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Speaker 1: Travel to another world, another time in the age of

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Speaker 1: London The Crystal. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind

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Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey you, welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with another movie

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Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. I'm so excited

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Speaker 1: about this. When Robert, what are we talking about today?

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Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about The Dark Crystal. Last month

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Speaker 1: it was Highlander two. Uh, you know, I think a

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Speaker 1: pretty objectively terrible film. But this time we're talking about

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Speaker 1: a film that that, in my personal opinion, is is

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Speaker 1: a indeed a great film, if not a perfect film.

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Speaker 1: In the words of a good friend of mine who's

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Speaker 1: it is his favorite movie of all time, he posits

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Speaker 1: it is the most magical movie ever made. And I

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Speaker 1: think I agree. There is no more magical film. There's

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Speaker 1: also no film I can think of that is a

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Speaker 1: more pure fantasy than The Dark Crystal. There are a

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Speaker 1: lot of fantasy movies, but The Dark Crystal is is

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Speaker 1: the most fully committed to a fantasy vision. It's a

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Speaker 1: movie with no human beings in it. Yeah, it is

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Speaker 1: a It's just a wonderful alien experience. But yet one

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Speaker 1: that you know is it shadows the natural world that

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Speaker 1: we we know. It's shadows human mythologies and storytelling traditions. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it really leads to just an overall eloquent work.

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Speaker 1: Um to remind anyone who hasn't seen it or did

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Speaker 1: just sort of introduce you to it, because I've spoken

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Speaker 1: to people who have not seen The Dark Crystal, uh,

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Speaker 1: and I have to tell them about it. I have

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Speaker 1: to serve as an ambassador for this film. Uh. It

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Speaker 1: came out in two directed by Jim Hinson and Frank

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Speaker 1: Oz written Kermit and Yoda yea Kermit Yoda written by

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Speaker 1: David O'Dell and Jim Hinson, and the world and creature

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Speaker 1: designs were created by the artist Brian Froud and then

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Speaker 1: and then brought to life through a Hinston's Creature Shop

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Speaker 1: and just the vast effort of just an entire industry

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Speaker 1: of people. Uh. There's a wonderful making of documentary that

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Speaker 1: is generally included on most Stevs and blue rays uh

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Speaker 1: that you'll find of of the Dark Crystal. Highly recommend

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Speaker 1: everyone watched that. In short, though, The Dark Crystal is

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Speaker 1: a story of prophecy and reunification in a divided fantasy world,

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Speaker 1: in a world that, like you said, is almost entirely

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Speaker 1: rendered via puppets. I mean you'll see rocks and maybe

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Speaker 1: a few you know, you know, see some grass, etcetera,

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Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But sometimes the grass is a puppet.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Sometimes the you know, the faun of the flora. Uh,

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Speaker 1: all of it is is realized with puppetry, at least

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Speaker 1: at some point in the film. The various creatures were

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Speaker 1: designed through a superb fusion of that imaginative design from

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Speaker 1: Brian Fraud, inventive puppeteering and puppet design from Jim Hinson's

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Speaker 1: creature shop, and also the various professional physical performers such

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Speaker 1: as dancers and still walkers. And you really can't over

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Speaker 1: emphasize the importance of these three things coming together, because

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Speaker 1: it's it's not enough. That's like, the creature looks real,

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Speaker 1: but does it move in a way that feels real?

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Speaker 1: And then does it move in a way that doesn't

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Speaker 1: feel like a human in a suit? Yeah? So it is.

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Speaker 1: It is a beautifully designed film, and it's the kind

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Speaker 1: of design that I love. You know. It's back before

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Speaker 1: everything with c g I, it's puppets, it's models, it

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Speaker 1: sets its painted backgrounds. God, I love painted backgrounds and these.

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Speaker 1: I would love to go back to that more often. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a film that that that really could have only

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Speaker 1: occurred in two It came in at the perfect time

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Speaker 1: because on one hand, like you said, I would come

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Speaker 1: out a little later, you would have had the early

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Speaker 1: c G I coming coming into play. You imagine that

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Speaker 1: like Mortal Kombat Level c G I, the Dark Crystal,

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Speaker 1: or or likewise, if it had been earlier, you might

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Speaker 1: not have had the degree of a technical know how.

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Speaker 1: Certainly the puppetry technology might not have been quite where

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Speaker 1: it needed to be. I would also say a thing

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Speaker 1: that's remarkable about The Dark Crystal is the way that

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Speaker 1: it seems to be a product of true collaborative evolution,

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Speaker 1: because it seems like it's something that was originally kind

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Speaker 1: of a rough concept and mythology dreamt up by Jim Henson,

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Speaker 1: who joined forces with Brian Froud and Brian Froud's type

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Speaker 1: of creature designs. Brian Froud illustrated like giants and fairies

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Speaker 1: and things like that, and so his designs for creatures

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Speaker 1: sort of fed back into Henson's ideas about the story

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Speaker 1: and the mythology, and then all this came together and

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Speaker 1: got more definition when the performers came on board. It

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Speaker 1: seems like a real ensemble, creative project that was formed

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Speaker 1: by gradual accretion of mutations over many generations. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: a big part of that was that, like, there was

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Speaker 1: money for this to happen, and I you know, it's

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Speaker 1: not a given that that would have been the case.

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Speaker 1: It's Muppet money, and Muppet it is Muppet money. Like

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Speaker 1: I believe part of the deal was, like, you know,

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Speaker 1: when it was financed, it was like, all right, you

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Speaker 1: can make The Dark Crystal. You gotta make some Muppet

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Speaker 1: movies as well. We need them, you know that we

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Speaker 1: need to have the definite cash cows as well as

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Speaker 1: this this sort of long gamble at trying to cash

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Speaker 1: in on the sort of you know, franchise um uh

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Speaker 1: dominance that you saw just a few years earlier with

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Speaker 1: Star Wars. Yes, and also I think it was pretty

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Speaker 1: clear through the Empire Strikes Back that people were looking

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Speaker 1: at The Dark Crystal and saying, hey, you know, Yoda

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Speaker 1: the puppet, he's very popular in the Empire strikes Back.

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Speaker 1: We can we can make some puppet money with this

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Speaker 1: Dark Crystal thing. Now, arguably it may not have reached

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Speaker 1: the degree of financial achievement that they were that everyone

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Speaker 1: was hoping for at the time, I'm but it has

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Speaker 1: certainly become a beloved film, certainly one with a very

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Speaker 1: strong occult following. Um and uh and and today generally,

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Speaker 1: if you find if you ask somebody about The Dark Crystal,

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Speaker 1: sometimes you may get some people are like, oh, I

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Speaker 1: remember seeing that as a kid. It was a little dark, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: And it does have some darker serious themes. Um. But

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Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever met anybody who who disliked

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Speaker 1: The Dark Crystal. Nor do I want to meet something

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Speaker 1: to dislike The Dark Crystal, because that's it's probably gonna

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Speaker 1: be a pretty big red flag for me that maybe

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Speaker 1: we don't have a lot in common. Yeah, if you

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Speaker 1: don't like it, don't even bother right and end to

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Speaker 1: tell us no, no, you can you can tell us.

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Speaker 1: I'd be interested to hear your reasons. Okay, but why

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Speaker 1: are we talking about The Dark Crystal today? For well,

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Speaker 1: for starters, we do like to chat about films on

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Speaker 1: the show here and there, and they often give us

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Speaker 1: a means to discuss various scientific, philosophical, or psychological concepts

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Speaker 1: that in some cases we might not otherwise cover. And

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Speaker 1: with The Dark Crystal, I think I think there's there's

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Speaker 1: a lot to be said about how it reflects aspects

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Speaker 1: of our world and what we can see of Planet

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Speaker 1: Earth and human culture in the world of Thraw Thraw.

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Speaker 1: So that's the planet they're on in The Dark Crystal

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Speaker 1: or I don't know if they say, yeah, I guess

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Speaker 1: it's a planet, it's their world. Yeah, it gets kind

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Speaker 1: of tricky when you start trying to apply that, like

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Speaker 1: the scientific lens to a world that is, uh to

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Speaker 1: a to a pretty large degree realize through mythology, you know,

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Speaker 1: like it's we will get into some astronomical concepts, but

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Speaker 1: for the most part, the world of The Dark Crystal

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Speaker 1: is a world of of myth and magic. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: also I will say, though I love The Dark Crystal

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Speaker 1: and I'm a partisan of science, I will say it

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Speaker 1: is not I don't know if it is a strongly

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Speaker 1: pro science narrative, because you notice in the film basically

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Speaker 1: science and technology seems to only exist among the bad

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Speaker 1: guys and the well, no, that's not quite true. There's Augura. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm overstepping and in the say, the Skexy have a scientist,

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Speaker 1: but the good mystics are more mystical in nature. Yes,

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Speaker 1: but then we have to consider where they came from.

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Speaker 1: And well we'll get back to that in a bit.

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Speaker 1: But but those are those are aliens, those are that

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Speaker 1: come to the world of Thraw. We should talk for

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Speaker 1: a little bit about the the native inhabitants of this world. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So first and foremost, The Dark Crystal is the story

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Speaker 1: of gelf links. Yeah, it's it's a sort of hero's

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Speaker 1: journey type narrative, basic classic adventure narrative with a with

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Speaker 1: a young Gelfling at the core of it. Yeah, to

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Speaker 1: two of them, actually we have. We start off with

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Speaker 1: the male gelfling Jin and then we meet a female

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Speaker 1: Gelfling later on named Kira, and they are the last

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Speaker 1: two are seemingly the last two members of their species.

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Speaker 1: And we we come to learn that that they were

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Speaker 1: that their people were hunted to extinction by the ske

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Speaker 1: Skexias in in ages past. And I guess we'll have

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Speaker 1: to explain the we'll explain this ex he's in a bit.

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Speaker 1: But basically, their species is all but extinct. If we're

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Speaker 1: to apply you know, scientific understanding, I think we can

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Speaker 1: safely say that they're extinct in the wild, like the

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Speaker 1: gene pool would be too shallow for them to repopulate

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Speaker 1: the world. Though in a mythological sense, like the sort

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Speaker 1: of Adam and Eve logic applies, and they could conceivably

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Speaker 1: bring everything back. But but then also more to the point,

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Speaker 1: their culture is uh is extinct, like the only thing

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Speaker 1: we see of original Gelfling culture we see in ruins,

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Speaker 1: because Gin and Kira have each been raised by a

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Speaker 1: different people. Jin has been raised by the mystics, the Uru,

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Speaker 1: and then Kira is raised by the podlings. These sort

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Speaker 1: of uh potato people. Yeah, that they live in huts

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Speaker 1: and uh and the dance about and have a good time.

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Speaker 1: They do quite literally appear to have potatoes for heads. Yes,

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Speaker 1: they and we're modeled on potatoes. Yeah, so they live

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Speaker 1: sort of underground. It makes sense. They're they're potato potato humans,

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Speaker 1: basically little potato people. Now. Biologically, one thing that is

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Speaker 1: interesting about the gelflings uh is that the males are

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Speaker 1: wingless and the females have wings. Otherwise they're sort of

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Speaker 1: basic they're they're the most human characters in the film.

