STBYM Listener Mail: Darkness There and Nothing More

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Listener Mail. My name is Robert Lam. And I am Joe McCormick. And, hey, on our Listener Mail episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, what do you think we do? Can you guess? We open that mail back. Yeah, we got to get into the old mailbag. Messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you are a Listener or a Watcher on Netflix and you have never gotten in touch before, it's always a great time for it to be the first time. You can reach us at contact at StufftoBlowYourMind.com. Whatever type of message you want to send is fair game. We do our best to read all of it. We often don't get a chance to reply to all of these messages. But if you do send something into the show, there's a chance it could be featured in a Listener Mail episode like this one. That's right. And since I think it's going to come up pretty early in this episode, we'll also go ahead and mention that, yeah, we're on some of the socials. We also have a Discord server for the show. To join that Discord server, you just need to email us and we'll send you the link. Maybe it's not the most efficient way to do that, but it's the way we keep doing it. I don't know. It makes it feel a little more special when people actually join. You've got to want it enough to actually email us and ask for the link. You actually have to have a hand off of the information. Does that make it less likely that the Discord is infiltrated by bots? I don't know how Discord works. I guess so. I don't know. I don't know the current state of bots. It's possible. They're all bots in there and they just all have me fooled, but they're nice bots on the whole. So I guess I'm not opposed to it. Well, maybe we should start off with a message from Discord today. This is our first message. It's going to be from Taylor and it is in response to our series from a few weeks back on the theme of being upside down. This message actually relates to multiple things we got into in that series. One topic is what are called inversion illusions among astronauts in microgravity. Astronauts, when they're in orbit around the Earth in the space station or on the way up, sometimes report these strange sensations where they will be in microgravity and then suddenly their subjective vertical flips and they suddenly think, oh, I'm upside down. I'm hanging upside down. So we talked about that and some interesting effects of inversion illusions, like how it can disrupt your perception of objects and things like that. The other idea from that series is the Thatcher illusion. That's this interesting psychology discovery about what happens when you make grotesque alterations to a picture of a human face. If you flip the eyes and the mouth upside down relative to the rest of the head, the Thatcher illusion finding is that while these modifications are immediately obvious and usually quite funny when looking at a picture right side up, they become, to most people, virtually invisible when the picture is turned upside down. And we got into some theoretical reasons why that could be the case. So on to Taylor's message here. Taylor writes, have an interesting tidbit to add to the upside down discussion. Turning illustrations and reference images upside down is a tried and true mind hack artists use to help reproduce those images more accurately. To paraphrase an art instructor's explanation, our minds develop heuristic concepts of what certain categories of things look like. When illustrating a subject, the brain supplements sensory information from the eyes with the heuristics offered up by our inner eye. Consequently, an illustration of a subject is often skewed by what we think the subject ought to look like. Inverting the reference image slash subject makes it unfamiliar. parentheses, we do not have heuristic concepts of what most things look like upside down, forcing the mind to abandon heuristic data and focus on visual sensory information, helping an artist replicate the image more accurately. I have to imagine something similar is happening to astronauts experiencing inversion hallucinations and seeing familiar objects differently. Perhaps the inversion is forcing them to observe the objects more actively than they would at their typical vertical, where mental heuristics might be supplementing their image processing. Well, thank you, Taylor. That is a really interesting thing to add to this discussion. I don't think I've ever used this technique myself, but I should give it a try. I think I've talked about this on the show before, but to my family and friends, I am notoriously a terrible visual artist. The things I draw tend to provoke just storms of laughter from onlookers. So yeah, maybe this will finally help me with my artistic breakthrough. Well, I just always doodle goblins and the like because that way you always nail it 100%. There's no messing that up. That's true. All right, here's another one. I guess this one came in via email. Am I correct on this from Matt? Yep. Yep. Subject line, I am upside down. Hi, guys. Listening to your episode, your upside down episodes made me remember something from my childhood. In the front yard, we had a tree that had branches forked in just the right way to be perfect for hooking your legs over to hang upside down. So naturally, that was something me, my siblings and many of the neighborhood kids all did on a semi regular basis. Now, the specific memory that the episodes brought up was about a time that a friend was hanging upside down and he commented how it looked like I was walking on the ceiling. This struck me at the time because such a thought had never occurred to me. I think it has something to do with me having dyslexia, but to me, the people around me still seemed right side up even when I was upside down. I'm tempted to use the words that they looked right side up, but I think that isn't exactly right. It's more they felt right side up and the orientation