Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: today we're talking about monsters. We're talking about Godzilla also
Speaker 1: known as uh Gohira, and we're talking about King Kong,
Speaker 1: and we're maybe gonna well, you know, we are going
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about Barbie. She's a monster,
Speaker 1: and most important, we're talking about the science of all this.
Speaker 1: But before we we really dive into it, what is
Speaker 1: your experience with with giant monsters? Well, you know, have
Speaker 1: a three year old, yes, right, So Barney is the
Speaker 1: first thing I think of. Oh I thought you were
Speaker 1: going to say she was like a small monster. Oh
Speaker 1: well yeah, she kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, And it
Speaker 1: is kind of funny how actually I'm sure to her,
Speaker 1: I'm a big monster, and she actually loves for my
Speaker 1: husband and I to chase her around and sort of
Speaker 1: do the big monster arms. So for sure, there's there
Speaker 1: are some themes going on there, but Barney is favored.
Speaker 1: Barney I think of as a monster. Um, I think
Speaker 1: of the crack and of course one of my favorite monsters.
Speaker 1: Oh from my class at the time. Yes, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: Paul Bunyan. Was there a movie about Paula or just
Speaker 1: in general this stor like super giant kind of a
Speaker 1: human but not how come no one ever did? Uh?
Speaker 1: I mean that would be that would have been great
Speaker 1: to have like a purely American. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: King Kong is really our American giant monster, but even
Speaker 1: he's an import Paul Bunyan. But Paul Bunyan in his
Speaker 1: giant Ox attacking San Francisco, like that would be that
Speaker 1: would be a great foot Yeah, I know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think that people think of Paul Bunyan is menacing,
Speaker 1: but I do I think that there's a plot line here.
Speaker 1: What about you? I mean, I grew up as a
Speaker 1: young boy, so I was very into the monster films,
Speaker 1: especially the one I've mentioned. I think it's like a
Speaker 1: TBS or something. They had the grand Grandpa Monster hosted
Speaker 1: a like a midday monster show, and they were aways
Speaker 1: showing like Godzilla movies, and you know, of course they're
Speaker 1: there are just tons of Gods older movies. So it's
Speaker 1: Gods older versus this versus that versus like a whole
Speaker 1: cadre of of various rubber suited villains. So you know,
Speaker 1: I was heavy into those and I got then. I
Speaker 1: I was an am big mystery signed theater, a few
Speaker 1: thousand fan, and a lot of the movies that they
Speaker 1: watched when involved giant rubber monster suits. And uh. One
Speaker 1: of my favorites today, which which I won't I won't
Speaker 1: get break into too much, but is a film called
Speaker 1: Hanuman Versus Seven Ultraman, and it is a it's an
Speaker 1: Ultraman film, but it's a it's a Thai Japanese co
Speaker 1: production in which Hanuman, the monkey god out of Hindu
Speaker 1: mythology but also very important in Thai culture. Hanuman teams
Speaker 1: up with the Ultraman and an ultra woman. I'm not
Speaker 1: really sure. I'm more up on the Hindu mythology than
Speaker 1: Ultraman mythology, but they team up to just beat the
Speaker 1: tar out of a bunch of hideous monsters that emerge
Speaker 1: from like a rocket fact manufacturing plant or something. So
Speaker 1: it's goofy and beauty full and psychedelic and from like, yeah,
Speaker 1: sixties or seventies, and it's it's well worth hunting down
Speaker 1: if you're you two are a monster fan. But I
Speaker 1: guess one of the things that I'm really highlighting here
Speaker 1: is like silliness, Like there's definitely a large amount of
Speaker 1: silliness and fun like kids love Gammera, kids love Godzilla.
Speaker 1: But if you go all the way back to n Gohira,
Speaker 1: you're you're really looking at a different animal. Especially if
Speaker 1: you're you're not you're not dealing with the americanized version
Speaker 1: that came out, like Raymond Burron and all the different translation.
