Listener Mail: Piano Fighter

Published Feb 19, 2024, 11:00 AM

Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb.

And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day of each week that we read back messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you are a listener of the show and you've never gotten in touch before, why not give it a shot. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Send whatever you like. We especially appreciate if you have something interesting to add to a topic we've recently talked about on the show. But any kind of feedback is fair game. Of course, if you have corrections, those are always welcome. If you just want to say hi, send us a friendly message, let us know what you like about the show, or you know how you listen, any of that's fair game. Also, if you want to recommend topics or suggest movies for Weird House Cinema, that's that's welcome as well. Contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Oh, before we get into the messages, brief announcement. We're going to be out for the rest of this week, so there will be some Vault episodes running in Tuesday and Thursday slots this week, and we will have a Weird House Cinema rewind for you on Friday, but we should be back with new stuff the following week.

All right, Well, what do we have in the mail bag for us this time? Joe?

Okay, we got some messages in response to our series on Strange Ice. This first message is specifically about a comment I made when we were talking about ice shove. Remember, ice shove is where ice that forms on the top of a lake or the sea gets pushed onto shore by wind or ocean currents, and in some cases it can pile up in these huge ice dunes that, when they get very large, can damage structures near the shore. We were talking about one specific news report about a supper club in Wisconsin that was affected by some especially menacing ice shove. So this message comes from John and Milwalk. John says, Hello, I'm writing in about Joe's quote the supper club is threatened. They're going to get ice in their hot dish comment regarding an ice push threatening Jim and Linda's supper club in your Strange Ice Part two. Your comment made me smile, but I wanted to adjust it slightly as a former Minnesotan and current Wisconsinite. More likely you'll find hot dish at a Minnesota church or community pot luck. At the supper club in Wisconsin, you may have extra ice for your Brandy Old Fashioned or ice cream blended Brandy Alexander. The ice would the ice would threaten your prime rib special or fish fry, depending on the day. All delicious by the bye, except for the Brandy Old Fashioned too sweet. Keep doing great work. Thanks John from Milwaukee. John, I accept this correction, so you are exactly right. For those unfamiliar with what I was talking about in my original joke, hot dish is a famous common type of dish prepared in the Upper Midwest. I've never lived in the Upper Midwest, so I don't have like intimate familiarity, but I know sort of secondhand from what I understand, it's basically like a casserole blueprint that can take a lot of different forms. But the version I know is like some kind of meat, maybe like shredded chicken or ground beef, frozen mixed vegetables mixed with a can or multiple cans of condensed cream of mushroom soup, and then topped with frozen tater tots, so you bake that until it's crispy.

So kind of a casserole situation, right.

Yeah, we have similar dishes here in the Southeast as well. I think they're just not called hot dish. It's like, you know, Grandma's casserole or whatever. It's some kind of casserole where a major ingredient is canned cream of mushroom soup. Meanwhile, the supper Club in Wisconsin, I think that's like a somewhat traditional or old school, fancy type of fair where you go to the supper club on I don't know, Friday night or whatever. You get your classic cocktails, your brandy old fashioned or whatever, and they've got prime rib or something like that.

All right, all right, well this is exactly the kind of email we like. We get some nice on the ground regional feedback.

Right, and Midwesterners, I'm sorry, I hope that's close to the mark as I just described it. I'm sorry if I've slandered your culture once again.

All Right, we have some more. We have some more regional feedback here. This one comes to us from Quinn. Quinn says, I have seen the ice bubbles described in the Strange Ice episode while ice skating on Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota. Although not as clear and plentiful as the photos from Alberta, they were very present. They were most common around areas that were a little marshy with heavy plant growth in the summer. My mother talked about when she was a child, her and her siblings would go hunting for one or the surface. When they found these, they would use the toepics on their figure skates to break open the bubble and drop a match into it, lighting the methane.

That's an impressive story. I don't know how recommended that activity is, but yeah, great.

I mean, I guess in theory we're dealing with like individual small bubbles small amounts of methane, So I guess it's fine. But yeah, I didn't even think about that possibility.

