Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. I just have one thing to say,
Speaker 1: and that is remember Highland. Ah, Yes, your home five
Speaker 1: years ago on the planet seized. Yes, you're referring, of course,
Speaker 1: to the film Highlander to one of the most Uh wait,
Speaker 1: you're forgetting the most important part of the title, Highlander
Speaker 1: to coal in the Quickening. I've lost track of all
Speaker 1: the subtitles for this film. There's like because it's like,
Speaker 1: there's Highlander to colon the Quickening, colon the Renegade edition.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's been so many cuts of this over
Speaker 1: over time, but for the most part, in this episode,
Speaker 1: we're getting back to the theatrical cut of Highlander two.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Highlander two as presumably somebody we saw
Speaker 1: in the theater when it came out, and then a
Speaker 1: lot of us saw on VHS when it hit our
Speaker 1: local video rental stores. Now, we've been threatening to do
Speaker 1: this episode on Highlander too, Nate, not just threatening. We've
Speaker 1: been promising to do it for probably over a year now,
Speaker 1: and people. Some people say, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Why would you do that? And other people say, when
Speaker 1: is the Highlander too episode coming? So that latter group,
Speaker 1: you're about to be very happy that former group. Here
Speaker 1: we are and you're gonna listen and you're gonna like it. Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna catch up to speed on what the Highlander
Speaker 1: one was all about, what Highlander two was seemingly about,
Speaker 1: and there is going to be discussion of science in
Speaker 1: this episode. There is a lot of science to discussed,
Speaker 1: and in a way this allows us to tackle at
Speaker 1: least a couple of subjects that we've just never covered
Speaker 1: on the show before but are certainly of scientific interest.
Speaker 1: But before we get into all of that, let's just
Speaker 1: go ahead and have a taste from the original theatrical
Speaker 1: trailer for high Islander. To taste the quickening. That has
Speaker 1: some fun. There's centuries among the first nothing could have
Speaker 1: prepared them for quickening. Christopher Lambridge, Sean Connery Highlander too
Speaker 1: quickening alright, well sounds intriguing. Perhaps everyone out there can
Speaker 1: understand a little bit, uh why there was some excitement
Speaker 1: about this film for for fans of the original Highlander.
Speaker 1: Now I will say as concerns of fandom of the
Speaker 1: Original Highlander. The Original Highlander is a very fun movie,
Speaker 1: but it is also also a very bad movie. Well
Speaker 1: it is, it is. I definitely would argue that the
Speaker 1: film is far sillier than a lot of people. Remember, Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean I loved it when I saw it in
Speaker 1: goodness early junior high or whenever I saw The Highlander
Speaker 1: for the first time. I'm just like, this is a
Speaker 1: amazing It's you know, it's it's fantasy, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of historical, it has all these art wrestling it's good.
Speaker 1: Well did every I don't think I was really a
Speaker 1: fan of wrestling at the time, so I was just
Speaker 1: kind of I kind of glossed over that aspect of it.
Speaker 1: I didn't know who any of those guys were, but
Speaker 1: but I knew who the other guys were, you know,
Speaker 1: Sean Connery. And then then it's this weird uh Christopher
Speaker 1: Lambert or Lambert character, and then the Kurgan played by
Speaker 1: Clancy Brown. I just had a just so much scene
Speaker 1: chewing energy in this film. And then a magnificent score
Speaker 1: by Queen The Queen really ties it all together. But
Speaker 1: it's also just that blood bath of ridiculous acting that
Speaker 1: sells the movie. You've got Christopher Lambert or Chris Stophe Lambert,
Speaker 1: who is doing in Highlander one and two, both of
Speaker 1: which he kind of does like a Peter Laurie sort
Speaker 1: of thing. He's a little bit like, yes, I'm a
Speaker 1: Highlander and he's basically Peter Lori's handsome younger brother. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's that's the kind of vibe I always get off
Speaker 1: of it. But so let's let's rehash who the characters
Speaker 1: are versus the accents. So you've got, uh, Christoph Lambert
Speaker 1: plays a Scotsman and he's got a French accent. That's
Speaker 1: Connor McLoud, right. Sean Connery plays a Spanish Egyptian person,
Speaker 1: but he's got a Scottish accent. That's Ramira. It seems
Speaker 1: a little backwards. But then you've got Clancy Brown who
Speaker 1: plays like a like a Central Asian Russian kind of guy,
Speaker 1: but he has an American accent. Yes, this is definitely
Speaker 1: one of those areas of of of Highlander mythology that
Speaker 1: it it doesn't it doesn't pay off to think too
Speaker 1: hard about it. It gets confusing rather quickly. But let
Speaker 1: me just go ahead and rehash what the basic plot
Speaker 1: is for Highlander one in case you haven't seen it
Speaker 1: before or you've never seen it at all. Okay, so,
Speaker 1: first of all, film came out in nine six, big
Speaker 1: year for genre films. Uh. You know, if you were
Speaker 1: to make a like top ten genre films of eighty six,
Speaker 1: I don't even know that The Highlander would make the cut.
Speaker 1: There were just so many great flicks that came out
Speaker 1: that year. Is that the year of Aliens? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was the year of you two. I think you you
Speaker 1: entered the world that year. Maybe that's if I recall correctly.
Speaker 1: So in this movie, certain humans are randomly or seemingly
Speaker 1: randomly born imbued with this immortal energy that's kind of
Speaker 1: immortal fire, and that fire can only be snuffed out
Speaker 1: if they're just outright decapitated. And then that fire, that
Speaker 1: that immortal energy can be absorbed by another immortal Okay,
Speaker 1: So they're invincible except for decapitation, right, And they run
Speaker 1: around decapitating each other, right, hunting each other out, kind
Speaker 1: of sensing each other's presence. They're like playing their own game,
Speaker 1: and so they have these magical beings they battle across
Speaker 1: the ages, and the ideas that they're gonna keep doing this.
Speaker 1: They're gonna keep hunting each other down and engaging in
Speaker 1: sword fights, and and one of them wins and absorbs
Speaker 1: all the energy. They're gonna keep doing this until there's
Speaker 1: very few left on the planet, and then those few
Speaker 1: remaining individuals are going to go to some location on
Speaker 1: the Earth ends up being New York City, and this
Speaker 1: is going to be the gathering where the final immortals
Speaker 1: duke get out. There can be only one left at
Speaker 1: the end, and that final immortal is going to have
Speaker 1: all this collected energy of all those deceased immortals, and
Speaker 1: in doing so, he's gonna win the prize. The complete
Speaker 1: allotment of the immortal fire. You will presumably allow them to,
Speaker 1: you know, the wield godlike power, achieve great and terrible
Speaker 1: things depending on their individual temperament. This is like a
Speaker 1: really awesome idea for a fantasy movie that would be
Speaker 1: dreamt up by a high school sophomore. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: there is something wonderful about it, I have to say,
Speaker 1: like the idea of of and I do think that
Speaker 1: there is perhaps a deeper subtext to that that the screenwriter,
Speaker 1: especially director Russell McKay um, was perhaps getting into like
Speaker 1: this is feeling of like outsider individuals, um, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to you know, to find each other and and
Speaker 1: and and and battling for how they're perceived by the world.
Speaker 1: I would love to see somebody do like deeper, read
Speaker 1: some sort of film theory um uh l g B
Speaker 1: t Q reading of Highlander. Um. I myself, I'm not
Speaker 1: a film theorist, but but I would love to read
Speaker 1: the work of somebody who is on this matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that there's some subtexts like that there,
Speaker 1: especially in the first movie. But so you've got literally
Speaker 1: the character Christoph Lambert, with his French accent, plays the
Speaker 1: Scottish Highlander Connor McCloud. Right, he's Connor, He's he is
Speaker 1: our our hero and he we we we we get
Speaker 1: flashbacks from the president. We would find out this is
Speaker 1: how he learned that he was immortal. And then he encounters, uh,
Speaker 1: first the Kurgan, who is out to just decimate him
Speaker 1: and absorb his energy, but that Clancy Brown, right, and
Speaker 1: then he runs into Sean Connery's Ramire's character who schools
Speaker 1: him in the ways of the immortal. He's like, this
Speaker 1: is how we operate this is what we do. This
Speaker 1: is what you need to be careful about. The is
Speaker 1: who you need to beware of, and you know it
Speaker 1: prepares him. But then Kuragan comes along and kills Ramiras
Speaker 1: and uh well, anyway, we get to the end of
Speaker 1: the film. The inevitable final showdown is between Connor McCloud
Speaker 1: and the Kurrigan. They have a ridiculous sword fight that
Speaker 1: goes on forever. Lots of sparks. I mean, Russell McKay
Speaker 1: was was and is one of the great music video
Speaker 1: directors of the nineteen eighties, right Wild Boys, Wild Boys
Speaker 1: from Duran Duran I think he did. He did multiple
Speaker 1: Duran Duran videos. He did Total Eclipse of the Heart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he has this, he always had. This is fantastic
Speaker 1: visual flare and it is in full effect in Highlander.