Speaker 1: But the original Grim Go Heiro movie is a different
Speaker 1: animal time, right, because I mean, this is a far
Speaker 1: more complex creature, right. The American version is not so
Speaker 1: much concerned about the radiation part, right, right, right, But
Speaker 1: the Japanese version, this is a creature born of radiation
Speaker 1: and exuding radiation, right, I mean, the whole sort of
Speaker 1: part of the mythology of an atomic test and it
Speaker 1: brings this monster into being. But yeah, this original one,
Speaker 1: like people were dying just from being near Godzilla and
Speaker 1: right close to it, right, And there are far more
Speaker 1: scenes of individuals. It's more of a disaster film than
Speaker 1: a lot of the subsequent Godzilla films. Lots of people fling,
Speaker 1: lots of people in camps, lots of people in hospitals
Speaker 1: and lots of people dying from radiation poisoning. Culturally, it's
Speaker 1: such an interesting film because you look at Japan's place
Speaker 1: in the world at the time. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: we're in the shadows of the Second World War, in
Speaker 1: the shadows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and other incidents. Go
Speaker 1: Here references an incident involving an American thermonuclear device attested
Speaker 1: near Bikini. Ititall in the Pacific code named Bravos, detonated
Speaker 1: with about two point five times greater force than anticipated,
Speaker 1: and the fallout from the bomb it ended up enveloping
Speaker 1: this tuna trawler named the Lucky Dragon number five, and
Speaker 1: it's just just coated in like a blizzard or radioactive ash.
Speaker 1: And so the crew members in return to their home
Speaker 1: port and they're black, and they've blistered skin, just a
Speaker 1: cute radiation sickness, and and all the tuna is irradiated.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I was reading some some interesting
Speaker 1: commentary on this, which I'll link to on the blogs
Speaker 1: so that people can explore it further. But there's a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting commentary on how like this incident in particular,
Speaker 1: especially on the heels of the Second World War. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Japanese culture is very concerned with hygiene and uh,
Speaker 1: and then you have this situation where you know, we're
Speaker 1: just radioactively contaminated and not sure what is clean anymore.
Speaker 1: And then there's also commentary to make about in especially
Speaker 1: in subsequent Godzilla films, you see Japan using all of
Speaker 1: its technological prowess to fight off an opposing force, and
Speaker 1: that it can be argued that postwar Japan felt rather
Speaker 1: powerless to a certain degree in the global climate, you know,
Speaker 1: because they've just come off this disastrous armed conflict, and
Speaker 1: so their fantasy world, their fictional worlds kind of reflect
Speaker 1: this longing to be able to deal with problems more directly.
Speaker 1: I mean not to limit the films to just that
Speaker 1: it's not just a one plus one equals to situation,
Speaker 1: but but those themes are pretty strong in the in
Speaker 1: the films. Well, I was gonna say, you see that
Speaker 1: anxiety working itself out quite a bit in these films.
Speaker 1: Are twenty eight Godzilla films, and now is that counting
Speaker 1: the the Geno movie. I believe that is, and I
Speaker 1: know that that has been called an abomination, and not
Speaker 1: in a good way. It's just the one where the
Speaker 1: version of Godzilla is is that he's a lizard gets
Speaker 1: messed with because of a nuclear meltdown and scatters it
Speaker 1: and becomes a monster, which is kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that you know, Godzilla is uh
Speaker 1: far fetched anyway, but I mean you couldn't make it
Speaker 1: any more far fetched with that premise, right, But yeah,
Speaker 1: twenty eight films, and from what I understand to Godzilla,
Speaker 1: you know, at first is a very menacing figure, right
Speaker 1: is the embodiment of the problems of nuclear energy, nuclear warfare,
Speaker 1: and then he comes to later on represents somewhat of
Speaker 1: a hero or at least take on this part of
Speaker 1: as someone who is helping the people. And in fact,
Speaker 1: they have different versions of god Godzilla versus this Godzilla
Speaker 1: versus that Godzilla versus the small monster ecological problem um.
Speaker 1: You see, especially in the famous Keen congressus Godzilla, which
Speaker 1: is you know, interpromotional dream match there. This is really
Speaker 1: on a slightly removed scale. This is the US versus
Speaker 1: Japan again, and each country's cut has a slightly different
Speaker 1: preference in who's the superior super monster. But then in
Speaker 1: later films, Godzilla becomes not only a champion of Japan,
Speaker 1: but a champion of Earth itself, defending Earth against various catastrophes.
