STBYM Listener Mail: Tofurky Forever
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Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.

Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind Listener Mail. This is Robert Lamb. Hey, everybody. We were off last week for Thanksgiving here in the U.S. I spent the time traveling with my family in Wales, which was a tremendous privilege, a great experience, and it's nice to ease back into the holiday hustle here on the show with a nice Listener Mail episode.

Now, Joe is out sick today. He was going to join me, but he had to take the day off. So wishing him a quick recovery. It's just going to be me today. I've never done a solo listener mail before. The way it's worked out is that Joe will often jump in and do these solo and days when like I'm still recovering from a trip or I'm sick or whatever. So this is a first. So bear with me. I can't promise that it will be as exciting as a Joe solo listener mail, but I'll try and

put my own spin on it. All right, well, let's call Carney over here and dive into the mailbag. We have a few bits of listener mail regarding our episode on urohydrosis. This is, you'll recall, this is the episode where we talked about some animals that may pee and or poop on their legs as a method of cooling themselves.

And that led to a number of different discussions. We talked about evaporative cooling, and we also talked about peeing in one's wetsuit. So let's jump right into it. This one comes to us from Lindsay. Lindsay writes, Joe and Robert, out here in the desert, we have a very different relationship with humidity and evaporation than y'all in Atlanta. Look at the dew point or wet bulb weather temps, and that is about best case for evaporative cooling.

To the point that plenty of people out here go through our 106-degree summers with a swamp cooler. Prior to common refrigeration, there was a desert water bag that was just a tight weave canvas. And in a lot of Mexican areas, people kept a big unglazed pottery jug in the house. These weeped enough water to be continually cooling.

My grandparents, who went through the Depression, then the war, never threw out anything. In every pickup, tractor, and several barns, there was a glass jug wearing Grandma's Technicolor Jug Jacket. This, as Lindsay adds, is apparently a quilted cover for a gallon vinegar jug.

Lindsay continues, kept things cool with the occasional breakage. It kept all of the glass together, stitched together with any and all possible fabric scraps. So you didn't worry about a great loss when you did break one.

And then she continues here, getting into the whole idea of peeing in your wetsuit and whether that is an effective means of warming the body, short-term, long-term, and so forth. Robert, I was told the same thing going through Rescue Swimmers Club at NAS Jacksonville. But on the Cutter Valiant, this is a Coast Guard ship, I believe, she reversed course so quickly that I skipped the Farmer John's and just grabbed the wetsuit jacket.

When you're coming around fast, then you're in the water, preoccupied and having to override a lifetime of toilet training. I never could relax enough to just let it flow. Right on, y'all. Lindsay. All right, all right. You know, some almost kind of extreme of consciousness thoughts there. I dig it. Especially some added experience when it comes to the awkwardness of peeing in the water, peeing in the ocean. I'm glad I'm not alone.

I also heard from one Shadow Rat on our Discord. You might be wondering, hey, I want to get in on the Stuff to Blow Your Mind Discord. Well, hey, the way to do that is to email us, and we'll send you the link to join the Discord server for Stuff to Blow Your Mind. So just hang on. I'll throw out that email address at the end of this episode. Anyway, Shadow Rat shares the following. Ha ha!

Quoth he, I pee in my wetsuit all the time. This practice is so prevalent in the surfing and free diving communities that it's often offered up as a solution to every problem. Cold? Pee in your suit. Animal stings? Pee on it. Having trouble removing your wetsuit? Pee in it. Want to attract marine life? Pee in your suit. Want to repel marine life? Pee in your suit. Car trouble? Pee in it. And so forth.

It is important to always be as stoic and straight-faced as possible when advising someone to pee on it to convey that this is indeed a proven method. While there is a warming effect, the main reason people are peeing in wetsuits is just that there is no other choice. Nobody wants to stop a dive or a surf session to go back to the facilities. I think it's safe to assume that every rental wetsuit has been peed in many times.

While the neoprene is permeable, it works by slowing down how rapidly the water next to your skin is replaced by cold outside water. The water in the suit is heated by your body. The layer of heated water is what keeps you warm. Joe is correct when he states that the pee is essentially transferring heat from inside your body to outside. However, it's heat that would have been pulled from your skin by the cold water regardless.

