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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Land, I'm Christian Sager, and this is a

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Speaker 1: classic episode that we were returning to. It was a

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Speaker 1: fun little one that Robert and I put together about

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Speaker 1: a year ago about a D and D monster called

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Speaker 1: the mind Flare, and we decided to say, what if

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Speaker 1: science broke apart of mind flair looked at its anatomy

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Speaker 1: and its biology, how would that work? Yeah? If you

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Speaker 1: this psychic alien squid creature that that runs amuck in

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Speaker 1: the Dungeons and Dragons universe, what if this was real?

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Speaker 1: What can we look to in the actual scientific world

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Speaker 1: to understand it? And and you know what science can

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Speaker 1: we illuminate by looking to the mind Flair? And you

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Speaker 1: might be wondering, guys, why are you rerunning this episode?

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Speaker 1: And wait, why did this come out on a Friday?

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Speaker 1: Well it is because and no spoilers here, the mind

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Speaker 1: Flare is brought up in the latest season of Stranger Things.

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Speaker 1: And we know that there are a lot of Stranger

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Speaker 1: Things fans out there because last month we did our

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Speaker 1: Science of Stranger Things episode. I like to think of you,

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Speaker 1: Joe and I as like, what happens when the kids

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Speaker 1: from Stranger Things grow up and like this is what

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Speaker 1: they do for a living. Uh, And so we thought, hey,

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Speaker 1: you know, let's put this back out there and people

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Speaker 1: who might have binge watched that season in the last

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Speaker 1: seven days will go, oh, now I can really dive

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Speaker 1: into what a mind flare is. And uh, you basically

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Speaker 1: supplement my Stranger Things experience. All right, well let's dive

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Speaker 1: into it. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. From

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Speaker 1: How Stuff Works dot Com. A form slightly larger than Drifts,

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Speaker 1: but obviously humanoid, drifted around a nearby stalactite. Drifts kicked

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Speaker 1: off a stone to propel himself at it, drawing his

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Speaker 1: other scimitar as he went. He knew his peril a

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Speaker 1: moment later, for his enemy's head resembled a four tentacle octopus.

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Speaker 1: Drifts had never actually viewed such a creature before, but

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Speaker 1: he knew what it was as an ill efid a

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Speaker 1: mind flair, the most evil and most feared monster in

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Speaker 1: all of the under dark. Hey, welcome to Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and my

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Speaker 1: name is Christian Sager, and today we're talking about mind flares.

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Speaker 1: That's right. As you get from that quote mind flares.

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Speaker 1: For those of you who aren't aware, we're really diving

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Speaker 1: down the geek well today to get a monster that

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Speaker 1: we both love and grew up with. But this is

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Speaker 1: a creature that was originally created for dungeons and dragons, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it also has a long history that I'm just learning

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Speaker 1: about in the Final Fantasy Games. And I imagine other

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Speaker 1: other properties as well that that that's that were inspired by,

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Speaker 1: especially early dungeons and dragons. Yeah. But so we're not

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Speaker 1: just talking about this because we're into geeky stuff, right not.

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Speaker 1: That's like, yeah, where you using the mind flair as

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Speaker 1: a jumping off point to look at some really interesting science,

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Speaker 1: both in biology but also a little bit in technology today,

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Speaker 1: in the same way that drifts our hero in the

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Speaker 1: opening narration used that d stalactite as a springboard. Right.

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Speaker 1: So that was a quote from R. A. Salvatore's Exile,

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Speaker 1: which is part of the Dark Elf trilogy. It's actually

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Speaker 1: booked two in the Dark Elf trilogy. Uh, you may

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Speaker 1: be familiar with this. If you're not, look give you

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Speaker 1: a quick primer. These are Dungeons and Dragons based novels. Uh,

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Speaker 1: set in the Forgotten realm setting based around this character,

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Speaker 1: dritzto Arden, that is pretty popular with that crowd and

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Speaker 1: still still part of the property the board games that

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Speaker 1: come out He's He's mentioned in the materials for the

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Speaker 1: big current under Dark campaign. I'm pretty sure they're still

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Speaker 1: coming out with novels with him in it too. Um

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Speaker 1: and these I have a fondness for these novels because

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Speaker 1: they were like my way to wind down my brain

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Speaker 1: after doing too much research, either when I was in

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Speaker 1: graduate school or sometimes from podcasting. So I've read I

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Speaker 1: want to say, there's like these books, and I've probably

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Speaker 1: read three quarters of them. Uh mostly I I refer

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Speaker 1: to them as sword porn because there's just like whole sections,

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Speaker 1: like pages and pages where it's just describing like the

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Speaker 1: ways in which he moves his swords. I mean just

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Speaker 1: in this one paragraph alone, like they've had to mention

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Speaker 1: like the way he drew a scimitar and everything. But

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Speaker 1: mind Flares are like the primary antagonist in this specific book.

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Speaker 1: So I pulled that quote, and then there's another one

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Speaker 1: later on where I think that this contributed to the

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Speaker 1: lore surrounding them, so you know, we'll refer back to it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So see we're using this, this creature, this though wondrous creature,

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Speaker 1: as as as an opportunity to discuss some some science,

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Speaker 1: and we're using science as a way to explain some

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Speaker 1: of the more fan tactic aspects all of this fictional monster.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of relationship we come back to time and

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Speaker 1: time again, because, as I like to say, no matter

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Speaker 1: how fantastic, how crazy the imagined monster is, you can

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Speaker 1: you can almost count on nature to have equal or

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Speaker 1: surpassed it in weirdness. Yeah, that's that's exactly what's so

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Speaker 1: wonderful about using this for an episode of the show.

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Speaker 1: And I'd like to point out that this is actually

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Speaker 1: connected to two other things that we do on Stuff

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Speaker 1: to All Your Mind. The first is obviously Robert's Monster

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Speaker 1: Science that he's been working on for years. If you

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Speaker 1: go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, there

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Speaker 1: are I dare say, a hundred maybe monster science posts

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Speaker 1: like you've covered almost every monster in existence. Um well,

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Speaker 1: well I wouldn't go that far because they're pretty inexhaustible,

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Speaker 1: but um yeah, the monster the Monster of the Week

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Speaker 1: post or kind of like the monster Science versions. And

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Speaker 1: then there's the video series Monster Science as well, which

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Speaker 1: you can find there or you can find while all

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Speaker 1: the videos are on our Facebook and in our YouTube

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Speaker 1: channel as well. Uh. But also you and Joe are

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Speaker 1: doing an episode coordinated with this that's about mind control. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's gonna be titled what Mind Control feels Like, and

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Speaker 1: it should be the episode that follows this. I think

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Speaker 1: this episode right here is coming out on a Thursday,

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Speaker 1: and then the following one, the mind control episode, will

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Speaker 1: come out on Tuesday. But it'll all come together. So

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Speaker 1: brace yourselves, everybody. We're we're really getting into it with minds,

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Speaker 1: brains and actual brain eating today. Yeah, because one of

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Speaker 1: the things about the mind flares, if you're not familiar

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Speaker 1: and if you're not familiar at all with the mind flares,

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Speaker 1: just bear with us. We'll get to the real science

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Speaker 1: as well. But they are not only these these octopus headed,

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Speaker 1: purple fleshed evil doers that live in the under dark,

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Speaker 1: this vast subterranean realm in the Dungeons and Dragons world.

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Speaker 1: They are also uh psychic or psionically gifted creatures that

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Speaker 1: are able to just dominate people left and right with

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Speaker 1: their amazing psychic powers, you know, throwing mind blasts all

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Speaker 1: over the dungeon just really wreaking havoc, but that is

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Speaker 1: their primary power, and they're finishing move is to grab

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Speaker 1: ahold of you with their tentacle mouths and suck your

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Speaker 1: brain right out of your head. It's like, uh, total kill,

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Speaker 1: like instant kill. I think if you get grappled by

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Speaker 1: a mind flare by the head or whatever, you know.

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Speaker 1: They actually not to skip too far ahead into their anatomy,

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Speaker 1: but they're generally represented as having just four digits on

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Speaker 1: their hands, so they have three knuckles. And I was

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Speaker 1: thinking the other day this would be perfect for a

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Speaker 1: t p K tattoo for flair or total party kill.

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Speaker 1: That's your like your thug mind flare. Yes, I like it.

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Speaker 1: I like for those of you not with the game,

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Speaker 1: total party Killers. When the creatures in the game were

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Speaker 1: more specifically, the dungeon master kills off the entire party

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Speaker 1: with a generally general this occurs because the encounter is

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Speaker 1: not studematically calibrated. Yeah exactly. So yeah, so we're gonna

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Speaker 1: use these as a jumping off point. And you guys

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Speaker 1: are probably saying to yourselves right now, like WHOA, Like,

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Speaker 1: this isn't what I signed up for. Just bear with us,

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Speaker 1: because the thing about mind Flavors in particular that is

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Speaker 1: really useful for stuff to blow your mind is they

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Speaker 1: were created for this game, and then it's been a

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Speaker 1: good almost forty years that people have been working on them,

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Speaker 1: whether it's in these novels that I mentioned earlier, or

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Speaker 1: for rule books or for video games or whatever. It's

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like Star Wars creatures. They've had like

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Speaker 1: more and more tagged onto their fictional biology and culture

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Speaker 1: and philosophy over the years, to the point that it's

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Speaker 1: like it's this fleshed out world, you know, and it's

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Speaker 1: it's really fascinating what multiple people brought to the table

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Speaker 1: with it and how that then subsequently translates because they

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Speaker 1: were obviously inspired by you know, creatures from real life

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Speaker 1: or or philosophy in different cultures. Oh yeah, indeed. I mean,

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Speaker 1: and in so many cases either the people adding to

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Speaker 1: the mythos so say, the mind flares, they either were

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Speaker 1: directly inspired by natural world organisms or they're just weird

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Speaker 1: creativity managed to to parallel actual natural world weird. That's

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Speaker 1: that like somebody needs to do it like a history

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Speaker 1: of the mind Flare creation book where they like talk

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Speaker 1: to all these people, because in front of us here

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Speaker 1: in the studio right now is Volo's Guide to Monsters,

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Speaker 1: and it has a pretty comprehensive, like what almost ten

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Speaker 1: page section on mind flares, more more, I dare say,

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Speaker 1: than real world encyclopedias have on some of the real

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Speaker 1: world animals. We're going to talk about today's episode, but

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Speaker 1: it's really impressive and I would love to see how

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Speaker 1: all these pieces came together. Yeah, and that just came

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Speaker 1: out by the way of anyone out there is interested, uh,

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Speaker 1: just just published now. In terms of what we're not

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Speaker 1: canna attempt to do what we just mentioned here, we're

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Speaker 1: not going to actually uh, you know, go piece by

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Speaker 1: piece through the generation of the mind flare, but we

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Speaker 1: will just touched on its origins, which go back to

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Speaker 1: Gary Gygax himself, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: he is the guy. He's the guy who started the

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Speaker 1: whole thing. And you've got a nice quote from him

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Speaker 1: here specifically about mind flares. Yeah, he said, quote the

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Speaker 1: mind Flare I made up out of whole cloth, using

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Speaker 1: my imagination, but inspired by the cover of Brian Lumley's

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Speaker 1: novel in paperback edition, the burrowers beneath. So I've never

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Speaker 1: seen this before. What's it looked like? Um? I looked

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Speaker 1: at it, I will. I looked at the various covers,

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Speaker 1: and the one that I think most modern readers are

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Speaker 1: used to is the one that looks kind of like

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Speaker 1: an eye in the center of a nautilus, And that

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Speaker 1: one looks more mine flairy. Um. But the original cover,

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Speaker 1: the one that I think Guy GaX would have seen,

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Speaker 1: just kind of looks like a silhouette of dark tentacles

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Speaker 1: rising out of a hill. But still, I take the

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Speaker 1: man into his word. Um lumly of course was Lovecraft influenced,

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Speaker 1: and there's definitely a lot of love Crafty and weirdness

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Speaker 1: to the mind flare. So just just as the fictional

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Speaker 1: race has crossed over from another realm and dungeons and dragons,

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Speaker 1: the very inception is sort of a cross pollination from

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Speaker 1: a different dimension of literary fantasy. Yeah. I think you

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Speaker 1: could probably trace their origins all the way back to

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Speaker 1: Lovecraft's intense fear of sea life. So, and just to

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Speaker 1: get this out of the way too, because again I

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Speaker 1: know a number of you maybe primarily familiar with these

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Speaker 1: critters from Final Fantasy are their properties. Eltid is definitely

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Speaker 1: a d n D property, but they've got the t

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Speaker 1: M on that. Yeah, so you can't just throw e

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Speaker 1: litids around another games or video games or novels without

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Speaker 1: you know, big dungeon getting a cut. But mind flairs

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Speaker 1: you'll see elsewhere. Yeah, thats right. In fact, we saw

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Speaker 1: there was a paper that you've found that stunning all

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Speaker 1: about the various types of sort of cephalopod monster mollusks

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Speaker 1: that show up in video games. Oh yeah, yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: an article um that was published in geek Studies, and

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Speaker 1: I'll try to include a link to that on the

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Speaker 1: landing page for this episode. But yeah, just all about

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Speaker 1: weird squid and octopus monsters from sixteen bit videos. And

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Speaker 1: there was this amazing chart of all of the various ones,

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Speaker 1: uh down to their little like eight bit renderings, and

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Speaker 1: there's the mind flare very recognizable in there. So yeah, again,

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Speaker 1: these are basically purple people with octopus heads. Their mouths

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Speaker 1: are like Lamprey's. We're gonna go through the anatomy pretty

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Speaker 1: carefully because that's how we're going to tie it into

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Speaker 1: real world science. That's right, all right, So let's dive

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Speaker 1: in let's talk about their origins real quick, which are

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Speaker 1: of course shrouded in mystery. So they're basically two origin

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Speaker 1: stories in play here. Most likely the mind flarees hail

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Speaker 1: from the far Realm, which is an alien dimension of

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Speaker 1: cosmic horror, and the dn D universe. But there's also

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Speaker 1: this whispered rumor that if from the future and perhaps

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Speaker 1: even the distant highly evolved state of humanoid life in

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Speaker 1: the multiverse, though I'm I'm not sure much stock is

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Speaker 1: actually put in that interpretation. I want to say that

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Speaker 1: that is that's the one that's heavily Lovecraft influence, because

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Speaker 1: there's and I can't believe I can't remember the name

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Speaker 1: of the monster from one of the Lovecraft short stories,

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Speaker 1: but that's one of the things from his This monster

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Speaker 1: is from the future and it's come back in time

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Speaker 1: to sort of right some wrong or something like that.

