

I think actually what you're talking about is our our

16:16

refusal to discuss the sport. But

16:19

this listener says you'll enjoy the foon

16:22

and then attaches a picture. One is a sport.

16:25

So it's the bowl of a spoon with some times

16:27

at the end. The foon is a fork

16:29

in which each of the times ends in

16:32

a tiny spoon bowl. Yeah, it's

16:34

it's pretty weird looking. Even the spork looks weird

16:36

because it looks like it was Perhaps

16:38

it's it's it's if it's a like a fine

16:41

silver spork, which I

16:43

guess probably it probably exists. But

16:46

this looks like it was, you know, perhaps

16:48

created in photoshop. Rob. I can tell you're

16:50

about to lash out in anger. Let's let's move on to

16:52

something else. All

16:59

right, just a uh comes to us from brad

17:01

Um and it's a response to our episode

17:04

Gold Medal of the Sun. Dear Robert and Joe,

17:06

I am writing about your episode on Gold. I don't believe

17:08

you mentioned one of Gold's most interesting properties.

17:11

It's heat shielding prowess. Approximately

17:14

point eight ounces sixteen grams of gold

17:16

foil is used in the engine bay of

17:18

each McLaren F one because

17:20

it protects the carbon fiber body

17:23

and the mono

17:25

cue frame and chassis from heat,

17:27

the heat of the engine. Are we talking about a car here,

17:30

by the way, Yeah, I think this is like it's

17:32

like a racing car of some kind of

17:34

very very fast, high performance car. Yeah,

17:37

because I was thinking of like a like a like a

17:39

fighter plane. It's like, I don't don't recognize

17:41

McLaren as as as

17:43

a company that makes fighter jets, so I

17:45

don't. So I'm not familiar with this word

17:47

that mono cock or mono monoc

17:50

quay, whatever

17:52

that is. Yeah, Anyway,

17:54

they continue. This was a choice by Gordon

17:56

Murray, the chief engineer of the car. The

17:59

gold foy old lined engine bay is

18:01

one of two distinct design features

18:03

of this car. The other big design distinction is

18:05

the three seats. Here's a link

18:07

to the Wikipedia article, which they include

18:10

for us. Um. I've been listening

18:12

on and off for a couple of years, but I have started

18:14

listening frequently since I've been working from home. Keep

18:17

up the great work, especially with the Weird House Cinema

18:19

series. Regards Brad. Thanks

18:21

Brad. All Right, I am looking at the Yep,

18:24

that's a pretty fancy looking car. Um,

18:27

let's see. Yes, okay,

18:31

this is Bond villain

18:33

car. Yeah, maybe you have

18:35

more perspective on this. I've got a question here. Is

18:37

there a point at which a car starts

18:40

looking so cool that it goes

18:42

over the line and it's not cool and

18:44

instead it's kind of dorky? Um?

18:48

Maybe? I mean, I don't know you Occasionally,

18:51

you know, I guess I see a lot of normal looking

18:53

cars rolling around, uh,

18:55

the neighborhood. You know that you usually don't pay

18:58

much attention to them, and occasionally, like even

19:00

things like, at least to my eyes, even

19:02

when there's like a tesla there, I have to really

19:04

look at it to realize it's a tesla. Um

19:07

where until I'm finally like, WHOA

19:09

the student's dropping off his kids at school? And

19:11

a Tesla. What's that about? Um? But

19:15

I guess occasionally you do see a

19:17

car that is like so fancy

19:19

or so antique that it

19:21

is just I I grabbing.

19:24

UM. I don't know what extent it

19:26

becomes uncool. I'm

19:28

I guess it just depends on

19:30

on how judgmental you are about how people,

19:33

uh you know, um, how

19:36

people spend their money and you know, what they choose

19:38

to drive around in. UM. I

19:40

guess it's possible, but it would be very, very

19:42

subjective. Except for the headlights.

