Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're coming at you with listener mail today. Now our loyal mail bought. Carney has been through some changes. That's right. He's been uh, he's been off in Fatburg City. He's been helping uh Officer Fatburg battle the city's Fatburg problem. That's right. And in the course of fighting a Fatburg, which of course turned out to be sentient and alive. I guess that goes without saying you can't be sentient without being alive, but not for long um or maybe you can. Yeah, that's subject for another day. Anyway, like the black Ooze in Prometheus, part of that Fatburg just got right on into Carney. It took over part of his processor. Now he's Fatberg inside Fatberg power, uh Fatburg logic, and he's part fat Burg bought forever. Little flies come out of his nooks and crannies. I think that's just temporary. I think this is going to be an equilibrium that has reached and to whatever extent Carney can be fueled by fat birds. Um, you know, I think that's exciting. I think that's the future. Uh. That's actually gonna be the topic of another episode we're going to be recording. Have an episode of Invention coming up. What happens when robots can eat fat birds? We'll find out. But this episode is about listener mail, and we did receive a lot of really cool listener mail regarding our episode on fat birds. Now, just just to refresh, uh, to remove some of the you know, the sci fi fun here that we've been throwing out for a second. A fat berg is this large mass that accumulates in a modern sewer system or even kind of I guess an archaic sewer system, but due to modern sewage problems mostly caused by the flushing or the or the the dumping of of grease and the flush of sanitary wipes, wet wipes primarily. Yeah, like the problem with the with the wipe things or these things that are wet wipes. And apparently we heard from a lot of listeners, even people who worked in uh, you know, sewer maintenance, sewer workers, who said that these things that are so called flushable wet wipes are not flushable. Don't flush them even if they say you can. Yeah. And you know, I I have a kid. I've have used wet wipes plenty of times. And after you use them, you want to be rid of them, being able to throw them into a magical um uh you know, vat of water and then pushing a button and watching it disappear. That that's an attractive idea when you have a poop smeared. Uh what why? But but it doesn't really disappear, It goes somewhere and then it it makes friends. It becomes the bones of the soap dragon. That's right. Uh, So maybe we should get right to our first email. This one comes from Ray. Robert, you want to read this one? Hello Robert and Joe. My name is Ray, and I could not believe how close to home the episode of fat Bergs landed. I am currently a sewer utility worker in Faydeville, North Carolina, and prior to serving in the army for several years, I was a sewer utility worker in Jersey City, New Jersey. The issue of grease infiltrating our country sewers seems to be almost a universal problem with no real end in sight. Although there are significant differences in the capacity and complexity between the two sewer systems. I have personal experience with the effects of grease and non biodegradable solids such as wet wipes and feminine hygiene products. Seems to be universal in my experience. I have seen and worked on many Greef related issues, and though I have seen some large blockages, the issues I have come to find most common or more are more like grease tubes. The initial blockage creates a type of grease dam, which in turn leads to the sewer pipe becoming completely impacted with grease. Picture this is a tube of toothpaste. These issues can run for hundreds of feet underground and can require days of work. A clear the comparison made in the articles you read about it and concrete cannot be more accurate when trying to relieve a fat Burg induced blockage quote. Chipping away at the grease gestalt monstrosity with mason tools is surprisingly effective and brings to mind archaeologists using picks and hammers trying to reveal the hidden past and secrets the fat Birds hold in its subterranean lipid vaults. One point that I noticed was not mentioned that absolutely needs mentioning was the surprisingly distinct smell that grease blockages have, which, if one enjoys fried foods, could actually be appetite inducing. Each of the several grease blockages I have dealt with had a small had a smell scape that one could use to easily identify the main contributor to its unholy birth, whether it be Pizzeria's Chinese food takeout or even a rather famous diner located in downtown Jersey City. Nothing makes you look forward to lunch like the smell of comfort food wafting up from the depths of the sup Oh God, thank you again guys for never failing to surprise me with your awesome topics. This one, in particular, fat Burgs, made me realize that even something as mundane sounding as sewer utility work, it can be interesting. As a final side note, I would often try and tell people how serious grease problems can be in sewers and how large and lengthy they could be. It reminded me of another episode of Yours Great Wave, in which stories would be told by wayward sailors, often describing waves whose proportions seemed a drastically exaggerated I feel a shared kindred with these sailors, knowing that grease abominations lurk below the streets, and those who I tell my tales to disregard them as exaggerated fantasy. L O L. Thanks again, Right, Well, we don't disregard them, Ray, We believe every word, except I am a little skeptical about the the appetite inducing qualities of the sewer smell. Well, I think I think we have some other listener mail that that speaks to the odor, But I don't know I can and that I mean, I trust Ray on the matter. I mean, he he has experience that I do not have regarding uh fat bergs in their unholy kin. So if he says there's an appetizing odor, then I I believe it. I guess what I mean is the only thing I doubt is whether it would be appetizing to lots of people or to everyone. That seems like it would probably very person to person, especially depending on how maybe you're disgust reflexes and how sensitive they are, oh you need to fast food, or to just in general, No, I mean to general, like the association. I mean, we we know a lot about how smell is in some ways cognitive. You know, we've talked on the show before about how the exact same smell if you're told it's a cheese, it smells good. But if you're told you're smelling socks and it's the exact same chemical stimulant, uh, it's disgusting. It makes you you know, you find it revolting. And I think the same thing would probably be true. You know, they're different levels of sensitivity. But like, you can smell a smell that would maybe smell good if it's coming out of a restaurant kitchen, but if you smell it in a sewer, might give you the gag reflex, right, But then if you're working in a sewer, like I don't know, it might turn things around, Like you're you're in there so long exposed to this different smellscape, and if there's a hint of something even that is uh, you know, from beyond the sewer, then perhaps you know, the human mind can latch onto that I don't know. Um, there's also if I remember correctly, in our past episodes about smell, we've discussed how you know how about good smells and bad smells, and about how bad smells can sort of fade into the background a bit, while good smells remain in the forefront. I believe I have that right. Um In any right, there's there's a lot going on when we perceive odors, like even very strong odors. You know, some maybe destressed and others remain stressed. Uh in at least as you know, as far as our perceptions go, because there might be different adaptive reasons for the brain to remain aware of certain kinds of odors but not of others once you've initially smelled them, right, So maybe that would allow room for like the pleasing odor that is mixed in amongst the foul older odors to sort of resonate more after a while. This is just me guessing. Does the Yankee Candle Company make a fat burg candle? I don't know, but uh that we did discuss in that episode some of the possibilities of of using fatburgs for fuel. Yeah. Well, we actually have a great piece of listener mail about this, do it. Let's see here this one. This is a short one. This comes from Damian. Damian subject line, fat bergs are real. Hello from Little Rock fat Burgs. Sweet Jesus. Those things can ruin your life. My wife's grandparents had no qualms with pouring bacon grease down the sink. They had apparently been doing so for the last seventy years. A Router company worker that we hired told us that our pipes were worse off than a waffle house. I dug up ancient clay pipes and they were packed with the same stuff that's clocking sewers worldwide. It's a soap like material that is fairly stinky and very light weight. Actually lit it on fire while it was still wet. I'll include the fire video and offer to send you a sample of the burg itself. If you want some, let me know. I love your shows. Keep it up, Damien. Okay, Damien, I don't think we need a sample of the burg, but I did watch the video and dude, yeah, it's like it's like a tiny grease fire in puck form. