May 27, 2025 • 48 mins
Once more, it's time for a dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener Mail.
This is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And this is Joe McCormick, and today we are bringing
you some messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
email address, Folks at home, if you like this show
and you've never written in to tell us your thoughts before,
now would be a great time. You know, It's weird
how I feel like our email really comes in like floods,
and then it dries up, and then it's a flood again.
(00:35):
I wish we could do something, if we could prod
y'all out there in some way to make the flow
more steady. It's like we live. We live in a
kind of Nile inundation cycle of emails, where like sometimes
we're struggling to keep up to read enough of them,
and other times they dry up and I don't know
what to do about that.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Well, I mean it get the impression that some episodes
are just more relatable than others and are going to
be sorts of episodes that folks feel like they have
something to contribute on. Certainly we see this when we
do episodes on things like dreams, oh yes, or universal experiences,
and then sometimes we do deeper dives into areas that
you know no one has personal experience with, like no
(01:14):
one has actually been a warrior and an ancient army
and so forth. But yeah, you know it's sometimes it's
hard to predict as well.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well, whatever the reason they're folks, I just I would
always encourage you. If you want to get in touch,
please do. If you're thinking about it, do it. Make
it real. You can write us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com. We of course always
loved responses to recent episodes or series. If you have
a correction if necessary, certainly send that our way. If
(01:46):
you have something interesting you'd like to add to a
topic we talked about, If you would just like to
tell us something you find interesting, even unrelated to episodes
we've done, that's all fair game. Contact at Stuff to
Blow your Mind.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
If you ever find yourself thinking, boy, I wish they
would do more episodes like X, well, whatever X is,
write in and tell us because in all likelihood, you know,
we always have any number of episodes we'd like to
cover any number of topics, and it's just kind of
week to week on whether we'll spring on one or not,
so you know, a little prodding in one direction or
(02:22):
the other can work wonders.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
That's right. We can't promise to do topics on request,
but we absolutely have done that before and we'll do
that at some points in the future.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
All right, Well, let's dig into this mailbag. What does
Carnie have for us this week?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Joe, Let's see, maybe we should kick things off with
this response to our series on predators of the Deep Ocean.
This was a series we did about predatory animals that
operate in the darker parts of the sea, the lower
strata away from the sunlight, including the abyssle and the
hadel zones. Now, Rob, this message makes reference to a
(02:57):
Monsters of the Deep wall poster. That's ringing a bell
in my brain. But I actually don't remember the context
in which that originally came up. What was the deal there?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I think I was reminiscing about a possibly national geographic
fold out poster of various organisms in the ocean, including
deep sea organisms, and not everything was to scale, nor
was it intended to be to scale, but it kind
of led my young mind to assume that some of
these creatures were bigger than they actually were. And as
(03:27):
we've chatted with folks since that episode, it sounds like
I wasn't the only one to have this experience.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Yeah, okay, that's what it was. So this message comes
from Jeff. Jeff says, Greetings, deep ones. I didn't have
a Monsters of the Deep poster on my wall, but
I did have access to my grandfather's Encyclopedia Britannica and
(03:54):
spent many hours studying the illustrations of horrible deep sea
creatures and earning their names. Other kids had dinosaurs. I
had the spiny batfish and the gulper eel. I always
highly recommend reading outdated encyclopedias and reference books any like
(04:16):
nonfiction books of factual information about the world, especially if
the selection criteria is like what would be interesting to
a general reader and it's from I don't know, more
than eighty years ago. That is always a gold mine,
not necessarily because the information in it is still considered correct,
but just because it gives you such an interesting window
(04:38):
into the intellectual and literary landscape of the past.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah. Yeah, outdated reference books, you know, outdated encyclopedias. That's
how some of us got the sex talk Growing up
World books from the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah, I love stuff like that anyway. Jeff goes on
to say, along the lines of pre Discovery Channel, pre Internet,
re life, monster data, I highly recommend the X Do
the Strangest Things series of children's books from the nineteen
sixties and seventies. They include birds do the Strangest Things,
(05:13):
Animals they mean, mammals do the strangest things, prehistoric monsters
did the strangest things, and plants do amazing things. Why
not strange things for plants?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
But you don't want to vilify plants too much.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
These books are filled to the brim with animals with
superpowers and great backstories. Each chapter is just a few
pages long, with beautiful drawings, a large, friendly serafont that
encourages reading, and a solid sense of humor. Some of
the humor comes from the dated writing style. Animal couples
(05:51):
are often referred to as husband and wife. There are
some errors based on lack of modern data apocryphal stories.
For instance, they propagate the myth of suicidal lemmings, not
to mention amusing moral judgments of animal behavior, and some
classification of animals as either friends like the honeybee or
(06:13):
enemies like the mosquito. But what always stuck with me
was the fascinating animal facts and great art. The Fish
Book featured an archerfish in action on the cover and
was always my favorite. Creepy images of the alligator gar
have haunted my nightmares my entire life, but I have
rarely experienced as much pure delight as when some real
(06:37):
life archerfish spat on me at the National Aquarium when
I was allowed to feed them a cricket on a stick.
Below our links to the books, which you can still
purchase used copies of on Amazon and eBay. Also attached
are some pages from the Fish Book, including a section
on the mysterious eels recently discussed in Rob's interview with
(06:57):
the Mycologist and Rabbi. Pull in the images from Jeff's email.
These are like photos of some spreads from This Fish
to the Strangest Things books. So one is a spread
on the anglerfish, and I'm just going to read a
selection here, and so this is it's already introduced the
idea of the size disparity between the kind of anglerfish
(07:19):
they're talking about, at least the size disparity between the
females and the males. And the second paragraph on the
second page in the spread begins almost as soon as
he is born, the male anglerfish starts looking for a wife.
When he finds her, he fastens onto her side with
his mouth. Soon their skin grows together. After this, they
(07:41):
can never be parted. Now he will never lose her
in the dark.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
The male angler has no fishing rod. He does not
need one. His wife does the fishing for him.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
I mean, it implies that he wants to fish, But
I mean it's like you personify these creatures at your peril,
Like it's just they're not humans. They have their own
thing going on, and they're pretty far removed from us.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
But I would not be without this stuff. I love this.
It's great. I also was looking at some of the
other pages. There's a page on the archer fish which
has an illustration of the fish spitting above the water
line at a bug to make it fall, and it
describes how the fish does this, but then it says, quote,
the drops of water shot from the archer's mouth hit
(08:31):
the insect so hard it is knocked out. It falls
into the river. The archer swims over and eats it up.
He can hit a bug over three feet away. The
little sharpshooter almost never misses. It is a wonderful way
to catch an insect. But don't you try it. Spitting
is only for archerfish.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, there's a lesson here for all of us. But yeah,
I have to agree. These are These were not part
of my upbringing, or at least I don't remember these books.
But I do love the layout here. The illustrations are fabulous.
I can basically smell these books looking at them, you.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Know, Yeah, that old book smell. I love that. Yeah. Oh,
and there also is By the way, Jeff includes a
spread on the eels, eels making a trip to the
Sargasso Sea from each side of the Atlantic, from America
and from Europe, swimming down and then laying their eggs
and then dying and then somehow the European eels go
back to Europe and the American eels go back to America.
(09:28):
And I think that was the one referring to the
eels you talked about in the episode you did, Rob.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
That's right. That episode was the Queerness of Nature with
Patricia Keashian. And by the way, that episode is going
to rerun here in just a week or so.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Oh nice? Is that to time with the publication of
the book.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, that's a special circumstance here to correspond with publication date.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Nice. But anyway, yeah, oh wait, no, I was going
to mention one more page that Jeff includes from the book.
It's about sharks. So there's a page about how hammerhead
sharks are. You know, they're dangerous, they could bite you.
And then it starts talking about the whale shark. It's like,
it's the biggest fish in the sea, but it doesn't
want to eat people, just eats fish, tiny fish and plants.
(10:10):
And then it says the whale shark may let people
ride on him. Quote, it would not be wise to
try to ride any other kind of shark. Other sharks
cannot be trusted.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
And it's my understanding that your advice not to write
on whale sharks either of these problems, like, yeah, they
don't like. My understanding is that they do not really
seem to care for it, and it just sort of
drives them away. So it kind of gets in the
way of humans getting to experience being in the water
with whale sharks.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Anyway, Jeff says thanks again for sharing your research and
personal stories with us. Jeff, Well, thank you so much, Jeff,
I really appreciate you sending in the pages from these books.
They look fabulous. I would love to own these things.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, they're beautiful. This next one comes to us from Andrew.
Andrew says, Hello, Joe and Robert. I am still loving
Stuff to Blow your mind. It's my favorite podcast and
has been for a long time. I'm just finishing the
second episode about Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Some of my
(11:12):
favorite episodes were about the moons of Jupiter and sat
I love how many different topics you cover and how
consistently good they are. Sometimes I see the title and
think I won't be interested, but I basically always enjoy
the episode. I have the same experience. Sometimes I see
the topic and I'm like, I'm not going to be
able to get into this one, but I always am
able to get into it because I've found over the
(11:34):
years that any topic that pops up on our radar,
if you dig into it a bit, you'll find those
interesting angles and you'll find something to be fascinated about.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
I agree, it's quite rare that we commit to doing
something and then I can find almost nothing actually interesting
about it. I'm gonna admit it has happened, but really
only like a handful of times over the years.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yeah, and usually that realization comes pretty early in the
episode preparation process, Like we don't we quickly realize, oh,
maybe we should pivot and do this instead.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, yeah, all.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Right, Well, Andrew continues more praise. So hey, I'm going
to read it. I'm gay, they say, I really enjoy
weird house cinema, even though you choose rubbish movies. Now,
now this I do take a little bit of issue with.