I guess it makes sense that these would be most common in, as you say, Quinn, areas that are a little marshy or have heavy plant growth. That seems like where there would be some kind of decay or decomposition of vegetable matter in the water that would lead to these methane pockets.

Yeah. Yeah, because again, if you don't remember, you can listen to that episode. The basic idea is that, yeah, methane is rising up from decomposing organic material at the bottom of said body of water, and then it is like collecting underneath the forming layer of ice at the top, and then it gets trapped and it forms like multiple layers of these kind of squashed, elongated bubbles of captured methane.

Yeah, so thank you Quinn. Let's see Rob. Do you mind if I do this one from Jeremy? Go for it, Jeremy says, still on the subject of strange ice, Hello, Robert and Joe. In response to your request for strange ice pictures, here are a couple we found while skiing in Switzerland in twenty twenty. These are ice stalagmites in a tunnel. Best regards, Jeremy and Rob. I've attached the pictures Jeremy sent for you to look at here. This does look at some kind of cave or tunnel and the floor is iced over. It has, you know, pools of standing ice in the bottom, and there are all of these spikes coming up out of the pools and they're frozen. And I was wondering, are those ice spikes formed by the process we described in the Strange Ice episode, where if you'll call in that process, you have like a pool of water that is freezing gradually, and as it freezes from the outside in because water expands as it freezes, it squeezes the water out from a remaining hole in the surface of the ice and just keeps squeezing out and expanding as the whole thing freezes over, eventually forming these weird spikes that come out of the top. So it could be that, or I'm wondering, is this actually a stalagmite formed by accumulation through dripping, just like a stalagmite in a limestone cave. I guess one clue would be if the stalagmites below were directly aligned with matching icicles above. But I can't tell from the pictures if this is the case. So Jeremy, if you have more pictures or insight on this, let us know.

Yeah, very cool photos, a little bit creepy.

More than a little bit. Yeah, there's some frosty, ghostly magic happening in there.

Yeah, it might be a wampa back there. You never know what's going to happen, all right, For this next one, we have yet more regional feedback. This one comes to us from Carlos in response to our Illusion of Control episodes. Carlos says, currently taking a break from grading some papers, and I thought i'd reach out about your mention of Las Vegas in your most recent episode of The Illusion of Control Part one, which I started on during breakfast. First of all, I wanted to say thanks for mentioning that there is more to Vegas than gambling. I have lived here for almost three years now, since I started a PhD program in literature at UNLV. I thought for sure that I would hate it, that I would just put my head down and get through the years. This was based on my preconceived notions about Vegas, despite my wife having grown up here. Growing up in Bakersfield, California, we used to just come here to party, and that was basically all I have associated with the city. It was a pleasant surprise to learn how much more the city has to offer, especially since before moving here, my wife and I lived in Bishop, California, which has maybe three thy five hundred people. I wanted to highlight something else Vegas has that's worth visiting. Slash doing. In addition to what you both mentioned, Red Rock State Park, just outside of the city, is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. We moved here in part because we knew the climbing was good. But after a few years spending time in the canyons, I've fallen increasingly in love with the incredibly unique landscape here. It really is something special, from the strange rocks to the huge rock walls. I've attached some pictures anyways, thanks Carlos and Rob.

I pulled in some of the photos Carlos attached for us to look at. Thank you so much, Carlos wonderful message and these photos are great. So we have a landscape seeing the canyon and the rocks at a distance. But Carlos also sent a lot of close ups of just beautiful patterns in the rocks, some of which look like the weather on ju Jupiter. Others look like they have patches like a cow.

Yeah. Yeah, these look great. Yeah. Unfortunately, when my family and I went out to Vegas, we were primarily visiting family in Arizona, and then we went up to Vegas for just a couple of days, and we knew that there was good stuff to see out in the surrounding area, but we just ended up not having time to do it. So if we go back to Vegas at some point, I'm gonna have to make sure that we head out and see some of these rocks.