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Speaker 1: And I think this is again not there's no sources

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Speaker 1: behind this, but but if my memory is correct from

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Speaker 1: playing D and D for twenty some odd years, uh,

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Speaker 1: their origin story differs depending on which setting you're playing

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Speaker 1: D and D. And well, that's right, it's a it's

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Speaker 1: a multiverse. And of course they also instill this in you.

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Speaker 1: Your game is not necessarily taking place in the same

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Speaker 1: corner of the multiverse as the campaign across across the Road. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: So one of the really important plot points with the

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Speaker 1: Lipids is that an ages path, they carved out an

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Speaker 1: enormous empire for themselves, what the cells one that spanned

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Speaker 1: whole worlds and the material plane as well as other

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Speaker 1: various planes. They they had slash have spaceships called no

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Speaker 1: Alloids that enable travel across the plains. But they've lost

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Speaker 1: the technology of their manufacture, like any you know, decent

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Speaker 1: elder race. They've they've forgotten how to kind. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: they built their empire mostly on the back of psionically

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Speaker 1: dominated slave labor. But after time, as you know happens

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Speaker 1: when you build your empire on slave labor, the slaves

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Speaker 1: rose up, they rebelled, and their their empire fell to pieces,

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Speaker 1: and so they had to go out and just sort

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Speaker 1: of find little corners to survive. And and in particular

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Speaker 1: they end up taking up in the under dark. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And and here they end up, you know, having more

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Speaker 1: slave races, and each one they mess up by just

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Speaker 1: psionically dominating them, altering them changing them into whatever form

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Speaker 1: suits the mind flares and just just causing lots of

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Speaker 1: trauma and mischief, um, just across the world. They remind

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Speaker 1: me kind of of this ant that we've covered on

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Speaker 1: the show before. I'm gonna have trouble remembering its Latin

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Speaker 1: name off the top of my head, but you might

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Speaker 1: know it Court Accepts. Oh yes, the court aceps. Uh

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Speaker 1: fun guy that end up growing in the ants. Yeah, exactly. Um,

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Speaker 1: so this this fun guy gets inside these aunt brains

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Speaker 1: and it's it sort of controls them to take care

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Speaker 1: of its fungal colony and allow it to take the

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Speaker 1: ant resources and mind flair. I guess sociology is somewhat similar,

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Speaker 1: and that they they dominate these you know, people of

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Speaker 1: various D and D species, dwarves, elves, human beings, whatever

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Speaker 1: gift Oh yeah, the gift off touching the gift here,

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Speaker 1: and they're the slaves that sort of like work and

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Speaker 1: do all the labor for the mind flares. They even

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Speaker 1: one of the things that the slaves are known to

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Speaker 1: do is they have to scrub down the elder brain

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Speaker 1: and get massage. Oh yeah, and they all their brains

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Speaker 1: important to that. That's the thing all the all these

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Speaker 1: different elements that we're touching on here. They might sound

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Speaker 1: a bit like fluff, but we're gonna come back to

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Speaker 1: them and discuss some science around them. But real quick

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Speaker 1: about the Gift. The Gift were the the the biggest

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Speaker 1: mistake that they made. These were the thralls that really

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Speaker 1: rose up and not only helped bring about the follow

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Speaker 1: their empire, but regularly now the Gift regularly venture out

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Speaker 1: from their astral plane headquarters to hunt down and eradicate

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Speaker 1: elliptid colonies whoever they can find them. And that's one

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Speaker 1: of the key reasons that elipids live and you know,

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Speaker 1: the safety and secret of the under dark or other

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Speaker 1: secluded places and in each separate colonies cut off from

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Speaker 1: all the others while while they calculate and scheme and

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Speaker 1: figure out how they're going to restore their empire. Right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So they basically like live in these like deep caves there.

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Speaker 1: It's like a it's almost like an ant colony, it is, yeah, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the it's all based around the center of the

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Speaker 1: elder brain I mentioned earlier, which we're gonna get into. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They but they yeah, they kind of like occasionally just

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Speaker 1: go out grab some slaves pull them back in and

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Speaker 1: like that's how their society runs. Yeah, it's gonna be

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Speaker 1: very helpful as we go far, just to think of

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Speaker 1: them as you social parasites. Yes, they write really like

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Speaker 1: they have two options. They either capture somebody and eat

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Speaker 1: their brain, or capture them and dominate their mind and

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Speaker 1: make them into a slave. Right, So either way an

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Speaker 1: encounter with the mind flare is going to end up bad,

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Speaker 1: all right, So it's launched into their biology again. Bipedal

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Speaker 1: humanoid bodies, four tentacles, four claude digits per hand. Diet

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Speaker 1: consists mostly of csionic energy, with some additional sub sustenance

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Speaker 1: stuff from the gobble brains themselves. Now, technically speaking, their

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Speaker 1: troglophiles their cave dwelling creatures that complete their life cycles

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Speaker 1: in a cave, but they can also survive above ground.

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Speaker 1: Help me out with this. Trug l files is a

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Speaker 1: real term. Yeah, yeah, this is This is a real term.

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Speaker 1: It's not done in dragon's terms. This would be the

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Speaker 1: the the natural world classification for a creature like this, though,

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Speaker 1: of course, classifications are difficult when you're considering even fictional

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Speaker 1: intelligent creatures. You know, one that is choosing to live

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Speaker 1: underground in a subterranean environment for their own purposes, and

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Speaker 1: now their reproductive system is utterly bizarre. And yet uh,

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Speaker 1: there are real world examples that are almost as bizarre.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean they're a real world example. When

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Speaker 1: you start looking at complex life cycles, you look at

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Speaker 1: some of the the parasite life cycles out there and

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Speaker 1: various insect life cycles that are not only just like

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Speaker 1: a bizarre circle of parasitic behavior, but also when you

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Speaker 1: see branches in the tree, and this is key to

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Speaker 1: understanding the mind players, when you see various morphs that

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Speaker 1: can emerge. Yeah, so all right, walk us through this.

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Speaker 1: All right, So you have an egg. That's where it starts,

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Speaker 1: an a litid egg, so a mind for an adult

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Speaker 1: mind flare. What came first, the mind flare the egg.

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Speaker 1: Now an adult mind flare lays an egg. Yes, okay,

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Speaker 1: so they lay an egg. That egg hatches into an

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Speaker 1: a liftid tadpole, so little squirming us a tadpole, a

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Speaker 1: little larval alipid. Now from that point there are a

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Speaker 1: few different things that can happen. Ideally. There there's a

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Speaker 1: process called a sea morphosis, and this is where adult

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Speaker 1: mind flares would come and pick up the little tadpole

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Speaker 1: and implant in the cranium of a captive humanoid, like

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Speaker 1: a captive kind of like psychically washed humanoid, and they

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Speaker 1: usually put it through the ear. But there's a drawing

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Speaker 1: in Volos Guide of monsters of like it's very based

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Speaker 1: on wrath of calm of like the tadpole like crawling

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Speaker 1: its way up the face towards the eye socket of

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Speaker 1: a victim. Yeah. So yeah, that exact scenario. So one

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Speaker 1: way or another, they get that dust that puppy into

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Speaker 1: the brain and then it eats the brain, replaces the brain,

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Speaker 1: and then that host body becomes the new mind flare body. Go.

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Speaker 1: You know, I guess it turns per pole, slimy, loses

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Speaker 1: a digit on each hand, gets pretty skinny. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: then you've got you've got yourself an adult elithid that

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Speaker 1: carries on adult elithid business and eventually it can go

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Speaker 1: onto legs of its own. Right now, there are two

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Speaker 1: other possible ways that this can go with the elithid tadpole.

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Speaker 1: So sometimes the elithid becomes a you letharid and this

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Speaker 1: is uh, this is essentially a super mind flare that

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Speaker 1: is going to eventually leave the colony with some other

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Speaker 1: mind flares found a new colony and become its elder brain. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so it doesn't have human humanoid form. It's just like

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Speaker 1: the superpowered tadpole. It's a super powered tadpole, still have

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Speaker 1: to be implanted into a humanoid, but it's destined to

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Speaker 1: be this uh, this this cedar of the new Calling,

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Speaker 1: and it will eventually grow into a giant brain right

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Speaker 1: once it establishes itself elsewhere. And then the other way

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Speaker 1: that things can go is the elithid tadpole can become

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Speaker 1: a neolithid. And this is when they're nobody's taking care

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Speaker 1: of the tadpoles. Nobody, no mind flares are coming around

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Speaker 1: to look after them and make sure they're stuffed into

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Speaker 1: the right skull. In this case, they all freak out

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Speaker 1: and start eating each other, and whichever one is left

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Speaker 1: grows into a giant, powerful beast intelligence monster. Huh Okay,

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Speaker 1: I have never encountered one of these before. It's just good.

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Speaker 1: It's like a level wow. Okay, but it but what's

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Speaker 1: going on with both of these cases, and this is

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Speaker 1: where there's a there's a real world parallel that will

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Speaker 1: will break down a little a little more in a bit,

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Speaker 1: is that you essentially have two morphs springing off from

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Speaker 1: the tadpole. One is caused by negative environmental constraints and

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Speaker 1: that leads to the neolithid, and the other is positive

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Speaker 1: environmental constraints, which leads to the leth All right, so

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Speaker 1: I'm assuming this is dependent on like how many humanoids

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Speaker 1: are available for them to eat brains of, or make

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Speaker 1: slaves into, or or or whatnot, how big the cave

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Speaker 1: system is that they're living within. Yeah, it has to

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Speaker 1: do with population density. In our real world examples that

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Speaker 1: will get too, so you can think of it in

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Speaker 1: those terms like is the is the colony successful enough

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Speaker 1: to send off anything to found a new colony, or

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Speaker 1: is it even successful enough for the tadpoles to continue

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Speaker 1: to thrive or should they just all e each other

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Speaker 1: out of you know, purely economic cannibalism, which is the

397
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Speaker 1: thing that does happen in multiple species. Yeah, right, right,

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Speaker 1: in real species, but also in this fictional when we're

399
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Speaker 1: talking about right, just in our real world, cannibalism is

400
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Speaker 1: always the most economic path to avoid wasting the energy

401
00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:40,520
Speaker 1: that goes into flesh. So we've mentioned this elder brain

402
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Speaker 1: multiple times, and basically I just said it's a giant brain.

403
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Speaker 1: But let's let's get a little bit more defined here

404
00:22:46,840 --> 00:22:49,119
Speaker 1: on this. Yeah. I mean, essentially, it's just a giant

405
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Speaker 1: brain in a Brian pool that is in charge of

406
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Speaker 1: the mind flare colonies. See in the in the Um

407
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Speaker 1: Drifts books. It's in cerebral fluid. And I always wondered

408
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Speaker 1: where did they get all that cerebral fluid from, Like

409
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Speaker 1: maybe they eat the brains and then they like keep

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Speaker 1: they drain the cerebral fluid out to put in their

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Speaker 1: little elder brain pool. But they've got now they just

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Speaker 1: have Amazon weekly deliveries on siling Okay, yeah, well the

413
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Speaker 1: two day shipping on projects. Yeah, you gotta do it,

414
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Speaker 1: even to the under dark exactly. Yeah. So, according to Volos,

415
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Speaker 1: what's going on here with the elder brain is, so

416
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Speaker 1: is this to survive and to make the necessary meta

417
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Speaker 1: calculations in order, you know, to to to actually survive

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Speaker 1: and to eventually reclaim their empire. Uh, they've either evolved

419
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Speaker 1: or developed the elder brains and these are giant immobile

420
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Speaker 1: thought thought organs that flowed in tanks of brine serving

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Speaker 1: as the mind flares colonies, library of knowledge, a history

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Speaker 1: of past lives, and a nexus of meta cognition for

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Speaker 1: the individuals in the colony, and each individual that is

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Speaker 1: going to employ non aliftid thralls as well. Now, this

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Speaker 1: reminds me of in the Marvel universe. They have a

426
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:02,520
Speaker 1: similar thing, the cre alien species, which I haven't seen

427
00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:04,280
Speaker 1: a lot of the TV show Agents of Shield, but

428
00:24:04,320 --> 00:24:06,959
Speaker 1: I think they show up in there. They're ruled by

429
00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:08,960
Speaker 1: a thing that's very similar to this, that's called the

430
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:11,200
Speaker 1: Supreme Intelligence. It's kind of the same thing. It's just

431
00:24:11,240 --> 00:24:16,000
Speaker 1: like a big blob and like a giant canister of

432
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:19,080
Speaker 1: cerebral fluid, and it's got some brain tentacles and eyes

433
00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:21,320
Speaker 1: in the mouth. These don't have eyes in the mouth.