The strategic application of pee to the suit interior does seem, to me, to accelerate the rate at which the water inside the suit becomes tolerable. All right, well, that's some wonderful additional information there, not only into just the urine-based solutions that are common among free divers and so forth, but also just added experience into the process.

awkwardness of oceanic urination among humans. But this is a great point, too, that, yeah, this was my experience as well. You get off the boat, you're wearing the wetsuit, you're snorkeling. Maybe you don't have a wetsuit, but you're snorkeling, whatever. Now you are in the midst of it. It's not really a good time to go back to the boat. And if you do go back to the boat, there's not necessarily a bathroom there either. Like, this is the place where you are going to have to pee, and you just have to make the best of it.

All right, moving along. We also had some folks write in about an October episode we did on sirens. I say October. It's possible that this was one of the late October episodes, like October 33rd or 35th, once we actually got into November a bit, concerning the sirens. This one comes to us from Eric, Subject, Odysseus, and the Sirens.

Hey, gentlemen, I'm currently enjoying the episode about the sirens. You mentioned that presumably Odysseus had his ears unplugged out of curiosity, and I think that's probably true. But I had always understood that he did it as a sort of sirenometer for his crew. In short, when I stop freaking out, it's safe to unplug your ear holes.

If he hadn't, they might have just sailed on and on, unable to talk to one another until someone finally just became frustrated and unplugged an ear, potentially prematurely and thus fatally. I assume he picked himself as the sirenometer, if you will, out of curiosity, though. Maybe I overanalyzed the story in my youth, but the idea is plausible. Thanks, as always, for your excellent podcast. Eric.

Eric, this is a great point. Yeah, when in reading about this episode in the Odyssey, yeah, a lot is said about curiosity and Odysseus' curiosity regarding the Song of the Sirens. And that does seem to be an important theme. But I, like you, I think always grew up, even before I was reading the story, I would see these fabulous illustrations. And you see Odysseus, you know, bound to the mast, straining against them.

them. You know, a very intentionally, I think, erotic image that is presented by these painters. You know, he is putting himself in the position to receive like the full temptation of the sirens. And the only thing that prevents him from giving into that temptation is not

strong willpower, but just strong knot-tying abilities and the determination of his crew to keep those ears plugged. And don't look over at Odysseus. Don't untie him. Wait until the coast is clear, that sort of thing. But yeah, in looking at it, I always kind of thought, well, okay, their ears are plugged. They're continuing to row and they just need to keep doing that, stay plugged

until Odysseus stops freaking out. So I think that that makes sense to me as well. So I don't know, I guess we can kind of take a little bit of each of these answers to stitch together the rationale for this plan.

All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Scott in response to our Grimoire of Horror episode. This is the first of these. Hopefully we'll do more in the future where for Halloween, Joe and I will each select a work of short written horror fiction and then discuss it on the show. And we said, hey, you know, let's get ahead of next year if you have suggestions right in. And so we heard from Scott.

Scott writes in and says the following, "'Hello, all. I recently enjoyed the Grimoire of Horror episode, and I'm looking forward to more next Halloween. If you can find it, a short story I read as a middle schooler would be perfect for next year. This would have been in the mid-1960s, but I haven't been able to find any information about it. The gist of the story is that there is a radio star whose live weekly broadcast features him going to some haunted location and telling the listeners about what happens.'

He is always by himself and restrained so he can't leave. He has a portable radio which transmits to the radio van which, along with his crew, is some distance away. Essentially, he's helpless to save himself and there is nobody nearby to aid him. The show's format is that he tells his listeners the tale of the haunting, what the ghost or creature that inhabits

the haunted place is supposed to look like and do, how he fears strange sounds approaching, and then, oh no, there's the monster. Nothing can save him except the listeners who, through their concentrated thoughts, can force the creature to leave and spare his life.

The reality is, of course, that there is no monster. It's pure radio drama, except for the show, which is the subject of the story. At the end of the broadcast, while communicating with his crew, they tell him that the night's listening audience is the largest ever. He's happy, but asks them to hurry things up and come get him because he's been hearing some weird noises.