All right. This next message, also about Illusion of Control, is from Jessica. Jessica says, good afternoon. I enjoyed the show and wish to thank you for all the time and effort you put into it. I enjoyed part one of the new series on Control, but was a little disappointed that you did not mention Big Jewels dice in the dice section. It is from Guys and Dolls. Unfortunately I could not find a clip. It goes something like this. So the character Big Jewel says, and to change my life, I'm going to use my own dice. Another character named Nathan Detroit says, not to be petty, but may I see those dice. These dice ain't got no spots on them, and Jewel says, oh, I had them removed for luck. But it's all right. I remember where the spots formerly were. And then Detroit asks, you're going to roll blank dice and remember where the spots formerly were. I guess. Jewel says, yes, so, and then Jessica continues, needless to say, Big Jewel wins all his money back. That is the kind of control we all wish we had at the casino. It's a running joke in our house when we place, when we place dice, when we play I guess dice based games. Someone get me Big Jewels dice. Thank you for the podcast. I hope this entertained you for a moment, at least as you have entertained me for many hours. Have a good day, Jessica. Thank you, Jessica. And yeah, I'm not familiar with guys and dolls, but that's a great gag.

Yeah, I mean I know some of the songs, but never never seen the musical in full or the movie adaptation. Uh though of course it's, you know, considered a classic. I did do a quick search because I'm like, I bet you can do this, And sure enough, you can just go to your any of your favorite online retailers and buy blank d twenties to do with what you will if you want to tempt the wrath of your dungeon master.

Oh the mischief we shall make, all right.

This next one comes to us from Mike. Mike says was listening to this episode while waiting for a bus, and this was on the light pole I was leaning against. Lol, Mike, let's see, let's take a look at this booture. I haven't looked at it yet.

It's a very elaborate sign posted on a crosswalk button. It's got a lot of instructions.

Yeah, yeah, so it shows us what to do and what not to do when the walking man is on the light, when the hand is flashing, when the hand is solid, Harry, when you're getting the countdown. It's a fair amount of instructions. But I mean it must be necessary if they've had to post it.

I'm just gonna say, if they're going to make you read that much text and follow all the instructions, I hope that button actually does change something.

Yeah, it's also one of those nice elbow friendly buttons. It looks like I'm a big fan of this, or knee friendly, depending on the exact height. All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from John. John says, Hey, guys, thanks for your podcast. Here's a brief anecdote, followed by my thoughts on control anecdote. I bought a lottery ticket once. The jackpot was huge, so I thought I would. I went to a gas station and there was a separate line for lottery tickets because they were so popular. I get to the front and I'm ask if I want to choose my numbers. Understanding my level of control, I say no, and before I know it, I have a ticket and the next person is being served. My ticket wasn't printed, but handed to me from a stack, presumably a bunch of and of numbers were pre printed to move things along. But knowing nothing about the lottery, I couldn't help but wonder if I got a ticket from yesterday or something like that. I think chance skepticism at times limits both the chance and ease of being cheated, or at least a perception. Of course, you could also see the entire lottery as a cheat. And he spared me from ever buying another ticket. Hah. Yeah.

I guess they probably just pre printed him to speed up the line, and they weren't trying to scam you. But yeah, it may be beneficial to you just to have that suspicion, as I think you're suggesting here, because it discourages you from wasting too much money on a losing game in the future.

Yeah, he continues my thoughts on control. I see my mind broken down into consciousness and non consciousness, but not in the way that's traditionally defined. I see my consciousness as being pure observation and nothing more. My non consciousness is everything else. I'll spare most of the details here. A decent analogy might be that my mind is like ocean. My consciousness is the sunlight. What percentage of the ocean is sunlight? Zero? And yet the past present in future sunlight plays a huge role in what the ocean was, is and will be. How does control fit in? Control, it seems to me, is a feeling. It's often helpful, it might be necessary for normal function, and it might be impossible to eliminate. It feels like I have control, for example, over what I include in this email. I think that I do counterintuitively and walking a linguistic tight rope, I believe I am consciously observing my non conscious control splitting hairs. I would argue that consciously controlling what's included in this email is a less accurate way of saying I consciously observe my control of what's included in this email. It's a potentially meaningless distinction, but one that I find intriguing. This isn't directly applicable to the illusion of control as you've described it, but I thought you might find it interesting. I would guess the subjective feeling of control is correlated with objective control, but I'll leave that to you guys to figure out. Looking forward to part two, if you're not lost, I'm happy, honestly if you just read this far, I'm thrilled. Thanks John, Thank you, John.