Speaker 1: I would say that his music video of the Wild Boys,
Speaker 1: for me somehow slightly pre figures the aesthetics of the
Speaker 1: mad Max Fury Road war Boys. Yeah, to a certain
Speaker 1: ex Yeah, I could see that being the case. They're
Speaker 1: they're kind of like violence swinging about in a in
Speaker 1: a grimy industrial future. Absolutely so. Anyway, spoilers for Highlander one.
Speaker 1: He wins Connor wins, spares the world that a terrible
Speaker 1: fate at the hands of the Kurgan, and we're told
Speaker 1: that he gains the ability to read people's thoughts around
Speaker 1: the world. It's kind of tacked on, you know, that's
Speaker 1: certainly the exact nature of the prize is kind of
Speaker 1: an afterthought because the movie is ultimately not about that.
Speaker 1: It's it's about it's about style. It's style over substance.
Speaker 1: It's a fabulous style. But yeah, when at the end
Speaker 1: you have to realize, oh, yeah, he's supposed to win something,
Speaker 1: what is it? Well, now he's psychic and you can
Speaker 1: connect people. I completely forgot that element. All I remember
Speaker 1: about the end is like explosions and queen yes and
Speaker 1: ultimately like that's that's all you needed has to play
Speaker 1: is your fabulous, fabulous soundtrack. Wonderful explosions. Uh, some goofy funds,
Speaker 1: some very some some nice dramatic moments, and some very
Speaker 1: charismatic performances. You know, we'll spend a little bit of time,
Speaker 1: uh having fun with Sean Connery. But but Sean Connery
Speaker 1: was great in Highlander one, like he is he was
Speaker 1: at like peak silver Fox charisma level. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: And he's just a joy to watch in that film. Oh,
Speaker 1: he's the perfect charismatic yet silly character actor. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: it was well balanced and you know, the Kurgan was appropriate,
Speaker 1: appropriately fearsome. Uh. And everything I feel like Highlander one
Speaker 1: is is ultimately a well balanced cocktail. It is. It
Speaker 1: is a silly but entertaining, stupid movie. Yes, absolutely, and
Speaker 1: it ties everything up at the end. At the end
Speaker 1: of Highlander one, there's no reason to do a sequel.
Speaker 1: There's no reason to do um. Uh. You know a
Speaker 1: two animated films and animated TV shoots show, a hundred
Speaker 1: nineteen episodes of Highlander, the series, twenty two episodes of
Speaker 1: Highlander The Raven, which I've never even heard of. That
Speaker 1: and four additional live action sequels as well. So obviously
Speaker 1: the we we know, nobody can get enough Highlander after
Speaker 1: it's done, quoth the Karragan nevermore. I'm to understand The
Speaker 1: Raven is like an immortals cop show basically. Um that
Speaker 1: I've never seen it, so I can't really vouch for.
Speaker 1: But the TV show I watched a little off and
Speaker 1: that was that was that was pretty good at times.
Speaker 1: That's a great genre direction to take any previously existing
Speaker 1: genre franchise, like you go from Scanners to Scanner cop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it it's a more sensible move. Well that the
Speaker 1: TV series was a more sensible move because they said,
Speaker 1: let's not try and pick up afterwards, Let's just do
Speaker 1: a new character with lots of flashbacks. Each episode is
Speaker 1: a mix of coming to terms with old trauma and
Speaker 1: old enemies or old friends and then um and then
Speaker 1: and then hammering it out in the present or you know,
Speaker 1: sword fighting it out in the present. But that's not
Speaker 1: what they did for Highlander two. The sequel which comes
Speaker 1: out came out, continues where the first film left off. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's an ambitious task to begin with, especially if
Speaker 1: you insist on fee during Sean Connery in it, which,
Speaker 1: if what I was reading was correct, that was Lambert's insistence.
Speaker 1: You can't see it at home. But I'm rubbing my
Speaker 1: fingers together in the Money signal, the international gesture for money.
Speaker 1: Of course, Sean Connery is gonna want millions to come
Speaker 1: and reprise his role as Ramirez in this film. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it especially doesn't make sense because he was just
Speaker 1: conclusively murdered in the first time he's been dead for
Speaker 1: centuries first, but they said, all right, we gotta bring
Speaker 1: him back. Okay, if you read a lot about the
Speaker 1: production of this movie, it seems like the creative decisions
Speaker 1: about it were largely very investor driven. So there were
Speaker 1: some sort of like money dudes who were making a
Speaker 1: lot of the calls about what the movie would contain
Speaker 1: and be about. Right, and and then I think it
Speaker 1: seems like a lot of creative decisions ended up being
Speaker 1: made for the wrong reasons. Like I did read that
Speaker 1: Lambert was like, yeah, you gotta bring Connrey on and
Speaker 1: he was great, We had a great time. He should
Speaker 1: be in the sequel. But even though he died, you know,
Speaker 1: and then I'm sure the industry folks were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Connery is a bankable star, let's get him in there.
Speaker 1: So in order to continue the story of Highlander, it
Speaker 1: is necessary then to expand the mythology, because again it
Speaker 1: was all tied up in a neat little bow. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's no there's nothing left to continue. So they decided
Speaker 1: to come up with a twist, a new way that
Speaker 1: we can expand Highlander into a sequel, and that twist
Speaker 1: was that the immortals are aliens. It's so good. They
Speaker 1: should have just gone with Highlander cop but they didn't.
Speaker 1: Instead they went with aliens. Yeah, and you know I
Speaker 1: and I ultimately think it's not a bad idea. It
Speaker 1: gets a bum rap because most people hated Highlander too,
Speaker 1: But if you've got to come up with something, why
Speaker 1: not aliens? Why not them being beings from another world?
Speaker 1: And it's right there in the Queen theme song. Here
Speaker 1: we are Princess of the Universe, Princes of the Earth,
Speaker 1: Princess of the Universe. Okay, I can see you there.
Speaker 1: I mean, it all depends on how it's handled, right,
Speaker 1: But I think part of the reason people react with
Speaker 1: such uh incredulity to the sudden revelation that they're all
Speaker 1: aliens is literally just the way it's introduced in the film.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the original Highlander to the quickening,
Speaker 1: the theatrical cut, this has been butchered and edited out
Speaker 1: of these re releases that you can get in digital
Speaker 1: form and on DVD and stuff today, which are now
Speaker 1: they remove references to the alien planet. But so the
Speaker 1: way it's introduced is you've got Christopher Lambert. Uh Lambert
Speaker 1: is an old man makeup sitting at an opera and
Speaker 1: suddenly the camera just like zooms in on him while
Speaker 1: fans are blowing his hair, and he looks confused, and
Speaker 1: you get voiceover from Sean Connery saying, remember Highland of
Speaker 1: your home the planet Zeist, and then it cuts to
Speaker 1: this flashback and he's going, yes, I remember Zeist, and
Speaker 1: it's it's impossible not to laugh while watching this. So
Speaker 1: the basic idea that is then uh presented or on
Speaker 1: in Highland or two uh in the theatrical cut anyway,
Speaker 1: is that the immortals of Earth, we're all exiled immortals
Speaker 1: from another world, planet Zeist, following a failed rebellion, and
Speaker 1: the rebels here that basically the ideas instead of being
Speaker 1: put to death, they're sent to Earth and they have
Speaker 1: to battle each other across time to only one remains,
Speaker 1: and then the winner will have the choice between staying
Speaker 1: on Earth and growing old or returning to Zeist and
Speaker 1: becoming immortal again. Uh. So, I know that's confusing. The
Speaker 1: first one was contrived, so you know there's a lot
Speaker 1: that that doesn't work with that that concept, but but
Speaker 1: I don't know, I still kind of like it. Exiled
Speaker 1: immortals from another world? Fine, uh In the more recent
Speaker 1: cuts of it that you'll find, including one that was
Speaker 1: at least recently on Amazon Prime. They changed it from
Speaker 1: Exiles from Another World to Exiles from the Distant Past.
