WEBVTT - Frankenstein: 200 Years of Scientific Dread 0:00:02.800 --> 0:00:05.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:17.120 Works dot com. Here my tale. It is long and strange, 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:19.919 and the temperature of this place is not fitting to 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.160 your fine sensations. Come to the hut upon the mountain. 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:26.159 The sun is yet high in the heavens before it 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:30.360 descends to hide itself beyond yon snowy precipices and illuminate 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:33.440 another world. You will have heard my story and can 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:37.040 decide on you would rest, whether I quit forever the 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.600 neighborhood of man and lead a harmless life, or become 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:43.839 the scourge of your fellow creatures and the author of 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:51.040 your own speedy ruin. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:53.239 your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I am 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:56.040 Christian Seger. And as you might have guessed from the 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:59.440 title or from Robert's reading just now, we are talking 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:04.040 about Frankenstein. It is the month of October, it is 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:08.440 our favorite time of year, and Frankenstein is two hundred 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:11.199 years old this year, so we felt like we had 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:14.200 to do an episode on Frankenstein. Yeah, it's such a 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:17.880 great topic because it's it brings everything together, Like Frankenstein, 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:20.760 of course, is just as a horror stand out, just 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:25.560 a horror icon, um that the novel itself is a classic, 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:29.360 and more importantly, I guess for a science show is 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:34.240 Frankenstein continues to cast this shadow over the sciences. It 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:38.040 emerges from science, and and it continues to color our 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:42.200 understanding and at times fear of science. It is. It 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:46.680 is essentially science fiction. People often, you know, you forget 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:48.560 about that when you just get caught up sometimes and 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:52.960 just the sheer monster aspects of the thing. Yeah. I 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:55.880 even read one account that described it as the first 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:59.160 science fiction novel. I don't know if that's necessarily true, 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:02.720 but certainly we think of it as horror, probably more 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:05.480 because of the movies. But the book itself is a 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:08.200 little bit of both. And it's not the book itself, 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:10.480 which we're gonna mainly focus on the book today. Of course, 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:13.639 we'll talk about the other pop culture resonance of this 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:19.040 book throughout history. But the book is not gory. It's uh, 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:21.360 you know, the scenes where the monster kills people are 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:23.760 pretty much just like then he's snapped her neck. You know, 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:27.200 it wasn't like, uh, it's it's not it's not Boris 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:30.840 Karlafi even right, Yeah, it's it's really a tremendous book, 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:33.680 but I think stands the test of time rather nicely. 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:37.320 I don't think it communicates well to modern viewers. It's 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:41.919 it's it's a complex book. The the monster, the creature 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:44.280 is not just it's not it's not just a you know, 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:50.320 a shambling killer. He's a complex creature. Likewise, Victor Frankenstein 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:54.079 is neither hero nor pure villain in this There are 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:56.480 there are shades of gray and him as well. So 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:59.799 it's a it's a story ultimately of two complex into 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:03.080 vide rules of a creator and the created, and all 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:08.560 the various um interpretations of that that flow both religiously 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:12.320 scientifically and purely cultural. Yeah, there certainly are a lot, 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:14.959 and that's not really our mission here on this show. Um. 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:18.120 I'm sure there are lots of other podcasts that are 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:21.760 doing great uh literary readings of Frankenstein and sort of 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:24.840 tearing apart its themes. We'll talk about those, but we're 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:28.280 here mainly to look at the science behind it. Uh. 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:31.200 We will briefly talk though, as we usually do, about 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:36.600 you know, the the cultural importance of this media artifact basically, 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:38.680 and I think it would be great for us to 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:43.600 start off by saying what's your favorite? What's your favorite Frankenstein. Yeah, 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:45.920 I mean we all have our favorites, and these favorites 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:48.400 are not always going to be colored by our you know, 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:51.560 our appreciation for the text. You know, it's just growing 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:54.320 up with the monster. Yours is the Aaron Eckhart form. 0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:57.000 My Frankenstein isn't that. I haven't seen that, and I 0:03:57.080 --> 0:04:02.640 kind of want to. It's real bad um for me. 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:06.120 I have to start by saying, I've never seen an 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:10.480 adaptation where I felt like the monster, the creature, you know, 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:15.600 captured the essence of the creature from the novel. So 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:19.280 so I'm being perhaps a little unfair there, but but yeah, 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:20.920 there's a there's this sort of idea of what the 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:23.000 monster could be, and I've yet to see that really 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:26.960 come to fruition on film. I do have to say, though, 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.600 I have very strong memories of seeing what was probably 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:34.039 for many a rather lackluster Frankenstein. I don't know if 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:36.240 I may be alone in this being like an iconic 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:41.240 Frankenstein for me. But there was a TV movie, and 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:44.960 I believe it aired on tnt UH titled Frankenstein, and 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:49.480 it starred Patrick Bergen as Dr Frankenstein and Randy Quaid 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:54.240 as as the creation and it it was it was 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:55.760 quite I remember it as being good. I don't know 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:59.640 if you would hold up Randy Quaid. And it was 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:02.400 a seri serious movie. It was like a comedic Frankenstein. 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:06.440 It was a serious period piece. And Quade gave really 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:10.800 a great serious performance as the monster. That was you know, 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:12.880 I'm on par with what's in the book, you know, 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:15.640 maybe not not perfect, but still in keeping with the novel. 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:19.800 And and Patrick Bergen is always great. Uh. It featured, 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:22.640 you know, all the arctic intrigue that that I always 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:24.880 loved in the book that is absent from some of 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:28.240 the film adaptations, many of the film adaptations really Uh. 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:30.520 It also has some wonderful scenes in which the monster 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:32.800 and later he is doomed bride or created out of 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:34.960 like a lead red liquids just kind of like a 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.960 primordial soup that he brews up in a tank. And 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.760 it was directed by David Wicks, who also did a 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:46.600 Jekyl and Hide TV movie from nineteen ninety that starred 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.840 Michael Caine and Cheryl Ladd and Josh Auckland. And I 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:52.800 remember seeing that one on TV and finding it rather terrifying. 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:55.160 As well. Wow. Well, this was a period of time 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:57.440 where I didn't live in the United States, so I 0:05:57.560 --> 0:05:59.880 must have it must have been off my cultural radar 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:02.880 because I didn't have American television then, but I had 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:05.400 never heard either of these. Wow, I was like Nursed 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:08.919 on American television. There was no avoiding it for me. 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:12.680 But yeah, I remember that's That's a film adaptation that 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:14.479 I think back to a lot, even though I haven't 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:17.120 seen it since I've seen it on TV in like, 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.200 I should really give it another viewing. Yeah. Well, from 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:23.800 my part, I have two that I really love. The 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:27.320 first is Bernie writz In, who a lot of people 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:31.279 out there know as just a famous illustrator, especially in 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:35.120 the horror genre. He in the late seventies early eighties 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:37.480 had this passion project where he wanted to do an 0:06:37.520 --> 0:06:42.039 illustrated version of Frankenstein, and uh he did. It took 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:45.200 him years to finish it, but Marvel Comics published it, 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:48.360 I think in the early eighties. Since gone out of print, 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:52.920 but earlier this year, I was at Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon, 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:57.640 and I found an oversized edition of this Frankenstein copy. 0:06:57.720 --> 0:06:59.320 In fact, that's right in front of me. Right now. 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:02.960 And man, the illustrations in it are gorgeous. I think 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:05.000 writs In is like one of the few people who 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:11.480 captures the monster's essence, uh, at least according to the book. Um. 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:13.440 And this is just a really beautiful copy. So I 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:15.880 always think of when I think of the Monster, and 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:19.080 when I think of Victor Frankenstein, I think of these drawings. 