of how they look didn't really matter to my brain. They were just right side up. I don't know, but maybe you can pull some discussion points from that. But in any case, I hope you at least find that interesting. I also wanted to mention something that came to mind while listening to the Weird House episode about I am Legend. This would have been about the movie The Last Man on Earth, but no, we also talked a little bit about I am Legend, that being the source book and also the name of the third adaptation of the novel Mac continues. It struck me as noteworthy how air seems to be the major weakness of the bacteria, but the bacteria also spreads, quote, on the wind. The bacteria propagates using the element that is most dangerous to it, which seems to imply two distinct phases of life, a spore phase where it is dormant enough to survive air travel and a more active phase where it can infect its victims. Anyways, I thought you might find these thoughts interesting. Love the show. I always learn things I would never have even thought to look into. Matt. Thank you, Matt. Well, on that, the first account, this childhood experience of hanging upside down and having kids discuss their perceptions. I think we all have maybe similar experiences where we just have this, there's this place where perception, the pure sense perception of things and then the interpretation of sense data meets. There are different points in our life where we were forced to really analyze how these things line up. This sounds like perhaps an early example of that, where you maybe don't have all the terms in your mind or certainly all the angles on it that you'll get later on. But you're beginning to wake up to the idea that, yeah, something weird is going on. How is it that I can see something and I also feel something about the things I see that may be in opposition to the way things are? Yeah. I think it's very valuable when you're young to have experiences of seeing the world a different way or having some kind of challenge to naive realism or challenge to just the assumption that all of the properties that you perceive about reality are unchanging and objective, which many of them are not. So thanks for that childhood field report there, Matt. Okay. Here's a short message from Eric on the subject of upside down, a warning that this has spoilers for a Star Wars expanded universe novel. So... Okay. They don't name which novel it is. So just it's one of them. If you're looking to read one to all of them, then just maybe have your guards up. Eric says, hey gents, thanks for the fun episodes about upside down this. Your conversations reminded me about a Star Wars expanded universe novel I read when I was a kid. The hero of the novel was imprisoned in a subterranean prison camp. Eventually he learns, spoiler, that the entire prison is actually upside down through the use of artificial gravity so that prisoners go the wrong direction if they attempt to escape. It seemed a bit more effort than was really worthwhile, but it was an interesting idea. Thank you. Thanks again for the great show, Eric. This reminds me of the superstitious practice of burying suspected vampires upside down. Yeah. Plus, I don't know that I've run across the use of artificial gravity like this in sci-fi before. I mean, generally, you're encountering artificial gravity for one of two reasons. One, because you actually want to figure out how gravity attuned beings are going to live in outer space, or generally more to the point, you're shooting a sci-fi film and you don't want to attempt to replicate microgravity the whole time. You just want gravity. And we're just going to go ahead and say there's something under the floor or in the ship that is making that happen. But this would be a case of exploiting it planet side, which I pretty much, I don't think I ever encounter. I guess it would make sense that in some of these sci-fi scenarios, you would have it just because not every world's going to have the same amount of gravity that might be desired. But in this case, especially, you would have to really have it cranked up. This is like running the air conditioner in the desert, because you're not only creating gravity, a strong gravitational pull where there isn't one, or there's a very weak one, you're creating the opposite gravitational pull on a place where there is gravity. So yeah, I agree. It sounds like maybe it was more work than was necessary. But hey, when you have, presumably, a cruel empire behind something, they sometimes, the budget goes a bit out of control. This would have been a great plot point in Star Crash. If only we could go back in time and get Luigi Kotsi to do this one. Can you just imagine, like Stella and Elle, they end up going to the center of the planet because the prison was upside down. I think it would work. Yeah, I think it's great. I love what they did in Andor with the prison, but if they had used this concept instead, that would have totally worked. I don't know. It wouldn't have worked in the same way. They'd have to change a few things, but I think it's a cool idea. Well, I feel like it would have changed the tone of the prison in Andor was pretty dark and terrifying. This would make it significantly funnier. Yeah. I mean, it's how you play it out. I mean, the idea of, I guess it would have been more of a dead end because that seems to be where this ends up, is you think that you're reaching the surface of your subterranean prison, but you've climbed the last rung of the ladder and you emerge deep below the prison. You're even more underground and buried than you were initially. Just more locks down here. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, thanks for sending that in. Yeah, don't know which book that is, but I'm sure if one does the right searches, it'll turn out. All right. Let's see. Here's another one. This one comes to us from Uncle Bosco. I don't think we've heard from Uncle Bosco before. I don't recall, but this is more discussion of Upside Down. Hello, gentlemen. Your discussions about Upside Down immediately made me think of a scene from Big Trouble in Little China, and the scene depicts a jack and Wang seeing a series of corpses hung upside down in chains in water, and Wang explains that this is the hell of the Upside Down centers. I had an experience with a little upside down weirdness. This is the point that I was wondering, did he have an experience where he was in an elevator and it began to flood with water and escaped into a hell of skeletons and chains? I don't know. I spent 80,000 years in the prison of Upside Down centers. Yeah. Uncle Bosco continues, so it says, in 2015, I had an accident with a lawnmower, and the big toe on my right foot was severely damaged. However, almost all of the soul of that toe was intact. The surgeon flipped that flap of skin up over the wound and stitched it closed. Throughout my recovery, the surgeon would cover my foot with a towel and use a needle to test if my nerves were healing and rewiring. For about five months, when the surgeon would poke the needle into the skin that was now on the top of my toe, but which had been the bottom of my toe for 45 years, my brain would usually signal me that the needle was poking the bottom of my toe. After about four months, I started to feel it correctly, and around the end of the fifth month, my brain had completely rewired itself to indicate the poke was on the top of the toe. Be safe and have fun, Uncle Bosco. That is awesome. That is really interesting. It makes me wonder, how is that process regulated? Does the nerve reorientation there to feel the bottom of your toe as the bottom, again, when the flesh has been relocated, does that require continuous visual conditioning? Do you have to be looking at your toe while you're touching it over a long period of time, or does that just happen naturally, somatically, over some type of period of regrowth? It makes me think of some of the treatments for Fandom Limbs Syndrome that involve the use of a mirror. Fascinating. All right. I think we have another one here for us from another cleverly named listener. They keep coming up with them. Do you want me to do this one? Oh, please do. Okay. This is from The Wandering Wizard. Wandering Wizard says, listening to the upside down part one, and I've only made it to the part where you talk about Dante going through hell and coming out the other side and having the flip in the middle. Yeah, that was what we started talking about there. Wandering Wizard says, I know you guys love, quote, interesting movies. I also know you guys prefer the older movies, so you might not have seen this one. In 2012, someone decided to remake the classic Total Recall. In the 2012 version, the post-apocalyptic Earth has a giant gravity elevator of sorts. The movie calls it the two or the fall. This is a gravity-driven transportation system that goes from one side of the Earth to the other through the center. And if I remember correctly, flips people halfway through. Very nice. I'm skeptical that the reason Dante put the flip in was because of the Earth-centric universe view, but that may just be me projecting because I know the same things happen because of gravity. Keep up the good work, Wandering Wizard. Now, I will say 2012's Total Recall, directed by Lynn Wiseman, is a movie I have seen. I remember watching it. And I remember enjoying it because I went into it knowing this was going to be a different take on Total Recall. And this was not going to be the Total Recall that I loved. But it was made by a director whose films I have enjoyed before and featured a pretty cool cast. So I was like, it'll have some fun action. And I remember having a good time with it. But this was also one of the many films where this strange Martian phobia comes into play with particularly American bigger budget pictures, where there was just some sort of idea that seemed to last way longer than it needed to that you could not or you should not have a movie set on Mars because it would be a box office failure. This was one of the reasons that they made at least one of the Doom movies. And they were like, it's not set on Mars. And then I think maybe they retroactively changed that. And it's like, actually, it is Mars. Like they backtracked a little bit. But like, it's just such a pervasive feeling. It's like, no, you can't have a movie set on Mars. People will not view it. It will not be a hit. Well, what was it? I remember sometime in the 90s or was it the 90s or the early 2000s, there were two movies about Mars that came out around the same time. And it was like mission to Mars and red planet. I think that was it. And I think those, if I'm not mistaken, those were not successful. My memory could be off of that. But I think those those films or at least one of those films contributed to this, this bit of wisdom in the film production world that Mars was instant death for a film. And I imagine probably the John Carter film that came out in recent decades was also also contributed to this feeling. But yeah, I don't know. Producers are hard on Mars. It's rare. You see a strong Martian film poke through to the surface. So I imagine the scenario here is they're like, okay, we want you to remake Total Recall, but it cannot be set on Mars. And he's like, okay, can I have an elevator that goes to the center of the earth to Australia? They're like, sure, that's great. Go ahead. People will love that. People can connect to that. They don't go to Mars in this one. That was the point you're building to? They actually never go to Mars? I don't think there's Mars in this one. Let me do a quick, a quick, yeah, yeah, it's set on earth, not Mars. Yeah. Well, I got to say, I find that offensive. I think that I think Total Recall movies should go to Mars. I've only seen the first one, but yeah, that just seems like that's part of its soul. It's got to go there. All right. We had numerous folks right in about this next bit. In our, when we were talking about pop culture examples of