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Speaker 1: They're kind of elf like, thus the word gelfling, uh,

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Speaker 1: sort of you know, elf like humanoids. But the wings

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Speaker 1: are interesting because ultimately this would be an example of

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Speaker 1: sexual dimorphism, and we see this kind of sexual dimorphism

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Speaker 1: a lot. Say in the insect world. You'll find examples

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Speaker 1: of winged females and wingless males. Uh, you know, bees, wasps, ants,

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Speaker 1: soft flies, different types of beetles, all boasting morphological gender differences,

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Speaker 1: and the reasoning generally comes down to pure sexual economics.

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Speaker 1: You know, for all intents and purposes, Females are these

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Speaker 1: species itself in most cases, in all cases, and males

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Speaker 1: exist as a biological variant necessary for sexual reproduction. They basically,

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Speaker 1: in a lot of these insects species, the male are

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Speaker 1: just kind of there to mate and then don't do

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Speaker 1: much else. I mean, for an extreme example, just consider

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Speaker 1: there's a particular type of fairy fly um called uh

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Speaker 1: dico Pomorpha egg mc tergis. And not only are they

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Speaker 1: wingless compared to the winged females, but they're also blind

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Speaker 1: and non feeding. Oh, they don't even have a working

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Speaker 1: digestive system. Yeah, now we don't see that in the

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Speaker 1: guelf links. But but any rate, it's an interesting case

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Speaker 1: where you can you can look at this fantasy example

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Speaker 1: and see how it matches up with the real world biology.

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Speaker 1: But in in these insect examples, the males exist only

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Speaker 1: to breed, and that breeding takes place close to where

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Speaker 1: they hatched, often with nest mates, so there's no need

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Speaker 1: for them to disperse um. However, if we were, you know,

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Speaker 1: apply this to the gelf wings, we might assume that

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Speaker 1: male gelf links exist primarily to breed close to home.

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Speaker 1: One of the females would have migrated to find new mates,

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Speaker 1: produced new young, find new communities of gelf links, that

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Speaker 1: sort of thing. I don't know if we get much

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Speaker 1: sense of that in the movie, because it seems like

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Speaker 1: they're both long lived at least that the jin Jin,

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Speaker 1: the boy gelf Lin ventures out. Yeah, that's right, we

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Speaker 1: do see that. It's a reversal that jin is the

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Speaker 1: one who ventures and and Kira is the one that

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Speaker 1: is still remaining close to home. So so you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe that doesn't match up all that. Well, Oh, I

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Speaker 1: didn't mean to say it doesn't match it all. I

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Speaker 1: mean I just that I would say that the gelf

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Speaker 1: wings perhaps are not insects showing insects. Well, another possibility

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Speaker 1: would be that perhaps Kira still has wings but there,

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Speaker 1: and we see her sort of glide with them, but

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Speaker 1: not really fly with them. Perhaps they have more of

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Speaker 1: a pure like mating display purpose, you know, like they're

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Speaker 1: a show of fitness, reproductive fitness. Well, in that case,

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Speaker 1: I would think you'd be more likely to see them

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Speaker 1: on the males. That's true. This would be an inversion

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Speaker 1: of the sexual dimorphism we typically see where the mail

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Speaker 1: is the one with the with the fancy peacock feathers

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Speaker 1: as opposed to the pea hen. Another bit of sexual

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Speaker 1: dimorphism with the gelflings is that the jin is a

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Speaker 1: little bit taller. So I mean that could be maybe

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Speaker 1: Gen's a little older than Kira. But also it could

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Speaker 1: just be like the sexual dimorphism of more of a

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Speaker 1: sort of a warrior cast within the species. So we

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Speaker 1: can consider that as well. But basically the big difference

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Speaker 1: is the wings. Uh and and uh. And that kind

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Speaker 1: of spoils a key moment in the film for people

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Speaker 1: who haven't seen it, uh, because it comes as a

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Speaker 1: surprise to gin as well. I mean, I would say

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Speaker 1: the experience of The Dark Crystal is not really about

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Speaker 1: learning what's going to happen. You can probably kind of

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Speaker 1: predict to the plot. It's more about the experience of

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Speaker 1: the world, the texture of it. But we are going

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Speaker 1: to continue to talk about the plot of the film today.

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Speaker 1: So if you can't stand to have this, uh, this

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Speaker 1: rather straightforward hero's journey kind of story spoiled, I guess

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Speaker 1: you should stop here and then come back after you've

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Speaker 1: seen it. Alright. Well, another native species that plays a

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Speaker 1: pretty important role in the film are the land striders.

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Speaker 1: And this is this is my this is my son's

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Speaker 1: favorite creature from the movie, and he's always drawing these things.

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Speaker 1: These are long legged, striding herbivores that are sometimes used

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Speaker 1: by gelf Links as mounts, and they're ferocious fighters when

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Speaker 1: they have to be. They're kind of sweet looking, but

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Speaker 1: they can really put up a fight. They've got like

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Speaker 1: pussycat whiskers, funny looking eyes. They're great. Like most of

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Speaker 1: the creatures in The Dark Crystal designed by fraud. Here,

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Speaker 1: it is kind of difficult to put a real firm

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Speaker 1: line on the on the hybridity that's going that's taking place.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's not just a case where oh, it's

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Speaker 1: a tiger with a rabbit's head. No, it's more like

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Speaker 1: there's a sense of a rabbit to it, but also

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Speaker 1: the sense of an insect or a moth, and also

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Speaker 1: a giraffe. And it's all swirled around in a way

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Speaker 1: that feels familiar but also just distinctly alien. But we

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Speaker 1: do see some some some key real world animals reflected

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Speaker 1: in it, most notably probably the giraffe. So the giraffe

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Speaker 1: are real world land striders. They can actually reach top

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Speaker 1: speeds of thirty seven miles per hour, but they can't

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Speaker 1: really maintain it for long. But their kicks are are

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Speaker 1: no joke, just as the kicks of the land strider

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Speaker 1: are seen to be pretty devastating against their their enemies.

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Speaker 1: Um an adult giraffe can kill a human or a

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Speaker 1: lion if threatened, and they've also been pretty effective slinging

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Speaker 1: their necks, certainly in fights against other giraffes. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: long limb gives you a lot of leverage. You can

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Speaker 1: you can really whack with that thing. There's also again

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Speaker 1: a hint of the rabbit and the land strider. Anatomy

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Speaker 1: and I've also read that fraud considered jumping spiders and

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Speaker 1: designing them, so that kind of makes sense. They've got

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Speaker 1: a kind of so they've got very long legs below,

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Speaker 1: but then they've got this hunched upper body that looks

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Speaker 1: almost kind of like the the bunched up tiny body

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Speaker 1: of Assualta said spider. Yeah, Now I was thinking about

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Speaker 1: like animals like this. When you consider really long legged

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Speaker 1: animal body forms, you can think of quite a few

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Speaker 1: reasons for animals to have long legs compared to the

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Speaker 1: rest of their body. Might be a defensive thing, you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe they want like big legs for you know, a

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Speaker 1: lot of average and kicking. Maybe they want to be

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Speaker 1: able to move faster across short distances, longer stride, longer legs.

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Speaker 1: Of course, the long legs also come with downsides to

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Speaker 1: fast movement. But another thing would be to reach farther

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Speaker 1: or taller. This fairly simple one, but one really interesting

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Speaker 1: example I came across of animals with long legged body

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Speaker 1: ratios is for a totally different reason. Uh, the I

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Speaker 1: want to look at the black winged stilt or heman

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Speaker 1: optus human optus. This is a type of bird that's

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Speaker 1: a very land strider. To my eye, it's got these long,

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Speaker 1: narrow legs with these kind of knobby joints. Uh, and

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Speaker 1: it walks around in the water. Heman optus is found

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Speaker 1: all over the world and they walk around in the

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Speaker 1: water pecking around for food. According to the British zoologist

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Speaker 1: Mark Carwardine, the black wing stilt has the longest legged

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Speaker 1: to body ratio of any bird on Earth, with an

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Speaker 1: average body length of thirty five to forty centimeters and

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Speaker 1: an average leg length of seventeen to twenty four cinameter. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The legs are usually about six or more of total

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Speaker 1: body length. I'm looking at a picture of one right now,

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Speaker 1: and these are some long legs. Yeah, it's it's a

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Speaker 1: bit ridiculous looking. But the question would be why, like

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Speaker 1: do they need to reach up in the trees, And

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Speaker 1: the answer here is interesting. Instead, they're reaching down. The

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Speaker 1: human optics bird is a waiting forager like wades around

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Speaker 1: in water or mud, pecking down below to catch its prey.

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Speaker 1: And the long legs allowed the bird to walk around

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Speaker 1: in water pecking at prey, keeping their body up above

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Speaker 1: the water and dry. And I guess if you want

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Speaker 1: to do that longer legs allow you do wag deeper.

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Speaker 1: Interesting and you know, in the Dark Crystal, the land

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Speaker 1: Strider does seem to be more of a like a

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Speaker 1: purely terrestrial animal, and it kind of there are some

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Speaker 1: swamps in there are a lot of swamps, so, you know,

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Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody's ever really drawn a fine

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Speaker 1: line on why they have long legs. I always kind

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Speaker 1: of imagine that it was more like a draft they

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Speaker 1: needed to reach like high um fruit or flowers or

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Speaker 1: something to chew on. But you can easily imagine one

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Speaker 1: trooping through the swamp as well. All right, let's take

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Speaker 1: a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk

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Speaker 1: about the wise woman of thraw Agra. Thank alright, we're back.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, everybody's gotta have a favorite character in the

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Speaker 1: Dark Crystal. It's kind of hard for your favorite character

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Speaker 1: not to be agraa Ogre is pretty great. Like she's

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Speaker 1: she's commanding, she's powerful, she's wise, she grunts a lot,

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Speaker 1: She like every They are great scenes where she like

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Speaker 1: sits down and releases this powerful groan of discomfort as

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Speaker 1: she does. So. Yeah, I have seen interviews, old interviews

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Speaker 1: where Frank Oz describes her as being you know, she's

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Speaker 1: she's so ugly, she's beautiful that she's there's this there's

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Speaker 1: this grotesque, gorgeous quality to her. She she can detach

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Speaker 1: her eye and hold it in her hand to see

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Speaker 1: around with it. Yeah, she has uh belly, she has

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Speaker 1: like sort of goat curl curled goat horns um coming

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Speaker 1: out of her head. And she has what looks like

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Speaker 1: parietal eye where a third eye would be um. You know,

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Speaker 1: kind of like you see and say lizards and in

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Speaker 1: various species. So she too, is this kind of thing

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Speaker 1: that seems like a hybrid of all these different forms,

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Speaker 1: though she's largely humanoid. Uh. We we only learned so

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Speaker 1: much about her in the actual film. But there's a

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Speaker 1: wonderful book that came out um by Brian Fraud, titled

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Speaker 1: The World of the Dark Crystal. It's magical. This is

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Speaker 1: one of the best illustrated books ever and it's so

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Speaker 1: it's um. It is presented as if it is a

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Speaker 1: like an academic translation and gloss on an ancient text

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Speaker 1: that's been discovered, and that ancient text is the Book

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Speaker 1: of Augura. So it takes as like a fact, as

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Speaker 1: if you know, the stuff that happened in the Dark

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Speaker 1: Crystal is like a mythology from a long ago existing culture,

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Speaker 1: and Augura is the author of this mythology. And then

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Speaker 1: it's been translated by a by a fictional sky all

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Speaker 1: learned I think named lue Ellen. Right with the various

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Speaker 1: academic asides of uh dismantling what's happening there, But but

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Speaker 1: we learned it's it's really a wonderful book, not only

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Speaker 1: because it's filled with Froud's production art and designs, but

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Speaker 1: it is it's just so weird too, because it could

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Speaker 1: have just been that, right, it could have just been Hey,

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Speaker 1: my name is Brian Froud, and I worked on this

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Speaker 1: movie called The Dark Crystal. Here, here's some of the pictures. No,

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Speaker 1: it's this this this utterly weird and magical and one

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Speaker 1: of a kind of book. But but in it, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we hear a lot more about Augura, where she came from.

