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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Here my tale. It is long and strange,

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Speaker 1: and the temperature of this place is not fitting to

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Speaker 1: your fine sensations. Come to the hut upon the mountain.

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Speaker 1: The sun is yet high in the heavens before it

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Speaker 1: descends to hide itself beyond yon snowy precipices and illuminate

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Speaker 1: another world. You will have heard my story and can

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Speaker 1: decide on you would rest, whether I quit forever the

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Speaker 1: neighborhood of man and lead a harmless life, or become

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Speaker 1: the scourge of your fellow creatures and the author of

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Speaker 1: your own speedy ruin. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I am

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Speaker 1: Christian Seger. And as you might have guessed from the

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Speaker 1: title or from Robert's reading just now, we are talking

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Speaker 1: about Frankenstein. It is the month of October, it is

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Speaker 1: our favorite time of year, and Frankenstein is two hundred

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Speaker 1: years old this year, so we felt like we had

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Speaker 1: to do an episode on Frankenstein. Yeah, it's such a

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Speaker 1: great topic because it's it brings everything together, Like Frankenstein,

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Speaker 1: of course, is just as a horror stand out, just

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Speaker 1: a horror icon, um that the novel itself is a classic,

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Speaker 1: and more importantly, I guess for a science show is

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Speaker 1: Frankenstein continues to cast this shadow over the sciences. It

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Speaker 1: emerges from science, and and it continues to color our

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Speaker 1: understanding and at times fear of science. It is. It

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Speaker 1: is essentially science fiction. People often, you know, you forget

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Speaker 1: about that when you just get caught up sometimes and

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Speaker 1: just the sheer monster aspects of the thing. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: even read one account that described it as the first

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Speaker 1: science fiction novel. I don't know if that's necessarily true,

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Speaker 1: but certainly we think of it as horror, probably more

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Speaker 1: because of the movies. But the book itself is a

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Speaker 1: little bit of both. And it's not the book itself,

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Speaker 1: which we're gonna mainly focus on the book today. Of course,

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Speaker 1: we'll talk about the other pop culture resonance of this

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Speaker 1: book throughout history. But the book is not gory. It's uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, the scenes where the monster kills people are

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Speaker 1: pretty much just like then he's snapped her neck. You know,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't like, uh, it's it's not it's not Boris

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Speaker 1: Karlafi even right, Yeah, it's it's really a tremendous book,

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Speaker 1: but I think stands the test of time rather nicely.

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Speaker 1: I don't think it communicates well to modern viewers. It's

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Speaker 1: it's it's a complex book. The the monster, the creature

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Speaker 1: is not just it's not it's not just a you know,

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Speaker 1: a shambling killer. He's a complex creature. Likewise, Victor Frankenstein

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Speaker 1: is neither hero nor pure villain in this There are

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Speaker 1: there are shades of gray and him as well. So

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Speaker 1: it's a it's a story ultimately of two complex into

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Speaker 1: vide rules of a creator and the created, and all

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Speaker 1: the various um interpretations of that that flow both religiously

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Speaker 1: scientifically and purely cultural. Yeah, there certainly are a lot,

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Speaker 1: and that's not really our mission here on this show. Um.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure there are lots of other podcasts that are

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Speaker 1: doing great uh literary readings of Frankenstein and sort of

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Speaker 1: tearing apart its themes. We'll talk about those, but we're

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Speaker 1: here mainly to look at the science behind it. Uh.

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Speaker 1: We will briefly talk though, as we usually do, about

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Speaker 1: you know, the the cultural importance of this media artifact basically,

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Speaker 1: and I think it would be great for us to

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Speaker 1: start off by saying what's your favorite? What's your favorite Frankenstein. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean we all have our favorites, and these favorites

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Speaker 1: are not always going to be colored by our you know,

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Speaker 1: our appreciation for the text. You know, it's just growing

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Speaker 1: up with the monster. Yours is the Aaron Eckhart form.

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Speaker 1: My Frankenstein isn't that. I haven't seen that, and I

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Speaker 1: kind of want to. It's real bad um for me.

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Speaker 1: I have to start by saying, I've never seen an

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Speaker 1: adaptation where I felt like the monster, the creature, you know,

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Speaker 1: captured the essence of the creature from the novel. So

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Speaker 1: so I'm being perhaps a little unfair there, but but yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a there's this sort of idea of what the

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Speaker 1: monster could be, and I've yet to see that really

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Speaker 1: come to fruition on film. I do have to say, though,

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Speaker 1: I have very strong memories of seeing what was probably

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Speaker 1: for many a rather lackluster Frankenstein. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: I may be alone in this being like an iconic

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Speaker 1: Frankenstein for me. But there was a TV movie, and

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Speaker 1: I believe it aired on tnt UH titled Frankenstein, and

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Speaker 1: it starred Patrick Bergen as Dr Frankenstein and Randy Quaid

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Speaker 1: as as the creation and it it was it was

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Speaker 1: quite I remember it as being good. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if you would hold up Randy Quaid. And it was

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Speaker 1: a seri serious movie. It was like a comedic Frankenstein.

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Speaker 1: It was a serious period piece. And Quade gave really

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Speaker 1: a great serious performance as the monster. That was you know,

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Speaker 1: I'm on par with what's in the book, you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe not not perfect, but still in keeping with the novel.

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Speaker 1: And and Patrick Bergen is always great. Uh. It featured,

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Speaker 1: you know, all the arctic intrigue that that I always

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Speaker 1: loved in the book that is absent from some of

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Speaker 1: the film adaptations, many of the film adaptations really Uh.

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Speaker 1: It also has some wonderful scenes in which the monster

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Speaker 1: and later he is doomed bride or created out of

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Speaker 1: like a lead red liquids just kind of like a

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Speaker 1: primordial soup that he brews up in a tank. And

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Speaker 1: it was directed by David Wicks, who also did a

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Speaker 1: Jekyl and Hide TV movie from nineteen ninety that starred

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Speaker 1: Michael Caine and Cheryl Ladd and Josh Auckland. And I

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Speaker 1: remember seeing that one on TV and finding it rather terrifying.

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Speaker 1: As well. Wow. Well, this was a period of time

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Speaker 1: where I didn't live in the United States, so I

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Speaker 1: must have it must have been off my cultural radar

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Speaker 1: because I didn't have American television then, but I had

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Speaker 1: never heard either of these. Wow, I was like Nursed

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Speaker 1: on American television. There was no avoiding it for me.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, I remember that's That's a film adaptation that

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Speaker 1: I think back to a lot, even though I haven't

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Speaker 1: seen it since I've seen it on TV in like,

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Speaker 1: I should really give it another viewing. Yeah. Well, from

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Speaker 1: my part, I have two that I really love. The

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Speaker 1: first is Bernie writz In, who a lot of people

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Speaker 1: out there know as just a famous illustrator, especially in

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Speaker 1: the horror genre. He in the late seventies early eighties

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Speaker 1: had this passion project where he wanted to do an

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Speaker 1: illustrated version of Frankenstein, and uh he did. It took

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Speaker 1: him years to finish it, but Marvel Comics published it,

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Speaker 1: I think in the early eighties. Since gone out of print,

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Speaker 1: but earlier this year, I was at Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon,

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Speaker 1: and I found an oversized edition of this Frankenstein copy.

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Speaker 1: In fact, that's right in front of me. Right now.

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Speaker 1: And man, the illustrations in it are gorgeous. I think

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Speaker 1: writs In is like one of the few people who

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Speaker 1: captures the monster's essence, uh, at least according to the book. Um.

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Speaker 1: And this is just a really beautiful copy. So I

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Speaker 1: always think of when I think of the Monster, and

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Speaker 1: when I think of Victor Frankenstein, I think of these drawings.

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Speaker 1: But I have to say, there's a totally whacked out

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Speaker 1: version of Frankenstein that I also love from the comics that, uh,

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Speaker 1: a guy we often talk about on the show, Grant

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Speaker 1: Morrison did very short for issue series Frankenstein, Agent of Shade,

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Speaker 1: and uh, Frankenstein is basically a monster hunter. The monster,

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Speaker 1: not Victor Frankenstein. He's a monster hunter and uh he

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Speaker 1: goes like all over the world and even to Mars

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Speaker 1: to hunt monsters. Uh. And it's just this absolutely insane,

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Speaker 1: uh psychedelic Frankenstein ride. Uh and and uh so yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's like part of like a group called Shade that's

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Speaker 1: basically like like the government version of like a paranormal

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Speaker 1: control team or something like that. So they send him in.

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Speaker 1: The Bride is in it too, and she's also an agent,

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Speaker 1: and they have like sown extra arms on her, so

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Speaker 1: she's like she's got a bunch of guns and weapons

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Speaker 1: and stuff like that that she you know, she's adept

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Speaker 1: at fighting with like I think six or seven limbs

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Speaker 1: or something like that. Well, this sounds about right for

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Speaker 1: for Grant Morrison. You have a gothic um horror creature

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Speaker 1: that is also kind of a Hindu goddess that involved

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Speaker 1: in some sort of paranormal psychedelic and oh yeah, he

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Speaker 1: very much plays up the Hindu goddess part. She even

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Speaker 1: has like a jewel I think on her forehead and yeah,

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Speaker 1: I should check that out. Um. And then of course,

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Speaker 1: just from growing up the ones that well not growing

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Speaker 1: up the ones that I love to or tom Noonan

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Speaker 1: and Monster Squad, he was my Frankenstein because he was

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Speaker 1: just like the nicest Frankenstein who helped out the kids

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Speaker 1: at the end of that movie. He was a good

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Speaker 1: guy Frankenstein. He was yeah, the monster and uh lately,

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Speaker 1: uh Penny dreadful. Rory Kneer's performance in that as the

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Speaker 1: monster is wow, really great and it's essentially Robert Smith

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Speaker 1: is very much Yeah, I can't remember the name of

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Speaker 1: the guy who plays Victor Frankenstein. But he's incredible as well.

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Speaker 1: The whole Frankenstein arc in Penny Dreadful Is is amazing,

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Speaker 1: very well done. Um. I have to say too that

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Speaker 1: I have a lot of love for the Hammer Horror films,

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Speaker 1: and there are spredations of of Frankenstein and the creature

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Speaker 1: Christopher Lee, right, um it it depends on who's involved,

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Speaker 1: you know. It's kind of a a revolving cast at times. Though.

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Speaker 1: Peter Peter Cushing played Victor or Dr Frankstein or whatever

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Speaker 1: or Baron Frankenstein, whatever twist they were doing on it

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Speaker 1: in a number of them, so he's kind of like

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Speaker 1: the iconic Frankenstein, the Man, the Monster varied, but from

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Speaker 1: a purely design level, I really love David the Prowls

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Speaker 1: monster from Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell from Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen this one where the monster looks

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Speaker 1: like a gorilla with like the top of its headstone

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Speaker 1: back on classic Hammer Horror special effects. Yeah, so it

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Speaker 1: looks tremendous. Yeah, we're really you know, uh, here in

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Speaker 1: the States, I really wish that there was like easier

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Speaker 1: access to all of those Hammer things. You can find

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Speaker 1: a lot of them on YouTube nowadays, but like man,

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Speaker 1: it would be great if you could just like stream

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Speaker 1: all of those on like one service or or get

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Speaker 1: them at your local video shop or something like that.

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Speaker 1: They're really you have a great local video shop like

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Speaker 1: video yeah can, but that's it's harder with these streaming services. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're not as readily available. Although Hammers making a comeback

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Speaker 1: right now, so maybe they'll, I don't know, put their

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Speaker 1: archives up so everybody can watch these crazy Frankenstein movies again.

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Speaker 1: You know, I should go ahead, and we should go

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Speaker 1: ahead and make one point before we move on into

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Speaker 1: the media the episode, and that is, of course, there's

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Speaker 1: always the whole Uh, there's Frankenstein the man, there's the

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Speaker 1: creature of the monster. And some people get really upset

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Speaker 1: if you refer to the monster as Frankenstein. And yes,

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Speaker 1: technically that is so the creature is not named Frankenstein,

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Speaker 1: but at this point in the tradition of the character,

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Speaker 1: it's it's almost interchangeable, it is. Yeah. In fact, almost

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Speaker 1: every article I read for researching this episode had that

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Speaker 1: disclaimer in it. And I believe it was St. Joshi,

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Speaker 1: who we've talked about on the show before. You've interviewed

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Speaker 1: him on the show before he's a famous horror Uh

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Speaker 1: would you say literate critic? Uh? He was basically like,

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Speaker 1: look at this point, like it's not even worth arguing about.

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Speaker 1: Like it's just become a cultural norm that people refer

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Speaker 1: to the monster as Frankenstein. Just let it go. Let's

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Speaker 1: all move on. Yeah, so we're probably gonna do a

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Speaker 1: little bit of both and just there with us forgive us. Personally,

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Speaker 1: I love it when someone refers to plural Frankenstein's monsters

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Speaker 1: by calling them Frankenstein's likens. Took the field and defeated

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Speaker 1: I don't know, the New England Patriots. That would be

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Speaker 1: a great I would actually watch sports if that was

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Speaker 1: if that was available with Victor is the Coach, Ye

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Speaker 1: green One, make that movie you heard it here first.

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Speaker 1: All right, Well, on that note, let's let's move Let's

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Speaker 1: move ahead, and in doing so, let us move back

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Speaker 1: in time and talk about the origins of Mary Shelley's

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Speaker 1: um classic novel. Yeah. So, like I said, this isn't

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Speaker 1: a literary podcast, but I do think it's important that

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Speaker 1: we established some bit of a setting here for how

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Speaker 1: this book was created, for what we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about science wise later on, Because some of this is

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Speaker 1: important and the listeners may not be aware of this.

