Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
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Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day of each week that we read back messages that you have sent in to the Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address, which, by the way, you should give a try if you never have before. We always appreciate feedback to recent episodes, especially if you have something interesting you would like to add to a topic we've talked about. You can reach us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Let's see rob do you mind if I kick things off today? With this message from Daniel in response to our series Well, this was in response to our series on stickiness, but specifically the episode where we talked about sticky memories. Yeah, let's do it, okay, and for context. In the Sticky Memories episode, we talked about the idea of flash bulb memories, these memories that have a subjectively highly sticky quality to them. People many years later will report these types of experiences with confidence that they have very detailed, accurate memories, and specifically flash bold memories are about the moment that a person learned about a public event, often like a tragedy of some kind, like the moment somebody learned about the Kennedy assassination or the moment somebody learned about nine to eleven. People very often report that they have detailed and very consistent, accurate memories about what was going on when they found out where they were and all that, and studies have shown Nope, they don't. They just think that they do. We, for some reason, are especially convinced that these memories are authentic and unchanging. But you can show that they're not.
So.
Daniel says Hi in regard to your episode about sticky memories. The unreliability of some of the details of these memories was of extreme interest for me, as I have recorded proof of some of these in my personal life, that is, family events recorded on video and then years later compared to my memory of this event, having never seen the video until now, and noting the profound differences parentheses. I apologize for my possible poor writing skills, as I have autism and do not express myself well. It takes extreme effort to generate even this well. We appreciate the effort Daniel, think you're doing great, Daniel says. One event I will describe now. The memory I have is this. It's two thousand and four. I'm playing with the first solid state memory based video camera I ever had. I met my grandmother's place. My Auntie and I pressure cleaning the back pavement of her house. It's a crisp, cool, coldish, late winter's breezy day. The splashing water from the pressure cleaner feels lovely on my legs. I'm a person who hates hot weather, and so this is a particularly nice memory for this reason. All this time I am recording the event on the camera. This memory persisted for years and still does. However, how shocked I was two years later come across the original camera footage actual event as recorded. I was pressure cleaning with my auntie at my grandmother's place, washing the back pavement. But it was a stinking hot summer's day, and in the video I was wishing it was a much cooler winter's day. I was imagining how much nicer it would be to feel the cold splashes along with the coldish late winter breeze. The original event, plus my wishful alteration to the event, was fused into one memory event. How many of our memories actually appear more favorable than they actually were because we included any wishful changes in the memory. Eg. At a wedding a lovely time, but wish Uncle John could be here. In our memory Uncle John is there, but proven wrong by the wedding video. This has happened a lot in my life, as I have recorded heaps of it since I was in primary school. Maybe this is one of the reasons the past can seem so much better than the present. The past has been edited by our minds in post production to be better, and is only picked up if we record it with technology as well and compare it. I would never have realized the inaccuracy of the pressure cleaner event if I hadn't recorded it as well. Cheers Daniel. Oh well, yeah, thank you for the excellent message, Daniel. And yeah, I think it's amazing when people have experiences like this. I know my family didn't do a lot of home movies, but my wife's family did some home movies, and I think she's talked about experiences like this, like remembering something one way but then seeing it on video and oh, it happened a different way and being so surprised by that. But I think there's something very perceptive to what you're saying about the idea of you think that the day you were out there with the pressure cleaner, feeling the water on your legs and wishing it was a cool day may have contaminated your memory in such a way that you remembered it as being a cool day. I think that could very well be a mechanism in play. And there is evidence I've read about before of the ability of the imagination to contaminate memories of events. So, for example, if you intentionally imagine yourself doing something, there is often a good chance you will later remember actually doing that thing.
Yeah, and of course you have to keep in mind that you know it need not be a beneficial enhancer of memory. I mean, you can certainly have cases where a memory is made more traumatic through recollection. You know it, you know it's ultimately Again, it comes back to the fact that anytime we draw that memory out of the vault, we augment it in small ways, and that can go in either direction subjectively.
Right, So maybe if instead of sitting there thinking about how nice it would be if it were a cool day, you had been thinking about how much worse it would be if it were like one hundred and fifteen degrees outside. Maybe you would actually remember it that way.
Yeah, but again, this is another great insight into just how curious memory is and how susceptible to change it is.
Obviously, when I said one fifteen, I'm operating on the inferior fahrenheit scale, I don't think it would be one hundred and fifteen celsius out.
All right, here's another listener male for us. This one has to do with our series of episodes on strange underwater photos and other images that are of questionable quality. This one comes to us from Wait, Hi, Rob, Joe, and JJ. Thanks for the episodes on mysterious underwater photographs and the psychological explanations involving low resolution information, where the lack of detail seems to encourage the human mind to come up with more fanciful explanations, while a higher resolution image would have the opposite effect no gaps to fill in. This made me think of HFR, or high frame rate video content aka soap opera effect, which is higher than the traditional twenty four frames per second. I've always wondered why this feature is universally hated in movies and TV. I think the low resolution principle may be working here in reverse. We want there to be some mystery and gaps to fill in when we are engaging with fiction, so we can feel more like an active participant, even though there may not be anything substantial we are actually missing with normal film speed. Maybe our brains are translating the lower bandwidth into a sense of mystery, which is more enjoyable and engaging than the sterile, seeming high bandwidth HFR version. Keep up the great work way.
