Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And actually, no,
Speaker 1: you're not Robert Lamb. Your DJ Radio tropism. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and what your dad today? Oh, it would
Speaker 1: clearly be DJ cryptococcus. We'll get to that later. So
Speaker 1: today we're gonna be talking about radio activity and radio
Speaker 1: friendly organisms. But to start us off, I wanted to
Speaker 1: take us back to something that happened a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago. So we sometimes go on Facebook Live, the
Speaker 1: live streaming media service, and uh talk about in Aine
Speaker 1: garbage movie trailers and we're not in Maine garbage important
Speaker 1: B movie uh and sometimes non B movie trailers and
Speaker 1: discuss the way that they tie into our discussions here
Speaker 1: on the podcast. The topics that we cover, well, there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong within a garbage that wasn't inherently a pejorative.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love in a garbage, right, So we
Speaker 1: went on Facebook Live and we were talking about giant
Speaker 1: crab movies, a a film genre that I think is
Speaker 1: severely under realized. It has a lot of potential. There's
Speaker 1: just not enough there. The young aspiring filmmakers out there
Speaker 1: need to get on the giant crab movie train. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's as easy as buying a real crab or catching
Speaker 1: one on the beach and filming it right, put it
Speaker 1: in close up the little people. Yeah, it's amazing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And one of the movies we talked about was Attack
Speaker 1: of the Crab Monsters. So this was released in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven, directed by as I would call him the
Speaker 1: crud Wizard, Roger Corman, and it is a plot you've
Speaker 1: heard a million times before, as scientists go to an
Speaker 1: island in the Pacific where there has been atomic testing
Speaker 1: and eventually they have to square off against a couple
Speaker 1: of giant, intelligent, sort of psychic crabs that project their
Speaker 1: voices into your dreams. Stuff. It's it's odd. It's a
Speaker 1: script by Charles B. Griffith, who is a regular Corman writer.
Speaker 1: He's the same guy who wrote who wrote Little Shop
Speaker 1: of Horrors. Uh, not of This Earth and one of
Speaker 1: my favorites it Conquered the World, where Earth is attacked
Speaker 1: by an art of choke with an underbyte. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: of course you end up with a long The best
Speaker 1: part of that movie is you have lengthy scenes in
Speaker 1: which Levan Cliff and Peter Graves discuss that the philosophical
Speaker 1: quandaries related to alien invasion? What does freedom really mean?
Speaker 1: So I I I have a special place in my
Speaker 1: heart for that film too. Anyway, In an interview, Griffith,
Speaker 1: the screenwriter of Attack of the Crab Monsters, tells the
Speaker 1: story about where this screenplay came from. And he says,
Speaker 1: Roger Corman came to him and said, I want to
Speaker 1: make a picture called Attack of the Giant Crabs. Obviously
Speaker 1: the name evolved a little, and then Griffith says, I asked,
Speaker 1: does it have to be atomic radiation? And Corman responded yes.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's kind of the way it was
Speaker 1: in the sci fi and horror of the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: we went through the atomic age. It was we we
Speaker 1: of course, had just had a World war that was
Speaker 1: concluded with the use of atomic weapons, and it was
Speaker 1: almost like if your Corman thinking about Griffith coming to
Speaker 1: you saying does it have to be atomic radiation? Again,
Speaker 1: it's like, why are you even asking? Of course, this
Speaker 1: movie has to be about atomic radiation making animals bigger,
Speaker 1: more powerful, sometimes more intelligent, more rampage e versions of
Speaker 1: those same animals. Well, I love what you just said,
Speaker 1: because that, I mean, that's essentially what atomic power did
Speaker 1: for the human race, right once a society acquired it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we became this this, this thing that was more rampage e,
Speaker 1: more dangerous. The movies are always uh, the the initial
Speaker 1: uh sounding chamber for for cultural anxiety, and so it's
Speaker 1: you can think of it as as Oppenheimer uh invoking
Speaker 1: his famous uh uh quote from Hindu scripture and sing
Speaker 1: is saying, now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.
Speaker 1: Imagine him speaking that into the amplifier of of B
Speaker 1: movie culture, and what you get are all of these
Speaker 1: atomic of super creatures and atomic Superman spiraling out into
Speaker 1: comic book characters, etcetera. As this this anxiety works its
Speaker 1: way through our fiction. Now, I know you're like, you're
Speaker 1: sort of joking and sort of serious, and I want
Speaker 1: to agree with you on both halves, especially the sort
Speaker 1: of serious part. I totally agree that B movies are
Speaker 1: often where we work out are sort of taboo anxieties
Speaker 1: and uh, and it's where the conscience of the common
Speaker 1: person comes through into the arts and entertainment. But another
Speaker 1: fun fact act I cannot leave this subject without divulging,
Speaker 1: is that Griffith thinks, he says in the same interview
Speaker 1: that in in some scenes in the movie, the person
Speaker 1: operating the giant crab monster prop may have been Jack
Speaker 1: Nicholson because he was working on sets there at the time. Man.
Speaker 1: That that's a great fact. That's magical to think of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially look up this crab and think it could be
Speaker 1: Jack under there. Yeah, we we gotta give you. How
Speaker 1: often do you encounter that with us? Someone in a
Speaker 1: monster suit turns out to be an important, acclaimed actor
Speaker 1: later on. But then, of course, sometimes the monster itself
Speaker 1: becomes a character. Now, obviously there are not a whole
Speaker 1: franchise of giant crab movies. Uh, the the giant crab
Speaker 1: monsters never caught on as a beloved folk hero, but
Speaker 1: some giant radioactive monsters do. Yeah. The best example of
Speaker 1: that would be, of course, so Gohedra Godzilla, who continues
Speaker 1: to rampage through our our cinematic history here. Now, is
Speaker 1: it officially part of the Godzilla cannon that Godzilla was
Speaker 1: created by atomic radiation? Yes? Yeah, I mean that's when
Speaker 1: you go back to the original Godzilla. That's the the
Speaker 1: idea that uh and and and it's really kind of
Speaker 1: beautiful in its own way, right. I mean this is where,
Speaker 1: in the same way that all these other monsters managed
Speaker 1: to emerge from, you know, largely Western contemplations of the
Speaker 1: atomic age, Godzilla is a frightening manifestation of of the
Speaker 1: Japanese contemplation of the atomic age. And and it really
Speaker 1: shines through in that first film because that first film
Speaker 1: is a spark darker. Yeah, it's a dark film. Uh,
Speaker 1: it just becomes campy over time as people and grow
Speaker 1: used to the idea of a giant rampaging lizard creature,
Speaker 1: and when the giant rampaging lizard creature becomes the hero
Speaker 1: rather than the villain. Yes, you know, I I watched
Speaker 1: part of the shin Godzilla, the new Godzilla film out
Speaker 1: of Japan on an airplane recently, and I need to
Speaker 1: sit down and watch it in in you know, in
Speaker 1: complete form, because it seems like there are a lot
Speaker 1: of scenes of experts setting around tables discussing the political
Speaker 1: ramifications of combating Godzilla, which I love films like that
Speaker 1: they take the monster or whatever, the sort of fantastical
Speaker 1: element and just really get down and start teasing it
Speaker 1: apart with the real world factors. But of course, more recently,
Speaker 1: more recently, for most American audiences, we had this um,
Speaker 1: this this new treatment of Godzilla that to introduce some
Speaker 1: additional radioactive elements, the idea that that Godzilla and his
Speaker 1: fellow massive unidentified terrestrial organisms or mudos were radiation dependent organisms, uh,
Speaker 1: radiation feeding leftovers from a primal terrestrial era in which
Speaker 1: there was a lot more radioactivity on the Earth and
Speaker 1: organisms had evolved to depend upon it. Now, that could
Speaker 1: play into some of the science we actually discussed later
Speaker 1: in this episode, So keep that in mind. Yes, Now,
Speaker 1: of course there's plenty of people who would argue that, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't really nail Godzilla down. He's he's he can't
Speaker 1: throw too much science at godzilla is even though we
Speaker 1: can't stop doing it. It's more like a scaly zeus. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's a wonderful quote that I ran across.