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Speaker 1: Some of it I wasn't aware of until dove in yesterday. So, uh,

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Speaker 1: it's the two d year anniversary. We've been talking about this.

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Speaker 1: Why is that important? Well, eighteen sixteen was referred to

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Speaker 1: as the Year without a Summer. Most people know the

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Speaker 1: story that Mary Shelley Percy Shelley, lord Byron and John Paula.

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Speaker 1: Doori were in Switzerland vacation ng and they had a

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Speaker 1: competition with one another to see who could write the

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Speaker 1: best horror story, and Mary came out with Frankenstein. What

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Speaker 1: a lot of people don't know is that this was

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Speaker 1: during an unexpectedly cold summer in Switzerland, So that's why

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Speaker 1: they were enclosed indoors the whole time. And the reason

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Speaker 1: why was it was a year after an eruption at

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Speaker 1: Mount tim Bora and that had affected the climate somehow

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Speaker 1: and made it much colder. I guess because the ash

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Speaker 1: was still in the Yeah. Yeah, Like, if anyone anyone

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Speaker 1: out there is familiar with the nuclear winter and theories

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Speaker 1: regarding that, it's the same thing. You have. Yeah, you

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Speaker 1: have material that's ejected into the upper atmosphere and it

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Speaker 1: serves as kind of a shade that chills the world.

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Speaker 1: So they were stuck indoors trying to amuse themselves, and

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Speaker 1: they came up with this contest and Mary started working

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Speaker 1: on Frankenstein Um. For their parts, Byron wrote sort of

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Speaker 1: like a summary and I guess polla DOORI then like

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Speaker 1: took it further and wrote it into a story called

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Speaker 1: The Vampire, which is another horror classic, and it later

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Speaker 1: influenced brom Stoker's Dracula. So this, you know, um Year

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Speaker 1: without a Summer is like highly influential on the genre

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Speaker 1: of horror as we know it. But here's another thing

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Speaker 1: I didn't know. I'm curious if you've heard of this before.

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Speaker 1: I learned about it from a comic book, a graphic

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Speaker 1: novel by Warren Ellis and an artist named Marrik Olick

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Speaker 1: SICKI called Frankenstein's Womb. And apparently there's two theories of

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Speaker 1: real life events that also contributed to the book. The

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Speaker 1: first is that before they went to Switzerland for this

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Speaker 1: infamous vacation, Mary and Percy visited the real Frankenstein castle

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Speaker 1: that's near Drumstock, Germany in eighteen fourteen, and the story

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Speaker 1: about that place goes that Conrad Dipple was there and

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Speaker 1: he had experimented with human bodies there in his pursuit

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Speaker 1: of alchemy. So it's possible that Mary heard about all

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Speaker 1: of this before uh they even went and had their

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Speaker 1: horror story competition, and that she based Victor Frankenstein on

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Speaker 1: Conrad Dipple. He claimed to have invented in a mixer

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Speaker 1: of life, and he was rumored to have experimented on

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Speaker 1: dead bodies. So there's lots of similarities. But this is

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Speaker 1: like one of those things that sort of lost to history.

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Speaker 1: Nobody really knows well. I mean, there's certainly a alchemical

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Speaker 1: DNA and Frankenstein's yeah, yeah, you know, it seems likely

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Speaker 1: the second theory that comes out of this Frankenstein's Womb book,

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Speaker 1: and it has been expressed in other places. Obviously, it's

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Speaker 1: not like Warren Ellis cooked it up? Uh? Is that

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Speaker 1: thematically Frankenstein is about a premature birth that Mary had

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Speaker 1: an eighteen fifteen where their baby died two weeks after

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Speaker 1: it was born. So this is uh again like there

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Speaker 1: and I'll get into this, like this woman had a

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Speaker 1: horrible life full of medical misfortune, and honestly, it really

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Speaker 1: seems like Percy Elly treated her like garbage. But it

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Speaker 1: said that he didn't even care about the baby's condition

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Speaker 1: after it was born, and went on to have an

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Speaker 1: affair with her step sister right after I was born. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and that Frankenstein. The writing of it is her reconciliation

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Speaker 1: with giving life and then that life dying, the death

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Speaker 1: of her baby, and the horrible father that she had

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Speaker 1: to put up with. So um and just all right,

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Speaker 1: here's a little a side note about Percy Shelley. It

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Speaker 1: sounds like an awful person all the way around. Like

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Speaker 1: everything I've read about it, he just doesn't sound like

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Speaker 1: a pleasant guy. Um. Not only was he this obnoxious adulterer,

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Speaker 1: but according to Paula Dory's diary from that summer, this

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Speaker 1: is just one little instance of him. They were all

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Speaker 1: sitting around telling stories or something, and Shelley just stood

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Speaker 1: up and grabbed his head and started shrieking and ran

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Speaker 1: out of the room like very pretentiously, and everybody was like,

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Speaker 1: what is this all about? And he runs into the bathroom,

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Speaker 1: he throws water into his face, and he comes back

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Speaker 1: and he goes, well, I'm sorry, it's just while you

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Speaker 1: were talking. Just then, I suddenly imagine a woman who

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Speaker 1: had eyes instead of nipples, and everybody was just like, oh, okay,

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Speaker 1: moving on. Uh so he seems like a real character. Um,

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Speaker 1: And I imagine for for Mary's part, you know, she

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Speaker 1: I think they got together at like super early age,

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Speaker 1: like she was like sixteen or something like that, and

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Speaker 1: they were married maybe when she was nineteen or twenty,

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Speaker 1: but like she had already given birth to this premature child.

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Speaker 1: A lot, a lot of weird stuff around this, And well,

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Speaker 1: I guess I'm that theories like that. I can certainly

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Speaker 1: see where it could be a part of the genesis

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Speaker 1: of the story, because certainly misfortune and life in Vincent

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Speaker 1: general tend to color our creative endeavors. But I guess

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Speaker 1: I tend to shy away from theories that say, oh,

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Speaker 1: this book right here is all about this one thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I just don't think life necessarily works like well,

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Speaker 1: and Frankenstein is one of those books right that, like

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember if I read it in high school.

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Speaker 1: I definitely read it in college because I took a

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Speaker 1: horror classes in college. But like, um, it's one of

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Speaker 1: those books sort of like Catcher in the Rye where

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Speaker 1: you can like you as the reader, bring your themes

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Speaker 1: to it, and lots of people try to apply those

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Speaker 1: and say, like this, this is what this is about, right, Uh,

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Speaker 1: and Frankenstein is one of those. I mean it it's

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Speaker 1: very universal in that way. Um, and so a lot

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Speaker 1: of people take different things from it. So, yeah, you're right,

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Speaker 1: there isn't Those are just two sort of little maybe

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Speaker 1: factoids about its genesis. Another thing I read was an

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Speaker 1: article called the Medicine of Shelley and Frankenstein out of

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Speaker 1: a journal called Emergency Medicine, and this sort of traced

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Speaker 1: the medical misfortunes as I mentioned earlier, of Mary Shelley

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Speaker 1: and how they may have influenced it. That she was

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Speaker 1: very much aware of science, medicine, and the ideas of

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Speaker 1: life and death because of all of these things. So

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna hit you with him real quick. So Mary

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Speaker 1: Shelley's mother was Mary Wolston Kraft, who was a prominent

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Speaker 1: feminist at the time, but she literally died ten days

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Speaker 1: after giving birth to Mary from puerre parole fever, which

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Speaker 1: was a pretty common occurrence at the time. I think. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There's also a mention of the birth of their daughter,

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Speaker 1: who I talked about earlier. Clara, that's the one who

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Speaker 1: died at twelve days of age. Reportedly, Mary had dreams

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Speaker 1: of this dead daughter being reanimated by fire right afterwards.

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Speaker 1: So you can imagine how like traumatized this woman was,

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Speaker 1: Like she grew up without a mother, her first kid dies,

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Speaker 1: she's I guess like eloped with this kind of jerk. Uh.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen sixteen, just after Mary gave birth to their

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Speaker 1: second child, William, her sister Fanny, committed suicide with laudanum.

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Speaker 1: Then in eighteen seventeen, Percy had another wife and her

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Speaker 1: name was Harriet, and she committed suicide while she was

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Speaker 1: pregnant with his child. Two weeks later, two weeks after

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Speaker 1: this woman commits suicide, Percy, Mary's Mary. And then they

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Speaker 1: have a third child, and that's Clara Everina Shelley, and

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Speaker 1: she died at thirteen months of age from dysenterry. Then William,

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Speaker 1: who was the one who was born earlier, he dies

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Speaker 1: in eighteen nineteen from malaria. So she's she's had three

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Speaker 1: kids who died, her sister, her what do you call

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Speaker 1: her other wife, and then her mother, they've all, like

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Speaker 1: every everybody around her just died. Uh. And then Percy

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Speaker 1: himself is lost at sea in eighteen two. Mary contracts

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Speaker 1: smallpox in eight and she lives until the ripe old

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Speaker 1: age of fifty two, when she died from a brain tumor.

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Speaker 1: So you guess you could say her short life was

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Speaker 1: full of life, death, and the the whims of brilliant

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Speaker 1: but unstable men exactly, which makes sense regarding the book,

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Speaker 1: and and just that, like she would have been aware

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Speaker 1: of a lot of the medical scientific goings on of

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Speaker 1: the time, not just because of this, but also because

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Speaker 1: her father and Percy and Byron they were all sort

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Speaker 1: of interested in this stuff and talked about it and

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Speaker 1: met with scientists at the time, as we'll talk about later.

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Speaker 1: So at the heart of Frankenstein, of course, we have

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Speaker 1: the tale of a of a human creating life, particularly

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Speaker 1: a human male creating life, using science to do so.

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Speaker 1: Uh and and in and in that, like the mythic

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Speaker 1: roots of this thing run pretty deep. And and if

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Speaker 1: you follow the mythic roots far enough, you also reach

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Speaker 1: like the basic uh, psychological underpinnings of this this whole

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Speaker 1: notion of of humans giving life to an unliving object. Um.

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Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna gonna gonna coast through some of

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Speaker 1: this here for you. So so we have numerous examples

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Speaker 1: of this to draw in myth of course you've got uh.

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Speaker 1: For instance, the Greek myth of Pygmalion, in which you know,

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Speaker 1: female scalp sculpture is is awoken with the help of

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Speaker 1: the god Venus. Uh. Medieval Jewish folk tales are full

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Speaker 1: full of golems um, artificial beings that are you know,

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Speaker 1: brought to life via a tablet of sacred words that

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Speaker 1: are inserted beneath the clay, humanoids, tongues, um. Countless other

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Speaker 1: examples exist now. But humans have a knack for attributing

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Speaker 1: life to artificial likenesses. And it's we call this anthropomorphism,

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Speaker 1: and it refers to when we take non human or

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Speaker 1: impersonal objects and we give them human or personal characteristics

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Speaker 1: or behaviors. Yeah, and so this is a good spot

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Speaker 1: for us to note something about Shelley's version of the monster, Uh,

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Speaker 1: that this Frankenstein's Monster was not sewn together and blasted

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Speaker 1: to life with lightning, as we've come to understand from

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Speaker 1: James Whale's ninety one film Uh. In fact, the machines

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Speaker 1: that are in that were actually inspired by Nicola Tesla's

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Speaker 1: high voltage devices. In the book, however, the monster is

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Speaker 1: more like a golem or homunculous and that it's brought

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Speaker 1: about by what is called, quote, an elemental principle of

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Speaker 1: life like alchemy that is then applied to various quote

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Speaker 1: raw materials from the dissecting room and the slaughterhouse. So yes,

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Speaker 1: it's undead meat, I guess, but it's not even necessarily

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Speaker 1: human parts. It's more like a flesh goum. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: while there is you know, an allusion to some sort

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Speaker 1: of electrical nature to the secret, it's very much a

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Speaker 1: secret in the book because the book is is is

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Speaker 1: told from the point of views of Victor and the creature,

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Speaker 1: and Victor, as a first person uh narrator here does

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Speaker 1: not want to share his secret. Like most of the

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Speaker 1: book is about how ashamed and awful he feels about

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Speaker 1: having brought this thing into being, and therefore he wants

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Speaker 1: to die with the secrets. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Remember the

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Speaker 1: narrative setup is that they're in the Arctic. He's on

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Speaker 1: a ship with the ship's captain I think, or somebody

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Speaker 1: who's on the ship and just basically telling recounting the

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Speaker 1: story to him and is full of woe at all

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Speaker 1: the tragedy that it has wrought him. Yeah, as he

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Speaker 1: and his created chase each other to the ends of

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Speaker 1: the earth. But but yeah, we have this basic idea

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Speaker 1: that just that we have the power to think things

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Speaker 1: to life, not in a literal sense, but in a

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Speaker 1: you know, in a metaphoric and psychological sense. A brick

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Speaker 1: is just a brick until we paint a smiley face

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Speaker 1: on it, and then it becomes inevitably a little harder

424
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:29,240
Speaker 1: or a little easier to throw that brick down a well,

425
00:24:29,320 --> 00:24:32,800
Speaker 1: because he'ven imbued it with a sense of being. And

426
00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:35,600
Speaker 1: this interesting court stems from something anthropologists called the law

427
00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:39,480
Speaker 1: of similarity, which holds that humans inevitably links superficial, real

428
00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:44,000
Speaker 1: life resemblances to deep, unreal resemblances. So a baby doll

429
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:46,800
Speaker 1: is in an actual infant, but it resembles one enough

430
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:49,040
Speaker 1: to make it real to the child who plays with it.