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Speaker 1: We get more of a sense of the backstory on

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Speaker 1: the world of Thraw. But we learned that she's something

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Speaker 1: like an earth elemental, that she's like a being that

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Speaker 1: rises up out of the stones and the roots of

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Speaker 1: the world so that the world can have voice, in

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Speaker 1: that the world can witness what's happening, and uh, and

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Speaker 1: then she loses one of her eyes when the great

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Speaker 1: conjunction occurs, but we'll get more into that later on. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: one of the cool things about all gress that she's

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Speaker 1: sort of an astronomer astrologer type, right. She has in

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Speaker 1: her laboratory. She has like a big observatory on the

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Speaker 1: top of a mountain, and within it there is an

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Speaker 1: oor y, and I love a good oorory. So an

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Speaker 1: oory is basically a mechanical model of the movement of

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Speaker 1: celestial objects, usually of the planets in the Solar System,

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Speaker 1: and these have been constructed based on various astronomical models

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Speaker 1: throughout history. They became very popular in the early modern

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Speaker 1: period to represent the heliocentric model of the Solar System.

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Speaker 1: A standard or y would operate by orbiting physical objects

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Speaker 1: around based on a clockwork mechanism timed to simulate a

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Speaker 1: ratio of the actual orbital periods. And of course, because

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Speaker 1: the mechanisms that generate the movements were approximate, the known

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Speaker 1: oories are basically all to some degree inaccurate. You might

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Speaker 1: have heard though, of like classic examples of these things

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Speaker 1: that are very head of their time, like the ancient

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Speaker 1: Greek astronomical computer from the second century BC, known as

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Speaker 1: the anti Kithera mechanism. This was discovered in a shipwreck

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Speaker 1: around the turn of the twentieth century, but it was

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Speaker 1: a couple of thousand years old, and it's essentially an

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Speaker 1: analog computer that computed the future positions of celestial objects

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Speaker 1: by way of differently sized gears that would spin at

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Speaker 1: different rates and show you where the objects would be

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Speaker 1: at different points in the future. And this kind of

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Speaker 1: thing showed up again in the early modern period, where

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Speaker 1: you'd have these oories that were generally clockwork. You'd you know,

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Speaker 1: have like a somebody would work out all the details

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Speaker 1: of how to put it together, and you'd have a

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Speaker 1: clockwork solar system spinning around. Now we have highly accurate

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Speaker 1: digital or oories based on software, so I guess that's

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Speaker 1: actually a little bit less fun, even if it's more accurate.

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Speaker 1: But one interesting thing when constructing an accurate or ory

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Speaker 1: is that Augura faces a problem. We don't we have

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Speaker 1: a solar system that is by comparison, very easy to

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Speaker 1: predict the future positions of all gross solar system has

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Speaker 1: three sons and will return to this later. That's right,

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Speaker 1: it's key to the plot because when these three sons

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Speaker 1: aligne it creates the Great Conjunction, which has tremendous, uh

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Speaker 1: mystical properties in this film. You know, I've never wondered

426
00:23:22,240 --> 00:23:26,679
Speaker 1: this before, but is Pitch Black sort of a takeoff

427
00:23:26,760 --> 00:23:31,000
Speaker 1: on the Dark Crystal? Is there a great conjunction? So

428
00:23:31,040 --> 00:23:33,159
Speaker 1: long as I've seen it, it's on this hot planet

429
00:23:33,200 --> 00:23:35,679
Speaker 1: where the suns are always shining, but there's there's like

430
00:23:35,720 --> 00:23:40,600
Speaker 1: a predicted a prophet side conjunction when like all the

431
00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:43,640
Speaker 1: suns will suddenly be hidden. This almost never happens because

432
00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:46,280
Speaker 1: there are multiple sons, and then the planet will go

433
00:23:46,400 --> 00:23:48,280
Speaker 1: dark and then all the monsters can come out because

434
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:50,960
Speaker 1: they can't they can't tolerate the sunlight. That's right, that's right.

435
00:23:51,400 --> 00:23:54,200
Speaker 1: I thought you were up on your Rittick movies. I'm

436
00:23:54,200 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 1: more of a Chronicles of Riddeck guy. I've seen that

437
00:23:56,800 --> 00:23:59,080
Speaker 1: one like a couple of times. I've only seen the original.

438
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:02,159
Speaker 1: I only watched Pitch Black because you've told me to.

439
00:24:02,720 --> 00:24:05,200
Speaker 1: Did you move on to Chronicles a riddic to? I haven't. Oh,

440
00:24:05,280 --> 00:24:07,320
Speaker 1: that's the only reason to watch Chronicle. The only reason

441
00:24:07,320 --> 00:24:09,560
Speaker 1: to watch a Pitch Black is so you can watch

442
00:24:09,640 --> 00:24:12,240
Speaker 1: Chronicles of Reddit. Pitch Black was kind of trash, but

443
00:24:12,280 --> 00:24:14,880
Speaker 1: I sort of liked it. No, it's it has cool

444
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:18,040
Speaker 1: monsters in it, and uh, it has some some I

445
00:24:18,080 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 1: don't want to trash it because it does have again,

446
00:24:20,560 --> 00:24:23,560
Speaker 1: really cool monsters, and I think it it did some

447
00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 1: stuff really well. But then Chronicles are Riddic came along

448
00:24:27,640 --> 00:24:29,879
Speaker 1: and it's just even more over the top. It's like

449
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:33,520
Speaker 1: more of like a flash Gordon. Okay, well i'll see it.

450
00:24:33,560 --> 00:24:36,280
Speaker 1: I'll see it this time. Okay, alright, But back to

451
00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:39,120
Speaker 1: the Dark Crystals. So one of the things that we're

452
00:24:39,119 --> 00:24:41,639
Speaker 1: just talking about the mystical nature of the of the

453
00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:45,159
Speaker 1: Great conjunction in this world. So this is how we

454
00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:48,800
Speaker 1: end up getting the Earth Sky. Now the Earth Skx

455
00:24:48,920 --> 00:24:51,680
Speaker 1: are being that we don't encounter in the film to

456
00:24:51,800 --> 00:24:53,960
Speaker 1: the very end. But then and there's a lot more

457
00:24:53,960 --> 00:24:56,640
Speaker 1: information about what they were and where they came from.

458
00:24:56,640 --> 00:24:58,800
Speaker 1: In the world of the Dark Crystal the book, it

459
00:24:58,880 --> 00:25:02,480
Speaker 1: looked kind of a bit like creepy pagan ghosts with

460
00:25:02,560 --> 00:25:06,280
Speaker 1: like like wicker crowns, or they look kind of like

461
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:10,159
Speaker 1: when you see the images of the Nine Kings in

462
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:12,679
Speaker 1: the Lord of the Rings movies, like as ghosts in

463
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:14,919
Speaker 1: the shadow realm that you can only see when you

464
00:25:14,960 --> 00:25:17,439
Speaker 1: put the ring on there there like that. Yeah, like

465
00:25:17,480 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 1: all the things and all the other things in the film,

466
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:23,400
Speaker 1: there's this wonderful synthesis right of all these these things

467
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:26,720
Speaker 1: coming together so that it feels familiar and yet alien

468
00:25:26,760 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 1: at the same time. So it does feel like an

469
00:25:28,760 --> 00:25:31,720
Speaker 1: extra resturant, or like an angel or or some sort

470
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:35,359
Speaker 1: of pagan spirit being, but it is also unique. And

471
00:25:35,440 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 1: so we learned that these are the Earth SKX, or

472
00:25:38,560 --> 00:25:41,720
Speaker 1: more specifically the Fallen Earth SKX, who came to the

473
00:25:41,760 --> 00:25:45,280
Speaker 1: planet to Thraw to exploit the properties of the Great

474
00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:48,520
Speaker 1: Crystal there and um in the World of the Dark

475
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:51,480
Speaker 1: Crystal was written that they arrived during a past great conjunction,

476
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:55,440
Speaker 1: and the great conjunctions occur every one thousand trine, which

477
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:58,240
Speaker 1: we assume is something like a year, so about thousand

478
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:02,640
Speaker 1: trines a thousand years roughly. But when the great conjunction occurred,

479
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 1: it allowed for them to open a door through the crystal,

480
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:07,200
Speaker 1: some sort of a stargate, kind of like in two

481
00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:11,239
Speaker 1: thousand one Space Odyssey. I assume their home world had

482
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:13,639
Speaker 1: a crystal as well, but it was unsuitable for the

483
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:16,199
Speaker 1: work that they wished to pursue, and so, against the

484
00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 1: advice of their fellow or Skets, they traveled to the

485
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:21,840
Speaker 1: world of Thraw and they set up their operations there

486
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: where the crystal serves as kind of a meta crystal.

487
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:27,960
Speaker 1: And so you had eighteen ear skets and they constructed

488
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:30,879
Speaker 1: this great castle around the crystal and Thraw and they

489
00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:34,920
Speaker 1: began manipulating its power. So there are users of high

490
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:39,120
Speaker 1: technology and UH, and they're you know, seemingly um at

491
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:42,600
Speaker 1: least benign, if not benevolent species. They seem to get

492
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:46,520
Speaker 1: along well with the existing species. They form a relationship

493
00:26:46,520 --> 00:26:49,520
Speaker 1: with the gelf links, they form a relationship with Agra Uh.

494
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:53,480
Speaker 1: In fact, they teach agraa a bit about technology and

495
00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 1: the and their use of crystals. But despite being the

496
00:26:57,680 --> 00:27:01,720
Speaker 1: splendid angelic beings full of in some possibility, they also

497
00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:05,720
Speaker 1: recognize that that inside themselves there was this duality, There

498
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:08,760
Speaker 1: was this disharmony in their souls of darkness and light.