No, I think this is somewhat applicable, especially to stuff we talked about in part three with like the magical thinking stuff that you brought up, Rob, So I guess this has come up at a couple of points now. But the idea of control can be taken in multiple ways. One is a simple level of control, and it's the meaning used in most of this research. It just means that, like, what you do has some predictable influence on the outcome, Whereas, on the other hand, there's this other way of looking at control, the level you're talking about here, John, where the closer you examine your own consciousness and behavior, the more difficult it is to see how you meaning your consciousness actually controls anything, even your own thoughts and behavior, and Rob you brought this up in part three of the series when you're talking about magical thinking, because even normal physic causation starts to feel more mysterious and potentially magical when you start looking for like, where's the clear evidence that my conscious will is in the driver's seat, and that evidence kind of seems to evaporate the closer you look for it. However, I think, as you said, John, in the more everyday sense, it is still useful to make a distinction between outcomes we can control or influence and those we can't, in that sense of just like having what you do has some predictable influence on the outcome, because if you don't make that distinction, you fail to realize that difference, it can, as we talked about, lead to all sorts of maladaptive behaviors.

All right, Shoe, we look at a little bit of Weird House Cinema. Male here, Joe.

Oh yeah, all right, Well, actually I'm going to do this one from Chelsea May, which touches on both an older Core episode and on Weird House Cinema. Chelsea May says, Hello, Robin, Joe of your Guys show, I own a cleaning business, and your podcast has gotten has got me through many jobs. Keep it up. I did have a comment on I believe the Sunken Lands episode. I apologize if I'm stating the wrong episode. I had a thought about emailing you after it came out, but I'm just getting to it, Chelsea May, having read your email, I think this is actually referring to the episodes we did on these ancient tales of lands where people did not have heads or were said to have like their faces were on their chest or their abdomen or something, and the context was there is a strong possibility that these stories of headless people are just purely fanciful invention, creative storytelling, or maybe some kind of information got mangled in a telephone game in the ancient world. But on the other hand, if these stories were based on somebody in the ancient world looking at people and somehow mistakenly believing they didn't have heads, what could be the cause of that confusion. So anyway, Chelsea May's email goes on mention something about people on ships seeing people on an island shore that didn't look like they had a head. I could see how from a certain perspective a person could look like that. It made me think of my grandmother. She was one of the sweetest and most caring people I've ever met, but for many years she worked for Lee Outlet making jeans and worked on a farm, so she was bent over sewing for most of her life as well as manual labor. Because of this, she developed a humped back. When she was looking down at something, her back could seem like it came up above her head slightly. The people seeing on an island could also have had this same back ailment because of the work they might have been doing to survive. I hope this makes sense, but this is why my mind went to my grandmother and I could understand why people might have thought the island people didn't have heads. Thanks again for all the information I've learned from you guys, and all the strange movies you have exposed me to. My husband and I watched Santa Claus versus the Martians over Christmas because of your show. You may well, I'm certainly glad to hear that the conquest of Mars by the forces of the North Pole has more witnesses. Now, yeah, yeah, that's an interesting idea about these things. I mean I think this is one of these cases, like we talked about in that episode, where we're probably never going to know what actually happened leading to these stories. Obviously it was not the case that people didn't actually have heads, but it is interesting to consider the possibilities, and that does seem like another one of them.