In all seriousness, I find something to love in all
of them. Not a rubbish film in the bunch, as
far as I'm concerned. But to each their own, your
(12:30):
mileage may vary.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Well, I think the way I would put it is,
there is such a thing as the quality of a film.
Most people generally know what we mean when we make
reference to that, though it's quite hard to define, actually,
I mean, it's generally kind of hard to define quality.
So that is a thing, and as it is normally understood,
(12:53):
a lot of the movies we cover are not high
in that thing, are not high in that quality. But
that doesn't mean they are without interest, and so I
think you know, a lot of movies we cover, they're
not going to get a lot of stars on your
classic on the on the IMDb scale, but they are
still fascinating artifacts, enjoyable to watch, interesting to talk about.
(13:15):
I mean, this has just been I guess part of
my personality, going back as long as I could remember,
is that I could find interesting things about things that
were not typically understood as good art.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Oh that's fair. That's fair. Though I think some of
them are pretty great art.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Of course, some of them are.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, all right, Well anyway, Andrew continues and says, this
may seem random, but I bring it up because the
first time I experienced it was listening to the episode
about Rods from God. Oh that was a long time ago. Yeah,
I've had the experience of a sound or other sensation
incorporating itself into a dream. For example, a telephone ringing
in reality will work its way into a dream, and
(13:54):
I'll experience a telephone ring in the dream. The first
time I listened to the Rods from God episode to
refresh everyone, This I believe had to do with we
were talking. This is a theoretical orbital bombardment technique about
taking very massive objects, essentially large rods, and dropping them
(14:16):
strategically from orbit, and they would you know, they would
enter the Earth's atmosphere and do you know, devastating harm
when they reach the surface. Not necessarily the sort of
episode i'd do today, but it was a different time.
Andrew continues and says, Yeah, the first time I listened
to the Rods from God episode I fell asleep with
the podcast on. I had a dream about the idea
(14:39):
where I was in a room and someone was explaining
the idea of rods from God to me. Oh and
one more thing. It's just called rods from God. It
has nothing to do with the divine being the one
sort or another. It's just they come from up from.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Where that is, right, could have called him rods from Zod.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, yeah, that would work so any Andrew says, the
first time I listened to the Rods from God episode
I fell asleep with a podcast on. I had a
dream about the idea where I was in a room
and someone was explaining the idea of rods from God
to me. I was surprised that when I woke up
Stuff to Blow your mind was talking about this very concept.
When I put the podcast back about thirty seconds, I
(15:19):
was very surprised that I had incorporated full sentences from
the podcast into my dream with high accuracy. I'm not
surprised that something like this can happen with something like
a phone ringing, but I never would have thought it
possible for full sentences. I often fall asleep listening to podcasts,
and I've experienced this more than a few times. I
remember one time distinctly being somewhere and someone told me,
(15:43):
I know Joe McCormick, instead of just hearing I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Andrew. Yeah, Andrew. So this is actually an interesting subject.
I wonder if we could come back and do a
whole series on this. I'm sure it's a familiar experience
to many listeners. This is not the first time we
have had an email talk about this that like we
ended up in their dreams by being on the podcast
they were listening to as they fell asleep. But I
(16:08):
did briefly look up to see if there was any
research on this, and yeah, there actually is a good
bit of research that seems to from what I could tell,
it's kind of inconsistent in its results. But I was
looking at a literature review called Influencing Dreams through Sensory Stimulation,
a systematic review. This was published last year in twenty
(16:31):
twenty four in a journal called Sleep Medicine Reviews. This
was by Salviason at All, and I didn't have time
to get deep into this research here, but it was
trying to collect all the different studies that had been
done on whether sensory information from the physical environment actually
gets incorporated into dream content, and then in some cases
(16:53):
testing the fidelity of how it gets incorporated. Like you,
if you play verbal information in a room, will while
somebody is sleeping, will the person later say that they
experienced that verbal information in the dream, And then will
they actually have accurate recall of what information was transmitted?
(17:14):
And in some cases it seems yes. Other research has
had to do with nonverbal auditory stimuli and also other
sensory modalities as well. But in terms of auditory stimuli,
I know there's some research that began testing fire alarms
because it was trying to say, like, you know, will
fire alarms successfully wake people up from their sleep and
(17:37):
get them to, you know, get out of bed and
respond to an emergency. Some research in that Vein found
that people often reported having dreams about alarms when the
alarms were going off, and then they wake up or
they at least have the impression they had dreams about that.
Other things are like if you place sounds of traffic
at people while they are sleeping, they will often increased
(18:01):
reports of having dreams about like being in a street
with cars going by and things like that. So apparently
it's a it's a common phenomenon that somehow sensory information
from the physical environment gets incorporated into the dream state
this one way or another.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah, that's interesting. I know in the past we've talked
to about certainly getting into different phases of sleep and dreaming,
you know, those sensitive areas where we're coming in or
out of sleep where reality and dream can kind of
be combined and in subtle and even disturbing ways. But yeah,
(18:37):
I guess I tend to kind of take this personally
for granted, says I don't listen to podcasts when I
go to sleep, or often I don't even listen to music.
I just have like, well, white noise on. And you know,
if you have to dream about white noise, well that's great,
but it's not necessarily going to be memorable.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I had a dream that the fan was blowing. Yeah, okay, Rob,
Now we've had a bunch of messages about Weird House cinema.
Do you want to go ahead and jump into those.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, let's go ahead and get into the Weird House mail.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
All right, maybe I'll do this first one from Ian.
This is referring to something that came up in a
previous Listener mail about Weird House. The subject is Flight
of the Navigator. Dear Robin Joe, I'm currently listening to
the listener mail episode from early April and just wanted
(19:28):
to shoot a quick message to say I had the
exact same reaction as Rob to Flight of the Navigator,
which I watched at a friend's house as a child.
At the time, I didn't have the words to describe
the feeling, so I would have just said it's scared me,
despite not being scary in any traditional sense. Now, as
an adult, I can say it actually deeply unsettled me, and,
(19:51):
like Rob, I have avoided rewatching it ever since. Almost
all of my memories of the actual content of the
movie have faded. Over the thirty years or so since
I watched it, all that's left is a vague memory
of a scene where the spaceship has to stop so
the little boy can be But the unsettled feeling remains,
and I'm still and I still inwardly recoil at the
(20:14):
idea of watching it again. It's fascinating how things can
leave such a lasting impression even when so little of
the actual content of the experience sticks with us. Anyway,
just wanted to share that Rob is definitely not alone.
Thanks for the show, Ian, Well, thank you, Ian. This
is really interesting. I would say, Rob, if I'm remembering
what you said about it last time correctly, it was
(20:37):
that even though the movie is not intended to be
scary in anyway, it's presented as kind of a family
friendly children's adventure, there's just something that kind of like
makes your blood run cold about it.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah. Yeah, it's been for ever since I watched it again.
For all the reasons we reference, but yeah, it has
some unsettling, kind of disturbed being concepts of like time
dilation and that, you know, our standard trope of science fiction.
But I think for many obviously this was our first
introduction to that concept, and it was, Yeah, it was
(21:13):
it was a little unnerving.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
It actually makes me wonder what sorts of stories or
movies would have this quality that they might be more
frightening or unsettling to a child in ways that adults
might not pick up on. So all the adults who
are vetting this, they say, Okay, this looks family friendly,
(21:35):
you know, give it the okay stamp. This is good
for kids. But there's actually something in there that like
really messes with a lot of the kids who experience it.
It's sort of invisible or passes under the radar of adults,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean, And I guess it's just hard
to really identify sometimes because we can all think of
cases where there's something identifiable in the movie that clearly
can stir a child, like I instantly think about a
lot of people have that experience with The Dark Crystal.
Dark Crystal was wonderful. I've always loved it, My child
has always loved it. But there is some dark content
(22:10):
in there, and it's in a dark and immersive world
that doesn't pull any punches with some of it. Another
example I've mentioned before on the show is Revenge of
the Sith, which I think for many people, many for
many people out there. For many kids, it was perhaps
their earliest encounter with a tragic story arc, with the
(22:35):
story of someone's downfall into darkness, and you know, even
knowing like what happens in the rest of the series
and how it ties in with the larger franchise like it's,
it can be a pretty dark ride, especially if you
have no experience with other tragedies. But to you to
your point, yeah, there there's that other case of something
that we wouldn't as adults, wouldn't wouldn't identify, and could
(22:58):
easily fly under our radar, either due to our exposure
to other pictures in a given genre, or just the
fact that we're no longer in the mindset of a
child and we're not as privy to the more pressing
fears and concerns of a child.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
This really hits home for me right now actually because
currently my daughter is about two and a half years old,
and she there was recently a day where we were,
you know, getting her ready for bed, and she mentioned
to me something. She got kind of serious and she
told me she was worried about something, and I was like, oh, no,
what is it? And she kind of didn't want to say.
(23:35):
But then she said something in my crib and I
was like, oh, what's going on? And so we, you know,
figured out that there was something in her bed that
was bothering her. And it turns out it was this
one stuffed animal that she used to love, but now
it had become scary to her, and she was almost
scared to say anything about it. Like it's like she
(23:56):
there was some kind of power she was afraid of
invoking by talking about the little stuffed lion, the cute
stuffed lion that she previously liked. But we you know,
so we took it out of the bed, like okay,
it's not in there anymore. The problem was solved. Then
she was fine, But I wondered. I wanted to get
inside that emotion, like what had evolved inside her mind?
(24:16):
You know, how did the cute lion that she was
hugging just a few days before, how did it become scary?
Something happened? And we don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Being a parent, especially if a very young child, is
often like that, like you can't get the child to
put into words exactly what it is that caused a
kind of emotional evolution or why they're thinking what they're thinking.