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I I glanced at this video as well, and it is. It's it's really flaming up there. It's kind of it's kind of making spitting sounds that might have to do with water content or the fact that it's wet. I mean, I'm not gonna say don't send us a piece of fatburg. Let's leave that up to the stochastic gods of fat berg face. I think I'm gonna do this next one here from our listener Joe. In fact, hi Robert and Joe. My name is also Joe, and I'm a plumber that listens to your podcast. No, not that plumber. I live in the state of Alabama. I routinely listen to your podcast on my way to job sites, having been a service lumber in the past. I have to tell you that Donnie Don't made me twitch a little. I think we started off the Fatberg episode with some don't do what Donnie Don't does, pouring pouring duck fat down the bathtub and stuff. Joe continues, Donna Don't, who also flushes sanitary products and plants shrubs over the residential sewer line, would have made me twitch a lot more. I don't care if the packaging says flushable or not. Anything small enough to fit down a toilet is flushable. That doesn't mean you should flush it. I could flush one Leader water bottles down some toilets, or even a bucket full of golf balls. There are even some that I wholly believe could flush small children, but that does not mean it's a good idea. That being said, my city doesn't have a sewer system that you can walk around in as it's more modern. However, I do have some grease stories that may interest you. Oh and old Greece is the single worst thing to smell in plumbing, narrowly beating out old urine. You would think that it's the pooh, but it's not. Of course, I haven't had the displeasure of cleaning the lines at a more refuneral home. I know some who have, and I will not regale you with those stories. I'm sure you can imagine. To preface these stories, restaurants are required to have a grease interceptor in their line going out, and they do just what the name implies. They intercept and hold the grease. However, in one case that was overlooked by the city when I was an apprentice, we received a service call to a dentist's office that was backing up with raw sewage. The building was roughly ten feet above the city sewer, and it was also the lowest of the surrounding buildings. After confirming that the lines to the city sewer were clear, we decided to pop a manhole cover the roads dirt and grime had sealed it down. This heavy cast iron manhole cover then proceeded to float, albeit briefly, on the flood of water among other things that rose from the manhole, and then had to direct traffic away from this open manhole as we waited for the city's jet truck to come clear the line. I think the jet truck is like a high pressure water. This was a very busy four lane road in the downtown of my city. I almost got run over several times as people swerved into the other lane within feet of me. I digress. When the truck arrived, the twelve inch City Maine was blocked for two hundred feet by you guessed it, fat and grease where this restaurant's line joined the cities. They had been pouring all of their oil down the drains. On another note, as an apprentice, again, I have personally stood on one foot on top of hardened grease and an intercept or at another restaurant. The grease was about a foot thick and weighed about two hundred pounds at the time, and it did not give. We had to take a steel bar to it to break it up so that it could be pumped out. I wouldn't say that it's as hard as concrete, but still rock like. I'm looking forward to more awesome episodes from you guys. Joe all right, another field report from the war against the fat Bergs. That is an epic tale of a heroic struggle. I wish I only had the you know, the mind of a Homer to translated into poetry. But hey, you know one thing we did in that Fatburg episode is we proposed a movie crossover, which should be Fatburg copy and Officer Fatberg. So we asked if anybody out there is, you know, developer in Hollywood or anything, get Fatburg cop going. We did hear back from a couple of people, a couple of creative types who engage with fat Bergs one way or another. Weird from one listener named Tom, who shared with us a story he had written about a fat Burg that becomes sentient. This was independent of our episode. He had already written it in the past. But we also heard from our listener L Robert do you want to read this one? Yes? L Rights quote. I recently listened to your episode on Fatberg's. You had mentioned how it would be cool to create an artist rendition of an anthropomorphic, murderous and justice seeking Fatburg. Well, being an artist myself, I could think of nothing more than to do just this. I wanted to make the creature humanoid, but also not too human. I ended up with some sort of a lizard man cotton made of congealed grease, and it turned out more saying than I would have liked. Make of that what you will. Maybe Fatburg really is the hero. Nevertheless, I enjoyed making this a ight style poster art. Robert had mentioned never visiting Philly, Well, come on by, I can't recommend it enough. Also, I recently visited the Mooder Museum uh the week before the episode. This, of course, the museum with all sorts of cool um medical oddities. I guess you'd say, men in medical uh um, anomalous medical history, graham artifacts of medical history, etcetera. I've long wanted to visit there and just never have had the chance. It came up in the episode because we were talking about the process of supponification, where like lipid and fatty acids can turn into soap like substances, and one example is a thing that's within the Mooder Museum's collection, the soap Lady, and I think also a male uh corpse, the soapman, which are covered in this soap like material called adapas or that's formed out of the lipids and flesh as it decays in certain types of environments I think like alkaline environments. All right, l continues, I was looking for something to do with friends while nearby, though sadly not knowing what I was getting myself into. Listening to your description of the soap Lady instantly brought a haunting image to my head of the corps that visited visitors are greeted with as they entered the main room. Uh. This the main room of the Commuter Museum, at least I think it was it. I wasn't going to stick around to read the description. As soon as I realized what I got myself into, I tried to leave as soon as I could. Although I can see it's importance as medical history and uh and it's importance for research, the idea of dead body and fetuses on display just didn't settle well with me. Not to say others would. It would have a different experience at the very least it was a unique experience I attached to the work of Officer Fatburgh below. I loved listening to your episode as I always do, and I loved listening to your show every time I drive or commute. Keep it up L from Philly. Okay, So for starters, this art that L gave us is tremendous and as of this record thing, I've requested that we be allowed to share this with the world. On the landing page for this episode is stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, So hopefully that will be the case and you all can go check it out for yourself. It's pretty fun. It's reminiscent of things like Maniac Cop and so forth. And then secondly, uh yeah, I have to admit that I can as interested as I am, and in visiting the Neuter Museum, I can imagine it's not everybody's cup of tea, and not necessarily everybody's cup of tea