499
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:11,680
Speaker 1: And so what they decided to do, what they set

500
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 1: out to do with the crystal was to purify themselves,

501
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:18,480
Speaker 1: to expunge their darker natures. And as they tried this

502
00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:22,640
Speaker 1: during a great conjunction UH, they managed to sever themselves.

503
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:26,639
Speaker 1: They divided themselves into two beings, and then subsequently the

504
00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:30,800
Speaker 1: crystal was cracked. So that's where you are in the movie,

505
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:33,800
Speaker 1: or actually the movie is like a thousand trying or

506
00:27:33,800 --> 00:27:36,680
Speaker 1: a thousand years after this, right when you these two

507
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:39,960
Speaker 1: beings are now completely separate, and you have the the

508
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:42,720
Speaker 1: Uru also known as the mystics in the movie. Who

509
00:27:42,720 --> 00:27:46,600
Speaker 1: are these very very sweet, gentle you know, gentle dinosaur,

510
00:27:46,680 --> 00:27:50,720
Speaker 1: gentle friendly brontosaurus uh type creatures. I don't want to

511
00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 1: knock them. I mean, the mystics are great, but oh yeah,

512
00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:56,160
Speaker 1: they're wonderful. They're there's certainly a dinosaur sense too of them.

513
00:27:56,200 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 1: There's kind of a Galapagos turtle sense to them, a

514
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:02,159
Speaker 1: slow calmness. They also have a sense I think of

515
00:28:02,480 --> 00:28:05,439
Speaker 1: there's like an equine quality to their heads, so you

516
00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:09,480
Speaker 1: get this this herbivore vibe to them as well. But

517
00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:12,920
Speaker 1: they're yeah, they're very zen like. They're they're they're they're

518
00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 1: they're drawn to prophecies and spirals and uh and they're

519
00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:19,600
Speaker 1: connected with the natural world. And these are the ones

520
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 1: that raise the hero of the film, the young gelf

521
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:25,240
Speaker 1: link gen. Now, but then you've also got the villains

522
00:28:25,280 --> 00:28:28,680
Speaker 1: of the movie, the bad halves of of what there Skex,

523
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:31,679
Speaker 1: and these are the skex eas a s. Yeah, so

524
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:36,520
Speaker 1: these are vile, ruthless, greedy, also six limbed creatures. We

525
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 1: often uh, it's easy to not pick up on this,

526
00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:42,240
Speaker 1: but we see later that they do have an extra

527
00:28:42,280 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 1: pair of arms that have atrophied. But anyway, they are.

528
00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 1: They're completely awful. They squander and pervert the science of

529
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:54,120
Speaker 1: the Earth Skex for their own personal gain their technologists,

530
00:28:54,120 --> 00:28:57,000
Speaker 1: but they're also exploiters, so uh, you know, they end

531
00:28:57,080 --> 00:28:59,440
Speaker 1: up working with the Gelflings for a while, but then

532
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 1: eventually they're uh, they're they're capturing the gelflings, they're enslaving

533
00:29:03,760 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 1: the gelf wings, they enslaved the pod people. So they're

534
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:09,840
Speaker 1: just nasty to the core. They all they hate everything,

535
00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 1: they hate each other, they hate themselves and uh, I

536
00:29:13,680 --> 00:29:18,960
Speaker 1: guess in appearance, they mostly resemble humanoid birds, especially raptors,

537
00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 1: and also crocodilians. One of the things we read preparing

538
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 1: for this was in a book You Let Me Robert

539
00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:26,640
Speaker 1: called uh well not the book was called, but the

540
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:31,520
Speaker 1: essay in it was by Katriona Makara called a Natural

541
00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 1: History of the Dark Crystal the conceptual design of Brian Froud,

542
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:37,440
Speaker 1: And in this essay it's mentioned that the Skexies, in

543
00:29:37,480 --> 00:29:42,000
Speaker 1: addition to being inspired by reptilian features and predatory bird

544
00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:45,440
Speaker 1: features and classic attributes of the dragon, they may also

545
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:49,720
Speaker 1: be based in part on angler fish. Interesting but clearly

546
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:53,640
Speaker 1: the predatory bird like the vulture aspect and the crocodile

547
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:59,160
Speaker 1: aspect are there. And Hinson was reportedly inspired in dreaming

548
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:01,160
Speaker 1: up the world of Dark Crystal. When he was first

549
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:04,000
Speaker 1: thinking about the idea of the Skexies, he was inspired

550
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:06,560
Speaker 1: by an illustration he saw in the nineteen seventies. Think

551
00:30:06,560 --> 00:30:10,160
Speaker 1: it was in nineteen seventy five of crocodiles like being

552
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:14,959
Speaker 1: posh in a fancy Victorian washroom. And this illustration was

553
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:18,280
Speaker 1: by a an artist named Leonard Lubin, and it was

554
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 1: accompanying a some printings of Lewis Carroll poem. But in

555
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:25,480
Speaker 1: this illustration I found a copy of it, and it's

556
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:28,479
Speaker 1: like one crocodile is in a fancy bathtub with its

557
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:31,760
Speaker 1: tail sticking out with a rubber ducky, and another one

558
00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:37,480
Speaker 1: is like being being toweled off in a graceful way. Yeah,

559
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:40,760
Speaker 1: it's a you know, again, it probably doesn't. It's not,

560
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:43,880
Speaker 1: you know, super helpful exercise to apply too much of

561
00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:46,920
Speaker 1: the natural world to the skexies, especially since they're not

562
00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:50,959
Speaker 1: even presented as a naturally evolved species. They're born out

563
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:54,880
Speaker 1: of a mystical division. And yet if you try to

564
00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:57,000
Speaker 1: if when you try to imagine, like, what would a

565
00:30:57,040 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 1: culture be like if it was if it consist of

566
00:31:01,080 --> 00:31:05,800
Speaker 1: more solitary creatures, they're more you know, and they are

567
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:08,760
Speaker 1: they are more competitive and less cooperative. What might that

568
00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:11,520
Speaker 1: be like? Uh? You know, it's interesting to wonder to

569
00:31:11,560 --> 00:31:14,920
Speaker 1: what extent the skexies are a realization of that. Yeah,

570
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 1: I mean you can see some kind of social ish

571
00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:22,600
Speaker 1: looking behaviors in in some birds and reptiles. But if

572
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 1: I was thinking about a more selfish kind of creature,

573
00:31:25,320 --> 00:31:28,040
Speaker 1: a less social kind of creature, yeah, I wouldn't think

574
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:32,760
Speaker 1: like mammalian features. But again with with the mystics and

575
00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:36,920
Speaker 1: the skexies, they both represent one side of the same being,

576
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:40,520
Speaker 1: and ultimately they're supposed to represent, uh, you know, two

577
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 1: sides of human nature. The idea of being that the

578
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 1: earth skex represent balance. Uh the uru are you know,

579
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 1: it's it's the noble human, the human that is, you know,

580
00:31:50,320 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: at one with the natural environment and peaceful, whereas the

581
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:58,880
Speaker 1: Skexies are awful and exploitive and petty. The disgustingness of

582
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:02,640
Speaker 1: the Skexies absolutely comes through in the design of the puppets,

583
00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:05,400
Speaker 1: and it actually even came through for the people working

584
00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:09,000
Speaker 1: with them, because Makara points out in in her essay

585
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:12,760
Speaker 1: that the costumes and the puppets of the Skexies became

586
00:32:12,840 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 1: more and more genuinely disgusting as work for the film

587
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:20,040
Speaker 1: went on, like as production went over time. She quotes

588
00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:23,280
Speaker 1: one person who worked on the production who said that

589
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:26,720
Speaker 1: the Uh the Skexies puppets came more and more to

590
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 1: consist of quote, rotten rubber permeated with cold k y

591
00:32:31,360 --> 00:32:36,520
Speaker 1: jelly and putrefying noodles. Yeah, it's it's something that's easy

592
00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:39,760
Speaker 1: to to to uh to to overlook in when you

593
00:32:39,800 --> 00:32:42,840
Speaker 1: consider the costumes like this and puppets like this, is

594
00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:45,680
Speaker 1: that they were never they weren't built to last. And

595
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 1: that's why when you go somewhere like Atlanta's own Center

596
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 1: for Puppetry Arts and you see the the examples of

597
00:32:53,360 --> 00:32:58,719
Speaker 1: Skexies and UH and Ruru and various other creatures from

598
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:01,640
Speaker 1: the film that are in it there and and on display.

599
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:06,320
Speaker 1: Like everything had to be restored before it was suitable

600
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 1: for a public display. Again. And by the way, uh,

601
00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: if you haven't been to the Center for Pupetory Arts

602
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, I have the recommended to anyone visiting our city.

603
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:17,880
Speaker 1: Here you can find out more about it at puppet

604
00:33:17,960 --> 00:33:22,840
Speaker 1: dot org. And through September one, two thousand and nineteen. Uh,

605
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal World of Myth and Magic

606
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:30,480
Speaker 1: is going on. It is a fabulous presentation of the

607
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:33,920
Speaker 1: various props and designs that you see in the film. Yeah,

608
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 1: they have like some full puppets from the movie. They've

609
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:38,080
Speaker 1: got an Augura. When I was there, at least they

610
00:33:38,080 --> 00:33:40,880
Speaker 1: had Augura. They had one of the Skexias, they had

611
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:43,000
Speaker 1: one of the Mystics, they have a bunch of other

612
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:46,320
Speaker 1: stuff land Strider puppets, and it was wonderful. Yeah, And

613
00:33:46,400 --> 00:33:49,080
Speaker 1: even if you don't make it by September one, they

614
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: have a lot of Dark Crystal stuff in the permanent

615
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 1: Hinson exhibit as well. Oh. In fact, one of the

616
00:33:54,280 --> 00:33:57,600
Speaker 1: things they have I believe in the permanent exhibit is Robert,

617
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:01,720
Speaker 1: do you hear a scuttling What is that scuttling sound?

618
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:06,960
Speaker 1: It's the garth Yes, so the Gartham are podcasters killed

619
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:11,120
Speaker 1: by Gartham. I hadn't thought about that. We're kind of

620
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 1: we're kind of pod people, aren't we? Um in some sense? So, yes,

621
00:34:15,160 --> 00:34:20,719
Speaker 1: the Gartham are those fabulous scuttling, giant crab like monstrosities.

622
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: And uh. And they're essentially an engineered weapons species of

623
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:30,080
Speaker 1: the Skexies. The Skexies are, you know, decrepit, cowardly, nasty creatures.

624
00:34:30,239 --> 00:34:31,920
Speaker 1: They don't fight their own battles. They're not going to

625
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 1: fight their own battles there. They need to make something

626
00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:36,440
Speaker 1: to go out there and wage their wars against the

627
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:39,920
Speaker 1: gelflings and the pod people and too and and so forth,

628
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:43,680
Speaker 1: and so they make these things. Um. Yeah, they're they're

629
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 1: massive guardians and soldiers and there they look like a

630
00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:51,840
Speaker 1: mixture of beetle and crab anatomies, though closer inspection reveals

631
00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 1: than to be kind of like bipeds with supporting tentacle

632
00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:57,560
Speaker 1: like appendages. Uh. And part of that is kind of

633
00:34:57,600 --> 00:34:59,720
Speaker 1: like the illusion of the puppetry. But the thing about

634
00:34:59,719 --> 00:35:02,279
Speaker 1: the between the dark Crystal is like, even when you

635
00:35:02,320 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 1: see how something works, like the facade is still so perfect. Um.

