Listener Mail: The Hearth's Filthy Lesson
44:41 Share

Today's episode is brought to you by the United Explorer card. Become a United Explorer card member and earn 60,000 bonus miles for your next journey. Then wherever you travel, enjoy extraordinary travel rewards, including a free checked bag, two times miles on United purchases and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Set out to see more of the world with your Explorer card and make every trip more rewarding.

From the Delta Sky Club to the Jet Bridge, Delta Airlines relies on 5G solutions from T-Mobile for business to power operations and serve customers faster. Together, we're putting 5G into the hands of ground staff so they can better assist on-the-go travelers with real-time information throughout the airport.

This is elevating customer experience. This is Delta Airlines with T-Mobile for business. Take your business further at T-Mobile.com slash now. This is Holly Frey from Stuff You Missed in History Class. The national sales event is on at your Toyota dealer. Making now the perfect time to get a great deal on a dependable new SUV, like an adventure-ready RAV4. Available with all-wheel drive, your new RAV4 is built for performance on any terrain. Or T-Mobile.

check out a stylish and comfortable Highlander with seating for up to eight passengers and available panoramic moonroof. You can sit back and enjoy the wide open views with the whole family. Check out more national sales event deals when you visit buyatoyota.com. Toyota, let's go places.

This is Joel and I am Matt. We are with the How to Money podcast. And Matt, I think one of the most worthwhile things you can save for these days is travel. Not you, me, both of us, all of us. I've been doing a lot of domestic travel lately. It can be even less expensive than traveling internationally and just as fulfilling. And it's just been incredible for my family.

I agree. And not only do I love to stay in Airbnb as while I am traveling, but I also loved being an Airbnb host. It's a great way to earn some extra money to use towards my next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Can Botox, on a botulinum toxin A, help if I have chronic migraine? 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more?

Botox prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. Botox is not approved for adults with migraine who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine treatment.

Botox is a prescription medicine injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headaches.

Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Talk to your doctor and visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Listener Mail. My name is Robert Land. And I am Joe McCormick. And hey, we're coming at you with new stuff after roughly a week or so off. Did we say this was a Listener Mail episode? I think you did. But if not, here we are with Listener Mail for you.

Hey, if you are a listener of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and you have never gotten in touch before, this is a great time to try it. You can email us at contact at stuff to blow your mind dot com. Messages of all sorts are welcome. We especially appreciate feedback to any episodes, recent or older episodes, if you want. If you've got thoughts to add something interesting to build on anything we brought up in the episode.

Of course, if you ever have corrections, if necessary, if you have just something interesting you want to share with us, we've got some messages of that sort here today. Or if you just want to tell us what you like about the show, where you listen from, that kind of thing. All sorts of messages are welcome. Contact at stuff to blow your mind dot com. You can also ask to join the discord server by emailing us at that address.

Alright, Rob, if you don't mind, I think we should kick things off today with actually a couple of messages from our listener, Robin. One about ancient art and another one about festive holiday cocktails. We're sort of, we're past the point for one season of holiday cocktails, but just in time for another. Alright. I'll start with the one about art. So this is from Robin.

Robin says, Hey, Rob, Joe and JJ, just a quick email with some cool stuff I came across, maybe fodder for future topics. Sometimes the almighty cursed algorithm actually digs up something worthwhile. And I got served up an image of an ancient sculpture from early history with a quick line of description. Intrigued, I dug a bit more into the Gwynnall lioness.

Gwynnall, if you're trying to look this up, is spelled G-U-E-N-N-O-L. That's a Welsh word apparently meaning Martin. And just for a bit of description, the Gwynnall lioness is a roughly 5,000-year-old lioness.

limestone statuette. It's a little over eight centimeters tall, and it shows a lion-human hybrid form. It's posed in a very interesting way. So we see it from the thighs up to the head, the lower parts of the legs. I don't know if they ever existed. If they did, they're no longer attached to the rest of the statuette. But we see from the thighs up, and it's

So it's a lion-human form with sort of the upright torso of a human body, but with a lion's head, no mane, just a maneless lion head.

Uh, and also, I don't know, the hands to me look like they're supposed to be maybe lion claws, but this could be interpreted, I guess, as just fingers, but it's a very unusual, interesting pose. First of all, the figure is extremely muscular. And second of all, it's got its fists or claws, uh, like pushed together with its elbows bent up. Uh, I don't know what,

You would call this arm posture, but it's like just raise your arms up and push your fists together in front of your chest. And it's also sort of rotating at the torso. So it looks like it's doing some kind of exercise. I don't know if this is like a Pilates move. Yeah, this looks a lot like the bodybuilding pose that is called the most muscular. Yeah.

Except in the most muscular, like the fists are not like touching. They're like crisscrossing. You've all seen this one if you've seen any amount of bodybuilding, just clips, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the day, that sort of thing.