every day. Like I, you know, some of my interests run uh or have run darker or more morbid at times. But in the air days where I don't do not want to see a soap person or or some sort of pickled remains. I mean, for instance, I just watched this is completely off topic, but I just watched The Deathly Hallows Part one, uh last night Harry Potter and How Its Part one last night with my family, and the film was a lot darker than I remember it being, uh to the point where it really I felt kind of bummed out into after finishing it. Yeah. I don't know if my my tastes have just changed a lot recently, but it's like like that was just it was that was too dark of a film for me. Yesterday is definitely how is the Last One? It's well, it's the first part of the last one, it's the so it's the penultimate movie and the Harry Potter sequence of films, so it is. It does have kind of ultimately an Empire strikes Back kind of ending, because it's like all these terrible things that are happening and all these trials of the characters have put through. And it's a great movie, Don't get me wrong. I think it's a tremendously impressive what they did with it. And I love Harry Potter uh and as much as anybody, but who that one, I felt like it really put me through the ringers, so their days when I am not in the mood for the darkness of a Harry Potter film Their days when I'm I'm definitely not in the mood to see a human cadaver that has been partially turned into soap. Fair enough, Robert, I will never try to force you to go look at the soap lady if you're not feeling it right. And if somebody sends us a fat bird chunk, you know, maybe it'll be a day day when I'm totally up for looking at it. Maybe It'll be a day when I just need a um, you know, ask you to keep the bag closed. Okay, I think we need to take a quick break, but we will be right back. Thank Alright, we're back. So Carney has given us the sign that we need to move on from fat Burgska is full of fat birds. He's currently processing and digesting it, turning it into energy. So we're gonna move on to some other episodes that we did some listener feedback on them, particularly our episode concerning the fundamental attribution error. Right now. This was a while back, so we did some messages about this on the last listener mail episode, but I think this one came in since then. This is from our listener, Matthew. Matthew says, greetings, So I am eagerly awaiting tonight's finale episode of Game of Thrones. It is one of the few shows or movies that I value experiencing along with the rest of the world. This last season has been taking a lot of flak from online critics, and I myself have felt the declining quality. While thinking through the seasons and talking to my wife, I came to the conclusion that it was mainly because of characters acting out of their expected behaviors as established over the past seven seasons. Having listened to your recent cast on fundamental attribution error, I began to think about the stories players on a grander scale, about the society and why the characters within that society are acting the way they are, as opposed to out of solely personal motivations. It made me feel so intelligent when I came across this article by an actual smart person discussing this very subject with direct references to fundamental attribution error. Basically, the show's focus switched from a broad society based story where something like the death of a main character progressed the narrative for everyone else and he says that that's more in line with George R. Martin's novels, and it switched to an individual focus narrative where each character's own psychology is being explored, which is the Hollywood's green writers more common approach. Thank you for equipping me to think about even mundane things like TV shows about dragons on a deep, almost academic level. Keep up the good work. Invention is awesome. You guys have long been the first thing I look for in my new releases list each week Matthew, and Matthew links to this article he's talking about, and this is what I had seen shared around a while, but I actually didn't read it until just today. It's an article in Scientific American by zep two fact she is, who's a really good writer. I'd seen it going around, but I'm glad I read it because I think I pretty much agree with it about a hundred percent. It's very spot on in analyzing how the show's storytelling mode changed over time, especially after the show ran out of book material to work with. Um And And the essential idea is that in the in the books, characters are hugely driven by circumstances by you know, the sort of like social pressures on them and the norms they face and by you know, events outside their control, and we we we constantly see characters having to deal with all of these circumstantial pressures, and we understand the influence of circumstantial pressures. And after the book material ran out and the show runners were more out on their own, it started to feel more like a typical Hollywood screenplay, where like characters have like a main defining personality attribute and everything they do is pretty much in line with that main personality attribute. Yeah, this is interest, especially you know, coming from HBO. And granted these were different show runners, but I feel like, um, I feel it feel like The Wire, um for instance, did a great job of really I think throughout the series, like focusing on the societal pressures that are making people what they are. Yeah. I mean David Simon in interviews has talked about, you know, like in the in his work, especially in The Wire, like the gods of this Greek tragedy are instead of being like Zeus and Poseidon and so forth, their institutions uh there, you know, it's it's government. It's uh, it's law enforcement, it's a you know whatever. The particular institution is that is applying this pressure to populations to individuals. And yeah, I feel like that sort of thing is is more evident in the earlier seasons of Game of Thrones and then almost completely gone in the later seasons. The last couple of seasons particularly yeah and uh and actually zanat affect, she makes exactly that comparison to the Wire, so she does, okay, so yeah, uh, yeah. I think The Wire is a great example of that. A lot of the great shows are like that in in a way, even though it's it's more focused on individual psychology, but even The Sopranos is kind of like this. It has a it has a sociological kind of feel. They're like there are large movements and pressures and trends at play and characters. You constantly see characters struggling with their circumstances and being moved by them and not just like acting out their dominant personality traits, right, you know, I I do not want to make it sound like I am attributing Hollywood with all of society's woes or blaming superhero movies in particular, but I think it is worth noting that, you know, um, certainly Matthew here mentions the Hollywood screenwriter approach and that being focused on individuals, and of course Hollywood is epicenter for our our our focus on celebrities. To focus on these key individuals that we've sent singled out for deification and vilification, um to um, to lift up into sacrifice. This need be to satiate our our, our our need for some sort of vicarious experience. And um, it's I wonder you know what the dangers are and been putting that much. Um, you know, cultural power within a single you know, a single system, well, especially one that, as we talked about in the episode, is is very often given to the fundamental attribution error. I and like, I think a lot of especially the weaker, shallower kinds of you know, popular Hollywood storytelling, very much fall into the FA kind of category where characters behaviors are almost entirely explained by their like innate qualities and predispositions, and there's really not much attention paid to like broader trends and sidal pressures and circumstances that change the way people are right and and with superheroes, and and I do again I want to stress that I enjoy superhero movies, and I'm not I'm not meaning to criticize them just across the board, but superhero movies are movies about individuals that are essentially God's uh that they may have you know, flawed characteristics and even very human characteristics in some uh some ways, which can of course be very much in keeping with with you know, classical