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

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And today we're gonna be talking about themes of technology

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Speaker 1: in ancient Greek literature. But before we get there, we

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Speaker 1: have to go to the slightly related, actually very related

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Speaker 1: topic of what's your favorite killer robot movie? Robert? Oh, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, outside of some of the obvious choices from

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Speaker 1: saying you know, the Terminator movies, can't say Terminator or

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Speaker 1: even the RoboCop movies, you get into a weird territory.

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Speaker 1: Is that a robot? Is it a cyborg? Right? I

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Speaker 1: would say my easy pick is the killer red robot

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Speaker 1: Maximilian from the Disney movie The Black Hole. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've never seen it. Oh he's terrifying because he just

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Speaker 1: he floats around feet do not touch the surface of

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Speaker 1: the ship, and has his menacing red visor that just

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Speaker 1: peers into your soul and has these spinning blade hands

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Speaker 1: that it utilizes to at one point murder Anthony Perkins

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Speaker 1: in Cold Blood. No Anthony Perkins. Yeah, well, after Psycho,

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Speaker 1: I guess he had it coming. Well, you know, and

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Speaker 1: this movie was great. In this movie, you felt sorry

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Speaker 1: for him. If he showed up showing up in Psycho

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Speaker 1: were than that would that would be a different matter altogether.

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Speaker 1: Now I have probably got to go to the movie.

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Speaker 1: Chopping Mall is a eighties robots slasher set in the

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Speaker 1: shopping mall at night where security robots go haywire. I

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Speaker 1: think their computer gets struck by lightning or something and

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Speaker 1: then they decide, well, they've got to kill all the

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Speaker 1: people who are hanging out overnight in the in the mall.

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Speaker 1: That is a delicious movie. Yeah. But also, how about

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Speaker 1: You'll Brenner in the original West World. Oh yeah, he's

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Speaker 1: super menacing and I'm up until his face falls off,

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Speaker 1: I guess. But before Westworld was like a thoughtful HBO series,

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Speaker 1: it was a cheesy old movie with You'll You'll Brenner

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Speaker 1: pulling guns on people. Yeah, yeah, he was. He was terrifying.

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Speaker 1: He I mean, you Brennan was always entertaining, but he

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Speaker 1: was kind of made to play a killer, emotionless robot.

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Speaker 1: I would say some of the best killer robots stuff

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Speaker 1: in movies. When killer robots are scary, the fact that

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Speaker 1: they're scary comes not from malice or ill intent, like

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Speaker 1: it might in a monster or in a human villain

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Speaker 1: or something like that. The great thing about a killer

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Speaker 1: robot in a scary movie is that it's terror is

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Speaker 1: derived from the fact that it has no will of

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Speaker 1: its own or no intention. It's just sort of like

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Speaker 1: a an efficient, emotionless killing machine. All it has is

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Speaker 1: directive and it it absolutely will not stop until it

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Speaker 1: achieves it. Now, we obviously think of themes like this

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Speaker 1: emerging in the fiction primarily of the twentieth century. Right,

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Speaker 1: that's when we think science fiction in earnest really shows

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Speaker 1: up the way we know it now. I know you

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Speaker 1: have Jules Verned before that, but the twentie centuries when

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Speaker 1: you really start getting your killer robots everywhere. But today

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Speaker 1: we're going to go back. Oh yes, we're gonna go

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Speaker 1: back to a fat be list example of what is

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Speaker 1: perhaps the very first killer robot that humans ever dreamt up.

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Speaker 1: And it it's not from the twentieth century, it's not

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Speaker 1: from the nineteenth or even it is from the ancient

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Speaker 1: Greek world, and its name is Talos. Talos, yes, the

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Speaker 1: man of Bronze, the bronze automaton. I want to quote

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Speaker 1: from Edith Hamilton's version of the classic story of the

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Speaker 1: Quest for the Golden Fleece now Edith Hamilton's Classic Mythology.

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Speaker 1: That this is a great old textbook on Greek mythology.

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Speaker 1: If you haven't had a chance to check it out,

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Speaker 1: it was just wonderful to leave through. Every personal library

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Speaker 1: needs a copy of this. But so she does a

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Speaker 1: really good job of taking disparate elements of story traditions

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Speaker 1: and sort of pasting them together into composite, synthetic versions

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Speaker 1: of the stories. So I want to sort of summarize

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Speaker 1: the Quest for the Golden Fleece. You can't hit all

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Speaker 1: the great points, but here's how it goes. So you've

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Speaker 1: got this young hero j Son, and in order to

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Speaker 1: reclaim his rightful kingdom from a usurper king, Jason is

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Speaker 1: on a quest to retrieve a sacred artifact, which is

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Speaker 1: a golden fleece from a magic ram that saved the

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Speaker 1: life of a Greek prince long ago, and he's accompanied

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Speaker 1: by a crew of other heroes known as the Argonauts.

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Speaker 1: This is where we get Jason and the Argonauts, and

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Speaker 1: on the way to retrieve the artifact, he has to

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Speaker 1: face many trials with his companions. One of the trials

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Speaker 1: that Hamilton's talks about is how Hercules is on the

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Speaker 1: on the ship with him and hercules friend gets yanked

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Speaker 1: down into a spring by this nymph type creature and

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Speaker 1: Hercules is roaming around the woods trying to find him

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Speaker 1: and eventually gets lost and wanders off. So you would think,

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Speaker 1: you know, you got Hercules in your career, you're set,

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Speaker 1: but it turns out he's easily distracted. Yes. Another trial

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Speaker 1: is when Jason and the Argonauts have to battle with

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Speaker 1: evil harpies on behalf of this wretched old man who

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Speaker 1: has the gift of future site. So the old man

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Speaker 1: is a prophet, but he's been cursed so that anytime

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Speaker 1: him he goes to eat some food, harpies zoomed down

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Speaker 1: down out of the sky and they terrorize him, and

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Speaker 1: they foul the food he's eating. I'm not sure exactly

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Speaker 1: what they do to it. It's they're described as foul smelling,

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Speaker 1: so maybe they just put him off it. Well, I'm

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Speaker 1: just imagining just a tussle of harpy feathers and and

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Speaker 1: harpy excrement and just all manner of nastiness. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: so they have to sail their ship through some crashing

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Speaker 1: rocks and all all kinds of stuff like that. But

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Speaker 1: eventually Jason is able to capture the artifacts the Golden Fleece,

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Speaker 1: but only with the help of the powerful witch, Princess Medea,

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Speaker 1: Uh one of the greatest sorceresses in all of fiction media.

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Speaker 1: Is awesome. So she has fallen in love with him,

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Speaker 1: but not entirely of her own volition, because she was

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Speaker 1: compelled into love by an arrow of Cupid, because Aphrodite

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Speaker 1: intervened on his behalf. So after they get the fleece,

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Speaker 1: Jason and Medea and the rest of the crew of

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Speaker 1: the argo Or sailing towards Jason's home. And on the

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Speaker 1: journey they passed by the island of Crete, and here

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Speaker 1: I want to read a direct quote from Hamilton's telling

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Speaker 1: of the story. Next came Crete, where they would have

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Speaker 1: landed but for Medea. She told them that Talus lived there,

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Speaker 1: the last man left of the ancient Bronze race, a

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Speaker 1: creature made all of bronze except one ankle, where alone

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Speaker 1: he was vulnerable. Even as she spoke, he appeared terrible

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Speaker 1: to behold, and threatened to crush the ship with rocks

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Speaker 1: if they drew nearer. They rested on their oars, and Medea, kneeling,

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Speaker 1: prayed to the hounds of Hades to come and destroy him.

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Speaker 1: The dread powers of evil heard her, as the bronze

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Speaker 1: man lifted a pointed crag to hurl it at the argo.

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Speaker 1: He grazed his ankle, and the blood gushed forth until

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Speaker 1: he sank and died. Then the heroes could land and

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Speaker 1: refresh themselves for the voyage still before them. Now, this

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Speaker 1: is only one telling of the story of Talos, the

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Speaker 1: mighty Man of Bronze, and to get a little bit

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Speaker 1: more detail, I think we should look at a translation

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Speaker 1: of the text of the story as told by Apollonius

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Speaker 1: of Rhodes in his work the Argonautica, which is one

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Speaker 1: version of this story I've just been talking about. Yes,

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Speaker 1: Apollonius rights he was of the stock of bronze, of

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Speaker 1: the men's spring from ash trees, the last left among

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Speaker 1: the sons of the gods, and the sons of Chronos

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Speaker 1: gave him to Europa to be the warder of crete,

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Speaker 1: and destroyed around the island thrice a day with his

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Speaker 1: feet of bronze. Now in all the rest of his

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Speaker 1: body and limbs he was fashioned of bronze and invulnerable,

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Speaker 1: but beneath the sinew of his ankle was a blood

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Speaker 1: red vein, and this, with its issue of life and death,

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Speaker 1: was covered by a thin skin. Now, so you've got

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Speaker 1: a bronze guy. You've got a bronze guy, and he

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Speaker 1: has this weak point in his his his ankle, very

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Speaker 1: much like Achilles. The legend of Achilles also weak only

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Speaker 1: in his ankle at his heel, right, because that's where

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Speaker 1: was held as he was dipped into into the river sticks.

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Speaker 1: But we get a different explanation for the vulnerability in

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Speaker 1: this story. Now it's a technological vulnerability. Yeah. And I

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Speaker 1: think this is this is the key, and this is

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Speaker 1: something we're going to discuss over and over again in

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Speaker 1: this episode. Is that it's easy to just dismiss this

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Speaker 1: tale because Talus does not have other adventures. He basically

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Speaker 1: shows up kind of like a dungeon and Dragon's random encounter,

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Speaker 1: and he's dispatched. The main story about him is his

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Speaker 1: death right. And you can also say, well, it sounds

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Speaker 1: a lot like Achilles. It's kind of like a bronze

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Speaker 1: It's like a robot knockoff of Achilles to a certain extent,

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Speaker 1: but when you really start digging into it, the technological

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Speaker 1: aspect of this is absolutely phenomenal. Now, one great source

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Speaker 1: on the tradition of the Talus character is the author

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Speaker 1: Merlin Paris, who wrote the article Talos and Dadalus, a

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Speaker 1: review of the authorship of the Abominable Bronze Man in

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Speaker 1: the Ceylon Journal of Humanities from nineteen seventy one. And

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Speaker 1: this is a fantastic article, so we will bring him

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Speaker 1: up several times throughout this episode. Now, one thing Paris

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Speaker 1: points out is that not all versions of the Talus

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Speaker 1: story described tall Us exactly the same. Sometimes his body

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Speaker 1: has different features or characteristics depending on who the author is.