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.160 But I have to say, there's a totally whacked out 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:26.920 version of Frankenstein that I also love from the comics that, uh, 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:28.760 a guy we often talk about on the show, Grant 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:34.360 Morrison did very short for issue series Frankenstein, Agent of Shade, 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:40.360 and uh, Frankenstein is basically a monster hunter. The monster, 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:44.840 not Victor Frankenstein. He's a monster hunter and uh he 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:47.320 goes like all over the world and even to Mars 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:53.000 to hunt monsters. Uh. And it's just this absolutely insane, 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:59.760 uh psychedelic Frankenstein ride. Uh and and uh so yeah, 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:02.480 he's like part of like a group called Shade that's 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:06.800 basically like like the government version of like a paranormal 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:09.480 control team or something like that. So they send him in. 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:12.680 The Bride is in it too, and she's also an agent, 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:15.120 and they have like sown extra arms on her, so 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:18.560 she's like she's got a bunch of guns and weapons 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:20.880 and stuff like that that she you know, she's adept 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:23.720 at fighting with like I think six or seven limbs 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:26.080 or something like that. Well, this sounds about right for 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:30.640 for Grant Morrison. You have a gothic um horror creature 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:34.120 that is also kind of a Hindu goddess that involved 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:37.080 in some sort of paranormal psychedelic and oh yeah, he 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:39.240 very much plays up the Hindu goddess part. She even 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:41.840 has like a jewel I think on her forehead and yeah, 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:43.880 I should check that out. Um. And then of course, 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:46.160 just from growing up the ones that well not growing 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:49.240 up the ones that I love to or tom Noonan 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:52.760 and Monster Squad, he was my Frankenstein because he was 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:56.360 just like the nicest Frankenstein who helped out the kids 0:08:56.400 --> 0:08:57.920 at the end of that movie. He was a good 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:02.640 guy Frankenstein. He was yeah, the monster and uh lately, 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:07.160 uh Penny dreadful. Rory Kneer's performance in that as the 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:11.880 monster is wow, really great and it's essentially Robert Smith 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:15.320 is very much Yeah, I can't remember the name of 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:18.679 the guy who plays Victor Frankenstein. But he's incredible as well. 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:23.000 The whole Frankenstein arc in Penny Dreadful Is is amazing, 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:26.400 very well done. Um. I have to say too that 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:28.760 I have a lot of love for the Hammer Horror films, 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:32.960 and there are spredations of of Frankenstein and the creature 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:38.080 Christopher Lee, right, um it it depends on who's involved, 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:42.480 you know. It's kind of a a revolving cast at times. Though. 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:47.240 Peter Peter Cushing played Victor or Dr Frankstein or whatever 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:50.080 or Baron Frankenstein, whatever twist they were doing on it 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:51.760 in a number of them, so he's kind of like 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:57.520 the iconic Frankenstein, the Man, the Monster varied, but from 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:00.840 a purely design level, I really love David the Prowls 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:05.000 monster from Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell from Yeah. 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:07.520 I'm sure you've seen this one where the monster looks 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:10.520 like a gorilla with like the top of its headstone 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:15.000 back on classic Hammer Horror special effects. Yeah, so it 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:19.680 looks tremendous. Yeah, we're really you know, uh, here in 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:22.360 the States, I really wish that there was like easier 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:24.520 access to all of those Hammer things. You can find 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:27.200 a lot of them on YouTube nowadays, but like man, 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:30.040 it would be great if you could just like stream 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:32.280 all of those on like one service or or get 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.280 them at your local video shop or something like that. 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:36.800 They're really you have a great local video shop like 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:41.440 video yeah can, but that's it's harder with these streaming services. Yeah, yeah, 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.280 they're not as readily available. Although Hammers making a comeback 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:47.360 right now, so maybe they'll, I don't know, put their 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:50.440 archives up so everybody can watch these crazy Frankenstein movies again. 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:52.079 You know, I should go ahead, and we should go 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:53.920 ahead and make one point before we move on into 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:55.880 the media the episode, and that is, of course, there's 0:10:55.920 --> 0:11:00.480 always the whole Uh, there's Frankenstein the man, there's the 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:03.680 creature of the monster. And some people get really upset 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:07.080 if you refer to the monster as Frankenstein. And yes, 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:12.520 technically that is so the creature is not named Frankenstein, 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:15.679 but at this point in the tradition of the character, 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:20.480 it's it's almost interchangeable, it is. Yeah. In fact, almost 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:24.240 every article I read for researching this episode had that 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:27.600 disclaimer in it. And I believe it was St. Joshi, 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:30.640 who we've talked about on the show before. You've interviewed 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:34.120 him on the show before he's a famous horror Uh 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:38.240 would you say literate critic? Uh? He was basically like, 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:41.800 look at this point, like it's not even worth arguing about. 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:45.839 Like it's just become a cultural norm that people refer 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:48.640 to the monster as Frankenstein. Just let it go. Let's 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:50.559 all move on. Yeah, so we're probably gonna do a 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:54.120 little bit of both and just there with us forgive us. Personally, 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:57.760 I love it when someone refers to plural Frankenstein's monsters 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:03.040 by calling them Frankenstein's likens. Took the field and defeated 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:06.040 I don't know, the New England Patriots. That would be 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:08.320 a great I would actually watch sports if that was 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:12.040 if that was available with Victor is the Coach, Ye 0:12:12.440 --> 0:12:15.680 green One, make that movie you heard it here first. 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:19.080 All right, Well, on that note, let's let's move Let's 0:12:19.080 --> 0:12:21.400 move ahead, and in doing so, let us move back 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:25.319 in time and talk about the origins of Mary Shelley's 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.760 um classic novel. Yeah. So, like I said, this isn't 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:32.360 a literary podcast, but I do think it's important that 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:36.880 we established some bit of a setting here for how 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.360 this book was created, for what we're going to talk 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:42.880 about science wise later on, Because some of this is 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:45.719 important and the listeners may not be aware of this. 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:49.840 Some of it I wasn't aware of until dove in yesterday. So, uh, 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:52.600 it's the two d year anniversary. We've been talking about this. 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.840 Why is that important? Well, eighteen sixteen was referred to 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:59.520 as the Year without a Summer. Most people know the 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:04.080 story that Mary Shelley Percy Shelley, lord Byron and John Paula. 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:07.840 Doori were in Switzerland vacation ng and they had a 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:10.520 competition with one another to see who could write the 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:15.440 best horror story, and Mary came out with Frankenstein. What 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:17.080 a lot of people don't know is that this was 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:21.079 during an unexpectedly cold summer in Switzerland, So that's why 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:24.520 they were enclosed indoors the whole time. And the reason 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:27.439 why was it was a year after an eruption at 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:30.960 Mount tim Bora and that had affected the climate somehow 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:33.120 and made it much colder. I guess because the ash 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:35.400 was still in the Yeah. Yeah, Like, if anyone anyone 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:38.280 out there is familiar with the nuclear winter and theories 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:40.760 regarding that, it's the same thing. You have. Yeah, you 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:43.600 have material that's ejected into the upper atmosphere and it 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:46.640 serves as kind of a shade that chills the world. 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:50.040 So they were stuck indoors trying to amuse themselves, and 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:52.720 they came up with this contest and Mary started working 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:57.280 on Frankenstein Um. For their parts, Byron wrote sort of 0:13:57.320 --> 0:13:59.600 like a summary and I guess polla DOORI then like 0:13:59.600 --> 0:14:02.560 took it further and wrote it into a story called 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:05.920 The Vampire, which is another horror classic, and it later 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:10.400 influenced brom Stoker's Dracula. So this, you know, um Year 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:13.560 without a Summer is like highly influential on the genre 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:17.079 of horror as we know it. But here's another thing 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:19.360 I didn't know. I'm curious if you've heard of this before. 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.120 I learned about it from a comic book, a graphic 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:26.560 novel by Warren Ellis and an artist named Marrik Olick 0:14:26.800 --> 0:14:32.600 SICKI called Frankenstein's Womb. And apparently there's two theories of 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:35.680 real life events that also contributed to the book. The 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:39.800 first is that before they went to Switzerland for this 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:45.280 infamous vacation, Mary and Percy visited the real Frankenstein castle 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:50.120 that's near Drumstock, Germany in eighteen fourteen, and the story 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:54.720 about that place goes that Conrad Dipple was there and 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:59.000 he had experimented with human bodies there in his pursuit 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:03.560 of alchemy. So it's possible that Mary heard about all 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:07.560 of this before uh they even went and had their 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:11.840 horror story competition, and that she based Victor Frankenstein on 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:15.120 Conrad Dipple. He claimed to have invented in a mixer 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:17.320 of life, and he was rumored to have experimented on 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:20.400 dead bodies. So there's lots of similarities. But this is 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:22.680 like one of those things that sort of lost to history. 