So this statuette was allegedly found near modern-day Baghdad. I don't know if it's known exactly when it was found, but the trading history of it in collections seems to begin in the early 1930s. So it was found somewhere around Baghdad before that time in the early 1930s and held for a while in the private collection of a guy who was, I guess, a major tennis player named Alistair Bradley Martin, who was also an art collector. Hmm.

But it's been on display at some museums. I believe the Brooklyn Museum in New York and so forth. But anyway, I'm going to continue with Robin's message here about this statuette. Robin says, Holy Mackinac, what a fascinating and gorgeous piece of art. But even better, in the Wikipedia article on this artwork, the first link in the further reading tab is a book called Art of the First Cities, the Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus, edited by Joan Aruz et al.,

That book is downloadable as a PDF from the link provided there. And wow, is that ever a treasure of incredible art from the distant past. I love seeing the connections, similarities, and the different takes on common subjects of art and expression by different people in the past.

Early artwork gives me the shivers in the best way. I find a real connection can be forged with the artist, and to think about who they were and when they were living, well, it really blows my mind, as they say. Anyway, thanks for the continued excellent content, and wishing you all folks down there a happy holiday season. Cheers, Rob.

Well, first of all, thank you so much, Robin. Great message. And I love that you brought this up. So I got interested looking at this artwork and I have two takes on this one. I guess one sort of thoughtful and one kind of Internet brained. The more thoughtful take is, yes, I totally know what you mean.

about the way that ancient art can send shivers through your body. Rob, I assume you have a similar experience as well. And I agree with you, Robin, that it is something about that sudden connection between minds that are so distant in time and space. Like, your mind and the artist's mind across thousands of years

It's easy to feel by virtue of this encounter with someone's art that you know them in some intimate way, maybe better than people who have actually met them know them because art is a window. You know, it's a window and kind of deep parts of people's mind and character. Often people express things through artworks that they're.

Maybe they aren't comfortable sharing in conversation. You know, it's commonly thought of that art is in some way an expression of the personality of the artist. So like by seeing the works that people create, you know, something very familiar and close and maybe commonly hidden about them. And yet because of the distance in time and the anonymity of the artist, in this case, we don't know who made this lioness statue yet.

Not only can you never meet this artist, there's just so much about their life and context you cannot know and will never know how different their life was from yours, how differently they saw the world and everything like that. And I think it's that tension between the intimate relationship.

mental connection established by viewing a piece of art and the objective ignorance we have, the total mystery about the life of the artist that makes ancient art so haunting, at least to me. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree with all that. And by the way, the book that was referenced, Art of the First Cities, is

Uh, this was a 2003 publication from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Looks like you can still pick up copies of it. Uh, yeah, it looks like a handsome volume. Oh, nice. Yeah. I'm going to have to go back and check out that link, uh, uh, after we record this. But anyway, uh, there are just so many questions that spring to mind. I don't know. It's like you want to know more about the mindset of the artist when you can't. Mm-hmm.

For example, so this is a lion-human hybrid, but I always wonder in these cases of these ancient artworks, is it best thought of as anthropomorphic, meaning a lion taking a human form, or theriomorphic? Is it a human taking a lion form?

And you can't necessarily tell by the picture, but you can make guesses. Like, what does it mean when it's a lion's head on a human body as opposed to like a human head on a lion's body? Does one imply more anthropomorphism versus theriomorphism than the other?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can just look at our own modern dreams of half-human, half-animal hybrids, and they can ultimately convey a whole host of different ideas. And certainly that would have been the case in the ancient past as well. Absolutely.

As for my internet brain take on this, I'm sorry, but a comparison did come to mind. I was looking at this leonine human being that is just so jacked with muscles. And it made me think about those comic book superhero illustrations that get turned into memes because the muscles are comically gigantic. I'm thinking particularly of an image I've seen many times on the internet of like Captain America where he looks just like a truck.

Yeah, you included that one here in our outline. And this is the infamous big-chested Rob Liefeld, Captain America. I'm not trying to hate, by the way. I don't know anything about this artist. I'm just saying it's a funny image. A lot of people have fun with Liefeld illustrations. I mean, he...

was and is a very influential figure in comics, particularly Marvel. But some of his designs are memed a lot because of their anatomical ridiculousness, even within the world of comic book superheroes. Yeah.

On the other hand, I think there are multiple ways you can kind of read the pose of this lion human with the hands clasped together like that. Like, is that a muscle flexing pose or kind of a, you know, we were thinking of it as like an exercise bodybuilding pose, but you could also read that as

the hands clasped of contemplation. I don't know if it had the same association in the ancient Mesopotamian culture that produced this, but we often think of clasped hands as prayer or meditation or contemplation, thoughtfulness, wisdom. That could be what's going on here. Yeah, it's hard to say exactly. It's hard to read this image.

I mean, it's easier to read the Captain America. I think he's being all tough. That's just basically the read I'm getting here. Tough and a little mean. Yeah.