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Speaker 1: Yes and days we'll discuss. Even the size fluctuates. One

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Speaker 1: thing we always have to remember with Greek myths in

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Speaker 1: particular is that they evolve. I mean, all myths are

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Speaker 1: subject to change over time and over place, depending on

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Speaker 1: who's telling the tale and who and when they are

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Speaker 1: telling it. And that's certainly the case with Greek mythology.

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Speaker 1: So for example, Apollonius of Rhodes, who was writing in

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Speaker 1: the third century, had said that this this vein, this

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Speaker 1: vein inside him was only apparent under the sinew of

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Speaker 1: his ankle, right, the one ankle, Yeah, But then there

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Speaker 1: are other accounts that say that it's stretched from the

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Speaker 1: neck down to both ankles. So that was Appolodorus, right, Yes,

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Speaker 1: So this vein is full of what's known as echor,

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Speaker 1: which in Greek myth is the life blood of the gods.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it's described as golden instead of red, though in

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Speaker 1: most of the stories I've seen about Talus it is

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Speaker 1: described as red. In the Iliad, when the gods, for example, Aphrodite,

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Speaker 1: are cut or stabbed with spears, they can be harmed,

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Speaker 1: their skin can be pierced, and they leak fluid. But

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Speaker 1: the fluid they leak is not blood but ichor. So

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Speaker 1: to quote from the Iliad, quote, the point tore through

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Speaker 1: the ambrosial robe which the graces had woven for Aphrodite,

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Speaker 1: and pierce the skin between her wrist and the palm

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Speaker 1: of her hand, so that the immortal blood or ichor,

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Speaker 1: that flows in the veins of the blessed gods came

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Speaker 1: pouring from the wound. For the gods do not eat

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Speaker 1: bread nor drink wine. Hence they have no blood such

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Speaker 1: as ours and our immortal I love the conflicting ideas here,

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Speaker 1: like the idea that the God can be injured and

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Speaker 1: the God can bleed, but they are in some sense immortal.

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Speaker 1: They have bodies, they can leak fluid, they can be hurt,

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Speaker 1: but the idea of immortality. He is somehow more bound

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Speaker 1: up in what goes into their body and what comes

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Speaker 1: out of it than what can be done to it. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's important to note here that this does

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Speaker 1: not mean that tal Us is a god. All all

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Speaker 1: accounts indicate that he is a manufactured thing, but of

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Speaker 1: course the manufacturer changes depending on the different tails. But

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Speaker 1: but still he is. He is like this artificial creation

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Speaker 1: that has been filled with life because he's been filled

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Speaker 1: with core. So the ecre maybe for for the bronze man,

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Speaker 1: Talus is not essential to his nature, but is something

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Speaker 1: that has been used to give him the properties he has,

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Speaker 1: maybe the properties of life for animation. Right. Yeah, this

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Speaker 1: it's the gasoline for your large bronze death column, the

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Speaker 1: oil in the car. Now. This makes me think about

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Speaker 1: how both monsters and robots and fiction are often identified

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Speaker 1: by the different color of their blood. I think about

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Speaker 1: like the Aliens and the X Files that have green

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Speaker 1: blood or you know, it's not just the X File

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Speaker 1: as I think about it. There's a great scene in

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Speaker 1: Fright Night where there's a guy who you just think

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Speaker 1: is like a normal vampire, is familiar, but then he

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Speaker 1: starts bleeding and I think his blood is green? Is

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Speaker 1: that right? I believe so. Yeah. But anyway, it's it's

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Speaker 1: all all all over the place in fiction. But it's

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Speaker 1: not just monsters. It's robots too. I think about Ash

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Speaker 1: spraying the milk white blood everywhere an alien when he

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Speaker 1: gets bashed up, and I think this goes to the

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Speaker 1: deep metaphorical understanding we have of blood as like the

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Speaker 1: essence of a person, in the sense that close family members,

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Speaker 1: which in material terms are those animals with which you

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Speaker 1: share the most essential genetic similarity, are quote your blood indeed,

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Speaker 1: And of course it's also worth noting that I believe

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Speaker 1: film ratings sometimes come into play. I've I've read that

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Speaker 1: if you have a humanoid spouting green paint white or

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Speaker 1: say amber blood, you can still earn yourself with PG. Thirteen.

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Speaker 1: But if it's if the if the stuff is red,

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Speaker 1: then you're probably gonna get an r. Oh wow, you

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Speaker 1: know I was gonna say, well, I wonder if that

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Speaker 1: played a role in it's in its use in the Iliad.

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Speaker 1: But no, the iliots full of blood. They didn't shy

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Speaker 1: away from blood there. Oh well, without getting into the

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Speaker 1: whole issue of of colors in the works of Homer, right,

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Speaker 1: that's an entirely different topic, maybe for a different day.

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Speaker 1: So Talos, so we've got him as this bronze man

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Speaker 1: made of bronze. He's got this vein of ecore somewhere

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Speaker 1: in his body going down to his ankle or both ankles,

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Speaker 1: that contains this lifeblood or essential ethereal liquid inside the

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Speaker 1: gods that has animated this bronze creature to some extent.

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Speaker 1: And he stands on the island throwing rocks at any

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Speaker 1: ship that tries to dock. We saw in apollonius tale

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Speaker 1: that he apparently runs around the island of crete three

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Speaker 1: times a day, three times a day, which is impossible.

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Speaker 1: I was tempted to do the math on it, or

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Speaker 1: I was actually kind of surprised that nobody else has

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Speaker 1: a paper oute there breaking down exactly how fast and

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Speaker 1: how large Talos would have to be to pull this off.

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Speaker 1: But that's not the only thing that tell Us can do.

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Speaker 1: So he can curl rocks at your ship, But what

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Speaker 1: if you come ashore? Does he still pose a risk? Then? Oh?

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Speaker 1: Does he? Ever? He has this this beautifully grotesque superpower

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Speaker 1: of being able to apparently jump into the fire, heat

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Speaker 1: its body up, and then come out and embrace the enemy.

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Speaker 1: So here, so the enemy soldiers say they've landed. Here

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Speaker 1: comes Talis leaping out of the fire, applies a huge

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Speaker 1: bear hug and just immolates you in his embrace. And

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Speaker 1: according to that, that's amazing. And it gets even better,

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Speaker 1: according to to Merlin paris Uh. Some argue that the

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Speaker 1: term sardonic grin may have originated with the victims of

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Speaker 1: this death. This at least according to Symonides, who wrote

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Speaker 1: the Talus resided in Sardinia before coming to Crete, and

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Speaker 1: he had already destroyed many of the Sardinians, presumably leaving

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Speaker 1: them with peeled back, appealed back grin of a of

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Speaker 1: a you know, of of the burnt dead. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: idea of the grimace. And and this is a big

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Speaker 1: question actually in the the etymology you of this term.

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Speaker 1: Where does the idea of the sardonic grin come from?

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Speaker 1: Or the resist sardonicus which I think actually literally means

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Speaker 1: sardonic laughter, not sardonic grin, but the ideas get conflated

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Speaker 1: in the history of the terms. Um, so yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: where does this idea come from? Now? Another version I've

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Speaker 1: heard so one is that he is crushing the Sardinians,

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Speaker 1: and he's crushing them and burning them with his red

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Speaker 1: hot embrace, and that in their death their grimaces turned

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Speaker 1: into grins. But then also I Paris talks about the

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Speaker 1: idea that the grin goes to the robot itself, right,

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Speaker 1: that this that Talos would grin have this creepy grin

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Speaker 1: when he was hugging people to death with his burning arms.

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Speaker 1: Another version of the explanation for this, which is kind

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Speaker 1: of a side note from Talis, but I thought it

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Speaker 1: was interesting, so I should bring it up. No one

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Speaker 1: knows for sure where it came from, but the idea

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Speaker 1: of the sardonic grin has also been potentially traced to

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Speaker 1: a totally different Sardinian threat. So ancient history told these

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Speaker 1: stories that on the island of Sardinia, the pre Roman

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Speaker 1: inhabitants had this ritual custom for dealing with criminals and

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Speaker 1: for euthanizing elderly people who couldn't care for themselves, and

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Speaker 1: what they would do is they would drug them with

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Speaker 1: an intoxicating poison that caused the victim's facial muscles to

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Speaker 1: contract into a creepy grin and become paralyzed, hence the

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Speaker 1: sardonic grin of Sardinia. And then while the victims were

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Speaker 1: drugged out, they could be thrown off a cliff or

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Speaker 1: beaten to death. It started outstounding reasonably humane for the

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Speaker 1: ancient world world, and maybe it still is, depending on

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Speaker 1: how you look at it. There's just not much that's

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Speaker 1: reasonably humane in the ancient world. But anyway, so in

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Speaker 1: two thousand nine, a study by scientists at the University

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Speaker 1: of Eastern Piedmont in Italy claimed to trace this story,

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Speaker 1: if true, to an herb native to Sardinia called the

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Speaker 1: hemlock water drop ward or enanthe crocata, also known commonly

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Speaker 1: as water cellery. But this is not a good candidate

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Speaker 1: to stick in your you, mary, because the stem and

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Speaker 1: the root of this plant are apparently a significant threat

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Speaker 1: to fatal human poisonings. One example, sometime in the late nineties,

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Speaker 1: a Sardinian shepherd committed suicide by eating water dropwoard and

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Speaker 1: his corpse was apparently found grinning. Now the name ennth

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Speaker 1: means wine flower, and crocata in particular has apparently a