treatments of gods, but they are they are individuals that that that apply pressure more to society or seem to be you know, complete the remove from societal pressure in some cases. And um, if when those are the dominant stories that we're telling, those are the ones that seem to have the most cultural impact, and certainly have them, you know, the most box office impact. Does that uh? Does that just serve to to help reinforce the fundamental attribution error in our popular storytelling. I think that's that you could very well make that case. I think that's likely true. That being said, I may be missing some really key examples of of films, you know, particularly in non Hollywood films, but maybe some big tent pictures as well that that run counter to this. So I would love to hear from listeners who have some really good examples of of films that avoid the fundamental attribution eraor I think there's one reason you more often see uh like non f A storytelling and more like sociological or circumstance based storytelling in longer television series these. Uh. And that's just like having to do with the efficiency of storytelling and run time. It's hard to tell a story that's not a little bit given to the f A E in a short run time, you know, because you need to identify themes really quickly and and identify who characters are in a memorable way really quickly. You don't have whole seasons to figure out who people are and get a sense of them. Oh yeah, Well, like with The Wire, for instance, they had the time to provide characters and secondary character, primary and secondary characters at all levels of society. So you had, you know, you had you had people on law enforcement side, people that were in the criminal element in the sale and the trafficking of drugs, but then also the political spectrum, the educational spectrum, you know, and they were able to layer on more from season to season to provide this overall ultimately holistic picture of how the world worked. Yeah, and doing something doing that kind of thing. You need time to do that, and it's really hard to tell a story, uh that you know, that appropriately treats the influence of circumstances and all that without doing something like that. So yeah, I can see why this kind of storytelling shows up more often on like the you know, the gold standard TV series than it does in movies. Yeah, yeah, because ultimately, of you know, if a movie can basically cover the ground of a short story, a short story is going to be limited generally to like one p O V. Like, there's not a lot generally not much room for anything beyond that. Alright, Well, speaking of created worlds, we have a correction here. This one comes to us from Steve Um. I can't even was this a previous Listener mail episode we were talking about. I think it was on the last Listener Mail episode we did. Somebody wrote in, uh, wrote in with an email that incorrectly attributed the author of a story, and we did not catch that right. So anyway, Steve writes in and says, in your recent listener email, uh, it was slated that John Scalz wrote the Forever War. That is incorrect. Joe Halderman wrote the Forever War, which yes, this is correct. Yes, the author of The Forever War is Joe Halderman. Okay, we stand corrected. Yes, yeah, I mean and I've read The Forever War, so I should have remembered that one. But at any rate, stuff goes by really fast while we're sitting here talking. All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Chris regarding our Almost Cannibals episode, which was, you know, a contemplation of well, you know, how do we classify things that are not quite cannibalism in the animal world and occasionally in the human world. Uh, they're not quite cannibalism, but they're almost cannibalism. It's all almost close in one way or another pre cannibalism. Right, So Chris writes in and says, hey, checking in on a couple of recent episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind and invention, and boy, do I have a crossover story for you. In your recent episode on Almost Cannibals, you mentioned a story about an army roasting meat and eating in close proximity to fallen soldiers from an opposing force. Uh. And this, by the way, this was like an older you know, a true you did detail from history that you know was probably rolled out as a way to criticize the enemy and make them seem more barbaric. Uh. You know, as if to say, let's look at these people. They're not cannibals yet, but they're just like just one stumble away from it. Anyway, it continues, and that there were rumors that the army were cannibals because of this. Well, my story is about my grandfather who was in the ninety five Infantry Division during World War two. Uh. And he includes a short link to a video about them this. He earned his nickname during the war as the Buzzard as an unfortunate part of his job was to remove bodies from the field and take them off the trucks when they returned to the base the moniker. The buzzard was applied because he was known to pull bodies from the truck with one hand and have a ham sandwich and the other WHOA, It's amazing what the human mind can normalize during the horrors of war. I am by no means in insinuating that he was a cannibal, but the bit about eating too close to dead bodies sparked a memory. The second tie in comes Once he returned home. My grandp and it's house was three blocks from our small town two thousand people funeral home. Um, here is where the camera comes in. We recently did a whole slew of episodes of Invention about the camera. Once he came back from the war, he would go to every week where the person was laid out at the funeral home and take a picture of them in the casket. You mentioned in the episode on the Camera about how early photo photography was used to document deceased relatives. He would then develop the film and annotate the back of the photograph with named date of birth, death, etcetera, and all the photos would be out in albums. When he died, he had dozens and dozens of albums filled with these photos. He never talked about the war or really anything much, but I have to imagine that what he saw on serving changed the way he viewed life and death, and his photographs of those who had died were his own way of remembering them. Cheers Chris. Wow, Well that's an interesting story. I don't know what to make about that, but thank you for sharing. Chris. Yeah, I mean it's I think it's a very point about the horrors of war. I mean, a lot of us, maybe most of those listening to us, you know, we were far removed from those horrors. Um. You know, certainly we we do hear from time to time from individuals who have served in combat situations or law enforcements to environments, or or you know, in some way or another, have have had you know, this level of violence impact their lives. But for a lot of us, we are removed from it. So, you know, we we don't know what it's like to have to haul dead bodies around and at the same time deal with the fact that you have to eat, you have to have sandwich, and maybe you do have a sandwich in one hand, and then likewise when it comes to just dealing with with with death. I mean, I'm wondering about this case with the grandfather to like being a you know, an older individual, like perhaps they had memories of of you know, of of a time when there were more there was more photography to a funeral photography taking place, and you know there therefore they're just kind of you know, returning to those memories and um and doing it themselves. I don't know, but but yeah, this was certainly all food for thoughts, So it looks like we need to move on to the next group of listener mail. This was in response to our episode against the phrase survival of the Fittest in the context of explaining how evolution works. And so we got some responses just to the episode in general, and we've got a number of responses, some mega responses to Pokemon, which Robert, I think you brought up at the end of the episode, right, yeah, I mean part of it just is because I'm I'm too old for Pokemon, was I id or at least I didn't. I never did anything with Pokemon, so I don't have an appreciation for it. But I realize, you know, just from being online, that it is really important to many people, and and that Pokemon becomes like a metaphor for understanding various things in life. And so they made me curious about, well, how does that