Speaker 1: This is from film producer A show Go, Tomi Yama,
Speaker 1: and it was a two thousand four interview with the
Speaker 1: now defunct Penny Blood dot com. But you can find
Speaker 1: archive versions of this, and he said this is a translation.
Speaker 1: I believe Godzilla is closer to being a god. He's
Speaker 1: not just a living animal or a monster. The fact
Speaker 1: is that humans cannot control or judge the gods. They
Speaker 1: have their own will, they have their own way. In Japan,
Speaker 1: there are many gods. There is a god of destruction.
Speaker 1: He totally destroys everything, and then there is a rebirth,
Speaker 1: something new and fresh can begin. Godzilla is closer to
Speaker 1: being that kind of god. Now this brings us to
Speaker 1: the Godzilla youthfro dilemma. Is the righteous righteous because it's
Speaker 1: loved by Godzilla? Or is it righteous because never mind? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what is love by Godzilla? It is that. There's an
Speaker 1: answer to that, but it changes, I think from film
Speaker 1: to film. It's obviously rampage. Yeah, I mean, it's easier
Speaker 1: to nail down gammera. What does gammera love the children? Right?
Speaker 1: And and that's why I think I'm ultimately more drawn
Speaker 1: to Gammera. Okay, we shouldn't look at some other radiation
Speaker 1: eating organisms that are either powered up by radiation or
Speaker 1: or derived their their everyday energy from it. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: Christian and I recently did an episode dealing with some
Speaker 1: of the science of the expanse. And if you're watching
Speaker 1: that show, or if you've read the first book, you
Speaker 1: know that there's this thing called the protomolecule that shows
Speaker 1: up and it's an extrasolar biolot biology reassembling system that
Speaker 1: enters the picture. And it's as shown that I and
Speaker 1: razing radiation is an energy source to this thing. So
Speaker 1: I'll say no more about that without getting into into spoilers.
Speaker 1: But yeah, radiation eating organisms of of of a sort
Speaker 1: do play into that series. Now, I see you have
Speaker 1: a note about it here. I know the Ghouls and Fallout,
Speaker 1: yeah series they get they get love from the radioactive energy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even and also the main character, at least in
Speaker 1: the main you know recent games, uh, the character that
Speaker 1: you play with, the Wanderer, the vault Walker or whatever
Speaker 1: the descriptions are that they throw out for him. You
Speaker 1: can pick up perks where the radiation heals you and
Speaker 1: you kind of like feed off the radiation. So this
Speaker 1: is a path you can choose to take in the
Speaker 1: game to say, I want to live on radiation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to be able to drink radioactive water, which
Speaker 1: one of the things I love about the recent Fallowout
Speaker 1: games is they'll be these these moments where you're standing
Speaker 1: like ankle deep in maybe not full blown radioactive water,
Speaker 1: but bad water that you should not drink, like you're
Speaker 1: standing in a sewer, and you look down and you go, oh,
Speaker 1: there's an AMMO clip down there. I better pick it up.
Speaker 1: But you accidentally click on the water next to the
Speaker 1: clip instead of the clip itself, and so you reach
Speaker 1: down with your hand and you get a big scoop
Speaker 1: full of the water and you drink it. And yeah,
Speaker 1: because I love I love the idea of that happening
Speaker 1: where it's, oh, crap, I just meant to pick up
Speaker 1: the clip and I just drank radioactive water instead. Such
Speaker 1: such a duface. So those are just a few radiation
Speaker 1: eating radiation absorbing creatures to consider, but fiction is full
Speaker 1: of many examples of radioactive mutants, and giant mutant animals
Speaker 1: are a big one. So we we've talked about all
Speaker 1: a number of these examples before. You mentioned the crabs already,
Speaker 1: but it brings up another B movie icon. The director
Speaker 1: of of real one of my my favorite films from
Speaker 1: this era, the amazing Colossal Man. Right, I haven't seen
Speaker 1: this one still, this is the one where there is
Speaker 1: a man who gets some kind of radiation and he
Speaker 1: grows huge and it of course it's directed by Birt
Speaker 1: Eye Gordon, Mr Big himself, who mostly made movies about
Speaker 1: things getting big, about big spiders, big dinosaurs. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: one movie of his that made a great Mystery Science
Speaker 1: Theater three thousand episode called The Beginning of the End,
Speaker 1: where it explores the sort of downstream food ecosystem effects
Speaker 1: of radiation radiation gigantism, where this scientist makes some giant
Speaker 1: vegetables but I think he I may be remembering this wrong,
Speaker 1: but I think he injects them with radiation with a needle.
Speaker 1: I apologize if I've mischaracterized there, but that's my memory.
Speaker 1: And then some bugs eat the radioactively injected fruits and
Speaker 1: vegetables or grains, and then the bug has become huge
Speaker 1: and attack Chicago. He Berney Gordon must have had either
Speaker 1: a needle phobia or a needle fetish because because there
Speaker 1: are some fabulous needle scenes in The Amazing Colossal Man
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, yeah, there he like they have bring
Speaker 1: a huge needle to inject a huge man with and
Speaker 1: then it is a wonderful scene. It's in the trailers
Speaker 1: and all where he picks it up and he kind
Speaker 1: of looked at Glenn Manning, the amazing glossal man does this,
Speaker 1: picks this this uh, this hypodermic needle up and it's
Speaker 1: it's regular size to him, and then he just with
Speaker 1: with with expert precision. He just throws it like a
Speaker 1: dart down at one of these soldiers who just pricked
Speaker 1: him with it, and it just skewers him. It's a
Speaker 1: wonderful scene, but one of cinema's finest moments. Now, in
Speaker 1: addition to these examples, and you have legions of other
Speaker 1: mutant humanoids from telepathic nu nutants in beneath the planets,
Speaker 1: beneath the planet of the Apes, which I'd love to
Speaker 1: see those guys uh explored in some of these reboots
Speaker 1: that are coming out for the Apes movies. These are
Speaker 1: the ones that worship a giant bomb. They like sing
Speaker 1: hymns to the to the atomic bomb. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they worship with the atomic bomb, and they they have
Speaker 1: crazy mental powers. You also have the Chud's from Chud,
Speaker 1: the cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers. Um. We've mentioned the ghouls
Speaker 1: of Fallout. You've got the mutants of Total Recall. Nice, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were. They were a lot of fun. You have
Speaker 1: the mutants of the Hills have Eyes not so much fun.
Speaker 1: Not not so fun pretty much an any installment of that.
Speaker 1: They are generally not that fun, but but certainly a
Speaker 1: good B movie example as well. And uh, of course,
Speaker 1: let's not forget atomic superheroes. That is a huge area
Speaker 1: of of fictional exploration here, right, you've got the Hulk.
Speaker 1: So the official Marvel approved origin blurb I looked it
Speaker 1: up on Marvel dot com for the Hulk reads as follows.
Speaker 1: Caught in a blast of gamma radiation, alliant scientist Bruce
Speaker 1: Banner is cursed to transform in times of stress into
Speaker 1: the living engine of destruction known as the Incredible Hulk.
Speaker 1: So got that straight right. The origin story is gamma radiation,
Speaker 1: then a curse. The curse is that when he gets
Speaker 1: his briefs in a twist, he changes colors, becomes huge, strong, invincible,
Speaker 1: rampage e. Now obviously this is not I don't need
Speaker 1: to tell you, but this is not what happens to
Speaker 1: a human who's caught in a blast of gamma radiation.
Speaker 1: We know this in theory and principle but even if
Speaker 1: we didn't, we would know it in practice because this
Speaker 1: is literally actually happened. I want to talk about one
Speaker 1: example of a quote brilliant scientist caught in a blast
Speaker 1: of hard radiation which included gamma rays among other types
Speaker 1: of radiation, and that man was Louis Slotan, a Canadian
Speaker 1: physicist working at the United States Atomic Testing Facility at
Speaker 1: Los Alamos, New Mexico, go UH shortly after the conclusion
Speaker 1: of the Second World War. So on May one, nineteen six,
Speaker 1: at about three in the afternoon, Slotan and colleagues were
Speaker 1: performing a nuclear criticality test on a core of plutonium.