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Speaker 1: quote paradoxical Swedish and pleasant taste and odor, and this

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Speaker 1: makes it more dangerous than a lot of other plants,

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Speaker 1: especially plants in the same genus which are also poisonous

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Speaker 1: but have a bitter taste which kind of keeps you

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Speaker 1: from eating too much of it. And because of its

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Speaker 1: ability to cause the facial muscles to contract into the

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Speaker 1: risus sardonicus, and because Sardinia is the only place in

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Speaker 1: the Mediterranean where this plant commonly grows, the researchers think

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Speaker 1: that it is probably the Sardinian death herb from the

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Speaker 1: ancient stories, and thus the origin of the idea of

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Speaker 1: the sardonic grin. Now back to Talus though, Okay, so

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry to take a sup it's a fascinating diversion,

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Speaker 1: But the bronze killer oasis, as will explore, there are

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Speaker 1: two key origin stories for this mechanical marvel, so in

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Speaker 1: some tales he really most of the older tales he

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Speaker 1: was created by Hephestus, the god of the forge, the

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Speaker 1: later known as Vulcan, the Blacksmith, God of Olympus. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the deformed god when and who. If you visit Birmingham, Alabama,

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Speaker 1: you get to see his likeness on the horizon because

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Speaker 1: they have the statue of Vulcan. I didn't know that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's interesting. It's one of the few I guess

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Speaker 1: pagan uh tourists stops in the American South. But in

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Speaker 1: later tellings, Uh, the inventor Daedalus constructs this artificial being. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the master inventor, the creator of the Manoan Maize, the

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Speaker 1: Wings of Icarus and other marvels, the famed mythical inventor. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's but this is interesting as well because Talos,

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Speaker 1: the the bronze atomic on here curiously bears the same

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Speaker 1: name as the inventor. The Dadalists tried to murder out

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Speaker 1: of jealousy earlier on pushing him out of out of

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Speaker 1: a tower, although Athena saves this mortal Talus by turning

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Speaker 1: him into a partridge so we can fly away. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and his paper Paris talks about the the number of

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Speaker 1: stories along these lines. But it's like an Athenian tradition

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Speaker 1: that Dadalus was in Athens and he had this pupil

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Speaker 1: who was very talented, and he was a little too talented.

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Speaker 1: A dadalists got a little territorial, got a little jealous

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Speaker 1: and pushed him off the acropolis. Yeah, that the original Talus,

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Speaker 1: if we want to call him that, the mortal Talus.

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Speaker 1: He's attributed with with inventing the saw really things. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: Dedalist is standing. There's like Jeesus as saw. That's genius.

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Speaker 1: Why didn't I think of that? I just want to

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Speaker 1: push you out of a towel, and he does. This

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Speaker 1: is a great argument for not showing up your boss

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Speaker 1: in a meeting or being too clever. You're gonna get

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Speaker 1: pushed out of a tower. You just know it's coming

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Speaker 1: exactly now. One last note about that tell Us, that

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Speaker 1: original human Talus was apparently also known as Callous in

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Speaker 1: some traditions, so there's some differences in the name. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: So back to tell Us. In the story of the

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Speaker 1: Golden Fleet, so you've got Jason and the argonauts and

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Speaker 1: Media especially now in most of the good versions of

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Speaker 1: the story, Media is the one who takes him down

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Speaker 1: right right, and it and most of them, and has

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Speaker 1: to do with the removing of a bronze nail from

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Speaker 1: that ankle again, that weak point that's that's connected to

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Speaker 1: the vein that runs all the way through Talus's body. Uh,

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Speaker 1: she unplugs it. She unplugs the bronze nail, which causes uh,

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Speaker 1: the echer to pour out of his body, draining him

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Speaker 1: of all life and movement. And there's actually a wonderful

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Speaker 1: vase and Athenian vase from four hundred BC that illustrates this,

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Speaker 1: and I'll make sure to include that image on the

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Speaker 1: landing page for this episode. It's stuff to blow your mind.

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Speaker 1: Dot Com. You should take a look at this because

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Speaker 1: it's awesome. Talus has ripped. His pecks are like the

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Speaker 1: size of ours. But actually, one thing that you might

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Speaker 1: notice in this vase is that, so, okay, you've got

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Speaker 1: a bronze man and he seems to be stumbling and

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Speaker 1: falling down, but he's the same size as all the

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Speaker 1: other dudes around him, which makes sense when you think

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Speaker 1: about the the the the embrace that the deadly burning

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Speaker 1: bear hug of the giant. Exactly. So when I read

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Speaker 1: this story in the say the version told by Apollonius

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Speaker 1: of Rhodes, I think of tal Us as this hundred

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Speaker 1: foot tall giant, And it seems that most modern commentators

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Speaker 1: have just assumed him to be towering, to be a giant,

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Speaker 1: like in the Ray Harry House in movies, where when

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Speaker 1: you see tal Us he's this huge godzilla like figure.

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Speaker 1: But Paris points out that most of the ancient authors

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Speaker 1: didn't describe him this way, and that logically, like you're saying,

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Speaker 1: he couldn't have been that much bigger than a man.

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Speaker 1: How else could he do this this heating embrace, heating,

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Speaker 1: the scalding, burning, roasting embrace. Now, one exception to this

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Speaker 1: seems to be the author of the Orphic Argonautica, which

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Speaker 1: is a different telling of the Argonautica, who called him

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Speaker 1: quote a bronze thrice giant or tree giganta. The line

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Speaker 1: from there is we suffered a great enemy on crete

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Speaker 1: when we observed a bronze giant who allowed no one

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Speaker 1: to go into the harbor. So at least some ancient

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Speaker 1: authors picked up on this idea that he was a giant,

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Speaker 1: but it's not there in most of the stories, and

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Speaker 1: most he's more like the tin man or something that's

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Speaker 1: very strong, powerful metal figure but basically human sized. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and I believe there's also sometimes some crossover from

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Speaker 1: accounts of the Colossus of Rhodes. Oh yeah, you know,

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Speaker 1: they literally a giant statue that stood as a sort

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Speaker 1: of a guardian of of the harbor. Yeah, so wait

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Speaker 1: a minute, we gotta go back to how tal Us

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Speaker 1: gets defeated in those stories. So there there are four

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Speaker 1: different versions of his death that seemed to exist, but

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Speaker 1: they all relate to draining the equal out of the ankle.

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Speaker 1: So in one, uh, the hero Poeus shoots him in

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Speaker 1: the ankle, which is is one I reject. That's no fun.

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Speaker 1: Don't don't give this guy a chance to do it.

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Speaker 1: It's this is a media's role, right, right. So there's

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Speaker 1: another one where Media's tricks him into thinking she can

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Speaker 1: make him immortal by pulling out the nail. Now, this

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Speaker 1: is a common trick up media's sleeve because later in

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Speaker 1: the same story, media also kills the usurper King by

424
00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:29,960
Speaker 1: tricking him into thinking he can be immortal. Actually not

425
00:23:30,000 --> 00:23:32,960
Speaker 1: by tricking him, but she plays this wonderfully fatal and

426
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:36,399
Speaker 1: devious hoax on the daughters of the pretender King that

427
00:23:36,480 --> 00:23:38,720
Speaker 1: Jason is trying to get his throne back from. I

428
00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:41,639
Speaker 1: believe his name is Pelias right. So she goes to

429
00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:45,520
Speaker 1: Pelias's daughters and says, hey, look, I can make an

430
00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:48,440
Speaker 1: old lamb young again, or not not not a lamb,

431
00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:51,719
Speaker 1: I guess an old ram And so she chops it up,

432
00:23:51,760 --> 00:23:53,879
Speaker 1: puts it in boiling water, and does a spell to

433
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:57,480
Speaker 1: make a young lamb jump out. And then so Pelias's

434
00:23:57,560 --> 00:24:00,119
Speaker 1: daughters are like, well, great, we're gonna do that. Her

435
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:03,000
Speaker 1: dad Happy birthday. And so they chop him up and

436
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:04,960
Speaker 1: they boil him and they try to do the spell

437
00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:07,240
Speaker 1: and it doesn't work. She's something of an anti hero,

438
00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:10,320
Speaker 1: isn't she. Yeah, well no, I mean, Media, you gotta

439
00:24:10,359 --> 00:24:12,840
Speaker 1: feel for her like she's she's the I would say

440
00:24:12,840 --> 00:24:15,720
Speaker 1: she's the tragic heroine, despite all of the killing she does.

441
00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:20,359
Speaker 1: The other two versions of this relate to magical efforts

442
00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:25,280
Speaker 1: on Media's part, her hypnotic gaze spells, or even some

443
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:28,480
Speaker 1: sort of a magical potion of a drugging of talus

444
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:31,159
Speaker 1: if you will, that somehow make him stumble and up

445
00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:34,520
Speaker 1: through his ankle on a rock, or or at least

446
00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:37,199
Speaker 1: open him up for attack, allow her to move in

447
00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:40,400
Speaker 1: and pull that nail from the membrane. I would say,

448
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:43,239
Speaker 1: the actual text of the Argonautica is too good not

449
00:24:43,359 --> 00:24:45,280
Speaker 1: to read, So I think we should read the section

450
00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:48,879
Speaker 1: where Media kills tell Us inside. Note this would be

451
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:51,440
Speaker 1: a good one to throw some drums over something, and

452
00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:54,240
Speaker 1: the barbarian drums exactly, so please sub them in here.