431
00:24:49,760 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 1: And there's a way to test the law of similarity

432
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:53,480
Speaker 1: on your own. You can sketch a face of a

433
00:24:53,520 --> 00:24:55,640
Speaker 1: loved one on a scrap of paper and then crumple

434
00:24:55,640 --> 00:24:57,960
Speaker 1: it in your hand. And when you do that, do

435
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:00,080
Speaker 1: you feel a connection? Do you feel like connects in

436
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:02,360
Speaker 1: that your mind forms, including the resemblance and the thing

437
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:06,680
Speaker 1: itself probably so. Uh so. Out of this phenomenon, we

438
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:11,080
Speaker 1: have innumerable magical and religious practices that emerge in human culture,

439
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:14,160
Speaker 1: such as harming a person's likeness to produce the same

440
00:25:14,200 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 1: effect on the actual person uh so called sympathetic magic

441
00:25:18,440 --> 00:25:21,840
Speaker 1: that includes the burning of effigies, the use of voodoo dolls.

442
00:25:21,200 --> 00:25:26,359
Speaker 1: And the roots of anthropypomorphic thinking lie in the human

443
00:25:26,400 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 1: capacity for reflective consciousness, the ability to use what we

444
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:33,800
Speaker 1: know about ourselves to understand and predict predict the behaviors

445
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:38,040
Speaker 1: of others. And these empathetic qualities gave early humans and

446
00:25:38,080 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: evolutionary advantage along that did not only outthink other people,

447
00:25:41,600 --> 00:25:44,560
Speaker 1: but also to fit the behaviors of domesticated animals within

448
00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:48,360
Speaker 1: the confines of human society. Yeah yeah, that's very important.

449
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 1: Yeah so. And then as a as kind of a

450
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:54,720
Speaker 1: sidebar to that, it also gives us the place and

451
00:25:54,800 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: human cognition to dream about bringing man made likenesses to life,

452
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:01,840
Speaker 1: be it a at you of a woman or a

453
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:07,639
Speaker 1: flesh golemn in a Gothic basement, which brings us to alchemy. Um,

454
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:10,520
Speaker 1: and I want to read a passage here from the book. Actually,

455
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 1: before we dive into this, there is Mary Shelley was

456
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:17,359
Speaker 1: obviously well aware of alchemy at the time, and she

457
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 1: works it into the book. There's a point where Victor's

458
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:23,960
Speaker 1: studying at the university and he's got some um I

459
00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:27,119
Speaker 1: guess mentors, and one of them is referred to They

460
00:26:27,119 --> 00:26:30,560
Speaker 1: don't give his first name, he's just M. Waldman. But

461
00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:34,440
Speaker 1: Waldman sort of, you know, guides Victor's study and says,

462
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:37,280
Speaker 1: you can use my machine. So he's it's implied Waldman

463
00:26:37,400 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 1: sort of knows how to do this himself. Maybe uh.

464
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:43,800
Speaker 1: And he says this about alchemists. He says, the ancient

465
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:49,600
Speaker 1: teachers of this science promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The

466
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 1: modern masters promised very little. They know that metals cannot

467
00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:56,760
Speaker 1: be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera.

468
00:26:57,200 --> 00:27:00,960
Speaker 1: But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble

469
00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:04,080
Speaker 1: in dirt and their eyes to pour over the microscope

470
00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:08,480
Speaker 1: or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the

471
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:11,800
Speaker 1: recesses of nature and show how she works in her

472
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:15,560
Speaker 1: hiding places. They ascend into the heavens. They have discovered

473
00:27:15,560 --> 00:27:18,440
Speaker 1: how the blood circulates and the nature of the air

474
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:22,880
Speaker 1: we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers.

475
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:26,639
Speaker 1: They can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake,

476
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:30,920
Speaker 1: and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.

477
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:33,760
Speaker 1: So there's a little bit of a set up here

478
00:27:33,800 --> 00:27:37,920
Speaker 1: that Shelley's giving us, which is, yes, alchemy was a thing,

479
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: and we acknowledge that Victor Frankenstein is pretty influenced by it.

480
00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 1: But modern science is here to pave the real way

481
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:48,960
Speaker 1: the alchemy left behind. Yeah, And and then I think

482
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 1: it gets to the heart of what alchemy was, uh,

483
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 1: you know, basically from the sixteenth of the eighteen centuries,

484
00:27:55,119 --> 00:28:01,480
Speaker 1: it was a hodgepodge of early chemistry, occultism, essential all

485
00:28:01,520 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 1: these these uh, these these graspings for understanding, some rooted

486
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:09,640
Speaker 1: in in pre scientific chemistry, like in an actual attempt

487
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:12,440
Speaker 1: to understand how these chemical properties interact with each other

488
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: and other. But but that is kind of muddled in

489
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:19,040
Speaker 1: together with a bunch of essentially who we uh, some

490
00:28:19,240 --> 00:28:22,399
Speaker 1: actual like you know, there were some interesting discoveries that

491
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:26,160
Speaker 1: came out of alchemy, but you didn't have scientific rigor

492
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:30,000
Speaker 1: there to guide it right. And remember Conrad Dipple, who

493
00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:32,560
Speaker 1: may or may not have influenced this story, was an

494
00:28:32,600 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 1: alchemist and claimed that he had found the elixir of life. Now,

495
00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:40,240
Speaker 1: the elixir of life is also known in alchemic circles

496
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 1: as the Philosopher's Stone. Yeah, the philosopher's Stone was certainly

497
00:28:45,800 --> 00:28:50,760
Speaker 1: one of the main alchemical um uh goals. Maybe well,

498
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:52,480
Speaker 1: but there were a couple of other things that were

499
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:55,720
Speaker 1: interesting as well. Of course, there's there's always the attempt

500
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 1: to turn things into gold, um right. For instance, there

501
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 1: was a seventeen entry alchemist Hinnig Brundt distilled countless buckets

502
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:07,000
Speaker 1: of urine in an attempt to turn urine into gold.

503
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:11,080
Speaker 1: And if only we could do that only yeah, uh so,

504
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 1: if I could only spin urine into gold. His experiment failed,

505
00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 1: which would come to know, there's no surprise to anyone.

506
00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:22,480
Speaker 1: But it did allow him to discover the element phosphorus.

507
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 1: So so you can see here and how even though

508
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 1: it was unguided and uh and uncertain and muddled with

509
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: all these other disciplines, they still occasionally accidentally achieve something

510
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 1: now and again, it's the history of science. Yea. Now,

511
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:42,640
Speaker 1: the fictional Frankenstein's work closely resembles alchemical attempts to produce H,

512
00:29:42,880 --> 00:29:46,960
Speaker 1: a minuscule artificial human avoid known as a homunculus. Uh

513
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:49,959
Speaker 1: and and uh. I've looked into this summing in the past.

514
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 1: I'm always fascinated by the homunculus. Do you have a

515
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 1: monster science episode about homunculi? I don't know. I just

516
00:29:56,640 --> 00:29:58,560
Speaker 1: I've done a few posts here and there about it.

517
00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: There's a there's a mini text known as the Libavack

518
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 1: or the Book of the Cow, and it it lays

519
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:09,240
Speaker 1: out the homunculous creation formula and bizarre details so that

520
00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 1: the process begins by mixing human semen with a mystical

521
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:17,440
Speaker 1: phosphorescent elixir and ends with a newborn humunculous emerging from

522
00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:20,719
Speaker 1: a cow, growing human skin and craving its mother's blood

523
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:24,680
Speaker 1: inside of a large glass or lead vessel. That sounds

524
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:27,720
Speaker 1: totally legit to me. I mean, at any time I've

525
00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:31,560
Speaker 1: mixed human semen with phosphorescent elixir, something close to this happens.

526
00:30:31,600 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 1: I think I've been missing the cow ingredient. But but

527
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 1: but at hard here? So what while lost amid false

528
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:45,280
Speaker 1: concepts of spontaneous generation and magical Tomfoolery. Alchemists were pondering

529
00:30:45,320 --> 00:30:49,400
Speaker 1: the possibility of creating an artificial rational animals, as they

530
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:53,840
Speaker 1: sometimes referred to it, through learned manipulation of organic tissue,

531
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 1: and at the time, it was widely believed that humans

532
00:30:56,560 --> 00:31:01,080
Speaker 1: could mimic and manipulate such natural reproductive processes, but biological

533
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 1: science was still incubating, and humanity's first breakthroughs came in

534
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:10,480
Speaker 1: the form of machines, uh, not flesh. And it's worth

535
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 1: noting here too that the novel states that Victor specifically

536
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:20,240
Speaker 1: studied books by Albertus Magnus, Paris Celsus, and Cornelius Agrippa,

537
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:24,840
Speaker 1: who were all known alchemists, and that he considered lords

538
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 1: of his imagination. Uh. Now, let's take a quick break.

539
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:30,600
Speaker 1: But when we get back, we can get into the

540
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:34,280
Speaker 1: machinery aspect of this of bringing life about by talking

541
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 1: about automatons. Alright, we're back. So the automaton uh slightly

542
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:49,240
Speaker 1: different deal than Frankenstein. I can't think offhand of any

543
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:52,280
Speaker 1: examples of like Frankenstein adaptations where they've gone for like

544
00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 1: a purely mechanical monster. The one that immediately pops into

545
00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 1: my head is Frankenstein's Army. Have you seen that? Yes, Yeah,

546
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:04,120
Speaker 1: they're very mechanical, but there is like organic tissue stone

547
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:07,400
Speaker 1: in there too, right, Yeah, they're kind of like steam punky.

548
00:32:07,520 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 1: Side words, Josh Clark turned me to that movie and

549
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:12,960
Speaker 1: I watched it on Netflix one time, So if you've

550
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:14,840
Speaker 1: never seen it, the premise of the movie is that

551
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:21,040
Speaker 1: Victor Frankenstein, it's like his grandson or somebody like that,

552
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 1: is alive during World War two and the Russians. He's

553
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 1: working for the Russians and he builds like this army

554
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:32,080
Speaker 1: of Frankenstein's that then just destroyed Nazis. And it's it's

555
00:32:32,080 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 1: a found footage film too, like somehow they're filming the

556
00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:38,800
Speaker 1: entire thing during World War Two. It's a it's pretty great.

557
00:32:38,840 --> 00:32:41,720
Speaker 1: It's been a sixteen it's more of a filmed haunted

558
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 1: attraction that's more of a house than it is a movie.

559
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 1: But it's still a lot of fun if you're in

560
00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:50,760
Speaker 1: for that. The monster designs are amazing. That's the the

561
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: best part. Now, as far as it's Frankenstein is concerned, Uh,

562
00:32:56,240 --> 00:32:58,960
Speaker 1: you know, we don't see a purely mechanical Frankenstein. It

563
00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:01,680
Speaker 1: certainly that's not what he presented in the book, But

564
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:08,600
Speaker 1: it's really difficult to think about Frankenstein's historical underpinnings without

565
00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 1: thinking about the obsession of of automatons, the idea that, Okay,

566
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 1: certainly people can't build something out of flesh, but we

567
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:17,920
Speaker 1: can build machines. And if we build machines that look

568
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:20,880
Speaker 1: like humans, if they if we can program them to

569
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:24,520
Speaker 1: to or make them so that they move in certain ways,

570
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:28,920
Speaker 1: then we are at least mimicking a living body. Um.

571
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 1: They're not intelligent in any sense of the world at word,

572
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:36,640
Speaker 1: but they serve as a forerunner to modern computational robots. Now.

573
00:33:36,800 --> 00:33:39,680
Speaker 1: Accounts of automatons date back as far as the fourth

574
00:33:39,680 --> 00:33:44,200
Speaker 1: century b C. When when a Greek poet Pindar wrote

575
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: of animated statues on the streets of Rhodes uh and

576
00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 1: you had accounts of other individuals building self propelled mechanical birds. Overtime,

577
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 1: Countless engineers and inventors applied their intellect to create mechanical, pneumatic,

578
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:03,520
Speaker 1: hide rolic and even electric mimicry of biological life, and

579
00:34:03,520 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 1: their attempts rained from Leonardo da Vinci's fifteenth century robotic Night,

580
00:34:07,680 --> 00:34:10,880
Speaker 1: which was apparently designed to walk and sit to Jacques

581
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:16,359
Speaker 1: de w Consin's eighteenth century digesting duck, which which made

582
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 1: the rounds, it was really more of a performance thing.

583
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:22,279
Speaker 1: It was supposedly this mechanical duck was using its motorized

584
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 1: chewing abilities, uh, to to eat and then it's digesting,

585
00:34:26,560 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 1: and then it has a mechanical sphincter to mimic defecation. Uh.

586
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:34,719
Speaker 1: Reportedly the inspiration for the tre ducan. Yeah, in a way,

587
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:38,240
Speaker 1: kind of a mechanical tre duncan, but it didn't actually

588
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:39,719
Speaker 1: digest anything. It was just kind of a part of

589
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:45,360
Speaker 1: the trick, but it didn't include actual biomimicry mechanics. But

590
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 1: it all reflects this this idea that Okay, if the

591
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:52,279
Speaker 1: body may be mechanical in nature, and if we can

592
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:55,640
Speaker 1: build machines that replicate it, then then perhaps this is

593
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:57,480
Speaker 1: the first step and getting to the point where we

594
00:34:57,480 --> 00:35:00,719
Speaker 1: can we can build a rational animal, that we can

595
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:02,640
Speaker 1: build a human, We can build an animal, we can

596
00:35:02,680 --> 00:35:05,439
Speaker 1: build a duck that digests. That these things are within

597
00:35:05,480 --> 00:35:09,400
Speaker 1: the graphs of human achievement. Yeah, this speaks to I

598
00:35:09,440 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 1: think just like this ongoing theme throughout human myth and

599
00:35:14,719 --> 00:35:18,000
Speaker 1: also in science to a certain degree. But of you know,

600
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:22,839
Speaker 1: us creating life outside of our regular reproductive means, right,

601
00:35:22,880 --> 00:35:25,439
Speaker 1: And of course Frankenstein's about that, But you can even say,

602
00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:28,319
Speaker 1: like I don't know data from Star Trek. The next

603
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:30,839
Speaker 1: generation is also about that, right, like the way in

604
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:33,239
Speaker 1: his own way he's at Frankenstein. You know it. It

605
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:36,239
Speaker 1: gets down to stuff we're still struggling with today, Like

606
00:35:36,640 --> 00:35:40,279
Speaker 1: whatever we can create that that resembles a human, that

607
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:43,880
Speaker 1: resembles a human human thought, that that tweaks the human design?