Speaker 1: So and so, if someone rebels against them, instead of
Speaker 1: sending them to another planet, they send them far into
Speaker 1: the future. We're gonna punish you by sending you to
Speaker 1: a time with indoor plumbing. Oh no, no, don't send
Speaker 1: me to a time after penicillin. But that's that's apparently
Speaker 1: what they did. Um. So, for my money, there there
Speaker 1: are some positives about the film, just to run through
Speaker 1: really quickly. Um And besides the obvious being that I
Speaker 1: enjoy watching bad films, first of all, I would say
Speaker 1: that it was at least ambitious enough to expand and
Speaker 1: take a sci fi twist on the original film rather
Speaker 1: than just redoing it, which is, you know, often the
Speaker 1: way you do a sequel, you're just like, all right,
Speaker 1: do it again, except bigger, and they didn't do that.
Speaker 1: I will say that Russell McKay created an interesting sci
Speaker 1: fi and war look for much of the film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a couple of the sets are really good. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: especially you know, the very Blade Runner esque Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of blade runner with more Casablanca heaped on top,
Speaker 1: and then hoverboards and swords. I think these were the
Speaker 1: sets that were built earlier in the production. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the stories about the production is that the
Speaker 1: movie was made in Argentina. They were like lured there
Speaker 1: because it was like, hey, it's much cheaper to make
Speaker 1: a movie here. You can build elaborate sets and all
Speaker 1: that for half the cost. So they went there, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly there was there was an economic crisis in
Speaker 1: Argentina while they were filming the movie. There was like
Speaker 1: hyper inflation, and then they didn't have any money to
Speaker 1: finish the movie with. Yeah, so so yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: some of the these scenes and some of the sets
Speaker 1: better than others. But but certainly the sequence where the
Speaker 1: assassins from the future show up to fight Old Connor, uh,
Speaker 1: that sequences a lot of fun. I enjoyed that one. Um.
Speaker 1: There's also some goofy scenes with Ramira's buying a suit
Speaker 1: and watching a flight safety video efter he comes back
Speaker 1: from the dead. Highlight of the film is just Sean
Speaker 1: Connery's high jinks in Future Scotland. Yeah, and then there's
Speaker 1: yeah that there's that in addition to that flight safety video,
Speaker 1: there's also and that you only find this in later
Speaker 1: cuts of the film, but there is a fake commercial
Speaker 1: kind of like from you know, something from RoboCop or
Speaker 1: Total Recall for something called Psychic Chef just pops up
Speaker 1: in the middle of the film and it's completely bonkers.
Speaker 1: Like if for anyone out there is a fan of
Speaker 1: the film, Mandy, it's um it's cheddar Goblin esque in criticulousness.
Speaker 1: So it's one of the definite pros to checking out
Speaker 1: a more recent kind of Highlander. Two. I would say
Speaker 1: another huge highlight of the film is the villain Michael Ironside.
Speaker 1: He's this guy from planet Zeist who is their enemy
Speaker 1: who eventually gets tired of waiting on Christoph Lambert to
Speaker 1: just die on Earth and uh and he like goes
Speaker 1: there to fight him. Uh and he you know, there's
Speaker 1: the expression chewing the scenery, but Michael Ironside and this
Speaker 1: is not really he's like a shark, you know, the
Speaker 1: way shark teeth are just always coming out in the
Speaker 1: things they buy it, So he's leaving his teeth all
Speaker 1: over the scenery. Yeah, it's very like skull far Forward
Speaker 1: Scanners esque acting for Michael Ron's side, I saw an
Speaker 1: inner view with him where he basically said, yeah, I
Speaker 1: wasn't a fan of the script. The production was kind
Speaker 1: of a wreck. But I decided like, if I'm going
Speaker 1: to do this, I'm going to be the most memorable
Speaker 1: thing in the film. I'm just gonna go you know, completely,
Speaker 1: you know, crank it up to eleven on the scene shooting. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a he's a tremendous amount of fun. Anytime he's
Speaker 1: on the screen, you can't help but but invest yourself
Speaker 1: and know what he's doing. Oh wait, we haven't even
Speaker 1: mentioned yet the sci fi premise of the movie, have
Speaker 1: we No, we haven't, And this will be something that
Speaker 1: we'll discuss uh later on a little more depth. Because
Speaker 1: one of the ideas here is that what what does
Speaker 1: Connor do with the prize? Right, so he's got this
Speaker 1: great power and wisdom after cutting off all the other
Speaker 1: Zeistian heads we find out that they're from Zeis the heads.
Speaker 1: What does he do with it? Well, apparently he becomes
Speaker 1: like an atmospheric or geoscientist of some kind. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: at least he uses his psyche powers to connect important
Speaker 1: people who are and yeah, he ends up bringing them
Speaker 1: together to solve the problem of Earth's depleted ozone layer,
Speaker 1: and ends up called found founding the Shield Corporation, which
Speaker 1: creates these enormous machines that beam some sort of energy
Speaker 1: up into the stratosphere and create an artificial ozone layer
Speaker 1: of sorts, like an energy layer that protects the Earth
Speaker 1: from UV rays but also makes everything. It makes the
Speaker 1: whole world like permanent Casablanca climate, So everything is dark
Speaker 1: and everything is sweaty everywhere all over the Earth. It's
Speaker 1: a perfect way to justify your like dark and war sets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it does create this. You can see where they
Speaker 1: were going with this idea of like Connors, this was
Speaker 1: the savior, but now he's he's vilified, you know, which
Speaker 1: is an interesting trope. You know they sometimes rolled out.
Speaker 1: You see shades of that, certainly in uh in the
Speaker 1: Dune saga. But yeah, so now he's this guy that
Speaker 1: people curse because yeah, he's the planet from UH from
Speaker 1: It's it's o's own problem. But then you replaced it
Speaker 1: with this weird thing that nobody likes. I hate sweating.
Speaker 1: I'd rather be burned alive by UV rays. And so
Speaker 1: that's the sci fi in war World that the bulk
Speaker 1: of Highlander two deals with. Okay, well, now that we
Speaker 1: have described perhaps the most awesome bad movie of all time, Like,
Speaker 1: would you say for me, it's like a top five
Speaker 1: all time bad film. Yeah, it's pretty great, and we
Speaker 1: don't even have time to get into all the ways
Speaker 1: that it is is bad and all the ways that
Speaker 1: it's it's it's ultimately fun to watch. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it's not a good
Speaker 1: film by anybody's standard. But hey, if you can get
Speaker 1: you one of those pristine VHS tapes that's got the
Speaker 1: original cut, I highly recommended if you're a fan and
Speaker 1: you want to treat yourself to a brain self funeral. Um,
Speaker 1: now we should take a quick break and then when
Speaker 1: we come back, let's start to discuss the science of
Speaker 1: Highlander two. All right, we're back. Yes, we're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: We're going to We're gonna reach into the corpse of
Speaker 1: this movie. We're gonna pull back the ribs and wrench
Speaker 1: out some juicy, um, you know, moist portions of actual
Speaker 1: science to discuss. Wow, where did that description come from?
Speaker 1: That was? I'm riveted. Now I gotta see what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do. Okay, So the first thing that I think
Speaker 1: we should mention is the weirdness of using the the idea.
Speaker 1: I guess this this maybe does go into the first movie.
Speaker 1: I don't recall the use of the phrase the quickening,
Speaker 1: which is the subtitle of the film is Highlander to
Speaker 1: colon the quickening and the quickening? What is it? What
Speaker 1: happens when the quickening is on screen? Are you referring
Speaker 1: to the you know what happens after that one of
Speaker 1: them cuts the other's heads off? Yeah, that seems to
Speaker 1: be what it's referring to, right the I think there's
Speaker 1: something in the first film where Ramirez is encouraging him to,
Speaker 1: like Feele, the quickening of watching an Elk run or
Speaker 1: something like that. But yeah, for the most part, the
Speaker 1: quickening is this is explosive transfer of magical electronic energy
Speaker 1: and or and made it demons from the body of
Speaker 1: the deceased immortal into the body of the living immortal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems to be what happens when one Zeisteon cuts
Speaker 1: another Zysteon's head off, and then suddenly there are just
Speaker 1: lots of sparks and explosions and electrical arcs and the
Speaker 1: decapitate or receives all of the power and wisdom of
Speaker 1: the decapitate. T Yes, it is, I would say, unapologetically orgasmic,
Speaker 1: right is it is? It is a you know, pyrotechnic
Speaker 1: orgasm on the screen every time this occurs. But we
Speaker 1: we should mention. I guess the idea that the quickening
Speaker 1: is actually a term that already had historically relevant meaning
Speaker 1: like too. I want to quote a section from article
Speaker 1: in Slate by the journalist Ruth Graham about the idea
Speaker 1: of the quickening. Quote. Maift thirty seven was a momentous
Speaker 1: day for Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henry the eighth.