19:44

I'm not sure I would be able to tell which end

19:46

of this car is the front. Yeah,

19:49

I don't know. It's kind of I imagine. I'm not a car

19:51

person, so I don't really get excited about cars

19:53

and all. But I think one area

19:55

I might be able to compare it to would be

19:57

like my my interest in things like

20:00

inks and and military

20:02

aircraft, which, on

20:04

on one level, I can definitely look at a bomber

20:06

or a tank and be like, Wow, that's a really cool looking

20:08

air plants a neat design, And on the other hand,

20:10

I'm like, that is okay, that's that's a weapon

20:13

of war that probably or

20:15

in many cases definitely caused a

20:17

lot of death, destruction and misery and pain.

20:20

Um, But on some level

20:22

you kind of separate the two when you're considering

20:24

just pieces of technology like that. Uh.

20:27

And granted, if you're talking about like a Lamborghini

20:30

or something, it probably didn't lead

20:32

to uh, you know, the same level

20:34

of of death and misery that a uh

20:36

you know, like an M one tank did. But

20:39

still you kind of they're probably different ways

20:41

that we engage in thinking about it. So we might be able to

20:43

look at a car and be like, oh, that's a really cool car

20:45

without thinking is that a wise

20:48

use of one's money? Is that appropriate to drive

20:50

on these streets? So what does that say about inequality

20:53

in our in our world or our nation

20:55

that sort of thing. Uh? So I don't

20:57

know not to lay all that on this one particular

21:00

their car. No, No, it's

21:03

a it's it's a cool looking car. I

21:05

will admit if I saw it driving down the

21:07

street, I would say, Wow, that's a cool car. I

21:10

jump right in front of it.

21:13

It would be an honor could get run

21:15

over by this car, something I

21:17

really get excited about. I live close to railroad

21:19

tracks, and I think one of my favorite things in the

21:21

world are maintenance vehicles on railroad

21:23

tracks? Yeah, I get really excited

21:26

about those. I point them out to my family and

21:28

mostly they don't care. But

21:30

but yeah, if there's some sort of strange

21:33

vehicle that's cleaning the tracks or

21:35

enabling the maintenance of the tracks, or even

21:37

just a truck on the tracks, you know, um that

21:40

I that that stuff. That's something

21:42

I really get excited about. So if I imagine

21:44

there are people who get that level of excited about

21:47

sports cars and all, and I can, I can acknowledge

21:49

that I'm right here with you. I think I have much more

21:51

enthusiasm about reil based

21:53

vehicles. Yeah, oh yeah,

21:55

yeah, I still occasionally, Unfortunately

21:58

I don't have them every night. I have semi

22:01

recurring dreams about getting to ride

22:03

special train cars on like

22:05

the subway or our local rail system here

22:07

in Atlanta, though it's usually kind of like an unreal,

22:10

uh subway system I'm engaging in, but like

22:12

a chance where oh I get to ride this

22:15

like open vehicle that's traveling

22:17

through the subway tunnels or some sort of bizarre

22:20

say, and it it like it occurs

22:23

with some regular frequency,

22:25

and my my dreams I don't always remember it all that well,

22:27

but yeah, something about strange train

22:30

cars. I'm I'm just really drawn to. I

22:32

thought you were going to say, like a fancy you

22:34

know, orient express style,

22:37

uh dining car on

22:39

Marta. Oh, I would be up

22:41

for that as well. Yeah, one of my favorite

22:44

museums. Uh. There are so many great museums

22:46

in New York, but the Public Transit Rail

22:48

Museum is so great because it's

22:50

an actual subway station and it's

22:52

filled with just different historical train

22:55

cars and you can just walk through them and explore.

22:57

It's it's wonderful. Oh that sounds cool. Maybe

23:00

one day huh yeah, yeah, one

23:02

day I'll get back up there. Alright.

23:12

This next message is about the Fatim Organa

23:14

episode. This comes from Alexander.

23:16

Alexander says, Hello, Robert and Joe.

23:18

Hope you guys are safe and well. I've been

23:20

a fan of the podcast for some years now, and

23:23

to someone who listens mostly to comedy

23:25

shows, your weekly discussions give me

23:27

real food for thought. I love the informal

23:29

and really interesting tone of the conversations

23:31

and the themes of the episodes. So when hearing

23:33

the episode about the Fatim Morgana,

23:36

I couldn't help but think of a minor

23:38

character of the anime Narudo.