You have these little moments like that, and it's just
I don't know, like you. It's like these little changes
(24:47):
and moments that are emotionally powerful to you because they're
emotionally powerful to your child and you're connected to your child,
but they're also inscrutable to you.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, but this is a great example. If listeners out
there have any any other accounts of this sort of
thing from their own life, for the lives of children
in their lives right in, we would love to hear
from you. All right, This next one comes to us
from Leif. Leif Wright sentence says, Hi, guys, love your
(25:17):
show and have been listening for years. I especially enjoy
the Weird House Cinema episodes. You know, I should mention
now that we're talking about this. We haven't announced this
everywhere yet, but Weird House Cinema can now be found
as its own playlist wherever you get your podcasts. So
if you want to subscribe to Just Weird House Cinema
and rate Just Weird House Cinema, you can do that
(25:39):
wherever you get your podcasts. We're checking it out see
how it works.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Of course, assuming you still like our Core episodes. We
would love for you to subscribe to the whole feed
and listen to everything. But if you want to just
get yes, But if you want to just get Weird House,
go for it, all right.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
So Leif says, Yeah, I love your show and have
been listening for years, especially enjoy the Weird House Cinema episodes.
But I want to posit something to you. I have
never heard you do an Australian osploitation movie, and indeed
I believe this is true. The closest we've come was
nineteen eighty two's Next of Ken, which I think qualifies
more as Australian new wave rather than osploitation.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
I don't know what counts as osploitation. Have I seen one?
Is Mad Max osploitation?
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I yeah, yeah, it's sometimes discussed as such. I mean
all these terms are kind of gray, right, I mean,
you can make a case for something being within or
outside of a particular subgenre. But you know, my loose
way of interpreting it is always, does it make Australia
seem scary? Does it seem to be you know, promoting
(26:46):
and or you know, exploiting some idea of like Australia's
and out of control wilderness sort of a thing, you know.
So anyway, a Live says, I'd love for you guys
to take a look and hear your take on some
of these gems from the seventies and eighties. Really the
golden era of these types of films. Like Canada during
the late seventies and eighties, there was a lot of
(27:06):
government grants and tax breaks to make movies here in Australia,
and so the upshot was a lot of weird and
wonderful B grade movies without their concepts that would never
have been made by mainstream film companies in Australia. You
kind of had to make period films or something set
in the outback to get made, to get funding were made.
Sorry that the sentence had a big aside in the middle,
but you get the idea. Lee says, I give you
(27:28):
a potential list of weird and wonderful OSSI films that
are literally a treasure trove of bizarreness to delve into
a rich sem of weirdness, or to mine if you like.
One of the filmmakers who is considered at the forefront
of this era of Australian cinema is the director Brian
Trenchard Smith, a favorite of one Quentin Tarantino. His films
(27:51):
to look out for are Turkey Shoot, highly recommended. It
gets strange. Think Deadliest Game on drug lace steroids, Okay,
death Cheaters, stunts, stunts and more, stunts, cheating on death,
dead in drive In? What if a drive in was
turned into a concentration camp for all the freaks and
(28:11):
weird of society? My ex girlfriend was in this one. Oh,
I've not seen this one, but I am familiar with
this one by reputation.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Okay, wait, so does the drive In here play movie? Still?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
I think so?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah? Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
The Man from Hong Kong an early classic insane martial
arts film Stunt Rock so weird? Is this movie about
death defying stunts or a rock band? I'm still not sure?
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Oh no, wait a minute. This next one I have
talked about on the show multiple times. So I have
seen an osploitation.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Movie, Yes, Razorback Russell McKay Hilander and eighties music video
director Think Duran Duran. Yes, multiple Duran Duran videos, including
the excellent Wild Boys, which I'll both talked about before. Yeah,
great track, amazing video Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart,
which again is amazing, amazing, a great track, amazing video.
(29:07):
But anyway, it points out that this was Russell's first
attempt at a feature film. Hungry Like the Wolf meets
a giant wild pig that terrorizes farm people in the
Australian Outback.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Yes, this has come up several times on the show.
I think we talked about it, certainly in our episodes
on Highland Er to the Quickening because same director or wait, no, dude,
yeah direct, Oh he did make the second he made
at least the first time he made him both. Yes, okay, yes,
but yeah. I described it as like Australian Texas Chainsaw
(29:37):
Massacre as the setting. It's like, you know, use the
outback instead of Texas there, so it's like a gross, grimy, gory,
redneck slaughter house sort of thing. But then it's also
at the same time as that Jaws, but with a
pig instead of a shark.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
It sounds like a winner. I'm game. But there's more
on this list. Stone Aussie biker's on well if not
acid something or other. Hugh keys Burn in the role
that was the precursor to his role as toe Cutter
in the original Mad Max or road Warrior.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Wait a minute, or road Warrior. I feel like I'm
getting confused here, or was the title mixed up in
other versions because I thought toe Cutter was only in
the original Mad Max. And then also, of course the
Hugh keys Burn came back in Furry Road.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
To play yeah, place the main antagonist in Furry Road.
You know, I don't remember. It's been so long since
I've seen any of the Mel Gibson Road Warrior films.
I've only seen the two new ones in recent memory.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Oh man, Well, you know, it's been a while since
I've seen the older ones. But I think of Mad
Max as ones where like the originals were great and
had their own gritty integrity, and the new ones are
amazing as well.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yeah, the second one especially was a big favorite of
mine back when I was like in junior high. I think,
so I need to revisit that one at some point. Anyway,
they continue. There are a stack more, but these are
a good starting If you want to delve deeper into
the osploitation films of the seventies and eighties, you can't
go past this documentary that features Quentin Tarantino. He has
(31:08):
an abiding love of the Aussie films of this era,
not quite Hollywood, the wild, untold story of osploitation. I
hope you take a look at one or more of
these completely insane flicks for your show. All the best
and enjoy Leif.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Thank you so much, Leif.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah, that documentary came out in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
By the way, all right now, I think we should
shift into covering some responses to our couple of episodes
on The wicker Man. These messages and our responses to
them will have spoilers for the movie. So if you
(31:45):
haven't seen The wicker Man and you want to go
into it unspoiled, which I would recommend, this is the
place to go watch it now, or at least consider
yourself warn This first message comes from Joe, not from me,
from a different Joe. Subject line pluggs and cynics. Hello, gentlemen.
I have a confession. I almost never watch your weird
(32:06):
house movies. For some reason, I quite enjoy listening to
you talk about movies I haven't seen. My wife says
it's odd, and perhaps it is, but being odd rarely
stops me. However, taking note of your peculiar intensity. I
went ahead and saw the Wickerman between the first and
second parts, and it did not disappoint. I've been mulling
over it all week, particularly the many, many times the
(32:28):
Islanders gave the detective the opportunity to pull himself off
the path to the Wickerman, from the first moment, where
he could have subjected himself to Lord Summerle, but instead
insisted he came with the power of the crown to
the night. He could have given in to Willow's temptation
and no longer been the virgin they needed, but instead
(32:49):
chose his vows to choosing to wear the fool's raiment
at each turn, faced with the opportunity to choose uncivilization,
animal instinct, and base tribalism. I didn't watch the final cut,
but your description of the scene with the slugs captured
the essence of that. A core impulse of the film
was this sense that civilization is a high wire act
(33:12):
without a net, that the gravity of our animal state
is hungry to reclaim us, and that there is something
good and natural and above all tempting about just letting
yourself fall. It reminded me of your recent discussion of
Cynic philosophy. There's a through line there the nobility of
giving into your base animal self. Thanks as always for
(33:33):
the thoughtful discussion, Joe.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
That's a good point. I mean really, in the later
portions of the film, like the townspeople embody animals, they
become animals, they transform into animals to elimined but powerful
extent in a way that people have throughout human history
via costumes. So it's yeah, I think there's some interesting
(33:57):
comparisons to be made to Cynic for the philosophy here.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Absolutely, And Joe, I think your description of the movies
ethos that that civilization and Christianity are, Yeah, there's a
precariousness to them. There's something about how they're you know,
they take great effort to maintain, and there's always sort
of like a wobbling, wobbling wire underneath them where any
(34:21):
moment they could they could just kind of plummet back
into something else, something deeper, something older.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
All right, here's another wicker Man message system comes to
us from Lawrence. Hey, guys, just a few remarks on
or sort of related to part one of your discussion
on the wicker Man. I apologoz in advance for the
meandering and irrelelent quality of these remarks, but it's a sorry,
not sorry sort of apology. We're talking about weird house here.
(34:51):
True enough, I've seen a film twice, both times on
broadcast television. I think both times were in the eighties,
but the first might have been in the late seventies.
Pretty sure. Both were late shows, so I would have
been tired and watching mostly out of insomnia. Because it
was broadcast TV. There was, of course no nudity, but
as best I recalled, the girl was plenty sexy without it.
(35:11):
I was less impressed than you with the documentary style
camera work. I would have preferred something more cinematic than Again,
I was young, and I wasn't put off by Howie's
abrasive nature so much as you were. I figured he's
a cop and these people were hiding something, and I
missed a lot a lot of the same clues that
he did. I only caught them on my second viewing,
when I already knew the film's ending. I was struck
(35:34):
when you mentioned Charlton Heston in The Crucifer of Blood.
I was not aware that this had been adapted to film,
but I saw the world premiere production of the play
with my father back in the seventies in Buffalo before
the production went to Broadway. I remember that when the
Studio Arena Theater first announced the season, the working title
(35:54):
was The Blood Triangle. By the time the play opened,
they had changed it to The Crucifer of Blood Sherlock
was played by Paxton Whitehead in that production, and Glenn
Close played the character based on Mary Morston in The
Sign of Four, from which the play was freely adapted.
They changed her name in the play. No idea who
played Watson. I was impressed with Whitehead's performance, but when
(36:17):
I told my dad this, he muttered, He's no Basil Rathbone,
just as Jeremy Brett will always be Sherlock for you.