But yeah, it's hard to read The Lioness. But anyway, thank you again, Robin. Oh, should we do this other message from Robin about festive holiday cocktails? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, this one came in separately. And this one was sent to us as well as to Tracy and Holly over at Stuff You Missed in History Class.

And this is how it goes down. Hi, Holly and Rob and Tracy and Joe. Please forgive the slightly odd commingling of stuff personnel. But from listening to both of your podcasts, stuff you missed in history class and stuff to blow your mind, I think the two of you are most relevant to the question I have, if I may. Calling out Holly in particular because she has a cocktail book out.

That book is Killer Cocktails, Dangerous Drinks Inspired by History's Most Nefarious Criminals. It's out now. You can get it in all sorts of formats. Oh, wonderful. Shout out to our crossover listeners, by the way. Yeah.

Anyway, Robin continues, it seems that both of you are fans of a tasty cocktail. I would love to make some tasty holiday cocktails for family and friends in the next few weeks, and I am looking for fun ideas and inspiration. Do the two of you either A, have an outlet where you have views specifically about tasty drinks in your experience? I know about your exciting book, Holly. I am waiting until after Christmas in case someone already wrapped it up for me. Or B, have favorite or a favorite's

that you go to, websites, blogs, social media, etc., for cocktail inspiration. Thank you ever so much for any info in this area. Much appreciated. Happy mixing.

Well, yes, Rob and I do enjoy a cocktail, be it one that is infused with a spirit or one that is alcohol-free. I love a great many zero-proof cocktails these days as well. I'm a big fan of tropical drinks, so I often turn to the pages of Jeff Beachbone Berry, as well as his Total Tiki app.

on top of his published books. So these are great places to find cool, historic, tiki drinks to try out. I also love to look through the pages of Imbibe Magazine and their website, imbibemagazine.com, for ideas. In fact, one of the holiday drinks I've been making regularly each year for a few years now is one called Nutty Like a Fruitcake.

That's a lot of fun. So you can find that at Imbibe Magazine. I will, however, stress that this is one of those drinks that every year I make it, it feels a little stronger and a little sweeter. And I know that I'm not changing the way I make it, but I think the makeup of myself is changing each year. It just feels sweeter and stronger to my sensibilities. So if you do make this drink, and it's a great Christmas holiday, New Year's,

drink and so forth, I would say don't be a hero. Consider cutting it with soda water. It's still a great drink if you do it that way.

Yeah, I support that. Certainly over time, the body craves less alcohol and sugar, I would say. But yeah, yeah. You know, on the subject of cutting drinks or not being a hero, I think this came up recently on a Weird House Cinema episode. I don't remember if we we may have cut it. I don't know if we left it or not. But anyway, I want to stand up for the non-drinkers.

dry martini. You know, whenever people order a martini in a movie, if they specify anything about it, they always say dry. I want a very dry martini, meaning, you know, higher content of whatever your hard spirit is in it, your gin or your vodka. So I recommend if you're making yourself a martini for New Year's, try a wetter, gentler martini. I think

think it's a nice experience. I think a gin-based martini is better. And go less on the gin, heavier on the vermouth, and try it with some olive brine. It's nice. Yeah, and I do want to stress, too, for folks out there who don't drink alcohol or considering stopping or, you know, considering doing a dry January, as a lot of folks do these days, I mean, there's never been a better time to

in my opinion, to go that route. Like we have so many wonderful zero-proof spirits, zero-proof ingredients, cocktail recipes to go off of. Yeah, you can still have a grand time and get so much out of the cocktail experience these days.

Totally agree there. There are even some canned pre-made non-alcoholic cocktails you can buy now that we've tried recently that are really good. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So if any of you out there have particular favorites you'd like to share, write in. We'd love to hear from you. ♪

Even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere, from self-driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it is coming fast. But AI needs a lot of speed and computing power. So how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI.

OCI is a blazing fast and secure platform for your infrastructure, database, and application development, plus all your AI and machine learning workloads. OCI costs 50% less for compute and 80% less for networking, so you're saving a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to OCI, including Amazon.

Thank you.

That's oracle.com slash strategic. From the Delta Sky Club to the Jet Bridge, Delta Airlines relies on 5G solutions from T-Mobile for Business to power operations and serve customers faster. Together, we're putting 5G into the hands of ground staff so they can better assist on-the-go travelers with real-time information throughout the airport. This is elevating customer experience. This is Delta Airlines with T-Mobile for Business.

Take your business further at T-Mobile.com slash now.

This is an ad by BetterHelp. What's your perfect night? Is it curling up on the couch for a cozy, peaceful night in? Therapy can feel a bit like that. Your comfort place where you replenish your energy. With BetterHelp, get matched with a therapist based on your needs entirely online. It's convenient and suited to your schedule. Find comfort this season with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelpHELP.com.