23:41

And as you guys ask for representations

23:44

of the shin in media, here

23:46

you go. Also, English is not my first

23:48

language, so bear with me. No

23:50

worries at all, Alexander rob what's a

23:52

quick refresher on the shin Oh.

23:55

A giant clan that lives in the deep

23:57

and belches up a column

24:00

of of ectoplasm that

24:02

forms like fairy castles

24:04

and cities in the sky, on

24:06

the horizon, in the in

24:09

the Sea of Japan. Yeah, amazing,

24:11

like giant clam monsters burping up

24:13

bubbles that turn into visions. Yeah.

24:15

And if you and yeah, you don't want to go following

24:17

it because it's not really there. You can't really live

24:20

there, you can't really explore it. Um

24:22

you know, it's it's fairy fire that will lead you to your

24:24

down excellent summary. The message

24:27

continues. So Naruto

24:29

is a pretty famous anime that tells the

24:31

story of Naruto Uzumaki, a

24:33

young ninja who seeks recognition

24:36

from his peers and dreams of becoming

24:38

the the hokag I think

24:40

the leader of his village, while dealing

24:43

with the mythical spirit of the Kyubi,

24:46

a nine tailed fox sealed in his

24:48

body. The Shin appears during the

24:50

fourth Shinobi World War Arc,

24:53

one of the final ones. The creature

24:55

is a pretty straightforward representation of

24:57

the Chinese myth and also has

24:59

the ability to create mirages and

25:01

delusions. The giant Clam

25:03

appears as a personal summon of

25:06

the second Mizukag, the

25:08

leader of the hidden village of the Mist,

25:11

resurrected to fight in the Ninja World

25:13

War. It's capable of producing

25:15

a mist that creates a deceptive mirage

25:18

that renders observers unable to locate

25:20

the position of the summinar or the clam

25:23

itself. In my opinion, it

25:25

was a very interesting use of the Chinese myth

25:27

of the Shin. I'm also attaching a

25:29

link of the clam scene with the

25:31

English sub so you guys can better

25:34

understand the role of the creature in the anime.

25:36

Unfortunately, when I clicked on it, the

25:38

video is unavailable, so I think snatched

25:42

by the piracy bots. Those

25:44

bots that someday they'll pay

25:47

back. In Alexander's message p S,

25:49

I would also love to make a suggestion for the

25:51

future. It would be really cool

25:53

to hear an episode about the Amazon, Pink

25:55

river dolphin. I'm from Brazil and

25:57

this aquatical mammal is

26:00

and an extremely interesting animal

26:02

with a rich mythical background and repercussions

26:04

on the sociology or anthropology

26:07

of indigenous groups. Thank you for your

26:09

great podcast. Keep up the good work. Smiley

26:12

face emoji which for some reason,

26:14

when I copy and paste turns into a capital

26:16

J. I don't know what to do about that. Let's

26:19

see for starters. UM. I have

26:21

not seen this anime in question. Uh,

26:23

And of course wasn't able to get that link to work,

26:26

but I am vaguely aware that it exists,

26:28

so I don't know. MAYBO have to check it out of enjoying a lot

26:30

of high quality animation these days. Oh

26:33

and then secondly pink river dolphin. Yeah, I would

26:35

love to do something on pink river dolphins. Uh,

26:38

dolphins in general, just a fascinating topic.

26:45

UM. In a recent listener mail,

26:47

we listen we heard, We asked everyone,

26:49

it's like, hey, what's some relaxing music you dig? We

26:51

heard from a couple of people. I'm not going to read their complete

26:54

emails, but I would just want to mention some of the

26:56

the music that they recommended.

26:59

H William, responding on the discussion module,

27:02

said that they too are fans of Biosphere

27:04

that we brought up, but also mentioned

27:07

another artist that I dig, Rook Schnouse,

27:11

as well as an artist by name of

27:13

William Basinski, who I think

27:15

I've listened to a little bit before. I think they're known for

27:17

these like using degenerating

27:19

tapes um

27:22

to create interesting soundscapes.