Before they can reach him, he screams into the radio that the creature is real and that it is in the room with him. Then silence. By the time they arrive, they find nothing save for chains which held him, broken and twisted by some monstrous strength. It is asserted that the combined belief in the monster by the large listening audience brought it into existence. As a youngster, this story scared the bejesus out of me. All those people believing in the monster brought it to life.

So what if me thinking about it causes the same thing? Then I try not to think about it, which of course only makes me think about it all the more. This fits in well with what you guys discussed in the follow-up to the second story, when Robert mentions that there is, quote, this weird connection between thought and action and ideas of the supernatural. And if you put thought and action in motion, like what does that? What does that do?

Of course, I knew that logically there was no way I could will a monster into existence, but as Joe said, there is a difference between what you consciously believe and what kinds of things scare you in theory. Anyway, thanks for the hours of interesting content you provide during my long commutes. Scott.

All right. Well, Scott, this sounds like a really interesting story. Reminds me of some related works, you know, that get into similar areas, describing tool pose, you know, thought emanations. I think of some of the, there's a particular story, The Circular Ruins by Borges.

You know, I instantly think of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. But as for this particular story, I do not know what this is. I looked around a little bit online, and I'm pretty sure I found a poster on Reddit asking about this same story, but there were no satisfactory answers. So I'll bump the signal on this request here, and maybe it'll ring a bell with someone out there listening. You can write in, uh,

to me, and then we'll share it on a future Listener Mail episode. But yeah, my mind instantly turns to a few different 1960s horror fiction mainstays. I instantly think of somebody like Ray Bradbury, but, you know, a lot of these are authors that were quite prolific, so it doesn't really narrow it down a lot for me anyway. So hey, if you know what Scott is talking about here, write in, and we'll go from there. All right, this one comes to us from Matthew. This is a response to our Hogs of Hell episode.

Matthew says, hey, I have a fun story about pigs eating a drunk Irishman. I came across it in an episode of the Blind Boy podcast. Link below includes a link to where you can find this on Spotify. I imagine this is one of those shows you can find this wherever you get your podcast. But it continues. The short version is this. In 1818, James O'Sullivan, after failing to sell his two pigs at market, got drunk at the public house.

and then got into his horse-drawn cart and passed out in the back with the pigs. The horse, unguided, walked the path home. What Miss Sullivan found when the cart returned was only her husband's boots remaining. The neighbors were gathered, and the priest was called. He suggested that the man-eating pigs be slaughtered and given a Christian burial. That was the best they could do for poor Mr. Sullivan within their stomachs.

His gravestone with a depiction of two pigs still lays in the local graveyard. Thank you for the consistent and wonderful content. It's all fantastic. Oh, and don't forget about Pigsy, Zubaji, the human reincarnated as a pig demon protagonist from Journey into the West, Matthew.

A good point on Pigsy, Matthew. Yeah, I hadn't really thought about Pigsy so much because I think of him not so much as a monster, but as an important character of that particular narrative. But still, worth mentioning in passing. Certainly one of, if not the most famous, pig-human hybrid characters for sure.

As for the story of the drunk Irishman, yeah, that's quite horrific. I had not heard that one before. And this detail about the gravestone, also quite tantalizing.

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Alright, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird-shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Bartesian. Bartesian? It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails. Plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites, too. I just got it for

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That's oracle.com slash strategic. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about.

It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.

It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get into a little Weird House Cinema. We have one here from Jeff, and this is about Spirited Away. Greetings, Joe and Rob.

Last year, along with the usual re-releases of Ghibli films, I was able to catch a showing of the live stage version of Spirited Away at the local cinema. It was amazing. Stunning.

It's not better than the movie and would probably make no sense whatsoever if you hadn't seen the original, but they did almost every scene, almost every shot, the close-ups, flying, falling, swimming, hanging off the side of a building, in a moving train, in a car, almost everything. Despite being one of the top films that comes to mind, you have asked, which would be the most insane to try to turn into a stage performance?