Speaker 1: And the way a test like this worked is that
Speaker 1: you would take a mass of physile material and then
Speaker 1: bring it almost to the point of going critical by
Speaker 1: nearly covering it with a beryllium cap. Now what would
Speaker 1: that do well. The reason a substance like plutonium is
Speaker 1: dangerous is that the heavy atoms inside it are unstable
Speaker 1: and they start to split apart and shoot neutrons off
Speaker 1: in every direction, releasing a lot of energy in the process.
Speaker 1: This is a nuclear fission. By covering a hemisphere of
Speaker 1: physical plutonium with this thick reflective material like beryllium. You
Speaker 1: reflect those neutrons back into the plutonium where they hit
Speaker 1: other atomic nuclei, knocked them apart, producing more free neutrons,
Speaker 1: releasing more energy. And as this happens more and more
Speaker 1: you come closer to producing a runaway criticality event. The
Speaker 1: physicist Richard Feynman, upon hearing this type of experiment described
Speaker 1: in the forties, compared that compared it to quote tickling
Speaker 1: the tale of a sleeping dragon. Now that's because the
Speaker 1: dragon presumably breathes fire when it wakes up, and about
Speaker 1: the same as true of a plutonium core. Now, this
Speaker 1: beryllium cap, called a tamper, it was supposed to be
Speaker 1: kept from going completely closed, from completely covering the core.
Speaker 1: As long as there was a gap through which some
Speaker 1: of the neutrons could still fly out and it wasn't
Speaker 1: completely covered, the dragon would not fully wake up. But
Speaker 1: on the day I mentioned earlier in ninety six, while
Speaker 1: Slotan was performing this experiment holding the tamper cap open
Speaker 1: with a screwdriver, an accident happened. His hand slipped, the
Speaker 1: screwdriver came out of place, and the tamper briefly fell
Speaker 1: completely over the plutonium mass, causing it to go critical.
Speaker 1: People in the room described that they saw a flash
Speaker 1: of blue light, which was the secondary result of the
Speaker 1: air itself being ionized by a blast of hard radiation,
Speaker 1: and they also felt this wave of heat wash over them,
Speaker 1: so their primary radiation exposure lasted really only a split
Speaker 1: second before Slotan was able to knock the tamper off.
Speaker 1: He sort of reached out and knocked it away, and
Speaker 1: he stopped the chain reaction, but he had already in
Speaker 1: that tiny split second, received more than enough radiation to
Speaker 1: kill him. Uh. There's a good short New Yorker article
Speaker 1: about the history of this accident, and it reports that
Speaker 1: quote Slotan's whole body dose was around twenty one RIM
Speaker 1: of neutrons, gamma rays, and X rays. Five hundred RIM
Speaker 1: is usually fatal for humans, so this was an incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful close up door. Right after the exposure, he went
Speaker 1: outside and vomited, and then the hand closest to the
Speaker 1: core that he'd been holding right up next to the
Speaker 1: plutonium turned blue developed large blisters. Uh, and he started
Speaker 1: experiencing systemic effects that developed for the next nine days
Speaker 1: before he died. UM. He was in continuously deteriorating health.
Speaker 1: His white cell count dropped, his temperature and pulse became erratic.
Speaker 1: He had digestive distress. According to one medical professional who
Speaker 1: was trying to explain the nature of his his wounds,
Speaker 1: his internal radiation burns. They described it as quote a
Speaker 1: three dimensional sunburn if you can imagine being sunburned on
Speaker 1: the inside that is rough. Now here's a really crazy fact.
Speaker 1: This was not even the first time this had happened
Speaker 1: at this lab. Just months before, a Los Alamos worker
Speaker 1: named Harry dag Lean Jr. Had Been killed by radiation
Speaker 1: exposure in a similar criticality experiment. Not exactly the same
Speaker 1: they were using some like a tungsten carbide bricks I think,
Speaker 1: but by the exact same piece of plutonium, which thereafter
Speaker 1: got its nickname, quote the demon core. And of course
Speaker 1: Slotan is not the only person to suffer death from
Speaker 1: radiation exposure. You know, victims of the atomic bombing in
Speaker 1: Japan at the close of World War two tragically suffered
Speaker 1: many of the same effects. But what's sort of morbidly
Speaker 1: fascinating about the cases of Slotan and Daglian is that
Speaker 1: there's no explosion, no fire, there's no uh conventional physical destruction,
Speaker 1: just the pure isolated, almost instantaneous dose of hard radiation
Speaker 1: that makes every tissue in your body start to fail.
Speaker 1: There's almost a magical element to it. Yeah, in that
Speaker 1: with it would being devoid of the explosion and the
Speaker 1: sort of the the traditional um atrobutes of warfare. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. It does have this kind of magical feel
Speaker 1: to it because you can't see the mechanism. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it kills you slowly then, because now everything in your
Speaker 1: body is irreparably damaged, but you can't see exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: So I think maybe we should take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back we can talk about radiation.
Speaker 1: We we know now obviously it doesn't actually make you bigger, stronger,
Speaker 1: more intelligent, at least for large complex mammals and most
Speaker 1: other organisms. But if it does kill, how does it kill?
Speaker 1: Why does it cause this problem? All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: so let's take a moment to just really talk about
Speaker 1: what radiation is. We've been, we've been, we've been talking
Speaker 1: about it, and I think most of our listeners have
Speaker 1: a you know, a reasonable working knowledge of radiation. But
Speaker 1: I think it's it's a it's a good opportunity to
Speaker 1: just stop and try and boil it all down here.
Speaker 1: So it's important to note that our lives are filled
Speaker 1: with radiation, and much of it is harmless, and much
Speaker 1: of it is natural, not all radiations of the apocalyptic variety.
Speaker 1: Soil and underground gas is exposed us to radiation, and
Speaker 1: we're also exposed to cosmic radiation from the sun and
Speaker 1: outer space. It's mostly mostly all right, mostly fine if
Speaker 1: the doses are right and uh, and you're dealing with this,
Speaker 1: this natural mode of radiation, well, I guess it depends
Speaker 1: on your definition of fine. But you might say it's unavoidable.
Speaker 1: That's part of being. And with all radiation, you know,
Speaker 1: it's going to depend on the type of radiation, the
Speaker 1: dosage level, and how long you're exposed to it. Because
Speaker 1: obviously radiation is coming from the sun. You can get
Speaker 1: too much sun, and they're varying their varying definitions of
Speaker 1: too much sun. There's too much sun over the course
Speaker 1: of a lifetime. There's too much sun over the course
Speaker 1: of a day at the beach, right, But that's a
Speaker 1: good illustration of the different kinds of risks that are
Speaker 1: posed by radiation. For example, too much on it one
Speaker 1: day at the beach, you risk the sort of the
Speaker 1: slotan version, the acute radiation poisoning from the sun versus
Speaker 1: too much sun over a lifetime will tend to cause
Speaker 1: things like skin cancer, right, and not enough exposure to
Speaker 1: the sun can leave you with the vitamin D deficiency.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's a balance in all in all
Speaker 1: things here. Uh. And one of the key aspects we'll
Speaker 1: get back to two is that just as radiation is
Speaker 1: around us, radiation has always been around us. Radiation has
Speaker 1: been there in the background of varying degrees throughout the
Speaker 1: evolution of life on our planets. So it's not like
Speaker 1: it's not like radiation. Even though radiation as this theme
Speaker 1: as this uh, this fear and this anxiety really arrived
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties, uh, you know, and we see
Speaker 1: it echoed in these B movies. Radiation did not arrive
Speaker 1: on the scene. Then, radiation had always been with us. Now,
Speaker 1: in terms of radiation, the stems from human inventions. That
Speaker 1: that's that's a different area here. So we're when this
Speaker 1: we're talking about medical procedures. We're talking about television's, cell phones,
Speaker 1: microwave ovens. Uh. And again it all depends on dosage.
Speaker 1: The strength to type, the length of exposure. Electromagnetic radiation
Speaker 1: is merely a stream of photons traveling in waves. So
Speaker 1: we have you know, low energy photons such as radio waves,
Speaker 1: and these spend These are just waves. They behave like waves.