play into understandings of evolution. Is it helpful, is it a hindrance, etcetera. And so we put that out the listeners to chime in. We heard from a lot. Well, I think maybe should do a general email about the episode first and then we'll do the Pokemon one. Okay, So this first one comes from our listener Lloyd. Lloyd says, Hi, guys, love your podcast. I listened with interest to your episode on natural selection and Survival of the Fittest. I agree with your point that the latter phrase is not linguistically apt when a modern sembilance of the phrase is applied. However, I wondered if this overlooks the fact that fittest may have had a slightly different meaning at the time when Spencer Wallace and Darwin We're discussing it. You considered fittest to mean the biggest and the strongest, as in the bigger batterism you talked about. However, the word fittest literally means the best fit, most fit, or most suitable. Fit has only recently come to mean physically fit, and has in the past meant something more akin too suitable, as in the phrase this man is a fit and proper person. In your podcast, you also considered survival to mean survival of the individual. However, it also means survival of the species considered this way, survival of the fittest, survival of the species best fitted, or you might say, most suitable to its environment. I therefore find myself agreeing with Wallace to some extent that it is a good and in some sense is better descriptor of the evolutionary process than the phrase natural selection. I would suggest that the better argument for use of the term natural selection is that it suggests a kind of positive advancement or natural refinement. By contrast, survival of the most suitable or the fittest draws on the more nihilistic side of evolution that those who are not the most suitable are destined to decline. That is, of course true, but it's pretty depressing. Yours faithfully, Lloyd. Um Well, Lloyd, I mean I think I accepted a lot of the sense of what you're saying. I mean, what you're describing is I think how Darwin and Wallace, since Spencer meant it as we discussed in the episode. I mean, I don't think they were they were saying anything incorrect when they use the phrase. We were talking more about the the modern implications that people get from the baggage of these words. It's not that like Darwin and Wallace were incorrect and how they used it. Yeah, I mean, certainly the words uh, words can change over time, or at least the they can. They can skew different directions. Uh, and then we have to, um, we have to you know, account for that. Also, words tend to I mean, when there's a phrase like natural selection or survival of the fittest, we have to deal with the fact that, in Darwin's context, this is a phrase that's appearing within a book, you know, so he's got a whole book to explain what he means. But these phrases now are just sort of floating free within the culture and there you know, people invoke these phrases to explain how evolution works, but they might not necessarily bring with them all of the explanation that comes, like say, in on the Origin of species. So you don't have a book in front of you all the time. You have to think about how phrases are just received in in a vacuum. All right, Well here's one. Here's one of the Pokemon of spots. This this comes to us from Taylor. Hey, Robert and Joe Taylor here, another long time fan and email writer. When Robert asked the audience to reach out with their Pokemon experiences at the end of against Survival of the Fittest, it was a bespoke question for me, as a student of evolutionary biology and one of the biggest Pokemon nerds you'll ever meet. I couldn't resist saying everything I could, so let's get right to it. When a Pokemon quote unquote evolves within the context of the game, it matures into a larger, more powerful form and benefits from increased combat stats. Well, this might look like a terrible case of bigger batterism on the surface, the Pokemon franchise approaches adaptation and biodiversity with much more nuanced than you might expect. While the game uses the term evolution to describe this growth, it's clear within the context of the game the Pokemon evolution is a descriptive is a is a is descriptive of a Pokemon species maturation and natural life cycle, and not of natural selection. This distinction is especially clear when Pokemon evolution represents the metamorphosis of a species. For example, when the larval Pokemon wheel evolved into the pup eight Kakuna before emerging as the wasp like be Drill at the end of its life cycle, or when the tadpole like uh Dratini matures into the dopey amphibian dragon Pokemon called dragon Eyed, but Wait, there's more. The Pokemon games also do a great job of describing symbiotic relationships, sexual dimorphism, and yes, even natural selection. Many Pokemon species exhibit important symbiotic relationships. For example, the seafaring mantle like Pokemon manteen, is rarely depicted without a remorade. I like that. It's like the gatorade of remoras. Yeah, that would be I guess it's the genesis there clinging to its underside as you might have guessed. Their relationship is illustrative of the real life symbiosis of ramorras and open ocean predators like blue sharks. A lot of Pokemon also exhibits sexual dimorphism. One of my favorite examples is Burmy, a Pokemon based on real life bagwarm moths. Like their real world world on our parts, Burmi build protective cloaks around themselves out of whatever detritus is available to them. If you encounter Burmy with a forest within a forest, it is covered in leaves, whereas a desert dwelling Burmi would be covered in sand and pebbles. But it gets more interesting. Female burmi exhibit neatany they evolve into werma dam, a larger bagworm Pokemon that remains sessile but male burmy evolve into moth motham, a flying insect that can flit from one from female to female. Another great example is the grouse like Pokemon un Phasant, whose males boast resplendent plumage that the drab females lack and Pokemon doesn't have. Doesn't leave other examples of adaptation untouched. Several species illustrate coevolution, as is the case with heat More and Durant. Heat More as an ant eater Pokemon whose lava hot tongue allows it to bore through the metal exoskeleton of the insect Durant. The franchise is explicit in describing this predatory relationship's role in the evolution of both heat morse tongue and Durance metal shell. Finally, the most recent generation of the game's Pokemon, Sun and Moon, introduced regional variants. Sun and Moon take place on the Polynesian themed islands of Aloa. Regional variants represent Pokemon species that have been introduced to Alloa from elsewhere in the Pokemon world and have adapted to life on the islands. For example, the armadillo like sand shrew and its mature form sand slash are usually encountered in desert biomas, but in Aloa their regional variants have adapted to frigid mountain caves and both thicker bodies. Ultimately, Pokemon is a fantastical king. While I've put forth plenty of fascinating biology on display in the Pokemon world, there are still other Pokemon based on ghosts, dolemns, and inanimate objects, which may be unsurprising because of its Japanese origins. Nevertheless, I think it does a fantastic job of illustrating biodiversity and the mechanisms that relate to it the Pokemon games. It shouldn't be a child's textbook revolution, but for this childhood Pokemon fan become biologists, they played an extraordinary role in following in love with the natural world. Cheers Taylor. Ps. I highly recommend looking up images of the Pokemon I've described here because their designs are simply delightful. Let me show you my Pokemon's. Thank you so much, Taylor, you know what you've brought me around. Yeah, I am not. I am not a Pokemon nerd like you. I did not ever really get deep into Pokemon I think the deepest ever got was when that original game Boy game Play came out. I played it, but I never finished it. Oh yeah, the most I think I played when that uh that that that phone game came out recently. That was all the craze where you find Pokemon on the street, that had people wandering around waving their phones at stuff. Yeah. I checked that out of out, out of curiosity, and I think I like, I encountered a Pokemon in my house and then like I saw one down the street, and then um, but that