All right. This next message is from Elliot, and it concerns our episodes on sacred trees, specifically the second episode we did on that where I talked about sacred trees struck by lightning. And Rob, you talked about the meaning of the Rowan tree. Elliot says, Greetings, long-time listener, first-time writer here. Primarily, thank you for your service with the podcast. It's an educational joy and a wonderful wellspring of inspiration. Thank you so much, Elliot.

Elliot says, as a small token of appreciation for the Rowan tree episode, I wanted to share some seeds. Specifically, I know the Rowan tree is used by Ursula K. Le Guin in her Earthsea series.

The first chapter of Book 3, The Farthest Shore, is called The Rowan Tree. The specific Rowan Tree in question is one which stands adjacent to a fountain in the courtyard in the magical school of Roke, the inspiration for Hogwarts. This scene is actually a callback to Book 1, titled A Wizard of Earthsea, when the young protagonist first arrives at the school and meets the Archmage, an inspiration for Dumbledore.

Since Ursula Le Guin's father was an anthropologist working with indigenous Americans, documented by her mother in the book Ishi in Two Worlds, young Ursula grew up surrounded by inherently anthropological questions such as what does this tree mean to this culture? The magic system in the Earthsea universe is also fascinating to view through this lens. An episode on magic systems in general could be fun. Thanks again for your great work, Elliot.

Well, thank you, Elliot. A couple of thoughts. First of all, yes, I love Ursula Le Guin. I haven't read the Earthsea series yet. This email has made me think maybe that should be my next fiction read. I've been meaning to for years. I think there is a cool sensibility about cultures in her work that...

The way she depicts invented alien cultures in her sci-fi novels, I haven't read any of her fantasy work, but excited about Earthsea. It feels very sensitive and lived in with a kind of heterogeneity visible within the general trends as opposed to the stories that depict alien cultures or invented cultures in a very flat or symbolic way where it's just like everyone does this, you know.

Uh, and also if you would like to learn more about the story of the man known as Ishii mentioned in this email, uh, the, the person who's in the title of the Theodora Kroeber book, Ishii in Two Worlds, we discussed him in our series on brain theft from 2021. So you can go back and listen to that if you want to hear about Ishii. All right. Let's see. Oh, we do have a number of messages related to the hearth. Um,

I believe there's a Hearth-related title for today's Listener Mail episode. So let's get into some of these. This first one comes to us from Mike. Subject line, X-Men 97 Fireplace. We were talking about various fireplace-for-your-home DVDs, streaming options, and so forth. So Mike says, To add to the collection, Marvel has posted an X-Men animated series fireplace on YouTube.

You know, Mike included a link and I tried to go check this out, but by the time I checked it, it was after Christmas and the video was gone. So it may have been just a before Christmas thing and then taken down. I don't know. Or maybe it's still out there somewhere. But I did find a screenshot and I pulled that in and put it in our outline. So here you can see, Rob, what the X-Men fireplace looked like. I appreciate that this is more like a hand-drawn animation style. Yes. Yeah. Very much in the style of X-Men 97, which...

is an amazing series by the way uh hits really hard i think it's must it's must viewing for anyone who grew up with the uh the 90s x-men cartoon but i think i haven't tested this out yet but i think you could also watch x-men 97 without having watched the original x-men series i watched it with my kid and it was a lot of fun and we've been talking about well should we get mom in on the action as well and uh

And I think you can get into it. That's my theory. I think you can watch X-Men 97 with only just like a casual understanding of Marvel's X-Men.

Trying to see who's got stockings. The stockings have names on them here. Oh, yeah. We have a stocking for Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Jean, Jean Grey. And then this says Morph in the middle? Morph, yeah. Morph is a shape-shifting mutant, yes. I don't know if I knew Morph. Morph was in the original series and has, I think, a more prominent role in this one. Cool.

Well, as I've said before on the show, I'm under familiar with X-Men cartoons, both old and new. I haven't seen this new one and I didn't ever watch much of the old one. So I don't know as much as I would like to, but I don't know. It looks fun. I like the visual style. I'd like to check it out. Yeah. Yeah. It's solid.

Let's see what else. Oh, and then this is also from Mike, right? Mike sent over something that AEW Wrestling did. It's a video of one hangman, Adam Page, sipping whiskey in front of a burning house that's serving as a Yule log. I personally don't follow wrestling as much these days, so I don't know what the context is for this. But still, anything within the virtual Christmas hearth domain, I'm all for it.

Oh, and this just springs to mind as well. I didn't think to mention this earlier, but we were talking about like spinoffs of virtual hearths, digital hearths and fireplaces and indeed Yule Logs. Adult Swim's Yule Log from 2022. It's like a horror movie that begins as a Yule Log video feed and then it evolves into a horror movie. Yeah, my pal Nick Iketonowat did the original score for it.