608
00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:48,520
Speaker 1: Like what's the divide between all that? That that that biology,

609
00:35:48,680 --> 00:35:54,799
Speaker 1: the biomechanics, and actual identity, actual consciousness. Seventeenth century French

610
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 1: philosopher Reneed de Cartes viewed nature is primarily mechanical. He

611
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:03,280
Speaker 1: avoided the messier existential complications of this view by defining

612
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:06,400
Speaker 1: the human soul as an independent force, as as the

613
00:36:06,440 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: ghost in the machine, as as philosopher and Descartes's critic

614
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:16,399
Speaker 1: Gilbert Ryle would later describe it, Yeah, Descartes classic philosopher,

615
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:19,319
Speaker 1: the old am I a brain in a jar? How

616
00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:21,040
Speaker 1: do I prove that I'm not just a brain in

617
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:23,160
Speaker 1: a jar? And a demon is torturing me into thinking

618
00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:26,400
Speaker 1: that existence is real? That was That was like pretty

619
00:36:26,480 --> 00:36:28,799
Speaker 1: much a whole semester of college for me, was trying

620
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 1: to wrap my brain around that one. Yeah, and like

621
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 1: I said, it, stuff we're still were worrying about today

622
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:36,560
Speaker 1: as we we were further and further towards the sort

623
00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:41,200
Speaker 1: of artificial intelligence that potentially reflects our own consciousness. So

624
00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 1: that too, is as a major theme and in Frankenstein,

625
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:49,080
Speaker 1: because because the creature is, like I say, unlike some

626
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:53,799
Speaker 1: of the more basic uh film adaptations, he is a

627
00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:56,640
Speaker 1: rational creature, he has them, he has emotions. You feel

628
00:36:56,640 --> 00:36:59,040
Speaker 1: a lot of sympathy for him in the book, really

629
00:36:59,080 --> 00:37:01,960
Speaker 1: more in my heating anyway, you feel more sympathy for

630
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:04,600
Speaker 1: the creature than you do for Victor, who who is

631
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 1: reckless and impulsive and uh, just kind of a disaster

632
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:13,000
Speaker 1: and and what is the creature but a result of

633
00:37:13,040 --> 00:37:16,600
Speaker 1: his disastrous choices. Yeah, And this brings us around to

634
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:22,239
Speaker 1: the alternate title of the book, which is the modern Prometheus. Uh.

635
00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:25,800
Speaker 1: And in many ways, Victor is that modern Prometheus. And

636
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:28,920
Speaker 1: as we were talking about earlier, there's a million different

637
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:31,600
Speaker 1: ways that you can try to dissect that and figure

638
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 1: out what the themes are going on there. I think

639
00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:39,040
Speaker 1: the term modern Prometheus was coined by Emmanuel Kant and

640
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:44,680
Speaker 1: in reference it was referencing Benjamin Franklin's experiments with electricity.

641
00:37:44,760 --> 00:37:47,439
Speaker 1: So let's take this apart for just a second. Here,

642
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:52,239
Speaker 1: Prometheus in the Greek iteration stole fire from the gods, right,

643
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: But then there's a Latin iteration as well of Prometheus,

644
00:37:56,600 --> 00:37:59,040
Speaker 1: and he was basically bringing men to life I think

645
00:37:59,040 --> 00:38:02,880
Speaker 1: from clay by using particles of quote, heavenly fire, so

646
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:07,080
Speaker 1: also electricity maybe. Um So there's there's a lot going

647
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 1: on in there. Was Mary Shelley purposely connecting it to

648
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:14,759
Speaker 1: both of those and how did she envision this the

649
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:20,399
Speaker 1: I guess symbology of Prometheus as as relevant to her

650
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:23,200
Speaker 1: context right the time that she lived in when people

651
00:38:23,239 --> 00:38:26,800
Speaker 1: were experimenting with electricity, trying to discern what the meaning

652
00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 1: was between life and death and whether you could use

653
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:32,560
Speaker 1: electricity to revive a dead body. Yeah, I mean the

654
00:38:32,719 --> 00:38:36,719
Speaker 1: Promethean figures are are fascinating and in various mythologies, be

655
00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:39,279
Speaker 1: at actual Prometheus or some other generation of where you

656
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:42,759
Speaker 1: have a character, uh an individual demigod, even sometimes it's

657
00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:45,720
Speaker 1: just kind of a semi human hero who takes something

658
00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:48,040
Speaker 1: from the gods and gives it to humans generally, it's

659
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:51,360
Speaker 1: like a technology or an ability. Their their Chinese myths

660
00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:56,560
Speaker 1: where it's uh, it's more agricultural in nature, and so like,

661
00:38:56,840 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 1: what does that what does that mean? Does that mean

662
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:01,080
Speaker 1: that that humans here have they have they stepped out

663
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 1: of beyond their boundaries? Are they doing so they dabbling

664
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:08,600
Speaker 1: in God's domain? Or is it simply like, hey, they

665
00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:11,840
Speaker 1: have mastered something. Here is something that previously was the

666
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:17,239
Speaker 1: domain of of of of of of forces beyond their imagination,

667
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:22,239
Speaker 1: and now it is within the human experience. Yeah. Obviously

668
00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:25,799
Speaker 1: makes me think of the recent movie Prometheus, set within

669
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:29,480
Speaker 1: the alien mythology and the beginning of that where these

670
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:34,520
Speaker 1: uh what are they? These statuesque engineer aliens come to

671
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 1: Earth and give life to earth basically by I mean,

672
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:40,400
Speaker 1: there's the first five minutes of the film, like one

673
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:44,640
Speaker 1: of them just dissolves, right and like his cellular parts

674
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:48,480
Speaker 1: become the nature of life. Well, yeah, they're presented as titans.

675
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 1: Prometheus was a Titan, So it's it's I mean, it's

676
00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:55,280
Speaker 1: really the the metaphor is strong in that one. Yeah.

677
00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:59,840
Speaker 1: So this brings us to the real nuts and bolts

678
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:04,279
Speaker 1: science behind Frankenstein and that all starts with bioelectricity. So

679
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 1: I want to do just a real basic encyclopedia breakdown

680
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:14,520
Speaker 1: of what we mean by bioelectricity. Here we're referring to

681
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:19,759
Speaker 1: the electric potentials and currents that are produced by or

682
00:40:19,960 --> 00:40:25,560
Speaker 1: occurring within living organisms. So this is not necessarily Frankenstein's monster,

683
00:40:25,719 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: but the experiments of people like Luigi Galvani and Alessandro

684
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:33,680
Speaker 1: Volta in the eighteenth century influenced this field of study,

685
00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:35,960
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk about them much more in the

686
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:39,279
Speaker 1: next couple of minutes. Generally, they were looking for a

687
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 1: connection between electricity and the muscle contractions and frogs and

688
00:40:43,680 --> 00:40:46,960
Speaker 1: other animals, and it lead to modern developments where we

689
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:50,600
Speaker 1: can now measure bioelectric effects and clinical medicine. Right, you know,

690
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 1: we can measure uh, how electricity emanates from our hearts

691
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:57,640
Speaker 1: and our brains, etcetera, as part of our modern medicine.

692
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 1: The difference is that bioelectric city currents consist of a

693
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:05,480
Speaker 1: flow of ions, whereas the kind of electrical current that

694
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:09,120
Speaker 1: we use for power UH is more of a movement

695
00:41:09,200 --> 00:41:15,400
Speaker 1: of electrons. Bioelectric pulses a company all muscular contraction and

696
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:18,360
Speaker 1: a nerve and muscle cells Basically what happens there's a

697
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:22,759
Speaker 1: chemical or electrochemical stimulation that changes the cell membrane, so

698
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:27,399
Speaker 1: they discharge a current along those fibers and activate the

699
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:32,440
Speaker 1: contractile mechanism, so the contraction of these muscles. Now, Professor

700
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:36,920
Speaker 1: Sharon Rustin has written quite a bit about the science

701
00:41:37,360 --> 00:41:40,480
Speaker 1: behind the context of the time that Mary Shelley was

702
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:42,480
Speaker 1: living in the influence this, and I want to talk

703
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:45,759
Speaker 1: about a couple of these. There's uh three or four.

704
00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:49,920
Speaker 1: The first is that at the time of the novels writing,

705
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:54,239
Speaker 1: drowning and resuscitation from drowning were a very big thing,

706
00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: as she tells it, despite the fact that a lot

707
00:41:56,640 --> 00:41:59,960
Speaker 1: of people worked along the Thames in London, they couldn't

708
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:03,279
Speaker 1: necessarily swim uh. And so there was this group that

709
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 1: was started called the Royal Humane Society in London. It

710
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:09,879
Speaker 1: was established in seventeen seventy four, but its first name

711
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:15,759
Speaker 1: was the Society for the Recovery of Persons apparently drowned uh,

712
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:17,960
Speaker 1: and its whole aim was to publish information on how

713
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:21,680
Speaker 1: to resuscitate others and save lives. Saving people from drowning

714
00:42:21,719 --> 00:42:24,200
Speaker 1: was such a big deal that they used to have

715
00:42:24,239 --> 00:42:27,240
Speaker 1: an annual procession in London of all of the people

716
00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:31,200
Speaker 1: that were quote raised from the dead by these methods, okay,

717
00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:36,520
Speaker 1: one of these people was Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wolston Craft,

718
00:42:36,680 --> 00:42:39,319
Speaker 1: who had tried to kill herself by jumping off of

719
00:42:39,360 --> 00:42:44,359
Speaker 1: Putney Bridge into the Thames, and afterwards she complained that

720
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:49,799
Speaker 1: she was inhumanely brought back to life and misery. And

721
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:53,760
Speaker 1: as a consequence of these resurrections, there was a growing

722
00:42:53,920 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 1: fear that wasn't just drowning, Like maybe you could appear

723
00:42:57,160 --> 00:42:59,360
Speaker 1: dead and then you'd, oh, you'd be alive. So what

724
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:02,640
Speaker 1: if I get buried alive? This is where people really

725
00:43:02,680 --> 00:43:06,879
Speaker 1: start freaking about the idea of being buried alive. Uh. Yeah,

726
00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:09,440
Speaker 1: this is interesting to think about because if you think

727
00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:11,919
Speaker 1: back to a time where we're falling in the water,

728
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 1: not being able to swim, essentially drowning, that that's just

729
00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 1: a complete death sentence, And then you see an uptick

730
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:23,440
Speaker 1: in the survivability of these experiences. Um he could we

731
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:26,680
Speaker 1: view it today is just a basic reality that individuals

732
00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 1: can be resuscitated. But but when the idea is fresh,

733
00:43:30,239 --> 00:43:33,560
Speaker 1: it takes on these kind of supernatural aspects. Yeah very

734
00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:36,160
Speaker 1: much so. Uh, I mean Here's the thing is that

735
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:38,920
Speaker 1: doctors at the time, in fact, one of them was

736
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:42,200
Speaker 1: Shelley's doctor. His name was James Curry, wrote a book

737
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:44,399
Speaker 1: where he argued that the only way to be sure

738
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:48,440
Speaker 1: that someone was dead was if putrification began. Other states

739
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:51,160
Speaker 1: like painting, or being in a coma, or even being

740
00:43:51,160 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 1: asleep were sort of considered to be like death. And

741
00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:58,719
Speaker 1: we see this reflected in the book Frankenstein in the

742
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 1: way that she uses language to describe like when Elizabeth

743
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 1: faints or when Victor collapses. They talk about it as

744
00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:08,400
Speaker 1: if like they were momentarily dead and then came back.

745
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:11,080
Speaker 1: So it was a very different understanding of the difference

746
00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:14,759
Speaker 1: between life and death at that time. Now we get

747
00:44:14,760 --> 00:44:20,960
Speaker 1: into Galvani, Volta and Aldini. These are the Italian electrocutioners,

748
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:24,000
Speaker 1: as I like to call them. These guys played with electricity.

749
00:44:24,040 --> 00:44:26,680
Speaker 1: My understanding is you guys talked about the You and

750
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:30,000
Speaker 1: Joe talked about them in a previous episode that was

751
00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:34,200
Speaker 1: all about sort of the zany religious antics around electricity.