434
00:24:21,320 --> 00:24:24,000
Speaker 1: They're just just big brains and they do all sorts

435
00:24:24,040 --> 00:24:29,119
Speaker 1: of of you know, psionically powerful tactics against anybody that

436
00:24:29,160 --> 00:24:31,640
Speaker 1: threatens them. But we'll come back to the Elder Brains

437
00:24:31,640 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 1: in a bit, because there are actual parallels to discuss

438
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:38,959
Speaker 1: with humans. All right, So that is the crash course

439
00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:43,160
Speaker 1: in the fictional elithics. Now from here on in the episode,

440
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:47,119
Speaker 1: we're gonna largely focus on what the natural world, what

441
00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:50,720
Speaker 1: real life biology can tell us about what's going on

442
00:24:50,760 --> 00:24:53,280
Speaker 1: with the elithids and how we can use the elithid

443
00:24:53,320 --> 00:24:56,359
Speaker 1: examples the way to explore these examples. Yea. So the

444
00:24:56,359 --> 00:24:59,200
Speaker 1: way that I approached this was sort of like, let's

445
00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:03,400
Speaker 1: Frankenstein and from the real world a mind flare out

446
00:25:03,440 --> 00:25:05,680
Speaker 1: of what we know of how they're described, right, So

447
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:10,199
Speaker 1: the their biology, anatomy, all that stuff like what's in

448
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:13,000
Speaker 1: the real world that we can bring to our understanding

449
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:14,800
Speaker 1: of this. And the first place that I went to

450
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:18,520
Speaker 1: was their mouths because they are described as even though

451
00:25:18,560 --> 00:25:22,119
Speaker 1: they've got these tentacles, they're described as their specific mouths

452
00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 1: as being like lamp re mouths. Lampreys, if you're unfamiliar,

453
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:29,520
Speaker 1: are jawless fish. Uh. They've got these thorny, suction cup

454
00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:32,720
Speaker 1: like mouths and they are parasites much like the mind

455
00:25:32,760 --> 00:25:34,399
Speaker 1: flares and a lot of the creatures we're gonna talk

456
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:37,000
Speaker 1: about today. They use their mouths to attach to an

457
00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 1: animal's body and then they cut with these teeth through

458
00:25:40,840 --> 00:25:44,320
Speaker 1: surface tissue until they reach the blood and bodily fluids

459
00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:46,639
Speaker 1: of it um. They're they they're known to live in

460
00:25:46,720 --> 00:25:49,880
Speaker 1: both coastal and fresh water. They're kind of they look

461
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,800
Speaker 1: like eels kind of, but they're not their fish. Uh.

462
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:55,879
Speaker 1: There's three types of them. There's flesh eaters, blood drinkers,

463
00:25:55,960 --> 00:25:58,879
Speaker 1: and just a type that lives for three to seven

464
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:01,760
Speaker 1: years in a larval stage and then they only live

465
00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:04,119
Speaker 1: for six months as adults. But they don't really feed.

466
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:06,520
Speaker 1: They just reproduce with other lamp reas and then they die.

467
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 1: So an equally weird example from the real world. Now,

468
00:26:10,640 --> 00:26:15,320
Speaker 1: there is an excellent article on Wired from called Absurd

469
00:26:15,359 --> 00:26:18,560
Speaker 1: Creature of the Week the lamprey that just really dove

470
00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:21,720
Speaker 1: deep into the lamprey's biology. So I turned to that

471
00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 1: for a real deep description of this mouth. What's going

472
00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:30,119
Speaker 1: on with this mouth? Now? Uh, flesh eater lampreys and

473
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:34,320
Speaker 1: blood drinker lampreys have different types of mouth. So let's

474
00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:36,320
Speaker 1: go with the flesh eater for today. Since we know

475
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:40,120
Speaker 1: that the mind flare is definitely using it to eat brains.

476
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 1: So they have a structure that's like a tongue. These

477
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 1: are lampreys, and it's called a piston. It has this

478
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 1: convex structure to it that moves both side to side

479
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:54,920
Speaker 1: and up and down, basically gouging flesh out of its

480
00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 1: victim with a strong middle tooth attached to it. And

481
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:01,879
Speaker 1: this middle tooth is shaped like a U in the

482
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:04,720
Speaker 1: flesh eater lampreys and like a W and the blood

483
00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:07,840
Speaker 1: drinker lampreys, and for different reasons, with one's better at

484
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 1: like pulling flesh into the mouth, the other is better

485
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:15,800
Speaker 1: getting blood flowing um. And there are very much like

486
00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:18,760
Speaker 1: other animals that we've talked about when we've covered vampires

487
00:27:18,760 --> 00:27:21,440
Speaker 1: on the show before. They have glands in their throat

488
00:27:21,520 --> 00:27:25,119
Speaker 1: that secrete an anticoagulant and that helps keep the blood

489
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:28,280
Speaker 1: flowing help get stuffed down their throat. Uh. In the

490
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:31,720
Speaker 1: flesh eaters, the anti coagulant glands are much smaller, but

491
00:27:31,760 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 1: they still exist. So presumably a mind flare would have

492
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:40,119
Speaker 1: some kind of anticoagulant gland as well. Now, lampreys have

493
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:44,440
Speaker 1: two rings of structures inside the mouth that helps them

494
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 1: adhere to their victims through suction. One ring is the

495
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:54,240
Speaker 1: oral fimbria, and it basically looks like little leaves that

496
00:27:54,280 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 1: are made of flaps of tissue, and these adhere closely

497
00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:00,040
Speaker 1: to the skin of the victim and they form a

498
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:03,600
Speaker 1: tight seal. Like I mean, I've never been bitten by lamprey,

499
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:06,440
Speaker 1: but I imagine like from what I've heard, their next

500
00:28:06,440 --> 00:28:08,840
Speaker 1: to impossible to get off of you. Like part of

501
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:10,480
Speaker 1: the country that I lived in for a while in

502
00:28:10,560 --> 00:28:12,960
Speaker 1: New Hampshire was right next to what was called the

503
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:15,399
Speaker 1: Lamprey River, and so obviously there are a lot of

504
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:18,680
Speaker 1: fresh water lamp freas in there. I never encountered them,

505
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:21,159
Speaker 1: but you know, my understanding is like you know, you

506
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:22,720
Speaker 1: have to basically kill it to get it off and

507
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:26,320
Speaker 1: then have it I think surgically removed. Um, so it's

508
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:29,159
Speaker 1: it's clamped on their tight There's a second ring in

509
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:32,120
Speaker 1: the mouth that is made of conical structures known as

510
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:37,080
Speaker 1: papal a, and these helped the lamprey actually sense where

511
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:42,840
Speaker 1: best to attach themselves. So the blood drinking lampreys, they're

512
00:28:43,040 --> 00:28:45,400
Speaker 1: so sensitive with this region of their mouth they can

513
00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:49,400
Speaker 1: actually use it to find underlying blood vessels a victims.

514
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:51,719
Speaker 1: So this is like think of it as like uh,

515
00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:56,120
Speaker 1: like radar almost right, Like it's a supersensitive organ built

516
00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 1: into their mouth, so they can find the best possible

517
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:03,560
Speaker 1: play to clamp down and start chewing and sucking blood

518
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: or and or flesh out of you. Now, they don't

519
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:08,880
Speaker 1: often go after humans don't be listening to this and

520
00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:11,760
Speaker 1: like freak out. Oh boy like that. You know, that's

521
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: pretty rare. I think it. It has happened obviously. But

522
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:17,760
Speaker 1: fun fact that Joe actually told me about. I was

523
00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:19,480
Speaker 1: talking to him about this episode before we came to

524
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 1: the studio and he said, well, did you know this

525
00:29:21,560 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 1: is classic Joe. He's got just like this ample amount

526
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:26,520
Speaker 1: of weird knowledge. He goes, did you know Henry the

527
00:29:26,560 --> 00:29:28,960
Speaker 1: First died from eating a pie fell Lampreys? And I

528
00:29:29,040 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: was like, what what are you talking about? Yeah? And

529
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:35,880
Speaker 1: he was right. Apparently, King Henry the First died from

530
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:38,800
Speaker 1: food poisoning when he ate what was referred to as

531
00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:44,240
Speaker 1: a surfeit of Lamprey's in a pie. His physician specifically

532
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 1: told him not to because like this is this is

533
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:50,320
Speaker 1: a bad idea, and he instead, I think he was

534
00:29:50,360 --> 00:29:52,840
Speaker 1: like sixty eight sixty nine. He was, you know, for

535
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 1: the time, quite elderly, but he was like, nope, I'm

536
00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:59,239
Speaker 1: eating this pie Fell Lampreys. I can't imagine what that

537
00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 1: tastes like. It just made me immediately nauseous when Joe

538
00:30:03,040 --> 00:30:05,720
Speaker 1: told me about it. But by all accounts, there's there's

539
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 1: multiple pieces of evidence that this guy ate a lamprey pie.

540
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: We'll have to hear from people who have a culinary

541
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:14,320
Speaker 1: experience with lampreys. Yeah, maybe they taste great. I don't know.

542
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that a creature that solely subsists on

543
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 1: just like hanging onto the body of its victim and

544
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:23,120
Speaker 1: draining it of blood has got like a lot of

545
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 1: like good fatty flesh on it for eating. But I'm

546
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:30,040
Speaker 1: also a vegetarian. Now, for the mind flares part, of course,

547
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:32,440
Speaker 1: it's it's not so much about blood or meat, it's

548
00:30:32,480 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 1: about giving that brain. So so I guess the idea

549
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 1: here would be if we looked at the lamprey, it

550
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:41,200
Speaker 1: would be to either use some sort of specialized tongue

551
00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 1: after attachment to either like cut its way through an

552
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 1: eye socket or some other natural fleshy gateway to the brain,

553
00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:53,840
Speaker 1: or just like straight through the skull. Yeah. The way

554
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:56,680
Speaker 1: I've always seen it drawn is from behind, Like the

555
00:30:57,680 --> 00:31:01,640
Speaker 1: of mind flare, tentacles wrap around your face room behind

556
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 1: the mouth attaches to the back of your skull, and

557
00:31:05,320 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 1: then presumably this piston thing is in their mouth and

558
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:15,080
Speaker 1: just bores through your skull, and subsequently they just chunk

559
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:18,760
Speaker 1: the your brain up and suck it up through their mouth. Yeah,

560
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:23,600
Speaker 1: leaving you with a head without a brain. All right, Well,

561
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 1: on that note, uh, let's take a quick break and

562
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:29,640
Speaker 1: when we come back, we will explore more horrifying wonders

563
00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:40,480
Speaker 1: related to the elithid body as well as natural world organisms. Okay,

564
00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:45,080
Speaker 1: so we're back, Robert. You had previously mentioned the possibilities

565
00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 1: of tadpoles in real life and in mind flare life

566
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:52,920
Speaker 1: being cannibals, So let's talk about this, all right, So

567
00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:56,000
Speaker 1: once more again, according to Tvolo's guided monsters and elithid

568
00:31:56,080 --> 00:32:00,320
Speaker 1: las eggs and protected pools and larval tadpole hatcheries, all right,

569
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:04,640
Speaker 1: the tadpoles hatch and then they get turned into adult

570
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 1: mind flares, now tadpoles and abandoned pools. These are pools

571
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:10,840
Speaker 1: that you know, the mind flares that looked after we're

572
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:14,600
Speaker 1: all slain by high level adventures or or or gift

573
00:32:14,720 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 1: coming in from from the outside, so there's nobody to

574
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:20,480
Speaker 1: take care of them, so that what they do is

575
00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 1: they end up eating each other until all you have

576
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 1: left is just one mutated survivor known as a neolithid,

577
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 1: and this just grows into a monstrous psychic worm. That's

578
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 1: the danger to elipids and non elithids alike. Large powerful

579
00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:39,960
Speaker 1: animal minded monster with us with some sionic ability. Okay,

580
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:43,560
Speaker 1: so there are some real world examples of this, right yeah. Yeah,

581
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 1: for the real world world parallel here would be tiger

582
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:52,400
Speaker 1: salamander cannibal morphs. So the life cycle of the tiger

583
00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:57,280
Speaker 1: salamander features an interesting developmental fork. An egg can develop

584
00:32:57,360 --> 00:33:02,719
Speaker 1: into a normal larval tadpole or we're into this cannibal morph. See. Now,

585
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:07,440
Speaker 1: under normal circumstances, tiger salamatter eggs developed into normal tadpoles

586
00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:10,720
Speaker 1: and then into normal adult tiger salamanders. But if the

587
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 1: population is too large for the available environment, so like

588
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 1: they're in a small pool or something. Uh, then consistent

589
00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:22,160
Speaker 1: tactile interactions with other tadpoles caused some of the eggs

590
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:26,640
Speaker 1: to develop into tadpoles with larger heads, bigger mouths, and

591
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:30,640
Speaker 1: more well developed teeth. And I'm definitely picturing like a

592
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: baby Zeno more. Yeah. So yeah, it's basically the scenario

593
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:39,720
Speaker 1: is not to personify uh, you know, non human non

594
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 1: intelligent um relationships here, but it's almost like there's a

595
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:47,160
Speaker 1: there's somebody in charge of all right, we've got too many.