This is the same bunch that also did Too Many Cooks a few years ago, a couple of years before that. So similar vein.

So like fireplace for your home in the style of too many cooks. Exactly. Yes. Perfect. That's what I want. And in speaking of what we want, I was also thinking we talked a little bit about this when we discussed the movie Blue Sunshine and Weird House Cinema, which has a very notable horrific hearth sequence in it. These are some of my ideas. These are movies that we need digital hearth feeds for. Blue Sunshine, of course.

the wicker man, obviously. Not quite a hearth, but fire. Fellowship of the Ring seems just a no-brainer. We need one of the roaring hobbit hearth with the one ring in there, you know, staying nice and cool and shining, and maybe we can glimpse...

uh the the script in the interior of the ring i think that would be a good one and then finally uh citizen kane it's been a while since i've seen citizen kane but uh i'm reminded that citizen kane had a phenomenal fireplace it seems like that would be a great inclusion as well uh i gotta say my entry is the vincent price house of wax where is our burning house of wax we

that would be kind of hard to loop i think because as the wax fig marines melt maybe they could melt and then it could go in reverse and they reconstitute it just goes back and forth forever sounds fun um who and likewise this would be hard to loop but melting nazis from the end of raiders of the lost ark ah yes that could also potentially work melting nazis for your home yeah yes

Oh, a couple of quick messages from the Discord server in regards to hearth videos and so forth. One Gorpi writes in with the following. Back in 2008, Stephen Colbert made a holiday special, and one of the extras on the DVD was a Yule log, but a random book would occasionally be thrown into it. I remember Fahrenheit 451 was one of the first books thrown into the Yule log. Nice.

And then, oh, and then we also heard from Matt on Discord. Matt writes, loving the Hearth episode so far. Despite growing up in the Burbs, we had a functional wood stove fireplace in the living room. So between that and being a Boy Scout as a kid, I have a strong nostalgia for fireplaces and campfires.

The apartment I lived in had a faux fireplace mantle with a rotating fire effect and a built-in space heater. Something I noticed over the years was that even if the heater part wasn't on, my face would flush after sitting in front of the fire effect for a while as though it was a real fire and not just a rotating stencil and red light.

And Netflix certainly wasn't the first. I've got this gem from 2005, and I'm sure there were plenty before it. That includes a photograph of a DVD here, Holiday Fire, a virtual fireplace. Oh, man. I bet Kmart could not keep these on the shelves in 2006. Yeah.

I have to admit there are many times where I'll go up to, I'll be at a friend's house who has a faux fireplace of some kind, and I will still warm my hands by it. I just can't, it's like you see it, you do it. And even when you feel no heat coming off of it, the ritual of the situation still feels potent. Yeah, interesting that the thing Matt's saying about the physiological reaction, the flushing without the heat. You know, it kind of comes back to what we were talking about earlier about zero-proof cocktails. Yeah.

I've had situations before where I've had a zero proof cocktail and, you know, I kind of feel like a little flushed, a little like psychosomatic imbibing of like purely mental alcohol in those situations. Yeah.

like just the, uh, the belief that you're having a cocktail provides some amount of social disinhibition, even if there's no actual alcohol in it. Yeah. Because there's so much, of course, with, uh, with any of these things where there's the actual stimuli, there's the actual, uh, you know, chemical and biological processes that are involved, but, but then there's some, there's ritual, there's, uh, there's additional sensory data that's not tied to the, uh, to the heat, uh,

or to the alcohol and so forth. And all of that has an effect on the mind as well. There have probably been studies. Maybe there have even been studies about people warming themselves by a fake firelight. I don't know. All right. This next message comes from Joe, subject line, On Illumination.

Dear Rob and Joe, thank you for your illuminating, had to swing at that slow pitch over the plate, sorry, podcast on hearths. I wanted to write in with some cultural commentary on your observations on the nature of firelight and how we take pervasive electric illumination for granted. I connected this conversation with an upcoming ritual in which I partake annually, Hanukkah.

My favorite thing about Hanukkah is the sacred practice of turning off all the other lights while the candles burn. The light of the Hanukkiah, or menorah, both words are correct, is intended to be the only light in the area for the time when the candles burn. It can be an extraordinary gift of peace in a time of year which is usually filled with joy that brings with it a sizable share of chaos, noise, and, of course, bright electric light.

I am a secular Jew, so for me this holiday isn't about a divine connection, but I find the 10 or 15 minutes of darkness but for the flickering, fading, waning light as the candles in my menorah dwindle strengthen my relationship to my ancestors whose nights were lit by this ephemeral source. It's not a portal to another world, but for me, Firelight does open a passageway of sorts through time and creates a connection to a history I choose to treasure. Joe."

Well, thank you, Joe. Yeah, that's very interesting. And it does expand on some themes we talked about in the second of our Hearth episodes when we were talking about the

The study of how time lit by firelight is used differently than time lit by daylight or by electric light. And in one particular case of people studied living in Southern Africa, time that was lit exclusively by firelight was used overwhelmingly for storytelling as opposed to other types of conversation which dominated during daylight hours.