752
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:36,799
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, Well, I'll be sure to include a

753
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:39,520
Speaker 1: link to to that episode of those episodes in the

754
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:42,200
Speaker 1: on the landing page for this episode. So in the

755
00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:46,440
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty one preface to the book, Shelley mentions that

756
00:44:46,680 --> 00:44:51,279
Speaker 1: modern scientific discussions in galvanism influenced her story, and what

757
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 1: she was referring to was the work of Italian physician

758
00:44:55,040 --> 00:44:58,759
Speaker 1: Luigi Galvani. Uh And this guy basically found that a

759
00:44:58,840 --> 00:45:01,840
Speaker 1: dead frog's leg would twitch as if they were alive

760
00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:04,920
Speaker 1: when they are struck with a spark of electricity. He

761
00:45:04,960 --> 00:45:07,360
Speaker 1: figured this out in seventeen eighty one while he was

762
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:12,200
Speaker 1: dissecting a frog nearby a static electricity machine. His assistant

763
00:45:12,239 --> 00:45:16,279
Speaker 1: accidentally touched a scalpel to a nerve in the frog's leg.

764
00:45:16,719 --> 00:45:20,480
Speaker 1: The leg moved, and Galvanni immediately changed all of his

765
00:45:20,560 --> 00:45:25,520
Speaker 1: research into something he called animal electricity. Tried to replicate

766
00:45:25,600 --> 00:45:30,759
Speaker 1: this experiment over and over again. His contemporary, Alessandro Volta,

767
00:45:30,960 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 1: was one of the earliest readers of these papers, and

768
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:37,839
Speaker 1: he had already earned a reputation as discovering electric potential

769
00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:41,200
Speaker 1: and charge, as well as being the first person to

770
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:47,040
Speaker 1: isolate methane gas. So Volta reproduced Galvani's experiments, but he

771
00:45:47,160 --> 00:45:51,080
Speaker 1: had a totally different conclusion. He thought the electricity actually

772
00:45:51,120 --> 00:45:54,279
Speaker 1: came from the metals in the in the room. The

773
00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:56,840
Speaker 1: dissimilar metals and that the frog itself was just simply

774
00:45:56,880 --> 00:45:59,920
Speaker 1: a conductor for those. Galvani in the meantime, believed that

775
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:03,720
Speaker 1: electricity resided in the frog itself and thought the two

776
00:46:03,800 --> 00:46:08,080
Speaker 1: dissimilar metals were merely conducting electricity from one part of

777
00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:11,400
Speaker 1: the frog to another. He thought electrical energy was actually

778
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:15,640
Speaker 1: intrinsic to biological matter. And they developed this bitter feud

779
00:46:15,640 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: over it, and academics from you know, around all just

780
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:21,799
Speaker 1: took sides and it became like an issue. It was

781
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:26,400
Speaker 1: like a modern debate. Um. They were both kind of

782
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:28,960
Speaker 1: right in their own ways. They were also both kind

783
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:30,440
Speaker 1: of wrong in their own ways. I mean, it was

784
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 1: a time when we were still trying to figure out

785
00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 1: what electricity was and how it worked, and then certainly

786
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:40,160
Speaker 1: how it it was involved in the in the processes

787
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:42,320
Speaker 1: of the human body and the movement of muscles, etcetera.

788
00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 1: And an electricity kind of had this holy area at

789
00:46:45,480 --> 00:46:48,200
Speaker 1: the time, but it was this mystery of it was

790
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:51,040
Speaker 1: there was something divine in it. And this is even

791
00:46:51,160 --> 00:46:55,400
Speaker 1: before like we get into uh Edison and Tesla and

792
00:46:55,400 --> 00:47:00,759
Speaker 1: their electricity wars and all that. In Volta invented the

793
00:47:00,840 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 1: voltaic pile. Uh. This was basically a stack of disks

794
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 1: of two different metals that were separated by brine soaked paper.

795
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:11,880
Speaker 1: This was the world's first battery. He invented it, and

796
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:17,040
Speaker 1: we know his stack worked today because dissimilar metals transfer

797
00:47:17,200 --> 00:47:22,640
Speaker 1: electrons in an oxidation reduction reaction. We also know that

798
00:47:22,719 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 1: the reason why the frog legs moved is because of

799
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:28,359
Speaker 1: what I was talking about earlier. Electricity plays a role

800
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:31,680
Speaker 1: in muscular contractions. So again, they're both right, they're both wrong.

801
00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:35,799
Speaker 1: Galvani actually responded to both the skepticism though, and he's

802
00:47:35,840 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: just he just keeps conducting more sets on various animals

803
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:44,080
Speaker 1: and their exposed nerves and keeps recreating muscle contractions without

804
00:47:44,160 --> 00:47:48,480
Speaker 1: those dissimilar metals present. Uh. And he absolutely believed nerves

805
00:47:48,480 --> 00:47:52,800
Speaker 1: were insulated with non conductive coding, which we now call myelin,

806
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:56,880
Speaker 1: and that electrical impulses traveled through them to muscle cells.

807
00:47:57,760 --> 00:48:00,840
Speaker 1: There's another article that I read by guy named Richard Shaw,

808
00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:05,319
Speaker 1: and it's called Volta's Battery, Animal Electricity and Frankenstein. All

809
00:48:05,360 --> 00:48:09,960
Speaker 1: this stuff is connected. Uh. Shaw argues that Volta's invention

810
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:13,799
Speaker 1: was significant to the novel, as was Galvani and the

811
00:48:13,840 --> 00:48:17,800
Speaker 1: existence of the idea of animal electricity. Uh. He argues

812
00:48:17,840 --> 00:48:21,920
Speaker 1: that Shelley's book is actually a challenge of Volta's research

813
00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:26,360
Speaker 1: trying to distinguish life in the near appearance of life.

814
00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:29,880
Speaker 1: So uh, it puts her in the book right in

815
00:48:29,880 --> 00:48:31,920
Speaker 1: the middle of this big debate that was going on.

816
00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:34,120
Speaker 1: And this is a quote from his paper. He says,

817
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:38,319
Speaker 1: Shelly understands animal electricity not as life, but as a

818
00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:43,000
Speaker 1: token for life, and thereby arrests the tendency of the

819
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 1: vitalists to make it an object and to mistake it

820
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:51,279
Speaker 1: for life itself. So this brings up a question where

821
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:53,759
Speaker 1: we talked about this earlier. It's very unclear in the

822
00:48:53,800 --> 00:48:57,440
Speaker 1: book what science is actually being used to create Frankenstein,

823
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:02,200
Speaker 1: and it seems to come out of as I recall,

824
00:49:02,680 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 1: like he's just he's working himself over, clocking himself to

825
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:08,200
Speaker 1: the point of just near just I meanbe actually complete

826
00:49:08,200 --> 00:49:12,800
Speaker 1: physical exhaustion. So he he alone has the brilliance, madness,

827
00:49:12,800 --> 00:49:15,839
Speaker 1: and determination to grasp the secret, and he's not about

828
00:49:15,840 --> 00:49:18,120
Speaker 1: to share it with the rest of us because it's horrible. Well,

829
00:49:18,160 --> 00:49:20,120
Speaker 1: we might be able to unpack this a little bit.

830
00:49:20,560 --> 00:49:25,279
Speaker 1: Maybe the secret was the voltaic battery, at least in

831
00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:28,120
Speaker 1: terms of what Shelley knew about at the time. Now

832
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 1: here's where things get even weirder. And this also happened

833
00:49:31,160 --> 00:49:34,080
Speaker 1: before Shelley wrote the book. Galvani had a nephew and

834
00:49:34,200 --> 00:49:37,320
Speaker 1: his name was Giovanni Aldini, and he went a step

835
00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:41,080
Speaker 1: further and he tried to reanimate hanged criminals with electricity

836
00:49:41,640 --> 00:49:45,040
Speaker 1: in eighteen oh three at Newgate Prison in London. He

837
00:49:45,120 --> 00:49:47,560
Speaker 1: did this with the some success and a guy named

838
00:49:47,600 --> 00:49:51,120
Speaker 1: George Forster who was found guilty of murdering his wife

839
00:49:51,120 --> 00:49:54,799
Speaker 1: and child. Now a whole crowd was there and they

840
00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:59,040
Speaker 1: all reported that they saw Forster's eye open, his right

841
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:02,720
Speaker 1: hand raise up and clench, and his leg move. And

842
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:08,799
Speaker 1: by the way, Aldini used Volta's pile in his electrocution experiment. Now,

843
00:50:08,800 --> 00:50:11,680
Speaker 1: obviously he didn't bring the individual back to life so

844
00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:13,959
Speaker 1: much as he just made a dance around a little

845
00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:16,440
Speaker 1: bit exactly. But it would have been interesting. What what

846
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 1: if he had what have you been able to That

847
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:20,000
Speaker 1: would have been, Yeah, does he have to does he

848
00:50:20,040 --> 00:50:22,400
Speaker 1: get another death set finance? Where is that sentence served?

849
00:50:23,120 --> 00:50:28,440
Speaker 1: That's a good yeah. Yeah. The ethics, so many ethical quandaries,

850
00:50:28,520 --> 00:50:30,279
Speaker 1: In fact, we're gonna get into that the end of

851
00:50:30,280 --> 00:50:33,200
Speaker 1: this episode. There's a fun bit of ethics played with

852
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:36,440
Speaker 1: the science here. Uh, but let me even just finish

853
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:39,840
Speaker 1: with some more scientific stuff here. That that Mary Shelley

854
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:43,560
Speaker 1: was clearly aware of. Another was Humphrey Davy's book The

855
00:50:43,640 --> 00:50:48,040
Speaker 1: Elements of Chemical Philosophy. Now, Humphrey Davy and William Nicholson

856
00:50:48,120 --> 00:50:52,600
Speaker 1: were the era's leading electrical researchers, and they were friends

857
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:55,840
Speaker 1: of her father, so she probably knew all about them

858
00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:59,720
Speaker 1: as well as this history of electrical experiments with corpses,

859
00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:04,480
Speaker 1: whether they be human or animals. Uh. Davy used Volta's

860
00:51:04,520 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 1: battery for what is now called electrolysis and isolated a

861
00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:12,840
Speaker 1: series of substances for the first time. He basically invented

862
00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:16,320
Speaker 1: electro chemistry. He went on to invent the Davy lamp,

863
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:19,520
Speaker 1: to which separated flame from gas so that there was

864
00:51:19,600 --> 00:51:23,160
Speaker 1: safer usage of like lanterns in minds that were filled

865
00:51:23,200 --> 00:51:26,200
Speaker 1: with methane gas. And he published this book, Elements of

866
00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:29,799
Speaker 1: Chemical Philosophy in eighteen twelve as an account of the

867
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:33,400
Speaker 1: field within which he worked. So it's very much thought

868
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:37,200
Speaker 1: that this is a book that influenced Shelley. She was

869
00:51:37,239 --> 00:51:39,040
Speaker 1: aware of it. He was a friend of the family,

870
00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:43,520
Speaker 1: uh and clearly brought it into her work on Frankenstein.

871
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:48,239
Speaker 1: Now one last little tie in here. There was a

872
00:51:48,239 --> 00:51:51,000
Speaker 1: big focus on life and the body at the time

873
00:51:51,040 --> 00:51:54,839
Speaker 1: as well, and another debate was going on between two surgeons,

874
00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:58,839
Speaker 1: this time John Abernathy and William Lawrence, and they were

875
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:01,919
Speaker 1: arguing about the Nate sure of life. Now here's the thing.

876
00:52:02,200 --> 00:52:06,080
Speaker 1: William Lawrence had been the Shelley's doctor previously. I mean,

877
00:52:06,120 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 1: think about all those medical misfortunes we talked about earlier.

878
00:52:09,200 --> 00:52:12,719
Speaker 1: She must have visited a lot of doctors. So he

879
00:52:12,800 --> 00:52:15,960
Speaker 1: was seen as a radical because he argued that life

880
00:52:16,360 --> 00:52:20,080
Speaker 1: was simply the working operation of a body's functions and

881
00:52:20,120 --> 00:52:23,239
Speaker 1: he didn't take the soul into account. And people got

882
00:52:23,239 --> 00:52:26,279
Speaker 1: really upset about this. So subsequently he was forced to

883
00:52:26,320 --> 00:52:29,560
Speaker 1: withdraw his book about this topic from publication and he

884
00:52:29,600 --> 00:52:31,920
Speaker 1: had to actually resign from the hospital he worked at

885
00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:36,960
Speaker 1: because he didn't have a scientific principle for the soul. Now. Abernathy,

886
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:39,920
Speaker 1: on the other hand, argued that life didn't depend on

887
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:42,759
Speaker 1: the body's structure, and that our bodies were just these

888
00:52:42,840 --> 00:52:46,040
Speaker 1: material substances that life was attached to as what he

889
00:52:46,120 --> 00:52:50,399
Speaker 1: called quote a vital principle. Now this goes right back

890
00:52:50,440 --> 00:52:54,080
Speaker 1: to what we were talking about earlier with alchemy and

891
00:52:54,239 --> 00:52:59,160
Speaker 1: the biomechanical soul and especially goalms. I mean, essentially what

892
00:52:59,239 --> 00:53:01,880
Speaker 1: abernatheists thing is like, Oh, we're just all golems that

893
00:53:01,920 --> 00:53:05,920
Speaker 1: are filled with souls. You know, when one uh one

894
00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:10,839
Speaker 1: thing about all these historical um dissections I guess you'd say,

895
00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:14,879
Speaker 1: of of Frankenstein and the and the the the individuals

896
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:17,200
Speaker 1: and the works that and they may have inspired Frankenstein

897
00:53:17,640 --> 00:53:20,719
Speaker 1: is that sometimes when when you start absorbing a lot

898
00:53:20,719 --> 00:53:24,040
Speaker 1: of it, it begins to feel like an attempt to

899
00:53:24,239 --> 00:53:30,400
Speaker 1: ground a female authors success in the works of male

900
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:35,000
Speaker 1: UH scientists and male writers and male professionals, etcetera. So

901
00:53:35,040 --> 00:53:37,360
Speaker 1: I think it's important to note that no matter what

902
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:39,759
Speaker 1: her influences were, no matter what work she was, she was,

903
00:53:39,880 --> 00:53:43,000
Speaker 1: she was drawing off of the way she assembled at

904
00:53:43,040 --> 00:53:46,399
Speaker 1: all UH is brilliant. The way she assembled at all

905
00:53:46,640 --> 00:53:48,799
Speaker 1: is is just above reproach. So we don't we don't

906
00:53:48,800 --> 00:53:52,000
Speaker 1: want that to to bleed away in the dissection. Not

907
00:53:52,120 --> 00:53:54,360
Speaker 1: at all. None of these guys that I just mentioned

908
00:53:54,400 --> 00:53:58,919
Speaker 1: could have created a work as imaginative and insightful as Frankenstein.