596
00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:50,400
Speaker 1: We've got too many salamanders in this pool. Let's just

597
00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:53,240
Speaker 1: make one that's really good at eating all the other

598
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:57,680
Speaker 1: all the other salamanders. Uh and so it basically they

599
00:33:57,680 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 1: have a built in population control system laar of on

600
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:04,760
Speaker 1: larva cannibalism. The broodpools overcrowded and the resources are too scarce,

601
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:08,840
Speaker 1: then some tadpoles physically transform in order to better gobble

602
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:11,839
Speaker 1: up the others. That is absolutely terrifying. Let's back up

603
00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 1: for a second here. Let's imagine let's apply this to

604
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:18,279
Speaker 1: human beings. Imagine there's a nursery and it's you know,

605
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:20,319
Speaker 1: at the hospital, and it's got all the babies in

606
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:25,840
Speaker 1: their little beds, right, and one baby grows a little

607
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:29,440
Speaker 1: bit larger, Its head gets bigger, it gets this huge mouth,

608
00:34:29,520 --> 00:34:32,200
Speaker 1: and it grows well developed teeth, and then it proceeds

609
00:34:32,200 --> 00:34:34,440
Speaker 1: to crawl around the nursery and eat some of the

610
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:37,080
Speaker 1: other babies. That's basically what we're talking that's the basic

611
00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:42,040
Speaker 1: scenario here. Yeah, wow, and uh and and after this

612
00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:46,120
Speaker 1: culling is done, the the cannibal MorphOS salamander, it keeps

613
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:48,600
Speaker 1: its large head and bigger mouth, but then goes through

614
00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 1: its diet normalizes, and it goes through a normal life cycle.

615
00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:56,760
Speaker 1: I'm trying to imagine like the animal documentary that's narrated

616
00:34:56,760 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 1: by like Morgan Freeman or Sigourney Weaver or something, and

617
00:34:59,440 --> 00:35:04,200
Speaker 1: they're like, and here we have the tiger salamander eating

618
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 1: all of its fellow tadpole babies, and it's just like, well,

619
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly the kind of thing Attenborough would hit

620
00:35:11,040 --> 00:35:13,520
Speaker 1: us with. Attenborough would love it, that's true, And I

621
00:35:13,560 --> 00:35:15,319
Speaker 1: would have to I would have to immediately skip the

622
00:35:15,320 --> 00:35:19,280
Speaker 1: track for my son as we watched the Nature shows. Um,

623
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 1: now let's turn to the neolithid. So, yeah, the neolithid,

624
00:35:21,719 --> 00:35:23,600
Speaker 1: you can look at and say, this is essentially a

625
00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:27,319
Speaker 1: cannibal morph. This is one tadpole eating all the other

626
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 1: tadpoles and then growing into this giant thing. So if

627
00:35:30,640 --> 00:35:33,080
Speaker 1: we're to use nature as our guide here, we can

628
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:36,719
Speaker 1: only assume that the neo liftid morph once served in

629
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 1: evolutionary purpose, allowing a tadpole pool to survive in times

630
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:44,000
Speaker 1: of chaos or abandonment, absorbing the nutrients of its fellow

631
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 1: tadpoles with just pure economic ruthlessness, just like the cannibal morphs.

632
00:35:48,960 --> 00:35:52,359
Speaker 1: Of tiger salamanders. However, with the mind flares, you can

633
00:35:52,360 --> 00:35:54,920
Speaker 1: definitely say that the neo lithi is something of of

634
00:35:54,960 --> 00:35:59,239
Speaker 1: this stigial thing, right because there's there's no information any

635
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:01,960
Speaker 1: of the books. I like that that that let us

636
00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:05,200
Speaker 1: know that. Then the annal lipid continues the a lipid

637
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:08,839
Speaker 1: race in any way, shape or form um. It's not

638
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:10,719
Speaker 1: going to develop into as far as I can tell,

639
00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:13,240
Speaker 1: it's not going to develop into an adult mind flare.

640
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:17,800
Speaker 1: So this is perhaps in a you know, a fitting

641
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: accident for a species that has manipulated other species and

642
00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:25,480
Speaker 1: itself for so long. Under normal condition, larger tad bowls

643
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:27,840
Speaker 1: would would be killed and they certainly would not be

644
00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:30,839
Speaker 1: permitted to mature into annal lipid. Right yeah. I would

645
00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:34,440
Speaker 1: imagine like in the mind flare society, this isn't always

646
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:36,719
Speaker 1: a good thing, right Yeah, it kind of deviates from

647
00:36:36,760 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 1: your normal routine. It would be like it would be

648
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:43,120
Speaker 1: exactly like if humans could do this, you would you

649
00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 1: would know, never, never, always space your babies out, don't

650
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 1: let don't put them too close, or you're gonna end

651
00:36:48,640 --> 00:36:51,239
Speaker 1: up with a cannibal morph baby. And then what are

652
00:36:51,239 --> 00:36:53,480
Speaker 1: we gonna do about that? You know, well, so I

653
00:36:53,760 --> 00:36:56,640
Speaker 1: this isn't directly related to the cannibalism thing, but I

654
00:36:56,719 --> 00:37:00,600
Speaker 1: found an interesting article about tad holes that I just

655
00:37:00,640 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 1: wanted to throw in here as well to try to

656
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 1: understand the neolithids. So, according to research that was published

657
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:12,800
Speaker 1: in apparently tadpoles can see if you attach eyeballs to

658
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:17,680
Speaker 1: their tails. Now this is utterly bizarre. Why what what

659
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: I'm wondering is like, you know what the working conditions

660
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 1: are like in this laboratory that basically it was compelling

661
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 1: to scientists to study because they wanted to learn how

662
00:37:27,640 --> 00:37:31,279
Speaker 1: much a tadpole brain could interpret sensory data. So they

663
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:36,960
Speaker 1: took the African claw frog Xenopus lavists I believe that's

664
00:37:37,120 --> 00:37:41,319
Speaker 1: the Latin pronunciation. They took their tadpoles and they grafted

665
00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:45,520
Speaker 1: eyeballs onto their torsos and tails, and then they removed

666
00:37:45,560 --> 00:37:48,719
Speaker 1: their original eyes. So that's the part. To me, I'm like,

667
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:51,960
Speaker 1: what mad science is this? That they're just like plucking

668
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:54,919
Speaker 1: eyes out of these creatures and then pasting eyes onto

669
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:57,160
Speaker 1: other parts of their body. Yeah, who's the awful underdark

670
00:37:57,239 --> 00:37:59,440
Speaker 1: monster here? Yeah? Exactly, this is very This is the

671
00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:03,280
Speaker 1: kind of thing players too. Yeah. Um, then they gave

672
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:07,600
Speaker 1: a tadpole vision test, and the way that they did

673
00:38:07,640 --> 00:38:11,560
Speaker 1: this was they illuminated half the area that the tadpoles

674
00:38:11,560 --> 00:38:14,200
Speaker 1: were in with red light and half with blue light.

675
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:18,200
Speaker 1: And in the red light the tadpoles would get electrocuted.

676
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:21,680
Speaker 1: They'd get zapped with electricity. So again, more torture. Right,

677
00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:24,560
Speaker 1: we've already yanked your eyeballs out, pasted them onto your tail.

678
00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:28,160
Speaker 1: Now we're gonna zap you. But apparently some of these

679
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:31,480
Speaker 1: tadpoles would go over to the blue light area because

680
00:38:31,480 --> 00:38:34,200
Speaker 1: they knew that it was safe. So the scientists determined

681
00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:38,760
Speaker 1: some of them could actually see with their eyeball tails

682
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:43,080
Speaker 1: because they stayed in these safe blue areas. So the

683
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:47,360
Speaker 1: researchers basically argued, this is evidence that the brain in

684
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:53,880
Speaker 1: general is remarkably plastic in its configuration for different body arrangements,

685
00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 1: like especially at tadpole stage, when it's so um, you know,

686
00:38:58,200 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 1: you're at the beginning of the life cycle. It can

687
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:05,839
Speaker 1: adapt quickly enough to like somehow rewire, so it can

688
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:09,200
Speaker 1: attach to these eyeballs that are just not supposed to

689
00:39:09,280 --> 00:39:14,640
Speaker 1: be there um, And this is what allows mutations in

690
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:18,400
Speaker 1: all kinds of body plans. Not just in frogs and tadpoles,

691
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 1: to still work with the existing anatomy. So the basic

692
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 1: idea here is like, if there's some kind of a

693
00:39:24,120 --> 00:39:28,400
Speaker 1: mutation in a single organism, it can adapt quickly, or

694
00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:31,960
Speaker 1: its brain can adapt quickly because like it's designed to

695
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:35,719
Speaker 1: be so I don't know, flexible. Literally, Well, that's that's

696
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:37,680
Speaker 1: wonderful because this not only gives us a little more

697
00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: information about tadpoles and how they work, but again it

698
00:39:41,040 --> 00:39:46,120
Speaker 1: shows it supports the theory that mind flares are essentially us. Yeah,

699
00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 1: very much so. And I think right, like, can imagine there,

700
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:52,560
Speaker 1: here's your D and D campaign, right, you have you

701
00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: have to hear some adventurers. You have to sneak into

702
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:58,440
Speaker 1: a mind flare cave, take some of their tadpoles, and

703
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:01,440
Speaker 1: then pull their eyes off and attention to their tails

704
00:40:01,560 --> 00:40:05,239
Speaker 1: and perform this experiment in uh in D and D time.

705
00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 1: So we'll see what kind of odd results that would have.

706
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:12,960
Speaker 1: Now we're talking about brain eating monsters here, so so

707
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:15,200
Speaker 1: one of the most obvious areas to to to explore

708
00:40:15,239 --> 00:40:18,360
Speaker 1: here would be what animals eat brains. And it's a

709
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:21,319
Speaker 1: tricker scenario than we often think because they're playing of

710
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:25,680
Speaker 1: animals that eat brains, humans eat brains totally. Yeah, I mean, oh,

711
00:40:26,760 --> 00:40:29,239
Speaker 1: this is going to have forever scarred me. But growing up,

712
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 1: do you eversey Faces of Death? No? I mean I'm

713
00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:34,680
Speaker 1: very familiar with them by reputation they were. You're lucky

714
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 1: they didn't. But there was one of the like bootlegged

715
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:40,960
Speaker 1: VHS copies that I saw back when I was god

716
00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:43,720
Speaker 1: must have been like fourteen or fifteen years old. Uh.

717
00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:46,720
Speaker 1: They they did the thing where they put the monkey

718
00:40:46,840 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 1: in the middle of a table. The table has like

719
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:51,799
Speaker 1: the circular entry, and you hit the monkey on the head,

720
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:54,920
Speaker 1: open up as skull and people eat the brains. This

721
00:40:54,920 --> 00:40:59,239
Speaker 1: would be the very thing that was referenced in that

722
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:03,000
Speaker 1: awful scene in the second Indiana Jones movie. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

723
00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:05,000
Speaker 1: And if you wonder why I'm a vegetarian, that was

724
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 1: probably the beginnings of it right there. Yeah. God, what

725
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:11,959
Speaker 1: what an odd I want to go back and watch

726
00:41:11,960 --> 00:41:17,960
Speaker 1: that movie sometimes, but don't. There's so much weird xenophobic material. Yeah, yeah,

727
00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:21,839
Speaker 1: it's Yeah. I feel sorry if our listeners are out

728
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 1: there and you know what I'm talking about. But yeah,

729
00:41:24,239 --> 00:41:27,320
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of examples, plenty of animals, birds,

730
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 1: humans that eat brains, right, But to understand the mind

731
00:41:33,680 --> 00:41:39,640
Speaker 1: flare affect on uh, the humanoids that they're eating the

732
00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:44,719
Speaker 1: brains of, I turned to a couple of specific creatures

733
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 1: that I think will help us out here, because one

734
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:49,360
Speaker 1: of the things about the mind flare is that you know,

735
00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:53,680
Speaker 1: in a in a very fantasy way, it eats psychic energy.

736
00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:56,000
Speaker 1: And of course there are no real parallels to that

737
00:41:56,040 --> 00:42:00,279
Speaker 1: in the in the real world. Otherwise they're definitely eating

738
00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:03,360
Speaker 1: the brain and nothing else. So the way to describe

739
00:42:03,400 --> 00:42:05,920
Speaker 1: this in biology would be to say that they're I obligate,

740
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:11,080
Speaker 1: I guess neurovores, and it's difficult to find anything like

741
00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:15,640
Speaker 1: that in biology. But you have a couple of possibilities here,

742
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:20,360
Speaker 1: I do, yeah, all of them much smaller than the

743
00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:24,239
Speaker 1: mind flare. The first is and again help me with

744
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:28,319
Speaker 1: my Latin here, I think it's Neglia foul Larry. This

745
00:42:28,440 --> 00:42:33,160
Speaker 1: is referred to in English as the brain eating amba uh,

746
00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:36,759
Speaker 1: and this amiba is the primary cause of the infectious

747
00:42:36,800 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 1: disease ambic men and joe encephalitis, which is also referred

748
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:45,640
Speaker 1: to as just pam P a M. The amiba can

749
00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:49,960
Speaker 1: exist in different kinds of environments, sometimes in soil, sometimes

750
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:52,080
Speaker 1: in fresh water, and that's where it becomes trouble for

751
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:55,279
Speaker 1: us as human beings, or it can exist in the

752
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:59,000
Speaker 1: human central nervous system. Now, these infections are really rare.

753
00:42:59,040 --> 00:43:01,680
Speaker 1: Well we're about to tell you. Don't get super freaked out.