Speaker 1: And while we also have high energy photons such as
Speaker 1: X rays, those behave more like particles. Uh So in
Speaker 1: this we're getting into this idea of the electromagnetic spectrum,
Speaker 1: you know, radio, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultra violet X rays.
Speaker 1: Although we have to to gamma raise. Yeah, that's an
Speaker 1: ascending scale of the energy of of these photons and
Speaker 1: starting somewhere at the upper end of the ultra violet spectrum,
Speaker 1: so that the upper end of the ultra violet, the
Speaker 1: X rays, the gamma rays, those are the really dangerous,
Speaker 1: the ionizing types of radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum, that's right,
Speaker 1: So ionizing that that brings up the main distinction we
Speaker 1: should probably make about the different kinds of radiation, because
Speaker 1: as we said, we're always surrounded constantly by radiation. It
Speaker 1: makes a big difference whether that radiation is ionizing or
Speaker 1: non ionizing. Right, And you had that wonderful example earlier
Speaker 1: about the flash of blue light is the the air
Speaker 1: uh ionized. Right, So the radiation that was coming out
Speaker 1: of that plutonium core was doing something to the to
Speaker 1: the atoms in the air. It was making some changes
Speaker 1: to the structure of the very atoms themselves. Right Now,
Speaker 1: These lower forms of of radiation, the non ionizing variety,
Speaker 1: they don't have enough energy to ionize atoms or molecules,
Speaker 1: thus the name. They're located at the low low end
Speaker 1: of the electromagnetic spectrum and a non ionizing radiation sources
Speaker 1: in our life include power lines, microwaves, radio waves, infrared radiation,
Speaker 1: visible light lasers. Although considered less dangerous than ionizing radiation,
Speaker 1: over exposure of course can cause health issues because again
Speaker 1: it comes down to uh to the degree and the
Speaker 1: length of exposure, right, I mean it can still non
Speaker 1: ionizing radiation can still for example, heat tissues which can
Speaker 1: have an effect. Yeah. But ionizing radiation is energy in
Speaker 1: the form of particles or waves uh. And it's so
Speaker 1: high in energy that it can break chemical bonds, meaning
Speaker 1: it can change or ionize an atom that interacts with it.
Speaker 1: At a lower energy, it can strip off a couple
Speaker 1: of electrons. At higher energy, it can destroy the nucleus
Speaker 1: of an atom, it can damage DNA. So this is
Speaker 1: the stuff of radioactive material, very high voltage equipment, nuclear
Speaker 1: reactions and stars. And by the way, as long as
Speaker 1: we're talking about natural versus unnatural radiation, even though there's
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes there's a you can kind of blur
Speaker 1: the lines there. On a terrestrial basis, the levels of
Speaker 1: radiation you would need to cause radiation sickness and really
Speaker 1: you know, acute form uh, pretty much require human technology
Speaker 1: after a point. So naturally occurring occurring sites of radioactivities
Speaker 1: such as prinstance, if you were to travel to Ramsar
Speaker 1: around but that's like a naturally radioactive site, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you were to travel there, you would you would
Speaker 1: encounter this, you know, in this radioactive environment, but it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be enough to produce anything near the high level
Speaker 1: of doses required to inflict the sort of harm we've
Speaker 1: seen via the detonation of atomic weapons or accidents at
Speaker 1: nuclear power plants. Well that's good, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: appreciate that the Earth is like that. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: this kind of I guess is a nod to this
Speaker 1: idea of you know, the the atomic age, what is
Speaker 1: invented in the atomic age. What is unleashed in the
Speaker 1: atomic age um. So while while we are naturally surrounded
Speaker 1: by all kinds of radiation, while we are naturally in
Speaker 1: a universe of highly radioactive stars and things like that,
Speaker 1: we're not naturally any universe of of you know, regular
Speaker 1: human life scale nuclear reactors and atomic weapons. Right. It
Speaker 1: brings some very high radiation events uh and uh and
Speaker 1: items into our local environment that generally are not there.
Speaker 1: So ionizing radiation, the dangerous kind of radiation comes in
Speaker 1: a handful of main varieties. You've basically got high frequency
Speaker 1: electromagnetic radiation, and then you've got radioactive particles. So let's
Speaker 1: look at the particles first. You've got alpha particles and
Speaker 1: beta particles. Alpha particles are relatively large, and they're made
Speaker 1: of protons and neutrons, right. And because you've got protons
Speaker 1: without any electrons, what does that mean? It's charged positive
Speaker 1: charge uh. And this means it wants to interact with
Speaker 1: matter to break bonds and strip away electrons. That's the
Speaker 1: ionizing part. So what it can do is turn atoms
Speaker 1: in your body into other differently behaving atom charged ions uh.
Speaker 1: And alpha particles tend to shoot off of atoms when
Speaker 1: they undergo radioactive decay. Now, alpha particles can only travel
Speaker 1: a short distance. In fact, they can be stopped with
Speaker 1: just a piece of paper or even your skin. However,
Speaker 1: inhalation or ingestion of any material that gives off alpha
Speaker 1: particles that can be dangerous. Once inside your body, alpha
Speaker 1: particles can ionize your internal tissue. And this is what
Speaker 1: happens in some cases of like radioactive poisoning. Somebody has
Speaker 1: given a poison that contains a radioactive material and it's
Speaker 1: putting off alpha particles inside your body. But now, what
Speaker 1: about beta particles. Beta particles are fast moving electrons that
Speaker 1: they can travel and penetrate far more than alpha particles.
Speaker 1: Beta particles can be stopped or reduced by a layer
Speaker 1: of clothing or a substance like aluminum. However, some beta
Speaker 1: particles have enough energy to penetrate the skin and cause
Speaker 1: damage that's very similar to burns. As with alpha particles,
Speaker 1: beta particles are quite hazardous if you inhale or ingest
Speaker 1: something that releases them, right because yet again they have
Speaker 1: a charge, and for this reason they're going to interact
Speaker 1: electrically with the tissues inside your body, trying to change
Speaker 1: stuff around. Now, another type of particle radiation would be
Speaker 1: neutron radiation, and this just means a free neutron from
Speaker 1: the nucleus of an atom shooting off all by itself,
Speaker 1: and this happens during nuclear fission. Neutrons can travel a
Speaker 1: really long distance, and they can penetrate deeply through many
Speaker 1: types of objects. And I've read that the best thing
Speaker 1: for stopping this material is actually something that's rich in hydrogen,
Speaker 1: for example water H two. Oh. This is a good
Speaker 1: reason water makes a good radiation shield. Um and neutron
Speaker 1: radiation is a major part of what actually happened at
Speaker 1: the Los Alamos criticality accidents when the demon core went
Speaker 1: super critical. Lewis Slotan's body was bombarded by neutrons and
Speaker 1: this is part of what killed him. But you might
Speaker 1: be thinking, wait a minute, ionizing radiation. Why would neutrons
Speaker 1: be ionizing radiation, because if you remember your atomic chemistry,
Speaker 1: neutrons don't have a charge positive or negative, So why
Speaker 1: would they break chemical bonds and change atoms into other
Speaker 1: things that behave differently. Well, the answer is that neutrons
Speaker 1: are sort of indirect killers. They themselves don't ionize your tissues,
Speaker 1: but If a neutron is absorbed into the nucleus of
Speaker 1: an atom in your body, that atom can now be
Speaker 1: an unstable isotope. It's got too many neutrons and it's
Speaker 1: and its nucleus, so the nucleus becomes unstable, meaning it
Speaker 1: could now undergo fission and emit radiation. So neutron radiation
Speaker 1: has the power to turn normal, safe materials into radioactive materials,
Speaker 1: which in turn with then emit ionizing radiation and harm you.