453
00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:57,000
Speaker 1: So tell Us shows up on a cliff, he threatens

454
00:24:57,040 --> 00:24:59,760
Speaker 1: to crush them with rocks, and Media tells Jason and

455
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:01,880
Speaker 1: his end back away from the shore and let her

456
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:03,800
Speaker 1: take care of it. And then the translation of what

457
00:25:03,920 --> 00:25:08,119
Speaker 1: follows is by RC. Seaton. And with songs did she

458
00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: propitiate and invoke the death spirits, devourers of life, the

459
00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 1: swift hounds of Hades, who, hovering through all the air,

460
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:21,159
Speaker 1: swooped down on the living, kneeling in supplication. Thrice she

461
00:25:21,280 --> 00:25:24,960
Speaker 1: called on them with songs, and thrice with prayers, and

462
00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:28,840
Speaker 1: shaping her soul to mischief. With her hostile glance, she

463
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:32,320
Speaker 1: bewitched the eyes of Talus, the man of bronze, and

464
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:35,880
Speaker 1: her teeth gnashed bitter wrath against him, and she sent

465
00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:40,680
Speaker 1: forth baneful phantoms in the frenzy of her rage. Father Zeus,

466
00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:44,800
Speaker 1: surely great wonder rises in my mind, seeing that dire

467
00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 1: destruction meets us, not from disease and wounds alone, but

468
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:54,119
Speaker 1: lo even from afar, maybe it tortures us. So Tallows,

469
00:25:54,240 --> 00:25:57,760
Speaker 1: for all his frame of bronze, yielded the victory to

470
00:25:57,840 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 1: the might of Medea the Sorceress. And as he was

471
00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:04,199
Speaker 1: heaving massy rocks to stay them from reaching the haven,

472
00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: he grazed his ankle on a pointed crag, and the

473
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:11,920
Speaker 1: ecre gushed forth like melted lead. And not long thereafter

474
00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:15,720
Speaker 1: did he stand towering on the jutting cliff. But even

475
00:26:15,760 --> 00:26:19,080
Speaker 1: as some huge pine high up on the mountains, which

476
00:26:19,119 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 1: woodmen have left half hewn through their sharp axes when

477
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 1: they returned from the forest, at first it shivers in

478
00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 1: the wind by night, then at last snaps at the

479
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:33,200
Speaker 1: stump and crashes down. So Tallows for a while stood

480
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:37,159
Speaker 1: on his tireless feet, swaying to and fro, when at last,

481
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:42,320
Speaker 1: all strengthless fell with a mighty thud. Oh that's beautiful.

482
00:26:42,359 --> 00:26:45,000
Speaker 1: I love that. That is a robot death, soone, if

483
00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: ever I have read one that's better than the t

484
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 1: one thousand melting. That's better than any of it. And

485
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:52,280
Speaker 1: I should also note it's better than what we see

486
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty three film Jason and the Argonauts,

487
00:26:55,280 --> 00:26:58,000
Speaker 1: with those wonderful Ray Harry House in effects because in

488
00:26:58,080 --> 00:27:02,040
Speaker 1: that one, Jason kills tawe Us rather than Media sexist

489
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:05,399
Speaker 1: red con and it's boring too. Jason just runs up

490
00:27:05,400 --> 00:27:07,600
Speaker 1: to his foot and pulls the thing out and then

491
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:10,160
Speaker 1: all the fluid gushes out of him and he falls over.

492
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: Why I mean, you gotta give Media some spells to do.

493
00:27:14,160 --> 00:27:15,959
Speaker 1: I agree, she's in the movie. You might as well

494
00:27:16,040 --> 00:27:17,760
Speaker 1: use her for that purpose. Is she not in the

495
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:20,280
Speaker 1: movie at that point? I don't remember. I believe she

496
00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:23,760
Speaker 1: shows up after the Talus encounter and they encounter Talus

497
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:28,720
Speaker 1: not on crete but on some island of bronze or something. Well,

498
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:31,360
Speaker 1: that's a bummer. You gotta get the Hounds of Hades

499
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:34,399
Speaker 1: dons eighties. That's a great line. Now. I love the

500
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:37,119
Speaker 1: way Media does this because she's like, of course, you

501
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:40,200
Speaker 1: got Jason and all his meathead buddies that I guess

502
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:42,119
Speaker 1: they probably just want to rush in there and slash

503
00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 1: him up with swords. But Medea is like, hold on,

504
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:48,359
Speaker 1: I got this. And that's actually possibly there in her name, because,

505
00:27:48,359 --> 00:27:51,679
Speaker 1: as Adrian Mayor points out, the name Media seems to

506
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:54,359
Speaker 1: be derived from a Greek word that means to plan

507
00:27:54,720 --> 00:27:58,439
Speaker 1: or to devise, Whereas she's surrounded by these heroes who

508
00:27:58,520 --> 00:28:02,080
Speaker 1: are who are powerful because they're strong and brave. She's

509
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:04,760
Speaker 1: powerful because she's cunning and she can think it out.

510
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 1: So she's definitely one of the really cool aspects of

511
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:13,240
Speaker 1: this story, the other, of course, being the giant Bronze robot. Yeah,

512
00:28:13,280 --> 00:28:16,920
Speaker 1: so where does Talus come from in the literary tradition?

513
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:21,480
Speaker 1: Like where where whence this Bronze Sentinel. We're gonna answer

514
00:28:21,480 --> 00:28:26,240
Speaker 1: that question when we come back. Thank alright, we're back.

515
00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:29,439
Speaker 1: So before we proceed here, I want to read this

516
00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:34,480
Speaker 1: excellent quote from Merlin Paris in that Talos in Dentalist

517
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 1: article that we've been discussing that really drives home why

518
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 1: we're doing an episode about this myth. To begin with, quote,

519
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 1: Talus was not a mortal creature like the rest of them,

520
00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 1: but a product of the Bronze founder's art. In other words,

521
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:53,360
Speaker 1: we have in him a robot, perhaps man's first conception

522
00:28:53,400 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 1: of such, not only in the outer form, but replete

523
00:28:56,560 --> 00:29:00,560
Speaker 1: with an imaginary mechanical device which was thought to activate him.

524
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:03,520
Speaker 1: And in this capacity he does not draw his plausibility

525
00:29:03,840 --> 00:29:07,320
Speaker 1: as the other monsters did, from the wild and fantastic

526
00:29:07,400 --> 00:29:11,760
Speaker 1: natures that belong to prehistory. Rather, he is remarkably futuristic,

527
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 1: anticipating the scientific possibilities of the present age, and even

528
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: then belonging more with the bizarre imaginings of the new

529
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 1: mythology of science fiction than with the mechanisms created and

530
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:27,400
Speaker 1: used in real life. I think something that's interesting about

531
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 1: looking at the fantastical literature of the ancient world is

532
00:29:31,320 --> 00:29:34,040
Speaker 1: that a lot of times we have trouble discerning the

533
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:39,400
Speaker 1: difference between what was to them sort of magic fantasy

534
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 1: and what was to them their equivalent of science fiction

535
00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 1: as we would imagine it today, because to us it

536
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:49,760
Speaker 1: all looks ancient, it's all, you know, because they're forward looking.

537
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:53,360
Speaker 1: Is still sort of backward to us. But I think

538
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 1: there's a lot of literature in the ancient world that

539
00:29:56,680 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: could quite well be characterized as sort of like science fiction.

540
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:04,200
Speaker 1: I think sometimes when you read, for example, the Book

541
00:30:04,200 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: of Revelation or other apocalyptic literature we read that now

542
00:30:08,920 --> 00:30:12,560
Speaker 1: is featuring is is kind of like uh, epic fantasy

543
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:15,440
Speaker 1: or something like that. But I think from the time

544
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:18,520
Speaker 1: it was created, the attitude toward it would have been

545
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 1: more like our ideas, like dystopian future sci fi. I

546
00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 1: think it's a strong point. Yes. Now at this point

547
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:29,719
Speaker 1: where we want to just discuss some of the different

548
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 1: versions of the tale relating where Tallos came from, because

549
00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:37,800
Speaker 1: they're important in breaking down what this tale says about technology.

550
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: So the first one that we've been talking about a

551
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:43,200
Speaker 1: good bit has been the story told by Apollonius of

552
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 1: Rhodes and the Argonautica. Right, Yeah, this is the idea

553
00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 1: that he was a survivor of the Age of Bronze.

554
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:51,040
Speaker 1: And this is something that Merlin Paris viewed as a quote,

555
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 1: dubious tradition, so that the Bronze Age we're discussing here,

556
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:58,960
Speaker 1: this is not an historical time period. This is not

557
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:02,400
Speaker 1: the technological Bronze Age that we will talk about that later. Yeah,

558
00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:04,960
Speaker 1: what we're discussing here is one of the poet Hesiods

559
00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:09,040
Speaker 1: five races, a race of humans created by Zeus from

560
00:31:09,080 --> 00:31:14,000
Speaker 1: ash trees, violent clad in bronze, destroyed in the flood

561
00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:17,400
Speaker 1: of de Coulian, who was the son of Prometheus and

562
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 1: who is now confined to the quote dank house of Hades.

563
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:23,720
Speaker 1: Hades house. I didn't even know it was dank. It's

564
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:27,240
Speaker 1: dank down there. So this would frame Talos as the

565
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:30,440
Speaker 1: last bronze man, given by Zeus to Europa to protect

566
00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:33,200
Speaker 1: her children, and then given to Minos to guard Crete. However,

567
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 1: there seems little to suggest that anyone else viewed the

568
00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:40,560
Speaker 1: bronze men as actual men of bronze, and Paris suspects

569
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:43,640
Speaker 1: that this was Apollonius's invention. Okay, so we're seeing sort

570
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:47,440
Speaker 1: of a mishmash of different ideas here. You've got Hessiad's

571
00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 1: bronze age of of creatures, these human creatures who are

572
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:54,880
Speaker 1: not literally made of bronze. But but it seems like

573
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:57,400
Speaker 1: Apollonius is sort of taking that idea and applying it

574
00:31:57,440 --> 00:32:00,720
Speaker 1: to a creature that he does say explicit is made

575
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:04,560
Speaker 1: of bronze. Again, myths evolved, and myths are retold and

576
00:32:04,600 --> 00:32:07,720
Speaker 1: retold and changed. So if he's made of bronze, who

577
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:10,360
Speaker 1: made him? Well. In the most popular version of the tale,

578
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:13,160
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, Talos is the create is a creation,

579
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:16,400
Speaker 1: a machine of some sort, born from the forge, and

580
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 1: in the earlier traditions, the creator is Hephaestus a k

581
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:23,160
Speaker 1: a Vulcan god of the Forge. In Homer's the Iliad

582
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 1: were told that Hephaestus creates golden females and wheel driven