walking on the ceiling, monsters on the ceiling, I don't even remember how it came up, but this idea of there being some sort of image from a film in which there's a baby crawling on the ceiling that had disturbed us. But in the heat of the moment, neither of us can remember what film it was. Numerous folks wrote in to tell us that we were probably remembering 1996's train spotting. So for instance, I'll read at least one of these here. Well, let's see, we got, we heard from a couple of people. Let's see, which one should I read? Let's go with, let's go, Elle wrote in, but we also heard from Mike. I'm going to read Mike's just cause Mike mentioned something else in it as well. Mike says, Hey guys, I'm a little behind on the pod lately, but I'm in the middle of upside down number two and have your answer to where you are remembering a baby on the ceiling from train spotting. When you and McGregor's character is going through withdrawals, he has visions of a friend's baby crawling along the ceiling towards him. He truly terrifying scene that is made much worse by the uncanny valley robotic baby years. I am guessing this answer was already given, but on the off chance that it wasn't, here you go. P.S. still waiting for you guys to cover Johnny Pneumonic in Weird House. Thanks as always, Mike. All right. Not the first time we've had a request for Johnny Pneumonic. So I don't know, never seen that one. I've seen parts of it. And it's, it's got a wild cast. So it's very much on the list. It's just sometimes these, these things, you know, we have a list to draw from and, and sort of in the heat of the moment inspirations to draw from. And we just kind of see which way the wind is blowing when it comes time to pick a movie. But this one's very much on the list. I think we'll get to it in time. Okay. Are you ready to do some responses to the Star Wars episodes? Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm going to read this message from Jonas in reaction to the first Star Wars episode that we did about Hoth, where we talked about the Tauntaun sleeping bag, among other things. Subject line of this episode, a literary parallel to the Tauntaun moment. Jonas says, Hi, Rob and Joe, I really enjoyed listening to your discussion about the Star Wars episode where Luke takes shelter inside a Tauntaun. It reminded me of a similar story in one of my favorite books, The Settlers by Wilhelm Moberg. One chapter tells the story of a trip to the mill by the protagonist Carl Oskar and his young son, Johann. They're traveling in a cart pulled by an ox and on their way home are caught in a fierce snowstorm. The situation becomes increasingly desperate and the boy is close to freezing to death. In the end, Carl Oskar makes the difficult decision to slaughter the ox so he can place his son inside it to keep him warm and save his life. I highly recommend the book as well as the entire The Immigrant series that it is part of. This particular episode is very intense and moving and it has stayed with me since I first read it many years ago. The book was published in 1956, so it's possible it may have inspired Star Wars, although I'm sure similar stories exist in many forms. It's always a pleasure listening to your insightful discussions. Thank you and keep up the great work. Jonas. Well, thank you, Jonas. That book sounds really interesting. I was not previously, I've never read it obviously, and I was not familiar with this author, but I looked up Wilhelm Moberg and seems like an interesting guy too. Cool. Cool. Yeah. All right. In relation to the second of those Star Wars episodes, the one dealing with the Sith, we heard from a longtime listener, P.K. And P.K. chimed in on Discord to talk specifically about the Sith transition situation, the whole rule of two. And the thing here is that P.K. has read a number of these Star Wars books or listened to the audiobook versions and wanted to point out some of what they learned from these books. Great. Rob, can you refresh the listeners on how the Sith succession rule of two goes? Always two there, a master and an apprentice. And so the master is always killed by the apprentice. The master holds and withholds power and knowledge. The apprentice wants power, but there can only be two at a time. And eventually the apprentice will kill the master, becoming the new master and taking on a new apprentice. Okay. Yeah. And we get into it. We discussed the practicality of all of this. But P.K. says, and I'm going to quote them here. I'm not going to read all of their thoughts. They had a number of thoughts here, but they wrote, my impression was that they didn't necessarily think the new Sith would be the exception to the rule, except at least a couple seriously attempted to find a way to extend their lives indefinitely. And even then it sounds more like they wanted much longer lives. And they often weren't happy with their apprentice not making a valid challenge, like with Bane, Darth Bane. He thought it unhonorable for the apprentice to wait for him to get old and slow. That wouldn't sharpen the Sith. So that's when he went to find a way to live forever and to find a replacement. So it sounds like some of these books dealing with the Sith and getting into these master apprentice relationships, they have, of course, chewed on some of this. What's the master thinking as he's watching this apprentice growing stronger and yet just as hungry as before? And then what does that mean for the long-term future of their religion slash organization? This also sounds like P.K. here is answering a question that we brought up in the episode, which the question was, are the Sith Lords and apprentices aware of this rule that the apprentice always kills and replaces the master? Is this just like meta that we know looking in on this world or are the characters in the world aware of it? And Rob, your answer was sort of that it seems like maybe they are aware of it, but the masters often think that they're going to be the exception. Well, one thing that