was it. But I I appreciated what seemed possible with that game. Would did that game not turn out to be a massive data mining operation? I don't know. I haven't. I I have friends who I think still play it, still really into it, and they enjoy going on like walks and even trips and searching for Pokemon while they're out there. So I don't know. I gotta look into that more. But anyway, you've brought me around on the basic Pokemon concept. I love the Pokemon's now and you know what, some of the illustrations are really great. You got me there, alright. One that note, We're gonna take one more break, But when we come back, we will leave the realm of Pokemon behind and we will venture to the Holy Mountain. Thank thank Alright, we're back. So this is a straggler email that came in I think after the last batch that we read about sacred mountains, and this is from our listener, Dave. Dave writes, Hi, Robert and Joe Medium the longtime listener, first time writer. I'm a big fan of your podcast and your new one invention. I'm writing in regard to the two episodes focused on Sacred Mountains. I live in the Pacific Northwest and I'm an amateure mountaineer. I wanted to share a couple of things with you that you were curious about from your listeners. First, I've experienced altitude sickness a few times, but the worst of it was when I summitted Mount Whitney in California, the tallest peak in the country within the contiguous United States at fourteen thousand, five hundred and five feet. My partner and I were hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in SI from Mexico to Canada. We had stopped off to meet my mom and toured around Las Vegas, the Eastern Sierra and Death Valley National Park. So we went to Death Valley, which has the lowest point in the US at two hundred and seventy nine ft below sea level. Three or four days later we were back on the trail in the heart of the Sierra and summitted Mount Whitney. We had we we had lost all of our altitude acclimatization since we took a break, and it was certainly felt. I made it up the summit relatively fine, slowly moving to some degree. Then on the way down it hit me like a ton of bricks. I could barely move, had the worst migraine I had ever had, and was completely disoriented. I felt like I was going to explode at both ends constantly. Eventually I made it to camp at about eight thousand feet and recovered over the next twelve hours. I drank plenty of water eight and slept. After that, I was more or less back to normal. Secondly, you had both mentioned when researching the episode, you didn't come across any evil mountains. Really, When I was listening, one popped into my head that I find fascinating. According to the Native American tribe the Klamath, the Good God is Mount Shasta, in northern California, and the evil god was Mountain Massama in central Oregon. Apparently eight thousand years ago. The two gods had an awesome battle and ultimately the good prevailed. This resulted in Mountain Azama exploding and collapsing in on itself and then creating the clearest and cleanest lake in the world, Crater Lake, which is an amazing place to go to. If you've never been, Crater Lake is definitely worth the trip. David says, keep doing what you're doing. Love your stuff, and he also attaches a photo of himself on Mount Whitney. He says, quote before my world crashed in on me. Well, thanks David. All right, here's another one that comes into us, and this one um. You know, you know, no one ever has to use the real name when they're right in um, and this particular individual wrote in as Daddy. So at any rate, this is what Datty had to say. Dear Robert and Joe, I've been listening to your show for the last few months, and I would like to say thank you. You have provided me with such nutritious brain food. I have been bingeing on episodes while working out in the fields, mostly I sit a cross legged planting vegetables. While the setting is quite peaceful, the labor is quite monotonous. Listening to your podcast has prevented my mind from turning into mud. I have so many compliments and comments about various topics you discussed, but it would make for quite the read. To save time, I have neared it down to a list of three. Number one, you both have such great taste in film. Well many would disagree. Arguable, I guess, but but you know I'm glad we see I. He continues, I was so excited when I started listening and discovered that many of the tapes you discussed I own on VHS because it's the only way to go. Also, films you have mentioned that I haven't seen. I now have to thank you you also for the recommendations. Uh. Then number two, the Cube film would make for a killer episode. Not only could you explore the science behind such a structure, I was reminded of the Library of Babel, but the themes submerged in the film would also provide quite the thought adventure. Have you seen Cube Horring of its sequels? Joe, Yes, it's been a while. I remember it. Uh, I remember it? Was a movie that definitely held my attention but was also kind of bad. Yeah, I remember, I think I watched it like on the Sci Fi channel on a Sunday afternoon, Uh, sort of a thing, and I remember being intrigued by it because it does have an intriguing concept like it. It has certain Kafka esque elements to it, you know, where people were trapped in this machine that is lethal and full of lethal traps, but they don't know why they're in it or what purposes it serve ing. And I think it's also you know, it stated or implied that, like the people who made it, we're working on different parts of it and had no idea what the complete hole was. I think one of the guys in the Cube, it turns out like, helped build it, but he didn't know what it was going to be. Yeah, And I think like those some of those ideas are very thought provoking. It gets into you know, ideas of the Panopticon and uh, you know, modern modern society itself and uh, in in a way like the Cube movies, or at least the first one. You know, it's kind of a predecessor to the Song movies, but kind of like elaborate traps, but I feel like the elaborate traps were more the cube set up for the elaborate traps. I think I far prefer than just like crazy serial killer with way too much time on their hands. We got another exquisite movie recommendation coming next though. Oh yes, number three Zar does. It was somewhat off handedly suggested by Joe in an episode I cannot remember which, but yes, please for apps you can break the tavernac. What did I say about Zardas? I don't. I don't remember because I suggest science of Zardas. Maybe you did, because we're probably talking about Highlander or Highlander too. I've actually never seen Zardas. It's a I've never checked it out. WHOA, this is a game changer, Robert. Would you like to see Sean Connery with a long braided ponytail and a red diaper and a mustache? Well, I absolutely I would, especially if there's some sort of weird flying heads. Yeah, there's weird flying heads. That's all I know about it. But those two elements are alone are enough to get me. There. Didn't somebody interesting to the music? Is there something about the music? But I should be aware music because I think it was directed by the same guy who made Deliverance. Uh, very very strange movie. Anyway, I think both of those sound like solid suggestions. We I think we have yet to do them. So we basically we've been doing these movie episodes where once a month, generally will will pick a movie and we'll use it as an excuse to you know, talk about topics we've discussed before, but in light of the film, or as a way to talk about topics that might not otherwise come up on the show in their own episode. And generally there's some sort of you know, approach to be made there. And we've talked about stuff like two thousand one of Space Odyssey, the Dark Crystal. We've talked about Highlander too. Um, we've talked about Silent Running. Um am I missing one in there. I don't know, maybe maybe yeah. At any rate, it's a fun exercise and we're hoping to continue doing it and it's and we enjoy hearing recommendations from folks. Maybe one day we'll even come up we'll cover a movie that came out in the last couple of decades. You seem to be you know, uh narrowing in on like what the sixties, seventies, and eighties thus far. Why would we change that? Yeah, as as a golden age, right, But it's not just old media that we talked about on this show. We