27:24

Oh, that's interesting. One of my favorite things

27:26

actually that that the Internet is good for

27:28

is recordings of dying

27:31

sound playing chips that are implanted

27:33

in greeting cards that play music. So

27:36

there are a lot of really good ones there. There's one that

27:39

I used to listen to all the time. It was the Happy

27:41

Birthday Song, but it was of course

27:44

not able to quite produce the clarity

27:46

and crispness and power that it once did

27:49

when it was first purchased, so it rendered

27:51

this absolute dirge of death

27:53

for your birthday. Another one that I think

27:55

I shared with you not too long ago was playing

27:57

the Baja Mens who Let the Dogs Out?

28:00

But as the machines spiraled down to its

28:02

doom, the who let the Dogs Out chorus

28:04

became increasingly forlorn. Yeah,

28:08

yeah, that was a good one for sure. Um,

28:11

let's see they speaking

28:13

of which is not really decayed um audio

28:15

loops or anything. But I'm also a big fan of Steve

28:18

Reich's music for eighteen musicians if anyone

28:20

out there is looking for something to try out.

28:22

But what William also mentions, uh

28:25

Billow observatory that I'm not familiar

28:27

with, and also brings up, of

28:29

course Brian Eno, especially

28:32

Brian ENO's work with Robert Fripp. Love

28:34

Brian Eno. Yes, yeah, absolutely.

28:37

In fact, we heard from another listener by the name

28:39

of Jarry who wanted

28:41

to write you in just about you Know, um

28:45

that they that they basically go

28:47

on at length here about how great you Know's

28:49

work is and lists list some stuff

28:52

to check out. I'm not going to go into

28:54

all of it here, but they

28:56

do pinpoints some of the big ones, like music

28:59

for airports, atmospheres,

29:01

and soundtracks. I'm a big fan personally

29:03

of what music music for films that has

29:05

a or whatever it was called, where it's like little

29:08

bits of of soundtrack score

29:10

for non existent films that he put together.

29:13

I'm pretty sure we've talked on the show before about

29:15

how we both agreed that music for

29:17

airports should actually be played in

29:19

airports instead of whatever god awful

29:21

racket that they're pumping out of, like the TVs

29:24

they've got up in there too. If you run an airport,

29:26

please don't have TVs

29:28

running in the terminal areas. That

29:31

is just a recipe for incredible

29:33

stress and misery. Yeah. I

29:35

don't know why. I don't know why music for airports

29:38

was ignored by airports. Uh.

29:40

They also mentioned, you know, his work

29:42

with Cluster we've talked about. I know that you're you're

29:44

a fan of Cluster as well. Um,

29:47

he's worked he worked on Ambient to the Plateau

29:50

of Mirror, worked on that with Harold

29:52

Budd, who's another big name in ambient

29:54

sound. Um. Yeah,

29:56

there's just there's just so much, so much

29:58

great stuff that the you knows put out over the

30:00

years, and still it was putting out great ambient material.

30:03

What I apologize if I missed it? Did? Did you already

30:05

mentioned Bowie's Eno collaboration

30:07

period? No? No, but that's

30:10

that's amazing stuff as well. Does that

30:12

include the Bowie album

30:14

Low? Oh, I'm not I don't know that. To

30:16

answer to that, Wait, Seth has chimed in, Seth

30:18

has chimed in. Yes, it does Low is

30:20

one of my favorite David Bowie albums. It's not

30:23

it's not as fun as some of his other

30:25

albums. It's very uh dark

30:28

and it it has the feeling of

30:30

looking at the twentieth century from a hermetically

30:33

sealed chamber through a curved piece of

30:35

glass. But it is. It is

30:37

a dark and beautiful album, and a

30:39

lot of the electronic and synthesizer work

30:41

I think, especially on the second half of the album,

30:44

feels very very like dark you know.

30:47

Yeah. One of the things about you know, of course,

30:49

is when I think of you know, I do think of his ambiat work.