754
00:43:01,680 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 1: It's soup. It's incredibly rare. But when they happen of

755
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:08,759
Speaker 1: the time, it's fatal. Like, if you get one of

756
00:43:08,760 --> 00:43:12,040
Speaker 1: these amiba in you, you've pretty much done for this

757
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:16,319
Speaker 1: is this is rolling a one on your Yeah. The

758
00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:20,040
Speaker 1: CDC actually estimates that there were a hundred and thirty

759
00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:23,320
Speaker 1: eight cases of PAM reported in the United States between

760
00:43:23,400 --> 00:43:26,279
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two and fifteen. Okay, so that gives you

761
00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:29,360
Speaker 1: an idea of how rare it is. Of those, only

762
00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 1: three of the patients survived. Uh so, how do you

763
00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:35,959
Speaker 1: get it? You're all probably immediately going, oh, I don't

764
00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:38,439
Speaker 1: want that. How How how do I stay away from that? Well,

765
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:42,360
Speaker 1: usually it's from engaging in recreational water activities like swimming

766
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:44,719
Speaker 1: or diving, So you know, you basically have to stay

767
00:43:44,760 --> 00:43:47,600
Speaker 1: away from water fun if if you if you want

768
00:43:47,640 --> 00:43:51,280
Speaker 1: to totally avoid this thing. The amiba enters the human

769
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:54,480
Speaker 1: body through your nose and It attaches itself to the

770
00:43:54,600 --> 00:43:58,480
Speaker 1: epithel cells that line the inside of the nasal cavity.

771
00:43:58,600 --> 00:44:02,000
Speaker 1: Then it migraine it's to the nerves that are situated

772
00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:06,240
Speaker 1: in the nasal area. Eventually this reaches the central nervous

773
00:44:06,239 --> 00:44:09,960
Speaker 1: system of your spinal cord and brain, and it induces

774
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:15,000
Speaker 1: your body's immune system to activate macrophages and neutrophills to

775
00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:19,960
Speaker 1: combat infection. Doesn't feel good. And here's why. The amba

776
00:44:20,080 --> 00:44:25,000
Speaker 1: itself this is very mind flawery. It has food cups

777
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:27,640
Speaker 1: on its surface that allow it to capture its own

778
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 1: food resources, and this is everything from bacteria and fungi

779
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:35,680
Speaker 1: to human tissue if it's gotten up your nose. In addition,

780
00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:41,280
Speaker 1: it produces cell destructive molecules that destroy the membrane structure

781
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 1: of nerve cells. So the combination of these two things

782
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:49,560
Speaker 1: make it really effective at inducing severe nerve damage. It

783
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:54,480
Speaker 1: eventually will destroy your entire central nervous system. This makes

784
00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:59,239
Speaker 1: them a pretty serious public health hazard um because they

785
00:44:59,239 --> 00:45:01,799
Speaker 1: can be EASi acquired. You know, you're just swimming along,

786
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:04,520
Speaker 1: you get one up your nose and boom, and then

787
00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:08,279
Speaker 1: they're associated with this really high mortality rate. Now, the

788
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:11,760
Speaker 1: symptoms don't show up until about two to eight days

789
00:45:11,800 --> 00:45:15,319
Speaker 1: after infection, and they include the following and this is

790
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:17,640
Speaker 1: I think we can use these as probably an idea

791
00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:20,879
Speaker 1: of what symptoms would be like of uh be either

792
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: being under the thrall of mine flares or during the

793
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:28,560
Speaker 1: process of your brain being consumed. Okay, so as they're

794
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:31,600
Speaker 1: sucking that brain, just beginning to suck it out, I guess,

795
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:35,040
Speaker 1: so sudden headache, that's a that's an obvious one, right,

796
00:45:35,320 --> 00:45:42,640
Speaker 1: high fever, neck pain, nausea, vomiting, ryanitis, light sensitivity, and

797
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:47,600
Speaker 1: eventually seizure, seizures and a coma. So alright, mind flare

798
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:50,240
Speaker 1: is probably doing this much quicker than the brain eating amiva,

799
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:53,640
Speaker 1: is right, But that's a basic idea, you know, unless

800
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:56,799
Speaker 1: they have different culinary styles, you know, maybe there's some

801
00:45:56,840 --> 00:45:59,040
Speaker 1: of them. Maybe they like to eat slow. Yeah, I

802
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:01,239
Speaker 1: mean I was reading to geek out a little bit.

803
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:05,000
Speaker 1: I was reading that supposedly some mind Flare's experiment by

804
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:10,319
Speaker 1: say subjecting their they're they're victims to musical thoughts or whatever, like,

805
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:12,879
Speaker 1: they'll they'll they'll want a certain mind state before they

806
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:16,719
Speaker 1: eat it because it had just later interesting. Okay, So

807
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:18,880
Speaker 1: they go to like they go to like a special

808
00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:23,120
Speaker 1: school to like learn what specific thoughts to beam into

809
00:46:23,160 --> 00:46:24,879
Speaker 1: the brain before they eat it. Yeah, do you want

810
00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:26,920
Speaker 1: your your brain meal to be more a little like

811
00:46:26,960 --> 00:46:30,080
Speaker 1: of a veal or I wanted to be a sushi

812
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:35,160
Speaker 1: you know? Depends. Huh. Well again, I want to remind

813
00:46:35,239 --> 00:46:38,479
Speaker 1: everybody the brain eating amba is pretty rare. It's so

814
00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:43,120
Speaker 1: rare that no clinical trials for developing treatments even exist

815
00:46:43,200 --> 00:46:47,520
Speaker 1: as of Usually, if it's found, it's treated with something

816
00:46:47,560 --> 00:46:52,160
Speaker 1: called ampho terrisin B, which is an anti fungal drug,

817
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:55,000
Speaker 1: as well as a variety of other anti fungal drugs.

818
00:46:55,000 --> 00:46:56,879
Speaker 1: And I've got some examples for you. In fact, these

819
00:46:56,880 --> 00:47:00,160
Speaker 1: are the three survivors in the US um one of

820
00:47:00,480 --> 00:47:03,440
Speaker 1: the Now, there's been seven survivors in the whole world,

821
00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:06,239
Speaker 1: three in the US. One of them was a nine

822
00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:09,400
Speaker 1: year old girl in California who was infected in nineteen

823
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:13,480
Speaker 1: and she caught it by swimming in Deep Creek hot

824
00:47:13,520 --> 00:47:17,839
Speaker 1: springs in San Bernardino National Forest. She was treated with

825
00:47:17,920 --> 00:47:20,480
Speaker 1: exactly what I just described. They gave her Ampho terris

826
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 1: and be some other antifungal drugs intravenously, and she beat

827
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:29,200
Speaker 1: it and lived through the experience. Now, two other children

828
00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 1: were reported survivors of this just in two thousand thirteen,

829
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:35,200
Speaker 1: so just three years ago, and they were twelve and

830
00:47:35,280 --> 00:47:38,520
Speaker 1: eight years old. And the twelve year old first contracted

831
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 1: it at a water park that was near Little Rock, Arkansas.

832
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:43,680
Speaker 1: So don't think to yourself like, oh, this is only

833
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:46,440
Speaker 1: if I swim in like natural water, because apparently they

834
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:49,239
Speaker 1: got it at this water park as well. Uh. In

835
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:52,080
Speaker 1: addition to the anti fungal treatments that they usually give,

836
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:54,799
Speaker 1: this girl was so bad off that they had to

837
00:47:54,840 --> 00:47:59,320
Speaker 1: subject her to induced hypothermia to reduce her brain swelling.

838
00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:04,080
Speaker 1: So this is pretty nasty disease. Um. But also, you know,

839
00:48:04,320 --> 00:48:07,360
Speaker 1: let's keep it in mind when we're thinking about, boy,

840
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:10,279
Speaker 1: this mind flare, it's got its lampory mouth attached and

841
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:12,960
Speaker 1: it's piston drilling through my head. What's that going to

842
00:48:13,040 --> 00:48:16,040
Speaker 1: feel like? So this would be an example of a

843
00:48:16,080 --> 00:48:21,640
Speaker 1: creature that certainly doesn't depend on human brains at all exactly,

844
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:23,360
Speaker 1: but this is it. But it also gives us an

845
00:48:23,360 --> 00:48:28,799
Speaker 1: example of what brain eating in the real world consists of. Yep,

846
00:48:29,200 --> 00:48:32,360
Speaker 1: we have a couple other examples here too. The next

847
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:36,400
Speaker 1: one is neurosister curosis, which is a type of tape

848
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:38,799
Speaker 1: worm that usually lives in pigs. This is very stuff

849
00:48:38,840 --> 00:48:42,880
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. You must have covered the pork tapeworm. Uh.

850
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:47,239
Speaker 1: Pork tape worm produced larva that can latch onto cranium,

851
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:51,239
Speaker 1: whether it's pigs cranium or human cranium, and they show

852
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:55,000
Speaker 1: up as large white cysts. They usually disperse through a

853
00:48:55,040 --> 00:48:59,239
Speaker 1: pig's blood stream, so when you're eating undercooked pork, you

854
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:02,680
Speaker 1: could be eating their larva. Uh. So when they enter

855
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:06,240
Speaker 1: a human, usually from eating undercooked pork, they still flow

856
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:08,920
Speaker 1: through our blood stream and they get stuck inside the

857
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:12,960
Speaker 1: fluid filled cavities in our brains. These can lead to

858
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:17,400
Speaker 1: a coma, loss of motor functions, violent seizures, or blindness.

859
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:21,359
Speaker 1: And the reason why they're eating holes into your brain. Now,

860
00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:24,440
Speaker 1: my understanding of this scenario is that essentially you have

861
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:29,839
Speaker 1: a parasite that is lost in an unfamiliar host exactly. Yeah,

862
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:31,719
Speaker 1: and it's just doing what it thinks it's supposed to

863
00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:36,360
Speaker 1: do and it results in this. Yeah. Now, it's unlike

864
00:49:36,360 --> 00:49:38,799
Speaker 1: the amiba. This is more common than you might think.

865
00:49:38,840 --> 00:49:43,120
Speaker 1: It's estimated that two thousand people have them in the US.

866
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:46,680
Speaker 1: In twenty nine million in Latin America. Now, these are

867
00:49:46,680 --> 00:49:50,400
Speaker 1: just pork tape worms going about their regular business, not

868
00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:53,480
Speaker 1: not necessarily getting lost to winding up of the brain though, Yeah,

869
00:49:53,560 --> 00:49:56,080
Speaker 1: I believe that's true. Yeah, which can be right, It

870
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:59,800
Speaker 1: can subsequently lead to that. The other one that's related

871
00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:05,360
Speaker 1: to this similar effect, very different being is prion disease,

872
00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:07,600
Speaker 1: and we've we've talked about this occasionally on the show

873
00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:12,960
Speaker 1: um Prions. There are a variety of fatal neurological illnesses

874
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:17,040
Speaker 1: that are associated with them. They are abnormal proteins and

875
00:50:17,120 --> 00:50:21,080
Speaker 1: you can both inherit them or have them transmitted into

876
00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:25,640
Speaker 1: your body through infected animal tissue. They result in symptoms

877
00:50:25,680 --> 00:50:29,480
Speaker 1: of dementia or a taxio which is impaired motor control,

878
00:50:29,719 --> 00:50:31,960
Speaker 1: and they eventually lead to death and it can take

879
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:35,479
Speaker 1: anywhere from weeks two months. UM. You might have heard

880
00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:40,200
Speaker 1: of this as Kreuzfeldt Jakob disease. Uh, there's also new

881
00:50:40,280 --> 00:50:46,840
Speaker 1: variant Kreutzfeld Jakob disease, crew Gerstmann Stralser Shinker syndrome, and

882
00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:50,920
Speaker 1: fatal familial insomnia. So all of these are caused by

883
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:55,360
Speaker 1: prion proteins in the brain. Kuru in particular is the

884
00:50:55,400 --> 00:51:02,360
Speaker 1: one that is associated with traditional acts of funeral cannibalism

885
00:51:02,480 --> 00:51:05,960
Speaker 1: um in in certain parts of the world. And yeah,

886
00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:10,440
Speaker 1: exactly what it leads to disease. Yeah, so all of

887
00:51:10,520 --> 00:51:15,000
Speaker 1: us are probably most familiar with these from the animal

888
00:51:15,080 --> 00:51:18,399
Speaker 1: form that we referred to as mad cow disease. It's

889
00:51:18,480 --> 00:51:22,040
Speaker 1: caused by a similar thing with prions. Now, we've known

890
00:51:22,080 --> 00:51:24,960
Speaker 1: about this in sheep and goats for hundreds of years.

891
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:29,200
Speaker 1: It's referred to as scrappy in sheeps and goats, but

892
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:32,480
Speaker 1: we didn't know that it was actually transmittable until the

893
00:51:32,560 --> 00:51:36,840
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. So basically what happens here is these diseases

894
00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:40,719
Speaker 1: are caused by proteins that are misshapen um. That's why

895
00:51:40,719 --> 00:51:43,560
Speaker 1: we refer to them as prions. They clump together and

896
00:51:43,960 --> 00:51:49,200
Speaker 1: proliferate by inducing shape changes in our normal proteins, and

897
00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:53,240
Speaker 1: this causes sponge like lesions in the brain that disrupt

898
00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:57,319
Speaker 1: brain function. So there's your three examples. You got the prions,

899
00:51:57,719 --> 00:52:02,320
Speaker 1: the pork tape worm, and the brain eating amiva. Basically,

900
00:52:02,400 --> 00:52:05,480
Speaker 1: you know, very different kinds of creatures that can get

901
00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:10,480
Speaker 1: into your nervous system and wreck havoc. But good examples

902
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:14,040
Speaker 1: of probably what's going on with mind flare consumption. All right,

903
00:52:14,080 --> 00:52:15,719
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and we come back.