Speaker 1: But I guess we should now let's look at the
Speaker 1: pure energy radiation, like gamma raise. Gamma raise are a
Speaker 1: type of electromagic magnetic radiation. Gamma rays often a company
Speaker 1: alpha and beta particles. Unlike alpha and beta particles, however,
Speaker 1: they're extremely penetrating. In fact, several inches of lead or
Speaker 1: even a few feet of concrete are necessary to stop
Speaker 1: gamma ray. Uh. They're a radiation hazard for the entire body,
Speaker 1: meaning that although they'll pass through you, your tissue is
Speaker 1: going to absorb some rays. Yeah. And then also, of
Speaker 1: course there are X rays, lower energy than gamma rays,
Speaker 1: but still ionizing and potentially very dangerous depending on the dose. Basically,
Speaker 1: the way that X rays and gamma rays hurt you
Speaker 1: is by introducing huge amounts of energy into the atoms
Speaker 1: and your body, which again breaks molecular bonds, strips electrons
Speaker 1: away from atoms, creating free charged particles that want to
Speaker 1: interact with other atoms and molecules to change them. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, in a lot of cases where you're getting
Speaker 1: a dose of hard radiation, it's not going to be
Speaker 1: just one of these things or another. You're getting a
Speaker 1: mixture of different types of radiation all coming at you simultaneously.
Speaker 1: So overexposure to ionizing radiation can cause mutations in your genes.
Speaker 1: This can cause birth defects, raised risk of cancer, and
Speaker 1: then you go get burns, radiation, sickness, etcetera. But in
Speaker 1: order to kill you, it would just need to damage
Speaker 1: or kill enough cells to cause as a more immediate
Speaker 1: or immediate death, or just to cause cancer. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: for a really rough analogy, imagine a huge machine like
Speaker 1: a like a aircraft carrier or battleship that is bombarded
Speaker 1: by millions of invisible, tiny pin pricks, and each of
Speaker 1: these pin pricks has a certain random chance of hitting
Speaker 1: a component within that ship and then changing it into
Speaker 1: something else, like a maybe a screw turns into a
Speaker 1: nut or a copper wire into a piece of foam.
Speaker 1: Uh And a ship might be able to survive a
Speaker 1: certain number of these magic pin pricks and still run,
Speaker 1: but a certain at a certain level of exposure, you're
Speaker 1: basically guaranteed to make enough changes to the ship that
Speaker 1: it no longer functions as a machine and maybe even
Speaker 1: sinks when the hull itself fails. Now, one thing to
Speaker 1: notice is that the harmful effects of radiation are based
Speaker 1: on atomic physics and chemistry. Any complex system that's made
Speaker 1: out of atoms should be somewhat vulnerable to radiation, and
Speaker 1: for this reason, it really should affect any organism, right,
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be just humans or something. All organisms are
Speaker 1: made out of atoms and molecules. No organism wants to
Speaker 1: have its atoms and molecules broken up changed into different
Speaker 1: atoms and molecules like no I need that. Uh So,
Speaker 1: the molecular structures in our bodies are the way they
Speaker 1: are for a reason that has to do with survival.
Speaker 1: But but where it's interesting is, again for the probably
Speaker 1: fifth time, if it comes down to to the dosage
Speaker 1: level and the exposure length and h and also varying species,
Speaker 1: varying organisms are gonna have different levels of resistance to
Speaker 1: radiation as well, exactly. So this is a concept in
Speaker 1: biology of radio resistance. Not all organisms are equally susceptible
Speaker 1: to radiation. Some are able to withstand more than others,
Speaker 1: and as we'll get into in a bit, some might
Speaker 1: even go. Uh, I don't know what you'd say, go
Speaker 1: across the line to the other side of the ledger
Speaker 1: and not just resist but benefit indeed. Alright, So on
Speaker 1: that note, shall we go to Chernobyl? I think we
Speaker 1: should probably try to take a trip okay, just scenic Ukraine.
Speaker 1: So Chernobyl is one of those um, it's one of
Speaker 1: those places, one of those events where that the name
Speaker 1: continues to resonate. Uh. And you know, listeners out there,
Speaker 1: we're going to have varying degrees of familiarity with Chernobyl.
Speaker 1: But I thought it would be helpful just to to
Speaker 1: very quickly run through what where, where Chernobyl is, and
Speaker 1: what occurred and now we should keep in mind that.
Speaker 1: I think in the future we might want to do
Speaker 1: a whole episode on the science of the Chernobyl disaster
Speaker 1: and it's many downstream effects through time. Because there have
Speaker 1: been a lot of studies about not just what happened
Speaker 1: at this nuclear meltdown, but but what happened in the
Speaker 1: decades since, right, I mean, even the story of how
Speaker 1: it occurred is is fascinating as well. So tell me
Speaker 1: about it. Right. So, when it comes to environmental disasters, uh,
Speaker 1: we're the nineteen eighties six Chernobyl catastrophe is often kind
Speaker 1: of at the top of the list or its It
Speaker 1: certainly has some of the uh, it has the name
Speaker 1: value that you you don't find with a lot of
Speaker 1: other environmental disasters. So this was this explosions fewed fifty
Speaker 1: tons of radioactive material into the air and the reactor
Speaker 1: burned for ten days, forcing the evacuation of at least
Speaker 1: thirty thousand people from the Ukrainian town of Pripyat. In
Speaker 1: the decades to follow, we have we've had continuous study
Speaker 1: pretty much of how this affected not only the local environment,
Speaker 1: but but the broader environment. Now, when people here melt
Speaker 1: down in the United States, a lot of them might
Speaker 1: have the the the US point of Three Mile Island.
Speaker 1: You know something, they know something happened there, but it's
Speaker 1: not comparable. Right, So nineteen seventy nine three mile Island
Speaker 1: incident that was a partial nuclear meltdown, Chernobyl was a
Speaker 1: total meltdown. Um So Russian teams chased the melted remnants
Speaker 1: of the plants reactor core into the facility's basement. They
Speaker 1: flooded it with water to cool off the materials, keep
Speaker 1: them from from burning down um to you know, to
Speaker 1: try to try and stop it before it could burn
Speaker 1: through the containment building and pollute the groundwater. Next, they
Speaker 1: dumped a bore on clay, dolomite, lead and sand onto
Speaker 1: the burning core by helicopter to put off the fires
Speaker 1: and limit the radioactive particles that were now rising up
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere. And in the months that followed, the
Speaker 1: encase the ruined plan and a concrete shielding that's often
Speaker 1: referred to as as the sarcophagus, which puts you know
Speaker 1: a suitably dark um darker uh note on everything here,
Speaker 1: But of course, the damage was already done by that
Speaker 1: point um and subsequent inquiries would reveal just what the
Speaker 1: damage amounted to as far as humans were concerned. The
Speaker 1: World Health Organised zation puts the fatality estimate set four
Speaker 1: thousand deaths uh. This is a quote from World Health Organization.
Speaker 1: They said this includes some fifty emergency workers who died
Speaker 1: of acute radiation syndrome and nine children who died of
Speaker 1: thyroid cancer, and an estimate in estimated total of thirty
Speaker 1: nine hundred and forty deaths from radiation induced cancer and
Speaker 1: leukemia among the two hundred thousand emergency workers from nineteen
Speaker 1: eight six to nineteen eighty seven, One hundred sixteen thousand
Speaker 1: evacuees and two hundred and seventy thousand residents of the
Speaker 1: most contaminated areas total about six hundred thousand, so food
Speaker 1: contaminated with radioactive iodine was a major factor, especially with children.
Speaker 1: Radioactive iodine ended up in the milk from cows who
Speaker 1: ate contaminated grasses. Yeah, and then the environmental impact overall.
Speaker 1: This is a major release of radio nucleides that continued
Speaker 1: for ten days and contaminated more than two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: square kilometers or seven seven thousand, two hundred twenty square
Speaker 1: miles of Europe. Most of the strontium and plutonium isotopes
Speaker 1: were deposited within a hundred kilometers or sixty two miles
Speaker 1: of the damage reactor, so the radioactive iodine luckily had
Speaker 1: a short half life and that's all gone now. Um
Speaker 1: the strontium and the cesium with has a longer half
Speaker 1: life of about thirty years, so that's going to remain
Speaker 1: an issue for decades um. And but then this, this
Speaker 1: quote comes to us from a World Health again they said,
Speaker 1: although plutonium isotopes in americium to forty one will persist
Speaker 1: perhaps for thousands of years, their contribution to human exposure
Speaker 1: is low. This this shows the kind of crazy way
Speaker 1: that radioactive material can behave almost kind of like a
Speaker 1: plague spreading throughout except it's not like a plague because
Speaker 1: generally a plague is more contained to certain types of organisms.