also talk about new media. We also talk about social media, um and and that can sometimes be quite a duze. Social media is certainly it is the cube and the czar DAWs of our world. Um. So, yeah, it's the tabernacle, it's the cube maze, it's all those things. The cube cube. Actually, that whole scenario we just talked about about people creating this thing, working on their individual um corners of it. It's a giant murderous weapon field traps, yeah, and ultimately making a giant murder machine. Um. I think there are a lot of comparisons to be made between that and various big name social media platforms um, which I think will be exploring in greater detail and subsequent episodes of the show. But we have been discussing aspects of it already. Yeah. Well, let's talk about some listener feedback to the episode we did about the Doppelganger Network, where we discussed the idea, of course of doppelgangers and all that. But then also we discussed an article by Robert Zapolski, the neuro indo Chronologist, where he made a connection between the psychological syndrome known as Capgras delusion, where people and to believe that the people they know have been replaced by impostors or doubles or doublegangers, that and the kinds of psychological effects that are brought about by social media, and he in the main comparison he makes is that, uh, social media may be causing a similar kind of situation of recognition without familiarity uh and its inverse. So one of the things we talked about in that episode, of course, is you know, often Robert and I, especially lately or or we will tend to gripe about the evils of social media, and we talked about the possibility of could anything be improved if you just took the corporate influence out of it and just had like nonprofit, open source social media platforms. I do want to reiterate my feeling that even if we took the corrupting influence of the profit motive out of these platforms, I'm still not sure they'd be a good thing. I think it's highly possible they could still overall like even a nonprofit open source Facebook might be a bad thing for the world. And I also want to drive home to come back to the you scenario, is that a lot of the people that we've been reading on this topic, like they're not saying that there is UM. I think Jarren Lantier, uh is the exact phrase, and he says that there's not. He doesn't believe that say it Facebook, that there is. There's a room. There's like an evil room in which an evil person plots out evil things for this particular company that that it emerges more like the death machine in Cube, where where a company is trying to do various things, and some of those things may be quite noble or at least have noble ambitions to them. Other things have far more corporate leanings, and all of these things like come together in the just bake and the the alchemy of of a major corporation, and then the results uh may not be the best for us. Yeah, And so so it's there's no guarantee all of these negative effects that we associate with social media platforms would go away if you say, like distributed the creation of that platform and took away the profit motive. But it still might possibly be a step in the right direction. So we're asking about this, and several listeners got in touch to name a few things. One is Keith who's a data scientist and software developer. He mentions a few platforms that are open source or nonprofit social media platforms. Quote. The main one I'd like to point out is mastadon. This one has been gaining interraction, and it's pretty much a clone of Twitter. Some major differences are that it's open source, and they also encourage users to self host, so you can use the code to have your own social media. The main site says that there are three d and twenty thousand users, which is not a large amount, but it is growing. I'd also like to note some more obscure social media. There are chat room social media platforms like discord and Slack where communities form too. Open source alternatives are getter and rocket chat. So I hadn't heard it of those. I think maybe i'd heard of Mastodon, but I didn't really know what it was. Mainly, I'm just familiar with the band end Right, which I don't think have any involvement in this, uh this at all. We're a thrash metal platform. Yeah, I massad On of course local local band. Occasionally I will I'll run into folks from Mastadon at various events. It's great seeing him. There was one band member in particular that UM and I'm I'm not like, I'm not super familiar familiar with Mastadon, but one of the members of Mastodon has like really cool sideburns, or has in the past, and I would occasionally see him at different events and I would like kind of look at him and be like, hey, guy's got some pretty good sideburns, you know, And I'm kind of like admiring his sideburns from afar and then he'll kind of look back at me and they'll be like kind of a not a look of fear, but a look of like like you know, like I'm staring at him, you know. And but and I didn't. I didn't put it together till later. Then I'm like, oh, he's in a famous band, and he thought that I was maybe like, you know, you know, fan boying out and that might like I might approach him and uh, you know, disruptive, you know, whatever he's doing. And really I was just admiring his sideburns. UM. Anyway, for whatever that's but I also admire their music that. Oh yeah, I think they're they're top tier modern metal. Okay, so I think let's look at this next email from Sammy. This one came in after the Doppelganger Network episode. Sammy says, hey, guys, I just started listening to your new episode the Doppelganger Network and you brought up cap cross syndrome. I've never heard of it. Uh. And at first, when you guys said that this famous frenchwoman thought her loved ones were replaced by doppelgangers, I thought, how is this even possible? But as you started explaining it more as when the face recognition part of our brain knows it's someone we know, but the feeling of familiarity does not arise, I started thinking this is what I have. I was diagnosed with depression about eight years ago and put it on an s s R I. But as I started my treatment and doing research, my dad and I came across a term called de personalization. This is exactly what you described when you know you know the person you see, but you don't feel the warmth of familiarity. In the first two years of my illness, I dealt with this probably about nine percent of the time. It was horrifying seeing my parents, my friends, my boyfriend, and knowing I'm supposed to feel something but I don't. Quite a few times I almost broke up with my boyfriend because I felt guilty that I didn't love him. At the peak of this, when I was with my therapist, I told her, if you brought another man into this room and told me he was my dad, I'd believe you. Fortunately, now several years later, I rarely experienced episodes like this. My last full on depersonalization episode was about two years ago. However, to this day, I hold myself back from certain situations because I know that they have caused me to have these episodes in the past. Anyways, I felt immense gratitude when you guys mentioned this in the first part of the episode, because this issue is something I find so hard to explain to people, but you guys and Sepolski put it into the perfect words. I don't know if what I have dealt with is related to this syndrome, as I don't think people have been replaced, but I thought it was interesting. My official diagnosis now is panic disorder. Thank you for everything you guys, do you're one of the three podcasts I always listened to Sammy. Uh Well, first of all, thank you for sharing with us, but also I'm really glad to hear you're doing better these days. Yeah. Absolutely, And you know, I think as we try and stress on the podcast, you know, anybody out there if you're experiencing if you ever find yourself experiencing symptoms that were discussing on the show, Um, I mean, certainly they are dangers and self self evaluation, but don't hesitate to to ask a professional about what you're feeling and to bring it to their attention. Yeah, I think that is always a it's always a wise move, that's what that's what they're there for, and they're the ones that can can ultimately help you, uh or or tell you that you're if you're if you are worrying about nothing, if you are you know, self diagnosing