636
00:35:07,680 --> 00:35:11,080
Speaker 1: One arm at the garthen terminates in a vicious crab pincher,

637
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:14,000
Speaker 1: and the other has like a fingered claw for snatching

638
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:17,400
Speaker 1: up prisoners. Yeah. So, in his introduction to the world

639
00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 1: of The Dark Crystal, I thought this was so funny

640
00:35:19,640 --> 00:35:23,040
Speaker 1: and so interesting. Brian Froud was talking about the process

641
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:25,600
Speaker 1: of coming up with the concepts and the designs for

642
00:35:25,640 --> 00:35:29,560
Speaker 1: the movie, and Froud mentions that he often drew inspiration

643
00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:33,960
Speaker 1: before the movie from walking in nature. When he designed creatures.

644
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:35,759
Speaker 1: You know, he would do illustrations and he'd go out

645
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:37,920
Speaker 1: and walk in nature and look at trees and rocks

646
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:41,360
Speaker 1: and animals. But he was working on The Dark Crystal

647
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 1: in New York City and didn't have much access to

648
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:47,880
Speaker 1: unspoiled countryside to go look at trees and rocks and animals.

649
00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:49,680
Speaker 1: So he said, you know, maybe you could sort of

650
00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:51,560
Speaker 1: go to Central Park, but it wasn't quite the same.

651
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:55,120
Speaker 1: So instead, he said he would end up taking inspiration

652
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:58,040
Speaker 1: from wherever he could find it, including by the natural

653
00:35:58,080 --> 00:36:01,520
Speaker 1: forms he found in his food. So he said he

654
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:04,279
Speaker 1: he and others went out to a dinner where they

655
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 1: ate lobster, and then Froud was inspired to take all

656
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:11,520
Speaker 1: the lobster shells home with them and this became partial

657
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:15,239
Speaker 1: inspiration for the shells and the exoskeleton of the Gartham

658
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 1: and also for the carapace of the Skexies. Oh yeah,

659
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:21,759
Speaker 1: they have these elaborate costumes that make them look grander

660
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 1: than they actually are. Yeah, but you can kind of

661
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:26,000
Speaker 1: see it there, like in the in the carapace of

662
00:36:26,040 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 1: the Skexies, you can kind of see like a a

663
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:31,960
Speaker 1: plated overlapping, plated lobster tail kind of thing, except it's

664
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:35,120
Speaker 1: really craggy and nasty, and you can definitely see the

665
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:40,240
Speaker 1: lobster shells as they came through in the Gartham. Yeah. Um,

666
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:42,000
Speaker 1: so you know, a couple of things to sort of

667
00:36:42,600 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 1: take apart with the Gartham here. I believe it's mentioned

668
00:36:46,080 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: in the World of the Dark Crystal that they're they're

669
00:36:48,040 --> 00:36:50,800
Speaker 1: sort of a symbol out of the memory of ancient

670
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:53,719
Speaker 1: sea creatures, which is something we'll get get back to

671
00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:58,920
Speaker 1: in a minute. And then um mccara, who again wrote

672
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:01,920
Speaker 1: a natural Tree of the Dark Crystal conceptual design of

673
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:05,880
Speaker 1: Brian Froud. Uh. She speculated the Gartha may actually exist

674
00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:09,440
Speaker 1: as the thought projection of the Skexies because like, yeah,

675
00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:12,800
Speaker 1: because when they're when when the Skexies power is broken,

676
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:16,080
Speaker 1: the Gartham kind of vanished, or at least they their

677
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:21,560
Speaker 1: internal um biology vanishes in the shell plating just falls

678
00:37:21,640 --> 00:37:26,480
Speaker 1: like empty armor. But you know, I was looking looking

679
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:30,400
Speaker 1: reading a little bit about just like shells and claws

680
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:34,120
Speaker 1: and weaponry, and I came back to an excellent book

681
00:37:34,120 --> 00:37:38,280
Speaker 1: by Douglas j Imlind titled Animal Weapons, The Evolution of Battle.

682
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:42,319
Speaker 1: And one of the key things in this is that he's,

683
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:46,560
Speaker 1: you know, he's comparing the evolution of various biological weapons

684
00:37:46,600 --> 00:37:51,399
Speaker 1: to actual you know, man made weapons and and and

685
00:37:51,640 --> 00:37:55,360
Speaker 1: tools of war and humans create. And he points out that,

686
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:58,400
Speaker 1: you know, muscles are expensive to maintain even when they're resting,

687
00:37:58,400 --> 00:38:02,400
Speaker 1: and males with big claws require the most muscle. And

688
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:04,880
Speaker 1: of course he's just talking about natural world fiddler crabs here.

689
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 1: But when we look at something like the Garthen, like

690
00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 1: that's an enormous creature. You know, it would have to

691
00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:12,960
Speaker 1: if we're depending on a on an actual diet, and

692
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:16,480
Speaker 1: it wasn't just sustained through like vile Skexies thoughts or

693
00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:19,560
Speaker 1: some sort of mystical crystal powers. It would have to

694
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: eat a lot. It would be expensive to maintain. Now,

695
00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:25,279
Speaker 1: you do see the Skexies feasting in the movie quite disgustingly.

696
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 1: There's a great feasting scene where they've got stuff hanging

697
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:30,320
Speaker 1: out of their mouths. Yeah. I don't recall ever seeing

698
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:33,840
Speaker 1: the Garthen eat. Yeah, but and the and and maybe

699
00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:35,879
Speaker 1: they don't. You know, it's it's hard to be hard

700
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:38,400
Speaker 1: to be sure. But one thing you can think of,

701
00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:41,279
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, if they are expensive to maintain, uh,

702
00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: just you know, through crystal power or feeding them a

703
00:38:44,040 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 1: bunch of meat, garbage or whatever the Skexies are doing,

704
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: you could easily compare that to the sort of weapons

705
00:38:50,719 --> 00:38:54,120
Speaker 1: programs that humans have. So and this is you know,

706
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:57,080
Speaker 1: one of the key things that that he gets the

707
00:38:57,120 --> 00:39:00,480
Speaker 1: author gets into an animal weapons that Emelyand discusses. For instance,

708
00:39:00,520 --> 00:39:03,319
Speaker 1: you could compare the Gartham to UH the U. S

709
00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:06,600
Speaker 1: Air Force B two stealth bomber, built at a reported

710
00:39:06,640 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: cost of two point one billion per plane and requiring

711
00:39:09,760 --> 00:39:12,759
Speaker 1: fifty to sixty hours of ground maintenance for every one

712
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:15,560
Speaker 1: hour in the air and uh, and that's not even

713
00:39:15,640 --> 00:39:21,360
Speaker 1: taking into account upgrade efforts. So contractors Northrop Grumman current

714
00:39:21,480 --> 00:39:24,840
Speaker 1: UH at least previously held a nine point nine billion

715
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:28,640
Speaker 1: dollar contract to complete maintenance and modernization of the twenty

716
00:39:28,640 --> 00:39:31,680
Speaker 1: plane feet fleet. That was from a few years back.

717
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:33,120
Speaker 1: But it just gives you an idea of just like

718
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:36,600
Speaker 1: the colossal cost of not only creating some sort of

719
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:39,520
Speaker 1: a weapon but also maintaining it, and that would be

720
00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:42,360
Speaker 1: part of having an army of Gartham as well. But

721
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:46,040
Speaker 1: clearly it's a price that the Skexis were willing to pay,

722
00:39:46,120 --> 00:39:48,239
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, it almost works for them. They're

723
00:39:48,239 --> 00:39:50,720
Speaker 1: able to use the Gartham to uh, you know, wage

724
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:54,239
Speaker 1: this war of extinction against the guelf Links and rid

725
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:57,400
Speaker 1: the world of at all but at least two of them.

726
00:39:57,520 --> 00:40:00,399
Speaker 1: Now is the reason they do that, because is there

727
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:03,279
Speaker 1: is a prophecy that the Skexies will be undone by

728
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:06,959
Speaker 1: Guelfling hand or else by none. Exactly. That's their whole reason.

729
00:40:07,560 --> 00:40:10,600
Speaker 1: This is a great you know, mythic storytelling trope. Right,

730
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:13,279
Speaker 1: there's this prophecy, and therefore they're going to act on

731
00:40:13,280 --> 00:40:16,640
Speaker 1: this prophecy and try and rid the world of those

732
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:20,040
Speaker 1: that will undo them. But then perhaps it's a self

733
00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:22,920
Speaker 1: fulfilling prophecy like they have, they have set things in

734
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:25,799
Speaker 1: motion for their own downfall. Well, it's also a great

735
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:30,880
Speaker 1: example of the destructive power of an unquestioned religious dogma. Exactly.

736
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:33,520
Speaker 1: All right, let's take one more break, and when we

737
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:36,080
Speaker 1: come back, we're gonna talk a little bit more about

738
00:40:36,120 --> 00:40:40,239
Speaker 1: Gartham and crystal organisms. Before we were, we return to

739
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:46,200
Speaker 1: the problem of a world with three sons. Thank alright,

740
00:40:46,239 --> 00:40:49,120
Speaker 1: we're back. So the Dark Crystal, as we mentioned a

741
00:40:49,160 --> 00:40:51,719
Speaker 1: minute ago, has a couple of organisms that seem to

742
00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:56,239
Speaker 1: have at least partially crystalloid biology, at least they have

743
00:40:56,320 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 1: crystals for eyes, or use crystals to see. It's mentioned

744
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:02,640
Speaker 1: in a couple of sources that the Gartham have crystals

745
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:04,520
Speaker 1: for eyes, and you can see this in some up

746
00:41:04,560 --> 00:41:07,160
Speaker 1: close representations of them. It seems that their eyes have

747
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 1: sort of uh uh, you know, polygon type surfaces on

748
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:14,200
Speaker 1: them that they might be actual, I don't know, pieces

749
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:16,879
Speaker 1: of dark crystal or something like that in there. Oh yeah,

750
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:19,239
Speaker 1: Like we're it's explained, especially in the world of the

751
00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:21,520
Speaker 1: Dark Crystal, that the Skexies, you know, they're not only

752
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:25,399
Speaker 1: continuing to experiment with the dark crystal itself, uh, the

753
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:28,880
Speaker 1: the the imperfect great crystal. But they're also creating like

754
00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:32,480
Speaker 1: their own knockoff crystals and doing other things with crystals,

755
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: and so seemingly also incorporating them into their weapons species.