904
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:20,720
Speaker 1: We're going to compare the elethids to a certain conge

905
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:29,680
Speaker 1: eating parasite. So we talked about this earlier. But the

906
00:52:30,560 --> 00:52:35,120
Speaker 1: creation of the mind flare and it's I guess lore

907
00:52:35,600 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: throughout the last forty odd years is so amazing that

908
00:52:40,120 --> 00:52:43,799
Speaker 1: they've actually come up with a detailed process with its

909
00:52:43,800 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 1: own title called ceremorphosis, which is basically the idea of

910
00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:55,040
Speaker 1: how it reproduces parasitically, right right, Yeah, it's that example

911
00:52:55,080 --> 00:52:58,160
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier. The the little tadpole is shoved

912
00:52:58,239 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 1: up into the cranium and then it eats the host

913
00:53:01,120 --> 00:53:05,359
Speaker 1: brain and it attaches there to the brainstorm swells up,

914
00:53:05,400 --> 00:53:08,600
Speaker 1: grows into the new brain for this body, and then

915
00:53:08,600 --> 00:53:11,239
Speaker 1: transforms the body. Now here's a here's a nerdy little

916
00:53:11,239 --> 00:53:16,399
Speaker 1: bit that I remember about illids. Sometimes when they do this,

917
00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:21,400
Speaker 1: they take on like mental ticks from the host that

918
00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:25,960
Speaker 1: they grow within. Uh. And this is considered like social flaw.

919
00:53:26,520 --> 00:53:28,480
Speaker 1: It's like a it's a real like bad sign of

920
00:53:28,480 --> 00:53:32,040
Speaker 1: manners in mind flare society. So they try to hide

921
00:53:32,040 --> 00:53:35,480
Speaker 1: it from the rest of their speechies. So like let's say, like, um,

922
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:37,359
Speaker 1: all right, we'll use Joe as an example. Let's say

923
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:40,600
Speaker 1: Joe has like a tick where he picks at his fingernails,

924
00:53:41,000 --> 00:53:44,479
Speaker 1: and then they insert a mind flare tadpole into Joe.

925
00:53:44,800 --> 00:53:47,600
Speaker 1: It eats his brain, It turns Joe into a mind flare,

926
00:53:47,719 --> 00:53:50,600
Speaker 1: regrows as his brain, but it may still have that

927
00:53:50,640 --> 00:53:53,439
Speaker 1: tick where it picks at its fingernails, but it has

928
00:53:53,480 --> 00:53:56,520
Speaker 1: to hide it constantly from other mind flairs or else

929
00:53:56,600 --> 00:53:59,520
Speaker 1: they'll they'll be like, oh, there's something off with you.

930
00:53:59,520 --> 00:54:04,480
Speaker 1: You're not mind flawery enough. You didn't discard the human

931
00:54:04,560 --> 00:54:07,440
Speaker 1: shell that you So it's so you're weak because you're

932
00:54:07,480 --> 00:54:12,880
Speaker 1: in a since you're letting your your clothing control you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Alright,

933
00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:15,600
Speaker 1: So you're probably wondering, well, this sounds just monstrous and

934
00:54:15,640 --> 00:54:20,120
Speaker 1: awful and other worldly. What's what possible parallel was there? Well,

935
00:54:20,239 --> 00:54:24,799
Speaker 1: there's a wonderful one and in the form of Simothia exigua.

936
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:27,040
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is the stuff to blow your my classic.

937
00:54:27,080 --> 00:54:29,960
Speaker 1: We talked about this one on the Strain episode. Yeah,

938
00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:34,040
Speaker 1: this is the tongue eating ice apod. You might be

939
00:54:34,160 --> 00:54:36,960
Speaker 1: familiar with these from a movie that came out a

940
00:54:37,000 --> 00:54:39,600
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. It's a found footage horror movie

941
00:54:39,640 --> 00:54:43,080
Speaker 1: called The Bay, and I think the premise I watched

942
00:54:43,120 --> 00:54:44,839
Speaker 1: it a while ago, but the premise was something like,

943
00:54:44,880 --> 00:54:47,360
Speaker 1: there was some kind of pollutant in the waters around

944
00:54:47,440 --> 00:54:53,000
Speaker 1: this coastal town. It caused the the isopods to mutate, uh,

945
00:54:53,040 --> 00:54:57,040
Speaker 1: and so they started infecting human beings instead of fish. Yeah. Now, luckily,

946
00:54:57,320 --> 00:55:00,880
Speaker 1: luckily they don't actually affect humans. But there hasn't been

947
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:03,719
Speaker 1: a lot of new research published on these creatures. It's

948
00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:06,759
Speaker 1: it's they're they're quite rare. They're possibly popping up more

949
00:55:07,200 --> 00:55:10,520
Speaker 1: these days due to over fishing. But essentially what you

950
00:55:10,560 --> 00:55:13,160
Speaker 1: have here, this is the scenario as we understanding. This

951
00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:16,200
Speaker 1: little crustacean sneaks in through the gills of a fish.

952
00:55:16,320 --> 00:55:19,000
Speaker 1: It sets up shop on the host taste buds, and

953
00:55:19,040 --> 00:55:21,120
Speaker 1: then there's there's only so much room and a fish

954
00:55:21,200 --> 00:55:23,839
Speaker 1: is in a fish mouth, So you can imagine what

955
00:55:23,920 --> 00:55:26,640
Speaker 1: the the louse's first meal is. It has a tasty

956
00:55:26,680 --> 00:55:29,560
Speaker 1: helping of tongue juice, starts sucking on that tongue juice,

957
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:33,359
Speaker 1: and once the allows drains the tongue of enough blood, Uh,

958
00:55:33,440 --> 00:55:37,080
Speaker 1: it attaches itself to the atrophied stump of the tongue

959
00:55:37,080 --> 00:55:41,719
Speaker 1: and essentially becomes the new tongue for the fish. And

960
00:55:41,760 --> 00:55:43,799
Speaker 1: every time the host opens its mouth for a meal,

961
00:55:44,120 --> 00:55:47,320
Speaker 1: the allows you know, helps itself to a little food

962
00:55:47,600 --> 00:55:50,799
Speaker 1: on the way down. Yeah, you can easily, uh find

963
00:55:50,800 --> 00:55:53,239
Speaker 1: a Google image search of what these things look like.

964
00:55:53,280 --> 00:55:56,040
Speaker 1: There's plenty of pictures of people prying fish mouths opening.

965
00:55:56,080 --> 00:55:58,919
Speaker 1: You can see the little icebod inside out. Yeah, every

966
00:55:58,920 --> 00:56:00,960
Speaker 1: time I show my wife, she just goes like she

967
00:56:01,000 --> 00:56:03,759
Speaker 1: does the voice of the isopod saying like hello, like

968
00:56:04,239 --> 00:56:07,960
Speaker 1: speaking out from inside this fish mouth. Fun fact, not

969
00:56:08,160 --> 00:56:12,640
Speaker 1: these specific isopods that that it regrow as tongues, but

970
00:56:12,719 --> 00:56:15,400
Speaker 1: other isopods can grow to be over two point five

971
00:56:15,520 --> 00:56:19,160
Speaker 1: feet long. And uh, these aren't the tongue replaces this

972
00:56:19,280 --> 00:56:22,000
Speaker 1: that these are the kind that scavenge the carcasses of whales,

973
00:56:22,040 --> 00:56:24,239
Speaker 1: which we've talked about before the show as well. Yeah,

974
00:56:24,480 --> 00:56:26,759
Speaker 1: so these are really I mean, I don't I don't

975
00:56:26,760 --> 00:56:30,200
Speaker 1: know how to describe isopods verbally on the show, but

976
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:33,920
Speaker 1: they're real creepy looking critters and just imagine them crawling

977
00:56:33,920 --> 00:56:37,279
Speaker 1: along the corpse of whale, just slowly chewing their way

978
00:56:37,280 --> 00:56:41,120
Speaker 1: through it. Yeah, to drag in another fictional comparison, they

979
00:56:41,120 --> 00:56:42,960
Speaker 1: remind me a lot of the Gartham from the Dark

980
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:46,280
Speaker 1: Crystal of the beetle creatures. Yeah, Yeah, that's good. Yeah,

981
00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:50,920
Speaker 1: that's a good example. So with Samothia exigua, you have

982
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:53,640
Speaker 1: a creature here that that mainly you know, sucks on

983
00:56:53,880 --> 00:56:56,960
Speaker 1: tongue juice, attaches itself to the stump, while the elithid

984
00:56:56,960 --> 00:57:00,560
Speaker 1: tadpole goes far beyond that. The the elithid tadpole is

985
00:57:00,640 --> 00:57:04,080
Speaker 1: replacing the central organ of the nervous system. Uh. And

986
00:57:04,120 --> 00:57:06,440
Speaker 1: it's it's quite appropriate to think of this as an

987
00:57:06,440 --> 00:57:09,320
Speaker 1: act that just kills the host, but it really serves

988
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:12,560
Speaker 1: as a sort of of of parasitism. The body continues

989
00:57:12,600 --> 00:57:15,040
Speaker 1: to live, I'll be it in a different form, and

990
00:57:15,160 --> 00:57:19,920
Speaker 1: many natural world parasites inflict behavioral and physical changes on

991
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:23,320
Speaker 1: their hosts. It also gives us a rough evolutionary idea

992
00:57:23,360 --> 00:57:25,480
Speaker 1: of where the elithids came from or would have come

993
00:57:25,520 --> 00:57:28,920
Speaker 1: from in a natural system, right brain replacing parasites that

994
00:57:29,000 --> 00:57:33,120
Speaker 1: eventually transcend into something greater. Yeah, So I mean, if

995
00:57:33,160 --> 00:57:36,240
Speaker 1: you really think about it, like they have to, even

996
00:57:36,240 --> 00:57:40,120
Speaker 1: though like mind players best operate in the dark and

997
00:57:40,440 --> 00:57:44,160
Speaker 1: hide an attack. They have to come into contact with

998
00:57:44,240 --> 00:57:49,520
Speaker 1: other humanoid species because otherwise they're just gonna only exist

999
00:57:49,560 --> 00:57:51,600
Speaker 1: as tadpole form, right, they have to. They have to

1000
00:57:51,680 --> 00:57:54,160
Speaker 1: use humans for bodies, they have to use humans for food.

1001
00:57:54,880 --> 00:57:57,000
Speaker 1: It's yeah, because also, yeah, you can think of it

1002
00:57:57,040 --> 00:58:01,160
Speaker 1: this way. So the parasitic form that goes inside the

1003
00:58:01,280 --> 00:58:04,360
Speaker 1: host is physically eating the brain from the out, from

1004
00:58:04,360 --> 00:58:06,880
Speaker 1: the inside out. But then as adults they have to

1005
00:58:07,400 --> 00:58:10,600
Speaker 1: crack open skulls and get brains, you know, in a

1006
00:58:10,600 --> 00:58:15,280
Speaker 1: different way. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I wonder what happens if

1007
00:58:15,320 --> 00:58:19,680
Speaker 1: a mind flare eats a pryon infected brain. That would

1008
00:58:19,720 --> 00:58:22,640
Speaker 1: be that would be an interesting plot porn infected brains

1009
00:58:22,840 --> 00:58:24,800
Speaker 1: and how maybe they can detect them and know not

1010
00:58:24,920 --> 00:58:27,600
Speaker 1: to them. Maybe that's it. That's like the oh, it's

1011
00:58:27,640 --> 00:58:30,840
Speaker 1: like it's like an alien three when they the aliens

1012
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:34,720
Speaker 1: don't attack Sigourney Weaver because spoilers, she's got one of

1013
00:58:34,760 --> 00:58:37,320
Speaker 1: them in her. But like the mind flares will like

1014
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:40,160
Speaker 1: kill everybody except for one person, and it's because they

1015
00:58:40,160 --> 00:58:43,400
Speaker 1: can sense that they've got you know, either pryon related

1016
00:58:43,440 --> 00:58:45,800
Speaker 1: disease or like a pork tape worm or something. But

1017
00:58:45,840 --> 00:58:47,600
Speaker 1: this would be a wonderful plot for anybody out there

1018
00:58:47,600 --> 00:58:50,680
Speaker 1: who's putting together a campaign. Imagine a scenario in which

1019
00:58:50,720 --> 00:58:53,560
Speaker 1: the big threat that the mind flares are facing, or

1020
00:58:53,600 --> 00:58:58,440
Speaker 1: perhaps the the methodology that's being employed by their enemies

1021
00:58:58,920 --> 00:59:02,000
Speaker 1: is a pry on. It's being induced to the populations

1022
00:59:02,080 --> 00:59:05,000
Speaker 1: that the mind flavors depend on for food. Mad mind

1023
00:59:05,040 --> 00:59:10,959
Speaker 1: flare disease. Alright, but we've got some more biological parallels,

1024
00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:17,080
Speaker 1: specifically with locusts. Right, yes, so remember the olethard that

1025
00:59:17,120 --> 00:59:20,560
Speaker 1: we have mentioned earlier. This is the super mind flare.