based on a podcast and jump into conclusions like they're they're the ones to rein you in on that as well. Yeah, exactly. I mean, nothing nothing good ever comes out of keeping stuff like this hidden. If you are experiencing symptoms like this, it's important to talk to your loved ones about it to seek professional help. These are not the kind of things that it is best to deal with on your own right now. As But again though, as for social media inducing symptoms like this in a and a more widespread scale, I mean, that's kind of new territory in some regards. I wonder, I wonder how the therapeutic world is is currently, you know, adapting to all of this, and how they will be adapting in the near future, because I mean, I look at my own experience with say Facebook, and I go on there, and I think what I experienced some like level of just large scale depersonalization with everybody on there. These days, I feel like I am not encountering real versions of the people that I know or new, and that I am not presenting a real version of the person I am. And it's it's it's weird and and off putting and and granted, some of this may be due to some of the research we've been doing, I mean, it's certainly is a possibility, but I also think a large part of it is the platforms. Again will hopefully be discussing more of this in future episodes of the show. Yeah, totally. But also I just want to say again. We're really glad to hear you're doing better, Sammy, and best of luck in the future. All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Kate high Stuff to blow your mind. Recently, listen to your episode about Doppelgangers. At one point you were talking about para social relationships and start listening some examples, but you completely forgot to mention the very medium you're using, podcasts. Sometimes I listen to podcasts more than I communicate with my friends, family, or even boyfriends. There was a time when I used to us to consider Ira Glass from This American Life like a brother, Stephen Dubner from Freakonomics like a father figure, and still to this day, you guys are like my friends. Interesting that this is based purely on personality and nothing to do with age. Stephen Dubner, five years old, is younger than Ira Glass sixty years old. I have mentioned this to friends, and they have also revealed that they consider some of the podcast hosts they listen to like their friends. I would never consider these paras social relationships as a negative because it genuinely enriches many of my face to face relationships. Thank you anyway, f Y, I The Myths and Legends podcasted an amazing episode about people in real life who have experiences seeing their doppelgangers. Definitely worth a listen. And she includes a link but the uh and I won't read the whole link, But basically the website is myth podcast dot com. So that sounds like a phone we to check out. Always always happy to check out new podcasts, especially if they concerned something like mythology. Yeah, so I will try to give that a look if I find some time. But also I have to report, Yeah, I sometimes have a feeling like this. I mean, you can definitely, when listening to a podcast, start to feel like the people you're listening to are just your buddies, especially if it's a conversational podcast. I have had this experience plenty of times. I think, um, and yeah, I guess the question about whether you know whether these counts para social relationships and whether or not they're destructive, I think is a question of what role they play in in your life, because yeah, I've also had the experience of listening to podcasts and sort of feeling when I'm listening to these people talk like they're my buddies. But I think it's okay because I don't find them like preventing me from spending time with my real friends or my real loved ones. Um, if if I did find that that it was like interfering with my relationships, I think I would be concerned then yeah, yeah, or you know, certainly I would be concerned if if a listener showed you sor at my doorstep and wanted to borrow my xbox or something, right, yeah, that would probably right. I mean, also, yeah, it's important to have like realistic perspective and know that, you know, while it can feel like you're being social with people when you listen to a podcast, of course you know they're not actually you're you know, you don't actually know each other. Well, like let's say, take um Paul Kennedy, the hosts of Ideas, the CBC radio show I've spoken on spoken about it on the show before because it's one of my favorites, and like I can I can catch myself kind of looking at Paul Kennedy kind of like a father or grandfather figure. Um, And you know, especially since you know I don't I don't really have any of I don't have a real father or grandfather figure, in my life anymore. So maybe I'm more inclined to to find that in uh an individual from the uh you know, from the podcast world. But I think it's ultimately, like this particular example, like it's it's a healthy attachment, like like you don't think you're actually gonna go like meet Paul Kennedy, right I. I I know Paul Kennedy does not know me. And the ultimately is just this this friendly voice that shares uh you know, wonderful topics with me via this medium of podcast and uh and yeah, I think it's that that is a beneficial para social relationship, if that is indeed what it is. It sounds like it to me, and I I hope we can only be if we are a par of social or relationship for anybody, I hope we can only be a beneficial one. Don't don't don't let our voices replace your real relationships with your friends and family. They're more important. Go talk to them about fat bergs. Well that's you know, that's all. That's ultimately what what I I love to hear from listeners is when we've been able to turn you onto a topic and then you know you can, then you pick it up and you run with it, or you take it out and you share it with people and you should and it becomes a you know, conversation. It becomes at least a catalyst for you to then go out and interact with the world, interact with with with friends and family members and make new friends, make new family members for that matter. Um, if if such as possible with some of our topics, uh, you know, I think that's that that's ultimately the best case scenario for any any episode that we put out there. Not that I don't think I've ever heard of anybody like actually acquiring a new family member through the show, but I would love to hear if if anybody out there has ever met a significant other U through listening to our show, I would absolutely love to hear about. Oh my god, yes, please send us your stories if that happened. Maybe Fatbirg is doing it right now. Somewhere out there. A love story is brewing through um just strangers meeting and talking about the fat Burg episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's a romance between so Plady and Fatbird Cop. Yeah, that would be the sequel, right, Fat Bird too, Fat Birds in Love La who's upontificating? Now there you go. All right, Well, hey, we we have a whole stack of emails here that Carney the mail bot brought us. We were not able to read them all at all, but we we we did what we could. We read some of them. There are plenty that we read to ourselves and you know, and we didn't read on the show. But hey, some of them will say for next time. And we encourage everyone to keep writing in. You have thoughts about episodes, you have corrections about episodes. Uh, you have criticisms, you have little tidbits to share. Uh. We love to hear from everybody. We'll share the email address here at the end of the show. You can also reach out to us. The main way really is if you go to the Facebook group associated with the show, which is the Stuff to Blew your Mind discussion module. UH. That's probably one of the better ways to interact with us these days. And of course Stuff to Bow your Mind dot Com is the mothership. That's our O n O website, as they say, that's where you'll find all the episodes of the show, uh, and the various other bits of information that you might need. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Tory Harrison, and to our guest producer today my Cole. 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, just to say hello, you can email us at contact dot stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen your favorite shows. The