Speaker 1: It'll it'll target rats or bird or humans or something
Speaker 1: like that. This is almost like a you know, a
Speaker 1: material plague that split spreads all throughout the ecosystem. And
Speaker 1: because of the way that different organisms in the ecosystem
Speaker 1: absorbed materials, trap them and then get consumed and decompose
Speaker 1: and redistribute them, it just kind of goes everywhere. Now,
Speaker 1: one could quick note on the idea of giant mutants. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously no giant animals came rampaging out of the forests
Speaker 1: surrounding Chernobyl and even giant Ukrainian crabs. No, no, giant
Speaker 1: Ukrainian crabs. The U S Department of Energies, Office of
Speaker 1: Human Radiation Experiments, they're they're very quick to remind us
Speaker 1: that genetic mutations due to radiation, they do not produce
Speaker 1: the visible monstrosities of science fiction. You know, it just creates,
Speaker 1: produces a greater frequency of the same mutations that occur
Speaker 1: continuously and spontaneously in nature, so that the natural world
Speaker 1: does not produce radioactive giants, at least in the animal kingdom,
Speaker 1: because the realm of plants is another matter entirely in
Speaker 1: the in the wake of chernobyl uh and other radioactive accidents,
Speaker 1: we have seen various malformations including dwarf is m, strange growths, glowing,
Speaker 1: and yes, even gigantism, especially concerning pine needles. So that's yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the few areas where we can say, yes,
Speaker 1: we have seen atomic gigantism pine needles. But who's going
Speaker 1: to watch attack up the pine needles, right, I would, dude,
Speaker 1: do you think predatory animals are ruthless? Imagine predatory atomic plants.
Speaker 1: Plants have no compassion whatsoever. That I don't even process
Speaker 1: the concept of cuteness. A giant lion might want to
Speaker 1: kill you, but at least it recognizes that large eyes
Speaker 1: are cute. The pine tree does not. All right, well,
Speaker 1: maybe there's some potential there, you know. I would say, though,
Speaker 1: if if I was going to get killed by killer
Speaker 1: pine tree, I would hope it was a Jeffrey pine.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the best kind of pine. Well it has
Speaker 1: a friendly name. Yeah. Uh So, despite what organisms you
Speaker 1: might see like this surviving resisting and environments contaminated with
Speaker 1: radiation and radioactive particles, whether or not they've got apparent mutations,
Speaker 1: you would still expect that ionizing radiation is always a
Speaker 1: net negative influence on an organism, right, except in those
Speaker 1: rare cases maybe where the you know, it causes a
Speaker 1: free commutation that provides a survival advantage. Those are going
Speaker 1: to be the minority, right, Some radio resistant or just
Speaker 1: plain lucky organisms might survive despite the hardship of ambient radiation.
Speaker 1: But what if there were organisms like the Hulk or
Speaker 1: like the crab monsters that seem to actively benefit from
Speaker 1: the universal high energy death magic of ionizing radiation. We
Speaker 1: are going to answer that question when we get back
Speaker 1: from this break. All right, we're back. All right. So
Speaker 1: we've talked about ionizing non ionizing radiation. Well, ionizing radiation
Speaker 1: has always been a part of the terrestrial environment. Comes
Speaker 1: from space. Yeah, and early life forms here on Earth
Speaker 1: had to have considerable resistance to it in order to
Speaker 1: survive and to advance into other forms. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: should mention radioactive rocks as well, just on Earth. So
Speaker 1: background radiation levels are much lower now than they were
Speaker 1: on the early Earth, but terrestrial life still exists in
Speaker 1: a field of radiation. Fungi in particular show a strong resistance.
Speaker 1: So you see this stuff thriving aboard space stations, adapting
Speaker 1: to extreme conditions. We've all I've we've covered on this
Speaker 1: on the show before. And imagine everyone out there from
Speaker 1: run across constant articles about the extreme file organisms in
Speaker 1: our world and how they force us to re examine
Speaker 1: what life is and where life can thrive. There's a
Speaker 1: reason there are limits to how you can spend on
Speaker 1: the International Space Station. If you go up there, they
Speaker 1: won't let you stay forever. You need to come back,
Speaker 1: and that's for your own good. Uh. There are multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: I mean, some of them might have to do with
Speaker 1: like the long term effects of micro gravity on the
Speaker 1: human body, which we don't fully understand yet, but a
Speaker 1: lot of it is clearly due to the known risks
Speaker 1: from exposured ionizing radiation. While you're up there outside the
Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere. There are elevated levels of radiation in space,
Speaker 1: and you shouldn't get too much of this or it's
Speaker 1: going to hurt you. Now, as you say, there there
Speaker 1: are these micro organisms, these uh, fungal microbes that survive
Speaker 1: up there in the I s s for for generations apparently, uh,
Speaker 1: in space, and they seem to be doing just fine.
Speaker 1: And it's true you mentioned the radio resistance of fung gui.
Speaker 1: I think generally fungi are considered the most radio resistant
Speaker 1: uh kingdom of life. I hope I'm not wrong about that.
Speaker 1: I think that's generally correct. Yeah, we're up there in space,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of barely managing when we come back.
Speaker 1: The fun Guide is saying, get me on that generation ship.
Speaker 1: I'm ready to go. Right, let's see some new worlds. Well,
Speaker 1: they might need to be on the generation ship if
Speaker 1: we need something to eat while we're going going out there,
Speaker 1: But we'll get to that in a minute. So we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about a study by several authors, one
Speaker 1: of whom is the distinguished microbiologist and immunologist Arturo Casadival,
Speaker 1: and he tells this story about how years ago he
Speaker 1: was reading about how robotic exploration of the Chernobyl ruins
Speaker 1: that from the Chernobyl disaster. We were just talking about
Speaker 1: the total meltdown of the power plant. So there's a
Speaker 1: robotic exploration of these ruins, and they revealed that something
Speaker 1: was growing on the walls of the abandoned reactor, some
Speaker 1: sort of matt of dark fungus. But this is definitely
Speaker 1: weird because this was a dangerously radioactive environment. You know,
Speaker 1: the pin pricks, the pin pricks of ionizing radiation are
Speaker 1: going all over the place all the time. Be kind
Speaker 1: of like if you just let the demon core go
Speaker 1: critical for a while and discovered that a bunch of
Speaker 1: squirrels began nesting in the test check, you'd want to
Speaker 1: know what's the deal with those squirrels, and and please
Speaker 1: stay away from those squirrels. Yeah, not as bad as
Speaker 1: the pine needles that there, might be worse than the crabs.
Speaker 1: So one of the first things to notice about this
Speaker 1: fungus that's growing in the presence of radiation is that
Speaker 1: it's specifically dark fungus. This is an indication of the
Speaker 1: presence of the pigment melanin. Now, melanin is a natural
Speaker 1: polymer pigments found in all kinds of organisms. In humans,
Speaker 1: varieties melanin are produced by special cells known as melana sites,
Speaker 1: and the melanin itself is responsible for providing the pigmentation
Speaker 1: of body parts like your iris, is your hair and
Speaker 1: your skin, and of course there are a couple of
Speaker 1: different kind of melanin. There are several kinds actually, like
Speaker 1: there is you melanin. This is the common kind that's
Speaker 1: black or brown in color. So if your hair is dark,
Speaker 1: if you have black or brown hair, it probably has
Speaker 1: a lot of you melanin in it. There's also phia melanin.
Speaker 1: This is usually what's seen in like the hair of
Speaker 1: people who have red hair or maybe light brown reddish hair,
Speaker 1: and in the skin. Melanin is believed to play a
Speaker 1: role in the natural human relationship to radiation because scientists
Speaker 1: think that it protects our cells, especially our d n A,
Speaker 1: from damage by an everyday form of ionizing or near
Speaker 1: ionizing radiation, which is the ultraviolet or UV radiation found
Speaker 1: in sunlight, so naturally, dark objects tend to absorb more light.
