Stuff To Blow Your Mind

Did the human fist evolve to punch faces? Did our faces evolve to take punches? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explore University of Utah biologist David Carrier's research into human evolution -- including his 2015 study that involves a cadaver-armed punching machine.

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How do we know precisely what constitutes "normality" or mental illness? And if there is a difference, can anybody detect it? Even professionals? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the groundbreaking 1973 study that saw eight otherwise-healthy "pseudopatients" admitted to 12 different psychiatric facilities and diagnosed with mental illness.

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If your fictional diet contains significant quantities of horror or dark fantasy, then you've likely encountered the ghoul: a scavenging, grave-robbing race of unnatural beings with an insatiable hunger for the dead. As Robert and Joe explore in this episode, the roots of ghouldom sink back into pre-Islamic Arabic folklore -- as well into the distant evolutionary history of humanity itself.

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Global myth cycles are rife with blood-drinkers and blood bathers. Often, the tale centers around the notion of young blood as a fountain of youth. The aging countess or decrepit monster needs only to drink from young veins in order to restore a failing body. Yet science has a way of catching up with myth, and in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the history of medicinal blood drinking and the startling scientific reality of rejuvenation through transfusions of young blood.

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There was a time when strange lights appeared in the marshlands. Commoners might have known the eerie luminescence as "Will-o'-the-Wisp" or "Hinky Punk," while the learned pondered the mysteries of "Ignis Fatuus." Superstitions aside, what natural phenomenon was at work here, before accounts of false fires in the night largely vanished from history? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe search for answers.

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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.

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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 Christian explore the real-life science behind a handful of experiments from the world of creepypasta.

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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.

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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.

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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 mummification, as well as the actual alien entities these necronauts encountered: grave robbers, Victorian ghouls and the probing curiosity of modern science.

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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 of the sandworm, mentats and the power of the spice.

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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 possibilities of water-recycling stillsuits, the Holtzman Effect and the war against thinking machines.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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, the mind and maybe life itself.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 also plunge the psychological depths of human necrophilia in all its varied forms.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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 research. Join Robert and Joe as they get to know the echoborgs and cyranoids among us.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 Mind, Robert and Christian examine the life of Fuller, as well as the success of his dymaxion inventions and geodesic domes.

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From palm-reading fortune tellers to professionally-administered Myers Briggs test, everyone's a sucker for a an ego-stroking personality assessment. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the subtle forces of the Forer effect.

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Imagine waking to a new, terrifying sensation: Your seemingly organic body is actually made of glass. While doctors and loved ones insist otherwise, you know in your heart that the slightest bump or fall will shatter you into a million shards. While cases of glass delusion largely vanished in the early 19th century, a few cases persist to this day. What underlies this bizarre psychiatric disorder? Robert and Joe explore in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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In the previous episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explored the Christian tradition of the stigmata and its 13th century originator, Saint Francis of Assisi. But what are we to make of of all the stigmatics to follow in the saint's footsteps? Are these holy wounds the work of deceptive self-harm, masochistic devotion or psychosomatic anomaly?

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According to Christian tradition, a stigmatic prays to God so zealously, so faithfully that Christ's crucifixion wounds of manifest in the form of bleeding sores and gorey holes. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explore stigmata patient zero in the form of Saint Francis of Assisi. What real-life illness might underlie this 13th century mystic's legendary condition?

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A region of space barely a thousandth of a square degree on the sky contains a whopping 5,500 galaxies. Making the probability that there exists at least one planet that could support life pretty tantalizing. What might that life form look like? Robert and Joe discuss cosmologist Fergus Simpson's statistical argument that an extraterrestrial could weigh in at 660 pounds. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of grizzly bears from outer space?

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Imagine an entire 15th-century town overcome by a collective waking nightmare. The afflicted walk the streets with blackened limbs and seeping sores, all while psychotic hallucinations assault their fragile hold on sanity. Join Robert and Joe as they explore the world of Ergotism and discuss how a toxic fungus terrorized and inspired generations of Medieval Europeans.