Wayne, That is a really interesting idea. I don't know if I think that that's correct or not, but I can certainly agree that the high frame rate experience is not one that feels very magical to me. And even worse, I think, are the I don't even know technically what's going on here, but the sort of you know, the digital simulations of it with like the it's called different things on different TVs, but the cursed motion smoothing effect that comes as turned on by default, and a lot of new televisions just looks abysmal. Awful movies look terrible with this thing on.
Yeah, it's it can be quite an experience I was. I was with my family and we were staying with my wife's uncle and aunt, and you know, we were staying at somebody's house. You don't want to go necessarily messing around with other people's TV settings. Some folks don't like that, and they don't mind showing you. Sorry it laughs into a Texas chainsaw mESC A quote there, But the point is still the same. It's it may be impolite to mess around with someone's TV settings. So Uncle and Ann had gone to bed. We decided to watch Black Panther, of you know, spectacular special effects laden film with some great performances in it as well some high drama. But we had to face the fact are we going to keep watching it in this strange format or are we going to just go to bed early? We decided to watch the whole film and it was still It was still great. You know, a film like that I think can take the visual ding. But it was weird. It was like watching like an old school Doctor Who episode instead of like the sleek Marvel Cinematic Universe film that it is.
I don't know if i've I may have told the story on the podcast before. If so, apologies, but one time my wife and I started watching a significant chunk of the first Lord of the Rings film with the motions moothing on and a TV in a different place, and wooh boy, I mean, how to really suck the mystery and magic out of that prologue site with the seal door and the you know, the Wargan saur on and all that. It takes like the swirling mist and haze of mythology and turns it into just kind of like a hokey smudge. Everything looks so cheap and fake.
Wow. I mean, this is why you see some filmmakers and actors railing against it. You know, it's it kind of you know, it disrupts the way that the art is supposed to be immuted and appreciated.
Now, to be fair, I think we have somewhat strayed from because Wayne was talking about high frame rate video content or high frame rate film. I don't know what the exact technical relationship of that to the motion smoothing effect on the TVs is, but I will say it feels similar whatever is going on in these cases. I don't know if there is significant overlap technically.
But the basic point about enhanced detail, taking away from immersion. You do see that at times. You see it in cases we've talked about in Weird House cinema before, where there may be a wire visible, or a velcro a velcros strap, or a zipper visible on a monster that would not have been visible, and say the VHS age. But now and with restore, you know, some of these glorious restored editions we have, sometimes you get to see the seams a little more than was intended. And I understand it makes some of those old effects folks kind of WinCE at times because they're like, I was never meant to be seen like this, and yet now it is. Well.
But when I see a wire or a zipper today, I find that charming. I mean, that's just lovely. I do not feel that about the act of taking a Grand tolkienesque battle scene and turning it into a soap opera.
Yeah. Yeah. Another example that comes to mind is sometimes you'll be watching a period piece, you know, maybe it's a medieval saga, and one of the heroes or villains you know, gets a nice close up and they yell something and when their mouth is open, you get to see all of their dental work. All of their modern don't work, and you know that might there might be a case to be made there. It's like we were never meant to see everything inside this actor's mouth with perfect clarity. And you know, I'm not saying it ruins a film or anything, but you know, for a split second you're like, oh, oh, I see those feelings there, medieval Warrior.
But so, to come back to Wayne's idea, I guess the question would be, is that because part of the magic of cinema relies on like the el tanna and antenna effect, that like you're seeing some kind of something is lower resolution, or some kind of information is missing and part of the fun of watching cinema is letting your mind fill in those gaps, or it is the cause something else. Is there a different reason that we prefer the look of the you know, traditional lower frame rate.
Yeah, these are great questions. All right, Well, you know I think up next, Joe, it's time for our favorite section of listener mail. It's time for a little more tea talk.
All right, Well, I can read this one if you want, but you're gonna have to comment on it because you're the tea guy. Okay, you're the t man between us.
So.
This is from Susan on the Facebook discussion module. Susan says, how did I not comment on Lapsong souchong before? I feel like I did. It's just lost to time. AnyWho Lapsong souchong is delicious. I'm not a fan of barbecue, so I wouldn't call it that, but it definitely is smoky all get out, or at least it should be. I had to give it up, though, because my father refuses to not make fun of the smell and I got tired of it. I finally found a pooerr that I've liked, which is exciting because all the others I've tried have one percent tasted like boiled leather shoes. I remember forcing myself to drink my way through a box of it because I don't like to waste things, but for some reason, I try again every few years. I think the one I tried recently was a chocolate one, and I guess my brain went chocolate shoe leather yum. And then as a footnote, I guess to the idea of not liking to throw things out or waste them. Susan says this is also why I drank a box of tea that tasted like hot kool aid discovered I do not like the taste of hibiscus.