The sets were simple but brilliant. They broke the movie into puzzle pieces and then put it all together. The acting was great. The original voice actor played Yubaba. And many of the parts were so physical, they must have been dancers or gymnasts. The audience in our movie theater actually applauded at the end when the camera pulled back and showed the full orchestra and stage. Not as emotionally engaging as the film, but a super impressive spectacle. I highly recommend checking it out if you have the opportunity.

Yeah, I had I have not seen this myself, but I had heard that this was excellent If memory serves there's also a Totoro stage adaptation that somebody has put together But again, I haven't seen that either Anyway, Jeff continues on the topic of subs versus dubs I think the English spirited away dub is quite good but you haven't actually seen Kiki's delivery service if you haven't seen it with the original voices and

Phil Hartman as Kiki's cat sidekick, this is in the English version, of course, the English dub, is not only a completely different character, he changes the meaning of the film. Hartman's Gigi is like Kiki's superpower, a force of positive energy. The original Gigi is a quiet little voice inside Kiki's head, telling her she's not good enough. Thus, the communication breakdown between the two has a totally different meaning.

Kiki is by far my favorite Ghibli film. It's an instruction manual for leading a rewarding life. I go see it every summer when they re-release it. It's probably not weird enough for Weird House, but I very much encourage all your listeners to check it out, if possible, in the original Japanese.

This, oh, this is an excellent suggestion. I have never seen Kiki's Delivery Service in the original Japanese, but this is one that I watched a fair amount with my son. This was, for a time, this was his absolute favorite as well. It's such a sweet film. And yeah, I mean, I really like Phil Hartman in it. So it would be an interesting experience to get into this other, like original version of Gigi.

Let's see. Jeff continues here. Also, despite Michael Keaton's great performance in Porco Rosso, the original Porco is far more charming. Here's a comparison of an exchange between our hero and a group of old ladies he hasn't seen in a long time. American Porco. Are you girls really still alive? Japanese Porco. The angels haven't come for you yet.

Well,

Well, excellent, Jeff. I knew that we had some Ghibli fans out there with some strong opinions on dubs versus subs. You know, I've heard some of it before in regard to certain films. You know, I've certainly heard it in regards to like the...

the mytho-religious context that is present in some of these films and how the English dub often takes a more monotheistic approach versus what was originally present in the original untranslated material. So anyway, thanks for writing in about all of that. Yeah, I need to queue up

Miyazaki film and watch it in the original Japanese. It was probably going to be, I'm probably going to turn to one of my favorites and probably do something like Nausicaa. But yeah, I'll come back to that in the future. All right, this next one comes to us from Iris. This is another spirited away response. Iris says, Hi, Rob and Joe. Hope you both are doing very well.

I just came from your Weird House Cinema episode on Spirited Away. It is my ultimate comfort film. Though as a child, I too was traumatized by the food stall scene and made my parents promise to never eat food without paying first.

Throughout the years, I have rewatched the movie in different stages of life and have gained different perspectives on this film in two aspects. One, the power within a name. And two, the kabukicho, the red light district culture reflection on the bathhouse setting. And a content warning, there are going to be some mature themes explored in the later paragraph. Okay, so mature themes, warning applied.

I've always loved applied linguistics, and it is an interesting exercise to learn about the character names of the key characters. Chihiro's name in kanji is chi, thousand, and hiro, to seek, to find, which reflects her character's journey to be constantly seeking a way out, seeking a way to save her parents, and seeking the truth of the spirit realm.

So when Yubaba takes her name, she chose to take away the verb in her name and left her with the numerical character sin, also means thousand. Yubaba is minimizing Chihiro down to a money-making servant and taking away her central motivation of seeking a way out.

Haku's real name expands into Junior Master of Fast-Winding Amber River, or Nijihayami Kohakunushi. The haku, or white dragon, is derived from kohaku, amber, which reflects his spiritual form.

When I was younger, I questioned if it is really that easy to forget your name when the new name sounds so similar to your original name. But the Japanese language is a funny combination of romanticized syllables that string into meaningful kanji characters. You can see that by taking a part of one's name, the meaning changes completely. On a more lighthearted note, Yubaba and twin Zaniba have an interesting title pair.