P.K. did argue was that given how secretive the organization is, the apprentice doesn't necessarily know about this whole rule of two thing when they start. Like they just know that they're like some sort of dark Jedi out there and then they meet somebody that's very powerful and probably quite scary as well, you know, just how powerful they are. And then they fall under their control, their power. And it's maybe not so much later that they realize, oh, this is this is a thing. This is this is this is going to be my master's fate and my ultimate fate as well. Okay. But then P.K. also points out, quote, the third bane book is all about this secession struggle, by the way, the Palpatine book is also one of the better in the Star Wars series. The secession here, there is shorter, but also fascinating if you haven't read it, it makes Palpatine much more of a full fledged character. And you end up liking him for the most part. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I'm just sharing a little bit of what they shared in Discord, but I found it found it pretty fascinating. And it makes sense, of course, that these books would really get in there and discuss and tease apart the relationship between these masters and these apprentice. Okay, the next message I'm going to do has images with it. This comes from Christopher, subject line, Hecann Chonker. Greetings, Robert, Joe and JJ. Thanks for the great episodes on goldfish slash carp slash koi fish loved learning about the history of these fish wanted to share some pics of my neighbor's goldfish Nemo. Oh, that's, that's brutal. A goldfish named Nemo, who started life as an 18 cent feeder goldfish from Petco eight years ago. The second spring, they had him, the owner decided to put him outside in a backyard pond slash water feature to enjoy the outdoors. When late fall rolled around, it was time to bring Nemo back in the house to shelter from the cold Chicago winter. I know you had mentioned in the episode that the myth of a gold fish growing to the size of its container is just that a myth. But I have seen with my own eyes the anecdotal evidence as he went from a small fish in an indoor tank to a much larger outdoor habitat and came out significantly came out the significantly larger fish you see in the photos here now residing in a 50 gallon tank all to himself. And then Chris attaches some images of this. It's one of these goldfish that has kind of bulging out eyes that are coming out to the sides kind of Admiral Ackbar a little bit back to Star Wars and has some very nice golden orange color. But it does. Oh, Chris is holding his hand up for comparison. The fish is bigger than his whole hand. Nice. Nice. Yeah, it's a beautiful fish. Chris continues, other than his size, he's a very interesting fish. He will watch you when you enter the room and go about. Additionally, he will loudly slap the sides of the tank at the waterline when his owner is about and he wants some additional feeding. Thanks again for the deep dive into these fish, Chris. I don't think I'd ever heard before of fish communicating like this, slapping the side of the tank to communicate with the owner and express their desire for food. Though I did have a kind of similar experience, not with slapping, but just recently Rob, you and I were actually in the same place. We happened to we recorded an episode together on location and we were walking around this hotel and saw they had a koi pond with some beautiful fish in it swimming around. When I was standing there beside the koi pond, I noticed suddenly all of the fish were gathering in my shadow. They were coming over to me and I was like, what is this all about? And I realized like, oh, probably when somebody stands here, that's when they're about to get fed. Yeah, yeah. Koi will do that for sure. They see the shadow, they know you're human and like, pet cat or dog, they come up and they're like, you're human, do the thing that you were supposed to do for me. Dogs do this too. I go over to somebody's house, they have a dog and the dog is like, I need you to let me outside. And I just have to say, I am not authorized to do that. That's not my job. You have the wrong human. But yeah, in this case and others, you have the koi will come up and they just kind of regard you. And you can see why we discussed in the episodes how you'll have anecdotal evidence of Koi and or other carp having a sort of personality and even even a relationship with their human or their human observer or the human, you know, sees them as an individual who also regards them in return. Anyway, thank you, Chris. All right, let's skip on ahead to some Weird House Cinema messages here. This one comes to us from Colm and the subject line is, I am never going to a spa again. Colm says, Hi guys, I thought these were places where people went to relax, obviously not and includes a classic poster to the film death spa tagline, you'll sweat blood. And Colm says, I'm liking the cactus episodes just moving straight on to this poster. And also you are available here now on Netflix in Ireland. There was a bit of a delay. All the best, Colm. Thank you, Colm. I long have admired this poster. I've actually never watched the whole movie. I think I watched maybe the first five minutes of it one time. But I'm going to have to try to do the whole thing because the poster, it's just earned my business. Yeah, there's like a guy being tortured by exercise equipment from hell. There's a hot lady in a swimsuit with a skull head skull head all great elements. It's come up on the show before because it features some actors we've covered before. And it's been on my list for a while. I think sometimes I end up skipping over it because in the heat of the moment, I confused death spa about a spa that kills with was it death bed, the bed that kills? The bed that eats. Yeah, the bed that eats. And I think you had mentioned that death bed, you didn't think it was one that would be a good pick. So I kind of like end up accidentally putting death spa