Yeah, yeah, I didn't see it mentioned in any of the materials we were looking at. Maybe it's explored elsewhere, But now that I'm thinking about it, you could imagine a scenario where you had a certain group of people from a given culture that are maybe doing the gathering on the shore, and maybe those people, you know, are specialized in this particular task, or they're depending on elderly members of the society that can't engage and some of the more robust physical activities anymore. So Yeah, yeah, it's a lot to think about, all right. This next one comes to us from Chewy Chewy Rites high Fellows, longtime listener and a huge fan of the Weird House episodes. In particular, it's become a tradition for my wife and I to put these movies on in the background and enjoy the dialogue while we doodle, paint and art every now and then the art gets shoved aside and the weird movie wins memorable mention robot jocks Oh of course, Yeah, that was a lot of fun. AnyWho, the RoboCop episode had you guys talking about the goofy stance that RoboCop takes when firing is gun. It reminded me of this World War Two pistol training video with a similar goofy stance. The offhand is not out like someone learning to skateboard, but more like someone opening the oven to check on the cake inside. Surely this helps with stability, but it seems like you would become an easier target to hit Smashing show chewing.

Yeah, I don't know about whether they'd be an easier target to hit, but I did take a look at this video, and yeah, there are some funny looking stances, especially at one point where the instructor in the video is showing how to sort of do a sort of squatting walk and pivot to hit targets when coming out of the walk to like freeze and try to aim. And it does look pretty funny, and I guess it's just one example of how there are a lot of activities in the world where what we think is the optimal form just does not make you look super cool.

Yeah, And to be clear, once you have a RoboCop situation going on, the conditions for optimal form change. Because he does not have a human body, he does not have human weaknesses anymore. So whatever form he's taking to fire is gun. Who are we to argue with his programmers? By the way, if you're curious about this video, it's on YouTube with the title combat Firing with Handgun Military Training Video Part one. It's like an old World War two short that's now public domain.

I've watched other videos like this before. I think there's a famous one that's like combat knife fighting training video for World War Two, and it's the tone of them is so strange because it has that kind of cheerful sounding nineteen forties movie narrator film strip narrator voice, and it's, you know, kind of like, oh, assume the fighting stance so that the knife blade is pointed toward you. I don't know, it just sounds like a like a National Parks video or something, but it's about how to kill people.

All right.

I think we have one more, don't we, Joe.

That's right, This last message comes from column Column says, Hey, guys, hope all is good. I just came across this cool video attached on my Instagram feed about a guy who gives a helping hand to hermit crabs off real shells to poor hermit crabs who can only find plastic rubbish shells on the beach. At the time the video was made, he had helped over one hundred and fifty crabs move into new proper shell homes.

Oh interesting, Okay, he's kind of breaking the prime directive there, but I guess prime directive has already been broken regarding hermit crab civilization.

At least on his face, it seems like that would be a helpful thing to do. I guess my natural instinct is to be a little cautious about interventions of that sort, because I would always wonder if there's like some secondary effect or something that could bring about that's actually overall not helpful to the ecosystem. But I don't want to be too suspicious. I mean, it seems like a nice thing to do. I don't know, people who have more knowledge about this environment or hermit krab ecology, let us know. Is this a nice and helpful thing to do. It seems like it maybe possibly yes, certainly appears to come from a place of love. But the second thing Colin says is regarding Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain.

Wow.

I could only find a stream online in Chinese with no subtitles, so I watched it with the sound off, and even then I had to take regular breaks in order to prevent my head from exploding.

What a movie.

All the best your pal, Column. Thank you so much, Column. I'm glad you enjoyed Zoo Warriors. It sounds like as much as we did.

Yeah, and it is overpowering. Yeah, I would say if you set out to watch this movie, factor in some breaks. It's a lot to take in in one setting.

Okay, I think that does it for today.

Yeah. We'll go ahead and close the mail bag for now, but keep it coming, keep writing in if you have thoughts on past, present, and future episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Weird House Cinema, or anything else we put out on the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed, and will remind you that our core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Monday, short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we set us oude most serious concerns just about a weird movie on Weird Out Cinema.

Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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