The former translates roughly to soup grandma and the later money grandma. When you put the characters of you and Zen together, it makes the word tozen, which is a synonym to onsen or hot spring bath.

Very on the nose. It's also interesting that Yubaba and Zaniba both use titles such as the Grandma of Soup or Money throughout the film as opposed to a more conventional name. My guess is that by not uncovering their true name, magical creatures in the spirit realm would not have any power over them. If you were a fan of the fantasy genre, you'll know that the law of name is a common trope.

among large fantasy works such as Earthsea and Lord of the Rings. Folklore such as Rumpelstiltskin also explores this magic behind name and how you can control a creature if you hold their real name.

The ritual of changing one's name is present and still practiced in the Kabukicho culture in Japan. Chihiro's journey in getting a job in the bathhouse starts with signing a work contract, in a way selling her name to gain employment. The sequence is a similar journey for Chiyo from Memoir of a Geisha, where she was sold to the geisha house for labor and then abandons her name to Sayuri.

Mr. Miyazaki himself has made comparisons between the bathhouse in Japan's Edo period red light district in the book Turning Point, 1997-2008. Chihiro is employed as a bath girl, or yuna, who cleans after customers. In the Edo period, yuna's services offered would include eating, drinking, playing games, and in some private cases, prostitution.

You can also see this connection to Yubaba's title, which is a form of madam. She determines which yuna works for which customer. Even though there are a ton of elements in the film that reflect the Kabukicho culture of Japan, I have to applaud that Mr. Miyazaki chose to focus on the genuine relationship between Chihiro, Rin, Haiku, and Kamaji that was forged in the most brutal workplace.

Lastly, going back to the language of the film, the full Japanese title of the film is "Sentu Chichiro no Kamakakushi," which consists of the two names of our main heroine and "Kamakakushi." The word is typically translated to "the disappearance," but the kanji form of the word literally means "hidden by the gods." The specific usage of this word is usually reserved for Japanese children who disappear without a trace.

There are a lot of Japanese myths and traditional Shinto tales that address the disappearance of women or children, which are usually summarized to be the doing by gods or spirits who lures them into the ghost realm. I would love to hear you guys' deep dive on some famous Kamakoshi cases of Japan, perhaps a future episode.

Thanks again for choosing such a classic film for this episode of Weird House Cinema. I'm forever blown away by your breadth and depth of topics and the endless passion I hear for the past six years. Thanks for being the show that I look forward to catch up on the most best, Iris. Well, Iris, thanks for writing in with all of that. Some excellent insight into the world, the real world behind Spirited Away and some of the thoughts and ideas that went into it.

I hope I was able to do an okay job, at least with some of those, uh, those words, my apologies. If I, uh, any mispronunciations of the Japanese there, uh, that I inevitably, uh, uh, inflicted. Uh, but that's, yeah, that's, that's absolutely fascinating. And yeah, I could see us coming back and doing, um, episodes related to these topics in the future. We're always fascinated by, uh,

by different folk beliefs and urban legends and so forth in varying cultures. And, you know, we come back time and time again to Japanese culture as well.

Listen up, folks. Time could be running out to lock in a historic yield at public.com. As of September 23rd, 2024, you can lock in a 6% or higher yield with a bond account. But here's the thing. The Federal Reserve just announced a big rate cut, and the plan is for more rate cuts this year and in 2025 as well. That's good news if you're looking to buy a home, but it might not be so good for the interest you earn on your cash.

So if you want to lock in a 6% or higher yield with a diversified portfolio of high yield and investment grade bonds, you might want to act fast. The good news, it only takes a couple of minutes to sign up at public.com. And once you lock in your yield, you can earn regular interest payments even as rates decline.

Lock in a 6% or higher yield with a bond account at public.com. But hurry, your yield is not locked in until you invest. Brought to you by Public Investing, member FINRA and SIPC. Yield to worst is not guaranteed. Not an investment recommendation. All investing involves risk. Visit public.com slash disclosures for more info.