583
00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 1: tripod stools to serve the table of the gods. And

584
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:33,680
Speaker 1: he's also the one who forged the armor or the

585
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 1: armors of Achilles. Simonides, among others, identified Talos as a

586
00:32:37,760 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 1: creature of Hephaestus. Okay, so created by the gods. That

587
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:44,520
Speaker 1: sort of takes away to some extent for me, the

588
00:32:44,640 --> 00:32:48,200
Speaker 1: sci fi nature of the creature. Right. If it's an

589
00:32:48,240 --> 00:32:51,560
Speaker 1: animated statue of bronze, but it's created by the gods,

590
00:32:51,600 --> 00:32:55,080
Speaker 1: it seems like it's nature is essentially magical, right. Yeah. Now,

591
00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:58,120
Speaker 1: Paris reminds us that the association here might have been

592
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:01,680
Speaker 1: that Talus was a creation in the art of Hephestus,

593
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:04,600
Speaker 1: perhaps by another. And I suppose this would be like

594
00:33:04,760 --> 00:33:07,760
Speaker 1: using satanic magic to make a monster, right, who is

595
00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 1: who is the master of the monster? Who's the true

596
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:14,600
Speaker 1: monster maker? Here? Is the wizard or the devil? Over time, though,

597
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:17,880
Speaker 1: we see this growth of association with Daedalus, and I

598
00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:19,640
Speaker 1: think this is where we really can get into some

599
00:33:19,680 --> 00:33:23,360
Speaker 1: fun questions about technology. So in time, Daedalus comes to

600
00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:27,080
Speaker 1: serve as a human representative, representative of the skills and

601
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:31,200
Speaker 1: crafts that Hephaestus rules over, so the mythological inventor. Again

602
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:33,680
Speaker 1: he said to have had walking statues of his own.

603
00:33:33,760 --> 00:33:36,840
Speaker 1: He created the Minoan maze and crafted the wings of Icarus.

604
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 1: He was a master of at least art, if not technology. Yeah,

605
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 1: and usually in the traditions, both or at least over

606
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:48,320
Speaker 1: time both and Paris makes a lot of this history

607
00:33:48,400 --> 00:33:51,880
Speaker 1: of associations between Daedalus and statutory that he was a

608
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:55,240
Speaker 1: great innovator in life life sculptures. For example, Paris points

609
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 1: out the Diadorus writes quote in the sculptor's art, He

610
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 1: Dadalus so far excelled all other men. The statues he

611
00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:08,080
Speaker 1: made were like human beings. They could see, they said,

612
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:11,799
Speaker 1: and walk and in a word, preserved so well. The

613
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 1: composition of the whole body, that is handiwork seemed to

614
00:34:16,080 --> 00:34:19,400
Speaker 1: be a living creature. So what have you the skeptically,

615
00:34:19,719 --> 00:34:22,200
Speaker 1: it just sounds like he's he's an accomplished sculpture and

616
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:25,120
Speaker 1: can make life life like sculptures. Right. But this does

617
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:27,440
Speaker 1: seem to be taken literally all over the place, Like

618
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:32,080
Speaker 1: there are Platonic dialogues where Socrates and it's there in

619
00:34:32,160 --> 00:34:34,200
Speaker 1: the youth of Row, and it's there in the Meno,

620
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 1: I think they're Platonic dialogues where Socrates talks about Dadalus's

621
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:41,880
Speaker 1: statues literally walking away, so he'll use them as a

622
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:44,239
Speaker 1: metaphor for something. It's like, don't let this thing get

623
00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 1: away from you, like Dadalus's statues walking off from the workshop.

624
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 1: But the idea of the innovation of life like poses

625
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:55,399
Speaker 1: in artistic sculpture does make me think about how when

626
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:59,479
Speaker 1: you look at Stone Age figurines. Maybe I just haven't

627
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:01,759
Speaker 1: seen enough of them, but almost all the ones I

628
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: can think of seem to be posed with arms at

629
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:08,400
Speaker 1: their sides, almost like corpses. They don't seem to be

630
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 1: an action. Even the lowand Minch is like this, all

631
00:35:11,040 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 1: the Venus figurines, the Lowan Mench. I'm just racking my

632
00:35:14,680 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 1: brain for Stone Age statues that really have much much

633
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:22,040
Speaker 1: action or stuff going on, as if they're alive. But

634
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:24,920
Speaker 1: once you get closer to the modern Age, once you

635
00:35:24,960 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 1: get the empires of Egypt and elsewhere, I guess later

636
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:30,120
Speaker 1: in the Stone Age and into the Bronze Age, you

637
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:33,800
Speaker 1: start to see more figurines of humans animated with action,

638
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:37,080
Speaker 1: like the striding figurines of ancient Egypt. Robert, I know

639
00:35:37,120 --> 00:35:39,600
Speaker 1: you've seen these right where the their legs are clearly

640
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:42,640
Speaker 1: like walking there like the walk sign on the street. Yes,

641
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:47,440
Speaker 1: walking like an Egypt if you will, and uh so

642
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: you add to this, Paris says, the Athenian tradition about

643
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 1: Dadalists that we talked about earlier, which to remind you,

644
00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 1: is that he once had a young pupil named Talos

645
00:35:56,080 --> 00:35:59,120
Speaker 1: or Kalos, who was so talented that Dadalists got really

646
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:02,680
Speaker 1: jealous pushed him off the acropolis to his death, and

647
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:06,239
Speaker 1: then for this crime, Dadalus was banished to crete. And

648
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 1: then meanwhile, Paris notes that there are these traditions suggesting

649
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:14,200
Speaker 1: that the ancient Greeks knew of historical Taloi the plural

650
00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:18,319
Speaker 1: of Talus in places like Attica and Sardinia, which were

651
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:22,440
Speaker 1: not actual robots, but bronze statues set up on rocky

652
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:27,400
Speaker 1: coastlines as figures of apotropaic magic, meaning warding off magic

653
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:32,120
Speaker 1: like gargoyles driving away evil forces and beings. And Paris

654
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:34,680
Speaker 1: mentions the idea that there could have been such a

655
00:36:34,719 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: figure once posed on the acropolis which fell off. And

656
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:41,880
Speaker 1: so for Paris it seems like these disparate narrative traditions

657
00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:44,880
Speaker 1: and historical memories sort of get blended together into the

658
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: idea that Dadalus created Talos not just as a bronze statue,

659
00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:55,960
Speaker 1: but as an animated, living, walking, bronze robot. And I

660
00:36:56,000 --> 00:36:58,040
Speaker 1: have to say, this is the version of the tale

661
00:36:58,080 --> 00:37:00,759
Speaker 1: I like the most. I like the idea that that

662
00:37:01,120 --> 00:37:06,160
Speaker 1: Dadalus is perhaps using the craft and the power of Hephaestus,

663
00:37:06,200 --> 00:37:10,799
Speaker 1: but he's creating a thing himself. Yeah. Oh, it's much

664
00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:13,040
Speaker 1: better if it's created by humans instead of created by

665
00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 1: the gods, because if it's created by the gods, like

666
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:17,279
Speaker 1: we said, it's magic. If it's created by humans, this

667
00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:19,480
Speaker 1: is sci fi. Now, of course, if it's sci fi,

668
00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: one thing we know from sci fi's you've got to

669
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:25,160
Speaker 1: give a plausible, pseudo scientific explanation for why things work. Right.

670
00:37:25,200 --> 00:37:27,279
Speaker 1: You can't just invoke magic. You've got to give some

671
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:31,680
Speaker 1: kind of chemical or material explanation for the technology. Well, yeah,

672
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:34,719
Speaker 1: and we have this idea that perhaps the inventions of

673
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:38,759
Speaker 1: Daedalus are powered by quicksilver. And this Paris says he

674
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:42,640
Speaker 1: suspects that Sophocles was the one who managed to steer

675
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:46,239
Speaker 1: the tradition towards Daedalus, and this idea of of quicksilver

676
00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 1: as the the really the animating equor. Now you can

677
00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:51,719
Speaker 1: see why that would be the case, because if you've

678
00:37:51,719 --> 00:37:54,880
Speaker 1: ever seen quicksilver, it's got this kind of dancing, dancing,

679
00:37:54,960 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 1: jiggling quality that makes it look as if it's quick,

680
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:01,160
Speaker 1: as if it's alive. And so this provides an interesting

681
00:38:01,280 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 1: chemical substitute to the mythological magical concept of ecor the

682
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:09,239
Speaker 1: lifeblood of the gods. Alright, on that note, we're going

683
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 1: to take one more break, and when we come back,

684
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 1: we are going to discuss technology and tell us than alright,

685
00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:21,040
Speaker 1: we're back. Now, we've already talked about the Bronze Age,

686
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:25,359
Speaker 1: as defined as one of Hesiod's five ages, the mythological

687
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:28,520
Speaker 1: Bronze Age, But what about the technological Bronze Age. Yeah,

688
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:31,719
Speaker 1: this this is where we get into some really interesting

689
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:37,200
Speaker 1: technological explanations here. So the Bronze Age generally covers the

690
00:38:37,200 --> 00:38:42,320
Speaker 1: period of Greek history from thirty b C to b C.

691
00:38:43,200 --> 00:38:45,319
Speaker 1: And we know that they used other medals during this

692
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:48,920
Speaker 1: time gold, silver, lead, tim electrom and even iron on

693
00:38:49,040 --> 00:38:53,160
Speaker 1: rare occasions. Bronze, however, it was the predominant metal of

694
00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:57,759
Speaker 1: choice for weapons, tools, vessels, and statuettes. Right, So what

695
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:01,920
Speaker 1: exactly did it mean for this robot to be composed

696
00:39:02,120 --> 00:39:04,640
Speaker 1: of bronze as opposed to any other thing that he

697
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:07,440
Speaker 1: could have been composed of in the story, Well, for starters,

698
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:10,239
Speaker 1: it means that that he's composed of bronze, which is

699
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 1: an alloy which is copper and ten percent pin. Yeah.