909
00:53:59,280 --> 00:54:03,600
Speaker 1: And let's let's be honest here, neither did her husband

910
00:54:03,680 --> 00:54:07,240
Speaker 1: or Lord Byron or Paula Dorri on that fateful summer.

911
00:54:07,320 --> 00:54:10,040
Speaker 1: She was the only one who wrote, you know, who

912
00:54:10,080 --> 00:54:13,560
Speaker 1: finished a novel. Paul Dory had that vampire story. That's fine,

913
00:54:13,640 --> 00:54:20,439
Speaker 1: but I mean she created this uh long lasting, two

914
00:54:20,560 --> 00:54:24,160
Speaker 1: hundred year epic that we're still looking back on today.

915
00:54:24,840 --> 00:54:26,880
Speaker 1: Uh let's take a quick break, and then when we

916
00:54:26,920 --> 00:54:29,759
Speaker 1: get back, let's talk about that. Where we are now

917
00:54:29,800 --> 00:54:33,640
Speaker 1: two hundred years later and what Frankenstein's influences on all

918
00:54:33,640 --> 00:54:38,080
Speaker 1: of us. Alright, we're back, So yeah, Frankenstein continues to

919
00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:41,239
Speaker 1: cast this long shadow not only over our culture, but

920
00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:46,040
Speaker 1: also over our perception of science. And you'll still you

921
00:54:46,080 --> 00:54:49,080
Speaker 1: go into something like Eureko Alerts or or any of

922
00:54:49,120 --> 00:54:51,479
Speaker 1: the various science journalism websites, if you do a search

923
00:54:51,520 --> 00:54:54,640
Speaker 1: for Frankenstein, you're gonna you're gonna find some some articles

924
00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:57,239
Speaker 1: that are out directly related to Frankenstein is somewhere or another.

925
00:54:57,239 --> 00:55:00,960
Speaker 1: But you're also just gonna find Frankenstein used repeat as

926
00:55:00,960 --> 00:55:04,480
Speaker 1: an adjective, as is even a slur um Tell me

927
00:55:04,520 --> 00:55:07,239
Speaker 1: about it yesterday, trying to do research for this episode. Man,

928
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:10,880
Speaker 1: Like I really had to make use of all of

929
00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:14,880
Speaker 1: the filters in our library search engine to try to

930
00:55:15,000 --> 00:55:18,000
Speaker 1: really hone down what I was looking for. Because yeah,

931
00:55:18,160 --> 00:55:22,160
Speaker 1: the just the term Frankenstein is used now as a bird, right,

932
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:25,680
Speaker 1: like to Frankenstein something. I use it like that, of course,

933
00:55:25,680 --> 00:55:28,440
Speaker 1: but like there are scientific articles that throw it around

934
00:55:28,440 --> 00:55:34,359
Speaker 1: pretty pretty uh easily to draw attention. Yeah. And you know,

935
00:55:34,440 --> 00:55:36,759
Speaker 1: as as much as we said we can discount and

936
00:55:36,760 --> 00:55:39,879
Speaker 1: say all right, you're over using using this term, using

937
00:55:39,880 --> 00:55:43,120
Speaker 1: it poorly, etcetera, it has still become a part of

938
00:55:43,160 --> 00:55:45,120
Speaker 1: the way that we view science. I mean, that's how

939
00:55:45,160 --> 00:55:48,640
Speaker 1: influential this was as a work of science fiction. Um,

940
00:55:48,680 --> 00:55:53,000
Speaker 1: you know, I think Frankenstein, Man, it's a real quintessential

941
00:55:53,080 --> 00:55:56,279
Speaker 1: work obviously, but it really speaks to what we do

942
00:55:56,400 --> 00:55:59,200
Speaker 1: here on the show. I think, like our mission here

943
00:55:59,239 --> 00:56:02,080
Speaker 1: was stuff to blow your mind. Frankenstein is sort of

944
00:56:02,120 --> 00:56:06,240
Speaker 1: this perfect text that we can attach what we do

945
00:56:06,440 --> 00:56:08,879
Speaker 1: with and that like it is about science, but it's

946
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:13,720
Speaker 1: also about the larger world and the human experience. Uh

947
00:56:13,800 --> 00:56:16,560
Speaker 1: it's just man, revisiting it this last year, I've just

948
00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:19,799
Speaker 1: really fallen in love with it. Yeah, it is it's

949
00:56:19,840 --> 00:56:21,480
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful text, and it has a little bit

950
00:56:21,480 --> 00:56:23,080
Speaker 1: of every Everything that we love here on the show

951
00:56:23,239 --> 00:56:25,440
Speaker 1: is president in the book. But because one of the

952
00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:29,440
Speaker 1: things with science fiction, first of all, it's a brilliant example,

953
00:56:29,520 --> 00:56:32,840
Speaker 1: because she was vague and exactly how Victor is bringing

954
00:56:33,440 --> 00:56:36,120
Speaker 1: life to this thing. And if you're vague enough, then

955
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:38,400
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna come along ten years later and say, oh,

956
00:56:38,440 --> 00:56:40,840
Speaker 1: you've got it wrong, because he never he never actually

957
00:56:40,840 --> 00:56:44,840
Speaker 1: shares the secret with the reader, totally right. So so

958
00:56:44,920 --> 00:56:47,600
Speaker 1: there's that. But then also we obviously have not reached

959
00:56:47,600 --> 00:56:51,719
Speaker 1: the point in time where human achievement has equalled the

960
00:56:51,800 --> 00:56:56,160
Speaker 1: fictional u achievement in the book, the creation of life.

961
00:56:56,320 --> 00:56:59,719
Speaker 1: But we have made a number of advances that continue

962
00:56:59,800 --> 00:57:02,799
Speaker 1: to push the boundaries and and and and certainly give

963
00:57:02,920 --> 00:57:06,480
Speaker 1: life to this The shadow of Frankenstein is hanging over things.

964
00:57:06,480 --> 00:57:10,560
Speaker 1: I mean, advances in that synthetic biology and other fields. Uh.

965
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:13,760
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty two we unlock the mysteries of DNA,

966
00:57:14,320 --> 00:57:17,800
Speaker 1: and subsequent breakthroughs in genetics have empowered and the science

967
00:57:17,800 --> 00:57:21,520
Speaker 1: of cloning. In two thousand ten, researchers created synthetic bacteria

968
00:57:21,760 --> 00:57:24,840
Speaker 1: in the lab, the first one to be controlled entirely

969
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:28,760
Speaker 1: by man made genetic instructions. Elsewhere, robotics continue to develop

970
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:35,920
Speaker 1: increasingly complex, increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence, and biologically inspired mechanical forms.

971
00:57:36,400 --> 00:57:39,200
Speaker 1: And through all of this, uh yeah, Frankenstein's Monster continues

972
00:57:39,240 --> 00:57:43,960
Speaker 1: to resonate as a powerful model of unchecked scientific advancement,

973
00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:47,240
Speaker 1: as well as a reminder of the murky philosophical and

974
00:57:47,400 --> 00:57:51,920
Speaker 1: ethical quagmires we wish to avoid. So as as kind

975
00:57:51,920 --> 00:57:55,720
Speaker 1: of a modern myth, Frankenstein taps into that fear that

976
00:57:55,840 --> 00:57:59,480
Speaker 1: the like Victor will lack the wisdom or responsibility to

977
00:57:59,520 --> 00:58:04,760
Speaker 1: control our scientific creations and uh and the Monster embodies

978
00:58:04,840 --> 00:58:08,040
Speaker 1: such modern fears as a lab created black hole or

979
00:58:08,120 --> 00:58:11,680
Speaker 1: man made plagues, nuclear annihilation. And the story also poses

980
00:58:11,680 --> 00:58:15,320
Speaker 1: the possibility that liked the Monster himself, science will deliver

981
00:58:15,440 --> 00:58:18,000
Speaker 1: us to a place where we find the integrity of

982
00:58:18,000 --> 00:58:20,600
Speaker 1: the human body violated, in the nature of the human

983
00:58:20,680 --> 00:58:23,960
Speaker 1: soul scourged. And these are themes. All of these are

984
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:26,600
Speaker 1: themes that we have talked about in the last year

985
00:58:26,840 --> 00:58:29,880
Speaker 1: on the show, like whether we're talking about bioengineering or

986
00:58:29,920 --> 00:58:35,120
Speaker 1: body hacking, or biosynthesis or you know, you and Joe

987
00:58:35,200 --> 00:58:39,760
Speaker 1: did the electricity episode, like we're circling around this stuff unintentionally,

988
00:58:40,760 --> 00:58:43,400
Speaker 1: we're all in Frankenstein's orbit. Yeah, I mean, as we uh,

989
00:58:43,440 --> 00:58:47,520
Speaker 1: as we've discussed um some biotechnology episodes in the summer,

990
00:58:47,680 --> 00:58:52,240
Speaker 1: we see great examples of the science clearly outpacing our

991
00:58:52,280 --> 00:58:55,280
Speaker 1: ability to really drive home what our rules and regulations

992
00:58:55,280 --> 00:58:58,840
Speaker 1: and expectations should be. And I mean, what's more Frankenstein

993
00:58:58,840 --> 00:59:02,040
Speaker 1: than that they absolutely advances are beyond what we were

994
00:59:02,040 --> 00:59:06,720
Speaker 1: prepared for. So this leads us to my favorite article

995
00:59:06,960 --> 00:59:11,400
Speaker 1: that I found in the whole pile of stuff about Frankenstein.

996
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:14,280
Speaker 1: This is one of the most fun papers I've ever read.

997
00:59:14,360 --> 00:59:16,480
Speaker 1: It reminds me of that one that we did when

998
00:59:16,480 --> 00:59:19,440
Speaker 1: we did an episode on vampire blood drinking, the one

999
00:59:19,480 --> 00:59:22,040
Speaker 1: about like how what the rate of infection would be

1000
00:59:22,400 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 1: if vampires were real. This is called Victor Frankenstein's Institutional

1001
00:59:27,160 --> 00:59:31,840
Speaker 1: Review Board Proposal, and it's written by G. Harrison and W. Gannon.

1002
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:35,320
Speaker 1: It came out last year in It's a very fun

1003
00:59:35,360 --> 00:59:38,360
Speaker 1: idea for an article. The idea is what would it

1004
00:59:38,400 --> 00:59:42,000
Speaker 1: be like if Victor Frankenstein had to submit his research

1005
00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:45,919
Speaker 1: to an institutional review board the way all scientists aff

1006
00:59:45,960 --> 00:59:50,480
Speaker 1: to today. So. Um, they basically took uh the I

1007
00:59:50,640 --> 00:59:52,760
Speaker 1: r B proposal, and they said it in seventeen nine

1008
00:59:52,960 --> 00:59:55,680
Speaker 1: at Ingolstadt, which is where he went to school. Uh,

1009
00:59:55,760 --> 00:59:58,600
Speaker 1: in the book where Frankenstein was a student, and in

1010
00:59:58,800 --> 01:00:04,360
Speaker 1: his proposal they made him consider comparative anatomy medical experimentation

1011
01:00:04,480 --> 01:00:08,760
Speaker 1: in theories of life related to the debates around animal electricity. Now,

1012
01:00:08,800 --> 01:00:11,800
Speaker 1: because the theme of the novel is that he didn't

1013
01:00:11,800 --> 01:00:16,480
Speaker 1: consider the ethical consequences of his work and therefore suffered tragedy,

1014
01:00:16,520 --> 01:00:18,320
Speaker 1: they think that the I r B shows that it

1015
01:00:18,360 --> 01:00:22,120
Speaker 1: would have compelled him to consider the consequences of this experiment.

1016
01:00:23,280 --> 01:00:28,880
Speaker 1: I like this, I've never heard of it's so yeah. Yeah,

1017
01:00:28,920 --> 01:00:32,840
Speaker 1: it was published in Science and Engineering Ethics. Um. They

1018
01:00:32,880 --> 01:00:36,400
Speaker 1: note that in the novel Victor talked, as I mentioned earlier,

1019
01:00:36,440 --> 01:00:39,400
Speaker 1: he talks about all these alchemists that he studied. Uh.

1020
01:00:39,680 --> 01:00:42,960
Speaker 1: But they say, in addition, you know, they basically create

1021
01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:45,840
Speaker 1: what you do for an IRB a literary review, and

1022
01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:48,520
Speaker 1: they add a long list of authors prevalent before that

1023
01:00:48,560 --> 01:00:51,400
Speaker 1: time in natural history who would have influenced the debates

1024
01:00:51,440 --> 01:00:56,120
Speaker 1: about reproduction, regeneration, anatomy, body functions in the interplay between

1025
01:00:56,160 --> 01:01:01,280
Speaker 1: electrochemical and pneumatic forces in living systems. Galvani, Volta, and

1026
01:01:01,400 --> 01:01:04,880
Speaker 1: Davy are all among these. They also remind us that

1027
01:01:05,120 --> 01:01:09,480
Speaker 1: the electrical machines are from the movie. Again that's Nicola

1028
01:01:09,520 --> 01:01:13,520
Speaker 1: Tesla's inspiration. They're not in the book. They also say that,

1029
01:01:13,880 --> 01:01:15,919
Speaker 1: and this is maybe for all of you out there too,

1030
01:01:16,120 --> 01:01:18,600
Speaker 1: if you're unfamiliar, if you haven't been in an academic setting.