Speaker 1: And and then Godzilla's can do the same like Gammra
Speaker 1: as always protecting the planet, protecting children, which I think
Speaker 1: is kind of beautiful. Again, it's kind of the idea
Speaker 1: that these uh we create, especially in the original Godzilla
Speaker 1: and Gohira, we create this avatar of all our all
Speaker 1: the worst possibilities of humanity, this frightening thing, and then
Speaker 1: we're able to transform it into something positive, into into
Speaker 1: like a strength. I don't know. I guess you can
Speaker 1: make the argument too that it's kind of casting the
Speaker 1: warnings aside and forgetting what the native potent to begin with.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but again I think it's so this is
Speaker 1: where you know, art movies paint things. Everything that sort
Speaker 1: of allows us to work out these anxieties comes into play.
Speaker 1: And in fact, MPR had a story this morning that
Speaker 1: was talking about Fukushima a year later, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the the earthquake, the tsunami and um and then the
Speaker 1: subsequent you know, mountdown of the three reactors, uh and
Speaker 1: that you know, the real problem right now a year later,
Speaker 1: isn't so much the radiation levels, which really aren't as
Speaker 1: bad as the initially thought because much of them were
Speaker 1: swept away by the winds out over the Pacific, but
Speaker 1: more that it's it's a psychological problem because again you
Speaker 1: have this long history with with you know, nuclear materials
Speaker 1: Japan and this distrust and the year later, people are
Speaker 1: still not quite sure if they feel, you know, like
Speaker 1: they're on terra firma just you know, with their government,
Speaker 1: with their food supplies, and it's just it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: So they were saying that is not a culture that
Speaker 1: really invests a lot into mental health. I mean they have,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously you can go and you at medical attention,
Speaker 1: but it's not so much geared towards mental health. So
Speaker 1: there's not so much an outlet there. King Kong, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, there's there's not I don't know, he's
Speaker 1: not quite as deep. No, no, I mean this is
Speaker 1: what the nineteen thirty three that King Kong comes on
Speaker 1: the scene, and people have pointed to King Kong and
Speaker 1: said that, you know, definitely King Kong embodies UM, so
Speaker 1: that the naivete of American society and especially UM concerning
Speaker 1: race relations at that time but yeah, King Kong, because
Speaker 1: he's his foreign threat, this subhuman threat, and I think
Speaker 1: you can sort of from an exotic place, exotic place.
Speaker 1: He wants to steal women, climb buildings, and yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess if you look at King Kong from that standpoint,
Speaker 1: he's kind of awful, Like he's also kind of an
Speaker 1: avatar of awfulness, just maybe in his an initial inception
Speaker 1: when they want as conscious of it. Whereas Go here
Speaker 1: is obviously the themes are a lot more prevalent and
Speaker 1: on the surface, whereas King Kong and the awfulness is
Speaker 1: kind of hidden. And yet in King Kong in the story,
Speaker 1: you're meant to feel empathy for this creature, so you're
Speaker 1: you to fear him, but you also are too empathize
Speaker 1: with him, right because here he is he's the last
Speaker 1: survivors species. He's lived on School Island his entire life.