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:25.640 Nobody really knows well. I mean, there's certainly a alchemical 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:29.560 DNA and Frankenstein's yeah, yeah, you know, it seems likely 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:33.360 the second theory that comes out of this Frankenstein's Womb book, 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:36.360 and it has been expressed in other places. Obviously, it's 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:39.160 not like Warren Ellis cooked it up? Uh? Is that 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:44.440 thematically Frankenstein is about a premature birth that Mary had 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:48.720 an eighteen fifteen where their baby died two weeks after 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:52.200 it was born. So this is uh again like there 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:54.600 and I'll get into this, like this woman had a 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:59.120 horrible life full of medical misfortune, and honestly, it really 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:02.000 seems like Percy Elly treated her like garbage. But it 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:04.960 said that he didn't even care about the baby's condition 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:06.600 after it was born, and went on to have an 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:10.240 affair with her step sister right after I was born. Uh, 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:14.760 and that Frankenstein. The writing of it is her reconciliation 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:18.280 with giving life and then that life dying, the death 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:21.400 of her baby, and the horrible father that she had 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:24.880 to put up with. So um and just all right, 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:27.560 here's a little a side note about Percy Shelley. It 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:29.480 sounds like an awful person all the way around. Like 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:31.680 everything I've read about it, he just doesn't sound like 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:35.640 a pleasant guy. Um. Not only was he this obnoxious adulterer, 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:39.320 but according to Paula Dory's diary from that summer, this 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:41.760 is just one little instance of him. They were all 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:45.000 sitting around telling stories or something, and Shelley just stood 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:48.080 up and grabbed his head and started shrieking and ran 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:51.240 out of the room like very pretentiously, and everybody was like, 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:53.600 what is this all about? And he runs into the bathroom, 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:55.400 he throws water into his face, and he comes back 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:57.720 and he goes, well, I'm sorry, it's just while you 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:00.640 were talking. Just then, I suddenly imagine a woman who 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:05.240 had eyes instead of nipples, and everybody was just like, oh, okay, 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:10.200 moving on. Uh so he seems like a real character. Um, 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:13.760 And I imagine for for Mary's part, you know, she 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:16.200 I think they got together at like super early age, 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:18.359 like she was like sixteen or something like that, and 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:22.080 they were married maybe when she was nineteen or twenty, 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:25.600 but like she had already given birth to this premature child. 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:29.320 A lot, a lot of weird stuff around this, And well, 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:31.840 I guess I'm that theories like that. I can certainly 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:33.720 see where it could be a part of the genesis 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:37.119 of the story, because certainly misfortune and life in Vincent 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:42.040 general tend to color our creative endeavors. But I guess 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:44.919 I tend to shy away from theories that say, oh, 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:48.000 this book right here is all about this one thing. Yeah, 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:50.560 and I just don't think life necessarily works like well, 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:52.800 and Frankenstein is one of those books right that, like 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:55.000 I'm trying to remember if I read it in high school. 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:56.680 I definitely read it in college because I took a 0:17:56.680 --> 0:17:59.480 horror classes in college. But like, um, it's one of 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:02.160 those books sort of like Catcher in the Rye where 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:04.840 you can like you as the reader, bring your themes 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:07.320 to it, and lots of people try to apply those 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:10.840 and say, like this, this is what this is about, right, Uh, 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:13.320 and Frankenstein is one of those. I mean it it's 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:15.919 very universal in that way. Um, and so a lot 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:18.080 of people take different things from it. So, yeah, you're right, 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:21.199 there isn't Those are just two sort of little maybe 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:25.520 factoids about its genesis. Another thing I read was an 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:28.679 article called the Medicine of Shelley and Frankenstein out of 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:32.040 a journal called Emergency Medicine, and this sort of traced 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:36.919 the medical misfortunes as I mentioned earlier, of Mary Shelley 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:40.320 and how they may have influenced it. That she was 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:45.600 very much aware of science, medicine, and the ideas of 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:47.480 life and death because of all of these things. So 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:51.320 I'm gonna hit you with him real quick. So Mary 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:54.760 Shelley's mother was Mary Wolston Kraft, who was a prominent 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:58.159 feminist at the time, but she literally died ten days 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:02.280 after giving birth to Mary from puerre parole fever, which 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:05.600 was a pretty common occurrence at the time. I think. Uh. 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:08.480 There's also a mention of the birth of their daughter, 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:10.800 who I talked about earlier. Clara, that's the one who 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:14.760 died at twelve days of age. Reportedly, Mary had dreams 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:18.600 of this dead daughter being reanimated by fire right afterwards. 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:21.159 So you can imagine how like traumatized this woman was, 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:24.000 Like she grew up without a mother, her first kid dies, 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:29.120 she's I guess like eloped with this kind of jerk. Uh. 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:32.720 In eighteen sixteen, just after Mary gave birth to their 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:38.679 second child, William, her sister Fanny, committed suicide with laudanum. 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:42.239 Then in eighteen seventeen, Percy had another wife and her 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:45.240 name was Harriet, and she committed suicide while she was 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:49.600 pregnant with his child. Two weeks later, two weeks after 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:54.200 this woman commits suicide, Percy, Mary's Mary. And then they 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:58.960 have a third child, and that's Clara Everina Shelley, and 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:05.360 she died at thirteen months of age from dysenterry. Then William, 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:07.720 who was the one who was born earlier, he dies 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:11.160 in eighteen nineteen from malaria. So she's she's had three 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:15.840 kids who died, her sister, her what do you call 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:19.320 her other wife, and then her mother, they've all, like 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:22.919 every everybody around her just died. Uh. And then Percy 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:26.879 himself is lost at sea in eighteen two. Mary contracts 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:30.880 smallpox in eight and she lives until the ripe old 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:34.159 age of fifty two, when she died from a brain tumor. 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:35.919 So you guess you could say her short life was 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:39.400 full of life, death, and the the whims of brilliant 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:44.119 but unstable men exactly, which makes sense regarding the book, 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:48.080 and and just that, like she would have been aware 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.520 of a lot of the medical scientific goings on of 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:54.920 the time, not just because of this, but also because 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:59.760 her father and Percy and Byron they were all sort 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:01.600 of interested in this stuff and talked about it and 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:03.960 met with scientists at the time, as we'll talk about later. 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:06.879 So at the heart of Frankenstein, of course, we have 0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:11.040 the tale of a of a human creating life, particularly 0:21:11.080 --> 0:21:14.840 a human male creating life, using science to do so. 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:17.840 Uh and and in and in that, like the mythic 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:20.959 roots of this thing run pretty deep. And and if 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:23.720 you follow the mythic roots far enough, you also reach 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:29.240 like the basic uh, psychological underpinnings of this this whole 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:36.119 notion of of humans giving life to an unliving object. Um. 