1031
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:21,240
Speaker 1: The purpose of an i r B is to protect

1032
01:01:21,360 --> 01:01:26,040
Speaker 1: those involved in research using uh, anything that's impacting to

1033
01:01:26,240 --> 01:01:30,200
Speaker 1: living human beings. So the present i RB structure was

1034
01:01:30,280 --> 01:01:33,680
Speaker 1: inspired by something called the Belmont Report, which drew its

1035
01:01:33,680 --> 01:01:39,440
Speaker 1: inquiries from both the Nuremberg Trials and the Tuskegee Syphilis study.

1036
01:01:39,480 --> 01:01:42,080
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about irbes again in our

1037
01:01:42,120 --> 01:01:45,440
Speaker 1: other episode this week about Creepy Pasta's, but i'll keep

1038
01:01:45,440 --> 01:01:49,040
Speaker 1: it grunted here for now. These led to three broad

1039
01:01:49,120 --> 01:01:52,040
Speaker 1: principles for the Belmont Report. The first is to respect

1040
01:01:52,160 --> 01:01:56,360
Speaker 1: people's autonomy, the second is to do no harm to

1041
01:01:56,400 --> 01:01:59,040
Speaker 1: the people involved in the study, and the third is

1042
01:01:59,200 --> 01:02:03,160
Speaker 1: justice or basically a fair sharing of the benefits of

1043
01:02:03,200 --> 01:02:07,000
Speaker 1: the research. Today's i RB is essentially a group of

1044
01:02:07,000 --> 01:02:09,880
Speaker 1: people at each institution who must have at least five

1045
01:02:09,960 --> 01:02:14,720
Speaker 1: members and conduct an initial and continuing review of these

1046
01:02:14,720 --> 01:02:17,680
Speaker 1: research projects. I you know, in my time as a

1047
01:02:17,680 --> 01:02:21,600
Speaker 1: graduate student and working at the UM Georgia State University

1048
01:02:21,600 --> 01:02:25,080
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, UH submitted many proposals to the RB.

1049
01:02:25,760 --> 01:02:29,040
Speaker 1: Everything from my thesis about Captain America had to go

1050
01:02:29,080 --> 01:02:32,680
Speaker 1: to them. To UM when I worked at the library

1051
01:02:32,680 --> 01:02:34,880
Speaker 1: at Georgia State University, if we wanted to interact with

1052
01:02:34,920 --> 01:02:37,680
Speaker 1: students and do some studies on like how they're using

1053
01:02:37,760 --> 01:02:39,880
Speaker 1: library materials, we had to submit it to the IRB.

1054
01:02:40,040 --> 01:02:43,200
Speaker 1: So they look at pretty much everything, and they make you,

1055
01:02:43,840 --> 01:02:48,120
Speaker 1: UH take refresher courses on the Belmont Report over and

1056
01:02:48,160 --> 01:02:49,920
Speaker 1: over again so that you're really up to date on

1057
01:02:49,960 --> 01:02:54,919
Speaker 1: this stuff. The principles of the i RB. The big

1058
01:02:55,040 --> 01:02:58,600
Speaker 1: argument of this, this fun paper is that the principles

1059
01:02:58,600 --> 01:03:01,440
Speaker 1: of the IRB are all essentially what the monster is

1060
01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:06,520
Speaker 1: appealing to Victor for throughout this entire novel. UH. One

1061
01:03:06,640 --> 01:03:09,640
Speaker 1: is his acknowledgment and respect as an autonomous human being,

1062
01:03:10,160 --> 01:03:12,760
Speaker 1: to the promotion of his welfare and to protect him

1063
01:03:12,760 --> 01:03:15,240
Speaker 1: from harm, and three to just treat him with some

1064
01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:18,880
Speaker 1: justice and equity. So from this and the books accounting.

1065
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:22,280
Speaker 1: They argue that Victor always intended to create life from

1066
01:03:22,280 --> 01:03:26,560
Speaker 1: lifeless matter, which could constitute as impacting living human beings,

1067
01:03:26,560 --> 01:03:30,400
Speaker 1: and the outline a proposal. It's real. I'm gonna very

1068
01:03:30,440 --> 01:03:32,920
Speaker 1: briefly cover it. It's like a twenty page paper, but

1069
01:03:33,400 --> 01:03:36,240
Speaker 1: uh he They cover the basic building blocks of life,

1070
01:03:36,240 --> 01:03:39,320
Speaker 1: including the protocols for how he's gonna catalog and carefully

1071
01:03:39,360 --> 01:03:43,400
Speaker 1: store all of his body parts, uh, the reconstitution of

1072
01:03:43,680 --> 01:03:47,880
Speaker 1: simpler organisms, basically, how he's going to reverse the process

1073
01:03:47,880 --> 01:03:50,280
Speaker 1: of death in all the various systems of a body,

1074
01:03:50,800 --> 01:03:53,880
Speaker 1: and then how he applies biotechnology to the creation of

1075
01:03:53,880 --> 01:03:56,160
Speaker 1: a human being. And they speculate the way that he

1076
01:03:56,200 --> 01:03:59,480
Speaker 1: would pitch this is by generating electrical charges in a

1077
01:03:59,600 --> 01:04:03,400
Speaker 1: series of Leyden jars and supplementing them with a jolt

1078
01:04:03,440 --> 01:04:06,280
Speaker 1: of electricity from a bolt of lightning. All of this

1079
01:04:06,320 --> 01:04:10,520
Speaker 1: would convulse this organism systems back into life. Their conclusion

1080
01:04:10,640 --> 01:04:14,000
Speaker 1: is that if Victor Frankenstein had just completed an i

1081
01:04:14,120 --> 01:04:17,440
Speaker 1: RB proposal, he would have had to consider the consequences

1082
01:04:17,440 --> 01:04:21,440
Speaker 1: of his experiment and acknowledge his responsibilities to his creature,

1083
01:04:21,800 --> 01:04:24,160
Speaker 1: and it would have given him the chance to think

1084
01:04:24,280 --> 01:04:29,120
Speaker 1: through what he was doing ethically. I love it. My

1085
01:04:29,240 --> 01:04:33,880
Speaker 1: favorite quote from this paper is him saying, this is

1086
01:04:33,960 --> 01:04:37,240
Speaker 1: them writing in his voice, if I animate a human creature,

1087
01:04:37,520 --> 01:04:40,400
Speaker 1: I will assess risks for the being as well as

1088
01:04:40,440 --> 01:04:44,080
Speaker 1: for the surrounding community with whom the creature might interact.

1089
01:04:44,440 --> 01:04:47,560
Speaker 1: And another one is should I succeed in creating a

1090
01:04:47,680 --> 01:04:51,120
Speaker 1: rational being, I will ensure its privacy and try to

1091
01:04:51,280 --> 01:04:54,120
Speaker 1: ensure that it does not become a spectacle or a

1092
01:04:54,160 --> 01:04:57,800
Speaker 1: monster for the amusement of others. It's this is like

1093
01:04:57,840 --> 01:05:00,120
Speaker 1: one of the most fun papers I've ever read. It's

1094
01:05:00,120 --> 01:05:01,920
Speaker 1: a it's a brilliant idea. Yeah, I want them to

1095
01:05:01,920 --> 01:05:04,920
Speaker 1: do a sequel to this where they write a proposal

1096
01:05:04,920 --> 01:05:07,800
Speaker 1: for Herbert West reanimator. I think that that would be

1097
01:05:08,200 --> 01:05:11,400
Speaker 1: another worthy cause. Oh yeah, just about any mad scientists

1098
01:05:11,400 --> 01:05:13,439
Speaker 1: would work, because I mean that's what I love about

1099
01:05:13,480 --> 01:05:17,880
Speaker 1: looking at a mad scientist character is asking like, what, like,

1100
01:05:17,920 --> 01:05:20,680
Speaker 1: what were your goals here? What were you really trying

1101
01:05:20,720 --> 01:05:23,360
Speaker 1: to do? What was how do how does this possibly

1102
01:05:23,760 --> 01:05:27,920
Speaker 1: fit into any kind of actual um you know, scientific

1103
01:05:28,000 --> 01:05:31,800
Speaker 1: rigor so circling back to the two hundred year old thing,

1104
01:05:32,200 --> 01:05:35,240
Speaker 1: I just want to lead us out here with two

1105
01:05:35,520 --> 01:05:38,040
Speaker 1: of I think that we could easily say this the

1106
01:05:38,160 --> 01:05:42,560
Speaker 1: leading minds in horror literature that are alive today. The

1107
01:05:42,640 --> 01:05:45,280
Speaker 1: first is st. Jochi, who I mentioned at the top.

1108
01:05:45,960 --> 01:05:47,840
Speaker 1: He has a book that I have mentioned on this

1109
01:05:47,880 --> 01:05:50,640
Speaker 1: show many times that is a survey of all of

1110
01:05:50,960 --> 01:05:55,560
Speaker 1: horror literature called Unutterable Horror uh and his section on

1111
01:05:55,600 --> 01:05:59,640
Speaker 1: Frankenstein in it, he says it is a richly complex

1112
01:05:59,680 --> 01:06:04,680
Speaker 1: tale that fully justifies the mountains of commentary it has inspired.

1113
01:06:04,720 --> 01:06:08,240
Speaker 1: So we mentioned that earlier. All of the swirling conversation

1114
01:06:08,280 --> 01:06:11,919
Speaker 1: about themes and intentions and influences and everything. He says,

1115
01:06:11,920 --> 01:06:15,600
Speaker 1: it's all justified because this book is great. Um. He

1116
01:06:15,680 --> 01:06:19,600
Speaker 1: also says, the passages that are about science show that

1117
01:06:19,680 --> 01:06:24,320
Speaker 1: Shelley is departing from the Gothic traditions reliance on medieval

1118
01:06:24,360 --> 01:06:28,120
Speaker 1: superstition as the source for terror, and that's the real

1119
01:06:28,240 --> 01:06:31,440
Speaker 1: important point of this book is it's like a huge transition,

1120
01:06:31,520 --> 01:06:35,480
Speaker 1: turning point in the world of horror literature. He also

1121
01:06:35,640 --> 01:06:40,280
Speaker 1: argues that what gives the book merit is the creatures

1122
01:06:40,320 --> 01:06:43,320
Speaker 1: moral complexity. We talked about it earlier. Both the creature

1123
01:06:43,400 --> 01:06:47,040
Speaker 1: and Victor Frankenstein are so morally complex. Joe she says

1124
01:06:47,400 --> 01:06:50,920
Speaker 1: it may be the sole genuine contribution of Gothic fiction

1125
01:06:50,960 --> 01:06:54,080
Speaker 1: to the great literature of the world, and its themes

1126
01:06:54,080 --> 01:06:58,240
Speaker 1: are eternal, and Shelly, to her credit, doesn't provide simple

1127
01:06:58,280 --> 01:07:01,000
Speaker 1: solutions to them, so it constantly makes us keep thinking.

1128
01:07:01,320 --> 01:07:03,600
Speaker 1: That's why we keep turning back to it. For two years.

1129
01:07:04,560 --> 01:07:09,440
Speaker 1: And then Uncle Stevie Stephen King from his book Dance

1130
01:07:09,520 --> 01:07:11,840
Speaker 1: maccob back in. I think that came out in like

1131
01:07:11,880 --> 01:07:15,320
Speaker 1: eighty two, maybe eighty one. Yeah, this one I've never read,

1132
01:07:15,320 --> 01:07:18,360
Speaker 1: but I always remembered seeing it on the on the

1133
01:07:18,440 --> 01:07:20,720
Speaker 1: King racks. When I would, I would I would skip

1134
01:07:20,800 --> 01:07:23,560
Speaker 1: lunch for a week, uh in school to say about

1135
01:07:23,560 --> 01:07:26,600
Speaker 1: my lunch money to spend on Stephen King paperbacks, And

1136
01:07:26,640 --> 01:07:28,480
Speaker 1: I always I would consider that one, and I'm like, oh,

1137
01:07:28,520 --> 01:07:30,919
Speaker 1: it's not it's not a tale, this is nonfiction. Yeah,

1138
01:07:30,960 --> 01:07:34,600
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna spend it on you know, uh,

1139
01:07:35,240 --> 01:07:37,880
Speaker 1: different cycle of the Werewolf cycle. No, I never get cycled.

1140
01:07:37,880 --> 01:07:42,000
Speaker 1: The Warwold was always a little bit more expensive prestige books.