Speaker 1: He's a beautiful girl. Uh you know, he tries to
Speaker 1: to I don't know, to make out with her or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then he is essentially enslaved, brought to New York,
Speaker 1: he made to perform on Broadway. I know, I always
Speaker 1: forget about that portion of the story. And then and
Speaker 1: then of course, the whole building thing and the airplane. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a sad story. The remake of that was
Speaker 1: a lot more in keeping with I guess the spirit
Speaker 1: of the original is that the Jessica Lang one. Oh
Speaker 1: there were no there were a couple of remixes, right,
Speaker 1: there's one that there was like an eighties version of it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that one was I think that one was just
Speaker 1: kind of weird. I don't know if anyone has any
Speaker 1: real love for that film outside of maybe you know,
Speaker 1: cheesy enthusiasm. But then Peter Jackson, Oh that's right, okay, yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: which my only problems with that one is a it
Speaker 1: seemed I think that movie is like six hours long
Speaker 1: or something like. It's awfully long for King Kong, and
Speaker 1: I'll so I remember it just had some really look over.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love dark imagery as much as the
Speaker 1: next person, but like, this is King Kong and there's
Speaker 1: this scene where these like all these horrible giant insect
Speaker 1: monsters are like meeting people and giant slugs are like
Speaker 1: sucking people's faces, and I remember thinking that this is
Speaker 1: a bit dark. Jackson, Um, well, it was filler to
Speaker 1: your point. You can't really make a film that long
Speaker 1: with the premise of King Kong, you know, but still
Speaker 1: it was over like everything was like like they're like
Speaker 1: King Kong, let's do this, except we're gonna it's gonna
Speaker 1: be King Kong on steroids. In the original, he fights
Speaker 1: one dinosaur. This time he's gonna fight two dinosaurs. You know,
Speaker 1: that's right, all right, So let's let's let's throw some
Speaker 1: science on these beasts. Yeah, first, let's take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll see stabbling about the
Speaker 1: culture behind these monsters and so forth, and we will
Speaker 1: start talking about the science behind gigantic animals and whether
Speaker 1: it's even pot Alright, so we're back, and it's time
Speaker 1: to get into the morphological limits of giant monsters. Yeah yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So here's here's just something that's a basic Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: So if you're going to create something that's bigger than
Speaker 1: the original, um, the weight as a function of their
Speaker 1: volume is going to increase dramatically faster than does the
Speaker 1: surface area, right this creature. This is important to remember
Speaker 1: because this has a lot of important consequences. Um. So,
Speaker 1: basically is that if you're going to double something size
Speaker 1: and keep its proportions the same. The weight doesn't double
Speaker 1: or even quadruple. It actually increases by a factor of eight. Okay,
Speaker 1: so when we're talking about King Kong, we're talking about
Speaker 1: a gorilla that is super giant, right, And when we're
Speaker 1: talking about Godzilla, we're talking about dinosaur hybrid that is
Speaker 1: runs on both gas and electric. That's right. He does
Speaker 1: have some electric properties similar, which doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: with the flames in the radioactivity. I mean there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on there anyway. Well, radioactive firestorms. I mean
Speaker 1: that's part of the whole nuclear apocalypse scenario, you know,
Speaker 1: Like you see the ridges on his back start to
Speaker 1: get electrified, and then the fire comes out of his mouth,
Speaker 1: and yet at the same time he's always exuding radiation.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, Yeah, there's a lot of port for
Speaker 1: one fork. Yeah, well, Gamra has it coming out both ends.
Speaker 1: So because you've seen Gamra, right, a big turtle, he
Speaker 1: can retract his back to legs and then fire comes
Speaker 1: out and he flies around. But I was going to
Speaker 1: make like a little gas joke. There should be eight
Speaker 1: year old boy in me. Yeah, I should have brought
Speaker 1: in my Gamera toy too help us with this, but
Speaker 1: I'm getting off track gadding about monsters. Another way to
Speaker 1: look at this mass thing that I really like is
Speaker 1: the spherical cow analogy. Alright, So the shape of an
Speaker 1: animal can be a little complex, and it's a simpler
Speaker 1: if you look at something like a cow, and look
Speaker 1: at the cow and imagine it as just a sphere
Speaker 1: like the mass just reduced to a sphere of calmus, okay,
Speaker 1: and then imagine increasing the size of that that mass,
Speaker 1: all right, And again the volume increases more rapidly than
Speaker 1: the surface area. So if you double the ray idious
Speaker 1: of the sphere, the surface area increases four times, and
Speaker 1: the volume increases eight times. That again, like you said,
Speaker 1: you double something size, and if it keeps the same proportions,
Speaker 1: the weight doesn't double or even quadruple, it increases eightfold.