756
00:41:37,080 --> 00:41:39,960
Speaker 1: They're doing all kinds of nasty crystal technology, and some

757
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:43,320
Speaker 1: of this is nasty crystal biotechnology. So the Gartham have

758
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:46,520
Speaker 1: crystals fries, and they're also these spy beasts in the

759
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:50,480
Speaker 1: movie called the crystal bats who fly around doing aerial

760
00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:54,480
Speaker 1: surveillance and looking with their crystals that appears to be

761
00:41:54,600 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 1: their video recorder lens or their eyes. Now, obviously this

762
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:00,640
Speaker 1: seems far fetched. She wouldn't expect, well, maybe there are

763
00:42:00,680 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 1: actually organisms that have crystals for eyes. But as we

764
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:08,360
Speaker 1: discover pretty much every time, reality is weirder than fiction.

765
00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 1: There are creatures on this very world with minerals and

766
00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:15,799
Speaker 1: crystals for eyes. And I had to talk about this

767
00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:17,840
Speaker 1: for a few minutes. Yeah, this floored me that you

768
00:42:17,880 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: were able to get so much out of the crystal bats.

769
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: I figured, the crystal bats are like the least biological

770
00:42:23,120 --> 00:42:26,000
Speaker 1: creatures in the whole movie. And yet here we go.

771
00:42:26,320 --> 00:42:28,320
Speaker 1: Let's have a look at a creature called A kitan

772
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:32,000
Speaker 1: now a keiton, is a form of a marine mollusk.

773
00:42:32,200 --> 00:42:36,279
Speaker 1: They're generally small. They're flat. They're oval shaped, kind of

774
00:42:36,320 --> 00:42:39,840
Speaker 1: like a flat slug or snail, with a protruding foot

775
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:42,919
Speaker 1: on the underside for attaching to surfaces on the sea

776
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:46,520
Speaker 1: floor and moving along those surfaces while they scrape up

777
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:50,319
Speaker 1: food in the form of algae or other clinging biomatter.

778
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:53,680
Speaker 1: But on its back, the kiton wears a suit of armor.

779
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:56,840
Speaker 1: It has a shell made out of tough plates which

780
00:42:56,880 --> 00:42:59,680
Speaker 1: face up towards the sea as it crawls along a

781
00:42:59,760 --> 00:43:03,640
Speaker 1: raw clapping up delicious slime with its ragula. Now, you

782
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:08,000
Speaker 1: might suspect that a small algae scraping, rock crawling sea

783
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:11,759
Speaker 1: dweller like the kitan is maybe simply blind, right, What

784
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:14,279
Speaker 1: does it need eyes for to look down at the

785
00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:16,880
Speaker 1: rocks below it as it scrapes up stuff to eat.

786
00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:20,120
Speaker 1: But they do appear to have eyes on their backs.

787
00:43:20,160 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 1: On those protective shells. The armor part, they've got hundreds

788
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:28,359
Speaker 1: of little beady, light sensitive organs spaced about on their

789
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 1: dorsal armor, called ocelly. Now, scientists have known about these

790
00:43:33,040 --> 00:43:36,480
Speaker 1: ocellly for years. They've known about these organs for sensing light,

791
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:38,960
Speaker 1: but they didn't know much about them, what they were

792
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:41,880
Speaker 1: made of, how they worked. Essentially, what we knew for

793
00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:44,240
Speaker 1: a long time was that the kitans had these organs

794
00:43:44,239 --> 00:43:48,000
Speaker 1: with underlying light sensitive cells like a retina, in some

795
00:43:48,200 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 1: form of lens material. Now, a few years back, a

796
00:43:51,680 --> 00:43:56,000
Speaker 1: marine biologist named Dan Spicer conducted research on a kitan

797
00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:59,440
Speaker 1: known as the West Indian Fuzzy Kitan, which is the

798
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:02,160
Speaker 1: cuddliest to all kitan's. It sounds kind of like an

799
00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:03,920
Speaker 1: off brand Muppet, I have to say, it sounds kind

800
00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:07,680
Speaker 1: of like a fizz gig. So Spicer was studying the

801
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: lenses on the ocelli of these animals that the little

802
00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:14,880
Speaker 1: light sensing organs on their backs, and in an attempt

803
00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 1: to clean these ocelli these lenses off for observation in

804
00:44:19,120 --> 00:44:23,840
Speaker 1: an acidic solution. The lenses suddenly dissolved and this was

805
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:27,320
Speaker 1: a tip tip off that the lenses were not protein

806
00:44:27,440 --> 00:44:31,160
Speaker 1: based like you would find in pretty much all other organisms. Instead,

807
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:35,840
Speaker 1: these lenses were made of a mineral called aragonite. The

808
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:41,319
Speaker 1: Kitans had mineral crystals for eyes. Aragonite is a form

809
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:44,400
Speaker 1: of calcium carbonate. It's the material that forms the shells

810
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 1: of most molluscs, so it had lenses for its eyes

811
00:44:49,200 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: that were made out of the same stuff that it's

812
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 1: armor is made out of the shell is made out of,

813
00:44:54,640 --> 00:45:00,279
Speaker 1: and Spicer, along with Earness and Johnson, published uh paper

814
00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 1: about kitan and aragonite lenses in Current Biology in two

815
00:45:03,680 --> 00:45:07,880
Speaker 1: thousand eleven. So the kitan uses these eyes to detect

816
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:10,880
Speaker 1: when shadows pass overhead. That would be a signal that

817
00:45:10,920 --> 00:45:14,200
Speaker 1: there's like a predator near And when this happens, the

818
00:45:14,280 --> 00:45:17,760
Speaker 1: kitans flatten out their bodies and clamp their armored shells

819
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:21,360
Speaker 1: down over their soft parts. The crystallized don't appear to

820
00:45:21,400 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 1: see in great detail, but they can apparently distinguish dark

821
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:29,520
Speaker 1: moving shapes from a mirror dimming of raw light levels. Now,

822
00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:31,680
Speaker 1: when you've got rocks for eyes, of course, they can

823
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:34,040
Speaker 1: be eroded by water over the time. But I was

824
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:38,359
Speaker 1: over time, but I was reading about how apparently one

825
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:41,879
Speaker 1: benefit of having rocks for eyes is that they are

826
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:45,360
Speaker 1: less vulnerable to the you know, the the violent washing

827
00:45:45,440 --> 00:45:48,879
Speaker 1: of the tide or intertidal areas. It's like they their

828
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:51,359
Speaker 1: eyes have armor. Yeah, but what do you do when

829
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:54,920
Speaker 1: your eyes erode? Yeah? Well you so as if you

830
00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:57,440
Speaker 1: have rocks for eyes, what you do is you gradually

831
00:45:57,480 --> 00:45:59,799
Speaker 1: replace them with more crystals. So the kitans would grow

832
00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:02,680
Speaker 1: new crystal lenses to replace the old ones that would

833
00:46:02,680 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 1: get eroded over time. And it seems that organisms with

834
00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:10,319
Speaker 1: crystals for eyes are pretty rare in today's biosphere, but

835
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 1: there are other example. There are other examples. So crystals

836
00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:19,040
Speaker 1: appear in various forms suspended within otherwise protein based eyes

837
00:46:19,080 --> 00:46:21,239
Speaker 1: of other creatures. Right, so there are other creatures that

838
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:25,520
Speaker 1: might not quite have crystals four eyes like rocks as

839
00:46:25,560 --> 00:46:27,719
Speaker 1: the lenses of their eyes, but might have some kind

840
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,880
Speaker 1: of crystal somewhere in there. One example I was reading

841
00:46:30,880 --> 00:46:35,160
Speaker 1: about in a book called Animal Eyes from Oxford University

842
00:46:35,160 --> 00:46:38,480
Speaker 1: Press by Michael f. Land and Dan Eric Nielson is

843
00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:43,040
Speaker 1: about spiders. Specifically, these would be like acids or wolf spiders.

844
00:46:43,200 --> 00:46:48,040
Speaker 1: Wolf spiders have some crystal structures inside their eyes. These

845
00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:52,600
Speaker 1: are specialized eyes, usually the lateral eyes, used for locating

846
00:46:52,640 --> 00:46:55,879
Speaker 1: prey in low light and to since in low light

847
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:58,080
Speaker 1: they have a wide aperture so they let a lot

848
00:46:58,120 --> 00:47:01,960
Speaker 1: of light in. But they also have reflecting tap at um,

849
00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:04,160
Speaker 1: kind of like you see in a cat when its

850
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:06,840
Speaker 1: eyes shine back at you in the dark. The wolf

851
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:09,759
Speaker 1: spider has something similar. Now, what does the TapIt um

852
00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:14,600
Speaker 1: actually do. Apparently it serves to increase the sensitivity of

853
00:47:14,640 --> 00:47:18,640
Speaker 1: the retina in low light conditions by sitting behind the

854
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:22,359
Speaker 1: retina and reflecting light back in the direction of the

855
00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:27,080
Speaker 1: source through the retina, again maintaining the visual features of

856
00:47:27,120 --> 00:47:30,440
Speaker 1: the image while increasing the amount of light available to

857
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:32,919
Speaker 1: the light sensitive cells. Some makes sense, like, so there's

858
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 1: low light, so you put a mirror behind the area

859
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:39,479
Speaker 1: that's sensing the light, and by reflecting it back through

860
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:41,600
Speaker 1: that area, you sort of get You get a couple

861
00:47:41,600 --> 00:47:44,239
Speaker 1: of tries, you get extra ways of sensing the low

862
00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:47,160
Speaker 1: amounts of light. But in like I said's these tapita

863
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:50,200
Speaker 1: that behind the eyes consist of quote, many layers of

864
00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:55,760
Speaker 1: very thin crystals, probably guanine crystals, which form a long

865
00:47:55,920 --> 00:47:59,799
Speaker 1: ribbon beneath the receptors. So that's pretty interesting on its own,

866
00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:02,719
Speaker 1: But it's not even the only organism that uses guanine

867
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:07,080
Speaker 1: crystals in order to see with To look at another mollusk,

868
00:48:07,640 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 1: reflective guantine crystals are also important in the light sensitive

869
00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:15,800
Speaker 1: organs of scallops. Scalops like the kind you eat. Research

870
00:48:15,800 --> 00:48:19,520
Speaker 1: shows that scalops use a reflective mirror made of guantine

871
00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 1: crystals instead of a transparent lens to focus light onto

872
00:48:23,640 --> 00:48:25,799
Speaker 1: their retinas. And I've attached a little picture of what

873
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:29,560
Speaker 1: these crystals look like. They formed these layers of plates.