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:38.919 So I'm just gonna gonna gonna coast through some of 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:42.680 this here for you. So so we have numerous examples 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:45.280 of this to draw in myth of course you've got uh. 0:21:45.960 --> 0:21:49.320 For instance, the Greek myth of Pygmalion, in which you know, 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.320 female scalp sculpture is is awoken with the help of 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:56.080 the god Venus. Uh. Medieval Jewish folk tales are full 0:21:56.240 --> 0:21:59.879 full of golems um, artificial beings that are you know, 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:03.760 brought to life via a tablet of sacred words that 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:08.200 are inserted beneath the clay, humanoids, tongues, um. Countless other 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:12.000 examples exist now. But humans have a knack for attributing 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:17.359 life to artificial likenesses. And it's we call this anthropomorphism, 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:20.360 and it refers to when we take non human or 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:24.480 impersonal objects and we give them human or personal characteristics 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:27.919 or behaviors. Yeah, and so this is a good spot 0:22:27.960 --> 0:22:32.800 for us to note something about Shelley's version of the monster, Uh, 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:38.560 that this Frankenstein's Monster was not sewn together and blasted 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:41.480 to life with lightning, as we've come to understand from 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:45.200 James Whale's ninety one film Uh. In fact, the machines 0:22:45.240 --> 0:22:49.159 that are in that were actually inspired by Nicola Tesla's 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:53.000 high voltage devices. In the book, however, the monster is 0:22:53.040 --> 0:22:56.080 more like a golem or homunculous and that it's brought 0:22:56.119 --> 0:23:00.239 about by what is called, quote, an elemental principle of 0:23:00.320 --> 0:23:04.639 life like alchemy that is then applied to various quote 0:23:05.000 --> 0:23:09.000 raw materials from the dissecting room and the slaughterhouse. So yes, 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:13.800 it's undead meat, I guess, but it's not even necessarily 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:16.879 human parts. It's more like a flesh goum. Yeah. And 0:23:16.920 --> 0:23:19.160 while there is you know, an allusion to some sort 0:23:19.200 --> 0:23:22.840 of electrical nature to the secret, it's very much a 0:23:22.840 --> 0:23:25.600 secret in the book because the book is is is 0:23:25.640 --> 0:23:28.840 told from the point of views of Victor and the creature, 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:34.520 and Victor, as a first person uh narrator here does 0:23:34.600 --> 0:23:37.320 not want to share his secret. Like most of the 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:40.480 book is about how ashamed and awful he feels about 0:23:40.720 --> 0:23:44.000 having brought this thing into being, and therefore he wants 0:23:44.040 --> 0:23:49.399 to die with the secrets. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Remember the 0:23:49.520 --> 0:23:52.679 narrative setup is that they're in the Arctic. He's on 0:23:52.720 --> 0:23:56.399 a ship with the ship's captain I think, or somebody 0:23:56.400 --> 0:23:59.159 who's on the ship and just basically telling recounting the 0:23:59.240 --> 0:24:02.480 story to him and is full of woe at all 0:24:02.520 --> 0:24:04.639 the tragedy that it has wrought him. Yeah, as he 0:24:04.720 --> 0:24:07.399 and his created chase each other to the ends of 0:24:07.400 --> 0:24:10.680 the earth. But but yeah, we have this basic idea 0:24:10.760 --> 0:24:13.680 that just that we have the power to think things 0:24:13.760 --> 0:24:16.280 to life, not in a literal sense, but in a 0:24:16.480 --> 0:24:20.680 you know, in a metaphoric and psychological sense. A brick 0:24:20.800 --> 0:24:23.600 is just a brick until we paint a smiley face 0:24:23.640 --> 0:24:26.600 on it, and then it becomes inevitably a little harder 0:24:26.720 --> 0:24:29.240 or a little easier to throw that brick down a well, 0:24:29.320 --> 0:24:32.800 because he'ven imbued it with a sense of being. And 0:24:32.840 --> 0:24:35.600 this interesting court stems from something anthropologists called the law 0:24:35.640 --> 0:24:39.480 of similarity, which holds that humans inevitably links superficial, real 0:24:39.560 --> 0:24:44.000 life resemblances to deep, unreal resemblances. So a baby doll 0:24:44.080 --> 0:24:46.800 is in an actual infant, but it resembles one enough 0:24:46.840 --> 0:24:49.040 to make it real to the child who plays with it. 0:24:49.760 --> 0:24:51.760 And there's a way to test the law of similarity 0:24:51.920 --> 0:24:53.480 on your own. You can sketch a face of a 0:24:53.520 --> 0:24:55.640 loved one on a scrap of paper and then crumple 0:24:55.640 --> 0:24:57.960 it in your hand. And when you do that, do 0:24:58.000 --> 0:25:00.080 you feel a connection? Do you feel like connects in 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:02.360 that your mind forms, including the resemblance and the thing 0:25:02.400 --> 0:25:06.680 itself probably so. Uh so. Out of this phenomenon, we 0:25:06.720 --> 0:25:11.080 have innumerable magical and religious practices that emerge in human culture, 0:25:11.359 --> 0:25:14.160 such as harming a person's likeness to produce the same 0:25:14.200 --> 0:25:18.359 effect on the actual person uh so called sympathetic magic 0:25:18.440 --> 0:25:21.840 that includes the burning of effigies, the use of voodoo dolls. 0:25:21.200 --> 0:25:26.359 And the roots of anthropypomorphic thinking lie in the human 0:25:26.400 --> 0:25:30.320 capacity for reflective consciousness, the ability to use what we 0:25:30.359 --> 0:25:33.800 know about ourselves to understand and predict predict the behaviors 0:25:33.800 --> 0:25:38.040 of others. And these empathetic qualities gave early humans and 0:25:38.080 --> 0:25:41.280 evolutionary advantage along that did not only outthink other people, 0:25:41.600 --> 0:25:44.560 but also to fit the behaviors of domesticated animals within 0:25:44.600 --> 0:25:48.360 the confines of human society. Yeah yeah, that's very important. 0:25:48.520 --> 0:25:51.320 Yeah so. And then as a as kind of a 0:25:51.359 --> 0:25:54.720 sidebar to that, it also gives us the place and 0:25:54.800 --> 0:25:59.080 human cognition to dream about bringing man made likenesses to life, 0:25:59.080 --> 0:26:01.840 be it a at you of a woman or a 0:26:02.000 --> 0:26:07.639 flesh golemn in a Gothic basement, which brings us to alchemy. Um, 0:26:07.680 --> 0:26:10.520 and I want to read a passage here from the book. Actually, 0:26:10.560 --> 0:26:14.280 before we dive into this, there is Mary Shelley was 0:26:14.280 --> 0:26:17.359 obviously well aware of alchemy at the time, and she 0:26:17.480 --> 0:26:20.600 works it into the book. There's a point where Victor's 0:26:20.600 --> 0:26:23.960 studying at the university and he's got some um I 0:26:24.040 --> 0:26:27.119 guess mentors, and one of them is referred to They 0:26:27.119 --> 0:26:30.560 don't give his first name, he's just M. Waldman. But 0:26:30.680 --> 0:26:34.440 Waldman sort of, you know, guides Victor's study and says, 0:26:34.480 --> 0:26:37.280 you can use my machine. So he's it's implied Waldman 0:26:37.400 --> 0:26:40.080 sort of knows how to do this himself. Maybe uh. 0:26:40.119 --> 0:26:43.800 And he says this about alchemists. He says, the ancient 0:26:44.200 --> 0:26:49.600 teachers of this science promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The 0:26:49.640 --> 0:26:53.600 modern masters promised very little. They know that metals cannot 0:26:53.600 --> 0:26:56.760 be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera. 0:26:57.200 --> 0:27:00.960 But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble 0:27:01.000 --> 0:27:04.080 in dirt and their eyes to pour over the microscope 0:27:04.160 --> 0:27:08.480 or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the 0:27:08.600 --> 0:27:11.800 recesses of nature and show how she works in her 0:27:11.880 --> 0:27:15.560 hiding places. They ascend into the heavens. They have discovered 0:27:15.560 --> 0:27:18.440 how the blood circulates and the nature of the air 0:27:18.480 --> 0:27:22.880 we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers. 0:27:23.119 --> 0:27:26.639 They can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, 0:27:26.800 --> 0:27:30.920 and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows. 0:27:31.480 --> 0:27:33.760 So there's a little bit of a set up here 0:27:33.800 --> 0:27:37.920 that Shelley's giving us, which is, yes, alchemy was a thing, 0:27:38.200 --> 0:27:41.800 and we acknowledge that Victor Frankenstein is pretty influenced by it. 0:27:42.240 --> 0:27:45.840 But modern science is here to pave the real way 0:27:45.920 --> 0:27:48.960 the alchemy left behind. Yeah, And and then I think 0:27:48.960 --> 0:27:52.680 it gets to the heart of what alchemy was, uh, 0:27:52.400 --> 0:27:55.080 you know, basically from the sixteenth of the eighteen centuries, 0:27:55.119 --> 0:28:01.480 it was a hodgepodge of early chemistry, occultism, essential all 0:28:01.520 --> 0:28:06.280 these these uh, these these graspings for understanding, some rooted 0:28:06.400 --> 0:28:09.640 in in pre scientific chemistry, like in an actual attempt 0:28:09.640 --> 0:28:12.440 to understand how these chemical properties interact with each other 0:28:12.800 --> 0:28:15.600 and other. But but that is kind of muddled in 0:28:15.680 --> 0:28:19.040 together with a bunch of essentially who we uh, some 0:28:19.240 --> 0:28:22.399 actual like you know, there were some interesting discoveries that 0:28:22.480 --> 0:28:26.160 came out of alchemy, but you didn't have scientific rigor 0:28:26.200 --> 0:28:30.000 there to guide it right. And remember Conrad Dipple, who 0:28:30.040 --> 0:28:32.560 may or may not have influenced this story, was an 0:28:32.600 --> 0:28:36.840 alchemist and claimed that he had found the elixir of life. Now, 0:28:36.840 --> 0:28:40.240 the elixir of life is also known in alchemic circles 0:28:40.320 --> 0:28:44.960 as the Philosopher's Stone. Yeah, the philosopher's Stone was certainly 0:28:45.800 --> 0:28:50.760 one of the main alchemical um uh goals. Maybe well, 0:28:51.120 --> 0:28:52.480 but there were a couple of other things that were 0:28:53.000 --> 0:28:55.720 interesting as well. Of course, there's there's always the attempt 0:28:55.720 --> 0:28:58.960 to turn things into gold, um right. For instance, there 0:28:59.000 --> 0:29:03.640 was a seventeen entry alchemist Hinnig Brundt distilled countless buckets 0:29:03.680 --> 0:29:07.000 of urine in an attempt to turn urine into gold. 0:29:07.200 --> 0:29:11.080 And if only we could do that only yeah, uh so, 0:29:11.240 --> 0:29:16.080 if I could only spin urine into gold. His experiment failed, 0:29:16.400 --> 0:29:18.880 which would come to know, there's no surprise to anyone. 0:29:19.280 --> 0:29:22.480 But it did allow him to discover the element phosphorus. 0:29:23.240 --> 0:29:26.000 So so you can see here and how even though 0:29:26.000 --> 0:29:28.760 it was unguided and uh and uncertain and muddled with 0:29:28.800 --> 0:29:33.000 all these other disciplines, they still occasionally accidentally achieve something 0:29:33.040 --> 0:29:36.960 now and again, it's the history of science. Yea. Now, 0:29:37.440 --> 0:29:42.640 the fictional Frankenstein's work closely resembles alchemical attempts to produce H, 0:29:42.880 --> 0:29:46.960 a minuscule artificial human avoid known as a homunculus. Uh 0:29:47.000 --> 0:29:49.959 and and uh. I've looked into this summing in the past. 0:29:50.200 --> 0:29:53.080 I'm always fascinated by the homunculus. Do you have a 0:29:53.120 --> 0:29:56.600 monster science episode about homunculi? I don't know. I just 0:29:56.640 --> 0:29:58.560 I've done a few posts here and there about it. 0:29:58.880 --> 0:30:02.520 There's a there's a mini text known as the Libavack 0:30:02.920 --> 0:30:05.800 or the Book of the Cow, and it it lays 0:30:05.800 --> 0:30:09.240 out the homunculous creation formula and bizarre details so that 0:30:09.320 --> 0:30:13.160 the process begins by mixing human semen with a mystical 0:30:13.240 --> 0:30:17.440 phosphorescent elixir and ends with a newborn humunculous emerging from 0:30:17.440 --> 0:30:20.719 a cow, growing human skin and craving its mother's blood 0:30:21.000 --> 0:30:24.680 inside of a large glass or lead vessel. That sounds 0:30:24.720 --> 0:30:27.720 totally legit to me. I mean, at any time I've 0:30:27.800 --> 0:30:31.560 mixed human semen with phosphorescent elixir, something close to this happens. 0:30:31.600 --> 0:30:35.800 I think I've been missing the cow ingredient. But but 0:30:35.800 --> 0:30:39.400 but at hard here? So what while lost amid false 0:30:39.480 --> 0:30:45.280 concepts of spontaneous generation and magical Tomfoolery. Alchemists were pondering 0:30:45.320 --> 0:30:49.400 the possibility of creating an artificial rational animals, as they 0:30:49.680 --> 0:30:53.840 sometimes referred to it, through learned manipulation of organic tissue, 0:30:54.440 --> 0:30:56.520 and at the time, it was widely believed that humans 0:30:56.560 --> 0:31:01.080 could mimic and manipulate such natural reproductive processes, but biological 0:31:01.120 --> 0:31:05.600 science was still incubating, and humanity's first breakthroughs came in 0:31:05.640 --> 0:31:10.480 the form of machines, uh, not flesh. And it's worth 0:31:10.840 --> 0:31:15.000 noting here too that the novel states that Victor specifically 0:31:15.040 --> 0:31:20.240 studied books by Albertus Magnus, Paris Celsus, and Cornelius Agrippa, 0:31:20.280 --> 0:31:24.840 who were all known alchemists, and that he considered lords 0:31:24.880 --> 0:31:28.360 of his imagination. Uh. Now, let's take a quick break. 0:31:28.400 --> 0:31:30.600 But when we get back, we can get into the 0:31:30.640 --> 0:31:34.280 machinery aspect of this of bringing life about by talking 0:31:34.280 --> 0:31:45.800 about automatons. Alright, we're back. So the automaton uh slightly 0:31:45.840 --> 0:31:49.240 different deal than Frankenstein. I can't think offhand of any 0:31:49.240 --> 0:31:52.280 examples of like Frankenstein adaptations where they've gone for like 0:31:52.320 --> 0:31:57.600 a purely mechanical monster. The one that immediately pops into 0:31:57.640 --> 0:32:00.880 my head is Frankenstein's Army. Have you seen that? Yes, Yeah, 0:32:01.240 --> 0:32:04.120 they're very mechanical, but there is like organic tissue stone 0:32:04.120 --> 0:32:07.400 in there too, right, Yeah, they're kind of like steam punky. 0:32:07.520 --> 0:32:10.560 Side words, Josh Clark turned me to that movie and 0:32:10.640 --> 0:32:12.960 I watched it on Netflix one time, So if you've 0:32:13.000 --> 0:32:14.840 never seen it, the premise of the movie is that 0:32:14.960 --> 0:32:21.040 Victor Frankenstein, it's like his grandson or somebody like that, 0:32:21.480 --> 0:32:25.040 is alive during World War two and the Russians. He's 0:32:25.080 --> 0:32:28.520 working for the Russians and he builds like this army 0:32:28.560 --> 0:32:32.080 of Frankenstein's that then just destroyed Nazis. And it's it's 0:32:32.080 --> 0:32:35.400 a found footage film too, like somehow they're filming the 0:32:35.560 --> 0:32:38.800 entire thing during World War Two. It's a it's pretty great. 0:32:38.840 --> 0:32:41.720 It's been a sixteen it's more of a filmed haunted 0:32:41.760 --> 0:32:44.760 attraction that's more of a house than it is a movie. 