Speaker 1: So you have something like King Kong, right, who is
Speaker 1: thirty feet high in the film, five times the size
Speaker 1: of a real gorilla, and his proportions are more or
Speaker 1: less the same. If you were to take an actual
Speaker 1: gorilla and you were to blow it up like that
Speaker 1: in a you know, honey, I blew up the kid's fashion,
Speaker 1: the creature would not be able to stand, its legs
Speaker 1: would break. Basically, its own weights bones can't support it.
Speaker 1: We're talking about thirty ft high tons, right. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was reading an interesting country about the size of animals
Speaker 1: and how the size of something is very much. I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's not just a matter of oh, this
Speaker 1: is a big one and this is a little one. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are there's a certain amount to be said about
Speaker 1: dwarf is m versus gigantism in organisms. But but takes
Speaker 1: something like a whale, Like a whale is large, and
Speaker 1: whale is massive, and its mass allows it, among other things,
Speaker 1: to keep warm and chilling waters. If you were to
Speaker 1: reduce a blue whale to the size of a minnow,
Speaker 1: it would not be able to stay warm. Its size
Speaker 1: is part of its function. Would actually have to consume
Speaker 1: far more, right for energy. Right, Yeah, That's why you
Speaker 1: have things like mice and other small animals that are
Speaker 1: just so ravenous that have an endless hunger because they're
Speaker 1: having to keep up their metabolism. Yep. Yeah. So when
Speaker 1: you're looking at King Kong and you're talking about a
Speaker 1: creature that's a hundred and twenty five times heavier than
Speaker 1: an original gorilla, right, and you also have the problem
Speaker 1: that relative to the size, King Kong has only twenty
Speaker 1: five times the surface area of an ape skin. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is important because on top of that, you have
Speaker 1: for that is five times as thick as a real gorilla.
Speaker 1: Because he needs to lose excess heat, he's metabolizing like
Speaker 1: like other mammals to keep warm. He's metabolizing. He us
Speaker 1: to lose that excess heat, but he has less skin
Speaker 1: to lose it through and more for that's insulating, right,
Speaker 1: So it's a lot harder to wick off that heat, right, right,
Speaker 1: So I mean you would have to shave constant and
Speaker 1: then that might do it a hairless King Kong, which
Speaker 1: would completely change that storyline, I think. But I mean,
Speaker 1: just think about that if he were to try to
Speaker 1: do any sort of normal movements. You know, first of all,
Speaker 1: he would collapse again under the weight of um of himself.
Speaker 1: But also he would probably collapse because you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to again get rid of the heat, and so
Speaker 1: he would just be in a jumbled mess. He wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to get the girl and climb to the
Speaker 1: top of the Empire State building. Right. Another thing to
Speaker 1: know about the legs again, he would need larger leg bones.
Speaker 1: He would just need bigger legs in general, and he
Speaker 1: would probably need a different gait, you know, instead of
Speaker 1: having like eight light bendy knees, he would need more
Speaker 1: of a straight legged type of movement, which would probably
Speaker 1: limit his ability to climb skyscrapers. Yeah, indeed, all right,
Speaker 1: let's talk about one husky boy here, Godzilla. Well, Godzilla
Speaker 1: has kind of a leg up on the situation on
Speaker 1: one hand, because because he's cold blighted or I don't know,
Speaker 1: presumably he is cold lighted. Um. And in the American version, well,
Speaker 1: who knows. In the America that doesn't count. Presumably Godzilla
Speaker 1: is is cold blooded and accounting the nuclear fires brewing
Speaker 1: in his belly. And uh. And we look back to
Speaker 1: the dinosaurs, and these are clearly a great example of
Speaker 1: a large creature that was a probably cold blooded you
Speaker 1: know where the drew is kind of but but presumably
Speaker 1: cold blooded for the sake of this argument, and was
Speaker 1: walking around on land. Some of these guys were quite huge.