874
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:32,239
Speaker 1: Almost yeah, it looks like like plate mail, kind of

875
00:48:32,280 --> 00:48:35,000
Speaker 1: like dinosaur scales. Yeah yeah, yeah, I guess more actuli

876
00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:37,520
Speaker 1: scale mail. If I was going to use the morefeitting

877
00:48:38,239 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 1: um the term there, but to get even weirder and

878
00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:43,960
Speaker 1: to connect to the dark crystal in a weirder way,

879
00:48:44,160 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 1: I want to go into the deep past, because if

880
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:49,359
Speaker 1: you go into the deep past, you can find even

881
00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:54,480
Speaker 1: more crazy examples of crystallize. The TRIALO bytes, the trial

882
00:48:54,520 --> 00:48:57,200
Speaker 1: A bytes of the Cambrian period, which you know began

883
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:00,319
Speaker 1: roughly five million years ago. The TRIALO byte of this

884
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:03,400
Speaker 1: period had lenses on their eyes that were literally made

885
00:49:03,400 --> 00:49:07,880
Speaker 1: of calcite crystals. The triobites had rocks for eyes and

886
00:49:08,120 --> 00:49:11,279
Speaker 1: this uh, of course, the calcite crystals that form these

887
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 1: lenses were this is another form of calcium carbonate stone eyes.

888
00:49:15,600 --> 00:49:19,000
Speaker 1: And the lenses that were amazingly powerful by the protein

889
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:21,960
Speaker 1: based standards were familiar with today. They were they were

890
00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 1: seeing the world through crystal prisms. As described in a

891
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:29,120
Speaker 1: feature by the American Museum of Natural History. Quote, this

892
00:49:29,239 --> 00:49:33,480
Speaker 1: provided these ancient creatures with virtually unparalleled vision that we

893
00:49:33,560 --> 00:49:37,440
Speaker 1: can assume thanks to recent experiments conducted with calcite crystals,

894
00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:41,040
Speaker 1: was filled with streams of light and bursts of color.

895
00:49:41,600 --> 00:49:45,640
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So like the Cambrian seas were just a uh,

896
00:49:45,680 --> 00:49:49,400
Speaker 1: you know, a psychedelic fire show for these these creatures

897
00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:51,680
Speaker 1: on some level. Yeah, if only we could see the

898
00:49:51,719 --> 00:49:57,000
Speaker 1: world like these ancient bugs that had crystals for eyes. Yeah,

899
00:49:57,040 --> 00:49:59,120
Speaker 1: and again this is this is fitting because it is

900
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:01,840
Speaker 1: mentioned the world of the Dark Crystal that the sketch

901
00:50:01,960 --> 00:50:05,600
Speaker 1: the Skexies kind of summon the form of the Gartham

902
00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:08,279
Speaker 1: out of the memories of long dead sea life. Yes,

903
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:10,480
Speaker 1: I love that. That's exactly what I was thinking about.

904
00:50:10,520 --> 00:50:13,640
Speaker 1: So the trial bytes. The inhabitants of this ancient unseen

905
00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:16,799
Speaker 1: world are are known to us only through fossils from

906
00:50:16,800 --> 00:50:19,839
Speaker 1: about five million to about two fifty million years ago,

907
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:23,919
Speaker 1: And like the lost prehistoric world quality of the Dark

908
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 1: Crystal mythology. Yeah, in fact, I wanted to take this

909
00:50:27,160 --> 00:50:29,680
Speaker 1: connection even further. Tell you tell me if I'm getting

910
00:50:29,680 --> 00:50:32,520
Speaker 1: too wild here. But you can't get too wild, not crystal.

911
00:50:33,520 --> 00:50:35,560
Speaker 1: So one idea is thing I was thinking about is

912
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:39,600
Speaker 1: that the trial bytes mineral eyes are the first complex

913
00:50:39,640 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 1: eyes we really find in the fossil record. They were

914
00:50:43,040 --> 00:50:45,960
Speaker 1: part of the Cambrian explosion, which is when animal bodies

915
00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:51,400
Speaker 1: suddenly showed this massive diversity and uh at least fascinating

916
00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:55,120
Speaker 1: and complex and fast moving forms. These eyes are a

917
00:50:55,160 --> 00:50:57,840
Speaker 1: wonder of evolution, but they might also be a signal

918
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:01,759
Speaker 1: of something important changing in the himal world. Why did

919
00:51:01,800 --> 00:51:07,160
Speaker 1: animals suddenly need powerful calcite eyes crystal eyes? Well, one

920
00:51:07,480 --> 00:51:10,640
Speaker 1: theory about this is that it's because of the explosion

921
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:14,600
Speaker 1: of predation. We live in a world in which predation evolved,

922
00:51:14,600 --> 00:51:17,439
Speaker 1: in which animals kill and eat each other, which plenty

923
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:20,359
Speaker 1: of mythological traditions see as a key indicator of some

924
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:24,319
Speaker 1: kind of fallen or corrupted state of the world, kind

925
00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:26,520
Speaker 1: of like the shattering of the crystal and the dark

926
00:51:26,520 --> 00:51:30,000
Speaker 1: crystal and the sundering of the earth skex, which which

927
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:32,320
Speaker 1: in the mythology gives rise to the Gartham and the

928
00:51:32,360 --> 00:51:36,360
Speaker 1: crystal bats. Interesting. Yeah, so crystal vision on both counts

929
00:51:36,400 --> 00:51:39,640
Speaker 1: emerging out of an age of conflict. How about it

930
00:51:40,200 --> 00:51:43,319
Speaker 1: look up those those trial. Bye eyes, it's amazing. All right. Well,

931
00:51:43,400 --> 00:51:46,759
Speaker 1: let's let's return to the bigger picture here. Let's let's

932
00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:50,520
Speaker 1: talk about the three suns system, the three star system

933
00:51:50,560 --> 00:51:53,720
Speaker 1: that we see with the world of Thraw. Okay, so Thraw,

934
00:51:54,160 --> 00:51:56,200
Speaker 1: the planet depicted in the Crystal in the Dark Crystal

935
00:51:56,680 --> 00:51:59,520
Speaker 1: uh is a three star system. It's it's it's key

936
00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:03,880
Speaker 1: to the whole narrative about the great conjunction occurring. And

937
00:52:03,920 --> 00:52:06,320
Speaker 1: the three sons are described as the Great Son, of

938
00:52:06,400 --> 00:52:08,640
Speaker 1: the Dying Son and the Rose Sun, and we see

939
00:52:08,640 --> 00:52:12,440
Speaker 1: these images of these suns moving through the sky. Um

940
00:52:12,480 --> 00:52:15,080
Speaker 1: it's difficult, you know, and perhaps kind of a fool's air,

941
00:52:15,120 --> 00:52:19,120
Speaker 1: and to try and work out exactly what stage each

942
00:52:19,120 --> 00:52:22,239
Speaker 1: of these sons happens to be in. I've seen it

943
00:52:22,280 --> 00:52:25,319
Speaker 1: speculated that the Great Sun is a giant son, and

944
00:52:25,360 --> 00:52:28,480
Speaker 1: the Dying Sun is a gas giant or a protostar,

945
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:30,719
Speaker 1: and then the Rose Sun is a red dwarf. But

946
00:52:31,600 --> 00:52:33,840
Speaker 1: really you could you could kind of go a number

947
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:37,479
Speaker 1: of different directions and interpreting like what stage each star

948
00:52:37,680 --> 00:52:40,200
Speaker 1: is in that might make sense in the light of

949
00:52:40,280 --> 00:52:42,960
Speaker 1: something I'll get back to in just a minute here. Now. Likewise,

950
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:46,800
Speaker 1: it might ultimately be a bit silly to to really

951
00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:50,719
Speaker 1: get two worked over up over the exact celestial mechanics

952
00:52:50,840 --> 00:52:52,719
Speaker 1: of all of this. I mean, for instance, given the

953
00:52:52,760 --> 00:52:55,279
Speaker 1: mythological nature of many themes in the movie, we might

954
00:52:55,280 --> 00:52:58,879
Speaker 1: be dealing with more of a uh potlemaic universe here

955
00:52:58,920 --> 00:53:02,080
Speaker 1: with the three sons orbiting thraw. You know, there's no

956
00:53:02,120 --> 00:53:06,920
Speaker 1: reason that wouldn't be the case. It's a mythological world. Um. However,

957
00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:08,680
Speaker 1: when we look to the world of the dark Crystal

958
00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:12,719
Speaker 1: that the Book of Brian frauds, uh, there is this, uh,

959
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:15,920
Speaker 1: this fabulous a little bit of commentary that is supposedly

960
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:19,960
Speaker 1: from the the anthropologists or the academic that is commenting

961
00:53:20,000 --> 00:53:23,120
Speaker 1: on everything, and this is what they say of the

962
00:53:23,160 --> 00:53:26,760
Speaker 1: three stars of Thraw. Quote. In a system with three sons,

963
00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:32,560
Speaker 1: astronomical calculations would be intolerably complex. Newtonian or Einsteinian physics

964
00:53:32,680 --> 00:53:35,719
Speaker 1: can deal exactly with two bodies Earth and Sun or

965
00:53:35,719 --> 00:53:39,120
Speaker 1: Earth and Moon, but more complex cases can be solved

966
00:53:39,160 --> 00:53:43,880
Speaker 1: only by successive approximations. With three sons. Even the elementary

967
00:53:43,960 --> 00:53:47,120
Speaker 1: calculations needed to begin our studies of the skies are

968
00:53:47,160 --> 00:53:51,719
Speaker 1: beyond our scope. Augura's astronomy, therefore, is devised chiefly through

969
00:53:51,719 --> 00:53:56,440
Speaker 1: intuition and empirical models. So this is a reference to

970
00:53:56,480 --> 00:53:59,000
Speaker 1: a very real problem in the study of celestial mechanics

971
00:53:59,000 --> 00:54:00,600
Speaker 1: that I think we've discussed and stuff to blow your

972
00:54:00,640 --> 00:54:04,759
Speaker 1: mind before, at least in passing the three body problem right.

973
00:54:04,800 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 1: If so, if you're dealing with uh, say, velocity, your momentum,

974
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:13,719
Speaker 1: and gravity, you can easily predict the future states of

975
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:17,200
Speaker 1: two objects orbiting each other. Once you throw another object

976
00:54:17,280 --> 00:54:19,160
Speaker 1: into the mix there, especially if it's you know, of

977
00:54:19,200 --> 00:54:25,640
Speaker 1: a similar mass, the interactions become increasingly chaotic and sensitive

978
00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:29,920
Speaker 1: to tiny to like tiny variations, and it becomes harder

979
00:54:29,920 --> 00:54:34,040
Speaker 1: and harder to predict a future state from the current state. Now.

980
00:54:34,080 --> 00:54:36,040
Speaker 1: I was looking into this because I was like, well,

981
00:54:36,160 --> 00:54:39,880
Speaker 1: are there really triple star systems? Like does that exist

982
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:42,719
Speaker 1: in reality? What would that look like? And triple star

983
00:54:42,800 --> 00:54:46,200
Speaker 1: systems do exist, though they can in some cases become

984
00:54:46,280 --> 00:54:50,000
Speaker 1: dynamically unstable, meaning that they might eject one of the

985
00:54:50,040 --> 00:54:54,160
Speaker 1: stars from the system through their interactions. But a common

986
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:58,040
Speaker 1: form of a more stable triple star system is that

987
00:54:58,080 --> 00:55:01,799
Speaker 1: there is essentially a core binary star system, which means

988
00:55:01,880 --> 00:55:05,480
Speaker 1: two stars more closely orbiting a shared center of gravity

989
00:55:05,560 --> 00:55:08,400
Speaker 1: and then you'd have a third star much farther away

990
00:55:08,640 --> 00:55:12,319
Speaker 1: orbiting that center of gravity. And this even almost sort

991
00:55:12,320 --> 00:55:15,480
Speaker 1: of goes with the Great Sun Dying Sun Rose Sun thing, Like,

992
00:55:15,840 --> 00:55:18,200
Speaker 1: I wonder if maybe your great son and your dying

993
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:21,879
Speaker 1: stunt son, the bigger, closer ones are orbiting each other.