Speaker 1: She had been pregnant for some but now it was official.
Speaker 1: Seymour had felt the quickening, the child's first kick in
Speaker 1: her womb. The milestone was announced too much rejoicing in St.
Speaker 1: Paul's Cathedral in London, with bonfires throughout the city and
Speaker 1: celebratory wine distributed to the poor. At Oxford, a preacher
Speaker 1: delivered a sermon to mark the occasion quote upon Trinity Sunday,
Speaker 1: like one given of God, the child quickened in the
Speaker 1: mother's womb. The assembled worshippers praised God and prayed that
Speaker 1: the new baby would be a prince of the universe.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe, I mean, if you're going to
Speaker 1: be a Prince of England at the time, you might
Speaker 1: as well consider yourself a prince of the universe. Right, No,
Speaker 1: no need to undersell. But why all of this hubbub
Speaker 1: about the fact that Jane Seymour had felt a kick? Uh?
Speaker 1: So the quickening literally means when a pregnant woman first
Speaker 1: feels a kick or a movement from the developing fetus.
Speaker 1: And the root of this word in English is the
Speaker 1: word quick meaning alive. Like you know, the phrase of
Speaker 1: the quicken the dead, that's not just a movie title,
Speaker 1: it's a phrase from from the New Testament. As Second Timothy,
Speaker 1: I charged the therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: who shall judge the quicken the dead at his appearing
Speaker 1: in his kingdom? So it means judging the living and
Speaker 1: the dead. So, while today the moment of the quickening
Speaker 1: is not really invested with any particular biological significance, it
Speaker 1: used to be considered very important legally, morally, religiously. Like
Speaker 1: Aristotle wrote that the moment of the quickening was the
Speaker 1: moment that the fetus became animated or became alive, And
Speaker 1: many would go on to interpret this, like, especially in
Speaker 1: a lot of Christian traditions, as the moment that the
Speaker 1: fetus received a soul or became alive. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: in that I can see where we could get to
Speaker 1: the to the idea of what's happening with the immortals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are absorbing a soul exactly. And and so for
Speaker 1: this reason, like the quickening had very weird legal status,
Speaker 1: especially for us to read back on now, like Graham
Speaker 1: Rights for example, about a precedent in English law where
Speaker 1: if a pregnant woman was condemned to death, like she
Speaker 1: had to be executed, she could be executed if she
Speaker 1: had not yet felt the quickening, but she would be
Speaker 1: given a delay of sentence if she had felt the quickening.
Speaker 1: I can't have an imagine like ramires As as a
Speaker 1: lawyer then defending your honor, my client only absorbed the
Speaker 1: quickening after he knocked the futuristic a shassion off the train,
Speaker 1: and then the train ran over his neck. So I
Speaker 1: would argue that this was a case of accidental quickening. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: this makes a kind of odd choice of terms though
Speaker 1: for for a movie about like alien swordsman cutting off
Speaker 1: each other's heads, Like, I guess the idea of receiving
Speaker 1: a soul or receiving a life essence at a certain
Speaker 1: moment like that could be in there. Also. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's just a coincidence, maybe like he just
Speaker 1: independently Whoever the writer was arrived at the h the
Speaker 1: idea of the quickening after thinking about the word quick
Speaker 1: meaning living, living essence or something. I mean, you gotta
Speaker 1: call it something, right. Maybe for a while they just
Speaker 1: referred to it as the sparky explode e uh, post
Speaker 1: decapitation brain orgasm. I don't know. Um quickening rolls off
Speaker 1: the tongue a little easier, the decapagasming, Yes, the decephalizagasming. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about just the
Speaker 1: idea of immortality and mortality, Okay, And we've we've covered
Speaker 1: aspects of this on the show before. We did a
Speaker 1: two parter um in the last year, I believe about
Speaker 1: the desire for immortality. Yeah, and where we talked about
Speaker 1: like what is the biological reality about why animals age?
Speaker 1: Why do animals grow old and die? Like why don't
Speaker 1: you know, why don't our our bodies just have us
Speaker 1: live forever? And the answer to that is generally that
Speaker 1: there's what's sort of known as antagonistic pleotropies. There are
Speaker 1: forces within the genome that are driving fitness in multiple
Speaker 1: different directions, and it just turns out that nature doesn't
Speaker 1: see a whole lot of advance age and extending human
Speaker 1: lifespans over a long period of time. And so when
Speaker 1: there's a gene that, say, like, maybe prevents cancer when
Speaker 1: you're young, but also happens to lead to deterioration of
Speaker 1: the body and death of old age later on, natural
Speaker 1: selection doesn't care a whole lot about the old age.
Speaker 1: It cares more about preventing cancer when you're young, so
Speaker 1: it just selects for that and rarely sees what happens
Speaker 1: in old age because there's a lot of natural mortality
Speaker 1: throughout the span of a life anyway. Right, So it's
Speaker 1: on one level, it's difficult to come up with an
Speaker 1: argument for for how biologically immortal creature would work within
Speaker 1: a given um environment. However, we do have a few
Speaker 1: possible examples, the main one being that of the hydra,
Speaker 1: the real world hydra, not the mythical hydra um, because
Speaker 1: you know, these are hardy, regenerative creatures that evolved to
Speaker 1: thrive in a in harsh war like environments, perhaps not
Speaker 1: unlike our our planet Zeist. It seems like we all
Speaker 1: are are all male species of of immortal swordsmen, are
Speaker 1: in a constant state of war. Uh So maybe we
Speaker 1: can compare them to the hydra a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Hydrozoa's ice danum. And it's worth noting that, uh that
Speaker 1: even with biologically immortal or or you know, possibly biological
Speaker 1: immortal organisms, they still live in a dangerous world that
Speaker 1: will inevitably kill them. Like nobody's saying, oh, hydras live forever. No,
Speaker 1: hydras still don't live tremendously long. They'll die for any
Speaker 1: number of reasons. But there have been there have been
Speaker 1: experimental observations that have have shown that in in in
Speaker 1: certain lab situations, they live far longer than we thought,
Speaker 1: and they don't appear to age. Uh So, you know,
Speaker 1: we could maybe look to some parallels there for our
Speaker 1: our fictional magical swordsman from another planet. Um. You know
Speaker 1: that that's this is the basic pitch behind the biologically
Speaker 1: immortal Adrien's an alien fictional alien species in the culture
Speaker 1: novels by Nim Banks that I've mentioned probably several times
Speaker 1: in the show at this point. The idea is that
Speaker 1: they emerged in a very competitive, very harsh environment that
Speaker 1: they ultimately ended up mastering, but they retained this biological
Speaker 1: immortality as being just a part of their their physiology. Now,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say for sure, but it makes me
Speaker 1: I mean, I tend to think that wherever you are,
Speaker 1: you'd probably have, even on an alien planet, some similar
Speaker 1: natural selection forces at play. As long as you have
Speaker 1: the same basic principles of evolution working, you probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: have many large organisms having any kind of mechanism that
Speaker 1: favored immortality, just because, much like on Earth, there wouldn't
Speaker 1: be much reason for natural selection to still elect it. Now,
Speaker 1: the other big possibility, and this is probably the more
Speaker 1: likely possibility if we're trying to come up with a
Speaker 1: reason that the immortals of Zeist are indeed immortal, is
Speaker 1: that perhaps they engineered it. Because certainly they just seem
Speaker 1: to be running around the desert fighting the swords and
Speaker 1: using some sort of guns. I can't remember if they're
Speaker 1: laser laser guns. Yeah, so they have some advanced technology,
Speaker 1: and they have the technology to either exile individuals to
Speaker 1: another planet or to the to the distant future, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem impossible that they would have also figured
Speaker 1: out a way to make themselves biologically immortal um or
Speaker 1: technologically and technologically immortal artificially. So at any rate, it's
Speaker 1: also worth noting that again that there are no female
Speaker 1: immortals that we see in Highlander two. I tend to
Speaker 1: think this has more to do with just sort of
Speaker 1: like sexist envisioning of story tropes than to do with
Speaker 1: the their biological ideas about Zeist or they reproduce via
Speaker 1: a sexual budding like the Hydra. Okay, you know, we
Speaker 1: never we don't see we never see a scene where
Speaker 1: Sean Connery buds additional Sean conneries. But who knows. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would point out that you could very
Speaker 1: well say the Highlander films are buddy films christof Lambert
Speaker 1: and Sean Connery. I mean, if that's that, they should
Speaker 1: have had their own buddy cop series. Chiefs says, I'm
Speaker 1: taking it too personal, No Islander, We've got to stop him. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm so that would have That would have been great, though,
Speaker 1: can you be a buddy cop without budding. I don't
Speaker 1: know several others Riggs and MYRTA manage it all right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's move on to decapitation. What do you have
Speaker 1: for us in the way of decapitation science. Well, I
Speaker 1: was wondering, you know, is there an animal that does
Speaker 1: the Zeist thing, that does the immortal thing, that wanders
Speaker 1: the earth in search of combat with enemies who can
Speaker 1: supply it with the quickening if and only if it
Speaker 1: kills them by decapitation? And I, you know, at first,
Speaker 1: I was like coming up with a blank. I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's really anything like that out there. Actually,
Speaker 1: decapitation just does not seem very common in the animal kingdom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's one of those things that happens
Speaker 1: all the time in movies. And I believe is it
Speaker 1: appears easier to do in films, um, but you're really
Speaker 1: having to You're having to cut through a lot of
Speaker 1: material there. And to what end if you're an animal? Right,
Speaker 1: what's the point. Normally, if you're an animal, you're not
Speaker 1: like trying to make your enemy or your prey like
Speaker 1: get a quick death as if it's like a you know,
Speaker 1: a judicial execution or something. It's not the guillotine here.