onto the past list without remembering that it's actually a separate film. I mean, it's been a long time since I saw a death bed, the bed that eats. But I recall it being kind of underwhelming actually. Sometimes it's a lot for a movie to live up to a great title and or a great poster for sure. Yeah. But the death spa poster, the lady on this poster who's in her like aerobics outfit that has the skull face reminds me of the skull face monster from Empire of the Dark that wanders into the kitchen in her underwear and starts kissing the guy, but has the monster mask. Yeah, so good. Yeah. All right, we'll just have to we'll have to make sure it's on the the considerations list for sure. Okay, Rob, do you mind if I read this one from Larry? Go for it. This one has to do with Last Intention of Christ, subject line Josh, Judas and the Church, 1989. Hi, guys. Thanks for the Weird House episode on Last Intention of Christ. I worked in one of our country's oldest Episcopal churches and recently began studying early Christianity. I wasn't raised religious per se, so I didn't realize Jesus wasn't Jesus's historical name. The savior of humanity was Josh. Anyway, Larry goes on making reference to another ancient book that is not part of the Bible. It's one of these apocryphal Christian texts called the Gospel of Judas. Larry says, in the Gospel of Judas, Jesus tells Judas to turn him in. It was found in 1978. Do you wonder how much influence it may have had on the movie or if it was coincidentally what the author of the novel included too? Would you consider covering some of the famous or strangest non-canon Gospels or Sayings Bibles? It's cool that the early days of the faith are full of all different types of Christianities or Jewish sects, not two distinct faiths. Well, Larry, you're speaking my language. I don't think we've ever done an episode fully just devoted to non-canonical early Christian texts, but they've definitely come up here and there in other topics. I know we've talked at some length about some various Gnostic Christianities and other books. Actually, there was one episode years back now, I think it was probably in like 2020, where I interviewed a biblical scholar named Bart Ehrman about it. It was for his book on Heaven and Hell, sort of the origins of how Christians came to believe in the modern versions of Heaven and Hell, where those ideas come from and how they developed. One of the things I talked about with him also was some of these early books, these Christian books that give visions of Heaven and Hell, like long before Dante, there are books like The Apocalypse of Peter that go into extreme detail talking about the tortures of the damned and what parts of the body people are being hung up by and stuff. It gets pretty gnarly, but I do generally agree. There are just all kinds of interesting things going on in early Christian history that are, I think, fascinating no matter who you are, but also really strange, probably, to a lot of modern Christians, like won't recognize a lot of the theology and stuff. Anyway, so Larry goes on to say, this recent interest is why I finally watched The Church. Really, we went from like Christian theology to the movie The Church. Would you do it for Weird House? I don't think I've ever seen something so delightfully baffling in so many different ways. I felt like I was watching someone else's dream played backward, felt nostalgic after spending some wonderfully spooky days working in a historic church. Keep up the great episodes, Larry. Yeah, wow. It's been a while since I've seen The Church, but I remember loving it. It is nuts. Yeah, same here. It's been way too long since I saw it, but I loved it back in the day. We've been talking about, we've certainly mentioned Michael Suave on the show before, but we've never, because he pops up, and he and his motorcycle pops up in a number of Italian films. He's even around and absurd, I think. Yeah, he and his motorcycle show up and absurd. He learned the trade. He was an eager learner on the sets of many a horror film, but we haven't talked about any of the films that he actually directed, and he's directed some fun ones. Did he play a creep in City of the Living Dead? I think he did. Did he? Not the main creep in the movie. I think another creep in it. Yeah, or I can't remember if he showed up or if we just saw a motorcycle and we're like, where's Suave? But I guess one of the things with that is that much of it was filmed, the outdoor stuff, anyway, was filmed in Georgia. So I don't know if Suave made the trip or if he was just on the sets in Rome. He's everywhere. But all right, another vote for The Church. We'll push it up the list. All right, here's one from Wade. Wade is writing in in response to a much older episode of Weird House Cinema that we recently reared as part of our Star Wars week, because we were talking about one of the early spaghetti Star Wars films, The Humanoid. Wade says, hi, guys. I don't know if this came up when the Humanoid episode originally aired, and indeed I do not remember. But I wanted to comment on the memory of Jaws in Moonraker, the James Bond film, Jaws falling in love with the woman after she smiled and he saw her braces. I saw Moonraker in the theater with my dad when I was a kid and I have a very clear memory of the same scene. However, pretty recently, I've seen evidence that this memory of the woman having braces is an example of the Mandela effect, the so-called Mandela effect, and is basically a false memory. All examples of the film available clearly show she didn't have braces. Here is a link included to a skeptical inquire article about, I mean, by author slash skeptic Mick West, that discusses the scene and gives some other examples of the Mandela effect. This one really got me because I have a very clear memory of the braces from when I saw the film. I guess it's just another example of how our memories can change and be manipulated over time. I enjoy the show. Thanks, Wade. Well, yeah, thank you, Wade. It's