1026
00:59:20,880 --> 00:59:23,720
Speaker 1: So again, the scenario here is you have tadpoles growing

1027
00:59:23,760 --> 00:59:26,640
Speaker 1: into adult mind flares. Everything is going like normal, but

1028
00:59:26,640 --> 00:59:30,040
Speaker 1: then there's an exceptional mind flare adult who starts uh

1029
00:59:30,920 --> 00:59:35,360
Speaker 1: rivaling the elder brain. You know, they're they're disagreeing on everything.

1030
00:59:35,720 --> 00:59:38,120
Speaker 1: And finally the elder brain says, all right, go do

1031
00:59:38,160 --> 00:59:40,200
Speaker 1: your own thing, take your followers, get out of here,

1032
00:59:40,960 --> 00:59:43,560
Speaker 1: start your own colony. And that's what happens, seeds a

1033
00:59:43,600 --> 00:59:46,680
Speaker 1: new colony. And again you can think of this as

1034
00:59:46,720 --> 00:59:50,360
Speaker 1: a morph a version of the species that's going to

1035
00:59:50,440 --> 00:59:54,280
Speaker 1: go out and uh and and found a new colony. Okay,

1036
00:59:55,400 --> 00:59:58,200
Speaker 1: And the best example that that I came across to

1037
00:59:58,200 --> 01:00:01,000
Speaker 1: to discuss this is that of the desert locust. So

1038
01:00:01,120 --> 01:00:05,560
Speaker 1: desert locust feature both a gregarious and a solitary morph.

1039
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:10,640
Speaker 1: A gregarious morph arises as a response to population density.

1040
01:00:11,120 --> 01:00:13,360
Speaker 1: It's more adapted flying, so it can it can get

1041
01:00:13,400 --> 01:00:15,800
Speaker 1: the heck out of that immediate area, go off and

1042
01:00:15,880 --> 01:00:20,120
Speaker 1: help found a new population of desert locusts. So I

1043
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:22,160
Speaker 1: think that's what we have. We have here with the olythics.

1044
01:00:22,200 --> 01:00:25,160
Speaker 1: You have a model that closely resembles morphs that develop

1045
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:27,960
Speaker 1: due to population density in order to spread out and

1046
01:00:28,120 --> 01:00:31,240
Speaker 1: establish new community. So in this case, it's it's the

1047
01:00:31,240 --> 01:00:33,160
Speaker 1: idea there's there's enough of them around that it means

1048
01:00:33,160 --> 01:00:37,280
Speaker 1: that the population is healthy, the resources are abundant enough,

1049
01:00:37,600 --> 01:00:42,000
Speaker 1: and the colony can actually uh you know, depart, splinter

1050
01:00:42,360 --> 01:00:46,480
Speaker 1: and form new populations of the species. Now, what's inherent

1051
01:00:46,640 --> 01:00:50,800
Speaker 1: about that, especially for these mind flares, is that they're hermaphrodites,

1052
01:00:51,000 --> 01:00:54,439
Speaker 1: so they don't need mates in order to create more

1053
01:00:54,480 --> 01:00:57,000
Speaker 1: mind flares. So I was thinking about this, I was like,

1054
01:00:57,040 --> 01:01:01,000
Speaker 1: all right, her mapphroditic reproduction is is definitely a real thing.

1055
01:01:01,040 --> 01:01:04,080
Speaker 1: But let's look to another example to try to figure

1056
01:01:04,120 --> 01:01:07,240
Speaker 1: out how that would work with mind flares, and the

1057
01:01:07,280 --> 01:01:10,400
Speaker 1: one I turned to was CE elegants, which is a

1058
01:01:10,440 --> 01:01:14,560
Speaker 1: type of nematode of roundworm or threadworm uh, And it

1059
01:01:14,600 --> 01:01:18,880
Speaker 1: lives in the soil, usually sometimes rotting vegetation, and it

1060
01:01:18,920 --> 01:01:22,000
Speaker 1: basically feeds on bacteria. And they're they're very primitive, but

1061
01:01:22,200 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 1: we human beings study them a lot, and why because

1062
01:01:25,760 --> 01:01:30,480
Speaker 1: they share essential characteristics with human biology, so you know,

1063
01:01:30,680 --> 01:01:33,760
Speaker 1: they're great for studying the effects of certain things on

1064
01:01:34,160 --> 01:01:37,400
Speaker 1: without doing it to humans or I don't know, ferrets,

1065
01:01:37,400 --> 01:01:39,919
Speaker 1: which are another sort of I guess if you're thinking

1066
01:01:39,960 --> 01:01:42,520
Speaker 1: about it in terms of evolved life forms higher up

1067
01:01:42,560 --> 01:01:47,960
Speaker 1: the chain that has human characteristics, except some of C.

1068
01:01:48,240 --> 01:01:53,360
Speaker 1: Elegans are self fertilizing hermaphrodites, just like the mind flayers

1069
01:01:53,440 --> 01:01:55,680
Speaker 1: are uh. And the way that they do this is

1070
01:01:55,720 --> 01:02:00,080
Speaker 1: they cleave embryonically. So I would assume this is something

1071
01:02:00,120 --> 01:02:04,320
Speaker 1: that happens in the mind flare. It proceeds through morpha

1072
01:02:04,320 --> 01:02:06,480
Speaker 1: genesis and then they grow into an adult. Now we've

1073
01:02:06,520 --> 01:02:10,400
Speaker 1: been told by Volo's Guide of Monsters that mind flares

1074
01:02:10,520 --> 01:02:13,320
Speaker 1: lay an egg, but this is all right, not trying

1075
01:02:13,320 --> 01:02:15,840
Speaker 1: to be gross here, but I'm trying to figure this out. Right,

1076
01:02:15,880 --> 01:02:19,400
Speaker 1: You go through ceremorphosis, changes your body, turns your head

1077
01:02:19,400 --> 01:02:24,640
Speaker 1: into an octopus. Presumably it creates some kind of orifice

1078
01:02:24,760 --> 01:02:28,080
Speaker 1: that you can lay an egg through. Yeah, I would

1079
01:02:28,080 --> 01:02:31,280
Speaker 1: guess so. Or it's utilizing an existing orifice in some way,

1080
01:02:31,280 --> 01:02:35,120
Speaker 1: shape or form. Okay, um, but I'm wondering if maybe

1081
01:02:35,120 --> 01:02:39,920
Speaker 1: what's happening is it's because it's creating its own eggs.

1082
01:02:40,000 --> 01:02:45,520
Speaker 1: It's it's cleaving embryonically inside of itself, laying that as

1083
01:02:45,520 --> 01:02:50,160
Speaker 1: an egg, and then that egg hatches, proceeds through morpha genesis,

1084
01:02:50,840 --> 01:02:54,360
Speaker 1: and then goes through the ceremorphosis procedure that we've already

1085
01:02:54,400 --> 01:03:01,240
Speaker 1: described right now. See elegants also has only male counterparts.

1086
01:03:01,560 --> 01:03:04,720
Speaker 1: So there's hermaphrodites and there's males, but there aren't females.

1087
01:03:05,080 --> 01:03:08,240
Speaker 1: It's kind of fascinating. Most of their volume when you

1088
01:03:08,280 --> 01:03:13,160
Speaker 1: look at their anatomy, is taken up by their reproductive system.

1089
01:03:13,240 --> 01:03:15,360
Speaker 1: So you'd have to imagine maybe mind flares would be

1090
01:03:15,400 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 1: the same way. Like other than the big head, everything

1091
01:03:18,160 --> 01:03:20,880
Speaker 1: from the neck down is reproductive system. Yeah, I mean,

1092
01:03:20,880 --> 01:03:22,720
Speaker 1: they probably don't need much in the way of a

1093
01:03:22,760 --> 01:03:25,760
Speaker 1: traditional digestive system because they're only getting a limited amount

1094
01:03:25,760 --> 01:03:28,919
Speaker 1: of sustenance out of that brain. Yeah. Um, and then

1095
01:03:29,120 --> 01:03:31,760
Speaker 1: and then who knows how they defecate. Maybe they just

1096
01:03:31,760 --> 01:03:34,040
Speaker 1: they're always covered in slime, so maybe they just maybe

1097
01:03:34,080 --> 01:03:37,240
Speaker 1: they just secrete it through their cores. Well. Um, the

1098
01:03:37,320 --> 01:03:40,240
Speaker 1: sea elegance of their nine dred and fifty nine cells,

1099
01:03:40,600 --> 01:03:43,920
Speaker 1: three hundred of them are neurons. This sounds about right

1100
01:03:44,000 --> 01:03:46,480
Speaker 1: for a larval mind flare, especially if it's you know,

1101
01:03:46,560 --> 01:03:52,320
Speaker 1: primarily using its thoughts, its brain, it's thinking capacity. See,

1102
01:03:52,320 --> 01:03:56,880
Speaker 1: elegants also have neural structures. These are just in nematodes

1103
01:03:56,960 --> 01:04:01,200
Speaker 1: mind you that include sense organs for taste, ill, temperature,

1104
01:04:01,440 --> 01:04:05,520
Speaker 1: and touch. They don't have eyes, but they do respond

1105
01:04:05,560 --> 01:04:08,080
Speaker 1: to light. Hopefully nobody starts sewing eyes onto these guys

1106
01:04:08,120 --> 01:04:12,439
Speaker 1: anytime soon. But they they are responsive to light as well. Uh.

1107
01:04:12,480 --> 01:04:16,160
Speaker 1: And they move by flexing and relaxing their dorsal ventral

1108
01:04:16,240 --> 01:04:19,400
Speaker 1: waves along their body to propel themselves along. And this

1109
01:04:19,440 --> 01:04:24,160
Speaker 1: was how I was imagining the mind flare. Larvae must

1110
01:04:24,520 --> 01:04:27,439
Speaker 1: have to have some kind of locomotion, right, whether it's

1111
01:04:27,480 --> 01:04:30,560
Speaker 1: moving through cerebral fluid, that it's swimming around in or

1112
01:04:30,640 --> 01:04:34,280
Speaker 1: it's crawling up into somebody's skull. So it probably does

1113
01:04:34,280 --> 01:04:37,200
Speaker 1: a similar thing right by flexing and relaxing until it

1114
01:04:37,240 --> 01:04:39,720
Speaker 1: burrows up in there and eats the brain. So I

1115
01:04:39,760 --> 01:04:43,880
Speaker 1: think see elegants as a nematode is a pretty good start.

1116
01:04:43,920 --> 01:04:46,760
Speaker 1: There's lots of hermaphroditic creatures out there that we could

1117
01:04:46,800 --> 01:04:50,400
Speaker 1: look to, but this seems plausible for how the mind

1118
01:04:50,480 --> 01:04:55,000
Speaker 1: flare I guess the reproductive part inside the actual adult

1119
01:04:55,040 --> 01:04:57,960
Speaker 1: mind flare's bodies working. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's an

1120
01:04:58,000 --> 01:05:00,720
Speaker 1: interesting spin on it. And certainly flesh is out something

1121
01:05:00,760 --> 01:05:02,920
Speaker 1: that at least in the guides I've looked at, they

1122
01:05:03,120 --> 01:05:05,720
Speaker 1: don't really put a lot of detail into. Right, Yeah,

1123
01:05:05,720 --> 01:05:09,400
Speaker 1: that's probably a little too much for your your average

1124
01:05:09,400 --> 01:05:12,520
Speaker 1: A D and D reader that's in Volos Additional Guy,

1125
01:05:12,960 --> 01:05:19,560
Speaker 1: the Midnight glos Erotic Guide, the Monsters. Um, okay, so

1126
01:05:19,640 --> 01:05:21,680
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about this on the side, but

1127
01:05:21,760 --> 01:05:25,640
Speaker 1: let's really get into it. The elder brain. So can

1128
01:05:25,640 --> 01:05:30,600
Speaker 1: you imagine like if we just had rather rather than

1129
01:05:30,680 --> 01:05:35,440
Speaker 1: like um, a boss at work instead, where your boss's

1130
01:05:35,480 --> 01:05:39,920
Speaker 1: office is, there's just a big baby pool that's filled

1131
01:05:39,960 --> 01:05:43,880
Speaker 1: with cerebral fluid and a giant brain, and that's what

1132
01:05:44,040 --> 01:05:46,760
Speaker 1: tells you what your duties are for the day. I'm

1133
01:05:46,760 --> 01:05:48,960
Speaker 1: picturing it right now. I mean I could probably get

1134
01:05:48,960 --> 01:05:52,280
Speaker 1: behind it after after a while. Yeah, yeah, you could

1135
01:05:52,320 --> 01:05:55,040
Speaker 1: trust an elder brain. Yeah, I mean that's the older brain.

1136
01:05:55,160 --> 01:05:57,400
Speaker 1: Who's who's going to question the elder brain? But you,

1137
01:05:57,920 --> 01:06:01,680
Speaker 1: I certainly wouldn't know. But uh, dritzt Ordn did. That's

1138
01:06:01,760 --> 01:06:06,840
Speaker 1: a spoiler for that book Exile. Uh speaking of which, Yeah,

1139
01:06:06,960 --> 01:06:10,080
Speaker 1: so this is actually a quote from it, and I'm

1140
01:06:10,120 --> 01:06:12,360
Speaker 1: gonna give you a little bit of an idea of

1141
01:06:12,600 --> 01:06:15,600
Speaker 1: from the prose what they're like. The inside of the

1142
01:06:15,640 --> 01:06:19,520
Speaker 1: giant stone structure was ringed by balconies and spiraling stairways,

1143
01:06:19,600 --> 01:06:22,680
Speaker 1: each level housing several of the mind flares, But it

1144
01:06:22,760 --> 01:06:26,240
Speaker 1: was the bottom chamber, unadorned and circular, that held the

1145
01:06:26,280 --> 01:06:31,320
Speaker 1: most important being of all, the central brain. Fully twenty

1146
01:06:31,400 --> 01:06:35,640
Speaker 1: feet in diameter, This boneless lump of pulsating flesh tied

1147
01:06:35,720 --> 01:06:40,480
Speaker 1: the mind flare community together in telepathic symbiosis. The central

1148
01:06:40,520 --> 01:06:43,479
Speaker 1: brain was the composite of their knowledge, the mental eye

1149
01:06:43,560 --> 01:06:47,240
Speaker 1: that guarded their outside chambers, and which had heard the

1150
01:06:47,280 --> 01:06:50,600
Speaker 1: warning cries of the Illapid from the drows city many

1151
01:06:50,640 --> 01:06:54,160
Speaker 1: miles to the east to the Illatids of the community.