Speaker 1: You're trying to eat them or you're trying to fight
Speaker 1: them off or something. But as always, as always, nature
Speaker 1: is weirder than fiction. So I present for your consideration
Speaker 1: an insect, a highlander insect. It is a genus of
Speaker 1: forward fly, known scientifically as suit acton. Now, I was
Speaker 1: wondering what this means for like, false pseudo means false,
Speaker 1: so false Acteon acton is a figure from Greek Man
Speaker 1: who was a herdsman who got torn apart by his
Speaker 1: own hounds. Oh, yes, there's some paintings that depict this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what significance that has there. Maybe acting
Speaker 1: on is another type of fly or animal that it's like,
Speaker 1: maybe a false mimic of an outward appearance. I couldn't
Speaker 1: figure that out. But despite the scientific name, I will
Speaker 1: propose hereafter we call it either I don't know, we
Speaker 1: can pick from a few of the highlander fly, the
Speaker 1: zeist fly, or maybe the quickening fly, or if you
Speaker 1: can think of a better one, I'm still open. The
Speaker 1: Connor McFly A little back to the future bridge there.
Speaker 1: So here's how it goes. You've got these flies from
Speaker 1: the family for a day, and they're they're pretty familiar
Speaker 1: to us. We can see them buzzing around food sources
Speaker 1: as pests. We often mistakenly call them fruit flies. They're
Speaker 1: not fruit flies, but the genus sued Acteon is different.
Speaker 1: These flies are parasitoids, their reproductive parasites that attack ants,
Speaker 1: especially ants in the genus sullen Opsis, which includes the
Speaker 1: invasive red fire ant Solenopsis invicta, which we've talked about
Speaker 1: plenty on the show before, and the black imported fire
Speaker 1: ant Solenopsis ricktieri. So species of this fly can be
Speaker 1: found throughout the world. In the United States, you'll mainly
Speaker 1: find them, I think in the Southeast, like the Texas,
Speaker 1: through the Deep South in Florida in those areas, and
Speaker 1: the process of their parasitism is amazing. Robert, I've included
Speaker 1: some images for you to look at as we go
Speaker 1: along here, so feel free to comment sharing with the
Speaker 1: listeners in any color that strikes you here, but absolutely
Speaker 1: uh So. First of all, you've got a female suit
Speaker 1: act on or highlander fly. She mates and so now
Speaker 1: she's got fertilized eggs, and what she does is she
Speaker 1: will find a fire ant of the particular species that
Speaker 1: she can parasitize. So certain species of this genus of
Speaker 1: fly attack generally a certain species of ant, And so
Speaker 1: she'll find the right kind of aunt, and she'll fly
Speaker 1: around above groups of worker ants during their foraging behavior,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly, when the time is right, she swoops
Speaker 1: down on and stabs one of the ants with her
Speaker 1: external ovipositor. And I've got some close up micrographs of
Speaker 1: these ovipositors for you to look at, Robert. I love
Speaker 1: these things because they look so metal. They're straight out
Speaker 1: of like a Mortal Kombat game. Oh yeah. One of
Speaker 1: them in particular does remind me a bit of the
Speaker 1: Kurgan's sword from the first Highlighter film. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: forget what that looks like. Oh it's kind of got
Speaker 1: claws on it, doesn't it. So I guess she's this
Speaker 1: is kind of the sword fight portion. She is like
Speaker 1: the Kurgans. She flies in with the sword and stabs
Speaker 1: instead of immediately decapitating. But we're getting there. So then
Speaker 1: with the ovipositor, she injects an egg into the ants thorax,
Speaker 1: and the egg develops within the ant, and then the
Speaker 1: larva hatches, and from here the larva travels into the
Speaker 1: ant's head and waits there consuming material inside the ant's head.
Speaker 1: It consumes hema lymph, and hema lymph is the invertebrate
Speaker 1: equivalent of blood. So imagine this thing basically going inside
Speaker 1: your head and then sit there and drinking your blood.
Speaker 1: But it also, over time eats the ant's brain, and
Speaker 1: this causes the ant, i've read in reports to kind
Speaker 1: of wander around zombie like. This is, of course, not
Speaker 1: the only parasite that can affect an ant's nervous system
Speaker 1: and cause it to wander around and strange zombie like behavior,
Speaker 1: but it did make me wonder. So when does the
Speaker 1: ant first feel the quickening inside its own head? Oh?
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's a tough one. We'll come back
Speaker 1: to it then. So anyway, when it's time for the
Speaker 1: larva to pupate, it secretes an enzyme that dissolves the
Speaker 1: connective membrane of the ants exoskeleton, particularly at the site
Speaker 1: where the ant's head connects to its thorax. Basically, it
Speaker 1: is externally digesting the ant's neck, and while that enzyme
Speaker 1: is doing its work, the larvae continues to eat the
Speaker 1: stuff inside the ant's head, and then the ants head
Speaker 1: falls off, so that here is the decapitation ant's head
Speaker 1: off the larva is inside it. So the larva inside
Speaker 1: the severed head shoves the ant's mouthparts out of the
Speaker 1: severed head, and the fly pupa extends to fill different
Speaker 1: cavities in the ant head, especially like it extends to
Speaker 1: fill in the oral cavity with part of its plate,
Speaker 1: and then it's it sends out a couple of spikes
Speaker 1: that stabs these spikes out through the sides of the
Speaker 1: ant head, and these are respiratory horns like breathing tubes.
Speaker 1: And then after maybe like two to four or two
Speaker 1: to six weeks, an adult fly will just burst out
Speaker 1: of the ant head like you know, hello, there can
Speaker 1: be only one. And I've got I've got a picture
Speaker 1: of it bursting out here down below. And I must say,
Speaker 1: this little larva popping out of the ant head like
Speaker 1: a smashed pumpkin is so cute. It's got huge eyes,
Speaker 1: it's got little little wiggly things. I don't know what
Speaker 1: those are. Yeah, it's just kind of like busting out
Speaker 1: of the face. I like just a like a baby
Speaker 1: crawled out of your face? Right? Did they ever go
Speaker 1: there in the sequels to the Alien franchise later in
Speaker 1: Alien movies where their face bursters. No, But I believe
Speaker 1: one of those Peter Jackson early Gorefest films of his
Speaker 1: there's a scene where like a baby like evil zombie
Speaker 1: baby rips its way out of an old lady's face.
Speaker 1: I think, sick. Yeah, yeah, by all accounts, sick indeed.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe it takes a kind of dark sense
Speaker 1: of humor to appreciate this, but I see when there's
Speaker 1: one photo where the the ant's head has fallen off
Speaker 1: of its body, and it appears that the ant is
Speaker 1: sort of like feeling around for its head with its
Speaker 1: four limbs, like where did my head go? This? It
Speaker 1: reminds me once again of the Certainly, there are lots
Speaker 1: of cartoons where people's heads come off and they you know,
Speaker 1: they reach around for them. But the fieries in Labyrinth,
Speaker 1: the Nightmarck orange creatures who take their own heads and
Speaker 1: limbs off and throw them around and and nix and
Speaker 1: match them and want to do the same thing to uh,
Speaker 1: to us, to to our our protagonist. Uh yeah, those
Speaker 1: are those are some nightmare creatures for sure. You know,
Speaker 1: I to go back and watch The Labyrinth again. It's
Speaker 1: been so I barely remember it. Oh yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's quite good. It's a classic. I mean it's no
Speaker 1: Highlander too does have a queen soundtrack. Uh no, but
Speaker 1: it has a tape with Bowie soundtrack. I think that
Speaker 1: I think that that suffices. But anyway, so back to
Speaker 1: the Highlander flies, the suit Acteon. So these flies have
Speaker 1: actually been deployed intentionally in some areas for invasive fire
Speaker 1: ant control. So it's kind of like if you had
Speaker 1: a problem with invasive Michael ironside populations and they're ravaging
Speaker 1: your local ecosystem, what do you do while you release
Speaker 1: a population of christof lamberts to keep it in check,
Speaker 1: going out and decapitating all of your invasive Michael ironsides.