For him, it would always be Rathbone. He did, however,
like Brett in the role of Holmes on television, but
that was some time after we saw the play. I
think I was still living at home when we saw
the first season of Brett's Sherlock Holmes broadcast on the
(36:39):
CBC out of Toronto. You could view Toronto stations in
Buffalo with somewhat fuzzy reception. Later we would occasionally get
together to watch subsequent seasons on PPS. Your mention of
Heston as Holmes gave me what I think may be
the answer to a question you post. Is there another
example of a non comical detective who is sympathetic, unsympathetic, intelligent, obtuse, abrasive,
(37:02):
but likable, and who keeps missing clues and doesn't find
the solution until it is tragically thrust down his throat.
It's Heston as George Taylor in the nineteen sixty eight
film adaptation of Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Wow. I would not have made that connection, but Lawrence,
this is good. I feel like there are some strong
similarities between the Wickerman and Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Ooh goodness, Yes, yes there is. I mean right down
to some of the ooh I kind of want to
compare the final sequences in both films.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Yeah, I mean a lot of differences too, though, because
like the locals in Planet of the Apes are the
apes on Planet of the Apes do not embody a
kind of retreat into paganism, and they are representing more
the witch hunting civilizational authority. But in the main character
as the isolated investigator who's not himself all that you know,
(37:54):
powerful as an investigator in the structure of a lot
of the revelations, there are some major similarities that are
quite interesting. I like this observation.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
All right, Lawrence continues and says, Okay, Taylor is an astronaut,
not a detective. But he's an astronaut solving a mystery,
which makes him a kind of detective, and I think
he fits the bill. There may be other candidates for
this category, but none come to mind at this moment.
That's all I have for now. I look forward to
hearing part two of your conversation. Thanks guys, Lawrence.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
I'm gonna have to keep thinking about this Planet of
the Apes Wickerman comparison, especially in that both films involve
a twist, like a horrifying twist ending with the revelation
of a giant Let's just say not to spoil anything
about the Planet of the Apes if you actually haven't
seen it and don't know the ending from The Simpsons
or something. A giant anthropoid kind of structure.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah, yeah, this one is often spoiled by popular culture.
I think somehow or another, I managed to see it
as a kid without knowing the twist, which was pretty
magical me too.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, I saw it actually at the beach. A relative
of mine rented it from Blockbuster when we were staying
at the beach time. Yeah, and I don't know why,
but I thought it was good anyway. This next message
is from Matt. Matt says, my name is Matt. Longtime listener,
(39:15):
first time writing. And of course this is also about
the Wickerman, the scene where Willow and her father were
using the hand of Glory. You said it didn't work.
My impression was that they were saying, gee, I hope
he's not lying awake in there listening to us. Conspired
to make him sleep with this macabre artifact. Wink wink.
I sure hope he doesn't leave the pub and try
(39:36):
to interfere with the Mayday festival. Wink wink.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
That's a good point. That was a good point.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
It seemed like it was part of the ruse to
provoke Howie to do that very thing, although I'm not
sure the innkeeper planned on getting hit in the head
and tied up on a lighter yet still dark note.
I found myself wanting to compare Sergeant Howie to Simon
Pegg's Sergeant Angel from the film Hot Fuzz. Sergeant Angel
is a London police officer who is reassigned to a
(40:05):
small rural village because he's such an overachiever he makes
everyone else look bad. Is it possible that Sergeant Howie's
colleagues and superiors, and possibly his fiance, whom I don't
remember seeing in the version I watched, dislike Sergeant Howie
so much that they set him up to be sent
off to be sacrificed by an island full of pagans.
What a horrible thought. Love the show best wishes.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Well, that's a good point. You know, I haven't seen
Hot Fuzz in a number of years that Edward Woodward
was of course in Hot Fuzz, so this comparison, potential
comparison might have very much been on their mind.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Yeah, a big city police officer goes to a rural
village and encounter as a conspiracy there. There's a similarity,
though the nature of the conspiracy and Hot Fuzz is
quite different. But yeah, yeah, I recall It's been a while,
but I recall quite liking Hot Fuzz.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember enjoying it. Oh Man,
every time I think about the Wickerman that I keep
coming back to this idea that entered my mind that
what if Howie, what if they couldn't send Howe, what
if they had to send another detective? And it was,
in fact a detective played by Oliver Reed, who you
know has been like divorced three times and like immediately
(41:15):
gets drunk in the pub, immediately sleeps with Willow and
then like gives them nothing to get. Like, we can't
sacrifice this guy. We can't put him in the wicker Man.
What are we gonna do? They try to make him
leave the island, and he's just like in bed smoking.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
Yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
To do Yeah, all right, here we go. We have
another one from a different Matt. Matt writes in it says,
good day, Felons. I've written to you about agricultural subjects
a few times in the past, and this is another
such message. Loved The wicker Man revisit seems I enjoy
(41:51):
the film more each time I watch it. Something I
never caught before was Sergeant Howie, right prior to being
locked into the Wickerman's chest cavity, saying something to the
effect of it was your cultivars that failed you, implying
to a degree a lack of resilience in the particular
varieties of fruits in part apples in this case to
(42:12):
inclement conditions. This got me thinking, is there actually a
Summer Ale, or possibly even a witcher Man apple cultivar?
I checked, and unfortunately, no, there doesn't appear to be one.
I'd love to hear I'm wrong from another listener, though.
Still that means a new cultivar could be named in
this fashion, something any apple breeders out there might want
(42:32):
to consider.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
I would buy so many of these apples. I would
get them every time at the store.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
I mean, I love a good apple. It would depend
on it being tasty. I don't know how you're gonna
beat fuji. Fuji is the best apple for me. For me,
I love various various apples, but the fuji is might
go too.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I love every kind of apple except red delicious. I
don't understand how people eat red delicious apples.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Well, you know they had. They felt like they had
to put delicious in the title to sell it. They
don't call it the fuji delicious, Like everybody knows the
fuji is delicious, and you're not trying to force it
on anyone with some sort of a snappy title. Anyway,
they continue. I did speculate that historic Scottish apple varieties
could have conceivably grown well in a western Heberdeene Island,
(43:18):
presumably somewhere near Isle of Sky, as some of the
as seen from plain footage I believe features the sky landscape.
I should add here that if memories serves, some of
the aerial photography early on in the picture is actually
South Africa as well.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah, there's some I think that is in Scotland or
the Hebridese, but there is some from South Africa.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
You're right, they continue. Apparently there's one called the Bloody Plowman, which,
while not from the Hebridese, was developed from another highly
productive agricultural region in Scotland around eighteen hundred. Wikipedia sources
the following as a rather chilling source for the apple's name.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
It is reputed two have got its name after a
gamekeeper shot dead of plowman caught stealing apples from the
and I may be saying this wrong mcginch estate. When
his body was returned to his wife, she found stolen
apples in his pockets and threw them onto the rubbish heap.
One of the resulting seedlings bore apples of a deep
blood red. This tree gave rise to the cultivar that
(44:22):
was named after the unfortunate plowman.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
That's funny, I have Okay, even if this story is
literally true, I really have doubts that the blood running
into the apples there would affect the colors of the
fruits produced.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
They continued. There's also Galloway, developed some time in the
mid Victorian period, so seemingly around the original summer Lord
Somerle's efforts, and presumably near the west coast of the
Scottish mainland, but its name isn't as intriguing. And lastly,
if Summerle cultivars are indeed failing, one has to wonder why,
assuming it's not just Bread's or another farming deities wrath.
(44:58):
Is it the result of intermittent cl slimactic shifts eg
slight changes in c currents, a shifting frost free date,
the time of year when frosts become exceedingly unlikely, and
such like. If so, in the existing cultivars might for example,
experience bloom periods that don't line up with weather pattern changes.
Those islanders are in a bad way. They better get
(45:19):
apple breeding because doing so without the use of modern
tools like gene editing, means the process takes a very
long time. Trees don't grow overnight. Of course, if it's
not just weather patterns changing, perhaps there are new pests
in the area, even invasive ones. Maybe some new insects
arriving on the wind eight all the lady birds, thus
allowing aphid populations to explode. That's just a hypothetical example,
(45:42):
but new or otherwise crafty insect pests is a continual
challenge for farmers around the world. Adding to the problem
might be an ineffective use or lack of use altogether
of crop protection products like fungicides or insecticides. Even in
modern organic farming, there are some tools available in this
regard to help protect crops from disease and harmful insects,
which again could conceivably be getting worse from weather pattern alterations.
(46:07):
Perhaps the strong nature focus of Summer Islanders means they
have traditionally exkewed such tools for fear of offending the
old gods. Regardless, methinks the years following the Wickerman's filming,
were it real, would have a lot of burning going on.
Probably not somewhere a guy would want to be on
May Day, inviting though the local pubs. Certainly, it's a
(46:29):
great pair of episodes.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
Matt, Well, thank you so much, Matt. That is fantastic.
Matt has many times in the past written great emails,
often about farming and agricultural technology, and my experience of
the Wickerman is so much richer now for having read this.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah, these are a lot of points that I just
kind of took for granted focusing on other aspects of
the story. But yeah, the agricultural skeleton of the piece
is also pretty fascinating. And Matt goes on to recommend
that we do a futurepisode of following a crop from
its historical origin to its modern cultivation, and I think
this is a solid, solid idea. This, of course, has
(47:08):
been done particularly well in the past by the likes
of Michael Pollen, So if anyone out there hasn't read
or listened to the excellent audiobooks of Michael Polland's work,
he has several different books that get into this with
particular crops. All right, we're going to go ahead and
close this episode here, but we'd love to hear from
everybody right in with your listener mails to the email
(47:29):
address we're going to provide here in a minute, again
just about anything as fair game content related to past episodes,
future episodes, present episodes, you name it, just to remind
us of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
a science and culture of podcast, with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
We set aside most concerns to just talk about a
(47:50):
weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Huge things, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener Mail.