I just got it for

So how about a Closmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita? I'm thirsty. Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and... Wow. It's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian. Because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off. Tis the season to be jollier.

Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker, Bartesian. Pick up your phone and shake it to get $50 off any cocktail maker. Yes, you heard me. Shake your phone and get $50 off. Don't delay. Hey, guys. I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more.

After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.

You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all.

It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, this next one comes to us from Skyler. And I really love the title on this particular email. It is, "Local libraries can be your Videodrome." Skyler is, of course, referring to Atlanta's own Videodrome video rental store. This is a wonderful place where I rent a lot of the discs that I watch for Weird House Cinema.

And Skyler makes a great point here that, yeah, if you don't have a Videodrome in your city or something like Videodrome, you might have a library that can rent you some discs. She writes, Hey all, I always enjoy your Weird House selection, but there is not a video rental store near me, so I have to stream it if available. I use my local library for books, but checked out the movie section and because of the regional library system,

I can request books for numerous libraries. Same goes with movies. Many of the movies you've highlighted on the podcast are available through the library system. Just another option for watching awesome Weird House movies on DVD with cool bonus features and a great opportunity to support your local library.

Also, I was listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger's memoir, and he said that he was signed on to be in the I Am Legend film that starred Will Smith, but because Arnold had recently had heart surgery, the cost to insure him was enormous. I wish that had happened because I have a hard time imagining him in the role. Thanks for all that you do, Skyler.

Well, great point, Skylar. Yeah, don't forget the excellent resources afforded to you by your local library. You know, I don't, it's been a while. It's been a long time since I've rented any movies to the library, but I do continue to use the library, local library for books and such. And I do have friends who more religiously use the library as their means of, you know, getting on the waiting list for various films. So it's an excellent idea. Glad you brought it up.

I need to touch on that more when we're bringing up ways to watch these various films. As for Arnold and Will Smith, obviously I've loved both of them in different projects, though I'm hard-pressed to imagine a version of 2007's I Am Legend that I would personally be fond of. But then again, I know a lot of people like this film. Ebert gave it like three out of four stars, so maybe I need to revisit it. I don't know. Maybe time has been kind to it, and I'm

I'm just remembering the CGI monsters and I don't know. It didn't hit. It didn't land properly for me back then. But maybe if I re-experienced it, it would be different.

All right. I haven't completely depleted the mailbag here, but there are a couple here that I wanted to save because I knew that Joe would really want to get into them. So I'm going to set a few aside. We'll come back to them later on. In all likelihood, we'll do another listener mail towards the end of December or the beginning of January. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of disruption and so forth due to the holidays.

But let's see, as I begin to close this out, you know, I said at the top of the episode that I traveled with my family to Wales last week. So perhaps some of you are wondering if you've listened to me long enough, well, what films did I watch on the plane? Because watching movies on a plane, along with listening to Steve Roach albums and napping, that is the main way I cope with flights. I don't really like flying, no matter what my seating situation happens to be. So I ended up

exerting control where I can exert control, download a bunch of movies, and then pick out ones mid-flight to watch. So yeah, I'll go ahead and share this with anyone who's curious. And if you're not curious, you know, I guess just, you know, you can close out the episode. But I'm just going to talk about movies I watched on the plane here for a minute or two.

So I watched both 1980s Shogun Assassin and 1972s Lone Wolf and Cub Sword of Vengeance. I watched these for an upcoming Weird House Cinema episode we're going to do on Shogun Assassin. Shogun Assassin is a Western picture that takes the first two Lone Wolf and Cub movies and cuts them into one picture with a new soundtrack and narration. It is a grindhouse classic. It's tremendous fun. I had a great time watching it.

watching it on the plane, and then watching the first of the two movies that went into it. And I think I'm going to watch that second one as well before Joe and I discuss Shogun Assassin. I love watching a film where I can just kind of really zone out on the colors. And that's why another film that I watched, this was a rewatch for me. I hadn't seen it in a while, perhaps since it came out, but I watched 2016's The Love Witch.

Just a perfect film that knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and does so with such loving technicolor style. Though this is one that as I'm watching it, you know, there are, of course, you're on a plane. Other people can see what you're watching. And sometimes I feel like I need to like turn around and explain to them that I'm watching a very artsy film with some very serious-minded ideas behind it.