Speaker 1: And this works out because the specifics of at least
Speaker 1: some species of the suit Acteon make them unlikely to
Speaker 1: be a human pest. Like, they do not seem to
Speaker 1: be attracted to the kinds of things that normally make
Speaker 1: a fly past. They're not really attracted to carry in feces, fruits,
Speaker 1: or human foods. M So more challenging to trigger the
Speaker 1: gathering here, that's what you're saying, I guess. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you get them all in the same place?
Speaker 1: I guess you just gather a lot of fire ants.
Speaker 1: Another thing that that's funny I found, Uh, I guess
Speaker 1: because of this potential to act as like pest control.
Speaker 1: When you google this genus, you will find hits for
Speaker 1: posts like where can I buy ant decapitating flies? They're
Speaker 1: like international suppliers who will ship to you? Or what?
Speaker 1: Another random but maybe interesting fact, apparently, the sex of
Speaker 1: the emerging highlander fly will be determined by the size
Speaker 1: of the ant head that gets cut off. So you
Speaker 1: cut off a bigger aunt head, you get a female fly.
Speaker 1: You cut off a smaller ant head, you get a
Speaker 1: mail fly. Oh wow. So it's like the older, the immortal,
Speaker 1: you know, the more quickenings within them, the more room
Speaker 1: for growth. I'm reaching, but I'm trying to continue the
Speaker 1: connection here now. I admire your your dedication. By the way,
Speaker 1: if you want to read more, the University of Florida
Speaker 1: Entomology department website as a great page with references on
Speaker 1: the sud Acton genus. Uh. It's it's a wild ride.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take one more break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to talk about the ozone layer.
Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back. So, as we discussed earlier, one
Speaker 1: of the major plot elements in Highlander two is the
Speaker 1: idea that the Earth's ozone layer was was terribly depleted
Speaker 1: and Connor McCloud uh founded the Shield Corporation, which which
Speaker 1: created these enormous like uh you know sci fi energy um,
Speaker 1: the pyramid pyramids ye, that are shooting some sort of
Speaker 1: beam up into the sky and creating an artificial ozone
Speaker 1: layer and artificial shield that is protecting the Earth against
Speaker 1: harmful UV rays. But it makes everything like dark and
Speaker 1: human except I must say this does not actually apply
Speaker 1: in every scene, Like when you showed the scenes with
Speaker 1: Sean Connery in Scotland. Scotland's fine, everything looks normal, but
Speaker 1: which is which is generally so not what you'd expect
Speaker 1: from Scotland, right, But yeah, so the world is all
Speaker 1: dark and humid, and it's a classic case of like
Speaker 1: the heroic character who does something to save the world
Speaker 1: and is totally unappreciated. Everybody hates him for it. There's
Speaker 1: a scene where where Christopher Lambert in Old Man Makeup
Speaker 1: is like at a bar getting a drink in this
Speaker 1: angry lady in a polka dot dress runs up to
Speaker 1: him and tries to hit him, and it's like, yo
Speaker 1: felt the sky with that puke. Alright, well, let's talk
Speaker 1: about the puke in the sky. Um, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the ozone layer. So, first of all, ozone or try oxygen,
Speaker 1: is an inorganic molecule, and on the surface of the planet,
Speaker 1: it's a pale blue gas and it's a pollutant. But
Speaker 1: most of the Earth's ozone isn't down here. Nine of
Speaker 1: it is up in the stratosphere, ten to thirty miles
Speaker 1: sixty kilometers above the surface. It's just a small part
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere up there, and it's mostly oxygen and nitrogen.
Speaker 1: But but in the stratosphere it blocks the worst and
Speaker 1: most energetic ultraviolet light wave lengths, namely UVC and UVB.
Speaker 1: These uh these particles absorbed the UV waves and heat up,
Speaker 1: as does the oxygen. And for this reason, the stratosphere
Speaker 1: heats up the higher that you go, so temperatures that
Speaker 1: increase from an average of negative sixty degrees fahrenheit or
Speaker 1: negative fifty one degree celsius at the tropopas to a
Speaker 1: maximum of about five degrees fahrenheit or negative fifteen degrees
Speaker 1: celsius at the top of the stratosphere. And that's because
Speaker 1: of the ozone being bombarded by the UV radiation from
Speaker 1: space right, and so it plays an important role. It
Speaker 1: is a shield. The ozone layer is a shield, um
Speaker 1: and it's especially important to us mortals down here or
Speaker 1: you know, life itself. Now, when I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: I remember the depletion of the ozone layer being essentially
Speaker 1: like the biggest environmental issue. I remember that from like
Speaker 1: the late eighties and early nineties absolutely, and that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that is what this film is coming out of, uh
Speaker 1: and that is reflected in this film's themes. So, in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies, scientists realized that ozone levels over
Speaker 1: Antarctica were dropping. Record low levels were occurring every spring.
Speaker 1: In they figured out why it was due to the
Speaker 1: release of chlorofluoro carbons or c f c's in the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and these chemical compounds or things that we were
Speaker 1: using them in in air conditioning, aerosol spray cans, cleaning products,
Speaker 1: and the manufacture of things like styrofoam, right, And I
Speaker 1: believe specifically it was the chlorine component of the chloroflora
Speaker 1: carbons that was especially damaging to ozone levels because it
Speaker 1: would the CFCs would go up in the atmosphere and
Speaker 1: then then the chlorine ions would come off of them
Speaker 1: and bond with other molecules and it would eventually lead
Speaker 1: to ozone depletion. That's right. Yeah, the CFCs were drifting
Speaker 1: up into the stratosphere and then the CFCs would be
Speaker 1: broken apart by UV radiation releasing the chlorine. Now, it
Speaker 1: was only popping up in the spring because there are
Speaker 1: seasonal factors that influence ozone levels over the Antarctic at Arctic,
Speaker 1: so it's really only popping up during that one period
Speaker 1: of time, and the Arctic wasn't affected due to a
Speaker 1: fewer icy clouds and other climate factors. Now there's a
Speaker 1: dystopian version of this story. Uh, there's a dystopian timeline
Speaker 1: extending from the nineteen eighties. Uh. Ultimately a fiction, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't involve immortal swordsmen at all. It was partially
Speaker 1: foreseen in the nineteen eighties and then in two thousand nine, UH.
Speaker 1: Goddard Space Flight Center scientist Paul Newman uh ransom computer
Speaker 1: simulations to see what would have happened? What? What kind
Speaker 1: of what? What might we have seen if we had
Speaker 1: done absolutely nothing, If there had been uh no concerted
Speaker 1: efforts to to do something about the depleted ozone layer,
Speaker 1: if there's been no connor McCloud, what would the future
Speaker 1: have been like? And according to Newman's model, if humans
Speaker 1: had done nothing about it, if we'd stubbornly continued pumping
Speaker 1: these CFCs into the atmosphere. Uh. He said that we'd
Speaker 1: find ourselves ultimately in the year by the way Highlander
Speaker 1: two takes place in what's going to happen when we
Speaker 1: get there? Well? Anyway, with two thirds of the Earth's
Speaker 1: ozone layer gone, we'd have a permanent ozone hole over
Speaker 1: the Antarctic and the Arctic, and UV radiation in mid
Speaker 1: latitude cities like Washington, d C would be enough to
Speaker 1: give you a sunburn in a mere five minutes of exposure.