This is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And this is Joe McCormick, and today we are bringing
you some messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
email address, Folks at home, if you like this show
and you've never written in to tell us your thoughts before,
now would be a great time. You know, It's weird
how I feel like our email really comes in like floods,
and then it dries up, and then it's a flood again.
(00:35):
I wish we could do something, if we could prod
y'all out there in some way to make the flow
more steady. It's like we live. We live in a
kind of Nile inundation cycle of emails, where like sometimes
we're struggling to keep up to read enough of them,
and other times they dry up and I don't know
what to do about that.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Well, I mean it get the impression that some episodes
are just more relatable than others and are going to
be sorts of episodes that folks feel like they have
something to contribute on. Certainly we see this when we
do episodes on things like dreams, oh yes, or universal experiences,
and then sometimes we do deeper dives into areas that
you know no one has personal experience with, like no
(01:14):
one has actually been a warrior and an ancient army
and so forth. But yeah, you know it's sometimes it's
hard to predict as well.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well, whatever the reason they're folks, I just I would
always encourage you. If you want to get in touch,
please do. If you're thinking about it, do it. Make
it real. You can write us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com. We of course always
loved responses to recent episodes or series. If you have
a correction if necessary, certainly send that our way. If
(01:46):
you have something interesting you'd like to add to a
topic we talked about, If you would just like to
tell us something you find interesting, even unrelated to episodes
we've done, that's all fair game. Contact at Stuff to
Blow your Mind.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
If you ever find yourself thinking, boy, I wish they
would do more episodes like X, well, whatever X is,
write in and tell us because in all likelihood, you know,
we always have any number of episodes we'd like to
cover any number of topics, and it's just kind of
week to week on whether we'll spring on one or not,
so you know, a little prodding in one direction or
(02:22):
the other can work wonders.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
That's right. We can't promise to do topics on request,
but we absolutely have done that before and we'll do
that at some points in the future.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
All right, Well, let's dig into this mailbag. What does
Carnie have for us this week?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Joe, Let's see, maybe we should kick things off with
this response to our series on predators of the Deep Ocean.
This was a series we did about predatory animals that
operate in the darker parts of the sea, the lower
strata away from the sunlight, including the abyssle and the
hadel zones. Now, Rob, this message makes reference to a
(02:57):
Monsters of the Deep wall poster. That's ringing a bell
in my brain. But I actually don't remember the context
in which that originally came up. What was the deal there?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I think I was reminiscing about a possibly national geographic
fold out poster of various organisms in the ocean, including
deep sea organisms, and not everything was to scale, nor
was it intended to be to scale, but it kind
of led my young mind to assume that some of
these creatures were bigger than they actually were. And as
(03:27):
we've chatted with folks since that episode, it sounds like
I wasn't the only one to have this experience.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Yeah, okay, that's what it was. So this message comes
from Jeff. Jeff says, Greetings, deep ones. I didn't have
a Monsters of the Deep poster on my wall, but
I did have access to my grandfather's Encyclopedia Britannica and
(03:54):
spent many hours studying the illustrations of horrible deep sea
creatures and earning their names. Other kids had dinosaurs. I
had the spiny batfish and the gulper eel. I always
highly recommend reading outdated encyclopedias and reference books any like
(04:16):
nonfiction books of factual information about the world, especially if
the selection criteria is like what would be interesting to
a general reader and it's from I don't know, more
than eighty years ago. That is always a gold mine,
not necessarily because the information in it is still considered correct,
but just because it gives you such an interesting window
(04:38):
into the intellectual and literary landscape of the past.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah. Yeah, outdated reference books, you know, outdated encyclopedias. That's
how some of us got the sex talk Growing up
World books from the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah, I love stuff like that anyway. Jeff goes on
to say, along the lines of pre Discovery Channel, pre Internet,
re life, monster data, I highly recommend the X Do
the Strangest Things series of children's books from the nineteen
sixties and seventies. They include birds do the Strangest Things,
(05:13):
Animals they mean, mammals do the strangest things, prehistoric monsters
did the strangest things, and plants do amazing things. Why
not strange things for plants?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
But you don't want to vilify plants too much.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
These books are filled to the brim with animals with
superpowers and great backstories. Each chapter is just a few
pages long, with beautiful drawings, a large, friendly serafont that
encourages reading, and a solid sense of humor. Some of
the humor comes from the dated writing style. Animal couples
(05:51):
are often referred to as husband and wife. There are
some errors based on lack of modern data apocryphal stories.
For instance, they propagate the myth of suicidal lemmings, not
to mention amusing moral judgments of animal behavior, and some
classification of animals as either friends like the honeybee or
(06:13):
enemies like the mosquito. But what always stuck with me
was the fascinating animal facts and great art. The Fish
Book featured an archerfish in action on the cover and
was always my favorite. Creepy images of the alligator gar
have haunted my nightmares my entire life, but I have
rarely experienced as much pure delight as when some real
(06:37):
life archerfish spat on me at the National Aquarium when
I was allowed to feed them a cricket on a stick.
Below our links to the books, which you can still
purchase used copies of on Amazon and eBay. Also attached
are some pages from the Fish Book, including a section
on the mysterious eels recently discussed in Rob's interview with
(06:57):
the Mycologist and Rabbi. Pull in the images from Jeff's email.
These are like photos of some spreads from This Fish
to the Strangest Things books. So one is a spread
on the anglerfish, and I'm just going to read a
selection here, and so this is it's already introduced the
idea of the size disparity between the kind of anglerfish
(07:19):
they're talking about, at least the size disparity between the
females and the males. And the second paragraph on the
second page in the spread begins almost as soon as
he is born, the male anglerfish starts looking for a wife.
When he finds her, he fastens onto her side with
his mouth. Soon their skin grows together. After this, they
(07:41):
can never be parted. Now he will never lose her
in the dark.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
The male angler has no fishing rod. He does not
need one. His wife does the fishing for him.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
I mean, it implies that he wants to fish, But
I mean it's like you personify these creatures at your peril,
Like it's just they're not humans. They have their own
thing going on, and they're pretty far removed from us.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
But I would not be without this stuff. I love this.
It's great. I also was looking at some of the
other pages. There's a page on the archer fish which
has an illustration of the fish spitting above the water
line at a bug to make it fall, and it
describes how the fish does this, but then it says, quote,
the drops of water shot from the archer's mouth hit
(08:31):
the insect so hard it is knocked out. It falls
into the river. The archer swims over and eats it up.
He can hit a bug over three feet away. The
little sharpshooter almost never misses. It is a wonderful way
to catch an insect. But don't you try it. Spitting
is only for archerfish.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, there's a lesson here for all of us. But yeah,
I have to agree. These are These were not part
of my upbringing, or at least I don't remember these books.
But I do love the layout here. The illustrations are fabulous.
I can basically smell these books looking at them, you.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Know, Yeah, that old book smell. I love that. Yeah. Oh,
and there also is By the way, Jeff includes a
spread on the eels, eels making a trip to the
Sargasso Sea from each side of the Atlantic, from America
and from Europe, swimming down and then laying their eggs
and then dying and then somehow the European eels go
back to Europe and the American eels go back to America.
(09:28):
And I think that was the one referring to the
eels you talked about in the episode you did, Rob.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
That's right. That episode was the Queerness of Nature with
Patricia Keashian. And by the way, that episode is going
to rerun here in just a week or so.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Oh nice? Is that to time with the publication of
the book.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, that's a special circumstance here to correspond with publication date.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Nice. But anyway, yeah, oh wait, no, I was going
to mention one more page that Jeff includes from the book.
It's about sharks. So there's a page about how hammerhead
sharks are. You know, they're dangerous, they could bite you.
And then it starts talking about the whale shark. It's like,
it's the biggest fish in the sea, but it doesn't
want to eat people, just eats fish, tiny fish and plants.
(10:10):
And then it says the whale shark may let people
ride on him. Quote, it would not be wise to
try to ride any other kind of shark. Other sharks
cannot be trusted.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
And it's my understanding that your advice not to write
on whale sharks either of these problems, like, yeah, they
don't like. My understanding is that they do not really
seem to care for it, and it just sort of
drives them away. So it kind of gets in the
way of humans getting to experience being in the water
with whale sharks.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Anyway, Jeff says thanks again for sharing your research and
personal stories with us. Jeff, Well, thank you so much, Jeff,
I really appreciate you sending in the pages from these books.
They look fabulous. I would love to own these things.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, they're beautiful. This next one comes to us from Andrew.
Andrew says, Hello, Joe and Robert. I am still loving
Stuff to Blow your mind. It's my favorite podcast and
has been for a long time. I'm just finishing the
second episode about Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Some of my
(11:12):
favorite episodes were about the moons of Jupiter and sat
I love how many different topics you cover and how
consistently good they are. Sometimes I see the title and
think I won't be interested, but I basically always enjoy
the episode. I have the same experience. Sometimes I see
the topic and I'm like, I'm not going to be
able to get into this one, but I always am
able to get into it because I've found over the
(11:34):
years that any topic that pops up on our radar,
if you dig into it a bit, you'll find those
interesting angles and you'll find something to be fascinated about.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
I agree, it's quite rare that we commit to doing
something and then I can find almost nothing actually interesting
about it. I'm gonna admit it has happened, but really
only like a handful of times over the years.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yeah, and usually that realization comes pretty early in the
episode preparation process, Like we don't we quickly realize, oh,
maybe we should pivot and do this instead.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, yeah, all.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Right, Well, Andrew continues more praise. So hey, I'm going
to read it. I'm gay, they say, I really enjoy
weird house cinema, even though you choose rubbish movies. Now,
now this I do take a little bit of issue with.
In all seriousness, I find something to love in all
of them. Not a rubbish film in the bunch, as
far as I'm concerned. But to each their own, your
(12:30):
mileage may vary.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Well, I think the way I would put it is,
there is such a thing as the quality of a film.