700
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:17,680
Speaker 1: So for thousands of years before the Bronze Age, people

701
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:20,200
Speaker 1: had been making crafts out of copper. Copper was a

702
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:23,239
Speaker 1: metal you could find in the rocks, but copper was

703
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:26,200
Speaker 1: soft and easily deformed. You can't make a sword out

704
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:28,480
Speaker 1: of copper because you know, you clash against a shield

705
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:31,400
Speaker 1: or something is just gonna bend or break. So the

706
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:35,680
Speaker 1: alloy with tin changed all that and left us with bronze,

707
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 1: which is a metal that changed the world. Yeah. It

708
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:41,120
Speaker 1: was the hardest and strongest metal at their disposal and

709
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:43,799
Speaker 1: could they could form complex shapes with it. Plus there

710
00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:48,320
Speaker 1: were no production obstacles for for preparation because that and

711
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:50,919
Speaker 1: we're talking to casting and the hammering of bronze. All

712
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:53,360
Speaker 1: of this was fully mastered at the time. This was

713
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:56,680
Speaker 1: this was an age of peak bronze technology. Yeah, and

714
00:39:56,719 --> 00:39:59,239
Speaker 1: bronze was important. It was a major innovation in the

715
00:39:59,280 --> 00:40:02,480
Speaker 1: history of techno oology, because it meant we suddenly had

716
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:06,920
Speaker 1: access to hard objects that could be formed into blades

717
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:11,480
Speaker 1: and pre cast shapes that wouldn't chip or shatter under impact,

718
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:14,960
Speaker 1: and could hold a sharp edge after heavy use. Iron,

719
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:18,080
Speaker 1: of course later would be even stronger, But before people

720
00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:20,279
Speaker 1: figured out the process for drawing iron out of its

721
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:23,360
Speaker 1: or at scale, bronze was the best human kind had.

722
00:40:23,719 --> 00:40:25,279
Speaker 1: And I've even read I know in the past that

723
00:40:25,360 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: bronze working may have been one of the first real

724
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:32,480
Speaker 1: drivers of long distance trade because sources of tin were

725
00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: very rare and it often had to be imported to

726
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:39,360
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean or the Mesopotamian empires from somewhere far away,

727
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:42,680
Speaker 1: So you might have you might think did bronze create

728
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:46,680
Speaker 1: the foundations of globalism? Also, just a side question, I

729
00:40:46,719 --> 00:40:50,320
Speaker 1: wonder why it is that so many technological revolutions seemed

730
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:55,879
Speaker 1: based on the creation of blades and cutting materials. Well, well,

731
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 1: I think there's there's an answer there that that relates

732
00:40:58,560 --> 00:41:02,120
Speaker 1: to the basic nature humanity. Well, yeah, obviously one of

733
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:04,560
Speaker 1: them is the idea of weapons. But I think it

734
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:06,920
Speaker 1: actually goes deeper than that, because I think it's almost

735
00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:11,400
Speaker 1: as if blades by being able to cleave naturally adhering

736
00:41:11,480 --> 00:41:15,400
Speaker 1: materials represent the very essence of technological power in the

737
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:19,480
Speaker 1: natural world, which is the transformation of things. By cutting

738
00:41:19,480 --> 00:41:22,680
Speaker 1: a thing, you change its nature, you shape it to

739
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:25,640
Speaker 1: what you want. Now, that could be changing the nature

740
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:27,960
Speaker 1: of a live person into a dead person. But it

741
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:30,200
Speaker 1: could also be changing the nature of a piece of

742
00:41:30,200 --> 00:41:33,239
Speaker 1: wood into a building material that you can easily work with,

743
00:41:33,680 --> 00:41:36,120
Speaker 1: or any number of things like that. Now, some of

744
00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:38,399
Speaker 1: you might be saying, all right, Robert and Joe, you're

745
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:41,360
Speaker 1: you're chewing more than you bid off here. But I

746
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:43,359
Speaker 1: want to add it into book The Robot, The Life

747
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:46,600
Speaker 1: Story of a Technology by Lisa Knox. The author points

748
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 1: out that despite the imaginative and symbolic nature of tales

749
00:41:50,239 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 1: such as this, we shouldn't dismiss connections between myths and

750
00:41:53,640 --> 00:41:56,440
Speaker 1: the history of technology, because we if we look closely,

751
00:41:56,920 --> 00:42:00,839
Speaker 1: we can derive clues about people's attitudes to war technology,

752
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:03,839
Speaker 1: toward tool making and the use of tools. Joan are

753
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:08,000
Speaker 1: Mertens in Greek Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

754
00:42:08,520 --> 00:42:12,319
Speaker 1: writes that Talos illustrates a recurring trope in Greek myth,

755
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:15,799
Speaker 1: the endowment of works of art with animate being. We

756
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:20,239
Speaker 1: see it in the bold Daedalus makes for Pacife, as

757
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:24,200
Speaker 1: well as such a notable myths as Pandora and Pygmalion quote.

758
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:28,040
Speaker 1: In the hands of an inspired craftsman, the proper combination

759
00:42:28,200 --> 00:42:31,799
Speaker 1: of imitation and imagination could result in a creation of

760
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:35,919
Speaker 1: extraordinary potential. The Talos Smith reminds us also that these

761
00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:39,440
Speaker 1: creations were always made to serve a purpose, in the

762
00:42:39,480 --> 00:42:41,920
Speaker 1: case of the giant, to guard the island of crete.

763
00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:44,719
Speaker 1: Here again we've got an author assuming it's a giant. Yeah,

764
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:46,919
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of impossible to resist that, but yeah,

765
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:50,680
Speaker 1: I see exactly what's going on here. Uh. Martens is

766
00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:55,840
Speaker 1: drawing this connection between the creative power of human beings

767
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:58,960
Speaker 1: and the idea that you could actually create something animated,

768
00:42:59,040 --> 00:43:02,279
Speaker 1: something that's all five. Uh, and we totally see that

769
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:04,640
Speaker 1: the blurring of that distinction and what we were talking

770
00:43:04,680 --> 00:43:09,120
Speaker 1: about with Dedalus. Dedalus creating lifelike statues and sculptures that

771
00:43:09,400 --> 00:43:12,640
Speaker 1: at some point are seen to be literally alive. Now,

772
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:15,360
Speaker 1: one of the cool ways to look at the Talos

773
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 1: Smith is to see it as a metaphor for bronze

774
00:43:18,719 --> 00:43:23,480
Speaker 1: versus iron of the Bronze age essentially ending and the

775
00:43:23,560 --> 00:43:27,279
Speaker 1: Iron Age dawning. Uh So, we've already discussed how in

776
00:43:27,320 --> 00:43:29,319
Speaker 1: some versions of the myth, Talos is a gift given

777
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:32,799
Speaker 1: to King Minos or another person of power, and in

778
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:36,160
Speaker 1: this Knox points out that it quote reflects the way

779
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:39,600
Speaker 1: that bronze objects were reserved for the elite classes by

780
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:42,280
Speaker 1: the time the Iliad was first told. So the idea

781
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:44,880
Speaker 1: here's that the things size and power may imply the

782
00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 1: important civil and military applications of practical metallurgy. And historians

783
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:55,120
Speaker 1: believe that the invaders who attacked Greece from the north

784
00:43:55,239 --> 00:44:00,560
Speaker 1: around twelve b c. Used iron weapons, So it's possible

785
00:44:00,600 --> 00:44:02,680
Speaker 1: that this tale, this is a tale of the transition

786
00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 1: from bronze to iron. It's a it's showing that here's

787
00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:08,880
Speaker 1: this marvelous weapon is symbolic we this is basically bronze

788
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:14,000
Speaker 1: weaponry and bronze technology incarnate, and it crumbles if it

789
00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 1: goes up against this new metal that is even more potent. Well,

790
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:21,520
Speaker 1: all the more reason that you should always show Talos

791
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:24,920
Speaker 1: being destroyed by magic, the magic of media and the spells,

792
00:44:25,520 --> 00:44:29,040
Speaker 1: rather than by just somebody shooting an arrow. Really good,

793
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:32,280
Speaker 1: because if it's magic that implies, you know, this higher

794
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:35,279
Speaker 1: advanced level level of technology. The iron working of some

795
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: of their culture is in fact magic to you. You

796
00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:40,880
Speaker 1: can't figure it out, so it is a power beyond

797
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:45,720
Speaker 1: your reach. Now there's a there's one more fascinating technological

798
00:44:45,760 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 1: angle on all of this, and it it relates to

799
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:51,040
Speaker 1: that vein of Talos that we see. So here's a

800
00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:55,480
Speaker 1: quote once more from Joan our Merdens in Greek bronzes. Quote.

801
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 1: The myth also relates in an interesting way to the

802
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:01,759
Speaker 1: production of bronze objects. One's attention is drawn to the

803
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:04,920
Speaker 1: mention of a single vein running through Talis's body and

804
00:45:04,960 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 1: plugged at the ankle, a detail that may possibly have

805
00:45:07,719 --> 00:45:10,880
Speaker 1: been taken from the molds for casting by the lost

806
00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:14,719
Speaker 1: wax technique. The Lost wax technique. Yes, now tell me

807
00:45:14,760 --> 00:45:17,000
Speaker 1: about this, Robert, all right. So, first of all, I

808
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:19,680
Speaker 1: do want to mention that this is an interpretation that

809
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:23,359
Speaker 1: seems to originate with British classical scholar Arthur Bernard Cook,

810
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:27,640
Speaker 1: who lived through two But the idea here is that

811
00:45:27,719 --> 00:45:30,359
Speaker 1: the functionality of Tallos, the thing that gives him life,

812
00:45:30,400 --> 00:45:34,360
Speaker 1: closely resembles the way you would make a bronze statue,

813
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:37,120
Speaker 1: or at least a statue at So here's the basic

814
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:40,879
Speaker 1: process of creating a bronze work, an inanimate one, mind,

815
00:45:40,960 --> 00:45:43,239
Speaker 1: you's not one that walks around. First of all, you

816
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:46,600
Speaker 1: prepare a core of soil and clay to mold into

817
00:45:46,640 --> 00:45:49,920
Speaker 1: a figure. Then you layer that in wax. Then you

818
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:53,880
Speaker 1: add a third layer of fine clay baked with Courser clay.