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Highly addictive substances like meth and heroin are formidable enemies for the recovering addict, but what does the future hold for their treatment? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie explore the use of electromagnetic stimulation, vaccines and other treatments to help win the battle.

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What is addiction? Why are some people predisposed to it and what happens in the brain when addiction takes hold? In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie break it all down for you and ponder the addiction-shattered brain.

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Stroll into the memory palace, an imagined location that just might expand your brain power. In this classic episode you'll learn all about the Method of Loci, a mnemonic device that allows mental athletes to perform astounding acts of recall. Plus, in this updated publication of the episode, learn the secrets firsthand from 4-time USA memory champion Nelson Dellis.

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Explore Universe 25, a 101-square-inch tank designed as a utopia for mice and a mirror of human behavior. Every detail of the structure was crafted with comfort in mind: a never-ending supply of food; a constant 68 degree F temperature; a self-cleaning environment and spacious apartments for its inhabitants. So what contributed to Universe 25's spiral into degradation and violence? And why were a subset of mice dubbed "The Beautiful Ones?"

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Everyone loves a good whodunit, but why does the figure of the fictional detective tower so staggeringly over the modern world? He or she is a seeker of truth, a resolver of conflict, a subcultural liaison and perhaps even a shaman for an increasingly secular world. Join Robert and Christian for dive through the history, science and cultural resonance of the detective story.

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No longer limited by the constrains of their environment or biology, humans have remade their world. Why walk when you can soar? Why shout when you can whisper in the ear of a listener halfway round the world? And why limit yourself to normal stimuli when you can condense the sensory world into nuggets of superstimuli. Join Robert and Julie in this classic episode as they discuss junk food, gaming, pornography, the Internet and beauty itself all in the framework of natural biology.

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We often think of technology and religion as distinct and separate worlds, but what happens when they converge? Join Robert and Joe in this two-part episode as they examine religious world views shaped by technology, such as John Murray Spear's electrical messiah, the simple prayer wheel and the psycho-spiritual technologies of Scientology.v

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We often think of technology and religion as distinct and separate worlds, but what happens when they converge? Join Robert and Joe in this two-part episode as they examine religious world views shaped by technology, such as John Murray Spear's electrical messiah, the simple prayer wheel and the psycho-spiritual technologies of Scientology.

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Five mass extinction events have ravaged the species of Earth, and we just might be living in the sixth. How can humanity survive the threat of cosmic calamity and its own tireless work to unbalance the world? Robert and Christian discuss in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Trepanation is an ancient surgical procedure and we've found the millennia-aged skulls to prove it - each punctured and gouged to relieve inner-pressure and inner-madness. But is such cranial perforation truly a relic of a primitive age or do modern trepanation advocates have a point in their quest to free the brain's heartbeat from its prison of bone? Tune in to this classic STBYM episode of to find out.

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Spider silk is nothing short of an engineering marvel. Weight for weight, it's stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar. But spiders are disagreeable creatures. Unlike the silkworms, they've proven unwilling to bow to humanity's domestication, but that hasn't stopped scientists from stealing the secrets. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, enter a world of spider silk medicine, nanomaterials, optics, music and of course transgenic goats.

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At one time in human history superstitions were the guiding force in a person's life -- rules of thumb to live by. Find out which pieces of lore and superstition are actually spot-on and why in this episode of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast.

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What are we to make of coincidence? From the numerological cats cradles we weave around famous events to the curious ways human lives converge through time, coincidence seems to fly in the face of reason and even suggest the supernatural. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the synchronicity, statistics and psychology of coincidence.

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Amid the regular cycle of sun and moon stalks a darkness -- a darkness that ancient humans perceived as cosmic abandonment, portent and demonic disruption. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the celestial mechanics, mythology and terrestrial ramifications of solar and lunar eclipses.

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