Speaker 1: And while we used to think that some of these
Speaker 1: different sarropods were we're walking around in the muck or
Speaker 1: in the water. To help you, know, to buoy them,
Speaker 1: especially if they if they were to make love right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about that in the dinosaurs. They probably the species,
Speaker 1: but yeah, if they were going to make out, knock
Speaker 1: boots whatever, there was always that question of how do
Speaker 1: they actually do this because they are so weighty, um,
Speaker 1: and in in Godzilla's case, we were talking about sixty
Speaker 1: thou tons, right, like the size of a battleship, and
Speaker 1: he does emerge from the ocean. That's worth noting. But
Speaker 1: back to battleship. That's another interesting example. I ran across
Speaker 1: took a battleship out of the water and put it
Speaker 1: on land, like it would to what extent would it
Speaker 1: fall apart because it doesn't have water holding it right? Right?
Speaker 1: But okay, so the dinosaurs, for a while we have
Speaker 1: thought that they that some of these larger models were
Speaker 1: having to stay in the water all the time to
Speaker 1: support their weight. A lot of the footprint information that
Speaker 1: we have and now the fossilized prints, indicate that they
Speaker 1: were walking around at least in the mud, you know,
Speaker 1: and that therefore we're capable of land movement, maybe even
Speaker 1: running as fast as stay an elephant, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like three miles per hour, I think. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Addition having really thick legs like a cong or a
Speaker 1: Godzilla would need. They also walked around on four, which
Speaker 1: is again is an enormous help in Godzilla is walking
Speaker 1: around on two. Well, especially if you're thinking about the
Speaker 1: heart and pumping blood, it's another key thing because your
Speaker 1: brain needs some of that blood. Yeah, and you we've
Speaker 1: you know, sore pods have been somewhat of a mystery
Speaker 1: in that respect too, right, because they have really long
Speaker 1: necks and they have huge bodies, and so you're talking
Speaker 1: about pumping blood from when end up a two hundred
Speaker 1: meter long body to the other and that's a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure. So if your Godzilla, you know, in order
Speaker 1: to resist that kind of pressure, your arteries near your
Speaker 1: heart would have to be made out of steel, you know,
Speaker 1: and so that your your heart didn't burst. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: even giraffes, we've talked about the about this, their hearts
Speaker 1: after piece very high pressure to force the blood all
Speaker 1: the way to their brains. And uh, way back, one
Speaker 1: of our first few podcasts tore that we talked about
Speaker 1: exploding heads and reheb there was the some people are asking, well, well,
Speaker 1: how come the giraffe's head doesn't explode when it bends
Speaker 1: down to drink. There's actually they have a cluster of
Speaker 1: arteries and veins that divert the blood flow under the
Speaker 1: right circumstances to equalize the blood pressure. They've got adaptations
Speaker 1: for that. But the blood pressure involved in some of these, uh,
Speaker 1: these dinosaurs, these long necked sauropods, is like we're we're
Speaker 1: looking at like eight times what would we encounter in
Speaker 1: a normal animal. So something like Godzilla or or King Kong,
Speaker 1: they would have to have tremendous blood pressure, like you said,
Speaker 1: to just to keep the brain active, right, or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe they just get dizzy very once in a
Speaker 1: while and that's why they're swiveling around the cities and
Speaker 1: destroying everything. Well, that's that's I'm glad that you mentioned
Speaker 1: dizziness because that's one way to get a quick idea
Speaker 1: of what this is. What we're talking about with the
Speaker 1: blood of the brain. Lay down for a few minutes
Speaker 1: and then get up really quick. But not right now,
Speaker 1: right now, So don't we don't know what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could be on a bus, on a
Speaker 1: train walking, but that feeling that you get when you
Speaker 1: get up really quick and you're like, oh, I'm so dizzy.
Speaker 1: That's because you've your position has changed the bloodstic to
Speaker 1: your brain. Uh. Imagine if you were even taller, it
Speaker 1: would be even more of an issue. So that's another
Speaker 1: thing to take into a consideration with these giant animals
Speaker 1: is how's the blood flow gonna work? How are they
Speaker 1: going to get blood to their brain? That we're dealing
Speaker 1: with a whole new set of engineering problems. Here's another
Speaker 1: sticking point, Godzi less skin. Yes, okay, it has to
Speaker 1: be somehow strong enough to resist bullets variety of munitions,
Speaker 1: but yet flexible enough to move around. Right, So I
Speaker 1: mean that's that that's some serious engineering right there. It is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and nanotechnology wasn't even you know, next since in nine um.