Most people generally know what we mean when we make
reference to that, though it's quite hard to define, actually,
I mean, it's generally kind of hard to define quality.
So that is a thing, and as it is normally understood,
(12:53):
a lot of the movies we cover are not high
in that thing, are not high in that quality. But
that doesn't mean they are without interest, and so I
think you know, a lot of movies we cover, they're
not going to get a lot of stars on your
classic on the on the IMDb scale, but they are
still fascinating artifacts, enjoyable to watch, interesting to talk about.
(13:15):
I mean, this has just been I guess part of
my personality, going back as long as I could remember,
is that I could find interesting things about things that
were not typically understood as good art.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Oh that's fair. That's fair. Though I think some of
them are pretty great art.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Of course, some of them are.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, all right, Well anyway, Andrew continues and says, this
may seem random, but I bring it up because the
first time I experienced it was listening to the episode
about Rods from God. Oh that was a long time ago. Yeah,
I've had the experience of a sound or other sensation
incorporating itself into a dream. For example, a telephone ringing
in reality will work its way into a dream, and
(13:54):
I'll experience a telephone ring in the dream. The first
time I listened to the Rods from God episode to
refresh everyone, This I believe had to do with we
were talking. This is a theoretical orbital bombardment technique about
taking very massive objects, essentially large rods, and dropping them
(14:16):
strategically from orbit, and they would you know, they would
enter the Earth's atmosphere and do you know, devastating harm
when they reach the surface. Not necessarily the sort of
episode i'd do today, but it was a different time.
Andrew continues and says, Yeah, the first time I listened
to the Rods from God episode I fell asleep with
the podcast on. I had a dream about the idea
(14:39):
where I was in a room and someone was explaining
the idea of rods from God to me. Oh and
one more thing. It's just called rods from God. It
has nothing to do with the divine being the one
sort or another. It's just they come from up from.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Where that is, right, could have called him rods from Zod.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, yeah, that would work so any Andrew says, the
first time I listened to the Rods from God episode
I fell asleep with a podcast on. I had a
dream about the idea where I was in a room
and someone was explaining the idea of rods from God
to me. I was surprised that when I woke up
Stuff to Blow your mind was talking about this very concept.
When I put the podcast back about thirty seconds, I
(15:19):
was very surprised that I had incorporated full sentences from
the podcast into my dream with high accuracy. I'm not
surprised that something like this can happen with something like
a phone ringing, but I never would have thought it
possible for full sentences. I often fall asleep listening to podcasts,
and I've experienced this more than a few times. I
remember one time distinctly being somewhere and someone told me,
(15:43):
I know Joe McCormick, instead of just hearing I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Andrew. Yeah, Andrew. So this is actually an interesting subject.
I wonder if we could come back and do a
whole series on this. I'm sure it's a familiar experience
to many listeners. This is not the first time we
have had an email talk about this that like we
ended up in their dreams by being on the podcast
they were listening to as they fell asleep. But I
(16:08):
did briefly look up to see if there was any
research on this, and yeah, there actually is a good
bit of research that seems to from what I could tell,
it's kind of inconsistent in its results. But I was
looking at a literature review called Influencing Dreams through Sensory Stimulation,
a systematic review. This was published last year in twenty
(16:31):
twenty four in a journal called Sleep Medicine Reviews. This
was by Salviason at All, and I didn't have time
to get deep into this research here, but it was
trying to collect all the different studies that had been
done on whether sensory information from the physical environment actually
gets incorporated into dream content, and then in some cases
(16:53):
testing the fidelity of how it gets incorporated. Like you,
if you play verbal information in a room, will while
somebody is sleeping, will the person later say that they
experienced that verbal information in the dream, And then will
they actually have accurate recall of what information was transmitted?
(17:14):
And in some cases it seems yes. Other research has
had to do with nonverbal auditory stimuli and also other
sensory modalities as well. But in terms of auditory stimuli,
I know there's some research that began testing fire alarms
because it was trying to say, like, you know, will
fire alarms successfully wake people up from their sleep and
(17:37):
get them to, you know, get out of bed and
respond to an emergency. Some research in that Vein found
that people often reported having dreams about alarms when the
alarms were going off, and then they wake up or
they at least have the impression they had dreams about that.
Other things are like if you place sounds of traffic
at people while they are sleeping, they will often increased
(18:01):
reports of having dreams about like being in a street
with cars going by and things like that. So apparently
it's a it's a common phenomenon that somehow sensory information
from the physical environment gets incorporated into the dream state
this one way or another.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah, that's interesting. I know in the past we've talked
to about certainly getting into different phases of sleep and dreaming,
you know, those sensitive areas where we're coming in or
out of sleep where reality and dream can kind of
be combined and in subtle and even disturbing ways. But yeah,
(18:37):
I guess I tend to kind of take this personally
for granted, says I don't listen to podcasts when I
go to sleep, or often I don't even listen to music.
I just have like, well, white noise on. And you know,
if you have to dream about white noise, well that's great,
but it's not necessarily going to be memorable.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I had a dream that the fan was blowing. Yeah, okay, Rob,
Now we've had a bunch of messages about Weird House cinema.
Do you want to go ahead and jump into those.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, let's go ahead and get into the Weird House mail.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
All right, maybe I'll do this first one from Ian.
This is referring to something that came up in a
previous Listener mail about Weird House. The subject is Flight
of the Navigator. Dear Robin Joe, I'm currently listening to
the listener mail episode from early April and just wanted
(19:28):
to shoot a quick message to say I had the
exact same reaction as Rob to Flight of the Navigator,
which I watched at a friend's house as a child.
At the time, I didn't have the words to describe
the feeling, so I would have just said it's scared me,
despite not being scary in any traditional sense. Now, as
an adult, I can say it actually deeply unsettled me, and,
(19:51):
like Rob, I have avoided rewatching it ever since. Almost
all of my memories of the actual content of the
movie have faded. Over the thirty years or so since
I watched it, all that's left is a vague memory
of a scene where the spaceship has to stop so
the little boy can be But the unsettled feeling remains,
and I'm still and I still inwardly recoil at the
(20:14):
idea of watching it again. It's fascinating how things can
leave such a lasting impression even when so little of
the actual content of the experience sticks with us. Anyway,
just wanted to share that Rob is definitely not alone.
Thanks for the show, Ian, Well, thank you, Ian. This
is really interesting. I would say, Rob, if I'm remembering
what you said about it last time correctly, it was
(20:37):
that even though the movie is not intended to be
scary in anyway, it's presented as kind of a family
friendly children's adventure, there's just something that kind of like
makes your blood run cold about it.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah. Yeah, it's been for ever since I watched it again.
For all the reasons we reference, but yeah, it has
some unsettling, kind of disturbed being concepts of like time
dilation and that, you know, our standard trope of science fiction.
But I think for many obviously this was our first
introduction to that concept, and it was, Yeah, it was
(21:13):
it was a little unnerving.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
It actually makes me wonder what sorts of stories or
movies would have this quality that they might be more
frightening or unsettling to a child in ways that adults
might not pick up on. So all the adults who
are vetting this, they say, Okay, this looks family friendly,
(21:35):
you know, give it the okay stamp. This is good
for kids. But there's actually something in there that like
really messes with a lot of the kids who experience it.
It's sort of invisible or passes under the radar of adults,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean, And I guess it's just hard
to really identify sometimes because we can all think of
cases where there's something identifiable in the movie that clearly
can stir a child, like I instantly think about a
lot of people have that experience with The Dark Crystal.
Dark Crystal was wonderful. I've always loved it, My child
has always loved it. But there is some dark content
(22:10):
in there, and it's in a dark and immersive world
that doesn't pull any punches with some of it. Another
example I've mentioned before on the show is Revenge of
the Sith, which I think for many people, many for
many people out there. For many kids, it was perhaps
their earliest encounter with a tragic story arc, with the
(22:35):
story of someone's downfall into darkness, and you know, even
knowing like what happens in the rest of the series
and how it ties in with the larger franchise like it's,
it can be a pretty dark ride, especially if you
have no experience with other tragedies. But to you to
your point, yeah, there there's that other case of something
that we wouldn't as adults, wouldn't wouldn't identify, and could
(22:58):
easily fly under our radar, either due to our exposure
to other pictures in a given genre, or just the
fact that we're no longer in the mindset of a
child and we're not as privy to the more pressing
fears and concerns of a child.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
This really hits home for me right now actually because
currently my daughter is about two and a half years old,
and she there was recently a day where we were,
you know, getting her ready for bed, and she mentioned
to me something. She got kind of serious and she
told me she was worried about something, and I was like, oh, no,
what is it? And she kind of didn't want to say.
(23:35):
But then she said something in my crib and I
was like, oh, what's going on? And so we, you know,
figured out that there was something in her bed that
was bothering her. And it turns out it was this
one stuffed animal that she used to love, but now
it had become scary to her, and she was almost
scared to say anything about it. Like it's like she
(23:56):
there was some kind of power she was afraid of
invoking by talking about the little stuffed lion, the cute
stuffed lion that she previously liked. But we you know,
so we took it out of the bed, like okay,
it's not in there anymore. The problem was solved. Then
she was fine, But I wondered. I wanted to get
inside that emotion, like what had evolved inside her mind?
(24:16):
You know, how did the cute lion that she was
hugging just a few days before, how did it become scary?
Something happened? And we don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Being a parent, especially if a very young child, is
often like that, like you can't get the child to
put into words exactly what it is that caused a
kind of emotional evolution or why they're thinking what they're thinking.