But yeah, love The Love Witch. This is one that I could see an episode of Weird House Cinema devoted to this episode. I know Joe's really fond of it. I think Annie Reese is a big fan of this film as well, if I'm remembering correctly. So I don't know, one way or another, it might come back to The Love Witch.

I also rewatched 2017's Alien Covenant, which I had previously rewatched on a long flight just earlier this year. Some people don't like this film, but this one remains one of my personal favorites. I realize that no one understands the lonely perfection of my dreams. But hey, this time around, I really focused on Billy Crudup's performance here. Such a terrific actor.

Even if he's in something that I'm not really, you know, super into, you know, there's no speculative element. It's not weird. It's like he's still such a captivating performer. And I think part of my attraction to his acting is that I got to see him on stage back in, I think this was 2000.

2005 in New York. He was in a production of The Pillow Man opposite Jeff Goldblum. This is one where it would just kind of grab tickets last minute. You know, what can we see tonight in the big city? We got tickets to see The Pillow Man and it was really captivating. I had never heard of Billy before, but he was tremendous in that. And I think he's just really great in anything I see him in. And he's great in Alien Covenant. Great cast all around there.

And then finally, I'll mention a film that has come up a lot on Weird House Cinema, and

And I wasn't sure if it would be like a weird house cinema selection. I was like, I need to watch it in full by myself before I make up my mind. I sat down and watched, well, of course I was sitting down. I seated for like 10 hours, but I watched The Eyes of Laura Mars from 1978. Some of you had written in about this one in the past, I think. So this is a film that has a great cast based on a spec script from John Carpenter, which

really cool 70s, like late 70s New York disco feel. It's essentially a Jalo film. You know, it's some sort of strange murders going on. High fashion photographers getting glimpses, psychic glimpses of the murders. You know, all the pieces seem tremendous, but it doesn't quite come together the way you want it to.

So I don't think it's right for Weird House, but it is an interesting film curio. You know, you're looking at a film that doesn't quite land, but man, all the pieces are there. It's weird that it doesn't. But I don't know. I'm sure it has its fans. If you're a fan of The Eyes of Laura Mars, write in. We can chat about it. Certainly has some great pieces to it and some great little performances sprinkled throughout.

All right. Well, if anyone's still with me here, I'm going to go ahead and close out this rare solo Robert Lamb episode of Listener Mail. Let's see. What kind of notes do I need to share here as we close out? And I guess just the regular stuff, that stuff to blow your mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

But on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns, and we just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. On Wednesdays, a little short-form episode, sometimes a monster. I think there's a particular Welsh monster I'm going to come back to either this week or following week. We'll see how it all lands.

And if you're on Instagram, look us up. We're stbympodcast. Great way to follow us. What else? Let's see. Oh, wherever you get the podcast, make sure you're subscribed. Make sure you're getting downloads. And if you haven't already, give us a nice rating. We always forget to beg for stars and ask for ratings and all. And it's easy to not wrap our minds around all of that and just focus on the content and the listeners. But, you know, it does help if there are nice reviews for the show.

You know, as is often the case, you know, the folks who chime in with reviews are often those that are that really don't like us or really like us. You know, you get those extremes of of opinion. And so, you know, sometimes I think it's a good idea to just remind everyone in the middle, you know, hey, why don't you pop on and, you know, go ahead and bump those stars up stars up to five. You know, I realize you probably are thinking more like the four range, but go ahead and give it a five. Five helps more.

Let's see. Anything else? Oh, yeah. If you want to follow the Weird House Cinema selections, we're on Letterboxd as Weird House. That's our username. Follow us there. And I believe that's pretty much it. We're going to go ahead and close the episode out. But thanks, as always, to the excellent J.J. Possway for producing the show, stitching everything together, making it sound as good as it does. And if you would like to reach out to any of us here at Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

If you would like to get that link to the Discord server or just share ideas for the future, ideas and thoughts on past episodes, Weird House Cinema, you name it, write in to us at 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.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.

Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.