Speaker 1: DNA mutating UV radiation levels would be up sixty uh,
Speaker 1: greatly increasing cancer rates and impacting numerous organisms. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: imagine that would that would really hurt the environment and
Speaker 1: ecosystems too. And and indeed, this is this is the
Speaker 1: sort of dystopian world week we kind of see reflected
Speaker 1: in Highlander two, you know, when the fear of this
Speaker 1: world right, and yet somehow humanity avoided this right as
Speaker 1: if a psychic French Scotsman unified our minds uh and
Speaker 1: and and caused seventy countries to come together and enact
Speaker 1: the Montreal Protocol, which is what happened in nine six,
Speaker 1: mind you, the year that Highlander one came out. Absolutely
Speaker 1: no connection between the two, but it did occur. In
Speaker 1: so there actually was a massive effort kind of like
Speaker 1: Connor McCloud shield, except instead of putting a barrier in place,
Speaker 1: what they were trying to do was stop harming the
Speaker 1: ozone layer to begin with. Right, The scientists presented the
Speaker 1: case and they said, look, here's the evidence, and it
Speaker 1: is it's CFCs that are doing it. If we stopped
Speaker 1: producing CFCs, or we at least, you know, tightened down
Speaker 1: our regulations of CFC's, we can stop this process. And
Speaker 1: so they set some goals reduced CFC production by t
Speaker 1: by by and the targets were subsequently strengthened, banning the
Speaker 1: worst CFC offenders by and stiffly regulating them. And as
Speaker 1: it stands today, the ozone layer is recovering and should
Speaker 1: fully recover by Yeah, and I should point out we're
Speaker 1: actually now seeing direct evidence of the of the recovery
Speaker 1: of the ozone layer hole over the Antarctic. Like I
Speaker 1: was looking at a NASA press release about this direct evidence,
Speaker 1: and there was a measuring instrument called the Microwave Limbs
Speaker 1: Sounder MLS aboard the AURA satellite. It was used to
Speaker 1: measure ozone depletion levels and or measure chlorine I think,
Speaker 1: and it showed from two thousand five to eighteen there
Speaker 1: was a net of about twenty percent reduction of ozone depletion.
Speaker 1: So it is actually recovering. Things are getting better, and
Speaker 1: we know this directly now, Yeah, I mean, it's ultimately
Speaker 1: an inspiring success story. It's uh, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: one to one with the problem of human caused climate change,
Speaker 1: but it demonstrates our potential to enact change based on
Speaker 1: our on sound scientific consensus, to to change the way
Speaker 1: we're approaching the world, to cut back on what we're
Speaker 1: doing to it, and and see some recovery take place.
Speaker 1: Like it, it can be done. People. We've done it before.
Speaker 1: It just makes me worry what would have happened if
Speaker 1: there had been as much money behind attacking that scientific
Speaker 1: consensus as there is on the consensus about climate change, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: or if it had been politicized to the accident that
Speaker 1: the climate change has has unfortunately been politicized, we could
Speaker 1: be living in a world a heard right now? Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: so so speaking of a world of heard, Okay, so
Speaker 1: all this squares rather nicely with what we see in
Speaker 1: Highland or two. You know, clearly again it was this.
Speaker 1: This story emerged from this time of great concern over
Speaker 1: the ozone layer. You can see where the idea for
Speaker 1: the movie came from exactly so, because you know, faced
Speaker 1: with environmental challenges, Connor decided to do something about it,
Speaker 1: partially preventing the dystopian vision we related earlier. And at
Speaker 1: the same time, the movie deals with the self healing
Speaker 1: nature of the ozone like here, because there's this whole
Speaker 1: uh we didn't even really get into this, but there's
Speaker 1: a there are some freedom fighters who believe that the
Speaker 1: Shield Corporation doesn't need to exist anymore, that the ozone
Speaker 1: layer is fixed itself, and then the shields are just
Speaker 1: keeping us in this permanent noir world for no reason.
Speaker 1: And and it turns out that that's the case, right,
Speaker 1: that the Shield Corporation is evil now and must be stopped.
Speaker 1: Like Virginia Madson plays a scientist and eco terrorist who
Speaker 1: believes that the ozone levels are normal and that we
Speaker 1: need we no longer need the Shield. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: would seem that Connor also managed to ban CFCs as
Speaker 1: well as creating this artificial shield. Um but but but
Speaker 1: it did make me wonder what could we do with
Speaker 1: an artificial ozone layer? Like what sort is there any
Speaker 1: research out there about about how we might you know,
Speaker 1: fix it? If is there anything like the shield that
Speaker 1: we see in Highlander two in scientific literature? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean you see this kind of reaction to certain thing,
Speaker 1: like you often hear people say about climate change, like, well,
Speaker 1: it would just be too hard to get people to
Speaker 1: stop burning fossil fuels and releasing all this carbon into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. What we need to do instead is focus
Speaker 1: all of our scientific efforts on coming up with ways
Speaker 1: to like counteract climate change. There is geo hacking scheme.
Speaker 1: I would say, based on what I've read, do not
Speaker 1: put all your hope in this like, if you want
Speaker 1: a good way to deal with the climate change, is
Speaker 1: you you should be thinking about reducing emissions, not depending
Speaker 1: on some savior technology to come along and geoengineer the
Speaker 1: world back to good health. And yet, knowing, you know,
Speaker 1: knowing scientists, I figured, well, somebody has surely Cureainly somebody
Speaker 1: presented some sort of geo hacking measure for ozone layer depletion.
Speaker 1: Why I stopped cutting ourselves when we can invent a
Speaker 1: really good band aid? Well, you know, but I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly there's a value in sort of something in the
Speaker 1: scientific exploration of a measures as well. Yeah, having having
Speaker 1: a plan B is worthwhile. So I hunted around and
Speaker 1: I found the work of a Russian physicist by the
Speaker 1: name of Alexander gurvek Born, presumably still alive, based on
Speaker 1: what I could gather, and he proposed this idea in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty um the the idea of of generating an
Speaker 1: artificial ozone layer or a o L refers to it,
Speaker 1: but then in later papers he refers to it as
Speaker 1: an artificially ionized region or an ai R. He's an
Speaker 1: interesting guy. He argued that among the various high energy
Speaker 1: proposals to deal with ozone layer loss. Quote. The most
Speaker 1: promising approach is connected with the creation of an artificial
Speaker 1: ionized region in the atmosphere by microwave discharges. Okay, well
Speaker 1: that's funny because in the movie you see like a
Speaker 1: big pyramid that's like shooting some beam of energy into
Speaker 1: the sky. It doesn't say what that is. Presumably it
Speaker 1: could be microwaves, So I guess it's visible in the movie,
Speaker 1: and micro raves wouldn't be visible. Yeah, what I'm about
Speaker 1: to explain here does not match up with what we
Speaker 1: see in the film. But you can see where, for instance,
Speaker 1: the screen radier writer might have read about it, like
Speaker 1: might have read something and say popular science, like a
Speaker 1: blurb about this paper and then use that in the screenplay.
Speaker 1: So he wrote about this numerous times during his career
Speaker 1: and uh and even carry out a few experiments to
Speaker 1: sort of present how it would work. And he argues
Speaker 1: that it's possible in principle, but would be difficult and
Speaker 1: we require a lot more development, certainly to reach, you know,
Speaker 1: the level that we could actually counter ozone depletion. But
Speaker 1: the basic idea here behind his his his notion is
Speaker 1: that ozone normally forms in the stratosphere via the combine
Speaker 1: nation of atomic oxygen with molecular oxygen by solar radiation,
Speaker 1: which of course also destroys but basically the solar radiation
Speaker 1: causes a triple collision UH. And so Gouvek proposed beefing
Speaker 1: up ozone creation by the use of microwave radiation, and
Speaker 1: he points out that there are three key reasons to
Speaker 1: depend on microwaves in this kind of scenario. First of all,
Speaker 1: the energy can be transferred for considerable distances in the
Speaker 1: air almost without losses because you're gonna want to beam
Speaker 1: it up to the stratosphere to the energy can be
Speaker 1: focused in the given region of the atmosphere to achieve
Speaker 1: the necessary effect. And then three different regimes of the
Speaker 1: microwave source can be used, which gives the opportunity to
Speaker 1: achieve the necessary optimum conditions. So the idea here is
Speaker 1: to create an artificially ionized region or air rather than
Speaker 1: a shield. And while you could localize the effect you know,
Speaker 1: point out to a pointing out a particular area in
Speaker 1: the stratosphere, the ozone you create with then spread around
Speaker 1: due to winds and turbulent diffusion up in the stratosphere.