1152
01:06:54,440 --> 01:06:58,120
Speaker 1: The central brain was the coordinator of their entire existence

1153
01:06:58,200 --> 01:07:02,160
Speaker 1: and nothing short of their odd Thus, only a very

1154
01:07:02,240 --> 01:07:07,320
Speaker 1: few slaves were allowed with this special tower, captives with

1155
01:07:07,480 --> 01:07:12,040
Speaker 1: sensitive and delicate fingers that could massage the illeted god

1156
01:07:12,160 --> 01:07:16,040
Speaker 1: thing and soothe it with tender brushes and warm fluids.

1157
01:07:16,840 --> 01:07:19,920
Speaker 1: So it's a little insight into what goes on with

1158
01:07:20,000 --> 01:07:22,040
Speaker 1: the elder brains. Well, you've got to keep the the

1159
01:07:22,080 --> 01:07:25,880
Speaker 1: elder brain well scrubbed. It's like constantly, like at a

1160
01:07:25,960 --> 01:07:30,160
Speaker 1: day spa. Yeah. So again, you get back into this

1161
01:07:30,240 --> 01:07:34,920
Speaker 1: idea that either they developed this overtime or they evolved

1162
01:07:35,040 --> 01:07:38,080
Speaker 1: to have the elder brain as part of their their

1163
01:07:38,560 --> 01:07:42,000
Speaker 1: biology essentially um but part of their They're just there

1164
01:07:42,520 --> 01:07:45,480
Speaker 1: their life cycle. I tend to like the idea that

1165
01:07:45,560 --> 01:07:49,640
Speaker 1: they they developed it or they turned to it after

1166
01:07:49,680 --> 01:07:52,760
Speaker 1: the fall, because the mind flays endlessly plot the restoration

1167
01:07:52,800 --> 01:07:54,600
Speaker 1: of their empire, and to do so, they have to

1168
01:07:54,600 --> 01:07:58,040
Speaker 1: maintain a perfect balance of secrecy and exploration, ever clawing

1169
01:07:58,040 --> 01:08:02,400
Speaker 1: out the shortest a fist path, much like the Spacing

1170
01:08:02,440 --> 01:08:05,840
Speaker 1: Guild and the Dune Yeah, yeah, I can't make big

1171
01:08:05,960 --> 01:08:08,400
Speaker 1: risks because because if they don't pay off, they could

1172
01:08:08,400 --> 01:08:11,920
Speaker 1: lose everything. Right, so to survive and to make the

1173
01:08:11,960 --> 01:08:15,520
Speaker 1: necessary meta calculations. Here, the elethids have this elder brain,

1174
01:08:16,240 --> 01:08:20,559
Speaker 1: uh again, giant immobile thought organ in a tank of brine.

1175
01:08:20,960 --> 01:08:23,280
Speaker 1: It's the colony's library of knowledge, a history of all

1176
01:08:23,280 --> 01:08:26,040
Speaker 1: their past lives. When they die, their their their own

1177
01:08:26,040 --> 01:08:29,240
Speaker 1: brains are returned to the older brain. It's the a

1178
01:08:29,400 --> 01:08:32,360
Speaker 1: nexus of meta cognition for the individuals in the colony,

1179
01:08:32,800 --> 01:08:36,000
Speaker 1: and likewise kind of serves the thralls as well. You

1180
01:08:36,000 --> 01:08:39,280
Speaker 1: know what that sounds like to me? What cyborg ism? Yeah,

1181
01:08:39,320 --> 01:08:42,599
Speaker 1: except for it's using organic material. It sounds very much

1182
01:08:42,680 --> 01:08:44,919
Speaker 1: like what we talked about in our episode on cyborg

1183
01:08:45,000 --> 01:08:47,479
Speaker 1: is m. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't help but think

1184
01:08:47,520 --> 01:08:51,679
Speaker 1: about human computing. The entire system resembles in many ways

1185
01:08:52,080 --> 01:08:56,200
Speaker 1: human information networking systems and the ever evolving supercomputers that

1186
01:08:56,280 --> 01:09:01,000
Speaker 1: manage it were the externalization and interconnect of it of thought.

1187
01:09:01,560 --> 01:09:05,200
Speaker 1: And as we drift ever closer to the technological singularity,

1188
01:09:05,240 --> 01:09:10,599
Speaker 1: when computer superintelligence truly eclipses that of humanity, it seems

1189
01:09:10,600 --> 01:09:13,320
Speaker 1: like we could be approaching our own age of the

1190
01:09:13,360 --> 01:09:17,040
Speaker 1: elder brain. Right, Yeah, I mean, well, think about it

1191
01:09:17,160 --> 01:09:20,200
Speaker 1: the cloud, the way everybody talks about the cloud, We're

1192
01:09:20,240 --> 01:09:24,120
Speaker 1: just like offloading information to the cloud. And I don't know,

1193
01:09:24,520 --> 01:09:26,880
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess we do have like people whose

1194
01:09:26,880 --> 01:09:29,120
Speaker 1: whole job is to maintain the cloud. I don't know

1195
01:09:29,160 --> 01:09:33,280
Speaker 1: that they're necessarily giving it a delicate finger massages, but

1196
01:09:33,400 --> 01:09:36,320
Speaker 1: you know that they work inside these data centers that

1197
01:09:36,400 --> 01:09:39,160
Speaker 1: house all this information. That's our version of the elder

1198
01:09:39,280 --> 01:09:41,240
Speaker 1: We put all of our human knowledge into it. We

1199
01:09:41,280 --> 01:09:43,720
Speaker 1: put all these details about our daily life. Even when

1200
01:09:43,760 --> 01:09:48,559
Speaker 1: we die, information about us lives on. Yeah, I mean what, yeah,

1201
01:09:48,600 --> 01:09:50,439
Speaker 1: what is the internet? What is the cloud but an

1202
01:09:50,439 --> 01:09:52,599
Speaker 1: elder brain? And you know, the more I think about it,

1203
01:09:52,840 --> 01:09:55,840
Speaker 1: I would I think I'd be okay with trusting. I'd

1204
01:09:55,880 --> 01:09:59,719
Speaker 1: be I feel safer trusting the world to an elder

1205
01:09:59,720 --> 01:10:03,679
Speaker 1: brain or or in the human variation here, a super

1206
01:10:03,720 --> 01:10:07,599
Speaker 1: advanced artificial intelligence. Yeah. So you're ready to give up

1207
01:10:07,600 --> 01:10:09,920
Speaker 1: to sky Net at this point, You're like, maybe it'll

1208
01:10:09,960 --> 01:10:12,080
Speaker 1: do a better job than we have. It's kind of

1209
01:10:12,080 --> 01:10:16,000
Speaker 1: the sky Net situation, right because the mind flares are saying, look,

1210
01:10:16,320 --> 01:10:18,559
Speaker 1: we screw this up. We're done, We're doomed, we're done.

1211
01:10:19,120 --> 01:10:21,960
Speaker 1: So let's let's let's have this elder brain that's going

1212
01:10:22,000 --> 01:10:25,800
Speaker 1: to take care of all those choices for us, and

1213
01:10:26,200 --> 01:10:30,280
Speaker 1: this way we can survive and maybe even rise again. Yeah,

1214
01:10:30,320 --> 01:10:32,519
Speaker 1: and so I'm trying to think to like parallels of

1215
01:10:32,560 --> 01:10:36,040
Speaker 1: this if you you know, like so in the stories

1216
01:10:36,040 --> 01:10:38,720
Speaker 1: of mind flares, basically they'll protect the elder brain at

1217
01:10:38,720 --> 01:10:42,400
Speaker 1: all costs. Uh. It's you know, as you mentioned earlier,

1218
01:10:42,400 --> 01:10:44,599
Speaker 1: I think it's a pretty high level monster to fight

1219
01:10:44,600 --> 01:10:47,160
Speaker 1: an elder brain or something. Right, It's like pretty like

1220
01:10:47,200 --> 01:10:49,200
Speaker 1: they'll just like psychically wipe you out if you try

1221
01:10:49,240 --> 01:10:53,000
Speaker 1: to hurt them. But but like, imagine if you just

1222
01:10:53,040 --> 01:10:55,880
Speaker 1: destroyed the Internet, you just took out the cloud. Now

1223
01:10:55,880 --> 01:10:59,519
Speaker 1: I know that's like, you know, pretty much as much

1224
01:10:59,560 --> 01:11:02,559
Speaker 1: fantasy as mind flares at this point, right, But like

1225
01:11:03,479 --> 01:11:06,960
Speaker 1: a world right now without all of that data backed

1226
01:11:07,000 --> 01:11:10,559
Speaker 1: up that we've got would be an utter chaos, And

1227
01:11:10,920 --> 01:11:12,760
Speaker 1: so what are we gonna do for now? We're going

1228
01:11:12,840 --> 01:11:16,800
Speaker 1: to protect it at all costs. Right, That's like information

1229
01:11:17,439 --> 01:11:22,360
Speaker 1: is our primary resource right now. It's kind of crazy. Yeah,

1230
01:11:22,520 --> 01:11:25,040
Speaker 1: you sound like a modern human, you also sound like

1231
01:11:25,080 --> 01:11:27,200
Speaker 1: a mind flare and saying that, which brings us back

1232
01:11:27,240 --> 01:11:29,800
Speaker 1: again to this area, this idea that the mind flares

1233
01:11:29,840 --> 01:11:33,280
Speaker 1: are essentially us. They may have tentacles, they may eat

1234
01:11:33,600 --> 01:11:36,640
Speaker 1: more brains than we do on a daily basis, but

1235
01:11:36,840 --> 01:11:40,839
Speaker 1: they're essentially humans with a with a very similar reliance

1236
01:11:40,880 --> 01:11:45,920
Speaker 1: on information and informational systems. Um. So think about that

1237
01:11:45,960 --> 01:11:47,880
Speaker 1: the next time you encounter one, you know, no one

1238
01:11:47,880 --> 01:11:50,720
Speaker 1: of your adventures. Yeah, absolutely, be a little bit more

1239
01:11:50,800 --> 01:11:54,920
Speaker 1: humane with the mind flares that you may be attacking. Yes,

1240
01:11:55,360 --> 01:11:59,679
Speaker 1: in humans before before you rule your initiative, I think twice.

1241
01:12:00,080 --> 01:12:02,000
Speaker 1: All right, So there you have it. The lited the

1242
01:12:02,000 --> 01:12:05,960
Speaker 1: mind flare again a fun Dungeons and Dragons monster and

1243
01:12:06,160 --> 01:12:09,719
Speaker 1: iconic Dungeons and Dragons monster that was referenced in season

1244
01:12:09,720 --> 01:12:12,599
Speaker 1: two of Stranger Things. Yes, suddenly, all of a sudden,

1245
01:12:12,600 --> 01:12:15,080
Speaker 1: it's way more relevant to people who aren't just D

1246
01:12:15,160 --> 01:12:18,120
Speaker 1: and D nerds like us or monster fans. Yeah. So,

1247
01:12:18,320 --> 01:12:20,840
Speaker 1: if you watch Stranger Things season two and you thought

1248
01:12:20,880 --> 01:12:23,479
Speaker 1: that this helped out, or you thought, hey, wait a minute,

1249
01:12:23,520 --> 01:12:25,599
Speaker 1: that's not like a mind flare at all, you guys

1250
01:12:25,640 --> 01:12:28,720
Speaker 1: described the real mind flare right to us. We're on

1251
01:12:28,840 --> 01:12:30,720
Speaker 1: social media all over the place. You can get us

1252
01:12:30,760 --> 01:12:34,280
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler or Instagram. That's right. You can

1253
01:12:34,280 --> 01:12:36,000
Speaker 1: head on over to the mother ship stuff to Blow

1254
01:12:36,040 --> 01:12:38,479
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com and you'll find all the episodes

1255
01:12:38,520 --> 01:12:42,080
Speaker 1: we've done before, including there's one what does mind Control

1256
01:12:42,160 --> 01:12:44,479
Speaker 1: Feel Like? That Joe and I did, and then all

1257
01:12:44,520 --> 01:12:47,120
Speaker 1: three of us jumped in on the Live Stranger Things

1258
01:12:47,160 --> 01:12:50,800
Speaker 1: episode just a couple of months ago. Yeah, exactly. So

1259
01:12:51,080 --> 01:12:52,559
Speaker 1: the other way that you can get in touch with

1260
01:12:52,640 --> 01:12:54,920
Speaker 1: us is the direct way that and I'm not talking

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Speaker 1: about telepathy, I'm talking about email. Here, let's blow the

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Speaker 1: mind at how stuff works dot com for more on

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Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com the big