994
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:24,120
Speaker 1: That's a binary star system, and then you've got a

995
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:27,640
Speaker 1: little little red dwarf for Rose Sun that's way farther out,

996
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:30,359
Speaker 1: that's orbiting the whole system. Yeah, I think that would

997
00:55:30,360 --> 00:55:33,360
Speaker 1: make sense. Now would be another question entirely whether in

998
00:55:33,480 --> 00:55:37,040
Speaker 1: reality a planet like Thraw could exist, I mean, not

999
00:55:37,200 --> 00:55:40,120
Speaker 1: necessarily like Thraw, but a planet of any kind could

1000
00:55:40,160 --> 00:55:42,839
Speaker 1: exist in a triple star system. Or would it just

1001
00:55:42,880 --> 00:55:46,920
Speaker 1: be automatically, you know, pretty quickly ejected or destroyed due

1002
00:55:46,960 --> 00:55:49,800
Speaker 1: to the chaotic influences of gravity from a three star system.

1003
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:52,719
Speaker 1: Would there be enough stability there at all, certainly for

1004
00:55:52,920 --> 00:55:55,600
Speaker 1: life to emerge. I just assumed the answer was no.

1005
00:55:55,800 --> 00:55:57,600
Speaker 1: That I was like, that's probably not going to happen.

1006
00:55:57,800 --> 00:56:00,920
Speaker 1: But I was actually surprised what I found here. I

1007
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:03,399
Speaker 1: was reading an article about this on astronomy dot com

1008
00:56:03,400 --> 00:56:06,680
Speaker 1: by Amber Jorgensen, which was about the work of a

1009
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:09,480
Speaker 1: few scholars of Franco Bissetti of the School of Computer

1010
00:56:09,480 --> 00:56:12,880
Speaker 1: Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of Wits in

1011
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:17,759
Speaker 1: South Africa. Also Cherice Harley of Wits and uh are

1012
00:56:17,880 --> 00:56:21,440
Speaker 1: a Boost at University of Grenoble Alps in France. So

1013
00:56:21,520 --> 00:56:25,360
Speaker 1: Bussetti and colleagues here conducted simulations which found that planets

1014
00:56:25,400 --> 00:56:29,400
Speaker 1: could survive in appreciable numbers in systems like this. So

1015
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:33,120
Speaker 1: Bussetti says, quote because of the complex dynamics between these

1016
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:36,399
Speaker 1: stars and planets, it was previously thought improbable that many

1017
00:56:36,440 --> 00:56:41,000
Speaker 1: planets would have stable orbits in these regions, but they

1018
00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:44,399
Speaker 1: found evidence to the contrary quote. We ran the simulations

1019
00:56:44,440 --> 00:56:47,600
Speaker 1: for periods ranging from one million to ten million years

1020
00:56:47,960 --> 00:56:50,520
Speaker 1: in order to see if the systems are stable over

1021
00:56:50,640 --> 00:56:53,680
Speaker 1: very long periods. If a planet is ejected from that

1022
00:56:53,719 --> 00:56:57,040
Speaker 1: system during that time, it is not stable. The analysis

1023
00:56:57,040 --> 00:57:00,920
Speaker 1: showed that most configurations had large enough stable regions for

1024
00:57:01,000 --> 00:57:04,359
Speaker 1: planets to exist. Many of these areas are actually very

1025
00:57:04,400 --> 00:57:07,440
Speaker 1: habitable for planets, and they even mapped out areas of

1026
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:11,000
Speaker 1: the galaxy where double and triple star exoplanets are likely

1027
00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:13,720
Speaker 1: to be found in stable orbits, so it is actually

1028
00:57:13,800 --> 00:57:18,160
Speaker 1: possible there might be really bad places to be within

1029
00:57:18,200 --> 00:57:21,000
Speaker 1: the orbit of a of a three star system, but

1030
00:57:21,080 --> 00:57:24,760
Speaker 1: there could be types of triple star systems that could

1031
00:57:24,800 --> 00:57:29,080
Speaker 1: have stable planetary orbits within them, where at least presumably

1032
00:57:29,520 --> 00:57:31,960
Speaker 1: life could thrive. So there might be a thraw out.

1033
00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:34,720
Speaker 1: There's what you're saying. There could be a world. Scientists

1034
00:57:34,760 --> 00:57:38,680
Speaker 1: have discovered thraw. It really exists, and we're sending a

1035
00:57:38,680 --> 00:57:42,800
Speaker 1: mission there right now. Um, in terms of things that

1036
00:57:42,840 --> 00:57:45,200
Speaker 1: really exists, it is worth noting that there is a

1037
00:57:45,240 --> 00:57:50,000
Speaker 1: real great conjunction, so the the the the the conjunction

1038
00:57:50,040 --> 00:57:52,840
Speaker 1: of Jupiter and Saturn is sometimes referred to as the

1039
00:57:52,920 --> 00:57:56,600
Speaker 1: Great Conjunction, and it takes place every eighteen to twenty years,

1040
00:57:57,120 --> 00:58:01,000
Speaker 1: and there's a there's a fair amount of astrological uh

1041
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:05,680
Speaker 1: speculation about them, shall we say, especially concerning political assassinations

1042
00:58:05,720 --> 00:58:09,000
Speaker 1: and how they seem to line up selectively. Of course,

1043
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:13,160
Speaker 1: with great conjunctions throughout history. The last one took place

1044
00:58:13,200 --> 00:58:15,640
Speaker 1: in May thirty one, two thousand, while the next one

1045
00:58:15,680 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 1: will take place in late December. Now, as usual, we

1046
00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:21,360
Speaker 1: don't put a lot of stock, we don't put any

1047
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:28,600
Speaker 1: stock in astrological predictions like this. Ultimately, whatever the astrological

1048
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:31,720
Speaker 1: pattern is if you if you cherry pick enough, you

1049
00:58:31,760 --> 00:58:34,760
Speaker 1: can find some sequence of events on Earth that match

1050
00:58:34,840 --> 00:58:38,000
Speaker 1: up with it. The planets don't influence your dating life, folks,

1051
00:58:38,160 --> 00:58:40,720
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, all right, So there you have it. This

1052
00:58:40,800 --> 00:58:43,280
Speaker 1: has been fun, Robert. Yeah, the Dark Crystal. There's a

1053
00:58:43,280 --> 00:58:46,080
Speaker 1: lot to discuss there, and I was legitimately surprised by

1054
00:58:46,120 --> 00:58:50,240
Speaker 1: some of the places that it took us. Um But

1055
00:58:50,240 --> 00:58:53,760
Speaker 1: but hopefully we have you know, maybe even enhanced everyone's

1056
00:58:53,800 --> 00:58:55,600
Speaker 1: enjoyment of the Dark Crystal a little bit, or if

1057
00:58:55,640 --> 00:58:58,360
Speaker 1: nothing else, giving you a good reason to go out

1058
00:58:58,400 --> 00:59:00,880
Speaker 1: and watch a great film one more time and to

1059
00:59:00,920 --> 00:59:04,640
Speaker 1: wish you had crystal eyes. That's right. Anytime when you

1060
00:59:04,680 --> 00:59:07,280
Speaker 1: hear one of those rock songs or pop songs about

1061
00:59:07,320 --> 00:59:11,480
Speaker 1: touching eyes, think think like spiky crystals for eyes clinking

1062
00:59:11,520 --> 00:59:15,680
Speaker 1: against each other. Um, well cool. Obviously, I know we

1063
00:59:15,720 --> 00:59:18,680
Speaker 1: have a lot of listeners out there who have thoughts

1064
00:59:18,680 --> 00:59:21,640
Speaker 1: about the Dark Crystal and are Dark Crystal fans. Some

1065
00:59:21,720 --> 00:59:24,160
Speaker 1: of you may be very steeped in the Dark Crystal

1066
00:59:24,160 --> 00:59:26,600
Speaker 1: and have read like the novelizations and the comic books

1067
00:59:26,600 --> 00:59:29,320
Speaker 1: and the sort of the extended universe of the thing,

1068
00:59:29,360 --> 00:59:31,680
Speaker 1: and perhaps you have additional insight you'd like to share.

1069
00:59:31,840 --> 00:59:34,760
Speaker 1: Perhaps some of the questions we have presented have been

1070
00:59:34,800 --> 00:59:39,360
Speaker 1: answered in other bits of literature or other Brian Froud interviews, etcetera.

1071
00:59:39,800 --> 00:59:43,760
Speaker 1: We would love to hear from you about that. Oh no, Well,

1072
00:59:43,880 --> 00:59:45,240
Speaker 1: as we're closing out here, I do want to give

1073
00:59:45,240 --> 00:59:48,480
Speaker 1: a quick shout out as well to The bizarre Cast.

1074
00:59:48,680 --> 00:59:52,040
Speaker 1: That's b A Z A A R. The Bizarre Cast

1075
00:59:52,120 --> 00:59:56,240
Speaker 1: with Richard and Robert. Uh They're like a horror pop

1076
00:59:56,280 --> 00:59:58,800
Speaker 1: culture podcast. They recently had me on the show to

1077
00:59:58,840 --> 01:00:01,439
Speaker 1: talk about podcast staying about Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

1078
01:00:01,520 --> 01:00:05,200
Speaker 1: invention and the upcoming Transgenesis. Uh So, just to shout

1079
01:00:05,240 --> 01:00:06,760
Speaker 1: out to those guys. If you want to check out

1080
01:00:06,800 --> 01:00:10,680
Speaker 1: their show, it's The bizarre Cast dot pod bean dot com,

1081
01:00:10,840 --> 01:00:13,280
Speaker 1: or you can find them on Twitter, the bizarre Cast

1082
01:00:13,520 --> 01:00:16,240
Speaker 1: at the bizarre Cast, Huge Things. As always to our

1083
01:00:16,240 --> 01:00:19,920
Speaker 1: wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. If you

1084
01:00:19,920 --> 01:00:22,040
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us directly if

1085
01:00:22,040 --> 01:00:24,240
Speaker 1: you give us feedback on this episode or any other,

1086
01:00:24,480 --> 01:00:26,920
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello.

1087
01:00:27,040 --> 01:00:30,400
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1088
01:00:30,440 --> 01:00:43,240
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com for more on this and thousands

1089
01:00:43,240 --> 01:00:45,560
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works, dot com,

1090
01:00:52,680 --> 01:01:05,160
Speaker 1: batutory proper FA