And that's kind of an interesting observation. Don't know how universally true that holds, but it seems that other sources have documented that it is common for people who have environments lit entirely by firelight to dwell in a kind of storytelling space or in a space that puts everyday experiences in.

in the context of a kind of bigger picture and a history and a world and a realm of meaning as opposed to just the day-to-day tactics of getting by that consume most of our energy. And so I thought that that was really interesting. And I wonder to what extent, there was a kind of economic explanation in the paper we talked about, which is that

Fire light is enough light to stay awake and interact with other people to like talk and sing and dance and have social time. But the quality of the light produced by a fire is typically not good enough to see what you're doing well enough to get most kinds of work done. You know, so it's like it produces a time you can be awake and do things, but you can't really be very economically productive. Right.

And that could be viewed in some ways as a kind of blessing because it allows you to engage in these other types of activities. And so we were thinking, is it only that kind of mechanical explanation where it's like, well, you can't really see good enough to do most types of economic work.

Mm.

I guess I'm not fully prepared to have this conversation today, but maybe it's something to come back to in the future. Like if it is the case that firelight puts you in a particularly imaginative or expansive state of mind compared to daylight or bright electric light, why is that? What is it about the firelight environment that makes you think differently? Is it something about the...

color of the light or the the relative amount of darkness surrounding you or or what i don't know exactly but i think that'd be interesting to consider yeah fluctuations shadows i wonder if lava lamps get into a similar area like you know yeah we're probably you know you're not doing a lot of like serious study by by lava lamp you you're you're doing other things here yeah you're you're you're dreaming you know all right this next one comes to us from anna

Anna writes and it says, Hi, Rob and Joe. Your talk about the TV show of a fireplace reminds me of something that came out a few years ago here in Australia. It was just one long train journey and it ran all day long. There's a famous train in Australia called the Gone that runs through the center of Australia.

I had to look this up and yeah, it goes right through the middle from the northern coast to the southern coast. It looks pretty, pretty incredible. The show, and it continues, was mostly shots from the front of the train moving along the track interspersed with other external shots of the train moving along. Because the train goes through the center of Australia, the landscape is mostly desert. There was no soundtrack, just the soothing clackety clack of the train.

It was quite popular at the time. The fact that there wasn't much going on was what made it appealing because people found it soothing. I live in Sydney now, so I don't encounter fireplaces a lot, but I grew up in Tasmania where they were a part of life in winter. Obviously here in Australia, winter is at the opposite time of the year, so I don't associate them with Christmas, but I do associate them with family gatherings. Anyway, thanks for the great podcast, Anna.

Oh, thanks, Anna. Well, yeah, I agree that that's an interesting comparison. So when we were talking about slow TV and the hearth episodes, we talked about obviously, you know, the Yule log fireplace for your home, all of these fire burning movies. But we also talked about Andy Warhol's Empire, which is just a shot of the Empire State Building filmed over the course of one night as it is. The sky grows dark and the floodlights come on at the top of the building.

And not much happens. You just look at the building for, I don't know, six hours or eight hours. I think it's like eight hours, the full length of the movie when played at the frame rate that's intended. And so that's one way of doing it. The train thing is...

On a similar theme, though, it does seem kind of different because there you are going from one place to another, though I still think it'd be hard to call that much of a plot by conventional standards. But there's something more literally of a journey about it. I should go ahead and add a real time self-correction here. I think I said gone.

I think GAN would be more accurate because this was formerly the Afghan Express and it was abbreviated to GAN. But yeah, this does sound like a very interesting program in its own right. I'm reminded now of, I believe this was a 2016 project from the band Sigur Rós. They did some sort of project where they had like a camera mounted on the top of a vehicle and they were just driving around Iceland driving.

And then, of course, with their signature sound on top of that. But I remember when that came out, I remember a lot of us were very intrigued by it. And I think you can still pull it up on their website. And maybe that just links to some other places you can watch it. But anyway, it's still out there if you want to ride around Iceland with Sigur Rós. Well, thanks again, Anna. Thank you.

From the Delta Sky Club to the Jet Bridge, Delta Airlines relies on 5G solutions from T-Mobile for Business to power operations and serve customers faster. Together, we're putting 5G into the hands of ground staff so they can better assist on-the-go travelers with real-time information throughout the airport. This is elevating customer experience. This is Delta Airlines with T-Mobile for Business. Take your business further at T-Mobile.com slash now.

This is an ad by BetterHelp. What's your perfect night? Is it curling up on the couch for a cozy, peaceful night in? Therapy can feel a bit like that. Your comfort place where you replenish your energy. With BetterHelp, get matched with a therapist based on your needs entirely online. It's convenient and suited to your schedule. Find comfort this season with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelpHELP.com.