1141
01:07:42,080 --> 01:07:44,920
Speaker 1: It was like that was like seven. Your cheapest was

1142
01:07:44,960 --> 01:07:47,400
Speaker 1: the Dead Zone at like four. So that was the

1143
01:07:47,400 --> 01:07:50,040
Speaker 1: first one I read out of cheapness. And then you

1144
01:07:50,080 --> 01:07:51,720
Speaker 1: have to work like some of the bigger ones. Though

1145
01:07:51,760 --> 01:07:54,480
Speaker 1: you're talking a thousand plus page books, that's like two

1146
01:07:54,520 --> 01:07:58,240
Speaker 1: weeks of lunch money, maybe three. See I always just

1147
01:07:58,320 --> 01:08:00,680
Speaker 1: hitting the library from bullies and read all of my

1148
01:08:00,720 --> 01:08:06,440
Speaker 1: Stephen King's books in there during lunch. But don's maccab

1149
01:08:06,480 --> 01:08:10,320
Speaker 1: if you haven't read it. Is King's attempt to sort

1150
01:08:10,320 --> 01:08:13,920
Speaker 1: of gather all of the thoughts about the horror genre

1151
01:08:14,000 --> 01:08:16,600
Speaker 1: together in one book. Keep in mind he wrote this

1152
01:08:16,680 --> 01:08:18,800
Speaker 1: in like the late seventies, early eighties, so there's a

1153
01:08:18,800 --> 01:08:21,960
Speaker 1: lot that has happened since then. But I love it.

1154
01:08:22,000 --> 01:08:24,519
Speaker 1: I think you'd really like it, Robert. I keep going

1155
01:08:24,560 --> 01:08:27,520
Speaker 1: back to it. But in the book he outlines basically

1156
01:08:27,760 --> 01:08:30,439
Speaker 1: his argument is that there are three major archetypes of

1157
01:08:30,439 --> 01:08:34,200
Speaker 1: horror that we keep coming back to, and Frankenstein's Monster

1158
01:08:34,360 --> 01:08:37,599
Speaker 1: is one of them. He calls it the Thing without

1159
01:08:37,640 --> 01:08:40,639
Speaker 1: a Name, which is important because Victor never names the monster.

1160
01:08:40,680 --> 01:08:43,479
Speaker 1: That's why we have this problem. There's no name for it.

1161
01:08:43,800 --> 01:08:45,640
Speaker 1: There is that like sort of I think there's a

1162
01:08:45,680 --> 01:08:48,040
Speaker 1: passage in it, or maybe it's something Shelley said outside

1163
01:08:48,040 --> 01:08:50,280
Speaker 1: of the book of like referring to it as Adam,

1164
01:08:50,360 --> 01:08:53,320
Speaker 1: like his atom. Some people call the monster Adam, and

1165
01:08:53,360 --> 01:08:56,720
Speaker 1: maybe he was just trying to, you know, retain scientific objectivity.

1166
01:08:56,720 --> 01:08:58,720
Speaker 1: He knew that had been named it, he'd have to

1167
01:08:58,800 --> 01:09:06,280
Speaker 1: copy that. Um So King says that there are many

1168
01:09:06,320 --> 01:09:12,719
Speaker 1: examples of Frankenstein's inheritors, So everything from The Hulk, the

1169
01:09:12,760 --> 01:09:16,200
Speaker 1: Marvel Superhero The Hulk is a version of that too.

1170
01:09:16,640 --> 01:09:18,799
Speaker 1: The Thing from Another World that came out in ninete.

1171
01:09:19,840 --> 01:09:24,439
Speaker 1: Now remember King wrote this like two years before John

1172
01:09:24,479 --> 01:09:27,800
Speaker 1: Carpenter's version of the Thing came out. Uh, so he

1173
01:09:27,840 --> 01:09:31,519
Speaker 1: would have surely included that as the Thing without a Name.

1174
01:09:31,560 --> 01:09:35,479
Speaker 1: In fact, uh just last night Joe McCormick and I

1175
01:09:35,520 --> 01:09:37,960
Speaker 1: went and saw the Thing here in Atlanta at our

1176
01:09:38,040 --> 01:09:40,240
Speaker 1: Plaza Theater. This first time I saw it on the

1177
01:09:40,240 --> 01:09:42,719
Speaker 1: big screen, and it was a wonderful experience. But yeah,

1178
01:09:42,720 --> 01:09:45,240
Speaker 1: I think it would qualify as this Thing without a Name.

1179
01:09:45,280 --> 01:09:47,360
Speaker 1: So when you're thinking of the types of horror that

1180
01:09:47,400 --> 01:09:51,519
Speaker 1: you watch, that's probably one of them. King also says

1181
01:09:52,280 --> 01:09:55,680
Speaker 1: this book has probably been the subject of more films

1182
01:09:55,880 --> 01:09:59,799
Speaker 1: than any other literary work in history, including the Bible,

1183
01:10:00,400 --> 01:10:02,599
Speaker 1: and I find it hard to argue with that. I mean,

1184
01:10:02,640 --> 01:10:05,240
Speaker 1: I haven't counted them, but man, there's a lot. I mean,

1185
01:10:05,240 --> 01:10:08,519
Speaker 1: it was one of the earliest. You saw Edison's short

1186
01:10:08,560 --> 01:10:11,280
Speaker 1: Frankenstein film, and and then you have you go to

1187
01:10:11,320 --> 01:10:14,400
Speaker 1: IMDb and you put in Frankenstein or Victor Frankenstein. It's

1188
01:10:14,439 --> 01:10:18,080
Speaker 1: just yeah, you know, hundreds. It seems different generations of

1189
01:10:18,120 --> 01:10:20,640
Speaker 1: value those characters. So I just want to end on this.

1190
01:10:20,840 --> 01:10:24,720
Speaker 1: He argues that it uses one of horror's most common themes,

1191
01:10:25,120 --> 01:10:29,639
Speaker 1: that there are things that mankind was not meant to know.

1192
01:10:30,479 --> 01:10:34,000
Speaker 1: And this brings us right back around again to the

1193
01:10:34,040 --> 01:10:36,640
Speaker 1: mission of stuff to blow your mind, and why Frankenstein

1194
01:10:36,720 --> 01:10:40,040
Speaker 1: is so important to it. This this idea of science

1195
01:10:40,120 --> 01:10:44,360
Speaker 1: and wonder and oddity and how much can we know

1196
01:10:44,479 --> 01:10:47,880
Speaker 1: and how far should we prod? Yeah, I think I

1197
01:10:47,920 --> 01:10:50,120
Speaker 1: think the the answer. My view on it is that

1198
01:10:50,200 --> 01:10:52,880
Speaker 1: we should. We should not be afraid to prod and

1199
01:10:52,960 --> 01:10:55,400
Speaker 1: to move forward, but we should use if we're going

1200
01:10:55,439 --> 01:10:57,559
Speaker 1: to turn to Frankenstein, we used it as cautionary tale

1201
01:10:57,560 --> 01:11:00,400
Speaker 1: to say, hey, keep pushing, but no it you are

1202
01:11:00,439 --> 01:11:03,080
Speaker 1: going to discover things that you might not be prepared

1203
01:11:03,120 --> 01:11:06,800
Speaker 1: for as an individual, as a culture, as a legal system.

1204
01:11:06,920 --> 01:11:10,439
Speaker 1: And uh, and therefore you have to remain ever vigilant

1205
01:11:10,760 --> 01:11:13,960
Speaker 1: and and ever ready to adapt your mindset, even your

1206
01:11:14,000 --> 01:11:19,519
Speaker 1: worldview to the new revel as revelations to come. All right, well,

1207
01:11:19,560 --> 01:11:22,120
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna go ahead and close out this, uh,

1208
01:11:22,240 --> 01:11:25,920
Speaker 1: this chapter of Frankenstein until we inevitably do another Frankenstein

1209
01:11:26,000 --> 01:11:30,000
Speaker 1: episode with perhaps some new angle in the years ahead. Hopefully, yeah,

1210
01:11:30,000 --> 01:11:33,520
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll be here to do the fourth anniversary of Frankenstein.

1211
01:11:33,760 --> 01:11:37,080
Speaker 1: We'll use a biotechnology to keep ourselves alive for two

1212
01:11:37,160 --> 01:11:39,400
Speaker 1: hundred more years so we can talk about it again. Then.

1213
01:11:39,840 --> 01:11:42,480
Speaker 1: All right, so this is one of our Halloween episodes.

1214
01:11:43,200 --> 01:11:45,879
Speaker 1: Obviously we are in the Halloween season and it's sufforable

1215
01:11:45,880 --> 01:11:48,040
Speaker 1: in your mind. We're probably gonna stretch that Halloween season

1216
01:11:48,080 --> 01:11:52,519
Speaker 1: as far through the remainder of as possible, hopefully pushing

1217
01:11:52,600 --> 01:11:58,360
Speaker 1: Christmas and the holidays uh into January or a pit somewhere. Uh. So, Hey,

1218
01:11:58,400 --> 01:12:01,439
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this, dearing how aween, be aware

1219
01:12:01,520 --> 01:12:05,559
Speaker 1: that the stuff to blow your mind. Uh monster video

1220
01:12:05,640 --> 01:12:09,920
Speaker 1: series Monster Science is back with a fourth season or

1221
01:12:10,080 --> 01:12:13,000
Speaker 1: series of episodes. We have six of them. Uh, and

1222
01:12:13,360 --> 01:12:16,200
Speaker 1: as you're listening to this, there should be two or

1223
01:12:16,320 --> 01:12:20,320
Speaker 1: three episodes already out. The first three are sex education

1224
01:12:20,400 --> 01:12:25,519
Speaker 1: oriented with takes on sexy vampires, alien husbands, and uh

1225
01:12:25,560 --> 01:12:28,479
Speaker 1: and face huggers from the alien films. Yes, and then

1226
01:12:28,720 --> 01:12:31,000
Speaker 1: we've got a lovely face hugger here hanging in the

1227
01:12:31,040 --> 01:12:33,760
Speaker 1: office from the ceiling. Now pretty good. Yeah, and then

1228
01:12:33,760 --> 01:12:36,200
Speaker 1: the back half of the series are going to deal

1229
01:12:36,240 --> 01:12:40,360
Speaker 1: with dragons, Godzilla, and of course the threat of pod people.

1230
01:12:40,520 --> 01:12:43,400
Speaker 1: So Robert would never say this, but I'm gonna say it.

1231
01:12:43,800 --> 01:12:47,400
Speaker 1: Monster Science is my absolute favorite thing that how Stuff

1232
01:12:47,400 --> 01:12:50,720
Speaker 1: Works produces. I love it. I'm an unabashed fan of

1233
01:12:50,760 --> 01:12:52,920
Speaker 1: this series. Even if I wasn't involved in Stuff to

1234
01:12:52,920 --> 01:12:55,280
Speaker 1: Bowl your mind and didn't work here. It is the,

1235
01:12:55,520 --> 01:12:58,599
Speaker 1: in my opinion, the best thing that we put out here.

1236
01:12:58,960 --> 01:13:02,680
Speaker 1: I definitely recommend that you watch it. They're funny, they're informative,

1237
01:13:02,840 --> 01:13:07,439
Speaker 1: they're fun, and they revolve around the lovely October horror

1238
01:13:07,479 --> 01:13:09,280
Speaker 1: themes that we like to play around with here on

1239
01:13:09,320 --> 01:13:12,880
Speaker 1: the show. I've seen two of these episodes. Joe and

1240
01:13:12,920 --> 01:13:16,360
Speaker 1: I are in a couple of them. Uh, They're they're great.

1241
01:13:16,680 --> 01:13:19,800
Speaker 1: And our producer, Tyler Man, he really goes out of

1242
01:13:19,840 --> 01:13:24,160
Speaker 1: his way, just makes great special effects. It's so much fun.

1243
01:13:24,400 --> 01:13:27,320
Speaker 1: So we'll check them out and on that note, I'd

1244
01:13:27,320 --> 01:13:28,639
Speaker 1: like to throw out to a project on my own,

1245
01:13:28,680 --> 01:13:31,360
Speaker 1: which is I do another podcast outside of here called

1246
01:13:31,400 --> 01:13:35,519
Speaker 1: super Context, and this episode was a very scientific look

1247
01:13:35,520 --> 01:13:38,360
Speaker 1: at Frankenstein. But super Context is a show that's a

1248
01:13:38,360 --> 01:13:43,599
Speaker 1: autopsy of various forms of media. We do movies, television, music,

1249
01:13:43,720 --> 01:13:46,559
Speaker 1: we look at comics sometimes, and we talk about literature

1250
01:13:46,600 --> 01:13:48,960
Speaker 1: as well. So if you want to show that's more

1251
01:13:49,040 --> 01:13:51,960
Speaker 1: along those lines but sort of plays in the same

1252
01:13:52,120 --> 01:13:55,639
Speaker 1: research heavy orientation that we do here, please check it out.

1253
01:13:55,720 --> 01:13:59,240
Speaker 1: It's called super Context and you can find us on

1254
01:13:59,280 --> 01:14:02,599
Speaker 1: Twitter and Tumbler. All right, And as far as stuff

1255
01:14:02,600 --> 01:14:04,519
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind goes, as always, head on over

1256
01:14:04,560 --> 01:14:07,040
Speaker 1: to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is

1257
01:14:07,080 --> 01:14:09,519
Speaker 1: the mothership. That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes.

1258
01:14:09,560 --> 01:14:12,759
Speaker 1: You'll find a new monster science episodes, you'll find blog posts,

1259
01:14:13,040 --> 01:14:15,519
Speaker 1: you'll find links out to our various social media accounts

1260
01:14:15,520 --> 01:14:20,400
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, we are on Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, and Facebook.

1261
01:14:20,600 --> 01:14:23,840
Speaker 1: We're all over those. Follow us there to find out

1262
01:14:23,840 --> 01:14:26,360
Speaker 1: more about these videos, to see what new episodes are

1263
01:14:26,400 --> 01:14:29,679
Speaker 1: coming up, or just what kind of weird, bizarre science

1264
01:14:29,720 --> 01:14:32,040
Speaker 1: we come across in our journeys. And if you want

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Speaker 1: to write us the old fashioned way. You can send

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Speaker 1: us an email at blow the Mind at how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of

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Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Fine

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Speaker 1: first by the part prop