Stuff To Blow Your Mind

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.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.comSee 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 your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.comSee 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-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.