Hmm. You know, I haven't had a lot of high biscus tea, but I do like some cocktail mixes that involve high biscuits, like some things of that nature, some sweeteners that have hibiscus head to them. But as for her larger points here, I totally can relate to needing to consume all of the tea that you buy. I like trying out new teas and occasionally I get one that I'm not crazy about. But I do feel like I owe it to the tea to go ahead and just go through the entire amount that I ordered, like it would be. I'm not just going to leave it in there and eventually throw it out. I'm not going to compost it. I'm going to consume it, even if I'm not crazy about it, you know, sort of in a way, sort of give it to the end of the package to try and win me over. Now, as for the lopsong Sushan, I'm still getting used to it. It's not going to be my everyday tea, but I do enjoy it. And other members of my household are tolerating it's aroma, so that's all well and good. But I do love the poo airs. In fact, I'm drinking at this very moment an evil snake king poo air that I really like. And a number of these do have a very kind of earthy, perhaps leathery, even kind of barnyard sort of flavor profile. That. Yeah, it can take some good news to.
All right, Rob, I want to take your pick between these two weird house messages here.
Sure, sure, sure, Let's say we have one. This one relates to Danger Diabolic. This one comes to us from Paul Robin Joe. My wife and I watch Danger Diabolic on Saturday night and thoroughly enjoyed it. After watching it, though I have one observation and one question. First, you noted in your review that Diabolic is more anti than we may be used to in our anti heroes, in that he murders people who don't seemingly deserve it based on their actions. He definitely appears to quote unquote shoot first. However, in the first heist we see in the film, he's entirely nonviolent. The gas he uses to confuse the agents guarding the cash as non toxic, and even when he's being shot at from the helicopters, he's evasive but non violent in response. It's only after the government reinstates the death penalty specifically because of him, that we see him use violent tactics. Maybe it's the government that shot first. Second, where do supervillains hire their contractors? That underground Layer is fantastic, I, on the other hand, have a hard time just finding a competent plumber. Is there a secret version of Craigslist only available to supervillains? Looking forward to the next weird house cinema?
Paul, I do imagine if you are hiring people to make modifications to your underground Layer and your Diabolic, you will have the problem that you will have to find contractors who accept as payment like sweaty, smelly money.
Yeah. I also had some of the same thoughts watching it, like who built I mean? And then this is the type of film where you can easily jump out of that kind of of thinking, But yeah, who would build this? Where did this come from? What is the origin story of this vast facility underground? And I do love that a film like Danger Diabolic does not feel like it needs to explain that, whereas plenty of modern films would that. Being said, you know, I do have to single out the television series Better Call Saul for doing one of the better jobs I've ever seen of explaining the origin story of a complex underground villain's layer in a in a believable sense, like how would this possibly come together? And how would you possibly attempt to keep it secret? On the subject of danger Diabolic, we also heard from listener Matt in discord. He commented, quote Diabolic share some DNA with chronicles of Riddick. I guess in that quote evil should be fought with a different type of evil. Unquote it's a pretty good point. Pretty good point. Yeah. However, I will say there are no good guys encouraging Diabolic to fight evil in the film. He just gets drawn into a prolonged feud with criminals and government. Nobody's saying like, yes, finally we can use Diabolic to uh to deliver us from the tyranny of the government and or the crime lords.
Can you imagine in a movie that's Riddick versus Terry Thomas.
Oh well, it raises a tough quest like who would be the modern Terry Thomas, who could do that? Who would be the actor for that role? Wait, I think I have an idea. I think Hugh Grant could do it. Michael Sheen, I think would especially contemporary Michael Sheen could do a nice one. Which is interesting because Michael Sheen definitely had his sort of action period, his sort of like Underworld three era where he would be more of like a fitting like physical adversary of Riddick. But but current Michael Sheen, he's at a different stage in his life and career where he could and of course he's a brilliant performer that can p a serious character as well as a highly comedic and campy character. And I think you would be particularly delicious as that kind of adversary for maybe not maybe not for Riddic, but somebody like critic.
Well you know what I was, I was half joking about Hugh Grant, but actually he plays a bullseye Terry Thomas role in the recent Dungeons and Dragons movie. I mean, that's a Terry Thomas character.
It is, it is, and that is a great, great role, great role in that film. I'm enjoying late career Hugh Grant here he's playing an oople lumpenex, which I'm excited to see.
Oh I didn't know that.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's in the trailer. Looks it looks looks fabulous. All right, well, we're gonna go ahead and close up the mail bag there real quick. You might have heard us mention the discussion module. That's the Facebook group. If you want to join it, you can just go to go onto Facebook, look for it, and then request entry. I think you have to answer the easiest question in the world, what is the name of the podcast? And if you can't get that, then you don't get in. I'm sorry, you don't belong. You don't belong there. You can try again another time. And you may have heard us mentioned as well the discord page, the discord server, or what have you. If you would like to access that, just email us. We'll throw up that email addressed here in a minute. And if you just email and say, hey, I want to be in the discord, well we'll send you the link to access the discord. It's pretty easy.
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.
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