Speaker 1: And then another key issue to keep in mind with
Speaker 1: the animal size is that you have to ask your
Speaker 1: stuff like why why are animals as big as they are?
Speaker 1: And why do they remain that way? Well? Um, like
Speaker 1: size evolution has a lot to do with the arms
Speaker 1: race between prey and predators and surviving various environments, like
Speaker 1: there has to be a reason for something to be
Speaker 1: that big, and granted, Godzilla kind of gets by with
Speaker 1: the whole Oh it's a mutation or it's you know,
Speaker 1: ancient ancient animal from a previous ecosystem plus radiation equals
Speaker 1: something that doesn't quite make sense. King Kong has less
Speaker 1: of an excuse because he's just living on an island somewhere, right,
Speaker 1: And does he really have an environment and ecosystem that
Speaker 1: supports his size. I mean, granted, there are like dinosaurs
Speaker 1: on Skull Island and presumably he's eating some of those, right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, but if he's the largest and most fierce too,
Speaker 1: I mean, he doesn't have a natural predator that he
Speaker 1: needs to be really that large and dominate anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's like when we're talking about super predators,
Speaker 1: especially like this was us, wasn't it? Or I feel
Speaker 1: like we were talking about this in the past podcast
Speaker 1: about then are doppelgangers maybe oh yeah, oh their their podcast?
Speaker 1: Yeah mind yeah, yeah, Okay, But if you think of
Speaker 1: like any kind of superprederor especially like the prehistoric superpredators
Speaker 1: like this giant like super shark, super tyrannosaur type creatures,
Speaker 1: imagine them as kings the top of pyramid of bones
Speaker 1: there at the very top, and that that pyramid gets
Speaker 1: wider as you reach the ground, because those are all
Speaker 1: the layers of food that have to support them. Like
Speaker 1: the lowest layer, of course, is like plants, and then
Speaker 1: there are a whole bunch of things that eat those plants,
Speaker 1: and then things that eat those animals, and then things
Speaker 1: to those animals, and at the very top you have
Speaker 1: this this lofty king of all things. The environment can
Speaker 1: only support so many of those guys, and there are
Speaker 1: limits to what they can support, what they can give, right,
Speaker 1: and what they can give. So so that's another thing
Speaker 1: you have to ask about, especially like a King Kong
Speaker 1: or anything that lives on a monster island, is to
Speaker 1: what extent could the ecosystem possibly support an animal and
Speaker 1: how how long could it supported before you know, Kim
Speaker 1: Kong wiped out everything? Right, right, Yeah, he's not very sustainable,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. So he's a perfect symbol for American culture.
Speaker 1: I'm about to say, yeah, he's He's a good symbol
Speaker 1: for gluttony for sure, Bob. But another symbol of American culture, right,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, another beast um. What we're talking about
Speaker 1: is the blonde haired giant menace Barbie. Uh. Since two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, Gallia Sland, now a student at Hamilton College,
Speaker 1: unveils a monster she created for the purpose of showing,
Speaker 1: um uh people the the sort of body dysmorphia present
Speaker 1: in the Barbie doll. And she presents this at the
Speaker 1: National Eating Disorder Awareness Week at different events. It is
Speaker 1: a life size Barbie that she created. And I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna throw some stats out there. Um, if Barbie were
Speaker 1: an actual woman, Okay, she would be five ft nine
Speaker 1: that's a reasonable height for yeah, yeah, she would have
Speaker 1: a thirty nine inch bust. Now, Okay, in these times
Speaker 1: of padding, maybe that doesn't seem too huge, but just
Speaker 1: think about it that that really is quite large. It's
Speaker 1: more like on par with maybe Dolly Parton, Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: So Dolly Parton is a good frame of preference for that. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: an eighteen inch waist, which is insane, Like, who would
Speaker 1: that be on part with? That would be Vivianly from
Speaker 1: Gone with a Wind And she was corseted to a
Speaker 1: nineteen inch waist, and that's insane because she's super petite. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think woman corseted to the point of passing out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to think about the like your typical hourglass dimensions would be,