Speaker 1: This is, in fact, by definition, what makes objects dark
Speaker 1: uh so black or brown. Melanin has properties of absorbing
Speaker 1: electromagnetic radiation, including UV radiation, and dissipating it by converting
Speaker 1: it into heat. In this way, it is thought to
Speaker 1: be able to protect the nuclei of your skin cells
Speaker 1: from being constantly bombarded, damaged, and mutated by the invisible
Speaker 1: death rays of the sun, and the pigment absorbs the radiation,
Speaker 1: so your genetic material doesn't have to So melanin in
Speaker 1: that way is a natural shield against radiation. It's one
Speaker 1: of the ways that organisms have evolved natural radio resistance,
Speaker 1: and even our own bodies make use of it. But
Speaker 1: the role of melanin doesn't stop there. There's some evidence
Speaker 1: that melanin may play other roles in the human body
Speaker 1: and in other organisms. For example, uh, the fungal microbe
Speaker 1: Cryptococcus neoform us. Oh yeah, that's your DJ name, DJ
Speaker 1: Cryptococcus neoformons. Okay, I'll have to be able to say
Speaker 1: that really fast over a beat with you need to
Speaker 1: be able to stay in the house at the end
Speaker 1: of the dame. They need to know that not only
Speaker 1: are you here, but you are in the house else.
Speaker 1: And if you were playing house music, you need to
Speaker 1: be able to tell everyone that that is what they're
Speaker 1: listening to. I'm not in the house. I'm in the
Speaker 1: abandoned reactor room. I'm just telling you the rules. So
Speaker 1: Cryptococcus neofemans is a fungus that's found everywhere, just pretty
Speaker 1: much everywhere in nature. It's also potentially pathogenic, causing diseases
Speaker 1: and people, especially with impaired immune function. For example, it
Speaker 1: often causes lung infections and people who have AIDS. So
Speaker 1: for some reason, it has been observed that melanin production
Speaker 1: in this fungal germ is associated with virulence. More melanin
Speaker 1: production means a more powerful germ, and it's been suggested
Speaker 1: that this is because melanin helps the fungus protect itself
Speaker 1: against the host's immune response. So we're seeing that melanin
Speaker 1: may have a diverse role essentially in in different life
Speaker 1: functions and for all different kinds of organisms. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is weird to remember we're talking about a fungus here,
Speaker 1: but this is also a pigment that animals share. It's
Speaker 1: in all the kingdoms of life, which tends to be
Speaker 1: an indicator that it's probably quite ancient in origin. That
Speaker 1: melanin goes way back. Now, Robert, you mentioned earlier that
Speaker 1: in previous geological eras, and you know, past life on
Speaker 1: Earth was exposed to a lot more ionizing radiation than
Speaker 1: we are on the surface of the Earth now. And uh,
Speaker 1: if you look at the role of melanin as a
Speaker 1: very ancient thing emerging very early in life on Earth,
Speaker 1: that that may that may sort of provide an explanation. Right,
Speaker 1: if there was a lot of radiation back then, and
Speaker 1: melanin has this role in protecting organisms from radiation, you
Speaker 1: can see one reason it might have emerged. Now, let's
Speaker 1: go back to the paper I mentioned earlier. So as
Speaker 1: we saw hinted in the blasted concrete dungeon of the
Speaker 1: Chernobyl reactor room, this dark pigment in some types of
Speaker 1: fungus plays an even weirder, more fascinating role, not just
Speaker 1: protecting or is ms from harmful radiation, but allowing them
Speaker 1: to thrive on it. Yeah. This uh, this paper, This
Speaker 1: is a two seven paper published in pl Os one
Speaker 1: titled Ionizing radiation changes the electronic properties of melan and
Speaker 1: enhances the growth of melanized fung Guy. Right, And that
Speaker 1: was by a long list of authors data Cova, Brian, Hung, Model, Schweitzer,
Speaker 1: Ien Nosen, Chuck, and Cassadaval. Yeah, and they found they
Speaker 1: found some interesting evidence that the fungi containing the pigment
Speaker 1: melan and can utilize the ionizing radiation portion of the
Speaker 1: electromagnics spectrum to transform radioactive energy into biological energy. And uh,
Speaker 1: this would be in keeping crazy enough with the way
Speaker 1: that chlorophylling plants converts sunlight into bio energy. That is crazy. Now,
Speaker 1: if that's correct, it would be absolutely bizarre and fascinating.
Speaker 1: That essentially a a cosmic dark kind of parody of Oh.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say parody, I don't mean to demean it.
Speaker 1: A fascinating, weird parallel of photosynthesis, the kind of photosynthesis
Speaker 1: we see in plants and blue green algae and things
Speaker 1: is going on with mushrooms. But instead of regular sunlight,
Speaker 1: they're using gamma radiation, this high energy stuff that should
Speaker 1: kill any organism. So if this is correct, how did
Speaker 1: they determine it, Like, how did they determine the fun
Speaker 1: fungi were not only surviving in the presence of this,
Speaker 1: but we're actively benefiting from it. So here's the basic experiment,
Speaker 1: or this part of the experiment. There were multiple experiments
Speaker 1: in in this study. The basic experiment on the fungus
Speaker 1: was the two species of fungus contained melanin, the Cryptococcus
Speaker 1: neoformans and the Wengiella dermatiditis it's got a lot of
Speaker 1: dental consonants in it. Both were placed in environments with
Speaker 1: strong ionizing radiation than five hundred times what you'd get
Speaker 1: from standard background radiation on Earth. And then these melanized
Speaker 1: cells in radioactive conditions were found to have had quote
Speaker 1: higher cf use, more dry weight biomass, and threefold greater
Speaker 1: incorporation of C fourteen acetate than non irradiated melanized cells
Speaker 1: or irradiated albino mutants. Now that's a mouthful. What did
Speaker 1: that mean? In other words, by several measures, the melanin
Speaker 1: fungus exposed to strong radiation was more biologically successful, It
Speaker 1: grew more, it did better than fungus that was not irradiated,
Speaker 1: or fungus that was irradiated but didn't have significant melanin
Speaker 1: in it cells. So put a pale fungus in radiation
Speaker 1: that doesn't like it. Put have a regular non irradiated fungus,
Speaker 1: you know, it does its thing. But you put one
Speaker 1: of these dark pigmented funguses fungi under radiation and it thrives,
Speaker 1: It loves it. It's a power up to it, it's
Speaker 1: food to it. In a sense, that's what appears to
Speaker 1: be happening. Now this isn't fully confirmed, but but that's
Speaker 1: what they think they observed here and and to further
Speaker 1: bols through this idea, they tried to uncover leads as
Speaker 1: to what the mechanism might be. Right. So, if you
Speaker 1: if you find something in nature that looks very odd,
Speaker 1: one of the ways that you can really help build
Speaker 1: your case that it is that what you're seeing is
Speaker 1: really what you think it is, is to find out
Speaker 1: how it works. Right, So they tried to uncover a
Speaker 1: possible mechanism and uh and their mechanism of how ionizing
Speaker 1: radiation might be converted into usable energy went like this.