30:51

But I did a lot of material. He

30:53

put out a lot of material if you want

30:55

to if anyone out there wants to hear like the

30:57

funkier side of Eno. DJ

31:00

Food put out a wonderful mix eleven

31:03

years ago now who titled

31:05

more Volts the Funky Eno. If

31:08

you look it up you can still find it. DJ Food

31:10

has it hosted on SoundCloud, and

31:13

uh, I haven't listened to it in a little bit, but I remember

31:15

it being a lot of fun, just a lot of of cool,

31:17

funky beats from Brian Eno working

31:19

with various people like David

31:22

byrne Um uh

31:24

and and so forth. Yeah, but

31:26

also very versatile, because yes, there there

31:28

is that funky side. But then music

31:30

for airports is just the most calming

31:33

thing I have ever heard. I mean, is

31:35

is there any series of sounds that better puts

31:37

the brain at at peace? Yeah?

31:40

Yeah? How mad can you be when you're listening to music for

31:42

airports? Yeah? It's like, Okay,

31:45

I missed my connection. You know it's

31:47

gonna be all right. All

31:53

right, looks like we have some weird how cinema email

31:56

as well here Joe. That's

31:58

right. So this first message comes from Jim.

32:01

Jim says, hey, Robert and Joe, you mentioned

32:03

on the listener mail that sometimes you should do a Ken

32:05

Russell film on weird House cinema.