Okay, let's see. Rob, do you mind if I do this message about our vault episodes on the shadow? Oh, yes, please do. This comes from LS. LS says, Hey, I thought your episodes on shadows were quite intriguing. I was particularly curious about the role shadows play in characters or religious figures such as Chaya. And that, by the way, is a Hindu deity that is a personification of the shadow or of shade.

LS continues, the stories you featured in these episodes had characters with their shadows being stolen, or in some cases, a separate entity. This got me thinking about characters that have shadows as an integral part of their being, especially in ways that reflect some sort of inner evil or buried personality. An example that comes to mind is

from League of Legends, parentheses, I know. Well, LS, maybe you know, but I don't know. I don't know what, I've heard of League of Legends, but I don't know anything about it. This implies to me that there must be, I don't know. Yeah.

something notorious about it. I mean, I don't know much about League of Legends, but the TV series Arcane, the animated series, is quite good. And I'm not very far into it, but people really love it. And I've been impressed by it so far. So, yeah, I mean, it seems like a rich world, but I don't know anything about the original video game. Arcane is a show based on League of Legends? Correct. Oh, okay.

Yeah. So Ellis continues about this character Vex. This character features abilities revolving around her sentient shadow, one that is a source of power, a thing that she can separate from and manipulate.

Another, maybe more prominent exhibit is the departed shadow of the Marvel character Sentry. This thing is called the Void and is somewhat its own character. In the Doctor Strange trade paperback, The God of Magic, parentheses Kate slash Walta, the Void is imprisoned in the Wizard's Sanctum, a being that mirrors the strength of Sentry but returns the Sentry's good deeds into equal acts of darkness.

These characters come to mind because they have different behaviors than the shadows featured in the episodes. I thought that the idea of the shadow being the reflection of someone's inner evil, like a personification of intrusive thoughts or source of power, was a topic that wasn't reached due to time constraints, but felt that this kind of interpretation of shadow was something that you might find curious. There are certainly many more instances of this, but I may have spent too much time on this anyways. L.S.

Well, thank you, Ellis. Yeah, I guess we didn't get into it in the episode. In, for example, I know the shadow, I don't know a ton about this, but I know the shadow in...

I almost called it Jungian psychology. I try not to say Jungian psychology these days because I feel like that gives Jungianism too much of a, the implication that it's based on like direct scientific research. In Jungian thought, there's this idea of the shadow that is basically the, the,

repressed version of the ego or of the self. And so it's like the version of you that is maybe the, the version that, uh, that you don't want people to see that would maybe do bad things that, you know, you shouldn't do or in some other way would, would, uh, violate your, uh, your externally, uh, validated ethos. You know, it's, it's the, the version of you that could be let loose if you just cut off all of your inhibitions. The, uh,

The Mr. Hyde to your Dr. Jekyll. Exactly. Yes. And so, yeah, you can have kind of interesting thoughts about the ways that your conscious self interacts with the, you know, with your, your repressed desires and the things that, you know, you shouldn't do and so forth. And those kinds of interactions between the conscious self and the, and the shadow self.

I don't know, maybe kind of blend in interesting ways that come out in our behaviors. But then again, I don't want to I don't want to overstate or give the impression that that I think Jungian thought is like a scientifically validated way of understanding humanity. It's more just kind of like an interesting philosophical framework on the human mind. All right. Well, on that note, should should we turn to a little weird house cinema to round out the episode? Absolutely. Absolutely.

the void to our century, if you will. Let's see. You want to do this one from Nathan and Olivia or this one from Joan? Ooh, I mean, well, they're both great. Your choice. Let's see. I'll take Nathan and Olivia. Then you take Joan. How about that? Sounds good. Okay. So this is from an account called Nathan and Olivia, though the email uses the first person singular pronoun. So it seems like this is from either Nathan or Olivia in superposition for the time being.

Subject line, Dead Mountaineers Hotel. Hi, Robert, Joe and JJ just finished the Weird House episode on the Dead Mountaineers Hotel. I was especially excited for this one as the Strugatsky's have been cited by the developers of the video game Disco Elysium as a core inspiration to the game.

And then they add, if you search Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Disco Elysium Steam, you should find a list of inspirations the developers made on a Steam page for the game. Disco Elysium is my favorite game of all time. You play as an amnesiac detective trying to solve a murder and get his life together, or not, in the fictional city of Revachol.

It is a callback to classic CRPGs like Planescape Torment and regarded as one of the best written video games of all time. The lead writer for the game was Robert Kurvitz, who is Estonian. Oh yeah, was Dead Mountaineers Hotel Estonian? I know it was one of the Baltic states where it was made.