0:32:45.520 --> 0:32:47.080 But it's still a lot of fun if you're in 0:32:47.160 --> 0:32:50.760 for that. The monster designs are amazing. That's the the 0:32:51.120 --> 0:32:56.000 best part. Now, as far as it's Frankenstein is concerned, Uh, 0:32:56.240 --> 0:32:58.960 you know, we don't see a purely mechanical Frankenstein. It 0:32:58.960 --> 0:33:01.680 certainly that's not what he presented in the book, But 0:33:02.600 --> 0:33:08.600 it's really difficult to think about Frankenstein's historical underpinnings without 0:33:08.600 --> 0:33:13.320 thinking about the obsession of of automatons, the idea that, Okay, 0:33:13.320 --> 0:33:15.200 certainly people can't build something out of flesh, but we 0:33:15.240 --> 0:33:17.920 can build machines. And if we build machines that look 0:33:18.000 --> 0:33:20.880 like humans, if they if we can program them to 0:33:21.280 --> 0:33:24.520 to or make them so that they move in certain ways, 0:33:24.920 --> 0:33:28.920 then we are at least mimicking a living body. Um. 0:33:28.960 --> 0:33:31.360 They're not intelligent in any sense of the world at word, 0:33:31.400 --> 0:33:36.640 but they serve as a forerunner to modern computational robots. Now. 0:33:36.800 --> 0:33:39.680 Accounts of automatons date back as far as the fourth 0:33:39.680 --> 0:33:44.200 century b C. When when a Greek poet Pindar wrote 0:33:44.200 --> 0:33:48.280 of animated statues on the streets of Rhodes uh and 0:33:48.320 --> 0:33:53.920 you had accounts of other individuals building self propelled mechanical birds. Overtime, 0:33:54.360 --> 0:33:59.600 Countless engineers and inventors applied their intellect to create mechanical, pneumatic, 0:33:59.680 --> 0:34:03.520 hide rolic and even electric mimicry of biological life, and 0:34:03.520 --> 0:34:07.360 their attempts rained from Leonardo da Vinci's fifteenth century robotic Night, 0:34:07.680 --> 0:34:10.880 which was apparently designed to walk and sit to Jacques 0:34:11.000 --> 0:34:16.359 de w Consin's eighteenth century digesting duck, which which made 0:34:16.360 --> 0:34:18.160 the rounds, it was really more of a performance thing. 0:34:18.160 --> 0:34:22.279 It was supposedly this mechanical duck was using its motorized 0:34:22.320 --> 0:34:26.520 chewing abilities, uh, to to eat and then it's digesting, 0:34:26.560 --> 0:34:30.520 and then it has a mechanical sphincter to mimic defecation. Uh. 0:34:30.560 --> 0:34:34.719 Reportedly the inspiration for the tre ducan. Yeah, in a way, 0:34:34.800 --> 0:34:38.240 kind of a mechanical tre duncan, but it didn't actually 0:34:38.280 --> 0:34:39.719 digest anything. It was just kind of a part of 0:34:39.719 --> 0:34:45.360 the trick, but it didn't include actual biomimicry mechanics. But 0:34:45.400 --> 0:34:49.000 it all reflects this this idea that Okay, if the 0:34:49.400 --> 0:34:52.279 body may be mechanical in nature, and if we can 0:34:52.320 --> 0:34:55.640 build machines that replicate it, then then perhaps this is 0:34:55.680 --> 0:34:57.480 the first step and getting to the point where we 0:34:57.480 --> 0:35:00.719 can we can build a rational animal, that we can 0:35:00.760 --> 0:35:02.640 build a human, We can build an animal, we can 0:35:02.680 --> 0:35:05.439 build a duck that digests. That these things are within 0:35:05.480 --> 0:35:09.400 the graphs of human achievement. Yeah, this speaks to I 0:35:09.440 --> 0:35:14.600 think just like this ongoing theme throughout human myth and 0:35:14.719 --> 0:35:18.000 also in science to a certain degree. But of you know, 0:35:18.200 --> 0:35:22.839 us creating life outside of our regular reproductive means, right, 0:35:22.880 --> 0:35:25.439 And of course Frankenstein's about that, But you can even say, 0:35:25.480 --> 0:35:28.319 like I don't know data from Star Trek. The next 0:35:28.320 --> 0:35:30.839 generation is also about that, right, like the way in 0:35:30.880 --> 0:35:33.239 his own way he's at Frankenstein. You know it. It 0:35:33.520 --> 0:35:36.239 gets down to stuff we're still struggling with today, Like 0:35:36.640 --> 0:35:40.279 whatever we can create that that resembles a human, that 0:35:40.400 --> 0:35:43.880 resembles a human human thought, that that tweaks the human design? 0:35:43.960 --> 0:35:48.520 Like what's the divide between all that? That that that biology, 0:35:48.680 --> 0:35:54.799 the biomechanics, and actual identity, actual consciousness. Seventeenth century French 0:35:54.800 --> 0:35:59.319 philosopher Reneed de Cartes viewed nature is primarily mechanical. He 0:35:59.400 --> 0:36:03.280 avoided the messier existential complications of this view by defining 0:36:03.360 --> 0:36:06.400 the human soul as an independent force, as as the 0:36:06.440 --> 0:36:11.120 ghost in the machine, as as philosopher and Descartes's critic 0:36:11.400 --> 0:36:16.399 Gilbert Ryle would later describe it, Yeah, Descartes classic philosopher, 0:36:16.560 --> 0:36:19.319 the old am I a brain in a jar? How 0:36:19.360 --> 0:36:21.040 do I prove that I'm not just a brain in 0:36:21.080 --> 0:36:23.160 a jar? And a demon is torturing me into thinking 0:36:23.160 --> 0:36:26.400 that existence is real? That was That was like pretty 0:36:26.480 --> 0:36:28.799 much a whole semester of college for me, was trying 0:36:28.800 --> 0:36:30.560 to wrap my brain around that one. Yeah, and like 0:36:30.600 --> 0:36:33.480 I said, it, stuff we're still were worrying about today 0:36:33.560 --> 0:36:36.560 as we we were further and further towards the sort 0:36:36.560 --> 0:36:41.200 of artificial intelligence that potentially reflects our own consciousness. So 0:36:41.280 --> 0:36:44.160 that too, is as a major theme and in Frankenstein, 0:36:44.320 --> 0:36:49.080 because because the creature is, like I say, unlike some 0:36:49.200 --> 0:36:53.799 of the more basic uh film adaptations, he is a 0:36:53.880 --> 0:36:56.640 rational creature, he has them, he has emotions. You feel 0:36:56.640 --> 0:36:59.040 a lot of sympathy for him in the book, really 0:36:59.080 --> 0:37:01.960 more in my heating anyway, you feel more sympathy for 0:37:02.000 --> 0:37:04.600 the creature than you do for Victor, who who is 0:37:05.000 --> 0:37:10.080 reckless and impulsive and uh, just kind of a disaster 0:37:10.680 --> 0:37:13.000 and and what is the creature but a result of 0:37:13.040 --> 0:37:16.600 his disastrous choices. Yeah, And this brings us around to 0:37:16.680 --> 0:37:22.239 the alternate title of the book, which is the modern Prometheus. Uh. 0:37:22.280 --> 0:37:25.800 And in many ways, Victor is that modern Prometheus. And 0:37:25.840 --> 0:37:28.920 as we were talking about earlier, there's a million different 0:37:28.920 --> 0:37:31.600 ways that you can try to dissect that and figure 0:37:31.640 --> 0:37:34.560 out what the themes are going on there. I think 0:37:34.640 --> 0:37:39.040 the term modern Prometheus was coined by Emmanuel Kant and 0:37:39.280 --> 0:37:44.680 in reference it was referencing Benjamin Franklin's experiments with electricity. 0:37:44.760 --> 0:37:47.439 So let's take this apart for just a second. Here, 0:37:47.840 --> 0:37:52.239 Prometheus in the Greek iteration stole fire from the gods, right, 0:37:53.000 --> 0:37:56.520 But then there's a Latin iteration as well of Prometheus, 0:37:56.600 --> 0:37:59.040 and he was basically bringing men to life I think 0:37:59.040 --> 0:38:02.880 from clay by using particles of quote, heavenly fire, so 0:38:03.080 --> 0:38:07.080 also electricity maybe. Um So there's there's a lot going 0:38:07.160 --> 0:38:10.759 on in there. Was Mary Shelley purposely connecting it to 0:38:10.800 --> 0:38:14.759 both of those and how did she envision this the 0:38:15.440 --> 0:38:20.399 I guess symbology of Prometheus as as relevant to her 0:38:20.440 --> 0:38:23.200 context right the time that she lived in when people 0:38:23.239 --> 0:38:26.800 were experimenting with electricity, trying to discern what the meaning 0:38:26.880 --> 0:38:29.279 was between life and death and whether you could use 0:38:29.280 --> 0:38:32.560 electricity to revive a dead body. Yeah, I mean the 0:38:32.719 --> 0:38:36.719 Promethean figures are are fascinating and in various mythologies, be 0:38:36.760 --> 0:38:39.279 at actual Prometheus or some other generation of where you 0:38:39.280 --> 0:38:42.759 have a character, uh an individual demigod, even sometimes it's 0:38:42.800 --> 0:38:45.720 just kind of a semi human hero who takes something 0:38:45.760 --> 0:38:48.040 from the gods and gives it to humans generally, it's 0:38:48.080 --> 0:38:51.360 like a technology or an ability. Their their Chinese myths 0:38:51.360 --> 0:38:56.560 where it's uh, it's more agricultural in nature, and so like, 0:38:56.840 --> 0:38:58.640 what does that what does that mean? Does that mean 0:38:58.640 --> 0:39:01.080 that that humans here have they have they stepped out 0:39:01.080 --> 0:39:04.960 of beyond their boundaries? Are they doing so they dabbling 0:39:05.600 --> 0:39:08.600 in God's domain? Or is it simply like, hey, they 0:39:08.640 --> 0:39:11.840 have mastered something. Here is something that previously was the 0:39:11.920 --> 0:39:17.239 domain of of of of of of forces beyond their imagination, 0:39:17.520 --> 0:39:22.239 and now it is within the human experience. Yeah. Obviously 0:39:22.400 --> 0:39:25.799 makes me think of the recent movie Prometheus, set within 0:39:25.840 --> 0:39:29.480 the alien mythology and the beginning of that where these 0:39:30.400 --> 0:39:34.520 uh what are they? These statuesque engineer aliens come to 0:39:34.560 --> 0:39:38.560 Earth and give life to earth basically by I mean, 0:39:38.600 --> 0:39:40.400 there's the first five minutes of the film, like one 0:39:40.400 --> 0:39:44.640 of them just dissolves, right and like his cellular parts 0:39:44.719 --> 0:39:48.480 become the nature of life. Well, yeah, they're presented as titans. 0:39:48.880 --> 0:39:51.440 Prometheus was a Titan, So it's it's I mean, it's 0:39:51.520 --> 0:39:55.280 really the the metaphor is strong in that one. Yeah. 0:39:55.440 --> 0:39:59.840 So this brings us to the real nuts and bolts 0:40:00.000 --> 0:40:04.279 science behind Frankenstein and that all starts with bioelectricity. So 0:40:04.360 --> 0:40:10.200 I want to do just a real basic encyclopedia breakdown 0:40:10.239 --> 0:40:14.520 of what we mean by bioelectricity. Here we're referring to 0:40:15.040 --> 0:40:19.759 the electric potentials and currents that are produced by or 0:40:19.960 --> 0:40:25.560 occurring within living organisms. So this is not necessarily Frankenstein's monster, 0:40:25.719 --> 0:40:30.000 but the experiments of people like Luigi Galvani and Alessandro 0:40:30.120 --> 0:40:33.680 Volta in the eighteenth century influenced this field of study, 0:40:33.680 --> 0:40:35.960 and we're gonna talk about them much more in the 0:40:35.960 --> 0:40:39.279 next couple of minutes. Generally, they were looking for a 0:40:39.320 --> 0:40:43.640 connection between electricity and the muscle contractions and frogs and 0:40:43.680 --> 0:40:46.960 other animals, and it lead to modern developments where we 0:40:47.000 --> 0:40:50.600 can now measure bioelectric effects and clinical medicine. Right, you know, 0:40:50.640 --> 0:40:54.600 we can measure uh, how electricity emanates from our hearts 0:40:54.600 --> 0:40:57.640 and our brains, etcetera, as part of our modern medicine. 0:40:57.960 --> 0:41:01.960 The difference is that bioelectric city currents consist of a 0:41:02.040 --> 0:41:05.480 flow of ions, whereas the kind of electrical current that 0:41:05.480 --> 0:41:09.120 we use for power UH is more of a movement 0:41:09.200 --> 0:41:15.400 of electrons. Bioelectric pulses a company all muscular contraction and 0:41:15.440 --> 0:41:18.360 a nerve and muscle cells Basically what happens there's a 0:41:18.440 --> 0:41:22.759 chemical or electrochemical stimulation that changes the cell membrane, so 0:41:22.800 --> 0:41:27.399 they discharge a current along those fibers and activate the 0:41:27.480 --> 0:41:32.440 contractile mechanism, so the contraction of these muscles. Now, Professor 0:41:32.520 --> 0:41:36.920 Sharon Rustin has written quite a bit about the science 0:41:37.360 --> 0:41:40.480 behind the context of the time that Mary Shelley was 0:41:40.520 --> 0:41:42.480 living in the influence this, and I want to talk 0:41:42.480 --> 0:41:45.759 about a couple of these. There's uh three or four. 0:41:46.480 --> 0:41:49.920 The first is that at the time of the novels writing, 0:41:50.440 --> 0:41:54.239 drowning and resuscitation from drowning were a very big thing, 0:41:54.760 --> 0:41:56.600 as she tells it, despite the fact that a lot 0:41:56.640 --> 0:41:59.960 of people worked along the Thames in London, they couldn't 0:42:00.000 --> 0:42:03.279 necessarily swim uh. And so there was this group that 0:42:03.360 --> 0:42:06.960 was started called the Royal Humane Society in London. It 0:42:07.000 --> 0:42:09.879 was established in seventeen seventy four, but its first name 0:42:10.000 --> 0:42:15.759 was the Society for the Recovery of Persons apparently drowned uh, 0:42:15.760 --> 0:42:17.960 and its whole aim was to publish information on how 0:42:17.960 --> 0:42:21.680 to resuscitate others and save lives. Saving people from drowning 0:42:21.719 --> 0:42:24.200 was such a big deal that they used to have 0:42:24.239 --> 0:42:27.240 an annual procession in London of all of the people 0:42:27.280 --> 0:42:31.200 that were quote raised from the dead by these methods, okay, 0:42:31.680 --> 0:42:36.520 one of these people was Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wolston Craft, 0:42:36.680 --> 0:42:39.319 who had tried to kill herself by jumping off of 0:42:39.360 --> 0:42:44.359 Putney Bridge into the Thames, and afterwards she complained that 0:42:44.400 --> 0:42:49.799 she was inhumanely brought back to life and misery. And 0:42:49.840 --> 0:42:53.760 as a consequence of these resurrections, there was a growing 0:42:53.920 --> 0:42:57.120 fear that wasn't just drowning, Like maybe you could appear 0:42:57.160 --> 0:42:59.360 dead and then you'd, oh, you'd be alive. So what 0:42:59.440 --> 0:43:02.640 if I get buried alive? This is where people really 0:43:02.680 --> 0:43:06.879 start freaking about the idea of being buried alive. Uh. Yeah, 0:43:06.920 --> 0:43:09.440 this is interesting to think about because if you think 0:43:09.440 --> 0:43:11.919 back to a time where we're falling in the water, 0:43:11.960 --> 0:43:14.600 not being able to swim, essentially drowning, that that's just 0:43:14.680 --> 0:43:17.120 a complete death sentence, And then you see an uptick 0:43:17.320 --> 0:43:23.440 in the survivability of these experiences. Um he could we 0:43:23.600 --> 0:43:26.680 view it today is just a basic reality that individuals 0:43:26.680 --> 0:43:30.200 can be resuscitated. But but when the idea is fresh, 0:43:30.239 --> 0:43:33.560 it takes on these kind of supernatural aspects. Yeah very 0:43:33.640 --> 0:43:36.160 much so. Uh, I mean Here's the thing is that 0:43:36.640 --> 0:43:38.920 doctors at the time, in fact, one of them was 0:43:39.000 --> 0:43:42.200 Shelley's doctor. His name was James Curry, wrote a book 0:43:42.239 --> 0:43:44.399 where he argued that the only way to be sure 0:43:44.480 --> 0:43:48.440 that someone was dead was if putrification began. Other states 0:43:48.800 --> 0:43:51.160 like painting, or being in a coma, or even being 0:43:51.160 --> 0:43:55.560 asleep were sort of considered to be like death. And 0:43:55.600 --> 0:43:58.719 we see this reflected in the book Frankenstein in the 0:43:58.760 --> 0:44:01.640 way that she uses language to describe like when Elizabeth 0:44:01.680 --> 0:44:05.080 faints or when Victor collapses. They talk about it as 0:44:05.120 --> 0:44:08.400 if like they were momentarily dead and then came back. 0:44:08.680 --> 0:44:11.080 So it was a very different understanding of the difference 0:44:11.080 --> 0:44:14.759 between life and death at that time. Now we get 0:44:14.760 --> 0:44:20.960 into Galvani, Volta and Aldini. These are the Italian electrocutioners, 0:44:21.000 --> 0:44:24.000 as I like to call them. These guys played with electricity. 