819
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 1: And this is where you'd sculpt in the details. Okay,

820
00:45:56,680 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 1: So you've got like a clay mold, and then you

821
00:45:58,600 --> 00:46:00,720
Speaker 1: put wax around the shape of it, and then another

822
00:46:00,719 --> 00:46:02,880
Speaker 1: clay mold on top. Right, And when you sculpt in

823
00:46:02,880 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 1: the details, that's of course affecting the wax underneath. The

824
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:10,160
Speaker 1: wax is then left exposed at two points at the base.

825
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:12,640
Speaker 1: Think again to the idea that there are two veins

826
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:16,719
Speaker 1: running down Tallus's body. So this leaves us with a

827
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:20,880
Speaker 1: three layer construction core at the center, wax representation around it,

828
00:46:21,080 --> 00:46:23,720
Speaker 1: and a clay mold over the wax with metal pins

829
00:46:23,760 --> 00:46:27,040
Speaker 1: holding everything in alignment. And then once the clay dries,

830
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:30,400
Speaker 1: you heat it up and the wax drains out of

831
00:46:30,440 --> 00:46:33,440
Speaker 1: those holes. So then you've got a gap, right, And

832
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:36,400
Speaker 1: then that's where you pour molten bronze. You pour that

833
00:46:36,440 --> 00:46:39,080
Speaker 1: into the void, and then once it cools, you remove

834
00:46:39,160 --> 00:46:42,520
Speaker 1: the clay and the former wax details are now in bronze.

835
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:44,239
Speaker 1: So you're then you All you have to do is

836
00:46:44,280 --> 00:46:47,400
Speaker 1: repair casting flaws, smooth and polish the surface, rework the

837
00:46:47,440 --> 00:46:52,440
Speaker 1: details is needed, add additional embellishments as desired, like silver inlays, etcetera,

838
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:56,560
Speaker 1: and you have perhaps a being of bronze. So this

839
00:46:56,640 --> 00:47:00,080
Speaker 1: means that the tallos figure as to pick To in

840
00:47:00,239 --> 00:47:04,200
Speaker 1: myth could be a direct metaphor for how bronze figures

841
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:07,480
Speaker 1: and figurines are created, because it's got this vein for

842
00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:11,120
Speaker 1: the wax to drain out. Uh yeah, that that's really interesting.

843
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:13,920
Speaker 1: It is this idea that this this thing is is

844
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:16,680
Speaker 1: mirroring technology in more than one way, and perhaps this

845
00:47:16,719 --> 00:47:18,319
Speaker 1: is in doing so in a way that would have

846
00:47:18,320 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 1: been more obvious. I guess to people hearing the tale

847
00:47:21,680 --> 00:47:23,600
Speaker 1: like it might have been kind of a joke one

848
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:26,520
Speaker 1: can imagine at the time, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I

849
00:47:26,520 --> 00:47:29,760
Speaker 1: mean I think very often the humor of ancient myths

850
00:47:29,840 --> 00:47:32,600
Speaker 1: is lost on us because we don't get the context.

851
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:35,279
Speaker 1: I mean, you can you can even imagine it being

852
00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:37,080
Speaker 1: kind of like, hey, you know what this robot's achilles

853
00:47:37,120 --> 00:47:39,239
Speaker 1: heal was? What was his achilles heal? Well, you just

854
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:41,239
Speaker 1: pulled the plug out and then everything drained out and

855
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:44,960
Speaker 1: he lost his his life force and then Greek laughter ensus.

856
00:47:45,080 --> 00:47:48,000
Speaker 1: It would be almost like if you in you know,

857
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:50,680
Speaker 1: thousands of years, we're looking back on some modern sci

858
00:47:50,719 --> 00:47:55,200
Speaker 1: fi story where somebody undoes the killer robot by unplugging

859
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:57,719
Speaker 1: it from the wall. Yes, and they think that, like

860
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:00,759
Speaker 1: that is a wow. It has this long tailed, it's

861
00:48:00,760 --> 00:48:03,759
Speaker 1: attached to the building it's in, and like what a

862
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:06,640
Speaker 1: strange mythological feature. But in fact it's just a joke

863
00:48:06,719 --> 00:48:08,759
Speaker 1: about how easy it is to kill this thing by

864
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:10,839
Speaker 1: unplugging it. Yeah, they might think, well this is a

865
00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:15,760
Speaker 1: metaphor for how shackled to electricity and technology that people

866
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 1: of the time felt, and that and and you know

867
00:48:18,560 --> 00:48:21,520
Speaker 1: all of these various uh, you know, complex interpretations when

868
00:48:21,520 --> 00:48:25,320
Speaker 1: it's really just a plug. Now, speaking of modern times,

869
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 1: what evenything can we draw from tallos about modern technology? Now?

870
00:48:30,600 --> 00:48:31,960
Speaker 1: One thing to keep in mind and all of this

871
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:35,120
Speaker 1: we talked about how myths change over time, but of

872
00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:38,080
Speaker 1: course society changes as well, and there are changes in

873
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:42,280
Speaker 1: like the moral and social dimension of how we treat

874
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 1: our technology. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean there's definitely a sense

875
00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:50,960
Speaker 1: in which technology influences the development of human ideology and culture.

876
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:53,920
Speaker 1: But it also goes the other way. Our ideas about

877
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:58,080
Speaker 1: technology come from our values and are the way our

878
00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:01,600
Speaker 1: society is ordered in our beliefs. And what one example

879
00:49:01,719 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 1: is I wonder if you can draw broad parallels between

880
00:49:05,560 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 1: the way technology is envisioned in free societies that value

881
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 1: human rights versus slave owning societies and so. For example,

882
00:49:15,520 --> 00:49:21,000
Speaker 1: in his book Politics Aristotle, written around three Aristotle is

883
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:26,480
Speaker 1: writing about the idea of possessions versus instruments, and he

884
00:49:26,560 --> 00:49:30,279
Speaker 1: sort of characterizes slaves who are human beings as a

885
00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:34,239
Speaker 1: type of instrument or tool. He says, quote for if

886
00:49:34,280 --> 00:49:39,080
Speaker 1: every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating

887
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:42,480
Speaker 1: the will of others, like the statues of Deadalus or

888
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:46,640
Speaker 1: the tripods of Hephaestus, which says the poet quote of

889
00:49:46,680 --> 00:49:50,040
Speaker 1: their own accord entered the assembly of the gods. If

890
00:49:50,160 --> 00:49:53,719
Speaker 1: in like manner the shuttle would weave and the plectrum

891
00:49:53,840 --> 00:49:57,080
Speaker 1: touched the liar without a hand to guide them, chief

892
00:49:57,120 --> 00:50:00,920
Speaker 1: workmen would not want servants, nor mass or as slaves.

893
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:07,000
Speaker 1: So Aristotle believed that that slavery, that that slavery and

894
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:10,160
Speaker 1: being masters were a state of nature. Some people, for him,

895
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:12,520
Speaker 1: were born to be masters and other people were born

896
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:14,840
Speaker 1: to be slaves, and this was a basic feature of

897
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 1: the character of each person. Now, obviously this goes completely

898
00:50:18,640 --> 00:50:21,240
Speaker 1: in the face of our modern ideas about individual rights

899
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:23,840
Speaker 1: and equality and freedoms. This is the worst part of

900
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:28,280
Speaker 1: Aristotle to read, and yet I wonder if it's illuminating

901
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:32,120
Speaker 1: about how perfect perhaps a defender of a slave owning

902
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:36,239
Speaker 1: culture like Aristotle and other Greek elites would have had

903
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:41,359
Speaker 1: to blur the line between human labor and inanimate technology

904
00:50:41,440 --> 00:50:44,719
Speaker 1: in order to justify their enslavement of other humans. Like

905
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:50,200
Speaker 1: but by being pro slavery, they think of human labor

906
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:53,600
Speaker 1: and inanimate labor, or at least as they'd imagine sort

907
00:50:53,600 --> 00:50:56,960
Speaker 1: of robot labor in their fantasies, to be sort of

908
00:50:57,000 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 1: similar things. So we in the modern a would make

909
00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:04,000
Speaker 1: a complete, you know, a very hard line distinction between

910
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:06,480
Speaker 1: the labor of a human being and the workings of

911
00:51:06,520 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 1: a mechanical robot. I'm not sure that Aristotle and many

912
00:51:10,239 --> 00:51:13,440
Speaker 1: of the Greeks always would, So if they didn't necessarily

913
00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:16,319
Speaker 1: make that distinction. How did it inform their myths and

914
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:21,120
Speaker 1: their ideas of automata and and robots and artificial beings.

