The Twilight Zone: The Rip Van Winkle Caper

Stuff To Blow Your Mind

iHeartPodcasts

Life Sciences, Science, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences

4.4 • 5.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2026

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Submitted for your approval: Given listener nostalgia for past TV marathons of The Twilight Zone, Robert and Joe devote this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind to the classic episode “The Rip Van Winkle Caper.” Join them as they break down some of the scientific, cultural and economic topics associated with it.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:02.5	Guaranteed Human.
0:07.1	Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.
0:17.0	Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
0:19.6	My name is Robert Lamb.
0:38.6	And I'm Joe McCormick. We have something a little different and a little familiar for you here today on today's episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. In a way, this is kind of a spinoff from our old anthology of horror series that we used to do. But it's also a response to listeners over the years who've written in about their nostalgia for marathons of TVs, the Twilight Zone, on the
0:45.4	sci-fi channel on New Year's Eve and or New Year's Day. Do you know why they do that? Like,
0:51.8	what's the connection with New Year's? Is it just a coincidence? Or not coincidence? Is it random? I'm not entirely certain. I mean, I've been thinking about it a lot, like why the Twilight Zone at New Year's. And I guess it's because, you know, it's a space between, right? I mean, I feel that heavily right now. It's like, all right, we're down with
1:10.8	Christmas. The New Year's about to start, but it's not there yet. And even once it has
1:17.2	started, it's not going to feel real for a little bit. So, I don't know, it seems like maybe a
1:22.5	fitting time. I'm also not super hip to all of like the cable channel business side of all of this.
1:32.6	Like why does it even make sense to run, say, a Turkey Day marathon?
1:36.3	There may just be very strong and pretty straightforward industry reasons why.
1:40.8	You know, it's like, I don't know, you've got to put something on.
1:43.0	Maybe there are more people watching at that time. But I don't know, over the years you've seen these
1:46.9	kind of holiday marathons really take root, be it MST3K Turkey Day, or I forget which
1:53.0	Turner Channel would air a Christmas story just over and over again for like 24-hour period.
1:57.8	I wonder if it's that on days people are expected to be off work and home for a holiday,
2:04.5	that they're more likely to just leave the TV on on a certain channel where they can
2:08.9	expect to kind of, some kind of like predictable stream in the background.
2:13.3	Yeah.
2:13.8	Yeah.
	...

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