Speaker 1: They found through experiment that exposure to ionizing radiation increased
Speaker 1: the electron transfer properties of melanin. Again, what does that mean, Well,
Speaker 1: essentially it changed the electronic capabilities of this pigment. The
Speaker 1: best way I've seen it put into simple, understandable terms
Speaker 1: is from a two thousand seven article and Scientific American
Speaker 1: by David Biello, who claimed that the melanin in this
Speaker 1: case quote acts like a step down electric transformer transformers
Speaker 1: you might see, you know, turning the electricity from the
Speaker 1: power grid into something that you can use in your house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: taking something that would normally just fry to the Jesus
Speaker 1: out of everything, you know, dear, into something that was
Speaker 1: his tame enough, domesticating the current for you. Right. So,
Speaker 1: what what the pigment does under this model is it's
Speaker 1: hit with incredibly high energy radiation that should destroy life. Instead,
Speaker 1: the pigment absorbs it through some electrical electrical transfer. It
Speaker 1: manages to tone it down a bit into some kind
Speaker 1: of energy that can be used by the organism to
Speaker 1: sustain its life function. So some of the far reaching
Speaker 1: effects of the study are pretty fascinating. The researchers suggests
Speaker 1: that radiation grown fungi might one day feed human travel
Speaker 1: space travelers. Yeah, because out in space, you're exposed to
Speaker 1: a lot of ionizing radiation um and if you're say
Speaker 1: far from sunlight, Uh, and you don't want to have
Speaker 1: to use your own power on grow lamps to to
Speaker 1: to grow plants in your in your spaceship. What do
Speaker 1: you have to work without in deep space? While if
Speaker 1: you could actually grow something on ionizing radiation that you
Speaker 1: could eat, that would be amazing. And what if it
Speaker 1: glowed as well, and you have like glowing fungal of
Speaker 1: spheres that are lighting your environments. You can really go
Speaker 1: go wild with some of the possibilities here. But they
Speaker 1: they they also speculate that this could even unlock unlock
Speaker 1: the possibility. Uh that no, this is just a possibility
Speaker 1: that this is not proven, that melanin in human flesh
Speaker 1: might provide energy to skin cells. Now that, like you say,
Speaker 1: it's just a speculation. It would be consistent with their findings,
Speaker 1: but it's not something that's proven. But really interesting if
Speaker 1: that were true, it would also provide an interesting twist
Speaker 1: on this old claim. I know you've heard Robert the
Speaker 1: idea of the sun eaters, the people who that it's
Speaker 1: basically a supernatural claim. But these people claim that some
Speaker 1: monks and holy people can live for years without eating food,
Speaker 1: getting all of the nourishment and energy their body needs.
Speaker 1: Just straight from the sunlight. Now, obviously, I don't think
Speaker 1: that even if this were true, that we were getting
Speaker 1: usable bio energy through the melanin in our skin cells,
Speaker 1: I don't think it would make those claims plausible. I
Speaker 1: think that's still pretty much nonsense. But it would be
Speaker 1: a cool twist on it, because even if you could
Speaker 1: get some tiny amount of usable bio energy from the sunlight,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't come close to the amount of concentrated chemical
Speaker 1: energy you get from eating food. Right for for a
Speaker 1: rough analogy, think about the electromagnetic energy harvested from solar
Speaker 1: panels versus the dense chemical energy contained in gasoline. You know,
Speaker 1: it does make me think back to our episode on
Speaker 1: Chinese immortality where we talked about the idea of these
Speaker 1: aged individuals living just on undo and the wind. Uh
Speaker 1: would kind of fall in line with with that vision
Speaker 1: of this almost um you know, ephemeral of a life
Speaker 1: form that's just just barely subsisting on the things around it. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it just makes me wonder if this were
Speaker 1: the case that you get some usable bio energy through
Speaker 1: your skin cells, what I would want to see is
Speaker 1: the thought experiment that explains, Okay, given how that works,
Speaker 1: what would the naked surface area of your body need
Speaker 1: to be in order to replace certain amounts of food?
Speaker 1: Like could you live on five hundred calories a day
Speaker 1: if you had x amount of naked surface area and
Speaker 1: sat out in the sun all day? Like if you
Speaker 1: had like a large skin flap like a demetridon, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: something that that nature basically human solar panel, Like if
Speaker 1: you had giant wings to stretch out and uh and
Speaker 1: absorb all the life, But then you'd also be losing
Speaker 1: a lot of heat energy against But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I do love, I do love the idea of it.
Speaker 1: The big thing is that this, this study does force
Speaker 1: us to reevaluate life and uh and how life not
Speaker 1: only interacts now but has just evolved in the presence
Speaker 1: of radiation. Yeah. I mean it's weird how the stuff
Speaker 1: that seems so normal to us on Earth is maybe
Speaker 1: not normal. In fact, it's just a circumstantial byproduct of
Speaker 1: what Earth is like, and that life on another planet,
Speaker 1: the same kind of biology, the same kind of relationship
Speaker 1: with energy in the universe that seems so intuitive to
Speaker 1: us might be very weird to them. I mean, what
Speaker 1: if there's a planet that really thrives on gamma radiation.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that's plausible. That might not make sense,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, I can imagine it. You know
Speaker 1: what if they're really just confused by the idea of
Speaker 1: a whole food ecosystem that's built off the energy from sunlight,
Speaker 1: which is where everything on Earth comes from. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is This is something that came up in the
Speaker 1: episode that did recently with Christian on butter. Like you
Speaker 1: you really break down butter, Butter comes from the sun.
Speaker 1: Everything comes from the sun. It's all solar. I mean,
Speaker 1: your steak comes from the sun, Your your your whatever,
Speaker 1: your milkshake comes from the sun, and all of it
Speaker 1: is essentially solar energy that has been transformed into into
Speaker 1: something else, something that you can consume. You're just you're
Speaker 1: just gobbling it up further down the food jake. All right,
Speaker 1: we gotta end with crazy ideas. I've got one. Here's
Speaker 1: one has matt suits made entirely out of mold. I
Speaker 1: like it like a black fungus, black fungus body suit
Speaker 1: to cover you up and protect you when you wade
Speaker 1: into the nuclear waters. Especially if it's rare. It grows rapidly,
Speaker 1: So it's essentially like it's kind of like a glow stick.
Speaker 1: You just break this in half in two fluid chambers,
Speaker 1: converge and then this black mole just grows all over you.
Speaker 1: And it's because it's alive. It's self healing. So instead
Speaker 1: of your has mat suit getting punctured and now you're like,
Speaker 1: oh well I'm ruined now. Uh, instead it would it
Speaker 1: would grow back, seal itself up. That wouldn't really work
Speaker 1: with it, maybe not, but you know, it makes me
Speaker 1: think think about the various theories have been thrown out
Speaker 1: over the years about the future of of the human
Speaker 1: species in space. The basic cyborg idea that that human
Speaker 1: and must become more machine. It has been be this
Speaker 1: the synthesis of of biology and technology in order to
Speaker 1: make this adaptation possible. What if the future is is
Speaker 1: is Homo sapiens becoming a symbiotic more of a symbiotic
Speaker 1: go organism. Uh and uh and and bringing in this
Speaker 1: this fungal existence is the space You know, this idea
Speaker 1: of the living suit. But what if that is the
Speaker 1: future of the human race. Yeah, well, I mean it
Speaker 1: goes to the idea of when we think of the cyborg.
Speaker 1: It's it's humans joining with human made artificial technology that's
Speaker 1: you know, made of metal and plastic and molded pieces.
Speaker 1: I like the idea of the biocyborg, the hybrid organism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if we end up with a big mushroom cap
Speaker 1: head and then then you know, it's it's it's all worth.
Speaker 1: It will become space Lins. Yeah, space Lins Invasion of
Speaker 1: the Space Likens. There's the next the next movie I'd
Speaker 1: like to see, along with The Killer Pine Trees and
Speaker 1: some of the other hypothetical B movies we've discussed in
Speaker 1: this episode. Have I told you about the B movie
Speaker 1: that I I've recently been thinking, we've got to rite
Speaker 1: and produce what's this? This the No? No, it's called
Speaker 1: Planet of the Satan's, of the Satans, of the Satan
Speaker 1: all Satan's. Yeah, well, I mean you got Planet of
Speaker 1: the Vampires, but you gotta go step up. Planet of
Speaker 1: the Satan's. That would be good. Yeah, that or a
Speaker 1: Planet of the Frankenstein's. I would like that as well,
Speaker 1: but Planet of the Satans. It would be kind of
Speaker 1: like everyone on the planet is a Satan. And then yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well not the people who arrived there they've got to
Speaker 1: deal with the native Satan's. Oh, what if you do
Speaker 1: a Santa Claus versus the Martians kind of thing where
Speaker 1: you have a world where there is no Satan. And
Speaker 1: they said that children need Satan. Without Satan, how are
Speaker 1: they to live their lives? And then they decided, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go and we're gonna steal a Satan from
Speaker 1: the planet of the Satans, and then that will be
Speaker 1: our world Satan and then will put everything in balance.
Speaker 1: And then that's the origin story for life on Earth.
Speaker 1: Big spoiler at the end, Yeah, the Fall of Man.
Speaker 1: All right, you lived up to the name. That's how
Speaker 1: we do it, all right. So hey, if you want
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