915
00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:24,239
Speaker 1: But this is interesting too when when you consider, if

916
00:51:24,239 --> 00:51:28,880
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, our word robot even derives from an

917
00:51:28,960 --> 00:51:35,239
Speaker 1: old Slavic word robota, which means a servitude. So you

918
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:38,800
Speaker 1: could you see this definite connection between even our modern

919
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:43,319
Speaker 1: conception of a robot with slaved slavery or servitude. Yeah,

920
00:51:43,320 --> 00:51:46,120
Speaker 1: I think maybe this very firm distinction we make between

921
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:50,200
Speaker 1: human beings and humanoid robots, thinking of them as very different,

922
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:56,200
Speaker 1: fundamentally different things might come from our idea of human rights, right,

923
00:51:56,320 --> 00:51:58,759
Speaker 1: Like if you are in a society that just does

924
00:51:58,840 --> 00:52:01,960
Speaker 1: not really have the idea of human rights, you may

925
00:52:02,160 --> 00:52:04,759
Speaker 1: may very well not have such a clear idea of

926
00:52:04,800 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 1: the distinction between a human and a robot. Indeed, and

927
00:52:09,080 --> 00:52:11,080
Speaker 1: I think we see this line blurred very much in

928
00:52:11,120 --> 00:52:15,400
Speaker 1: the different traditions of how the talos is represented. But

929
00:52:15,480 --> 00:52:18,240
Speaker 1: what can I wonder what talos can tell us about

930
00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:21,640
Speaker 1: modern technology? Well, for one thing, it connects to ideas

931
00:52:21,680 --> 00:52:24,480
Speaker 1: about the nature of a robot, like what is a

932
00:52:24,600 --> 00:52:27,480
Speaker 1: robot or an android? And could a robot or an

933
00:52:27,520 --> 00:52:31,600
Speaker 1: android ever attain the human kind of status. We you know,

934
00:52:32,080 --> 00:52:34,680
Speaker 1: we've just been talking about the distinction between humans and

935
00:52:34,760 --> 00:52:37,920
Speaker 1: robots can but can a robot ascend the ladder and

936
00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:41,080
Speaker 1: become something we would think of like a human is

937
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:44,960
Speaker 1: a self moved but artificial creature capable of feeling. Now,

938
00:52:45,080 --> 00:52:48,880
Speaker 1: Paris says that according to Aristotle, Dadalus's statues were able

939
00:52:48,920 --> 00:52:52,680
Speaker 1: to quote carry out tasks which they had been instructed

940
00:52:52,719 --> 00:52:56,840
Speaker 1: to do or had learned beforehand. So Paris says, the

941
00:52:56,880 --> 00:53:01,440
Speaker 1: deadly silence, the impersonal efficiency, the iireless thoroughness with which

942
00:53:01,520 --> 00:53:04,840
Speaker 1: he executed his gory tasks mark him out as a

943
00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:09,200
Speaker 1: machine without a speck of thought or feeling. And on

944
00:53:09,440 --> 00:53:14,440
Speaker 1: Aristotle's idea that a statue, especially a robot, could carry

945
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:17,040
Speaker 1: out tasks which they had been instructed to do or

946
00:53:17,080 --> 00:53:21,000
Speaker 1: had learned beforehand, this seems to imply that creative or

947
00:53:21,040 --> 00:53:24,480
Speaker 1: novel behaviors are not possible. For it that the robot

948
00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:28,799
Speaker 1: does as its programmed, but that it can't achieve a

949
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:32,160
Speaker 1: will of its own basically, But then at the same time,

950
00:53:32,320 --> 00:53:35,480
Speaker 1: Talos is animated with ichor for the ability to be

951
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:39,239
Speaker 1: self moved like the gods. Uh and the stories of

952
00:53:39,239 --> 00:53:42,600
Speaker 1: Talos several times say he was quote alive, and that

953
00:53:42,640 --> 00:53:45,319
Speaker 1: he was quote faded to die, and that when he

954
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:49,360
Speaker 1: fell he was not only deactivated or destroyed, but he died.

955
00:53:49,880 --> 00:53:52,279
Speaker 1: Yet again, we're seeing the sort of blurring of the

956
00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:55,280
Speaker 1: distinction between a human and a robot. We would talk

957
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:59,319
Speaker 1: about humans and robots much more differently, I think in

958
00:53:59,360 --> 00:54:02,719
Speaker 1: modern science fiction than the ancient Greeks did when they

959
00:54:02,760 --> 00:54:05,880
Speaker 1: talked about their their humans and their gods and their robots.

960
00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:08,880
Speaker 1: It seems like the lines are much blurrier all throughout,

961
00:54:09,120 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 1: and certainly we see a lot of modern science fiction

962
00:54:11,120 --> 00:54:13,880
Speaker 1: that reblurs those lines. I mean, there's a tremendous amount

963
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:18,440
Speaker 1: of of narrative of fun to be had there. Oh yeah, well,

964
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:20,920
Speaker 1: I mean earlier we brought up the obvious robot of

965
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:23,600
Speaker 1: you old Brenner in Westworld, But in the New West World,

966
00:54:23,800 --> 00:54:26,000
Speaker 1: I think it spends a lot of times trying to

967
00:54:26,080 --> 00:54:29,200
Speaker 1: reblur these lines we were talking about being blurrier in

968
00:54:29,200 --> 00:54:33,359
Speaker 1: the ancient literature but becoming more distinct in the twentieth century.

969
00:54:33,520 --> 00:54:36,319
Speaker 1: If you've if you've got a West World where these

970
00:54:36,400 --> 00:54:39,200
Speaker 1: characters are robots, but you're wondering like, do they feel

971
00:54:39,480 --> 00:54:43,200
Speaker 1: is their labor more like human labor? Can they be exploited?

972
00:54:43,239 --> 00:54:45,359
Speaker 1: Should they have some kind of rights of their own?

973
00:54:45,719 --> 00:54:49,880
Speaker 1: It's almost like they're like, we're reverting to this this

974
00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:53,560
Speaker 1: miasma of confusion about the nature of beings that can

975
00:54:53,600 --> 00:54:58,440
Speaker 1: move and act. That's a that's a good point. Another

976
00:54:58,480 --> 00:55:00,680
Speaker 1: great show that comes to mind is ah Believe. It's

977
00:55:00,680 --> 00:55:04,960
Speaker 1: a Channel four AMC co production, but Humans explores a

978
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:07,320
Speaker 1: lot of this. They have these humanoid robots that are created,

979
00:55:07,719 --> 00:55:11,520
Speaker 1: uh to serve us, and then they some of them

980
00:55:11,560 --> 00:55:15,120
Speaker 1: become conscious and complications arise. Yeah. And one thing we

981
00:55:15,160 --> 00:55:17,880
Speaker 1: can definitely see being dealt with in these new versions

982
00:55:17,880 --> 00:55:20,680
Speaker 1: of science fiction that are blurring the lines between humankind

983
00:55:20,719 --> 00:55:23,839
Speaker 1: and robots is that, unlike many of these Greek myths,

984
00:55:23,840 --> 00:55:27,799
Speaker 1: they are much more informed by the idea of human rights. Uh.

985
00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:30,200
Speaker 1: And so what happens if you reblur the lines, But

986
00:55:30,280 --> 00:55:33,000
Speaker 1: suddenly you've got a much higher standard for what humans

987
00:55:33,040 --> 00:55:35,880
Speaker 1: deserve and how they should be treated. All right, Well,

988
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:38,360
Speaker 1: I think that pretty much wraps it up for Talus,

989
00:55:38,400 --> 00:55:41,080
Speaker 1: the Man of Bronze. However, I would be I would

990
00:55:41,120 --> 00:55:44,480
Speaker 1: be remiss if I did not mention the giant warriors

991
00:55:44,520 --> 00:55:47,440
Speaker 1: in Miyazaki's Nasaka The Valley of the Wind. Those are

992
00:55:47,480 --> 00:55:51,319
Speaker 1: some amazing giant robots that play an important role in

993
00:55:51,360 --> 00:55:53,200
Speaker 1: that film. Yeah, and now I would say, if you

994
00:55:53,280 --> 00:55:57,160
Speaker 1: haven't seen Ray Harry has Houses Talous from Jason and

995
00:55:57,160 --> 00:55:59,879
Speaker 1: the Argonauts in nineteen sixty three, I know we were

996
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:02,880
Speaker 1: in on it because they take away Medea's role in it,

997
00:56:03,160 --> 00:56:06,839
Speaker 1: but it's still a really cool stop motion in emotion. Yeah. All,

998
00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:08,160
Speaker 1: I mean it's the same way with all of Ray

999
00:56:08,200 --> 00:56:10,919
Speaker 1: Harry house and stuff. Right, if nothing else, seek out

1000
00:56:11,080 --> 00:56:14,160
Speaker 1: the Hairy Housing sequences and watch them, because Talos does

1001
00:56:14,160 --> 00:56:17,000
Speaker 1: look amazing in this. Yeah, it's like all the Hairy

1002
00:56:17,000 --> 00:56:20,040
Speaker 1: Housing sin bad movies. Usually the story is just garbage,

1003
00:56:20,239 --> 00:56:24,040
Speaker 1: but it's got some great monsters in it. Indeed, now,

1004
00:56:24,080 --> 00:56:26,880
Speaker 1: I know we have some some listener thoughts on this

1005
00:56:26,960 --> 00:56:29,719
Speaker 1: you'd like to share about Talos, about the nature of

1006
00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:33,319
Speaker 1: robots and machines. I'm sure that anyone out there who

1007
00:56:33,400 --> 00:56:36,439
Speaker 1: was really inspired by the Bicameral Mind episodes, I'm sure

1008
00:56:36,480 --> 00:56:41,120
Speaker 1: you have some bicameral uh thoughts on this particular topic.

1009
00:56:41,360 --> 00:56:45,160
Speaker 1: Because we're talking about statues coming to life, share those

1010
00:56:45,200 --> 00:56:47,479
Speaker 1: with us. We'd love to talk with you about them,

1011
00:56:47,560 --> 00:56:50,280
Speaker 1: either an email or hey over at the discussion module.

1012
00:56:50,640 --> 00:56:54,640
Speaker 1: That's our Facebook group that you can join and interact

1013
00:56:54,680 --> 00:56:56,799
Speaker 1: not only with us, but plenty of other listeners to

1014
00:56:56,840 --> 00:56:58,480
Speaker 1: the show. And of course you can find us at

1015
00:56:58,480 --> 00:57:00,160
Speaker 1: stuff to bule your mind dot com. That's the other

1016
00:57:00,160 --> 00:57:03,480
Speaker 1: ship will you'll find all of our podcast episodes are

1017
00:57:03,520 --> 00:57:06,200
Speaker 1: blog post videos, and links out to all those various

1018
00:57:06,200 --> 00:57:08,799
Speaker 1: social media accounts that will maintain. Big shout out to

1019
00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:13,480
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Taria Harrison are excellent audio producers for

1020
00:57:13,480 --> 00:57:15,800
Speaker 1: for making us sound better than we are as always,

1021
00:57:15,880 --> 00:57:17,840
Speaker 1: and of course if you want to reach out to us,

1022
00:57:18,120 --> 00:57:20,960
Speaker 1: you can do so on email at blow the Mind

1023
00:57:21,040 --> 00:57:33,520
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. Well more on this

1024
00:57:33,680 --> 00:57:36,200
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics does it how stuff works

1025
00:57:36,200 --> 00:57:59,440
Speaker 1: dot com