32:08

Uh. There are many great ones from Ken Russell,

32:10

but my recommendation is Layer of the

32:12

White Worm nineteen nine

32:15

eight. I don't think you're right about that

32:17

year, Jim. I'm I'm pretty sure that is

32:19

wrong, but I will be corrected

32:21

if I'm wrong about that. Rob. Maybe you can look it up while

32:23

I'm reading this. It's adapted from a novel

32:26

by Bram Stoker and as several

32:28

well known stars Hugh Grant, Peter Capaldi,

32:30

Katherine Oxenberg. It's about a

32:32

British vampuric snake cult. It's

32:35

fun, funny, sexy, lightly

32:37

scary. I think it might be available

32:39

on to be right now if you have

32:41

that app. Thanks for all your work, Jim

32:44

and Jim. Yes, you you know

32:46

our strike zone. I love this

32:48

movie definitely one that I've been planning

32:50

to feature at some point. Uh. Layer

32:53

of the White Worm. In fact, I thought I had mentioned

32:55

it on a recent weird House cinema

32:57

because we were talking about blasphemous

32:59

like crucifixion scenes and movies,

33:02

and Lair of the White Worm has a really good

33:04

like uh snake demon, blasphemous

33:07

crucifixion vision. Yeah, and I looked

33:09

it up. It's a film so close

33:11

one decade off. Yeah, it's been a while since I've

33:13

seen it, but I remember being a lot of fun. It has a Yeah,

33:16

it's a uh sexy and weird

33:18

and has a really cool worm puppet in it. Yeah,

33:20

just glorious, absolutely great. All

33:28

right, here's a bit of email comes to us

33:30

from Emily. Hi, Robert and Joe. Let me start

33:32

off by saying, I've been loving the steady stream of stuff

33:34

toble your mind content coming through my pod catcher,

33:37

especially weird how Cinema. Y'all killing

33:39

the game? Please continue anyway,

33:41

I'm writing with the suggestion for weird House. I

33:43

feel like you guys have brought it up before, but I

33:45

don't remember the context. So maybe this

33:48

is one of your two watch list. This is

33:50

on your two watch list already. Nine seventy

33:52

two is Silent Running, directed by

33:54

Douglas Trumbull. Has been on my

33:56

personal to watch list since high school, and my husband

33:58

and I are just getting around to why watching it recently. I'd

34:01

love to get you guys this take on it. My favorite thing

34:03

about the experience of watching fifty year old sci fi

34:05

movies is sitting with that feeling, uh,

34:08

with your disbelief. Can't quite

34:10

stay suspended as a modern watcher, because

34:13

the film depicts technology is basically quote

34:15

magic dressed in greebals and blinking

34:18

lights um hand waving

34:20

away exactly how the machine does

34:22

what it's shown doing, like the robots

34:24

being advanced enough to understand natural speech

34:27

while also running on basically punch card

34:29

programs, which are themselves

34:31

sophisticated enough to enable said robots

34:33

to perform surgery and play

34:35

poker. I don't know if general audiences

34:38

in the nineteen seventies would have felt that same

34:40

challenge to the suspension of disbelief,

34:43

or if I just learned too much ding dang

34:45

science from the wealth of accessible science

34:47

content available in this day and age, including in

34:50

No Small Park this very podcast. Anyway,

34:53

keep out the great work and stay safe out there. Looking forward

34:55

to the next batch of podcasts. Regards Emily,

34:58

I think the main takeaway from Silent

35:00

Running is just surgery. Isn't that hard?

35:02

Basically anybody could do it. Yeah,

35:05

with the right punch card. But

35:07

no, Emily, You're in luck. We did

35:09

a whole episode about Silent Running

35:11

sometime in nineteen I believe,

35:14

Yeah, June eight, nineteen, just simply

35:16

titled Silent Running. It's one of the

35:18

episodes that we did a series of episodes that we did

35:21

with They were ultimately kind of a precursor to Weird House

35:23

Cinema, where we were like, what

35:25

do we need to do to get away with talking about

35:27

weird movies on this podcast,

35:29

And you know, we realized, well, certain types of movies

35:32

lent themselves well to that kind of discussion, because

35:34

like two thousand and one of Space Odyssey's Silent Running.

35:37

These are films with a lot of science

35:39

in them to discuss, you know, whether

35:42

the science works ride or is presented in

35:44

a way that makes sense. It's said, that's all part of the discussion.

35:47

Yeah, but obviously things have evolved since

35:49

then. You know, if we're gonna be putting out five episodes

35:51

a week, at least one of them we're just gonna talk about movies.

35:54

Yeah. But indeed, Silent

35:56

Running great film. I love

35:59

it. I'll always of it and I recommend

36:01

it to anybody out there who wants to,

36:04

uh, you know, seek out a weird,

36:06

cool, well acted, um

36:09

piece of sci fi cinematic history.

36:12

A great soundtrack too. I love the Joe Bias tracks.

36:15

All right, Well, it looks like our mail

36:17

bot is shutting down, so we need

36:19

to go ahead and shut down this episode as well.

36:21

But we thank everybody for writing in. We didn't

36:23

get to get to everything, but you know, we'll we'll

36:25

try and get to it next week. Um.

36:28

Even if we don't read your mail on

36:30

Listener mail, we still read it when it comes

36:33

in. So keep it coming. Your your

36:35

your your comments, your thoughts, your corrections,

36:37

your ideas for the future, thoughts

36:40

on Stuff Table your Mind episodes, thoughts on

36:42

Weird House Cinema episodes, thoughts on

36:44

Artifact episodes, etcetera. Uh,

36:47

we just want to hear from y'all. Absolutely

36:49

keep it coming, you know. Actually, I thought

36:51

when we switched to doing episodes once a week that

36:53

that would mean we we ended up having

36:55

time to read all listener mail. It did not work out

36:58

that way. I feel like we still don't even get to have off

37:00

of it. So apologies if your message

37:02

has not been read, please don't take it personally.

37:05

But we we love all the email we get. We really

37:07

do. That's right. In the meantime, if you want

37:09

to listen to other episodes of Stuff to

37:11

Blow Your Mind listener mail, it tends to

37:13

publish on Mondays. I think that's its standard

37:15

date of publication. Wednesdays

37:17

will do an Artifact unless we need to preempt it. Tuesdays

37:20

and Thursdays are our core Stuff to Blow Your Mind

37:22

episodes, Friday is Weird How Cinema, and

37:24

then we have evolved episode over the weekend. That's

37:26

right. Hook your ears up, download it all,

37:29

listen, do as we command you, but

37:31

anyway, huge thanks as always to our

37:33

excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas

37:35

Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

37:37

with us to potentially have a piece of email

37:40

featured on a future Listener Mail episode,

37:42

to provide feedback to this

37:44

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37:47

for the future, or just to say hi, you

37:49

can always email us at contact at

37:51

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38:00

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38:03

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