Yes, Rob just confirmed it was Estonian. Anyway, the email goes on. I really enjoyed the episode on the Dead Mountaineers Hotel. The influence on Disco Elysium is easy to see. If you were ever to decide to do a Weird House episode on a video game, Disco would be a great candidate. It's relatively short and the choices are endless and isn't traditionally difficult as there is no combat. Sounds great to me. You had me at it's relatively short. Yeah.

Good writing and short. That's my kind of game these days. Take care and thanks for a great show, Nathan and Olivia.

Uh, so yeah, uh, thank you for getting in touch either Nathan or Olivia or both of you. Uh, how, how, whoever wrote this, uh, that, that, uh, I've, I've heard great things about the game. I actually, well, actually, uh, I'm understanding. I did download it and I started playing it one day, but I didn't actually like get into the game. You know, it's one of those things I played like five minutes, so I just need to like start over someday.

Yeah, yeah. I've been tempted to pick it up as well because I've always heard great things. And as of this recording, there's like a massive sale on it on the console that I use in their web store. So I have it bookmarked and I've been trying to decide. It's like, is 70% off? Is this the threshold at which I buy this game? And then what will it take for me to actually play it? I just play fewer games these days. Yeah.

But yeah, I've only heard great things. And Planescape Torment, that was one that I loved so much back in the day. That is an amazing game. Dungeons & Dragons game set in the Planescape setting, which is also one of my favorites. Yeah, loads of fun. So if it's anything like that, that's a great sign. All right, one more Weird House message. Yes, this one comes to us from Joan. Joan.

Jones says, I just enjoyed listening to your discussion of Return to Oz.

Yes. So we recently re-ran this as a Weird House Cinema Rewind episode. And I think I managed to more or less hit the debut of the new Wicked movie without really intending to. It's like it ended up being like, oh, that was a great, I patted myself on the back for it, but it was kind of by accident. I wasn't even thinking about it. But obviously Wicked has been a huge hit. Everyone I know who has seen it loved it.

The rest of my family really loved it, but I haven't seen it just yet. Anyway, Joan says, Oh, boys, your grandma's minds were being blown by those characters before you were a twinkle in your daddy's eyes. What you view as mind blowing is all from the original Oz books by Baum. You owe it to yourself to read them. Baum canned the original illustrator and the new illustrations are wonderful. They have a fantastic art deco vibe.

Oh.

Lots of twists and turns there. Yeah. As a little girl, my personal favorite was a magic turnstile that would dress you in a new outfit every time you went through it. I just realized turnstile may have been a pun for turn style. My friends and I hated Glinda's hairstyle and loved Polychrome, the fairy of the rainbow. Yeah.

Wow. Somebody once pointed out that Oz is a distinctly American fairy tale. In Alice in Wonderland, for example, all the characters are self-centered creeps who work against Alice. In Oz, Dorothy succeeds by making friends. Check out the book sometime. Joan.

Oh, yeah. I didn't really, I guess I didn't really think about that. But in both of the Oz stories I know from the movies, not from the books, Dorothy is a friend maker. Even in a very strange land, she picks up friendships wherever she goes. Yeah, that's a great point. Every time the Wizard of Oz has come up, we often hear from folks who have read the books who point out just how deep friendship

and weird it all is. I have to admit, I've never read any of it, but I enjoy these little tidbits about the deep weirdness of Oz. Totally.

All right. Does that do it for today? I believe it does. We'll go ahead and close out this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind Listener Mail, but we'll be back with more in the future. So keep the listener mails coming. We read everything that comes in. It doesn't necessarily make it to a listener mail episode, but a lot of it does. Likewise, you can leave your thoughts in the Discord server. You can write into us via email and we'll send you the link for that. We're also, there are some other places. There's a

there's a stuff to blow your mind Facebook group called the discussion module. You can look that up and ask to join that if, uh, if you prefer to use the Facebook, um, speaking of social, if you're on Instagram, we're STBYM podcast, uh, follow us there. Uh, it's one way to keep up with what we're putting out these days on letterbox. We are weird house and you can follow the weird house cinema, uh, selections there. And,

And yeah, those are the main plugs I can think of. What do you got, Joe? Just our email once again. Oh, but first, huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If you want to get in touch by email and you missed the address earlier in the episode, once again, it is contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

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

We've all got a thing, an obsession. For some of us, it's vintage fashion, our cars, anything we can collect. They all live under one roof, eBay. It's where closets get filled with statement pieces and vintage finds, where must-have sneakers wait for you, and designer handbags are the real deal. On eBay, doors open to stacks of the rarest trading cards and a garage stocked with all the car parts you need for any DIY job—

eBay's home to whatever thing you're into that keeps you up at night. eBay. Things people love.

This is an ad by BetterHelp. What's your perfect night? Is it curling up on the couch for a cozy, peaceful night in? Therapy can feel a bit like that. Your comfort place where you replenish your energy. With BetterHelp, get matched with a therapist based on your needs entirely online. It's convenient and suited to your schedule. Find comfort this season with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelpHELP.com. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and

and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.