0:44:24.040 --> 0:44:26.680 My understanding is you guys talked about the You and 0:44:26.760 --> 0:44:30.000 Joe talked about them in a previous episode that was 0:44:30.040 --> 0:44:34.200 all about sort of the zany religious antics around electricity. 0:44:34.640 --> 0:44:36.799 Uh yeah, yeah, Well, I'll be sure to include a 0:44:36.840 --> 0:44:39.520 link to to that episode of those episodes in the 0:44:39.960 --> 0:44:42.200 on the landing page for this episode. So in the 0:44:42.280 --> 0:44:46.440 eighteen thirty one preface to the book, Shelley mentions that 0:44:46.680 --> 0:44:51.279 modern scientific discussions in galvanism influenced her story, and what 0:44:51.400 --> 0:44:54.920 she was referring to was the work of Italian physician 0:44:55.040 --> 0:44:58.759 Luigi Galvani. Uh And this guy basically found that a 0:44:58.840 --> 0:45:01.840 dead frog's leg would twitch as if they were alive 0:45:02.160 --> 0:45:04.920 when they are struck with a spark of electricity. He 0:45:04.960 --> 0:45:07.360 figured this out in seventeen eighty one while he was 0:45:07.440 --> 0:45:12.200 dissecting a frog nearby a static electricity machine. His assistant 0:45:12.239 --> 0:45:16.279 accidentally touched a scalpel to a nerve in the frog's leg. 0:45:16.719 --> 0:45:20.480 The leg moved, and Galvanni immediately changed all of his 0:45:20.560 --> 0:45:25.520 research into something he called animal electricity. Tried to replicate 0:45:25.600 --> 0:45:30.759 this experiment over and over again. His contemporary, Alessandro Volta, 0:45:30.960 --> 0:45:33.640 was one of the earliest readers of these papers, and 0:45:33.719 --> 0:45:37.839 he had already earned a reputation as discovering electric potential 0:45:37.960 --> 0:45:41.200 and charge, as well as being the first person to 0:45:41.280 --> 0:45:47.040 isolate methane gas. So Volta reproduced Galvani's experiments, but he 0:45:47.160 --> 0:45:51.080 had a totally different conclusion. He thought the electricity actually 0:45:51.120 --> 0:45:54.279 came from the metals in the in the room. The 0:45:54.360 --> 0:45:56.840 dissimilar metals and that the frog itself was just simply 0:45:56.880 --> 0:45:59.920 a conductor for those. Galvani in the meantime, believed that 0:46:00.040 --> 0:46:03.720 electricity resided in the frog itself and thought the two 0:46:03.800 --> 0:46:08.080 dissimilar metals were merely conducting electricity from one part of 0:46:08.080 --> 0:46:11.400 the frog to another. He thought electrical energy was actually 0:46:11.520 --> 0:46:15.640 intrinsic to biological matter. And they developed this bitter feud 0:46:15.640 --> 0:46:19.160 over it, and academics from you know, around all just 0:46:19.200 --> 0:46:21.799 took sides and it became like an issue. It was 0:46:21.840 --> 0:46:26.400 like a modern debate. Um. They were both kind of 0:46:26.480 --> 0:46:28.960 right in their own ways. They were also both kind 0:46:28.960 --> 0:46:30.440 of wrong in their own ways. I mean, it was 0:46:30.480 --> 0:46:33.120 a time when we were still trying to figure out 0:46:33.200 --> 0:46:36.120 what electricity was and how it worked, and then certainly 0:46:36.120 --> 0:46:40.160 how it it was involved in the in the processes 0:46:40.160 --> 0:46:42.320 of the human body and the movement of muscles, etcetera. 0:46:42.680 --> 0:46:45.480 And an electricity kind of had this holy area at 0:46:45.480 --> 0:46:48.200 the time, but it was this mystery of it was 0:46:48.280 --> 0:46:51.040 there was something divine in it. And this is even 0:46:51.160 --> 0:46:55.400 before like we get into uh Edison and Tesla and 0:46:55.400 --> 0:47:00.759 their electricity wars and all that. In Volta invented the 0:47:00.840 --> 0:47:04.600 voltaic pile. Uh. This was basically a stack of disks 0:47:04.680 --> 0:47:08.480 of two different metals that were separated by brine soaked paper. 0:47:09.040 --> 0:47:11.880 This was the world's first battery. He invented it, and 0:47:11.880 --> 0:47:17.040 we know his stack worked today because dissimilar metals transfer 0:47:17.200 --> 0:47:22.640 electrons in an oxidation reduction reaction. We also know that 0:47:22.719 --> 0:47:25.600 the reason why the frog legs moved is because of 0:47:25.640 --> 0:47:28.359 what I was talking about earlier. Electricity plays a role 0:47:28.400 --> 0:47:31.680 in muscular contractions. So again, they're both right, they're both wrong. 0:47:32.080 --> 0:47:35.799 Galvani actually responded to both the skepticism though, and he's 0:47:35.840 --> 0:47:39.680 just he just keeps conducting more sets on various animals 0:47:39.719 --> 0:47:44.080 and their exposed nerves and keeps recreating muscle contractions without 0:47:44.160 --> 0:47:48.480 those dissimilar metals present. Uh. And he absolutely believed nerves 0:47:48.480 --> 0:47:52.800 were insulated with non conductive coding, which we now call myelin, 0:47:53.160 --> 0:47:56.880 and that electrical impulses traveled through them to muscle cells. 0:47:57.760 --> 0:48:00.840 There's another article that I read by guy named Richard Shaw, 0:48:01.440 --> 0:48:05.319 and it's called Volta's Battery, Animal Electricity and Frankenstein. All 0:48:05.360 --> 0:48:09.960 this stuff is connected. Uh. Shaw argues that Volta's invention 0:48:10.280 --> 0:48:13.799 was significant to the novel, as was Galvani and the 0:48:13.840 --> 0:48:17.800 existence of the idea of animal electricity. Uh. He argues 0:48:17.840 --> 0:48:21.920 that Shelley's book is actually a challenge of Volta's research 0:48:22.280 --> 0:48:26.360 trying to distinguish life in the near appearance of life. 0:48:26.360 --> 0:48:29.880 So uh, it puts her in the book right in 0:48:29.880 --> 0:48:31.920 the middle of this big debate that was going on. 0:48:32.440 --> 0:48:34.120 And this is a quote from his paper. He says, 0:48:34.160 --> 0:48:38.319 Shelly understands animal electricity not as life, but as a 0:48:38.440 --> 0:48:43.000 token for life, and thereby arrests the tendency of the 0:48:43.120 --> 0:48:46.560 vitalists to make it an object and to mistake it 0:48:46.600 --> 0:48:51.279 for life itself. So this brings up a question where 0:48:51.320 --> 0:48:53.759 we talked about this earlier. It's very unclear in the 0:48:53.800 --> 0:48:57.440 book what science is actually being used to create Frankenstein, 0:49:00.160 --> 0:49:02.200 and it seems to come out of as I recall, 0:49:02.680 --> 0:49:05.560 like he's just he's working himself over, clocking himself to 0:49:05.640 --> 0:49:08.200 the point of just near just I meanbe actually complete 0:49:08.200 --> 0:49:12.800 physical exhaustion. So he he alone has the brilliance, madness, 0:49:12.800 --> 0:49:15.839 and determination to grasp the secret, and he's not about 0:49:15.840 --> 0:49:18.120 to share it with the rest of us because it's horrible. Well, 0:49:18.160 --> 0:49:20.120 we might be able to unpack this a little bit. 0:49:20.560 --> 0:49:25.279 Maybe the secret was the voltaic battery, at least in 0:49:25.360 --> 0:49:28.120 terms of what Shelley knew about at the time. Now 0:49:28.320 --> 0:49:31.160 here's where things get even weirder. And this also happened 0:49:31.160 --> 0:49:34.080 before Shelley wrote the book. Galvani had a nephew and 0:49:34.200 --> 0:49:37.320 his name was Giovanni Aldini, and he went a step 0:49:37.360 --> 0:49:41.080 further and he tried to reanimate hanged criminals with electricity 0:49:41.640 --> 0:49:45.040 in eighteen oh three at Newgate Prison in London. He 0:49:45.120 --> 0:49:47.560 did this with the some success and a guy named 0:49:47.600 --> 0:49:51.120 George Forster who was found guilty of murdering his wife 0:49:51.120 --> 0:49:54.799 and child. Now a whole crowd was there and they 0:49:54.880 --> 0:49:59.040 all reported that they saw Forster's eye open, his right 0:49:59.080 --> 0:50:02.720 hand raise up and clench, and his leg move. And 0:50:03.040 --> 0:50:08.799 by the way, Aldini used Volta's pile in his electrocution experiment. Now, 0:50:08.800 --> 0:50:11.680 obviously he didn't bring the individual back to life so 0:50:11.760 --> 0:50:13.959 much as he just made a dance around a little 0:50:13.960 --> 0:50:16.440 bit exactly. But it would have been interesting. What what 0:50:16.480 --> 0:50:18.000 if he had what have you been able to That 0:50:18.040 --> 0:50:20.000 would have been, Yeah, does he have to does he 0:50:20.040 --> 0:50:22.400 get another death set finance? Where is that sentence served? 0:50:23.120 --> 0:50:28.440 That's a good yeah. Yeah. The ethics, so many ethical quandaries, 0:50:28.520 --> 0:50:30.279 In fact, we're gonna get into that the end of 0:50:30.280 --> 0:50:33.200 this episode. There's a fun bit of ethics played with 0:50:33.280 --> 0:50:36.440 the science here. Uh, but let me even just finish 0:50:36.480 --> 0:50:39.840 with some more scientific stuff here. That that Mary Shelley 0:50:39.920 --> 0:50:43.560 was clearly aware of. Another was Humphrey Davy's book The 0:50:43.640 --> 0:50:48.040 Elements of Chemical Philosophy. Now, Humphrey Davy and William Nicholson 0:50:48.120 --> 0:50:52.600 were the era's leading electrical researchers, and they were friends 0:50:52.600 --> 0:50:55.840 of her father, so she probably knew all about them 0:50:55.920 --> 0:50:59.720 as well as this history of electrical experiments with corpses, 0:50:59.760 --> 0:51:04.480 whether they be human or animals. Uh. Davy used Volta's 0:51:04.520 --> 0:51:09.480 battery for what is now called electrolysis and isolated a 0:51:09.560 --> 0:51:12.840 series of substances for the first time. He basically invented 0:51:12.880 --> 0:51:16.320 electro chemistry. He went on to invent the Davy lamp, 0:51:16.360 --> 0:51:19.520 to which separated flame from gas so that there was 0:51:19.600 --> 0:51:23.160 safer usage of like lanterns in minds that were filled 0:51:23.200 --> 0:51:26.200 with methane gas. And he published this book, Elements of 0:51:26.280 --> 0:51:29.799 Chemical Philosophy in eighteen twelve as an account of the 0:51:29.840 --> 0:51:33.400 field within which he worked. So it's very much thought 0:51:33.440 --> 0:51:37.200 that this is a book that influenced Shelley. She was 0:51:37.239 --> 0:51:39.040 aware of it. He was a friend of the family, 0:51:39.680 --> 0:51:43.520 uh and clearly brought it into her work on Frankenstein. 0:51:44.920 --> 0:51:48.239 Now one last little tie in here. There was a 0:51:48.239 --> 0:51:51.000 big focus on life and the body at the time 0:51:51.040 --> 0:51:54.839 as well, and another debate was going on between two surgeons, 0:51:54.920 --> 0:51:58.839 this time John Abernathy and William Lawrence, and they were 0:51:58.920 --> 0:52:01.919 arguing about the Nate sure of life. Now here's the thing. 0:52:02.200 --> 0:52:06.080 William Lawrence had been the Shelley's doctor previously. I mean, 0:52:06.120 --> 0:52:09.080 think about all those medical misfortunes we talked about earlier. 0:52:09.200 --> 0:52:12.719 She must have visited a lot of doctors. So he 0:52:12.800 --> 0:52:15.960 was seen as a radical because he argued that life 0:52:16.360 --> 0:52:20.080 was simply the working operation of a body's functions and 0:52:20.120 --> 0:52:23.239 he didn't take the soul into account. And people got 0:52:23.239 --> 0:52:26.279 really upset about this. So subsequently he was forced to 0:52:26.320 --> 0:52:29.560 withdraw his book about this topic from publication and he 0:52:29.600 --> 0:52:31.920 had to actually resign from the hospital he worked at 0:52:32.000 --> 0:52:36.960 because he didn't have a scientific principle for the soul. Now. Abernathy, 0:52:36.960 --> 0:52:39.920 on the other hand, argued that life didn't depend on 0:52:39.960 --> 0:52:42.759 the body's structure, and that our bodies were just these 0:52:42.840 --> 0:52:46.040 material substances that life was attached to as what he 0:52:46.120 --> 0:52:50.399 called quote a vital principle. Now this goes right back 0:52:50.440 --> 0:52:54.080 to what we were talking about earlier with alchemy and 0:52:54.239 --> 0:52:59.160 the biomechanical soul and especially goalms. I mean, essentially what 0:52:59.239 --> 0:53:01.880 abernatheists thing is like, Oh, we're just all golems that 0:53:01.920 --> 0:53:05.920 are filled with souls. You know, when one uh one 0:53:05.960 --> 0:53:10.839 thing about all these historical um dissections I guess you'd say, 0:53:11.200 --> 0:53:14.879 of of Frankenstein and the and the the the individuals 0:53:14.880 --> 0:53:17.200 and the works that and they may have inspired Frankenstein 0:53:17.640 --> 0:53:20.719 is that sometimes when when you start absorbing a lot 0:53:20.719 --> 0:53:24.040 of it, it begins to feel like an attempt to 0:53:24.239 --> 0:53:30.400 ground a female authors success in the works of male 0:53:30.840 --> 0:53:35.000 UH scientists and male writers and male professionals, etcetera. So 0:53:35.040 --> 0:53:37.360 I think it's important to note that no matter what 0:53:37.440 --> 0:53:39.759 her influences were, no matter what work she was, she was, 0:53:39.880 --> 0:53:43.000 she was drawing off of the way she assembled at 0:53:43.040 --> 0:53:46.399 all UH is brilliant. The way she assembled at all 0:53:46.640 --> 0:53:48.799 is is just above reproach. So we don't we don't 0:53:48.800 --> 0:53:52.000 want that to to bleed away in the dissection. Not 0:53:52.120 --> 0:53:54.360 at all. None of these guys that I just mentioned 0:53:54.400 --> 0:53:58.919 could have created a work as imaginative and insightful as Frankenstein. 0:53:59.280 --> 0:54:03.600 And let's let's be honest here, neither did her husband 0:54:03.680 --> 0:54:07.240 or Lord Byron or Paula Dorri on that fateful summer. 0:54:07.320 --> 0:54:10.040 She was the only one who wrote, you know, who 0:54:10.080 --> 0:54:13.560 finished a novel. Paul Dory had that vampire story. That's fine, 0:54:13.640 --> 0:54:20.439 but I mean she created this uh long lasting, two 0:54:20.560 --> 0:54:24.160 hundred year epic that we're still looking back on today. 