Speaker 1: you know, like thirty thirty four, thirty four being the hips,
Speaker 1: twenty four being the waist, thirty four being the bust. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here we have Barbie five nine, thirty nine bust,
Speaker 1: eighteen inch waist and thirty three hips okay, so very
Speaker 1: slender hips and a size three shoe. Okay. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: with all the other Godzilla and King Kong proportions that
Speaker 1: you know, that doesn't seem too crazy. But again, you
Speaker 1: know these when we get the Godzilla dolls or I
Speaker 1: should say toys rather or King Kong toys, we don't
Speaker 1: actually think of them as fashioned after ourselves, whereas Barbie
Speaker 1: is fashioned after a female human. So at five nine
Speaker 1: tall and win one ten pounds, Barbie would have a
Speaker 1: body that index of sixteen point two four and she
Speaker 1: likely would not menstruate because of this, And if you
Speaker 1: were a real woman, she would have to walk on
Speaker 1: all fours due to her proportions. And I just thought
Speaker 1: this was fascinating. Slumber Party Barbie was introduced in nine
Speaker 1: and came with a bathroom scale permanently set at one pounds,
Speaker 1: with a book entitled How to Lose Weight with directions
Speaker 1: inside stating simply don't eat. Yeah. Yeah, that this is
Speaker 1: the most monsters thing, like discussed in the podcast. And
Speaker 1: there are two Barbie dolls sold every second in the world. Wow,
Speaker 1: now that is world domination, my friend. Yeah, I far
Speaker 1: better than a little girl, a little boy would want
Speaker 1: to grow up in the Godzilla I think. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can breathe fire. I mean, that's that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: You're turning your your your weaknesses into strength. You're standing
Speaker 1: up for the environment, for for nation, for planet, for
Speaker 1: little kids. I mean all that Barbie just wants sold
Speaker 1: these weight and not learning maths. So yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: just a little fun like, uh talk about the limits
Speaker 1: of human I guess you could say proportions. There's something
Speaker 1: I want to throw out to the listeners. I wonder
Speaker 1: has any work of fiction actually tackled giant creatures in
Speaker 1: a more believable manner, like taking into account the physics,
Speaker 1: because I generally that that's off the table with these
Speaker 1: and I'm not complaining because I enjoy them. But like,
Speaker 1: the only example I can think of about hand is
Speaker 1: that there's a book by the author Michael Shea, who's
Speaker 1: a fabulous sci fi horror and dark fantasy writer An
Speaker 1: he wrote these books about this character, nif Bilin, and
Speaker 1: he's always going on these like the guy is like
Speaker 1: super into Dante's Inferno and the sex lies of the insects.
Speaker 1: So he's definitely an author after my own heart. He
Speaker 1: writes these sales about these characters, is going into the
Speaker 1: underworld and and there's there's one episode where guys to
Speaker 1: bring back this elixir to these giant underworld insects used
Speaker 1: to to feed their larva, and he brings it up
Speaker 1: and they feed it too. Bees. With this scheme, they're
Speaker 1: gonna grow giant bees and then they're gonna have lots
Speaker 1: of honey. And of course the bees then get so
Speaker 1: big they can't fly and they're just rolling around and
Speaker 1: the human ends up taking some of this and he
Speaker 1: gets so big hecaus just in constant pain. And he's
Speaker 1: first rolling around and he doesn't like fall apart at
Speaker 1: any or anything, but he ends up having like crawl
Speaker 1: into the ocean to support his weight. A dinosaur knocking boots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I think he gets like I forget what
Speaker 1: happens to him. But if you want to read more
Speaker 1: about it, check out the work of Michael Ja. He's
Speaker 1: quite pacive. Uh, And do tell us what you think
Speaker 1: about giant animals, giant monsters and again if you find
Speaker 1: any in in fiction that actually make a little bit
Speaker 1: of scientific sense, let us know. You can always find
Speaker 1: us on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook, we're stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, and on Twitter, our Twitter handle is
Speaker 1: blow the Mind one word and you can always drop
Speaker 1: us a line at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
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