You have these little moments like that, and it's just
I don't know, like you. It's like these little changes
(24:47):
and moments that are emotionally powerful to you because they're
emotionally powerful to your child and you're connected to your child,
but they're also inscrutable to you.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, but this is a great example. If listeners out
there have any any other accounts of this sort of
thing from their own life, for the lives of children
in their lives right in, we would love to hear
from you. All right, This next one comes to us
from Leif. Leif Wright sentence says, Hi, guys, love your
(25:17):
show and have been listening for years. I especially enjoy
the Weird House Cinema episodes. You know, I should mention
now that we're talking about this. We haven't announced this
everywhere yet, but Weird House Cinema can now be found
as its own playlist wherever you get your podcasts. So
if you want to subscribe to Just Weird House Cinema
and rate Just Weird House Cinema, you can do that
(25:39):
wherever you get your podcasts. We're checking it out see
how it works.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Of course, assuming you still like our Core episodes. We
would love for you to subscribe to the whole feed
and listen to everything. But if you want to just
get yes, But if you want to just get Weird House,
go for it, all right.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
So Leif says, Yeah, I love your show and have
been listening for years, especially enjoy the Weird House Cinema episodes.
But I want to posit something to you. I have
never heard you do an Australian osploitation movie, and indeed
I believe this is true. The closest we've come was
nineteen eighty two's Next of Ken, which I think qualifies
more as Australian new wave rather than osploitation.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
I don't know what counts as osploitation. Have I seen one?
Is Mad Max osploitation?
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I yeah, yeah, it's sometimes discussed as such. I mean
all these terms are kind of gray, right, I mean,
you can make a case for something being within or
outside of a particular subgenre. But you know, my loose
way of interpreting it is always, does it make Australia
seem scary? Does it seem to be you know, promoting
(26:46):
and or you know, exploiting some idea of like Australia's
and out of control wilderness sort of a thing, you know.
So anyway, a Live says, I'd love for you guys
to take a look and hear your take on some
of these gems from the seventies and eighties. Really the
golden era of these types of films. Like Canada during
the late seventies and eighties, there was a lot of
(27:06):
government grants and tax breaks to make movies here in Australia,
and so the upshot was a lot of weird and
wonderful B grade movies without their concepts that would never
have been made by mainstream film companies in Australia. You
kind of had to make period films or something set
in the outback to get made, to get funding were made.
Sorry that the sentence had a big aside in the middle,
but you get the idea. Lee says, I give you
(27:28):
a potential list of weird and wonderful OSSI films that
are literally a treasure trove of bizarreness to delve into
a rich sem of weirdness, or to mine if you like.
One of the filmmakers who is considered at the forefront
of this era of Australian cinema is the director Brian
Trenchard Smith, a favorite of one Quentin Tarantino. His films
(27:51):
to look out for are Turkey Shoot, highly recommended. It
gets strange. Think Deadliest Game on drug lace steroids, Okay,
death Cheaters, stunts, stunts and more, stunts, cheating on death,
dead in drive In? What if a drive in was
turned into a concentration camp for all the freaks and
(28:11):
weird of society? My ex girlfriend was in this one. Oh,
I've not seen this one, but I am familiar with
this one by reputation.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Okay, wait, so does the drive In here play movie? Still?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
I think so?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah? Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
The Man from Hong Kong an early classic insane martial
arts film Stunt Rock so weird? Is this movie about
death defying stunts or a rock band? I'm still not sure?
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Oh no, wait a minute. This next one I have
talked about on the show multiple times. So I have
seen an osploitation.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Movie, Yes, Razorback Russell McKay Hilander and eighties music video
director Think Duran Duran. Yes, multiple Duran Duran videos, including
the excellent Wild Boys, which I'll both talked about before. Yeah,
great track, amazing video Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart,
which again is amazing, amazing, a great track, amazing video.
(29:07):
But anyway, it points out that this was Russell's first
attempt at a feature film. Hungry Like the Wolf meets
a giant wild pig that terrorizes farm people in the
Australian Outback.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Yes, this has come up several times on the show.
I think we talked about it, certainly in our episodes
on Highland Er to the Quickening because same director or wait, no, dude,
yeah direct, Oh he did make the second he made
at least the first time he made him both. Yes, okay, yes,
but yeah. I described it as like Australian Texas Chainsaw
(29:37):
Massacre as the setting. It's like, you know, use the
outback instead of Texas there, so it's like a gross, grimy, gory,
redneck slaughter house sort of thing. But then it's also
at the same time as that Jaws, but with a
pig instead of a shark.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
It sounds like a winner. I'm game. But there's more
on this list. Stone Aussie biker's on well if not
acid something or other. Hugh keys Burn in the role
that was the precursor to his role as toe Cutter
in the original Mad Max or road Warrior.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Wait a minute, or road Warrior. I feel like I'm
getting confused here, or was the title mixed up in
other versions because I thought toe Cutter was only in
the original Mad Max. And then also, of course the
Hugh keys Burn came back in Furry Road.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
To play yeah, place the main antagonist in Furry Road.
You know, I don't remember. It's been so long since
I've seen any of the Mel Gibson Road Warrior films.
I've only seen the two new ones in recent memory.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Oh man, Well, you know, it's been a while since
I've seen the older ones. But I think of Mad
Max as ones where like the originals were great and
had their own gritty integrity, and the new ones are
amazing as well.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yeah, the second one especially was a big favorite of
mine back when I was like in junior high. I think,
so I need to revisit that one at some point. Anyway,
they continue. There are a stack more, but these are
a good starting If you want to delve deeper into
the osploitation films of the seventies and eighties, you can't
go past this documentary that features Quentin Tarantino. He has
(31:08):
an abiding love of the Aussie films of this era,
not quite Hollywood, the wild, untold story of osploitation. I
hope you take a look at one or more of
these completely insane flicks for your show. All the best
and enjoy Leif.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Thank you so much, Leif.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah, that documentary came out in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
By the way, all right now, I think we should
shift into covering some responses to our couple of episodes
on The wicker Man. These messages and our responses to
them will have spoilers for the movie. So if you
(31:45):
haven't seen The wicker Man and you want to go
into it unspoiled, which I would recommend, this is the
place to go watch it now, or at least consider
yourself warn This first message comes from Joe, not from me,
from a different Joe. Subject line pluggs and cynics. Hello, gentlemen.
I have a confession. I almost never watch your weird
(32:06):
house movies. For some reason, I quite enjoy listening to
you talk about movies I haven't seen. My wife says
it's odd, and perhaps it is, but being odd rarely
stops me. However, taking note of your peculiar intensity. I
went ahead and saw the Wickerman between the first and
second parts, and it did not disappoint. I've been mulling
over it all week, particularly the many, many times the
(32:28):
Islanders gave the detective the opportunity to pull himself off
the path to the Wickerman, from the first moment, where
he could have subjected himself to Lord Summerle, but instead
insisted he came with the power of the crown to
the night. He could have given in to Willow's temptation
and no longer been the virgin they needed, but instead
(32:49):
chose his vows to choosing to wear the fool's raiment
at each turn, faced with the opportunity to choose uncivilization,
animal instinct, and base tribalism. I didn't watch the final cut,
but your description of the scene with the slugs captured
the essence of that. A core impulse of the film
was this sense that civilization is a high wire act
(33:12):
without a net, that the gravity of our animal state
is hungry to reclaim us, and that there is something
good and natural and above all tempting about just letting
yourself fall. It reminded me of your recent discussion of
Cynic philosophy. There's a through line there the nobility of
giving into your base animal self. Thanks as always for
(33:33):
the thoughtful discussion, Joe.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
That's a good point. I mean really, in the later
portions of the film, like the townspeople embody animals, they
become animals, they transform into animals to elimined but powerful
extent in a way that people have throughout human history
via costumes. So it's yeah, I think there's some interesting
(33:57):
comparisons to be made to Cynic for the philosophy here.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Absolutely, And Joe, I think your description of the movies
ethos that that civilization and Christianity are, Yeah, there's a
precariousness to them. There's something about how they're you know,
they take great effort to maintain, and there's always sort
of like a wobbling, wobbling wire underneath them where any
(34:21):
moment they could they could just kind of plummet back
into something else, something deeper, something older.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
All right, here's another wicker Man message system comes to
us from Lawrence. Hey, guys, just a few remarks on
or sort of related to part one of your discussion
on the wicker Man. I apologoz in advance for the
meandering and irrelelent quality of these remarks, but it's a sorry,
not sorry sort of apology. We're talking about weird house here.
(34:51):
True enough, I've seen a film twice, both times on
broadcast television. I think both times were in the eighties,
but the first might have been in the late seventies.
Pretty sure. Both were late shows, so I would have
been tired and watching mostly out of insomnia. Because it
was broadcast TV. There was, of course no nudity, but
as best I recalled, the girl was plenty sexy without it.
(35:11):
I was less impressed than you with the documentary style
camera work. I would have preferred something more cinematic than Again,
I was young, and I wasn't put off by Howie's
abrasive nature so much as you were. I figured he's
a cop and these people were hiding something, and I
missed a lot a lot of the same clues that
he did. I only caught them on my second viewing,
when I already knew the film's ending. I was struck
(35:34):
when you mentioned Charlton Heston in The Crucifer of Blood.
I was not aware that this had been adapted to film,
but I saw the world premiere production of the play
with my father back in the seventies in Buffalo before
the production went to Broadway. I remember that when the
Studio Arena Theater first announced the season, the working title
(35:54):
was The Blood Triangle. By the time the play opened,
they had changed it to The Crucifer of Blood Sherlock
was played by Paxton Whitehead in that production, and Glenn
Close played the character based on Mary Morston in The
Sign of Four, from which the play was freely adapted.
They changed her name in the play. No idea who
played Watson. I was impressed with Whitehead's performance, but when
(36:17):
I told my dad this, he muttered, He's no Basil Rathbone,
just as Jeremy Brett will always be Sherlock for you.
