Stuff To Blow Your Mind

The "final girl" trope has become a standard horror cinema convention, in which a single strong female character outruns, outsmarts and outstabs her murderous pursuer to stand victorious amid the slain. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explore the film roots, cultural resonance and symbolic power of the final girl. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.ihe...

Surf the Internet long enough and you'll happen upon creepypasta: little cut-and-paste snippets of horror that blur the lines between reality and the fantastic. These collectively assembled amalgams of pop culture influences take on their own amorphous power -- and more than a few of them seem to involve shadowy science experiments. So in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christi...

Humanity currently stands at a crossroads in the treatment of its dead. Forced to contend with the environmental and economic downsides to modern mortuary customs, various innovators look back to our most basic burial customs and recreate them with a suitably high-tech design twist. Join Robert and Joe for a look at human remains and the way we help (or hinder) their return to the soil. Learn more...

What happens when we slip into a costume? Be it a monster pelt, a sexy witch or a simple children's ghost mask, a psychological transformation takes place. Join Robert and Christian for a fittingly seasonal look at enclothed cognition and deindividuation. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ancient Egyptian mummification is not unlike sci-fi space travel in many respects. The leading minds of the day preserved a chosen human within a costly vessel, and then they sent that vessel on a journey across time and space to another world -- a dangerous and uncertain world inhabited by monsters and alien entities. Join Robert and Christian as they explore the cosmology and process of Egyptian...

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Frank Herbert's "Dune," the game-changing 1965 sci-fi novel full of space-age feudalistic intrigue, rampaging sandworms and prescient mind drugs on a desert world. Even today, the work resonates with scientific wonder and philosophical intrigue, so join Robert and Joe for a two-part exploration of the science of "Dune." In this episode, explore the lifecycle...

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Frank Herbert's "Dune," the game-changing 1965 sci-fi novel full of space-age feudalistic intrigue, rampaging sandworms and prescient mind drugs on a desert world. Even today, the work resonates with scientific wonder and philosophical intrigue, so join Robert and Joe for a two-part exploration of the science of "Dune." First up, consider the real-life possi...

Perhaps you've heard of wolf's bane as curative or even causal agent in the mythology of lycanthropy, yet the appeal of this very real plant reaches far beyond the realm of werewolves. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian consider the role of wolf's bane in traditional Chinese medicine, early biological warfare and natural insect defenses. Learn more about your ad-choic...

You may call it a slot machine, a fruit machine or a one-armed bandit, but the reality is the same: an algorithmically precise machine designed to drain the human gambler of all his or her earnings. Where did these insidious machines come from? How do they ensorcell us? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the science and psychology of slot machine gambling behavior....

How can we even imagine a life without language when language itself plays such a crucial role in human cognition? Can you even imagine a world in which nothing has a name? Join Robert and Christian as they continue their exploration of the brain's linguistic operating system. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informati...

The feral child occupies two worlds: that of lighthearted myth and depressing reality. We entertain ourselves with fantasies about wolf-reared infants, but most studies of feral children stem from cases of extreme child abuse and neglect. Join Robert and Christian as they explore human language acquisition and childhood without words. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastne...

Historians learn a great deal from historical texts -- and not only that which was written, but that which was unwritten. Join Robert and Christian as they explore the world of palimpsests, the erased books just under the surface of ancient tomes. Modern technology allows us to uncover more and more of their secrets, while the idea of the palimpsest itself serves as a powerful metaphor for media,...

With the recent passing of horror director Wes Craven, it seems appropriate to cover the science behind his 1988 film "The Serpent and the Rainbow." Join Robert and Christian for a discussion of Haitian folklore, zombie powder and the challenges of filmmaking. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Where is the human tail? Our embryos lose them in the womb and our great ape kin lost them in the shadows of evolutionary history. Join Robert and Joe as they continue to explore the worlds of human tails and even a Utopian dream of tailed transhumans. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tails are a common feature in the animal kingdom, fulfilling just about every role from comfy blanket to instrument of venomous death. Join Robert and Joe as they explore some of the more outstanding uses, including your dog's caudal language and the scorpion that sheds its own tail and anus. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for p...

Don't run away! True enough, this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind considers a most repellent sexual atrocity, but there's more to necrophilia than the sexual abuse of human corpses. Join Robert and Christian as they discuss necrophilia in the animal kingdom, including one rare case of "functional necrophilia" that actually produces offspring. Stay for the later half of the episode and you'll al...

Voice-to-skull or V2K technology is generally the stuff of paranoid government conspiracies, and yet the microwave auditory effect is very real. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe consider the military and commercial applications for what some people call microwave telepathy. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listene...

While all humans develop inside an amniotic sac, only a rare few are born with part of it enveloping their face. These membranous veils protect us in utero, but what does it mean when a newborn is covered in one at birth? In this episode of Stuff To Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explore what a birth caul is and the many superstitions and omens attached to their presence. Learn more about yo...

Sure, you need to get your butt to Mars, but what are the long-term health ramifications of life on the Red Planet? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore reduced gravity, radiation, toxic dust and a microbiotic desert. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Guillermo del Toro's "The Strain" continues to enthrall readers and viewers -- and, love it or hate it, there's no denying the complexity and creativity that del Toro and co-author Chuck Hogan poured into the series' vampires. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explore some real-world organisms that line up nicely with the science of "The Strain." Learn more about you...

Imagine a future in which powerful AIs use human surrogates or "echoborgs" to speak their words and socialize with humans. The living, breathing avatar simply recites the computer's words at the conference table, serving as a humanizing conduit for an inhuman will. It may sound like the stuff of science fiction and TV's "Black Mirror," but such experiments are a reality in artificial intelligence...

It's a summer tradition, so once more the hosts of Stuff to Blow Your Mind share their fiction and nonfiction reading recommendations with listeners. That means science, science fiction, horror and more -- all with a distinct STBYM flavor. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What are we to make of spite? As humans, we lash out to hurt our neighbor due to petty grudges and prejudices all the time. Yet we're also capable of such altruistic grace. How are these two opposites linked in the human condition and just how important is spite in the framework of civilization? Robert and Christian explore in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Learn more about your ad-choic...

We've entered a new era of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, so it's time for Robert, Joe and Christian to reboot the mailbot with updated user data. As the former "Arnie" comes back online, your three hosts will answer some recent e-mail and social media missives from you the listener. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informat...

Imagine a world where cities fly, we all drive three-wheeled cars and mainly eat Jell-O. This is where the dreams of architect and engineer Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller would have taken us. At his height, Bucky was influential between the 1930s and 1950s. But his legacy today is largely that of a designer and a counterculture symbol, not as an inventor. In this episode of Stuff To Blow Your...