Speaker 1: So he continued to work on this idea well up
Speaker 1: into the two thousands. Uh Uh, it's it's a again
Speaker 1: as far as I understand it, and certainly a lot
Speaker 1: of the paper I was looking at what consisted of
Speaker 1: equations and stuff, and you know, breakdowns of what's happening
Speaker 1: would be happening happening at a molecular level. But are
Speaker 1: you saying that you're not an atmospheric physicist. Yeah, I'm sorry. Uh,
Speaker 1: in this discussion of Highlander two, I have to reveal that.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, basically, the idea is that this would
Speaker 1: be a way to produce more ozone to make up
Speaker 1: for ozone depletion, and he makes what seems to be
Speaker 1: a strong case that that we could conceivably do it.
Speaker 1: You can certainly see the kind of thinking that would
Speaker 1: lead to this contingency. I'm glad we didn't have to
Speaker 1: depend on this exactly. Yeah, we're very fortunate that we
Speaker 1: put in place protocols to just allow the atmosphere or
Speaker 1: the ozone layer to fix itself naturally. I mean, one
Speaker 1: reason is maybe it's just a Highlander two working on
Speaker 1: my brain, But I always do worry about all these
Speaker 1: proposed massive geoengineering projects that say, you know, we're going
Speaker 1: to do X, y or Z with Earth's atmosphere, like
Speaker 1: the idea of counteracting climate change by injecting sulfate particles
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere or something like that to reflect you
Speaker 1: know this, So, I don't know what the scientific consensus
Speaker 1: is on how effective that would actually be or or
Speaker 1: whether it's a good idea. I tend to suspect that
Speaker 1: it doesn't have a lot of support. But just the
Speaker 1: idea of trying things like that on the one Earth
Speaker 1: we have seems very scary. Absolutely now. At the same time,
Speaker 1: if we if we could do something like the shield
Speaker 1: that we see in Highlander two, that would of course
Speaker 1: be tremendously helpful, especially as we consider the possibility of
Speaker 1: one day um sending people to other worlds and setting
Speaker 1: up you know, colonies there. Like if you if you
Speaker 1: had the technology to create a radiation blocking shield, you know,
Speaker 1: install that thing on Mars, install that thing on the Moon,
Speaker 1: install it anywhere you need to try and house people
Speaker 1: off the planet. Yeah, have like a portable shield kit
Speaker 1: that goes with you wherever you go. Yeah. So you know,
Speaker 1: in that regard, this sci fi Technologyan sci fi technology
Speaker 1: always has a lot of of advantages, right because you
Speaker 1: don't actually have to develop it. It's just it's there,
Speaker 1: it's ready to go. But but certainly if we could,
Speaker 1: if we could pull something off like we see in
Speaker 1: the film, it would it would be tremendously useful, to
Speaker 1: say nothing of hoverboards which are also in highland or two.
Speaker 1: You know, I always wonder about like what is the
Speaker 1: what is the cost benefit thing of of talking a
Speaker 1: lot about like, you know, geoengineering contingencies for what if
Speaker 1: we we've got some massive environmental problem that that could
Speaker 1: really harm human human civilization, Uh, if we don't stop
Speaker 1: doing X. And meanwhile, we've got some people working on
Speaker 1: why saying maybe possibly why could protect us if we
Speaker 1: don't stop doing X. Does talking about the potential geoengineering
Speaker 1: solution or whatever like reduce people's incentive to say, stop
Speaker 1: producing chlorofluora carbons or stop producing carbon emissions, Like I
Speaker 1: don't know the answer, Well, I don't know. I'm always
Speaker 1: I'm continually perplexed by this because it's it's one of
Speaker 1: these things where you see humanities potential, you know, confounding
Speaker 1: potential to both refuse to change and be and and
Speaker 1: still be open to dramatic change, like the kind of
Speaker 1: the kind of human will that that very reasonably would think, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get rid of my hair spray,
Speaker 1: but I I guess I might be open to the
Speaker 1: entire world being clothed in sweaty darkness all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could, I could change. I could get used to that,
Speaker 1: but like, but I'm totally not gonna budge on this
Speaker 1: other issue. It's the it's the change of right now
Speaker 1: versus the change of years from now. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: see this on a personal level all the time. To
Speaker 1: like you can imagine someone thinking, well, I really, I
Speaker 1: know my doctor told me I need to change my diet,
Speaker 1: but sorry, I'm not I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 1: But maybe I'll start running every day and then that
Speaker 1: will counterbalance the crap that I eat, you know, or
Speaker 1: mayage in these exercises on an individual level all the time,
Speaker 1: very similar to that, like somebody thinks, well, my doctor
Speaker 1: told me I need to change my day, but maybe
Speaker 1: in ten years doctors will come up with a pill
Speaker 1: that I can just take to make me healthy and
Speaker 1: that will be that'll That's kind of like the shield option. Right,
Speaker 1: you've got a sort of like counteracting contingency that you're
Speaker 1: just really crossing your fingers for. And but you know
Speaker 1: you shouldn't do that. That's not a good idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean medical technology, technology in general continues to uh
Speaker 1: to advance often in in in very uh you know,
Speaker 1: at a very alarming rate. But you absolutely can't book
Speaker 1: on it. You know, you can't say, well, I'm sure
Speaker 1: somebody will figure it out. I'm just gonna keep along
Speaker 1: this path and we'll see what happens. Maybe maybe someone
Speaker 1: will come up with a magical shield to protect the
Speaker 1: planet and in protecting it, I mean protect it from us, maybe,
Speaker 1: but don't count on it. Just regulate the dang hairspray.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, yeah, now that I think about Highlands,
Speaker 1: who really does have a mangled environmental message? Like what
Speaker 1: that's not really I guess it's not really trying to
Speaker 1: say anything. I should not even try to decipher what
Speaker 1: it might be saying ing about environmentalism. But it's otherwise
Speaker 1: so lucid, Yes, or Robert, I'm glad we finally did it.
Speaker 1: This is an episode on one of the best bad
Speaker 1: movies of all time, And if you have never seen
Speaker 1: the original Highlander two, you can find yourself. I don't
Speaker 1: know how is the best way to find yourself a
Speaker 1: copy of the original cut, because I don't think you
Speaker 1: can get it in the United States at least well,
Speaker 1: we had to depend on your VHS copy for for
Speaker 1: us to watch it. And then, like I said, the
Speaker 1: version I watched on Amazon Prime last month, uh is
Speaker 1: a different cut of the film. I mean, it's still
Speaker 1: enjoyable in some respects. You still get to see that,
Speaker 1: you know, the visual flare of the director is still
Speaker 1: very much on the screen, but no Zeist. It's less
Speaker 1: manically incoherent. Yeah, they remix things in an attempt to
Speaker 1: give it more um coherence, but I'm not sure it
Speaker 1: really succeeds. But hey, if nothing else, you still get
Speaker 1: that cool sword fight in the in the you know,
Speaker 1: the city with the train and the the flying punks
Speaker 1: on their their their their hoverboards. So that's always a win.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we should pat ourselves on the
Speaker 1: back too much, but I think we did a better
Speaker 1: job of finding good scientific angles on Highland or two
Speaker 1: than I expected we could. I know, imagine what we
Speaker 1: could do with a real science fiction film. You know,
Speaker 1: but which brings us that we did one of these
Speaker 1: on two thousand one of Space Odyssey several months back,
Speaker 1: and now that we've we we've gotten Highlander two out
Speaker 1: of the way. I would love to do more of
Speaker 1: these on a regular basis. Uh. For instance, I've wanted
Speaker 1: to do an episode on the science of the Dark
Speaker 1: Crystal for a long time, and uh, I think given
Speaker 1: developments with Netflix, I think this is the year to
Speaker 1: do it. Maybe we'll have to think about that one.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have said, oh, do you know,
Speaker 1: do something related to alien and the xenomorph. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously there's a lot we could talk about there. So
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from all of you out there.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this treatment of of a film with science,
Speaker 1: then then a let know what you would like us
Speaker 1: to explore in potential future episodes. If like us, you're
Speaker 1: a fan of trash cinema and be movie behemoths, get
Speaker 1: in touch. Let us know what's your favorite awesomely bad movie. Likewise,
Speaker 1: we know that we have some Highlander fans out there,
Speaker 1: So if you have definite thoughts about Highlander one and two,
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts about all the various other films
Speaker 1: and TV shows, most of which I have not seen.
Speaker 1: We would love for you to to to bring us
Speaker 1: up to speed on the Highlander universe, quoth the Lambert
Speaker 1: never more. Alright, So in the meantime, check out Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mother Ship.
Speaker 1: That's where we'll find all the episodes of the show.
Speaker 1: You also find links out to our very social media
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Speaker 1: and check it out. We have a whole episode about
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Speaker 1: so go check out Invention. If you like this show,
Speaker 1: you'll probably love that show too. Anyway, huge thanks to
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