0:54:24.840 --> 0:54:26.880 Uh let's take a quick break, and then when we 0:54:26.920 --> 0:54:29.759 get back, let's talk about that. Where we are now 0:54:29.800 --> 0:54:33.640 two hundred years later and what Frankenstein's influences on all 0:54:33.640 --> 0:54:38.080 of us. Alright, we're back, So yeah, Frankenstein continues to 0:54:38.160 --> 0:54:41.239 cast this long shadow not only over our culture, but 0:54:41.320 --> 0:54:46.040 also over our perception of science. And you'll still you 0:54:46.080 --> 0:54:49.080 go into something like Eureko Alerts or or any of 0:54:49.120 --> 0:54:51.479 the various science journalism websites, if you do a search 0:54:51.520 --> 0:54:54.640 for Frankenstein, you're gonna you're gonna find some some articles 0:54:54.640 --> 0:54:57.239 that are out directly related to Frankenstein is somewhere or another. 0:54:57.239 --> 0:55:00.960 But you're also just gonna find Frankenstein used repeat as 0:55:00.960 --> 0:55:04.480 an adjective, as is even a slur um Tell me 0:55:04.520 --> 0:55:07.239 about it yesterday, trying to do research for this episode. Man, 0:55:07.360 --> 0:55:10.880 Like I really had to make use of all of 0:55:10.960 --> 0:55:14.880 the filters in our library search engine to try to 0:55:15.000 --> 0:55:18.000 really hone down what I was looking for. Because yeah, 0:55:18.160 --> 0:55:22.160 the just the term Frankenstein is used now as a bird, right, 0:55:22.320 --> 0:55:25.680 like to Frankenstein something. I use it like that, of course, 0:55:25.680 --> 0:55:28.440 but like there are scientific articles that throw it around 0:55:28.440 --> 0:55:34.359 pretty pretty uh easily to draw attention. Yeah. And you know, 0:55:34.440 --> 0:55:36.759 as as much as we said we can discount and 0:55:36.760 --> 0:55:39.879 say all right, you're over using using this term, using 0:55:39.880 --> 0:55:43.120 it poorly, etcetera, it has still become a part of 0:55:43.160 --> 0:55:45.120 the way that we view science. I mean, that's how 0:55:45.160 --> 0:55:48.640 influential this was as a work of science fiction. Um, 0:55:48.680 --> 0:55:53.000 you know, I think Frankenstein, Man, it's a real quintessential 0:55:53.080 --> 0:55:56.279 work obviously, but it really speaks to what we do 0:55:56.400 --> 0:55:59.200 here on the show. I think, like our mission here 0:55:59.239 --> 0:56:02.080 was stuff to blow your mind. Frankenstein is sort of 0:56:02.120 --> 0:56:06.240 this perfect text that we can attach what we do 0:56:06.440 --> 0:56:08.879 with and that like it is about science, but it's 0:56:08.920 --> 0:56:13.720 also about the larger world and the human experience. Uh 0:56:13.800 --> 0:56:16.560 it's just man, revisiting it this last year, I've just 0:56:16.600 --> 0:56:19.799 really fallen in love with it. Yeah, it is it's 0:56:19.840 --> 0:56:21.480 it's a wonderful text, and it has a little bit 0:56:21.480 --> 0:56:23.080 of every Everything that we love here on the show 0:56:23.239 --> 0:56:25.440 is president in the book. But because one of the 0:56:25.440 --> 0:56:29.440 things with science fiction, first of all, it's a brilliant example, 0:56:29.520 --> 0:56:32.840 because she was vague and exactly how Victor is bringing 0:56:33.440 --> 0:56:36.120 life to this thing. And if you're vague enough, then 0:56:36.320 --> 0:56:38.400 nobody's gonna come along ten years later and say, oh, 0:56:38.440 --> 0:56:40.840 you've got it wrong, because he never he never actually 0:56:40.840 --> 0:56:44.840 shares the secret with the reader, totally right. So so 0:56:44.920 --> 0:56:47.600 there's that. But then also we obviously have not reached 0:56:47.600 --> 0:56:51.719 the point in time where human achievement has equalled the 0:56:51.800 --> 0:56:56.160 fictional u achievement in the book, the creation of life. 0:56:56.320 --> 0:56:59.719 But we have made a number of advances that continue 0:56:59.800 --> 0:57:02.799 to push the boundaries and and and and certainly give 0:57:02.920 --> 0:57:06.480 life to this The shadow of Frankenstein is hanging over things. 0:57:06.480 --> 0:57:10.560 I mean, advances in that synthetic biology and other fields. Uh. 0:57:10.840 --> 0:57:13.760 In nineteen fifty two we unlock the mysteries of DNA, 0:57:14.320 --> 0:57:17.800 and subsequent breakthroughs in genetics have empowered and the science 0:57:17.800 --> 0:57:21.520 of cloning. In two thousand ten, researchers created synthetic bacteria 0:57:21.760 --> 0:57:24.840 in the lab, the first one to be controlled entirely 0:57:24.880 --> 0:57:28.760 by man made genetic instructions. Elsewhere, robotics continue to develop 0:57:29.240 --> 0:57:35.920 increasingly complex, increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence, and biologically inspired mechanical forms. 0:57:36.400 --> 0:57:39.200 And through all of this, uh yeah, Frankenstein's Monster continues 0:57:39.240 --> 0:57:43.960 to resonate as a powerful model of unchecked scientific advancement, 0:57:44.000 --> 0:57:47.240 as well as a reminder of the murky philosophical and 0:57:47.400 --> 0:57:51.920 ethical quagmires we wish to avoid. So as as kind 0:57:51.920 --> 0:57:55.720 of a modern myth, Frankenstein taps into that fear that 0:57:55.840 --> 0:57:59.480 the like Victor will lack the wisdom or responsibility to 0:57:59.520 --> 0:58:04.760 control our scientific creations and uh and the Monster embodies 0:58:04.840 --> 0:58:08.040 such modern fears as a lab created black hole or 0:58:08.120 --> 0:58:11.680 man made plagues, nuclear annihilation. And the story also poses 0:58:11.680 --> 0:58:15.320 the possibility that liked the Monster himself, science will deliver 0:58:15.440 --> 0:58:18.000 us to a place where we find the integrity of 0:58:18.000 --> 0:58:20.600 the human body violated, in the nature of the human 0:58:20.680 --> 0:58:23.960 soul scourged. And these are themes. All of these are 0:58:24.040 --> 0:58:26.600 themes that we have talked about in the last year 0:58:26.840 --> 0:58:29.880 on the show, like whether we're talking about bioengineering or 0:58:29.920 --> 0:58:35.120 body hacking, or biosynthesis or you know, you and Joe 0:58:35.200 --> 0:58:39.760 did the electricity episode, like we're circling around this stuff unintentionally, 0:58:40.760 --> 0:58:43.400 we're all in Frankenstein's orbit. Yeah, I mean, as we uh, 0:58:43.440 --> 0:58:47.520 as we've discussed um some biotechnology episodes in the summer, 0:58:47.680 --> 0:58:52.240 we see great examples of the science clearly outpacing our 0:58:52.280 --> 0:58:55.280 ability to really drive home what our rules and regulations 0:58:55.280 --> 0:58:58.840 and expectations should be. And I mean, what's more Frankenstein 0:58:58.840 --> 0:59:02.040 than that they absolutely advances are beyond what we were 0:59:02.040 --> 0:59:06.720 prepared for. So this leads us to my favorite article 0:59:06.960 --> 0:59:11.400 that I found in the whole pile of stuff about Frankenstein. 0:59:11.640 --> 0:59:14.280 This is one of the most fun papers I've ever read. 0:59:14.360 --> 0:59:16.480 It reminds me of that one that we did when 0:59:16.480 --> 0:59:19.440 we did an episode on vampire blood drinking, the one 0:59:19.480 --> 0:59:22.040 about like how what the rate of infection would be 0:59:22.400 --> 0:59:27.040 if vampires were real. This is called Victor Frankenstein's Institutional 0:59:27.160 --> 0:59:31.840 Review Board Proposal, and it's written by G. Harrison and W. Gannon. 0:59:31.920 --> 0:59:35.320 It came out last year in It's a very fun 0:59:35.360 --> 0:59:38.360 idea for an article. The idea is what would it 0:59:38.400 --> 0:59:42.000 be like if Victor Frankenstein had to submit his research 0:59:42.280 --> 0:59:45.919 to an institutional review board the way all scientists aff 0:59:45.960 --> 0:59:50.480 to today. So. Um, they basically took uh the I 0:59:50.640 --> 0:59:52.760 r B proposal, and they said it in seventeen nine 0:59:52.960 --> 0:59:55.680 at Ingolstadt, which is where he went to school. Uh, 0:59:55.760 --> 0:59:58.600 in the book where Frankenstein was a student, and in 0:59:58.800 --> 1:00:04.360 his proposal they made him consider comparative anatomy medical experimentation 1:00:04.480 --> 1:00:08.760 in theories of life related to the debates around animal electricity. Now, 1:00:08.800 --> 1:00:11.800 because the theme of the novel is that he didn't 1:00:11.800 --> 1:00:16.480 consider the ethical consequences of his work and therefore suffered tragedy, 1:00:16.520 --> 1:00:18.320 they think that the I r B shows that it 1:00:18.360 --> 1:00:22.120 would have compelled him to consider the consequences of this experiment. 1:00:23.280 --> 1:00:28.880 I like this, I've never heard of it's so yeah. Yeah, 1:00:28.920 --> 1:00:32.840 it was published in Science and Engineering Ethics. Um. They 1:00:32.880 --> 1:00:36.400 note that in the novel Victor talked, as I mentioned earlier, 1:00:36.440 --> 1:00:39.400 he talks about all these alchemists that he studied. Uh. 1:00:39.680 --> 1:00:42.960 But they say, in addition, you know, they basically create 1:00:43.000 --> 1:00:45.840 what you do for an IRB a literary review, and 1:00:45.840 --> 1:00:48.520 they add a long list of authors prevalent before that 1:00:48.560 --> 1:00:51.400 time in natural history who would have influenced the debates 1:00:51.440 --> 1:00:56.120 about reproduction, regeneration, anatomy, body functions in the interplay between 1:00:56.160 --> 1:01:01.280 electrochemical and pneumatic forces in living systems. Galvani, Volta, and 1:01:01.400 --> 1:01:04.880 Davy are all among these. They also remind us that 1:01:05.120 --> 1:01:09.480 the electrical machines are from the movie. Again that's Nicola 1:01:09.520 --> 1:01:13.520 Tesla's inspiration. They're not in the book. They also say that, 1:01:13.880 --> 1:01:15.919 and this is maybe for all of you out there too, 1:01:16.120 --> 1:01:18.600 if you're unfamiliar, if you haven't been in an academic setting. 1:01:18.760 --> 1:01:21.240 The purpose of an i r B is to protect 1:01:21.360 --> 1:01:26.040 those involved in research using uh, anything that's impacting to 1:01:26.240 --> 1:01:30.200 living human beings. So the present i RB structure was 1:01:30.280 --> 1:01:33.680 inspired by something called the Belmont Report, which drew its 1:01:33.680 --> 1:01:39.440 inquiries from both the Nuremberg Trials and the Tuskegee Syphilis study. 1:01:39.480 --> 1:01:42.080 And we're going to talk about irbes again in our 1:01:42.120 --> 1:01:45.440 other episode this week about Creepy Pasta's, but i'll keep 1:01:45.440 --> 1:01:49.040 it grunted here for now. These led to three broad 1:01:49.120 --> 1:01:52.040 principles for the Belmont Report. The first is to respect 1:01:52.160 --> 1:01:56.360 people's autonomy, the second is to do no harm to 1:01:56.400 --> 1:01:59.040 the people involved in the study, and the third is 1:01:59.200 --> 1:02:03.160 justice or basically a fair sharing of the benefits of 1:02:03.200 --> 1:02:07.000 the research. Today's i RB is essentially a group of 1:02:07.000 --> 1:02:09.880 people at each institution who must have at least five 1:02:09.960 --> 1:02:14.720 members and conduct an initial and continuing review of these 1:02:14.720 --> 1:02:17.680 research projects. I you know, in my time as a 1:02:17.680 --> 1:02:21.600 graduate student and working at the UM Georgia State University 1:02:21.600 --> 1:02:25.080 here in Atlanta, UH submitted many proposals to the RB. 1:02:25.760 --> 1:02:29.040 Everything from my thesis about Captain America had to go 1:02:29.080 --> 1:02:32.680 to them. To UM when I worked at the library 1:02:32.680 --> 1:02:34.880 at Georgia State University, if we wanted to interact with 1:02:34.920 --> 1:02:37.680 students and do some studies on like how they're using 1:02:37.760 --> 1:02:39.880 library materials, we had to submit it to the IRB. 1:02:40.040 --> 1:02:43.200 So they look at pretty much everything, and they make you, 1:02:43.840 --> 1:02:48.120 UH take refresher courses on the Belmont Report over and 1:02:48.160 --> 1:02:49.920 over again so that you're really up to date on 1:02:49.960 --> 1:02:54.919 this stuff. The principles of the i RB. The big 1:02:55.040 --> 1:02:58.600 argument of this, this fun paper is that the principles 1:02:58.600 --> 1:03:01.440 of the IRB are all essentially what the monster is 1:03:01.480 --> 1:03:06.520 appealing to Victor for throughout this entire novel. UH. One 1:03:06.640 --> 1:03:09.640 is his acknowledgment and respect as an autonomous human being, 1:03:10.160 --> 1:03:12.760 to the promotion of his welfare and to protect him 1:03:12.760 --> 1:03:15.240 from harm, and three to just treat him with some 1:03:15.360 --> 1:03:18.880 justice and equity. So from this and the books accounting. 1:03:18.920 --> 1:03:22.280 They argue that Victor always intended to create life from 1:03:22.280 --> 1:03:26.560 lifeless matter, which could constitute as impacting living human beings, 1:03:26.560 --> 1:03:30.400 and the outline a proposal. It's real. I'm gonna very 1:03:30.440 --> 1:03:32.920 briefly cover it. It's like a twenty page paper, but 1:03:33.400 --> 1:03:36.240 uh he They cover the basic building blocks of life, 1:03:36.240 --> 1:03:39.320 including the protocols for how he's gonna catalog and carefully 1:03:39.360 --> 1:03:43.400 store all of his body parts, uh, the reconstitution of 1:03:43.680 --> 1:03:47.880 simpler organisms, basically, how he's going to reverse the process 1:03:47.880 --> 1:03:50.280 of death in all the various systems of a body, 1:03:50.800 --> 1:03:53.880 and then how he applies biotechnology to the creation of 1:03:53.880 --> 1:03:56.160 a human being. And they speculate the way that he 1:03:56.200 --> 1:03:59.480 would pitch this is by generating electrical charges in a 1:03:59.600 --> 1:04:03.400 series of Leyden jars and supplementing them with a jolt 1:04:03.440 --> 1:04:06.280 of electricity from a bolt of lightning. All of this 1:04:06.320 --> 1:04:10.520 would convulse this organism systems back into life. Their conclusion 1:04:10.640 --> 1:04:14.000 is that if Victor Frankenstein had just completed an i 1:04:14.120 --> 1:04:17.440 RB proposal, he would have had to consider the consequences 1:04:17.440 --> 1:04:21.440 of his experiment and acknowledge his responsibilities to his creature, 1:04:21.800 --> 1:04:24.160 and it would have given him the chance to think 1:04:24.280 --> 1:04:29.120 through what he was doing ethically. I love it. My 1:04:29.240 --> 1:04:33.880 favorite quote from this paper is him saying, this is 1:04:33.960 --> 1:04:37.240 them writing in his voice, if I animate a human creature, 1:04:37.520 --> 1:04:40.400 I will assess risks for the being as well as 1:04:40.440 --> 1:04:44.080 for the surrounding community with whom the creature might interact. 