been so long since we recorded the episode on The Humanoid. I genuinely don't remember what we said about it, so I hope I don't issue some bizarre contradiction now. But what my memory now is, is that when I saw this movie as a kid, that lady had braces. I know that's not true. I don't believe in parallel dimensions or anything. I don't think there's anything actually spooky going on with the so-called Mandela effect. I think it's just, you know, there are common misconceptions. You remember things a certain way because it seems like it would have made sense for it to be that way. Like it would have been a kind of perfect thing for her to have braces and jaws to have his metal teeth, but that's just not what it was. For some reason, lots of people remember it wrong that way. Yeah, like we mentioned Total Recall earlier. I know we've discussed this, but there's a scene where one of the Mars people, a short lady with a sword, stabs one of the villains. And in my memory from watching Total Recall the first time, I thought she stabbed the dude in the crotch with the sword. Oh yeah, I remember that. But it's apparently not the crotch that she stabs him. She stabs him somewhere else. She still stabs him to death. But I have this very clear memory of how I thought the scene was and then it's different later on. And we've also encountered less specific versions of that where there'll be some film and you or I have a memory of it being gorier or more upsetting than it actually really is. And part of that is just where we were when we watched it and how we perhaps reflected on it afterwards. And again, just coming back to what we've mentioned many times before, the more you withdraw that particular memory, the more you get your fingerprints on it, the more you manipulate it. So the memories that we, and this goes beyond movies, this goes to everything in life, but the memories that we utilize the most are also the ones we can trust the least. Broadly speaking, don't let that, don't trouble yourself too much over that. Well yeah, there are exceptions to that. Obviously, there are different ways that a memory can be preserved. Like if you're recalling a memory many times with the aid of video footage every time, obviously that's going to be a different relationship to that memory than something that you're, you don't even remember all that well the first time and then you start remembering it a lot. You know, then you're really probably going to be narrativizing. So yeah, but it is certainly true that you never want to fall for the illusion that our memories are a video camera no matter how much it might seem that way. Right, right. Yeah, for that to be the case, we would have to be cyborgs. Yes, so it is time to do some Borg stuff. As a Rob, you pulled in a message from Discord from Shadow Rat. This is about the Albert Peune movie Nemesis, which we covered on Weird House Cinema. It's a movie that I think it had some cyborgs in it. And so here, Shadow Rat is going to reference the character named Alex Rain. Alex Rain is the main character of Nemesis. A lot of Nemesis is people arguing about who is and is not a cyborg. And in a lot of cases, it's not actually clear except our main character is a cyborg. But a lot of times he talks about how other people are cyborgs and he's not a cyborg. Anyway, Shadow Rat says, I noticed a lot of similarities between Alex Rain and Blade. Like where you're going here, Shadow Rat. So in Blade's world, you've got vampires and humans at war. There are humans that seem perfectly capable of fighting the vampires. But what they really need is a human vampire hybrid because I guess that person gets all the strengths of both humans and vampires. Alex Rain is kind of the same trope. In Nemesis, you have some kind of human-slash-cyborg conflict going on. And it's true, it is quite vague in the film. But Shadow Rat says, although it doesn't seem like the humans eat machines. Okay, so that... Or vice versa. Right. So that parallel to Blade does not hold. It's not like the humans are going out sucking the cyborgs' blood. But yeah, so it doesn't seem like the machines eat the humans or the humans eat the machines. Alex is the savior of humans that is half human, half machine. But I thought in the context of the movie, isn't that sort of what cyborg means anyway? It's like a half human, half machine. Okay. So Shadow Rat goes on, actually, now that I type that out, I realize that Jesus also kind of fits that trope. He's the savior of humanity that's human and vampire, so let's then cross out vampire and God. Jesus, Blade, and Alex Rain. Oh, also, both Blade and Alex seem to have this inner conflict thing going on. Blade worries about giving in to his vampire side. Alex worries about his machine percentage getting too high. I'm pretty sure that the Gospels depict Jesus as wanting to stay human a little longer. I don't... Well, I think what you're probably thinking of, Shadow Rat, is the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus says in at least some of the Gospel tellings, Jesus prays if God will allow this cup to pass from him. Essentially, like, can I get out of this? I want more life, Father. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So Shadow Rat says he's sort of resisting getting his God percentage to 100. Wow. Well, this is a applause. Several rounds of applause, please, for Shadow Rat. Yes. Yes. Very good analysis. Yeah. I mean, not that every work that we've referenced here or certainly that gets into this territory. Not every work is going to be intentionally going deep on any of these concepts, but I think, obviously, a lot of these stories appeal to us because we live in a world where there are a lot of firm, strict labels for what we're supposed to be, and most people will find themselves, if they're truly self-aware, they'll find themselves not completely lining up with these various labels. And so everybody feels a little bit like a vampire, human hybrid at times. And also, it seems like what we need is somebody that can bridge some sort of division. You need somebody who's an individual of both worlds. And of course, there are examples of very much realities like that. It doesn't always work out. Sometimes your half-human vampire just ends up being hated by both vampires and humans, or if not hated, at least treated at times with the same sort of hostility or more alienation. But we're highly social creatures, and we're very tuned in to how others perceive us, and whether we're fitting in or not fitting in, what does it mean to fit in or not fit in with a particular group? What does it mean to be an outsider? So stories like this are always going to resonate with us. It's true. I mean, the crazy thing is that reminds me of that quote we read from Albert Pugh, in where, despite the fact that he kept making cyborg, post-apocalyptic cyborg movies, he apparently said, I'm not really all that interested in cyborgs. It was just a way to tell the stories I wanted to tell. So I don't know. I think he was maybe interested in some kind of more deeper, more universal or generic theme about blended or altered types of humanity. And the cyborg was just one way you can make that into a story. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm all for it. We should have more. We're not making enough cyborg films, is what I'm saying. And I want to see more. Go make them, please. All right. Finally, obviously, we were always asking for recommendations for Weird House Cinema, what we should consider covering in the future. And I think in one week, we heard like, from three different directions, people mentioning the 5,000 fingers of Dr. T. So I want to acknowledge that Dexter wrote in about this. Independently, my wife happened to send me a clip from the same movie. But I'm going to read a message here from Carrie. Carrie says, Robin Joe, on your April 23, 2026 podcast, you requested listeners to not let you forget films that have been suggested for Weird House. The door having been opened, I will shamelessly remind you of the three I have suggested in the past. The 5,000 fingers of Dr. T., a musical fantasy with story and screenplay by Dr. Seuss. Them, giant mutant ants, run amok, threatening a great cast, including James Arnaz. Island of Terror, silicate-based monsters accidentally created in a laboratory that sucked the bones out of people, starring Peter Cushing. What do people look like when the bones are gone? Hopefully, a big old pile of flesh, right? Yeah. There was a great Ray Bradbury theater episode like that that had Eugene Levy in it, where he goes and ends up getting his bones all sucked out. And Eugene Levy's character is reduced to just a pile of Eugene Levy flesh. Hanging on a clothesline or something. Yeah. I think it's just crumpled up on the floor, like a pair of old pants, but still alive. It's disturbing. And then, Carrie continues, he says, and one more that I haven't mentioned before, Dr. Who and the Daleks, a 1965 theatrical release of the Dr. Who origin story starring Peter Cushing. I'm not a big Who fan, but I know people who are, who had not heard of this film. I hope you can get around to some of these sometime. Thanks for doing such an entertaining and enlightening podcast, Carrie. Thank you, Carrie. Yeah. So, 5,000 fingers, definitely on the list. Enough people have recommended it that can't ignore it forever. Them, yeah, we always love giant creatures, giant hands. And in general, anything that has Peter Cushing in it is at least worth a glance. I have looked at Peter Cushing films that just were not a good fit before. He was in a lot of things. Not all of them were that good. But I think he's always a nice presence in a film. I think some of the worst movies we've done on Weird House have been Peter Cushing movies, but it wasn't his fault. No, no. He was in that movie with the Minotaur that wasn't actually a Minotaur. It was called Devil's Men. Yes, that was one of the dullest films we ever watched for Weird House, but Brian Eno did the music. So, it's like, I'm glad we did it. There was no way I was going to say no to it. I think, if memory serves, like the only film that has a dedicated Brian Eno score, not counting movies that have utilized Brian Eno tracks or he contributed or something, like this was the only one where a very minimal and very minimally heard score is actually by Brian Eno. It's the most interesting thing about that movie. I think it did also have Donald Pleasance in it. It did, yes. Yes, but I remember really reaching for things that were legitimately interesting about the film. I remember we discussed what was on a dinner table for a while. It was still a fun episode. No, that one did have some good, bad food in it as we talk about on the show pretty often. I like to pause the movie when there's a table with food and just see what's going on there. Okay. Does that do it for today? I think that does it for today, but hey, right in about anything and everything. We're game for it. We already mentioned how to get in touch with us, but we'll lay that out again here at the end. Just a reminder, the stuff to blow your mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And maybe once a month, one of those Tuesday or Thursday episodes will be listener mail and we try to catch up. Wednesdays, we do a short form episode and then on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns. Just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. And if you're wondering, have they done this film before? Have they done that film? We'll certainly look in the audio vault wherever you get your podcast, look up stuff to blow your mind or look up dedicated Weird House Cinema playlist and you can see all those episodes. But also, you can go to letterbox.com. Our username there is Weird House and we have a nice list of all the movies we've covered over the years and sometimes a peek ahead at what comes up next. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Pawsway. 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.