For him, it would always be Rathbone. He did, however,
like Brett in the role of Holmes on television, but
that was some time after we saw the play. I
think I was still living at home when we saw
the first season of Brett's Sherlock Holmes broadcast on the
(36:39):
CBC out of Toronto. You could view Toronto stations in
Buffalo with somewhat fuzzy reception. Later we would occasionally get
together to watch subsequent seasons on PPS. Your mention of
Heston as Holmes gave me what I think may be
the answer to a question you post. Is there another
example of a non comical detective who is sympathetic, unsympathetic, intelligent, obtuse, abrasive,
(37:02):
but likable, and who keeps missing clues and doesn't find
the solution until it is tragically thrust down his throat.
It's Heston as George Taylor in the nineteen sixty eight
film adaptation of Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Wow. I would not have made that connection, but Lawrence,
this is good. I feel like there are some strong
similarities between the Wickerman and Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Ooh goodness, Yes, yes there is. I mean right down
to some of the ooh I kind of want to
compare the final sequences in both films.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Yeah, I mean a lot of differences too, though, because
like the locals in Planet of the Apes are the
apes on Planet of the Apes do not embody a
kind of retreat into paganism, and they are representing more
the witch hunting civilizational authority. But in the main character
as the isolated investigator who's not himself all that you know,
(37:54):
powerful as an investigator in the structure of a lot
of the revelations, there are some major similarities that are
quite interesting. I like this observation.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
All right, Lawrence continues and says, Okay, Taylor is an astronaut,
not a detective. But he's an astronaut solving a mystery,
which makes him a kind of detective, and I think
he fits the bill. There may be other candidates for
this category, but none come to mind at this moment.
That's all I have for now. I look forward to
hearing part two of your conversation. Thanks guys, Lawrence.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
I'm gonna have to keep thinking about this Planet of
the Apes Wickerman comparison, especially in that both films involve
a twist, like a horrifying twist ending with the revelation
of a giant Let's just say not to spoil anything
about the Planet of the Apes if you actually haven't
seen it and don't know the ending from The Simpsons
or something. A giant anthropoid kind of structure.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah, yeah, this one is often spoiled by popular culture.
I think somehow or another, I managed to see it
as a kid without knowing the twist, which was pretty
magical me too.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, I saw it actually at the beach. A relative
of mine rented it from Blockbuster when we were staying
at the beach time. Yeah, and I don't know why,
but I thought it was good anyway. This next message
is from Matt. Matt says, my name is Matt. Longtime listener,
(39:15):
first time writing. And of course this is also about
the Wickerman, the scene where Willow and her father were
using the hand of Glory. You said it didn't work.
My impression was that they were saying, gee, I hope
he's not lying awake in there listening to us. Conspired
to make him sleep with this macabre artifact. Wink wink.
I sure hope he doesn't leave the pub and try
(39:36):
to interfere with the Mayday festival. Wink wink.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
That's a good point. That was a good point.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
It seemed like it was part of the ruse to
provoke Howie to do that very thing, although I'm not
sure the innkeeper planned on getting hit in the head
and tied up on a lighter yet still dark note.
I found myself wanting to compare Sergeant Howie to Simon
Pegg's Sergeant Angel from the film Hot Fuzz. Sergeant Angel
is a London police officer who is reassigned to a
(40:05):
small rural village because he's such an overachiever he makes
everyone else look bad. Is it possible that Sergeant Howie's
colleagues and superiors, and possibly his fiance, whom I don't
remember seeing in the version I watched, dislike Sergeant Howie
so much that they set him up to be sent
off to be sacrificed by an island full of pagans.
What a horrible thought. Love the show best wishes.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Well, that's a good point. You know, I haven't seen
Hot Fuzz in a number of years that Edward Woodward
was of course in Hot Fuzz, so this comparison, potential
comparison might have very much been on their mind.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Yeah, a big city police officer goes to a rural
village and encounter as a conspiracy there. There's a similarity,
though the nature of the conspiracy and Hot Fuzz is
quite different. But yeah, yeah, I recall It's been a while,
but I recall quite liking Hot Fuzz.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember enjoying it. Oh Man,
every time I think about the Wickerman that I keep
coming back to this idea that entered my mind that
what if Howie, what if they couldn't send Howe, what
if they had to send another detective? And it was,
in fact a detective played by Oliver Reed, who you
know has been like divorced three times and like immediately
(41:15):
gets drunk in the pub, immediately sleeps with Willow and
then like gives them nothing to get. Like, we can't
sacrifice this guy. We can't put him in the wicker Man.
What are we gonna do? They try to make him
leave the island, and he's just like in bed smoking.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
Yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
To do Yeah, all right, here we go. We have
another one from a different Matt. Matt writes in it says,
good day, Felons. I've written to you about agricultural subjects
a few times in the past, and this is another
such message. Loved The wicker Man revisit seems I enjoy
(41:51):
the film more each time I watch it. Something I
never caught before was Sergeant Howie, right prior to being
locked into the Wickerman's chest cavity, saying something to the
effect of it was your cultivars that failed you, implying
to a degree a lack of resilience in the particular
varieties of fruits in part apples in this case to
(42:12):
inclement conditions. This got me thinking, is there actually a
Summer Ale, or possibly even a witcher Man apple cultivar?
I checked, and unfortunately, no, there doesn't appear to be one.
I'd love to hear I'm wrong from another listener, though.
Still that means a new cultivar could be named in
this fashion, something any apple breeders out there might want
(42:32):
to consider.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
I would buy so many of these apples. I would
get them every time at the store.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
I mean, I love a good apple. It would depend
on it being tasty. I don't know how you're gonna
beat fuji. Fuji is the best apple for me. For me,
I love various various apples, but the fuji is might
go too.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I love every kind of apple except red delicious. I
don't understand how people eat red delicious apples.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Well, you know they had. They felt like they had
to put delicious in the title to sell it. They
don't call it the fuji delicious, Like everybody knows the
fuji is delicious, and you're not trying to force it
on anyone with some sort of a snappy title. Anyway,
they continue. I did speculate that historic Scottish apple varieties
could have conceivably grown well in a western Heberdeene Island,
(43:18):
presumably somewhere near Isle of Sky, as some of the
as seen from plain footage I believe features the sky landscape.
I should add here that if memories serves, some of
the aerial photography early on in the picture is actually
South Africa as well.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah, there's some I think that is in Scotland or
the Hebridese, but there is some from South Africa.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
You're right, they continue. Apparently there's one called the Bloody Plowman, which,
while not from the Hebridese, was developed from another highly
productive agricultural region in Scotland around eighteen hundred. Wikipedia sources
the following as a rather chilling source for the apple's name.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
It is reputed two have got its name after a
gamekeeper shot dead of plowman caught stealing apples from the
and I may be saying this wrong mcginch estate. When
his body was returned to his wife, she found stolen
apples in his pockets and threw them onto the rubbish heap.
One of the resulting seedlings bore apples of a deep
blood red. This tree gave rise to the cultivar that
(44:22):
was named after the unfortunate plowman.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
That's funny, I have Okay, even if this story is
literally true, I really have doubts that the blood running
into the apples there would affect the colors of the
fruits produced.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
They continued. There's also Galloway, developed some time in the
mid Victorian period, so seemingly around the original summer Lord
Somerle's efforts, and presumably near the west coast of the
Scottish mainland, but its name isn't as intriguing. And lastly,
if Summerle cultivars are indeed failing, one has to wonder why,
assuming it's not just Bread's or another farming deities wrath.
(44:58):
Is it the result of intermittent cl slimactic shifts eg
slight changes in c currents, a shifting frost free date,
the time of year when frosts become exceedingly unlikely, and
such like. If so, in the existing cultivars might for example,
experience bloom periods that don't line up with weather pattern changes.
Those islanders are in a bad way. They better get
(45:19):
apple breeding because doing so without the use of modern
tools like gene editing, means the process takes a very
long time. Trees don't grow overnight. Of course, if it's
not just weather patterns changing, perhaps there are new pests
in the area, even invasive ones. Maybe some new insects
arriving on the wind eight all the lady birds, thus
allowing aphid populations to explode. That's just a hypothetical example,
(45:42):
but new or otherwise crafty insect pests is a continual
challenge for farmers around the world. Adding to the problem
might be an ineffective use or lack of use altogether
of crop protection products like fungicides or insecticides. Even in
modern organic farming, there are some tools available in this
regard to help protect crops from disease and harmful insects,
which again could conceivably be getting worse from weather pattern alterations.
(46:07):
Perhaps the strong nature focus of Summer Islanders means they
have traditionally exkewed such tools for fear of offending the
old gods. Regardless, methinks the years following the Wickerman's filming,
were it real, would have a lot of burning going on.
Probably not somewhere a guy would want to be on
May Day, inviting though the local pubs. Certainly, it's a
(46:29):
great pair of episodes.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
Matt, Well, thank you so much, Matt. That is fantastic.
Matt has many times in the past written great emails,
often about farming and agricultural technology, and my experience of
the Wickerman is so much richer now for having read this.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah, these are a lot of points that I just
kind of took for granted focusing on other aspects of
the story. But yeah, the agricultural skeleton of the piece
is also pretty fascinating. And Matt goes on to recommend
that we do a futurepisode of following a crop from
its historical origin to its modern cultivation, and I think
this is a solid, solid idea. This, of course, has
(47:08):
been done particularly well in the past by the likes
of Michael Pollen, So if anyone out there hasn't read
or listened to the excellent audiobooks of Michael Polland's work,
he has several different books that get into this with
particular crops. All right, we're going to go ahead and
close this episode here, but we'd love to hear from
everybody right in with your listener mails to the email
(47:29):
address we're going to provide here in a minute, again
just about anything as fair game content related to past episodes,
future episodes, present episodes, you name it, just to remind
us of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
a science and culture of podcast, with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
We set aside most concerns to just talk about a
(47:50):
weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Huge things, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.