1:04:44.440 --> 1:04:47.560 And another one is should I succeed in creating a 1:04:47.680 --> 1:04:51.120 rational being, I will ensure its privacy and try to 1:04:51.280 --> 1:04:54.120 ensure that it does not become a spectacle or a 1:04:54.160 --> 1:04:57.800 monster for the amusement of others. It's this is like 1:04:57.840 --> 1:05:00.120 one of the most fun papers I've ever read. It's 1:05:00.120 --> 1:05:01.920 a it's a brilliant idea. Yeah, I want them to 1:05:01.920 --> 1:05:04.920 do a sequel to this where they write a proposal 1:05:04.920 --> 1:05:07.800 for Herbert West reanimator. I think that that would be 1:05:08.200 --> 1:05:11.400 another worthy cause. Oh yeah, just about any mad scientists 1:05:11.400 --> 1:05:13.439 would work, because I mean that's what I love about 1:05:13.480 --> 1:05:17.880 looking at a mad scientist character is asking like, what, like, 1:05:17.920 --> 1:05:20.680 what were your goals here? What were you really trying 1:05:20.720 --> 1:05:23.360 to do? What was how do how does this possibly 1:05:23.760 --> 1:05:27.920 fit into any kind of actual um you know, scientific 1:05:28.000 --> 1:05:31.800 rigor so circling back to the two hundred year old thing, 1:05:32.200 --> 1:05:35.240 I just want to lead us out here with two 1:05:35.520 --> 1:05:38.040 of I think that we could easily say this the 1:05:38.160 --> 1:05:42.560 leading minds in horror literature that are alive today. The 1:05:42.640 --> 1:05:45.280 first is st. Jochi, who I mentioned at the top. 1:05:45.960 --> 1:05:47.840 He has a book that I have mentioned on this 1:05:47.880 --> 1:05:50.640 show many times that is a survey of all of 1:05:50.960 --> 1:05:55.560 horror literature called Unutterable Horror uh and his section on 1:05:55.600 --> 1:05:59.640 Frankenstein in it, he says it is a richly complex 1:05:59.680 --> 1:06:04.680 tale that fully justifies the mountains of commentary it has inspired. 1:06:04.720 --> 1:06:08.240 So we mentioned that earlier. All of the swirling conversation 1:06:08.280 --> 1:06:11.919 about themes and intentions and influences and everything. He says, 1:06:11.920 --> 1:06:15.600 it's all justified because this book is great. Um. He 1:06:15.680 --> 1:06:19.600 also says, the passages that are about science show that 1:06:19.680 --> 1:06:24.320 Shelley is departing from the Gothic traditions reliance on medieval 1:06:24.360 --> 1:06:28.120 superstition as the source for terror, and that's the real 1:06:28.240 --> 1:06:31.440 important point of this book is it's like a huge transition, 1:06:31.520 --> 1:06:35.480 turning point in the world of horror literature. He also 1:06:35.640 --> 1:06:40.280 argues that what gives the book merit is the creatures 1:06:40.320 --> 1:06:43.320 moral complexity. We talked about it earlier. Both the creature 1:06:43.400 --> 1:06:47.040 and Victor Frankenstein are so morally complex. Joe she says 1:06:47.400 --> 1:06:50.920 it may be the sole genuine contribution of Gothic fiction 1:06:50.960 --> 1:06:54.080 to the great literature of the world, and its themes 1:06:54.080 --> 1:06:58.240 are eternal, and Shelly, to her credit, doesn't provide simple 1:06:58.280 --> 1:07:01.000 solutions to them, so it constantly makes us keep thinking. 1:07:01.320 --> 1:07:03.600 That's why we keep turning back to it. For two years. 1:07:04.560 --> 1:07:09.440 And then Uncle Stevie Stephen King from his book Dance 1:07:09.520 --> 1:07:11.840 maccob back in. I think that came out in like 1:07:11.880 --> 1:07:15.320 eighty two, maybe eighty one. Yeah, this one I've never read, 1:07:15.320 --> 1:07:18.360 but I always remembered seeing it on the on the 1:07:18.440 --> 1:07:20.720 King racks. When I would, I would I would skip 1:07:20.800 --> 1:07:23.560 lunch for a week, uh in school to say about 1:07:23.560 --> 1:07:26.600 my lunch money to spend on Stephen King paperbacks, And 1:07:26.640 --> 1:07:28.480 I always I would consider that one, and I'm like, oh, 1:07:28.520 --> 1:07:30.919 it's not it's not a tale, this is nonfiction. Yeah, 1:07:30.960 --> 1:07:34.600 I'm gonna I'm gonna spend it on you know, uh, 1:07:35.240 --> 1:07:37.880 different cycle of the Werewolf cycle. No, I never get cycled. 1:07:37.880 --> 1:07:42.000 The Warwold was always a little bit more expensive prestige books. 1:07:42.080 --> 1:07:44.920 It was like that was like seven. Your cheapest was 1:07:44.960 --> 1:07:47.400 the Dead Zone at like four. So that was the 1:07:47.400 --> 1:07:50.040 first one I read out of cheapness. And then you 1:07:50.080 --> 1:07:51.720 have to work like some of the bigger ones. Though 1:07:51.760 --> 1:07:54.480 you're talking a thousand plus page books, that's like two 1:07:54.520 --> 1:07:58.240 weeks of lunch money, maybe three. See I always just 1:07:58.320 --> 1:08:00.680 hitting the library from bullies and read all of my 1:08:00.720 --> 1:08:06.440 Stephen King's books in there during lunch. But don's maccab 1:08:06.480 --> 1:08:10.320 if you haven't read it. Is King's attempt to sort 1:08:10.320 --> 1:08:13.920 of gather all of the thoughts about the horror genre 1:08:14.000 --> 1:08:16.600 together in one book. Keep in mind he wrote this 1:08:16.680 --> 1:08:18.800 in like the late seventies, early eighties, so there's a 1:08:18.800 --> 1:08:21.960 lot that has happened since then. But I love it. 1:08:22.000 --> 1:08:24.519 I think you'd really like it, Robert. I keep going 1:08:24.560 --> 1:08:27.520 back to it. But in the book he outlines basically 1:08:27.760 --> 1:08:30.439 his argument is that there are three major archetypes of 1:08:30.439 --> 1:08:34.200 horror that we keep coming back to, and Frankenstein's Monster 1:08:34.360 --> 1:08:37.599 is one of them. He calls it the Thing without 1:08:37.640 --> 1:08:40.639 a Name, which is important because Victor never names the monster. 1:08:40.680 --> 1:08:43.479 That's why we have this problem. There's no name for it. 1:08:43.800 --> 1:08:45.640 There is that like sort of I think there's a 1:08:45.680 --> 1:08:48.040 passage in it, or maybe it's something Shelley said outside 1:08:48.040 --> 1:08:50.280 of the book of like referring to it as Adam, 1:08:50.360 --> 1:08:53.320 like his atom. Some people call the monster Adam, and 1:08:53.360 --> 1:08:56.720 maybe he was just trying to, you know, retain scientific objectivity. 1:08:56.720 --> 1:08:58.720 He knew that had been named it, he'd have to 1:08:58.800 --> 1:09:06.280 copy that. Um So King says that there are many 1:09:06.320 --> 1:09:12.719 examples of Frankenstein's inheritors, So everything from The Hulk, the 1:09:12.760 --> 1:09:16.200 Marvel Superhero The Hulk is a version of that too. 1:09:16.640 --> 1:09:18.799 The Thing from Another World that came out in ninete. 1:09:19.840 --> 1:09:24.439 Now remember King wrote this like two years before John 1:09:24.479 --> 1:09:27.800 Carpenter's version of the Thing came out. Uh, so he 1:09:27.840 --> 1:09:31.519 would have surely included that as the Thing without a Name. 1:09:31.560 --> 1:09:35.479 In fact, uh just last night Joe McCormick and I 1:09:35.520 --> 1:09:37.960 went and saw the Thing here in Atlanta at our 1:09:38.040 --> 1:09:40.240 Plaza Theater. This first time I saw it on the 1:09:40.240 --> 1:09:42.719 big screen, and it was a wonderful experience. But yeah, 1:09:42.720 --> 1:09:45.240 I think it would qualify as this Thing without a Name. 1:09:45.280 --> 1:09:47.360 So when you're thinking of the types of horror that 1:09:47.400 --> 1:09:51.519 you watch, that's probably one of them. King also says 1:09:52.280 --> 1:09:55.680 this book has probably been the subject of more films 1:09:55.880 --> 1:09:59.799 than any other literary work in history, including the Bible, 1:10:00.400 --> 1:10:02.599 and I find it hard to argue with that. I mean, 1:10:02.640 --> 1:10:05.240 I haven't counted them, but man, there's a lot. I mean, 1:10:05.240 --> 1:10:08.519 it was one of the earliest. You saw Edison's short 1:10:08.560 --> 1:10:11.280 Frankenstein film, and and then you have you go to 1:10:11.320 --> 1:10:14.400 IMDb and you put in Frankenstein or Victor Frankenstein. It's 1:10:14.439 --> 1:10:18.080 just yeah, you know, hundreds. It seems different generations of 1:10:18.120 --> 1:10:20.640 value those characters. So I just want to end on this. 1:10:20.840 --> 1:10:24.720 He argues that it uses one of horror's most common themes, 1:10:25.120 --> 1:10:29.639 that there are things that mankind was not meant to know. 1:10:30.479 --> 1:10:34.000 And this brings us right back around again to the 1:10:34.040 --> 1:10:36.640 mission of stuff to blow your mind, and why Frankenstein 1:10:36.720 --> 1:10:40.040 is so important to it. This this idea of science 1:10:40.120 --> 1:10:44.360 and wonder and oddity and how much can we know 1:10:44.479 --> 1:10:47.880 and how far should we prod? Yeah, I think I 1:10:47.920 --> 1:10:50.120 think the the answer. My view on it is that 1:10:50.200 --> 1:10:52.880 we should. We should not be afraid to prod and 1:10:52.960 --> 1:10:55.400 to move forward, but we should use if we're going 1:10:55.439 --> 1:10:57.559 to turn to Frankenstein, we used it as cautionary tale 1:10:57.560 --> 1:11:00.400 to say, hey, keep pushing, but no it you are 1:11:00.439 --> 1:11:03.080 going to discover things that you might not be prepared 1:11:03.120 --> 1:11:06.800 for as an individual, as a culture, as a legal system. 1:11:06.920 --> 1:11:10.439 And uh, and therefore you have to remain ever vigilant 1:11:10.760 --> 1:11:13.960 and and ever ready to adapt your mindset, even your 1:11:14.000 --> 1:11:19.519 worldview to the new revel as revelations to come. All right, well, 1:11:19.560 --> 1:11:22.120 on that note, we're gonna go ahead and close out this, uh, 1:11:22.240 --> 1:11:25.920 this chapter of Frankenstein until we inevitably do another Frankenstein 1:11:26.000 --> 1:11:30.000 episode with perhaps some new angle in the years ahead. Hopefully, yeah, 1:11:30.000 --> 1:11:33.520 hopefully we'll be here to do the fourth anniversary of Frankenstein. 1:11:33.760 --> 1:11:37.080 We'll use a biotechnology to keep ourselves alive for two 1:11:37.160 --> 1:11:39.400 hundred more years so we can talk about it again. Then. 1:11:39.840 --> 1:11:42.480 All right, so this is one of our Halloween episodes. 1:11:43.200 --> 1:11:45.879 Obviously we are in the Halloween season and it's sufforable 1:11:45.880 --> 1:11:48.040 in your mind. We're probably gonna stretch that Halloween season 1:11:48.080 --> 1:11:52.519 as far through the remainder of as possible, hopefully pushing 1:11:52.600 --> 1:11:58.360 Christmas and the holidays uh into January or a pit somewhere. Uh. So, Hey, 1:11:58.400 --> 1:12:01.439 if you're listening to this, dearing how aween, be aware 1:12:01.520 --> 1:12:05.559 that the stuff to blow your mind. Uh monster video 1:12:05.640 --> 1:12:09.920 series Monster Science is back with a fourth season or 1:12:10.080 --> 1:12:13.000 series of episodes. We have six of them. Uh, and 1:12:13.360 --> 1:12:16.200 as you're listening to this, there should be two or 1:12:16.320 --> 1:12:20.320 three episodes already out. The first three are sex education 1:12:20.400 --> 1:12:25.519 oriented with takes on sexy vampires, alien husbands, and uh 1:12:25.560 --> 1:12:28.479 and face huggers from the alien films. Yes, and then 1:12:28.720 --> 1:12:31.000 we've got a lovely face hugger here hanging in the 1:12:31.040 --> 1:12:33.760 office from the ceiling. Now pretty good. Yeah, and then 1:12:33.760 --> 1:12:36.200 the back half of the series are going to deal 1:12:36.240 --> 1:12:40.360 with dragons, Godzilla, and of course the threat of pod people. 1:12:40.520 --> 1:12:43.400 So Robert would never say this, but I'm gonna say it. 1:12:43.800 --> 1:12:47.400 Monster Science is my absolute favorite thing that how Stuff 1:12:47.400 --> 1:12:50.720 Works produces. I love it. I'm an unabashed fan of 1:12:50.760 --> 1:12:52.920 this series. Even if I wasn't involved in Stuff to 1:12:52.920 --> 1:12:55.280 Bowl your mind and didn't work here. It is the, 1:12:55.520 --> 1:12:58.599 in my opinion, the best thing that we put out here. 1:12:58.960 --> 1:13:02.680 I definitely recommend that you watch it. They're funny, they're informative, 1:13:02.840 --> 1:13:07.439 they're fun, and they revolve around the lovely October horror 1:13:07.479 --> 1:13:09.280 themes that we like to play around with here on 1:13:09.320 --> 1:13:12.880 the show. I've seen two of these episodes. Joe and 1:13:12.920 --> 1:13:16.360 I are in a couple of them. Uh, They're they're great. 1:13:16.680 --> 1:13:19.800 And our producer, Tyler Man, he really goes out of 1:13:19.840 --> 1:13:24.160 his way, just makes great special effects. It's so much fun. 1:13:24.400 --> 1:13:27.320 So we'll check them out and on that note, I'd 1:13:27.320 --> 1:13:28.639 like to throw out to a project on my own, 1:13:28.680 --> 1:13:31.360 which is I do another podcast outside of here called 1:13:31.400 --> 1:13:35.519 super Context, and this episode was a very scientific look 1:13:35.520 --> 1:13:38.360 at Frankenstein. But super Context is a show that's a 1:13:38.360 --> 1:13:43.599 autopsy of various forms of media. We do movies, television, music, 1:13:43.720 --> 1:13:46.559 we look at comics sometimes, and we talk about literature 1:13:46.600 --> 1:13:48.960 as well. So if you want to show that's more 1:13:49.040 --> 1:13:51.960 along those lines but sort of plays in the same 1:13:52.120 --> 1:13:55.639 research heavy orientation that we do here, please check it out. 1:13:55.720 --> 1:13:59.240 It's called super Context and you can find us on 1:13:59.280 --> 1:14:02.599 Twitter and Tumbler. All right, And as far as stuff 1:14:02.600 --> 1:14:04.519 to Blow your Mind goes, as always, head on over 1:14:04.560 --> 1:14:07.040 to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is 1:14:07.080 --> 1:14:09.519 the mothership. That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes. 1:14:09.560 --> 1:14:12.759 You'll find a new monster science episodes, you'll find blog posts, 1:14:13.040 --> 1:14:15.519 you'll find links out to our various social media accounts 1:14:15.520 --> 1:14:20.400 as well. Yeah, we are on Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, and Facebook. 1:14:20.600 --> 1:14:23.840 We're all over those. Follow us there to find out 1:14:23.840 --> 1:14:26.360 more about these videos, to see what new episodes are 1:14:26.400 --> 1:14:29.679 coming up, or just what kind of weird, bizarre science 1:14:29.720 --> 1:14:32.040 we come across in our journeys. And if you want 1:14:32.040 --> 1:14:34.400 to write us the old fashioned way. You can send 1:14:34.479 --> 1:14:36.759 us an email at blow the Mind at how stuff 1:14:36.800 --> 1:14:48.479 works dot com. For more on this and thousands of 1:14:48.520 --> 1:15:06.000 other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Fine 1:15:06.080 --> 1:15:08.000 first by the part prop